Message from The Man

Dissidents: If you are too threatening, actually threatening and not protected, then you will be murdered. If you are too popular, then you will be character assassinated. If you confine yourself to properly "academic" expression and the pretext to fire you is too costly or risky, then you will not be censored. Only your web venues will be very very very s..l..o..o..o..w.

Evolutionary anthropology of police practice of containment of targeted populations, and of self-defence strategies including rockets and boycott

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

SUMMARY: I show that the de facto police practice of constant random harassment by carding (demanding identification) and a spectrum of other means, combined with less frequent unprovoked executions and prosecutions using false charges, in containing groups targeted for containment is exactly the most effective and efficient strategy for hierarchical containment developed by evolution and described by primate anthropologists. As such, the said practice should be understood to be an intrinsic and voluntary feature of the state’s domination over occupied groups. This applies both to para-military occupation such as US and Canada’s containment of ghettoized groups in cities, and to military occupation such as the occupation of Palestinians by Israel. The self-defence strategies are also derived from evolutionary anthropology, which provides the bio-psychological basis of their effectiveness.

Continue reading HERE.

Cite this article as: Rancourt, Denis G., Evolutionary anthropology of police practice of containment of targeted populations, and of self-defence strategies including rockets and boycott, Research Gate (June 2016), DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3381.9120

Carding and random murder: Evolutionary anthropology of police practice in maintaining a high-gradient hierarchical social-class structure

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD

SUMMARY: I show that the de facto police practice of constant random harassment by carding and other means, combined with less frequent unprovoked executions and prosecutions using false charges, in containing groups targeted for containment is exactly the most effective and efficient strategy for hierarchical containment developed by evolution and described by primate anthropologists. As such, the said practice should be understood to be an intrinsic feature of the societal dominance hierarchy. The harm from this practice can be mitigated using further knowledge from primate anthropology, to lower the hierarchy gradient and produce a net societal benefit (and less senseless violence). Cops are apes, not pigs.

Role of the police

In maintaining class structures in the Western societal dominance hierarchies (e.g., US, Canada), the lower-strata groups (below the elite classes of rulers) are targeted, with the obvious overlaps, for either:

• sharing in the plunder (business elite classes), 
• rewarded service (professional classes), 
• maintenance (middle classes and working classes), 
• integration (recruited groups within or between classes), 
• containment (ghetto and prison-population classes), or 
• elimination (genocidal-target classes). 

The police and "justice" system play multiple roles in enforcing the class structure. As such, it is a structural feature of enforcement practice that different standards and rewards and punishments must be applied to different classes. Police and "justice" system discrimination and class bias are necessary characteristics of a stable Western dominance hierarchy.

The actively propagated myth of (even merely theoretical) equality in the "justice" system is entirely an instrument used in the maintenance of the middle and working classes. And mostly those are the classes that believe this myth, which is propaganda aimed at them. The myth is integrated deeply, at the individual identity level. As such, there are many cases of the individual being most perturbed by examples and experiences of not being oppressed fairly.

An unwanted but easily manipulated side-effect of the resulting sense of justice is that the middle classes will have some empathy against oppression of the lower classes, if the oppression can be sufficiently identified with. Thus lower-classes seeking inter-class "solidarity" and professional classes selling inter-class "solidarity" must market the oppression using terms that trigger empathy among middle class individuals. Another route is by transfer of the empathy for animal pets, which are allowed for compensation of the social isolation imposed by hierarchy, and so on.

In this article, I make the point that (de facto) police practice in containing the ghetto classes, in the US and Canada, is exactly the optimized practice that is predicted by evolutionary anthropology, as deduced from observations of primates and other animals. As such, it is not an accident or a defect. It is a structural feature of our hierarchies.

Violence is evolutionary

All social animals form hierarchies, with various magnitudes of hierarchical gradient. I define the hierarchical gradient as the difference in individual privilege between the top and the bottom of the hierarchy. Privilege includes access to power, resources, security, reproduction, and continuity of lineage.

Since humans are "without question the most behaviourally flexible animals in the world" [1], we have developed complex multi-layered societies that incorporate every kind of technology and organizational strategy. However, it is important to recognize that human psychology and our intrinsic social nature have not changed since long before we developed agriculture. We are the animals that billions of years of evolution have produced, and we cannot be anything else.

Our high intelligence is accompanied by an apparently unsurpassed Theory of Mind (ToM), which is the ability to have an image of ourselves and an image of how others are. ToM allows us to read the minds of others, in terms of their emotional states, motives, and intentions. It also allows us to perceive our place and the place of others in the social hierarchy.

Human children spontaneously use punishment -- including intimidation, manipulation, and violence -- to establish hierarchical dominance as soon as they concomitantly develop ToM, as young as two years of age [2]:

"As young as 2 years of age, children assemble stable, linearly transitive dominance hierarchies when brought together in novel social groups."

Dominance hierarchy is the most characteristic and overt feature of any human society [3], and it manifests itself in any human group. Even the methods devised to locally or sectorially remove hierarchy are enforced by higher layers of hierarchy, in order to confer more overall hierarchical stability. This is true of creating "safe space" as much as of the practice of voting, or any institutional rules of procedure.

Animals, including humans, use punishment (violence) for the following reasons [4]:

• "the establishment and maintenance of dominance relationships"
• "theft, parasitism and predation" (including war)
• "the establishment of mating bonds"
• "parent/offspring conflict" ("education/socialization")
• "the enforcement of cooperative behaviour" (including enforcement of societal norms)

All of these areas identified by animal-behaviour researchers relate to the establishment, operation and stabilization or growth of dominance hierarchy.

