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Front De Libération Du Québec

Front de libération du Québec

The Front de Libération du Québec (Quebec Liberation Front), commonly known as the FLQ, was a socialist and nationalist terrorist group founded in the 1960s, during the early days of the Quebec independence movement.

History

The FLQ was a group of Québécois whose declarations called for a Marxist insurrection, the overthrow of the Quebec government, the independence of Quebec from Canada and the establishment of a workers' society. Members and sympathizers of the group were called Felquistes ([fɛlˈkists] in IPA), a word coined from the French pronunciation of the letters FLQ. In 1963, some members were organized and trained by Georges Schoeters, a Belgian revolutionary and alleged KGB agent, whose hero was Che Guevara. The FLQ's intellectual leaders were Charles Gagnon and Pierre Vallières. On October 7, 1963 Schoeters was given 2 five-year prison terms for political crimes. At least two of the FLQ members had also received guerrilla training in selective assassination from Palestinian commandos in Jordan. Various cells emerged over time: The Viger Cell, the Dieppe Cell, the Louis Riel Cell (see:Louis Riel), the Nelson Cell, The Saint-Denis Cell, the Liberation Cell and the Chénier Cell. The latter two of these cells were involved in what became known as the "October Crisis," the first terrorist crisis in modern Canadian history. From 1963 to 1970, the FLQ committed over 200 violent political actions, including bombings, bank hold-ups and at least three deaths by FLQ bombs and two deaths by gunfire. In 1963, Gabriel Hudon and Raymond Villeneuve were sentenced to 12 years in prison for crimes against the state after their bomb killed Sgt. O'Neill, a watchman at Montreal's Canadian Army Recruitment Centre. By 1970, twenty-three members of the FLQ were in jail, including four convicted murderers, and one member had been killed by his own bomb. Targets included English owned businesses, banks, McGill University, and the homes of prominent English speakers in the wealthy Westmount area of the city. On February 13, 1969 the Front de libération du Québec set off a powerful bomb that ripped through the Montreal Stock Exchange causing massive destruction and seriously injuring twenty-seven people. As a Marxist group, the FLQ was also opposed to the United States' ruling class and one cell supposedly plotted to blow up the Statue of Liberty, but they were apprehended before this could occur. In 1966 a secret eight-page document titled Revolutionary Strategy and the Role of the Avant-Garde was prepared by the FLQ outlining its long term strategy of successive waves of robberies, violence, bombings and kidnappings, culminating in insurrection and revolution.

October crisis

On October 5, 1970, members of the FLQ's Liberation cell kidnapped James Richard Cross, the British Trade Commissioner as he was leaving his home for work. Shortly afterwards, on October 10, the Chénier Cell kidnapped the Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour, Pierre Laporte, while he was playing football with his family on his front lawn. On October 17, callers to a radio station announced that Laporte had been murdered and divulged the location of the map which lead to the discovery of his body. The FLQ released a list of seven demands for Cross's release. #the release of 23 "political prisoners" #$500,000 in gold #the broadcast and publication of the [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/FLQ_Manifesto FLQ Manifesto] #the publication of the names of the police informants for terrorist activities #an aircraft to take the kidnappers to Cuba or Algeria #the rehiring of about 450 Lapalme postal workers who had been laid off #the cessation of all police search activities As part of its Manifesto, the FLQ stated: "In the coming year Bourassa (Quebec Premier) will have to face reality; 100,000 revolutionary workers, armed and organized." Early in December 1970, police discovered the location of the kidnappers holding James Cross. His release was negotiated and on December 3, 1970, five of the terrorists were granted their request for safe passage to Cuba by the Government of Canada after approval by Fidel Castro. In July 1980, police arrested and charged a sixth person in connection with the Cross kidnapping. Nigel Barry Hamer, a British radical socialist and FLQ sympathizer, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months in jail. Although the five terrorists who wanted to go to Cuba were exiled from Canada for life, they were later found to be living in Paris, France. Over the years, despite being exiled for life, all of the FLQ members wanted to come back to Canada. The federal government consented. On their return:
- The Cossette-Trudels pleaded guilty at trial and were sentenced to two years in jail for their part in the kidnapping. They were freed on parole after serving eight months.
- Marc Carbonneau was sentenced to 20 months of jail and three years probation for kidnapping, forcible confinement, conspiracy and extortion.
- Yves Langlois was sentenced to two years in prison less one day for his part in the kidnapping. He served 10 months. In the wake of the kidnappings, at the request of Québec premier Robert Bourassa, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared a lesser form of martial law under the War Measures Act -- which had only been used twice before in Canada's history, both in times of war. The difference this time was that the military did not assume control, rather took orders from and aided municipal police. The following day, the Chénier cell announced that they had "executed" - murdered - their hostage, Pierre Laporte. His killing was the second political assassination in Canadian history since Thomas D'Arcy McGee was murdered in 1868. In late December, four weeks after the kidnappers of James Cross were found, Paul Rose and the kidnappers and murderers of Pierre Laporte were located in the corner of a country farmhouse basement. They were tried and convicted for kidnapping and murder. The events of October 1970 contributed to the loss of support for violent means to attain Quebec independence, and increased support for the political party, the Parti Québécois, which took power in 1976.

FLQ subsequent activities

Nevertheless, terrorist activities continue to occur at the hands of isolated members of the organization. In 2001, Rhéal Mathieu, a member who in 1967 was sentenced to 9 years in prison for terrorist activities including murder, was convicted of the attempted firebombing of three Second Cup coffee shops in Montreal. Mathieu targeted Canada's largest specialty coffee retailer because of the company's use of its incorporated English name Second Cup. For this offence, a judge sentenced Rhéal Mathieu to one month in jail in addition to the nine months he had already been held. He was also given a six-month sentence to be served concurrently for illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun and a .38-calibre revolver. Shortly thereafter, seven McDonald's restaurants were firebombed. According to a spokesperson for the company, the bombings resulted in customers being afraid to go to Second Cup coffee shops, resulting in a substantial loss of business. The company changed their signs to Les cafés Second Cup.

Liberation cell members

The known Liberation cell members:
- Jacques Cossette-Trudel
- Louise Lanctôt (Louise Cossette-Trudel)
- Jacques Lanctôt
- Marc Carbonneau
- Yves Langlois (aka Pierre Seguin)
- Nigel Barry Hamer

Chénier cell members

The known Chénier Cell members:
- Paul Rose
- Jacques Rose
- Francis Simard
- Bernard Lortie

Other known members

Other known members of the FLQ, almost all of whom were charged and convicted for terrorist activities were:

- Alain Allard
- Mario Bachand
- Pierre Boucher
- Pierre Charette
- Cyriaque Delisle
- Pierre Demers
- Serge Demers
- Marcel Faulkner
- Marc-André Gagné
- Charles Gagnon
- Pierre-Paul Geoffroy
- Edmond Guenette
- Gabriel Hudon
- Robert Hudon
- Gérard Laquerre
- Michel Lambert
- Alex Roth

- Daniel Lamoureux
- François Lanctôt
- André Lessard
- Robert Levesque
- Michel Loriot
- Pierre Marcil
- Oliver Closoff
- Jean Materot
- Rhéal Mathieu
- Claude Morency
- André Ouellette
- André Roy
- François Schirm
- Claude Simard
- Réjean Tremblay
- Raymond Villeneuve

Michaëlle Jean

The Canadian Governor General Michaëlle Jean appeared to have affiliated herself with the FLQ by appearing in a documentary, directed by her husband, with former members of the FLQ, which showed them toasting the separation of Quebec from Canada. However, Ms Jean has denied any link between herself and the FLQ [http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20050817_jean_comments_050816/?hub=TopStories (Article)].

