Over the last year, a mass of shocking evidence has emerged on the close ties between Western government spy agencies and giant energy companies, and their mutual interests in criminalising anti-fracking activists.
Activists tarred with the same brush
In late 2013, official documents obtained under freedom of information showed that Canada's domestic spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), had ramped up its surveillance of activists opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline project on 'national security' grounds. The CSIS also routinely passed information about such groups to the project's corporate architect, Calgary-based energy company, Enbridge.
The Northern Gateway is an $8 billion project to transport oil from the Alberta tar sands to the British Columbia coast, where it can be shipped to global markets. According to the documents a Canadian federal agency, the National Energy Board, worked with CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to coordinate with Enbridge, TransCanada, and other energy corporations in gathering intelligence on anti-fracking activists - despite senior police privately admitting they "could not detect a direct or specific criminal threat."
Now it has emerged that former cabinet minister Chuck Strahl - the man appointed by Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper to head up the CSIS' civilian oversight panel, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) - has been lobbying for Enbridge since 2011.
But that's not all. According to CBC News, only one member of Strahl's spy watchdog committee "has no ties to either the current government or the oil industry." For instance, SIRC member Denis Losier sits on the board of directors of Enbridge-subsidiary, Enbridge NB, while Yves Fortier, is a former board member of TransCanada, the company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Counter-insurgency in the homeland
Investigative journalist Steve Horn reports that TransCanada has also worked closely with American law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in attempting to criminalise US citizens opposed to the pipeline. Files obtained under freedom of information last summer showed that in training documents for the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), TransCanada suggested that non-violent Keystone XL protestors could be deterred using criminal and anti-terror statutes:
"... the language in some of the documents is so vague that it could also ensnare journalists, researchers and academics, as well."
According to the Earth Island Journal, official documents show that TransCanada "has established close ties with state and federal law enforcement agencies along the proposed pipeline route." But TransCanada is only one example of "the revolving door between state law enforcement agencies and the private sector, especially in areas where fracking and pipeline construction have become big business."
This has had a tangible impact. In March last year, US law enforcement officials had infiltrated and spied on environmentalists attending a tar sands resistance camp in Oklahoma, leading to the successful pre-emptive disruption of their protest action.
Just last December, other activists in Oklahoma faced terror charges for draping an anti-fracking banner in the lobby of the offices housing US oil and gas company, Devon Energy. The two protestors were charged with carrying out a "terrorism hoax" for using gold glitter on their banner, some of which happened to scatter to the floor of the building - depicted by a police spokesman as a potentially "dangerous or toxic" substance in the form of a "black powder," causing a panic.
But Suzanne Goldenberg reports a different account:
"After a few uneventful minutes, [the activists] Stephenson and Warner took down the banner and left the building – apologising to the janitor who came hurrying over with a broom. A few people, clutching coffee cups, wandered around in the lobby below, according to Stephenson. But she did not detect much of a response to the banner. There wasn't even that much mess, she said. The pair had used just four small tubes of glitter on their two banners."
The criminalisation of peaceful activism under the rubric of 'anti-terrorism' is an escalating trend linked directly to corporate co-optation of the national security apparatus. In one egregious example, thousands of pages of government records confirm how local US police departments, the FBI and the DHS monitored Occupy activists nationwide as part of public-private intelligence sharing with banks and corporations.
Anti-fracking activists in particular have come under increased FBI surveillance in recent years under an expanded definition of 'eco-terrorism', although the FBI concedes that eco-terrorism is on the decline. This is consistent with US defence planning documents over the last decade which increasingly highlight the danger of domestic "insurgencies" due to the potential collapse of public order under various environmental, energy or economic crises.
Manufacturing "consensus"
In the UK, Scotland Yard's National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit (which started life as the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit and later became the National Domestic Extremism Unit), has had a long record of equating the spectre of "domestic extremism" with "single-issue protests, such as animal rights, anti-war, anti-globalisation and anti-GM crops." Apart from animal rights, these movements have been "overwhelmingly peaceful" points out George Monbiot.
This has not prevented the police unit from monitoring almost 9,000 Britons deemed to hold "radical political views," ranging from "anti-capitalists" to "anti-war demonstrators." Increasingly though, according to a Guardian investigation, the unit "is known to have focused its resources on spying on environmental campaigners, particularly those engaged in direct action and civil disobedience to protest against climate change."
