Flailing, flailing...

The Usual Suspects are trying to deflect blame for Torturegate onto the Liberals.

Readers know that I'm no friend of the latter, but can't we inject a dollop of Canadian fairness into the discussion, not to mention some pesky facts?

Fact: General Rick Hillier, acting on his own or not as the case may be, signed a deeply flawed agreement to turn over detainees to the Afghan authorities in December, 2005, during an election campaign. The Conservatives were elected a month later. Instances of mistreatment were reported by Richard Colvin to his superiors, first in May 2006, and well into 2007.

Fact: The Liberal government was indeed considering transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities as early as May, 2005. But what came out of these initial discussions was merely a framework agreement:

Graham’s May 2005 letter states that the government wanted an agreement under which Afghan detainees transferred by Canada would "be afforded treatment consistent with the standards set out in the Third Geneva Convention, regardless of the legal status of those detainees." [emphasis added]

The letter also says that Canadians would pass information on detainees to the International Committee of the Red Cross, "which has the mandate and resources to track Prisoners of War and detainees captured during armed conflict." However, it does not clarify whether the ICRC would report back to Canada on the condition of the detainees.

O’Connor [the Conservative's former Minister of Defence] recently apologized for incorrectly telling Parliament that the ICRC was reporting back to Canada.

On May 31, 2005, Graham and Hillier met Afghanistan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah to discuss the possibility of a bilateral "framework agreement," according to the briefing note. In a July 28 letter, Hillier asked Graham for authority to work toward the negotiation of a bilateral agreement on the treatment of detainees.

Graham signed off on the plan. [emphases added]

In other words, the Liberals wanted an arrangement that would conform to strict Geneva Convention protocols. As we now can see, of course, there was many a slip 'twixt that perfectly reasonable position and the final, flawed document signed by General Hillier. But the execution hardly discredits the original approach.

Fact: The Liberals, following the NDP, have called for a public inquiry that would encompass the entire Afghanistan mission. If there are skeletons in the Liberal closet in this matter, they seems unafraid of having them rattled.



Fact: The Conservatives waited a leisurely year and a half or so, during which detainee abuse was taking place, to put a new agreement into place on May 3, 2007, after being embarrassed by an extensive and shocking report in the Globe & Mail on April 23. That's a mere ten days, indicating that the government can move swiftly--when it wants to.

Here's Michael Ignatieff on the chronology:

Let us remember how we got here. The sequence of events is extremely important.

On December 18, 2005, during a federal election, General Rick Hillier, then CDS, signed a detainee transfer agreement with the Afghan government.

The ministers opposite were sworn in on February 6, 2006, and the defence minister has admitted that he heard serious allegations of detainee abuse from the moment the government took office.

[Translation]

In March 2006, the U.S. State Department reported that Afghan authorities, and I quote: “tortured and abused detainees on a regular basis.” However, despite this information, the Conservative government carried on as usual. And a few weeks later, in spring 2006, the first detainees were transferred by the Canadian Forces.

[English]

In May 2006 Richard Colvin began sending reports of detainee abuse to his superiors.

On June 2, 2006, the Afghan independent human rights commission reported that a third of detainees handed over by Canadian Forces were abused or tortured in Afghan custody. On that same day Richard Colvin sent another memo with reports of torture in Afghan jails. Still the government did nothing.

Mr. Colvin sent three more reports before the end of 2006. He made additional reports in March, April, June and July 2007. Yet, 17 months, 17 memos, and still the government did nothing.

[Translation]

In 2006, the Canadian Embassy in Kabul had a report on human rights stating that torture was systematic in Afghan prisons. Once again, the government did nothing.

[English]

It was during the summer of 2006 that the detainee abuse confirmed yesterday by General Natynczyk took place. It was documented and reported by soldiers in the field who did their job. Still the government did not do its job.

In November 2006 the Department of Foreign Affairs actually issued talking points playing down reports of torture. Secret memos leaked to the press confirmed that the government's priority was spinning the issue rather than preventing torture from occurring.

[Translation]

In February 2007, there were three additional allegations of detainee abuse. That same month, the military police complaints commission initiated an investigation that was blocked by the government.

[English]

The government's year of wilful blindness only ended when graphic reports of abuse surfaced in the Canadian press on April 23, 2007.

[Translation]

It was not until May 3, 2007, that the government signed a new detainee transfer agreement. However, that did not put an end to the problems. [emphases added]

Not surprisingly, an insufficient grasp of the facts (if I can be parliamentary for once) has been compounded by misleading statements like this one:

The International Red Cross issued a stinging rebuke of Richard Colvin in late November, for asserting that the organization did not engage in the proper diligence and followup on the treatment of detainees.

Follow the link and see for yourself how far the IRC's statements depart from this claim. No such allegations were ever made by Colvin about the IRC. His concerns had to do with the length of time it took for the Canadian military to report to the IRC about detainee transfers, not about the IRC itself. The Red Cross was concerned, not about accusations against it that were never made, but about Colvin's talking publicly about the IRC's role. And their spokesperson's actual comments do not add one iota of weight to the government's case.

