Royal Bank of Canada Firebombed in Ottawa: Communique

From what I can see on google maps, the bank is right next door to either a school or daycare centre. Streetview even shows tricycles out front. So even if the place didn't accidentally catch on fire, how do you explain the issues to a bunch of kids who find out that the building next door to their place was bombed? Might that not have a traumatic effect on them? 

Polunatic2 wrote:

From what I can see on google maps, the bank is right next door to either a school or daycare centre. Streetview even shows tricycles out front. So even if the place didn't accidentally catch on fire, how do you explain the issues to a bunch of kids who find out that the building next door to their place was bombed? Might that not have a traumatic effect on them? 

It is a church and the church appears to have a daycare. Do you really want to push this point given that it was 3:30 AM that the incident occurred?

Well, Polunatic, you are asking the wrong questions. How do you tell kids that they will have to succumb to a system that is inherently unjust and compromise themselves as moral and ethical beings (if we are to interpret the daycare as a Christian space as it is in the church) to participate in environmental destruction, dispossession and violence against the poor just so that they can survive? Why don't you explain to them first that RBC calls itself a green company while destroying the environment, that they supported punitive measures against people in the DTES so that the fascist spectacle they sponsored could be a success?

FFS many children grow up in situations like this knowing "la puta verdad" of the world they live in! But only good, wholesome Canadian children should be shielded from "such suffering" when in fact their country and the corporations within it are guilty of some really bad atrocities? Really, Polunatic, this is the path towards change?

I don't think I'm asking the wrong questions at all. Where does the line get drawn? For some, the risk of burning down a childcare centre as collateral damage is fine because the bank is evil and the children live lives of privilege in Canada. So it's not just about unoccupied buildings. That's not the line. So where is the line? 

Last month, someone successfully scammed my royal bank card for about $1200, caused my account to be overdrawn, made my money innaccessible for over 2 weeks (at the end of the month...). Fine, they fix it. I just looked at my statement... it seems that they have charged me $4 for being overdrawn due to the fraud. Were I a less patient person, I'd have been throwing things thru their windows too. They have one less customer...

Is there a mass action for people to move their accounts from the Royal Bank in protest? I've been out of the loop for a while.

Yes, of course. But I'm talking about an action that could be noticed, and made clear to the bank.

Polunatic2 wrote:

"Won't someone think of the children [at 3:30 AM]!"

Why don't you don't worry about children who are actually physically threatened day in and day out?

writer wrote:

j.m., I know Polunatic well. He does, and he is. Worrying about how a blast might have affected the place some children go to every day, and thus their everyday lives (and those of their working parents) is not uncaring, even if you disagree with his position.

Caring about some children in Ottawa does not make one incapable of caring about children elsewhere.

I disagree with the lack of reflection on how the very people who were not in actuality affected by the act against RBC are tied to the lives of people elsewhere, and that they indeed reproduce a very unjust system that punishes and harms other people's children elsewhere. Furthermore, I doubt there are any children there at 3:30 AM!

If you have articulated your position, Polunatic, and you don't want to engage in the discussion of tactics given the rather complex nature of contesting these injustices, fine. But you could "badger" people about this on MSM threads, not here.

Quote:

Out of curiousity, how would YOU go about getting noticed/heard/listened to by a corporation the size and might of RBC?  What actions would you take if you truly wanted them to stop funding something as ecologically devastating as the tar sands (and as profitable for RBC, which makes them less inclined to listen to you?).  If "stunts" like this (property damage) are out, what do you propose?

Just for starters, let me say that this question seems to me not unlike "Ok, how can we get terrorists to give us information if you take waterboarding away from us???". Saying something is wrong doesn't, or shouldn't, put the onus on one to come up with a newer, better solution. To put it another way, I'm sorry if less risky tactics aren't as successful as you wish they were, but it's a logical fallacy to think that that lends any moral credibility to adopting risky tactics. How, after all, can our brave soldiers extricate known terrorists from residential areas? That's the question asked, and fortunately progressives don't feel any obligation to say "I guess you're right.... asking them to come out with their hands up won't work, so bomb away".

But that said, I think environmental issues like the tar sands are a job for government, not finance. And as electors, we get to elect that government. Oh, I know, I know, "It's all RIGGED!! They'd never let us elect a government that would care!!". Yes, I've heard.

Snert wrote:

 

Just for starters, let me say that this question seems to me not unlike "Ok, how can we get terrorists to give us information if you take waterboarding away from us???". Saying something is wrong doesn't, or shouldn't, put the onus on one to come up with a newer, better solution. To put it another way, I'm sorry if less risky tactics aren't as successful as you wish they were, but it's a logical fallacy to think that that lends any moral credibility to adopting risky tactics. How, after all, can our brave soldiers extricate known terrorists from residential areas? That's the question asked, and fortunately progressives don't feel any obligation to say "I guess you're right.... asking them to come out with their hands up won't work, so bomb away".

