Mothra Canada

I'm completely mystified by the  near-universal  negative  reaction that Never Forgotten National Memorial 's proposed Mothra Canada war memorial has provoked in my fellow Canadians. Who wouldn't like a tax-payer subsidized 10 storey statue to Mothra on Cape Breton?

Come on, guys. What's your problem? Ecological vandalism? That the monument will ruin "a pristine geological site of peaceful scenic beauty"? 

They did an 86 page Detailed Impact Analysis. Ok sure, so it was done by the engineering firm Stantec, who are one of the corporate sponsors listed on the NFNM "Partners and Supporters" page but it's not like they're putting up the world's largest ball of tinfoil or twine on the site.

Here's a nice letter from Chief of Defence Staff General Tom Lawson to project founder Tony Trigiani pledging the help of the Canadian Armed Forces.  I didn't know CAF did that.

And just look at the list of Honorary Patrons : JustMin/AG Peter MacKay, Tom D'Aquino, Mila Mulroney, Frank McKenna, Jean Charest, some corps, plus CBC stars Rex Murphy and Peter Mansbridge. Oh wait, Mansbridge was on there last week when I looked but now he isn't, and Rex Murphy is listed as a "Freelance Journalist". 

A privately directed enterprise since described by Peter MacKay as a "private-public partnership", the site will feature the names of "Major Gift donors" but not those of the war dead.

From the NFNM website :

"The Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation has developed recognition opportunities for Major Gift donors at varying levels, for both Canadian and International donors.

As a living, breathing and fully interactive memorial, the Never Forgotten National Memorial will offer ongoing marketing opportunities for individuals and corporate partners."

A fitting motto for a war memorial because war has always done exactly that.

Bumped up from comments : Brian Busby quotes :" Naming rights located throughout the Founders Hall and other special areas of the Interpretive Centre will also recognize the contributions of project partners and other major donors." 
and then responds : A shame the Ross Rifle Co. is no longer around.

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Bill C-51 and MacKay's friends with benefits

Ignoring the over 100 law profs that have just told him he's wrong, JustMin and AttGen Peter MacKay continues to insist that the Cons new anti-terrorism omnibus Bill C-51 is not going to be targetting birdwatchers, enviros, First Nations etc. because judges! warrants! independent judiciary!    About that ...

Press Progress recently asked why lawyers and party donors prominently featured in Justice Minister Peter MacKay's 2012 wedding photos wound up being appointed as judges.  MacKay's best man Josh Arnold, red-arrowed here, was appointed to the bench the year after this photo and his wife Cindy Cormier the year after that. Another appointment is a friend of MacKay's dad.

In fact six of the nine judges appointed to Nova Scotia courts since October 2013 have personal, professional or political connections to MacKay.

CBC picked up the story and Press Progress issued two updates :

UPDATE #1: The CBC wrote a story about this PressProgress report and asked MacKay's office about the judicial appointments. A MacKay spokesperson said: "In the case of lawyers applying to be judges, committees assess them, provide comments, and also recommend them or not for appointment. The minister of justice only appoints those recommended by such committees." 

UPDATE #2: Responding to questions about MacKay's judicial appointments ... Secretary to the Minister of Justice Bob Dechert rejected NDP Justice Critic François Boivin's characterization of the appointments as "patronage" that "undermines the credibility of justice," stating that these "eminently qualified individuals" were "vetted by the judicial advisory council" and that it's "upon their recommendations that all appointments are made."

MacKay himself has said it : "All appointments to the Federal judiciary are made on the recommendation of the 17 Judicial Advisory Committees across the country." 

So backing up a step, who appoints the members of these 17 judicial advisory committees?
Turns out it's Peter Mackay!  As JustMin, he gets to pick over half of them on each committee. 

Frank Mag had a bit of fun with a few of MacKay's committee picks last month:

Ok, so who else has the Federal Justice Minister appointed? Here's six more:

John Tropak :  Manitoba CPC fundraiser and former campaign manager for Shelly Glover; donated $5,000 to CPC

Ken Lee : Manitoba PC leadership election committee chair and fundraiser

Marni Larkin : top Conservative strategist for Manitoba PC provincial campaign, served on the party's national council, advisor to local Manitoba riding races, CPC donor on the CBC's board of directors and, um, motivational speaker at *** Marni's Magic ***

Gordon MacFarlane : Progressive Conservative Party of Prince Edward Island’s Leadership Convention Committee spokesman

Kerri A. Carpenter : 2009 Conservative nominee for Cardigan PEI riding

Catherine H. Zingg : lawyer at Flaherty Dow Elliott & McCarthy ; co-wrote a book with The Honourable James M. Flaherty

And in a law article from last fall : How do we get more diversity on the bench when there’s no transparency in the appointments process? Stephen Lautens notes the Facebook page of one maritime appointments committee member shows the friend in her first slot is Peter MacKay’s mom, while another "regularly posts pro-Harper government/anti-Justin Trudeau tweets on his Twitter account". 

This is not to suggest that the friends-of-Cons committee members won't do a fabulous job of carefully vetting MacKay's wedding guests before recommending them to the bench, or that once appointed, Peter MacKay's friends won't make wonderful judges just as annoying to the Cons as Steve's Supremes picks have turned out to be.

But it does suggest our Justice Minister is quietly building up his own personal patronage circle of Con-friendly "activist judges" - which doesn't do much to bolster his warrants! judges! independent judiciary! argument against possible Bill C-51 abuses.
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h/t Antonia Z for Frank Mag link

July update : Patronage appointments padding the bench
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Parliamentary cakewalk

"I'll see your liar, liar, pants-on-fire," the Honorable Minister Peter MacKay told the House of Commons yesterday, "and raise you an easy peasy lemon squeezy."