Proroguing Parliament does not suspend the First Rule of Holes. National Post commenter "wolfman 49" walks up one side of this Tory apologist and down the other:

This is probably the most pathetic partisan nonsense I have read in a long time. The writer seems to acknowledge that war crimes have in fact been committed. Then the standard deflection to the Liberals of several years ago. But wait: Did the Liberal Government refuse to hand over documents demanded and ordered by Parliament? No. Did the Liberal Government attack its own diplomat publicly? No. Did the Liberal Government prorogue Parliament to end a committee investigation? No! Did the Liberal Government engage in cover up? No! Harper did all of these things. We live in the present, not the past and this is called a "cover up" of Nixon-like proportions!!!

Someone's got something to hide, but it doesn't appear to be the Official Opposition. The deflector in question sees no value in a public inquiry. Small wonder.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

...would you stand up and walk out on me?

A sorry chronology

...of Stephen Harper's unceasing assaults on Canadian democracy. Fully documented.

Go. Read. Act.

[H/t]

Haiti help

Courtesy of the Globe & Mail:

***********

If you need help

Canadians in Haiti in need of assistance are encouraged to make their way to the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince on Delmas Road, between Delmas 75 and 71.

Canadians seeking emergency consular assistance in the area should contact the Emergency Operations Centre or call 613-996-8885 collect. The Operations Centre of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Friends and relatives in Canada seeking information on Canadian citizens believed to be in the affected area should contact Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada at 1- 800-387-3124.

How you can help

The Canadian Red Cross is accepting online donations here, by phone at 1-800-418-1111 or at any Red Cross office.

Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is taking online donations here or by calling 1-800-982-7903.

Unicef Canada is accepting online donations here or by phone at 1-800-567-4483.

World Vision Canada is taking online donations here.

The Humanitarian Coalition, which is a joint effort between Save the Children Canada, CARE, Oxfam Canada and Oxfam Quebec, is accepting online donations here.

The Mennonite Central Committee is accepting donations, click here to donate or by phone at 1-888-622-6337.

Save the Children is accepting online donations here.

Plan Canada has been active in Haiti for 40 years. Donations can be made here or by calling 1-800-387-1418.

The United Jewish Appeal is accepting online donations here or by calling 416-631-5705.

Mission Aviation Fellowship of Canada, which has operated in Haiti since 1986, is taking online donations here.

Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee is accepting online donations here.

The Salvation Army in Canada is accepting donations here, by phone at 1-800-725-2769 or in-person at its locations.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has compiled a guide designed to help the public avoid scams and ensure their donations are of maximum value.

UPDATE: (January 15)

Reader Jason Hickman writes:

I don't have an active blog anymore, but at the risk of being seen as spamming, I'm posting the following link in the comments on blogs that I visit that have posts re: Haiti:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/whtsnw/tms/rthqk-haiti-eng.html

Anyone reading this who has a blog will hopefully consider posting this link. Among other things, it gives info on which charities are on the up-and-up. Unfortunately, there are reports of scams involving fake charities out there. The last thing anyone would want is to have their donation go to some criminal.

A note to my readers

As many of you are aware, I've been frogmarched into adopting a new comments system, and paying for it too.

In some ways the system is better--you can post links, italicize and so on without having to use html tags, for example--but in many others it is substandard. Here are two glaring problems:

Email addresses of visitors no longer appear. That makes it difficult to distinguish among different visitors with the same handles. (Lee, are you the Lee from Calgary?)

The "reply" feature is confusing and useless. If you reply directly to another comment rather than simply posting your comment on a thread, it will appear somewhere in the body of the thread instead of at the top. This makes it really easy to miss.

I do like to read your comments. So could you please avoid "reply" and simply post them?

[This has been a public service announcement from Dr.Dawg.]

Dalton McGuinty's immoral government

Should the wrongfully convicted be compensated if there is no clear incompetence or malfeasance by the police or by the Crown? An ordinary Canadian's sense of justice cries aloud for matters to be put right. We are accustomed to paying for our mistakes, no matter what the reasons are for making them.

But the Liberal government of Ontario thinks otherwise. It has already stonewalled a call for a public inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Robert Baltovitch. Now the Attorney-General shrugs and says, "Too bad, so sad."

Time for lawsuits, methinks. And thanks a lot, Dalton--I'll likely end up paying substantially more provincial taxes at the end of all this because your Attorney-General lacks a sense of decency and fairness.

More important, however, two wrongfully convicted people will receive no justice from the Ontario government. Remind me--Liberals are different from Conservatives...how, exactly?

When the scales fall from your eyes

...what you see isn't pretty:

They were angry all the time. They were angry at everything. Most importantly, and disturbingly, they seemed to despise Canada. They revered the United States. Spoke longingly of low taxes, easily accessibly guns, low paid teachers, and strict immigration rules. I realized I was with the bad guys.

Go visit this new blogger, and encourage him to keep those posts coming. I like!

Unpersonhood

"I’ve never heard of Tom Flanagan." --Conservative MP Shelly Glover (St-Boniface) [Comment #20]

Was it something he said?

