statism watch

by Dana Gabriel, Be Your Own Leader
Nov 7, 2011

After a two year hiatus, the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico are set to meet for a trilateral summit. While the push for further North American integration continues incrementally, at this time, it is unlikely that discussions will yield any grand new initiatives that involve the participation of all three NAFTA partners. Instead, the meeting could be used to build off of bilateral discussions already underway. This includes negotiations between the U.S. and Canada on a North American Security perimeter deal designed to accelerate the flow of people and goods across the border.

In an article from several months back, Robert Pastor, who has been a leading proponent of continental integration, emphasized that Obama’s jobs strategy should be a North American one. He explained how the U.S. can expand trade faster by focusing on its neighbours and also pointed out that few Americans realize just how dependent the U.S. is on Canada and Mexico. In order to facilitate this approach, Pastor recommended, “We should eliminate restrictive ‘rules of origin,’ which add a tax as high as the tariff that was eliminated by NAFTA, and combine, rather than duplicate, customs’ forms, personnel and frequent-traveler programs.” He also called on President Obama to, “expand his infrastructure fund to be a North American one, with contributions from all three countries.” Pastor went on to say, “The leaders of each nation should then instruct their transportation ministers to develop a North American plan for transportation and infrastructure that would include another trade corridor from the busiest transit point in Windsor, Ontario, to southern Mexico.” This sounds a lot like plans for a NAFTA superhighway.

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by Todd Howe, WeAreChangeToronto
October 20, 2011

Optimism. More than anything, it was optimism which hung in the air as two thousand people marched through the financial district to St James Park to ‘Occupy Toronto’ this past Saturday. Decamping from the subway to the paved expanse of Commerce Court’s plaza, I was cheered by the sight of a vast crowd that had improbably ventured out on a drizzly mid-October morning. They gathered right at the geographic heart of Canada’s banking center, X marks the spot, King and Bay – it’s not the sort of thing that usually happens in Toronto. But it happened this day, and it was an unprecedented, courageous symbol – watch the video below for a brief walk-though of the day’s events. If nothing else, you had to admire the chutzpah, the obvious joy that was expressed in speaking back to power. And the celebratory mood of the demonstrators was undiminished as they sang and chanted their way up Bay and along Queen to St. James Park, united by a hope that, maybe this time, visibility might drive positive change.

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by Dana Gabriel, BeYourOwnLeader
September 1, 2011

(Image by Darcy St. Amant and NAUresistance)

Much has been made about the secretive nature and lack of transparency surrounding efforts by the U.S. and Canada to create a North American security perimeter. With several high-level meetings in the last month, not to mention all the behind the scenes negotiations, it is expected that an action plan will be unveiled at some point in September. From a U.S. perspective, it is security which is driving the agenda, while on the Canadian side, facilitating trade and easing the flow of goods across the border is the focal point. Any deal reached will build off of past initiatives and be used to advance economic, energy and security integration between the two countries.

During a bilateral meeting in early August, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird discussed issues pertaining to the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere. Also high on the agenda was U.S.- Canada relations. This included the declaration, Beyond the Border: Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness issued by U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in February of this year. At a news conference following her meeting with Minister Baird, Secretary Clinton stressed that, “it’s critical that we ensure our border remains a safe, vibrant connector of people, trade, and energy. And today, the minister and I discussed other ways to expand trade and investment; for example, by reducing unnecessary regulations.” It is interesting that Clinton brought up energy as this is also an integral part of North American integration which is being further advanced through the U.S.-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue, as well as other initiatives.

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by Todd Howe, We Are Change Toronto
August 8, 2011

“They have cast all the mysteries and secrets of government… before the vulgar (like pearls before swine), and have taught both the soldiery and people to look so far into them as to ravel back all governments to the first principles of nature…” Clement Walker, on the English Revolution, 1661

From Miami with Love

Something very interesting happened this past April in an El Paso courtroom. There, a verdict was returned in the case of one Luis Posada Carriles, a man that has notably been described as the “Osama Bin Laden of Latin America” and “one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history”. [1]

The circumstances of the case and the details of Posada’s extraordinary biography could be mistaken for the plot of an international thriller — there’s ample evidence of a long career in the business of international terrorism, including declassified FBI and CIA documents [2] and Posada’s on-the-record admission of involvement [3] in a string of hotel bombings in Havana. Add to that terrorism convictions by multiple governments that have found themselves in Posada’s crosshairs, an outstanding INTERPOL warrant, sundry bombings and other paramilitary attacks within Cuba and abroad. He ran guns to the Contras during their cross-border war with Nicuaragua, as exposed during the Reagan-era ‘Iran Contra’ scandal hearings [4]. He was caught flying 200 lbs of C4 plastic explosive into Panama City and convicted of a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro [5]. He’s connected with the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 in 1976 and the immolation of 78 people. [6]

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by Dana Gabriel, BeYourOwnLeader
June 11, 2011

While few details have emerged surrounding talks between the U.S. and Canada on a North American security perimeter, there is little doubt that deeper military integration between both countries will play an important part of any such deal. Plans for a common security perimeter have renewed calls to expand the NORAD bilateral air defence model to include ground and naval forces. There are also efforts to increase security cooperation in the Arctic and further integrate military command structures.