Most recently, British police have gone so far as to conduct surveillance of Cambridge University students involved in social campaigns like anti-fracking, education, anti-fascism, and opposition to austerity, despite a lack of reason to suspect criminal activity.
This is no accident. Yesterday, senior Tory and ex-Cabinet minister Lord Deben, chairman of the UK government-sponsored Committee on Climate Change, characterised anyone suggesting that fracking is "devastatingly damaging" as a far-left "extremist," holding "nonsensical" views associated with "Trotskyite" dogma. In contrast, he described "moderate" environmentalists as situated safely in the legitimate spectrum of a "broad range of consensus" across "all political parties."
In other words, if you are disillusioned with the existing party political system and its approach to environmental issues, you are an extremist.
Deben's comments demonstrate the regressive mindset behind the British government's private collaboration with shale gas industry executives to "manage the British public's hostility to fracking," as revealed in official emails analysed by Damien Carrington.
The emails exposed the alarming extent to which government is "acting as an arm of the gas industry," compounding earlier revelations that Department of Energy and Climate Change employees involved in drafting UK energy policy have been seconded from UK gas corporations.
Public opinion is the enemy
The latest polling data shows that some 47% of Britons "would not be happy for a gas well site using fracking to open within 10 miles of their home," with just 14% saying they would be happy. By implication, the government views nearly half of the British public as potential extremists merely for being sceptical of shale gas.
This illustrates precisely why the trend-line of mass surveillance exemplified in the Snowden disclosures has escalated across the Western world. From North America to Europe, the twin spectres of "terrorism" and "extremism" are being disingenuously deployed by an ever more centralised nexus of corporate, state and intelligence power, to suppress widening public opposition to that very process of unaccountable centralisation.
But then, what's new? Back in 1975, the Trilateral Commission - a network of some 300 American, European and Japanese elites drawn from business, banking, government, academia and media founded by Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockerfeller - published an influential study called The Crisis of Democracy.
The report concluded that the problems of governance "stem from an excess of democracy" which makes government "less powerful and more active" due to being "overloaded with participants and demands." This democratic excess at the time consisted of:
"... a marked upswing in other forms of citizen participation, in the form of marches, demonstrations, protest movements, and 'cause' organizations... [including] markedly higher levels of self-consciousness on the part of blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women... [and] a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private... People no longer felt the same compulsion to obey those whom they had previously considered superior to themselves in age, rank, status, expertise, character, or talents."
The solution, therefore, is "to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions," including "hegemonic power" in the world. This requires the government to somehow "reinforce tendencies towards political passivity" and to instill "a greater degree of moderation in democracy." This is because:
"... the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups... In itself, this marginality on the part of some groups is inherently undemocratic, but it has also been one of the factors which has enabled democracy to function effectively."
Today, such official sentiments live on in the form of covert psychological operations targeted against Western publics by the CIA, Pentagon and MI6, invariably designed to exaggerate threats to manipulate public opinion in favour of government policy.
As the global economy continues to suffocate itself, and as publics increasingly lose faith in prevailing institutions, the spectre of 'terror' is an increasingly convenient tool to attempt to restore authority by whipping populations into panic-induced subordination.
Evidently, however, what the nexus of corporate, state and intelligence power fears the most is simply an "excess of democracy": the unpalatable prospect of citizens rising up and taking power back.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed
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Actually, Nafeez, he was talking about a small set in Australia. You could always check that with him via his Twitter account where he's been correcting the record.
It'll all come right as soon as this diabolical tracking starts. Only an idiot government would stand by and allow all those earthquakes/flames in tap water/toxic chemicals in aquifers,etc. to happen.
Ahhhh, that explains it, it would have been odd in the extreme if he`d described a majority of rural supporters of his own party as Trotskyite extremists. That would have been an AWFUL blunder!
But it is still a direct attack against the viewpoint that fracking is bad.
If I was to say "some people against genocide have extreme views" it is not relevant to the actual debate.
I forget the technical name for this type of argument but I am sure it has one. It is a method of attacking those who have faultless reputations and a logically complete argument whilst avoiding direct addressing of the argument.
