Fear and loathing in Toronto

Nora Loreto, Editor-in-Chief

As fear gripped Toronto during the G8/G20 Summits, democracy vanished.

To anyone paying attention, it seemed like the public relations machine that was kicked into gear for the G20 Summit was a never-ending set of announcements meant to elevate concern about the potential dangers of having the world’s most powerful people in Toronto for a weekend.

Early on, the University of Toronto announced that the possibility of danger on the St. George campus was so great that the entire University would be shut down during the Summit. Even student residents would have to be moved as the city would be so unsafe that students should not be allowed on campus.

This set the bar pretty high for what level of danger to expect. Of course, there were some rational heads on campus who challenged this decision by defying the university’s orders and keeping their offices open. They also called the university out when it was revealed that security agents would be taking the temporarily-moved students’ rooms.

These organizations were targeted for their courageous stands. One, the Graduate Students’ Union, was raided and every person inside was detained, likely with the help of Campus Police. What a price to pay for standing up against an administration that conspired with security officials
to detain progressive students.

The message sent by the Integrated Security Unit, the joint-security force comprised of the RCMP, the OPP, Toronto Police, Canadian Forces and private firms, as a result of this raid was clear: don’t challenge the notion that the security measures taken are warranted, or you could be considered an enemy of the state.

The federal government, security agencies and the province all seemed to manipulate information to make everyone fear each other: the protesters were to fear the police, the general public were to fear the protesters and no one should go near the fence. With everyone’s rationality turned off and replaced with fear, the purpose of the summits would continue generally unchallenged, especially by mainstream journalists.

Fear was used to rule the City of Toronto that weekend. Our powerless mayor stepped back as Martial Law was imposed by Police Chief Bill Blair, while the Premier looked the other way. Blair was ordered by someone to allow for his officers to conduct sweeping powers of search and detention that were not contemplated
by the anything passed by government.

As a result of these expanded powers , fear spread among citizens of being searched and detained
without any due process, having hearing damage as a result of being blasted with a sound cannon, or going blind or choking because of tear gas.

I saw fear in the eyes of many, many people I talked to that weekend. I was afraid too. On Sunday night, I was standing with four people at Queen and Soho Streets in awe of seeing busloads of people shipped off to cages. Two officers came up to us and told us to leave immediately. We were told that by standing together in a group we were “violating the riot act” and that we were not legally allowed to “converge.”

When I challenged one of the officers and demanded to know which part of what law he was citing, fear came through his eyes, and anger through his mouth. All he could do is yell, “I have told so many people tonight about this and I’m tired of it.” He threatened to arrest us again, if we asked any more questions, so we dispersed.

Blair was on the front lines of generating fear. He wasted many words whipping people up against the violent protesters, and convinced a cadre of journalists to advance this view. Before long, people uninvolved with the day’s events were decrying vandalism shown over and over on television news stations as if someone had actually been hurt.

Of course, many people had been hurt, but broken windows were the only image used to demonstrate violence. Many people who had been hurt were shipped off to a detention centre away from the city’s core.
We were all under attack. At times, we were all afraid. And despite using the force that they had, the security forces didn’t even unleash their entire arsenal. At each confrontation, this led many of us on the streets to wonder, what will they use next?

When I saw horses charging dense crowds, or people running as if their lives depended on escape, I wondered how instilling this fear among us had anything to do with G20 leaders like Manmohan Singh, Hu Jintao or David Cameron. There wasn’t even a remote possibility of a world leader being hurt, indeed no political leader has ever been murdered in Canada by a protesting mob.

Instilling fear in people only served to disempower us. The move toward a near removal of all freedoms stated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms happened so fast that only after the Summit has anyone realized that the power on which the ISU was operating didn’t exist. But that didn’t matter. More than 1,000 people were rounded up and dehumanized, regardless of what powers the police did or didn’t have.

It degenerated into seemingly random arrests that were based only on the colour of one’s clothes, the language one spoke, or whether or not a protester came prepared to be tear gassed.

When I was hit over the shoulder and knocked to my knees by a riot officer, my hope of demonstrating against what the G20 stood for dissipated, and I knew that the rest of the weekend
would be pure resistance to the violence perpetuated by the police state.

The police response to us in the streets during the G20 is an important reminder of this: The freedoms we enjoy were hard fought for by generations of activists, and they remain absolutely fragile.

The reaction of the police to peaceful protesters with important and legitimate concerns of the work of the world’s elites is a necessary reminder that the powerful actually fear the power of the citizens when they come together to resist a global agenda that continues to rob and marginalize the world’s poor. They will promote fear, they will detain and they will raid our homes or places of work if the chance is presented to them.

If we know that fear will be used to advance an oppressive agenda, everyone who refuses to buy into that fear must stand up to it. And, in all circumstances, we must challenge those people in positions of power and demand justice for Canada and the world’s oppressed.

Especially now, as we know just how scared the elites are.

The thing about museums

How English museums illustrate the problems with the contemporary historical exhibit

Haseena Manek

THROUGHOUT RECENT HISTORY, England has probably extended its reach to more countries than any other colonizing nation. In fact, at the height of its imperial regime, England controlled a quarter of the world’s population. Under the guise of science, anthropology, religious missions and military exploration, the English crown changed the history of hundreds of nations and millions of people.

Today, evidence of that history is unabashedly displayed in English museums.

Brighton’s Pavilion Museum is housed next to George IVs former seaside palace, which was built in the Indo-Saracenic style, a mix of Victorian gothic and indigenous design. This approach was a favourite of British officials living in colonial India, a way to mask orientalist exoticism with feigned respect and appreciation for local art, basically the equivalent of architectural imperialism.

The museum itself is small by comparison but efficiently packs art, tools, clothing and other tokens from indigenous peoples the world over.

Descriptions of these objects glorify ‘armchair anthropology’; a detached and ineffective ethnographic technique critiqued by contemporary academics for its racist essentialism.

The information provided romanticizes the colonial process, using gentle euphemisms when explaining the adventurous ‘collection process’ of what should be declared stolen goods.

The infamous British Museum of London, England’s also glosses over the processes by which artifacts were ‘collected,’ but small and large plaques thanking benefactors for their ‘donations’ are everywhere.

Many of these are personal contributions, which made me question where someone like Major R.G. Gayer-Anderson, who donated the Ancient Egyptian cat statuette, dubbed the ‘Gayer-Anderson Cat’, would have obtained his treasury of historic art. (The Victoria and Albert Museum, also in London, is another of many museums to house Gayer-Anderson’s and his younger brother, T. G. Gayer-Anderson’s, donations).

Despite the fact that a map of Britain’s contemporary and historical political ties could be drawn out based on contributions to the British Museum, it is clear that there is an attempt to depoliticize its collection.
A Tennyson quote on the floor of the Great Court (as you enter the museum), reads: “And let thy feet/millenniums hence/be set in midst of knowledge.” A quote that I believe illustrates the way history and art are romanticized. A self-confessed history-geek myself, I still believe it is important to contextualize historical artifacts to truly understand them.

Political context often goes unmentioned when displaying said artifacts, in an attempt to maintain what I can only describe as the ‘purity’ of academia, encouraging museum-goers to try and embrace and appreciate the wonders of world history and science without sullying it with implications of cultural theft and global politics.

If one considers the manner in which the museum obtained so many of its artifacts, disregarding historical and political context is to disregard a vital part the object’s history. In so doing, we are disregarding the people and the culture it represents. This strikes me as both discourteous and ineffective for an establishment of universal scholarship.

Another important point is that the value of certain histories, certain peoples and certain eras visibly changes as one navigates somewhere like the British Museum. Something as basic as the layout of exhibits, I think, illustrates what the institution deems more interesting or important for visitors.

While on the one hand much of the museum’s collection from what we call today’s ‘Global South,’ are stolen pieces of history, it is interesting to note that European territories are still given large wings and sections for multiple time periods while other parts of the world are given smaller and simpler bearings. Despite the British colonial legacy of baseless theft and genocide, the history of the colonized remains less impressive, or less important. 500 years later, Africa is still in the basement.

