"...a very dangerous precedent"

Yes, making things disappear because we don't want people finding shit out is pretty dangerous.  We should know that.

 

Eventually, people make a party out of embracing ignorance and destroying information.  Children begin to view any kind of information - except that approved by The Party - as corrupting.  Damn academics, statisticians, scientists!  Pretentious types, elitists, the whole lot, bunch of latte drinking commies...

Ignorant people are easier to control.  Lack of resources to research policy lets The Party make up their own pseudo-facts and figures.

The federal bill introduced last month would halt registration of long guns and permanently delete more than seven million files on gun ownership. It would override provisions of the Library and Archives of Canada Act and the Privacy Act to allow for destruction of the records.

The Association of Canadian Archivists recently wrote to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, arguing that destroying records for "political expediency" and ignoring existing legislation "sets a very dangerous precedent for future legislation and record-keeping practices."

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." 
                                                                                                                                                - Orwell

Harper begs for money for his War on Truth, Free Speech and Free Thought

I can barely keep up with the ever growing harper lexicon of what is baaaaad.

Latest addition to the baaaad elitists are people with opinions.  

I’m wondering how people like Ezra Levant, KKKKate McMillan, Stephen Taylor, and Charles McVety feel about harper declaring war on them.

In a letter sent out in the past few days, Conservative Party President John Walsh is urging supporters to help the party counter a “hailstorm” of negative attacks from the media, pundits and the “opinion elite.”

Where does that leave the wisdom of the Tim Horton’s crowd?  Maybe Timmy’s should put up signs: “no opining.”

Harper knows the power of Sleight of Mouth  and has been linking perfectly good characteristics, professions, and groups of people to negative terms, probably since he realized that the world didn’t automatically buy into his conviction that he’s wonderful and anyone who disagrees is the enemy.  Lacking any actual proof that he is the embodiment of perfection, he probably decided to change words and their definitions to suit his deluded beliefs and convince others of them.  But I digress.

Neuro-linguistic programming  used among other things to change patterns of mental and emotional behaviour in others is a key weapon in the CPC arsenal even if most of the CONs are too stump-dumb ignorant to understand how it works.  You don’t need to understand how a sexually transmitted disease functions on a cellular level in order to spread it, for instance.

What harper and the neanders are doing is attempting to define what a good Canadian is and what a bad Canadian is, what a good group of people is and what a bad group of people is.  By linking these people and groups to favourable/unfavourable terms over and over, he can eventually get the stupider segment of the public to support or attack at his prompting.

Steve had defined so very many people and groups as baaaaad during his four year election campaign claiming that if only he had a majority, he could get things done despite the opposition of these baaaad elements.  Now that he has a majority, he can’t raise funds by going on about the long gun registry, the opposition stalling Bills, the unelected liberal Senate, senate reform...

He no longer has any effective opposition in Parliament so naturally looks to who else he feels he needs to silence.  No big surprise he wants to shut up the media and social networks.  But how will donations to CPC help him do that?  Massive negative ad campaigns  against the media and people with opinions?  Silencing those few independent thinking journalist with the integrity not to kiss his ass by getting them fired?

The letter does not say how the party plans to counter the groups it identifies as a threat.

Perhaps Stevie intends to use the funds to establish re-education camps.  

Facts published by the media or through social media would be threatening to the survival of a party and leader who have been found in contempt of Parliament, who have mislead the public on spending, who have violates spending rules, who have violated election rules, who continuously refuse to tell the public how their tax dollars are being spent, who falsify documents by altering them…

Even dumb ass, thick as concrete, atavistic neandercon fanatics with no opinions or original thoughts must realize that the electorate needs to be told these facts if they are to vote in an informed fashion.  Maybe even those dullards realize that harper can't possibly represent every single preference and ideal they embrace and that they may want the chance to express their own opinion in a democratic, effective fashion, just once in their life.

Maybe not.  To recognize those things requires at least a modicum of original thought.

Be afraid.

The party that thrives on spreading false fears is engineering a true reason to be afraid.  But of course, they won’t open this piece of legislation for debate, nor will they be honest to Canadians as to how it will affect us.

