Video shows undercover agents assaulting man filming them at Montreal G20 protest

Police "agents provocateurs" attempt to infiltrate family-friendly march in Montreal; MPP Amir Khadir denounces police tricks

Montreal, 3 July 2010 -- A man arrested at Thursday's march against police repression around the G20 Summit has come forward to reveal that he was assaulted by undercover "agents provocateurs" when he attempted to film them.

While 1,000 Montrealers, including many parents with young children, marched to denounce the abusive police treatment of G20 protestors, Montreal police apparently attempted to introduce agent provocateurs into the march. The provocateurs were spotted trying to enter the march on Sherbrooke Street, but were forced out by attentive march organizers. Two videos of the group of provocateurs were posted on youtube on Friday:





"They were big guys, looking like thugs. In fact, they looked very much like the police provocateurs who were caught on video carrying rocks at the protest against the Security and Prosperity Partnership in Montebello,
Quebec in August 2007," stated Scott Weinstein, who decided to bicycle over to film the group when informed of their presence.

When he caught up to them, the provocateurs were walking one block east of the march, on St-Dominique, parallel to most of the children and babies who tended to be near the end of the march.

"The police had no business playing these games and threatening violence, especially when so many children were present," explained Weinstein, a health care worker and photographer. "Their strategy is totally unacceptable."

The group quickly surrounded Weinstein, grabbed him and attempted to take his camera from him. He refused to let go. They dragged Weinstein to the sidewalk and kneed him until he could no longer hold onto the camera. "I knew they wanted to erase the evidence, especially since I didn't hide I was filming them. I made sure not to touch them, instead I tried to protect myself in a fetal position and screamed for help."

Janet Cleveland, a psychologist, was leaving the march and returning home when she heard screams. "I saw 5 or 6 burly young guys dressed in black forming a tight circle around someone, holding his hands behind his back and pushing his face to the pavement while he screamed for help. It was scary - my first thought was that they might be skinheads beating somebody up. There was no way to tell the difference. But they told me that they were police and that I should stay away."

Cleveland stayed to watch as Weinstein was forced into a police car and then alerted Quebec Solidaire MPP Amir Khadir, who also attended the march. Khadir intervened with the police immediately after the arrest to denounce the arbitrary, abusive and illegal character of Weinstein's arrest.

"Quebec citizens expect the police to respect the democratic rights of people who demonstrate", stated Khadir. "Dissent and opposition are not only permitted in this country, but must also be protected and celebrated. I am particularly proud of people like Scott who protest peacefully to denounce the abuse and violence of police repression in Toronto. It is unacceptable that Montreal police use the same tricks that led to the excesses of the security agencies in Toronto," he stated.

Three police ethics commission reports in April 2010 found that filming the police is legal.

Weinstein was released the same evening but faces bogus charges of assault with a weapon. According to a police spokesperson, his bicycle was the weapon. However, as events revealed, Weinstein's real "weapon" was his camera: when police returned it to him, all video and photo material had been erased.

Luckily for Weinstein, a bystander caught the incident on camera and posted it to youtube. Weinstein is trying to get in touch with this person.

From rabble.ca

Photographs like this may soon become illegal!

Yep! According to some proposed legislation currently "going through the process" apparently I could get up to ten years in jail for taking a photograph like the above and publishing it in future!

Read Terror Law and Photography on photojournalist Marc Vallee's blog.

Worrying implications indeed!

As an article on Indymedia so succinctly puts it:

"If a police officer behaves badly and oppressively we [activists] have been known to criticise them on the internet. Furthermore it has always been commonsense to jot down police collar numbers on demos and take photos a) for legal reasons to identify police breaking the law, to identify police behaving well, to help clarify matters in both criminal and civil courts. Intelligence on police gathered by activists has helped to acquit innocent activists, enabled activists to sue police and correctly identify the culprits. None of this has ever been used in order to use violence against the police let alone terrorism but we can hazard a guess that they might use this proposed legislation against us. What if MI5 infiltrate a group and that agent is discovered? Will it become an offence to warn other activists? Will it be an offence to after having suspicions raised about a fellow activist to make a few enquiries if the “activist” is an undercover cop?"

And there's some related info on Indymedia here.

At the very least this proposed legislation will constitute yet another encroachment on individual freedoms in this country whilst at the same time giving even greater power and freedom from accountability to the cops, thereby edging us one step closer to becoming a true Police State.

As well as making the job of the photojournalist that much more difficult than it already is.

Also posted at yet another blog

Britain... the Surveillance State

From The Guardian website, by Henry Porter...

The police ANPR database, which the Guardian today reveals will retain information from 50 million road journeys a day for five years, is a system that was never sanctioned or debated in parliament and which threatens the freedom of movement, assembly and protest.

