THE WAY THINGS ARE DONE IN CANADA

A Partial Personal History (of sorts)...

All and all, the work I have accomplished in defining the origin of writing amazes even me; it is not something that I would have foreseen myself eventually doing back during my university days. It is, however, something I would have wanted to do, had I known that it would be possible; so, things have worked out for me in that respect.

Of course, back then I still believed that hard work, innovation, and inventive thinking would actually count for something. Then, I still believed that academic merit was recognized and valued. Now, I know better; it doesn't matter what you know or what you do: all that REALLY matters is who you know and who knows you or, to be more precise, what those who claim to know who you are tell others about you. I would guess that this is typical of all institutions, and that life-term academics can be expected to act in ways that are similar to any other institutionalized persons.

A Different Time

I use to spend my summers working for various First Nations news organizations in Canada's Northwest Territories, earning my university tuition. That was in the early 1980's, just twenty short years after Aboriginal people were given the right to vote in Canadian federal elections. Back then, I still had no real idea what had been done to the members of the First Nations by the Canadian government over the last 100 or so years. It would take another 10 years for the magnitude of what had been done to these people to sink into my consciousness, during which time I would realize some other things as well. But back then, I suppose my ignorance and naive enthusiasm made me appear as if I might prove eventually "useful" to 'the powers that be' who oversee the universities of Canada. That would soon change, though.

As a relatively competent photographer even that long ago, I soon became involved with my university's student newspaper. Various causes were championed by those who worked there, with the peace and disarmament movements being two of the more popular student concerns at that time.

Those who have grown up during the time since the cold war ended will not appreciate what it was like, in the 1970's, to sit outside one night under a star filled sky watching a meteor shower on one of the same evenings as a flare patrol (night maneuvers) was being conducted on a military base in Northern New York State (across the St. Lawrence River)...and to realize that the (meteor) streaks in the sky above, along with the distant flashes and persistent glow (of parachute flares) on the horizon would be all one would initially see of a nuclear war - which might have at that very moment been ending the future of the entire world. The possibility of such a war was at that time that close and that real; and it is a very good thing that children no longer have to deal with such a threat (we hope).

Politics And Academics Do Not Favorably Mix

It also seemed very close, and very real when anti-war activists blew up a company that made components for cruise missiles in Toronto, Canada. That was in the early 1980’s, and a west coast group no one had heard of was responsible; but, a student who was active in the anti-war/disarmament movement at my university was soon being questioned by the RCMP about his event. He later (the next year) became the editor of the student newspaper (the same year I started working there as a photographer); and being of a journalistic bent, he had spent some time traveling in Russia: so, the ‘reasoning’ went, he must know the people responsible for bombing the factory in question.

He was picked up by the RCMP outside of a campus theater - ironically, Dr. Strangelove was the film being featured that evening - and whisked away to Toronto for 24 hours of interrogation.

The RCMP even called his mother in Montreal to threaten and cajole her. But nobody in Ontario, or Eastern Canada for that matter, had the faintest idea who was responsible for that bombing.

This was my first exposure to the extreme, heavy-handed, and arbitrary tactics which government security services in Canada regularly employ. It wouldn't be my last, though, because by the mid 1980's I was involved with the environmental movement. I had always been interested in hiking, canoeing, camping, and climbing (and by that time I had already planted a lot of trees); so when the Green Party started up in Canada in 1983, I joined and was soon heavily involved in a very active chapter of this fledgling party. Our chapter fielded two candidates for the Green Party's first federal election as an official political party in Canada (1984). I was the Official Agent for one of those candidates.

It was at about this time (just after the election) that the RCMP was forced to give up its intelligence and espionage services (due to excesses upon the part of its employees) to a new Canadian security agency, CSIS. This new and more shadowy organization was no doubt to the greater liking of those responsible for such things, since people within the Canadian intelligence community tend to be essentially cowards at heart; and instead of taking on those who are actual threats to Canadian values and institutions, they prefer to mess around students, and poor people, and environmentalists, and researchers: anyone who isn't actually any danger to them, so that they can look like they are doing something without having to worry about getting hurt in return.

So, as an active member of a new political party in Canada that dates from that time, it would seem that I have been listed and filed by CSIS right from that agency's very beginning. It would have been at this point in time that I would have been identified in whatever way they identify people (and blacklisted through whatever means they use to do that); and from this point on I was no longer a Canadian citizen, despite having been born here (3rd generation). From then on, I was an 'other', someone to be watched and suppressed.

On my last day of university, on the day of my last final exam, members of the RCMP travelled about 100 miles from their Toronto office to raid my house in the morning. They probably weren't looking for anything; they just wanted to harass me (they searched everyone's room except mine, which is odd as I was the only person living there with even a breath of activism in them...they were hoping, no doubt, to start some rumors), and remove any listening devices they had planted in the house. Previously, I had noticed that when I picked up the telephone receiver and then depressed the 'hang-up' buttons part way (between the dial tone cut-off and actually hanging-up), I could sometimes hear the conversations other people were having...other people who also worked at the student newspaper (usually called Arthur or, Lilith once-a-year when published as a feminist paper; apparently we were being monitored and taped on the same equipment). Another time, I returned home unexpectedly to find the house empty...except for a "Bell Canada" employee who was in the basement "fixing the telephone line" (despite the fact that nobody had called in any complaints). In the afternoon of the same day as my last final exams, the fire department came crashing into the house in response to a false alarm. I was returning from writing an exam when this happened; my first clue that something was going on was when I noticed a police cruiser parked a few blocks ahead of me...which drove away and then turned down the street I lived on as I approached on my bike. Had I not left early to ride out to the university campus that day, I probably would have been detained during the house search that morning and would have missed my exams.

Sept. 9, 2002: As it turns out, it seems to have been (and be) quite common for students and faculty to be monitored and harrassed by RCMP operatives/operations on campusses across Canada... so much so that, a new book has been written on this very topic! You can preview an overview of this book at:

"Spying 101"

"If you attended a Canadian university in the past eighty years, it's possible that, unbeknownst to you, Canadian security agents were surveying you, your fellow students, and your professors for 'subversive' tendencies and behaviour. Since the end of the First World War, members of the RCMP have infiltrated the campuses of Canada's universities and colleges to spy, meet informants, gather information, and on occasion, to attend classes. Why they were there is the subject of a new book by Steve Hewitt.

Spying 101 provides new insight on the previously secret operations of one of Canada's most powerful institutions and best-known national symbols, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. For more than eighty years, the RCMP and its younger counterpart, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), have been conducting covert investigations within the hallowed halls of Canadian universities in an attempt to discover 'subversive' activity among faculty, employees, and students, and, periodically, to hunt for spies and terrorists. Information has been collected on thousands of Canadians, including prominent individuals such as Pierre Berton, Peter Gzowski, Lotta Hitschmanova, and Rene Levesque".

Things like that (and lots more) happened, not because I had done or would do anything illegal but, just because I had been identified and labeled by people who had (and have) nothing better to do with their time. I was eventually to find out that, people so labeled, people in the environmental movement, do not end up having good jobs or careers. That has started to change a bit as environmentalism has become more mainstream over the past decade but, it hasn't changed for those who were involved in this movement early in its growth period. I know LOTS of veteran environmentalist for whom this is true.

If you were an early member of the environmental movement then, after a certain point, it becomes obvious that it doesn't matter what you might end up discovering, working out, or defining; it doesn't matter how much of a positive impact your interest and dedication might have: nothing you could do would in any way alter the circumstances which would have crystallized around you and labeled you as a generalized and unspecified 'threat' to, well, whatever.