Tennyson’s quote is an obvious tenet of what the British Museum, and many other museums stand for: knowledge and learning about our past. All I can conclude based on visiting
all of these institutions is that we will be in no capacity able to learn from the mistakes of our past if future generations are not taught about them.

And I know I am not the first to say “He who wins the war writes the history books,” so I wonder why it is that centuries of colonial oppression and all its ramifications are not only glorified and venerated by internationally renowned institutions but that their gross misrepresentation goes unquestioned
and unchallenged.

It appears that the institution of the metropolitan museum has become another facet of the neo-colonial machine and that education is one more battle to fight in the war for freedom and equality.

Culture shock: From Toronto, home to Alberta’s foothills

Kate Spencer

PICTURE A COWBOY in the Albertan Foothills. Behind him, the majesty of the mountains, blue and snow capped and shining. In front of him, his cattle grazing freely. All around him, hills sprawling and dotted with evergreens.

Picture now the Environmentalist, hurtling toward the cowboy, waving pamphlets and soy products, shouting, “Oil spills! Clear cutting! Melting ice caps! Death and destruction!”

And picture the cowboy, tilting back his hat (used for shade, not style). See him glance to the endless sky, breathe the crisp, dry air, and ask, “Where would that be, exactly?”

When you’re in small town Alberta, you can almost understand environmental skepticism.
As one of the doomsayers, coming to Turner Valley, population just over two thousand is always a bit of a culture shock. This is a town too small for a grocery store, but big enough for a breakfast place that proudly serves Triple A Alberta beef. It is a town that gets its mail delivered to a central post office, where you will find postings for chilli cookoffs and mall walking for seniors. There is one bar – cougar themed – one coffee place named the Coyote Moon, and a surprisingly lovely florist and sweets shop.Things always seem to go at a slower pace out in the Foothills. Maybe that’s because you can see more of the sky. In Toronto, I am accustomed to striding from one place to another. I am goal oriented, with my eyes on the ground looking for obstacles, or held firmly in an away-from-homeless-people direction to avoid guilt from lack of change. I have yet to see anyone asking for money on the corners of Turner Valley, because let’s face it, there’s nowhere to go if you don’t have a home. There are no homeless shelters here, no convenient parks or warm ATM vestibules – just a lot of highway on all sides. So I spend more of my time seeing shapes in the clouds and going for rambling walks. It’s still lilac season here, which is another perk of a place less climactically charged. Seasons seem longer and lazier, and more content to linger, which can sometimes lead to snow in June.Of course, that lovely slow pace of small town Alberta can be a huge frustration when the purpose of your stay is to find work. Two years ago there seemed to be a plethora of positions here, a true overabundance which meant, so the legend went, that you could find yourself working in a Tim Horton’s for 13 dollars an hour. But the recession hit here too, though to a lesser extent, and the Dairy Queen a few towns over is now advertising a measly 10 dollars for front staff positions. And perhaps in Calgary or Edmonton there is more of a drive to fill positions quickly, but in Okotoks, the closest town sporting a Wal Mart, minimum wage hopefuls can expect to wait a couple of weeks before hearing back.

There are also the obvious problems that come from being a lover of Arts and Culture living in a province run by Ed Stelmach. In early February of this year, grants available from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts were cut by 16 per cent, or $5.6 million. Cuts were also made to parks operations, museum funds and non-profit organizations. Alberta was one of the few provinces that made cuts to their arts funds, rather than adding to it. Money instead continues to be pushed toward the oil industry, whose returns are actually much lower on a dollar by dollar basis than the film industry which is working with $3 million fewer dollars than it was in 2009.

And of course, living in such an oil driven economy rankles whenever I think about it. The oil sands in Alberta supply 1.4 million barrels of oil per day to the United States, and one job in 15 in Alberta is directly related to energy. The Government of Alberta and private industry have each invested more than $1 billion in oil sands research – and I have to wonder whether that money could have been better spent. You just can’t help feeling the cruel irony - being surrounded by natural beauty when you drive everywhere while eating nothing but beef. To then go home to live with cement buildings and liberal guilt when you walk to all destinations and use high efficiency light bulbs seems bizarre.

My feelings for Alberta, and for Turner Valley especially, have come to the forefront of my mind now, as I read the Globe and Mail, or friends’ Facebook statuses. In a week and a month where everyone I know has an opinion about the G8 and G20, I am remarkably sheltered from it all. I shipped out of Toronto before the barricades went up, before people’s houses were boarded, and before people I knew experienced first hand what it’s like to be hit with a police baton. There is a frustration and a peace that comes from knowing that I won’t have to deal with any of that – geography is my protective cushion. And while a part of me can’t wait to get back in the thick of things, I can’t help but give in to the urge to turn off the news, step away from the Twitter updates, and go read a book in the backyard.

Oil still spills in the Gulf

Kaitlin Fowlie

BRITISH PETROLEUM, THE fourth largest company in the world and third largest oil giant is increasingly criticized for being corrupt, careless and unprepared, and the company will be the first to own up to such allegations. As a series of recent news reports have brought to the forefront, BP has a history of cutting corners. There were many indicators of impending disaster that led up to the events on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico– and the Obama administration failed to take note of the signs. The deepest oil and gas well ever – over 35,000 feet beneath water and rock was not something to be taken lightly, but it was, and the carelessness of one company, under Obama’s approval, landed us in one of America’s monolithic environmental disasters in American history.

BP’s 582 page emergency response plan appears to have never been taken seriously by the company. In it, the worst case scenario was predicted to be an oil spill lasting up to 30 days with a 20 per cent chance of oil reaching the Louisiana coast. The reality has been over two months of continuous leakage, the consequences of which we may not realize for years to come. The company anticipated no coastline problems since the drilling site was so far offshore. According to the site plan, “due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected.” More than 200 dead turtles, several dolphins and countless fish have washed ashore, and some beaches, such as Gulfort Mississippi, have seen oil soaked debris and seaweed floating into the shoreline.

The oil plumes continue to be swept into the Gulf Coast current, which is anticipated to eventually send oil hundreds of kilometres around Florida’s southern tip and up the Atlantic coast. This possibility isn’t even mentioned in the plan. Perhaps the most absurd error in the cleanup plan included safety precautions for walrus’s and sea otters - such creatures have never existed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Minerals Management Service (MMS), a bureau in the U.S. Department of the Interior responsible for managing the nation’s natural gas, oil, and other mineral resources, played a significant role in the April disaster by approving BP’s inadequate emergency response plan. Since its inception in 1982, MMS has had a reputation for being lax with approving permits, accepting bribes from companies, even engaging in sex/drug related exploits. In granting BP the permission to drill, MMS allowed the company a categorical exclusion, which are usually applicable only to activities that are minimally intrusive projects – like outhouses and hiking trails. Without that exclusion, BP would have been required to produce a report that included a study of the possible damages caused by a blow out or spill. MMS granted the permit with one suggestion – “exercise caution while drilling due to indications of shallow gas” – an example of the many ways they trusted the company to regulate itself.

So too, did the president. Obama had the final word in permitting the company to drill, and his administration simply didn’t acknowledge the numerous indicators of potential disaster to come. His oft mentioned lacklustre response to the explosion that killed 11 workers and injured 17 has triggered
an outbreak of angry responses – from Youtube videos to blog posts to eight page editorials in Rolling Stone magazine.

For weeks, the administration refused to play anything more than a supporting role in the spill. (Aforementioned Rolling Stone editorial notes that this is a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad). Eventually, Obama acknowledged that his administration failed to adequately reform the MMS. The scandal ridden federal agency did act as a significant link in the chain of events leading up to the disaster, but BP, notorious for its many brushes with the law, should have been under greater super vision.