"Neener, neener," added Steve.

McVety wants National Defence investigated

You would think that rapture raptor blowtard Charles McVety would be satisfied with his part in getting DefMin Peter Airshow MacKay to ban Executive Director of the Canadian Islamic Congress Imam Delic from speaking as planned at Defence headquarters yesterday as part of Islamic Heritage/History Month celebrations.
Banned, as Pogge put it, for : "Comments made six years ago by someone else who later apologized for them."

Hell no. McVety still wants Harper to investigate MacKay's National Defence headquarters for boogity boogities. Here he is on CTV :

"We're questioning whether it is a serious security failure. One is the wisdom of our National Defence headquarters having an Islamic Heritage celebration when our men and women are overseas fighting ...."

Um, Charles, did you miss Senator Hugh Segal introducing Imam Delic to speak at the launch of Islamic History Month in Parliament in October 2007? Back to Charles :

"You have to remember this is an internal national defence issue. Is this a security breach that has entered into other places in our government? It's a real surprise to see this happening inside our National Defence headquarters - we're talking about the internal operations of our national defence and intelligence within our defence forces."

From McVety's letter to Stephen Harper (Guess he finally got over being pissed at Steve for being a one-worlder commie):

"Circumstances surrounding this failure raise questions about our Defence headquarters’ internal security at a time when experts warn of the risk of infiltration of our security organizations. Was the Delic invitation facilitated by associates of the Canadian Islamic Congress or other radical Muslim elements operating from within National Defence headquarters itself?
Something has gone wrong, and we ask fair-minded Canadians to call upon Prime Minister Stephen Harper to fully investigate this serious security failure."

Wear it, Airshow. It's all yours. Looks good on ya.
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See also Dave, Boris, Dawg, Pogge, Balbulican, and Cathie

And here is the text of Imam Delic's cancelled speech.
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Canada in Afghanistan after 2011

"After 2011, the military mission will end," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, repeating the Conservative government's well-worn line.
"What we will do beyond that point in the area of training, will predominantly be in the area of policing. And that is very much a key component part of security for Afghanistan."

Training the Afghan National Police. That was contracted out to DynCorp in 2003, wasn't it?
They put together a training program for police that went from being 8 weeks long, to 6 weeks, now down to 3 weeks.
How's that going so far?

Afghan Cops - A $6 Billion Fiasco - excerpted :

"More than a year after Barack Obama took office, the president is still discovering how bad things are. At a March 12 briefing on Afghanistan with his senior advisers, he asked whether the police will be ready when America's scheduled drawdown begins in July 2011, according to a senior official who was in the room.
"It's inconceivable, but in fact for eight years we weren't training the police," replied Caldwell, taking part in the meeting via video link from Afghanistan. "We just never trained them before. All we did was give them a uniform."

The president looked stunned. "Eight years," he said. "And we didn't train police? It's mind-boggling." The room was silent."

Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who took over in November as chief of the U.S. program : "You constantly hear these stories about who was worse: the Afghan police that were there or the Taliban."

Since January 2007, upwards of 2,000 Afghan police have been killed in action—more than twice the figure for Afghan Army soldiers. U.S. officers say as many as half the police casualties were a result of firearms accidents and traffic collisions.

Fewer than 12% of the country's police units are capable of operating on their own. Yet of the 170,000 or so Afghans trained under the program since its inception, only about 30,000 remain on the force.

Steve Kraft, who oversees the program for the State Department : "Once they leave the training center, we currently don't know whether they stay with the force or quit," Kraft says. "The bottom line is, we just don't know."

Tracy Jeansonne, a former deputy sheriff from Louisiana who worked for DynCorp from May 2006 to June 2008. "A lot of the police officers wanted to be able to extort money from locals. If we caught them, we'd suggest they be removed. But we couldn't fire anybody. We could only make suggestions."

Ann Jones : "In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election."

And then there's the missing and unaccounted for billions of dollars in US government contracts.
AEY Inc., based in Florida, and described by the New York Times as "a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur," dispatched to the Afghan security forces 100 million Chinese cartridges, some 40 years old and in "decomposing packaging," under a $10 million Pentagon contract.

Currently, the Pentagon has given the Space and Missile Defense Command Contracting Office in Huntsville, Alabama, the task of deciding between DynCorp and Blackwater/Xe for the new billion-dollar training contract.

On March 12th, President Obama devoted much of the monthly video conference call between his Washington national security team and his senior commanders in Afghanistan to questions about how the police training problem should be tackled.
I guess that's where we come in.
MacKay, today :

"We will work within the parameters of the parliamentary motion, which states very clearly that the military mission will come to an end in 2011. We will then transition into some of the other important work that we’re doing. That includes a focus on police training. The prime minister has been clear in saying our commitment to Afghanistan is for the long-term."

Training the Afghan police alongside either DynCorp or Xe will be the new parliamentary "parameters" necessary to keep those trucks rolling between Windsor and Detroit .
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April 12 Update from Hansard.
Peter Kent, Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas) :

"Mr. Speaker, I can only say again that the government has been very clear.
Canada's military mission will end in 2011. Officials are now considering and examining Canada's potential and non-military role post-2011."

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Wiebo Ludwig

I don't claim to be any kind of authority on Wiebo Ludwig - for that you can read Andrew Nikiforuk's Saboteurs - but in all the considerable coverage of Ludwig's arrest today in connection with six cases of explosions on EnCana's gas pipelines, I notice the media's accompanying history of Ludwig makes no mention of the RCMP blowing up a well site last time they were building their case against him so here's a reminder.