As part of the Tri Command Vision, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and Canada Command (Canada COM) are working closer together in the defense and security of North America. Moving forward, the Tri Command strategic goals are to, “Improve unity of effort with each other and with our respective mission partners; develop a culture of continuous collaboration and cooperation in planning, execution, training, information management, and innovation; enhance intelligence and information sharing and fusion.” In order to better achieve these objectives, “The Commands shall develop and share comprehensive, situational awareness and a common operating picture, and must strive to interact seamlessly with each other and with our respective civil authorities, non-governmental organizations and other mission partners.” The Tri Command is part of efforts to merge the three commands into one.

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Police states don’t appear full blown, over night.  They are, like any other social phenomenon, part of social and political process — the end result of long term corruption of the political culture and the incremental diminishing of democracy. – Murray Dobbin

Related: G20 police ripped off amputee’s prosthetic limb, told him to walk before dragging him off | Release G20 ‘political prisoners’: rights groups | Canada Day: 2,000 protest G20 summit arrests | Civil liberties association to sue police on behalf of G20 arrestees | Four detained journalists file complaints of assault, sexual threats against G20 police | Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre | Toronto Police Lied: No five-metre rule existed in G20 security fence law | Outraged G20 protesters rally against police abuse and arbitrary detention | 20 G20 detention reports: ‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ | The G20: Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people | The G20’s ignominious end: Panic, outrage as police detain hundreds for hours in pouring rain | National Post photographers arrested, spend night in G20 detention camp | Peaceful Eastern Ave jail solidarity action attacked by Toronto police | Police Raid U of T Student Union for Hosting G20 Protesters | Guardian journalist beaten, arrested at peaceful G20 protest on Esplanade | Four alleged G20 violence ringleaders appear in court | Pre-dawn raids in Toronto homes result in four arrests | First G20 ‘secret law’ arrestee plans Charter challenge | G20 law gives police sweeping powers to arrest people | CP Reporter: How I was detained by G8 security | G20: Activists Arrested, Others Denied Entry into Canada | No legislation, no precedent to limit G20 police powers | Rights group files for injunction against G20 ‘sound cannon’ | G20 activists accuse CSIS of intimidation | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

Henry Stancu, Michelle Henry, Toronto Star
July 6, 2010

The province’s special investigations unit has begun probing five allegations that police caused serious injury to civilians during the summit.

It is unclear whether civilian or police information led to the investigation, with more details promised Wednesday.

“We’re currently looking into details surrounding those interactions” and speaking with witnesses, SIU spokesperson Monica Hudon said Tuesday. She would not say which police force or forces, of many drawn into G20 security, are involved in the allegations. The SIU can probe only the officers who work in Ontario, Hudon said, which includes municipal forces and the OPP but not the RCMP.

On the same day, a Toronto police services board meeting calling for an independent civilian review of the way G20 security was handled drew heated response from many people who came to vent about their treatment during the summit.

Thinking their voices would be heard at Tuesday’s hastily called special session at police headquarters, many shouted their objections after board chair Alok Mukherjee announced his recommendation that an impartial civilian overseer be chosen to conduct the review.

The chair said those in the rowdy gathering had “no automatic right to speak” at this venue, and that complaints should be filed in the form of written deputations.

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Of course the cops were yelling that he was resisting arrest – that’s now standard operating procedure. Raise an arm to defend yourself against the crack of a baton or push back even accidentally, and presto, you’ve assaulted an officer. As the G20 weekend and media reports from across the country in recent years make clear, this is about more than just a few bad apples – the barrel of apples is just about rotted through. Of course there must be many honest, hardworking good people on the force but it seems like they’re rapidly becoming a minority. Just look at media reports from across the continent – grandmothers being TASERed for sitting up in bed, women for sitting in the wrong seat at a game, innocent people being dragged out of their homes and beaten, border guards arresting people for asking questions, this is just how the cops roll now. The question is, why? What has happened to our former ‘peace officers’, charged with the honour to serve and protect, now more akin to some sort of dark STASI enforcement arm loosed on the public? There are many cultural forces at play here, but the increasing militarization and corruption of the police in the world we’re told is forever changed ‘post-911′ is but one of the many issues this journal attempts to set in context. Spin the ‘topicgate’ globe to the left of your screen and click a topic to jump in.