The package is benignly nicknamed “lawful access,” but isn’t benign.  If the Conservatives move forward with it, it would feature a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers.   

(Emphasis mine)

The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight...The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, e-mail address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers.

The second prong requires Internet providers to re-work their networks to allow for real-time surveillance...These include the power to intercept communications, to isolate the communications to a particular individual, and to engage in multiple simultaneous interceptions.

Having obtained customer information without court oversight and mandated Internet surveillance capabilities, the third prong creates a several new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.

Lawful access raises genuine privacy and free speech concerns, particularly given the fact the government has never provided adequate evidence on the need for it, it has never been subject to committee review, and it would cost millions to implement yet there has been no disclosure on who would actually pay for it. Given this, it is not surprising that every  privacy commissioner in Canada has signed a joint letter expressing their concerns.

Not only is the substance problematic, but the attempt to fast track lawful access virtually guarantees that it will not be fully vetted. For example, over the past few weeks there has been mounting concern that the legislation would also create new criminal liability for hyperlinking to content that incites hatred and for using anonymous or false names online.

As we cheered on countries who used social media to spread the desire for change and allowed people to organize, our own government plans to control freedom of speech here, on the Net in particular.

This is no big surprise since it has been one of the few areas where harper could not control dissent.  Social media has not been kind to him, and with good reason.  With nearly every newspaper supporting the harper regime, it has been left to the Net users to expose the serious abuses of his government and the obvious direction in which he is taking our country against the will of most Canadians.

Youtube has been especially unfriendly to the master strategist.  It is a powerful social engine due to brief messaging tightly scripted, presented with visuals.

A few months ago, several articles came out about limitations public servants are subject to during elections.  While the purpose of the legislation is to assure that public servants remain non-partisan and take a moment to assess their involvement with politics before over-stepping bounds, such limitations were deemed undemocratic, stifling public servants’ rights to be actively engaged in politics.

This access act would stifle every Canadian and do so without justification, without providing those silenced with recourse, without oversight agencies protecting individual privacy or freedom of speech rights.

Meanwhile, the harper government has just made sure it can deny access to its own doings.

In a major decision, the court decided that Canada’s Access to Information Act does not apply to the records controlled by the people at the top of the government’s power pyramid: the prime minister, cabinet ministers, and their staffs.  And though the current Conservative government promised in the 2006 election campaign to ensure that ministers’ offices would be subject to the access law, it fought that principle in court.

We can see where this is going.  The harper regime can operate in secrecy as it plans major changes that affect us all, while any person who questions or criticizes - as is not only our right, but our responsibility in a democracy - will be silenced, perhaps even charged.

With a majority, harper will slide the lawful access legislation through easily since there is no longer an opposition that can vote him down.  He owns the Senate majority as well, so forget sober second thought or in-depth review working out the legalities or fairness of the act.  Harper will bury this in another omnibus crime Bill that will allow even the little bit of debate in the House to turn to the usual harper dishonesty of criticizing opposition to parts of the Bill as criticism to the more benign parts he puts in for window dressing.


And silencing dissent, stopping the sharing of information, making criticism criminal...that's just the beginning.  There are reasons why leaders like harper want to control information and discussion at all levels.  They want to make sure we don't have any chance of opposing what he knows will be highly unpopular changes to our country, our way of life, our very rights in order to pursue his own very narrow, backwards, extremist view of what Canada should be and how Canadians should live, even at very personal levels of religion, marriage, rights, and how we spend our money.

Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em, because our days of free speech and activism on the Net are numbered.  The very people who have been resisting this type of tyranny will be the first to be silenced.

Justice isn't just blind, she's protean as well.

Others, notably Joe Lieberman in the Senate and Peter King in the House of Representatives have pushed for new legislation to facilitate the prosecution of Mr Assange in the event that existing law proves insufficient. "Assange and his associates... have not only damaged US national security... but also placed at risk countless lives, including those of our intelligence sources," said Mr King.

Sure.  Just make a new law so you can nab this fellow who is exposing your crimes.  Brilliant!  Then change it again for the next case, and the next, and the next.  Justice for all, right?  Tailored justice, that is.