In 2005, the oil giant plead guilty to a felony for failing to have adequate written procedures for maintain the ongoing mechanical integrity of process equipment at the Texas City refinery – which blew up and killed 15 workers, and injured hundreds. Again in 2006, it plead guilty to a misdemeanour violation of the US Federal Water Pollution Control Act which resulted in a 4,800 barrel spill in Prudhoe Bay. Perhaps most significantly, BP was involved in the previously worst oil disasters in American history, the Exxon Valdez in 1989. BP failed to respond to the Valdez during the hours of the spill when the worst damage occurred. Vital equipment was buried under snow, no cleanup ship was standing by and no containment barge was available to collect oil.

In addition to its history of negligence, BP’s frugal attitude cost it the assurance of safety. The company contracts out all its equipment, owning nothing. In a cost cutting strategy,

BP shaved 500,000 dollars off its costs by positioning a blowout preventer without a remote control trigger – a safety precaution required in many countries but not mandated by MMS. BP opted for cheap, single walled piping for the well, and installed only 6 of the 21 cement spacers recommended by its contractor. It also skimped on critical testing that could have shown whether explosive gas was getting into the system
as it was being cemented, and began removing mud that protected the well before it was sealed with cement plugs. The company has repeatedly made the same mistakes, cut corners, put its workers lives at risk, and the Obama administration continued to trust them.

Obama has assured us that he has assembled a team of the Nation’s best scientists and engineers to confront the challenge. There are nearly 30,000 people working across four states to contain and clean up the spill, and they have successfully removed millions of gallons of oil and laid five and a half million feet of boom to block and absorb oil. However, this disaster, unlike a hurricane, tornado or tsunami, is different than any other environmental devastation based on the fact that the damage didn’t simply occur in a matter of days. This oil spill is like an epidemic that is continuously leaking every day. The tragedy unfurling on our southern neighbours coast is a painful and powerful reminder of the underlying issue at hand – our dependence on oil. The president may have made mistakes in his lack of foresight, and the previous decade of politics paved the way for environmental adversity, but we have no choice to take the Gulf oil spill as an indicator that the time to embrace a sustainable energy future is now.

What Kevin Neish saw

Eyewitness to the Israeli Assault on the Mavi Marmara

Dave Lindorff

KEVIN NEISH OF Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. “This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, ‘It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’” he recalls with a laugh. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, ‘I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired over and over!’”
A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he’d found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) commando.

Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla’s lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched took photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past him.

“I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down,” he recalls. “He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier.”

That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. “I figured I’d look inside and see what he was carrying,” Neish says. “And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara.”

Meanwhile, he says, more and more people were being carried down the stairs from the mayhem above—people who’d been shot, and people who were dying or people already dead. “I took detailed photos of the dead and wounded with my camera,” he says, adding, “There were several guys who had two neat bullet holes side by side on the side of their head–clearly they were executed.”

Neish smuggled his photos out of Israel to Turkey despite his arrest on the ship and imprisonment in Israel for several days. “I pulled out the memory card, tossed my camera and anything I had on me that had anything to do with electronics, and then kept moving the chip around so it wouldn’t be found,” he says.

“The Israelis took all the cameras and computers. They were smashing some and keeping others.
I put the chip in my mouth under my tongue, between my butt cheeks, in my sock, everywhere, to keep them from finding it,” he says. He finally handed it to a Turk who was leaving for a flight home on a Turkish airline.

He says the card ended up in the hands of an organization called Free Gaza, and he has seen some of his pictures published, so he knows they made it out successfully.

Neish says that claims that the Israeli commandos were just armed with paint guns and 9 mm pistols are “Bullshit–at one point when I was in the stairwell, a commando opened a hatch above, stuck in a machine gun, and started firing. Bullets were bouncing all over the place. If the guy had gotten to look in and see where he was shooting, I’d have been dead, but two Turkish guys in the stairwell, who had short lengths of chain with them that they had taken from the access points to the lifeboats, stood to the side of the hatch and whipped them up at the barrell. I don’t know if they were trying to hit the commando or to use them to snatch away the gun, but the Israeli backed off, and they slammed and locked the hatch.”

“I never saw a single paint gun, or a sign of a fired paint ball!” he says. He also didn’t see any guns in the hands of people who were on the ship. “In the whole time I was there on the ship, I never saw a single weapon in the hands of the crew or the aid workers,” he says. Indeed, Neish, who originally
had been on a smaller 70-foot yacht called the Challenger II, had transferred to the Mavi Marmara after a stop in Cyprus, because his boat had been sabotaged by Israeli agents (a claim verified by the Israeli government), making it impossible to steer.

“When we came aboard the big boat, I was frisked and my bag was inspected for weapons,” he says. “Being an engineer, I of course had a pocket knife, but they took that and tossed it into the ocean. Nobody was allowed to have any weapons on this voyage. They were very careful about that.”

What he did see during the IDF assault was severe bullet wounds. “In addition to several people I saw who were killed, I saw several dozen wounded people. There was one older guy who was just propped up against the wall with a huge hole in his chest. He died as I was taking his picture.”

Neish says he saw many of the nine who were known to have been killed, and of the 40 who were wounded, and adds, “There were many more who were wounded, too, but less seriously.

In the Israeli prison, I saw people with knife wounds and broken bones. Some were hiding their injuries so they wouldn’t be taken away from the others.” He also says, “Initially there were reports that 16 on the boat had been killed. The medical station said 16. There was a suspicion that some bodies may have been thrown overboard. But what people think now is that the the other seven who are missing, since we’re not hearing from families, may have been Israeli spies.”

Once the Israeli commandos had secured control of the Mavi Marmara, Neish says the ship’s passengers and crew were rounded up, with the men put in one area on deck, and the women put below in another area. The men were told to squat, and had their hands bound with plastic cuffs, which Neish says were pulled so tight that his wrists were cut and his hands swelled up and turned purple (he is still suffering
nerve damage from the experience, which his doctor in Canada says he hopes will gradually repair on its own).

“They told us to be quiet,” he says. “But at one point this Turkish imam stood up and started singing a call to prayer. Everybody was dead quiet–even the Israelis. But after about ten seconds, this Israeli officer stomped over through the squatting people, pulled out his pistol and pointed at the guy’s head, yelling ‘Shut up!’ in English.

The imam looked at him directly and just kept singing! I thought, Jesus Christ, he’s gonna kill him! Then I thought, well, this is what I’m here for, I guess, so I stood up. The officer wheeled around and pointed his gun at my head. The imam finished his song and sat down, and then I sat down.”

While the commandeered vessels were sailed to the Israeli port of Ashdot, the captives were left without food or water. “All we were given were some chocolate bars that the Israelis pilfered from the ship’s stores,” says Neish. “You had to grovel to get to go to the bathroom, and many people had to just go in their pants.”
Things didn’t get much better once the passengers were transferred to an Israeli prison. He and the other prisoners with him, who hadn’t eaten for more than half a day, were tossed a frozen block of bread and some cucumbers.

On the second day, someone from the Canadian embassy came around, calling out his name. “It turned out he’d been going to every cell looking for me,” says Neish. “My daughter had been frantically telling the Canadian government I was in the flotilla. Even though the Israelis had my name and knew where I was, they weren’t telling the Canadian embassy people. In fact the Canadians–and my daughter–thought I was dead, because people had said I’d been near the initial assault. The good thing is that as they went around calling out for me, they discovered two Arab-born Canadians that they hadn’t known were there.”

“Eventually they got to my cell and I answered them. The embassy official said, ‘You’re Kevin? You’re supposed to be dead.’”

After being held for a few days, there was a rush to move everyone to the Ben Gurion airport for a flight to Turkey. “It turned out that Israeli lawyers had brought our case to the Supreme Court, challenging the legality of our capture on international waters. There was a chance that the court would order the IDF to put us back on our ships and let us go, so the government wanted to get us out of Israel and moot the case. But two guys were hauled off, probably by Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency). So we all said, ‘No. We don’t go unless you bring them back.’”

