harper Broke the Law: Punish him!

Bradley Manning found evidence of war crimes. He found evidence that his country was engaged in criminal activity all over the world including mass murder. He courageously exposed these crimes to the world. In response, the Harvard Constitutional scholar, President Barack Obama, as Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, presided over Manning's arrest and subsequent solitary confinement, systematic humiliation and mental torture.

Tim DeChristopher noticed that the bush II regime was violating numerous regulatory requirements with a last-minute auction of drilling rights on federal lands at the end of its second term. He went to the public auction to protest but was asked by people inside if he intended to be a bidder. He decided to disrupt this irregular auction by bidding for these lands (where there should have been public consultation before granting any drilling rights) and taking them off market. DeChristopher, like many sane people, believes that human activity is causing global warming, which will have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity and all life on Earth. DeChristopher was arrested for disrupting the auction and was rail-roaded into a two-year sentence. In an email to a lawyer DeChristopher said that since one of the donors to his legal defence team had ties to the oil and gas industry that he might "threaten" to return their donation unless they cut those ties.

In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave a bit of surveillance software caught the word "threat" and this was reported to the head of the prison who reported it to Washington D.C. where an anonymous Congressman ordered that DeChristopher be placed in solitary confinement. In the Land of the Free, prisoners are not allowed to engage in political organization in the outside world.

It can't happen here? It already has! Don't you remember Alex Hundert? He was one of the organizers of the protest against austerity and imperialism and ecocide and the rest of the vast array of crimes of the capitalist world system which was meeting in the guise of the G20 in Toronto in 2008. What we do know is that persons (still unknown) broke some store windows and burned a couple of police cars that the police left their for just such a purpose. ("Why would we do such a thing? Those cars are expensive!" is a paraphrase of Toronto Police Service Chief Bill Blair, whose organization had received part of the over $1 BILLION in spending on security that weekend.)

[You heard that right. The government spent over $1 Billion in 2008 for security at the G20. What's the worst that tends to happen when violence erupts at a political protest in Canada? Some windows get broken. What happened after they spent over $1 Billion to prevent "violence" at the Toronto G20? Some windows got broken AND a couple of police cars got set on fire. Talk about an efficient use of tax-payers' dollars!]

We don't know if Hundert had anything to do with the Black Bloq window-smashers. None of the other organizers arrested before and during and after the G20 were every convicted of any property damage. Let's remember that: However much you might be disturbed at the sight of people smashing windows, the crime is "vandalism." Not murder. Not ecocide. Not war crimes. Not billion dollar corruption schemes. Vandalism. Hundert was arrested and released on bail. Part of the bail conditions were that Hundert not participate in a political demonstration. During his bail period Hundert attended a panel discussion. Twisted lawyers and judges were able to say that a panel discussion was a demonstration and Hundert was re-arrested. His freedom was taken away from him. He was given newer, stricter bail conditions.

1: non-association with individuals such as Harsha Walia and Dan Keller and groups such as AW@L and No One Is Illegal; 2: no planning and or participating/planning public meetings or marches and 3: no expressing political views in public, including in the media.

It can't happen here? It did! Hundert at first attempted to refuse these conditions but was informed by some fascist piece-of-shit Security Director at the Toronto East Detention Centre that should he opt prison instead of the full surrender of his political rights, he would be in indefinite solitary confinement, perhaps up until his actual trial.

Things have debased and degraded for so long here that we all might have forgotten that this is not the way free societies are supposed to operate. This is not the way dissidents are supposed to be treated.

Meanwhile, what happens to the REAL criminals? What happened to all the war criminals in the bush II regime? They're all running around free, selling books about their stupid blundering and mass-murder. None of the Wall Street financial fraudsters have been charged with any crime. Their disgusting criminal behaviour of using phony documents to evict people (even those who were making their payments) is being excused with a trifling fine.

Barack Obama, who lied his way into office (Okay! He would have run anyway since his opponents were two complete shit-heads.) is still on the loose, armed and dangerous, with his Predator drones targeting civilians while he pals around with those aforementioned Wall Street criminals.

We have stephen harper wandering around free having successfully suppressed any real investigations into his war crime in Afghanistan. We have Tony Clement in charge of all government spending having engaged in illegal pork-barrelling, cynically using funds marked for border security on things like gazebos and chandelier cleaning in his own riding. We have Christian Paradis, unpunished for having given privileged access to lobbyists. We have Bruce Carson using government connections to extort First Nations into buying his company's water filtration system.

Our national police force can kill an unarmed man in public and be viewed doing it. They can lie about it. And they can get away with it.

Over thirty women were killed by a serial murderer in Vancouver British Columbia and the police can get away with a bullshit inquiry after having demonstrated massive incompetence or worse.

The thing is, these criminal psychopaths want to rob us all blind. They want to slash our wages, or throw us out of work. They want to poison our environment. They want to steal our money in crooked financial schemes. They want to take away our right to health care and then rip us off with private insurance for profit. We know that they want to do these things because they're already doing these things.

And they have been successfully criminalizing our trying to protest against it.

But stephen harper has himself broken the law. Those "dirty tricks" in the 2011 Federal Election were also crimes. And for every crime the penalty is $5,000 and/or five years in prison. Everyone knows that these calls, sent by call centres employed by the Conservative Party of Canada (and which had signed exclusivity contracts with the Conservative Party of Canada), are the fault of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Everyone knows that the Conservative Party of Canada is guilty of thousands of instances of violating our federal election laws. The question is - is the fix in? Is the Elections Canada investigation a cover-up? Are the Conservatives going to receive some token fine and get to say they genuinely have a different idea about what the laws are?

It's entirely possible that the harpercons wouldn't have received their majority without their election fraud. It's a plain fact that because of this large-scale assault on the integrity of our electoral process that we honestly don't know if we have a legitimate government. That is a disgrace. That is a tragedy.

If we don't take this opportunity, then we have shown our own contempt for even the basics of democracy. We have opened ourselves up for more of the same. And I'll tell you this: I have no intention of accepting this. Readers, do what you can ... do what I am doing ... organize real people in your communities to do something real about this scandal. Demand that Elections Canada enforce the law. Demand a Royal Commission. Protest. Occupy. Teach the harpercons and their scum/shit-head followers that this bullshit will not be accepted in Canada.

Hell, just check out this fascist behaviour that Glenn Greenwald posted the very same day that I started this post:

This time, however, she was told by multiple CBP agents that she was prohibited from taking notes on the ground that her pen could be used as a weapon. After she advised them that she was a journalist and that her lawyer had advised her to keep notes of her interrogations, one of them, CBP agent Wassum, threatened to handcuff her if she did not immediately stop taking notes. A CBP Deputy Chief (Lopez) also told her she was barred from taking notes, and then accused her of “refusing to cooperate with an investigation” if she continued to refuse to answer their questions (he later clarified that there was no “investigation” per se, but only a “questioning”). Requests for comment from the CBP were not returned as of the time of publication.

When they have you in their clutches there is very little that you can do and very much that they can do to you. There are laws in the democracies preventing abuse but those laws are only worth what the people and the courts can bring to enforce compliance.

harper has to go down for this, his latest spitting on the democratic process and the rule of law. he has to be removed or we have resigned any right to call ourselves free people. Get out there! Organize. Agitate! And, GENUINELY Resist.