Modern large-scale human hierarchies use specialized enforcers and institutions, rather than a predominantly distributed approach to violence, although low-intensity distributed punishment remains vital.[1] Such specialization of violence both allows a larger scale hierarchy and provides net evolutionary-fitness benefit to the species (ideas which I will develop in a next article).

Nonetheless, the bio-psychological mechanisms for effective hierarchical establishment and maintenance developed through millions of years of evolution remain the same, whether the enforcers are dominant apes in a tropical-forest family group or steroid-charged police officers, backed by class-conscious judges, patrolling a ghetto suburb in a modern city.

Why card and kill?

In the modern city, there are large inner-city and suburban compounds or ghettos of racially and culturally identifiable groups that are targeted for containment. This is true even in Canada's luxurious capital city Ottawa, where in addition to homelessness which is targeted for containment pending elimination, their are subsidized housing neighbourhoods targeted for containment pending imprisonment, deportation or integration, such as the Somali neighbourhoods where residents are both Black and Muslim.[5] In addition, carding, police harassment, and random police executions are more well known in larger cities such as Toronto.

So what is the evolutionary bio-psychological tactic that has evolved to impose hierarchical dominance on individuals who are to be contained and does it correspond to carding, random harassment, and random executions? Here, by "random" I mean unprovoked, sudden and specifically unpredictable to the target.

Well, evolutionary anthropology of primates is quite clear in its answer [6]:

"The logic of unprovoked and unpredictable aggression potentially applies to any animals that live in stable groups of familiar individuals, interact repeatedly, remember past interactions, and use dominance to mediate access to valuable resources. ...

The logic of random aggression exploits mammalian stress physiology. ... [L]ong-term activation of the stress response is pathogenic. In social species within which subordinance is associated with high rates of stressors and low availability of coping responses, subordinates tend to suffer the most stress and are most vulnerable to stressrelated diseases that impair health and reduce fertility. ...

In this situation, randomly timed attacks on randomly selected targets creates continuing uncertainty in subordinates about when and if they will be attacked. This uncertainty generates long-term, low-level stress, which has deleterious long-term effects on subordinates. Dominants benefit because they are able to inflict these costs on subordinates but are able to minimize the risks associated with escalated aggression. Thus, randomly timed attacks on randomly selected targets may be favored by natural selection because this strategy is both effective and efficient. ...

Of course, if threats are never translated into action, potential victims will eventually learn that they have no reason to be fearful. Thus, aggressors must sometimes attack subordinates to legitimate the threat of aggression." 

Thus, carding and the entire gamut of unprovoked and random police harassment events (such as intimidating patrol car dismounts, searches, interrogations, etc., and intense surveillance itself), coupled with random executions and random prosecutions using false charges, constitute a complete practice that exactly mirrors the most "effective and efficient" evolutionary behaviour for containing subordinates in a dominance hierarchy of primates or other animals.

The only difference is that the human dominance hierarchy is larger, more stratified and employs specialized professionals and institutions for enforcement. But when containment of a targeted group is the primary mission, then the police practice is the optimized enforcer behaviour developed through millennia of evolution.

I have previously explained how the stress from dominance enforcement is a pivotal bio-psychological mechanism that stabilizes human hierarchies, and how the costs to individuals is the factor that moderates increases in hierarchical gradient [3]. I have also described how physiological stress is the dominant causal factor in individual health [7].

In this case, we see the particular mode of application of debilitating stress when the police contain a group targeted for containment, in circumstances that operationally exclude complete physical imprisonment, complete deportation, mass murder and complete genocide.

What is the best defence?

Evolutionary anthropology also informs us about the best defence against the above-described police practice of containment. I don't mean coping strategies for individuals in a targeted group. Instead, I mean how the police practice can best be disarmed, at its root, within the societal hierarchy.

Here is the relevant observation from evolutionary anthropology [6]:

"The tactic of launching randomly timed attacks on randomly selected subordinates has at least one major drawback: if attacks are effective, then it will be difficult for dominants to interact with subordinates, even when their intentions are peaceful. This may make it hard for dominants to approach subordinates in order to solicit grooming, handle their infants, or huddle together for warmth."

There you have it. The best defence is to effectively boycott, shun and shame the police, as leverage to get it to curb its practice. The difficulty with modern human society is that specialization, professional compartmentalization and the class structure are such that police usually don't seek substantive positive contact with the groups they are tasked with targeting.

The latter difficulty can partly be solved by inter-class "solidarity", where agents who do have leverage with the police can play a role. Social media, such as YouTube, has been useful in this regard by spreading images that tarnish the reputation of the police in social classes that matter to the police.

Indeed, arguably the only way to apply pressures against hierarchical oppression, within the hierarchy, is via the human relations that matter to the dominants, and that can thus perturb the dominant by distancing, and via any induced reputational self-image incongruence.[8][9]

In this regard, insults that catch-on can be very effective. Therefore, in view of the above evolutionary anthropology results, we should say that the police are apes, not pigs.

We must guard against our learned class-structure-supporting political correctness reflex of avoiding making insults, and instead try to make insults that stick and spread, and that will steer the police away from its most damaging practices in a high-gradient hierarchy. Lowering hierarchical gradients produces significant public health benefits.[3][10] Liberation is better than oppression.

I was inspired to research and write this article by reading Hazel Gashoka's recent graduate-course (York University, Canada) paper entitled "Racial profiling and health outcomes for Black women in Toronto".