"Apparently wikileaks is malware. Or it is porn."

David Eaves of eaves.ca  has a good post here comparing the Pentagon Papers to Wikileaks.  I unapologetically post most of it here:

While doing this yesterday, something came over my desk that showed me how completely backwards parts of the US government has become around dealing with wikileaks. Turns out that the US Airforce has banned access to the New York Times and the Guardian because of wikileaks. Of course discussions about the leaked documents and their contents are not limited to these websites... one presumes that banning access to the Internet is what comes next?  The Air Force "routinely blocks Air Force network access to websites hosting inappropriate materials or malware (malicious software) and this includes any website that hosts classified materials and those that are released by WikiLeaks," she said.

Apparently wikileaks is malware. Or it is porn.

More importantly, the government is telling its employees to blind themselves. That they should pretend like the information about wikleaks, the leaked documents and how the world is reacting to it - the type of information an organization whose mission it is to engage with allies and a public that care about this a great deal - doesn't exist. If some information is bad... more information must be worse!

The attempt at thought control is all kind of Orwellian. It's also doomed to fail. In the 21st century, information and knowledge is power. Cut yourself off from it and you cut yourself off from your capacity to think and react effectively. In other words the US Airforce has been played. They are doing pretty much what I think wikileaks was trying to accomplish.

Intimidation at DND?

Defence Department staff have been warned against using government computers to sift through secret documents released by WikiLeaks.  An email dubbed "Wikileaks Notice" in the subject line says military computers are "not to be used to visit the Wikileaks (sic) site or any other websites containing such information."

OK, no big deal.  All federal departments have restrictions, which vary from one to another.  But DND doesn’t stop with that warning, and their planned procedures and justifications are bizarre.

Canadian Forces IT staff "may monitor attempts to view this site's material and will report attempts to the affected chains of command," it adds.

But –

The website has not been blocked by the Defence Department and employees have not been directed to not talk about the documents, MacLean added.

Why not block it if they seriously don’t want staff going there, especially if the department has legitimate IT security concerns.  Would save IT hours of monitoring – unless they want to tag people who are interested in Wikileaks.

DND’s justification for not allowing staff to visit Wikileaks -

The department fears accessing the site could expose government computers to "malicious search engine poisoning attacks" and that third parties might "collect and exploit visitor data or deliver malicious software through downloaded files."

Again, that doesn’t sound unreasonable to a layperson like me until we find out that similar directives do not appear to be applied to all public servants or departments. If there was indeed a problem with Wikileaks connected to viruses or “poisoning attacks,” it’s very likely all federal departments would be taking measures to protect their systems.

More weirdness -

As some of the information may be classified, downloading it onto or viewing it from government computers could also be a breach of security policy, it says.

But if it’s available for anyone to view and bits and pieces keep appearing in the media, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

DND doesn’t stop at regulating staff while they are functioning as employees, either -

Staff were also warned to consider the similar risk of contamination to personal computers, smart phones and flash drives that access the site.

And the weirdness just goes on -

While they're not forbidden from accessing the material on their own time from home, MacLean said staff are discouraged from seeking out their own files.

And why would that be?  Why the threat note of warning not to seek out their own files?

If you gots nothin’ ta hide, why ya worried?

Right, wingnuts?

Or how about: If’n ya didn’t do nuthin’, what’d ya sweatin’ over?

Or how about Steve’s and Johnnie’s own words:
“We promised to stand up for accountability and to change the way government works,” said Prime Minister Stephen Harper.  “Canadians elected this government to deliver on that commitment and today the Federal Accountability Act has received Royal Assent.  From this day on, accountability in government is the law and we can all be proud of that fact.”

John Baird: “The Federal Accountability Act is a significant and substantive step by Canada’s New Government to help restore Canadians’ trust in government and the democratic process.”

Sure, but that was when Canadians were lead to believe that legislation applied to all Canadians.  Stevie has informed us that such is not reality.

That might explain why Baird thumbed his nose at his and his master’s promise of transparency and accountability by refusing the legitimate demand of the Information, Privacy and Ethics committee for the electronic correspondence of a political aide who – can anyone make this shit up? -  blocked the release of an Access to Information request. 

