The G&M, the Star, and Vancouver Observer all carried stories yesterday about environmentalists being understandably pissed at being lumped in with white supremacists among the listed "issue-based" terrorist threats in Canada's new counter-terrorism strategy released on Thursday, Building Resilience Against Terrorism :
"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."
Gosh that list sounds familiar.
Wait! Not only have I read it before - I've blogged it before.
It's from the Integrated Security Unit Joint Intelligence Group's Intelligence Assessment for the 2010 G8 summit, written back in June 2009. From page 6 :
It's from the Integrated Security Unit Joint Intelligence Group's Intelligence Assessment for the 2010 G8 summit, written back in June 2009. From page 6 :
"The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville ... will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power ...
"The important commonality is that these ideologies ... place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society.
In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations'(sic) resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc."And you all remember how well that summit security assessment worked out.
Notable that this new public list of potential terrorist threats leaves off any reference to First Nations.
Vancouver Observer :
"Public Safety spokesperson Lisa Filipps ... explained that the agency does not keep a list of domestic issue-based terrorist groups, and said the counter-terrorism strategy is not meant to target those using legal means to further their causes."
So I guess that means they've torn up the lists of people mentioned on Page 15 of the the JIG Intelligence Report, then, does it?
"The segment to follow will provide a list of investigative subjects, persons of interest, and their associates. In the following section, a specific profile sheet will be supplied for each subject according the criteria established. The profiles will be divided and color-coded into three distinct categories: Suspect (Red); Person of Interest (Orange); and Associate (Yellow).
And is this still going on? Yes it is :
RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continues. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011 — more than nine months after world leaders departed Toronto.
Look, nobody expects our government not to track and compile lists of people and groups it considers likely to blow things up, and most of this "new" strategy focuses on those. But in its determination to bash through the Enbridge Gateway tarsands-to-tankers pipeline regardless of what Canadians think about it, this government has repeatedly referred to environmentalists as "radicals" and "adversaries" and "foreign-funded socialists".
How far is that from being a Suspect (Red), a Person of Interest (Orange), or an Associate (Yellow)?
.
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They just don't like democracy.
ReplyDeleteThe thing Harper dislikes the most about governing the people of Canada is ...Well...the people of Canada
ReplyDeleteAnd given that the Harper regime is hellbent on having the tar sands exports fuelling economy and scrapping Kyoto, removing environment protections, etc it stands to reason that number of radicalized colour coded Canadians will only grow. Of course, this will in turn prompt larger domestic surveillance activity the the assorted security agencies.
ReplyDeleteIn effect what is happening is that the security agencies are being employed to enforce very specific Harper government policies, which ultimately help China enforce it's resource colonialism.
Yes, there is the surveillance of First Nations advocates Cindy Blackstock and Pamela Palmater and no doubt many others:
ReplyDeletehttp://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/pamela-palmater/2012/01/csis-and-me-what-first-nation-activities-are-not-considered-p
http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2012/01/03/indigenous-prof-puzzled-by-csis-answer-to-information-request/
But there is another term they use that I find interesting: "anti-capitalist." Who is an anti-capitalist? A communist, surely. A socialist also? A social democrat? And how about all those people protesting the G8/G20? They're all a bunch of dirty anti-capitalists! And then the people who oppose the pipelines and the tar sands must also be unethical anti-capitalists!
Um, who's left?
And you all remember how well that summit security assessment worked out.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah.
Consider this: The similarities between Toronto and Chicago are numerous, including their populations.
Why is it, then, that the upcoming G8 and NATO summit in Chicago has cost estimates of $40 - $65 million vs the G8 and G20 summit in Toronto which had costs of $1.1 billion?!? Two years later and the costs have dropped that much?
Amazing how innovative and thrifty those USians are, huh ? ? ? ?
West End Bob The difference in cost may be attributable to the fact that Canada lags the US in setting up the security state and the need to hide funding of such from the view of Canadians. Much of the G8/G20 funding was not for those events as much as it was to equip the state for future events.
ReplyDeleteThey're just following their leader, Alison.
ReplyDeleteGreen is the New Red
Thank you all for your brilliant comments and links. We do get this, don't we?
ReplyDeleteCounter-terrorism is the new witchcraft.
Um, the new inquisition?
ReplyDeleteThey hate us for our freedoms.
ReplyDeleteThis is, once again, just faithful imitation of the US, where Homeland Security et al. has been energetically redefining environmentalists as terrorists for years (and of course anticapitalists always were). White supremacists, not so much, but we can assume that one's just for window dressing and smear-by-association here too.
ReplyDelete