Consider the statement, "all swans are white." As a theory, it works fine until you see your first black swan. At that point, your lovely avian hypothesis is toast. Now consider the statement, "Canadian police never dress up as black-masked demonstrators at protests." All it takes to disprove it is the identification of one black-masked demonstrator as a cop.

How about three cops?

In 2007, the town of Montebello, Quebec hosted a major summit for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. During a street protest, three burly, black-clad agitators, one with a rock in his hand, pushed and shoved against the police line. A protest organizer demanded the men to put the rock down, and tried unsuccessfully to unmask them while yelling out they were "cops."

As police theatrically wrestled the three to the ground, cameras inadvertently got a view of the protesters' shoes--the same footwear as those of the police around them, right down to orange insignias on the soles. The Quebec police later admitted the three officers were disguised as demonstrators, but denied there was an attempt to provoke violence at a peaceful protest.

Take a street full of protesters and police. Mix in some masked agents and let simmer. Toss in some pushing and shoving, and bring things to a boil with tear gas and truncheons. Serves millions of home viewers. What a recipe for disaster--and confusion.

Supposedly, the footwear of some violent agitators at the Toronto G20 protests closely resembles those of summit police, according to claims on the Internet. I've gone through links to the photos but I can't see it myself. Some people are looking at Toronto and seeing Montebello, I suspect. But even if the shoe doesn't fit for the G20 summit, is it possible there were agent provocateurs in the streets of Toronto last month?

An online video from the G20 Summit protests shows undercover police, dressed in civilian clothes, clearing a crowd with collapsible batons, so their uniformed colleagues can retreat to their line. At the 45-second mark, a figure in Black Bloc anarchist gear runs unhindered toward the police line and into the crowd of cops. It's not quite a smoking gun, but there's a definitely a whiff coming from the barrel.

If "Black Bloc" protesters didn't exist, someone might have to invent them, if only to justify a billion-dollar G20 security budget. How terribly wasteful this elite hobnobbing might have seemed without a contingent of useful idiots bashing store windows and destroying police cars conveniently left in harm's way.

South of the border, high-level infiltration of left-wing groups is not some conspiratorial fantasy, but a long-term trend. Ever since the FBI's '50s to '70s COINTELPRO operation, it's been a tried and tested method for monitoring and destabilizing dissident political organizations.

A while back a photographer friend showed me her photographs of the 2001 free trade summit in Quebec City. One shot, from the security perimeter around the convention centre, showed a masked protester shaking hands through a chain link fence with the officer in charge. My friend interpreted the scene as a moment of chivalry, a throwback to the days of Wolfe, Montcalm and the Plains of Abraham. I wasn't so sure. Most street-fighting protesters don't abide by 18th-century battlefield etiquette. Anarchists shaking hands with cops? They're more likely to start wearing tasselled Gucci loafers to teach-ins. How difficult would it be to covertly manipulate any protest, especially if the manipulators are working with the anarchists' belief system, rather than against it? It would take only a few agent provocateurs among a large group of genuine anarchists to legitimize a police response.

Without or without covert activity, the post-Battle-of-Seattle protest scene is getting a bit tired. Professional shit disturbers continue to shadow summits like headbangers following a Metallica tour. The peaceful protesters who abide by Ghandian principles (while refusing to condemn the violent tactics of their black-clad counterparts) are mostly ignored by big media, which gets a heaping helping of street brawls for the 24-hour news cycle. Meanwhile, the real looting and pillaging goes on behind closed doors, courtesy of political spear-carriers who are making the world safe for kleptocracy.

There were a lot of figures dressed in black at the G20 Summit, on both sides of the conflict. I'd just like to know which ones were the swans.

www.geoffolson.com