I Always Thought Christie Blatchford Was an Idiot

(I changed the title, so that it says "Idiot" instead of my first choice "Moron" because that's what I call Blatchford's sister in stupidity, Rosie DiManno.)

I haven't read you for years and years and years Christie. You used to appear in the Toronto Sun, writing brain-dead criticisms of left-wing politicians and causes and nauseating praises for right-wing politicians, for cops, for the military, and on and on. I just didn't have much time for your ugly, unoriginal musings. I was aware that you somehow moved to the Globe & Mail, but by that point my reading of that newspaper had fallen off as I got angry at paying good money only to see at least half the editorial page taken up by Marcus Gee, Margaret Wente, and Jeffrey Simpson. So, now you're at the Globe. Whatever.

You're still the same dull plodder you always were. Yeah, "the troops" are doing an awesome job. Anyone who criticizes "the Mission" (tm.) is a traitor who hates "the troops." Only the troops are fighting, killing and dying, all to prop-up an unpopular, corrupt, brutal, criminal government. While you've been standing around with your fingers in your ears shouting:

"LA-LA-LA!!! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!! WE'RE 'WINNING' HERE IN AFGHANISTAN!!!! GREAT WORK BY THE CANADIAN FORCES!!!! LA-LA-LA!!! I'M NOT LISTENING!!!! WE'RE WINNING!!!!"

... the plain fact of the matter is that we've been losing. Let me repeat that for emphasis: We're LOSING. Canadian soldiers used to roam around the province of Kandahar. Now we're reduced to guarding the entrance-ways to Kandahar City.

The outgoing NATO commander for southern Afghanistan told The Associated Press that troops need to secure the exits and entrances to Kandahar city itself if the provincial capital is to be protected from infiltration and an eventual Taliban takeover.

"Will Kandahar fall? Every two or three weeks people tell me Kandahar will fall. I think the way forward is to secure the approaches to Kandahar city," said Dutch Maj. Gen. Marc C. De Kruif.

But the strength of the insurgents is only part of the problem. The other part is the local people's
mistrust of the U.S. and the Afghan government with which it is partnered. Without trust, the residents cannot be counted on to tip off authorities to the militants' presence.

Why are we LOSING? Even though you continue to stop up your ears and yell insults and inanities, I'm going to tell you Christie. It's the same reason why I was opposed to this war all along. Because bush II, Chretien, Martin, and now harper and Obama, simply don't care about the people of Afghanistan. This is a cynical imperialist game for the US-Americans and an opportunity for Canadian prime ministers to practice their spit-shining on those presidents' shoes. As such, neither we nor the US-Americans will do much for the Afghans outside of some token development projects that make for good public relations.

I like this title, so I'm gonna post it up now and finish it whenever. But the main point is my expanding upon this critique of Blatchford here.

Online Petition For Public Inquiry Into Torture

Pursuant to the goal of bringing accountability and the rule of law to Canada, and starting the process of getting the harpercons into the prison cells they're inevitably going to be thrown into, Alison at Creekside has a link to an online petition for a public inquiry into torture.

Please sign it and send it.

If Parliament Can't Do It, WE WILL

This prisoner torture in Afghanistan isn't the most important issue before us as a nation. It's damned serious, but I'd say Canada's ancient policy of cultural genocide against the First Nations is the biggest issue. But on this issue the harpercons have clearly crossed the line and violated international law. This whole Afghanistan "mission" is an abomination, and the depravity of Afghanistan's prison system is symptomatic of that. If we can STOP the harpercons on Afghanistan with this investigation that in itself makes it worthwhile that we hammer away on it.

There are no two-ways about it. Colvin's memos were enough of a reason for Canadian officials to have conducted a serious investigation into what we were doing. Record-keeping continued to be deliberately lackadaisical and prison transfers continued into 2007. When you hear that you might be complicit in war crimes, you DON'T allow the war crimes to continue while you craft a new policy. You STOP what you're doing.