For the position that he holds it was an entirely inappropriate stance. In fact he is little better than any industry shill and he heads an independent body on climate change to advise the government.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25327695
The GWPF herald his views as a good thing.
Are you opposed to fracking? Then you might just be a terrorist
Maybe!
But surely that's a whole lot better than being a fracking fascist fracker, isn't it?
In other words, if you are disillusioned with the existing party political system and its approach to environmental issues, you are an extremist.
reminded that just 30% of the entire UK population actually vote...
they water down the meaning of 'terrorist'
they water down the meaning of 'green'
historical records show that Democracy was in fact the first to go.
So mr Cameron, is Shale Gas a fossil fuel? then it is NOT GREEN
We are all terrorists now, or at least we are whenever the government decides we are.
The only question is "Who is Big Brother, or is that Big Sister?"
Exactly, I'm just a birder who is fighting to save Salford Mosses from having the crap fracked out of it. The Mosses contain over 20 threatened bird species and Common Cranes have just started to take an interest in the area after being persecuted out of England (by man) over 500 years ago. I'd like to be able to show my Grandson Peregrine Falcons that flourish on the Mosses just like my Grandfather did with me...if that makes me a "domestic extremist" then so be it. I find it an absolute honour and a privilege to defend my land just like my Grandfather did in the Arctic Convoys that he never got his medal for. I can't for the life of me understand why my fellow "Englishmen" aren't helping out the brave people of Salford (and beyond) who are currently under siege, being brutalised by our own "police force" and smeared in the most hideous US military psy-ops style campaign all being orchestrated by some foul, renowned "protest buster" all either being cheered on by the bent mainstream media or silenced by the usual BBC State TV bias.....all in aid of French, Canadian and Chinese oil and gas companies to come and rape our land and poison our environment and children in order to make rich people even richer. Its beyond me how any Englishman doesn't want to be a "domestic extremist" right now and if you don't then hang your f****** head in shame.
"This has not prevented the police unit from monitoring almost 9,000 Britons deemed to hold "radical political views," ranging from "anti-capitalists" to "anti-war demonstrators.""
If this was just keeping these, otherwise unemployable, police/"intelligence" bods in a job it would be bad enough. But I pay their wages.
"Increasingly though, according to a Guardian investigation, the unit "is known to have focused its resources on spying on environmental campaigners, particularly those engaged in direct action and civil disobedience to protest against climate change.""
I know a few of these people. One of the few parts of society which gives me hope that we can escape the mess corrupt and incompetent politicians/big businesspeople and officials want to get us further into.
Most people area anti capitalist aren't they?
I thought this was a socialist government, they keep giving money to people (banks) that say they need it.
Right wing governments don't need much to go on to label you a terrorist. Bleach your hair or get a tattoo and Theresa May will want you detained.
If this stupid, right wing bastard government is not careful, they are going to label anyone who protests about anything a terrorist. What effect this will have is to change the meaning of the word to that of a word that means cool, radical, sound, integrity, fearless etc.
So that "reporting" was from someone who was not present and just regurgitated what the accused claimed.
There is no surprise that the accused downplayed the effects on others of her reckless behaviour.
As for the rest of this startling "expose", it is nothing more than the weakest of conspiracy theories.
The actual story here is merely that politicians seek out effective capable people who also have similar views. There is little conspiratorial in that. For example, newspapers, including this one, publish primarily things that are in keeping with their agenda. Similarly, special interest groups, including the self-proclaiming "green" ones, do the same thing.
All in all, an unremarkable story dressed up as something much bigger and different from the reality.
Kindly explain why senior police have accused the anti-fracking protesters of firing a flare at a police helicopter when everyone present says no such thing happened, and police searches found zero, nada, zilch, nuffin to even suggest a flare gun was anywhere present?
And while you're at it, why were undercover cops getting too much under the covers and impregnating peaceful protesters, even acting as agents provocateur and setting up actions, while their senior rankers were passing on the publicly funded intelligence that had been gathered to private corporations?
I'm pro-fracking.
I do not believe in MMGW/MMCC.
BUT.
I do not want people spied on, I have been an activist all my life, I have had my phones tapped, been followed and spied upon by Special Branch officers, tailed and generally hassled.
