{Under construction}
A call to my fellow Canadians:
Is the Canadian government, a minority government, rewriting documents which include the US as a nation that tortures?
Torture is torture.
We know that Michael Mukasey was approved as the new Attorney General of the United States having failed to answer serious, serious questions about waterboarding, in particular - and other forms of torture in general.
The Canadian government is apparently going to remove any designation from Canadian documents that the US tortures people.
Why I need the help and support of other Canadians
This is is beyond regrettable and it warrants public review in Canada. We would not even know - but the Canadian government mistakenly (!!) gave a copy of the list to Amnesty International and details have come out in Al Jazeera.
I'll be looking for a copy of the original Canadian government document listing the US as a nation that tortures and saving a copy of it. When the "changed version" appears, you can be sure that as landed Canadian, I'll be comparing it with the original. I would sincerely wish that the opposition parties in Canada do likewise. And I call on my fellow citizens to insist that they do, too. We must somehow find ourselves inside "the loop" and not be "innocent bystanders" for the rhetoric coming from High Places on Parliament Hill will be sure to try to distract us and then encourage us to getting back to "business as usual" as soon as they possibly can. They will spin, distort, hyperbole us about the necessity of this, and hope we we "won't notice" what they've been up to.
As this reaches the international crisis level, I have many MANY questions. Questions that are too troubling for me to ponder on my own. I am relying on the intellect, wit, conscience and concern of my fellow Canucks to help me, for we must come together and ask our government some very deep and troubling questions -- and we must ask that our opposition leaders join us in a chorus of dissent. We must form an alliance that brokers no deals with the Harper government and hold them accountable for making Canada once again a laughingstock amongst nations.
We must not let ourselves slide down the path to lack of conscience, following the "leadership" of the Harper government, even as we concern ourselves to formulate those questions which will allow us to understand how all this transpired.
What I will be asking my MP to ask on my behalf and other citizens
There are questions I'd like to see asked in Parliament on my own behalf, as well as questions I must raise on the behalf of Omar Khadr and Maher Arar. Khadr's lawyers said on Thursday that the document countered claims by the Canadian government that he was not being mistreated at the prison. Maher Arar's appeal case for damages wafts around in the US justice system. These citizens have been betrayed by Canada - and finding justice for Arar has not been easy. He still has a way to go before restitution is accomplished. Omar Khadr is still suffering in Guantanamo. The United States executive orders precisely state that they can pick up Canadian citizens in anywhere in the world and detain them as long as they like, without ever stating charges.
Are we to be afraid now that if it is in the US' interest (Global war against terror or NOT) we can expect that the Canadian government says so when we are tortured we are "not" tortured?
If we serve in the military are we to be terrified of being tortured?
As citizens we must take to heart what the Justice Advocate Generals have said repeatedly over the past five years - when a nation tortures it puts its soldier in grave risk.
A very deep hole is being dug for Canadian diplomats, for human rights activists and for the legal community. In fact, this latest fiasco is a slap in the face for all Canadian human rights activists, the attorneys who fight against war criminality and those who have care and concern for others, people outside the "government cliques".
which reulted in the resignation of career diplomats, intelligence professionals?
What will happen to our national security and the morale
of our diplomats and intelligence professionals if this
unilateral usurption of Canada's international oligation
is allowe to stand?
Is it fair for all people of conscience to be denied voice as the Harper
government continues on its merry way towards accommodating
US objectives while ignoring its treaty obligations?
I read today that the desk of the Minister of Public Safety's desk is literally swamped with letters complaining about the Canadian government not insisting that the US not impose the death penality on one ofCanada's citizens - a man who is said to suffer from a grave mental illness or incapacity!! Canada has long opposed the imposition of the death penalty on our citizens in foreign countries. It had a very clean record of standing up for human rights (except when applicable to our own indigneous people.)
Now we wonder -- will our Foreign Minister's desk be littered with complaints from those who are outraged that torture is being committed on our citizens!!
That we, concerned citizens must appeal to our government now to write letters of outrage over the Canadian position on torture is a relection of the lack of leadership under which we all now suffer!! Maxine Bernier is rapidly becoming one of the world's most hated persons and must our international standing go down on her orders? When will her staff have time to do its diplomatic work when dealing with the undoubtedly thousands upon thousands of letter that are going to fall on her desk - let alone duck and dodge protestors of her failed and inhumane policies. Our govvernment is falling to shreds.
Can Canada afford that?
Is Canada now the FIFTH BRANCH of United States government - an American Bush adminstered government which boasts (a) an executive branch with war criminals at the helm, (b) a US Congress that continually funds an illegal war and all the war criminality that has gone with it (it costs MONEY to build a vast archipelago of "black sites" and then to maintain the torture facilities which Congress has refused to stop funding), (c) a Department of Justice that routining ignore the United States Supreme Law of the Land and its Judge Advocate Generals and the Constitutional scholars and (d) a mysterious and cavernous FOURTH BRANCH composed of Dick Cheney, his Mosler saves and a staff of science fiction writers. As a true ROGUE NATION, the United States is looking for nations to endorse its this insanity and Canada must not now be complicit!!
To what do we all owe this ignominous privilege of having the United States -- which is now a rogue nation operating without conscience in its branches of government - determine the course of Canadian sovereinty??
Are we now victims of blackmail - the serfs of the DC beltway war criminals in charge of US policy??
