statism watch

Todd Howe, WeAreChangeToronto
October 31, 2010

Early on the morning of Sunday June 27th, police burst into the University of Toronto’s Graduate Student’s Union. There they arrested around seventy sleeping political activists, protesters, guests from out of town that the GSU had billeted for the weekend and allowed to crash on the floor of the gymnasium. They were seized and led away (some barefooted) to waiting buses for the trip to the freezing cold, perpetually illuminated cells of Torontonamo Bay – otherwise known as the Eastern Avenue detention center. Fast forward three and a half months to October 14th, and all charges of conspiracy and unlawful assembly have been dropped. In fact, of the roughly 1,100 people arrested over the course of the G20 weekend, charges have been dropped against all but 100 detainees as of this writing.

Two other glaring instances of detention and mass arrest occurred during the evenings of Saturday June 26th, outside of the Novotel building on the Esplanade, and Sunday June 27th at Queen and Spadina. In the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s preliminary report on the summit, the authors write “it appeared that after 5pm on Saturday, the constitutional protection against arbitrary detention and unreasonable searches had effectively been suspended across downtown Toronto.”

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Todd Howe, WeAreChangeToronto
October 14, 2010

Photo: Michael Hudson

It’s been three months since the Toronto G20 upended this city’s downtown core, and October has produced a promising crop of critical and artistic reactions to the summit. Local documentarian Adam Letalik released his new film Toronto G20 Exposed to a packed room at Ryerson University October 6th. The Hindsight’s G20/20 multimedia art retrospective of the summit was exhibited this past weekend at Studio 561. And on October the 20th, Steve Paikin is scheduled to interview TPS Chief Bill Blair on TVO’s The Agenda.

Yet while memories of June’s G20 summit may still be fresh to political pros, activists, and residents of Toronto’s metro core, for many Canadians this memory is already fading, becoming history. The leader’s big top is dismantled, the circus long since latched on to its next international host. And why not? For those that caught the weekend’s news at home, the coverage in the aggregate presented a simple morality play of clashes between black-garbed ‘anarchists’ and police, leading inevitably to the rain-drenched roundup of hundreds of protesters, passerby and media on Sunday evening. And maybe this is explanation enough. Maybe the largest mass arrest in Canadian history was a regrettable yet unavoidable business in a nation that prides itself on Peace, Order, and Good Government.

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Dana Gabriel, BeYourOwnLeader
October 4, 2010

The U.S. is stepping up efforts to gain more influence in Asia-Pacific through participation in more regional institutions and negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. U.S. foreign policy seeks to shape the future of the region in an attempt to dominate economic, political and security issues.

There are concerns over the rise of trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific by U.S. competitors that could greatly affect its interests. The TPP is seen by many as a key component of America’s trade strategy for further engagement in the region. A U.S. government fact sheet describes the TPP as a, “potential platform for economic integration across the Asia Pacific region. The United States will engage with an initial group of seven like-minded countries, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Australia, Peru, and Vietnam, to craft a platform for a high-standard, comprehensive agreement – one that reflects U.S. priorities and values – with these and additional Asia-Pacific partners.” The TPP is open to other countries with Canada, Malaysia and the Philippines, among some of the nations that have shown interest in joining. It has been suggested that the U.S. may want the current eight partnership countries to reach an initial high-quality agreement before bringing others into the pact. In an effort to play a more dominant role, the TPP could be a means to address long-standing U.S. economic interests in Asia and be used to counter increasing Chinese trade in the region.

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