DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH March 19th in Montreal: Two Books about the Black Revolution

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When: Friday, March 19th 2010; 6pm
Where: Concordia Co-op Bookstore, 2150 Bishop St. • metro Guy-Concordia
Tel-: 514-848-7445

Montreal - The Certain Days Calendar Committee and Kersplebedeb Publishing are holding a Black Revolution Double Book Launch on March 19th 2010, starting at 6pm. The book launch will be co-sponsored and hosted by the Concordia Co-op Bookstore - 2150 Bishop Street, Guy-Concordia Metro. The books being launched are Safiya Buhkari’s The War Before, and James Yaki Sayles' Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth. Following readings from each book, there will be a discussion of local efforts around U.S. political prisoners and prisoners of war.  Erica Meiners, Associate Professor of Education and Women's Studies at Northeastern Illinois University and a longterm anti-prison activist, will speak on the ongoing ravages of the prison-industrial complex, and its relevance in Canada. Light refreshments will be served.


TWO BOOKS ABOUT THE BLACK REVOLUTION

The decades after the Second World War witnessed successful revolutions against colonial rule around the world. Struggles against national oppression took place on every continent – including within the borders of the United States, in what Che Guevara described as “belly of the beast.” Millions of people worked in a variety of ways against the ongoing destruction of their communities and societies by a racist and colonialist white power structure.

It was within this context that the Black Freedom Struggle engaged in its definitive 20th century confrontation with racialized capitalism in the U.S.A. Hidden from popular histories of the Sixties and the Civil Rights movement, the reality on the ground was that there was a war. Hundreds upon hundreds were killed, tens of thousands spent time in prison – and some still languish behind those bars. More than that, communities were destroyed, entire cities emptied, as white America and its government set about murdering the Black Liberation Movement.

Safiya Bukhari and James Yaki Sayles were two revolutionaries who participated in those fateful clashes, who found their calling in the struggle, and who would devote the rest of their lives to the liberation of their people – and of all people. After decades of struggle, Safiya Bukhari died in 2003 at the age of 53. James Yaki Sayles spent almost his entire adult life in prison; he had just been released a few years earlier when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died in 2008 at the age of 59.

In February, two posthumous volumes were published, making the words of these fallen freedom fighters available for the first time to a wide audience. Safiya Bukhari’s The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther Keeping the Faith in Prison, Fighting for Those Left Behind, was published by The Feminist Press at CUNY and James Yaki Sayles’ Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings was co-published by Spear and Shield Publications and Kersplebedeb Publishing.

At a time when we are instructed to keep our eye on the man in the White House and others who have “made it” and been integrated into the “American Dream,” Bukhari and Sayles’ words speak for and to those for whom the world’s only superpower remains an “American Nightmare.” In an age where there are more Black men in U.S. prisons than in U.S. colleges, where years after Katrina New Orleans has been rebuilt as a tourist attraction for the middle classes, and the U.S. continues to wage war on peoples around the world, these are two volumes to detox your mind, to help you keep your eye on the prize.



- BIOS -

James Yaki Sayles spent almost his entire adult life in prison. In the 1970s he was a leading figure in the New Afrikan Prisoners Organization, he would serve as Minister of Information for the Republic of New Afrika, and also worked in other, less public, groups. He was also an important theoretician of the continuing need for New Afrikan Revolution and the realities of New Afrikan Nationhood, writing under a variety on names, including Owusu Yaki Yakubu and Atiba Shanna. He died of lung cancer in 2008.

Safiya Bukhari joined the Black Panther Party in 1969. Imprisoned for nine years, for charges related to the Black Liberation Army, Bukhari was released in 1983 and went on to co-found the New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition and other organizations advocating for the release of political prisoners. She died in 2003 at the age of 53 years of age.

For more information about The War Before, please visit http://safiyabukhari.com.
For more information about Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, please visit http://www.kersplebedeb.com/meditations
For more information about the Certain Days Calendar Committee, please visit http://www.certaindays.org/
For more information about the Concordia Co-op Bookstore, please visit http://www.co-opbookstore.ca/


When: Friday, March 19th 2010; 6pm
Where: Concordia Co-op Bookstore, 2150 Bishop St. • metro Guy-Concordia
Tel-: 514-848-7445


For more information regarding the event, please email info@kersplebedeb.com or visit http://www.kersplebedeb.com/meditations/march19.php
- END -

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Montreal's International Day Against Police Brutality, 2010

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comrade throwing a firecracker at cops at yesterday's demo

From the McGill Tribune, a report on yesterday's march against police brutality in Montreal:

Police arrest 100 during March Against Police Brutality

Protestors, journalists detained for hours on STM buses

Matt Chesser | Published: 3/16/10

Protestors clashed with Montreal Police at a demonstration on Monday evening. Some launched fireworks at officers on horseback.
Media Credit: Adam Scotii, Alice Walker, Evelyne Bedard

Protestors clashed with Montreal Police at a demonstration on Monday evening. Some launched fireworks at officers on horseback.

The 14th annual March Against Police Brutality was declared unlawful shortly after beginning yesterday evening, as police used mass arrests to quell the demonstration in Montreal's Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighbourhood.

The Montreal Police Department (SPVM) arrested 100 protestors. Seventeen were charged with criminal offences, while 83 were apprehended for violating municipal bylaws, detained for three to four hours, given a ticket, and then released at random locations across the city. Police began making mass arrests of protestors and journalists - for participating in an unlawful protest - around an hour after the march began.

"We declared the protest illegal after some protestors started shooting fireworks at police," said Sergeant Ian Lafrenière, media relations supervisor for the SPVM. "Two times, before any arrests were made, we read a statement in English and in French saying that the protest was illegal and that people had to leave."

The Montreal police would not confirm the number of officers deployed to manage the march, but there appeared to be well over 100. The SPVM also used at least a dozen undercover police officers who posed as protestors, wearing black scarves, goggles, and large winter jackets to conceal body armour. These officers made a number of individual arrests and were involved in a brief fight about 15 minutes into the march, when they were identified as undercover police officers by a group of demonstrators.

Unlike last year's march, in which protestors caused over $200,000 in property damage, demonstrators did little harm to the mostly residential area. Aside from tipping over mailboxes, dragging garbage cans into the street, and throwing paint, the only major incident occurred when protestors set a dumpster on fire on St. Germain Street.

"The outcome was generally a positive one," Lafrenière said. "No one was injured on either side, and the total amount of damage was not nearly as bad as it was last year. I would have preferred a peaceful protest, but that might be dreaming."

Protest declared unlawful

Approximately 900 people attended the march, which began just after 5:30 p.m. near the Pie-IX metro station at Olympic Stadium. The crowd made their way southeast on Boulevard Pie-IX and into a residential area along Ontario Street, though the marchers changed direction repeatedly, presumably in order to disorient police.

The Collective Opposed to Police Brutality, the Montreal group who planned the event, refused to inform the police of the protest route before the demonstration began. According to the SPVM, there are approximately 1,500 protests in Montreal every year, and the March Against Police Brutality is the only one in which organizers refuse to inform the police of their demonstration route beforehand.

"[Most protest groups] want to make sure that we close streets, and they want to make sure that no one gets injured," Lafrenière said. "This is the same problem we have every year [with the Collective], though. They don't want to share the route - they say that legally they don't have any obligation to do so."

Police declared the protest an unlawful assembly at 6:05 p.m. after demonstrators clashed with riot police at the corner of Ontario Street and Valois Avenue. Protestors threw paint bombs and food at officers with riot shields and shot fireworks at those on horseback. Riot police responded by shooting offenders with a paintball gun in an attempt to mark them for future arrest.

Moments later a similar confrontation occurred at Raymond-Prefontaine Park as police executed a pincer manoeuvre that split the protest into two groups. Police charged demonstrators from both ends of Hochelaga Street, scattering demonstrators into separate groups and leading many involved to abandon the protest.

Police began making mass arrests moments later, as the larger protest group headed up Prefontaine Street and clashed with officers who had blocked off the road near the Prefontaine metro station. Riot police charged the crowd after protestors hurled objects at them. The police then detained dozens of people on city buses.

Demonstrators invoke Villanueva

The march coincided with the International Day Against Police Brutality as well as a coroner's inquest into the fatal shooting of Fredy Villanueva by a Montreal police officer in August 2008. Protestors could be heard chanting "Lapointe, murderer" early in the march, in reference to the police officer who killed Villanueva.

"We need to take back our streets," said Sara, a protestor who declined to provide her last name. "[The police] get away with too much … [we need to] show them that they can't get away with whatever they want."

Others had less principled reasons for attending the event.

"I just want to see things get fucked up," said Renaud, a protestor who also declined to provide his last name. "Fuck the police."

