Military Conducting Their Own Investigation into Torture, But Will it be Enough?

With Parliament closed down to put a halt to the inquiry into our government's possible complicity in war crimes, the military is conducting their own investigation.

This is essential in some ways, because with Harper hiding behind the troops, they will ultimately be the ones wearing it.

However, this investigation is only on one incident, and will do nothing to explain the countless other transfers.

It's telling that they will release it March 1, just before Parliament resumes. Will this be the way the government will say, OK no more questions? Our own military just gave us the answer so enough is enough.

That rug is getting awful bumpy.

After the Somalia incident, Canada's armed forces took an awful hit in public opinion, and it has only been recently that they have regained their dignity. If this turns out to be just another cover-up, I think we'll see a lot of people scratching those yellow ribbons off their bumpers.

It's a shame too, because they were not to blame.

Harper kept such a tight control on the messaging, that it would often be weeks before any reports were filed, and by then the detainee was lost in the system. And yet he claims he never saw the memos. What a horrible, horrible man.

Military wants answers on Afghan torture report
January 28, 2010
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—The Canadian military has ordered a formal investigation into how a critical report on the beating of an Afghan prisoner remained buried at National Defence headquarters.

In June 2006 soldiers captured a suspected Taliban fighter and handed him over to local police, who then beat him to the point where the Canadians had to intervene.
A report on the incident, which undermines Conservative government claims that no prisoners handed over to Afghans faced abuse, was apparently uncovered only in December.

Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk ordered an investigation, which is headed by Rear-Admiral Paul Maddison, commander of Joint Task Force Atlantic. Natynczyk’s deputy, Vice-Admiral Denis Rouleau, says the probe will look at the incident itself, why soldiers took the actions they did and how it was reported.

The report of the investigation is due March 1 and is to be made public shortly after. Diplomat Richard Colvin testified before a special House of Commons committee in November that he repeatedly warned federal officials in 2006 and 2007 that prisoners faced the possibility of torture in Afghan jails.

His warnings were dismissed by the government and the military as vague and unsubstantiated. The June 2006 incident was made public almost two years ago, but the military initially disputed the version of events, saying its soldiers never captured the prisoner in the first place.

Natynczyk’s admission that Canadians had indeed been the ones to detain the suspect caused shock waves on Parliament Hill and prompted accusations of a coverup.

The Conservatives Have Gone Too Far. It's Time to Call in the Ethics Commissioner - Again

Oh wait. We can't can we? Harper has shut everything down. However, I think we are entering a crisis zone here, because this government is out of control.

In an attempt to change the narrative from war crimes and the lobbying scandal, they have actually posted on the Justice Department website that they are only able to get their damn un-Canadian crime bills passed by stacking the senate.

This is an official GOVERNMENT website. OUR website. It is not for partisan propaganda. I think the Governor general needs to step in here.

Here are some facts:

1. Most of these bills were sabotaged by Harper himself.

2. Canada's crime rate is the lowest it's been in 30 years. We did not need these bills in the first place.

3. They were presented to the senate without costing. When they asked for a dollar figure they were told by the Conservatives that it was a cabinet secret. I understand that Kevin Page, our parliamentary budget office, is currently attaching a price tag that is believed to be in the billions.

This is from the website and if there are any constitutional lawyers out there, I hope someone comes forward. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

NEW SENATORS TO HELP END OPPOSITION OBSTRUCTION OF LAW-AND-ORDER BILLS

OTTAWA, January 29, 2010 – The Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and the Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Natural Resources, today celebrated the appointment of five new members of the Senate of Canada. They were joined by two of the five: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu and Senator Bob Runciman.

“Moments ago it was announced that the Prime Minister has appointed five outstanding Canadians to fill vacancies in the Senate,” said Minister Nicholson.“The Prime Minister’s action has not only brought additional talent and expertise to the Senate; it has greatly strengthened our efforts to move forward on our tackling-crime agenda.”

The opposition has obstructed that agenda in the Senate, most notably by gutting Bill C-15 – a bill proposing mandatory jail time for serious drug offences, and a key part of the government’s efforts to fight organized crime ....

Some International News on Canada's New Dictator

I like Real News. I often watch their videos, to get some idea of what is happening in the world. Fox News and Canwest Global are merely for entertainment, and I even use that term loosely.

Their coverage is quite good and they don't downplay our numbers the way many in the Canadian media has.

Terri Elvald, our CAPP organizer from Simcoe-Barrie has done a lot of work to provide links to your MPs contact info, should anyone feel motivated.