This is why things like, the Vancouver Green Party's office being broken into and the computer lists of their members being taken, happen (1986).

Allow me to supply you with a couple of examples of what this sort of situation can entail:

The Toxic Waste Incinerator Fight

In the late 1980's, a township council in an area where I often live sold land in their industrial park to a company which wanted to build a toxic waste incinerator.

This township council announced that sale at the last council meeting before their next election. I was at that meeting, and so were a lot of other people; but I was the only one there who knew anything about toxic waste incinerators. I had researched the topic while working for Greenpeace in another province several years before. My questions to the members of the township council made it obvious to everyone there that the council members knew nothing about toxic waste incinerators, despite having sold land for one to be built upon.

From that point on, people organized quickly (so fast that the head of the township council commented on the speed at which it happened in the local paper, lamenting that he had been denied his 'day in court'). Every member of that township council was defeated in their election one month later; and some had been on that township council for upwards of twenty years. The toxic waste incinerator was blocked; the land was bought back: the project never happened. End of story? Not for me.

It turned out that those ousted township council members had 'connections' within the local police forces so, one night while walking down the street (the same night that the new township council voted to cancel the land sale for the toxic waste incinerator) I was falsely arrested for "disturbing the peace". As this was happening, and as I could see something illegal was in the process of being done to me, I chose to sit on the ground rather than be thrown to the ground. At no point was I told I was under arrest; I was just told to get into a police car that pulled up beside me and, when I asked why, a notoriously vicious cop got out and started walking toward me. So, I sat down; whereupon I was put in a choke hold from behind and suspended by my neck (by the vertebra at the base of my skull, to be exact) until unconscious and then thrown into jail overnight. At the sham trial which followed later, the charge against me had become "resisting arrest" and three people who hadn't even been on the scene (two of them police officers) supplied perjurious testimony so that the true nature of the incident could be covered up. I later found out that two of the three had direct connections to people living in the area where the toxic waste incinerator was to have been built.

At the sham trial, I was accused of yelling and screaming while walking down the street (something nobody has ever seen me do, before, since, or then: it was about 40 degrees below zero that night, a temperature at which people do not continuously fill their lungs deeply in order to yell and scream...and of course, given the temperature, there were no other people around on the street at the time of the alleged incident); jumping into the air to in order to punch a street sign (which I would have been easily able to reach while standing flat-footed; although, after this incident, the street signs were replaced with ones which are much higher in the air; and this year, during street renovations, the sign in question was repositioned a few yards farther from the street corner so that it is now actually in front of the window in question) and then, somehow changing direction in mid-air (breaking the laws of physics) to end up crashing into a store window (the store was owned by the father of one of my best friends but, I guess the police didn't know that when they were concocting their perjurious testimony). The ad hoc organization which ousted the township council in question was called "P.O.W.I.", for "People Opposing Waste Incinerators"; and it seems this is where they derived the idea of me punching something (POW) and throwing myself into a window (WEEE).

LEFT: the first revision, with a taller sign in the same place as the old one. BELOW: the most recent revision, with the sign lowered and moved closer to - that is, in front of - the window in question.

The judge in the case stated that he had 'no other option but to believe the testimony presented by the police'; and, civil rights aside, there isn't a lot a person can do when confronted with this level of corruption. My lawyer (a personal friend) advised against an appeal, suggesting that in such a case, more people would probably be brought in to offer perjurious testimony against me... which would have taken up a lot of my time; and money; and, would have (as it turns out) diverted me from doing that which I ended up doing: rediscovering non-metrical image writing!

[In early March, 2002, we had a bit of a wind storm in this area. I found it quite amusing that the wind was strong enough to rip the face from the statue of 'Justice' which stands atop the local courthouse... the very courthouse in which I was thrown into jail for refusing to pay the fine imposed upon me for "resisting arrest" (that is, being falsely arrested and then perjured, by the police, in court).

Now, that's what I call "losing face"... definitely good for a laugh. Yes, such events do indeed keep my spirits in good humour; and you know, you can never tell just what the wind will pick up (or when, for that matter). ]

The Song Title Poem

If you think that the above incident (in relation to the toxic waste incinerator fight) was heavy-handed, let me tell you about the "song title poem".

A few years later, working as the photo editor for an alternative newspaper in Vancouver B.C., I contributed a poem composed from randomly selected song titles to our 'surrealism' issue. I made a few comments and observations about why such an assemblage could seem to make sense (due to the degree the words had been processed and polished, and the consequent interconnectivity extending from between individual words to between the titles themselves)...and included a brief reference to a section in Jacques Derrida's "Margins of Philosophy" to illustrate how Chinese words can sometimes sound like English words (the point being that artists are not responsible for how listeners interpret their lyrics); and I mentioned how linking sentences by repeating words at the beginning and end of sentences would produce a reggae-ish effect (there were some 'Taoist reggae' jokes at the time).

A few months later, someone broke into the distribution warehouse where I had been working (my day job, for a chain of record stores) when I had penned that poem (I was doing part of the year-end inventory at the time when I wrote it); and they stole a whole wall of tapes and C.D.'s.

Not computers. No stereo equipment. No office equipment. No laser discs. Just tapes and C.D.'s from one specific area of the warehouse.

Some of my friends at the time made jokes about how surreal it must be to try and translate random English phonemes into coherent Chinese sentences...since Chinese, of course, is a very strongly inflected language - with minor changes in the pronunciation of phonemes producing very different words and meanings. There is "No Code"; anyone looking for such a "Code Da" (ah - the infamous 'lost coda') would only end up with a "Code Duh". Personally, I found the whole matter rather sad: so, a person can't even write an interesting and inventive little poem in Canada without encountering government scrutiny that is so intense it resorts to criminal acts in the attempt to prove its paranoid fantasies? You can bet that this added a few pages to the files that the government has complied on me in the years that have passed since I joined the Green Party...

("Calling Elvis...is anybody home?").

Hmmm...so, my poetry constitutes a threat to national security. Is it just me, or is there something very wrong with that chain of events? Of course now, the Canadian government is introducing legislation which would make it legal for the police to break the law in the course of a 'criminal investigation'. Well, that should lower court costs: now the police will be able to just beat up people they suspect of wrong-doing, and call that an "investigation". That should cut the crime rates (since such acts will no longer be considered criminal in themselves).

Actually, that isn't quite true. The legislation would prohibit police from committing serious crimes, such as arson, physical assault, rape, and murder. So, those are the things that criminal gangs will now demand new members do before being allowed to join. As for the police, well, we can expect them to remain true to the consistencies that have previously defined their conceptual personae, as the 'substance of their being': and that means, simply goading, counselling, or otherwise encouraging criminal acts by others against those with a legitimate political agenda which differs from the status quo. A variety of the old "good cop, bad cop" ploy, this "good times/bad times" approach allows members of the security services to:
1) neutralize or even eliminate the politically active without directly implicating security services...a primary goal, since this allows security services to operate outside of the law without suffering any consequences for committing illegal acts;
2) either open infiltrated groups to criminal charges, or induce the politically active to implicate associates with allegations of criminal activity [well, SOMEBODY has to be responsible!]; and that is a necessary goal for security services since this constitutes the "feedback" whereby they assess the effectiveness of their socio-psychological 'experiments' [and notice the Nazi-ish absence of the concept we call "informed consent"];
3) create a socio-cultural milieux of mistrust which undermines political alliances between groups opposed to the status quo: this is an active approach to destabilization which ranges in focus from the personal/individual to the socio-cultural/collective...an approach characteristic of propaganda, as that which governments do to their own citizens in order to achieve a political end (something usually found during times of war so, that tells you something about the government's view of what is being done through these means)...and which necessitates autonomous political activity dedicated to that which is independently as well as collectively effective, and which does not necessitate associations in which trust is a prerequisite.