Protestors began gathering around 4:45 p.m. and were supervised by at least 50 riot police. Many demonstrators carried signs with slogans such as "60 dead since 1987. Disarm the Montreal police." and "Justice and truth for all the victims."

According to the Montreal Gazette, police stopped metro service to the Pie-IX station on the city's green line around 5 p.m. in an attempt to delay the arrival of more protesters. At least four protestors were arrested as the march began when they were discovered to have the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail.

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Laugh Out Fucking Loud

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These are tags. One says "Fuck the Police", another says "All Cops Are Bastards." We have also seen these slogans at demonstrations in the past, so we can surmise that the group we are dealing with here is a group that we see in demonstrations.
- Yannick Ouimet, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal

The above quote is in regard to the attack on a deserted police station over the weekend. The cop's logic is brilliant, fucking brilliant.

Remember, tonight is COBP's annual Demonstration Against Police Brutality metro Pix-IX at 5pm...

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More on Scotland Yard Deep Cover Revelations

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If you are interested in radical change, please read the following. Revelations from the anonymous "Officer A" in England reveal how deep cover agents were places in both fascist and antifa camps in the 90s, and later used the latter positions to gain entry into campaigns against the coverups of Black deaths in police custody. But people should be crystal clear that any group working effectively for radical social change will be targeted by these kinds of operations.

The solution is not paranoia, but nor is it willful ignorance.

Please read the following from the Guardian (and also check out the television clip linked to here):

They got drunk together, stood shoulder to shoulder as they fought the police and far-right activists, and became so intimately acquainted with each other's lives that in the end they were closer than brothers. But it was all a sham. Hidden among the close-knit and highly motivated group of violent far-left activists was a serving police officer, operating deep undercover, whose presence was intended to bring the group to its knees.

That man, known only as Officer A, has now come forward to give his account of the years he spent working for Scotland Yard's most secret unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), on a mission to prevent disorder on the streets of London. For four years in the mid-1990s, he lived a double life six days a week, spending just one day a week with his wife and family.

Week after week, year in and year out, he lived and breathed the life of a hardcore Trotskyist agitator with a passion for heavy drinking, a deep-seated hatred of the police and a predilection for extreme violence. It was a persona that took him to the heart of some of the most violent groups in the capital at a time when tensions between extreme left and extreme right were at their peak.

"I never had any respite when I was back at home. I simply couldn't relax," said Officer A. "The respite for me was being back in my undercover flat because that was where I was supposed to be. Even if my targets were not there, I felt more at ease. I had a really good time with my targets and enjoyed their company enormously – there was a genuine bond. But I was never under any illusion about what I was there to do. They were not truly my friends. The friendship would last only up until the point when they found out what I really was. I was under no illusion about what would happen to me if they did."

The SDS started life in 1968 after anti-Vietnam war protests turned violent in Grosvenor Square, London, outside the US embassy. No one had been prepared for the unprecedented level of violence directed at the police. It was a wake-up call to senior officers in the Metropolitan police who realised they needed a new way to gather intelligence about the hate-filled "subversives" they now had to deal with.

Known as the "hairies" because they had to look like the agitators they were mixing with, the 10 undercover officers who made up the unit were given new identities, flats, vehicles and "cover" jobs while working in the field for years at a time. Officer A had joined the Met in 1986 straight from school. Having discovered an interest in political ideology and public affairs, he initially wanted to join the security service but found that entry was barred to all but Oxbridge graduates.

His best chance of doing that kind of work, he was told, would be to join the Met and apply for a job in Special Branch, essentially a wing of MI5. Having distinguished himself during cadet training and his two-year probation, he joined Special Branch after four years in uniform and spent three years working to counter Irish terrorism before being recruited to the SDS.

"The day you join the SDS, you have a big leaving do. Although you're still a police officer, being in the SDS means you won't be seeing any of your police friends for at least five years. During your deployment, your only official link to the Met is your payslip," he said. SDS officers use the same methods as Frederick Forsyth detailed in The Day of the Jackal to choose their new identities. This involves applying for the birth certificate of someone who died at an early age and using this to fabricate a cover story. "That first step gives you a name, a flat, a vehicle and a life story that makes it all real."

Before being deployed in the field, SDS officers are taken into a room and interrogated about every aspect of their cover story by two experienced operators. If they pass this test, they are then told the cautionary tale of how an SDS officer's cover was blown when his targets asked him to explain the death certificate for the cover name he was using and had to jump from a second-floor window to escape.

Officer A's initial target was a young student union activist who was a key member of an up-and-coming Trotskyist organisation that had led a violent protest against BNP paper-sellers in Brick Lane, east London. The organisation was considered one of the most violent in the capital at the time and its leader soon became a priority SDS target.

Officers normally spend months getting to know their targets and winning their confidence. In the case of Officer A, however, it took far less time. "I enrolled at the college where the target studied and on my first day there I heard a bit of an altercation while I was in the queue for lunch. A few things were said to one of the female staff, some of which had a bit of a nasty racial overtone. I pushed forward to intervene. It all got a bit heated and the guy who was giving the abuse took a swing at me. Big mistake. He was soon on the floor, out cold.

"A close friend of my target was in the canteen at the time and had seen the whole thing. A couple of hours later, I was in the student union picking up some passes and the bloke who had watched me fight was there again. He turned to my target, who was sitting next to him, and said: 'That's the one I was telling you about.' A little later, my target came over and introduced himself."

Officer A eventually agreed to attend a small demonstration the following weekend. When the event turned violent, he found himself standing next to his target and others from the group as they launched a series of attacks on uniformed police. "The one thing all these groups have in common, both on the left and the right, is a total hatred of the police," he said. "It means you are having to maintain a false identity in a completely hostile environment. Under those circumstances you have no choice but to engage in acts of violence. That day developed into a major ruck. At the end no one would have believed I was a police officer.

"If anyone had accused me [of being a police officer] there would have been a dozen people willing to come forward and swear it wasn't true. We were all buzzing when it was over," said Officer A. "We couldn't wait for the next event. Because of what we'd all been through, I was accepted by them right away."

Officer A wasn't the only one attacking his former colleagues. At the time of his deployment, other SDS officers had infiltrated opposing right-wing groups such as the BNP and Combat 18, as well as other far-left groups. It was a time of extreme racial tension and violent clashes with the police and rival political parties were rife. Two weeks later, Officer A took part in a much larger, far more violent, protest in Welling, south-east London, against a BNP-run bookshop that served as the party's headquarters. Intelligence he obtained revealed that the demo was to be far larger than had been expected and that a particularly violent faction was planning to storm the bookshop and set fire to it, trapping any BNP members inside.

As a result, police leave was cancelled for that weekend and more than 7,000 officers, including a large mounted contingent, were deployed. Instead of being spread out along the entire route, police focused on blocking the main roads leading to the bookshop and forcing the march along a route that would take it away from its target. A violent confrontation ensued with a group of hardcore protesters – Officer A among them – attacking the police lines in an attempt to break through. Dozens of police and protesters were injured in the clashes.

Despite the violence, the operation was deemed to be a success for the police and Sir Paul Condon, the then Met commissioner, went to meet members of the SDS to thank them.

"I didn't have any qualms about what I was doing," said Officer A. "I was clear that my role was to target subversives and prevent disorder. The consequences of that day would have been far worse had the SDS not been involved."

At that time, some of the SDS officers were known as "shallow paddlers" because they spent only limited time with their targets. Others, like Officer A, were "deep swimmers" who immersed themselves in the role. During one operation to infiltrate an Animal Liberation Front cell, one officer is said to have lived in a squat for 18 months, virtually 24/7.

As months turned to years, Officer A's personal life was beginning to suffer, and his relationship with his wife and children was under particular pressure. One major cause of stress was that he was spending so much of his time fighting with fellow police officers and was now on the wrong side of a riot shield. "It was a total headbender," he said.

Once inside the groups they were ordered to infiltrate, it was relatively easy for SDS officers to rise to the top because they were often prepared to work long hours on boring, administrative jobs. Often they tried to become membership secretaries or treasurers, where their position gave them access to the records and secret agendas that were so useful to the security services. Often more efficient than those around them, operatives had to strike a balance to ensure they did not end up running the organisations they were trying to destroy.
Protestors clash during an anti-racist march in Welling, south-east London, in 1993. Protesters clash during an anti-racist march in Welling, south-east London, in 1993. Photograph: STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA NEWS

In the aftermath of the Welling riot, senior Met officials began to express concern that the so-called "black campaigns" that had sprung up in the aftermath of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 had the potential to lead to further bloodshed on the streets of the capital. "It had only been a couple of years since the beating of Rodney King led to the riots in LA. When young black men started dying in police custody and racist murders were going unsolved, a lot of people were getting increasingly angry," said Officer A. Fearing they were in danger of losing control, the SDS decided to target these new groups.

