Canada Complicit in Afghan Detainee Torture
Canada Complicit in Afghan Detainee Torture
http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/16973-afghan-detainee-torture.html
"A Canadian human rights activist has filed more than 120 documents with the International Criminal Court (ICC) demonstrating reaons for concern about the leglities of Canada's handling of the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan and calling for an investigation.
John McNamer, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said it is a matter of conscience for him and that he has been shocked over past years by 'the lack of legal and moral integrity,' from Canada and the handling of people detained in Afghanistan..."
'Complicity in torture is a war crime, and Canada is up to its neck in complicity in torture,' he said in a press release Wednesday. It's truly a horror story when you stop and look at everything that has come down on this, and anyone who wants to have a look at this information had better have a strong stomach.'
He said he sent evidence to the ICC because he believes top Canadian authorities have used their power to cover up wrongdoing and that the truth about detainee torture will come out only with intervention by a higher authority such as the ICC..."
And Canada's feckless opizishin allowed Harper to wriggle off the hook, even after the Speaker had found Harper's government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to release the detainee documents. As a result, the documents have been buried by the government.
This is a good initiative by McNamer - not because the ICC is going to actually do anything about it, but because it draws together all the threads of information about Canadian government complicity in torture and attempts to cover it up.
And we can blame the NDP for this as they opted out of signing an all-party committee agreement to resolve the government's release of torture documents. The real pro democracy parties against government secrecy, the Bloc and Liberals, were submarined by the feckless NDP oppozishin, again!! The Harpers wanted desperately to release this information to the NDP and Canadian public, but in 2012 it's the NDP who are insisting that the Harpers don't have to abide by the Speaker of the House' ruling.[/dark sarcasm]
You're understandably keen to forget the part about how the NDP and the other three parties all agreed on May 14, 2010 to a scheme that would allow for documents to be withheld from the committee looking into Afghan detainee torture - which was the very issue on which the Speaker had said the government was in contempt of parliament.
The immediate effect of the all-party agreement was to defuse the issue and end the parliamentarty crisis for the benefit of the Conservatives. The long-term effect of the agreement was to postpone the requirement for the government to produce documents to the parliamentary committee, by setting up barriers. As explained in the link above, each document would first have to pass an all-party ad hoc committee, sworn to secrecy, and then would have to pass a non-parliamentary panel of three arbiters, whose decision would be binding and non-appealable, before the parliamentary committee would be allowed to see it.
Only a month later, when it came time for all parties to agree in writing on how this complicated and stringent gatekeeping would work, did the NDP finally wake up and realize that it had been foolish to make the agreement of May 14. As a result they refused to sign the written agreement. But by then it was too late. The documents were effectively withheld from the parliamentary committee.
Had the NDP withheld consent to the agreement on May 14, 2010, the Speaker's deadline for an all-party agreement would have passed, and the finding of contempt of parliament against the Harper Government (which the Speaker had suspended to allow the four parties an opportunity to reach a unanimous agreement on how to get the documents to the parliamentary committee) would have become official. The unanimous agreement of May 14, 2010, however, saved Harper's bacon and killed the parliamentary committee's inquiry into the detainee torture issue.
How Canada Is Complicit in Torture - by Robert J Hanlon
http://the-diplomat.com/2012/02/19/how-canada-is-complicit-in-torture
"...Rather than maintaining a covert policy of intelligence gathering protected by national security, the government has inflicted Canadians with a moral argument that they now must normalize or reject. There is no longer any excuse; Canadians are complicit in torture abroad. Canada is signaling to Asia's rulers that torture is acceptable, period. The question remains, how will Canada's democratic system approach this truth?"
The NDP agreed "in principle" but pulled out of further discussions only after the Reformatory toadies to Warshington insisted on government loopholes to exclude the feds disclosing legal and cabinet documents from disclosure to the effective oppozishin NDP and Canadian public in general.