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Ludwig's war on Big Oil began with his belief that sour gas and industrial pollution was endangering the health of his family and livestock. This was confirmed for him when his grand-daughter was born dead. Unable to achieve satisfaction in the courts, Ludwig was convicted in 2001 on five charges related to vandalism of oil industry equipment and served two years of a 28-month sentence.

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Ok, Operation Kabriole ...

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CBC, Nov 10, 2000 : RCMP bombed oil site in 'dirty tricks' campaign

The Mounties bombed an oil installation as part of a dirty tricks campaign in their investigation into sabotage in the Alberta's oil patch.
The revelation came at the bail hearing Thursday of two farmers who the Crown says have turned their complaints that oil industry pollution is making their families ill into acts of vandalism and mischief.

CBC , Nov 10, 2000 : More details of RCMP 'dirty tricks' revealed

Dubbed "Operation Kabriole", the RCMP's intention was to help an informant
get closer to the two men police suspected were behind vandalism against the oil
and gas industry.

Wiebo Ludwig and Richard Boonstra were arrested and charged earlier this month.

"Operation Kabriole" was planned and executed with the direct involvement of a Calgary based oil and gas business. Alberta Energy Company has a big operation in the Peace River country.

The RCMP's original plan was to blow up one of AEC's trucks. The company convinced the police to change the operation even though AEC had already given its approval, offered up a truck to be bombed and said it would pay for any major damages. Company officials were having second thoughts.

According to the RCMP's own files, the head of AEC's northern operations met with the police to say his bosses were concerned that bombing a vehicle would cause 'undue stress and fear' for employees driving company trucks.
So the company offered an alternative, a shed covering one of its "out of service" well sites not far from the suspects' property.

The bomb was set off Oct. 14, one week before AEC hosted two tense and emotional town hall meetings. Worried residents who turned out, were told by an expert, who was flown in by AEC, that they were the victims of 'eco-terrorists'.

Tory MP Peter MacKay, the opposition's RCMP critic at the time :

"If, in fact, the RCMP engaged in this type of activity, regardless of their motives, and regardless of the public interest here, it would be potentially fatal to the Crown's case."

Except it wasn't.

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This time Ludwig has been charged his lawyer says he will be charged with extortion.

Extortion. Description in the Criminal Code: 346(1):

"Every one commits extortion who, without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to obtain anything, by threats, accusations, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any person, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done."

To do anything or cause anything to be done. That's pretty broad.

Maybe this time he wrote a letter.

Still, an RCMP fishing expedition is better than blowing up a shed.

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Richard Colvin's devastating letter of rebuttal

On Airshow MacKay's attempt to discredit Colvin by accusing him of not having brought up detainee abuse the one time MacKay met with Colvin in Afghanistan :
He, Colvin, had only been on the job for 10 days and had not met with any detainees yet.
And even if he had, protocol was to report to DFAIT, not the minister.

On Christie Blatchford's Con-fed column that Colvin had only been outside the wire once :
Colvin : 'Outside the wire' in Kandahar at least 11 times, in Kabul over 500 times.

On the claim his reports in 2006 did not use the word 'torture' :
Colvin : Six reports, one including the phrase " rife with torture"

On the government claim it heard no allegations of "torture" prior to April 2007:
Colvin : "... in early March 2007, I informed an interagency meeting of some 12 to 15 officials in Ottawa that, 'The NDS tortures people, that's what they do, and if we don't want our detainees tortured, we shouldn't give them to the NDS.' ... The response from the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) note-taker was to stop writing and put down her pen."

On the claim that it was only insurgents and Taliban who were detained:
Colvin : "... it was the NDS that told us that many or most of our detainees were unconnected to the insurgency. This assessment was reported to Ottawa. The NDS also told us that, because the intelligence value of Canadian-transferred detainees was so low, it did not want them."

On the government claim that it took action as soon as it was informed of abuse :
They were informed repeatedly of the risk of torture, the deficiencies of Canada's monitoring system, and delays in reports to the ICRC in 2006 in reports from the Provincial Reconstruction Team, the US State Department, and the US Secretary General. They finally sent someone in October 2007 who immediately confirmed torture.
The government also twice intervened to keep a torturer named by the PRT in place.

On Interdepartmental Coordinator for Afghanistan David Mulroney's statement that the only reason reports were edited was to remove 'opinion' or 'non‐fact based' information.

Colvin : Embassy staffers were told that they should not report information, however accurate, that conflicted with the government's public messaging. Ambassador Lalani instructed that we not report that the security situation was deteriorating.

In September 2007, an embassy staffer, in response to a written request from DFAIT's Afghanistan Taskforce to contribute to a security assessment by one of our NATO allies, sent a report that security in Kandahar had got worse and was likely to further deteriorate. Mr. Mulroney severely rebuked the officer in writing.

On Assistant Deputy Minister Colleen Swords' testimony that she told Colvin to phone first, write later :
Colvin : "Her message to me was that I should use the phone instead of writing..."

On the claim from Goldie, Gallant, MacKay, Abbott that "Afghan detainees are trained to claim torture."
Colvin : They are not Al Qaeda; they are peasants. We arrest them and turn them over to torturers. Why would they make any claims of torture, false or otherwise, to us? They don't trust us. Besides, reports of torture based on physical exams, not testimony.

And so on and so on. Absolutely devastating.

When Colvin originally testified at the Afghan Committee, he was just doing his job - appearing as summoned. As he stated today - he is not a whistleblower.
Today's letter, on what he politely termed the "inaccuracies" of the government's witnesses and MPs and camp followers, is even more damaging than his original testimony.

Government response?
Fucking idiot Goldie Hawn : "Now is not the time to accuse our troops of war crimes."
Peter MacKay's spokesweasel, Dan Dugas : "We reject all assertions that Canadian troops have committed war crimes."