The two men were returned and were allowed to leave with the rest of the group.

“I honestly never thought the Israelis would board the ship,” says Neish. “I thought we’d get into Gaza. I mean, I went as part of the Free Gaza Movement, and they had made prior attempts, with some getting in, and some getting boarded or rammed, but this time it was a big flotilla. I figured we’d be stopped, and maybe searched. My boat, the Challenger II, only had dignitaries on board including three German MPs, and then Lt. Col. Ann Wright and myself.

At one point in the Israeli prison, all the violence finally got to this man who had witnessed more death and mayhem than many active duty US troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. “I broke down and started crying,” he admits. “This big Turkish guy came over and asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Sixteen people died.’”

“He said to me, ‘No, they died for a wonderful cause. They’re happy. You just go out and tell your story.’”
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening.net

G20: Tweets from the ground

Nora Loreto, Editor-in-Chief

For many people, both on the ground and away from Downtown Toronto, Twitter was the only medium providing up-to-the-minute and honest coverage of the G8/G20 protests. Editor-in-Chief Nora Loreto Tweeted from the streets what she saw as she wandered, protested and ran through the streets from July 25 to 27.

Below is an unedited collection of what she saw and what she reported on Twitter. For the entire suite of Tweets (some have been removed due to space constraints) or to read what came after, check out Twitter.com/NoLore.

THURSDAY, JUNE 24
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

There’s enough cops at #ryerson to stage a coup d’etat. Just counted 5 minivans of cops drive by the Ram. #wtf #copsoffcampus #G20
June 24, 2010 3:58 PM EDT

Found the buses. 3 #busfullofcops sans cops is living south of Bay and Gerrard. But where are the cops? (Delta Chelsea!) #G20
June 24, 2010 9:57 PM

Ever since I learned about the October Crisis, I yearned to live under Martial Law. #G20 #wtf #copsgohome #newlow
June 24, 2010 10:06 PM EDT
FRIDAY, JUNE 25

A woman just tied her bike up and went into a Rabba. A cop car pull up and inspects the bike and lock. Then pulls off #G20 #worthabil?
June 25, 2010 3:26:36 PM EDT

Just passed a guy right out front of the MTCC with a shirt that said TYRRANY RESPONSE TEAM. RCMP didn’t seem phased. #g20.
June 25, 2010 3:36:17 PM EDT

Only saw 2 protesters on my walk #G20 #g20report
June 25, 2010 4:29:57 PM EDT

Most officers look painfully bored. One said she liked my dress, as if to say “I’m dying to talk to someone” #g20 #g20report
June 25, 2010 4:32:34 PM EDT

First illegal sighting: van just jumped the curb in front of me. A journalist jumped out. #G20
June 25, 2010 4:35:36 PM EDT

Cop to the journalist: “you’ll hafta park somewhere legal” #nokidding #g20 #g20report
June 25, 2010 4:36:31 PM EDT

Aaand just got questioned by rcmp. I’ve been sitting on this bench too long. Yup, that’s me in the orange dress, intelligence. #g20
June 25, 2010 5:27:06 PM EDT

Some G20 officials just got locked out by fence closure. Ppl now running to fence to escape before the chains are locked. #G20
June 25, 2010 6:13:25 PM EDT

Random cyclist who was trapped “does anyone know how I can get out?” #G20 #G20report
June 25, 2010 6:16:02 PM EDT

Older man with me is taking photos of himself and the fence. Another guy with a camera got in his way. #g20 #g20report
June 25, 2010 6:25:30 PM EDT

They’re on lockdown. I am locked in. The riot is coming I’ve been told.
June 25, 2010 6:45:50 PM EDT

Someone’s making small talk with a cop. From Calgary. I wonder if he arrived on a #busfullofcops. #g20
June 25, 2010 6:54:01 PM EDT

The cops have a handsome refreshment stand on a golf cart. #g20.
June 25, 2010 6:58:45 PM EDT

Yes I’m out!! Said one cop: be careful tho, its still martial law on the other side. #g20 #cophumour #g20report
June 25, 2010 7:22:47 PM EDT

The hippocratic oath for journalists says Amy Goodman: “We shall not be silent”
June 25, 2010 8:17:07 PM EDT

“In an age of hyper-individualism, there is nothing more surprising than solidarity-Naomi Klein” #shoutout #g20 #justice
June 25, 2010 10:07:23 PM EDT

We’re past Another World is Possible. We’ve reached Another World is NECESSARY. #G20 #cdnleft #G20report
June 25, 2010 10:35:59 PM EDT

Just blocked by cops to access my own campus. First time in 7 years. #copsoffcampus #G20
June 25, 2010 10:57:33 PM EDT

The #G20 is like the shittiest concert ever. My bags get searched and there isn’t even a sweet band on the other side. #G20report
June 25, 2010 11:07:58 PM EDT

SATURDAY, JUNE 26

@CP24 says that cops have confiscated gas masks from a car near Allan gardens. No word on whether or not urine soaked rags are allowed #G20
June 26, 2010 10:46:33 AM EDT

This rally is MASSIVE. We can’t make it thru the crowd to the stage. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 1:07:41 PM EDT

The rally fills univ ave as far as I can see. Are we at 15k yet? #g20 #g20report.
June 26, 2010 2:01:13 PM EDT

Insane bottleneck forced on crowd to keep ppl well away from the US consulate. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 2:15:46 PM EDT

Lots of people photographing the cops. “How do you sleep at night?” People yell. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 2:17:26 PM EDT

Just heard someone talking about the cops having rubber bullets. #g20.
June 26, 2010 2:19:11 PM EDT

Just realize I have the same uniform on as the blackblock. Uh oh. #g20
June 26, 2010 2:19:58 PM EDT

We broke through. Just saw a broken nose. Riot cops are slamming their shields
June 26, 2010 2:31:04 PM EDT

Just got beat down by a cop while I was huddled in at speakers corner. Thanks to the folks who dragged me out. I’m fully shaken #g20
June 26, 2010 2:35:00 PM EDT

I was trying to take a photo of them hitting another person and a cameraman. #g20 #g20report. June 26, 2010 2:36:46 PM EDT

I’m fine, have a baton sized welt. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 2:43:23 PM EDT

Word is cops will encircle the line south on queen to trap the protesters. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 3:20:17 PM EDT

Zombies just marched by. Figured that was going to happen next. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 4:01:37 PM EDT

People are running like crazy away from the riot cops. “I’ve never been so scared in my life” a young looking guy. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 4:18:39 PM EDT

This is how anger manifests itself when the powerful ignore the powerless #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 4:24:17 PM EDT

This is how anger manifests itself when the powerful ignore the powerless #g20 #g20report http://twitpic.com/207wby
June 26, 2010 4:24:17 PM EDT

Riot cops remain on guard for the american empire. Kinda. Many are stretched out. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 5:05:26 PM EDT

55 vans and minivans, 2 coach buses parked outside Mars on Univ. If the street’s closed, this is why. Looks like a traffic jam #g20
June 26, 2010 5:17:52 PM EDT

“Who’s protecting Obama?? Who’s protecting the fence?” Yells a woman at the riot cops #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 5:21:45 PM EDT

The 5 ambulances parked among the vans reportedly carried more riot cops. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 5:25:00 PM EDT

“What are you trying to protect?” “They’re protecting Godot” #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 5:36:05 PM EDT

CTV reporter dons his Kandahar protection in front of riot cops #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 5:39:44 PM EDT

Now singing O Canada at the cops. #g20 #g20report. Belted out Glorious and Free. Irony lost on no one
June 26, 2010 5:42:46 PM EDT

Tear gas Shot at crowd. Crowd is doing NOTHING. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 6:04:43 PM EDT

People are now able to reach the fence cause most cops are at queens park. #g20 #g20report June 26, 2010 6:05:53 PM EDT