Of course, this isn't a problem when people are not trying to establish relationships of power over others or to align with positions of 'authority'. But, such an approach does require that one be prepared to take apart and then put back together the concepts one uses, rather than simply using ready-made concepts.

Democracy And Hypocrisy

I have myself seen the ends to which such destabilization lead: our "local Green Party leader" appeared on the scene after that successful battle against a toxic waste incinerator; transplanted from Scotland by way of Newfoundland (where the last member of the largest indigenous group, the Beothuk Tribe, died in 1829; and where no treaty provisions for that province's other two indigenous groups - the Inuit and the Mi'kmaq - were made when Newfoundland joined the Canadian Confederation in 1949... producing a de facto and systematic suppression of First Nation's culture throughout that province which persists to this day; I mention this to give you some idea of the depth and scope of his familiarity with Canada, and with First Nations issues). He eventually settled in a big house on a large lot that was previously the property of a local Liberal politician. In the last Federal election (2000), he spent most of his time backing the local Liberal candidate, while the person who received the Green Party nomination presented a platform which seemed to be designed to woo voters away from the Liberal candidate's opponents. This "Green" candidate was an ex-employee of Union Carbide, the people responsible for the cyanide leak in Bhopal, India...so, most truly green voters probably voted Liberal instead; and the Liberal candidate won the riding by 55 votes.

This Liberal then joined his fellow Liberal colleagues in voting themselves a 20% pay increase, making his elected term of five years worth over half a million dollars to him... considerably more when one factors in the pension that being elected to a second term in office qualifies him for - particularly since the generous tax-free allowance that had previously been held seperate from the income used to determine pension rates has now been added in to those calculations, vastly inflating how much such people are paid when they reach their very early date of retirement.

(The next election, in 2004, turned out a bit differently. Seems our local "Green" party people decided 'not to run a candidate', giving their Liberal buddy an extra advantage; however, the Green party itself was committed to running a candidate in every riding - so they ended up having to parachute someone {an ex-leader of the party} in. Despite not living here, and not having much time to campaign here, he did very well: he polled well over 2,000 votes, which was around 3 times the ~700 votes the 'Bhopal candidate' managed in the previous election. And the Liberal? This time, he lost by over 9,000 votes).

Thus (as I was saying), despite having uncovered the origin of writing; and despite having defined the functional mechanisms of the previously unstudied form of image writing used by the First Nations of North America; and despite having established that an accurate system for mapping territory was also used by the Aboriginal Peoples, I still have nothing to show for my efforts (except, it would seem, a place on some secret government blacklist). To put all of this in perspective, remember that when I began to publicize my discovery of this form of writing, some of the First Nations of British Columbia were pursuing their land claims in the court system; and, they were being denied their claims because 'they didn't have a written language' (which would establish the cultural continuity between generations that at least one court deemed necessary for such claims to be justified). As to what happened next...

I Must Have Been Doing Something Right...

From: "Gathering Place First Nations,Ca"
Reply-To: "Gathering Place First Nations,Ca" To: "Gathering Place First Nations,Ca"
Subject: [Gathering Place] Good times with CSIS and me
Date: 15 May 2000 15:46:42 -0000

Gathering Place First Nations,Ca

With Thanks to Eastern Door:

Good times with CSIS and me
By: Taiaiake Alfred, Guest Columnist

A few months ago, I got a stranger than usual telephone call at my office in Victoria. My usual friendly Mohawk “Kwe Kwe!” greeting was met on the other end of the line with a few seconds of silence, and then some muffled grunts and a bunch of funny clicking noises. I always chalk this kind of thing up to another old white guy from the Reform Party (sorry, I mean the CRAParty) calling me up for a verbal showdown then panicking at the last second and dropping the phone. But this time, someone actually spoke up.

“Good afternoon Professor Alfred, this is the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Do you have a few minutes to speak with me today?”

I could tell that it wasn’t a prank. If one of my friends wanted to fool me into thinking the Canadian spy agency was after me, they would make sure to sound more like James Bond ordering a martini than the voice I heard, which was more like an anxious student nervously asking me for a grade change. What followed the agent’s clumsy introduction was a crass attempt by him to convince me to give up information on people that “may be threatening the security or stability of the province.”

To my incredulous response of “why the hell would I want to do something like that,” the agent said that it was, in fact, my duty as an author and public employee to inform on troublemakers. CSIS apparently figures that because universities receive money from the public treasury, it makes university professors government employees.

It turns out that CSIS, and the Canadian government’s other domestic intelligence gathering units, were interested in knowing more about potential First Nation problem communities and people so that they could take steps to “ensure that there was as little trouble as possible” between Indians and whites in the province of British Columbia.

The young agent was so keen to serve the public interest that he overplayed his hand. He even tried to get on my good side by telling me that his wife was a former student and that I shouldn’t worry about this at all, because he only worked for CSIS. If I was really in trouble, the RCMP’s secret intelligence unit would be contacting me instead. They work closely together, you see. Then came the kicker. He told me that he had equipped an apartment in Victoria to entertain people like me, and that he wanted me to come over so we could talk and so I could be “interviewed” on tape. It was illegal for him to do it on the university campus!

Unfortunately I have had to deal with this kind of thing from CSIS before when I was a professor in Montréal a few years ago. That time, the agent came up to my office in person. He wore a really cheap suit and looked nothing like James Bond and gave me the same line as the young keener, except then it was tailored to my supposed responsibility to help make sure that there were “no more Okas.”

When I told the keener about my previous experience, he responded that he knew about that contact because he had the other agent’s notes in front of him. Touché. I wondered to myself if the Montréal agent had noted all the details, like that I demanded an exploding pen-gun or at least a fancy shoe phone in exchange for letting him stay in my office. He didn’t have either one, so I made him leave.

In the end, the second contact between CSIS and me ended the same way as the first. I stated in my most professional voice as if my phone was bugged (you think so?) that I didn’t share CSIS’ goals and objectives. I made clear that neither do I care about maintaining order because after all I’m Mohawk, not Canadian. And, if I do have secrets, I’m surely not telling them to CSIS. Then, I politely declined his offer for a meeting and recommended instead that he buy my books and phone me if he had any questions. He never did. No doubt moved on to someone else.

We are all targets because Indigenous rights are still viewed as a threat by the Canadian government. It’s too bad, but this is still a country where those who speak the truth are targeted. All of our leaders are stalked and harassed secretly by Canadian police and internal spies every day. The whole incident was a useful reminder to me of this fact, and of the forces working against us and how strong we must be in resisting the temptation to become tools for the government’s divide-and-conquer tactics.

Indigenous people who I tell these things to find it spooky, and I have to admit that it’s not fun being stalked by creeps. Some others find it outrageous and get angry. As for myself, it gets my warrior groove on. The way I look at it, when you’re young and Indian and The Man is trying hard to track you down, you must be doing something right.

