Tuesday, July 27, 2010

BREAKING NEWS::: Activist Teacher is Climate Guy

REAKING NEWS:::
Activist Teacher is Climate Guy.
.
.


See attempt by George Marshall, Director of Projects, Climate Outreach Information Network, to censor Climate Guy HERE, with video by Marshall explaining his appeal-to-emotions-tactics in promoting the global warming agenda.

Read the recent radical (to the root) essay that prompted this second wave of media scrutiny of Climate Guy HERE.

One result of the ClimateDepot.com video has been to generate a mess-load of ruffled feathers among left bloggers and commentators.

Will the Left please wake up?

It's not about opinion politics. It's about not being scammed. It's not about education. It's about independent thinking. It's not about peer-review. It's about the class politics of science. It's not about being oppressed fairly. It's about liberation.

You can't control a monster by asking it not to shit as much... or by proposing to buy its shit.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Hilarious, refreshing, direct engagement against the police state in the UK




G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty

A critical examination of the role of the CCLA


by Denis G. Rancourt

Police violence at G20-Toronto, like the economic violence engineered by G20 itself, are windows into Canada’s loss of sovereignty as it continues to integrate the US military economy and military culture at breakneck speed. Loss of economic and security sovereignty and the associated planned plundering (so-called austerity) must be attended by loss of democracy and civil rights.

What is clear to any observer who reads the victim testimonies, watches the many videos, reads the civil society association statements, reports and petitions and follows the corporate and independent media broadcasts is that the cops and their bosses profiled activists and demonstrators and targeted them for surveillance, intimidation, interrogations, and assaults as though they were enemies of the state in a war.

What is clear is that the police and its bosses function under a police state paradigm in which lawful democratic participation in the form of organizing and protesting is considered domestic terrorism.

This paradigm is well known in the Latin American (and other) client states of the USA where the dissident members of civil society (teachers, union organizers, independent journalists, community organizers, priests, etc.) are systematically rooted out and murdered by US-trained government-sponsored commandos.

In addition, it has become routine in Canada’s geopolitical war of aggression in Afghanistan to disregard the Geneva Conventions and accept civilian “collateral damage” as a “fact of war” in pursuing suspected militants; not to mention turning them over to allied factions for torture.

Within the same logic the G20-Toronto paramilitary force was ordered to indiscriminately actuate mass intimidations and roundups of target groups (based on profiling), knowing that mostly authentic protesters and many bystanders would be subjected to the same illegal violence, for the double purpose of gathering personal information and intimidating citizens away from participation.

This included turning over select targets to non-uniformed thugs in unmarked vans for what can only be described as torture and it included extensive use of embedded agents and hyper surveillance; all the most repulsive tactics that Canadians have always denounced in totalitarian states.

Either the G20-Toronto paramilitary force was trained and ordered to enact its anti-democracy commando strategy witnessed by all or we live in a fucking fairy tale where less broken windows and smashed cars than after a hockey game in Montreal can justify an ad hoc billion-dollar military budget and where the best road to national security is a US-insanity-led murderous war against a nation on the other side of the planet.

The point is that the 10,000 police officers who participated in G20-Toronto and did not prevent their colleagues from performing massive, sustained and indiscriminate verbal and physical attacks against citizens and citizens’ rights disregarded their professional oaths of service and acted in line with received and accepted police training and instructions which are those of a police state – where citizens who speak out are the enemy.

What is the CCLA (and other recognized human and civil rights groups) doing about it?

What has been revealed by G20-Toronto cannot be covered up by a broad-in-name-only federal inquiry operating under the false premise that “mistakes” may have been made that may lead to the formulation of recommendations for new procedures and protocols.

These were not mistakes.

What happened at G20-Toronto was planned and runs deep in Canada’s newfound militaristic and police culture. Canadian civil rights icon Ursula Franklin recently explained in the national media that Canada is advancing towards fascism.

This is not business as usual for the CCLA (C for Canadian; Canadian Civil Liberties Association). The CCLA must not play its establishment role of aiding the cover up. It must distinguish itself.

