[Nettime-bold] Quebec/FTAA News

[metac0m <metac0m@zworg.com>]

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A20: Resistance Is Live
http://thehacktivist.com/a20/

--
Police State
By metac0m

There is a security obsession surround the Summit of the Americas.
Indeed there will be as many as 5,000 police officers, including five
riot squads present in Quebec City along with an ominous security zone
comprising nearly 4 kilometers of ten-foot high fence. A website has
even been developed to tell us all about the security surrounding the
Summit.

http://www.securitesommet.ca

The website states that "Security measures for the Summit of the
Americas have been selected on the basis of the violence and other
events experienced at similar international summits in the recent past."
A montage of no less than four police and security organizations will be
in Quebec:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police In Quebec
http://www.grcquebecrcmp.com/pages/english/menu_e.html

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is responsible for the safety of Heads
of State and official delegations while they are in Canada. Working
jointly with its partners, it also oversees the accreditation of Summit
participants.

Sûreté du Québec:
http://www.suretequebec.gouv.qc.ca/

The Sûreté du Québec is responsible for maintaining order inside and
outside the security perimeter, and for security measures on roads used
by the dignitaries. It will also carry out any criminal investigations
related to the event.


Québec City Police Force:
http://www.ville.quebec.qc.ca/fr/vivre/securite/securite.html
The Québec City Police Force controls traffic inside and outside the
security perimeter, and plans any emergency services and measures that
may be needed.


Sainte-Foy Public Security Service:
The Sainte-Foy Public Security Service controls traffic outside the
security perimeter around the Jean-Lesage Airport, and plans any
emergency measures that may be needed in the area for which it is
responsible.

But left out of the security website is the role of:

Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/

CSIS will be there too.

In light of the fact that the security measures "have been selected on
the basis of the violence" and police have not hesitated to resort to
violence it is important to be aware of both your rights and to whom
violent police officers are accountable.

For an overview of what to expect read "Guess What! We've Got Rights"
http://www.tao.ca/~cobp/englishweb.pdf

If you've witnessed police misconduct or have been a victim of police
brutality here are some contacts:

---
The RCMP Public Complaints Commission
http://www.cpc-cpp.gc.ca/
How To Contact Us
Head Office
Office Address 
60 Queen Street, 3rd Floor 
Ottawa, ON 

Mailing Address
P.O. Box 3423, Station 'D' 
Ottawa, ON K1P 6L4 

eMail
org@cpc-cpp.sgc.gc.ca

Telephone
General inquiries: 
 (613) 952-1471 
Toll-free across Canada:
1-800-267-6637
Fax:
 (613) 952-8045

---
Québec Police Complaint Procedure
http://www.opcc.bc.ca/Police%20Complaint%20Procedures/Quebec.html

CONTACT INFORMATION
COMMISSAIRE À LA DÉONTOLOGIE POLICIÉRE

Provincial Office:

Edifice Louis-Philippe-Pigeon, 1200, route de l'Eglise
Sainte-Foy, Québec, G1V 4Y9

Tel: (418) 643-7897 
Fax: (418)528-9473
deontologie-policiere.quebec@secpub.gouv.qc.ca

---
Security Intelligence Review Committee
http://www.sirc-csars.gc.ca/8000.html
Complaints about CSIS
---
--
Internet links anti-globalists
Web sites, E-mail, chat rooms, news groups all abuzz with summit plans

ALLISON HANES
The Gazette

In the 1960s, it was the music of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez that empowered
the protesters who fought for civil rights, the banning of nuclear
weapons and an end to the Vietnam War. 

Today, it's the Internet that powers the anti-globalization activists
who descend on international summits to fight against what they see as
corporate influence and the sacrifice of human rights for the sake of
trade. 

For protesters preparing for the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City
next month, the Internet - from Web sites to E-mail, to chat rooms, to
news groups - is abuzz with plans for organizing and mobilizing hundreds
of groups from dozens of countries. 

"It makes certain things possible that could never happen otherwise,
mainly the co-ordination of information and ideas over long distances,"
said David Graeber of the New York City chapter of the
protest group Ya Basta!. 

Many participant groups have posted long polemics outlining their
reasons for opposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which is to be
negotiated April 20-22 in Quebec by the leaders of 34 countries. 

Local groups are using the Web to co-ordinate activities with protesters
coming from Latin America, the United States and Europe. 

One Quebec City group, Operation Quebec Printemps 2001, is taking
requests for lodging via E-mail. "We have 10,000 requests for housing,"
OQP2001 member Shawn Stensil said. "I had one call from Thunder Bay
(Ont.) and another from South Carolina." 

Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader, has
everything from what to expect from police to tips for driving in
Quebec. 

