Tamils block University again

It's been on the CBC every hour, along with this: "Canada has the largest Tamil population outside of Sri Lanka: 250,000".

There is a genocidal war going on over there, and the thread title suggests that it's all about inconvenient traffic jams. Sadly, for a lot of Torontonians, that's probably what it is about though.

Yes, Toronto does have a huge Tamil population.  A good angle for this story might be how resolute and focussed the Canadian Tamil population is around this issue. The demonstrations seem very disciplined. AFAIK, Toronto's Tamils live largely in the St. Jamestown area, and north central Scarborough.  I don't know if this will mean anything to our friend thirusuj, but my office widow looks out onto Tuxedo Court.  I can almost smell the curry and the coriander from here.

The local CBC radio had an interview with one of the protest leaders ... she was great, but the questions that Andy Barrie asked were disgusting ... he insisted on staying with the topic of how this protest was effecting Toronto (traffic, the pressure on the police with all the protesters putting the women and children up at the front of the protest to be used as human shields, etc) ... that wasn't just my "biased recollection" of the interview, he actually told her that's what he wanted to do when she tried to move the discussion to the issue of the killings happening over in Sri Lanka.

(Note: She responded to the "human shield" question by making it clear that no asked the women and children to move to the front of the protest, and if that was the case, then that was just how things ended up, and it wasn't planned.)

I have to give a little credit to the police, and Bliar .. he seems to be far more restrained in his responses than Fantino would have been. He's even responded to some of the pressure to move in on the protesters by properly telling them that the protesters were Canadians and that they were exercising their democratic rights and he was not going to be pressured into taking unnecessary actions (or something along those lines.)

I would say it was a great one,  it has produced results, eh?!

Ghislaine wrote:

remind wrote:

I would say it was a great one,  it has produced results, eh?!

A promise by Iggy and majority racist reaction isn't much of a result.  Should there be sanctions on Sri Lanka? I wish I could change my thread title to that question.

Even if Harper were so inclined (which he doesn't seem to be), it's not really as if he can jsut call up the Sri Lankan ambassador and force them to change their policies. I think all they did was piss a lot of people off; people who might, otherwise, be very supportive of the cause but the message of "mass civilian deaths in Sri Lanka" gets overshadowed by "people stranded for hours on the gardiner because of protest."

Actually they do indeed had the right to protest in the street and impede the daily lives of non-protestors. Ask the Chief of Police Blair if you have any doubts.

And the complaints about impeding access to hospitals, they are doing no such thing ... the protestors when protesting on University, made sure that any and all emergency vehicles were unimpeded whenever they came along ... this is a very organized protest, the most organized I've ever seen.

While we here are complaining about being late getting home, and distupting Mothers Day celebrations, many Tamils have no home to be "late for", and many Tamil Mothers are being killed, or seeing their children killed ... sorry if I don't feel all that much sympathy for some poor Tronto commuter that had to spend an extra hour in traffic.

No Yards wrote:

And the complaints about impeding access to hospitals, they are doing no such thing ... the protestors when protesting on University, made sure that any and all emergency vehicles were unimpeded whenever they came along ... this is a very organized protest, the most organized I've ever seen.

While we here are complaining about being late getting home, and distupting Mothers Day celebrations, many Tamils have no home to be "late for", and many Tamil Mothers are being killed, or seeing their children killed ... sorry if I don't feel all that much sympathy for some poor Tronto commuter that had to spend an extra hour in traffic.

Not everyone who goes to a hospital does so in an emergency vehicle obviously! Sometimes, it's just someone driving a sick friend or relative or going to visit a family member who is there. If you're driving anything other than an ambulance the protesters would ahve no way of knowing that you needed to get to the hospital. it may not be a matter of imminent life or death but if you're trying to get to the hospital and you've got a kid crying in the back seat and you're stressed out enough as it is, having to navigate your way around a protest you didn't know would be happening is really the last thing you need.

And, obviously the situation over there is terrible and people with family members there are obviously deeply affected by this; just as anyone would be if their family was in danger. And, no, being stuck in traffic is not the WORST thing that can happen to someone. But WHY do it? Does it build support? I'd say 90% of comments from the public have been decidedly agaisnt their action. they've aliented people who would potentially be supportive. People who are jsut trying to drive their cars, not people actually invovled in what's going on Sri Lanka and not people in any position to do anything about it. I mean, it makes sense to protest the Sri Lankan embassy or a Canadian government building but what do they hope to accomplish by just pissing off ordinary people? And what did they get? A vague promise from an opposition leader with no pwoer to do anything? Who, even if he becomes prime minister, will STILL have no pwoer to do anything?