Having won the trust of several high-profile anti-facism and anti-racism activists on the far left, Officer A was ideally placed. Over the next two years he worked his way up to become branch secretary of Youth Against Racism in Europe, a leading anti-racist organisation that was a front for the far-left group Militant. Getting alongside these new targets called for a different approach, said Officer A. "You get given a file on your target that tells you everything you need to know. You become that person's brother. You know everything that makes them tick. You know how much they like to drink, you know where they like to drink. You know what kind of music they like, you know what kind of women they like. You become the brother they never knew they had. None of it is ever said to the target, it's far more subtle than that. The first time they get in the car, it will be just the right kind of music playing. The first time a redhead walks by it will be: 'God, I'm really into redheads.' It's all done fantastically cleverly.

"When your target is a man, it is just a matter of becoming his best friend. If your target is a woman, that becomes impossible. SDS officers would get together for regular meetings and you always knew if something was going on. If someone started talking about getting good information from a female target, we all knew there was only one way that could have happened. They had been sleeping with them." He himself had slept with two members of his target group. Although not officially sanctioned, such activity among SDS officers – both male and female – was tacitly accepted and in many cases was vital in maintaining an undercover role. "You can't be in that world full-time for five years and never have a girlfriend or boyfriend. People would start to ask questions," said Officer A.

But the pressures continued to grow. "At first, I could convince myself that my job was about fighting subversion, but once I began targeting the groups set up to win justice for those who had died in police custody or had been victims of racism, it was clear that what the loved ones of the deceased wanted was justice. My presence in the groups made that justice harder to obtain. The remit was to prevent disorder, but by providing intelligence you rob these groups of the element of surprise. If every time they have a demonstration the agitators are prevented from causing trouble, they are less effective. Once the SDS get into an organisation, it is effectively finished.

"If I were a regular police officer and I wanted to plant a bug in your house or your office, I would need to get all kinds of permissions. But the SDS can put a person in your car, in your house, in your life for 24 hours a day for five years and nobody outside the SDS will know anything about it.

"While I was undercover, my targets would refuse to talk on the phone because they felt it wasn't safe, but they had no qualms about inviting me into their homes to talk about their plans. I couldn't get over the irony of it. If the SDS had been in existence at the time of the Suffragettes, their campaigns would never have got off the ground and they would have been quickly forgotten."

The constant strain of living a double life was also beginning to take its toll. "I couldn't get out of role. Even after 18 months I was having trouble leaving the undercover persona behind. One time I was out swimming. Someone said something derogatory and my angry persona took over. It was an immediate reaction. There was blood everywhere."

Before they were deployed, every SDS officer was visited at home to ensure they were married. "They introduced that rule after one officer refused to come out of the field. It turned out he just enjoyed being with his contacts so much that he was willing to give up his police salary and everything that went along with it in order to stay with them. Now you have to be married on the basis that, if you have something in the real world to come back to, you are less likely to want to remain in role. That's the theory."

The pressure began to become intolerable when a public inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was announced. "There was concern that my role within the campaigns might emerge during the inquiry," he said. "In the end the SDS decided not to disclose it themselves. Because the remit was to prevent disorder, it was felt that if it had emerged at the time, it would have led to more violence.

"Looking back, I should have done something. I should have dealt with this 11 years ago. I am coming forward to get closure for the things I did back then. By the end I'd spent four years fighting the police. When I came back to Special Branch I had to suppress who I was. I was no longer the same person. I hated the job and everything about it."

Officer A was later diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He sued the Met and received an out-of-court settlement. The Metropolitan police, meanwhile, has refused to comment on any matters connected to the SDS.

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Smashing Cop Cars in Montreal

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Play safe and don't get caught!

From the CBC:

Vandals hit 11 Montreal police cars
Saturday, March 13, 2010
CBC News

Eleven cruisers were vandalized overnight at the Montreal police traffic and road safety division's building in the city's St. Henri district, police said Saturday.
Windows were smashed and the police cruisers' computers were damaged.Windows were smashed and the police cruisers' computers were damaged. (CBC)

Windows were smashed and the vehicles' computers were damaged.

Witnesses who alerted police said between 15 and 20 people, dressed mostly in black hooded jackets, used rocks and baseball bats to damage the vehicles in the parking lot on Dominion Street at Notre Dame Street West.

The vandals also spray-painted messages in English on the building, which was unoccupied at the time, said Const. Yannick Ouimet of the Montreal Police Service.

He speculated there may be a connection between the vandalism and Monday’s planned march against police brutality.

"We've seen these [graffiti] tags during past demonstrations," Ouimet said.

No arrests have been made.

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Police Infiltrating Militant Anti-Fascists in UK

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Revelations of cop who infiltrated Youth Against Racism in Europe during the 1993-1997 period - he engaged in violence alongside antifa, had sex with his antifa "targets", and eventually became a leading figure in various campaigns.

As this pig brags today, "My role was to provide intelligence about protests and demonstrations, particularly those that had the potential to become violent. In doing so, the campaigns I was associated with lost much of their effectiveness, a factor that ultimately hastened their demise."

During the 1990s there was lively debate on this side of the Atlantic about the degree to which antifa should cooperate with police and the state. During the Clinton administration there was a mass far right mobilization - the militia movement - and some people felt that "we" should work with the state against the fascists, as the lesser of two evils.

While it differs as to who the ostensible immediate targets were, the so-called "Grant Bristow Affair" in Canada already provided ample proof of the state's involvement in attacks on antifa here. And across this continent there continue to be numerous examples of heavily-funded "antiracism experts" (think SPLC) who openly advertise their function as auxiliary political police - and during the current era of far-right "tea party" mobilizations, these state allies are receiving a hearing in some quarters where folks should know better.

But this most recent case provides a stark example of even anti-state, anti-capitalist comrades being infiltrated and manipulated by the police -- and it would be ridiculous to assume that "Officer A" in England did not have his parallels in North America. While there is no way to guarantee that one will not be targeted and neutralized by such "deep cover" agents, their open existence should put to rest naive ideas of "working with the police" (hate crimes units, etc.) against the fascists. If the capitalist state is "anti-fascist", its antifascism is of a completely different sort than out own, and stands in direct opposition to us. Any cooperation simply increased our vulnerability.


The complete story, from The Guardian (be sure to also check out this chilling television clip):

An officer from a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police has given a chilling account of how he spent years working undercover among anti-racist groups in Britain, during which he routinely engaged in violence against members of the public and uniformed police officers to maintain his cover.

During his tour of duty, the man – known only as Officer A – also had sexual relations with at least two of his female targets as a way of obtaining intelligence. So convincing was he in his covert role that he quickly rose to become branch secretary of a leading anti-racist organisation that was believed to be a front for Labour's Militant tendency.

"My role was to provide intelligence about protests and demonstrations, particularly those that had the potential to become violent," he said. "In doing so, the campaigns I was associated with lost much of their effectiveness, a factor that ultimately hastened their demise."

His deployment, which lasted from 1993 to 1997, ended amid fears that his presence and role within groups protesting about black deaths in police custody and bungled investigations into racist murders would be revealed during the public inquiry by Sir William Macpherson into the death of south London teenager Stephen Lawrence.

His decision to tell his story to the Observer provides the most detailed account of the shadowy and controversial police unit that has provided intelligence from within political and protest movements for more than four decades. He believes the public should be able to make an informed decision about whether such covert activities are necessary, given their potential to curtail legitimate protest movements.

Officer A – with a long ponytail, angry persona and willingness to be educated in the finer points of Trotskyist ideology – was never suspected by those he befriended of being a member of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit within Special Branch, whose job is to prevent violent public disorder on the streets of the capital. Known as the "hairies" due to the fact that its members do not have to abide by usual police regulations about their appearance, the unit consists of 10 full-time undercover operatives who are given new identities, and provided with flats, vehicles and "cover" jobs while working in the field for up to five years at a time.

The unit has been credited with preventing bloodshed on numerous occasions by using intelligence to pre-empt potentially violent situations. Unlike regular undercover officers, members of the SDS do not have to gather evidence with a view to prosecuting their targets. This enables them to witness and even engage in criminal activity without fear of disciplinary action or compromising a subsequent court case.

Officer A joined the SDS in 1993 after two years in Special Branch. It was a time of heightened tension between the extreme left and right and almost every weekend saw clashes between the likes of the Anti-Nazi League, Youth Against Racism, the British National party and the National Front. The SDS is believed to have infiltrated all such organisations.

During Officer A's time undercover, all 10 covert SDS operatives would meet to share intelligence about forthcoming demonstrations. The information was used to plan police responses to counter the threat of the demonstration getting out of control.