As maybe Canada’s leading civil liberties lawyer group, the CCLA has been working overtime to show leadership in responding to the G20-Torornto mass police aggression.

Anything else would have been anomalous since the CCLA was founded in response to a similarly large mass violation of civil liberties: The Quebec War Measures Act mass arrests of the 1970s. In addition the CCLA office is in Toronto.

The CCLA had many observers on the ground at G20-Toronto, has vigilantly collected individual complaints and available data about the arrests, has coordinated tentative legal actions, and has sent several letters to key officials pressuring for inquiries. It has also made several media communications to further pressure responsible bodies to enact measures of accountability.

Its most significant political success to date is that Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) announced that “systemic issues” arising from police behaviour at G20-Toronto would be “investigated thoroughly and in a way that is accountable, transparent, efficient and fair to both the public and the police.” LINK.

This came in response to a CCLA letter to the OIPRD calling for such an investigation and detailing mass “systemic” violations; that is, incorrectly using the word “systemic” to mean incidents involving large groups of victims. LINK. LINK.

Why does the OIPRD feel the need to express that it will be “fair to both the public and the police”? Is it not fair to a criminal to be punished for his/her crime? The OIPRD statement appears to be intended to announce that its report will be a compromise between justice and police immunity, between civil rights and police state advancement.

The National Post’s celebration of the OIPRD review as an “unprecedented investigation by a powerful provincial agency … [with] the power to conduct searches and seizures, summon documents and summon witnesses, including officers and police chiefs” suggests that the establishment will use the OIPRD review to avoid a federal inquiry.

The OIPRD investigation does not have the mandate to examine the role of political leaders or to examine federal police. The OIPRD investigation is not enough for the CCLA. Its chief, Nathalie Des Rosiers, has called for a federal inquiry because the RCMP and CSIS were involved and because such issues as “national intelligence gathering”, police “baiting”, and high level “orders” are involved. LINK.

The CCLA has put much of its efforts in attempting to secure an official and “sufficiently broad” federal inquiry. The CCLA should now further and directly publicly pressure the Harper government and Parliament for the needed federal inquiry, which will in-principle only benefit from the OIPRD review.

The CCLA must also learn the proper definition of the word “systemic” and focus attention on the training and culture of the police and its bosses. It must sound the alarm: The canary in the coal mine is dead.

And what’s with the use of the word “efficient” used by both the CCLA and OIPRD? –Sounds like “no replication of analysis” and “not too deep”. On the contrary, no expense should be spared and plenty of divergent and complementary reports would be fine. (Is it too late to hold off that order for another sound canon? What is the cost of lost sovereignty?)

What will be the CCLA’s next push? Will it be placated by the OIPRD review?

It is also of concern that the CCLA appeared to be threatening the federal government with more lawsuits if a federal inquiry is not ordered – in the words of Des Rosiers: “if the federal government does not do anything, individuals who have been wronged should use the possibilities that exist. Many avenues of redress will rightly be undertaken to get answers and relief…” LINK.

This horse trading attitude indicates that the CCLA might not as vigorously pursue support for individual and group lawsuits if a “sufficiently broad” federal inquiry is called. The CCLA needs to provide support for as much redress as possible for individuals within the limits of the law, irrespective of inquiries.

In addition, the investigations, inquiries and lawsuits must lead to police and their bosses being rightly disciplined with formal reprimands, fines, suspensions, demotions, and firings, in proportion to their violations and lapses of duty. The police who witnessed their colleagues acting unprofessionally and illegally and who did nothing to stop their colleagues must also be disciplined. And political orders must lead to resignations.

A shakedown is needed to avert this next consolidation step towards fascism.

What role will the CCLA play in the continued destruction of Canada?

We don’t need a G20-driven-US-integration-establishment-preserving inquiry. We need organizations like the CCLA to read the writing on the wall and to stand for more than just business as usual. This is about Canada’s integration into the US military economy. It is about desperately needed sovereignty, the opposite of US-led G8 and G20.




Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by an executive that included Nathalie Des Rosiers who enforced his banning from campus and forceful police arrest while he participated in a campus event as a full professor [see http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/].

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing

Their law versus sanity and justice

by Denis G. Rancourt



Why should unelected and parasitic banks, insurance companies, and corporations run our lives? They shouldn’t but they do.

And why should politicians, lawyers and judges work for banks, insurance companies, and corporations? They shouldn’t but they do.

How can individuals obtain some measure of democratic influence? Tried voting? Surprise – doesn’t work huh? It’s like it’s a fixed game or something?

We are told that we “vote” with our “consumer choices”. Problem is the “choices” are pre-determined, like with political candidates and corporate media coverage, and the prices are fixed…

The next level beyond consumer choice is a boycott and we are told that boycott’s are legitimate. Problem is… the economy is quickly becoming a monopoly – so how do you boycott? Want to be a hippy living out of a dumpster and avoiding rent, mortgages and taxes, growing your food on the strip of land between the road and the sidewalk? (How come the working poor didn’t think of that?)

The purpose of a boycott is to inflict financial damage on a delinquent corporation to pressure it into compliance with moral behaviour.

Similarly, the purpose of targeted material damage to banks and corporations is to inflict financial punishment to force compliance with moral behaviour. History shows it to be vastly more effective than a consumer boycott. It is controlled directly by the individual in the purest form of democratic participation (you don’t need to be unionized), gives measurable immediate results, is psychologically empowering, and is a brave act for the common good with real associated risks. It also generates jobs and provides a visible public critique.

It is not a personal attack on personal property or livelihood. It is a political act; one that does not physically harm persons but instead aims to pressure undemocratic organizations towards change. It is an act motivated by love, vitality and self-preservation, not hate. It is not insane aggression. It is sanity. It is a noble form of taking one’s responsibility as a citizen. We have a duty to take back democratic control from the banksters and their corporate collaborators.

Any just legal process in prosecuting such cases would objectively consider the misbehaviour and criminality of the bank or corporate entity and would consider the mechanism whereby the property damage provides societal improvement. It would also consider the motivation and intent of the individual actor. It would then reward the individual actor for his/her risk, inconvenience, and service to society.

Similarly, when at G20-Toronto the police disregarded constitutional and natural rights actors had a duty not to let them and to resist arrest. Any criminal charge of resisting arrest in such circumstances, in a just legal system, would be disregarded and the resister would be compensated for his/her risk, damage, and service to society. WTF. The cops corral peaceful bystanders and protesters, intimidate, retain and selectively assault without cause or explanation, in the hope that some will resist in order to crush those with will. WTF. Those sane individuals are then to be prosecuted for resisting arrest – for questioning illegitimate authority? Violation upon violation in the true spirit of a fucked up system.

In these circumstances pacifism is pathology. Not the true pacifism of Gandhi but the pseudo pacifism of deference to illegitimate authority and deference to absurd context-blind and justice-blind laws that serve undemocratic power.

The only crimes at G20-Toronto were committed by the cops and their bosses.

It is not a crime, in a protest battle zone created by a militaristic police occupation, to spontaneously destroy police property offered as bait to encircled pro-democracy protesters for the benefit of corporate media propaganda that serves the police and its bosses in wrongly justifying tax-funded mass aggression and organized civil liberties dismantlement.

The division between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters is a divide-and-conquer tactic intended to neutralize and dismantle democratic expression and popular leverage. The crimes of the financiers, their corporate collaborators and their government servants, designed in secret behind closed doors at G8 and G20 and in all the boardrooms of power, are too great to let them divide us.

Free all political prisoners now!


RELATED POSTS:
They’re not just pigs
Dalai Lama pacifism

Monday, July 19, 2010

Why we must despise university professors

On the need to rebel from within academia

by Denis G. Rancourt


Class is stronger than race and sex.

University professors are cowardly deceiving scum. There are no good professors.