External links

- [http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21083/1.html The Lessons of October(by John Horvath) - an article in the german netculture magazine Telepolis] Category:Quebec history Category:Secessionist organizations Category:National liberation movements Category:Left-wing militant groups Category:Quebec terrorists

Terrorism

Terrorism is the unconventional use of violence for political gain. It is a strategy of using coordinated attacks that fall outside the laws of war commonly understood to represent the bounds of conventional warfare (see also unconventional warfare). "Terrorist attacks" are usually characterized as "indiscriminate," "targeting of civilians," or executed "with disregard" for human life. The term "terrorism" is often used to assert that the political violence of an enemy is immoral, wanton, and unjustified. According to definition of terrorism typically used by states, academics, counter-terrorism experts, and non-governmental organizations, "terrorists" are actors who don't belong to any recognized armed forces, or who don't adhere to their rules, and who are therefore regarded as "rogue actors". Because of the above pejorative connotations, those accused of being "terrorists" rarely identify themselves as such, and instead typically use terms that reference their ideological or ethnic struggle, such as: separatist, freedom fighter, liberator, militant, paramilitary, guerrilla (from guerra Spanish for "war" meaning "small war"), rebel, jihadi and mujaheddin (both meaning "struggler"), or fedayeen ("prepared for martyrdom").

Etymology

Main article: Definition of terrorism Although the term is often used imprecisely, there have been many attempts by various law enforcement agencies and public organizations to develop more precise working definitions of terrorism. The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention has proposed a short legal definition —that "[an act of terrorism is] the peacetime equivalent of a war crime." A US court found that "the malice associated with terrorist attacks transcends even that of premeditated murder." [http://www.ict.org.il/counter_ter/law/lawdet.cfm?lawid=16 Flatow v. Iran: Order. CA No. 97-396 (RCL)] More precise definitions of terrorism tend to be relativist, because views toward particular acts of political violence are often only subjective, and rarely show complete objectivity. For example, according to the United States Department of Defense, terrorism is: :"the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." This definition is vague because it relies on unclear terms which are left to interpretation —terms such as "unlawful violence," "intended to coerce or intimidate," "the pursuit of goals..." all can easily be applied to violent actions by state actors, though the above definition suggests such can be "lawful." Like all political ideas, the meaning of the term "terrorism" has evolved in response to circumstances. The words "terrorism" and "terror" originally referred to methods employed by regimes to control their own populations through fear, a tactic seen in totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. The term "terrorism" comes from the French word terrorisme, which is based on the Latin language verbs terrere (to frighten) and deterrere (to frighten from). It dates to 1795 when it was used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club in their rule of post-Revolutionary France, the so-called "Reign of Terror". Jacobins are rumored to have coined the term "terrorists" to refer to themselves. Acts described as Jacobin Club "terrorism" were mostly cases of arrest or execution of opponents as a means of coercing compliance in the general public. Up until comparatively recently, people who would now be known as "terrorists" were called "incendiaries" (due to the fact that they started fires and set off incendiary devices). One such example is the seventeenth-century Scottish nationalist John the Painter, who has been described as the first modern terrorist. However, in accounts of the time, he is labelled as an "incendiary". [http://heritage.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1267&id=196862005] The current use of the term is broader and relies more on the example of the 19th-century revolutionaries who used the technique of assassination, particularly the anarchists and Narodniks (populists) in Tsarist Russia, whose most notable action was the assassination of Alexander II. In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, political leaders from Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East have placed the phenomenon of terrorism within the context of a global struggle against systems of government perceived by those accused of using terrorist tactics as harmful to their interests. The European Union includes in its 2004 definition of "terrorism" the aim of "destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country."

Key criteria

Official definitions determine counter-terrorism policy and are often developed to serve it. Most official definitions outline the following key criteria: target, objective, motive, perpetrator, and legitimacy or legality of the act.
- Violence — According to Walter Laqueur of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "the only general characteristic [of terrorism] generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence". However, the criterion of violence alone does not produce a useful definition, as it includes many acts not usually considered terrorism: war, riot, organized crime, or even a simple assault. Whether property destruction is considered violent is also a common debate, especially with regard to the actions of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.
- Target – It is commonly held that the distinctive nature of terrorism lies in its deliberate and specific selection of civilians as direct targets. :This definition would exclude acts of war and attacks on military targets. It would pertain regardless of whether the attackers made an attempt to reduce civilian casualties. For example, the Zionist organization Irgun preceded many of its attacks (notably the 1946 King David Hotel bombing) with warnings to the press, the target, or the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine. They were nevertheless considered terrorists by the British. ETA and the Provisional IRA are also known for issuing warnings. In contrast, groups such as Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades who use attacks against civilian targets seek to maximize casualties, and therefore never issue warnings.
- Objective – As the name implies, terrorism is understood as an attempt to provoke fear and intimidation in the main target audience , which may be a government, a whole society, or a group within a society. Terrorist acts are therefore designed and may be deliberately timed to attract wide publicity and cause public shock, outrage, and fear. The intention may be to provoke disproportionate reactions from governments.
- Motive – Terrorists acts may be intended to achieve political or religious goals, which include the spread of fear and mayhem. The terrorist who acts as a mercenary, or gun-for-hire, may also be acting for personal gain: for example, see Abu Nidal. A gang of bank robbers who kill a bank manager, blow up his vault, and escape with the contents would not be classed as terrorists, but if they were to execute the same assault with the intention of causing a crisis in public confidence in the banking system, followed by a run on the banks, and a subsequent destabilization of the economy, then the gang would be classed as terrorists. This definition excludes organized crime.
- Perpetrator – Most definitions of terrorism do not include legitimate governments as terrorist actors, unless acting clandestinely and in the absence of a state of war. Acts of war, including war crimes and crimes against humanity are regarded as distinct from terrorism, as are overt government repression of its own civilians, the Holocaust, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, it does not rule out "state-sponsored terrorism", in which a government supports terrorist activity in another state, though this might instead be regarded as low-intensity warfare between sovereign states. Those who disagree with these definitions may use the term "state terror" to describe the actions of official groups such as the Gestapo, the KGB and the Stasi of East Germany against dissidents or ethnic minorities among their own citizens.
- Legitimacy – Many official state definitions include that the act must be unlawful.

Causes

Theories on the causes of terrorism include:
- sociological explanations, which focus on the position of the perpetrators in society
- conflict theory which examines their relationship to those in power
- ideological explanations, which focus on the differences in ideology, and the different goals of the ideologies
- media theory explanations, which treat terrorist acts as a form of communication. The existing social order within countries, and the global order of states, include structural compromises and agreements between various groups and interests. Often they arose in resolution of past conflicts. Over time, these arrangements may become less relevant to the current situation. New groups and interests may not be foreseen. Liberal democracy itself is intended to prevent small groups redesigning society according to their norms - but then they have to live in a society which they often reject. Some theories assume that groups resort to terrorism when other avenues for change, including economic campaigns, protest, public appeal, and standard warfare, hold no hope of success. This is related to the criterion of ultima ratio (last resort), in just war theory. In this perspective, terrorist acts are calculated to disrupt the existing order and provoke conflicts, in the expectation that the outcome will be a new order, more favourable to their interests. This is, crudely, the seat-at-the-table theory of terrorism. Applied to anti-terrorism policy, this approach implies policies to create and sustain an alternative, peaceful, avenue of problem resolution, particularly in the case of marginalized and oppressed populations. Ideological theories, on the other hand, often imply that nothing can be 'resolved', because the conflicting ideologies are logically incompatible.