But by committing war crimes, these detestable murderers and scum bags have placed themselves in a position whereby they will serve serious prison time. We can put these lying, stupid, anti-democratic, corporate-shilling, war-mongers AWAY. We can BREAK this political bowel movement and we can set a priceless precedent for other future prime ministers who might feel compelled to sign-on to another US imperialist project.

And if the Special Committee on Afghanistan can't do it. If they can't get the government to turn over the memos that clearly establishes their guilt, then it is up to us to ask the International Criminal Court to do the job. And we will hound these evil buffoons until their dying day for disgracing this country. And we will change the political culture in this country so that the twisted freaks defending torture on discussion boards, radio call-in shows, letters to the editor, and etc., are too ashamed to reveal their putrescence, or at least too frightened of the social consequences of cheerleading the rape of innocent bystanders in the prison hell-holes of a dictatorship.

The culture of impunity that the bush II regime enjoyed has borned extremely bitter fruit. It must not flower to such an extent here in Canada.

Rick Hillier and Second-Hand Information ...

Private Mann:"General Hillier, 'Amnesty International' has a scathing report about Afghan prison conditions."

Hillier: "Those detestable peacenicks and bleeding-hearts! Why should I care about such second-hand information!!"

Private Mann: "The PMO just called. Prime Minister Harper wants us confined to our bases until the election's over. Soldier deaths hurt him in the polls."

Hillier: "What's that?? Listen private, until I hear those words from Harper, from his own lips whispered into my pretty little ears, it's business as usual! I can't run this mission based on second-hand accounts of what the government wants!"

Private Mann: "Errr, yessir, general sir. Forward Base No. 12 reports an increased Taliban presence in their area. They're calling for helicopters and reinforcements. They believe an attack is imminent!"

Hillier: "Did you actually get that from them, or might'n't it have been THE TALIBAN trying to get me to move troops around according to where they're least likely to strike?!?!? How do you know that one of those detestable ragheads doesn't know English and can pose as a Canadian soldier over the phone? I'll need a first-hand request, via webcam at the very least before anything is done!!"

Private Mann: "Yessir. You're insane sir."

Am I missing something? Is Colvin saying that he sent warnings of prisoner abuse in 2006 and Hillier is saying that he didn't? Is it as simple as that? That the harpercons are refusing to release Colvin's reports and simply trying to say that Colvin doesn't know what he, himself wrote in them? Is the government (and the detestable Hillier) basically counting on their not having to release Colvin's reports to protect themselves?

Let this be a test of the legislative branch vs. the executive branch then. EVERY SINGLE OFFICIAL who obeys harper and refuses to give the committee its requested evidence should be jailed for being in contempt of Parliament. Empty out the Justice Department, the PCO, if need be. Every power that parliament has should be used to the limit to get to the bottom of this!!!

Building On What Pogge Said:

Here:

I'm sure the Conservatives would love to see this whole issue of torture turn into a partisan free-for-all that the general public will then tune out as being simply more of the same nonsense that they've come to expect from the overgrown children in Ottawa. You're now helping them and making it appear as though the NDP is only too happy to use human rights as a partisan issue.

I commented that I understood what Layton was trying to do, but that I agreed with pogge that it might not be good optics to make this entirely partisan.

If I ever remember not to drink some spare forty bucks, I'll rejoin the NDP.

That said, I think you've got a good point there pogge. I'm not sure that I agree with you 100% but i'm not sure that I 100% agree with Layton trying to position the NDP as the party with the least baggage on this defining issue.

So I would have kept my mouth shut about Ignatieff and kept the focus on harper if i were Layton.

I'm now of the opinion that it would be tactically best if Layton and the NDP would refrain from attacking the Libs where they're weak until they've managed to bring down stephen harper and his "conservative" idiots and assorted scum-bags.

The opposition should form a united front of outrage and focused vengeance upon the harpercons. The Liberals can do a great job mustering soaring heights of moral rhetoric against the evil that the harpercons have done, and THEN, when Canadians have been instructed on the enormity of these crimes, the NDP can turn on the Liberals. If they have to they should allow the Liberals to restrict the timeline of any investigation to exclude their own culpability. In whatever follows, the rhetoric of the Liberals can be turned against them on the campaign trail.

