CSIS and Olympic Police State Target Resistance Groups
-Press release sent by APC in response to article below-
CSIS and the Olympic Police State:
The Anti-Poverty Committee, and others, have been publicly targeted by [the] Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), again.
Over the weekend, news outlets released a document from CSIS that outlined their intention to surveil and neutralize anti-Olympic protest groups.
This news comes as no surprise to most groups. Following last February’s disruption of the countdown clock VANOC made a joint statement vowing to utilize all forces and affiliated security agencies, which include the RCMP, the [Vancouver Police Department], the Canadian Armed Forces and CSIS, to ‘target specific protesters and protest groups’.
Mary Claremont of the APC said, “This is what we have been protesting. Not just the Olympic lies and the millions of wasted dollars, but the coming Olympic police state. People thought we were nuts, but look, from 40 kilometers of electric fence, surveillance cameras, civil city, CSIS, add this and every thing else up- and its here.”
Mary pointed out that the APC has already been targeted with mass arrests, mis-information campaigns and the incident that had an organizer arrested by police posing as a journalist. As well organizations associated with the APC, like the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, have been targeted.
“We echo the concerns of the BC Civil Liberties Association. We also fear police intervention, surveillance and undercover operations. In fact we are certain that we have been and continue to be subject to all these things.”
“But this is all part of the Olympic package. It states very clearly in the rules of the IOC that there shall be no protests or strikes allowed. We want to know how far they are prepared to go. CSIS does not just look into things. The history of covert intelligence agencies and their relationship with protest organizations, especially direct action groups like ours, has been one of state sponsored disruption and violence.
Mainstream media article:
"CSIS on lookout for violent protests at 2010 games"
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/01/20/c...
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RE: CSIS and Olympic Police State Target Resistance Groups
Quick note:
The mainstream story - a serial-produced Canadian Press feed carried by the CBC - refers seamlessly to 'anti-poverty fighters', actively contextualizing any polemical intervention on the grounds of the politics of poverty as quasi-insurgent and deserving of active targeting and outright vigilant suppression.
Sounds strikingly like 'foreign fighters' or other descriptive permutations put to work by military/intelligence organs. Looks like full spectrum repression is coming home to Vancouver. The monopolizers of violence are attempting to cultivate further legitmacy and credibility, seeding and fertilizing statements on this matter to harvest some modicum of consent, or at least the air of "public interest" on this matter.
Small as it is, the new jargon is an intentional discursive shift to validate the use of force against anyone choosing to undertake civil acts of disobedience or organized expressions of dissent to defend neoliberal economic refugees in one of Canada's largest cities.