Cueball wrote:

Meh. Get a job.

Fuck you, Cueball. I don't know what the hell your issue is but you have this weird hang up about consistently insulting what I do for a fucking living which most non-idiot people would actually think is fairly important and which you could never come close to doing if you lived to be a thousand. While never disclosing what the hell it is that you do. Maybe losers like you can afford to sit in traffic all day and be contemptuous but some of us with things like families and responsibilities and "non-serious" jobs like medicine actually have places to be.

It got peoples attention, by making them angry, so what is wrong with that?

If  someone can only see their own personal perspective anger issues, and not the bigger issue, then they would never have been supportive to the Tamil cause in the first place. Others, who may have been initially angry, about personal inconvienence, may have found out something they did not know and thus would turn their personal angst into support for the Tamils.

And people have every right to protest in the streets, afterall the streets are theirs too!

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Cueball wrote:

Meh. Get a job.

Fuck you, Cueball. I don't know what the hell your issue is but you have this weird hang up about consistently insulting what I do for a fucking living which most non-idiot people would actually think is fairly important and which you could never come close to doing if you lived to be a thousand. While never disclosing what the hell it is that you do. Maybe losers like you can afford to sit in traffic all day and be contemptuous but some of us with things like families and responsibilities and "non-serious" jobs like medicine actually have places to be.

Your the one who is contemptuous. You seem to think that anyone not from your class doesn't have familiest and responsibilities. I suspect that these people very much care about families and responsibilities that they take very seriously indeed, hence their willingness to brave possible arrests for inconveniencing people like yourself whose life experience is so limited they think getting hung up in traffic for 20 minutes is a big deal. 

As for the value of orthopedic surgery. Sure it is a very serious business. But that has nothing to do with life experience. So when I say "job" I mean a job.  Your so out of it you clearly don't know the distinction between your business and a job.

No Yards wrote:

The Tamil protests were, as I understand it, mostly confined to the block between Queen and Dundas ... except for when they "marched" which closed down other intersections temporarly. The hospitals are another full block North.

That;s true. Though, there are people who would be driving North on University and run into the roadbloack.

The reality is taht streets are closed all the time whether for protests or parades or marathons or construction or any number of reasons. The difference is that it's known in advance and people can plan accordingly. In this case, people were stranded on the Gardiner for hours jsut because some protesters decided that they have the right to inconvenience whoever the hell they want and, apparently, face absolutely no consequences.

Cueball will you cut that out.

He completely freaked out when the relative value of his esteem was questioned. That was revealing all in itself. Tiresome reading some privileged brat complaining about commuter traffic blockage in the face of people protesting brutal oppression.

It is very much on point, in fact.

Isn't "tiresome brat" getting a bit personal?

I don't agree with SSC's take on this but that is no reason to attack his job or to call him a brat.

It's not me who started whining about people being 20 minutes late for dinner, as if that is relevant to what you are calling "genocide". If you really believe this is "genocide" I don't see why you are lifting a finger to defend this petulant whining.

Let's have some perspective here.

oldgoat wrote:

Swell.  If you want to start a thread about your opinions on the sense of entitlement in the medical profession in the western world, we probably have a spot for it.   Meanwhile, I'm assuming he's not just an avid hobbiest.

 

ETA: If you should start such a thread, please try to do it without making references to any particular individuals, esp any who just might happen to post here.

Come on OG. This is the issue in a nutshell. Privileged westerners freaking out when their privilege is ever so slightly infringed upon by uppitty people, whose families are surviving through the social and economic deprivation, (and consequent civil disorders, and military backlash) that is a direct result of the colonial legacy upon which our privilege is based.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

No Yards wrote:

The Tamil protests were, as I understand it, mostly confined to the block between Queen and Dundas ... except for when they "marched" which closed down other intersections temporarly. The hospitals are another full block North.

That;s true. Though, there are people who would be driving North on University and run into the roadbloack.

The reality is taht streets are closed all the time whether for protests or parades or marathons or construction or any number of reasons. The difference is that it's known in advance and people can plan accordingly. In this case, people were stranded on the Gardiner for hours jsut because some protesters decided that they have the right to inconvenience whoever the hell they want and, apparently, face absolutely no consequences.

