Thursday, May 10, 2007

Busting A Green Anarchist

Temporary worker; Jeff Monaghan , who was publicly arrested and taken out in handcuffs from his workplace, for leaking a draft of the Governments green plan, is an anarchist.

Clearly someone in the PMO knew this and ordered the arrest in order to smear the Environmental movement as being 'anarchists'.
Government defends arrest of public servant

We are after all dealing with a government of so called self professed Libertarians who know well the political mileu they exist in, which includes anarchists. They know it far better than their Liberal predecessors in fact.

And as such being our new Conservative Law and Order government are shamelessly using the bugaboo of the apprehended threat of 'anarchism' to justify this overkill on a leak of a government draft of their environmental plan.

I would suggest that they pinpointed
Jeff Monaghan deliberately to send a chill not only through the Ministry of the Environment but all government departments. And now they will use his being an anarchist to further the smear job they plan. After all originally the media reported that John Baird issued a fax saying they released the plan by mistake.

After all his arrest by the RCMP is not a usual bust, nor one that the State Police Force would initiate themselves. They had to have been informed as to who had leaked the governments green plan . Ask yourselves this, why did they not arrest a predominant journalist instead, as they have done in the past when it came to leaks. That is they were informed as to whom the government had suspicions had leaked the document.

In his press conference today
Jeff Monaghan said as much, while not saying he was the source of the leaked information. It is interesting that the MSM refers to hims as a "a federal bureaucrat", a "civil servant", when in fact these are political appointments and jobs covered by the Federal Labour Relations Act.

He is in fact none of these, he is but a lowly temporary worker, whose position may or may not carry the weight of being a civil servant or bureaucrat, since he is dispensable.

His is a job that can be easily replaced day by day, which was the point of introducing temporary workers into the civil service, to reduce costs. It is part of the Neo-Con Reinventing Government scheme, ironically introduced by the Liberals, which sees the reduction of the civil service from career occupations to contract jobs, in order to save the government money on paying less in benefits ( they still pay the same in wages except that the wages go to a Padrone not the worker).

He is neither a civil servant nor a bureaucrat nor even one who may have been covered by the governments own secrecy code applied to the civil service, he is a Temporary or Contract worker. A worker hired by a third party that contracts out workers to fill government jobs. Ironically he worked in this position for four years, which should have made him a public servant, but he was denied his rights to that job description, which would have made him federal employees subject to the rules and regulations of the state and to the right to belong to the federal Public Service Union.

As such he was not granted these rights, since the State decided to contract out his job to save money. So did they have any right to arrest him? Apparently not, since they let him go and he held a press conference exposing them.

In order to get around the conditions of work under the Canada Labour Act, which covers federal employees, the government contracts out work to temporary labour agencies. This means their workers get lower wages than PSAC employees, are not covered by the Labour Relations Act, and are not subject to the same security and secrecy provisions of other public sector workers.

You can't have it both ways, which is what the Conservatives forgot in this case. And thinking they actually had a federal employee who leaked their Green Plan mistakenly sent the RCMP after a temporary worker. And they identified him as an Anarchist, which means this was a political arrest. He was arrested only days after he was profiled in the Ottawa Citizen for his role in Ottawa's Anarchist Bookstore.

Ottawa's anarchist bookshop a spot for 'fringe' thinkers to gather

Exile Infoshop opens on Bank Street to offer alternative media, resources

Garrett Zehr, with files from Bruce Ward, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Thursday, May 03, 2007

But Jeff Monaghan, a member of the group's organizing collective, said the project is much more than just another bookstore.

"This is a community space," he said. "Infoshops are part of a much larger social movement, putting complex theories of social equality into practice and identifying with related movements and struggles demanding freedom and dignity."




What makes Jeff admirable is that he understands this, and in his press conference today exposed this hypocrisy. The fact temporary workers are being used to replace long term public service positions, he worked in his position for four years, that the government selectively uses secrecy to repress information available to the public.

Clearly the government of Stephen Harper is far more Stalinist than Libertarian and for exposing that again, post Garth Turner, we have Jeff to thank .

Unfortunately his arrest shows that Anarchism is still considered a threat to the State by statists.

Government worker Jeff Monaghan, an employee at Environment Canada, was arrested and led away in handcuffs from his office early Wednesday as co-workers looked on. At a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday, Monaghan called it a "politically engineered raid of my workplace."

"The spectacle of my arrest, the subsequent RCMP press release and the prepared statements from Environment Canada, including [Environment Minister John] Baird, have been crafted to bully public servants," he said.