Which is interesting in light of Colvin's letter. Note that he does not even obliquely lay blame on the military brass, never mind the troops.
Nope, it's all on MacKay, DFAIT and the Privy Council Office.
And this is why Harper has refused to release the docs to Peter Tinsley's Military Police Complaints Committee and the Afghan Committee, has fired Peter Tinsley, has intimidated witnesses from appearing before the Afghan committee, has refused to allow the Afghan Committee to continue their investigation, and has refused to call a public inquiry as voted on by the House.

All because one civil servant insisted on doing his job.
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Con coverup - the smoking gun

Richard Colvin sent Peter Mackay reports warning of torture until Peter MacKay's department told him to stop.
Peter MacKay denied receiving Colvin's reports until it was proven his department did indeed receive them. Ah but he did not see them himself claimed Pete six separate times in the House.

On Tuesday General Natynczyk announced that the beaten detainee was in fact a Canadian detainee and thus a Canadian responsibility.
Peter MacKay said the General's surprise statement was the first time he had heard of it.

Unfortunately for Pete, on Thursday in the House, Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded to questions about General Natynzyk's announcement thusly :

"... that particular incident has been public knowledge for a long time now"
"... the leader of the NDP speaks of facts that have been on the public record for a couple of years."

About that 'public record' ...
This is what the Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group sergeant wrote in June 2006 about the Afghan detainee who was beaten up:

"We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over, to ensure that if the ANP did assault him, as has happened in the past, we would have a visual record of his condition."

but this is what the government sent to the Military Police Complaints Commission:

"We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over (redacted)."

The redacted portion states that the Afghan National Police has a history of assaulting Canadian detainees. This is not a matter of national security. This is not a matter of defending the actions of the troops. This is a matter of covering up complicity in detainee abuse by those who knew, in Steve's happy phrase, about "facts that have been on the public record for a couple of years."

Steve will let Pete hold that smoking gun for a while.
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Gates touts his support for torture school

Photo snagged from Pacific Free Press

Gates touts support for WHINSEC in Halifax

Every November, thousands gather at Fort Benning, Georgia, to demand closure of the School of the Americas, renamed "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in 2001, for the disappearances, torture and the murder of hundreds of thousands of peasants, community and union organizers, clerics, missionaries, educators, and health workers in Latin America. This year's vigil marked the 20th anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led Jesuit massacre in San Salvador and focuses on the current SOA graduate-led coup in Honduras.
The protestors are hopeful. During his election campaign, Obama made sympathetic noises about closing down the school and last year Congress came within 6 votes of cutting off its Dept. of Defense funding.

So I was somewhat surprised to read that on the same weekend as the SOA/WHINSEC vigil, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was up in Canada touting his support for WHINSEC. Prior to giving the keynote address to the Halifax International Security Forum - a closed shop affair for top brass from NATO countries to speak freely on matters of mutual concern - Gates gave one public presser with Defensive Minister Peter MacKay that I only just now got around to reading, courtesy of the US Defense Dept.

Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA to Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra, Director of the CIA to GHW Bush, and Secretary of Defense to both George Bush and currently Barack Obama :

"The United States has made it a point to integrate human rights instruction into our joint training and education in programs such as the Western Hemispheric (sic) Institute for Security Cooperation."

Really? After all the coups, the disappearances, the brutal dictators, the now recalled torture manuals, isn't that rather like teaching a pig to sing?

Apologists for WHINSEC, which does indeed have mandatory human rights classes now, say it is not fair to judge the school on the basis of its graduates, that some pretty nasty characters likely came out of schools like Yale also and we don't lobby to have Yale shut down. I disagree. If a large proportion of nasty events featured Yale grads and if the Pentagon subsequently also had all their names classified, then yes, I think it's likely you could move Congress to within 6 votes of shutting it down.

For more of Gates' ideas on militarized solutions to climate change and to hear Airshow MacKay call him Bob, the presser transcript is here.

Irony note : Much of the groundwork for tracking SOA/WHINSEC over three decades has been done by Father Roy Bourgeois, a Viet Nam vet with a Purple Heart who founded SOA Watch after experiencing atrocities in Latin America. Since then, he has spent over four years in US federal prisons for nonviolent protests against the training of Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

This year he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Peter MacKay vs the evidence

Paul Koring :

"In one well-documented case in the summer of 2006, Canadian soldiers captured and handed over a detainee who was so severely beaten by Afghan police that the Canadians intervened and took the detainee back. Canadian medics then treated the man's injuries. The incident is documented in the field notes of Canadian troops, recounted in a sworn affidavit by a senior officer and confirmed in cross-examination by a general."

Peter MacKay :
"There has never been a single, solitary, proven allegation of abuse of a detainee, a Taliban prisoner, transferred by Canadian Forces.” Dec. 2 in the House of Commons

“Mr. Speaker, there has not been a single, solitary, proven allegation of a prisoner being abused that was transferred from the Canadian Forces.” Nov. 23 in the House of Commons

“We do want to hear from individuals who can bring forward credible, proven allegations, not just recitations of what was heard, what was passed on, what was read in reports, or what was disclosed by Taliban prisoners themselves. That is what the evidence is so far. We have not seen a single scintilla of proof.” Nov. 23 in the House of Commons

“There has never been a single proven allegation of abuse involving a prisoner transferred by the Canadian Forces, not one.” Nov. 23 in the House of Commons

What next, Pete? You were sadly misinformed by your generals? Your base doesn't give a shit about the Geneva conventions? What? I'm guessing Pete will go with blaming the generals.
MacKay's spokesweasel Dan Dugas lays the groundwork :

The minister's spokesman said Sunday that Mr. MacKay was standing by his repeated denials.
“He has said what he has said based on the advice of generals and senior officials in the department."