And the Liberals and Bloc continue to side with the Harpers in preventing transparency and accountability to the Canadian public.
Liberals and Bloc failing to hold Harper to account - no documents yet released: NDP March 2011
Reality Check: More broken promises on releasing Afghan detainee documents: NDP April 2011
Liberals hail detainee deal, dismiss NDP objections as 'horsefeathers' June 2010
If Ottawa is not broken, then there would exist a democratic process for extracting the truth about torture from Uncle Sam's junior inquisitors in phony-majority government. Of course, some babblers have argued for the maintenance of a red-blue chamber filled with old line party hacks, and some of whom moonlight as corporate lobbyists who lend bended ears to right wing think tankerists as of Brian Baloney's time in the sun. And I tend to not pay those babblers much attention when they shine us on with their anti-NDP propaganda as per usual.
Another perfectly good anti-NDP propaganda thread tainted by the truth. You'll just have to try harder.
...where we read this piece of utter hypocrisy:
The "agreement in principle" that supposedly struck a "fair balance between national security and the public's right to know" was a con job that the NDP fell for hook, line, and sinker on May 14, 2010. Here's the crap that they agreed to in writing, as I linked to above. Hold your nose - it gets stinky:
So whereas the Speaker had already decided that the parliamentary committee was entitled to see the documents, the government managed to con the 3 opizishin parties into a process whereby unelected, extraparliamentary gatekeepers would have the last word on what, if anything, the Parliamentary committee was allowed to see - with no right of appeal!
If the NDP had been so concerned on May 14, 2012 not to allow the government "to hijack the process and prevent necessary legal documents and Cabinet records from being made available to Parliament and the public", they would never have agreed to such a process.
By agreeing to this memorandum on May 14 the NDP helped snatch defeat from the jaws of the victory handed to them by the Speaker.
Then a year later they professed to be shocked - shocked! - that the documents had still been kept away from the Parliamentary committee.
It would be funny if it weren't such a tragedy.
I was going to add my comments, but realized it would be easier to just copy and paste what I already said before, in reply to Stockholm, KenS, jrootham, and others who were predicting that the opposition (in particular the NDP) were going to bring about heaven on earth with the Speaker's ruling.
Here are some excerpts from April 2010:
So here's my question in February 2012:
Now that the "combat mission" is over (heh), which of the NDP leadership candidates will declare this:
I didn't think so.
You keep repeating this. When did the Speaker of the House give the then fourth and effective opposition party the opportunity to bring down the government? From what I can tell, Harper was enjoying full support from his best friends forever at the time, Steve Ignatieff and Steve Duceppe in what was a mini coalition of the Three Stevadores.
Wait and minute wait a minute. I'm pretty sure it was Steve's cousins, Steve Ignatieff and his other cousin, Steve Duceppe, who were telling CBC reporters that the torture docs were practically in the mail. So what have their newest cousins Steve Rae and the Bloc head, Steve Paille, said lately about the torture docs? Are they conspiring with their other cousin Steve to prevent transparency and accountability to the Canadian public same as before?
Vetting of Afghan detainee files left unfinished, panel says June 2011
Thanks to their cousins in the Parti de Libranos and Bloc, our vicious toadies in government were able to dissolve Parliament and make another undemocratic maneuver with a snap election call for short-term political gain. I think herr Steveler must have set some kind of record for the number of times he dissolved Parliament with the fourth and effective opposition NDP party breathing down his fat neck.
Your recollection is faulty. Far from enjoying full support from any of the three opizishin parties, Harper was on the ropes in April 2010, when Speaker Milliken upheld the supremacy of Parliament over the government. Here, to refresh your memory of events, is what the CBC reported on April 27, 2010. I have selected and rearranged some of the paragraphs in order to create a chronological narrative for you:
At the end of his ruling the Speaker gave the House a deadline to work out a compromise:
And so it came to pass that the NDP did, in fact, have the power to scuttle a compromise and force the Speaker to rule on the contempt motion. Such a ruling would have undoubtedly gone against Harper and could have brought down the government.