A key success for Officer A came just two weeks into his deployment during a demonstration against the BNP-run bookshop in Welling, south-east London. His intelligence revealed that the protest was to be far larger than thought and that a particularly violent faction was planning to storm the bookshop and set fire to it.

As a result of intelligence provided by Officer A, police leave was cancelled for that weekend and, despite violent clashes, the operation was deemed to be a success for the Met. The then commissioner, Sir Paul Condon, met the members of the SDS to thank them.

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Canadian Counterinsurgency vs. Indigenous Resistance: Doug Bland's Predictions

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Counterinsurgency hype [tripe] from one of Canada's white warriors:

Conditions ripe for major aboriginal uprising, academic says

Young first nations people are largely poor, uneducated, prone to crime and live near vulnerable resource areas, ex-Forces officer argues

By Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver SunMarch 11, 2010

Canadians and their political leaders are ignoring all the signs of a looming aboriginal insurrection in their midst, warns a prominent military analyst.

Douglas Bland, a former lieutenant-colonel in Canada's Armed Forces who chairs defence management studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., says conditions are ripe for a major uprising by first nations people.

He told a luncheon audience of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg last week that "the typical federal or provincial politician in Canada has no idea what to do with this matter. They only see it as a difficulty for themselves."

In turn, aboriginals are "emboldened by the prevailing political reluctance to act."

In a speech titled, "Where Are Aboriginal Affairs in Canada Headed?," Bland answers the question by noting that Canada is particularly "vulnerable to a national disturbance, given its economic dependence on the export of oil, gas, natural gas, hydro power and other commodities to the U.S.

"Abor iginal communi -ties are sitting on those supply chains. At any moment they can turn that system off, which would pose a danger to the economy and to Canadian sovereignty."

Canada has witnessed several instances of the sort of aboriginal unrest Bland is talking about.

First nations groups have staged roadblocks on Highway 401 near Kingston and put up barricades on major railways. A crisis over disputed land occurred in Oka, Que., in 1990, and in Caledonia, Ont., in 2006. Another standoff took place in 2009 near Cornwall, Ont., between Mohawks and border services personnel who had planned to start carrying firearms.

Bland says he began studying the feasibility of an aboriginal uprising after the 9/11 debacle in the U.S. He recently wrote a fictional account of an aboriginal insurrection, titled Uprising.

Aboriginals make up the largest and fastest growing group of young people in the country.

Their median age -- 25, compared to 40 for nonaboriginals.

Incredibly, more than half of on-reserve aboriginals are 24 and younger. Too many of them are not being educated. Fewer than 24 per cent finish high school, even as 80 per cent of non-aboriginals graduate.

Another problem, says Bland, is that the aboriginals who graduate from universities most often don't return to reserves where they could improve governance and economic prospects.

And so, on-reserve unemployment stands at 28 per cent. Youth unemployment is more than 40 per cent.

A disproportionate number of young first nations men are being incarcerated in jails which tend to serve as "community colleges for the gangs."

For example, 71 per cent of those who are held in custody in Manitoba are aboriginals, despite the fact they make up only 15 per cent of the population.

Of course, aboriginals often experience deplorable living conditions characterized by rural isolation and housing that's dilapidated and overcrowded.

A community with a sense of grievance needs only a particular economic or political condition to aggravate it, along with a unifying leader able to mobilize the group to trigger an insurrection.

Because aboriginals reside in areas adjacent to Canada's resource bounty and these sometimes remote and expansive tracts of land are largely undefendable, the feasibility of a major conflict is that much greater.

Bland is a student of war and his soundings are worrisome. While past Liberal governments in Ottawa have deployed a strategy of big spending to alleviate unacceptable on-reserve living conditions, the Harper government has taken a different approach.

Conservatives have focused more on urban-dwelling aboriginals and, of course, given a formal apology and financial redress for historic injustices at first nations schools.

In any event, no political action will be as helpful as getting young on-reserve aboriginals educated.

With only five of 308 sitting MPs (and six senators) reflecting Metis, Inuit or first nations ethnicity, Parliament would be better equipped to respond to aboriginal challenges if more first nations people were to become engaged in national political processes.

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OUT OF OUR SHELTERS! OUT OF OUR LIVES!

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An important public service announcement regarding police invasions of women's shelters in canada, from the fine folks at No One Is Illegal Toronto:

OUT OF OUR SHELTERS! OUT OF OUR LIVES! was the message delivered
to the Canada Border Services Agency on March 8th, International Women's
Day, by the 120 plus women and trans-folks who poured into the Toronto
Rape Crisis Centre for an Emergency Assembly.

The Assembly was called after it came to the attention of the Shelter |
Sanctuary | Status campaign that in Feb. 2010 an Immigration Enforcement
officer went into a women's shelter, looking to deport a non-status migrant
woman, and survivor of violence. Since this information has been made public,
more and more women have started to break the silence.

The Assembly agreed to begin a large-scale campaign insisting that
Immigration Canada make women's spaces and services OFF-LIMITS to
Immigration Enforcement. We are writing today to ask for your support. Please
read below, forward and act! Our actions can make immediate change.

(Details of the assembly can be found at http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/node/435
Here is what the Toronto Star had to say: http://bit.ly/dAeIlT )

The gathering of over a hundred women, with support from hundreds of others calls for:

1) IMMEDIATE ACTION
This FRIDAY, March 12:
Phone or Email Reg Williams, Director of Immigration Enforcement in Toronto
Phone: 905.612.6070
Email: reg.williams@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca, cc shelter.sanctuary.status@gmail.com

Insist that CBSA has no place in anti-violence against women organizations.
A sample of what you can say or write can be found at:
http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/node/436

Forward this call to your friends, family and networks. The more
people/organizations that they hear from, the stronger our message will be!

2) If you are part of an organization that serves or supports migrant women,
transpeople and children, or work in a shelter or anti-violence against women
organization, invite a member of the SSS campaign to talk to you about
Access Without Fear. We can work with you to ensure that your centre is safe
and accessible for all people, regardless of immigration status.

3) Shelters and anti-VAW organizations across the city and across the country
are signing on to a declaration demanding:
-a moratorium on all deportations for women surviving violence
-Immigration Enforcement stay out of shelters and anti-VAW spaces
-women fighting back against violence be given immediate status

The full declaration is available here: http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/node/432
If you are working in the anti-VAW sector, work with residents and
participants to get your organization to sign on to the declaration.

4) Get involved with the SSS campaign. On March 19, come out to the
SSS: Access Without Fear Forum for front-line workers and service providers
to develop strategies aimed at ensuring access to essential services for people
without full status. Register here: http://bit.ly/9y1Pvo

The Shelter|Sanctuary|Status Coalition is a growing movement of over 120
anti-Violence Against Women organizations that are working to create safe
spaces for all women, regardless of immigration status.

http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org/sss
shelter.sanctuary.status@gmail.com

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March 12-14 in Montreal - Study in Action: Other Inconvenient Truths: beyond "sustainability", towards environmental justice

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MARCH 12-14, 2010
Concordia University, MONTREAL

The Study In Action conference is free. Welcome to all!

Opening Panel:
OTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTHS
Beyond "sustainability", towards environmental justice
FRIDAY, March 12, 6:30pmde Sève Cinema, 1400 de Maisonneuve West(métro Guy-Concordia)

Speakers include:

•  Gord Hill: Indigenous (Kwakwaka'wakw) artist and organizer, author of "500 Years of Indigenous Resistance," member of the Olympics Resistance Network
• Sharmeen Khan:environmental justice and anti-racist activist, writer and researcher
• Poya Saffari: farmer and activist active with le Coop jardins de la résistance & Solidarity Across Borders
• Catherine St-Arnaud-Babin: queer feminist activist and ex-squatter, member of the eco-radical collective Liberterre

Keynote panel followed by a reception at QPIRG-Concordia (1500 de Maisonneuve Ouest, #204).
SATURDAY, March 13 (10am-6pm) & SUNDAY, March 14 (10:30am-6pm)
PANELS, DISCUSSIONS, WORKSHOPS & ART EXHIBIT AND FOOD
7th Floor, Hall Building, 1455 de Maisonneuve West THEME: "Social and Environmental Justice"

Topics include: Radical Environmentalism; Racism in Canada; Food Security and Urban Agriculture; Urban Renewal and Public Space; Greenwashing NGOs; Indigenous Land Issues and Development; Impacts of Canadian Mining; “Greening” Prisons; and more

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF PANELS & WORKSHOPS:

• The Study In Action conference is free. Welcome to all!
• Breakfast, lunch and beverages are provided free during the conference.
• Wheelchair accessible.
• Childcare available o­n-site (please phone 48 hours in advance)
• Whisper translation available for all panels and workshops in English and French.