We have to let all parties know that we've had our wake up call and will never allow our voices to be taken away again. They work for us and we get to tell them when they can go home.

And we also now have bumper stickers available. One of our artists has designed them and you can purchase them here. Everytime one of Harper's Reformers tries to dismiss us, we just become more motivated. So keep those attacks coming guys.

Stephen Harper Reminds Us of Why We Feared Him

Boy, talk about someone shooting themselves in the foot.

For four years Stephen Harper has used our money to reinvent himself into a softer, kinder individual, with the help of a full time image consultant who arranges everything from his hair to his cheek position.

And then in just a matter of hours, it all came crashing down as Canadians remembered why we feared him in the first place.

The infamous 'secret agenda'.

It may be true that anti-prorogation anger will subside once the House reopens, but this will definitely be an election issue.

This is a man who spews venom at his opponents, then runs at the first sign of trouble. Neither are winning traits in a leader.

There was a good article in the Winnipeg Free Press, reminding us of just how dangerous a Harper majority, or in fact even another minority, would be.


Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Harper really is dangerous
By: William Neville
January 29, 2010

It has become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament in December was a serious miscalculation. The public, perhaps not normally attuned to such things, has clearly understood that Harper's decision smells: It smells of the all-consuming political calculations that are a 24-hour-a-day preoccupation with Harper; it smells of an attempt to shut Parliament down at a time when opposition MPs are asking embarrassing but legitimate questions of the government on several fronts; and it smells of a contempt for Parliament and public accountability that, ironically, helped bring the old Reform party into existence -- the same Reform party, need it be added, that first brought Harper to Ottawa.

Harper has offered a series of justifications for closing down Parliament. First, it was to allow the country to focus on the Vancouver Olympics, a fatuous suggestion if ever there was one. Then Harper rationalized prorogation as providing the government the time to recalibrate its programs and policies. Taken seriously, this would suggest that Harper's government cannot govern and recalibrate -- whatever that may mean -- at the same time.

As demonstrations against the government have occurred across the country, and as the Conservatives' standing in the polls slid dangerously close to the Liberals', a new explanation and justification has been floated. Last week, Harper's office sent a memorandum to all its parliamentary supporters listing all the wonderful things that ministers, Conservative MPs and senators are doing -- and, by implication, able to do -- because Parliament is not sitting.

Essentially, Harper is suggesting that government gets better the less Parliament does. That argument has been made explicit by no less an authority than one of Harper's senior pit bulls, Jason Kenney, who last week commented, "As a minister, I often get more done when the House is not in session. That's not to say Parliament is unimportant, but from a ministerial point of view, I think any minister in any government will tell you that's probably generally the case." Could the message be any clearer?

Presumably with no Parliament at all, the Conservatives could do one hell of a job. This is an extraordinarily pernicious doctrine. In fact, to call it a doctrine is to dignify it: It is pernicious nonsense. From a party that has made a fetish of wanting less government and more accountability, this confounds the convictions they have always professed to have. The truth, obviously, is that they love power and unchecked power especially. Little wonder that poll after poll suggests that a large majority of Canadians want Parliament sitting because, for all its imperfections, it is the only way in which a government -- this government -- can be held accountable on a day-to-day basis.

In any survey of modern history, one everywhere observes -- all round the world -- that when elected, democratic governments are overthrown one of the first acts of autocrats and usurpers is to close down the assemblies, parliaments or congresses and to dismiss them as inefficient or ineffective talking shops.

Elected bodies can be such things but that is not why would-be dictators close them down: They close them down because they rightly distrust democracy as slow, cumbersome, inefficient and inimical to autocratic minds and methods.

Despite his frequently made claims to being an economist, Harper has always lived on the avails of politics and is an archetypal professional politician who has had no significant career outside politics and, within which has been narrowly focused on ideology, strategy and tactics. Coming, as he does, from the one-party state of Alberta he has never shown any sensitivity to nor understanding of a parliamentary system whose functioning depends on recognizing the legitimacy of opposition, the existence of constitutional conventions and limits, or that there are lines that governments may not cross.

He demonstrated this ignorance a year ago in precipitating a crisis that almost brought him down, and he is demonstrating it again now over prorogation. He combines the stubbornness of the control freak with the ignorance of the know-it-all. Harper, in a sense that his sternest critics may never have imagined, is a dangerous man.

Charles Moore Gets the Smackdown - From the Calgary Herald?

During our kind of mini debate on the CBC Monday, Charles Moore brought out the tired old Reform-Conservative lines ... coalition ... too few numbers ... economy ... blah, blah, blah.

