[Marxism] Robert Fisk cites evidence of cop-organized "conspiracy" to frame up 17 Canadian Muslims

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This has the earmarks of a cop-sparked "conspiracy" aimed at drawing
Muslims into a cop-initiated plot, complete with taped conversations of
the Muslims expressing "horrible" thoughts on cop tape recorders, and
with cop encouragement, to do horrible things to the Canadian Prime
Minister and various associated buildings. Robert Fisk's article has the
flavor of the racist campaign that is going on in Canada around this

I have been here before, in the 1960s when cops organized plots to bomb
the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia's Independence Hall.  In this case the
cops actually had organized the purchase of fertilizer for the bombings,
the tipoff being that they replaced it with harmless material.

I knew people who went to jail for periods of time because they talked
to undercover cops, with strong participatory encouragement from the
latter, about all the things they fantasized about doing to the white
man.  One of them was Max Stanford, leader of the Revolutionary Action
Movement (RAM), an organization of Black nationalist youth based in
Philadelphia.

This scam blew up in the cops faces in the Panther 21 case, when the
whole cop organization of the "plot" was exposed to a now more aware
public, and the result was acquittal.  Tom Wolfe has never forgiven New
York for that example of "radical chic" -- the recognition that
cop-organized conspiracies and crimes are only crimes of the cops.
Fred Feldman



1.

HAS RACISM INVADED CANADA?
By Robert Fisk

** The Case of the Toronto 17 **

CounterPunch
June 12, 2006

http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk06122006.html

This has been a good week to be in Canada -- or an awful week, depending
on
your point of view -- to understand just how irretrievably biased and
potentially racist the Canadian press has become.  For, after the arrest
of 17
Canadian Muslims on "terrorism" charges, the Toronto *Globe and Mail*
and, to
a slightly lesser extent, the *National Post*, have indulged in an orgy
of
finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at
the
same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country's more than 700,000
Muslims.
In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I'd already be checking
the
airline timetables for a flight out of town.  Or is that the purpose of
this
press campaign?

First, the charges.  Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of
a plot
to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage, and chop off the
head of
Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  Without challenging the "facts" or
casting any
doubt on their sources -- primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or

Canada's leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) --
reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to
blow
up Parliament, CSIS's headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, and
sundry other targets.  Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative
of the
accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front

pages.  "Home-grown terrorists" has become theme of the month -- even
though
the "terrorists" have yet to stand trial.

They were in receipt of "fertilizers," we were told, which could be
turned
into explosives.  When it emerged that Canadian police officers had
already
switched the "fertilizers" for a less harmful substance, nobody followed
up
the implications of this apparent "sting."  A Buffalo radio station down
in
the U.S. even announced that the accused had actually received
"explosives."
Bingo:  Guilty before trial.

Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual
pious
concern for the rights of the accused.  "Before I go on, one
disclaimer,"
purred the *Globe and Mail*'s Margaret Wente.  "Nothing has been proved
and
nobody should rush to judgment."  Which, needless to say, Wente then
went on
to do in the same paragraph.  "The exposure of our very own home-grown
terrorists, if that's what the men aspired to be, was both predictably
shocking and shockingly predictable."  And just in case we missed the
point of
this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that "Canada is not

exempt from home-grown terrorism."  Angry young men are the tinderbox
and
Islamism is the match.

The country will probably have better luck than most at "putting out the

fire," she adds.  But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match?  For
a very
unpleasant -- albeit initially innocuous -- phrase has now found its way
into
the papers.  The accused 17 -- and, indeed their families and sometimes
the
country's entire Muslim community -- are now referred to as
"Canadian-born."
Well, yes, they are Canadian-born.  But there's a subtle difference
between
this and being described as a "Canadian" -- as other citizens of this
vast
country are in every other context.  And the implications are obvious;
there
are now two types of Canadian citizen:  The Canadian-born variety
(Muslims)
and Canadians (the rest).

If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the *Globe and
Mail*'s
front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police
arrest
operation:  "Parked directly outside his . . . office was a large, gray,

cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the
two
brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented
unit
. . ."  Come again?  Brown-skinned?  What in God's name is this
outrageous
piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily?  What
is
"brown-skinned" supposed to mean -- if it is not just a revolting
attempt to
isolate Muslims as the "other" in Canada's highly multicultural society?
I
notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to
Toronto's
police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as

"white-skinned" (which he most assuredly is).  Amid this swamp, Canada's

journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country's new
military involvement in Afghanistan.

More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military
operations against Taleban insurgents.  They are taking the place of
U.S.
troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in
Iraq.

Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war -- those who doubt this
should
note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in "defense spending" in

Afghanistan and only $500m in "additional expenditures," including
humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic) -- and, by
extension, in
Iraq.  In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.

None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the
cause
of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper -- the CSIS chief who has
a lot
to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much -- said a few days
ago
that "we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan.  In
any
event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated
that
threat somewhat."  I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa
this
week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter

Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and
fellow
passengers.  In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of
Goddard's
other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed
in
action in Afghanistan.

The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola's coffin at Canada's national

military cemetery.  A heart-rending photograph of him appeared in the
*Post*
-- but buried away on Page 6.  And on the front page?  A picture of
British
policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim "who may have
links
to Canada".

Allegedly, of course.

--Robert Fisk is a reporter for the *Independent* and author of *Pity
the
Nation*.  He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, *The
Politics
of Anti-Semitism*. Fisk's new book is *The Great War for Civilisation:
The
Conquest of the Middle East*.



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