Not in my name.
WTF, if you are not an environmentalist that is quite some claim. You clearly are not a communist or a unionist from you comments either. So this then leads to real questions as to which group you could be in and be aware that you were surveilled.
Look a few posts up...
Posted by me... "21 Jan 2014 19:59"
I have been and continue to be a campaigner, I don't use the term or word 'environmentalist' to describe myself ever, it has become debased to such an extent it is more of a condemnation than a compliment these days.
Once the 'movement' attracted the intellectual pygmies who simply wanted to shout and release pent up anger gained from other social issues the truth in it died.
Does firing flare at police helicopters count as a terrorist action if done as part of a political protest as was done as part of a recent anti Fracking protest?
If violence is politically motivated, seems to meet the definition of a "terrorist action" to me.
I was at Barton Moss Protection Camp during the night in question. THERE WAS NO FLARE.
Greater Manchester Police have produced no evidence & have arrested no-one because a search conducted at the site, tossing all bedding & clean clothing into the mud (I might add!) came up with a fat NOTHING.
We resent the inference that we would take such a reckless action.
Fractivists are peacefully campaigning for your water, air & land to remain free of toxins. Be grateful, VERY grateful!
Solidarity Sunday next weekend will be a vast show of support for the camp, buses are booked to attend from all over the country!
Be there, and help us show Cameron that we do not consent to this industry ruining our lives!
It didn't happen. It has been proved that the idea that a flare was launched at a Police Helicopter over Barton Moss came from a comment on an unmoderated website; there is no physical evidence nor any eye witnesses.
"I was at Barton Moss Protection Camp during the night in question. THERE WAS NO FLARE."
The forces of darkness never allow mere facts to get in the way of their lies.
Not the lies put out by the police.
Further information.
"Are you opposed to fracking? Then you might just be a terrorist".
Yup. Have you stocked up on flares Nafeez?
Can't be arsed reading the article but I agree with the headline.
Are you opposed to fracking? Then you might just be a terrorist
What else would you call people that are willing to freeze 1000's people to death?
"What else would you call people that are willing to freeze 1000's people to death?"
Fracking will do nothing to stop people freezing to death. This has already been demonstrated. Fracking is simply a means of increasing reliance on fossil fuels.
If society wants to stop people freezing to death then it needs to massively boost insulation measures and make much more progress with renewables. The clue is in the name.
Haven't you heard of renewable energy? Honestly some people are so behind the times!
It is a valid point of view... but people must be allowed to protest without being intimidated or spied on.
In simple terms this is a technology issue, these days just don't go to any protest without a camera-phone, my god I wish they'd been around at Greenham and similar.
Everybody can and should record everything they can, stay in close units to do this.
Two shots of police violence (which does happen) and you're in with a shout thanks to Mitchell and his 'fit-up' exposure.
Watch your own groups, we had two undercovers that to this day don't know I knew who they were and I played them mercilessly.
Look for the slightly too forceful members, who feign shame at 'losing it' each time, write it down and follow the trouble and deal with appropriately.
I found it a huge mental challenge.
We have noticed one or two like that! We are aware, but thank you for your advice! xx
Can I ask which protests these were? Anti-climate change? Pro-fracking?
Greenham, Against the US 501st TMW
Newbury By-pass, Against the protesters.
Winchester A34, Against my previous employer at Newbury.
Faslane Convoys, Against the Naval Provost.
to name a few...
Many thanks for the advice!
In Cameron's world, anyone who supports the rights of British citizens against the depredations of foreign corporations is a terrorist.