Please pre-register by e-mail at studyinaction@gmail.com (students: please indicate your name, school and field of study; community members: let us know who you are).

----------
Opening Panel: OTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTHS: Beyond "sustainability", towards environmental justice FRIDAY, March 12, 6:30pmde Sève Cinema, 1400 de Maisonneuve West
Speakers:
GORD HILL (Kwakwaka'wakw) is an indigenous artist and organizer who has been active with the Native Youth Movement and other groups. He is a main contributor to www.no2010.com as well as Warrior Publications, and is active with the Olympic Resistance Network of the Coast Salish Territories. Gord has been repeatedly targeted by the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit (VISU) in relation to his unrepentant advocacy for direct action in defense of the land and anti-Olympics organizing o­n the theme: "No Olympics o­n Stolen Native Land". He is the author/artist of the graphic novel: "500 Years of Indigenous Resistance".

SHARMEEN KHAN works at OPIRG-York in Toronto and is o­n the Advisory Board of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action. She has been active in media activism, environmental justice and anti-racism for many years and has organized with the Bus Riders Union in Vancouver and currently programs for CHRY 105.5FM in Toronto.

POYA SAFFARI is an Iranian-born farmer and activist based both in Montreal and Ormstown. He is a member of Coop jardins de la résistance an ecological farming project that grows a diversity of vegetables and fruits according to ecological practices, while also striving to develop meaningful links with communities in Montreal. During the past several years Poya has also been active with migrant justice struggles with groups like No o­ne Is Illegal and Solidarity Across Borders.

CATHERINE ST-ARNAUD-BABIN was a member of the former eco-radical collective Liberterre, as well as the former Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC), and has been active in transcontinental movements against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). She is a radical queer feminist and ex-squatter who is currently a community worker with immigrant families. She is also a member of the Collectif de recherche sur l'autonomie collective (CRAC). Through these different struggles and experiences, Catherine proposes a reflection o­n the environment, and the different relationships within the notion of space and time, that show the various intersections of oppressions from an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian point of view.

For more information:studyinaction@gmail.com tel: 514-848-7585 www.qpirgconcordia.org/studyinaction

STUDY IN ACTION is a project of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) at Concordia.Community - Research - Resistance


Saturday, March 13th, 2010

@ 7th floor of Concordia University’s Hall Building
1455 de Maisonneuve Ouest (metro Guy-Concordia)
Montreal, QC
10h – 11h
Registration & Breakfast served by the People’s potato
11h – 12h30
PANEL – Living the Land: “developing” indigenous land relationships

Erin Coughlan – “Drawing Lines in the Sand: drought and privatization in Kenyan Maasai-land”
This anthropological research assesses how pastoral strategies of land use by the Maasai of Kenya respond to conditions of climate change, specifically a severe drought, in the light of legal land tenure changes. Land that was once held collectively has now been subdivided into individual parcels, which is not a viable policy for the indigenous pastoralist grazing strategies. To cope with a restriction on migration, people have called on principles of reciprocity, and I explore the policy’s effects as well as the interaction and synergy of legal and traditional land entitlements.

Sandra Simbert -“Urban Inuit in Montreal: an example of sustainability?”
By referring to sustainability as the combination of the social, economic, environmental and political development, is the global situation of Montreal Inuit sustainable? A portrait of their main occupations, community support resources, intercultural challenges, strategies for ethnic pride and achievement. Are Inuit equal citizens of the metropolis?Does Montreal urban life allow opportunities for Inuit’ environmental friendly heritage to take root, be expressed, and
take form?

Emilou Kinsella – “Property Regimes in Kahnawake: implications for human relationships with the environment” Our group worked alongside the Mohawk Traditional Council in Kahnawake to investigate the history of land privatization in Kahnawake. We looked at the history of Kahnawake, conducted a map and legal analysis, and talked with community members in personal interviews to show how land has changed and how people’s attitudes about land has changed. Ultimately we wanted to answer the question: Has land privatization in Kahnawake altered its people’s relationship with the Environment? The short answer is, yes.

12h30 – 13h30
LUNCH – served by the People’s Potato

13h30 – 15h
PANEL – RACISM IN CANADA: ONGOING LEGACIES

Kerri Westlake – “Beyond Local Food: Guest-Worker Programs in Canada’s Agricultural Sector”
The presentation will focus on the Canadian government’s creation and maintenance of a ‘flexible’ and exploitable agricultural workforce through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker and the Temporary Foreign Worker Programs. These immigration policies serve the needs of an ever expanding and consolidating agricultural sector by creating conditions which restrict workers’ rights and voices. They will be examined in the context of trade liberalisation, “labour shortages,” and Canada’s history of racist immigration policies.

Sameer Zuberi (from the Canadian Muslim Forum) – “The State of Islamophobia in Québec and Canada” The presentation will look at the growing recognition of Islamophobia internationally and examine groundbreaking research into the phenomenon. The degree to which Quebec and Canada have recognized and combated Islamophobia will also be discussed. Specifically, the role of the media vis-a-vis Islamophobia and the Reasonable Accommodation Commission headed by Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor in will also be highlighted.

More presenters to be confirmed

WORKSHOP – “Radicalizing” Green – Reclaim!

(description to come)

15h – 15h15
BREAK

15h15 – 16h45
PANEL – DIRTY GREEN LAUNDRY: HANGING CANADA OUT TO DRY

Fred Burril and Cleve Higgins – “Precious Metals, Stolen Lands: the colonial roots of the Canadian mining industry” The Canadian mining industry is one of the most powerful in the world, committing atrocities in the name of profit across Latin America, Africa and Asia. But what about right here? This presentation re-frames Canadian mining from an anti-colonial historical and contemporary analysis of mining, market structures, and displacement of indigenous people on Turtle Island, making an argument that Canadian mining in the Global South is Canadian internal colonialism writ large across the globe.

Dru Oja Jay (author of the Offsetting Resistance report) – “Offsetting Resistance – who are the environmental NGOs accountable to?” Offsetting Resistance examines the effects of foundation funding on resistance to clearcutting in the Great Bear Rainforest historically, and looks at the plans the same groups and funding bodies have for the tar sands. The presentation discusses the scenario of resistance diverted into closed-door negotations, ultimately resulting in a sellout deal. The question is raised: who are ENGOs accountable to?

Katie Harris – “E-waste Management Policy Development” Presently, province-by-province, Canadian e-waste policy is being written co-operatively by an interdisciplinary team of industry and government specialists. The team forms a not-for-profit corporation that is effectively writing the environmental policy and standards which they (as industry representatives) will be held accountable to. This approach is quite different from the stringent approach of the European Union (EU). My paper will provide a short synopsis of what e-waste is, and why it is such an important international environmental issue. I will then explore the current state of policy creation that Canada is undergoing for e-waste management practices, with a focus on the state of policy in Quebec. Finally, by comparing our process with that of the Conventions arrived at in the EU I will provide a critique of our national process as something that could be labeled as green-washing. Exploring the idea of e-waste, the benefits of public-private policy collaboration in Canada in comparasion with the EU is an empowering discussion, and is a creative idea I feel will fit well with the theme of the conference.

WORKSHOP – “Your Radio is a Bomb: the explosive power and potential of independent media”

Aaron Lakkoff – Independent News Journalist (from CKUT Radio)
This workshop will explore the revolutionary potentials and limitations of independent and community media. With a particular focus paid towards community radio, we will look at some of the turning points in the recent history of grassroots media, and try to draw inspiration to fuel our present-day struggles. This workshop will also look at research being done on the history of community radio, from the Bolivian miners’ stations to pirate radio in Oaxaca, Mexico.


Sunday, March 14th

@ 7th floor of Concordia University’s Hall Building
1455 de Maisonneuve Ouest (metro Guy-Concordia)
Montreal, QC

10h30 – 11h
Registration & Breakfast served by the People’s Potato

11h – 12h30
PANEL – “PROMISING” PRACTICES: THE REALITIES OF LIBERAL PRINCIPLES
Cameron Fenton “Dam It! James Bay Hydro, land use and the myth of green power” With the global environmental consciousness fixated on climate change, hydro-power is being cheered as a low emissions energy source to fuel the future. Quebec is banking on its current and planned hydro developments to lead the province in a clean energy future, but at what cost? Hydro-Quebec has a long and sorted history with indigenous communities, especially in the James Bay territory, turning traditional lands into flood plains, fracturing forests and forcing provincial politics on the Cree and Inuit people who have inhabited the region for hundreds of years.

Gaby Pedicelli (from Journal of Prisoners on Prisons) – “Green Prisons” There are currently a number of prisons being built across Canada. In selling imprisonment to the public, officials describe the ‘green’ features of the facilities. This workshop will discuss how prison authorities are mobilizing liberal environmental discourses to justify the expansion of the carceral in our communities. In this session, we seek to develop strategies to resist this trend.