Separatism

During much of the 20th century, the term terrorism was primarily applied to nationalist movements of various types. Most of them were separatist movements, seeking to create a new independent nation-state on the territory of a larger, existing state. There were also some cases of non-state irredentist violence, seeking to annex territory. Classic counter-terrorist operations were a feature of the decolonization in Africa and the Middle East. Some of these campaigns, such as the Mau Mau and the FLOSY, were well known in the Western media, but unlike Al-Qaeda, their violence was remote and confined to the disputed colony. However, Irish republican groups did consistently target England, and the Basque ETA often targeted Madrid and other non-Basque parts of Spain. The motives of these groups derive from their nationalist ideology, and an underlying territorial conflict about which state should control what. In this respect, no separate theory of the causes is required, since violence is the standard instrument of geopolitical change. For example, given the competing claims on the former British mandate of Palestine, the chance that the Zionist movement could ever have reached agreement on the peaceful transfer of millions of Jews to the region seems non-existent. Thus, the violence resulting from territorial conflicts is frequently considered inevitable.

Claims of responsibility

Actions defined as terrorism are sometimes followed by statements from the perpetrators. They often issue additional information, and may have representative offices in countries which sympathize with their aims. Several themes recur and can be considered categories:
- Reference to the ideals of the group, implying that the ideals justify the actions; separatist groups, for instance, often emphasize the name and flag of their future independent state.
- Reference to historical grievances, usually the oppression of an ethnic or religious group.
- Retaliation for specific acts, including military campaigns. Islamist groups, for instance repeatedly refer to the occupation of Iraq.
- There may also be a specific demand related to the above factors; for instance the demand that troops be withdrawn from Iraq. Frequently, a number of unassociated groups may claim responsibility for the action; this may be considered "free publicity" for the organization's aims. Because of its anonymous nature, it is not uncommon for the reasons for a terrorist action to remain unknown for a considerable period.

Perpetrators

Acts of terrorism can be carried out by individuals or groups. According to some definitions, clandestine or semi-clandestine state actors may also carry out terrorist acts outside the framework of a state of war. The most common image of terrorism is that it is carried out by small and secretive cells, highly motivated to serve a particular cause. However, some acts have been committed by individuals acting alone, while others are alleged to have had the backing of established states. Over the years, many people have attempted to come up with a terrorist profile to attempt to explain these individuals' actions through their psychology and social circumstances.

Terrorist groups

:Main article: Terrorist groups

Lone wolves

:Main article: Lone-wolf terrorism Law enforcement agencies such as the FBI have identified a pattern of lone-wolf terrorist acts carried out by individuals who appear not to be acting as part of a conventional group, although they may function with the tacit approval of a group, and protect it by operating alone. Terrorists cited as lone wolves include the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski (1978-1995), Austrian letter-bomber Franz Fuchs (1993-1997), Cave of the Patriarchs gunman Baruch Goldstein (1994), Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (1995), Centennial Olympic park bomber Eric Robert Rudolph (1996), "London Nailbomber" David Copeland (1999), and gunman Buford O. Furrow, Jr. (1999).

State sponsors

:Main article: State terrorism. See also False flag operation. Some states have been accused of sponsoring terrorist actions in foreign countries, as an alternative to carrying them out directly and risking an open declaration of war. State-sponsored terrorism is widely denounced by the international community. When states do provide funding for groups considered by some to be terrorist, they rarely acknowledge them as such. For example, Iran has been linked to a number of organizations, including Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, but maintains that where funds have been transferred, these have been legitimate. Iran itself has accused the British military, stationed in southern Iraq, of involvement in bombings in Iran; such claims have been denied by the British government. When proof of state sponsorship of a terrorist act is obtained, the response may include economic sanctions. Sometimes state sponsors are forced to back down by offering incentives. An example is that of Pakistan, which supported the Taliban until it was forced to sever its links after pressure from the U.S. However, India accuses Pakistan of continuing to incite, train, and support terrorist organizations that target India. Institute for Policy Studies scholar Noam Chomsky has described the U.S as "a leading terrorist state." After President Bush declared a "War on Terrorism," Chomsky stated:
The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low–intensity warfare.” [...] If you read the definition of low–intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they’re almost the same. [http://www.monthlyreview.org/1101chomsky.htm]

