Contempt is a
Two-Way Street

As Spiteful Stevie Harper roams Canada in his bubble, limiting questions from the media and demanding proof of PsuedoCon Loyalty to even attend an election rally, everyone, especially the muzzled and thoroughly tamed excuse for a media, seems to forget to even mention that the actual reason we are going to the polls on May 2 is CONTEMPT. The contempt of Stephen Harper for Parliament and the people of Canada, not families, not fiscal management or mismanagement or evil (WARNING: some may find the following word offensive) coalitions.

The last time our hero almost had to face a vote of contempt in the House of Parliament, he prorogued Parliament, for the second time in his assumed presidency. The last time, before Christmas of 2009, on the verge of being found in contempt for refusing to produce documents related to Afghan detainees and the possibility that they were being (knowingly) turned over to torture (a war crime - currently creating problems in the UK, Australia and the US as well as Stevie's Canada). Here we are over a year later, and STILL, the Harper Government (you know the one that used to be the Government of Canada) hasn't produced a SINGLE document.

Of course with the assistance of his handmaidens in the print and broadcast media he has successfully fostered the meme that this is merely partisan opportunistic use of procedural minutae. That is really rich coming from the most controlling P.M. in the history of Canada, if not the commonwealth, whose PMO distributed frickin' manuals to its MP's and staff with instructions about how to disrupt committees and in general cripple Parliament from accomplishing anything that isn't part of his neanderthal agenda.

Well now this unseemly delay just might come back to bite him (and maybe the Liberals as well) in the butt as it is possible that a major document dump of the aforesaid Afghan detainee docs could occur right in the middle of the election. Perhaps our man Steve already has staff researching how to prorogue, declare and emergency or otherwise call a halt to an election that according to our man at 24 Sussex no one (especially him - who had been running attack ads all year) wanted or felt was necessary.

According to the Goober and Maul(the truth):

The first batch of papers related to the handling of Afghan detainees is expected to be released within two weeks – a mid-election document dump that could damage both Liberals and Conservatives, or absolve them of wrongdoing in a matter that once dominated parliamentary debate.

Bloc Québecois Leader Gilles Duceppe insists the documents must be made public by April 15 and says his MPs will withdraw from the closed-door Commons committee that has been vetting them if his demands are not met..../snip

Federal politicians are not certain, however, of a mechanism that could be used to make the documents public when Parliament is not sitting and all of the parties are engaged in election campaigns. Some have suggested the material would be given to party leaders for release. Others say the panel could make the documents public.

The three-party committee was struck last May after months of testy debate in the Commons that ended only when the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper was threatened with being declared in contempt of Parliament.

The New Democrats did not agree to take part in the committee which was struck as a compromise last May after Peter Milliken ruled that MPs had an unfettered right to see all government documents, regardless of potential security implications.

It isn't clear as intimated above whether the committee even exists now with Parliament dissolved or if anything can be released, or if so how it would be accomplished with Parliament dissolved (another reason Stevie wanted to dissolve Parliament perhaps?) but the Toronto Star also has some views on this issue.

Tortured Pretzel Logic!

Since Stevie avoided being found in contempt over a year ago by proroguing the House and then not really releasing anything for over a year, and avoided it again by calling an election now, with yet another contempt charge (the famous Oda "not") in the hopper my readers may wonder why I'm on this today, after-all Stevie's contempt for Parliament and Canadians and Canada is pretty much normal everyday stuff. However the news this morning made me double-check my calendar to make sure it wasn't still April Fool's Day. Stevie Spiteful has once again gone to court, in the midst of the campaign, to attempt in yet another, extremely convoluted reasoning(?) based, attempt to hide information from members of Parliament and Canadians. Now our excuse for a P.M. is concerned for the frickin' PRIVACY of torture victims. I heard this on the CBC before daylight this morning - but the following is from the CTV website (bolding mine):

Date: Sunday Apr. 3, 2011 8:53 PM ET

OTTAWA — The Conservative government quietly went to Federal Court last week hoping to impose limits on what a military watchdog can say in its final report into torture allegations involving Afghan prisoners.

The Military Police Complaints Commission is currently reviewing evidence and writing its report after hearings into allegations that army cops turned a blind eye to suspected abuse in Afghan jails.

Federal lawyers successfully argued in 2009 that the commission's investigation of complaints should be limited to what military police knew -- or should have known -- about possible torture of prisoners by Afghan jailers.

The Harper government went even further last week in two days of hearings and challenged the definition of what military cops could have known.

Justice Department lawyers also accused the commission of stepping "out of its narrow jurisdiction" and investigating Ottawa's policy of handing over prisoners to Afghan authorities -- something it was strictly forbidden from doing.

The government wants to exclude the testimony of diplomats and civilians who did not work for the Defence Department. It lawyers also want any documents belonging to those officials, including reports that warned of torture or documented the abuse, excluded from the commissions findings.

"They're asking the Federal Court to put a muzzle on the commission," said Paul Champ, the lawyer for both human rights groups....../snip

Court records show federal lawyers built their case to strike civilian testimony around the argument diplomats violated the privacy of potential torture victims by passing along the information.

"So that means the information couldn't be shared with military police who might investigate their torture," Champ said. "So how could they have investigated if they were prohibited from knowing anything? It's absurd."

New Democrat foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said the Defence Department has for years claimed that it was relying on diplomats to warn them about possible torture cases.

""What is the point of these reports in foreign affairs if they were not passed on to the Defence Department?," Dewar said Sunday.

He said it speaks to the reason opposition parties defeated the government in a contempt of Parliament motion on March 25.

"Conservatives can't run from accountability by going to court," he said.

"The buck stops with the ministers."....../snip

The government's refusal to hand over documents to both the commission and a House of Commons committee sparked a crisis in December 2009 where the Liberals brought in a contempt motion that threatened to topple the Conservatives. The prime minister avoided it by shutting down Parliament during the Christmas Holidays that year.

The government eventually agreed to let an independent experts and a committee of MPs -- excluding the NDP -- to review what documents could be released. A year after the agreement, the committee has yet to release a single scrap of paper, although Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe has given them until April 15.

Now I know whose privacy (or a more appropriate word would be SECRECY) Stephen Harper is worried about and it isn't that of any unfortunate victims of torture. I'm certain that is at the top of any torture victim's concerns. I can hardly believe that anyone, even Stephen Harper and his gang of goons could torture the very idea of logic to that extent and even then find EVEN lawyers who could go along with such nonsense.

Best case scenario, the docs get dumped and prove that both P.M. Martin and P.M. Harper implicitly or even complicitly looked the other way from Canadian involvement, while not direct, in war crimes. Then I can only hope that Canadians actually care, and haven't been thoroughly schooled in the politics of hate and division quite yet and we wake up on May 3 to a majority New Democrat government in Ottawa.