Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

No.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Seems anarchy is acceptable if you are of the 'right' ethnicity.....
:sneaky::ohmy:

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Sometimes people are forced into doing desperate things because all too often issues like this turn into faits accomplis. When the Tigers are wiped out, there is no longer an argument and there is never any restitution.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

If the protesters had made an issue of this when the Tigers were gaining ground, instead of sending aid to them, maybe there would be sympathy. We only ever hear Tamil protests when the Tigers are losing.

Maybe the protesters should ask the Tigers to stop fighting as well.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

The Sinhalese Government has made it patently clear that the extermination of the LTTEs ideology and its supporters is all it is interested in. Why would they lay down and accept a slaughter? Nobody here is saying that guilt belongs solely to one side, but warcrimes are not excusable by virtue of your opponents being on somebody's 'Terrorist List'.

I don't know enough about the history behind the conflict but what I have become aware of - that the Sri Lankan government is committing atrocities against its own people as well as Tamils while refusing to accept any outside monitoring by any agency, all the while lying about 'safe zones' and the end to heavy shelling - makes me wonder if a few people being stuck in their air conditioned cars for a bit isn't too much of a price to pay; for forcing people out of a zombie slumber and making them pay attention to what's going on.

It's not just Canadians who are being inconvenienced if its any consolation. Protests were held in the UK 'without permission' apparently.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/ap...minster-bridge

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

I'm not from Toronto, and what does race have to do with anything? I don't care who you are, you do not block freeways and demand to have meetings with the political leaders of our country. That would be like Quebecois in the UK blocking off the M1 and demanding a meeting with Gordon brown to intervene on behalf of the Quebec separatists.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

If anyone wants to protest, let them protest somewhere that can actually do something about it. Neither Toronto City Council nor the Ontario Legislature is the governing body of Canada. Protest outside Parliament Hill or 24 Sussex Dr, Ottawa. Maybe they should organise a protest outside the UN building in New York.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Good points. :thumbsup:

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Hardly. Canada is an explicitly multi-cultural country and Toronto is the centre of that multi-culture. I'd guess, but don't know, that most of the protesting Tamils are also Canadians. It might be that it's wrong to block the highway but nor more or less so over the PST rate than over a war in the other country of one's hyphenated culture. In a country in which most people have divided loyalties the obligations upon the government are more complicated than in one, such as the UK, where people can be assumed to have one loyalty.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Good thing it was all settled peacefully. As far as the expressway blockade well, to put it in perspective, it was truly a minor inconvenience.

In Montreal in 1990 we went through a two month blockade with native Indians which turned nasty and ugly. They had their grievances and found a way to get attention.

I wonder if some of you here, those who have expressed disgust and outrage, most notably jersey girl, I wonder what you would have said to that!

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

May I hazard a guess?

'Neva mhynd tha wawter Caynons, jast nook the dairty little naytives'

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Well quite. The Gardiner is blocked most days due to some tomfool on a cell phone changing lanes without signaling or summat equally trivial.

These people actually care for something other than a mere inconvenience.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Logical Yes. But bad strategy. they certainly got national attention. Plus there are loads of Tamils living in the Greater Toronto area. So why not protest in a spot which is virtually down the street.

P.S. Another excellent example of the law of unintended consequences. Immigration from the third world and multiculturalism has its implications.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

This is Canada. Nobody has the right to demand meetings with our government concerning interventionism in foreign civil wars, especially when the side doing the protesting is creating a public nuisance and waving flags of an internationally condemned terrorist. The government of Canada is responsible for the goings on in Canada, not the country where a group of people trace their roots. That is the down fall of multiculturalism as we discussed before. Canada is a nation, not the UN.

Re: Tamil Protest / Riot in Toronto
 

Just to make it clear, I don't have a huge problem with them protesting, and don't have a huge problem with them closing the Gardiner to do it. What I do have a huge problem with is these people pushing their kids in strollers straight into traffic on the Gardiner. I saw them do it, the kids and babies were the first onto the Gardiner, not the adults. And then when the police turned up the adults again hid behind the children.

Child services should have been out there prosecuting the parents for wreckless endangerment of their children. I just don't get it, if children are the ones to be protected then why deliberately put them in harms way, and why put them in harm over yourself. That is what I have the big issue with, and that is why I lost all sympathy for them after Sunday. They just don't care, their ideology is more important than their own families.