Never seen an NBC truck at queens park before. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 6:08:34 PM EDT

they keep moving in toward the crowd at. QP. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 6:14:03 PM EDT

From the fence: no cops. WTF are they protecting here, then? #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 6:27:44 PM EDT

Hoeses are charging the crowsd
June 26, 2010 6:33:01 PM EDT

See that line of riot cops? They’re pushin us somewhere. Closer to QP. Seems counter intuitive #g20
June 26, 2010 6:40:19 PM EDT

Consensus here is that there are now more cops than protesters. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 6:58:35 PM EDT

Hundreds of riot cops are shifting in from college to QP. They really outnumber us now. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 7:04:41 PM EDT

Ah, protester reinforcements have arrived. They could still arrest every one of us and still have enough cops to hold a line #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 7:12:20 PM EDT

People just got hit by bikes south of QP #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 7:21:55 PM EDT

Horses charging the crowd not too. We’re being pushed out. #g20
June 26, 2010 7:26:51 PM EDT

We are literally just being pushed further toward the legislative ass’ly. #wtf #g20
June 26, 2010 7:28:02 PM EDT

Horses circling the park, charging the crowd. #g20 sry the phots not great, I was running away. June 26, 2010 7:31:09 PM EDT

My friend saw someone get run over by a horse. “Took a horseshoe to the fuckin back” he said. #g20
June 26, 2010 7:33:36 PM EDT

It looks like John Tory is in the newstalk 1010 truck. He’s safe and secure. How nice. #g20
June 26, 2010 7:35:54 PM EDT

We are all being pushed onto the tarmac of QP. Yup, way closer to the Leg Ass. #g20 #copssansplans
June 26, 2010 7:40:45 PM EDT

“The whole world is watching” we’re chanting. The riot cops keep charging. #G20
June 26, 2010 8:02:31 PM EDT

Had the cop that hit me had hit a window instead, it would have smashed. #g20 #g20report
June 26, 2010 8:09:52 PM EDT

Cops now closing in from the east of the designated protest zone. No idea where we”re being forced. #g20
June 26, 2010 8:19:52 PM EDT

I keep hearing a loud bang and people ahead of me are running away frantically. #g20
June 26, 2010 8:17:49 PM EDT

Well, they’ve pushed the protest now back into the streets. Motorists, blame the cops.I can’t make sense of this #g20
June 26, 2010 8:21:51 PM EDT

So the cops have succeeded in creating total chaos. Protest is now running to bloor. #g20
June 26, 2010 8:33:56 PM EDT

The protest just took bloor. This doesn’t seem to be a better idea than having us chill in a park. #g20 June 26, 2010 8:37:54 PM EDT

Bill Blair claims that we were black block at QP in press conference, this justifies the violence today. That’s a lie. #g20
June 26, 2010 9:20:30 PM EDT

Blair says no rubber bullets. Global reporter says that he has some bullets. Blair claims that there were no rubber bullets. #g20
June 26, 2010 9:21:34 PM EDT

It seems that the mainstream media is concerned about Starbucks and empty police cars. Our media is broken. #G20
June 26, 2010 11:40:59 PM EDT

“The protesters spraypainted some of the mannequins” -CTV. Can someone tell CTV they only have feelings when their special hats are on? #g20
June 26, 2010 11:43:55 PM EDT

CTV has shown the same b roll of the burning cop car 7 or 9 times. No images of cops beating/charging/trampling people. #ctvwetdream #g20
June 26, 2010 11:51:55 PM EDT

BREAKING: so called black block protesters who smashed Starbucks windows were apparently Tim Horton’s shareholders #g20
June 27, 2010 12:01:56 AM EDT

SATURDAY JULY 27

5 ETF vehicles, a #busfullofcops all stopping traffic on Spad circle, outside of GSU office at UofT. #g20
June 27, 2010 1:19:43 PM EDT

Passed 14 vans full of cops all on Huron, passed 30 bike cops. No terrorist sightings. #g20
June 27, 2010 1:28:55 PM EDT

#G20. #fail. #epicfail.
June 27, 2010 1:39:24 PM EDT

The #G20 critical mass stretches two thirds of Queens Park circle. Absolutely impressive.
June 27, 2010 2:49:07 PM EDT

An empty Queens Park. Hard to believe I witnessed ppl here running in sheer terror yesterday. #g20
June 27, 2010 3:05:11 PM EDT

Just passed 3 cops with giant letter A’s on their backs. No sign of cops C, N and D. #g20 #g20report
June 27, 2010 3:24:10 PM EDT

On Yonge, random guy: “I expected way more than this to be honest.” Maybe cuz media’s reporting hasn’t been fair or accurate? #g20
June 27, 2010 5:17:06 PM EDT

“This is not democracy” said a bystander at King and Bay to a @torontostar reporter. #g20
June 27, 2010 6:08:48 PM EDT

Line of cops walking down spad with media, escorting them away from the protest. About 15 with visible media credentials #g20
June 27, 2010 7:38:27 PM EDT

Ppl should expect arrests with media out, that’s our guess. #g20
June 27, 2010 7:39:30 PM EDT

Worried parents of 2 boys trapped by the cops have joined us. #g20
June 27, 2010 7:47:55 PM EDT

The parents all try to get through the line. They are rejected. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:00:31 PM EDT

Another ambulance left, was definitely with cops inside. Saw one jump in. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:07:53 PM EDT

A person just came by from the intersection. I asked if people were still there. “They’ve arrested everyone” he said to us. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:16:31 PM EDT

An elderly woman just hit a cop. Really. She wasn’t detained. Queen and Peter #g20
June 27, 2010 8:32:42 PM EDT

Was just threatened with arrest for breach of the police for standing with 5 ppl at queen and peter. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:36:29 PM EDT

“We’re arresting ppl for converging” he told us. We dispersed. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:38:37 PM EDT

Found the parents again. Their sons are held on the street and are being arrested. Theyve been told to go home and wait for a call #g20
June 27, 2010 8:40:54 PM EDT

“How would we know they are your sons?” They were asked by the cops. They have their sons’ IDs. #g20
June 27, 2010 8:42:37 PM EDT

If black bloc was used to justify police violence yesterday, how can they justify just as much violence today? Oh..it was all lies. #g20
June 27, 2010 10:57:23 PM EDT

Rain on the reign

Full coverage of the Canadian government’s shameful oppression attempts, the possible use of agents provocateurs and the aftermath

Raynold Mobedi

Despite massive government propaganda which ranged from fabricating thank-you emails all the way to David Miller’s “the protesters are not from Toronto” comments on CP24, much of the world was capable of seeing the true colours of the Canadian government as it tried to crush dissent and suppress the voice of people.

The question remains: did some authorities decide to take it too far and use riot police as fake protestors, as they did in Quebec, in order to create chaos and undermine the movement of people? This attempt would devastate the legitimacy of the ruling regime.

From the Middle East all the way to North America, when it comes to public protests and gatherings, I have witnessed and studied hundreds of incidents where people decided to challenge a government to voice their opinion of what they believe is right and wrong. Having said that, what I witnessed on the G20 weekend was a very peaceful protest especially when compared to others around the world in the past decade. Yet at the same time, I also witnessed some of the most shameful media coverage. The coverage, provided by Canadian news agencies including CTV and CBC, effectively called the protesters “rioters,” “anarchists,” “criminals” and even “outsiders.” leaving some to believe that they are nothing but biased, government agents.

THE MISSION
THE RIDE – SATURDAY JUNE 26
The plan was simple: get downtown, take photos, report the events live via mobile. My long-time friend John was to stay at home, record my voice/coverage, and at the same time provide me with the live coverage from CTV so that I would know about the clashes and the places they take place. CTV was the only Canadian news agency that reported all the events live.

Nearly midday, when tens of thousands of outraged protesters had already started marching in the streets, I took the subway at Finch. The subway cars were mostly empty, with the exception of a few cops here and there. The announcements were talking about the “normal operations but with major delays due to security concerns.” At Sheppard station, a massive number of people entered the subway, many of whom appeared to be going to join the fellow protesters downtown.

