You've seen them in newspaper photos, shoulder to shoulder, black uniforms, helmets, masks, bulky with body armour, walled behind transparent shields, armed with batons, tear gas rifles, pepper spray, backed by dogs and water cannon, wagons ready. A fine sight, healthy young men and women, ready to combat anarchy in the streets.

Have you ever seen them close and personal?

This city isn't radical. It isn't even left of centre. It's a government town, with all that that implies. As a government town, it plays host, on occassion, to officials from other governments. When it does, the local left does its best to be heard.

Thus, riot police.

This weekend, our city hosted the International Monetary Fund and G20 combined. These are the people who make the world safe for capitalism. They were gathered to approve the proposals of the United States of America aimed at drying up funds to designated terrorist organisations around the world.

These are the same people who urge capitalism in its purest form on the world, who promote free trade to the poor nations that transnational corporations need as pools of cheap labour, who make aid to the hungry and sick dependant on compliance with the dictates of economic neo-liberalism, who demand the dismantling of social services as unfair subsidies to local industry, who saddle the world's poorest nations with implacable debts. Until the events of September 11th, they were largely concerned with promoting their agenda to increasingly resistant smaller countries, countries becoming ever more aware that the cost of IMF assistance and free trade was subservience to corporations and value systems that were antithetical to their own needs and beliefs.

After September 11th, these organisations wrapped themselves in the (American) flag and trumpet their principled opposition to terrorism, while promoting legislations that target specific populations and curtail the civil liberties of all. Has their agenda changed?

No.

So, that part of the local left not terrified into subservience by the renewed militance of established forces organised demonstrations. On the first day, only a few hundred people attended, and a maybe a dozen of them -- that's about 3%, folks -- broke windows at a MacDonald's and painted grafitti on walls. Violence! The riot cops moved in.

The next day was the big demonstration. Organised by moderate groups, billed well in advance as non-violent, it attracted about 7,000 initial participants who marshalled in two places, planning to converge at a park, well away from the IMF/G20 meeting place, hear speeches, then march to a Green Zone -- also well away from the meeting.

It didn't work out that way. First, riot police tried to prevent the two marches from joining. But, their hearts weren't in it, because the groups found ways around them. A designated group of police tried to move in on specific organisers, but were prevented from hauling them off by a group of pacifists who grabbed the organisers back, and surrounded them with their own bodies. Some people were hurt in the scuffle, but not too badly. Call it even.

The marchers made the park, where they shivered in the cold through long speeches. Many drifted away -- it was just too cold to stand around listening to predictable rhetoric. By the time the event was ready to move, there were perhaps 3,000 left. I stress that no demonstrator had initiated anything looking like violence. These were, after all, the no-violence crowd.

I was buying a hot dog, four or five blocks from the park. Suddenly, two buses rolled up and disgorged riot police, gasmasked, banging on shields, who double-timed past me to the intersection. Two dogs in the contingent, one hyped to the max, barking and dancing and ready to go. The citizens and tourists around me were floored -- and frightened -- as they were herded out of there and told to clear the area, like sheep, with a dog at their heels.

As we moved down a side street, we were greeted by more police, gasmasked, banging shields and shouting, coming the other way. The police shut down the entire downtown area, over 3,000 cold, peaceful demonstrators who had, at this point, barely left the park. They also cut off the route that the march had planned to the Green Zone. In fact, the cordon left only one route out -- and it went right to the convention centre in which the IMF/G20 were meeting.

Let me stress, this was a police decision. Not that the demonstrators weren't happy enough to comply. The left is a pretty fragmented place, and those who had chaffed at the pacifism of the demonstation's organisers were hoping for a chance to get close to the objects of their attentions.

Thus, maybe 2,500 shivering demonstrators found themselves confronting a double set of barricades less than a block from the IMF meeting. A double set of barricades and what I guesstimate were 150 to 200 riot police. Now, there was an opening in the police cordon, through which the marchers could have retreated, provided they did not mind running a gauntlet of more riot police, blocking every intersection off the route chosen for them. I took the opportunity to count them. I estimate it took another 200 or so officers, and two dogs per intersection, to manoeuvre the demonstrators into their corner. Throw in the supervisors and sergeants, and we have, I guess, 450 to 500 riot police to contain a demonstration of 2,500.

Maybe 500 demonstrators took the way out, leaving about 2,000. The first level of barricade fell quickly -- it was no more than a few cheap metal racks bicycle chained together. Then, both sides settled in -- one side chanting and singing, the other side standing, implacable and anonymous, behind gas masks and shields. Stand off.