Diana Rivadeneira – “Are Fair-Trade and organic labels enough? The case of quinoa production in Bolivia” In this presentation we will explore the socio-economic and environmental implications that consumption patterns of quinoa have along the commodity chain (from producer to consumer).This will be supplemented with a brief analysis of how the meaning of quinoa as a commodity is constructed in Western society through the creation of an specific market and how this meaning differs from colonial-based Andean perceptions.

Catherine Delisle L’Heureux (from ACTION CN) – “Redéveloppement et embourgeoisement dans Pointe Saint-Charles : qu'est-ce qu'on veut pour le quartier?” Des citoyens se mobilisent face à un projet de redéveloppement résidentiel, industriel et ferrovière sur les terres du Canadian National (CN) dans le quartier Pointe St-Charles. Cette présentation s`intéresse particulièrement au phénomène d’embourgeoisement et aux divisions idéologiques et symboliques entravant la démarche participative entre les promoteurs du projet et les résidents du quartier.

12h30 – 13h30
LUNCH – served by the People’s Potato

Special lunchtime workshop – The “Recycling” of Prisoners


13h30 – 15h
PANEL – FOOD (IN)SECURITY

Alexandra Matak (from TAPthirst) This presentation will contextualize problems associated with the bottled water industry in the global fight against privatization of fresh water resources. It will touch on environmental, health and monetary costs of the bottled water industry (which we believe to be one of the biggest scams of all time) as well as highlighting the human rights issues involved with privatization as a whole. We will offer a brief overview of the problems as well as some tangible solutions for individuals wanting to be in solidarity with the struggle to keep one of our most fundamental needs accessible for all people, everywhere.

Virginia Moore – “Urban Agriculture and Food Security in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, Montreal” Food insecurity is an habitual problem for many of the urban poor due to lack of access to and knowledge about healthy food. Action Communiterre, a nonprofit community gardening network in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, Montreal, is one organization attempting to mitigate this problem through urban agriculture initiatives. This presentation will discuss the degree to which this strategy appears to be successful

Joana Luz (presenting a CURE project) – “People’s Potato Demographics”
(description to come)

Faiz Abhuani (from le Frigo Vert) – “Food for thought: food politics beyond critique” Thoughts from an anticapitalist food store about food as folk and the folk of food. Issues discussed include eating culture, the recipe of food production (or, food economics for fools), fear and food as cannon fodder, and funny stories from a food store

WORKSHOP – “Subverting Higher Education – developing an environmental justice course”

Katheryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon and Asha Philar (from University of Waterloo) We will talk about the process of planning and facilitating an environmental justice course, at the university level. We will talk about challenges and successes we’ve encountered, how to start discussions about difficult topics in an environmental studies context, and share resources and ideas. We will also lead sample activities that we have used in the classroom.


15h – 15h15
BREAK

15h15 – 17h
DISCUSSION – Closing Plenary

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Michael Novick Responds to Kali Akuno and Don Hamerquist

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Just a quick heads up that Michael Novick has written a brief response to Don Hamerquist's Thinking and Acting in Real Time in the Real World. It is up on the excellent Three Way Fight blog, at http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2010/03/michael-novick-responds-to-thinking-and.html

Just to recap, Michael is the editor of Turning The Tide, publication of People Against Racist Terror. The pieces he is responding to were both recommended by yours truly last year:

• Navigating the Storm: A Strategic Orientation for Confronting the Advance of Reaction and National Oppression in the "Obama" Era by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grossroots Movement. This text, written in October and drawing on observations by Mike Davis, deals heavily with the Obama presidency that was being prepared for at that time. i have reservations (again) with the programmatic aspects Akuno suggests, but the text is worth reading as it helps to frame some of the subsequent discussion:
• Navigating the Storm: Reprise, also by Kali Akuno. A useful reappraisal of his initial Navigating the Storm piece, again with a focus on the Obama presidency and class dynamics within the united states that may make it less useful for those of us outside of the u.s.- nevertheless, definitely worth reading.
• Thinking and Acting in Real Time and A Real World by Don Hammerquist. An excellent survey of the field before us, Hammerquist discusses Akuno's Navigating the Storm piece and also texts by the Midnight Notes collective and Adam Hanieh of Left Turn magazine.

 All worth checking out...

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A Look Back at the Olympics

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Genocide Here and There: Harvard Fellow calls for international community to starve Palestinian children

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Via Electronic Intifada, this news that Martin Kramer of Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs is calling for genocide of Palestinians as a solution to imperialism's hiccups in the Middle East.

Of course this kind of thinking is neither new, nor limited to the Middle East, nor in fact is it even escapable under imperialism. In other words, population control (either pro- or anti-natalist) is just something that folks in power do, whether they make the mistake of talking about it in the media or not. Check out recent comments by Republican Andre Bauer, South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor:

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed.

You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.

As James Ridgeway tells us,

South Carolina is the 37th worst state when it come to child poverty, 45th worst for infant mortality, and 48th worst for low birth weight babies.

Lest you not have guessed, this of course comes with a clear national dimension: according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 126,000 poor children in South Carolina - over half - are Black. (According to their lying censuses, less than a third of the SC population is Black.)

South Carolina, no less than Israel, is home to both oppressor and oppressed nations.

Here's that Electronic Intifada article:

A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.

Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel's Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog ("Superfluous young men," 7 February 2010).

In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist "radicalization" is caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. Too many children, he argued, leads to too many "superfluous young men" who then become violent radicals.

Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would "happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status."

Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically "pro-natal subsidies." Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce.

He added, "Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim -- undermine the Hamas regime -- but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth, and there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men." This, he claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization "at its root."

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as "the largest international research center within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences." In addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is "president-designate" of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to be the "College of the Jewish People."

Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel's political and military establishment. This year's conference was also addressed by The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

Kramer's call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and Zionist concern about a so-called "demographic threat" to Israel, as Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories combined.

Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments expert, called on Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in relation to its Muslim population," a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.

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Haiti’s Wounded Long to Heal

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Scott Weinstein is a comrade, as well as being a registered nurse. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans he traveled to New Orleans where he stayed for months, helping out at the Common Ground medical/community clinic.

Immediately following the earthquake, Scott made his way to Haiti to do what he could. The following is an email he sent on February 18th, giving a glimpse of what he has been seeing on the ground:

For Elisa Zlami, the burden of her fractured leg just got heavier, literally. The day before, Marc, an ortho-tech at the General Hospital in Port au Prince, came immediately to her tent, “Post Op 3”, after I asked him to "do something" about Elisa's old split cast that was causing her pain. Haiti's earthquake snapped her shin bone in two, and left an open wound that has finally healed.

Marc expertly rewrapped her leg in a new plaster cast. Despite a day of drying, the new cast must weigh 20 lbs. Yet her leg still hurts along the fracture point. A summoned orthopedic doctor inspects Elisa, and tells her the pain should go away, and Elisa need not stay in the hospital. But Elisa has lost her home, and her family too.

A few weeks after the earthquake, Rea is desperately trying to get food for her community of children and their families from the school she ran before the earthquake. It now is a community center and clinic. Baz, an American medic, has told her that there might be food from the UN. But it is very confusing. The Italian Navy is also promising food in a few days. The prospect of being able to participate in that food distribution system seems daunting for Rea, whose English is not very good and whose Italian is nil.

A new French doctor, Michelle, breezes into Post Op 3 and cuts away the dressings from Mrs. Wintour’s heel. Mrs. Wintour's wounds are now green with infection. I changed her dressing two days ago and there was no green then, so daily dressing changes are now mandatory. Better nutrition is essential too, since malnourishment is preventing healing.

At the sprawling, busy United Nations compound, there are no hungry people. Not many are Haitians either, who are being stopped at the gates while whites like me are waved through. I have no business there really; I am wandering around looking to book a flight to Miami. I see many cheerful foreigners working for NGOs, governments, militaries and businesses, because Haiti is now a boomtown. The opportunities for aid and development work are enormous thanks to the disaster and the millions or billions of dollars being pledged. Foreigners, especially Americans, are flocking to Port au Prince to pursue this offshore opportunity. Many are earnest, believing sincerely in their humanitarian mission. Of course, the thousands of mostly U.S. soldiers didn't exactly come by choice.

When deposed popular Haitian President, Aristide told the UN in 1991, “Everyone must have a place at the table,” he was referring to Haiti’s hungry dispossessed. But it is the international community that has invited itself to feast. Little has changed since Columbus first colonized Haiti, including blaming the Haitians for their poverty.