Tactics
Terrorists often seek to demoralize and paralyze their enemy with fear, using their acts as a form of blackmail to apply pressure on governments to achieve goals the terrorists could not achieve by other means. Where terrorism occurs in the context of open warfare or insurgency, its perpetrators may shelter behind a section of the local population. Examples include the Intifada on Israeli-occupied territory, and the occupation of Iraq. This population, which is usually ethnically distinct from the counter-terrorist forces, is either sympathetic to their cause, indifferent, or acts under duress. Terrorist groups may arrange for secondary devices to detonate at a slightly later time in order to kill emergency-response personnel attempting to attend to the dead and wounded. Repeated or suspected use of secondary devices can also delay emergency response out of concern that such devices may exist. Examples include a (failed) cyanide-gas device that was meant to explode shortly after the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a second car bomb that detonated 20 minutes after the December 1, 2001 Ben Yehuda bombing by Hamas in Jerusalem. In the absence of state funding, terrorists may rely on organized crime to fund their activities. This can include kidnapping, drug trafficking, or robbery. But terrorists have also found many more sources of revenue. Osama bin Laden, for example, invested millions in terrorism that his family made in the construction industry building luxury mansions for Saudi Arabia's oil-millionaires. The diamond industry emerged early in the twenty-first century as an important new source of funding for terrorism, and Islamist terrorist groups in particular have been very effective at procuring funding through a system of charitable contributions. Guerrilla warfare is sometimes confused with terrorism, in that a relatively small force attempts to achieve large goals by using organized acts of directed violence against a larger force. But in contrast to terrorism, these acts are almost always against military targets, and civilian targets are minimized in an attempt to increase public support. For this reason, guerrilla tactics are generally considered military strategy rather than terrorism, although both terrorism and guerrilla warfare could be considered forms of asymmetric warfare.
Responses to terrorism
Responses to terrorism are broad in scope. They can include re-alignments of the political spectrum and reassessments of fundamental values. The term counter-terrorism has a narrower connotation, implying that it is directed at terrorist actors.
Terrorism and immigration in Europe
Recent developments have seen a divergence in social and political responses to terrorism between the United States and western Europe. The September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by foreigners who entered the country for that purpose, on behalf of a foreign organization, operating from bases in a remote country. Western European countries, on the other hand, are now confronted with a domestic terrorism based within a domestic religious minority, some recent immigrants, but many native-born citizens. Much of Europe has not experienced a domestic religious threat since the Wars of Religion. As a result, in Europe, the issues of Islam, immigration, and terrorism have become linked. The Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn was the first to show that the electorate may see Muslim immigrants as a fifth column at war with the country in which they live. Terrorism, according to this view, is a failure of multiculturalism and not simply a security issue. Although Muslims are a relatively small minority in the U.S., in some European cities they are approaching a majority. Aggression against sections of the population regarded as associated with the perpetrators is an increasingly important issue in these communities. Defusing potential backlash is now a standard item of European counter-terrorism policy. The direction of European responses to terrorism is indicated by new policies, proposed by Tony Blair in August 2005:
- deportation and exclusion on grounds of fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs or justifying or validating such violence;
- a criminal offence of condoning or glorifying terrorism;
- refusal of asylum to anyone with a connection to terrorism;
- new pre-trial procedures and extending detention pre-charge of terrorist suspects;
- extended use of control orders for those who are British nationals and who cannot be deported, with imprisonment for any breach of the order;
- new power to order closure of a place of worship which is used as a "centre for fomenting extremism". [http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page8041.asp]
Target-hardening
Common targets of terrorists are areas of high population concentration, such as mass transit vehicles (metro, bus, and trains), aircraft, office buildings, and crowded restaurants. Whatever the target of terrorists, there are multiple ways of hardening the targets so as to prevent the terrorists from hitting their mark. Perhaps the single most effective of these is bag-searching for explosives, which is only effective if it is conducted before the search subjects enter an area of high population concentration. Another method is to place concrete barriers a sufficient distance outside buildings to prevent truck bombing. Aircraft cockpits are kept locked during flights, and have reinforced doors, which only the pilots in the cabin are capable of opening.
Preemptive neutralization
Some countries see pre-emptive attacks as a legitimate strategy. This includes capturing, killing, or disabling suspected terrorists before they can mount an attack. Israel, the United States, and Russia have taken this approach, while western European states are generally more cautious. In July 2005, Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at Stockwell underground station in London, because he was misidentified as a suspected suicide bomber, and police feared he had a bomb ready for detonation. The shooting led to public concern and diplomatic protest. Another major method of pre-emptive neutralization is interrogation of known or suspected terrorists to obtain information about specific plots, targets, the identity of other terrorists, and whether the interrogation subject himself is guilty of terrorist involvement. Sometimes methods are used to increase suggestibility, such as sleep deprivation or drugs. Human rights objections apart, such methods may lead captives to offer false information in an attempt to stop the treatment, or because of confusion brought on by it.
Domestic intelligence and surveillance
Most counter-terrorism strategies involve an increase in standard police and domestic intelligence. The central activities are traditional: interception of communications, and the tracing of persons. New technology has, however, expanded the range of such operations. Domestic intelligence is often directed at specific groups, defined on the basis of origin or religion, which is a source of political controversy. Mass surveillance of an entire population raises objections on civil liberties grounds.
Military intervention
Terrorism has often been used to justify military intervention in countries where terrorists are said to be based. That was the main stated justification for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and one reason for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was also a stated justification for the second Russian invasion of Chechnya.
History
In the 1st century, Zealots conducted a fierce and unrelenting terror campaign against the Roman occupiers of the eastern Mediterranean. The Zealots enlisted sicarii to strike down rich Jewish collaborators and others who were friendly to the Romans. In the 11th century, the radical Islamic sect known as the Hash-Ishiim (This word, derived from the word "Hashish," which the Hash-Ishiim reputedly used to drug their victims, translates directly to the word "assassin" in the English language) employed systematic murder for a cause they believed to be righteous. For two centuries, they resisted efforts to suppress their religious beliefs and developed ritualized murder into a fine art taught through generations. Political aims were achieved through the power of intimidation. Similarly, the Christian warriors of the Crusades pursued political aims by means of assaults on Muslim civilian populations. During the French Revolution (1789 - 1799), the most severe period of the rule of the Committee of Public Safety (1793 - 1795) was labelled "The Reign of Terror" (1793 - 1794) to describe rule through a systematic use of terror exemplified especially by extensive use of the guillotine. Historic references to the term "terrorism" first appeared during the Reign of Terror. In 1867 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a revolutionary nationalist group with support from Irish-Americans, carried out attacks in England. These were the first acts of "republican terrorism", which became a recurrent feature of British history, and these Fenians were the precursor of the Irish Republican Army. The ideology of the group was Irish nationalism. In Russia, by the mid-19th century, the intelligentsia grew impatient with the slow pace of Tsarist reforms, and sought instead to transform peasant discontent into open revolution. Anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin maintained that progress was impossible without destruction. Their objective was nothing less than complete destruction of the state. Anything that contributed to this goal was regarded as moral. With the development of sufficiently powerful, stable, and affordable explosives, the gap closed between the firepower of the state and the means available to dissidents. Organized into secret societies like the People's Will, Russian terrorists launched a campaign of terror against the state that climaxed in 1881 when Tsar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated. In 1893 the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was founded in Thessaloniki, now in Greece but then part of the Ottoman Empire. The organisation was driven by Slavic nationalism, and later acquired a reputation for ferocious attacks, including the 1934 assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia during a state visit to France. The Fenians/IRA and the IMRO may be considered the prototype of all 'nationalist terrorism', and equally illustrate the (itself controversial) expression that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Both groups achieved their goal, an independent Ireland and an independent Macedonia. Today, modern weapons technology has made it possible for a "super-empowered angry man" (Thomas Friedman) to cause a large amount of destruction by himself or with only a few conspirators. It can be, and has been, conducted by small as well as large organizations. Some people considered at some point in their lives to be terrorists, or supporters of terrorism, have gone on to become dedicated peace activists (Uri Avnery), respected statesmen (Yitzhak Shamir) or even Nobel Peace Prize laureates (Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat).
Global trends
Since 1968, the U.S. State Department has tallied deaths due to terrorism. In 1985, it counted 816 deaths, the highest annual toll until then. The deaths decreased since the late 1980s, then rose to 3,295 in 2001, mainly as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2003, more than 1,000 people died as a result of terrorist acts. Many of these deaths resulted from suicide bombings in Chechnya, Iraq, India and Israel. It does not tally victims of state terrorism. Data from the Terrorism Knowledge Base showed a similar decline since the 1980s, especially in Western Europe. On the other hand, Asia experienced an increase in international terrorist attacks. Other regions experienced less consistent patterns over time. From 1991 to 2003, there was a consistent increase in the number of casualties from international terrorist attacks in Asia, but few other consistent trends in casualties from international terrorist attacks. Three different regions had, in three different years, a few attacks with a large number of casualties. Statistically, the distribution of the severity of terrorist attacks follows a power law, much like that for wars and also natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and forest fires.
Examples of major incidents
forest fire The U.S. State Department describes the following incidents as domestic and international terrorism: the June 1985 double-bombing of Air India jets originating from Canada, the 1993 Mumbai bombings, the Oklahoma City bombing in the USA (April 19, 1995); the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland (August 15, 1998); the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, and Washington DC, USA; the Munich Massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972; the Bali bombing in October 2002, the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, attack on Indian Parliament (December 13, 2001), the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, the March 11 2004 attacks in Madrid, July 7 2005 bombings in London and the second Bali bombing in October 2005. The deadliest events described as terrorism and not known to have been sponsored by a state were the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, in Arlington County, Virginia. So far as is known, the deadliest attack planned but not executed was Operation Bojinka, which aimed to murder Pope John Paul II and blow up 11 airliners. The plot was aborted after an apartment fire in Manila, Philippines on January 5 1995 exposed the operation to police. The militants who were planning it were just over two weeks away from implementing their plot. Other plots, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, were designed to kill thousands but failed to do so.
External links

