A new low for Canada in Afghanistan

CBC : "The Canadian Forces have for years arrested children suspected of working with the Taliban and handed them over to [the NDS] an Afghan security unit accused of torture.

The document, obtained under an Access to Information request and marked "secret," shows that Defence Minister Peter MacKay was briefed on the topic of juvenile detainees in Afghanistan March 30."

UN General Assembly Security Council, Children and Armed Conflict, April 10, 2010 :

"Approximately 110 children have been detained by the Afghan National Directorate of Security and international military forces on charges related to national security, including their alleged involvement or association with the Taliban or other armed groups. Access to detention facilities continues to be difficult and information on children detained by pro-Government forces remains limited.

The use of harsh interrogation techniques and forced confession of guilt by the Afghan Police and NDS was documented, including the use of electric shocks and beating. ... Available information points to sexual violence as a widespread phenomenon."

Electric shocks, beating, forced confessions, sexual violence.

You can see how the Con/Lib/Bloc Afghan detainee panel - all sworn to secrecy and finally convened in July seven months after it was ordered in the House and charged with going through all those binders on detainees that Laurie Hawn is leaning on - is going to take a really really long time to get around to releasing any hint of this, if ever.

At which point, MacKay will probably issue one of his 'there was a problem but we already fixed it' missives and point out that Afghanistan is a sovereign country whose torture facilities are solely responsible for the treatment of the children we hand over to them. Especially as we now apparently actively solicit Canadian industry support for the CIA-backed NDS.

In the Afghan Committee on Oct 20, 2010, Parliamentary Secretary for National Defence Laurie Hawn remarked the NDS is "probably one of the better institutions in Afghanistan" and asked the Afghan ambassador if there was anything Canadian private industry could do to help them out.

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Stop the presses : Unreported crime up 3% over 5 years

Whenever he's faced with StatsCan reports showing a decrease in the crime rate, including the violent crime rate over the last decade, Public Safety Minister Vic lock-'em-up Toews always attempts to refute the evidence by claiming that the unreported crime rate is going up.
And that is presumably why we have to build more prisons to house all the unreported criminals.
I know, I know, but just bear with me for a moment.

On Steve Paikin's The Agenda this week, Toews stated :

"Quite frankly Canadians don't care what the crime rate is"

and went on to produce stats on his unreported crime meme :

"From 2004 to 2009, instead of 34% of crimes being reported to police, only 31% were. So what we are seeing is a gradual decline in confidence in the justice system."

Holy crap! A 3% increase in unreported crime over 5 years.

Toews also explains that "an apples to apples comparison of Canadian victimization surveys with American victimization surveys is the proper standard to use" and recommends everyone read the Vancouver Board of Trade Victimization Survey, which he says shows an increase in unreported crime.

Did that already actually, Vic, and blogged about it back in 2007. While applauding the addition of spousal violence to the survey, I'm not convinced we need more prison spaces to deal with other survey questions such as whether the questionnaire respondent has received unwanted emails or had a window or fence broken.

To Toews' claims of public safety being the Cons first priority, Paikin asks why then did the Cons scuttle their own crime bills by proroguing parliament?
Toews :

"Essentially as a result of prorogation we were able to reconstitute the committees in the Senate which would allow us to get the criminal bills through.

We're right on track with our agenda and now we don't have to worry about the unelected Senate impeding the will of the House of Commons."

[cough]Climate bill[cough]

Indeed, yesterday the Senate voted to make possession of 6 pot plants subject to a mandatory prison sentence.

But guess what, Vic, unreported crime (click the video viewer on the right at the link) is indeed getting a massive increased airing this week.
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Con leakage

Impolitical mops up the latest embarrassing Con leakage -Con MP Kelly Block's staffer Russell Ullyatt who was fired for leaking drafts of confidential Finance Committee reports to at least four Con-connected industry lobbyists.
"I heart you," one of them wrote back to Ullyatt on receipt of his "Thought you'd like to see this in its infancy" covering note.

So whenever CBC's Power and Politics is done wrapping up its important coverage of the opinions of the Bonhomme mascot, here are a few other connections the CBC might consider following. After all, Ullyatt may well have only taken up leaking confidential docs to industry lobbyists for the very first time this week but given he's been swimming in the Con pool for some years now, it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it?

Prior to being hired by Brock, leaker Russell Ullyatt was employed as Senior Special Assistant to Secretary of State Helena Guergis (Foreign Affairs and International Trade).
In 2008 Ullyatt was campaign manager for Con MP Rob Clarke, the former RCMP sergeant who made the news when a "uniformed RCMP officer was spotted delivering campaign signs out of an RCMP truck".