... all of which would carry slightly more weight had we not already heard from foreign affairs and defence officials via Murray Brewster that they had been instructed by "senior officials in the Privy Council Office (and reinforced in follow-up conferences between Ottawa and Kabul, as well Ottawa and Kandahar) to "hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners" that didn't promote "a happy face".
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Airshow MacKay's 'catch and release yokel program'

Then, Nov 23 :

"Concerns about the treatment of Afghan prisoners prompted Canadian soldiers to halt the transfer of detainees three times over the course of the last year, says Defence Minister Peter MacKay.
MacKay said the suspensions followed the refusal by Afghan authorities to abide by an agreement that guaranteed access to prisons where the detainees were being held.
"Most recently the reason that the transfers stopped was that the Afghan officials were not living up to ... expectations," MacKay said."

Sounds like Airshow MacKay is staking out the high moral ground here, until Today :

"Afghanistan's intelligence service refused to accept Canadian-captured prisoners over the summer because the military was providing "insufficient evidence" of wrongdoing, The Canadian Press has learned.

And so with little or no evidence to hold suspects, the spy agency has been releasing them - to the dismay of the Canadian military."

CBC :

"Canada's top two commanders in Afghanistan in spring 2006 told investigators the government pressured them to transfer detainees to Afghan authorities faster than they felt was appropriate, CBC News has learned.

[Brig.-Gen. David] Fraser and [Lt.-Col. Tom] Putt said the military's interest in detainees ended as soon as the prisoners were transferred. The military didn't monitor their condition — that was not its jurisdiction, Fraser said.
And the government's position was that monitoring detainees was an Afghan problem.

Putt's testimony also suggests Canadian troops frequently weren't capturing high-value Taliban targets — an assertion [Richard] Colvin first raised two weeks ago

"I mean, we were basically capturing a local yokel, " Putt said. "Detaining the local yokels and handing them off."

What a surprise : Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of all alliance forces in Afghanistan, says Violence in Afghanistan has increased 300% since 2007. even as President Obama was making his major surge speech:

"And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights and tend for the light of freedom and justice and opportunity and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are; that is the source, the moral source of America's author."

"And just as America can't afford to abandon this war, surely it can't afford to abandon the Afghan people, who without the American military would be left to the savage whims of their hated enemy, the Afghan people. Indeed, it remains America's solemn duty as the leader of the free world to bring freedom and security to the Afghan people by hunting down and eliminating the Afghan people. Nor can America forget its own national security, and the dire threat posed by the Afghan people to our war against the Afghan people."

Correction : The second paragraph above was mistakenly attibuted to President Obama earlier today. It has since come to our attention it was actually written by Fafblog.
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How's that CBC poll on Colvin's credibility doing?

Hmmm ... 94% to 6% in favour of Colvin's testimony on an unfreepable one-vote-per-IP poll.

Ok, just checking.

I was wondering how that parade of generals appearing before the Afghan parliamentary committee was going over.

Everyone impressed the generals had access to Richard Colvin's reports but the committee members doing the investigation are denied the same access?

Hell, it's just one more Con puppet-head show now.

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Watch Peter MacKay's one minute smirking response about it here :

Minister MacKay on how the generals got the documents. (h/t Scott)

and then sign this letter demanding a public inquiry.

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Dragging the goalposts right off the field

Then : October 19, 2009

MacKay seeks answers on torture memos

"MacKay said Monday that neither he nor his deputy minister ever saw diplomat Richard Colvin's reports, which were circulated widely within the Foreign Affairs and National Defence departments, as well as among senior military commanders."

.October 16, 2009

MacKay denies seeing Afghan torture reports

"Defence Minister Peter MacKay says he never saw a former diplomat's reports containing allegations of torture of detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons. MacKay, who was foreign minister at the time, insisted Thursday that he knew nothing of the documents.

"I have not seen those reports in either my capacity as minister of National Defence or previously as minister of Foreign Affairs."

Today : MacKay's office got Red Cross warnings about Afghan treatment

"I received briefings from the deputy minister and there were attachments to which Mr. Colvin was a contributor but I have not received direct reports from Mr. Colvin," MacKay said."

Scrape ... scrape ... scrape...

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And then there's the Generals. Rather than bother dragging their goalposts off the field, they just declare them invisible. I posted this at The Beav earlier:

From Richard Colvin's reports beginning in May 2006 :

3. Of the XXX detainees we interviewed XXX said XXX had been whipped with cables, shocked with electricity and/or otherwise "hurt" while in NDS custody in Kandahar. This period of alleged abuse lasted from between XXX and XXX days, and was carried out in XXX and XXX.

XXX detainees still had XXX on XXX body; XXX seemed traumatized. This alleged abuse would have occurred before the new arrangement between the governments of Canada and Afghanistan was signed.

'Torture' not mentioned in Afghan detainee reports: Generals

"Three generals declared Wednesday that there was no mention of the word "torture" in reports from a senior diplomat who asserts that he repeatedly warned the government against surrendering Afghan detainees to local authorities because they would almost certainly be abused.

One of the recipients of the widely distributed reports, which Colvin says were copied to 76 government and military personnel in Ottawa and Afghanistan, was retired Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, who was then the head of oversees deployment. Gauthier told the Commons committee that none of Colvin's 2006 reports, including his May document, mentioned anything about torture.

Retired Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's top soldier during Colvin's posting in Afghanistan in 2006-07 : "There was simply nothing there."

