On March 6.12
It recently came to light that the Government of Canada has approved the use and dissemination of information that “may have been derived from the use of torture or mistreatment.” That was the directive from Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, to Canada’s spy agency, CSIS. It overturned the existing policy that CSIS was not to knowingly rely on information obtained by such repugnant (and illegal) means. Apparently, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper — precisely like the morally discredited former administration of George W. Bush south of the border, which it so closely resembles — has concluded that real or imagined expediency trumps not only the law of the land and binding international treaties (which outlaw torture), but also the core values upon which our nation is founded. A government that is prepared to rely on torture is hostile to the fundamental principles which bind us together. Such a government has betrayed its trust and forfeited its legitimacy to govern, opting instead to (in effect) wage war upon its own citizens.
Squalid Endings Make for Squalid Beginnings: The Unfortunate Murder of a Tyrant
Moammar Gadhafi was a ruthless tyrant who ruled Libya for 42 bloodstained years. The rise of overt opposition to his tyranny in 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, was certainly to be applauded. Canada did its bit, with the United States, Britain, France, and other allies, in belatedly securing Gadhafi’s downfall, even though we were quite prepared to do business with him at various times during his reign. The NATO members and other countries which engaged in last year’s massive aerial bombardment of Gadhafi’s forces (and in the surreptitious on-the-ground organizing and arming of ragtag opposition forces) were not honest enough to admit that our real objective was regime-change. Instead, we abused the terms of the limited mandate granted by the U.N. to protect non-combatants. Still, few would lament the demise of such an ugly regime. What we should regret, however, is the murderous end of its despotic head. Gadhafi opted to stay and fight, until he was finally cornered in the town of Sirte. Captured by his enemies, he was murdered by them in cold blood: He begged for his life, and they deliberately put some bullets in him to kill him.
Some might regard death by murder as a fitting end for a man whose regime perpetrated the self-same lawlessness for decades. But we do not agree. The only civilized response to criminality is justice — and that means apprehending the villain and according him a fair and open trial, ideally, in this case, at the International Court of Justice, rather than in situ. How can Libya hope for a better future when it starts its new chapter with more of the same bloody violence and murder that afflicted it for so long? And what has the legacy of that lawlessness been to date? According to Amnesty International, the same militias which ousted Gadhafi (with our all-important help) are now routinely torturing detainees suspected of being Gadhafi supporters. Evidence of torture and other abuse was found at ten of the eleven detention camps A.I. visited in the first two months of this year. The ramshackle provisional government we helped install controls neither the detention camps nor the armed brigades that run them. And, a few days ago, armed men desecrated an Allied war cemetery in Libya, smashing the gravestones of Canadian and other soldiers who died there fighting Axis forces in World War Two. It doesn’t get much more ‘squalid’ than that!
Kowtowing to China: Doing Servile Obeisance to Tyrants
Having inexcusably permitted (and abetted) the wholesale export of our manufacturing sector, and the thousands of jobs that went with it (a boondoggle perpetrated in the spurious name of ‘globalization’ that doubtless benefited corporate tycoons, even as it wrecked havoc and ruin upon ‘the 99%’), the political and business leaders of the United States and Canada now rush to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese regime. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was the latest to lead a pilgrimage, er, entourage, to do abject obeisance to the tyrants of the East, smiling in the best servile fashion and (figuratively) bowing in his cap-in-hand mission to drum-up trade and investment.
And, so it goes: China gets our jobs; they make all the shoddy consumer goods we buy; and, in return, they buy our raw resources. It never seems to dawn on our leaders to insist on our oil, lumber, minerals, and other natural resources being processed here. Instead, Canada ploddingly does what it has always done: It sells raw materials, and then buys them back — for a lot more money — in the form of processed goods.
Gone are the days of Harper’s public criticism of China’s lethal contempt for human rights. While he was shamelessly cozying-up to China’s anti-democratic regime in pursuit of trade, what were his hosts doing? Why, only gunning down two unarmed Tibetan protestors and vetoing (along with their fellow autocrats in Russia) a milquetoast resolution at the U.N. which dared to mildly admonish the murderous regime in Syria for making (very literal) war on its own people.
China is implacably hostile to the precepts of liberty, justice, and democracy. It is an enemy of human rights. That makes it our enemy; and its totalitarian regime should be anathema to our leaders. Instead, they curry its favor, because that’s where the money is these days. Befriending such a noxious regime and pretending that it is fit to be welcome in decent company among nations which recognize and vouchsafe basic human rights is to shamelessly substitute mercantile expediency for protection of the fundamental principles we in the West allegedly hold so dear.
The Banana Republic of the North?
The “robo-call” scandal that hit the news in Canada in recent days is a distressing sign that there is something rotten in the state of the true north strong and free. Nearly a year after the May 2, 2011 federal election, we are belatedly learning about what looks to be deliberate, orchestrated attempts to subvert the democratic process.
It turns out that more than 31,000 complaints have been lodged with Elections Canada about telephone calls which misdirected voters to bogus polling stations. Some calls were placed by live callers, others by the automated messages dubbed ‘robo-calls.’ Those doing the calling, whether in person or through a ‘robotic’ intermediary (i.e. an automated system programmed to make calls on someone’s behalf), fraudulently identified themselves as Elections Canada officials. It seems their objective was to disenfranchise as many voters as they could. And early indications suggest that opposition voters were the primary recipients of these fraudulent calls. The practice is alleged to have taken place in dozens of ridings across Canada — including some where the victors (usually Conservative, it seems) won by margins as low as 18 votes!
We are told that Elections Canada and the RCMP are investigating. The full force of Canada’s law enforcement resources needs to be brought to bear on this grievous affront to democracy. In government, as in legal proceedings, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. The current situation raises deeply troubling questions about criminal interference with the functioning of democracy in Canada. Until it is satisfactorily resolved, it also raises grave concerns about the legitimacy of the result of the 2011 federal election. No effort should be spared to get to the bottom of the alleged vote-tampering. Those responsible should face the full force of sanctions under both elections law and the criminal law — up to and including penitentiary sentences. In each riding in which a reasonable doubt can be made out about the legitimacy of the result as a consequence of criminal interference, said result should be nullified and a by-election called. And, should the problem prove to endemic across many ridings, the current government should resign and call a general election to clear the air. No self-respecting democracy can afford to live with nagging doubts about the legitimacy of its elected government, not, that is, unless it is to assume the ignominious mantle of the ‘Banana Republic of the North.’
© 2012 by John Arkelian.