Why am I talking about such a clear-cut moral issue along lines of partisan opportunism? Because I believe it is a moral imperative to destroy both of these mainstream parties. Both these parties dragged Canada into this mess and down into the muck. The harpercons have proven themselves absolutely evil on so many fronts (Aboriginals, Muslim-Canadians, Global Warming, poverty, the tar-sands) and the Liberals debased us in Haiti, and most of 'em would have dragged us into Iraq, and, finally, Igantieff thinks the tar-sands project is awesome. The NDP is an uncertain instrument, but they're a step in the right direction away from all of that evil and insanity. If the NDP can only help destroy one of these parties (the worst one, the most right-wing one) then that is a worthy goal.

But I believe that destroying the harpercons requires Liberal help. A united opposition against a minority government, in the face of pretty obvious committment of war-crimes by said government, can and must bring the guilty individuals to justice. harper is scared, but he might not be as scared as he should be, as he deserves to be. Because he was at the head of a government that committed war-crimes and that must mean a prison sentence.

That's what this means. That's what this HAS to mean. We have signed-on to a horrible project. We are imposing a brutal, corrupt, puppet-government on a desperately poor people. We are bombing villages from the skies because some insurgents might be sheltering among them, killing dozens of innocent civilians at a time. Because of a lack of competent translators we are handing over innocent bystanders to be raped and tortued in Karzai's prisons. We are shitting all over the values that we are supposed to represent.

Every single defender of this atrocity, every single politician who is responsible for this nightmare, ALL OF THEM must accept their responsibility with humilty and penitence. And it is long past time that we should suffer their continued ravings.

Is stephen harper a Snivelling Coward?

Where was he while the intellectually unequipped Peter MacKay was casting apsersions at Richard Colvin's "third-hand information" from people MacKay knows are bad because he's read "third-hand information" about them?



There he was. Taking a cheap photo-op with the National Men's Lacrosse Team. As the Globe and Mail titled it: "Lacrosse Trumps Torture." What a fucking putz.

stephen found out in the days before the Governor-General stupidly granted him a prorogation that he's really not all that much of a tough-guy after all. He was so terrified of losing power, and so stressed out from the harsh words from his enraged caucus that he almost started tearing up while giving one of his stream-of-platitude speeches about the deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. (Usually he's able to drone his way through those events without incident, but that time he actually felt some emotion. Too bad it was all about him.)

So here, once again, we have damning evidence of stephen harper's leadership deficiencies. The man is a gutless, spineless, amoral control freak.

We also have evidence that harper and his thugs directly threatened the entire military and diplomatic staff in Afghanistan if they spoke out against torture. Only the number two man felt strong enough to resist this pressure and they've attacked him in numerous ways since then, up to not paying his legal bills.

On July 28, the federal justice department wrote to 28 high-ranking government and military officials with knowledge of the Afghan detainee file, warning that their testimony could damage their reputations and potentially put their colleagues' careers at risk.

The letter "strongly" recommended they all retain the justice department as their legal counsel.

Not surprisingly, most heeded the pointed advice -- after all, it was coming from their employer. In fact, only one person retained his own counsel and agreed to co-operate with the commission.

That was diplomatic whistleblower Richard Colvin, formerly acting ambassador in Afghanistan, and now deputy chief of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington.

But the Globe and Mail and numerous other organizations have uncovered details about how widespread torture, rape and murder are in Afghanistan at the hands of the security forces we're funding, training and arming. Torture happened, and harper and his crew knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, and the fact that they did nothing about it, means that they are going to go to jail.

There was one problem when senior ministers and officials of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government said they were unaware of reports that prisoners were being tortured in Afghan jails, including prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian soldiers.

Both international and Canadian law require officials in a position of "superior responsibility" to know or try to find out what is happening if they are told or suspect that a war crime or crime against humanity is being committed or about to be committed.