They work under a cover of serving community and the public good yet they serve and replicate a system of extreme violence and repression; a system of layered exploitation that uses every method from war and genocide to economic slavery to psychological social engineering in order to maintain and increase its hierarchical domination.

Their work starts in the classroom and extends to the boardroom. They coerce and purify and provide the mental infrastructure of system maintenance and projection. You will “cooperate” and develop “professional ethics” and “universal values”...

It is disgusting to observe university service intellectuals posturing themselves into a self-image of community service and solidarity with the oppressed-other while not raising a finger to dismantle the very machine at its core. They are in a position to alter the production cycle of managers of mind and manners, yet they reinforce and perfect the indoctrination of self and of students instead.

Their lives of privilege are nestled in lies, as are all such lives. The lies that intra-class justice is justice, that privilege produces extra-class benefits, that knowledge arises from breeding and that it can be transferred via an administrative act; all necessary and comforting lies.

Without the armed thugs that preserve their power and the furniture of their lies they would be hapless beggars because they are empty. They pride themselves in being empty and give each other prizes for emptiness. They rise in the academic and administrative hierarchies for achieving emptiness and for celebrating emptiness.

They are truly a disgusting breed, destined to enlighten us all and to guide our leaders.

They excel at taking diversity and forming it into shapeless conformity. They work as a unit, like a meat grinder, with “radical” profs shaping activist students and business profs nurturing corporate service drones. Those that cannot be shaped are denied entry or expelled. There is no space for non-compliance.

They are gifted for selection. They select the emptiest by peer review and the most obedient by grading. And of course effective selection necessarily includes expulsion and failure. They look for and kill those who deserve to fail. And they mob and kill those who would expose them.

This explains why they are all exactly the same. There is no truer generalization at-the-root about a professional class; unless you believe in a difference between conservatives and liberal “progressives” or that a black feminist academic is not also a neutralizer and enforcer.

The university professorial class manages the highest-level institutional indoctrination, and must therefore be more fundamentally and completely aligned than any other class; more the same than politicians are the same or than doctors and lawyers are the same or than teachers, cops and soldiers are the same when they have been segregated and “elevated” into a service professional class.

The needed underlying monochromaticity, beyond school obedience and ordinary graduate or professional school indoctrination, takes another five to ten of the tenure track and is masked by an elaborate illusion of choice and independence supported by its own mythology and bureaucracy of “academic freedom”.

University professors cannot save themselves and will not save their students. We must love humanity and freedom enough to despise them in liberating ourselves. Only their jolt from rejection and our experience of rebellion can produce some result. Freedom means self-determination.




Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca]

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Denis Rancourt interviewed on the Progressive Radio News Hour -- Globalization, G20, liberation

Denis Rancourt was interviewed (July 10, 2010) on Stephen Lendman's The Progressive Radio News Hour show at PRN (Progressive Radio Network).

Follow the podcast radio interview recording HERE:

  • At the 51:40 time mark Rancourt describes "liberation activism" in opposition to "opinion management" preoccupations.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

There is no Canada - CSIS

It could not be more clear. CSIS, Canadian corporate media and Canadian parliamentarians could not have made it more clear. There is no Canada.

Here is Canada's spy chief, Richard Fadden, publicly making the "bold" assertion that "a number of Canadian politicians are being influenced by foreign states". The responses are swift and vehement.

Parliamentarians want to get to the bottom of this inexplicable "intel"...? And Canada's corporate media are hot on the trail of this confounding revelation!

What is reveled by these dedicated truth seekers is that the elephant in the room is as large as the G20-Toronto police state mass aggression budget was gargantuan: It turns out that CSIS and none of the media and none of the parliamentarians are talking about the US or Israel as the influence on Canadian politicians.

Hello...? Is someone going to say something? The US and Israel are not foreign states?

This comes just days after Canada-born Zionist leaders Stephen Harper (Prime Minister) and Bob Rae (Liberal MP) accused Libby Davies (MP, NDP Deputy Leader) of saying "some hateful things about Israel" and "'extremist' comments and 'a fundamental denial of Israel's right to exist," and demanded that she be fired as NDP Deputy Leader in the House of Commons, ALL BASED ON THE VIDEO EMBEDDED BELOW. Houaaa...