Unfortunately, after the self-congratulation and declarations of "victory for democracy" had died down, the NDP and the other parties agreed on May 14 to the memorandum I quoted in a previous post, whereby the obstructive function of Mr. Justice Iacobucci that had precipitated the crisis was replaced by another obstruction in the form of not just one judge, but a panel of three "eminent jurists" who would have absolute veto power over what information the Parliamentary committee could get its hands on. So much for Parliamentary supremacy.
And so, at the eleventh hour, the three opizishin "Steveadores" prevented the Speaker from having to rule that the government was in contempt, thereby saving Harper's bacon.
A year later, the NDP was still wondering whatever happened to the documents that Harper was supposed to hand over!
Will an NDP government hand over those documents to a Parliamentary committee? Is Tupac Shakur a Jewish holiday?
I don't see where the fourth and effective opposition party had the numerical ability to force the Harpers to do anything.
You seem to be the only person on the internet interpreting Milliken's words as a coded message to the NDP to either speak now or forever give up their right to protest herr Steveler's shananigans.
You seem to be the only babbler attempting to tell us, in so many words, that Parliament or Canada's democracy in general is not broken.
It is.
Your democracy was always broken same as your Westminster senate setup.
It's fubar as in hasn't worked since there were more than two parties in Ottawa. Libertories and Conservabranos can agree with one another and prop-up each others' parties all they like, but it isn't democracy.
Inbred cousins Steve Ignatieff, Steve Harper and Steve Duceppe were all best friends forever until Layton and the NDP broke-up their politically incestuous menage et trois, sorry to have to inform you.
You seem to be the only person who doesn't understand that the Speaker was prepared to find the Harper government in contempt of Parliament unless all parties in the House reached an agreement on how to get access to the documents for the Parliamentary committee. That gave all parties a veto.
That means that if the NDP had said on Friday May 14, "No, we will not agree to replacing Justice Iacobucci with a panel of three other judges who can veto what the Parliamentary committee is allowed to see; we demand that Parliament's supremacy over the Harper government be recognized in this agreement, in accordance with the Speaker's interim ruling of April 27" then on Monday May 17 Peter Milliken would have made a final ruling on the NDP contempt motion and would have found the Harper government in contempt of parliament.
And by June 14 the NDP realized they had been snookered by the other parties; they refused to sign the second written agreement that filled in the details of how the document-blocking scheme was to work. But by then it was too late. The NDP ended up on the sidelines, unable to influence the process at all, while the other three parties conspired with the three judges to drag the whole process out until parliament was prorogued.
ETA: As Murray Dobbin observed before the all-party agreement of May 14 was made:
I think it's you who are beginning to believe your own bullshit. No one else on the internet that I can see has interpreted anything Milliken said or ruled on to mean that the NDP was responsible for "saving Harper's bacon." Youre full of hops.
Milliken OK's Afghan records deal June 17 2010
Layton rejected the deal because it enshrines secrecy.
Aren't you the one who is always berating the NDP for demanding transparency and accountability to the Canadian public with your rabid anti-NDP rhetoric?
What would your old line party millionaire senators say about this, M?
That was in June.
Milliken was prepared to rule on the contempt motions two weeks after April 27 if all the parties couldn't reach a deal. Two weeks later they did just that, in a deal that "enshrined secrecy". That put an end to the Speaker's involvement.
A month later the NDP got buyer's remorse and refused to sign the second document, but, as I have said repeatedly, and as the CBC article you quote confirms, by then it was too late. The die had been cast on May 14.
Are you able to point us to one other person anywhere else on the internet who believes as you do - that the NDP conspired sub rosa and in secret to "save Harper's bacon"?
I never said they conspired. They got suckered, and a month later (June) it was "D'oh!"