Mr. Baird defended the decision, saying cabinet ministers, and not their staff, are responsible to Parliament (and that) parliamentary and constitution convention dictates that the political communications related to decisions and actions of cabinet ministers are never disclosed.



What a fucking  troll.

Let’s look at that statement in the context of this issue.  The political staffer Sébastien Togneri “unreleased” documents requested by a Globe and Mail reporter when Mr. Paradis headed the Public Works department.

Togneri apparently wrote a series of e-mails relating to this.  Since Paradis as Minister is responsible to Parliament, any e-mails Togneri sent to him as Minister should be available for scrutiny.

As for e-mails to public servants within the department, Stevie and Johnnie passed through that nifty accountability act in December, 2006 giving us clear direction on that.

The accounting officer system was put into place in Canada after considerable debate about whether the traditional model of ministerial and public service accountability was satisfactory.  The adoption of the accounting officer system could clarify accountability and improve the dialogue between Parliament and the professional public service by specifying that deputy ministers are indeed accountable for a few select areas, such as ensuring that an effective system of internal control is in place and signing the accounts of their organization.  It may make deputy ministers devote more attention to their management responsibilities, and may provide deputy ministers with an incentive to say no to inappropriate political interference in departmental administration.  It could do this by making them aware that their actions could potentially be the subject of parliamentary inquiry.

And public servants are accountable to their supervisors, so through the deputy minister, are responsible to Parliament as well.

So any e-mails Togneri sent to public servants within the department should be available to the committee as well.

Basic common sense tells us as well that parliamentary staff are responsible to their superior, and ultimately, the elected member they work for.  Because of that, their e-mails sent in course of their job are no longer their own property, but belong to the transaction or issue which is managed by the elected member.  The staffer doesn’t own the e-mails.  So, Baird can dance around all he wants trying to please his portly master, but if he keeps to that line, it isn’t Togneri who is in contempt by refusing, it is Paradis.

By Baird’s account, Togneri is not really responsible for whatever action was taken.  He was simply the post man, and the post man doesn’t own the mail he delivers nor can he grant that mail some vague diplomatic-type immunity.

So Baird, Harper, quit trying to interfere with the legitimate demand of the legitimate Information, Privacy and Ethics committee.  Because -  ‘Such interference would be unprecedented and abusive!’ 

(But hardly unprecedented coming from the Hamper party of Canada)

Harper can’t get rid of all public servants

He needs a few to kick around and blame shit on.

I’m not a big believer in coincidence when it comes to who is writing about what and when where politics are concerned.  Today, the Ottawa Citizen printed and article by print media’s very own Lowell Green, Kelly Egan. 

Egan valiantly takes it upon himself to inform us that “(we) have no idea how bad it is”… “(d)ealing with the federal government in this town (Ottawa).”  It is so bad, he says, that “(s)ome days, honestly, you just want to scream.”  He supports this claim with plenty of useful and reliable evidence in the form of anecdotes. 

One of the most vital functions for any government department is to be the organized gatekeeper for the flow of information. In this town, there are literally hundreds of people who do nothing but this one thing all day.  Why must it be such a battle?

Why?  Well, Egan, you dishonest Harper bag boy, left me tell you why.

An investigation by The Canadian Press revealed in June that MEPs are being used across the federal government to literally script words uttered by cabinet ministers and lowly backbenchers as well as screen media requests for interviews with public servants who have expert knowledge of government policy.
The tools — aimed at yielding a desired headline or soundbite from a public event — allow Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Office, through its bureaucratic arm at the Privy Council Office, to stay on message while controlling access to politicians and public servants. They've been used to plan the details of everything from answers for a journalism student seeking information about aid programming to a conference on helping save the polar bear.

Critics say MEPs undermine democracy and transparency because they allow the government to micromanage its message while blurring the time-honoured separation of non-partisan public servants and their political masters.

But you already knew this, didn’t you, Kelly?  This is not news, nor is it speculation.  MEPs control all public messages, and Ministers, as we have seen recently, can and do override departmental policies on information release.

