Whose Spirit? Whose Security?

First Published on October 3rd in The Imprint as "The SPP Won't Let Me Be" Dan Kellar - Columnist
   The CP Spirit Train is right now crossing Canada spreading Olympic
Spirit with every carbon emitting chug of its engine.  What would
happen to your Olympic Spirit if you knew that the Canadian government
has signed a deal that will allow American troops into Canada at the
request of a premier? 

Furthermore, this agreement will see these unaccountable troops in B.C.
undertaking “crowd control” measures on the poor, the compassionate,
the angry, and the dispossessed (I think that covers everyone) in
Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics.  

The victims have already been criminalized for not having the black
heartedness of the oligarchic corporate elite — their homes and lands
ripped away under the premise of an unending development paradigm that
is proving unsustainable — as is witnessed by the financial meltdown
now being experienced.

What will happen to your Olympic Spirit when you see the police use
aggressive tactics against non-violent protestors on Thanksgiving Day
when the train arrives at the Cooksville GO train station in
Mississauga?  The police response to Spirit Train protests in Vancouver
and Edmonton is a great indicator of their willingness to protect their
monetary overlords.

The point of commonality between the military agreement and the Olympic
Spirit Train protests is the repressive actions of police which have
been intensifying since the unfortunate events of September 2001.  This
is a Fascist-Soviet style crackdown being choreographed by the security
working group of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and
which is not being discussed in the legislatures in Mexico, Canada, or
the United States.

The normalisation of military force and the militarization of the
police force have been accepted by the North American masses as a
natural and unthreatening response to terror and the fear of the
unknown. The problem with this is that the security culture is allowed
to permeate through society and we only trust the police to keep us
safe.  We passively suspect everyone in our community of some sort of
treachery by allowing video cameras on every street corner.  What
percentage of your neighbours are you on a first name basis with?  Cops
never break the laws themselves, right? The government works for us,
right?

Well, just in case they did not teach the following in your stagnant
high school civics classes, or you did not hear about the following
through our corporate and “free market” controlled media, check out the
incidences at Oka and Ipperwash in the 1990s, the kidnappings and
freezing murders of First Nations in Saskatchewan, or the repeated
attacks by police on the critical mass bike ride in Winnipeg.

Alternatively, do a quick search on the crackdown on protestors at the
WTO talks in Quebec City in 2001; the arrest of 18 men in Toronto who
were held for years in confinement and denied proper legal process. You
could also look into the illegal deportation of at least five Canadian
citizens who were shipped overseas and tortured as terrorists. Or you
could investigate the case of Omar Khadar, a Canadian, a child soldier,
and the only Western national still being held in torturous conditions
by the American military at Guantanamo Bay.

Finally, to bring this back to the SPP, look up the August 2007 SPP
protests in Montebello, Quebec where over 3,000 police surrounded and
attacked 1,500 protestors (unions, students, poverty and environmental
activists, First Nations, and others) with rubber bullets, tasers, and
chemical weapons.  The crimes these concerned citizens had committed
were arriving with a well-researched resistance to the anti-democratic
tri-lateral agreement, and outing three agent provocateurs the police
had sent undercover in to the crowds with masks and rocks, all in an
effort to incite a riot.  Perhaps if there was violence to broadcast,
the media would not have to report on the actual issues?

These examples and countless more show that police forces are not to be
blindly trusted; they need to have oversight and be held accountable
for their actions.  The deep integration of security policies being
accomplished through the SPP will only serve to increase this sort of
police state.  This harmonization will fortify the power of the few
over the many as police are granted amnesty for their actions which
protect the greedy elite.

What is happening now in Canada is eerily similar to the tactics used
against Americans in Seattle at WTO talks, or more recently at the last
few RNC and DNC conferences near election time.  The merger is
occurring right under our noses.

To be once again seen as a just and fair society our security agencies
have to take responsibility for their role in torture.  Our federal
leaders who are misrepresenting their constituents and Canadian
sovereignty must withdrawal from the SPP and other privatization-based
trade agreements.  The corporatocracy who are choosing an
anti-democratic profit model at the cost of human rights must be
brought to justice.

Democracy is an active process; apathy and ignorance to binding
agreements that work to undermine individual freedoms, such as the SPP,
must be exposed and opposed.  Next time you need your spirit lifted,
think of the positive change that will occur in the world when the
resistance to the hegemonic corporate oligarchy succeeds in the
reorganization of equity and the redistribution of wealth.