UPDATE: (January 13) Glover's comments were even more inane than I initially reported:



[H/t Far and Wide]

Harper: meddling with human rights

The non-partisan International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, established by Parliament in 1988 to promote human rights and democratic institutions around the world, is under siege by the ideologically-obsessive Harper government.

Some recent Conservative appointments to the Centre's Board have apparently been so opposed to the very mandate of the organization that the Centre has been in gridlock for months. The frustration caused by these obstructionists may have literally killed the president, Rémy Beauregard, this past weekend.

Since the new Conservative appointees arrived, creating a 7 to 6 majority on a number of contentious issues, worthwhile initiatives have been nixed, and the ability of the President to respond to overseas crises, curtailed. And their antics have driven out prominent international members:

At a meeting Thursday in Toronto, the board voted not to reappoint one of its international members, Guido Riveros Franck, and voted not to provide three-year funding for a program to aid victims of sexual violence in Congo.

These came on the heels of a dispute over a decision, made a year earlier, to fund a non-governmental organization that some board members argued was connected to pro-Palestinian terrorist organizations. The board also passed a motion freezing a fund that the president could use to respond to crisis situations overseas.

It was during Thursday's meeting that Sima Samar, the chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and former deputy president of Afghanistan in Hamid Karzai's 2001 interim government, signalled her intention to resign over the conduct of fellow board members and walked out.

She was joined by Payam Akhavan, a McGill University law professor and former legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Both were allies of Mr. Beauregard.

The Centre's management and employees have now demanded the resignations of three Board members considered to be particularly responsible for the organizational malaise: "On ne veut plus travailler pour eux. Il y a du harcèlement psychologique et de l'intimidation de leur part." [We don't want to work for them anymore. They've been psychologically harassing and intimidating us].

The new members want links with organizations critical of Israel to be severed. Even more worryingly, they have set out to racially profile their own staff:

À l'interne, des membres du CA auraient demandé l'origine ethnique de plusieurs employés et s'ils parlaient arabe. «Ils estiment que l'organisme est trop pro-arabe, ce qui est ridicule. On fait du développement démocratique là où la situation l'exige. Mais il y a du harcèlement constant depuis quelques mois», souligne une source à l'interne.

[Internally, the Board members have asked about the ethnic origin of many employees and if they speak Arabic. "They think that the organization is too pro-Arab, which is ridiculous. We do democratic development there, as the situation demands. But there's been constant harassment for several months," an internal source emphasized.]

Unfortunately, questions about this cannot be raised in Parliament at the moment.

Progressives debate governance reform

Round One:

Should a Governor-General be elected or appointed?

Go weigh in.

Afghan poll-iticking

Much is being made by defenders of the Afghan mission of an opinion poll carried out in Afghanistan in December, purporting to show that most Afghans are upbeat, bullish on the future and supportive of the foreign troops in their midst. This is how it's generally being reported:

Afghans feel more optimistic about the future, according to a survey published on Nato's bloodiest day in Afghanistan for two months.

Against a backdrop of mounting violence, 70% of the population believe their country is heading in the right direction, up from 40% in 2009, according to a poll for the BBC, ABC News and the German broadcaster, ARD. Support for Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has also increased from 52% 12 months ago to 72% now, despite a lack of trust in the disputed presidential ballot last August and his problems in appointing a cabinet.

Hearts and minds, way to go!

But none of the blissful hawks who are fronting this poll express any scepticism at all about the circumstances under which it was carried out or the methodology employed, including controls against sampling bias (previous polls had significant sampling errors) or response bias.

Not surprisingly, the sceptics are already chewing:

ACSOR, which did the poll for the BBC, ABC News and the German broadcaster ARD, did not release details on the poll's margin of error.

A remarkable 91 per cent of respondents ranked Karzai's work as excellent (28 per cent), good (44 per cent) or fair (19 per cent).

Both Korski and Jason Burke, the Paris-based Observer correspondent who has written from and lived in Afghanistan and Pakistan, questioned the poll's credibility. They said the ability to conduct polls is difficult in the country's most dangerous and insecure regions, where the government's popularity is likely to be weakest.

And Afghans have learned over "decades" that the wisest and safest tactic when being asked a political opinion is to provide the answer the questioner wants to hear, according to Burke.

"There have been over the years a pattern of polls in Afghanistan which have been consistently and surprisingly pro-government and pro-western intervention," said Burke, author of the books Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam and On the Road to Kandahar.

"Any polls showing extremely high approval ratings for a government that has consistently failed to provide the basic necessities for tens of millions of people is very suspect."

This is what veteran observer Antonio Giustozzi had to say about a similar poll one year ago:

[M]any people in Afghanistan don’t know what polling is. So if you do it in areas under Government control, and ask ‘do you support the Taliban?’ and there is a police station on the corner and informers on every street, what are you going to say? There is a war on - people get arrested and tortured. There will certainly be a lot of people who are reluctant to admit any sympathy for the Taliban. I think it is underestimated, although it is difficult to say how much. Also, support is not evenly spread around the country. It will be low in Kabul and the north, but much higher in the south. Other companies, which don’t publicly release their polls, but who do private polls for ISAF or embassies, use different methodologies, mixing quantitative and qualitative polling, using focus groups - they get completely different figures. Much higher for the Taliban and much lower for the Government. In ISAF polls in early 2009 support for Karzai was 4 percent. They don’t release them of course - because they show a completely different picture.”