So there you have it - because Richard Colvin neglected to include the word "torture" in his accounts of detainees allegedly being "whipped with cables and shocked with electricity", there was no torture and the generals apparently feel justified in having failed to read his reports in the first place.
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Meanwhile look for those reports under the goalposts.

Initially Harper promised to release Colvin's reports to the Afghan committee, a parliamentary committee, who so far are asking witnesses questions about reports they are barred from seeing. Wait for it...

Feds bar whistleblower diplomat from handing over torture documents to MPs

The federal government is blocking whistleblowing diplomat Richard Colvin from giving documents to a special House of Commons committee investigating Afghan torture.

Justice Department lawyers have told Colvin - through the Foreign Affairs Department - that they do not accept the view that testimony before Parliament is exempt from national security provisions of the Canada Evidence Act. Violating Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act can be punishable by five years in prison.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the government intends to comply with the order to produce documents, but tempered expectations by saying the records will pass through several filters before they get to MPs.
"Anything we're legally required to hand over, we'll hand over," he said Wednesday.
"We have to, of course, respect the Canada Evidence Act, The National Defence Act and rules pertaining to disclosure. And of course anything having to do with national security will have to be vetted."

Those are the same arguments the government made to the Military Police Complaints Commission, whose public hearings into the same issue were derailed by legal wrangling. The government took a year to censor and hand over records to the watchdog agency and at one point stopped releasing documents entirely.

MacKay did not explain how the Justice Department could ignore Parliament's authority when it comes to providing evidence.

The committee will now hear more government witnesses free to spout the same crap as the generals because there will be no evidence to refute it -- and the press, barring actual reporters like Murray Brewster and Tonda MacCharles, will, in the absence of any other story, report it all faithfully.

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Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan

MacKay :
"Not a single Taliban soldier turned over by Canadian forces can be proved to have been abused. That is the crux of the issue."

Ok, how about "farmers, truck drivers, and peasants" then?

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission :
"Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment are common in the majority of law enforcement institutions, and at least 98.5 per cent of interviewed victims have been tortured."

The independent study, which tracked abuse claims between 2001 and early 2008, shows the vast majority of them - 243 - were levelled in 2006 and 2007.
That is the time frame when Colvin was in Afghanistan and warning the federal government about torture. "
(h/t Cathie)


"[Colvin] says all of the prisoners Canada handed to Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service in 2006-07 were tortured — and many of them were likely innocent … farmers, truck drivers and peasants "in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"In other words, we detained and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people."
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"The Conservative government was aware from the first day it took office in 2006 that Taliban suspects, rounded up by Canadian soldiers, might be tortured in Afghan prisons, says Defence Minister Peter MacKay.
The government then waited 15 months, until May 2007, before putting new safeguards in place to monitor the treatment of Afghan detainees."
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Peter MacKay vs the US State Dept.

Defensive Minister Peter MacKay :
"A top diplomat’s account of the rampant torture and rape of Afghan detainees is not credible, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Thursday.
MacKay dismissed testimony from Richard Colvin [First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Washington] as second- and third-hand information from enemy sources :
"What we’re talking about here is not only hearsay, we’re talking about basing much of his evidence on what the Taliban have been specifically instructed to lie about if captured."

US State Department :
Afghanistan
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
2006
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
"Local authorities ... continued to routinely torture and abuse detainees. Torture and abuse consisted of pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy."
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Putting a 'happy face' on war crimes

... updated below ...
A month ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time Peter MacKay , and Minister of Defence at the time Gordon O'Connor all denied ever seeing any of the 16 reports "circulated widely throughout the Foreign Affairs and Defence departments and also shared with senior military commanders in Ottawa and Afghanistan" warning that Afghan authorities were abusing detainees handed over by Canadian forces.

How did they all manage to miss all those reports from Richard Colvin, the second in command of Afghan reconstruction at the time? we asked ourselves, somewhat rhetorically.

Murray Brewster, CP :

Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources.

The instruction — issued soon after allegations of torture by Afghan authorities began appearing in public — was aimed at defusing the explosive human-rights controversy, said sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

There was a fear that graphic reports, even in censored form, could be uncovered by opposition parties and the media through access-to-information laws, leading to revelations that would further erode already-tenuous public support.

(Ed. : Yeah. Requests for boots to wade through blood and feces will do that.)

The controversy was seen as “detracting from the narrative” the Harper government was trying to weave around the mission, said one official.

“It was meant to put on happy face,” he added.

The instruction was passed over the telephone by senior officials in the Privy Council Office and reinforced in follow-up conferences between Ottawa and Kabul, as well Ottawa and Kandahar, sources said."

Military Police Complaints Commissioner Peter A. Tinsley, chair of the derailed hearings looking into this, and Richard Colvin, First Secretary at the Canadian Embassy in Washington and the diplomat who sent those 16 reports three years ago, will be witnesses at the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan today.


With 6 Cons, 3 Libs, 2 Bloc, and 1 NDP on the committee, the Cons will go for that elusive war crimes 'happy face', aided in no small part by the looney antics of Laurie Goldie Hawn(Con), but Paul Dewar(NDP) uses his scant ten minutes questioning time on this committee brilliantly.
It's listed as a public meeting - wonder if they'll change that? - see you back here later after I've watched it.
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UPDATE : A big storm passing through here is intermittantly knocking out the power and making listening to the committee rather difficult so in the meantime here's what others have reported :
The wonderful Murray Brewster/CP :

"[Colvin] says all of the prisoners Canada handed to Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service in 2006-07 were tortured — and many of them were likely innocent … farmers, truck drivers and peasants "in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"In other words, we detained and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people."
In a blistering indictment of Ottawa’s handling of prisoners, Colvin said the Red Cross tried for three months in 2006 to warn the Canadian army in Kandahar about what was happening to prisoners, but no one would “even take their phone calls."

