SPP and the Zapatistas

One of the sanest, clearest overviews of the SPP I've read to date comes from the Zapatistas. Intended as a primer, Ten Easy Questions and Ten Tougher Ones Regarding the SPPNA is of particular interest in that it addresses the threats posed by the SPP to the people of the western hemisphere as a whole, as opposed to the more US/Canada-centric coverage we are used to up here. In this context it is rather chilling to read casual mention of Canada having already signed away the right to control the extent of her oil trade with the US.

A snippet for all you non-clickers out there :

11. How are these regulations drafted and approved?

In most cases the enforcement of regulations requires just the chief executives' signatures. It is actually corporate lawyers who draft the language of the regulations, especially those having to do with trade, in consultation with selected government officials and academics. This procedure overturns the traditional roles played by governments and corporations and in essence constitutes the privatization of what had traditionally been considered a public prerogative.

The link is provided by Christopher Hayes, who I took to task here for his dismissive article in The Nation regarding the dangers of SPP. Mr Hayes left me a comment with a link to his blog, explaining that while still not convinced, he had cut a sentence from his original article that noted gutting regulations and giving corporations free reign were likely a part of the SPP agenda.
After reading this Zapatista position paper, Mr Hayes writes:

"The more I hear the more wary I become, although even this bill of indictment seems a bit vague—more focused on the general worldview out of which it springs and the motivations of the US than specifics about what, exactly the SPP has accomplished or plans to accomplish. Although, since they’re apparently keeping all SPP documents secret, I guess one can hardly blame the critics."

Warier faster, please, Mr Hayes.

All yr elekshnz is belong 2 us

Not this time, buddy.

Major kudos to Blogging a Dead Horse for his post a week ago : "Conservatives begin replacing opposition MPs with the Pod People" The link to BC Con Caucus Chair and MP Dick Harris's little presser on appointing an unelected Con party hack to virtually replace the elected NDP MP Nathan Cullen kicked off a blogstorm that eventually woke up the paper(tiger)media.

Frank Frink has an excellent DKos diary post up, detailing the whole affair from BaDH, through the blogswarm to :

Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun : "Realistic" Conservatives try to bypass an elected MP.
"Throwing in the waste bin the principles that make representative government in Canada function"

Globe&Mail : Want services? Forget your MP, Tory chair says.
"Dick Harris tells radio listeners to go to Conservative candidate instead of NDP MP."

and CTV : Tories backtrack from candidate as representative

The 'candidate' in question intends to run as a Con in the next election, but is currently just a mayor.
Attempting to gain distance from Harris's maneuver, PMO spokesman Ryan Sparrow said, "He just kind of did that himself.''

I see. The BC Chair of the Conservative Caucus has gone all Lee Harvey Oswald on the party.
Unfortunately for Sparrow's little disclaimer, bloggers have already discovered other such examples of unelected fake Con MPs. What about those Pod People? I guess they are all acting on their own too.

Dear G&M : The frontpage we'd rather see

Accidental Deliberations - The early edition
Ken Chapman explains how it worked.
.Red Tory annoys me with a much superior photoshop

Shadowy MPs from a shadowy parliament

Losing to Lib Blair Wilson in the last federal election in the West Van Sunshine Coast Sea-to-Sky riding didn't slow SoCon candidate John Weston down one whit : he just went ahead and behaved as if he had won.
Referring to himself as "the candidate of record" and Dion as "a left-wing Liberal leader more accountable to France than Western Canada", Weston regularly sends out "Getting Things Done In Ottawa" missives in the mail. This year he held a party at his house for 50 new Asian Canadians and announced that he had adopted a Chinese name for himself : "Wei Tzu Ang". [OK, John, but you're still Caucasian]
Local papers regularly run info ads and photos of Weston with visiting Con MPs, like this :

"I will continue to work for the people of Whistler and of other regions of our riding. Jason Kenney’s visit last week was just one endeavour that will produce benefits for Whistler. I will continue to work with the people of Whistler myself and to invite senior elected officials here in order to foster better decision-making in Ottawa that affects us here."

or this one :

"Over the past two years, I have worked closely with the Whistler Chamber of Commerce and local business people to resolve issues relating to critical labour shortages. I passed on these concerns to the Ministers of Citizenship & Immigration and Human Resources Development, along with specific recommendations."

Trouble is, this is the guy we didn't elect, apparently doing an end run round democracy here.
Ah, but we didn't elect a candidate from the Getting Things Doners, did we?
How can we expect to be properly represented in the HoC in this riding by a candidate from other than the ruling party?

Now if this seems a peculiar interpretation of democracy, it is part of a larger concerted bullying strategy from the Cons, and when they turn it up one more notch, it looks like this.

Dr Dawg does his usual round up. Frank Frink has updates.

