Commentary from Larry Solway
I love conspiracy theories. The wackier the better. Like the current air of Bastille-storming that surrounds the Quebec meeting, and recently the Finance Ministers pow-wow in Toronto.
In Toronto we have a police chief who won't tolerate any rubbish from people whose opinions might lead them to civil unrest. He doesn't say it quite so nicely, preferring to refer to many of the protestors as "anarchists!" (The exclamation point is just to emphasize a point and to energize all the rest of us anarchists who won't be throwing stones or hurling imprecations.)
Is Fantino also a conspiracy theory guy? Does he truly believe a horde of suicide bombers are just waiting for the go-ahead?
The Toronto cops were ready for the worst. They ended up, complete with riot gear, ready to repel Julian Fantino's "anarchists." Even if you live within range of the Toronto television signal, you may not have noticed the proclamation by the doughty police chief, the zero-tolerance cop to end all zero-tolerance cops, that he would not tolerate lawlessness during the meeting of the Finance Ministers of the Americas.
Lost in the spotlight given to the Quebec Conference was this conference chaired by our own Finance Minister, that Liberal answer to everything that is going wrong economically. One thing you have to admit about Paul Martin is that he, unlike Jean Chretien, absented himself from, the dizzying list of directorships and stockholding in major companies, anchored by the venerable Canada Steamship Lines, the heart of the Martin fortune.
The larger point is not that Paul Martin comes from money, a whole lot of money, or that Jean Chretien is tap dancing around the issue of his complicity in trying to get a Federal Development Bank loan for one of his cronies. That's all a given.
It is also a given that the economy is held tightly by the barons of Enterprise whose only concern these days seems to be to maintain those tax cuts while beggaring working folks by telling them they have to pull in their belts to fight hard times. All are given.
What has to be the most depressing is that the cops behave, not as out protectors, but as Establishment stooges.
Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Rights Association wrote tellingly, as he always does, in the Globe and Mail op-ed that we must not infringe on the right to protest and to demonstrate.
Of course he believes that there should be some level of reasonable vigilance and preparedness against gratuitous violence, but that neither the police or the government has the right to abrogate our obligation to show our displeasure vocally and in size. (Those were not his words, only my rendering of his thoughts.)
A new low - anarchist-baiting
But with the memory of the RCMP pepper-spray scandal during the anti-Sukarno protests in Vancouver still fresh, the comments by Fantino are particularly painful, egregious, and anti-democratic. He will have to accept responsibility for labelling, perhaps unfairly, all police as suffering from "police mentality," under the influence of which cops are suspicious of everyone who looks different or is in the place they (the cops) think they shouldn't be.
Fantino did use the word "anarchist." I saw him on the CBC News. Nobody put the words in his mouth. I could rewrite the historic cry for liberty with "If this be anarchy..."
We have every right to worry about violence in Quebec City. It will represent wish-fulfillment, not by the protestors, but by the very people who are ready and waiting to repel civil unrest.
Worst of it is that, as in the RCMP Pepper-spray it is clear that the police are following the orders of their political bosses who seem to have become the stalking horses for the trans- national agenda.
So - how's that for conspiracy theory?
P.S. Did you notice how Ian Urquhart trivialized Richard Thomas in the Star on April 4?
Writing about how badly the NDP did in the Muskoka by-election he referred to Thomas as a "local character." As if the only reason this truly great man got all the votes he did was that he is some sort of loveable local guy like the town drunk or a hayseed philosopher. There is no limit to the way the Establishment Press wants to help all of us who can't think for ourselves.
Now it's your turn:
Do you see evidence of growing repression in your community? Is globalization part of a larger picture of citizens losing control?
Tell Straight Goods and see what others are saying...
Then Take the Straight Goods poll...
Posted: April 09, 2001
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