G20 Black Bloc get green light to rampage

A photojournalist followed and filmed 75 to 100 Black Bloc for 90 minutes and 24 blocks as they rampaged through the streets of Toronto smashing windows and torching police cars while police looked calmly on from several different locations. Why was this rampage allowed to happen? Police say they had already infiltrated a Black Bloc group and knew what to expect, but tonight the head of G20 security operations told an incredulous Susan Ormiston on CBC that the police had better things to do than attend to the Black Bloc. So much for "serve and protect" then if you're not a G20 fence.

The photojournalist is interviewed here by Paul Manly, who shot the footage of the three rock-toting police provocateurs at the SPP protests in Montebello back in Aug 2007 and wonders if this is a repeat performance. There's the question of the abandoned police cruisers and it was only after the rampagers dumped their black gear and dispersed into the crowd that the police attacked the peaceful protesters.

Well, perhaps not all of them dumped their black gear. Below some 20 plainclothes, including a couple of blackclad guys in hoodies, are seen making a run for safety behind a police line. The crazyangry woman who attacks the photographer scampers off with them.

After Montebello, we should demand to know exactly what these guys were up to here.

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G20 : Security theatre bait cars

Protesters amuse themselves playing with the sirens and lights in two police cruisers inexplicably driven into the crowd and then abandoned in the middle of the street. Calling in to dispatch, making aeroplane noises on the mike for the crowd, and handing out tickets - it's all rather jovial.

Kid lights a paper fire on the passenger seat, someone else puts it out, and a short altercation about safety ensues. Another guy writes on the cruiser in green paint : "This is bait, aka a prop."

Kid on the mike in the cruiser : "For $1.2 billion dollars, thanks for all your photography. This will be on the news tonight justifying the whole event."

And later when the cars were torched for real it was. But some in the media remember the agents provocateurs at the SPP protest at Montebello.

The Guardian :

Many Canadians have become suspicious of police tactics since the Quebec police force admitted that it had disguised three of its own officers as rock-wielding anarchists in an attempt to provoke violence at a peaceful protest in the town of Montebello two years ago. Somewhat farcically, the three were exposed as agents provocateurs when they were found to be wearing official issue police boots identical to those of the uniformed officers "arresting" them.

"There are concerns that similar skulduggery may have played a part in Toronto this weekend, where the burning of three police cars quickly became the defining image of Saturday's otherwise peaceful demonstration. Questions are being asked as to why the police chose to drive the vehicles into the middle of a group of protesters and then abandon them, and why there was no attempt to put out the flames until the nation's media had been given time to record the scenes for broadcast around the world."

Indeed. The other three parts to this event are in the embedded related videos. Click on the title

The revolution will be YouTubed redux

When Paul Manly's video of union leader Dave Coles confronting three rock-toting undercover Quebec police officers skulking through peaceful protestors at the North American Leaders Summit in Montebello hit YouTube two years ago, then-minister of public safety Stockwell Day dismissed calls for a public inquiry :

"The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because were not engaging in violence," Mr. Day said.
"They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this," Mr. Day said.

Mr. Day added the actions were substantiated by the video that he has seen of the protests.
"Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters," Mr. Day said."

This ridiculous statement ran nightly on TV newscasts alongside footage of the police provocateurs shoving Dave Coles around before sneaking back behind police lines - seen here at left - to jeers from the crowd.

As Dave Coles told CBC's As It Happens :

"I didn't know they were police right away but I knew they were agitators because earlier they had been trying to get the young kids down on the road to cause trouble."

For days after the incident, Quebec Provincial Police denied these were their guys.

Well there was no inquiry and Quebec's Police Ethics Commissioner took till this May, two years later, to clear the officers, but now the Quebec independent police ethics committee will hold hearings to determine whether the officers breached the Code of Ethics of Quebec Police Officers by inciting others to violence.

Dave Coles suspects likely federal involvement may lead to a cover-up :

"This is the big question: Who sent them in? And don't give me some lame excuse that it was a low-level officer "

Good thing we already have the public statements from Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and the QPP on record for the Quebec independent police ethics committee.

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Paul Manly : "You, Me and the SPP"

Paul Manly is probably best known to most of us as the guy who shot the video of CEP union President Dave Coles exposing the 3 rock-toting Quebec police provocateurs at the Montebello protest against the SPP back in Aug. 2007.

His latest film is You, Me and the SPP : Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule.

Cribbing from his own description here :

"a feature length documentary which exposes the corporatist agenda that is currently undermining the democratic authority of the citizens of North America.
Two processes, the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the Trade Investment Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) are rapidly eroding and eliminating standards, civil liberties, regulatory systems and institutions put in place over generations through the democratic process."

A kick ass preview : The Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the SPP, ten minutes of interviews with Maude Barlow, Dave Coles, Michael Byers, Erin Weir, Gordon Laxer, Connie Fogel, Peter Julian, Ken Georgetti, and more. Clear, concise - an excellent overview.