The SPP, UFOs, Hitler, and....whoa, nice rack!

"The SPP, is the very kind of organization that one could expect to be launched by an alleged greed-driven "Security Partnership" for the "prosperity" of Human elite minions and Manipulative Extraterrestrials that has been well documented by Dr. Salla and others, toward realizing Adolf Hitler's ambition for a New World Order."
~ The Canadian National Newspaper

And here I thought having the John Birch Society on our side would be problematic.
Link

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."

Just Say No! to The Quagmire on Drugs

Ever since pot "Just Said No!" to me many years ago, I haven't kept up on The War on Drugs news much, other than to note that at best it appears to be a gigantic federal money laundering racket in those countries which have embraced it. I had rather assumed that along with giving women the vote and widespread acceptance of the benefits of bathing, legalization of marijuana was just one more benchmark in the long march toward civilization that we would eventually get around to.

While I'm not aware of Health Minister Tony Clements' position on female emancipation and personal hygiene, he recently announced an upcoming $64M federal anti-drug program, presumably to better align Canadian policy with the spectacularly corrupt and utterly ineffective US War on youth, blacks, hispanics and the poor Drugs program.

The UN recently reported that Canada has the highest use of marijuana in the industrialized world, clocking in at 16.8%, with over half of the population supporting decriminalization as laid out in the LeDain Commission 35 freakin years ago. The Toronto Star :

"In 2003, the Liberal government introduced a bill to decriminalize possession of less than 15 grams, making it subject to a fine but no criminal record.

The move caused immediate criticism in Washington. It warned Ottawa that if the bill passed, Canadians would pay for it at the border with increased security checks and lengthy delays.
In 2004, Conservative leader Stephen Harper said he opposed decriminalization but that "we can look at fines rather than jail terms for possession under five grams."

When the Tories came to power two years later, however, they killed the Liberal bill.
"Are they kowtowing to the U.S.? Almost certainly," says [Ottawa lawyer Eugene] Oscapella.

From an article on how the war on drugs is undermining western security, Misha Glenny writes in The Washington Post :

"British Columbia is now home to the greatest number of organized-crime syndicates anywhere in the world (if we accept the U.N. definition of a syndicate as more than two people involved in a planned crime). According to B.C. government statistics, the production, distribution and export of B.C. Bud, highly potent marijuana grown in hothouses along the province's border with the US, accounts for 6 percent of the region's gross domestic product. It now employs more Canadians than British Columbia's traditional industries of mining and logging combined.

The majority of the province's criminals remain passive hippie types for whom the drug is a lifestyle choice. But as Brian Brennan, the chief investigator for the drug squad of the RCMP told me, the marijuana trade is threatening to turn nasty as British Columbia's Hells Angels, one of the best-organized criminal syndicates in the world, moves in on the action.

An avalanche of B.C. Bud rolls southward into the United States every day, dodging U.S. customs in myriad imaginative ways. But as the Hell's Angels and other syndicates get stronger and their control over the port of Vancouver tightens, the ability of U.S. and Canadian authorities to monitor the border becomes ever weaker."

BC as a snow bound banana republic.

Reading US editorials like this, I can better appreciate why Americans respond to the news that you come from British Columbia with praise at how well you speak English.

Over in the Netherlands, where civilization seems to be on a more secure footing and possession isn't a criminal offence, consumption is only 6.1%.

Oscapala again in the Toronto Star : "This shows that criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization make people use it."

Well exactly.

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.

.

SPP : "No SouPP for you!"

Remember back here when I told you the John Birch Society, a Swift Boater, and the Minutemen were holding a presser in Ottawa to announce their solidarity with the anti-SPP protesters? A rightwing Canadian blogger or two reacted by complaining that I obviously didn't think the Birchers were good enough to protest with the rest of us.

Turns out the Birchers don't think we're good enough to protest with them. From the JBS website :

"The decision to send out the riot police, some armed with tear gas, was made late this morning. As groups of protesters shouted slogans phalanxes of officers arrived and completely cordoned off the area of the Chateau" where the summit is being held, said the report.

Such rent-a-mob activity at the summit should not be confused with legitimate and principled opposition. Anarchist and communist mob violence of this sort, which has been on display at previous high-level meetings of heads of state, typically serves to discredit legitimate, peaceful protest and opposition. As such the John Birch Society condemns violent protest activity..." yada, yada, and yada.

So who are these "anarchist and communist" types who are bringing down the whole "legitimate and principled" tone that the John Birch Society is itself so world-renowned for? This "rent-a-mob" group who would "discredit the legitimate peaceful protest" Birchers strive so hard for?

Check out their embedded CSNews link : Canadian Communists March Against Bush.
***snerk***snigger***It's the Canadian Labour Congress.***snort***

No direct link to the Birchers from here - You can crank that particular ol' Google yourself.