Two years back, as much as half the country was under Taliban control. Matters are no better today. The insurgency is growing: 2009 was considered the bloodiest year for coalition forces. It is within this horrendous context that the poll was carried out.

But is it a total dud? Not necessarily.

Clearly under such circumstances prudent responses are likely to be given to direct questions about support for the government, the police and the local army. And so we might well have expected the Soviet-style numbers that the pollsters obtained in these respects.

Fully 72% of the respondents think that President Hamid Karzai is doing an excellent, or at least a good, job--and another 19% think he's doing a fair one, for a total approval rating of 91%. (Did Karzai really run a crooked election? Why bother?) His government nets an 85% approval rating. The provincial governments of the various respondents garnered 87% approval. 89% like the cops: 63% think they're doing a good to excellent job. 89% register a similarly positive view of Afghan forces, wherever they are.

And although the Karzai government holds sway over less than one-third of the country, and Karzai himself has been called the "mayor of Kabul," 79% of the respondents told their interviewers that the Karzai government had a strong presence in their respective regions.

But responses to less fraught questions give a more nuanced picture.

95% of the respondents called government corruption a big (76%) or moderate (19%) problem--and 44% believe that corruption has worsened.

Despite their alleged balmy optimism, 55% of them believe that Taliban strength has either remained the same or grown stronger. 43% say that civilian casualties due to US and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces have gotten worse. 65%--nearly two-thirds--want a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. And 47% support the exodus of US and ISAF troops in 18 months or less.

66% oppose ISAF/US airstrikes because of the civilian toll. The Taliban and ISAF/US forces are blamed equally for on-the-ground civilian casualties.

As for the supposed infiltration of Western notions of governance, 66% support either a dictatorship or an Islamist state: only 32% favour some form of democracy.

The Usual Suspects deride mere anecdotal evidence of widespread disaffection in Afghanistan. And they have a point. For every anecdote, after all, one can find an equal and opposite one. Confirmation bias is rife in too many of these accounts, pro and con. But a highly suspect poll has no more credibility than a few on-the-spot interviews with "ordinary" people. It gives no greater insight into what people there are really feeling and thinking. The Shy Afghans, I suspect, will let us all know in good time.

The Librocons

Ignatieff: Proroguing if necessary, but not necessarily proroguing. One party, two wings.

Meanwhile, I see that my idea is catching on: indeed, the writer would make dissolution subject to a Parliamentary vote as well. That's worth a discussion.

Olympic shark jumping

The National Post's Jonathan Kay has had enough.

On January 4, B'nai Brith issued a press release that was so over the top that Kay had to confirm by telephone that it wasn't a send-up. In it, BB's League for Human Rights compared the lamentable exclusion of women ski jumpers from the Vancouver Olympics to the Berlin Olympics of 1936, in which Jewish persecution was ignored by the International Olympic Committee.

As one who is critical of shoddy, sloppy moral equivalences (e.g., Gaza = the Warsaw Ghetto), I couldn't begin to defend this, even though I believe that there is a bona fide case of discrimination here, while Kay doesn't. But what is most interesting about Kay's article is that this latest BB salient appears to be what labour relations folks call the "culminating incident." Kay excoriates the organization:

Every year, B'nai Brith puts out an "audit" of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada. And every year, the document is reported on by the mass media, which uncritically parrots the group's absurd contention that anti-Semitism is a growing epidemic in this tolerant country. Reporters politely overlook the fact that B'nai Brith's definition of "incident" is dumbed down: Any web posting, stray comment, or scrap of graffitti fits the bill. This allows B'nai Brith to reel off thousands of examples.

Most readers don't stop to scrutinize how trivial these examples are: They just look at the impressive-seeming bar graphs, which purport to show a Jewish community in a constant state of terror. The result: Older Jews with dark historical memories become terrified, and the donations to B'nai Brith come rolling in.

And he ends by describing anti-Semitism in Canada as--wait for it--a "very minor problem."

Recall that Kay has, at least up to now, been an assiduous witchfinder in this regard. He has uncovered so-called "anti-Semitism" (meaning criticism of Israel) everywhere: on campuses, in the arts community, in organized labour, and even among his journalistic colleagues. But a still small voice has apparently been trying to reason with him, and, thanks to B'nai Brith, it has been heard at last.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism chunders on with its full-bore inquiry into the "minor problem." Despite CPCCA's careful selection of witnesses, a couple of university officials have managed to put some sense on the record.

Here's Fred Lowy, former president of Concordia:

By and large, Canadian campuses are safe and are not hotbeds of antisemitism of any kind.

Patrick Monahan, Provost of York University, added this cautionary note:

The difficulty is that there is a narrative (of antisemitism) that gets picked up by others who never set foot on the campus here, but purport to be experts on the atmosphere on our campuses. It is unfair to the students, because it sows fear, it sows division. It fans flames of more conflict. We hope that your report and work of your committee will not in any way contribute further to that.