For the elephant in the room to be this large we must conclude that there is no Canada. Simple as that.

When a reasoned questioning of national sovereignty is this taboo and the perceived reprisals to MPs this significant, it has to mean that it's over and that the question will never come up again. English Canada is dead.

The US-globalists and geostrategists ran the attack against democracy at G20 in Toronto and run the show in Canada's foreign policy.

Why is Canada in Afghanistan again? And why does Canada's security depend on supporting Israeli war crimes, to the dismay of the rest of the world? How does that work exactly? Is there a parliamentary committee looking into these questions? Is there a single MP or Senator speaking out?



Saturday, July 3, 2010

"Western freedom-lovers cry truth" - Quds News Agency, Tehran


The Quds News Agency, Tehran (photo), Iran, ran a story including an interview with Denis Rancourt. The story is linked HERE. The interview part of the report is reproduced below.

"The Canadian scientist believes that as a solid method to resolve the Palestinian issue, countries of good will must recognize Palestine as a state and establish embassies in Gaza. In this regard, he suggests dispatch of a flotilla to establish an embassy in Gaza."
-- Quds News Agency, July 3, 2010.

Qudsna: We know your academic ordeal which took place against any standards of freedom of expression. We’d like to know what has motivated you in championing the Palestinian issue and objecting the Israeli racism and oppression even at the cost of your convenience.


Denis Rancourt: After living the lies of professional indoctrination and of academic elite incorporation for too long, I felt I had harmed myself enough and decided to start living in truth, or at least on the truth side of the street. I decided to make as few compromises as possible in trying to live up to the standards of authentic inquiry into real and important matters. These matters were related to the concerns of my students from around the world, to concerns of members of my community in Ottawa, and to my own oppression and servitude within the institution. In hindsight I can say that my motivation was liberation and that my struggle was and is a personal rebellion against the insanity of the university as violator of young persons and producer of service intellectuals.

Qudsna: According to one of your latest articles, the “the right to exist” is an absurd posturing by Israel which must be ridiculed because “No country has a recognized God-given or otherwise right to exist” and “The right of return is a human right.” The argument might provide the ground for the idea of staging a referendum over the Palestinian issue in which the original population of historic Palestine, whatever their religion, might be allowed to vote. What do you think?

DR: I agree that all important decisions should be made by democratic means rather than by officials concerned about their power more than anything else. However, the referendum that you suggest sounds exceedingly difficult to organize and just as difficult to have recognized by influential world bodies. Instead of such a referendum in which one only expresses one's opinion to referendum organizers, a more participatory process may be better in which individuals in their communities affirm their desires for Palestine and their right of return with actions. For example, a small group of returning Palestinians who organize to physically return and who do it publicly and with ties to local and global community support could have more impact than any poll or referendum or election. We see this with the aid flotilla movement. There can be many such ideas for action. The actions must arise from those being denied their rights and must involve "fighting one's own oppression". Fighting one's own oppression is the strongest source of motivation and leads to liberation.

Qudsna: Reports say American people are increasingly grow sensitive about the Palestinian issue and the oppression of Israel. How do you see the extent of anti-Israeli inclination in your community?

DR: There is a shift in Canada and the US, a developing movement that opposes the Israel lobby and its illegitimate and disproportionate influence on our governments and on our corporate media. This is seen in the academic world where more and more critics of the Israel lobby and of Israel are pushing forward, in the corporate media where the reporting is less completely skewed, in the student movements where Students Against Israeli Apartheid and Israeli Apartheid Week have made great strides, in the labour movements where progressive resolutions to support Palestine are adopted, in civil liberties activism, in coalescing social justice activism movements, in the art world such as film making, and in legal battles where the Israel lobby's bogus "anti-Semitism" attacks are being challenged.