Actually, I was asking because I was interested.  I support the message that these protesters are trying to put out there, and wanted to know how other groups would consider doing that.  Nothing devious at all.

RBC underwrites Petrolifera, one of the energy exploration companies that received access to Amazonian land through dispossession (and the violence of Bagua), so that Petrolifera can continue their Latin American operations Another reason to take some form of action against RBC: they're making money off a massacre of indigenous people.

We just got this media release in:

For Immediate Release

Wednesday May 19, 2010

Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) Statement on the Royal Bank of Canada Firebombing

Ottawa, ON, in response to the recent firebombing of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Tar Sands Campaigner of IEN, Clayton Thomas-Muller released the following statement:

“The Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is an Indigenous led environmental and economic justice organization that supports community led strategies that enable Indigenous Peoples to continue to maintain the sacred fires of our traditions and to protect our lands and cultures from corporate exploitation and toxic contamination.

First Nations in Canada’s tar sands have been waging an effective, transparent non-violent campaign against RBC and their dirty investments. The Indigenous Environmental Networks supports strategic non-violent direct action that is lead by impacted communities.

We call on all people who recognize the need to stop RBC’s dirty investments to honor the leadership of frontline Indigenous communities.

-30-

Tom Goldtooth Executive Director, IEN Office

Clayton Thomas-Muller Tar Sands Campaigner

Who gets to say when the war starts between oppressor and oppressed?

j.m. wrote:

There are some fair criticisms of this tactic, but I want to know why there is this practice of social distancing from anarchists* that use a diversity of tactics that is so definitive it leaves no room for acknowledgement that this is also against the same system we bemoan. As part of the left, engaging in discussion about this tactic would be more productive than distancing ourselves from them as if they were Harper himself. 

It appears as though we live at the end of an era that witnesses the unravelling of an unofficial accord, which in large measure has long presided over the complacent normalcy which surrounds us. An unspoken acknowledgement whereby the Right promised to avoid blatantly inflicting fascism upon the population, and in return the Left discarded any meaningful gestures which involve revolutionary persuasions.

Each unilateral adjustment undertaken by the Right through continuous neo-liberal manipulation, ranging from the re-entrenchment of religious influences to the perils of globalization and the financial evisceration of entire continents, has acted as a gauntlet that has been thrown down and ignored by a Left that has traditionally been content to allow itself to be corralled into official protest zones, where beatings, gassing, and arrests become the lot for the few among them whose voices and gestures barely register above the din of complacency, certainly not to the extent which provides tangible menace to the order.

Humanity has been under attack for so long to the point where we scarcely recognize that it is hardly necessary to declare oneself an enemy in order to be rendered into a criminal by the state. The extent of the security preparations alone for the G8/G20 international Mafioso gatherings testify to the fact that everyone is seen as a threat. Occasionally for illustrative purposes, a little flesh and face, or if none make themselves available, shadows on a surveillance camera, suffice to give form to the threats so that we can voice our collective outrage and disgust at their uncouth and dangerous mannerisms, proportional to the way in which the incidents are sketched by the media for our benefit. When they are sufficiently assured of our cooperation, we are quickly returned through programming changes to the docile state that has been created for us.

The global oligarchy anticipates the occasional outburst because it constantly arranges, through its exploits, the provocations which serve as justification for an ever tightening grip around the neck of the targeted and systematized population, where special attention is reserved for the more vocal and troublesome. Categorizing dissent in this way has a utility for both sides of the political spectrum, which is particularly convenient when the compromised left joins with the right in condemnation of what some may rightly consider as last ditch defensive measures.

As for intense disturbances or acts of terrorism, we live in an age where terrorists are transformed before our very eyes into Nobel Peace Prize recipients, or alternately into moderates that can be bargained with as doctrinal contortions take hold to explain the failures of aggression. We should always bear in mind that it is always the powerful who assign terrorist labels, and it is always those who yearn for a few crumbs from the order who will comply with and acknowledge the designations. The effectiveness of the relentless psychological warfare campaign can be gauged through the relative ease in which socially minded individuals will absorb and regurgitate the source material with all the politeness that one must expect from those who desire normalcy above inconvenience.

In the absence of outrageous acts against itself, fabrication serves the system as a standby in order to give effect to increased surveillance and violence against people, where the police, the legislative and the judicial are fused together to ensure the annihilation of subversion by rendering internal political threats into terrorist enemies, ascribing onto them the very worst characteristics that power itself is capable of. This is the unyielding logic of control and indignant subservience, which together unanimously seeks to use the spectre of a bank firebombing to obscure on the one hand our own continuing obliteration, and on the other our complicity to that end.