Unsatisfied, CPCCA is now hoping to hear from more university presidents--and, next month, from the police. Despite Kay's apparent defection, the witchhunting continues apace.

[H/t MediaBuzzard]

Walmart woes

Get your fill of apparent false arrest, wrongful imprisonment, forcible confinement, and lousy labour relations here. When these guys talk "rollback," I hadn't realized that they meant it chronologically.

In the Canadian case, Section 494 of the Criminal Code applies: the citizens' arrest carried out by the two baby-cops had to be "reasonable" for it to be legal. The Palm Bay man, on the other hand, seems to be the victim of wrongful dismissal. I hope the Ottawa parents and the old guy in Florida have good lawyers, although it certainly appears from the reports that even passable ones would do the trick.

[H/t Dan Shields]

We don't need no education

...but thought control is another matter.

Having barely recovered from being patronized by Stephen Harper the other night, as he patted Canadians collectively on the head and told them not to fuss about grown-up things like Afghan detainees and proroguing, I read yesterday that he's cutting off funds to yet another world-class organization, the Canadian Council on Learning.

The CCL's offence? Apparently, speaking too plainly about the state of formal education in Canada, and our ludicrously poor metrics for determining how we stack up against other countries. The Globe & Mail's perceptive Gary Mason writes:

Here's the truth: Ottawa didn't like the CCL leading the call for national standards for our postsecondary system. Didn't appreciate, either, hearing the council plead for more accountability around how billions of dollars being poured into our universities are being spent. For more information about our universities in general.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had noted in various reports on postsecondary education that when it came to Canada it was unable to report figures for two-thirds of the information gathered by the other 39 countries covered in the survey. That would include basic information such as participation, enrolment and graduation numbers in our colleges. We don't even have complete information on dropout rates. "We are the laughingstock of the OECD," Paul Cappon, president of the CCL, said a year ago.

The OECD, in fact, took the time to write to Stephen Harper last year, praising the CCL. "It is a pleasure to pledge my personal support to CCL in its on-going work," said OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria.

And so Canada's international reputation, for everything from peacekeeping to climate change to democracy to human rights, continues to circle the drain. CCL now joins other Canadian organizations wounded by the axe of far-right ideology: KAIROS, cultural programs and producers, gay rights groups...the list of casualties is growing by the day.

Education, culture, charity, human rights: like facts, these all have an unfortunate left-wing bias. Harper prefers to give the people bread and circuses instead--even if, these days, those classic political pacifiers are better-known as tax credits, the Calgary Stampede and the Vancouver Olympics.

Winning hearts and minds

An ugly little story has been leaking out of Afghanistan during the past few days.

On December 27, US-led forces in eastern Kunar province dragged eight children from their beds and executed them, some after they had been handcuffed. The youngest child was eleven years old. The deaths have been confirmed by the United Nations chief in Afghanistan, Kay Eide.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's National Security Council concurs: "International forces entered the area and killed ten youths, eight of them school students inside two rooms in a house, without encountering any armed resistance."

A Western official was also scathing. “There’s no doubt that there were insurgents there, and there may well have been an insurgent leader in the house, but that doesn’t justify executing eight children who were all enrolled in local schools,” he said. Rahman Jan Ehsas, the local headmaster, told The Times that seven of the students were handcuffed before they were shot. A local farm labourer and a shepherd boy were also killed, he said.

Karzai is furious, but you'd never know it reading most of the media, which have steadfastly avoided reporting on this Afghan My Lai. That task has been left to the venerable Times of London, and to various independent commentators.

There seems little doubt that a cold-blooded war crime was committed. Karzai's security chiefs have demanded that the US hand over the gunmen responsible for the murders. Demonstrations against the US are taking place across Afghanistan. But NATO's International Security Assistance Force is shrugging the matter off, claiming that "non-military Americans" were involved, on a "sanctioned operation," and had only returned fire in self-defence.

Even if the killers involved were "non-military," however, this doesn't get the ISAF off the hook. The operation, we are told, was "sanctioned." Who sanctioned it? The buck stops with NATO.

There are 10,000 or so private guns-for-hire wandering around Afghanistan at the moment, operating with relative impunity. Think of Blackwater/Xe's "contractors" (sounds much better than "mercenaries," doesn't it?), and their record of operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA is also busy as usual, playing its spooky little games.

The usual suspects will explain this latest atrocity away, of course, as they have brushed away the question of mistreatment of "detainees." The alibis are pre-formed: An isolated incident. Wasn't us. There were insurgents in the area. Fog of war. But for the average Afghan citizen, caught between two implacable and deadly forces, a dead child is a dead child.

And so President Karzai, beset on all sides by his own political problems, is facing yet another crucial test. He wants the killers handed over and punished. If NATO forces refuse to comply, which is likely, it will once again be clear who is really in charge in Afghanistan, and who, on the other hand, is providing less and less respectable cover for an army of occupation and its "non-military" agents.

Senate report on RCMP to be released

There's life in the old bones yet.

Harper's prorogation of Parliament effectively dissolves all existing committees, but a Senate committee examining the troubled operations of the RCMP will not have laboured in vain. Outgoing chair Colin Kenny, a Liberal, will be going ahead and releasing the committee report anyway.