The Gardiner is blocked regularly, protest, parade, or not ... that's why there are things like traffic reports on the radio, so we can check and see where the traffic problem are.

And again, the people inconvenienced by the protests are likely to be a very small portion of Toronto, maybe the population of a good sized condo development ... hell, let's assume that 10 miles of 3 lane traffic with 4 people in each car, and you're still only talking about 30,000 people or so ... but I suppose they could have held their protest in a deserted parking lot in Ajax, then the two people who actually knew that there was a protest would have loved them ... right?

I really don't think that the issue of the small number of people that might have been inconvenienced is all that relevant to the issue, although the way the media sometimes plays the things you never know, maybe you're right and the media has convinced Canada that some strange group of foreigners have blocked traffic to all hospitals for no apparent reason.

ETA: I need to ask though ... are you saying that you have weighted the plught of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, and the plight of the Toronto Commuters who were delayed for an hour in traffic, and have come down on the side of "let the genocide continue"?  If so, then I guess we have nothing more to discuss ... if not, then why would anyone else come to the conclusion that Toronto traffic is the  more important issue?

Do we have a three strikes rule/ Didn't OG tell you to dial it back? Leave SSC alone you bully!

I think it was very effective, it illuminates the racist bigots, makes people who are turned off of them, more supportive to the Tamils than they would have perhaps been before, as well as it has got the word out more, thus is shedding light on the issue more. Plus it empowers other groups to take a stand for their causes, and was/is a good example of how to do so in an organized manner.

People need to be inconvienced perhaps to start to pay attention!

Yeah, I'd agree with that.  It's also making it much more difficult for our spineless government to continue to do nothing but utter platitudes and hope the whole matter will go away.  Also, not too many months ago most Canadians couldn't have picked out Sri Lanka on a map, much less told you anything about the demographics of the place.  This has effectively put the issue out in the public eye.

No one is suggesting "out of the public eye". I think Queen's Park, Parliament Hill, the Sri Lankan embassy, etc. are all pretty much in the public eye. Nor am I even saying to not do it on a public street. Lots of protests ahve taken place. I remember when farmers drove tractors around queen's park shutting down traffic. But it's one thing to give notice so people can avoid it and another to jsut go ahead and do it. On the busiest street in Toronto. On Mother's day.

And who is the "person" who can potentially do something about it? The person trying to go have dinner with their mother? The person who just finished a long day at work and is trying to get home? Stephen Harper, safely enconsced in 24 sussex who gets a motorcade wherever HE goes who realistically couldn't do anything about the situation in Sri Lanka even if he wanted to?

caissa ur really defending SSC? Go tamils my boiz proly there right now

how about stop funding the sri lanka? giving it monetary aid which it known to use for military means? arms embargo?

edit - and it doesnt matter if there ppl from the other side genocide never justified

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

And who is the "person" who can potentially do something about it? The person trying to go have dinner with their mother? The person who just finished a long day at work and is trying to get home? Stephen Harper, safely enconsced in 24 sussex who gets a motorcade wherever HE goes who realistically couldn't do anything about the situation in Sri Lanka even if he wanted to?

The US Consulate is the "person" whose door they were protesting in front of. Remeber them? The worlds only "superpower".

I wouldn't think that any serious person would consider the issues and decide that the traffic issue outweighed the genocide issue ... and if they did, well, they'd be the very rare person, and any negativity they might provide to the issue would be far outweighed by the increased attantion to the actual issue that the protests provided.

oldgoat wrote:

  So SCC, with all due respect to your qualifications, this is not a huge factor, esp compared to the gravity of what's being protested.  University Ave and protests are like Kesington Ave. and sausages.  Everyone's pretty much used to it here.

I agree. In fact, I think the Gardiner blockade is far more serious. I jsut don't like the fact that after shutting down the gardiner last night, they go to University Ave. the very next morning. I'm all for protest. I completely understand their concerns. I know that the protests ahve been quite peaceful. All in all, they had lots going for them. But I don't think it would kill them to simply LET PEOPLE KNOW in advance that a certain street is going to be blocked, especially an important one like the Gardener which is the main way in and out of Toronto, that tens of thousands of people take every day and is bad enough in rush hour when it's totally open. I don't think it inconveniences protesters unreasonably to say "please don't blockade that busy street without notice". I don't think their cause is hurt by not blockading the gardiner. It seems they alienated lots of people and made themselves look bad in exchange for a vague promise by the opposition leader of a relatively uninluential country.