- [http://www.lawandterrorism.com Law, Terrorism and Homeland Security]. A collection of articles.
- [http://www.cgs.uiuc.edu/resources/webvideo/racvideo.html Richard Clarke speech Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror]
- [http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/10/news/belgium.php The New York Times: Terrorists in Europe find a base in Belgium ] (discussed at MajorityRights [http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/1592/])
- [http://www.tkb.org/ MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base]
- [http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0502014/ Scale invariance in global terrorism]
- [http://www.nationalterroralert.com/ National Terror Alert Resource Center]
- [http://www.debriefed.org/indexen.html Security NewsLine: Global Terrorism and Counterterrorism www.debriefed.org]
- [http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/inmm-r2.pdf Nuclear Facilities and Sabotage: Using Morphological Analysis as a Scenario and Strategy Development Laboratory] (PDF)
- [http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/dbt1.pdf Protection against Sabotage of Nuclear Facilities: Using Morphological Analysis in Revising the Design Basis Threat] (PDF)
- [http://www.codeplan.org/ENindex.html C.O.D.E. : Center for the Observation and Deterrence of Extremism]
- [http://www.paradisepoisoned.com Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Development and Terrorism from Sri Lanka's Civil Wars] by John Richardson ko:테러리즘 ja:テロリズム th:การก่อการร้าย zh-min-nan:Khióng-pò·-chú-gī

Quebec independence movement

The Quebec sovereignty movement is a political movement for the attainment of sovereignty for Quebec, a province of the Canadian federation. The sovereigntists propose that Quebecers exercise their right to self-determination in order to democratically give themselves their first independent constitutional state of law. The term Quebec separatist movement is often used by non-sovereigntists. With a sovereign state, Quebec sovereigntists believe that the people of Quebec will be better equipped to foster their own economic, social, and cultural development. Quebec sovereigntists are generally not in opposition to federalism as a concept, but are opposed to the present federal system of Canada and do not believe it can be reformed in a way that could answer what they see as the legitimate wish of Quebecers to govern themselves freely. The idea of sovereignty for Quebec is based, according to its proponents, on historical and sociological evidence that Quebecers are a people and a political nation, that they have democratic control over a state of their own, but that inside the Canadian federation as it currently stands, this state does not have the constitutional powers needed by the Quebec government to be the normal national government of all Quebecers. Within Canada, the national policies of Quebec clash with the national policies of the federal government. Various attempts at reforming the federal system of Canada have thus far failed due to the conflicting interests between the majority of Quebecers and the majority of other Canadians (see Constitutional debate of Canada). Although it is primarily a political question, cultural concerns are also at the root of the desire for independence. The central cultural argument of the sovereigntists is that only citizenship for Quebec can adequately and permanently resolve the difficult issue of the language of the majority (French), allow Quebecers to establish their nationality, preserve their cultural identity, and keep their collective memory alive.

Sovereignty-association

Main article: Sovereignty-Association Movement The sovereigntist movement of Quebec is generally considered to have started in the 1960s with the Quiet Revolution. The use of the word "sovereignty" and many of the ideas of this movement originated in the 1967 Mouvement Souveraineté-Association of René Lévesque. This movement ultimately gave birth to the Parti Québécois in 1968. Sovereignty-Association (French: Souveraineté-Association) is the combination of two concepts: # The achievement of sovereignty for the Quebec state. # The creation of a political and economic association between this new independent state and Canada. It was first presented in Lévesque's political manifesto, Option Québec. The Parti Québécois defines sovereignty as the power for a state to levy all its taxes, vote on all its laws, and sign all its treaties (as mentioned in the 1980 referendum question). The type of association between an independent Quebec and the rest of Canada was described as a monetary and customs union as well as joint political institutions to administer the relations between the two countries. The main inspiration for this project was the then-emerging European Community. The hyphen between the words "sovereignty" and "association" was often stressed by Lévesque and other PQ members, to make it clear that both were inseparable. The reason stated was that if Canada decided to boycott Quebec exports after voting for independence, the new country would have to go through difficult economic times, as the barriers to trade between Canada (including Quebec) and the United States were very high. Quebec would have been a nation of 7 million people stuck between two impenetrable protectionist countries. After the signing of the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, the sovereignty-associationists revisited their options, and the need for an association with the rest of Canada was made optional. That is, an association with Canada is still wished for, but were it to fail, sovereignty would be economically viable because Quebec can (and currently does) freely export to the U.S. market. At the present, PQ members and outside supporters will often speak of 'sovereignty' alone. Those in favour of independence vacillate between terming it "sovereignty" and "independence," but the two terms are considered to be synonymous. A small group of people prefer "independence" over the other term. They are often stigmatized for this choice. The use of the term "Sovereignty-Association" is a lot less frequent, but is still heard (refer to the Modernization section below).

History

Main article: History of the Quebec independence movement

Precursor ideas and events

See: Quebec nationalism Sovereigntism and sovereignty are terms that refer to the modern movement in favour of the political independence of Quebec. However, the roots of Quebec's desire for self-determination can be traced back as far as the Alliance Laurentienne of 1957, the writings of Lionel Groulx in the 1920s, the Francoeur Motion of 1917, Honoré Mercier's flirtation with this idea (especially in his historic speech of 1893.)

Emergence

The Quiet Revolution in Quebec brought widespread change in the 1960s. Among other changes, support for Quebec independence began to form and grow in some circles. The first organization dedicated to the independence of Quebec was the Alliance Laurentienne, founded by Raymond Barbeau on January 25, 1957. On September 10, 1960 the Rassemblement pour l'indépendance nationale (RIN) was founded. On August 9 of the same year, the Action socialiste pour l'indépendance du Québec (ASIQ) was formed by Raoul Roy. The "independence + socialism" project of the ASIQ was a source of political ideas for the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ). On October 31, 1962, the Comité de libération nationale and, in November of the same year, the Réseau de résistance were set up. These two groups were formed by RIN members to organize non-violent but illegal actions, such as vandalism and civil disobedience. The most extremist individuals of these groups left to form the FLQ, which, unlike all the other groups, had made the decision to resort to violence in order to reach its goal of independence for Quebec. Shortly after the November 14, 1962, Quebec general election, RIN member Marcel Chaput founded the short-lived Parti républicain du Québec. In February of 1963, the FLQ was founded by three RIN members who had met each other as part of the Réseau de résistance. They were Georges Shoeters, Raymond Villeneuve, and Gabriel Hudon. In 1964, the RIN became a provincial political party. In 1965, the more conservative Ralliement national (RN) also became a party. The historical context of the time was a period when many former European colonies, such as Cameroon, Congo, Senegal, Algeria, and Jamaica, were becoming independent. Some advocates of Quebec independence naturally saw Quebec's situation in a similar light. Numerous activists were influenced by the writings of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi and Karl Marx. Karl Marx In June 1967, French president Charles de Gaulle, who had granted independence to Algeria, shouted Vive le Québec libre! during a speech from the balcony of Montreal's city hall during a state visit to Canada. In doing so, he deeply offended the Canadian federal government, and many Canadians felt he had demonstrated contempt for the sacrifice of Canadian soldiers who died on the battlefields of France in two world wars. De Gaulle cut short his visit and left the country. Finally, in October 1967, former Liberal cabinet minister René Lévesque left that party when it refused to discuss sovereignty at a party convention. Lévesque formed the Mouvement souveraineté-association and set about uniting pro-sovereignty forces. He achieved that goal in October 1968 when the MSA held its first (and last) national congress in Quebec City. The RN and MSA agreed to merge to form the Parti Québécois (PQ), and later that month Pierre Bourgault, leader of the RIN, dissolved his party and invited its members to join the PQ.