"Turning right on a red light is illegal in the province of Quebec
(except in a few trial cities,)" a link on Public Citizen's site
advises. "Drivers are as bad as in Boston. ... In Quebec City, they have
a specialty for ignoring pedestrian crossings." 

While the Internet is an essential organizational tool and useful for
sharing ideas, anti-globalization activists say it has its limitations. 

"In a certain way the whole spirit of the movement is against what the
Internet stands for," said Graeber of Ya Basta!. 

He calls it a terrible medium for debate and decision-making because the
leaderless groups that make up the anti-globalist movement tend to
operate by consensus - a task that requires compromise and
understanding. 

"The Internet tends to bring out macho posturing ... and create a
contentious and competitive atmosphere," Graeber said. "Debate is still
done face to face, mostly over beer." 

Philippe Duhamel, a member of the Montreal-based group SalAMI, said
access to the Internet is an issue for those in the international
movement. 

"Those who are plugged in tend to be middle-aged white men," Duhamel
said. "More than 50 per cent of the world population has never touched a
phone." 

Still, outside observers see the Internet and anti-globalist forces as
inextricably linked. 

"Like the Internet itself, the anti-globalist movement is a body that
manages to survive and even thrive without a head," states a
confidential Canadian Security Intelligence Service brief about the
outlook for protests to be held in Canada. "The agile use of the
Internet allows co-ordinated actions with minimal resources and
bureaucracy." 

The documents also say CSIS needs to be on the alert for anarchist
groups that might be hatching plans for politically motivated violence. 

"Encryption by some groups suggests that some of the activities planned
could be illegal," a declassified document said. 

And, CSIS points out, the Internet itself has been used for protest:
anti-globalization "hacktivists" launched attacks against corporations
in conjunction with protests at the G8 summit in Cologne, Germany, in
1999. 

One expert believes the Internet has been a major catalyst in the
evolution of the present-day protest movement - which like the Web
itself is international in character, global in outlook and immense in
scale. 

"It can't be underestimated. It's absolutely huge," said Ron Deibert, a
professor of political science at the University of Toronto. "It has
boosted the organizational and intellectual capacity of civil society
around the world." 

Deibert has traced the roots of the use of the Internet by the
anti-globalist movement to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. 

Though the technology was rudimentary, civil society groups used the
Internet to draft an Earth Charter. 

The next landmark, he said, was the movement against the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment, or MAI. 

Deibert said he was struck by the Internet's mobilization power when he
learned that a motion adopted against the MAI by Mississauga, Ont., city
council and one passed in Berkeley, Calif., were identical - both taken
from a sample motion posted on the Web site of Public Citizen. 

"(The Internet) is fueling this revolution," Deibert said. 

"In the past, world politics was a game of states and citizens were
spectators. It's very simple when you're only dealing with states, but
what happens when you open the doors to other groups? How you include
them and who gets to decide? That's the question of the 21st century." 

--
The really tough question in Buenos Aires
NAOMI KLEIN
Wednesday, March 28, 2001

Next Friday, trade ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the Free
Trade Area of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires. Many in Latin
America predict that the ministers will be greeted with protests much
larger than the ones that exploded in Seattle in 1999.

The FTAA's cheerleaders like to pretend that their only critics are
white college kids from Harvard and McGill who just don't understand how
much "the poor" are "clamouring" for the FTAA. Will this public display
of Latin American opposition to the trade deal change all that?

Don't be silly.

Mass protests in the developing world don't register in our discussions
about trade in the West. No matter how many people take to the streets
of Buenos Aires, Mexico City or Sao Paulo, defenders of corporate-driven
globalization just keep on insisting that every possible objection
lobbed their way was dreamed up in Seattle, by somebody with newly
matted dreadlocks slurping a latte.

When we talk about trade, we often focus on who is getting richer and
who is getting poorer. But there is another divide at play: which
countries are presented as diverse, complicated political landscapes
where citizens have a range of divergent views, and which countries seem
to speak on the world stage in an ideological monotone.

In North America, we are finally hearing the debates about whether or
not more of the same model of deregulation, privatization and
liberalization will protect our heath and education and water systems.
In Western Europe, the foot-and-mouth inferno is putting the entire
model of export-oriented industrial agriculture on trial.

And yet such diversity of public opinion is rarely attributed to
citizens of Third Word countries. Instead, they are lumped into one
homogenous voice, channelled by dubiously elected politicians or, better
yet, ousted ones such as Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo, now calling for a
global campaign against "globophobes."

The truth is that no one can speak on behalf of Latin America's 500
million inhabitants, least of all Mr. Zedillo, whose defeat was in part
a repudiation of NAFTA's record. All over the Americas, market
liberalization is a subject of extreme dispute. The debate is not over
whether foreign investment and trade are desirable -- Latin America and
the Caribbean are already organized into regional trading blocs such as
Mercosur. The debate is about democracy: what terms and conditions will
poor countries be told they must meet in order to qualify for trade and
investment?