He said he was ordered not to write about prisoners, and soon afterward reports from the field began to be "censored" and revised to the point where diplomats could "no longer write that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating."

"all of the prisoners" That's new.
Interesting also that Gordon O'Connor's bogus and already debunked Red Cross alibi in the House was not only not an alibi but he made it while the Red Cross was attempting to bring the torture to his attention.

CBC :

"Colvin said Canada was taking six times as many detainees as British troops and 20 times as many as the Dutch.
He said unlike the British and Dutch, Canada did not monitor their conditions; took days, weeks or months to notify the Red Cross; kept poor records; and to prevent scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed this behind "walls of secrecy."

He said the most common forms of torture were beatings, whipping with power cables, the use of electricity, knives, open flames and rape."

Parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs Peter Kent said "since the new transfer agreement was signed, the government has received no complaints of torture."
L. O. fucking. L.

Kady liveblogs the committee.
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WED 10:00PM PST- Colvin speaks to the committee live on CPAC right now.
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Wow. More of the smearing of witnesses we've come to expect from the Cons in committee.

~ Cheryl Gallant. Although Richard Colvin took pains in his opening statement to make clear that he had nothing but admiration for the brave Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, none of whom to his knowledge had anything to do with torturing Afghans, Cheryl Gallant used her allotted time to lecture Colvin on how Canadian soldiers had nothing to do with torturing Afghans. She also chastised him for "fanning the flames of outrage" and lectured him on how "planting stories" is in the "Al Qaida handbook". Wanker.

~ Laurie Goldie Hawn, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay. Colvin never witnessed torture first hand - so take that, Red Cross. Torture was probably self-inflicted and isn't it suspicious that of all the public servants who were bullied out of testifying by the Cons, Colvin is the only one with the guts to torpedo his own career by coming forward. Yes, Goldie, obviously Colvin is up to something. Wanker.

~ Peter Goldring. Ditto Goldie but more pompously. Wanker.
~ Jim Abbott. Ditto Goldie, plus if our record-keeping and monitoring of prisoners was so bad, how do we know any of this even happened? As Kady pointed out in the link above, Abbott clearly thinks this is his 'Columbo' moment on committee.

I don't know how to explain their shocking behavior other than to guess they all saw the movie High Noon as kids and somehow thought Gary Cooper was the bad guy, taking the townspeople for their role models instead.
Will the rest of Canada stand up for Richard Colvin? He's going to need it.
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Paying off the Taliban to maintain the occupation

"Defense Minister Peter MacKay on Friday dismissed allegations that the Canadian military paid insurgents in Afghanistan not to attack them as nothing more than "Taliban propaganda."
"I strongly suspect that this is more Taliban propaganda. Of course, they're not bound by rules of engagement or simple things such as truth."

Unlike our Defence Minister [Vancouver Sun : please note the correct Canadian spelling] who spent yesterday pissing on "simple things such as truth" when he denied all knowledge of internal reports on Afghan prisoner abuse.

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The allegations of the Canadian military bribing the Taliban not to attack them originated in a Times story explaining the recent massacre of 10 French soldiers as being the result of the outgoing Italian forces failing to apprise the incoming French of their monetary deal with the Taliban :

"NATO also officially denied that any of its members pay insurgents in Afghanistan for peace, but military sources said Thursday that the practice is widespread among foreign forces fighting the Taliban.
One Western military source told of payments made by Canadian soldiers stationed in the violent southern province of Kandahar, while another officer spoke of similar practices by the German army in northern Kunduz."

Whether the military is paying off the Taliban not to fight, either directly or through private contractors, it's all still rumours at this stage.

What we do know is that private contractors already pay them protection money to lay off bombing reconstruction projects and to allow supplies to reach NATO troops:

"Asked whether his company paid money to Taleban commanders not to attack them, a security company owner said: “Everyone is hungry, everyone needs to eat. They are attacking the convoys because they have no jobs. They easily take money not to attack.”

Lieutenant-Commander James Gater, a spokesman for Nato forces in Afghanistan, said that the transport of Nato supplies was contracted to commercial firms and how they got them into the country was their business.

“I can confirm that we use two European-headquartered companies to supply food and fuel, though for contractual reasons it is not prudent for us to name them. They provide their own security as part of that contract. Such companies are free to subcontract to whomsoever they wish. "

and

"The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the U.S. government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month. Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents.
If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated."

and

"One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project.
“I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

In the south, no contract can be implemented without the Taliban taking a cut, sometimes at various steps along the way.

One contractor in the southern province of Helmand was negotiating with a local supplier for a large shipment of pipes. The pipes had to be brought in from Pakistan, so the supplier tacked on about 30 percent extra for the Taliban, to ensure that the pipes reached Lashkar Gah safely.
Once the pipes were given over to the contractor, he had to negotiate with the Taliban again to get the pipes out to the project site. This was added to the transportation costs.

“We assume that our people are paying off the Taliban,” said the foreign contractor in charge of the project."

And in this way Jean MacKenzie at Global Post estimates we are funding the Taliban around $1-billion a year to kill our troops, the same amount the US spends on ten days of occupation.

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If we called the war on Afghanistan what it is - an occupation - and cut out all the middlemen - both the Taliban and the foreign contractors we support - we could pay the Afghan people directly, day to day if necessary, to rebuild their country as they see fit and let them take care of the Taliban themselves. Give some of that money to groups like RAWA. The ranks of the Taliban would be decimated, many lives would be saved, and all we would lose by turning around that 10 to 1 military-to-reconstruction ratio would be our cherished hypocrisy and the ridiculous warporning of the likes of Peter MacKay.