References

[1] Punishment and spite, the dark side of cooperation, by Keith Jensen, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 365, No. 1553, Cooperation and deception: from evolution to mechanisms (12 September 2010), pp. 2635-2650.

[2] Social Stratification, Health, and Violence in the Very Young, by W. Thomas Boyce, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1036 (2004), pp. 47-68. doi: 10.1196/annals.1330.003

[3] Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, by Denis G. Rancourt, Stairway Press (2013), 175 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9859942-8-0

[4] Punishment in animal societies (review), by T.H. Clutton-Brock & G.A. Parker, Nature, Vol. 373 (19 January 1995), pp. 209-216.

[5] Civil Unliberties: The Space Between Policing and Justice, by panelists Sadia Jama, Yavar Hameed & David Moffette, Inaugural B. Myron Rusk Annual Memorial Lecture, Ottawa (1 March 2016)

[6] Practice random acts of aggression and senseless acts of intimidation: The logic of status contests in social groups, by Joan B. Silk, Evolutionary Anthropology, Vol. 11 (2002), pp. 221–225. doi: 10.1002/evan.10038

[7] Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis, by Denis G. Rancourt, Research Gate, (December 2015), 25 pages. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129

[8] Psycho-biological basis for image leverage and the case of Israel, by Denis G. Rancourt, Activism Teacher (12 June 2010): http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2010/06/psycho-biological-basis-for-image.html

[9] Self-image-incongruence theory of individual health, by Denis G. Rancourt, Dissident Voice (26 October 2014): http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/10/self-image-incongruence-theory-of-individual-health/

[10] Income inequality and health: A causal review, by Kate E. Pickett & Richard G. Wilkinson, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 128 (2015), pp. 316-326. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.12.031

Peacefull protester leaves Emergency room after Occupy Ottawa Eviction -- video

At Occupy Ottawa only those most intent on defending the occupied space and willing to risk police arrest and police violence remained and setup their tents in the large empty fountain in the park. Last night they were "evicted".

I received this report:

There were about 150 [police] officers, unmarked and marked cars all around the periphery of the park and a make-shift Intake Centre at the armoury. None of us not already in the park were allowed in. It was too snowy to take good video. We could say from a police perspective that it was a "success"...

From our perspective too: best case scenario. No pepper spray, 8 arrests but no charges, only trespass tickets.

The barricade around the fountain was destroyed.

This is Obert:

North American Pig Culture - A few good apples?

Can there even be a question of whether or not this is systemic? (See video!)

Canadian cops in Ottawa are at least as bad: LINK.

The best the establishment can argue is that there may be "a few good apples" but this needs to be demonstrated since virtually no officers ever intervene to stop or report this type of criminal police assault.

In this case, five officers were involved. In order for this to have occurred by chance with a 50% probability, that five (assumed professionally independent) cops would participate and condone this criminal assault, the percentage of bad cops has to be 87%. [(0.87)^5 = 0.5]

A few bad apples my ass. Add the federal judge's behaviour in trying to cover it up and in not finding evidence for criminal assaults. Now imagine the jail time if a cop were assaulted in this way... Or a white business man...

THIS IN NOT A TRICK QUESTION

On police brutality in the Claude Haridge case, Ottawa, Canada

Which of the following two violations is the most despicable and the most threatening to democracy?

(a) An anti-war protester throws a paint-filled rubber balloon at a bus exiting a major military weapons show in Canada's capital city, thereby splattering some paint on at least one police officer.

(b) Following arrest, the same protester is gratuitously verbally and physically assaulted in a holding cell by an attending police officer while in handcuffs and while another officer looks on and both officers then lie in kourt that there was no assault.

If you answered (a), then you agree with Justice Ann Alder who read a ruling today, Friday January 7, 2011, in the Claude Haridge case, superior kourt of Ontario, Ottawa, Canada.

In plain language, the Justice ruled that assault by police officers is OK.

Alder concluded that there had been a significant physical assault and inappropriate verbal intimidation perpetrated by one officer and that two officers had lied to the kourt to cover this up. However, in her ruling Alder spent much time advancing tenuous evidence that Mr. Haridge had exaggerated the gravity of the physical assault against him and she discredited the expert medical testimony based on an ancillary point whereas she did not reprimand police or make any criticism of detention procedures.

No charges of assault or perjury where handed down to the police officers. Imagine if the same gratuitous violence, proven in kourt to the same "balance of probability" standard, had been against a police officer...

In addition, Alder stated that the charge of throwing the paint balloon was of concern enough to "society" that the case should proceed to trial. Our guess is that the judge does not mean that it is of interest for society to question Canada's militarism and a citizen's moral duty to oppose this militarism.

Somehow, we don't think the latter will be a consideration entertained by the kourt - although some misguided observer might propose that this should be the central issue of the case (ah, yes).

"This case is just another example of what has been going on in this country. Throughout amerika's history, people have been imprisoned because of their beliefs and charged with criminal acts in order to justify that imprisonment."
-- Assata Shakur, self-defendant, u.s. district kourt, July 19, 1973

Do you feel you are living in a nightmare yet?
Have you noticed the rising temperature of the aquarium water?

[The correct answer is (b).]

RELATED POSTS:
Obscenity of the Legal Mind

media links:
Anti-war protester’s rights violated when he was hit after arrest, Ottawa judge finds - The Citizen
Stay of charges denied - Ottawa Sun

Police photos needed in Ottawa, Canada

1-REQUEST:

Vern White
Chief of Police
Ottawa Police
(by email, sent November 24, 2010)

Re: Request for police officer pictures

Dear Police Chief Vern White,

I write to ask you to increase public safety and improve the accountability of the Ottawa police force by posting the names and pictures of all Ottawa Police officers on the Ottawa Police web site.