He's certainly entitled to his opinion, even if it is wrong (hee, hee), but much was off topic.

However, I did want to rebut a couple of things. First off about the handling of the economy. As I mentioned before, what we saw of the Canada Action Plan was nothing more than a huge PR stunt.

From signs to big cardboard cheques, self-promotion ads and targeting of stimulus to their own ridings - Harper was not piloting us through the recession, but charting his own course.

Had the Coalition been handling the stimulus, it would not have been partisan, and remember Harper himself never planned to do anything.

But back to CAPP. Though trying to make comparisons of our numbers by using the entire Canadian population, he is wrong in assuming we are trivial. Besides, by that reasoning, Harper is in power based on about 6% of the population.

But babies can't vote and babies don't go on Facebook.

Why prorogation of Parliament is a big deal
By Paula Arab,
Calgary Herald
January 28, 2010

What's the big deal about proroguing Parliament, New Brunswick columnist Charles Moore asked earlier this week.

Well Charles, I'll tell you what the big deal is. Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn't prorogue for the traditional reasons, because the work is done, or to stick to a schedule. Nope. For the second time in 13 months, he asked the Governor General to shut down government to protect his own political hide.

Thanks to Harper, proroguing has become a common, household term, meaning to avoid unpleasantness in the House of Commons.

He has turned the procedure of closing down the government because the session has ended, into a political tool that serves his own interests. The big deal is never before in the history of Canada has a prime minister been so disrespectful of our democratic institutions, that are there to represent the voice of the people. The functioning of Parliament may not be perfect, but it's all we've got.

This is an abuse of power, plain and simple. Worse, it's part of a larger pattern of disturbingly authoritarian behaviour in which our prime minister seems to believe he is above accountability, to the media, the public or now the opposition's criticism in the House of Commons.

If Harper is trying to convince Canadians he can be trusted with a majority government, this is no way to go about inspiring the electorate's onfidence.

The big deal is 36 bills have now died on the table because of the abrupt prorogation in the middle of a session. All the work that went into crafting this legislation has been for naught, and adds up to at least 368 hours of wasted Parliamentary time.

The cost to taxpayers of proroguing is $50 million. Still, people like Moore, who writes a column for the Saint John's Telegraph Journal, express surprise by the public outrage. "I don't deny there's a lot of buzz but what is the issue of substance here?" he said on CBC Radio's The Current. "What still puzzles me is what exactly is the outrage about?"

Where do I begin? Harper requested the governor general prorogue parliament on Dec. 30, a day when five Canadians died in Afghanistan, including the first journalist, Herald reporter Michelle Lang.

It's a cynical, opportunistic play at a time when most people are otherwise busy with family and the Christmas Holidays. They're not paying attention to the news. It's amazing anyone caught the news of prorogation, considering how the deaths of Lang and the others in Afghanistan overshadowed all other news.

That people are still talking about the issue four weeks later, joining Facebook groups and going out to protests, shows just how badly Harper miscalculated public perception. Harper's excuse is laughable, as I found out when I asked Parliamentary expert Ned Franks whether there could be any truth in wanting to "recalibrate" until after the Olympics. The Queen's University professor emeritus burst out in belly laughs.

"There are a lot of fairy tales in politics including the government's explanation of why it prorogued." The Conservatives further antagonized the public with their spin and misrepresentation of facts. The next day, Conservative strategist Tim Powers was doing national interviews, saying Parliament has been prorogued 105 times in Canada's history, including four times by Jean Chretien.

"If you do the math that works out to about every one in 1.3 years. People understand this is parliamentary procedure." What Powers failed to explain is that every parliamentary session ends with a prorogation. It's a normal event except when the prime minister uses it to avoid accountability to Parliament, as Harper has done twice in his four years in power.

Prorogation was an annual event up until the 1960s because Parliament operated on a yearly schedule. New sessions automatically began every fall. Chretien was prime minister for seven sessions in three Parliaments. Four sessions ended by prorogation, and three in dissolution for an election.

He is guilty of proroguing to avoid embarrassment only once, in 2002, when he prorogued early to delay the tabling of the auditor general's report documenting the sponsorship scandal.

Prior to that, the only example occurred in 1873, when Sir John A. Macdonald shut down Parliament to avoid a probe into the Pacific Scandal. As for every other Westminster parliament? Only in Canada.