I am calling on my representative to ask, publically, in Parliament:
How much money did the US military threaten to remove from Canadian-US cooperation? For surely this could be the only excuse that Harper is using for conspiring with the Bush Administration to commit war crimes. The only thing the Bush Administration answers to is money - is it to be the same in Canada?? Are we to let our future be bartered away to the United States as it continues its futile, but terrible war for empire?? Or are we presuming that the United States is correct and it owns the world and we are to do our part to help out our supposed ally?
How much funding for Canadian-support/cooperation at NORAD was "under review" unless the designation was removed?
How much have foreign governments come to control the operations of Canadian governmental institutions since Harper took POWER?
Deep and troubling questions exist as to Canada's relationship with Isreal are also involved in this announcement. Stockwell Day has a very long record (as does Stephen Harper) of creating crises for the Muslim community within Canada. Perhaps my MP can refresh the Prime Minister of Canada and his "PUBLIC Safety Minister" memories that on October 7, 2000, the Canadian government supported United Nations Security Council Resolution 1322, which called on Israel to use restraint in dealing with Palestinian protesters. According to Day, that resolution is "anti-Israeli" and the Canadian government should not have supported this resolution. This fall, Stockwell Day held meeting(s) with the Isreali government to have them
Was the US, then, promising to "not attack" Canada??
Was to it to not "assert" fishing/naval access to Canadian waters?
or does this have ato do with the long-standing fight about nuclear subs coming into Canada waters. To this hark back to it is part of Canada's "alliance duty" to permit allied ships to transit Canadian waters.
It looks like Canada correctly called the US what it was: A nation that does torture.
Truly, we must not fall into the trap of acquiesing to the United States deepest and most profund fears. The United States at this time has a fundamental problem: reciprocity. As it maneuvers its way thorough the world of nations it falls foul of international covenants. As America's closest geographic ally, it's alliance with Canada provides a source of security and has proven to be "not much to worry about".
Recall, the US has been entering Canadian water - our alliances have caused grave concern previously.
Is this price Canadians must pay now to keep the defense contractors content? That its citizens accept torture as a means of staying in business?? Is Canada's "business" that of maintaining an out of control war machine in which the only beneficiary the holders of defense stocks and shares while its citizens can be tortured on a whim by the Decider in Chief in Washington DC? Is that the BARGAIN that was made!! Who is this government working for anyway?? God forbid that one of their loved ones were picked up for a bounty, having false accusations made, kidnapped and shipped off to a black site and tortured!! Heaven forbid!! Would that raise voices in Parliament? Would the letters of disgust be flying??
Is torture okay unless it is being done to YOUWhat happens to professional Canadians in government who oppose torture - those who decide to stay with and obey the international rule of law? Do we let them go, do we let them lose their jobs for obeying treaties to which Canada has signed? This has happened in the United States already.
or to someone with very deep pockets
or is related to someone in the government?
Has Canada really sunk this low?
Is Canada relying on the "promises" made by United States?
in exchange for the "change in designation"
This is put our citizens at risk!! Is the price really worth it. From Mahar Arar and Omar Khadr we can already seen what not might happen, but what has happened to Canadian citizens under the "Global War on Terror"'s ghastly agenda.
Is the prime objective of the Canadian government now to avoid retaliatory moves by the United States or is it to merely explain away the move to change this designation? I call on my Parliamentary representative to challenge the new Canadian policy which asserts the supremacy of alliance with the United States and would ignore international law. I ask that she see that whatever the US promised to "not do or do" in exhange for this "change in designation" will not be ignored or explained away.
It is clear from my interpretation of international law that "Stated reasons for the changes/reviews" notwithstanding - the Canadian opposition must challenge them all and insistence on such law be deemed more important.
It is now the time for a public review to get to the real facts. Undoubtedly a 'review' will be called, but as citizens we must lead the effort to challenge those in Parliament. We must arrive at the "real facts" behind this change.
I encourage all Canadians of conscience do the following:
-Put pressure on the Parliament to examine all facts behind the original designation; and the basis for the "review"
- Any issues with the US NAVY in Canadian waters, fishing issues, or the North Pole energy access?
- To, during question/answer time by the Prime Minister efore Parliament, for the PM to be openly challenged for daring to backdown on facts
- Was the PM under any pressure?
- Why should the Candian people, who have seen history in WWII with Hitler's threats against Czechoslovakia, not be concerned that the US is still torturing people; but the "change" isn't in the US, but in Canada: "How dare you call us that".
The issue of torture is more than human rights, but whether Canada will be a sovereign nation. It's time the Canadians, outside US governement control, decide whether they would like to assert their independence, or assent to the abuse they supposedly said only the Americans would confront in 1776.
Canada was once an inspiring country, known of its independence.
The Canandian Parliament is not, as Congress has assented, simply an administrative office within the Oval office. it is the government of a separate, soverigh nation.
It's unfortunate the Canadian leadership has backed down from truth to lie with the dogs of tyranny.
Canadians have a reasonable basis to question their leadership, openly demand answers, and seek elections to replace these Canadian leaders.
Americans may have assented to their abusive govenment, but there is no reason for Canadians to reciprocate.
Canada to rewrite 'torture' manual
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/19569/51/
Bernier says document alleging U.S., Israel torture 'wrong'
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=e2ee0d27-a524-4332-8970-10c9ca86816c&k=48366
Canada removes U.S., Israel from torture watchlist
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=09a77d7c-1b1a-437d-a1de-5dd2984f693c&k=42732
Canada FM regrets 'torture list'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7198435.stm
Canada puts United States on torture list with Syria & Iran
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02b_1200631795
(Video of commentary on Keith Olbermann -
includes the commentary of US Navy JAG, Charles Swift and must be watched)
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