Police officers are public servants with power disproportionate to that of a regular citizen. They are also integral members of the community and must be accountable to the public which they serve.

Posting the pictures of police officers on the Ottawa Police web site would increase public safety and would help to protect the public from now rampant police violence against citizens and police abuse of power and irregular behaviour in Ottawa.

It is often difficult, as you know, for victims of illegitimate police aggression to obtain or record and retain the names or badge numbers of offending officers while being subjected to improper treatments and aggressive arrests. I have direct experience with this and can only imagine what it must be like in even more violent situations than the ones I have witnessed on the campus at the University of Ottawa in recent years.

In addition it is important for citizens to be able to protect themselves by avoiding police officers who have been shown or reprimanded by the court or disciplined by their employer for improper behaviour. The web pictures would aid in this regard. As you know, the first defence of a person is to avoid dangerous or volatile situations.

For example, it is presently difficult to find pictures of your officers Const. Shyldon Safruk, Special Const. Glenmore Clarke, Sgt. Steve Desjourdy [photo], Special Constable (Melanie) Morris, and Const. John Flores despite the brutal attacks in which they participated and which have been reported in the media.

Unfortunately, the “few bad apples” theory does not hold water here because these officers would not have undertaken such breaches of the public trust if there was not a broad culture of thuggish disrespect for citizens’ rights within the force. I have repeatedly witnessed this culture and confrontational mentality on the University of Ottawa campus with student arrests, community member arrests, and my own false arrest while I was a tenured professor.

Changing this culture will be a massive undertaking that will take many years in which we will all need to participate. I will do my part. The pictures are an essential easy first step that you can implement immediately.

We need proud officers who uphold the law not delinquent thugs who serve special interests and hide their faces.

As a question of public safety and in the interest of accountability in a democratic society, therefore, will you post the names and pictures of your officers on the Ottawa Police web site? If not, why not?

Please indicate when you will be able to respond.

Sincerely,
Denis Rancourt
Former physics professor, University of Ottawa

Cc: Civil society, City Hall, the media


2-SAME DAY ANSWER FROM CHIEF:

Chief Vern White called me at home.

He said no. He said some other police forces in Canada don't follow the law by not even having name tags. He said pictures would put officers at risk from criminals. He said he had 2000 officers "the vast majority of who have a right to their privacy", that 700 of them were civilians, not sworn officers, and that 250 work special units and are in and out of under cover positions and that he wouldn't even recognize them all.

Chief White said the sworn officer photos "are available if necessary but we wouldn't put them up". He did not know that all regular university professors had their pictures posted. He said that he teaches at both universities (in Ottawa) but that he would not allow them to post his picture if they wanted and he stated that he had no fears from any of his students showing up at his home.

I stated my opinion that more citizens are harmed by police than police harmed by citizens. He asked me my motivation in making the request in my letter and asked me what my goal was. I re-expressed my letter and he disagreed.

His main point was "not everybody wants every criminal to know who you are and what you look like." A main point in my letter is that we need to know what the criminals look like.

He committed to providing me a written answer.

RELATED MEDIA LINKS: LINK-1, LINK-2, LINK-3, LINK-4, LINK-5.
.

This is Canada::: Cops lie in court to harm farmer

Breaking News::: Cops lie in court, judges put await people for traffic tickets, farmers targeted.

See all the "This is Canada" posts

This is Canada::: Activist Alex Hundert jailed for speaking at a university

That's right.

Social justice organizer Alex Hundert was arrested at his home in the middle of the night by a SWAT team to prevent his participation at G20-Toronto.

Outrageous bail conditions were then imposed, including removal of his constitutional right to demonstrate.

He was invited by a professor at Ryerson University (Toronto) to participate in a panel discussion about social activism. He accepted and was arrested for breach of his conditions.

He's still in jail.

The judge ruled that the university presentation was a demonstration.

We shit you not.

This is Canada.

The level of corporate fascism is so advanced that this passes for normal around here with most folks.

See all the "This is Canada" posts

This is Canada::: No lawyers allowed during police interrogations

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that an accused does not have a right to be accompanied by a lawyer during a police interrogation.

The latter right is well established in the US but the majority judges argued that Canada is not the US. They actually argued that Canadian police are not like US police so Canadian accused do not need the same protections.

What do police need to do during their interrogations that a lawyer cannot be present?

This is Canada.

The level of corporate fascism is so advanced that a majority of the judges don't see a problem here.

See all the "This is Canada" posts

G20-Toronto public enquiry farce is a national shame - TRN reality check - video

Disgusting behaviour of the cops, their bosses, and the "justice" establishment. And of most of the mainstream media and the civil rights establishment which is soft asleep. Historians take note!

Witness the degradation of Canadian institutions. This is the continued growth of corporate fascism.

MUCH RECOMMENDED RELATED POSTS:
G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty
They're not just pigs

Canadian education as an impetus towards fascism

Hilarious, refreshing, direct engagement against the police state in the UK

everything is ok

G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty

A critical examination of the role of the CCLA


by Denis G. Rancourt

Police violence at G20-Toronto, like the economic violence engineered by G20 itself, are windows into Canada’s loss of sovereignty as it continues to integrate the US military economy and military culture at breakneck speed. Loss of economic and security sovereignty and the associated planned plundering (so-called austerity) must be attended by loss of democracy and civil rights.