People who were there and who know stuff should look at that craven coward staring like a moron at that lacrosse shirt and they should realize that career-wise, he's a dead man walking. There will be no repurcussions for speaking out. The harpercons are finished.

And it's a good thing to destroy this party. True, they represent a large proportion of Canadians. Canadians of diminished mental capacity who have a right to their opinions, and their vote, but who, for the good of the country, should be kept far from the levers of power. Our bankrupt electoral system has put this power into their hands and we see the sickening results.

[You know, when all is said and done, the government put a lot of work on the subject of prisoner transfers. It's just that none of it was about upholding our legal obligations to respect human rights.]

Peter MacKay: Imperialist Stooge for a Rapist Government

Here's the ever-moronic Peter MacKay:

Under fire from all parties, MacKay dismissed testimony from Richard Colvin as second- and third-hand information from enemy sources.

“What we’re talking about here is not only hearsay, we’re talking about basing much of his evidence on what the Taliban have been specifically instructed to lie about if captured,” he said.

And further:

His statements – if I could finish, his statements that he made yesterday do not stand up to scrutiny. When pressed on the important issues of what was the source of his information, all he could tell us – and he was asked a number of times and given opportunities to clarify – all he could tell us was it came from second, sometimes thirdhand information. It came from reports that he had read. It came from a Taliban himself who, I note were not even Taliban that he could say were transferred from Canadian prisoners – or from Canadian Forces. So what we’re talking about here is not only hearsay, we’re talking about basing much of his evidence on what the Taliban have been specifically instructed to lie about if captured.

And once more for good measure:

MacKay painted Colvin as having been duped by the Taliban and said Canadians are being asked to accept the word of prisoners "who throw acid in the face of schoolgirls." MacKay also said he did not know about Colvin's allegations.

So he's a Taliban-dupe? Or worse?

Don't forget now; Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. It's a direct heir to the British Parliamentary System, the oldest democratic parliament in the world. And this plodding piece of shit is a front-rank cabinet minister in our government!

Using his own logic, we could take MacKay's account of the Taliban throwing acid in the faces of Afghan schoolgirls is also a third-hand account. If one wanted to be just as idiotic as MacKay and "Canada's Shittiest Government" we could ask MacKay if he saw those schoolgirls getting attacked. Did he speak to them afterwards? We could go on and on like that until we decided that the whole thing was made up by the Western media, which has been complicit in aiding and abetting an imperialist project to set up a puppet government in Afghanistan. This puppet government is so corrupt, brutal and unpopular that they need to make up atrocity stories to demonize the insurgency and justified a continued Western military presence.

If I were cut from the same filthy cloth that MacKay was torn from, that sort of blanket denial would be my method of operations. But I'm not. I believe there are some nasty, monstrous characters on the insurgents' side. But that there are some equally vile monsters on our side. (Including, it appears, members of our own government.)

The harpercons have deliberately refused to investigate any of the allegations of torture, child-rape, corruption, etc., against the Karzai/warlord regime. It appears they have steadfastly refused to be accountable for any of our prisoners in Afghanistan. If there's no paper-trail, there's no proof of any crime. And then they get to crow about how nothing is proven.

But too much has happened. There will be a public inquiry and whether the mental freaks slithering around on discussion boards* across the Canadian internet care about this or not, the fact of the matter is that these are allegations of war crimes. "Crimes," as in "criminal" as in "penalties." I am not the head of the official inquiry into allegations of prisoner abuse. I'm just an opinion on the internet. And it's my opinion that the harper government is guilty as hell of war crimes. And therefore, I believe that stephen harper and all the other scum-bags involved in this abomination are going to go to jail.

*It's really disgusting to read these vermin. They will issue their blanket denials and then in the same breath they'll admit that of course the Afghan government tortures people. They'll say though that we have no responsibility, we have no jurisdiction, we have no right, to tell them how to treat the prisoners we turn over to them.

What would these idiots say if you were to suggest restoring funding to the Palestinians under a Hamas government? What should we say if the Iranians rape and kill a Canadian photojournalist inside Iran? These people have no conception of human rights or the rule of law. They're still working on intellectual consistency.