Provocateurs policiers? En Canada? C’est impossible.
Non. C’est bien possible:
Story from the Toronto Star:
Protesters are accusing police of using undercover agents to provoke violent confrontations at the North American leaders’ summit in Montebello, Que.
Such accusations have been made before after similar demonstrations but this time the alleged “agents provocateurs” have been caught on camera.
A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand.
The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.
Coles also demands that they put down their rocks. Other protesters begin to chime in that the three are really police agents. Several try to snatch the bandanas from their faces.
Rather than leave, the three actually start edging closer to the police line, where they appear to engage in discussions. They eventually push their way past an officer, whereupon other police shove them to the ground and handcuff them.
Late Tuesday, photographs taken by another protester surfaced, showing the trio lying prone on the ground. The photos show the soles of their boots adorned by yellow triangles. A police officer kneeling beside the men has an identical yellow triangle on the sole of his boot.
The Torontoist explains the significance of the boots:
Those triangles, by the way, almost certainly denote Canadian Standards Association—approved footwear for “light industrial work environments”——because, really, if you intend to fight cops in riot gear, you’re gonna want toe and puncture protection.
Link theirs.
Maybe I shouldn’t write what I’m about to write, because it will help police provocateurs improve their act, but…silly cops, everyone knows that REAL anarchists (and British bobbies) wear Doc Martens!
Still, the brave union leader who blew their cover wasn’t looking at the provocs’ feet when he sniffed their scheme; he was looking at their eyes. When he accused one of them of being a cop, he says, the guy’s eyes just “glazed over”.
Intuition is such a bitch, ain’t it?
Meanwhile, here’s a little something from Starhawk explaining the hows and whys of police planting and riot provocation.
Yeah, tell me it’s not fascism.
UPDATE: CBC reports that the Quebec police admit that there were, indeed, three undercover officers attempting to infiltrate the demo. No doubt the same that were unmasked by the union protesters. (The burly builds and bullish stances of the fake anarchists were a dead giveaway–real anarchists are neither so bulky nor so swaggery.)
Yeah, this is a aspect of ‘fascism’ Bina, make no mistake about it.
This is an example of black operations, they type of stuff that the CIA and the underground units of the FBI engage here in the states to discredit potential centers of organized opposition to oligarchic control.
And, really, these protesters appear to be pretty middle of the road. There appeared to be a contingent of the ‘black block’ there as well.
It appears that the capitalist ‘authorities’ jumped the gun there. The exposed cops/provocatuers really were very lame–as they appeared to want to escape the protesters because they were being exposed. The way they walked right over to the pigs as not even ‘b’ movie material.
Hey, maybe the pigs smacked them around for being so utterly inept! LOL
This all appears to be pretty mundane–the parody of civil conflict rather than an actual instance.
Good that there are protesters, however. At least show the accomplices of imperial power that some Canadians do feel responsible for their country’s policies. Not all folk in Canada are sheep–at least not as many as here in the US!
Did you notice, too, that all the REAL black-blockers were peaceful and respectful–and that the only one with a rock in his hand was one of the three cops?
Talk about incrimination. The Quebec police were lying when they said these guys were only gathering intelligence and not trying to start the shit hitting the fan. It’s all down on video that they WERE out to make trouble!
And, Bina, this incident made the news on Democracy Now!
How cool is that.
Your instinct for real news is very good. This is a sign that the provincial governments are very nervous about civil protest to their plutocratic designs.
By the way, looks like nice weather up there, ehh. 🙂
It’s not just the provinces, although we’ve certainly had our share of repression from those (google Mike Harris sometime–Ontario was a neo-con shithole under him, complete with riots at Queen’s Park.) It’s the entire political system. We have “democracy” insofar as we get to vote, and we get a slate of at least 3 or 4 major parties to pick from. But when it comes to getting value for our votes, we have had very little of it since Tommy Douglas was premier of Saskatchewan. Like it or not, we have an oligarchy up here, too–an elite of political hacks and capitalist cronies–who don’t give a flying shit for what the people say or want. Their only desire is to wield the same kind of untrammelled power that the Latin American latifundistas have enjoyed since Columbus. And they get mighty pissed when the little people get in the way of their grand plans, as we can see here–and the fact that they have police forces at their disposal is downright disgusting.
The one thing I can say that is comforting is that the protest movement is awake and is learning how to spot the fronts. And it still refuses to give them what they want. We are Canadians–we refuse to give up what Tommy Douglas fought for, because it is what has enabled so many of us to succeed. How about that, eh–socialism made us rich and we want to stay that way! And that irks our would-be oligarchs no end, which is why they waste such a lot of space in the media calling us terrorists, extremists, bomb-throwers, etc.
BTW, I have a confession to make: I get good tips from my friends. One of them sent me the Torontoist link, for example. Nobody can be the media without an occasional tweet from the little birdies who perch on their shoulders!