What is clear to any observer who reads the victim testimonies, watches the many videos, reads the civil society association statements, reports and petitions and follows the corporate and independent media broadcasts is that the cops and their bosses profiled activists and demonstrators and targeted them for surveillance, intimidation, interrogations, and assaults as though they were enemies of the state in a war.

What is clear is that the police and its bosses function under a police state paradigm in which lawful democratic participation in the form of organizing and protesting is considered domestic terrorism.

This paradigm is well known in the Latin American (and other) client states of the USA where the dissident members of civil society (teachers, union organizers, independent journalists, community organizers, priests, etc.) are systematically rooted out and murdered by US-trained government-sponsored commandos.

In addition, it has become routine in Canada’s geopolitical war of aggression in Afghanistan to disregard the Geneva Conventions and accept civilian “collateral damage” as a “fact of war” in pursuing suspected militants; not to mention turning them over to allied factions for torture.

Within the same logic the G20-Toronto paramilitary force was ordered to indiscriminately actuate mass intimidations and roundups of target groups (based on profiling), knowing that mostly authentic protesters and many bystanders would be subjected to the same illegal violence, for the double purpose of gathering personal information and intimidating citizens away from participation.

This included turning over select targets to non-uniformed thugs in unmarked vans for what can only be described as torture and it included extensive use of embedded agents and hyper surveillance; all the most repulsive tactics that Canadians have always denounced in totalitarian states.

Either the G20-Toronto paramilitary force was trained and ordered to enact its anti-democracy commando strategy witnessed by all or we live in a fucking fairy tale where less broken windows and smashed cars than after a hockey game in Montreal can justify an ad hoc billion-dollar military budget and where the best road to national security is a US-insanity-led murderous war against a nation on the other side of the planet.

The point is that the 10,000 police officers who participated in G20-Toronto and did not prevent their colleagues from performing massive, sustained and indiscriminate verbal and physical attacks against citizens and citizens’ rights disregarded their professional oaths of service and acted in line with received and accepted police training and instructions which are those of a police state – where citizens who speak out are the enemy.

What is the CCLA (and other recognized human and civil rights groups) doing about it?

What has been revealed by G20-Toronto cannot be covered up by a broad-in-name-only federal inquiry operating under the false premise that “mistakes” may have been made that may lead to the formulation of recommendations for new procedures and protocols.

These were not mistakes.

What happened at G20-Toronto was planned and runs deep in Canada’s newfound militaristic and police culture. Canadian civil rights icon Ursula Franklin recently explained in the national media that Canada is advancing towards fascism.

This is not business as usual for the CCLA (C for Canadian; Canadian Civil Liberties Association). The CCLA must not play its establishment role of aiding the cover up. It must distinguish itself.

As maybe Canada’s leading civil liberties lawyer group, the CCLA has been working overtime to show leadership in responding to the G20-Torornto mass police aggression.

Anything else would have been anomalous since the CCLA was founded in response to a similarly large mass violation of civil liberties: The Quebec War Measures Act mass arrests of the 1970s. In addition the CCLA office is in Toronto.

The CCLA had many observers on the ground at G20-Toronto, has vigilantly collected individual complaints and available data about the arrests, has coordinated tentative legal actions, and has sent several letters to key officials pressuring for inquiries. It has also made several media communications to further pressure responsible bodies to enact measures of accountability.

Its most significant political success to date is that Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) announced that “systemic issues” arising from police behaviour at G20-Toronto would be “investigated thoroughly and in a way that is accountable, transparent, efficient and fair to both the public and the police.” LINK.

This came in response to a CCLA letter to the OIPRD calling for such an investigation and detailing mass “systemic” violations; that is, incorrectly using the word “systemic” to mean incidents involving large groups of victims. LINK. LINK.

Why does the OIPRD feel the need to express that it will be “fair to both the public and the police”? Is it not fair to a criminal to be punished for his/her crime? The OIPRD statement appears to be intended to announce that its report will be a compromise between justice and police immunity, between civil rights and police state advancement.

The National Post’s celebration of the OIPRD review as an “unprecedented investigation by a powerful provincial agency … [with] the power to conduct searches and seizures, summon documents and summon witnesses, including officers and police chiefs” suggests that the establishment will use the OIPRD review to avoid a federal inquiry.

The OIPRD investigation does not have the mandate to examine the role of political leaders or to examine federal police. The OIPRD investigation is not enough for the CCLA. Its chief, Nathalie Des Rosiers, has called for a federal inquiry because the RCMP and CSIS were involved and because such issues as “national intelligence gathering”, police “baiting”, and high level “orders” are involved. LINK.

The CCLA has put much of its efforts in attempting to secure an official and “sufficiently broad” federal inquiry. The CCLA should now further and directly publicly pressure the Harper government and Parliament for the needed federal inquiry, which will in-principle only benefit from the OIPRD review.

The CCLA must also learn the proper definition of the word “systemic” and focus attention on the training and culture of the police and its bosses. It must sound the alarm: The canary in the coal mine is dead.

And what’s with the use of the word “efficient” used by both the CCLA and OIPRD? –Sounds like “no replication of analysis” and “not too deep”. On the contrary, no expense should be spared and plenty of divergent and complementary reports would be fine. (Is it too late to hold off that order for another sound canon? What is the cost of lost sovereignty?)

What will be the CCLA’s next push? Will it be placated by the OIPRD review?

It is also of concern that the CCLA appeared to be threatening the federal government with more lawsuits if a federal inquiry is not ordered – in the words of Des Rosiers: “if the federal government does not do anything, individuals who have been wronged should use the possibilities that exist. Many avenues of redress will rightly be undertaken to get answers and relief…” LINK.