Read the blog post by Murray Dobbin I linked to in post #11. Dobbin points out how the opizishin parties all bought into Harper's framing of the release of detainee documents as being a genuine national security issue, and as a result let themselves get all tied up in bureaucratic procedures causing delays that were completely unnecessary.
As Dobbin said in a later column, "If there are 10 pages out of the 40,000 in question that have anything to do with genuine national security I will eat all of them." In that same column, written the day after the infamous May 14 agreement, he said all three opizishin parties went along with Harper's "compromise" because they were afraid of an election.
It must be tough being a social democrat and being held back from doing the right thing all the time because of those damned "Great Misled".
Of course it never occurs to them that the Great Misled wouldn't be so Misled if only the social democrats offered them alternative Leadership, instead of tail-ending the most backward sections of the populace all the time, out of fear of actually disturbing the status quo.
And apparently neither does Murray Dobbin agree with M. Spector when he says that the fourth and effective opposition party at the time, the NDP, conspired with the forces of evol to "save Harper's bacon."
You're giving us conspiracy theory, M. Spector. Conspiracy theory!
What did save Harper's bacon was our broken down democracy in Ottawa. It wasn't the fourth party in Ottawa or even Harper's clever political maneuvering but a broken-down electoral system whereby a bought and paid-for stooge and his party with 22% of the eligible voter support was in bed with another bought and paid-for by Bay Street stooge, Steve Ignatieff, an alleged leader of the then "opposition party." There was no official opposition party just a coalition of two same-same Bay Street parties.
And it all came to an end when Jack leaned over to Michael Ignatieff during a nationally televised election debate and said,
"And you've been his best friend!"
The alleged leader of "the official opposition party" never recovered after that.
It's busted, Jim.
It's perfectly clear that Harper won that battle, like all the others, even in the face of a contempt ruling.
But while we can argue about the past, what about the present?
Is any party demanding immediate release of all (or any) of the detainee documents, like NOW?
Is any NDP leadership candidate prepared to commit to publication of all the documents, the moment they lead a government - or hold the balance of power?
There can't be any conceivable "security" issues, now that the so-called combat mission is over.
Publish the detainee documents now!
I think I'll ask the candidates.
Harper has a 160 year-old legacy of broken democracy in Ottawa to thank for "saving his bacon" on a lot more than just his cow-towing, snivelling and grovelling to Uncle Sam on issues of torture in Afghanistan.
Murray Dobbin clearly blames the alleged former "official opposition party" Liberals who blew it on the torture documents. They carried out their colonial administrative duties wrt Afghanistan right to that party's bitter end and hopefully their long good night.
And we can thank Jack Layton for exposing the then phony opposition party for what they really are in a nationally televised election debate, which is a corrupt mirror image of the "Liberal" democrats in the U.S. and accomplices to the torture and warfiteering and great game baloney in Central Asia.
It's still broken. We need to elect our first NDP government in Ottawa to fix it.
Fidel,
Do you agree that the NDP should demand release of the Afghan detainee documents? And that the leadership candidates should commit to that now?
I'm sorry that Canada's first real opposition party leader passed away three months after the election. We still need to elect a leader and get on with opposing herr Steveler and his pro Warshington, pro big business colonial administrative agenda.
There will be no putting the bum's rush on party democracy in the NDP. It might be what the Liberal Party does, but it's not what social democrats will be doing soon.
All things in good time.
Translation: Don't expect anything useful to be accomplished before the NDP gets re-elected to a second majority term.
Or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.
?
The 24% Harper majoritarians are governing like they still have a minority even while the NDP is preoccupied with internal party democracy and will be in high gear and demonstrating what a real opposition party looks like in good time.
Canada Supports Torture: An Instrument of "Terrorism Propaganda"
It's time that the real anti-war movement and the left wing worked to undermine the American inquisition and their toadies in Ottawa instead of having generally supported the phony-baloney war on terror.