If you haven't seen this video of the Bush Montebello Summit this week, watch it! (3 min)
"Cops! They're Fucking Cops!..Take off your masks!"
White House Involvement? Canada's Globe and Mail has the original story, but so far nobody is asking the big question: what did the White House know in advance about the planned riot?
Busted! Pale Cold's Recommended Diary provides background on the SSP Summit.
Canada's CBC has more:
About 1,200 protesters were in the small resort town near Ottawa as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a two-day summit to discuss issues under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America pact...
In the footage filmed Monday afternoon, three burly men with bandanas and other covers over their faces push through protesters toward a line of riot police. One of the men has a rock in his hand.
As they move forward, Coles and other union leaders dressed in suits order the men to put the rock down and leave, accuse them of being police agents provocateurs, and try unsuccessfully to unmask them...photographs of the masked men's and police officers' boots taken during the handcuffing... appear to have identical tread patterns on their soles...
a retired Ottawa police officer who was formerly in charge of overseeing demonstrations for the force said he questions who the masked men really are, after viewing the video.
"Were they legitimate protesters? I don’t think so..."
Police Issue Denials. The Toronto Star
As protesters surrounded the men and tried to snatch off their masks, one of the three spoke to an SQ officer. The trio got through the police line, were forced to the ground and handcuffed.
Photos of the men lying on the ground show the three were wearing combat boots with identical markings to the ones worn by an SQ officer kneeling beside them.
Video also shows the three eventually being led quietly away to police vans. By contrast, Coles said four legitimate protesters – whom police say were the only people arrested and charged at the summit – were "roughed up pretty good and dragged away."
Get it? Three burly masked individuals approach police lines are stopped by protest organizers, are un-masked and then slink away through riot police lines. Are you fucking kidding me?
Peaceful protesters and union organizers work hard to comply with the law and exercise their rights to demand accountability from government. Police provocateurs are captured on film trying to trigger a charge by riot police.
The Mounties and the SQ, the two police forces involved in summit security, continued to refuse specific comment on three alleged undercover officers caught on camera in an apparent bid to incite a confrontation.
But they denied using agents to provoke violence.
Non-denial denial. Right on cue:... "spokesman for Harper denied any role by the prime minister in the affair, saying "the PMO is not involved in security for events." Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's office referred all questions to the RCMP.
White House Connection. What did the White House know and when did they know it? Are we supposed to believe that Secret Service officials were kept out of the loop about plans to disrupt anti-Summit protests?
Stockwell Day, in charge of summit security is a partisan religious crank, a former small-town evangelical Christian and second generation right-wing hack, with strong connections to anti-abortionists and racist anti-Semites who makes George Allen and Lott look like equal opportunity employers. Baby-faced Day has deep connections with the Texas Christian Right. Historical links connecting Day's Social Credit Party, the KKK and the racist religious right on both sides of the border are well-documented here.
Day is exactly the sort of lap-dog who'd commit any crime to further the rightist agenda.
Security Co-operation. That's what the SSP summit is all about. Does cross-border co-operation include provoking riots? How well informed were White House security officials about plans to disrupt summit protests?
UPDATE: A few folks have suggested that Day or the Mounties could have cooked this up alone. I'll happily agree. That's not the point. The point is why? And what role did the WH take? Fact is: we don't know. But I do know that Canadian/US security agencies are joined at the hip. It's unthinkable that Canadian cops would try a stunt like this at a summit attended by the US President without running it through channels. You don't run rogue operations when you're protecting a US President, not if you want to be working the next day.
Everything that happened at the Summit by the security services will have been scripted weeks and months in advance. Can anyone here imagine the US Secret Service saying: "Security ops? We're not interested." The provocation will have been practiced, probably at a Canadian military base, months in advance, by the numbers.