This horse trading attitude indicates that the CCLA might not as vigorously pursue support for individual and group lawsuits if a “sufficiently broad” federal inquiry is called. The CCLA needs to provide support for as much redress as possible for individuals within the limits of the law, irrespective of inquiries.

In addition, the investigations, inquiries and lawsuits must lead to police and their bosses being rightly disciplined with formal reprimands, fines, suspensions, demotions, and firings, in proportion to their violations and lapses of duty. The police who witnessed their colleagues acting unprofessionally and illegally and who did nothing to stop their colleagues must also be disciplined. And political orders must lead to resignations.

A shakedown is needed to avert this next consolidation step towards fascism.

What role will the CCLA play in the continued destruction of Canada?

We don’t need a G20-driven-US-integration-establishment-preserving inquiry. We need organizations like the CCLA to read the writing on the wall and to stand for more than just business as usual. This is about Canada’s integration into the US military economy. It is about desperately needed sovereignty, the opposite of US-led G8 and G20.

RELATED ARTICLES:
They’re not just pigs
G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing
Author calls on CCLA to repudiate…
Call for the resignation of Nathalie Des Rosiers

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by an executive that included Nathalie Des Rosiers who enforced his banning from campus and forceful police arrest while he participated in a campus event as a full professor [see http://rancourt.academicfreedom.ca/].

G20-Toronto property damage is a good thing

Their law versus sanity and justice

by Denis G. Rancourt



Why should unelected and parasitic banks, insurance companies, and corporations run our lives? They shouldn’t but they do.

And why should politicians, lawyers and judges work for banks, insurance companies, and corporations? They shouldn’t but they do.

How can individuals obtain some measure of democratic influence? Tried voting? Surprise – doesn’t work huh? It’s like it’s a fixed game or something?

We are told that we “vote” with our “consumer choices”. Problem is the “choices” are pre-determined, like with political candidates and corporate media coverage, and the prices are fixed…

The next level beyond consumer choice is a boycott and we are told that boycott’s are legitimate. Problem is… the economy is quickly becoming a monopoly – so how do you boycott? Want to be a hippy living out of a dumpster and avoiding rent, mortgages and taxes, growing your food on the strip of land between the road and the sidewalk? (How come the working poor didn’t think of that?)

The purpose of a boycott is to inflict financial damage on a delinquent corporation to pressure it into compliance with moral behaviour.

Similarly, the purpose of targeted material damage to banks and corporations is to inflict financial punishment to force compliance with moral behaviour. History shows it to be vastly more effective than a consumer boycott. It is controlled directly by the individual in the purest form of democratic participation (you don’t need to be unionized), gives measurable immediate results, is psychologically empowering, and is a brave act for the common good with real associated risks. It also generates jobs and provides a visible public critique.

It is not a personal attack on personal property or livelihood. It is a political act; one that does not physically harm persons but instead aims to pressure undemocratic organizations towards change. It is an act motivated by love, vitality and self-preservation, not hate. It is not insane aggression. It is sanity. It is a noble form of taking one’s responsibility as a citizen. We have a duty to take back democratic control from the banksters and their corporate collaborators.

Any just legal process in prosecuting such cases would objectively consider the misbehaviour and criminality of the bank or corporate entity and would consider the mechanism whereby the property damage provides societal improvement. It would also consider the motivation and intent of the individual actor. It would then reward the individual actor for his/her risk, inconvenience, and service to society.

Similarly, when at G20-Toronto the police disregarded constitutional and natural rights actors had a duty not to let them and to resist arrest. Any criminal charge of resisting arrest in such circumstances, in a just legal system, would be disregarded and the resister would be compensated for his/her risk, damage, and service to society. WTF. The cops corral peaceful bystanders and protesters, intimidate, retain and selectively assault without cause or explanation, in the hope that some will resist in order to crush those with will. WTF. Those sane individuals are then to be prosecuted for resisting arrest – for questioning illegitimate authority? Violation upon violation in the true spirit of a fucked up system.

In these circumstances pacifism is pathology. Not the true pacifism of Gandhi but the pseudo pacifism of deference to illegitimate authority and deference to absurd context-blind and justice-blind laws that serve undemocratic power.

The only crimes at G20-Toronto were committed by the cops and their bosses.

It is not a crime, in a protest battle zone created by a militaristic police occupation, to spontaneously destroy police property offered as bait to encircled pro-democracy protesters for the benefit of corporate media propaganda that serves the police and its bosses in wrongly justifying tax-funded mass aggression and organized civil liberties dismantlement.

The division between “violent” and “peaceful” protesters is a divide-and-conquer tactic intended to neutralize and dismantle democratic expression and popular leverage. The crimes of the financiers, their corporate collaborators and their government servants, designed in secret behind closed doors at G8 and G20 and in all the boardrooms of power, are too great to let them divide us.

Free all political prisoners now!

RELATED POSTS:
They’re not just pigs
Dalai Lama pacifism

Denis Rancourt interviewed on the Progressive Radio News Hour -- Globalization, G20, liberation

Denis Rancourt was interviewed (July 10, 2010) on Stephen Lendman's The Progressive Radio News Hour show at PRN (Progressive Radio Network).

Follow the podcast radio interview recording HERE:

• At the start of the interview Rancourt describes the University of Ottawa Allan Rock fiasco with Ann Coulter in the broad context of how university's are affected by financial globalization.

• At the 18:20 time mark Rancourt starts his commentary about the G20-Toronto mass police aggression against peaceful citizens.

• At the 39:10 time mark Rancourt comments about "grass roots" resistance and about the loss of Canadian sovereignty.