On my own campus, the president of the University of Ottawa (Allan Rock, a former federal Minister and former Canadian ambassador to the UN) has been trained partly by my public exposure via my UofOWatch blog and by strong criticisms from civil society to change his behaviour from bold attacks against Palestinian rights efforts towards silence on these matters.

I think Canadians and US citizens are more and more against the aggressive policies of Israel and reject more and more the overt and aggressive stance of the Israel lobby. We are winning the public opinion battle against Zionism and this will help to keep our Israel-lobby-serving and military-economy-serving governments in check, to some degree.

Qudsna: What must the world do to prevent Israel from such cruelties?

DR: Countries of good will (in which citizens would somehow gain actual democratic power) could recognize Palestine as a state and establish embassies in Gaza. Which country will be the first to do this? A flotilla to establish an embassy! I think countries, like individuals, must do bold acts to fight their oppressions. We need an array of bold and diversified actions by individuals, organizations, and countries, to fight against militarism and against both physical and economic occupations. These actions will coalesce into a stronger cultural and societal rejection of domination and oppression. An important element in all these actions is to expose the oppression and the crimes as much and as loudly as possible. Oppressors need to build and preserve a false image of legitimacy in order to continue oppressing and occupying - we must continually deconstruct that false image.

Qudsna: Do you consider the UN as an effective body in harnessing the cruel Israeli regime?

DR: Shamefully, Canada now joins the US and Israel in voting against Palestinian rights resolutions at the UN. The Canadian ambassador to the UN responsible for that change was Allan Rock, the now president of the University of Ottawa who fired me for my politics. As a Canadian, personally, I find the UN to be ineffective in opposing US domination and militarism. I also see US militarism, expansionism, interventionism, and economic predation as a major problem in the world, a problem that the UN cannot solve.

Qudsna: How do you think about the Hamas entity and what they call ‘resistance’ against Israel? Is their idea working?

DR: Hamas is a legitimate political representation and expression of Palestinians. Israel, the US, and Canada's vilification and criminalization of the Hamas political entity is disgusting and hypocritical. I know little about Hamas' work on the ground but from what I see from Canada Hamas is a mostly responsible and very dedicated resistance movement that is doing a remarkable job against tremendous odds and in the most difficult circumstances. Palestinians need Hamas. The world needs Hamas. The alternative is oblivion or complete servitude.

Hamas is the best placed as the completely occupied and targeted entity representing Palestinians in Gaza to judge its own methods and tactics in trying to survive Israel's persistent attempts to occupy, dominate, and exterminate. As an outsider I can see that Israel and the US are the aggressors, that is obvious, but I am not in a position to dictate tactics in such an asymmetric conflict with such tremendous losses on the Palestinian side. The US claims that dropping atomic bombs on two civilian cities was justified against a weakened and capitulating Japan yet it freaks out in horror at a few suicide bombs (when was the last one?) that may actually deter the aggressor and draw much needed world scrutiny on the Israeli extermination of Palestinians. The hypocrisy is gargantuan.

Qudsna: How your colleagues in general think about Hamas?

DR: Most of my colleagues would be too uncomfortable to say such clearly positive things about Hamas, even those that say positive things about Che Guevara. But this is changing, as I explained above.

Hamas is practicing self-defense. It is the US and Israel that must justify their aggressions and criminality. This is obvious but it will only be understood via the struggles against our oppressions that must occur. As we liberate ourselves we see more clearly than ever before, through our own eyes.

Qudsna: How do you see the role of Islamic Republic of Iran in the Palestinian issue?

DR: As the only major power in the Middle East that has not been corrupted and bought out by the US, I hope that Iran can provide the resistance with as much help as possible - to stem the horrendous crimes that are under way. I fear for the Iranian people because the US and Israel want the destruction of Iran in order to accelerate their expansionism and domination in the region. I hope that there will be popular revolutions in several other Middle Eastern countries, as there are in Latin American countries, to force governing elites to work for and with their citizens. I hope that there will be such popular or cultural revolutions in Canada and the US to make Canada and the US into democratic entities, instead of the plutocracies that they now are. I admire, for example, what has happened recently in Iceland regarding taking back democracy and I hope that this model can be applied to Canada? I believe that truly democratic states do not live from war.