For Pete's sake, the way they treat you, as though guarding information is Job One, not releasing it. What are they so afraid of? Where is their commitment to public discourse?

The commitment is there, Egan, but unfortunately harper has duct-taped it into silence.

What is evident -- and most dangerous -- is the brick wall that has been erected between the public service and the public via the media conduit.  Can you think of one prominent federal public servant who is regularly quoted in the nation's newspapers?   We have 140,000 PS workers in this town and one sealed lip. Amazing.

Egan does what dishonest, partisan neander-hacks do: he blends some truth with blatant omissions, producing an overall lie.

Yes, there is a brick wall, and yes, it is very, very dangerous, and yes, the media isn’t getting the message from the public service.  What Egan doesn’t bother saying, and what I maintain he deliberately misguides readers on, is that the brick wall has been erected by various elected governments, and the bulk of that wall was built by harper who introduced MEPs and is widely known by anyone who isn’t a complete moron as a message control freak of galactic proportions.

So why does Egan pick today to whine about public servants and how they just want to make him scream when it comes to obtaining information from them?  Well, Egan manages to use an anecdote about Stats Can as useful and reliable evidence of how badly public servants suck at communicating info to the public.  Yeah, Stats Can of the long form census.  That very same entity of misinformation gathered through threats and intimidation at 10 pm at night, on your very doorstep.  Bastards!

This bit of news made papers today as well:

Nationwide focus groups assembled by a federal pollster expressed "frustration" over the Harper government's lack of communication, leaving them in the dark about the Tory agenda.

Other articles (presumably not written by dishonest Harper bag boys) actually explain why the flow of info has stalled, linking much of it to Harper’s MEPs.  Even Doris admits to his party’s use of duct tape as a promotional tool:

Treasury Board President Stockwell Day said he'd consider removing the veritable gag on federal public servants that's been in place since the Conservatives introduced a potent messaging tool called the Message Event Proposal four years ago.

Dan Garner writes an entertaining piece with a serious message illustrating the absolute lack of respect the Harper government has for conveying truth. 

A slim majority of Conservative party members believe homosexuals should be arrested and imprisoned in federal dinner theatres, where they would perform The Sound of Music and other wholesome entertainment for children and seniors. Twenty per cent of the Conservative caucus dropped acid with the Grateful Dead. At least three cabinet ministers have outstanding arrest warrants in Nepal; one is a former member of the Manson family.

In the past, I would not have presented these claims as facts because they're not "true," in the narrow sense of an assertion supported by logic and evidence. That stuff mattered to me. I was a "member of the reality-based community," as a Bush administration official famously said about people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

But no more. "When we act," that official said, "we create our own reality." That's where I am now. Stephen Harper, the Conservative government, and me. Creating our own reality. And dropping acid with the Dead.

While Gardner’s article is primarily about the distortion of truth as Harper massages the message, it is yet another study of how real information is kept from the public while providing the illusion that valuable communication is occurring.

The astonishing rhetorical genius Doris affirms this (unintentionally, of course):


"When I say that our tax plan is regarded as the most competitive in the G7 countries and I ask people that, hardly any of them are aware," Day said.  "Those are called talking points and we believe they’re important…We send that stuff out all the time whether it’s talking points, speeches, whatever, we’re communicating it daily.”

No amount of letter writing to MPs will change harper’s demolition of information channels, because when the ideology that you are trying to force on an entire nation is so narrow that it only appeals only to a small percentage of the population (the 30% does not apply here because I am talking about the real, hardcore narrow ideology that would send most conservative supporters running en masse for protest sings), then truth and reality are not animals you want roaming free.  Gotta club those babies.  Lobotomize them.  Do some corrective surgery.

… Facts, evidence, logic. Irony. We're moved beyond that. I might even say we've evolved, but some of the guys in the purple van might not like that. So let's just say we've opened the doors of perception. We make reality, man.

And hacks like Egan are more than happy to type up Stevie’s latest versions.  So if we can’t get harper & co. to tell the truth because the truth is their enemy, and if we can’t get brown nosers like Egan to print the truth, we are left with one thing:  vote the mother-fuckers out of office.  Now.  Hammer away at the opposition parties, insist they grow a decent set of balls, vote the CONs out next possible chance, hold a damn election, and vote strategically.  (go see ACR)

Entropy : a function of a system's tendency towards spontaneous change

So that’s what harper’s ideology is based on.

