It looks like it's going to be one rainy weekend in Toronto but that's okay, there's football to keep us busy. To say I'm not big into sports, particularly team sports, is kind of an understatement, but I do tend to get swept up in World Cup fever and will be rooting for England tomorrow in their match against the U.S. and Australia in their Sunday match against Germany.
What with a rained out weekend on our hands and dread of the upcoming G-20 summit to be held shortly in Toronto, Torontonians in particular could use a diversion. Downtown Toronto, during the G-20 summit of June 26th & 27th, couldn't be anymore of a no-go area if there were a zombie outbreak in Dundas Square.
Toronto police, in preparing to deal with civic unrest during this time, have brought in four sonic guns. Otherwise known as a long-range acoustic device (LRAD), sound cannons are “designed to disperse unruly crowds with piercing sound.”
Piercing as in painful and capable of damaging hearing. With weapons like this at the ready, can some kind of crowd thought control weapon be far away?
I don't believe sonic guns are the kind of weapon that should be used on civilians. It makes controlling a population way too easy and what of people's right to protest? The police haven't exactly been the picture of restraint in their use of another supposedly non-lethal weapon, the taser.
* You can read more about LRADs at How Stuff Works.
And if you're planning to protest at the G-20 don't forget the earplugs!
C. K. Kelly Martin
likes to write things down and is a firm believer in the John Lennon quote, "If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal." She's written a middle grade sci-fi and multiple young adult books including I KNOW IT'S OVER, YESTERDAY, and DELICATE. Her most recent novel, released under the name Cara Martin, is a sci-fi centring around a young Canadian woman cryogenically frozen during a global pandemic and then reanimated to find herself and the rest of the world drastically changed, and Canada under threat.