Related: Release G20 ‘political prisoners’: rights groups | Canada Day: 2,000 protest G20 summit arrests | Civil liberties association to sue police on behalf of G20 arrestees | Four detained journalists file complaints of assault, sexual threats against G20 police | Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre | Toronto Police Lied: No five-metre rule existed in G20 security fence law | Outraged G20 protesters rally against police abuse and arbitrary detention | 20 G20 detention reports: ‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ | The G20: Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people | The G20’s ignominious end: Panic, outrage as police detain hundreds for hours in pouring rain | National Post photographers arrested, spend night in G20 detention camp | Peaceful Eastern Ave jail solidarity action attacked by Toronto police | Police Raid U of T Student Union for Hosting G20 Protesters | Guardian journalist beaten, arrested at peaceful G20 protest on Esplanade | Four alleged G20 violence ringleaders appear in court | Pre-dawn raids in Toronto homes result in four arrests | First G20 ‘secret law’ arrestee plans Charter challenge | G20 law gives police sweeping powers to arrest people | CP Reporter: How I was detained by G8 security | G20: Activists Arrested, Others Denied Entry into Canada | No legislation, no precedent to limit G20 police powers | Rights group files for injunction against G20 ‘sound cannon’ | G20 activists accuse CSIS of intimidation | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

Doug Draper, Niagara at Large
July 5, 2010

John Pruyn wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating Canada Day this year.

How could he be after the way he was treated a few days earlier in Toronto by figures of authority most of us were brought up to respect, our publicly paid-for police forces who are supposed to be there to serve and protect peaceful, law-abiding citizens like him.

The 57-year-old Thorold, Ontario resident — an employee with Revenue Canada and a part-time farmer who lost a leg above his knee following a farming accident 17 years ago — was sitting on the grass at Queen’s Park with his daughter Sarah and two other young people this June 26, during the G20 summit, where he assumed it would be safe.

As it turned out, it was a bad assumption because in came a line of armoured police, into an area the city had promised would be safe for peaceful demonstrations during the summit. They closed right in on John and his daughter and the two others and ordered them to move. Pruyn tried getting up and he fell, and it was all too slow for the police.

As Sarah began pleading with them to give her father a little time and space to get up because he is an amputee, they began kicking and hitting him. One of the police officers used his knee to press Pruyn’s head down so hard on the ground, said Pruyn in an interview this July 4 with Niagara At Large, that his head was still hurting a week later.

Accusing him of resisting arrest, they pulled his walking sticks away from him, tied his hands behind his back and ripped off his prosthetic leg. Then they told him to get up and hop, and when he said he couldn’t, they dragged him across the pavement, tearing skin off his elbows , with his hands still tied behind his back. His glasses were knocked off as they continued to accuse him of resisting arrest and of being a “spitter,” something he said he did not do. They took him to a warehouse and locked him in a steel-mesh cage where his nightmare continued for another 27 hours.

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“You can’t pre-emptively violate rights and then ask citizens to sort it out in the future,” White said.

Exactly.

Related: Canada Day: 2,000 protest G20 summit arrests | Civil liberties association to sue police on behalf of G20 arrestees | Four detained journalists file complaints of assault, sexual threats against G20 police | Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre | Toronto Police Lied: No five-metre rule existed in G20 security fence law | Outraged G20 protesters rally against police abuse and arbitrary detention | 20 G20 detention reports: ‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ | The G20: Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people | The G20’s ignominious end: Panic, outrage as police detain hundreds for hours in pouring rain | National Post photographers arrested, spend night in G20 detention camp | Peaceful Eastern Ave jail solidarity action attacked by Toronto police | Police Raid U of T Student Union for Hosting G20 Protesters | Guardian journalist beaten, arrested at peaceful G20 protest on Esplanade | Four alleged G20 violence ringleaders appear in court | Pre-dawn raids in Toronto homes result in four arrests | First G20 ‘secret law’ arrestee plans Charter challenge | G20 law gives police sweeping powers to arrest people | CP Reporter: How I was detained by G8 security | G20: Activists Arrested, Others Denied Entry into Canada | No legislation, no precedent to limit G20 police powers | Rights group files for injunction against G20 ‘sound cannon’ | G20 activists accuse CSIS of intimidation | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

The Canadian Press
July 5, 2010

The mass detention of people and widespread use of police force over the G20 summit weekend was a gross abuse of state power that demands an independent inquiry and the immediate release of “political prisoners,” a civil-rights coalition said Monday.

In addition, they said, those responsible for “one of the most grotesque public expressions of police brutality, intimidation and mass violation of civil liberties” need to be held to account.