Presented simply as a tool to fight crime and terror by the police, it will become one of the cornerstones of the surveillance state, and will give the police far too much power to track, in real time, the movement of people who may be bound for legitimate demonstrations and protest rallies.

Linked with the government's proposals to seize all our communications data to be announced in the Queen's speech this autumn, this move signifies a profound change in our society and an irreversible transfer of power from free individuals to the state.

It is not difficult to imagine how the system will be used in times of industrial and political strife. We have already seen how police prevented legitimate demonstration during the first years of the Iraq war and have illegally obstructed protests against the arms trade, and are currently harassing accredited press photographers going about their legitimate business. These are hints of what will come when the police can track the movement of all vehicles, particularly if harsher economic times are accompanied by unrest.

The revelations in the Guardian today come from freedom of information requests made to the Home Office. In this context it is important to know that the dealings and discussions in Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which has been largely responsible for pushing the ANPR system, remain hidden from public scrutiny. Because Acpo has limited company status and is not a public body, it does not have to comply with freedom of information laws.

Police officers keep on insisting that these powers will not be abused, but revelations made by another FOI request last week show that the police use surveillance techniques to bully and harass citizens. In Wales, a team of 11 officers took part in a surveillance operation against a 49-year-old police dog handler who claimed he was suffering from depression, a fact established by the Police Medical Appeal Board. Officers from two forces watched his home for months and filmed him at a cost of £100,000.

If the police have such little regard for the rights and privacy of one of their own, it's difficult to imagine that they will treat the public with any more respect.

The surveillance of all journeys is a very serious move indeed and it tells us a lot about how far Labour has advanced a state of total and unwavering surveillance; and also how little parliament has done to protect our rights. It seems incredible that the great issues of control and privacy that are obviously involved in the ANPR system were never discussed in parliament. That a secretive and unaccountable organisation like ACPO can press ahead behind parliament's back is a measure of our failed politics, at the very least of the failure of mechanisms of restraint and scrutiny.

In these days of enormous daily distractions – of freakish weather, banks failing and general economic turbulence – it is difficult to concentrate on the programme to convert Britain into a totally controlled and watched state. But we can all be sure that it is happening under our noses.

The penny has dropped with the Trades Union Congress, which will surely have much to say about the possibility of police watching and intercepting those on their way to take part in legitimate industrial action and protest.

Last week the TUC voted to resist the ID card scheme and consider legal action to uphold civil liberties. The move came after aviation workers – among the first group to be compelled to register for ID cards – placed a motion before congress. The motion states:

Congress sees absolutely no value in the scheme or in improvements to security that might flow from this exercise and feels that aviation workers are being used as pawns in a politically led process which might lead to individuals being denied the right to work because they are not registered or chose not to register in the scheme.

This represents a considerable victory for reason and democracy, and the important part is that the vote was not carried simply because the ID card might deny people the right to work. Broader civil liberties considerations were at the heart of this debate.

With parliament dead from the neck up when it comes to issues of liberty, it is difficult to know how the ANPR surveillance and the equally important proposal to seize data concerning all phone calls, text messages and internet connections, can be resisted. But resist we must if we are to save our free society.

Cops Cover Climate Campers!

Climate Change is an issue that's affecting us all (whether we acknowledge it or not) and one about which we should all, rightly, be concerned.
Increasingly we are seeing the effects of climate change impacting peoples' lives all over the world and, unless something dramatic is done, this situation will only get worse. Nor is this something that we can afford to simply put on the back burner for future generations to deal with.

Ultimately it may prove that to alleviate the more serious effects of climate change the measures that have so far been introduced in terms of reducing carbon emissions, "saving energy" and seeking alternative energy sources etc are insufficient... too little, too late.
The measures that government and the corporate world are introducing, or have planned to introduce, are neither enough or go far enough (or even quickly enough), and in some cases may actually be counter-productive by creating worse problems than they're intended to solve (one classic example being the development of "biofuels"). There is also a very real concern that climate change issues are simply being used as another angle to generate yet more massive profits for "big business" (and by the political parties purely to gain popular support) with little genuine interest in what's really at stake.

In reality our current lifestyle, certainly in the "developed world", is likely to prove unsustainable and we shall all be forced into a far-reaching reappraisal.
Of course, this is not a "popular" message for politicians to have to convey, nor is there much prospect in it of endlessly increasing profits for the commercial world. A return to a simpler, more sustainable and less energy-intensive lifestyle would almost certainly impact the world economy in an unprecedented manner and therefore, for the "movers and shakers", is a message to be avoided at any cost.
So it may prove that the initiative for real change will have to come from the grassroots level, with the ordinary general public driving forward demands to tackle climate change as a matter of extreme urgency.

And indeed this is already happening with initiatives such as the Camp for Climate Action (aka Climate Camp).