Post Op 3 tent is a small community where Elisa and Mrs. Wintour live with 18 other patients, their families and friends. The young girl who often tends Elisa is a friend, the healthy sister of another girl living outside the tent, who also has a painful broken leg. Food brought in by the families to supplement the meager daily hospital meal is often shared. Nearby, the Haitian Adventist hospital sponsored by US Adventists and an evangelical food mission provides two large vegan meals a day with food mostly bought from neighbouring Santo Domingo.

I asked Mr. Abelard, Elisa’s older neighbour in the next bed, to make sure Elisa gets to X-Ray. He knows how the informal system works - you flag down someone walking by in Transport, hand them your paper note saying "Radiograph - jambe droit", and they put you on a stretcher and carry you to and from X-Ray.

Emmanuel has extensive injuries, including an amputated right arm, and is fighting an infection to hip and leg wounds that have been repeatedly surgically cleaned. He also has two sisters jealous of his neighbour, Mrs. Wintour’s new experimental mechanical wound suction device that aspirates draining fluid from her foot wound into a corrugated blue squeeze bottle. The sisters want one for Emmanuel. The device is being developed by a Boston medical team who work with Partners In Health based here in Haiti. Kristine, their engineer, thinks when the kinks are worked out, they can provide the molds for the plastic bottles to businesses in third world countries that can stamp out bottles for a few dollars. They hope each system will cost less than $75. In the U.S., a more efficient electrical system called a Wound Vac costs $25,000; its manufacturer made $1.4 billion from it in 2008. The next day, Emmanuel gets the blue bottle wound suction for his hip.

Shekhar, an Edmonton Red Cross volunteer called me the other night after assisting with food distribution that day. He can't understand why food distribution is run so badly in Haiti. After all, Shekhar and the international agencies have done this successfully around the world. The Haitians are prepared to do anything they can to help. Those of us who have had the good fortune to hang out with Haitians or wander around Port au Prince’s poor neighbourhoods, remark to each other how kind and gracious these Haitians have been to us. This is in contradiction to their sinister portrayal by our media and governments.

I happened to have been in Washington when the quake struck down Haiti. I'm not a bad schmoozer, so with a little luck and effort, I found myself connecting with people and agencies that were to be some of the players in the emergency medical response.

Last week, Christine, a trauma surgeon in Washington told me that I should tell the director of the General Hospital that if he wants medical materials, he should go to the US A.I.D. web site. "Like a bridal registry," Christine texted. I presented the message to Director Dr. Lassegue, who responded skeptically, "Oui, perhaps something will come of it."

Many experienced in disaster response, label the beginning organization "a cluster fuck". I bumped into David, a young tattooed American at the UN campground walking to a health-cluster meeting. David griped that the scheduled meeting times were often changed, and tended to be useless because the decisions had already been made overseas.

Like so many of the people sharing the Post Op tents, Elisa’s losses are more profound than her wounds. It's not their crooked or missing limbs that will be their biggest impediment. It is the prospect of trying to make a home and a life out of their shattered country that again is being occupied - and is now run by a coalition of a post-coup regime, foreign governments, militaries, religious charities, NGOs and aid agencies - all under the umbrella of humanitarian relief.

Three weeks after the quake, the French-run Handicap International organization set up shop at the hospital with a plain green military tent and a team of about a dozen French physical therapists and Haitian trainees. The French will leave eventually, but they understand that the work must continue with the Haitian staff. This model has yet to be adopted by most aid agencies that have no plan to sustain their programs without their presence.

Most charitable aid to “take care of Haiti’s poor” spends little actual money inside Haiti. We long to hear announcements that there will be substantial aid for Haiti’s peasant farmers to provide credit and resources to plant sustainable crops for local consumption, and to help Haitian businesses produce essential local goods.

Back at the trauma ward, we have to figure out who will be operating on the patients now that after a month, the Red Cross Norwegian orthopedic surgeons have left to another health facility, and the Medecins du Monde surgeons are leaving this weekend. The rapid turnover of many volunteers is maddening. In the operating room, I ask the Haitian surgeon in charge, who says, "When you need a surgeon, just come in and grab one of us." Sounds like a plan.

The staffing at least during the dayshift at the hospital is much better now than three weeks ago when I first arrived. Many more Haitians are able to work. Even the Israelis just sent in a half dozen Mogen David staff, while they are still busy blocking medical aid to Gaza after destroying hospitals and ambulances there last year.

Diana is an American nurse running a clinic inside a tent community of 2,500 homeless and hungry people. Talking with worker at the airport where supplies are being delivered, she found out that his friend has a quadriplegic child who needs a wheelchair with a head support. With the help of a Mr. Fix-It friend, Diana presents the worker a retrofitted wheelchair with a headrest, and drives back to the tent community with four pallets of food. But two weeks later, Rea still has not been able to tap into a food pipeline for her community.

The informal networking ways of getting things done described above can only work on an international scale if the Haitian people are included and are allowed to be masters of their destiny.

International businessmen are urged take advantage of the new manufacturing climate in Haiti. Foreign aid earmarked for security will also revitalize Haitian security forces who historically have been its death squads, attacking labour and community organizers who might reduce profits from such sweatshops.

The Toussaint Louverture Airport was being run by the US Military when I arrived yesterday evening, despite the handful of Haitians who stamp our passports before we walk out onto the tarmac. Homeland Security's immigration police and border agents then check our passports as we board. Three weeks previously when I arrived, no one asked for my passport - in fact, no one asked me for any identification or professional license during my entire stay. On the tarmac are Canadian soldiers, RCMP officers, CIDA aid employees and diplomatic personnel waiting to board their military transport plane to Ottawa. There is also a tent for the US soldiers, and the US State Department processing civilians for their humanitarian transport to the U.S. in military C-130s.

The aid response is not so confusing after all. The Montreal Meeting of international donors, the Davos Forum, the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, US A.I.D., the UN, and the various security forces in Haiti all seem to be navigating the humanitarian response ship to further their interests in Haiti. Most NGOs and religious missions have found a niche to plug into.

Humanitarian aid is perceived as just and moral. But until Haitians like Elisa, Mr. Abelard, Mrs. Wintour and Rea are permitted at their own table and given the chance to build a sustainable infrastructure, so-called aid becomes another weapon to exploit these good people who liberated themselves from slavery, and are still paying the price.

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Ojore Lutalo to Sue Amtrak for Bogus Bust

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As detailed previously on this blog, a month ago Ojore Lutalo was arrested and accused of making terrorist threats while traveling home on the train from an anarchist bookfair on the west coast where he was speaking. The story floated was that someone had overheard him having a suspicious phone conversation on the train, so the cops were called.

The details of this can be viewed on this blog here, and there was a good follow-up article on the liberal Huffington Post here. Ojore was released within a couple of days after supporters raised thousands of dollars to pay his bond, and subsequently the District Attorney declined to pursue the case, citing insufficient evidence.

It stinks of harassment. Ojore is a former prisoner of war with the Black Liberation Army. He spent decades in prison, much of it subjected to isolation-torture, and was only finally released last fall. He has been "free" for just a few months, and this certainly looks like someone sending him a message that he's being watched, and the state is none too pleased that he has jumped into political activity.

Ojore has decided to pursue a lawsuit against Amtrak. The following from the Philly Anarchist Black Cross Federation gives the details,. and details how you can help:

On January 26th, while returning home from the Los Angeles Anarchist Bookfair on Amtrak, Ojore was detained at gun point and charged with endangering public transportation in La Junta, Colorado after several passengers allegedly heard Ojore make threatening remarks against the train while talking on his cell phone.

After 2 days in jail, Ojore was released on bail, after $4,500 was raised from people from all over the country, who rose to the occasion and donated funds and property to secure his release.

The ensuing investigation revealed that the steward on the train never heard Ojore make any threatening remarks and the passengers, after being reinterviewed said they never heard him make any specific threats. In light of this information, the district attorney dropped the charges against Ojore.

Throughout this week long ordeal Ojore and his comrades were steadfast in refuting the charges and media smear campaign. Many threats were made online against him on various news websites.

While Ojore is free and back home in New Jersey, he intends to pursue a civil liability suit against Amtrak. He will be seeking monetary compensation for all the expenses incurred such as the bail, which was non refundable, the cost of having to fly home after Amtrak denied him the right to return home on the train and other legal expenses. In pursuing this lawsuit, more funds are needed for legal and travel expenses.

Please donate whatever you can!

You can send checks or money orders (payable to Tim Fasnacht) to:

Tim Fasnacht
Philadelphia ABCF
P.O box 42129
Philadelphia, pa 19101

Or paypal donations to: timabcf@aol.com

Thank you for your support!