Australia, New Zealand and Britain all learned the lesson of King Charles I, who prorogued in his own self-interest in 1629. He got into a power struggle over his Royal prerogative, back in the pre-modern era, before the notion of good, democratic government replaced the monarchical system. King Charles eventually got beheaded. Mac-Donald was forced to resign. Chretien left and the Liberal Party is still in tatters.

And Harper? The Afghan detainees affair might very well be old news by the time Parliament resumes in March, and we may never know what, if anything, the government was trying to avoid. Canadians have a right to know. And, it seems, Canadians care very much about Parliament, even if they don't always like how it behaves. That, Charles Moore, is what the big deal is all about.

parab@theherald.canwest.com

Belleville's Daryl Cramp is Giving me Cramps. He's Off the Island

As I mentioned before, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, has opened the vault on suppressed information, and as we share stories from across the country, it paints a broader picture of this party.

Almost every single Conservative MP has had the same talking points. It's like they've been indoctrinated into some kind of cult.

Even Andrew Scheer, our deputy house leader, has no clue about what democracy means to Canadians. We are just being silly ... there there now ... he can make all our troubles vanish. You just have to wait until he pulls out the playbook.

Well CAPP has now become something very different. We are motivated and we are determined to take this country back. So the media and all the naysayers, can join in the fight or get out of our way.

We are no longer going to allow rhetoric to control us. We represent a great cross section of Canadians, with often altering points of view and allegiances, but we are all after the same thing. Democratic reform and the reinstatement of all checks and balances in our system. We will no longer allow anyone to claim this kind of power.

So my most recent 'in your face' goes out to Daryl Kramp, the Conservative MP for Belleville, Ontario.

Like most of Harper's disciples, he's trying to claim that CAPP and our rallies are all about partisan politics. He told the Belleville Intelligencer of their local organizer: “This is a gentleman who, by his own admission, has no partisan interest but is the vice-president of the local Liberal association,” he said. “Excuse me but you can’t have it both ways. Credibility to me is credibility earned.”

Fortunately the Intelligencer fired back:

The local MP is taking a kicking … for … Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament. [...] Kramp … rather than be concerned about the big picture, hose instead to quibble about the fact the organizer of the rally was in fact a
Liberal. [...]

What does it matter if the organizer of the rally is a member of one political party or another … ? [...] They are people with whom Harper’s Conservatives have lost touch in their imperial style of politics. They’re average Canadians who are fed up with watching their MPs perform like circus animals with cheques in hand …

Mr. Kramp, we’re growing increasingly weary of the kitschy grip and grins … “Credibility earned”? [Harper's] credibility … has now all but washed away like a January thaw and we’re left with politics as usual from a party and politicians who lied to us all that they would be different.

I left a comment:

Wonderful story and such an important message. I attended the rally in Kingston and while I am actively involved with our local Liberal riding association, I attended this rally, not as a Liberal, but as a Canadian.

In fact one woman approached me, suggesting that she would like to get involved in the political process, but wasn’t sure where to start.

My knee jerk response might have been to lead her to our president, but instead I pointed her to all of the local riding associations (the Conservatives were invited but declined sending reps) and also several advocacy groups that had put up signs and presented petitions.

I really wanted this to be about this beautiful country and how we have ignored it through our apathy. Partisan politics will be reserved for the next election.

As an active member of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament, I can assure you, that we are promoting all progressive parties, committed to steering this country away from it’s recent sharp right turn, and making sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

Even the next PM will not get a free ride. We are taking our country back.

Harper: Take a Bow For the New Revolution - We Won't be Fooled Again

You know Harper's in trouble when the corporate media begins to constantly (constantly, constantly, constantly) try and remind us of his swift response to Haiti. They really should stop already, because it's only making us question his motives.

CAPP is our new revolution and we won't be fooled again. I suspect in time we'll learn what's really going on with this relief mission. For now the Canadian media is only bowing to the dictator, so I read reports from the UK and other places to get the real story.

Our troops are amazing - Harper not so much.

And this brings us to his other meager attempt at portraying himself as a man who now gives a damn. His sudden interest in vulnerable women and children. Remember he was the one who once bragged that he was often sought out to speak against government giving money in the name of child poverty, and concern for women? That's a lark.

But if he really wants to help, he needs look no closer than his own backyard.

Inuit infant mortality three times Canadian average; children go hungry: Study
By Bob Weber
Canadian Press
January 26, 2010

Inuit infants die at well over three times the rate of other Canadian babies, according to a massive new study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

And as if to underscore the tough situation facing aboriginal children in Canada's North, a second study in the same journal found that 70 per cent of Inuit preschoolers live in homes where there isn't always enough food ....