Needless to say, this has Conservative senators in a flap. The report, already in draft, apparently has too critical a "tenor and tone" for their liking. And here's newly-minted Senator Pamela Wallin, formerly a member, like her colleague Mike Duffy, of the allegedly liberal corporate media:

Conservative Senator Pamela Wallin said the Liberals have no right to do this and accused Kenny of using his position as a "bully pulpit" to spread his "own bias."

My goodness. Where did he get that from? :)

[H/t Marie Ève]

Dirty oil

Another day, another Harper government cover-up.

Dr. Mark Tushingham, a scientist at Environment Canada, is the protagonist of this tale. His is a familar name to those with long memories.

Tushingham was one of the earliest victims of the bullying and muzzling that have since become a hallmark of the Harper administration. Less than three months after the 2006 election, then-Minister of the Environment Rona Ambrose ordered him to cancel a lunch-time presentation he was due to make on a novel he had just published about climate change.

The literary critic won, and the bound and gagged Tushingham was hustled back to work. And there he continued to do his job, no doubt to the discomfiture of both the government and its wealthy friends in the Alberta oil patch.

Harper has been putting the best possible face on the development of the Alberta tar sands (the government prefers the term "oilsands"), and Natural Resources Canada has been playing along, producing a sunny environmental assessment dutifully reflecting the views of the petroleum industry, and going so far as to include a favourable overview of a 2001 report funded by Big Oil.

The scientists at Environment Canada were not happy. After extensive internal consultations, a memorandum deeply critical of the assessment was prepared and delivered by Tushingham last February. The evident bias in the Natural Resources assessment was highlighted, and its conclusions questioned:

"The package should deliver neutral, balanced and factual information," said the analysis.

"Currently, much of the language is too pro-industry, and would make the government to be perceived as bias[ed] and thus not credible or serving the public good."

The documents warn that some climate-change and water-quality policies are unproven and could drive up production costs in the oilsands by as much as $20 per barrel of oil, while creating new pollution that affects air quality. The price of oil is now trading on the markets at about $80 US a barrel.

The analysis notes that the oilsands industry will not be able to implement wide-scale changes needed to address rising pollution, such as the introduction of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and bury them underground, without clear regulations and a price signal set by the government.

"There are also significant risks associated with integrating [carbon capture and storage] on a large commercial scale when it has yet to be successfully demonstrated in the oilsands," said the package, which also warned the government to address negative impacts of introducing nuclear power into the oilsands production process.

Regarding total greenhouse gas emissions, the documents explain that while the industry has reduced emissions per barrel over the past two decades, overall greenhouse gas emissions have tripled since 1990 and will likely continue to rise.

Unfortunately, no questions about this latest revelation of governmental malpractice can be raised in Parliament at the moment. But it's not likely to help the government's slipping poll numbers. Stay tuned.

[H/t Marie Ève]

A tale of two movies

Is there really only a handful of tales, continually re-invented? Or has something more obvious happened here?

[h/t Dark Daughta]

CFRA is running a prorogue poll

Just sayin'.

[H/t ftbt]

UPDATE: (January 12) The good guys won.

Proroguing: collateral damage

In addition to missing the vital work of backbenching, MPs are also complaining that said absence is spilling over into their domestic lives, as well. “I pointlessly heckled my wife last night while she was in the middle of telling me that I should at least do the dishes if all I’m going to be doing is hosting recycling picnics,” said another anonymous MP. “I’m so used to yelling all the way across the parliament floor, and in unison with the other backbenchers, that she nearly broke down in tears based on the volume of my booing alone, nevermind the fact that I called her ex-husband a ‘previous administration’ that was responsible for the shambles she is today.”

Calling Stephen Harper

Good. Can you hear me now? Good. Can you hear me now? Good. Can you hear me now? Good.

The Belated 2009 Awards

I don't know how this slipped from my fingers, but better late than never. Readers are invited to suggest awards of their own for their favourite folks.

The Rachel Marsden Award:

First prize: Christie Blatchford
Runner-up: Terry Glavin

The latter defamed me as a "moral illiterate" yesterday for daring to inquire too closely into the "stolen Palestinian organs" scandal. He'd apparently like to assault me with a baseball bat, or something. I suppose that jogged my memory. :)

Frogs in a pot

The current furore over our padlocked Parliament has raised issues that have likely seldom crossed the public mind. Could it be that federal governance--in recent years a matter of declining interest to Canadians--is now on the national agenda?

Before prorogation was even confirmed, a Harris Decima poll showed that half of the country cared enough about this arcane concept to have an opinion about it: and of that half, the tide was running against prorogation more than two to one.

Perhaps it is now time to take a comprehensive look at our governance as a whole. We tend to do this sort of thing in bits and pieces--or, rather, not do it. The recent attempts to replace our antiquated "first past the post" electoral system offer us some valuable lessons.

Referenda on proportional representation have gone down to defeat for a myriad of reasons. One of the difficulties is the sheer complexity of the issues involved. Referenda are not the way to go on any question other than a simple and generally comprehensible proposition. Talk of the Droop Quotient and the Single Transferable Vote and closed versus open lists leave most people gasping for air and voting for the devil we know.

