G20 Toronto Riots perpetrated by Agents Provocateurs of the Police

[link to www.globalresearch.ca]
G20 Toronto Riots perpetrated by Agents Provocateurs of the Police

by Ghada Chehade

Smoke and Mirrors

Two weeks after the G20 protests in Toronto it is becoming more and more apparent that what many of us suspected is indeed true: the June 26 ‘violence’ (i.e. property damage and police-car fires) was most likely perpetrated by agents provocateurs of the police. I recall walking back down Yonge Street after the June 26 demonstration and seeing smashed commercial windows and later watching the spectacle of burning police cars on the mainstream news; it all seemed surreal and quite staged. It felt a bit like being in a parallel universe. The demonstration broadcast on TV was not the demo I had just come from. None of the folks I was with during the demonstration saw windows being smashed or cars being set on fire, and when we saw the spectacle plaid out in the media we instantly knew that the vandalism was either staged or provoked, or both. Now evidence is beginning to surface that proves that these acts were at least partly carried out by undercover agents. As was the case at the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership’ meeting protests at Montebello Quebec on August 20, 2007, it is the agents’ boots that gives them away. In a recent article, Terry Burrows draws on photos from the Globe and Mail to demonstrate that ‘black bloc’ provocateurs and the uniformed armoured police were wearing in Toronto (as at Montebello) the identical government issued combat boots” [1].

It’s likely that the agents provocateurs went off with other ‘black block’ people away from the larger march to set the stage for what Burrows aptly calls a “massive government / media propaganda fraud.” This orchestrated spectacle of violence and destruction has at least three main functions or effects: it diverts attention away from the G8/G20 and any discussion on how they serve to plunder and exploit the world’s resources, peoples and economies (the very issues raised by protestors); it serves to demonize demonstrators and delegitimize much-needed dissent and protest against global capitalism and its aforementioned devastation and; it serves to justify the billion dollar security bill that Harper put on the Canadian people. After weeks of insisting that the grounds for a one billion dollar police presence was specifically to stop so called black block tactics and ‘violent groups,’ when the time came police were no where to be seen and/or were given clear orders from the command centre that said “Do not engage,” meaning to stand down and do nothing [2].

Rather than ‘protect’ the downtown district from violence and property damage, police actually used their resources and hugely disproportionate presence to demonize, intimidate and corral protestors. In Toronto police used what Catherine Porter of the Toronto Star calls the Miami Model [3]. This model is used by police agencies at demonstrations across the globe from Genoa to Pittsburgh. As Porter explicates, the formula includes a number of now-common police tactics: The first is information warfare. Leading up to the demonstrations protestors are criminalized and dehumanized, presented as ‘terrorists’ and ‘threats’ that the city needs to defend against. Then there is intimidation, wherein police conduct random searches of perceived activists, midnight raids on organizers’ homes before demonstrations etc. Another tactic is the self-defense rationale by police that “they threw rocks” so we had to use tear gas, rubber bullets and make arrests. In Toronto, rock-throwing, window-smashing “thugs” (as Harper called them), burning cars, and the over 1000 people arrested—only 263 of whom were charged with anything other than breach of the peace [4]—are part of a carefully orchestrated diversion and serve as scapegoats that allow the Canadian national security state to justify the insane cost of security for the summit as well as its police-state tactics and the increased militarization of public engagement. The last ingredient of the model is the police congratulating themselves for a “job well done” regardless of how many people are needlessly arrested (most of them never charged) or abused in the process.