You, Me and the SPP will be shown at Langara in Vancouver on February 14th and in other cities across Canada as part of the traveling World Community Film Festival [itinerary here].

Or you could buy the CD, or encourage your local library to do so, at his website, Manly Media.

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SPP - Canada Election 08

Paul Manley, the guy who shot this footage of police provocateurs attempting to start a riot at the Stop the SPP protests in Montebello Quebec, is working on a documentary about the SPP.
In the meantime he has produced this short vid about all the questions not being asked in this election about issues related to the Security and Prosperity Partnership and Canada-EU Free Trade Ageement. An excellent short history.

Why isn't this an election issue?

Go Nanaimo Blog!

SPP and the EPA

Remember that whole business about Canada lowering standards on pesticide use on fruits and vegetables to match U.S. regs because the U.S. found Canada's 40% more stringent pesticide regs to be "a trade irritant"?
Sure you do.

Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules said : "it's just common sense for Canada to work most closely with its largest and nearest trading partner".
Besides, in practice, the question of official residue limits is moot in most cases because farmers are using fewer and fewer pesticides, he said.

LA Times :

"Despite the protests of more than 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates in chemistry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday approved use of a new, highly toxic fumigant, mainly for strawberry fields.
Methyl iodide is a neurotoxin and carcinogen that has caused thyroid tumors, neurological damage and miscarriages in lab animals.
Methyl iodide will be manufactured by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Corp. and marketed under the name Midas. Its use will be allowed on fields growing strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, ornamentals, turf, trees and vines."

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is a Bush appointee.
Arysta's former chief executive, Elin Miller, is now a top official at the EPA.

I repeat : Why is it still called the Environmental Protection Agency?

And about that research on "lab animals".
Several years ago progressive US blogs were up in arms about a jointly-funded project by the EPA and a pesticide lobby group which offered poor families in Florida $970 and a camcorder to spray the inside of their homes, including childrens' bedrooms, with a pesticide once a day for two years and monitor the results with the free camcorder.
In 2000, Lockheed Martin paid volunteers in California $1000 to ingest toxic chemicals and pesticides under observation.
Shagya now has a vid up of Senator Barbara Boxer detailing these experiments. She points out they do not meet the Nuremburg Code forbidding the testing of "non-therapeutics" or poisons on human beings.

EPA : "Experiments on People just like at Auschwitz!"

One of the objectives of Montebello was to enhance the so-called 'smart regulation' : "undertaking trilateral cooperation to accelerate and strengthen our national and regional risk-based chemical assessment and management efforts."

From the U.S. government's SPP website : "Regulatory Cooperation in the Area of Chemicals."
Objective :"enhanced coordination of chemical assessment and management programs across North America."

Stephen Harper, responding to critics of regulatory harmonization following Montebello :
"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jellybean. I don’t think so."

Related : From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives :
More Than Jellybeans:
The SPP Regulatory Framework Agreement and Its Impact on Chemicals Regulation
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SPP : Jelly beans and the DHS

At the Montebello press conference, a reporter asked Harper, Bush, and Calderon point blank whether the SPP agenda on border security, energy, and streamlining regulations was a prelude to a North American union and hey, what about that NAFTA highway?

Harper :

"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jelly bean? You know, I don't think so."

Bush twice said he was "amused by the conspiracy theories" and "It's quite comical, actually, when you realize the difference between the reality and what some people are talking on TV about."

Jelly beans and Bush's particular take on reality vs TV. OK then.

The above letterhead is from one of the only internal government documents we have to date on the SPP. Obtained via a Freedom of Information request from the US government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, it is a memo from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, this Michael Chertoff :

"I want to take this opportunity to thank you and your respective staffs for your support of the SPP up to this point. The components involved in the development of the SPP implementation report substantially advanced our homeland security agenda with Canada and Mexico." 

"DHS-led U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico groups already in existence will take on the SPP actions within their scope. That said, the SPP has, in addition to identifying a number of new action items, comprehensively rolled up most of our existing homeland security-related policy initiatives with Canada and Mexico, and ongoing action and reporting in the various U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico working groups led by DHS should now be driven by a single agenda : the SPP."

We now return you to your regularly scheduled coverage of jelly beans and Bush's take on reality.
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SPP : Interview with Dave Coles

The Harper Index interviews Dave Coles

Coles, the union leader who exposed the police provos at Montebello, previously expressed some exasperation with the media preoccupation with rocks and tear gas. He'd rather see a little more attention paid to why he was at Montebello in the first place :

"It's all about Canada's energy security
There is no pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to refineries in eastern Canada. All production, to get to eastern Canada, must go through the United States of America. Ninety nine percent of all Canadians, including most politicians, don't understand that.
The stuff should be processed in Canada so we get the economic value from it, and the jobs, and society gets to determine the overall value we will get from it. Harper and his gang want it sold and shipped directly to the States. Canada, and especially Alberta, get the pollution, and the U.S. gets the jobs.
When Canadian raw crude oil has to go through the U.S. before it can get to any eastern refineries, including the big Irving refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, don't we have the right to ask "What about Canada's energy security?"