From: "John Morton"
Reply-To: "Gathering Place First Nations,Ca"
To: "Gathering Place First Nations,Ca"
Subject: Re: [Gathering Place] Bad times with CSIS and, ?
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 12:47:38 PDT

Gathering Place First Nations,Ca

After reading Taiaiake Alfred's recent posting about a recent telephone call from a CSIS "keener", and the stalking habits of CSIS "creeps" (Good Times with CSIS and Me", May 15 2000), I decided to share with Gathering Place some of my experiences with the non-Aboriginal community over the past ~10 years.

Since 1991 I've been working on documenting the the form of image writing used by the Aboriginal Peoples during pre-Columbian times. I managed to print an article on this topic in a small newspaper I worked at in Vancouver (NOISE), and in Semiotext(e) Canadas (Autonomedia Collective, Columbia University 1994, page 106). I have also managed to put together a web site on the topic (http://www.tripleoak.on.ca/mindseye/) called "The Origin of Writing". (Replaced by this web site when the previous one disappeared from the web-JM)

One would have expected such research to have generated widespread interest; and I suppose it has...but, not the kind I expected! Since beginning my research:

I've been physically assaulted twice (not to worry, friends: I may be a philosopher, but I am also a martial artist...which a couple of people found out the hard way);
I've noticed people following me around (including one of the creeps who assaulted me, a "suit" who, with two friends in tow, approached me on a downtown Vancouver street and 'straight-armed' my shoulder as he passed;

While living on Cortes Island for a while (after being invited up to visit someone):
the sidewall of my bicycle's front tire was punctured;
someone put some sort of chemical (LSD, strychnine..?) into my coffee at a restaurant while I was doing my laundry, which temporarily (months) gave me a bit of a speech impediment;
someone tried to hit me from behind with a speeding car they were driving on the wrong side of an otherwise deserted highway;
I woke up one morning in my cabin to notice a chemical smell, like some sort of anesthetic, lingering in the closed-in bathroom, the sliding patio door I had closed and locked the night before ajar, and a strange bump on my back with a little red dot on it, suggesting someone had injected something beside my spine;

Moving back to Vancouver:
someone put some sort of chemical "knock-out drop" in my beer in a bar (two sips of a first beer shouldn't make a person feel like they are passing out);
I began to notice people (some from Cortes Island) following me around;
someone put a drop of another type of chemical beside my shoulder blade while I was riding on a bus, which within a day caused a back muscle to lock into a very painful spasm that took several years to work out (so that when I touched the bump on my back, the combined effect was like having my arm twisted and pinned behind my back...glad I didn't ingest any of whatever that was);

When Semiotext[e] Canadas was finally published: I was attending a course in Desktop Publishing in Burnaby, and soon noticed that an RCMP cruiser often drove by my bus stop each morning...and was often parked at the school when and where I arrived (this went on for months, until I moved and started taking the Skytrain);
noticed more, new people following me around again (hey, I've done a lot of door-to-door canvassing, and I KNOW the relative frequency you can expect to randomly meet people you don't actually know... especially when you vary the patterns of your activities);
someone walked up to me at a bus stop swinging a package in a plastic bag, which they swung into my leg as they passed...I instinctively moved my leg, so the contact by the package was minimal, but as that person walked away, I saw the package give a strange little "jump" unconnected to the dynamics of the bag's swinging motion...as if some mechanical or pneumatic device had been triggered;
I found out my Aunt in Ontario had come down with a sudden and mysterious leg infection, from which she almost died (a type of insect called an "Assassin Beetle" was later found in her house and, no, it isn't native to Canada);
and I began to notice that occasionally people walking up to me on Vancouver streets with one hand behind their back, would make a sudden motion as if they were throwing something (acid?) in my face...

I don't know what else I managed to avoid, but moving back to Ontario, and the Delgamuuk'w decision of 1997, seemed to resolve these types of problems (although that "creepy, suited" guy has shown up here within the last couple of years). But through it all and afterward, there was a decided and pronounced consistency to the way that people in the Canadian academic community (such as Michael Ames at UBC; The Canada Council; Andrea LaForet at the Museum of Civilization in Hull (at that time, their 'expert on West Coast Indigenous culture'; now, assigned to 'acquisitions', thus assuring I won't be speaking with her again); Gary Griffin at the University of Waterloo; and of course the apparent capital of "keeners and creeps" in Canada's academic establishment, Trent University) simply ignored the findings of my research.

So, what's going on here? CSIS; CSIS operatives planting false and malicious rumours into the groups of paranoid people they are spying upon; large companies having people act against anything they perceive as threatening their vested interests, or other groups of people worried about loosing their control over land that they do not rightfully own; or, some perverse combination of the above?

Well, when I think these things, and about: Chief Joe Mathias suddenly dying shortly after the possibility of boycott on forest products, to speed up land claims, was announced; or Lasagna suddenly dying within a week of being released from prison in his aftermath of Oka; or (Lucien Bouchard's close brush with death, which cost him a leg, and) Elijah Harper's health problems after his historic "no" vote in the Manitoba Legislature (which I heard about at a Stein Valley gathering in 1990), I really wonder just how close to South African apartheid the entrenchment of Canada's Indian Act is.

{I should clarify what I mean by the above phrase, "physically assaulted twice". The first instance occurred on Christmas Day, 1991, when I was attacked outside my East Vancouver home by a six foot tall, 200+ pound man in his early twenties. That event proceeded through: his attempt to kick me in the crotch, which I dodged; to his attempt to punch me in the face, which I blocked (by intercepting his arm on his forearm, rather than 'filing' his upper arm with my forearm and breaking his elbow... like I said, I'm a nice person); to his kicking me on the chest, with his foot turned parallel to the ground in some martial art technique (and here, I almost smashed his ankle with my elbow as he kicked - and I sometimes wish I had) but instead, ended up absorbing the kick by compressing the front of my rib cage and then expanding the back of my rib cage to pass the force from the kick down my spine and out through my legs into the ground. As it was, that kick left a bruise from the side of his foot across my chest, directly over my heart. Surprised for a moment that his kick hadn't knocked me over, he prepared to kick me again with his other (stronger, right) leg... but by that point I was already in the process of striking that leg where the muscle on the side of the thigh joins the tendon, about a hand's width above the knee. I was nice enough to avoid breaking his knee - it was Christmas Day, after all - but I strike hard enough and sharply enough to bruise the muscle pretty much through to the bone. He would spend the next couple of days on crutches (until the swelling and bruising subsided) but, it would take a while for the extent of his injury to sink in; so, he retreated from me and proceeded to try and kick a friend of mine in the crotch... but, he couldn't lift his leg high enough to accomplish that. Then, he picked up a large rock - he had to use both hands to do this - and started screaming that he was going to crush my skull. Since I was the only one there who was capable of handling such a threat, I started walking toward him - so that he wouldn't attack someone else - and as I drew closer, he through the rock at me... over his head, using both hands. I jumped backward in the rock's path and managed to get one foot back on the ground in time to block the rock on my other, 'insubstantial' leg; in this way I guided it harmlessly to the ground, where it rolled past without injuring anyone. I was fine, too; and when my attacker saw that I was again uninjured by his attack, he turned and ran off into the night as quickly as his bruised right leg would allow.