Entropy and the census:

Back in mid-July the long form sucked because it generated bad data :
PMO spokesman Dimitri Soudas suggested the census generated bad data, noting in a widely circulated e-mail that “21,000 Canadians registered Jedi knight as a religion in the 2001 census.”

July 13, 2010, the long form sucked because it was intrusive and applied heavy-handed tactics:
"I think that government forcing people, threatening to put people in jail if they don't tell the government how many bathrooms they have is a bit heavy-handed, and a bit ridiculous frankly," (Baird) said in Ottawa.

Yesterday, August 5, 2010, the long form didn’t suck anymore, in fact was quite good:
“Yeah, there are groups that are upset. … Hey, listen, they had a good deal going,” Mr. Clement said Thursday following a meeting with fellow MPs in Ottawa.  “They got good, quality data and the government of Canada was the heavy.

August 5, 2010, the long form is still great, but once more uses heavy-handed tactics which Harperites want no part of:
Mr. Clement, however, said Ottawa no longer wants to act as data collection enforcer for statistics users. “It worked for them. Doesn't mean it worked for other Canadians.”

August 5, 2010, who the hell needs it anyway?:
“All these provincial governments and these social institutions and private businesses – we’ll get them some data that will be useful and reliable,” (Clement) said.

Great!  Useful and reliable.  From the HarperCONs.  Like this useful and reliable data upon which the decision has been made to spend 9.1 billion taxpayer dollars on unreported criminals:

“If you ask, is there unreported crime in Canada, there’s unreported crime, there’s no question about it,” Nicholson (said)…“I get anecdotal evidence and there are certainly some studies on that.”

Wow!  Anecdotal evidence!  Think of the cost savings! 

Finley can go hang out in the Market in Ottawa, and for the price of a pack of cigarettes and a little pocket change, she can gather reams of anecdotal evidence on the need for adult literacy programs, job training, transitional programs for people who lives have suddenly been shot to hell.

Leona Aglukkaq can join her (just need one Parl. Assistant handing out cigarettes that way) to get plenty of anecdotal evidence on the need for rehab centres, safe injection sites, half-way houses, temporary shelter.

Prentice can borrow a fishing rod from Scott Reid and go hang out with the natives on the Wabigoon River system catching fish no one can eat while they swap anecdotes. 

Oh, this could add up after all.  A better solution to collecting useful and reliable evidence at low cost with little to no intrusive methods would be to send a few MPs with their Parliamentary aids to hang out where the real Canadians go.  The place where common sense is found.  Tim Horton’s. 

Wait…still to expensive.  All those Parliamentary photographers…

Got it!  Create a new Ministry, the Ministry of Truth.  Put Max Bernier in charge.  Hell, if he can get useful and reliable info on the long form by receiving over 1,000 e-mails without even asking for input, just think – think what he can do if he’s on a mission!  And if anyone is worried about their personal anecdotal information getting into the hands of a hot biker chick with ties to the Mafia and Hell’s Angels, don’t worry.  Maxie doesn’t print out the e-mails.  He doesn’t even save them.  But he remembers each and every one.
Then Maxie can call whatever Minister may be interested, pass on the useful and reliable info, and the said Minister can make changes that affect all our lives.  Over the summer, of course.  When the House isn’t sitting.  Cheaper that way, and really, average Canadians just aren’t that interested in how their tax dollars are spent, or how their lives will be affected by sweeping changes.

If any of you need any further convincing, just think of the savings:  we could get rid of all researchers, planners, strategists, policy makers, and legal teams from all departments.  That would mean far less support/admin. Staff, and barely a handful of HR staff.  Communication staff?  Why pay those assholes!  Since PCO has to vet every piece of communication they produce for the public as it stands now,  just get PCO to make the products from the start.  In fact, we could get rid of PCO altogether and have the lot done by the PMO!!!!