Climate Camp is an event organised by ordinary people at an extreme grassroots level that has occurred for the past two years and provides a space (for about a week or so) where people can come together and experience sustainable living for themselves, learning more about the issues involved, skill-sharing, and participating in activities that help to increase awareness amongst the population at large of the issues surrounding climate change.

In 2006 the first Climate Camp was located near Drax in Yorkshire, the largest coal-fired power station in the UK. 2007, and Climate Camp was to be found near Heathrow, where there are plans afoot to ravage an entire swathe of countryside and displace local communities to expand the runways, opening the way for ever more pollution-producing flights.

And its just been announced (last Monday, 3rd March) that this year's Climate Camp will be at Kingsnorth in Kent, site of a proposed new coal-fired power station.

The Climate Camp itself (finding the space and creating the infrastructure of a large campsite to support hundreds of "Campers" for just over a week or so) is a tremendous undertaking in terms of planning, organisation, and actually "making it happen"... given that its an entirely volunteer effort with no corporate or institutional support. The entire event relies exclusively on ordinary people from vastly different backgrounds and viewpoints working together over a considerable period. The fact that it happens at all is little short of a miracle, and a huge testament to what is achievable when folk put their minds to it.

The first Camp saw 600+ people converging on a field in Yorkshire, the second witnessed well over double that number at a campsite established near Heathrow airport.

A significant amount of planning and prior preparation (and indeed the continual need to find "accords" and "compromises" that must inevitably occur when large numbers of people, each with their own particular viewpoint and way of doing things, come together to achieve a common objective within a non-hierarchical framework) obviously occur in the months leading up to the Camp itself.

Weekend-long meetings (or "gatherings" to use the terminology of the Campers) are hosted at different venues throughout the country, from as far afield as Scotland to the South of England, on a monthly cycle where everyone's welcome to attend and participate in the process of making the Camp happen. And of course all the relevant details of these gatherings (time, date, venue etc) are published beforehand.

The first one I managed to attend this year was at the SUMAC centre in Nottingham which, coincidentally, was the gathering at which the Kingsnorth location for the Camp proved to be the concensus.

However, for me something of a sour note crept into this most recent gathering in the shape of the presence of a police surveillance team!
I can't speak of the previous gatherings this year, but certainly I'd not noticed such a presence at any of the gatherings of the past two years (of which I attended quite a few), and I find this escalation of police monitoring of public assemblies to be quite disturbing in its implications.

In this post I've deliberately spent some time providing a context for these gatherings... they're the manifestation of the extreme concern felt by large numbers of ordinary people about an issue of fundamental importance to society as a whole. They're also a positive manifestaton of the preparedness of ordinary members of the public to acknowledge a personal responsibility to act when government fails to perform, and when the corporate world places profit above more pressing needs.
These gatherings are public; they are announced beforehand; they are peaceful, they are legal. They're well-structured and represent no threat to public order or safety.

Why then the monitoring thereof by police camera teams? And indeed does such monitoring even fall within the remit of the police force?

The first meeting of the weekend started at 1100 on the Saturday (1st March). I arrived (in company of a friend) a few minutes late and immediately observed three uniformed police officers (one of whom was equipped with a camera) loitering outside the front entrance of the SUMAC centre.
Whilst they made no attempt to prevent us entering the centre we were photographed as we approached (note... even before we'd actually entered the premises!).
Conferring with some of the people inside we learned that the police had been present before the announced start time of the first meeting, obviously with the intent of photographing everyone attending. (This raises the interesting question of how, and whether, they would differentiate between those attending the Climate Camp gathering and those visiting SUMAC for purely social purposes?)



At some stage during the course of the day that particular team disappeared. However, when the gathering adjourned for lunch on the Saturday I observed another couple of police (one of whom was equipped with a camera) in an unmarked car parked outside the rear entrance to the centre, again photographing the comings and goings therefrom.
When approached and challenged they denied they were acting in a "covert" manner... clearly forgetting the fact that they were in an unmarked car!



It seems to me that the presence of such police surveillance at public assemblies etc is becoming far more prevalent, and it appears to be almost standard practise now at virtually any demonstration or protest where the policies of the government of the day are being challenged or questioned.
I'm not entirely certain that this is acceptable. As I'm not entirely certain that any legitimate "law & order" interest is being served thereby. It seems to me rather that it is some sort of political agenda that is being served, and the deployment of police resources in such manner is far too redolent of the sort of activity that one would expect to find in a fascist or "police state".

Serious questions need to be asked. Such as, for example, what is the intended use of such photographs? Is it to build up profiles of individuals, their movements, their friends and contacts? And why? As some sort of "evidence" in the event that such people may, at some indeterminate point in the future, possibly participate in an as yet undefined "illegal act"?
Or is it to compile a database of people that may be likely to resist the introduction of some unpopular legislation in the future, or may oppose some future government policy?