The second assault in early 1993, was by multiple assailants on a downtown Vancouver street: I noticed three men standing in front of a building about half a block ahead of me, and as I saw them spot me, they proceeded onto the sidewalk toward me. I had a rain hood up over my head, so I didn't see the first one "straight-arm" my shoulder as he passed; but I applied a technique called 'ward off' to his arm using just one hand; and as the other two men stopped and just stood there looking a bit stunned, I simple proceeded past them and continued on my way without looking back. From that point on, things such as cars and chemicals became the weapons of choice for those who were trying to stop me and, my research.

There was one other incident, which took place between the above two: on my way to the 1992 Earth Day celebration where I would meet Warchief, a middle aged man sitting behind me on the bus punched me in the head as he stood to exit the bus several stops before my stop. It was not a hard punch, and I easily countered it by rolling my head with it and then tucking my chin into my shoulder to protect my neck against over-extension... but in retrospect, I suspect this was done as much to gauge my reaction as it was to draw me into a situation which would have precluded my attending the Earth Day ceremonies}.

[As I have mentioned elsewhere, I later found out that the cabin in which I stayed while on Cortes Island was about, oh, maybe 1,000 yards across a channel from where Prince Charles was to stay when visiting the Commonwealth Games later that year. Had I actually been killed while living there, I'm sure that someone would have come up with something like, "He thought the Chinese were sending him secret messages through song titles that were telling him to attack the Prince" {see: the song title poem, mentioned above}; and that would have been the end of any investigation.
That cabin was also a couple of hundred feet from a 'popular' "new age center" (established by expatriates in the late 1960's) where a certain Canadian singer (previously mentioned by her initials only) hangs out; the very same person who seems to have been brought in to 'confuse and cover-up' the situation which devolved around me when I was on that island (someone hasn't read the last paragraph of Anti-Oedipus). She's probably paying them back for the "suicide" of a fan that had been 'stalking' her; although, these people seem to be themselves quite into stalking and, creating nasty situations (oh no, it's a CRISIS) from which they and their friends can derive 'inspiration' for entertainment industry-related projects (capitalism at its worst, consuming people to create further conditions of consumption: the marketing of markets). So, it seems to me (in all probability, given my own observations within a seemingly associated context) that this 'fan' was manipulated into said situation to begin with (perhaps in an attempt to gain the sympathy of Anne Murray, who is an established entertainer from the same home province as the person in question here and whom also had - legitimate - problems with a stalker/fan?)...and was probably then killed to prevent his story from exposing the whole sordid little mess. All of which just continues trends set with this singer's first album (not the next one, drawn from material obtained from the fan who 'killed himself', or the later one which my situation seems to have been parasitized for), which not that long ago was the focus of a court case by someone who was hired to help write that album...but who claimed he was not properly paid for the work which he did.
Of course, since many of these "new age" people are oriented to some strange mix of Christian fundamentalism and New Age spiritualism, nothing they do is 'wrong' because they are hiding away from "the apocalypse" and will be in charge of the planet when 'the end' comes (although, it never does)...you know, the usual sort of crypto-fascist b.s. which characterizes such para/situational poseurs as the "New Age movement" is infamous for].

The fact that some of the elements enmeshed within the differential and derivational texture of that commentary which I in all honesty believe was based upon incidents that happened to me during the course of the research I am presenting on this web site (right down to the ridiculous pair of straw/reed sandals that were left upon the community hall stage where I would be demonstrating one of my Tai Chi sets, for those interested in learning that art, on Cortes Island in the latter part of the winter of 1993), but which were known only to myself and to those responsible for these incidents (which makes of that a connective synthesis of production [in this case, 'accessory after the fact'], rather than a legitimately disjunctive synthesis of recording), leads me to believe that my inferences concerning these incidents are justified and made in the public interest.

Back to "What Is Non-Metrical Image Writing"

Living in that place in 1993 turned out to be quite a bit more dangerous than when I was hanging out in Belize City during the early part of 1983.

What Was THAT About?

Well, these are the sorts of things that go on inside Canada, unbeknownst to the world; and this is why I can make the sorts of amazing discoveries I've outlined in this web site yet, receive no recognition, support, or anything else for my efforts except suppression and hardship.

Not that I'm the only one to encounter such situations:

RCMP Tried to Incite Arson: Animal Activist
Radical says he refused invitation from undercover Mounties

By Jim Bronskill; The Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 26, 2000; page A5.

A Vancouver animal rights activist alleges that RCMP officers tried to persuade him to burn down a building as part of an elaborate undercover operation.

David Barbarash, a spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front, said in an interview yesterday he refused the invitation to help torch the building, which housed a bear gall bladder-drying operation.

The accusation of dirty tricks came as Crown counsel confirmed a stay of proceedings had been entered on charges against Mr. Barbarash and fellow activist Darren Thurston, who were accused in 1998 of mailing razor blades to several hunting guides.

A group calling itself the "Justice Department" sent booby-trapped letters in 1996 to some two dozen British Columbia and Alberta guide outfitters. The incidents came to symbolize the newfound militancy of some animal rights activists.

Following a lengthy RCMP investigation, Mr. Barbarash and Mr. Thurston were charged with multiple counts of mailing razor blades with intent to cause bodily harm. Both have denied any involvement.

Crown counsel Brian Rendell said the charges were stayed last Wednesday after the B.C. Supreme Court ordered the disclosure of certain information to defense lawyers that the RCMP was not prepared to release.

"It left us no option but to terminate the proceedings," said Mr. Rendell.

Const. Manon Eburne, an RCMP spokeswoman, said the Mounties felt the information in question "must remain confidential" because of promises given to other agencies not to reveal secret intelligence sources or the identities of international partners.

"We had to respect our undertaking and obligation toward these people," said Ms. Eburne.

An official familiar with the case who requested anonymity said the objections came from international allies of the RCMP. The Mounties are known to work closely with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and British police.

Mr. Barbarash, however, argued the real reason for shutting down the case was to spare the RCMP embarrassment over its undercover tactics. He said some of these are detailed in records the police have released during the legal process.

Ms. Eburne said she could not discuss whether there had been a covert RCMP investigation.

But she allowed that, "in most of those big investigations, there often are undercover operations in order to obtain more information."

Mr. Barbarash claims that under the guise of fighting the bear parts trade, three undercover agents brought him and Mr. Thurston to a remote location in Fort Langley, B.C., to show them the gall bladder operation. He says an agent wielding a gasoline can tried to persuade the two to set the building on fire. Both activists refused.

MR. BARBARASH SAYS TWO OF HE SAME UNDERCOVER AGENTS HAD PREVIOUSLY INFILTRATED LA QUENA COFFEEHOUSE, a trendy East Vancouver cafe, to spy on the animal rights movement.

Mr. Barbarash said documents also show the Canadian Security Intelligence Service monitored the activists. CSIS spokesperson Dan Lambert said he could neither confirm nor deny allegations about the service's operations.

Mr. Barbarash said he is considering legal action against he RCMP for years of being followed and eavesdropped upon.

"I've suffered emotionally, psychologically and physically," he said. "My health has deteriorated as a result of the stress and anxiety that I have lived with."

Some have condemned the RCMP for recent undercover tactics, including infiltrating an anti-APEC group in British Columbia and blowing up a small building during an Alberta investigation of oil-field vandalism.

La Quena is an East Vancouver cafe that is run as a collective; most of its workers are volunteers, and profits are directed toward helping the disadvantaged in Central and South America. I don't think the RCMP infiltrated that place to spy on animal rights activists; but, that's all they found so, they probably decided to "make their efforts count."