Qudsna: How do you forecast the future of Palestine?

DR: I forecast that the future of Palestine will be the future of the world.

Qudsna: Any further comment about Palestine as a ‘country’?

DR: How did Israel become such a racists and despicable state? How did its citizens allow this to occur? This is not natural for a state constrained by the necessity to be sustainable - it must be partly the result of a continuous large influx of military "aid".

***

Friday, July 2, 2010

They’re not just pigs

G20-Toronto participatory inquiry in full swing

by Denis G. Rancourt


The 2010 G20 police state mass aggression in Toronto has led to unprecedented alternative and popular media coverage. Photos, raw video footage, video reports, Indy media articles, independent radio reports, documented testimonies, and social media commentaries are pouring in.

Taken together, this spontaneous and autonomously produced information is the evolving factual, interpretative, and recommendation parts of a self-organized participatory inquiry into the police state crimes of G20-Toronto. It will be more complete and more true than any official report from a government-appointed inquiry or than any ruling from a group action lawsuit.

We don’t need daddy to tell us what happened or that “mistakes” were made. We need daddy to be subjected to the consequences of having designed and allowed this mass aggression. A few of those consequences are and should be the lawsuits, the official inquiries, the human and civil rights organization condemnations, the negative media coverage, demotions and firings, the loss of credibility and legitimacy, and much more.

One of the most disturbing results of the participatory inquiry, at a systemic level, is that these cops aren’t just pigs.

The targeting, intimidation, and terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy” in a war – was, like with all recent anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns described by the thousands of victims (from psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape, e.g., HERE, HERE) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs. These thugs had to be trained to execute these manoeuvres against civil society.

It is the modus operandi of US anti-democratic terrorism to train the military hit squads of client states (for example in Latin America) to search out and destroy civil society: union leaders, activist teachers, independent media, community organizers, etc.

Exactly the same tactics are being used against activists and organizers in Canada. The cops are trained to view activists, not as the much needed societal agents that they are, but as “the enemy” that must be destroyed. Pre-emptive arrests, bogus charges, ad-hoc interrogations, imposed restrictive undertakings, and much more.

This extends to campuses such as the University of Ottawa where bogus criminal charges are routinely levelled against activist students (see reports on the UofOWatch blog). And it extends to the streets where anti-poverty organizers and the homeless themselves are targeted and into every workplace and school where anything but “cooperation” is quashed.

These cops are not just racist (all-ists) individuals because of their particular personal circumstances. Their language and actions show that they are trained into a military culture where protestors and activists are the enemy and are to be rooted out and intimidated away from societal participation. They aren’t just pigs. They are anti-democracy commandos.

All the cops that let the one cop brutally attack Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld (HERE) and that did not arrest their criminal colleague are as guilty as the main physical attacker. There has to be a strong militaristic culture among these cops for them to allow their own brutality in full public view, often with cameras rolling.

Let us demand (publicly pressure) that the official public inquiry and legal disclosures include an investigation into police training and tactics regarding the profiling of activists and the intimidation protocols for demonstrators.

Of course the cops are people too. That’s why it’s not a waste of time to be straight up with them and to face them down and to expose them and to justly punish them and their bosses. They’re not just pigs.


Addendum: I make the following concrete tentative suggestion for detainee support. Organize workshops about the legal process and how to represent yourself. Represent yourself, plead not guilty and go the full distance to trial. The Crown has the burden of the proof and must completely disclose its case and evidence to you before you make your case. Ask for disclosures as soon as you can. The disclosures can be shared after trial with the media. This will so expose the false and ludicrous bases for arrests… and it will put the cops on the stand and the disclosures will name the cops. Team up with others who can help. Don’t let a lawyer representing you make a (for your own good) corrupt compromise deal with the Crown.

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca] [Other social activism essays by Denis G. Rancourt are listed HERE.]