This is very exciting.  I can’t wait to stop at Timmie’s on the way in tomorrow and gather useful and reliable information so I can put together a portfolio and apply for a job with the PMO.

Care to help a fellow blogger with a few anecdotes?

Nice ruling if it applied to anyone who gave a damn about democracy

"It is the view of the chair that accepting an unconditional authority of the executive to censor the information provided to Parliament would, in fact, jeopardize the very separation of powers that is purported to lie at the heart of our parliamentary system and the independence of its constituent parts," Milliken told the House.  "Furthermore, it risks diminishing the inherent privileges of the House and its members, which have been earned and must be safeguarded."


The odds that the CONs will abide by the ruling - they have two weeks, are about as good as Velacott marrying McVety and holding their reception at The Lookout Bar.

Milliken offered them a few outs.  Two weeks to plan a challenge to the ruling by appealing to the Supreme Court; two weeks to form another tail-dragging strategy so that they simply go through the motions of trying to comply while putting up endless barriers to any info release and hope, as they have, people will tire of the issue; trigger an election (I doubt they'll do this considering their weak position).

Nicholson's words give a big clue as to the tactic the CONs will use immediately:  "Our government will not compromise Canada's national security, nor will it jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform."

Just what they've been using so far:  hiding behind the troops, and refusing based on security concerns without allowing impartial eyes to decide if such concerns are valid.

Not a hollow victory for democracy, but the battle to defend it ain't over yet.

What Canadians want

While it’s nice to see the CONs have post their brief lead  - if it was real at all - I wish the drop had been attributed to something other than the Guergis-Jaffer story.  While it does have to be pursued because corruption, influence peddling, and political interference are serious issues, I would much rather Canadians had been reacting to the two other big stories: the government’s cover-up and manipulation of information, and the torture of detainees.

I doubt even the Guergis-Jaffer thing would be getting much attention if sex and drugs weren’t mentioned.

This does not reflect well on our media, nor on the public.

Murder, war crimes, contracting out torture linked to our military?  The government taking measures so outrageous to cover this up and prevent witnesses from talking that the approach has been called Kafkaesque?

There was a time I would have thought - no way!  Not in my Canada!

But it is happening, here in this country we have been so proud of because Canadians, so it goes, just don’t tolerate that crap.

Well, we are tolerating it, and it isn’t crap.  Through our apathy, through our weakness for flashy headlines screaming of sex and drugs, and the private and public lives of public figures, we fail to support the demand for serious, thorough, independent investigation into the allegations of murder, torture and cover-up.

Without the public’s pressure demanding the truth come out without interference, the government will keep hiding any wrongdoing on their part, and the abuses will continue.

If they are allowed to get away with it in this very serious, international issue, we are truly screwed.  The public will show government that it need not be held accountable, that the public does not have the right to be informed.

What follows is a snowball effect.  We get used to less and less info and become more apathetic.  Government becomes more confident that it can violate the will of the people by deceiving them and counting on that apathy, and it becomes more corrupt.  A handful of special interest groups with lots of money hold the real power because they are the only ones lobbying, and they push for legislation that favours them, while the rest of us are no more than cattle - low wage earners and mindless consumers.

If we start to get fed up, we’ll just be tossed another Guergis-Jaffer story to distract us, or we’ll be shown infomercials to stir up blind patriotism, or we’ll be told of how severe measures are necessary because the world is a scary place full of criminals and terrorists who are out to get us and destroy our democracy.

Meanwhile, our democracy is being destroyed by three things: the very government we elected to protect it, the powerful, wealthy self-interest groups pulling the government’s reins, and out our pathetic apathy.

Yes, let us demand answers to the Guergis-Jaffer thing, but only as it relates to wrongdoing that affects our country.  Any corruption needs to be addressed and stopped.  But we cannot pick and choose what we will take interest in based on its entertainment value.  Keep the government’s heels to the flame on accountability, openness, and the respect of all laws - international as well as domestic.

Canadians should care about whether or not our military and government is complicit in murder, torture, and cover-ups.  Isn’t that what we so proudly say we oppose?

Hey! Fellow Canadians!

This concerns all of you.