After an hour, I guess someone got bored. The police turned on a fire hose and fired a few beanbags at the crowd. The crowd retreated a little, threw the beanbags back, and came back to the barricades. The standoff continued.

Then, the water cannon arrived. Ever seen them? They are huge, lime green trucks, bigger by far than they appear on TV. And behind them, perhaps another 60 to 80 gasmasked, shield-thumping riot police, bringing the number of police to, I am quite sure, well over 500 for maybe 1500 demonstrators who remained.

Eventually, after I left, frozen to the bone and depressed as hell, the police decided to break the standoff. Since I was not there to witness it, I cannot testify that no demonstrator gave them an excuse -- only that, after what I saw, I would be very surprised if the demonstrators initiated much. Maybe the overtime budget was getting strained. The police started in with the pepper spray and the sticks, and the demonstration was over.

The whole thing is depressing. Decades of neo-liberal rhetoric, US bullying and yuppie self-centredness have reduced the Canadian left to a pathetic remnant of frustrated hardliners, principled pacifists, environmentalists, amorphous woolly-headed pagans, wiccans, fruit loops and eccentrics. Many of the moderate groups are afraid of their shadows right now because of the government's dictatorial "Anti-terrorism" laws, which severely limit basic democratic rights and criminalise certain kinds of political opinion.

Just being at that demonstration was a mark of courage, of refusal to be intimidated into silence.

These were not the crowds of the 1960s and 70s. They were not even the people who marched in Seattle, Québec City, or Genoa, although there were, no doubt, a few hopeful of a chance to prove their commitment in some kind of violence.

These were just people who are tired of having their voices unheard, of being scorned by their elected officials, by the press and media, people who cared, one way or the other, about the poor, the damaged, the oppressed, here and abroad. People who are tired of being frightened and quiet, and have bestirred themselves to fight back. Or at least, not to be invisible any more.

This was a democracy: so it was billed, and so it was believed. A democracy does not need riot police to contain and manage a peaceful demonstration of dissenters, even if there are probably a few vandals in the crowd. Ordinary officers in ordinary uniforms would have done fine. Every police officer is trained in subduing and arresting troublemakers and drunks.

Riot police do not prevent violence, they provoke it. Invincible, anonymous, hyped and armed, they have been taught to expect violence. They interpret any action, any question, in light of that expectation. And, they prevent the violence they expect by initiating it -- getting their licks in before the hypothetical violent anarchists in the crowd can realise their nefarious schemes.

What violent anarchists? The Council of Concerned Canadians? The veteran wearing his medals and a sign that said "An old soldier still fighting for his country"? The Wiccans? The pagans? The singers? The university students? The aging Maoists, with their handout newspapers? The three or four Trotskyists? The trade unionists? A middle class housewife?

Just marshalling riot police, let alone in those numbers, puts not only the police, but the demonstrators on edge. It sends a clear message that any form of public dissent or demonstration is regarded as potentially criminal, and tells the crowd that there will be trouble. It immediately places any demonstration in the category of riot -- after all, what are riot police there for?

It instantly radicalises the demonstrators, no matter what their personal beliefs. it tells every one of them that the radicals among them are right -- dissent is a crime liable to immediate and violent response.

Is this really the message that the authorities want to send?

There was an old man at the hotdog stand when the riot police moved in. "Blackshirts!" he spat, as they herded him away. Two tourist women, confronted with lines of anonymous, armed police, began talking about intimidation. Citizens tried to ask questions, and were ignored or bullied into silence.

But, as a famous American president once said, "just because you have silenced a man, doesn't mean you have won him over".

The old man was right: blackshirts. Intimidators. Proud to be there, on the line, preventing subversive elements from creating anarchy in the streets.

Are you proud, officers? Are you proud to be the armed instruments of intimidation, to successfully manage that dangerous mob of demonstrators, with their songs and their chants and their dissenting beliefs? Are you proud to take hundreds of pictures of ordinary citizens for the database of subversives? Are you proud to stand there in your rows and rows, frightening old men and tourists into a silence that the authorities can take for assent? Are you proud to treat this country's citizens with contempt? Proud to be riot police?

Of course, you belonged there. After all, if you stop to think about it, it was funny, right? The determined remnants of Canada's left, treated like the largest possible threat to the nation's security.

It was just a riot.