When I lived in East Vancouver, from 1989 to 1995, quite a few of my friends volunteered, hung out, or set up/played at benefits held at La Quena. So, no doubt there was some inadvertent contact between my friends and such agent provocateurs. I strongly suspect that this is how my movements during this period of my life would have been monitored (since not many people were aware of where I was when I went to Cortes Island).

And I don't think that such agents would disseminate misinformation at the same place that they gathered information. La Quena is an alcohol-free, vegetarian space noted for its pacifist outlook: a secondary target for infiltration at best. That most likely occurred through other venues.

Of course, if these sorts of things went on regularly in Canada, you would think you would hear about them more often. Well, consider this exerpt from a January, 2001 Ottawa Citizen article...

"On the Trail of the Mother of All Biker Gangs: a profile of biker gang expert Yves Lavigne"
by Michael Harris; The Ottawa Citizen: Saturday January 13, 20001. Page A5 (and others).

"...In his 1999 book, "Hells Angels at War", (Mr. Lavigne) published minutes of an August 1998 meeting between the commissioner of the RCMP, and the commissioner of the OPP, and various high level police chiefs including Julian Fantino. Although the country's top law enforcement managers did talk about the need to involve prosecutors who knew what they were doing when it came to biker prosecutions, there was a more self-serving side to the national biker strategy, according to Mr. Lavigne.

"The second point defining the national strategy was they agreed to find ways to manipulate the media, to upset the public, so that the public would force politicians to give the police more money. I documented this going all the way back to 1979, where the police have used scare tactics worthy of the Hells Angels to frighten the public and demand money."

With the publication of portions of the sensitive police document, Mr. Lavigne found himself under investigation by the RCMP. In November, 1999, he was summoned to an interrogation session at the Airport Center in Toronto. His inquisitor was an RCMP detachment commander from Alberta. The Sunday session lasted three hours, and Mr. Lavigne was shocked at the extent of what the police wanted to know.

"There were two things in particular he wanted: The sources of the RCMP documents in my book and other sources too. More importantly, he said the RCMP needed to know if I had in my possession any documents that would embarrass the force any time in the next five years. That is no longer investigating a leak inside the RCMP. That is investigating a journalist and practising journalism is not a crime."

According to Mr. Lavigne, the interview ended on a bizarre note.

"He asked me if I knew anything about the poison ricin. I said 'Yeah, it's a castor bean derivative which is very poisonous, which is usually used by national security agencies for assassinations...And he said, 'It's a very deadly poison' and he was looking at a case involving a woman in Alberta who had allegedly murdered her husband with ricin. So all of a sudden this RCMP officer is confiding in me about an ongoing investigation about a poison that doesn't leave traces.

This man is investigating me for sources within the Mounties and suddenly he's telling me about an ongoing case. I took it as a threat."

We should all assume that such a threat would not have been made by such a low ranking officer were it not common knowledge within the RCMP that such actions had been successfully carried out in the past. Well, that's the sort of thing people have to deal with in Canada when the RCMP become involved in their lives.

I do not doubt that it was indeed ricin, or some similar chemical agent, that was dropped on my back beside my right shoulder blade in 1993. Now, eight years later, the muscle which this chemical affected has recovered to the point where the pain that this caused has been reduced to somewhere between a twinge localized to a point in the affected muscle, and a dull ache suffusing the entire muscle. However, it is still quite painful at times; and if I don't keep the affected muscle and it's associated tendons well stretched, then the resulting muscular tension affects my entire right arm by pulling one of the spinal vertebra in my back out of allignment: things will never be the same for me as they were before this happened. It is a good thing that I am not a musician, because this would have severely and adversely affected my career. It is a good thing that I did not ingest this chemical in food or a drink, because this would have ended my life. Which of course was part of the 'message' this chemical's application to my back was meant to convey.

Not that one would expect the Mounties and their other security service friends to do such dirty work all by themselves; as noted in the case of infiltrators at the LaQuena Cafe, the RCMP likes to contract such tasks out to 'agents' they hire off "the street":

RCMP INFORMANT COMMITS SUICIDE USING FLARE GUN

This is the story of the RCMP's gangster-informant Cory Privitera, as outlined by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's investigative journalism show, "The Fifth Estate": this is "The Story the Mounties Do Not Want Us to Tell You".

If anyone is still laboring under the illusion that the RCMP are somehow above any suspicions of criminal acts, this brief introduction to the sort of people the RCMP like to employ should clear up such misconceptions. Privitera was paid an estimated $300,000 while working for the RCMP and other Canadian police forces.

This story was first unearthed by the Ottawa Citizen's senior writer Gary Dimmock, who at the that time was a reporter focusing upon police matters in New Brunswick.

"It all started like a basic daily crime story that there was a guy found dead in a vacant basement apartment and when we went there, the police right away said 'no foul play,'" said Mr. Dimmock. "Then about six months later, me and a buddy that I was working on the story with, we just put it together. We knew of this guy who was an RCMP informant and then we connected it six months later. It was just one of those stories that you just covered like a regular story and then six months later you started connecting the circumstances."

Mr. Privitera was living in the house where the body was found in the basement apartment. The Fifth Estate picked up the story four years after police claim Mr. Privitera committed suicide by shooting himself with a flare gun while in British Columbia; and their coverage of Mr. Privitera's career as an RCMP informant draws upon three days of taped interviews conducted by Mr Dimmock with Mr. Privitera.

In their presentation of the story, The Fifth Estate revealed that Mr. Privitera:

- was recruited by the RCMP in the summer of 1989 in Barrie, Ontario;
- drove a beat-up old car with no muffler and swastika's spray painted on the side, and habitually drove over stop signs, on sidewalks, on lawns and over flower beds without being stopped or charged by police;
- in bars, regularly slipped drugs into women's drinks before raping them; and into men's drinks before beating them up;
- ran a break and enter ring which focussed upon residential homes, whereby teenagers equipped with walkie-talkies stole, from homes and warehouses, hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods for him in return for alcohol and drugs which he actively encouraged them to use;
- had one teen who, arrested for robbery, died of a massive morphine overdose in Privitera's home shortly after being released from custody: no investigation or inquest was ever held into the death, which police attributed to "accidental causes"; and all levels of police, including the Solicitor General, refuse to answer any questions concerning this incident;
- regularly visited bars carrying drugs, handguns, and grenades (all of which are illegal in Canada) unopposed;
- turned in members of a motorcycle club that he was affiliated with but, all those charged on his testimony were acquitted by a judge who called Privitera "a thug and a devious criminal" who's testimony was "completely unreliable";

- the RCMP then moved him to Halifax, Nova Scotia where he was given a new identity, a house, and $37,000; he stayed there until the Halifax police demanded he be moved out of the city so, the RCMP moved him to Fredericton, New Brunswick (population 46,000);
- in Fredericton he was paid $500 a week by the RCMP; Fredericton police soon arrested him, after a bouncer in a bar told him to leave the bar for urinating on the floor and Privitera responded by pulling a knife and threatening to burn the bar down;
- after revealing to the police at the jail he was taken to that he was an RCMP agent, he bragged to his lawyer about knowing ways to kill people such as injecting them in places where it can't be detected;
- the lawyer's cousin was later found in Privitera's basement, dead of a drug overdose; the case was quickly closed, labeled as another "accidental death" despite a lack of needle marks uncovered in the autopsy: and the dead man's cousin (Privitera's lawyer) stated that 'the police totally protected their agent (Privitera) during the investigation';
- in 1995, when the RCMP tried to fire him as an agent, Privitera shook them down for $10,000 by threatening suicide and/or going public with his story;
- when police tried to move Privitera out of Fredericton, he threatened them, their wives, and their children; he also told them to 'get the body bags ready' because he had enough cyanide to poison the city's water supply;
- in 1996, Privitera sued the RCMP for "wrongful dismissal"; the police settled the suit out of court;
- in 1998, Privitera was found dead of a drug overdose, and shot through the head with a flare gun; a note found neatly pinned to his shirt read: "It is a good day to die".