Current strategies for achieving proportional representation have been seriously flawed. Despite the "constituent assembly" approach, intended to give the process a democratic gloss in Ontario and BC, the process was in fact guided by experts. Little attempt was made to organize at the community level, or to find out what people themselves thought, or to take new and different grassroots proposals for change seriously.

This was not a question of "educating the people," as Fair Vote Canada has claimed, but of listening to them. A better approach might have been to reframe the discussion: to hold widespread public hearings, not about specific electoral systems, but about what values Canadians would like to see reflected in the electoral process--in other words, what we want out of a system of democratic representation. If common threads emerged, as I suspect they would have, then a model could subsequently have been drafted that best embodied these values, and put before the appropriate legislature.

Canadians will support change if they are permitted an active part in it and can see themselves reflected in the outcome; less so if they are merely presented with vast and complex proposals and told to say yes or no.

But can we rely on legislators, most of whom are deeply wedded to the status quo, to make changes even when a clear public consensus emerges? Would the Liberals, for example, support making prorogation a Parliamentary decision, when sometime down the road they might like to use that power themselves--as they did in the dying days of the Chrétien regime in 2003 to avoid facing up to the sponsorship scandal? Would they favour a system of proportional representation that would no longer allow them to form majority governments with minority popular support?

We can trust blindly in no one, and certainly not in the two "big tent" parties for whom power, not democratic principle, is what really matters.

The underpinning of the Canadian federal governance system is "responsible government," based upon the notion that Parliament is supreme, and that government--the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet--is accountable to Parliament as a whole. We don't elect governments: we elect MPs. But true to our Canadian penchant for compromise, the notion of responsible government was never implemented wholeheartedly.

Our head of state is still the Queen. We have an unelected upper house. The Prime Minister is elected by only one of Canada's 308 ridings, but has far more legal power than the President of the United States: the power to hand-pick Senators and Supreme Court justices, for example, or even to shut down Parliament whenever he likes, and for as long as he likes.

Recently the serious limitations on responsible government have become salient, and the public is beginning to stir. Parliamentary supremacy has turned into a hollow concept: the demand by a majority of our representatives for access to unredacted documents on the Afghan detainee affair, for example, was simply refused. And, when they pressed the point, Stephen Harper sent them home.

Let me blue-sky a little.

Perhaps we could learn something from the so-called "consensus government" model in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Although considered a "modified Westminster" system, there are some fundamental differences. The Premier is elected by the legislature, and so are the members of Cabinet. The premier has the power to assign portfolios, but only the legislature can dismiss a Cabinet minister, which the young Nunavut legislature has already done on one occasion. The Executive, in other words, serves at the pleasure of the legislature as a whole.

I am not arguing for a non-party model for Ottawa: it is inevitable that parties--like-minded people who have organized themselves around a set of ideas and values--will arise in a large and diverse country like Canada. But the notion of an Executive chosen by and accountable to a Parliament of elected representatives appears to be far more in keeping with the notion of responsible government than what we have at present.

Let Parliament--the people we elect--decide who best should lead it, and who should share that power in a Cabinet. Let Parliament decide when it should sit, and for how long, rather than having its fate in the hands of one person elected in one riding. Let Parliament ratify proposals to fill important positions, such as justices of the Supreme Court. Let all members of Parliament be elected members, reflecting the diverse electorate, and let no votes by Canadians be wasted votes.

What of the Senate, then? An elected Upper House that represents regions may not be a bad thing, although my own preference is still for a unicameral legislature. The proposal for a Triple-E Senate was a Reform Party initiative, a measure to overcome Western alienation, and perhaps some of us progressives were too quick to dismiss it because of its origin. The interests of the North are not necessarily the interests of the West, or the interests of the West those of central Canada: should numbers alone prevail, as they do now? (But what do we mean by "region?" Is PEI a "region?")

I want to avoid getting too deeply into the weeds here, however. These questions and many others would sort themselves out over time if there were indeed an overwhelming popular push for change. How is that push manifested?

As we saw with the Orange and Velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe, substantial change is not a matter of piecemeal legislative reform, or popular debate about this or that part of the whole. In the latter cases we are smothered by details until the status quo begins to look like the best of all possible worlds. The immoral use of power is cynically denounced by an Opposition that behaves the same way itself when in office.

Don't look to legislators to curtail their own power merely out of principle. And besides, the inertia in any system of governance is immense. It is only when public confidence is replaced by a public sense of crisis that momentous changes will occur. At such times, the usually empty phrase "will of the people" achieves real meaning, and our representatives either get in step or get replaced.

Have we reached that tipping point? There are signs of it. Thoughtful media commentators are worried about it. It's not every day that the Globe and Mail runs a front-page editorial sounding the alarm. The right-wing pundistas tell us at length why the burgeoning Facebook group opposed to prorogation is irrelevant. They frantically spill gallons of ink telling us that Canadians don't really care about this stuff at all.