A small and friendly group of student protesters who saw me programming my camera approached me. “School reporter?” said Jennifer an Osgoode Hall student. “Else he’d have a yellow identification card” added Tommy, an aerospace student at U of T. “You got it” I replied smiling. The rest of group included Martin and David – both law students from Osgoode Hall. The group was protesting HST and Harper’s minority government. About twenty minutes later, the subway stopped halfway at Bloor Station – an apparent attempt to stop more protestors from joining the crowd.

“We will crawl to union station if we have to” said Tommy. At this point, most of the crowd seemed even more determined to join the dissent.

THE PROTEST
The Theory of the Watchman argues that people in charge of law enforcement may not have the same ideology or mentality as the people they watch. I think that this theory was applied over the Summit weekend: over 22,000 law enforcement officers were drawn from across Canada. Of the riot police I interviewed, all were either from Alberta or British Columbia. On Saturday, this controversial method proved to be effective as authorities and media called the Toronto Police (non-riot) “incompetent” for not being able to control the crowd. Toronto Police officers were seen in many occasions talking to people, respecting their constitutional right to assemble. They seemed less willing to beat or injure the people that they have to live with everyday for the rest of their lives.

The scenes along my walk from Bloor Street were breathtaking and fascinating: liberals, conservatives, feminists, vegetarians, meat-lovers, environmentalists, business people, lawyers, Christians, Muslims, Jews, immigrants and people with or without status put up a united front. Not a single incident was reported in which people clashed among one another. The protestors’ demands were more varied than the number of attending country leaders in the Summit, but one thing was clear: People were unhappy with the government, its (indirectly elected) Prime Minister, its unelected Senators, and more importantly, unhappy with the ridiculous cost of the Summit.

John was navigating me through the area by phone. Hours after marching around downtown, interviewing individuals and witnessing the peaceful protests I began to stop at a heated showdown. The protesters, who were well away from the “G20 Security Zone,” were hesitant in backing down. “Hey! You! Be careful they only attack people with cameras,” said Melissa. I was reluctant to listen to her, given the fact that the protestors were not advancing or being violent, and that since the riot police were very slowly advancing. At this point, things turned around and all hell broke loose.

The riot police started attacking people like animals. They started advancing very rapidly, alongside another group of riot police–that had just suddenly showed up–beating people from another side. The crowd resisted. Splashes of blood were spilling from a protester’s head. A third group of riot police approached from another direction.

A cop violently grabbed me, ripping off my shirt. The first baton aimed for my camera, effectively breaking it into pieces. That cop’s second move was to smash my camera with his foot. It seemed like a procedure – a very structured, well-thought procedure. I managed to get away. As I ran back I watched people being dragged on their faces against the pavement. As they “arrest” you, at least four to five cops would sit on you, strip you and take off your shoes.

The ground was filled with drops of blood. A cop car was set ablaze. I could not verify whether the action was as a result of police provocation, out of dubious intent, or simply an action that was aimed at distracting the police so the innocent civilians could get away. I heard gunshots at this point. I could see the police rising what is similar to a machine gun against the crowd. Some reports said that the gunshots came from the “rubber and real bullets burning inside the police cruiser” while others reported it was from a special weapon that dispenses gas and is supposed to “shock the protesters.” My camera and my phone were gone. After this point, I was just there to protest against the police crime and brutality. People were violently beaten with clubs, and many were badly hurt – all so that some international guests could have a beer and watch the game in peace.

Further north, people had gathered in a small park. People there were not shouting or advancing – simply just standing and waving signs in attempt to be heard by the government and the world. It was not long before the line of riot police approach quickly behind their shields. From time to time the shields would go away and a few groups of thugs would come out quickly to arrest individuals in the most horrifying manner. When asked about “which people they choose to arrest,” Security Analyst Allen Bell replied: “they look for leaders, and the people that look suspicious.” Apparently young men, women in shorts and tank tops who stand there with tiny cameras or cell-phones translate into “vicious leaders” and “troublemakers” to the “law” enforcement of this nation.

I witnessed hundreds of incidents in which police acted violently, illegally and criminally on that day. In one case, a riot police tried to provoke peaceful protesters yards away by yelling: “SHOW ME what you got, show me the power, pussy!” Thankfully we managed to take his picture and keep it in our possession.

CANADIAN MEDIA AND THEIR “COVERAGE” OF THE EVENTS
Being out on the streets caused many protesters missed was the shameless media “coverage” of the events and the authorities’ response of the crackdown on dissent. David Miller called the protesters “criminals” adding “that’s all I really can think of” during a live interview with CTV. While watching his people being beaten up and dragged against the rough pavement he added “these people are not from Toronto. They are outsiders, coming here to make trouble.” CTV’s security analyst repeated called the civilians “anarchists”
– all tens of thousands of them!

Outrageously, on June 27, CBC News reported “150 arrests” while subtly quoting Integrated Security Unit. The Associated Press reported “over 400 arrests.” Some international reports reported about 500 arrests.

While CBC is a famous player when it comes to criticizing and condemning crackdowns on protests continents away in Iran or Israel, they seem to have their tongues gotten away by the cat when it comes to the violent crackdowns right here on their doorsteps.

Among Canadian news agencies, one thing was common: None of them dared to criticize the violent suppression of people, or to provide an unbiased coverage. They all seemed too focused on a suspicious (yet very, very small) group of people sporting black.

SUNDAY – JUNE 27 POLICE KIDNAPPING AND RAIDS
By Sunday, I had recuperated and was able to get another camera. Before the day had even begun, the Associated Press reported that police had raided a university building and rounded up hundreds of protesters. In addition, AP reported that, “Plainclothes police jumped out of an unmarked van, grabbed a protester off the street and whisked him away in the vehicle.” In early afternoon, before I made it to Bloor and Spadina, the police had violently crushed the crowd that included bicyclists and a group of 16-year-old girls.

POSSIBLE COVERT MISSIONS: DID THE GOVERNMENT USE PROVOCATEURS?
On Monday, June 28, the National Post called the Black Bloc “Stephan Harper’s best political friend today.” AP reported that, “Harper suggested the violence justified the controversial cost. ‘I think it goes a long way to explaining why we have the kind of security costs around these summits that we do.’”

Some may find the idea of police dressed as protesters and insurgents appalling, unbelievable, preposterous or even fictional. However, police provocateurs have been used before and it’s entirely possible that they were among the Black Bloc. In Quebec at Montebello, the riot police dressed as protesters and tried to get other protesters to become violent. In Toronto, the police did come out as plainclothes individuals beating, seizing and arresting people – what would stop them from taking it a step further?

Canadian news agencies seem to have completely blanked out the existence of plainclothes
police, and the amount of violence they exercised. On Sunday, we witnessed a massive number of plain/ordinary cars driven by police officers driving carelessly provoking the drivers and people. In one case one of them almost ran over a mother and her baby in the stroller. And while the police were allowed drive unsafely through the streets, the individuals seemed to be free to loot.

AFTERMATH: STOPPING THE MOMENTUM
Unlike the common belief that the Canadian government is amateur when it comes to power establishment and retention, the Canadian government is an expert in identifying dangers to its kingdom. They are taking all the necessary steps in order to make sure that the Summit protest remains an isolated incident, and that there will never be another act of defiance or another mass dissent – including those aimed at bringing more democracy to Canada.