In total, Privitera was paid at least $300,000 by the police, who still refuse to confirm that he ever worked for them.

SO: that's the sort of people the RCMP hire to work for them here in Canada; and, those are the sorts of things such people then get away with doing.

Here We Go Again...

In the summer of 1998, I traveled from British Columbia (where my marginalized position had once again become untenable, as people from Trent University and Cortes Island were again stalking my movements in a probable prelude to more of what I had experienced in British Columbia from 1993 to 1995: for instance, the focus ring on one of my camera's lenses mysteriously 'broke' when I was on Cortes Island in 1993; and exactly the same thing happened to my only other lens [while I was living on another B.C. island] in 1998...which would probably have, in both cases, involved someone breaking into my place of residence while I was away; someone who has been trained to think in terms of eliminating the ["war"] machinery of those that they oppose) to Waterloo, Ontario, with the intention of entering the University of Waterloo's Independent Studies program. I thought that this might be the only way I would be able to obtain any sort of even indirect funding for my research; and I had received a favorable response to this plan of action when I had contacted that program earlier, in 1995. However, the director of that program told me during an interview (held at my request) that he considered my research somehow 'inappropriate', and that I was wasting my time in applying to that program: he said he had no intention of supporting my application. Further, he stated that in his opinion 'there aren't any real problems facing the native peoples of Canada'; and when I mentioned that I had received some academic support from Americans, he said: "Then why don't you go to school in the United States?"

Interestingly, although I hadn't told anyone of my intention to travel to Waterloo, within a week of my arriving there I noticed that some people I had know at Trent University a decade and a half before were starting to turn up (as always, just in passing: apparently they have been told that this sort of activity does not constitute 'stalking' as long as they don't actually speak to me); and at one point the slime ball Liberal member of parliament (to be fair, though, I've known him since about grade one in elementary school; and he was never in the least bit sleazy before the Liberal Party machine took hold of him. He comes from a rather large family, so I suspect that his aquired and ingrained tendency to "grab" was easily subverted and converted into political prefidy...but at least the days when he had to snack upon raw potatos has long past) from my (distant) home riding even put in an appearance, driving past in a car as I was returning to my newly rented place of residence. Which suggested to me that the suppression of my research, as well as the direct interference in my personal life I had noticed since beginning this research, had indeed been due to government intervention.

Criminalizing Dissent

So, despite having made the sorts of amazing discoveries I've outlined in this web site yet, I have received no recognition, support, or anything else for my efforts except suppression and hardship.

And almost death. But of course, nobody cares about that; people just want to know if there is something here they can make money from! Which is, of course, the sort of attitude that allowed apartheid to persist for so long in South Africa.

So, even though I'm not a member of the First Nations; even though I am of European heritage, and my skin is speckled in its coloration, I have a pretty good grasp of the REAL reasons behind the high unemployment rates, lack of opportunity, and consequent despair encountered in Aboriginal communities across Canada. These problems are are not caused by any fault on the part of the First Nations: they are the direct result of the prejudice, racism and the active suppression of human rights (not to mention specific Aboriginal rights) that members of the First Nations presently have to face every day of their lives.

It's that simple.

Overall, the processes involved are pretty much the same, because the people involved ARE the same. It is true that the majority of the incidents which happened to me occurred during the years when Brian Mulroney and his party were in power in Canada (1984-1993); and that Mr. Mulroney was the most hated politician in Canadian history (when it lost power, his party went from a majority government to holding only two seats in parliament). But of course, the people who implement government policy, as public employees, do not change when governments do; and, neither do their attitudes. As with taxes, once established...

In Canada's early years, the First Nations were identified as a threat to settlers in Canada...not because the Aboriginal Peoples were against settlers but, because the settlers perceived the claim which the First Nations had on the land base as being in conflict with the designs and desires of the settlers.

Then, of course, this perception of a threat was used to justify all the repressive measures used to suppress the cultures and people of the First Nations.

When it eventually became apparent that the First Nations were never a threat but were in fact only interested in peaceful co-existence, then it became necessary to ensure that the nature of the repression they had undergone never became public. This is the final phase of the process of oppression, when the past application of mechanisms for suppression becomes the very reason that suppression is continued.

That is the point that Canada has reached in its relationships with the First Nations of North America; and, that is where I and my research are also being pigeon-holed.

This all seems a bit much, doesn't it? Not the sorts of things one would expect to find happening in a country with over 100 years of democracy behind it.

But you see, Canada has always been at least two countries forced to exist as if one.

Although it is a predominately English-speaking country, Canada also has a very large population of French-speaking citizens, who are located for the most part in the province of Quebec.

For at least the past 30 or so years, a certain percentage of this French-speaking populace has openly contemplated separating from Canada in order to establish themselves as an independent, French-speaking nation.

Today, this movement has established itself as a legitimate political party that regularly elects representatives to various levels of government...which has drained support away from Liberal party politicians, sending them seeking support elsewhere.

Initially, though, this was not so; and during the early period of this movement's history, the Canadian government responded to it with everything it could think of: infiltration and spying; RCMP 'dirty tricks'; even the suspension of civil rights throughout Canada, during a period of artificial crisis in the 1970's when the War Measures Act was invoked (so that people could be arrested and held for questioning, for an indefinite period of time, without any charges being laid).

Such responses have set the tone and defined the ethics of politics in Canada: and basically, anything can come to be justified on a political level here "in the interests of 'National Unity'."

Naturally, all the dirty little tricks and sleazy approaches to politics that evolved in the face of French Canadian separatism have come to be applied elsewhere in Canadian politics...because nobody ever really spoke out against these sorts of practices. So, the silence continues, the dirty tricks and sleazy ethics continue, and the Federal government now actively subverts the very principles it is suppose to protect...because that is what it has become use to doing. Those who have established themselves in the Federal government and its bureaucracies have done so by acting in this way; and, they no longer know how to act any differently.

These approaches didn't really work that well against the French Canadian separatists; but such approaches are more effective in the short term (i.e. in the course of an elected term of 4-5 years) than legitimate and ethical means so, these are the sorts of responses encountered by anyone doing anything at all differently than how the dominant interests of Canada's established governments dictate things are to be done.

Anyone who attended the Summit of the Americas, held in Quebec City in 2001, can attest to what I am saying: how else can one explain the random and unprovoked tear-gassing of, and firing of plastic bullets into, crowds of peaceful protesters?

Amnesty International recently condemned the Canadian governemnt for their response to protesters at the Quebec Summit (and other things, like the lack of a public inquiry into the mureder by police of Aboriginal protester Dudly George - see the "LINKS" section at the end of this site for more on this issue - and several murders of Aboriginal people by RCMP officers in Saskatchewan).

Even a member of Canada's Federal Parliament was hit with a plastic bullet during the Quebec Summit, as he walked peacefully with a group of protesters; so, you can imagine what sorts of things are resorted to in situations that are not being actively monitored by television cameras, and other media.