Snert wrote:

Polly B wrote:

Out of curiousity, how would YOU go about getting noticed/heard/listened to by a corporation the size and might of RBC?  What actions would you take if you truly wanted them to stop funding something as ecologically devastating as the tar sands (and as profitable for RBC, which makes them less inclined to listen to you?).  If "stunts" like this (property damage) are out, what do you propose?

Just for starters, let me say that this question seems to me not unlike "Ok, how can we get terrorists to give us information if you take waterboarding away from us???". Saying something is wrong doesn't, or shouldn't, put the onus on one to come up with a newer, better solution.

And they know that waterboarding and torture in general is never designed to extract the truth from those whom due process and fair trial have been denied. Torture is a technique for discovering whatever it is that inquisitors want their captives to confess to whether it's the truth or not. The historical record on torture says torture and truth are distinct and separate themes unrelated to the other. But legal truth according to modern day evidenciary proceedings is never obtained by torture, and a bad example of that is the accused 9/11 masterminds detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval base. So, yes I agree, The onus for proving guilt should always be with the accusers, and torture has no place in a modern and civilized democracy.

Slumberjack, I think we all know that the people who have power aren't going to share it out without bloodshed.  Or, if they did, it would certainly be a first.

So, it will come to violence, and that's really out of our control.  But what is in our control is how it comes to be.  

We haven't even begun to fight.  We have babblers ranting here who probably have their mortgages through the Royal Bank.   I bet the publishers of Rabble, in their travels end up periodically rubbing elbows with people from Navagator Public Relations and worse and civil pleasentries are exchanged.   And we have a teachers "union"  in Ontario that loves to use it's pension money to beat up on their students at home.  

No, there's a lot of simple things we should be doing before reaching for the powder horn.

Odd. 

I guess I should change my nom de plume to Ben Franklin.

This thread is embarrassing. The notion that individual acts of terror are going to accomplish anything in this country (or anywhere for that matter) is the hallmark of those who are totally divorced from any mass movement. People hate these kinds of actions. They are guaranteed, if not actually designed, to discredit and forestall any advance in our struggle. This is like listening to a hifalutin moralistic discussion as to whether Roger Warren was right to go kill the scabs. I don't know who firebombed the bank. But whether it was agents provocateurs, or some individuals acting out of desperation at being unable to win people over to their struggle, such actions must be unconditionally condemned by anyone who fancies themselves progressive.

N.Beltov wrote:

from the CTV story ...

Quote:

The anarchists say they plan to take their protest to the upcoming G8 summit in Huntsville, as well as the G20 meeting in Toronto at the end of June.

... which is a nice justification, wrapped with a bow on it, for government and police atrocities at the G8 and G20. Thanks a lot, anarchist assholes.

or was it agents provocateurs? I can't tell the difference.

Perhaps it is the Harper administration's pesky conscience troubling it?

Unionist wrote:

This thread is embarrassing. The notion that individual acts of terror are going to accomplish anything in this country (or anywhere for that matter) is the hallmark of those who are totally divorced from any mass movement. People hate these kinds of actions.

Yes I think several members of the ANC are still on America's terrorist watch list including Mandela. Or at least it was true as recently as 2008.

Apparently being on a US state dept terrorist watch list was a minor problem for undercover CIA agents to help their Islamic radical friends enter into the US in the years after the CIA's anticommunist jihad in Central Asia.

Everyone should be aware of their right to armed struggle in cases where governments and their corporate friends need reminding of the basic principles of democracy in general. Without armed struggle, there can be no transition to peaceful democracy afterward as was the case in South Africa and Rhodesia, Cuba etc

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

When somebody firebombed a Jewish school in Montreal several years ago, nobody was physically present either. Is it therefore okay to destroy property and intimidate people as long as nobody is actually injured? That asshole got "lots of press" too.

This is not my argument, but it looks like you agree with the argument that in Kanada, hating kapitalism is a hate crime equal to committing (in this case) an anti-Semitic hate crime.

Unionist wrote:

This thread is embarrassing. The notion that individual acts of terror are going to accomplish anything in this country (or anywhere for that matter) is the hallmark of those who are totally divorced from any mass movement. People hate these kinds of actions. They are guaranteed, if not actually designed, to discredit and forestall any advance in our struggle. This is like listening to a hifalutin moralistic discussion as to whether Roger Warren was right to go kill the scabs. I don't know who firebombed the bank. But whether it was agents provocateurs, or some individuals acting out of desperation at being unable to win people over to their struggle, such actions must be unconditionally condemned by anyone who fancies themselves progressive.

Thanks for posting some reason to this ugly, ugly thread.