Unsurprisingly, Barak Obama failed to issue any statement of condemnation regarding the violent crackdown of the protesters in Toronto. The American government is famous for issuing timely condemnations of Middle Eastern nations (in particular Iran) when it comes to protests as small as 150 people, yet they seem to overlook brutal clampdowns in their neighboring nation. Obama showed that while he may be a compassionate friend to the people of his nation, he is no friend of the Canadian people–just friends with the unelected, bureaucratic Canadian government.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair promised that the police will continue the crackdown on the “criminals” and that they “will investigate every crime committed at the Summit and track down and charge all those responsible.” Meanwhile, many voices across Canada are calling the country “a police state.” On Monday June 28, thousands of people gathered outside

Toronto’s police headquarters to protest the unjust police operation and to try to persuade the police to release the political prisoners. Many protestors have accused the police for illegal conduct. “The only violence against humanity …. Was committed exclusively by the police” a protestor said in an online. Thousands of protestors, including many students who were able to escape false imprisonments, are outraged at the bias Canadian media- and are demanding an explanation.

“[The government] took our city to hold a meeting and bullied us out of the core, damaging
the commerce of thousands of merchants and inconveniencing the entire population.” the Star said.

Throughout the protests the overcast sky chose to rain a few times. In the end a heavy and symbolic rain fell upon the city and Harper’s reign – washing the streets and its cover clean. By the time the rain was done, everything was clearer – not just to the Canadians but also to the global community.

Do you have pictures, comments or complains, or launching a class action lawsuit – email me at Raynold.Ryerson@hotmail.com

The radical roots of Pride

As Pride Toronto bans the term “Israeli Apartheid” from this year’s march, Christine Beckermann looks back on the radical roots of the gay liberation movement, and how the rights we have today didn’t come without a fight—or radical politics.

This summer will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Pride Day celebrations in Toronto. For young people who may be heading out to their first Pride, it would be easy to think that the history of the struggle for LGBT rights has been an onward and upward advance of rational ideas over bigotry and hatred; that through reasoned argument, society and the state have come to accept the case for equal rights.

In fact, the struggle for queer rights has been a struggle with advances and setbacks, and the politics at the heart of the struggle at different periods have been critical.

While there is an early and vibrant history of people fighting for equality for homosexuals that was developed primarily in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these struggles came to an end with the rise of fascism and Stalinism in the 1930s. Even after the defeat of Nazi Germany, there was a conservative climate in many countries epitomized by McCarthyism in the U.S. This climate meant that groups that formed around gay equality in this period, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, tended to be very cautious in their outlook and focused on education and gaining respectability.

It took the social upheaval sparked by the Black civil rights movement to start to break through this conservative climate and it was at the height of the student, antiwar, women’s liberation and Black power movements that the modern gay rights movement burst onto the scene.

There are two major events that mark the start of the modern fight for gay liberation in Canada. The riots which took place at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City on June 28, 1969 set off a radical movement for gay liberation in the U.S. which had impacts in Canada, Europe and other countries around the world. And the bathhouse raids in Toronto in February 1981 brought the fight for gay rights militantly into the streets here.

Stonewall

The police raid which took place at the Stonewall bar was nothing unusual. Raids were a regular feature at gay bars at the time. In the preceding three weeks, five other New York bars had been raided. These raids generally created more fear than resistance.

But what turned Stonewall into a touchstone for a new movement was the reaction of the patrons that night. Police were used to violent confrontations with students, blacks, antiwar and other protestors, but they expected gays and lesbians to just submit to the humiliation and harassment of the raids.

Instead, the patrons who were kicked out of the bar that night, many of whom were involved in the antiwar or other movements at the time, started to fight back. Rey “Sylvia Lee” Rivera, a drag queen who was at Stonewall the night of the riot described what happened: “I don’t know if it was the customers or if it was the police, but that night everything just clicked. Everybody was like, ‘Why the fuck are we doing all this for? Why should we be chastised? Why do we have to pay the Mafia all this kind of money to drink in a lousy fuckin’ bar? And still be harassed by the police?’ It didn’t make any sense. The people at them bars, especially at the Stonewall, were all involved in other movements. And everybody was like, ‘We got to do our thing. We’re gonna go for it!’

“When they ushered us out, they very nicely put us out the door. There we were standing across the street… But why? Everybody’s looking at each other. Suddenly the nickels, dimes, pennies and quarters started flying. ‘You already got your payoff and here’s some more!’”

Rivera described the riot as beautiful and exciting. “I’m out there being a revolutionary for everybody else, and now it’s time to do it for my own people”.

The police were completely caught off guard and forced to retreat back into the Stonewall bar. The Tactical Patrol Force was called in to control the mob, which was now using a parking meter as a battering ram. As the patrol force advanced, the crowd did not disperse, but instead doubled back and reformed behind the riot police. For the next several nights, the crowd would return in ever increasing numbers, handing out leaflets and rallying themselves. By the end of the weekend, the Stonewall bar was burnt out, but the modern gay liberation movement was born.

After the riots, an informal committee of people from Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society met to organize a march which drew out somewhere between 500 and 2,000 protestors. The march committee started holding meetings and decided that they needed a name for themselves. Martha Shelley, a lesbian activist who was part of the committee, isn’t sure who came up with the name Gay Liberation Front, but remembers pounding her fist on the table and yelling in exultation, “That’s it! We’re the Gay Liberation Front!” Shelley says “GLF was it because it was like the National Liberation front of North Vietnam – the Vietcong. They were like David fighting against Goliath, fighting for their nation and for the liberation of their people. We were all against the war, at least all of us in GLF.”

The GLF was not only dedicated to gay rights, but also to the broader social ideals which dominated the 1960s, including peace, equality and economic justice. Between 1969 and 1972, the GLF was an influential force, and grew to more than 80 chapters across the United States and abroad.

The GLF in the UK produced a manifesto in 1971 which talked about how gay people are oppressed, beginning with the family, through schools, the church, media, employment and on and on. The first aim in the manifesto was “to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression.” This would be done in alliance with the fight for women’s liberation.

The politics of the new gay liberation movement were completely intertwined with the politics of the broader left at the time.

In Canada the gay rights movement was very active in the decade following Stonewall, from the first gay rights march which saw 100 people rally in Ottawa in 1971, to the fight against antigay bigot Anita Bryant’s visit to Toronto, to the defence of members of the Body Politic collective after they were charged under obscenity laws for printing an article called “Men Loving Boys Loving Men.”

Bathhouse raids

But the key event that brought the LGBT movement in Canada massively into the streets came in February 1981 when police raided four gay bathhouses in downtown Toronto, arresting nearly 268 men and charging them under the “bawdy house” section of the criminal code. It was the largest mass arrest in Canada since the October Crisis in 1970.

People who were arrested that night described the brutality and violence of the police. People were physically assaulted and verbally abused by homophobic cops. After a group of men had been corralled into the showers in one bathhouse, a cop remarked that it was too bad that the pipes in the shower room couldn’t be hooked up with gas instead of water, harking back to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. George Hislop, a leader in the gay rights movement at the time, described the behaviour of the police as “gestapo-like” and the police destruction of the establishments was so bad that one of them never reopened.

The arrests had an immediate effect, politicizing and galvanizing the gay rights movement here. The night after the arrest, over 3,000 people joined in a protest on Yonge Street which marched down to 52 Division, chanting “Fuck You 52.” The march then moved on to Queen’s Park to protest the Conservative government’s inaction on updating the Human Rights code to include sexual orientation.

Participants in the march described the anger and intensity of the crowd. When the police tried to block protestors from turning onto Dundas Street to march to 52 Division, protestors swarmed through. And when a streetcar tried to push through the march, protestors began pushing it and rocking it, breaking a window before the driver finally decided to stay put.

Two weeks later, another march was held, this time drawing 5,000 people. And on March 6, a Gay Freedom Rally was held, effectively becoming Toronto’s first pride event.

The responses to the Stonewall and bathhouse raids reflected a movement and a community that had had enough, and that was no longer willing to sit back. People’s anger and frustration poured into the streets, and into a new movement which would pave the way for many of the rights which we have today.

These rights have not come easily, and this history of ordinary people who were inspired by other groups fighting against oppression, and who saw their liberation as being part of a larger struggle, should not be lost or sanitized out of Pride.

This article originally appeared at rabble.ca on May 28, 2010.

