"do not fall into their trap!"

amidst the growing uproar over the discovery earlier this week that agents provocateurs tainted montebello to the best of their CSIS training, details are emerging about an internal white house anti-protestors manual. thanks to an aclu access to information request related to the famed t-shirt case, we now learn what kind of pearly strategic advice is given to bush ground crews. the "presidential advance manual" directs white house advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

an unseen and unheard pig-pen for dissenters. how novel. and democratic. seems like more and more international admirers of the bush administration's approach of intolerance are ripping notes from the pages of this 2002 manual. harper knows all about it. forces at montebello established a distant perimeter for protesters (devotion to democracy was alive and well, however, as evidenced by the video link established for bush, harper, and calderon to be able to catch footage between photo opp-ing and reciting pre-determined talking points).

but The People wanted to snuggle up, and so marched onto the resort. peacefully.

enter the fracas instigated by so-called agents provocateurs. everyone's talking about how union leader dave coles tried to calmly urge three masked men to back away from the riot police, and how minutes later those three men were taken down - roughly - after being seen whispering to the police.

stunning, perhaps, that this sort of organized instigating goes on up in sleepy ol' canada. but it does. i mean, we certainly know we're watched and tagged by unidentifiable strangers. i can't count how many trench coat-sporting black boot-wearing mysterios i've seen hanging around the fringes of protests over the years. we know that infiltrators are among us at organizing meetings and gatherings, nudging things.

and this is certainly not the first time we've seen curiously unidentifiable people Made An Example Of at a major event. as if.

nonetheless, the gravity of the situation cannot be underestimated. it's obvious how dramatically the political climate is changing ever since the arrival of george w. more secretive. less tolerant. more polarizing. up here, we've seen harper tighten a muzzle on caucus members, clamp down the lid on media, information, and access.

WE, THE PEOPLE, have been put on a need-to-know basis. and they won't let us forget that. so it is significant that undercovers in oh-so-cliche fatigues would be ordered to stir things up at montebello - nothing but a quaint meeting regarding a secret agreement - oops, i mean "dialogue based on shared values" (says harper in defense of why the spp need not undergo parliamentary or public scrutiny).

in a strange irony, i'd say it was the agents provocateurs themselves who helped Make An Example Of the current administrations, the bush/harper era of insistence on suppressing dissent, beating down democracy. praise the law and order agenda.

"Remember - avoid physical contact with demonstrators! Most often, the demonstrators want a physical confrontation. Do not fall into their trap!" (presidential advance manual)

they were wearing the EXACT SAME BOOTS, y'all...