Mark Calzavara, of the Council of Canadians, said police detained more than 1,000 people after some protesters broke windows and burned a few police cruisers.

“When the police are the ones that are breaking the law, that’s when all of society has to really start to pay attention,” Calzavara said.

“That is a far greater crime.”

While the vast majority of those detained were released without charge within 24 hours, about 250 people still face charges and more than a dozen remained in custody Monday, according to the Movement Defence Committee.

The groups called for the release of those still incarcerated, saying the mass arrests amounted to criminalizing dissent.

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Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. – Howard Zinn

Related: Civil liberties association to sue police on behalf of G20 arrestees | Four detained journalists file complaints of assault, sexual threats against G20 police | Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre | Toronto Police Lied: No five-metre rule existed in G20 security fence law | Outraged G20 protesters rally against police abuse and arbitrary detention | 20 G20 detention reports: ‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ | The G20: Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people | The G20’s ignominious end: Panic, outrage as police detain hundreds for hours in pouring rain | National Post photographers arrested, spend night in G20 detention camp | Peaceful Eastern Ave jail solidarity action attacked by Toronto police | Police Raid U of T Student Union for Hosting G20 Protesters | Guardian journalist beaten, arrested at peaceful G20 protest on Esplanade | Four alleged G20 violence ringleaders appear in court | Pre-dawn raids in Toronto homes result in four arrests | First G20 ‘secret law’ arrestee plans Charter challenge | G20 law gives police sweeping powers to arrest people | CP Reporter: How I was detained by G8 security | G20: Activists Arrested, Others Denied Entry into Canada | No legislation, no precedent to limit G20 police powers | Rights group files for injunction against G20 ‘sound cannon’ | G20 activists accuse CSIS of intimidation | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

CBC News
July 1, 2010

More than 2,000 people demonstrated in Toronto and Montreal on Thursday against the arrests of nearly 1,000 protesters during last weekend’s G20 summit in Toronto.

About 1,000 protesters gathered at the Ontario legislature before marching south on University Avenue and then along a route that look them past Toronto police headquarters and back to Queen’s Park.

Groups including Canadians Advocating Public Participation called for an independent public inquiry into the way security was handled during the recent summit. Some also called for the resignation of Toronto police Chief Bill Blair.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has described the arrests as unprecedented, disproportionate, arbitrary and excessive.

“The CCLA is planning to help people who are seeking compensation to [initiate] a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Ontario,” Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel for the association, told the Toronto Star. “We have a couple of plaintiffs.”

Protesting police ‘intimidation’

In Montreal, more than 1,000 people, including women’s rights groups, union representatives and a provincial politician, marched to protest what happened in Toronto.

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Please consider supporting the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. They have a breakdown of the charges laid (or lack thereof) against the 1,105 people arrested here.

Related: Four detained journalists file complaints of assault, sexual threats against G20 police | Inside the G20 Eastern Avenue Detention Centre | Toronto Police Lied: No five-metre rule existed in G20 security fence law | Outraged G20 protesters rally against police abuse and arbitrary detention | 20 G20 detention reports: ‘I will not forget what they have done to me’ | The G20: Brutal spectacle failed a city and its people | The G20’s ignominious end: Panic, outrage as police detain hundreds for hours in pouring rain | National Post photographers arrested, spend night in G20 detention camp | Peaceful Eastern Ave jail solidarity action attacked by Toronto police | Police Raid U of T Student Union for Hosting G20 Protesters | Guardian journalist beaten, arrested at peaceful G20 protest on Esplanade | Four alleged G20 violence ringleaders appear in court | Pre-dawn raids in Toronto homes result in four arrests | First G20 ‘secret law’ arrestee plans Charter challenge | G20 law gives police sweeping powers to arrest people | CP Reporter: How I was detained by G8 security | G20: Activists Arrested, Others Denied Entry into Canada | No legislation, no precedent to limit G20 police powers | Rights group files for injunction against G20 ‘sound cannon’ | G20 activists accuse CSIS of intimidation | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

Jennifer Yang, Toronto Star
June 30, 2010

Overwhelmed with calls, Civil Liberties Association is working on suing police forces

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association says it is considering a joint lawsuit against the Toronto police and other police forces responsible for the G20 mass arrests.

“The CCLA is planning to help people who are seeking compensation to (initiate) a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Ontario,” said Nathalie Des Rosiers, general counsel for the CCLA. “We have a couple of plaintiffs.”

More than 1,000 arrests were made relating to the G20 summit and multiple reports have emerged alleging peaceful demonstrators or even bystanders were caught up in the mass arrests – most notably, at the Esplanade’s Novotel Hotel on Saturday, where demonstrators tried to stage a sit-in, or at Queen St. and Spadina Ave., where a large crowd was boxed in and detained for several hours in the rain.

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