The Last Resort - Eco-Extremism

Sooner or later it was bound to happen.

Guardian enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, writes that if those holding the reins of power choose to treat environmental activists as extremists then so be it.  I suppose we always knew it would come to a fight eventually. The only question was when.

First, the Guardian revealed that counter-terrorism police in south-east England have listed Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the youth climate strikes as forms of “ideological extremism”. Then teachers and officials around the country reported that they had been told, in briefings by the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, to look out for people expressing support for XR and Greenpeace. 

Then the Guardian found a Counter Terrorism Policing guide to the signs and symbols used by various groups. Alongside terrorists and violent extremist organisations, the guide listed Greenpeace, XR, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, CND, the Socialist party, Stop the War and other peaceful green and left organisations. Then the newspaper discovered that City of London police had listed XR as a “key threat” in its counter-terrorism assessment. 

...The police have always protected established power against those who challenge it, regardless of the nature of that challenge. And they have long sought to criminalise peaceful dissent. Part of the reason is ideological: illiberal and undemocratic attitudes infest policing in this country. Part of it is empire-building: if police units can convince the government and the media of imminent threats that only they can contain, they can argue for more funding. 

...But there’s another reason, which is arguably even more dangerous: the nexus of state and corporate power. All over the world, corporate lobbyists seek to brand opponents of their industries as extremists and terrorists, and some governments and police forces are prepared to listen. A recent article in the Intercept seeks to discover why the US Justice Department and the FBI had put much more effort into chasing mythical “ecoterrorists” than pursuing real, far-right terrorism. A former official explained, “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying ‘I wish you’d do something about these rightwing extremists’.” By contrast, there is constant corporate pressure to “do something” about environmental campaigners and animal rights activists.

Think of the federal government's pipeline Stasi set up by Stephen Harper but now in service to the Trudeau government. It's a taxpayer funded secret police service that combines the RCMP, CSIS and private security interests to monitor, intimidate and even strongarm peaceful environmental activists. Even under the supposedly progressive Trudeau peaceful dissent is unacceptable.

It is hard to think of any successful campaign for democracy, justice or human rights that would not now be classed by police forces and the government as an extremist ideology. Without extremists such as Emmeline Pankhurst, who maintained that “the argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics”, Patel would not be an MP. Only men with a certain amount of property would be permitted to vote. There would be no access to justice, no rights for workers, no defence against hunger and destitution, no weekends. 

In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr, subjected to smears very similar to those now directed against XR and other environmental groups, noted: “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?” 

Good citizens cannot meekly accept the death of the living planet. If seeking to defend life on Earth defines us as extremists, we have no choice but to own the label. We are extremists for the extension of justice and the perpetuation of life.

Eventually we all must decide which side we're on. With what we're seeing underway today, the petro-state is an abomination. It is, as some scholars contend, a crime against humanity. The choices are stark. You can acquiesce, you can support it or, on the other hand, you can oppose it.

RCMP + CSIS - Add Water and Stir. Voila, the Stasi Lives Again

They were East Germany's dreaded secret police.   They spied on ordinary East Germans, tapped their phones, intercepted their mail, assessed their 'reliability', used informants, kept dossiers on persons of interest and ordinary citizens alike.  

The hated Stasi fell with the Berlin Wall but they live on - in today's RCMP, the Royal Conservative Mounted Police, Harper's personal security apparatus. Today the RCMP, in conjunction with our official spy agency, CSIS, and the Canadian Border Service Agency, operate a domestic spying network called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, INSET.

And just whose security is INSET enforcing? Yours? Mine? Canada's? Hardly. Don't be naive. They're the taxpayer funded security service of the fossil fuelers and especially the tar sanders, corporations like Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.  Oh yeah, and the Peoples Republic of China.

71-year old Leslie Askin received a "visit" from state security officers.  Why? She had taken some photographs of what she thought were Kinder Morgan storage tanks in Burnaby, B.C.  She wasn't sneaking around.  She wasn't trespassing.  She stood a good distance away and took her photos.  She wanted to show the condition of the 60-year old tanks to the National Energy Board.

Askin was spotted by Kinder Morgan security and they, in turn, set Canada's secret police apparatus on her.

Kinder Morgan says it reports all potential threats to police to "ensure the security and safety of our facilities and the surrounding community is maintained."

"It is our security protocol to record and file an internal report of any suspicious activities surrounding our facilities and to inform the RCMP of the incident," the company says.

Ten days later Askin had RCMP officers on her doorstep demanding answers.

In a statement, a spokeseperson for E-INSET confirms they did visit an individual who was seen taking photographs of Kinder Morgan's storage terminal.

"The protection and security of critical infrastructure falls within the mandate of E-INSET. Any and all tips reported to us are followed up on to the fullest extent." But, in Askin'scase: "there were no issues and the file was concluded with no further action taken."

Askin has filed an access to information to try and find out what is in her police file.

"I am now in the INSET’s database and I will be there, I guess, until I drop dead," she said. 

When dealing with a state secret police agency, they're never entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Never.  They're thugs who operate in the shadows, in service not to the country but to powerful, immensely wealthy corporations who could easily do their own security.  But those corporations lack the intrusive powers of the state, they lack the professional spy apparatus, the very service that INSET serves up to them on a platter.

My father and my uncles went to war, sacrificed enormously, to fight this sort of thuggery.  We're damned poor Canadians if we fail to stand up to it in our own time.

I have an idea.  Let's catalogue Kinder Morgan and Enbridge facilities.  Then let's organize groups of people to individually visit those facilities, monitor them, record licence plate numbers, and take plenty of photographs.  20 or 30 monitors a day, new faces rotated in daily.  Nothing remotely illegal.  No trespassing, no obstruction, no heckling. Just maintain a vigil at a safe and legal distance, letting Kinder Morgan and Enbridge and the Canadian Stasi and our despotic government know that we will not be intimidated and we will respond in kind in keeping with our democratic and constitutional right of dissent.

They want to gather intelligence on us.  We should gather intelligence on them, every scrap we can collect.  To the Stasi, being exposed was like the noonday sun to a vampire.

They can intimidate us, one by one, but they'll have a hell of a hard time doing it if they have 20 or 40 or 100 new names each and every day, a list that could quickly grow into many hundreds, perhaps even thousands.  Watch, we can make them stand down, crawl back into the slime beneath their rocks. 

The RCMP has served notice that it is quite prepared to criminalize democratic dissent.  I won't have it.  No, not in my Canada.  What about yours? 

And if the goons demand your name, tell them "Leslie Askin."