• At the 51:40 time mark Rancourt describes "liberation activism" in opposition to "opinion management" preoccupations.

They’re not just pigs

G20-Toronto participatory inquiry in full swing

by Denis G. Rancourt


The 2010 G20 police state mass aggression in Toronto has led to unprecedented alternative and popular media coverage. Photos, raw video footage, video reports, Indy media articles, independent radio reports, documented testimonies, and social media commentaries are pouring in.

Taken together, this spontaneous and autonomously produced information is the evolving factual, interpretative, and recommendation parts of a self-organized participatory inquiry into the police state crimes of G20-Toronto. It will be more complete and more true than any official report from a government-appointed inquiry or than any ruling from a group action lawsuit.

We don’t need daddy to tell us what happened or that “mistakes” were made. We need daddy to be subjected to the consequences of having designed and allowed this mass aggression. A few of those consequences are and should be the lawsuits, the official inquiries, the human and civil rights organization condemnations, the negative media coverage, demotions and firings, the loss of credibility and legitimacy, and much more.

One of the most disturbing results of the participatory inquiry, at a systemic level, is that these cops aren’t just pigs.

The targeting, intimidation, and terrorizing of protestors - treated like “the enemy” in a war – was, like with all recent anti-globalization protests, systematic. The patterns described by the thousands of victims (from psychological intimidation to broken skin and rape, e.g., HERE, HERE) are identical. These are no ordinary pigs. These thugs had to be trained to execute these manoeuvres against civil society.

It is the modus operandi of US anti-democratic terrorism to train the military hit squads of client states (for example in Latin America) to search out and destroy civil society: union leaders, activist teachers, independent media, community organizers, etc.

Exactly the same tactics are being used against activists and organizers in Canada. The cops are trained to view activists, not as the much needed societal agents that they are, but as “the enemy” that must be destroyed. Pre-emptive arrests, bogus charges, ad-hoc interrogations, imposed restrictive undertakings, and much more.

This extends to campuses such as the University of Ottawa where bogus criminal charges are routinely levelled against activist students (see reports on the UofOWatch blog). And it extends to the streets where anti-poverty organizers and the homeless themselves are targeted and into every workplace and school where anything but “cooperation” is quashed.

These cops are not just racist (all-ists) individuals because of their particular personal circumstances. Their language and actions show that they are trained into a military culture where protestors and activists are the enemy and are to be rooted out and intimidated away from societal participation. They aren’t just pigs. They are anti-democracy commandos.

All the cops that let the one cop brutally attack Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld (HERE) and that did not arrest their criminal colleague are as guilty as the main physical attacker. There has to be a strong militaristic culture among these cops for them to allow their own brutality in full public view, often with cameras rolling.

Let us demand (publicly pressure) that the official public inquiry and legal disclosures include an investigation into police training and tactics regarding the profiling of activists and the intimidation protocols for demonstrators.

Of course the cops are people too. That’s why it’s not a waste of time to be straight up with them and to face them down and to expose them and to justly punish them and their bosses. They’re not just pigs.


Addendum: I make the following concrete tentative suggestion for detainee support. Organize workshops about the legal process and how to represent yourself. Represent yourself, plead not guilty and go the full distance to trial. The Crown has the burden of the proof and must completely disclose its case and evidence to you before you make your case. Ask for disclosures as soon as you can. The disclosures can be shared after trial with the media. This will so expose the false and ludicrous bases for arrests… and it will put the cops on the stand and the disclosures will name the cops. Team up with others who can help. Don’t let a lawyer representing you make a (for your own good) corrupt compromise deal with the Crown.

Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca] [Other social activism essays by Denis G. Rancourt are listed HERE.]

Social activism: Black thug violence must stop (with VIDEO)

Corroborated again at G20-Toronto:

In social activism by far the greatest threat of physical violence against persons is POLICE - dressed in black, faces covered, hard to identify, not answering questions, and bashing people about for no apparent reason.

by Denis G. Rancourt


In our PREVIOUS POST we made the obvious and repeatedly established point that the greatest risk of violence against persons at anti-corruption demonstrations is from police.

Not a single person was hurt or threatened by black bloc demonstrators at G20 in Toronto.

The same cannot be said about police behaviour: See the Real News video below.

They don't make it easy to identify the violent officers either. Here is a picture of G20-Toronto cops with no name tags - No way to identify an individual cop who hits you.


And below is a video with the police chief publicly shrugging off criticism with a suggestion that a bashed journalist can file a complaint... The video shows how small the name tag is when there is one, and there ain't no nice big officer number tag ever.

This video shows a series of disturbing scenes where, for no apparent reason, police run down a pedestrian with their horses, take down a deaf man for not following instructions, punch and throw about several peaceful demonstrators, punch a journalist and steal his microphone, throw back the microphone when other journalists move in, and, last but not least, show the police chief lying to justify the horrendous police behaviour in question.



A nice police state atmosphere with little counter protections: "This is what democracy looks like" - to remix a demonstrator's slogan.

This is the kind of police behaviour that changes one's emotional response to a picture of a police cruiser in flames, especially when it has been made clear that there will not be an investigation.

Partial solution for the immediate danger: The black thugs need big visible reflective officer numbers (front and back), with name lists posted to the web, and all the footage from those surveillance cameras made public every time they come onto the streets with clubs.

Safety first!