The early years of the PQ

Jacques Parizeau joined the party on September 19, 1969, and Jérôme Proulx of the Union nationale joined on November 11 of the same year. In the 1970 provincial election, the PQ won its first seven seats in the National Assembly. René Lévesque was defeated in Mont-Royal by the Liberal André Marchand. In the 1973 election, the PQ won six seats, a net loss of one. However, its share of the popular vote had significantly increased. 1973 election

The referendum of 1980

In the 1976 election, the PQ won 71 seats -- a majority in the National Assembly -- to the general astonishment of all Quebec and the rest of Canada. With one of the highest voting turnouts in Quebec history, 41.4 per cent of the electorate voted for the PQ. On August 26, 1977, the PQ passed two important laws: first, the law on the financing of political parties, which prohibits contributions by corporations and unions and set a limit on individual donations, and second, the Charter of the French Language. On May 17, PQ Member of the National Assembly Robert Burns resigned, telling the press he was convinced that the PQ was going to lose its referendum and fail to be re-elected afterwards. At its seventh national convention from June 1 to 3, 1979, the sovereigntists adopted their strategy for the coming referendum. The PQ then began an aggressive effort to promote sovereignty-association by providing details of how the economic relations with the rest of Canada would include free trade between Canada and Quebec, common tariffs against imports, and a common currency. In addition, joint political institutions would be established to administer these economic arrangements. Sovereignty-association was proposed to the population of Quebec in the 1980 Quebec referendum. The proposal was rejected by 60 per cent of the Quebec electorate. In September, the PQ created a national committee of anglophones and a liaison committee with ethnic minorities. Despite having lost the referendum, the PQ was returned to power in the 1981 election with a stronger majority than in 1976, obtaining 49.2 per cent of the vote and winning 80 seats. However, they did not hold a referendum in their second term, and put sovereignty on the back burner, concentrating on their stated goal of "good government". René Lévesque retired in 1985 (and died in 1987). In the 1985 election under his successor Pierre-Marc Johnson, the PQ was defeated by the Liberal Party. Liberal Party

Repatriation, Meech, Charlottetown

The economic "association" part of the Sovereignty-Association concept was in some ways a forerunner of the later Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1987 and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Perhaps for this reason, Quebec was one of the few regions within Canada where both sides of the political spectrum supported free trade with the United States.

The referendum of 1995

The PQ returned to power in the 1994 election under Jacques Parizeau, this time with 44.75% of the popular vote. In the intervening years, the failures of the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord had revived support for sovereignty, which had been written off as a dead issue for much of the 1980s. Another consequence of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord was the formation of the Bloc Québécois (BQ), a sovereigntist federal political party, under the leadership of the charismatic former Progressive Conservative federal cabinet minister Lucien Bouchard. Several PC and Liberal members of the federal parliament left their parties to form the BQ. For the first time, the PQ supported pro-sovereigntist forces running in federal elections; during his lifetime Lévesque had always opposed such a move. The Union Populaire had nominated candidates in the 1979 and 1980 federal elections, and the Parti nationaliste du Québec had nominated candidates in the 1984 election, but neither of these parties enjoyed the official support of the PQ; nor did they enjoy significant public support among Quebecers. In the 1993 federal election, following the collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party, the BQ won enough seats in Parliament to become Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in the House of Commons. Parizeau promptly called a new referendum. The 1995 referendum question differed from the 1980 question in that the negotiation of an association with Canada was now optional. The "No" camp again won, but only by a very small margin of barely 1%. As in the previous referendum, the English-speaking (anglophone) minority in Quebec overwhelmingly (about 90%) rejected sovereignty, and support for sovereignty was also weak among allophones in immigrant communities and first-generation descendants. By contrast almost 60 per cent of francophones of all origins voted "Yes". (82 per cent of Quebecers are francophone.) On election night, Premier Jacques Parizeau attributed the defeat of the resolution to "money and the ethnic vote".

Present

The PQ won re-election in the 1998 election despite losing the popular vote to Jean Charest and the Quebec Liberals. In the number of seats won by both sides, the election was almost a clone of the previous 1994 election. However, public support for sovereignty remained too low for the PQ to consider holding a second referendum during their second term. Meanwhile, the federal government passed the Clarity Act to govern the wording of any future referendum questions and the conditions under which a vote for sovereignty would be recognized as legitimate. Federal liberal politicians stated that the ambiguous wording of the 1995 referendum question was the primary impetus in the bill's drafting. In the 2003 election, the PQ lost power to the Parti libéral du Québec. However, in early 2004, the Liberal government of Jean Charest had proved to be unpopular, and that, combined with the federal Liberal Party sponsorship scandal, contributed to a resurgence of the BQ. In the 2004 federal elections, the Bloc Québécois won 54 of Quebec's 75 seats in the House of Commons, compared to 33 previously. While opponents of sovereignty were pleased with their referendum victories, most recognized that there are still deep divides within Quebec and problems with the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. 2004 federal elections

The Clarity Act

In 1999, the Parliament of Canada, inspired by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Stéphane Dion, passed the Clarity Act, a law that, amongst other things, set out the conditions under which the federal government would recognize a vote by any province to leave Canada. Controversially, the act gave the House of Commons the power to decide whether a proposed referendum question was considered clear, and allowed it to decide whether a clear majority has expressed itself in any referendum. It is widely considered by sovereigntists as indefensible and thus inapplicable. Indeed, a contradictory Act respecting the exercise of the fundamental rights and prerogatives of the Québec people and the Québec State was introduced in the National Assembly of Quebec only two days after the Clarity Act had been introduced in the House of Commons. This was purely a symbolic act, as, unlike the Clarity Act, it had no effect on the law. Former Prime Minister Chrétien, under whom the Clarity Act was passed, has remarked that the act is among his most significant accomplishments.

Modernization

"Sovereignty-Association" is nowadays more often referred to simply as "sovereignty". However, in the 1995 Quebec referendum, which was narrowly rejected, the notion of some form of economic association with the rest of Canada was still envisaged (continuing use of the Canadian dollar, for example). It remains a part of the Parti Québécois program and is tied to national independence in the minds of most Quebecers. This part of the PQ program has always been controversial, especially since Canadian federal politicians usually refuse the concept. In 2003, the PQ launched the Saison des idées (Season of ideas) which is a public consultation aiming to gather the opinions of Quebecers on its sovereignty project. The new program and the revised sovereignty project will be adopted at the 2005 Congress. A recent poll by CTV/Strategic Counsel showed that 49% of Quebecers are in favor of another referendum. However, only 43% would vote "Yes" if the sovereignty question is blunt or clear, as defined by the Clarity Act.