But a growing number of Canadians seem to care very much. We might not be constitutional experts, but we can smell something off about recent events: right across the political spectrum, we can sense the incremental loss of our democracy. One degree after another, Stephen Harper is raising the water temperature in the political pot. The question is: will we jump in time? And another: where will we land?

Lhasa de Sela: 1972-2010

Obviously out of the cultural loop, I became aware of Lhasa and her songs only upon the occasion of her death, after a long struggle with breast cancer, at the age of 37. And so life and death intertwine, making, in some ways at least, the distinction meaningless.

This haunting video, a dream echo, tells us something of what she was. I had no idea what I had been missing, but I know that I miss her now.



UPDATE: (January 6) Blogger brebis noir republishes an article based upon an interview with Lhasa that she did in 2004--well worth reading. And reader Blues Clair offers some new Lhasa tracks--have a listen.

Opposition: time to recalibrate

Faced with the Harper government's frontal assault on the principles of responsible government, the opposition is in its usual complete disarray. My Liberal friend Impolitical has a new badge up at her place: "I prorogue because...I can...you let me...". But what do we get from the leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition?

Just when a decisive voice is called for, there's Michael Ignatieff bleating almost en passant about the Harper cut-and-run exercise, and then proffering loads of hype about a Liberal "thinkers' conference" in March (which may conflict with a Spring election call, leaving all those thoughts unthought). Another tiresome grand tour of the Canadian hinterland is planned, including a homecoming visit to the universities. In other words, he'll be flying below the radar again at a crucial time.

Once defensive about Ignatieff's glaring lack of political instincts, Liberals are now starting to sound embarrassed. I don't blame them. Here's what the Leader says, fiddling while Rome burns:

It seems unbelievable that the Conservative government has prorogued Parliament for the second time in a year. Canadians are rightly starting to wonder if Conservatives intend to shut down government whenever things don’t go their way.

While Conservatives will be in hiding, Liberals will be hard at work over the next few months.

On March 26 to 28, 2010, some of Canada’s leading progressive thinkers and doers will gather in Montreal for a conference entitled Canada at 150: Rising to the Challenge. They will be part of a national conversation about the Canada we want to be in 2017, when we celebrate our 150th birthday, and the steps we can take today and tomorrow to get there.

That conversation starts with you.

That’s why I’ll be spending the first few months of the year reaching out, travelling from coast to coast, holding town-hall meetings, web forums and small gatherings to hear from Canadians first-hand. Your ideas, hopes, concerns and priorities will feed the discussion in Montreal. We’re starting off by visiting university and college campuses across the country – because a conversation about Canada’s future starts with the generation of Canadians that will shape it more than any other.

This goes beyond flabbiness, all the way to intellectual catatonia. A plaintive whine about those mean Conservatives, and then a proposal for a "national conversation," forsooth, where the common folk can all talk about Canada seven years hence.

Leaders are supposed to lead, dammit. This empty suit has been asking for input almost since his coronation. Doesn't he have any ideas of his own by now? Any gut reactions? Any strategy? Any vision? Any passion, for crying out loud?

I'm not even a Liberal, and I'm yearning to hear something real, just for once, come from this man's mouth.

If he still needs a clue, let him proceed by way of focus groups and polls. Canadian views are diverse: you won't pick up themes and directions by holding townhalls. At present Ignatieff is offering little more than do the online mainstream media with their comments threads, pretending to give Canadians a voice--suggesting, even, that they are somehow being listened to--but, in reality, building sandboxes for trolls to whom no one pays any real attention.

It's a faux-democratic exercise, at best. If Ignatieff hasn't figured out what presses Canadians' buttons by now, he won't achieve enlightenment with more trans-Canada meetings. Once more, he's coming across as a floundering, rootless character in search of an author.

At one point in the Fall of 2008, it looked as though the three opposition parties, representing the majority of Canadians, might achieve something by concerted action. Ignatieff pulled the plug on that, and shortly afterwards began to circle the drain himself, to the mounting despair of the Liberal rank and file. By the end of last October, he had finally pulled his party below Stéphane Dion's numbers.

Advisors have been cramming words and policies into him, inevitably making him look silly and out of touch--flipflopping on asbestos, selecting EI reform as a defining electoral issue, putting the Conservatives on "probation," tough-talking about an election when he's ten percent behind in the polls. Now we're getting a thinkers' conference and what might fairly be called outreach theatre.

We needed courage and conviction. We got Charlie McCarthy.

How is it that Harper can get away with defying and padlocking Parliament whenever he likes? Because he can. Because we're letting him. Because the two smaller opposition parties can't do very much on their own. Because the largest "opposition" party in the House of Commons is lumbered with a hapless caricature of a leader and a "war room" apparently populated by stoned adolescents.

I don't want any part of your "national conversation," Iggy. In case you hadn't noticed, we've already been having one. Perhaps some day you might deign to join it--or have the decency to step aside and make way for someone who will.

Now is the time at the Dawg

...when we juxtapose!

[A] significant percentage of Muslims in the west do not understand concepts such as pluralism and freedom of expression. --Mark Steyn

I'll start reading the post [sic] again when they fire Dr. Dawg. --Kathy Shaidle

Why oh why would the Post want this loonie leftie writing for them? --BC Blue