BREAKING NEWS June 28, 2010:
Conditions of 900 G20-Toronto detainees illegal, immoral and dangerous - rabble.ca

RELATED MATTER:
Where was the CCLA's Nathalie Des Rosiers in all of this? -Filing an injunction to prevent the use of sound canons and doing a press presentation about the injunction... but clubs, horses, "rubber" bullets and gas canisters fired at close range, and irrational police violence, with no investigations in sight for attacked journalist and peaceful protesters are just part of the decor? Will the CCLA demand an investigation?
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Social activism: The violence must stop

In anti-corruption activism by far the greatest documented physical threat to persons is police violence

by Denis G. Rancourt


Never mind property damage to out-of-control corporations, what about actual harm to persons?

Who gets hurt and has their democratic right to protest and civil rights violated?

The protesters do. They get physically corralled, sound cannoned, pepper sprayed, shot at close range with "rubber" bullets, beat to hell with batons, thrown about like rag dolls, tear gassed for just being there, arrested on false pretext, illegally detained, cuffed for hours, and more.

And this is without even analyzing the impact of agent provocateurs, a widespread practice that has not been punished by state prosecutors or denounced by police (HERE).

Sooner or latter the police are going to forcefully cause someone to bang his/her head and die (when they don't kill dissenters and civilians while in custody).

Why the hell doesn't the corporate media report the widespread police violence in proportion to its occurrence...? We need a check and balance on police behaviour.

There is a far greater probability of a person being physically harmed by police at a legitimate demonstration, or being forced through the ordeal of being falsely arrested, than of a person being physically harmed by a 3am lobby fire at a local bank branch.

Let us put the risks to persons and to democracy in perspective.

The Ottawa RBC fire says "pay attention and look at the role of financial institutions in causing misery". The police repression says "activists and critics will not be tolerated".

It is no longer an exaggeration to state that Canada has adopted a police state stance and practice. The police intimidate, interrogate, and round up activists on false charges before high-profile demonstrations, to quash democratic expression, and publicly vilify their targets with outrageous propaganda (HERE).

Those who vehemently call for the suppression of activists are those who most feel the need to defend their deference to authority. They are the slaves by choice who vie for the master's recognition and who insist on being oppressed fairly. They advance that one must earn the privilege of being fairly oppressed.

The rest of us want freedom and democracy, the real deal.
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BREAKING NEWS - June 26, 2010:
Radio interview: Police violence against journalist Jesse Freeston (Real News Network)
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See also these posts about the Dalai Lama and pacifism: HERE.
And this post about hatred: HERE.

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Meet poet John Akpata - performing 'made in kanada'

John lives and works in Ottawa. He works to make sanity with words and his words help us make sense of ourselves.

Thanks John! We await your youTube version of 'conspiracy theories are true'.

Binary structure of the slave mentality – Analysis of a vlog comment string

Look at this video of the arrest of a student on a campus.



Now go to YouTube and look at the viewer comments to this video.

Look at any similar situation where someone or a group of people are being targeted by cops, by the enforcers of imposed rules of conduct.

And you often see the same binary distribution of reactions.

In one camp you have those who are outraged or sensitive to individual rights being curtailed or disregarded. They see an abuse of power and conclude that the authority being exercised is not being legitimately exercised. They have an impulse to rebel against the master, or at least to train the master to be fair.

In the other camp you have those who see the victim as the menace, a menace to peace and order. Often, they don’t even see the victim (the one being subjected to power’s treatment) as a victim, only as someone who is getting what he/she deserves by virtue of some personal defect and/or not being sufficiently subservient.

There you have it; in the microcosm of a string of vlog comments. All admit that there is a master, a ruling authority, but some react to the incident of punishment with an eye to just and equal treatment (they insist on being oppressed fairly or they may rebel) while the others instinctively side with authority and find fault in the transgressor.

Both sides are quite transparent about their interpretations:

“That was a stupid thing to do to insult the cop” = “Rebel against authority and expect to received deserved punishment”

“I can’t believe cops can so disregard the law” = “If it’s not going to be fair then I can’t go along”

Both camps and their predominance reflect our true condition - our condition of slavery. The entire dynamic is a slave dynamic. The only question is “Will we rebel or will we mob and neutralize the belligerent individual?” The entire exchange is a battle to decide between these two alternatives. Is it time to fight the master or can we continue to obey?

If we fight there is a significant risk, so the conditions need to be sufficiently bad – an investigation is in order. If we continue to obey then we must rationalize away the punishment of the victim.

This shows that we are social beings; that our judgements are largely tied to communal decision making rather than individual evaluations based on outside circumstances. The mobbing instinct is always with us, as is the instinct to repair and maintain an established hierarchy. Among individuals reared in a hierarchy these reactions appear to dominate. It gives rise to a binary tension: Either the system is as good as possible and delinquent elements need to be expelled or the system needs fixing towards more control and counter checks to prevent abuses. The right-left divide at its root? “Hippy activists” versus “careerist reactionaries”?

This all leaves out the minority; the anarchist/libertarians: Those who don’t want hierarchy or government or police but only direct and horizontal (town hall) democracy and who see anything else (such as rigged representation) as a form of control and slavery. Where do these independent thinkers come from? What makes a Kropotkin, a Bakunin, or a Malatesta? These characters rebel against all authority all the time.

I don’t see any in the vlog posts? When they appear you know you are living in a vibrant time. When they are absent you know you are flirting with fascism.

PUT IT TO THE TEST:
Watch this video about Ottawa cops breaking the law and see how you react:



RELATED POSTS:
Canadian education as an impetus towards fascism
Independent thinking in education - quotations
Video evidence of emergent fascism at a Canadian university
The Activist Wars
On the need to embrace hatred
The student as nigger
Activism and risk