Apr 21
Big news came out of Occupy INAC last night. After eight days of occupying the Toronto office, seven days occupying Winnipeg and three days in Vancouver, protest organizers announced last night that they intend to stand down and walk away. That said, they haven’t vacated INAC’s offices yet. Further demonstrating their shameless quest to get …
Jul 14
One week before violence came to the streets of downtown Toronto during the 2010 G20 Sid Ryan of the Ontario Federation of Labour and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians issued statements that helped launch one of the year’s biggest conspiracy theories. Ryan and Barlow warned the government not to plant agent provocateurs into G20 …
Dec 10
#BurnabyMountain Unmasked Part III will focus on NGOs involved in the mayhem, with a special focus on ForestEthics, the Council of Canadians, and the WaterWealth Project. The above chart is for ForestEthics, and is a work in progress. It will continue to be updated over the next few days- watch it live! ForestEthics already seems …
Aug 15
Introduction: In Part I of Line 9 Protests Unmasked we explored the history of direct actions against Enbridge’s pipeline reversal from the original #SwampLine9 protest in 2013 to the most recent occupation of a construction site near Innerkip, Ontario. The protests started off with a bang but quickly faded out as the media and public …
Jun 26
On July 13 a new caravan of people will be bussed up to the Unist’ot’en Camp, an activist action camp it’s leaders call a “soft blockade”. Like most similar events, the media hasn’t been doing a good job at covering the camp. Movement-friendly media have been publishing misleading information- like Rabble.ca’s post that leaves the …
May 07
The Tsleil-Waututh Nation in BC announced last week that they’re filing a legal challenge against the National Energy Board’s review process. Their allegations include that the NEB failed to properly consult the Tsleil-Waututh on the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline “on key decisions about the environmental assessment and regulatory review of the project”; and that the …
May 02
Last December when a joint review panel recommended that the government approves Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project, it didn’t take long for the activist community to declare war; promising a long hot summer of protests, blockades, and (potentially) sabotage and violence. Ben West of Forest Ethics encapsulated the mood well, telling the CBC: “If these …
Jan 22
Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May is a strange duck. On the one hand she’s one of Canada’s most outspoken figures against activist violence- consistently insisting that it’s “unproductive” and has a negative impact on the environmental movement. But equally, she so often comes out spouting nonsense in regards to the people committing the …
Nov 26
Last week the Vancouver Observer published a scare story criticising the Harper government’s extensive spying on anti-oilsands groups. The writer explained that the “federal government” (wait, I thought it was Harper?) has been “vigorously spying” on anti oil sands activists and organizations across the country. Adding some fuel to the fire, they also hinted at a …
Jul 24
Two weekends ago members of Occupy Toronto gathered on the campus of Ryerson University for an 80 hour (dodgy) fundraiser, hoping to collect money to pay for the costs of operating their wireless data connection. Their event quickly degraded into a violent, racist and anti-Semitic hate fest. Later, after their fiasco became a national news …