The leaked docs recipients

Lynne Hamilton, former Mike Harris alumnus now a VP at GCI Group, and author of the "I heart you" note.
The GCI Group Leadership Team page lists Ken Boessenkool, former Senior Policy Advisor to Stephen Harper, as Senior Counsel. Hamilton's bio :

7 years at Hill & Knowlton plus previous government posts :
Chief of Staff to the Ontario Associate Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
Ontario Ministry of Northern Development
Environment Ministry media coordinator in 2000 for the Walkerton water tragedy
Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism -"handled the corporate
restructuring of over 40 companies for the Government"
Ontario Premier’s office co-ordinating the daily issue binder for question period.

Tim Egan, CEO at the Canadian Gas Association.

Founding director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project aka Not Really Science People - the Tim Ball and Tom Harris climate change skeptics group. Former President of the High Park Group, a Toronto-based lobby organization of which Tom Harris is the former head of its Ottawa office.

Clarke Cross, senior consultant with Tactix Group and former Legislative Assistant to Con/Alliance MPs James Lunney and Leon Benoit

Andy Gibbons of Hill and Knowlton , also formerly a legislative assistant to Con MP Leon Benoit.

Con cabinet ministers and the former political insiders who are now paid to lobby them - you can see how Russell Ullyatt might easily have got the two email lists confused. If only there was some sort of rule to keep the two separate.
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Pentagon freaking out ahead of the next WikiLeaks doc dump

and warns the documents may contain accounts of "compromising conversations" that could "cause serious embarrassment for foreign governments and politicians named in them" and result in "the expulsion of U.S. diplomats from foreign postings".

Because a previous Wikileaks-released conversation from a US Apache helicopter concerning civilians and Reuters employees ambling down a street in Baghdad that went :

"Light 'em all up. C'mon, fire! Keep shoot'n, Keep shoot'n. Keep shoot'n."

was not considered to be sufficiently offputting all by itself I guess.

"You think I know f*ck nothing? I know f*ck all!"

Yesterday in the House, Con MP Phil McColeman accused his fellow member on the Public Safety committee, Lib MP Mark Holland, of advocating "on behalf of convicted criminals".

Holland immediately protested the remark, calling it "below the level that should be expected in the House."

Unrepentant, McColeman rose to respond :

"Mr. Speaker, since being elected to the House some two years ago and a bit, I will take no lessons from the member for Ajax-Pickering when it comes to presenting issues to Parliament that are not based on any factual evidence. I will take no lessons from that member."

Okie dokie then.
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"We need more Canadian sex stories"

Tony Clement told an amused crowd in Ottawa.

I've got one for you, Tony.
Well, it's more of a question really.

Why do guys promise they will for sure pull out in time this time?
And why do we continue to believe them?

Also, how come they can talk about it but only if someone else brings it up first?
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Justice for Stacy Bonds

is looking less likely by the day.

Unlawfully arrested, forcibly strip-searched in front of male officers while being held down with a riot shield, her shirt and bra cut off with scissors by a male officer, a hand put down her pants, left in a cell for over three hours in the pants she soiled in fear.

After reviewing the police tapes and emphasizing that Ms Bonds was "clearly cooperating", Justice Richard Lajoie threw out the prosecutor's case in disgust, noting in his Reasons for Judgement on Oct. 27 :

"The officers have tried to justify their actions on the principles of safety, officer safety and the accused's safety, as well as risk of suicide."

Risk of suicide. What a disgusting excuse for an assault.

Here's their boss, Ottawa Police Chief Vern White, speaking to CBC about the case on Nov 17 :

"Like other Ontario police chiefs, White said, he would like more power to discipline officers.
"I do not feel our discipline process today carries the full weight of accountability the public expects," White said. "Most of the chiefs have identified to the province that we need to have some changes in the Police Services Act."

White said the current act makes it difficult to suspend or dismiss police officers, and even those dismissed may remain on the payroll if they choose to appeal."

But as noted by Dr. Dawg, Chief White's investigation is now history, taken over by the Ontario Special Investigations Unit. The SIU mandate as per their website :

"The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency, independent of the police, that investigates circumstances involving police and civilians which have resulted in serious injury, including sexual assault, or death."

Serious injury, sexual assault, death.
The bar for proving sexual assault is already appallingly high and what with the officers saying they were only attempting to prevent Bonds from committing suicide ...
Case closed.
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Keith Martin on the democratic deficit

Retiring from politics after 17 years, MP Dr. Keith Martin, (Reform, Alliance, Ind, Lib), spoke on CBC's The Current yesterday about the "serious, serious lack of democracy in Parliament ... the tragedy of the commons".

Martin began as a Reform MP in '93, attracted by the Reform Party Contract which listed MP's duties in the following order : first your conscience, then your constituents, and lastly your party and leader.

So what went wrong with that?
Harper beat out the more populist Preston Manning.

"Mr. Harper is a follower of a political philosopher in the US called Leo Strauss, and essentially Mr. Harper's philosophy is that a small number of people would rule and tell everybody else what to do and that is the best form of government.