For the past two decades, these terms and conditions have been
negotiated and enforced by the IMF and the World Bank in exchange for
loans. Social services have been privatized, user fees introduced,
agricultural subsidies cut (while richer countries kept theirs),
hard-won land-redistribution programs abandoned, and minimum wage
controlled -- all in the name of becoming "investment ready."

Argentina, the host of next week's FTAA meeting, is currently in open
revolt over massive cuts to social spending -- almost $8-billion (U.S.)
over three years -- that have been introduced in order to qualify for an
IMF loan package. Last week, three cabinet ministers resigned, unions
staged a general strike, and university instructors moved their classes
to the streets.

Though anger at wrenching austerity measures has focused primarily on
the IMF, it is rapidly expanding to encompass trade deals such as the
proposed FTAA. The Zapatistas began their uprising on Jan. 1, 1994 --
the day the North American free-trade agreement came into force. Seven
years later, three-quarters of the population of Mexico live in poverty,
real wages are lower than they were in 1994, and unemployment is rising.
No wonder the Zapatistas were able to draw 150,000 supporters to the
streets of Mexico City earlier this month.

And despite the claims that the rest of Latin America is clamouring for
a NAFTA to call its own, the central labour associations of Brazil,
Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay -- representing 20 million workers --
have come out against the plan. They are now calling for countrywide
referendums on membership in the FTAA.

Brazil, meanwhile, has threatened to boycott the summit altogether,
furious at Canada's dirty trade war and wary that the FTAA will contain
protections for drug companies that will threaten its visionary public
health policy of providing free generic AIDS drugs to anyone who needs
them.

Defenders of free trade would have us believe in a facile equation of
trade = democracy. The people who will greet our trade ministers on the
streets of Buenos Aires next week are posing a more complex, and
challenging, calculation: how much democracy should they be asked to
give up in exchange for trade?
--
Thursday 5 April 2001

Lawyers shun summit
Prosecutors say they're being used to control protest
WILLIAM MARSDEN
The Gazette

Quebec prosecutors are threatening to quit a special eight-member team
set up by the provincial government to prosecute protesters arrested at
the Summit of the Americas this month. 

They are objecting to what they claim is political interference with the
judiciary on the part of summit organizers. 

One prosecutor has already left the team, and others are expected to
follow. 

Prosecutors say provincial Justice Minister Paul Begin has directed them
to delay all bail hearings of arrested protesters for the maximum three
full days allowed by law, as a way of keeping them off the street for
the duration of the summit, April 20-22. 

"This is political interference, and we should not stand for it," said
one prosecutor who did not wish to be named. "It's a plan of battle to
hold them in jail. We will not accept these directives." 

The Criminal Code allows bail hearings to be delayed for a maximum of
three "clear days" between the day of the arrest and the day of the
hearing. This means that protesters could find themselves behind bars
for five days. 

Normally, defendants are processed within 24 hours of their arrest.
Often they are released the same day from a police station with a
promise to appear in court. 

The prosecutors also say they do not want to prosecute people who are
protesting against repressive governments represented at the summit. 

The Quebec government has built a concrete and chain-link fence around a
large section of the Old City where the summit is to take place. About
25,000 protesters are expected to show up. 

Jails have been cleared and thousands of police officers from the
Montreal Urban Community force, the RCMP and the Surete du Quebec are
being brought in for security. 

Prosecutors say they have been told not to subpoena police as witnesses
during the week of the summit because they won't be available. 

Prosecutors noted that the Criminal Code allows them to seek publication
bans on bail hearings. One prosecutor said he believes that after the
five days of incarceration, charges will simply be dropped in most
cases. 

He said the provincial government is just using the judiciary to keep
protesters off the streets. 

Montreal prosecutors plan to make public within the next few days a
letter of solidarity with the protesters, one prosecutor said. 

Prosecutors are negotiating with the province for better salary and
working conditions. 

Quebec prosecutors work in extremely difficult conditions. Most do not
have computers. Eighty-five prosecutors in Montreal share four
secretaries. While Begin, as justice minister, is paid $14,496 more than
his Ontario counterpart, Quebec prosecutors are paid about half as much
as Ontario prosecutors. 

Since The Gazette reported on the poor conditions last month, Begin has
promised to get the prosecutors computers. But he refuses to connect
them to the Internet because, he claims, it's too expensive. That means
they won't have access to online jurisprudence. 

Prosecutors complain that they have no time to prepare files and have to
plea-bargain more than 90 per cent of their cases. 


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