Monaghan, 27, also called the proposed charges "vengeful" and an "extension of a government-wide communication strategy pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

Baird said the arrest was a signal to other government employees that leaks of information wouldn't be tolerated.

But Monaghan, whose job was to monitor news reports about the government, said Thursday the proposed charges are "without precedent" in the extent to which they are disproportionate to the alleged offence.

On Thursday, he fired back at his accusers, calling the proposed charges a "profound threat to the public interest." He said they're part of a Tory communications strategy "pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

"The spectacle of my arrest, the subsequent RCMP press release, and the prepared statements from Environment Canada, including minister Baird, have been crafted to bully public servants whom they, in a paranoid fit, believe are partisan and embittered," Monaghan told a news conference.

He never admitted to the leak, but made it clear that he was profoundly opposed to the government's handling of the climate-change file. For four years he had worked on contract at Environment Canada, reading media articles and writing analyses of what they contained.

At the same time, Monaghan was helping to open an anarchist bookstore in downtown Ottawa that lists as its beliefs ``egalitarianism, co-operation and a collective struggle against abuses of power."

He said the government has undermined its legal commitment under the Kyoto agreement on climate change, and tried to "fool the public" into thinking otherwise through a carefully crafted public relations strategy. He said Environment Canada officials he worked with dutifully went along with the strategy even when it crossed the line into partisan activities.

"Our society knows the threat presented by the changing climate, global warming, and the rapidly increasing growth of industrial emissions," Monaghan said. "We deserve real action, not cynically calculated PR campaigns and witch-hunts on public servants."

Depending on who you talk to, the 27-year-old anarchist is either a victimized whistleblower or an alleged criminal who leaked sensitive government information.

Worker by day, anarchist book store operator... also by day

The unidentified Environment Canada employee who was escorted out of his office in handcuffs yesterday for allegedly leaking documents to the press came forward Thursday, accusing the Harper government of using bully tactics to discourage whistleblowers from coming forward.

In a brief news conference on Parliament Hill, 27-year-old Jeffrey Monaghan, a temporary government employee of four years — oh, and also a member of an Ottawa-based anarchist collective that opened a book store just over a week ago — announced he has not been charged with a crime.

"What I can tell you is that the proposed charges against me pose a profound threat to the public interest," said Mr. Monaghan, who did not take any questions.

"They are without precedent in their disproportionality, they are vengeful and they are an extension of a government-wide communications strategy pinned on secrecy, intimidation and centralization."

For more on Mr. Monaghan's comments and the document he allegedly leaked, read the story here.



Then Jeff shaved....

Jeff Monaghan, at the news conference Thursday, called the proposed charges an 'extension of a government-wide communication strategy pinned on secrecy intimidation and centralization.'

Jeff Monaghan, at the news conference Thursday, called the proposed charges an 'extension of a government-wide communication strategy pinned on secrecy intimidation and centralization.'
(CBC)


And here is the real irony of it all; this was the Conservative Governments much lauded democratic reform week.

This week, in its much-heralded “Week of Democratic Reform”, the federal government has delivered PR – public relations.

“It would be laughable if it wasn’t so worrying,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “What we are seeing is a government so deeply committed to deflection and avoiding the real issues that they are starting to believe their own spin.”

Ms. May said that the so-called Week of Democratic Reform was really a week of gimmickry and housekeeping: new rules on loans to political parties; more seats in parliament for growing provinces and an extra day of voting.


SEE:

Harpers Fascism

Leo Strauss and the Calgary School

Post Modern Conservatives.

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

Trotsky on Harper

The Great Dismantler

Man O Steel

More PMO Censorship


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3 comments:

Mike said...

Bank and Cooper eh?

Excellent...good to know. Hope they get a website up soon.

David Wozney said...

Re: “legal commitment under the Kyoto agreement”

Members of Parliament who voted to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2002, had an obligation, before taking their seats, to swear that they would be faithful and bear true allegiance to the King or Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

They swore, or affirmed, that they would be faithful and bear true allegiance to Elizabeth the Second. Elizabeth the Second is not Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, contrary to the requirement in the Fifth Schedule in this document.

The provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick expressed their desire to be federally united into one Dominion under the Crown of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”, not the Crown of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, according to the British North America Act, 1867.

This calls into question the legality of Canada's alleged commitment under the Kyoto Protocol.

EUGENE PLAWIUK said...

Am I the only one who sees the irony in an anarchist defending law, order and good government? Must be an Ottawa phenomena.