Not so! - in Cameron's world, no two days are the same and, likewise, neither are his policies. eg just before Christmas, he made various newspaper headlines by stating that great caution needed to be exercised over the development of the fracking industry in the UK due to its various potential health risks - though this was of course made in the context of his concern at fracking wells popping up in his own constituency which could harm his electoral prospects! Now, just after Christmas, he's made newspaper headlines again by stating that the whole country has to get behind fracking for the good of everybody - though this has been said largely in the context of expanding fracking in the wilds of the North, far enough away from his constituency to protect his long term electoral prospects. Looking at his form over the past year, which can change direction in a moment, I predict that by Easter he may well be denouncing the fracking industry as a dangerous threat to the public health and economic prosperity of our green and pleasant land (this will probably be his by-line) and, as such, the UK will have to commence immediate and substantial investment in the renewable energy industry (for the good of all of us). This will, undoubtedly, trigger another full scale govt enquiry into which idiot actually suggested fracking in the first place, costing a few billion £s of taxpayers money. Only to be replaced, in the Summer, by a renewed campaign to promote the economic benefits of shale gas - at a cost of a few billion more £'s, naturally...just in time for the next wave of national anti-fracking protests/summer festivals which will require, shock horror, a substantial increase to the national police budget to help protect innocent rural communities from the threat posed by the waves of hardened international subversives posing as anti-fracking suppporters which will have been parachuted into the countryside under cover of darkness to destablilise the UK economy once and for all..And so it goes on....
Way to go with the conflation. Equating being a NIMBY in not wanting any industrial development with those who actively and violently stop the development of shale drilling sites. They are not the same. Stopping people from legally going to work by threatening to kill them is not the same as putting in an objection to a planning application. Terrorists threaten to kill, NIMBYs just don't want change.
Fracking. Where's the water going to come from? Just asking...
It depends on the location. But if water is scarce I'd say the best option is to drill a water supply well and pump it out of a brackish water aquifer. Brackish water works, but it's a bit more expensive.
Given the substantial quantities required (a couple of million litres per well), I imagine it will be piped in from the North Sea to start with and when the sea level falls to dangerous levels and starts eroding large portions of our national coastline, the govt will start asking for assistance from some of their international partners (probably the US) and will ask if we can't borrow a bit from the Pacific and Atlantic.
You cannot use sea water in the fracking process.
AHHH the Trilateral commission. A group of self appointed elite pigs who manipulate government opinion. anyone who is not aware of what this evil enterprise has been up to needs to educate themselves. And they wonder why people believe there are conspiracies. Probably because there are. We can't have people going around preaching about democracy now can we?
I agree but it's an insult to pigs, I prefer the word 'elite fuckers'
They will be trying to pacify us by legalising cannabis next.
The problem for the green movement as a whole is that there are extremists involved in it (just have a look at what ELF and the like have gotten upto in the past). This plays right into the hands of the state. To maintain some form of credibility, the majority need to openly condemn the actions of the extreme minority. The problem with the green movement, is that they don't. This is just one more thing that allows the state to lump all protesters into one group, and treat them as such.
I suppose it must be surprising to find governments tend to work closely with industries which may become terrorist targets. Some individuals do like to use the system to stop protesters, but some protest groups are indeed infiltrated by people who are capable of terrorism. The key to effective protests is to make sure the protest is for a worthy cause, and if there's people who may be considering an illegal act, the best option is to toss them out or report their existence to the authorities. Otherwise you do get smeared.
any group could be infiltrated by a terrorist or policeman yet there are not cases of actual terrorist acts- i.e. to terrorise.
Real terrorists don't attack key installations and are more happy blowing up innocent civilians.
Only the ANC, an aspect of the IRA, and a short lived Welsh terror group actively targeted establishment infrastructure- like pylons, the City, and a water pipe. although I'm sure others like ETA have chosen infrastructure as well, I'm not fully informed.
Protest and disruption is not terror. The women who bust up a Hawk jet destined to attack Indonesians by their airforce was deemed to be a protest [to prevent crime]
Fernando there are extremists in almost every large organisation no matter what there concern is
Environmentalists are just that, they see the earth as a resource that is to be treasured not plundered and most of there claims going back 40years have been proved right. Without the lying right wing financed media we wouldn't see such prejudice against them
That's rather strong language to use about our fine constabulary.
We're all terrorists now. All of us, threats, to be catalogued and observed.
Exactly, any threat to capital expansion, money grubbing and environmental destruction is terrorism in the eyes of the money worshipers.
COINTELPRO 2.0
Well done the guardian for addressing this frightening phenomenon
This State apparatus will all be dismantled as soon as we elect the Labour Party back into power, yes?
Unfortunately not - corporate capture is ubiquitous, which is why democracy needs strengthening and protest movements to continue resistance.
I hope governments will start to take measures against terrorists who use corporations as their first weapon of choice.