Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Harper Speech Disrupted:
Steven Harper has gotten pretty much of a free ride lately as his "nation within a nation but not a real nation" resolution in the Commons has had every party scrambling to sign up to a meaningless linguistic debate that will give him good press for at least two weeks. Quick...call an election Stevy-poo ! Stevy-poo got a less enthusiastic reception in Montreal on November 24th when about 20 people turned out to protest his press conference at Montreal General Hospital . Another day, another photo-op. for the left wing photo-op go to the demonstration at http://gallery.cmaq.net/harper-mtl .

The demonstrators handed out a leaflet criticizing the Harper government's record on a number of points, from Canada's role as mercenaries for the USA in Afghanistan, to the Harper record on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to the Harper record on native rights, to the Harper record on surveillance and deportations, to the Harper record on gay rights, the environment and social programs. All of this can be seen in the leaflet's full text at http://bloquezlempire.resist.ca .


An interesting side note is that long time activist Jaggi Singh has scored another point at this event in his attempt to be "the most arrested man in Canada". When he was sitting in the audience, separate from the demonstration, he was escorted out and turned over to the police. The provincial government demanded that he be held without bail for six months. His bail hearing was yesterday. Please see the website above for further updates on this case.
A little Molly aside here. I'm sure that I could find points of "political disagreement" with Jaggi Singh as I am an "evolutionary anarchist" who does not believe in the concept of "revolution" at all and would prefer that "spectacular acts" were done as little as possible and only then when the "moral high ground" is so obvious that it would take an Adolf Hitler or a John Zerzan to lie about it. But what I must say about Jaggi Singh is that this person who was charged with the "possession of an offensive weapon" ie a "catapult to fling 'teddy bears' at the police" in the past is far less of a threat of violence than I could ever be with my beliefs. The Canadian state has very much demonstrated its paranoia in relation to Singh and made him into an hero. I'd prefer other types of hero, but the adjective is true. He is an hero, and his morality is a standing contrast to the lack of same in our political class. Morality and consistency are alien words to them. They are not to comrade Jaggi. Good speed fellow feline Singh.
Molly.

1 comment:

Larry Gambone said...

I met Jaggi in Montreal. He is a fine person and a practitioner of non-violent CV as far as I can make out. I think he gets arrested a lot because he is well known to the authorities and thus an easy target for these sociopaths.