Allies and opponents

National

There is a large semantic confusion, sometimes fostered by the Parti Québécois itself, between the terms sovereignty, separatism, independentism. These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but PQ supporters usually prefer the term "sovereignty", considered less radical and emotional than "independentism" (preferred by hard-liners), while "separatism" is usually considered pejorative. This ambiguity is further enhanced since the majority of Quebec's media, both written (with the notable exceptions of the CHOI-FM libertarian Quebec City radio station and La Presse and The Gazette newspapers), usually support the PQ's left to left-of-centre politics, if not the party itself. The separatist movement draws however above the Left and Right spectrum, a sizeable minority of more conservative Quebecers supporting the PQ's political agenda because of the sovereignty issue, despite reservations about its social democratic/socialist political agenda. Although one cannot generalize, natural allies of sovereignty tend to be found within the Left: labour unions, the French-speaking arts community, students (non-working members of the younger generations, as compared to Generation-Xers), the media, the Catholic clergy, anti-globalization supporters, and the academic political left. Opponents are often found in the business community, ethnic minorities, the older generations, working class Generation-Xers, non-French speakers ("allophones"), Jews, Francophone Protestants, libertarians, the non-nationalist political right, and critics of Keynesianism, statism, and government intervention in general. Quebec political standards usually range from the left-of-centre to the left compared to American or even European standards. Right and Left must thus be interpreted within the provincial context; compared to the American continuum, Liberal Party politics generally coincide with those of the United States Democratic Party while PQ politics are more in tone with the Green Party: there is no mass-equivalent of American conservatism in Quebec's French political culture, due notably to strong government interventionism and Keynesianism shared by all parties since the 1960s (the so-called "Quebec Consensus" since the Quiet Revolution), and the province's Catholic and rather homogeneous ethnic heritage. There are, of course, quite a few exceptions. Notable examples include:
- the conservative (by Quebec standards) but nationalist Action Démocratique du Québec supporting the Yes side in 1995 (their stance on the issue is now vague);
- the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada building links with the sovereigntists in the 1980s;
- well-known federalist artist Jean-Louis Roux, an actor, once destined to become the representative of Queen Elizabeth II as Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, a plan foiled by controversy; and
- René-Daniel Dubois, playwright and harsh critic of sovereignty, although a self-proclaimed neutral. Sovereignty fails at gathering substantial support among Quebec anglophones and anglicized allophones. About 60% of francophones of all ethnic origins voted "Yes" in 1995, and with the exception of some support from the Latino and Arabic communities, most non-francophones massively voted "No" (see Demolinguistics of Quebec). Consequently, some critics accuse the sovereignty movement of essentially being a chauvinistic, ethnic issue, a position refuted by the PQ, which considers its project all-embracing. Jacques Parizeau's comments after the 1995 referendum (see money and the ethnic vote), considered racist by most local and international commentators, added fuel to this controversy. money and the ethnic vote in Paris.]]

Rest of Canada

The other nine provinces of Canada have always been opposed to sovereignty-association. The most resistance is from the wealthier provinces of Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, since they pay out more than they receive from the federal government in equalization transfer payments, whereas it is the reverse for the less-affluent Quebec; provincial premiers were vehemently against subsidizing and giving economic benefits to an independent or autonomous Quebec. In both referendums, the sovereigntists (especially Jacques Parizeau in 1995) were seen outside Quebec as power-hungry individuals who wanted to rule as an independent nation and yet also enjoy all the exisiting benefits as a component of Canada. Although the Alberta government had clashed with the federal government in the 1980s over the National Energy Program in what some saw as another challenge to national unity, Premier Peter Lougheed never considered separatism even as a negotiation ploy. The Charter of the French Language and other attempts to make French secure as the primary language in Quebec had also deeply offended the Canadian population outside Quebec, since many of the other provinces had implemented Pierre Trudeau's initiatives to billingualize their institutions. To the surprise of sovereigntists, a large majority of non-Quebec francophones did not support the sovereignty movement.

International

In France, although openness and support is found in both sides of the political spectrum, the French "right" has been warmer to sovereigntists (like President Charles De Gaulle, who shouted his support of independence to Montreal in 1967) than the French "left" (like President François Mitterrand, who was distrustful of nationalism and notoriously snubbed Lévesque at their first meeting in the 1970s). This is a paradoxical phenomenon, for the Parti Québécois and most sovereigntists are to the political left. French politicians are sympathetic to Quebec for cultural and historical reasons, but the secessionist movement is often negatively perceived because France was built as one indivisible republic. The idea that France is "one nation, one country" is very solidly anchored in the political culture of France (and many other countries). A lot of French political parties feel it would be hypocritical if they officially supported Quebec nationalism, but continued to reject Corsican, Breton, and Basque nationalisms. Michel Rocard (who became Prime Minister of the French Republic) has been one of the French Socialists that broke that so-called rule the most (that of the French left being less open), maintaining a close and warm relationship with Quebec sovereigntists. Sovereignists also have relationships around the world with other social democratic, civic nationalist and/or independentist organizations like in Catalonia or in Scotland. For example, in 2000, Alex Salmond, then (and current) leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), wrote a speech to be read to the audience of the PQ National Council in which he spoke of the PQ as brother party of the SNP. The People's Republic of China has from time to time drawn comparisons between Taiwan (Republic of China) and Quebec and stated that like Canada, it was their duty to keep the country united from any separatist "threats". However, this interpretation still remains in dispute since Taiwan pays nor receives taxation from the PRC, in fact both operate as separate governments. Many nations maintain relations with Taiwan that are all but diplomatic in name but not in Quebec. China's case has also been significantly weakened morally since it has continually resorted to many coercive measures to bully and isolate Taiwan after the 1990s, even though a referendum has not been held. (Not the mention, China has a poor history of human rights and is also undemocratic, unlike Taiwan.) The issue is unlikely to be resolved, since China required that Taiwan's government recognize the One-China policy before any negotiations; a large majority of Taiwanese see adhering to such as policy as an automatic sell-out.

Ambivalence

Quebec federalist nationalists think that the Quebec people should be recognized as a de facto nation by the federal government of Canada and initiate the constitutional reforms that presuppose such a recognition. Their position is often so close to that of some moderate Quebec sovereigntists that many have jumped the fence both ways (former Premier of Quebec Lucien Bouchard and Quebec lawyer Guy Bertrand are well-known examples of this). A great proportion of Quebec sovereigntist politicians were formerly in the reformist camp of the greater liberal family before joining the MSA or later the PQ.

Sovereigntist organizations

- Parti Québécois
- SPQ Libre
- Bloc Québécois
- Union des Forces Progressistes
- Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society
- Conseil de la Souveraineté du Québec

Sympathizing organizations

- Confédération des syndicats nationaux (Confederation of national labour unions)
- Centrale des syndicats du Québec (Quebec labour unions congress)
- Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (Federation of Quebec workers)
- Union des artistes (Artists Labour Union)
- Mouvement national des Québécois et des Québécoises

Sovereigntist media

- Action Nationale
- L'Aut'journal
- Le Couac
- Le Devoir
- Le Jour (defunct)
- Le Mouton noir
- La Presse québécoise
- Le Québécois
- Québec-Radio
- Vigile.net

External links

- [http://www.pq.org Parti Québécois website] (in French and partly in English)
- [http://www.blocquebecois.org Bloc Québécois website] (in French and partly in English)
- [http://www.ssjb.com Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society website] (in French and partly in English)
- [http://www.souverainete.info/ Council of Quebec Sovereignty] (in French)
- [http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/chronos/national.htm Chronology of Quebec Nationalism]
- [http://www.lequebecois.org/quebecradio/index.html Québec-Radio] (in French) Category:Sovereignty movements Category:Politics of Quebec