Technological disconnect

Vanessa Santilli

I am extremely connected.

On a daily basis, I usually check my three e-mail accounts multiple times and take my cell phone with me wherever I go. It’s a rare occasion when I don’t log into Facebook every day.

Planning a trip to the Dominican Republic for a week, I didn’t think about how disconnected from technology I was going to be. But when my travel agent told me that my friend and I would only have 15 minutes of free internet access to share per day, it started to sink in. My worry only increased when we were told about the high cost of calling home. With calls costing upwards of $40 for only a few minutes, I was going to be making one collect call when I arrived and that was going to be it.

How was I going to survive being so removed from technology? To be honest, I thought it almost impossible.

At the airport, I swear I felt the buzz of a cell phone on vibrate in my carry-on bag. Call it a technological mirage of the senses. But upon arriving in sunny Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, the technological world was the last thing on my mind. Instead of friend requests and new messages in my inbox, my attention was focused on the ocean, tanning and the beautiful scenery.

The first few days I was so busy, I didn’t even stop to think about missing cyberspace. I’d log in to tell my loved ones that I was alive and that was it. I thought I was going to be like a junkie who quits cold turkey. But it was just the opposite. I felt like nothing was missing from my day (although I’ll admit, being in a tropical paradise might have played some part in this).

‘Who needs technology?’ I thought to myself. I am now independent and free from the shackles of the World Wide Web. But then came the stumbling block. One day, I logged into Facebook to message my boyfriend to say hello. My friend had used half of our allotted time so I had roughly seven minutes left. Little did I know that Facebook gives you a privacy test when you log in from another country. It displays random photos from your friend’s photo albums, making you identify which friend the photo belongs to. With time running out, an angry guest screaming at the concierge beside us for his lost luggage and photos with obscure faces being displayed, everything seemed to be against me. The message had to wait until the next day.

I felt cut off. I couldn’t e-mail. I couldn’t call. I couldn’t even send a text. It was an unsettling feeling. The freedom I was feeling had now become restrictive.

The next day – once I passed the privacy test – I began to enjoy being cut off. Sometimes you need time off to be in your own space, free from distraction. I discovered that I didn’t miss the internet. It was the people that I missed. I missed hearing their voices and seeing their faces, not scrolling through their online profiles.

Now that I’m back from my trip, I have to admit, my time spent on the internet is less than half of what it used to be. To be honest, I just don’t see the point. If I want to speak with someone, I’ll call them. While social messaging tools were created to bring us closer together, more often than not, they push us further apart. We communicate without actually interacting. We speak without actually saying anything.

Contrary to my original notions, a little disconnect is not such a bad thing after all. In fact, at the risk of getting tossed out of Generation Y, I would even go so far as to say it’s a good thing.

‘Maternal health’ plan ignores women’s health needs

Harper’s signature initiative for G8 mired by political controversy

Richa Gomes

From June 25 to 27, eight of the world’s leading economic powers will convene for the G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario to discuss the future of the international community and develop approaches to respond to global crises. Women and children’s health represents the Harper government’s “signature initiative” – a maternal health plan that will include contraception, but has no place for abortion.

Opposition parties, women’s activists and even U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, accuse the Conservative government of tainting their decision with conservative ideology and failing to consider the bigger picture with an objective viewpoint.

Earlier last month, in Quebec’s Le Soleil, Brigitte Breton’s editorial contended that the “Conservatives don’t have the right to impose their vision on the international scene.”

Clinton is also accused of expressing her personal opinion, according to an interview with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon on CTV’s Question Period. “I think Mrs. Clinton expressed not her government’s position; she expressed her personal point of view,” said Cannon in response to Clinton’s urge to address reproductive health, which includes discussing access to contraception and abortion.

In a La Presse column, Alain Dubuc argued the government’s stance illustrates a shift to the right in Canadian society. However, an EKOS survey provided exclusively to the Globe and Mail reveals that the majority of Canadians are in favour of abortion rights: “52 per cent of Canadians describe themselves as ‘pro-choice;’ 27 per cent say they are ‘pro-life’.”

NDP MP John Rafferty questioned this “disconnect” between the Canadian abortion policy and the government’s decision to refuse financial aid for abortion services in the developing world.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda clarified that “Canada’s refusal to fund abortions applies only to the G8 package and won’t change other aid projects.” While Oda asserted that “Canada has never funded a procedure that included abortion”, she said it will continue to honour its current commitments. Until December of last year, these commitments have included unrestricted funding to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which offers contraceptives and access to abortion. But whether the government will renew its funding to family planning organizations that provide abortion services remains uncertain.

Last month, Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth explicitly told a group of international women’s activists in a meeting sponsored by Ruth on Parliament Hill to “shut the fuck up on this issue.”

She said, “If you push it, there’ll be more backlash,” which might mean a cut in funding to organizations like the IPPF, which provides abortion services with government funding. “Canada is a still a country with free and accessible abortion. Leave it there.”

Ruth advised those present that continuing to press the issue was not the correct strategy to effect change or progress on the maternal health issue as a whole.

While opposition parties and agencies continue the contentious debate over Harper’s maternal health initiative, many express concern over the divisive atmosphere in Canada over abortion.

David Morley, the president of Save the Children Canada said, “I’m worried that this important global initiative is going to get derailed by domestic Canadian politics.”

Aid organizations are urging Canadians to look past the Conservative government’s decision to withhold funding for abortions and to focus on the government’s decision to champion maternal health in its G8 initiatives. They insist there are straightforward strategies to reduce maternal and infant mortality through nutritional supplements, vaccinations and contraceptive methods. Family planning is not limited to the provision of safe abortions.

“The abortion issue, in the big picture, is a small part,” adds Morley.

The World Health Organization (WHO) cites that every year, complications during pregnancy or childbirth account for more than half a million deaths worldwide. Unsafe abortions consist of 14 per cent of maternal deaths worldwide. Access to emergency care and the help of trained professionals can help prevent and reduce maternal deaths.  According to the WHO, in only 40 per cent of sub-Saharan African cases are mothers attended to by a trained nurse, midwife or doctor. “The key obstacle is pregnant women’s lack of access to quality care before, during and after childbirth.”

Jim Abbott, Oda’s parliamentary secretary announced that the government plans to address this “key obstacle.” Canada’s maternal health initiative consists of “strengthening medical systems and improving access to vaccinations and proper nutrition.” These are the points aid organizations are calling attention to, rather than putting all focus on the controversial abortion issue.

The head of the Canadian International Development Agency elaborated on the maternal health initiatives with specific examples, which include “building an obstetrical care hospital in Kandahar, polio eradication efforts in Afghanistan, helping rural poor people in Bangladesh and providing simple nutritional packages for mothers and children where needed.”

Harper’s signature initiative might exclude abortion, but its conservative nature and that it focuses on urgent healthcare needs in developing areas appeals to the African nations.

Many African countries are culturally conservative. Abortion is restricted in more than 90 per cent of African countries, and banned in 14. Illegal abortions are a booming business; the number keeps rising even though cases are reported to the police.

A representative for Maria Stopes Tanzania, which runs legal abortion clinics in the region said, “The unsafe abortion market is huge in Africa.”

They’re cheap, hushed and quick.

Advertisements for illegal “fly-by-night” abortions are pasted on the walls of police stations, government offices and poor communities. Only a cell phone number is provided so that those behind the operations remain anonymous and escape punishment.

Deadly backroom abortions in Africa cost the lives of 25,000 women every year. The methods are unsanitary, painful and life threatening.

By providing women with contraceptive options, the Conservative government argues that they can help to reduce the number of maternal deaths, the amount of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies, and decrease the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Harper affirmed that though they have “closed the door on the abortion part,” they would not be “closing doors against any options, including contraception.”

Join the People First rally and march against during the G20 Summit in Toronto. Women’s organizations and maternal health advocates will lead the march: Saturday, June 26 at 1:00 p.m. at Queen’s Park.

Next Page »