COMMENTARY related to:
(Note: I got carried away. This is in bad need of editing.)
U.S. says “More data on Canadians” if Canada wants to keep visa-free access to the U.S.
Why not call them on it (refuse)? We have more than enough bargaining power.
Our recent history is to roll over, belly up, panting to please the U.S. “Bush agenda”.
It looks as though the Government will do it again.
Lapdogs.
Unless we (our numbers) provide them with other reason.
How do I fit this news report (U.S. wants more information on Canadians) into our on-going work?
THREE POSSIBILITIES:
1. Is it related to email “Battle in Seattle” ?
Following the Battle in Seattle (1999), the National Guard would have strategized to prevent repeat occurrences. The protestors (50,000 to 100,000 people) were successful in closing down the WTO meeting. That is a pretty big threat to those who are comfortable wielding the reins of money and power in this old world.
Horrors! Four years later (2003), another mass assembly of protestors at the WTO meeting, this time in Cancun. Success again! The WTO meetings collapsed under the pressure.
The Seattle battle wasn’t confined to Seattle. Old-timers in our network will remember Chad Kister, an American who goes city-to-city giving a presentation on the extinction threats to polar bears, a consequence of climate change.
Chad told me that he joined the peaceful protest against the WTO in 1999, but in Washington, D.C. He was badly injured by the police. Someone video-taped Chad as it was happening; he later won a legal battle and compensation from the authorities.
Chad was surprised by the ability of the police to identify organizers from among the thousands of protestors.
QUESTION: What strategies have been employed in the aftermath of the WTO in Seattle?
The obvious strategy – – deal with the causes of the protest – – is not considered. Instead:
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a. Strategic location.
Meetings that are likely to attract protestors are strategically located to make it impossible for protestors to get near them. They are secretive, as much as possible.
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b. Police officers work inside the crowd, to discredit the protestors by inciting violence (as shocking as that may be).
We circulated two videos of the peaceful protestors at the SPP Summit (Security and Prosperity Partnership) at Montebello, outside Ottawa in August 2007. The protestors saw through the police plants whose faces were hidden by a toque and bandana, who, rock in hand were trying to turn the protest into a violent one. An astute protestor noticed the shoes on the “violent protestors” – the shoes of policemen. “The anarchists” were policemen, planted in the crowd to turn things violent. This happening in Canada. I am still dumbfounded.
For those who did not see this short video, it is in the next email. MANY thanks to filmmaker Paul Manly (Nanaimo, B.C.). Last June I had the good fortune to spend a few hours talking with Paul about his work. (The amazing people in this country blow me away.)
Paul’s Montebello video includes media footage of the Minister Responsible for the Quebec police, trying to justify that members of the police force were trained, disguised and deployed to join a group of protestors for the assigned purpose of turning the crowd violent.
It may be a tactic arising out of the Battle in Seattle. Discredit the protestors. Turn peaceful protest into violence. The media will gobble it up. The message of the protestors is lost. The protestors become bad guys.
That lost or forgotten message of the protestors needs to be re-stated. It’s in another email, important for understanding the situation in which we find ourselves today. (And thank-you to the young man, Stuart Townsend, for re-articulating that message through his script and film “Battle in Seattle“.)
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c. (Another strategy before and in the aftermath of Seattle): The American (and Canadian) security forces will strengthen their files on those who are suspected of organizing the dissidence.
I know a number of Canadians who went to Seattle to join the protests in 1999, and people who went to Cancun, and to Montebello. These are dedicated people who see that changes are necessary. They don’t get paid to speak up, to travel, to help-out. What they do is for the benefit of everyone, and “for seven generations” hence.
Steve writes: “Seattle was a blast. We had 41 busloads of Canadians go down from Vancouver that day. Look how far we have come in 9 years.”
It is possible that part of the American plan, coming out of those very successful protests, was to obtain files on the Canadian dissidents, people like Steve. It’s not good enough that only the Canadian security forces have the files.
“Battle in Seattle” makes it clear that the establishment was out-of-touch. The 50,000 to 100,000 protestors were a complete surprise, coming out of nowhere. The establishment does not want to be unprepared again.
Unprepared for … us. That’s who the protestors are, by and large. People who are a little better informed, who take a little longer view of the world, who can see where we’re headed, and are resolved to make changes so that our grand-children will have an inhabitable Earth. I see us as people who are willing to take responsibility and to work together.
9/11 and “Homeland Security” of course, added impetus to the plan for the Canadian population to come under the same surveillance as is the American population.
Imagine yourself sitting around the strategy table: how in Canada, a western democracy with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, can the police and military hope to contain an organized body of peaceful protestors that number in the tens of thousands?