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Have another look at this map of Taliban control of Afghanistan.

If it is true that the military have either directly or indirectly joined their private contractors in paying the 'enemy' not to fight, I don't disagree with it as a strategy. We're just paying off the wrong people.

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The Afghan torture coverup is going well

It's funny the things that stick with you.

What I remember when Canada's treatment of Afghan prisoners comes up is not Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin's 2007 report on allegations of electrocution and beatings, or the entire households detained because someone got the address wrong. What I remember is this simple request for desert camel boots made by Stockwell Day's newly arrived leader of the Correctional Service Canada inspections team in February 2007 :

"They afford the appropriate ankle support when getting in and out of the LAV/Coyote/Nyala vehicles. Additionally the colour is more appropriate in the summer heat. On a Health and Safety level we will be walking through blood and fecal matter when either on patrol or in the prison and should not be wearing our personal footwear as it will track into our personal quarters."

As Skdadl said at the time :

"I think we call this the banality of evil. I have to walk through blood and fecal material, so I need better boots. This is the road to Nuremberg, folks. And this is being done in our name. Everyone happy to sit here quietly and be a "Good Canadian"? "

Richard Colvin wasn't. As political director at the Canadian-run provincial reconstruction base in 2006 when troops began handing over prisoners to Afghanistan's notorious intelligence agency, the National Security Directorate, he is one of the only government witnesses who wants to testify at the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry into whether military police officers had a duty to investigate the transfer of detainees when there were allegations of torture in Afghan prisons.

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A week ago federal lawyers invoked a national security clause in Canada's Anti-terrorism Act that effectively prevents him from doing so.

They argue that on the one hand Colvin's testimony is not relevant, and on the other that his testimony would breach "national security considerations".

As we have seen previously with Arar, Abdelrazik, Almalki, Suaad Mohammud, Charkaoui, and Harkat, this is a government that flagrantly makes use of "national security considerations" to cover its own complicity in wrongdoing.

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Last Wednesday National Defence said some witnesses might be able to give some information, as long as the commission proves the testimony is relevant. This is impossible for the commission to do as Michel Gauthier, the retired lieutenant-general who was in charge of the country's overseas command until last spring, as well as three former ground commanders in Kandahar and members of Corrections Canada have all refused their subpoenas to meet with commission investigators.

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A week ago Canada's former top military police officer, retired navy captain Steve Moore, advised he had documents that he wanted to turn over to the inquiry, however Mr. Moore and his lawyer had to sign a pledge preventing them from passing the documents to the inquiry.
The documents first have to be reviewed to remove sensitive information– such as logs showing that Canadian military police opened investigations into whether detainees risked torture – but won't be declassified in time for the hearings.

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As if this wasn't sufficient obstruction, the chair of the inquiry, Peter Tinsley, has been let go on Dec 11, before his investigation can be completed and despite his request to be allowed to continue. Then on Monday public proceedings were postponed :

"after federal lawyers bombarded the agency with a series of motions demanding further delay and questioning, among other things, the jurisdiction of the commission".

MacKay told the House of Commons on Monday that "a search for a new chair is underway".

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Isn't this exactly what was done at Guantanamo? If the government didn't like the way a military investigation into the detainment of an individual prisoner was going, they just fired the presiding judge or lawyer and appointed another.

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Last word goes to Richard Colvin's lawyer on the use of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act to muzzle her client :

"The legislation was addressed at combatting terrorism-related activities. It was not intended to be used tactically to intimidate witnesses from giving evidence in administrative proceedings carried out by government-created bodies," the letter said.

"The interests of justice are not served when an ordinary witness such as Mr. Colvin is threatened by the Department of Justice with severe penalty for abiding by the terms of a subpoena served on him.".

Update : Good short history of a year's worth of sidelining the investigation : Dr. Dawg.

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Iggy and Steve - Fiscal Conservatism

The deficit will be twice what the Cons projected?

With fearless Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page pointing out the Cons' crappy math skills once again, we recall their ongoing threats to sell off crown corporations to offset the federal deficit and compare them with these words from Defence Minister Peter MacKay in May :

"The global economic downturn won't prevent the Canadian Forces from spending $60 billion on new equipment."

Will we be getting social services cuts to go with that?

Well as Harper pointed out to us in October last year, an economic meltdown does provide for lots of excellent investment opportunities - in fiscal conservatism.

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And now - your late night mid-holiday spectacularly unpopular Afghanistan news dump

Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced today in Afghanistan that "Canada may well stay in Afghanistan beyond its 2011 military mandate" blah blah blah "subject to the will of the people" blah blah.
By "people" I presume he is referring to Steve, Iggy, and Obama.
You're shocked, I'm sure.

The G&M reports that "Defence Construction Canada wants to buy 400 more beds at the Kandahar Air Field by next year, at a cost of $5-million, with an option to build 400 more."

I guess we're intending to open the world's largest B&B over there after 2011.

MacKay also announced that we're giving up that whole taking and holding territory thing in favour of closing down outposts and redeploying inside Kandahar City. Likewise in Kabul, foreign embassies are being relocated to a diplomatic quarter to be built next to Kabul airport. With Afghan authorities claiming that 140 civilians were killed by U.S fighter planes this month in southwest Afghanistan, bunkering down inside Baghdad-style Green Zones is probably a good idea.
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Say, I'll bet now that Obama has put Cheney's torturer in charge of Afghanistan, things will brighten right up over there.

Btw, if you've ever wanted a job that entails driving around drunk with your buddies and some loaded weapons, crashing your vehicle, and then firing on oncoming cars and killing people allegedly, you could do no better than to forward your resumé to Blackwater/Xe/Paravant/Whatever in Afghanistan.
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