Federal officials assured the Red Cross in 2006 that Canada would take an active role in monitoring the fate of Afghan prisoners - but for critical months behind the scenes did little more than manage the political spin, secret memos show.

The records, examined on a confidential basis by The Canadian Press, show the Harper government placed a greater emphasis on drafting "key messages" to the public and preparing "approaches" for embarrassing disclosures than on dealing with the human rights of prisoners.

(...)No. 1 on the eight-point plan for officials was to "Prepare standard key messages (ie. importance of adhering to obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law regarding the treatment of detainees.)"

Point No. 8 in the plan was to "consider supplementing the existing arrangement" in such a way to include the "guarantee of access for Canadian authorities to individuals transferred by the (Canadian Forces)."
h/t to Impolitical for that story.

This speaks of a broad problem with this government, so even if you somehow convince yourself that sure, torture is bad, hmm-kay...but the detainee issue is different because it’s just anout them thar terr’ists who throw acid in the faces of little girl, drafting key messages to avoid embarrassment or accountability is always the priority of Steve & Co.

What if there was, say, a dangerous, deadly bacteria in a common food source?  Do you want to take the chance that this government might place spin above the health and safety of Canadians?  Could Harper go that far?...Oh...right -

The news agency reported that Ritz fretted about the political dangers of the crisis, and then quipped: "This is like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts." 

The handling of something as serious as torture and Canada violating the Geneva conventions shows what lengths this government will go to in order to protect the false image it constantly promotes.

A respected former diplomat was aghast that "developing the spin" would take priority over dealing with an issue as urgent as possible torture.  "This is one of those situations where - once again - presentation has taken the place of substance," said Louis Delvoie, Canada's former high commissioner to Pakistan.

And this applies to any situation, even those affecting those Canadians who don’t give a damn about what happens beyond our borders -

"It's a rather sad commentary on what is taking place. You (should) deal with the substance of an issue and then you develop the communications plan as a separate and subsequent item to explain how you're doing it and what you're doing."

A bonus bit on those precious troops Harper and Baird are so concerned about -

Errol Mendes, a human-rights law expert, said the paper trail demonstrates that the Harper government viewed the war as a political exercise, where image-branding trumped policy.  "Throughout all of this the military has been used as a political prop and that is dangerous," he said.  "Governments come and go but the military as an institution remains and the damage this kind of approach can leave is severe."

We are likely to see more of this message massaging and crafting, paid for by...us.

Taxpayers are being asked to pay an extra $1.7-million this fiscal year to help bolster Stephen Harper's communications support services – just as the Prime Minister's Office begins distributing government videos of Harper to the news media.  Supplementary estimates tabled last month by the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's bureaucratic back office, boosted internal operational spending by almost $7.3-million for 2009-10. That's on top of existing budgets.

Oh great!  More of this nonsense, but costlier.

In the last two weeks, the PCO started sending news organizations links to new videos in the same way the PMO has routinely distributed photos shot by Mr. Harper's official photographer.

Besides being a ridiculous expense to taxpayers (just so Steve can pretend to be a real PM), this push to produce his own media outlet over which he has complete control threatens impartial journalism:

The photos, and now the videos, have sparked a debate over media access and when the use of government-produced and approved images may be appropriate in an independent news media.

“It's not access,” said Chris Waddell, who holds the Carty chair in business and financial journalism at Ottawa's Carleton University.  “Access is an opportunity to ask questions and an opportunity to engage in independent work according to journalistic principles. What they're giving you is public relations.”

To which Mr. Message himself answers:

“The media can't have it both ways,” Mr. Soudas recently told CBC.  “They can't criticize us for not providing enough information, and then criticize us for providing too much information.”

Well, yes we can, Dimitri.  Yes we can.  The info you provide through PMO releases is stilted, incomplete, and allows no avenue for challenge or questioning. 

It gives the illusion that Canadians are being kept up-to-date on what the government is doing, what studies have uncovered, what goals and plans are, how our money is spent.  But it is only the illusion that Harper wants us to buy into.

It’s like relying solely on the testimony of a pathological liar when that same liar is the one on trial.

update:  The Imp tells us to just say no.