What I want the police and military to see through is the WTO, the transnational corporate interests. If you are deployed to police the WTO meetings or an SPP Summit, … I’d say you are between a rock and a hard place. The protestors are actually working to make things better for the families of the police and military. The powers-that-be represented by the WTO and SPP do not serve the public interest, and yet it is them you are deployed to protect – – psychopathic large corporations. That is your job.
There will be more and more protests. That’s pretty easy to see, as described in the email about the Encana pipeline incidents. I want everyone to understand that the REASON there are tens of thousands of Canadians who are willing to protest isn’t because we are a bunch of radical, violent, angry, ignorant, “crowd-followers”.
We will protest because we are a little better informed, because we see where we are headed, and fundamentally because the government has opted out of its regulatory job, in favour of subservience to ignorance, money and destruction (large transnational corporations that are very corrupt. I can say that unequivocally because there is a long, well-documented public record of their court convictions.).
In February we circulated the information on the Canada – U.S. Troop Exchange Agreement. In June the information about the new “Canada First Defence Strategy”: “interoperability” with the American Military and “Compatible doctrine” among other niceties.
Okay, so maybe this American need for Canadian data “Not only about (routine) individuals, …” arises out of an increasingly non-compliant population. Made non-compliant by government.
Hand over the data on “(routine) Canadians” to the Americans. To purchase visa-free access to the U.S.
BUT WITH WHAT CONSEQUENCE?
I don’t think you have to be a wizard to figure out that the cost to the government of that action will be … more non-compliance by Canadians.
It’s called non-violent resistance. The majority of Canadians value Canada.
We stand on guard for thee. Against thieves.
++++ OR +++++
2. “Handing over data on (routine) Canadians to the Americans” fits in the pattern of the email sent on Nov 15th, “Massive ‘Homeland Defense’ Joint Exercise Is Underway”
1999: Battle in Seattle
2001: 9/11, etc,
AND THEN,
A. 2004 – health records of the Canadian military are contracted out to (American) Lockheed Martin Corp
B. Feb 14th, 2008 – Canada and U.S. sign Troop Exchange Agreement
C. June 19, 2008 – Canada has a new “defence” strategy. We will have “compatible doctrine” with the U.S. and “interoperability”. The decades-long Canadian dedication to alternatives to “killing wars” is gone.
D. Oct 1: “the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1.”
E. “November 14, 2008 – The United States government’s national threat level is Elevated, or Yellow. (For airline flights it is “High” or Orange.) They expect violence during the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations.
F. November 12 – 18: Massive ‘Homeland Defense’ Joint Exercise Is Under Way. (Canada is part of this, through NORAD and the other agreements we now have with the U.S.)
And now, we can add ?? :
G. “Americans want more information about Canadians if we want access without visas” ?
The justification for the turning over of data on Canadians is not related to internal civil disruption to the corporate-driven agenda, exemplified by the WTO battle.
The justification is the military integration of the U.S. and Canada for the purpose of protecting us from externally-created terrorists.
++++ OR +++++
Or maybe this is merely a case of Plan A didn’t work. So we need a Plan B:
3. 2006 Census, a thwarted opportunity for the Americans to get the data on Canadians ?
The Census offered the opportunity for the American security forces to gain access to Canadian Census data. It could have been accomplished with the out-sourcing of Census work to Lockheed Martin Corp. Under the Patriot Act, Lockheed Martin is legally required to hand requested data over to the U.S. government (the U.S. military, of which Lockheed Martin is a major player anyway). And note: the Canadian Government would NOT be advised when there is such a handover of information on its people. The Patriot Act is clear about that.
However! there was so much protest two years before the 2006 Census that the Government of Canada was forced to draw back and promise that Lockheed Martin would not have access to the Census data.
So if Plan A (the Census) was thwarted, then Plan B. Strong-arming it: give us access to the data on Canadians. If you won’t, we’ll make it so that Canadians will be required to have a visa in order to enter the U.S..
In 2004, and continuing, the Canadian Government has asserted, “No way that the U.S. will have access to Canadian (Census) data. We listened to Canadians.”
November 2008, an American (the Hudson Institute) tells us: “Canadian officials have said this country will meet the new standard (data on Canadians), “plus or minus a little,” by 2011, he said. “But there’ll be tremendous pressure (from the U.S.) to get there faster.”
When Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute tells a security intelligence conference in Ottawa, “we’d like to know who your suspicious people are before they enter the United States.”, I (Sandra Finley) think I’ll just step forth and volunteer my name for the list.
I leave you to your own thoughts.
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