Philadelphia ABCF

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Balaclava! VMC Olympic Broadsheet Issue 5

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The daily newspaper of the 2010 Anti-Olympic Convergence, a project of the Vancouver Media Co-op.
The Vancouver Media Coop is releasing a broadsheet every day of the Anti-Olympics Convergence.
Today's issue includes reports and photos about Saturday's actions in Vancouver, including a legal update and a round-up of absurd Police behaviour


Download a pdf of the Balaclava! Broadsheet here.

and check out past issues of Balaclava!:

• Issue 1
• Issue 2
• Issue 3
• Issue 4

(thx to Mostly Water for this)

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Spartacist (ICL) Theory of Anarchism

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The International Communist League, represented in (english) Canada as the Spartacist League, have a theory of anarchism emerging specifically as a result of the "low tide" or "movement interregnum" that followed the last cycle of struggle. In other words, in pissing-contest fashion, the line is put forth that because the left is weak, well-intentioned people are drawn towards anarchism. (In so doing, they seem to draw on Lenin's accusation that "Anarchism was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement.")

For instance:

The emergence of anarchism as a prevalent ideology among radicalized youth today is a reflection of what we Marxists understand as a global retrogression in political consciousness following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet degenerated workers state and the deformed workers states of East Europe.

Yippedy doo daa!

The implication being that a strong and vibrant left would see the decline of anarchist ideology.

Now i'm not an anarchist, nor am i a Trotskyist, so in the pissing-contest sense of this discussion i can say "i don't have a dog in that fight." But as a member of the radical left, as a post-anarchist leftist, i am interested in what evidence supports or contradicts this theory.

Ideas, anyone?

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Space Aliens Against Zionism

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It's tempting to make some snide comment about the colonizer needing the colonized to explain to them the meaning of their own movies.

But you don't need to have your ear to the ground to hear that that's (one half of) the buzz around Avatar.

More true would be the sad fact that the colonizer would prefer to ignore the colonized unless they can tie their existence into the latest hollywood blockbuster or some other spasm in the collective imperialist psyche. Media studies and discourse analysis being far more sexy than history or political economy.

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All Charges against Ojore Lutalo Have Been Dropped

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It's official - all charges against Ojore Lutalo have been dropped. Details will follow.

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Confronting a Killer Cop: this Wednesday, February 3rd in Montreal

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from The Jean-Loup Lapointe Welcoming Committee:

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
12:30pm-1pm
Palais de Justice de Montreal
corner of St-Laurent and St-Antoine

The Coalition Against Police Abuse and Repression is organizing a 30-minute gathering at 12:30pm sharp at the exit of Montreal's Court House (corner of St-Antoine and St-Laurent). Jean-Loup Lapointe, who shot four bullets at unarmed youth, killiing Fredy Villaneuva and severely injuring two other youths, will be testifying.

If you can, please attend the hearing in room 5,15 from 9:30am onwards. Please come with very few items in your pockets because you will be searched by the Court House security services. After the lunch break, the hearing will resume at 2pm.

The committee explains:

Jean-Loup Lapointe: Fredy’s executioner

Executioners still exist, but they’ve changed their appearance.

During the Middle Ages executioners did their dirty deeds in front of an impotent crowd. They didn’t decide who they would execute, or for what reasons, and that’s why we couldn’t hold them responsible for their death tolls. They also wore masks to hide their identities, and carried a weapon to protect them from the people. Their impunity was complete.

Today, it’s police officers that are modern-day executioners. They wear a blue uniform and carry guns – with bullets or electric shocks. They also enjoy impunity, but they don’t need a mask. They don’t need a judge either, nor a king or a Committee of Public Safety to decree the death penalty. No, these days it’s simple constables who’ve taken over. And with a bang, another death!

On August 9, 2008, Fredy Villaneuva, 18, was killed by Jean-Loup Lapointe’s bullets, but the courts prevent us from showing you the face of this killer cop. Jean-Loup doesn’t even need a mask to hide because the entire court machinery makes sure that the public won’t recognize him on the street and judge him at sight.

A cop that kills a youth and wounds two others by shooting at unarmed individuals should not escape justice. If a civilian had done the same thing, we all know that criminal charges would have been made without delay. What more needs to happen before the SQ decides to undertake a serious investigation, beginning with questioning the two officers involved? But the problem of police investigating police is a predictably incestuous investigation that always defends the interests of the executioners.

The impunity that Jean-Loup enjoys is double: there’s the decision to mask his physical identity that adds to the usual legal whitewash. It all confirms the power of the police to kill -- encouraged by the State that gives Jean-Loup all kinds of privileges. He’s given the right to carry his weapon everywhere, even off-duty. He gets expensive paid lawyers. He gets bodyguards during his public outings. The hangman Lapointe is overprotected, and at our cost.

Police officers have become street judges: they are both judges and executioners since they have the right to summarily kill a suspect. And so the death penalty, supposedly abolished, takes a new form, more arbitrary and insidious. It is hypocritical and protected by the police brotherhood and its long arm. These murders are normalized and the authorities are not ashamed to drag the reputations of the loved ones of the victims into the mud. Police violence is a reflection of social inequality and intolerance that is fed by creating fear in certain neighborhoods. It goes without saying that Jean-Loup would have been less quick to the trigger if he were intervening with young white youth near a tennis court in Outremont.

We refuse to be, once again, an impotent crowd in front of modern-day executioners who kill with impunity. On Wednesday, February 3, let’s welcome the witness Jean-Loup Lapointe who -- one year later -- will be questioned for the first time.

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Adoptees of Color: Statement on Haiti

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The following is an important statement from Adoptees of Color, regarding the current hype about [mostly white] people in imperialist countries rescuing Black and Brown people in the neocolonies, in the current instance Haiti.

Statement on Haiti
January 25, 2010

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption.

We understand that in a time of crisis there is a tendency to want to act quickly to support those considered the most vulnerable and directly affected, including children. However, we urge caution in determining how best to help. We have arrived at a time when the licenses of adoption agencies in various countries are being reviewed for the widespread practice of misrepresenting the social histories of children. There is evidence of the production of documents stating that a child is “available for adoption” based on a legal “paper” and not literal orphaning as seen in recent cases of intercountry adoption of children from Malawi, Guatemala, South Korea and China. We bear testimony to the ways in which the intercountry adoption industry has profited from and reinforced neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, aid dependency, population control policies, unsustainable development, corruption, and child trafficking.

For more than fifty years “orphaned children” have been shipped from areas of war, natural disasters, and poverty to supposedly better lives in Europe and North America. Our adoptions from Vietnam, South Korea, Guatemala and many other countries are no different from what is happening to the children of Haiti today. Like us, these “disaster orphans” will grow into adulthood and begin to grasp the magnitude of the abuse, fraud, negligence, suffering, and deprivation of human rights involved in their displacements.

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin.

As adoptees of color many of us have inherited a history of dubious adoptions. We are dismayed to hear that Haitian adoptions may be “fast-tracked” due to the massive destruction of buildings in Haiti that hold important records and documents. We oppose this plan and argue that the loss of records requires slowing down of the processes of adoption while important information is gathered and re-documented for these children. Removing children from Haiti without proper documentation and without proper reunification efforts is a violation of their basic human rights and leaves any family members who may be searching for them with no recourse. We insist on the absolute necessity of taking the time required to conduct a thorough search, and we support an expanded set of methods for creating these records, including recording oral histories.

We urge the international community to remember that the children in question have suffered the overwhelming trauma of the earthquake and separation from their loved ones. We have learned first-hand that adoption (domestic or intercountry) itself as a process forces children to negate their true feelings of grief, anger, pain or loss, and to assimilate to meet the desires and expectations of strangers. Immediate removal of traumatized children for adoption—including children whose adoptions were finalized prior to the quake— compounds their trauma, and denies their right to mourn and heal with the support of their community.

We affirm the spirit of Cultural Sovereignty, Sovereignty and Self-determination embodied as rights for all peoples to determine their own economic, social and cultural development included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Charter of the United Nations; the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The mobilization of European and North American courts, legislative bodies, and social work practices to implement forced removal through intercountry adoption is a direct challenge to cultural sovereignty. We support the legal and policy application of cultural rights such as rights to language, rights to ways of being/religion, collective existence, and a representation of Haiti’s histories and existence using Haiti’s own terms.

We offer this statement in solidarity with the people of Haiti and with all those who are seeking ways to intentionally support the long-term sustainability and self-determination of the Haitian people. As adoptees of color we bear a unique understanding of the trauma, and the sense of loss and abandonment that are part of the adoptee experience, and we demand that our voices be heard. All adoptions from Haiti must be stopped and all efforts to help children be refocused on giving aid to organizations working toward family reunification and caring for children in their own communities. We urge you to join us in supporting Haitian children’s rights to life, survival, and development within their own families and communities.

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