"The larger problem is that within leaders' offices, prime minister's offices, the people around them are unelected, generally very young and tend to be extremely partisan. They're hired by leaders to do the job and they have much more power than members of parliament do. They control much of what goes on on a day-to-day basis with respect to the tactics and strategy. But these are very young people - they are not terribly experienced in the real world - they may be smart in certain ways, but they haven't knocked on doors, they haven't run for political office, they are not as connected to the citizens on the ground as those who have gone through the election process.

So the people calling the shots, the rabid partisanship, tends to revolve around leaders' offices and they basically tell the MPs what to do. And that's a complete perversion of democracy."

Martin says the vast majority of his colleagues and friends from across party lines regret the change to the damaging rabid hyper partisanship imported from the US which silences innovation, debate, and bipartisan co-operation while rewarding juvenile mudslinging with career advances.

While the Korys and the Dimitris call the shots, and are protected from appearing before parliamentary committees to account for their actions, elected MPs' chances of career advancement increasingly depend merely upon their ability to fling poo.

And in this way Harper, never much of a democracy fan, has sidelined parliament from dealing with any of the real issues facing Canada, opting instead for inventing mock problems that can only be solved by further attacks on democracy.
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Ottawa Police vs Stacy Bonds

For over two years the Ottawa Police have had in their possession police video showing the unlawful arrest, assault, detention and brutalizing of Stacy Bonds by Ottawa police officers - including having her bra and shirt cut off with the assistance of "at least three male officers" and being left half-naked in a cell for three hours in the pants she soiled in fear - and only now that the case has gone public is Ottawa police Chief Vern White getting around to promising what he has the gall to refer to as "a swift internal investigation" ?

Stacy Bonds, 27, 100 pounds, and with no prior record, was arrested merely for asking why she was being questioned by police.

Presiding Justice Richard Lajoie describes the subsequent police station videotape.
Bonds is "clearly cooperating", "compliant", "with no hint of violence and no hint of being aggressive", yet he says the cameras show Bonds received "two extremely violent knee hits in the back", "is taken to the ground" with a riot shield, "someone has a hand inside Ms. Bonds' pants", and Sergeant Steven Desjourdy cuts off Bonds' shirt and bra, at which point she is strip searched by Constable Melanie Morris in the presence of "at least three male officers" before being thrown half naked into a cell.

And you thought if you were all compliant and cooperative nothing like this would ever happen to you.

Lajoie described Bonds arrest as "unlawful", "appalling", "a travesty" with "no reason apart from vengence and malice", and "an extremely serious breach of Ms. Bonds rights".

Smells like G20, doesn't it?

Ottawa Citizen :

"It’s not the first time Desjourdy has been under investigation. Days before this 2008 case, he kicked and Tasered a female prisoner in the cell block twice. In 2009, he pleaded guilty under the Police Act and was demoted for three months from sergeant to constable."

Which gives us some idea of what the outcome of Ottawa Police Chief Vern White's "swift internal investigation" will look like.

Dawg is offering to help Stacy Bonds finance a lawsuit. Go.
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Nov 25 Update : The Citizen has published the police video of Stacy Bonds jailhouse abuse.
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Sisters in Spirit update - NWAC not consulted

Last week APTN News reported that not only does the Cons new missing persons initiative entirely bypass Sisters In Spirit, the very group which initiated research into the nearly 600 missing and murdered FN women and girls in the first place, but SIS can no longer use the SIS name or continue their research when applying for grants.

Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose invoked support from the Sisters' parent organization, Native Women's Association of Canada, to blow off criticism in the House :

"Most important, we are working with and have the support of NWAC "
and
"In fact, we have been working with NWAC for the last couple of years in order to implement these concrete actions."

APTN News : NWAC kept out of the loop on missing women's announcement

Native Women’s Association of Canada president Jeannette Corbiere Lavell said she was only informed by the government the day before Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose stood in the Vancouver police department to say her government was following through on their $10 million commitment.

Lavell said the Conservative government did not consult with NWAC staff or those involved with the organization’s groundbreaking Sisters in Spirit project in the lead-up to the announcement.

"NWAC was originally led to believe that it would be invited to join in a discussion with the Department of Justice…about the allocation of the $10 million ," said Corbiere Lavell. "This did not occur."

Lavell further notes that the new initiative "reinvents" the work already done by SIS [at a new RCMP centre that will use up half the money], folds their research on murdered FN women into a general pot of violence against all Canadians, and excludes provinces east of Manitoba from access to funding.

She also confirmed Status of Women's embargo on the SIS name and continued research.

So why did Lavell stand with Ambrose on that podium in Vancouver last week and imply NWAC's endorsement?

Because, explains Lavell, they need the money and Aboriginal women have been waiting for it. They have to comply with the new SIS-squashing rules so they can access funds to continue related work.

Nice. Someone better call Ambrose on her bullshit in the House next week.

As Cathie from Canada put it : "Trying to make it disappear just like all those women have disappeared."

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And as for Canada's conditional endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples this week : See Pam Palmater at Non-Status Indians.

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