Vancouver Island Hippies - Top Security Threat for 2010?

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/blunt02112009.html


According to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, protestors are the number one security threat to the 2010 Games. So maybe that explains why officers with the Integrated Security Unit are running around Victoria trying to convince hippies to spy on each other.

But the cops may find that peaceniks and bohemians are too street-smart to play spy games. Vancouver Island long-hairs know better than to give information to police, especially when it's obvious that no crime has been committed.

"I said to the officer, there's no way I am going to snitch on my friends!" bookstore owner Robert Garfat tells me, a little indignantly.

The long-time Vancouver Island resident was shocked when he was approached earlier this month by RCMP constable Mike Smook of the Integrated Security Unit. Smook wanted information about Victoria's No 2010 activists. But it's not snitching, according to Smook – the police just want to use his eyes and ears.

-snip-

Others in the community have similar stories. According to several people who contacted us privately this week, the RCMP has succeeded in recruiting at least one informant – a child of 15. She has been cooperating with police for months, they said.

Leaving aside questions of whether this is legal or ethical, the tactic is troubling. If Victoria social justice advocates are so dangerous, isn't it risky to send a child to spy on them? And if they're not dangerous, why spy on them at all?

-snip-

Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, a member of the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) in Vancouver, was approached by police last month. She says, "The ORN is not interested in talking with police about the conditions under which we exercise our rights to assembly and expression. They can read the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

And if the RCMP can't be bothered to read the Charter, maybe we should read it to them, real slow, so that they understand.
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pink panther spies

[MineralMan]

1. Now, if the authorities are offering payment,

I would advise these young hippies of something we old hippies know: Disinformation has value, too.

I'm just sayin...

[Oregone]

2. I could use the extra dough

Where do I go to be found?

[MineralMan]

3. Well, if you go,

don't mention the super-secret plan to hijack bulk milk transport trucks and flood the roads with milk. If that gets out the whole thing is screwed. It's very hush-hush.

[sui generis]

4. I just got back from Hongcouver

;)

Very multi-cultural experience and I would have it no other way - but why focus on just the "hippies"? Looking for bloodshot-eyed devils who recycle?

Fact is, BC can't support resorts like Whistler without international traffic, especially in non-Olympic years, and relies heavily on tourism and visitors. If the RCMP have to single out a group as their sworn enemy, then they're by and large trying to work out a reason to increase their budget, kind of like we did with al qwaheeda and all the other evil tarrists running round getting ready to blow up the Gap at some mall in the midwest. Again, with the ;)

Personally, I think the relative lack of Canadian cowbell combined with evil derelict Israeli-Arabs and other one-eyed Injuns are going to cause the sky to fall.