The same applies for electricity. There's no east-west grid, it's all north-south. Ontario is landlocked from Manitoba. All we want to do is make sure these questions get asked so Canadians see how these questions are dealt with. The SPP should be dealt with in the House of Commons. Politicians should be the ones dealing with it, not the corporate elite."


Police provocateurs at peaceful demonstrations is the sexy news story alright and it's important, but equally important is why those thugs were sent in there to discredit opposition to SPP.
As Coles says :
"If the real reason the Council of Canadians and we were there were understood, the public would be up in arms about the SPP."

The Revolution will be YouTubed...

Sockwell Day in the Globe&Mail :

"The thing that was interesting in this particular incident, three people in question were spotted by protesters because were not engaging in violence," Mr. Day said.
"They were being encouraged to throw rocks and they were not throwing rocks, it was the protesters who were throwing the rocks. That's the irony of this," Mr. Day said.
Mr. Day added the actions were substantiated by the video that he has seen of the protests.
"Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters," Mr. Day said."

Substantiated? Not so much. But irony? Oh yeah.
The local Global TV news out of Vancouver Island obligingly ran large portions of Paul Manly's YouTube and the Quebec Prov Police surviellance video to accompany Mr Day's statement on the 6-o-clock news last night. Both clearly showed union leader Dave Coles' repeated demands to one QPP undercover cop to drop his rock and not cause trouble while another undercover was shoving Coles around.

QPP Inspector Marcel Savard complained on the same TV newscast that the video didn't show events prior to the shoving and rock-wielding incident.

That's right! I'd forgotten about the lead-up to this. Here's Dave Coles' As It Happens interview back on Wednesday :

"I didn't know they were police right away but I knew they were agitators because earlier they had been trying to get the young kids down on the road to cause trouble."

Memo to Doris : Paul Manly's video and the various clones it has inspired have now registered nearly 200,000 hits on YouTube. Congratulations on hanging it so firmly around the neck of your government.

Still on the milk carton...

It must have seemed like a terrific idea at the time.

Three guys with their faces hidden by identical kerchiefs, one of them holding a rock the size of a friggin melon, headed off towards a line of Surete du Quebec police in full riot garb. Union leader David Coles intercepted them, first demanding that they take their rock and bugger off, and then when they refused he demanded that they reveal their faces.

At this point they still had the opportunity to just walk away and blend back into the crowd again with their identities intact, as any sensible member of Black Bloc would certainly have done. Instead the video shows they approached the same police line they had earlier appeared bent on attacking and disappeared into it to be taken into custody. WTF?

And now we learn there is no publicly available paper trail documenting their arrest.

Choose One :

1) New Black Bloc tactic : Immediately surrender to the nearest policeman the first time some unarmed old guy tells you to bugger off.

2) Agent Provocateur. But for whom? The Star :

"The Mounties and Quebec provincial police deny using agents provocateurs at this week's Montebello summit, despite video evidence that suggests undercover cops tried to incite violence."

A statement that clearly shifts the blame to either CSIS or the US, and from which they will have to hurriedly back off again any moment now. I'm not sure where we go to protest American agents provocateur attempting to incite a riot in the middle of a peaceful protest miles away from the Montebello summit, but I'm pretty sure Steve and Doris won't be instigating it.

3) These are the same fuckwits who respond to either winning or losing a Grey Cup or a Tidy Bowl by smashing store windows and acting all "For the people, man!" about it, followed up by spending the next day at work wishing they were a lion tamer.

RossK first sent me the video days ago - here's one of his many good posts on this - but for a complete listing of everybody's coverage since then, Dr Dawg has the video, the stills, and a ton o links.

.UPDATE : CALL OFF THE AMBER ALERT

From the Quebec Provincial Police via RossK:

"Following the diffusion of a video extract on Internet site Youtube.com, possibly implying members of the Safety of Quebec at the time of the Summit of Montebello, the latter would like to bring certain precise details. After having analyzed its contents, in addition to taking note of the vidéos recorded by the police bodies, it is able now to confirm that these individuals are police officers of the Safety of Quebec."

Major props to Paul Manly of Nanaimo for putting up that YouTube. You can bet we never would have heard about this otherwise. And hats off to labour leader Dave Cole for having the guts and leadership to call them out without losing his cool and the smarts to hold a press conference about it.

Loved this bit from the QPP : "The police officers were located by the demonstrators at the time when they refused to launch projectiles."

Refused to launch projectiles? I dearly hope that's a translation problem and not just more Quebec Provincial Provocateurs ass-covering bullshit. This ain't over.

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