It has been this way for a while here in Canada, where it has become a standard government practice to criticize other nations in order to divert attention from the things that happen within Canada:

'YANKING UNCLE SAM'S BEARD' - 1967 papers show U.S. officials resented Canada's increasingly independent policies
By Jim Bronskill; The Ottawa Citizen, June 4, 2001; page one.

Newly disclosed records reveal the United States secretly blamed Canada for trying to divert attention from Quebec separatism in late 1967 by highlighting embarrassing American problems and fudging the facts on early plans for a missile defense shield.

The complaints were voiced in a sharply worded memo to Washington from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

The telegram from then-ambassador Walton Butterworth told State Department officials the Liberal government of Lester Pearson was giving Americans the "sandpaper treatment" to the "point where it begins to hurt".

The October 1967 telegram, long classified secret, was among dozens of recently released documents concerning U.S. relations with Canada in the 1960's.

Mr. Butterworth accused the Pearson government of "fanning, whether purposely or not, anti-Americanism" in Canada through public comments and policies on various political and economic issues...

One "recent shocker" was a documentary of summer riots in American cities that Mr. Butterworth considered an attempt to show U.S. society as a "welter of fear, hate, depravity, rot and disintegration."

The telegram represents the latest evidence of the uneasy wariness with which the U.S. administration of Lyndon Johnson often eyed Canada during the tumultuous period, an era marked by the flowering of nationalist sentiment in the wake of Canadian centennial celebrations.

The Parti Quebecois was also born in 1967, declaring the goal of an independent Quebec.

Mr. Butterworth, ambassador to Canada from 1962 to 1968, felt some of the Canadian policies in question were truly related to national interests, while others "reflect little more than a yen to yank Uncle Sam's beard" and a desire "to embarrass the U.S." by underscoring American problems, partly with the view to papering over controversy with Quebec."

[Now, you would think that such an approach to the United States of America has been stopped by this point in time, wouldn't you? Well, think again:

BROWN SHIRT
(an editorial by the Ottawa Citizen; Monday October 7, 2002, page A14).

"Liberal MP Bonnie Brown doesn't know democracy from dictatorship. Last week, she lumped George Bush in with Hirohito and Hitler.

"Hirohito and Hitler launched attacks on democracies to exterminate freedom, whereas Mr. Bush intends to topple a brutal dictator before he does the same. As Bill Buckley once said, it's the difference between pushing an old lady into the path of a bus and out of it. Get it, Ms. Brown?"].

Issues concerning Quebec nationalism are still influencing way political activity in Canada is conducted:

WITNESS SAYS MAN PAID HER $10 TO VOTE
- Montreal, Canadian Press, May 30, 2001.

A key witness at a vote-buying trial Tuesday identified a man she said incited her to vote in someone else's name for a Liberal candidate in return for a $10 fee in the November 1998 provincial election.

But Albert Berardinucci's defense lawyer made an attempt to discredit Cathy Gouin, questioning her recollection of he man and forcing her to describe him right down to the thickness of his hair and eyebrows.

The testimony came on the opening day of Berardinucci's trial into allegations he organized a sweeping vote-buying scheme in the 1998 provincial election in the Montreal-area riding of Anjou.

The election cost Parti Quebecois cabinet minister Pierre Belanger his seat.

Yes, this is how 'democracy' has evolved in Canada. A lot of people realize how things are being done here...and they do not like it.

AGILE, 'COSMOPOLITAN' CANADIANS EMBRACE CHANGE, STUDY SHOWS
By Kathryn May; The Ottawa Citizen, June 6, 2001

A new post-modern "cosmopolitan" citizen is emerging in Canada who loves change, has no political affiliation, distrusts politicians, is braced for North American union and wants more "active" government in their lives, according to a recent study.

Ongoing surveys conducted by Ekos Research Associates conclude this newfound "love of change" is one of the biggest shifts in public attitudes over the past decade. About 66 per cent of the Canadians surveyed think change is a good thing and 71 per cent believe the country needs to change...

But trust in politicians is at a 30-year low. This distrust is rooted in the belief the federal government puts the interests of big business, politicians and special interest groups first. Only 13 per cent believe the government acts in the public interest.

So you see, I am not the only person making the kinds of observations that I have outline above.

In fact, more and more Canadians are beginning to become all too familiar with the government's heavy-handed police tactics:

From: SPECIAL REPORT * CRIMINALIZING DISSENT

Keeping the Public in Check
By David Pugliese and Jim Bronskill
The Ottawa Citizen, Saturday August 18, 2001; pages A1 and A5.

"...for some, the right to free speech and assembly in Canada has become precarious at best.

The recently released APEC inquiry report focused on certain questionable RCMP activities during the 1997 gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in Vancouver, including the arrest of demonstrators and use of pepper spray. Almost overlooked in the review, however, was an apparent shift in police and government attitudes toward a "criminalization of dissent."

Behind the scenes, law enforcement agencies are directing their efforts at organizations and individuals who engage in peaceful demonstrations, according to civil rights experts. The targets are not extremists, but ordinary Canadians who happen to disagree with government policies.

Officers from various police forces and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) have infiltrated, spied on or closely monitored organizations that are simply exercising their legal right to assembly and free speech. Targets of such intelligence operations in recent years, according to federal documents obtained by the Citizen, range from former NDP leader Ed Broadbent to the Raging Grannies, a senior citizens' satire group that sings about social injustice.

Individuals have been arrested for handing out literature condemning police tactics. Large numbers of Canadian and legitimate organizations, from the United Church of Canada to Amnesty International, have found themselves included in federal "threat assessment" lists alongside actual terrorists groups.

And in what some consider blatant intimidation, RCMP and CSIS agents are showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of people who voice opinions critical of government policy or who plan to take part in demonstrations...

"When police start spying on people because they don't like their politics, you've gone a long way away from what Canadian liberal democracy is supposed to be about," says (University of British Columbia law professor) Wesley Pue, editor of the book Pepper in Our Eyes: The APEC Affair."

[On April 14th, 2002, Jim Bronskill and David Pugliese received two awards for investigative journalism from The Canadian Association of Journalists.
Their 5 part series on "The Criminalization of Dissent" received an award for 'best open newspaper/wire service report', as well as the prestigious '"overall" best investigative report of 2001' award].

Of course, such developments are not really new in Canada; they just represent the surfacing of tendencies and techniques which security services have covertly employed against Canadian citizens for decades. Since no one managed to publicly object to these practices in the past, they have become so widespread that they are now being asserted as a standard public policy, and are becoming characteristic of Canada.

Such developements are not unique to Canada, either; indeed, the overall process I am describing here is far too common in the world today:

"..."What were once the weapons of political repression have become the tools of everyday policing", notes a study on torture in Brazil released last month by Amnesty International.

Before Brazil returned to democracy in 1985, the military tortured intellectuals and activists who were seen as threats to the regime. In the years since, the practice has continued against what are known as "the dangerous classes," a derogatory term for the poor and blacks." From: "Brazil Launches Campaign Against Torture; Government finally acknowledges the widespread practice,"
By Hector Tobar, The Ottawa Citizen, Monday November 26, 2001; page A11.

Here is yet another reason why the term "Brazil of the North" (which usually refers to Canadian forestry practices) can be applied to Canada.

Return to ...

an analysis of non-metrical image writing (the section with the pictures of the Three Feather Chief).

Or, to the introductory section on "What Is Non-Metrical Image Writing" (the section with the picture of the poison arrow frog).