Québécois

:This article is about the use of the term Québécois in the English language. For the newspaper, see Le Québécois. In Canadian English, a Québécois (IPA: ), or in the feminine Québécoise (IPA: ), is a native or resident of the province of Quebec, Canada. The term may also refer more generally to Quebecers of French-Canadian descent or to Quebec French, a variant of the French language spoken by over 80 percent of Quebec's population. As an adjective, the word refers to Quebec's francophone culture or population. In French, the word Québécois refers to a native or resident of Quebec or of Quebec City. Its English equivalent is Quebecer or Quebecker (pronounced or ). These terms generally refer to any resident of Quebec, including anglophone or allophone natives or residents of Quebec. The word can be politically charged, and may mean different things to different speakers. Controversy often results over the word's definition. The word is featured in the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois political party names.
See also

- Culture of Quebec
- Demolinguistics of Quebec
- Scots-Quebecer
- List of Irish Quebecers Category:Ethnic groups of Canada Category:Culture of Quebec
- Category:Francophonie

Marxist

Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. Marx drew on G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy, the political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and theorists of 19th century French socialism, to develop a critique of society which he claimed was both scientific and revolutionary. This critique achieved its most systematic (albeit unfinished) expression in his masterpiece, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, more commonly known as Das Kapital. Since its inception and up to the present day, Marxism has been situated largely outside the political mainstream, although it has played a major role in history. Today, Marxist political parties of widely different sizes exist in most countries around the world, and Marxism continues to enjoy significant intellectual respect in many circles. Das Kapital Das Kapital Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis for their politics and policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and conflicting. One of the first major political splits occurred between the advocates of 'reformism', who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within existing bourgeois parliamentarian frameworks, and communists, who argued that the transition to a socialist society required a revolution and the dissolution of the capitalist state. The 'reformist' tendency (later known as Social Democracy) came to be dominant in most of the parties affiliated to the Second International and these parties supported their own governments in World War One. This issue caused the communists to break away and form their own parties which became members of the Third International. The contemporary meanings of these terms was initially very different: Lenin, for example, was considered a social democrat until the mutation of the latter movement. Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary social movements and political parties around the world, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, relatively few countries have governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although social democratic parties are in power in a number of Western nations, they long ago distanced themselves from their historical connections to Marx and his ideas. As of 2005, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China had governments in power which describe themselves as socialist in the Marxist sense. However, the private sector comprised more than 50% of the Chinese economy by this time and the Vietnamese government had also partially liberalized its economy. The Laotian and Cuban states maintained strong control over the means of production. While Marx theorized that such a socialist phase would eventually give way to a classless society in which the state essentially ceases to exist and workers collectively own the means of production (communism), such a development has yet to occur in any historical self-claimed Communist state, often due to an initial authoritarian regime's unwillingness to relinquish the power it gained in revolution. These historically communist states have generally followed a socialist, command economy model without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage. North Korea is another contemporary Communist state, though the official ideology of the Korean Workers' Party (originally led by Kim Il-sung and currently chaired by his son, Kim Jong-il,) Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by the leadership of the Soviet Union. Libya is often thought of as a socialist state; it maintained ties with the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc and Communist states during the Cold War. Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, describes the state's official ideology as Islamic socialism, and has labelled it a third way between capitalism and Marxism. Some libertarian members of the laissez-faire and individualist schools of thought believe the actions and principles of modern capitalist states or big governments can be understood as "Marxist". This point of view ignores the overall vision and general intent of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto, for qualitative change to the economic system, and focuses on a few steps that Marx and Engels believed would occur, as workers emancipated themselves from the capitalist system, such as "Free education for all children in public schools". A few such reforms have been implemented — not by Marxists but in the forms of Keynesianism, the welfare state, new liberalism, social democracy and other minor changes to the capitalist system, in most capitalist states. To Marxists these reforms represent responses to political pressures from working-class political parties and unions, themselves responding to perceived abuses of the capitalist system. Further, in this view, many of these reforms reflect efforts to "save" or "improve" capitalism (without abolishing it) by coordinating economic actors and dealing with market failures. Further, although Marxism does see a role for a socialist "vanguard" government in representing the proletariat through a revolutionary period of indeterminate length, it sees an eventual lightening of that burden, a "withering away of the state."

The Hegelian roots of Marxism

market failure Marx's immensely rich and varied politico-theoretical preoccupations were initially influenced by his contact with Hegelian philosophy. Hegel proposed a form of idealism in which the progress of freedom is the guiding theme of human history. Freedom progresses by the development of ideas into their contraries. This process, dialectic, sometimes involves gradual accretion but at other times requires discontinuous leaps -- violent upheavals of previously existing status quo. World-historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte are, on the Hegelian reading, servants of a World Spirit whose Freedom has reconciled with the Necessity of History. Hegel's dialectical process included the personal as well as the natural, the ideal as well as the material. Marx did not study directly with Hegel, but after Hegel died Marx studied under one of Hegel's pupils, Bruno Bauer. Bauer was a leader of the circle of Young Hegelians and Marx attached himself to Bauer. However, Marx and Engels came to disagree with Bruno Bauer about socialism and also about the usage of Hegel's dialectic. Marx and Engels quit the Young Hegelians and wrote a scathing criticism of the Young Hegelians in two books, "The Holy Family," and "The German Ideology." Marx, "stood Hegel on his head," in his own view of his role, by turning the idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas, instead of the other way around. In this, Marx was following the lead of another Young Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach. (Feuerbach had not been one of Hegel's favorite pupils; when Feuerbach sent his thesis to Hegel, Hegel refused to reply. So, the title of Young Hegelian should be considered loosely when considering Feuerbach.) What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach, however, was his view of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely the reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give ontological priority to what he called the "real life process" of real human beings, as he and Friedrich Engels said in an 1846 essay they entitled "The German Ideology": :In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking, and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Also, in his "Theses on Feuerbach," Marx writes that "the philosophers have only described the world, in various ways, the point is to change it," and his materialist approach allows for and empowers such change. In 1844-5, when Marx was starting to settle his account with Hegel and the Young Hegelians in his writings, he critiqued the Young Hegelians for limiting the horizon of their critique to religion and not taking up the critique of the state and civil society as paramount. Indeed in 1844, by the look of Marx's writings in that period (most famous of which is the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", a text that most explicitly elaborated his theory of alienation and that was only published in the twentieth century), Marx's thinking could have taken at least three possible courses: the study of law, religion, and the state; the study of natural philosophy; and the study of political economy. He chose the last as the predominant focus of his studies for the rest of his life, largely on account of his previous experience as the editor of the newspaper "Rheinische Zeitung" on whose pages he fought for freedom of expression against Prussian censorship and made a rather idealist, legal defense for the Moselle peasants' customary right of collecting wood in the forest (this right was at the point of being criminalized and privatized by the state). It was Marx's inability to penetrate beneath the legal and polemical surface of the latter issue to its materialist, economic, and social roots that prompted him to critically study political economy. Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history, otherwise known as historical materialism (although Engels was the one who coined this term and Marx himself never used it), in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: :In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. In this brief popularization of his ideas, Marx emphasized that social development sprang from the inherent contradictions within material life and the social superstructure. This notion is often understood as a simple historical narrative: primitive communism had developed into slave states. Slave states had developed into feudal societies. Those societies in turn became capitalist states, and those states would be overthrown by the self-conscious portion of their working-class, or proletariat, creating the conditions for socialism and, ultimately, a higher form of communism than that with which the whole process began. Marx illustrated his ideas most prominently by the development of capitalism from feudalism and by the prediction of the development of socialism from capitalism. The base-superstructure and stadialist formulations in the 1859 preface took on canonical status in the subsequent development