Ok, call me paranoid if you wish, but think on this... what if such a "surveillance database" were integrated with the database that will inevitably be created from the ID card scheme that the government is still determined to introduce, albeit by the back door?
Its not too difficult to visualise a situation where, at some point in the not-too-distant future, ID card-related benefits (education, health, welfare, housing, travel etc) will be withheld if you just happen to associate with the wrong people, or just happen to go to the wrong meeting.

This is all just one step too close to the thought police as far as I'm concerned.

Article also posted at:

Fitwatch at Tilting at Windmills
TawNews

Attempted Citizen's Arrest of Bush at UN

Came across the following item on Infoshop News through a link on TawNews. I wonder on what legal grounds the arrest was blocked?

1,000 Attempt Citizen's Arrest of Bush at UN; Blocked by Police, 10 to 12 Arrests

Wednesday, September 26 2007 @ 09:15 AM PDT
Contributed by: Admin
Views: 282

9/25/07

A citizen's arrest warrant has been issued! Please do your duty and see that it is served!

As George Bush made his appearance and speech today at the United Nations in NYC, 1,000 people issued a citizen's arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The day began with twelve separate feeder marches converging from across the city, consisting of perhaps several hundred protesters. The people carried 20 large coffins with them and marched from all five boroughs toward Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza and the UN Building where Bush was speaking. The feeder marches were organized by Arrest Cheney First, the War Resister's League, Witness Against Torture, Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS-NYC) and others.

Police had already set up a protest pen outside of the UN for a rally called by the vanguardist World Can't Wait, and quickly moved to herd the marchers into the pens. When members of the War Resister's League exited the pen to deliver the arrest warrant, police arrested 8 of them and grabbed three or four unaffiliated protesters from the pen as well, at approximately 10:30 am.

Eventually, the original contingent of marchers and several hundred others got tired of the pens and began to march south on Second Avenue toward Washington Square Park. A few attempts were made to march in the street, but police reacted violently, shoving and pushing marchers back onto the sidewalk. In the process, police also seized any megaphones they saw. Several protesters sustained injuries in these encounters, but no arrests were made. In all, about 500 people made their way to Washington Square Park.

The idea of citizen's arrest has its roots in common law, and allows for any citizen to execute an arrest on someone who they witness committing a felony offense. All states in the United States allow for citizen's arrest, except for North Carolina, which follows different statutes. Those undertaking a citizen's arrest can still be held liable in civil or criminal court for any damages they inflict in the process. However, they have full rights to detain and arrest a suspect who they witness in commission of a felony.

Applicable felonies in this case include, but are not limited to: treason, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, perjury, conspiracy malfeasance in office, fraud, embezzlement, and kidnapping.

Under established international and military law, also, the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which, as commander in chief, Bush bears command responsibility for the actions of those under his command as well as for his own policies.

Under the principles of the Nuremburg Trials at the end of World War Two, Bush would be indictable for all four counts established back then:

1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace;

2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace;

3. War crimes;

4. Crimes against humanity.

While the efforts of citizens today to serve an arrest warrant on Bush failed, be advised: the warrant stands. Please do you duty, and try at every opportunity to bring this criminal to justice.

Official Press Release:

ARREST BUSH
www.arrestcheneyfirst.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


ARREST BUSH!
Antiwar Activists to Bring President to Justice at the UN, Tues., Sept. 25

NEW YORK – George Bush will address the United Nations General Assembly on Tues., Sept. 25. A citywide coalition of antiwar activists are preparing to receive him – and bring him to justice.

In the early morning, as New Yorkers are on their way to work, funeral processions will begin simultaneously from different points in the city, bearing coffins toward the UN and converging there at 8:30am. These will symbolize the unrelenting death and suffering caused by the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the illegal detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the network of secret US prisons throughout the world.

At the UN, a group of activists will say, in the name of the citizens of the world, “Arrest Bush!” The War Resisters' League, Witness Against Torture, Movement for a Democratic Society-NYC, and other groups are calling upon concerned citizens to join them on Tues., Sept. 25, to participate in the morning funeral procession and then to Arrest Bush!

For information on starting locations and times of the funeral processions, please email to: arrestbush@gmail.com.

“We must resurrect the dream that created the UN out of the nightmare of World War II. We must show courage, wisdom, and love by acting now to confront a bullying, rogue Superpower which refuses to allow the UN to act in accord with its own charter as world events bring us closer to the threat of expanded warfare and nuclear annihilation. The alarm has sounded. It blares agonizingly in our ears, beckoning conscientious action.”
– Kathy Kelly, Other Lands Have Dreams