[Updated] Occupy Toronto Launches A Somewhat Misleading Fundraiser! (Feat. Captain Yarr!)

Captain Yarr (a.k.a Dee Shangar) being led away by the police…

UPDATE: Captain Yarr has announced that Ryerson University professor (and anarchist supporter) Judy Rebick will be joining on Saturday or Sunday to support his cop-baiting Livestream!

UPDATE 2: I’ve been told that it wasn’t the wireless stick that was stolen at Zach Ruiter’s protest, but ‘something else’. What it was has not been disclosed- supposedly, it has now been returned. However, this conflicts with what Captain Yarr has said himself…

UPDATE 3: The Livestreamers have announced they’re going to have Kevin Annett on their show today. Annett is a well-known con artist who has caused enormous pain for indigenous communities. Judy Rebick previously promoted him.

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If you’re a regular reader you may remember Captain Yarr (a.k.a. Dee Shangar), one of the few remaining people who still identifies himself as Occupy Toronto. Yarr’s first appearance on this site was during Activistocrat Sakura Saunder’s anti Barrick Gold Israel protest that turned into a cop-baiting rally. During the rally Yarr started trying to push his way through police lines crying “I am media!” and complaining about “police brutality” when the cop (gently) stopped him from crossing the line. He behaved the same way during the Zach Ruiter/Cheri DiNovo racist anti-police march, crying “I’m media” while trying to push through some cops and walk down a busy street.

Up until recently, Yarr led Occupy Toronto’s Livestream, broadcasting live video of various radical events around the city. But, then, on June 13th, someone stole Occupy Toronto’s USB Internet stick- Captain Yarr has lost his ‘media pass’. Since then OT’s Livestream service has mostly been off the air. In an effort to reclaim his ‘media’ status, Captain Yarr, and a few remaining stragglers, have launched a (misleading) fundraiser today….

Yarr and his friends have setup a Facebook event page to promote Occupy Toronto’s 80 Hour Fundraiser. Their description of the event somewhat conflicts with reality:

“On June 22nd our beloved 4G USB internet stick was suspended for non-payment. Occupy Toronto has been paying for the stick since Jan 17, 2012. We owe $775 (all figures: CAD) and until we pay for it our programing [sic] in the field is at a stand still. Most weekly shows are deeply affected unless we can get free Wifi somewhere. Right now, we are more or less at a stand still & fear we might have to shut down our beloved channel you’ve come to love over the last 21-months.”

It appears that Yarr has neglected to mention that their USB stick was stolen. This is interesting, because he has publicly acknowledged this in the past. One of the people responsible for OT’s bank account confirmed this in a posting made on June 21st:

The Livestreamers are asking for donations totalling $5,000 Canadian including $775 for their existing debt, $1,500 to cover the cost of operating the stick for the next year, $1,500 for a new notebook computer, and $1,225 for transportation costs. But, there appears to be some dissent in the ranks of the Occupiers.

John Erb, who’s famous for being pulled out of the OccuPod naked in Dundas Square, brought up the fact that Captain Yarr has been less than willing to share the Livestreaming equipment with others. This has been a major point of contention with many people, and has caused at least one person to quit Occupy (which is probably a good idea, the movement died over a year ago).

Captain Yarr is also somewhat paranoid, when he loses the signal for his Livestream, he’ll often go off the rails and blame it on the police jamming it:

So, if one donates money to Occupy Toronto, where and who does it go to (besides a cop-baiting idiot)? They’re asking people to send it through a couple of channels. The first is to an Occupy Toronto account at the Alterna Savings & Credit Union- this account has been in use for over a year now, but there’s a lot of confusion as to who controls it. Complaints about OT’s lack of funding transparency have been ongoing since back in the days when they were camping at St. James Park.

The other way to donate is through OT’s Paypal account on their webpage. As an experiment, I decided to make a generous one penny donation- it’s a tactic I’ve used to investigate funding of radical organizations in the past, and how I discovered that the (violence promoting) No One Is Illegal is funded through student fees at York University. The results were somewhat interesting:

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that OT’s Paypal account is setup to take donations in US dollars- this means that it’s attached to a bank account in the US, and not in Canada. It’s also similar to how Sakura Saunders raises money for her campaign against Barrick Gold:

So, it appears there’s something fishy going on. The next thing to notice about OT’s Paypal account is that the phone number given is from a Texas area code. It’s also out of service. It’s unknown why a Texas phone number was used, it may just be fake. As someone who’s contributed money to this account I’ll be making a complaint with Paypal this afternoon (and will keep you updated).

The reality of Captain Yarr, and the few remaining people who self-identify as Occupy Toronto is very similar to the stories of Hiroo Onada, the Japanese soldier who spent 29 years living on an island in the Philippines not knowing that WWII had ended. The Occupy movement has been dead in this country for over a year now, let’s hope for their sake that it doesn’t take another 28 years for Yarr and his pals to discover reality.

I’ll leave you with a couple videos of Captain Yarr and Zach Ruiter using the Livestream to harass Toronto police officers…

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