Stephen Harper and the Torture Cons

We have all read the horrifying stories about the CIA's torture campaign. The systematic brutality, the mechanical cruelty, the monstrous depravity.

And a lot of Americans are finally understanding how they got from 911 to Ferguson. 

When hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an empty Pennsylvania field in 2001 everyone knew that the United States was changed forever. We had no idea, though, that what we are told are our essential values would be surrendered. Now thirteen years on we are left with a legacy of wars, deceit, torture and a massive erosion of our basic liberties.

But I wonder how many Canadians understand how far down the road to torture and depravity Stephen Harper has taken this country.



From our doomed military mission in Afghanistan, and the days when he prorogued Parliament to prevent Richard Colvin from testifying about torture. Which Alison at Creeekside writes about here.

To a place where a troubled teenager like Ashley Smith could be held for 2,000 days in solitary confinement, which let's be clear IS torture...



Was treated and hooded like a prisoner from Guantanamo. Until she strangled herself while her guards watched and did nothing.

Only to have the Cons respond like this today. 

The federal government says it will not abolish indefinite solitary confinement for prisoners, rejecting one of the key recommendations made by an Ontario coroner's jury that examined the circumstances of the self-inflicted choking death of Ashley Smith.

Reject a recommendation from a coroners's jury, and insist that solitary confinement is just "administrative segregation."

Just like the CIA likes to call torture "enhanced interrogation techniques."

And then of course, there is appalling case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian child soldier who the Cons allowed the Americans torture even though he was badly wounded...



And who the bestial Harperites are still trying to punish. 

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear a federal government appeal related to Omar Khadr‘s youth status. The case deals with a lower court ruling which held that the former Guantanamo Bay inmate should be deemed to be serving a youth sentence.

Still trying to claim that he was not a child soldier in the face of all the evidence. Or the U.N. Protocol on the Treatment of Child Soldiers that we were the FIRST to sign. 

And even though Khadr has spent 12 years in jail, is not a threat to anyone, and is rapidly going BLIND. 

Former Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr is losing his eyesight and is no longer able to read or see clearly, according to his lawyer and educators who meet with him weekly in an Alberta prison.

“Initially he was having trouble reading because there was a light flashing and he could not focus,” Zinck said Wednesday, as she prepared to visit Khadr. “Now he can’t see through that cloudiness to be able to do any more than look at small pieces of text for a short period of time.”

Which makes the way he has been treated even more obscene.

And makes Stephen Harper look even more depraved...



And really what more can one say? Except how low have we fallen?

And Isabel Allende is right:

I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse. In our species, the alpha males define reality, and force the rest of the pack to accept that reality and follow the rules. The rules change all the time, but they always benefit them, and in this case, the trickle-down effect, which does not work in economics, works perfectly. Abuse trickles down from the top of the ladder to the bottom.

That's why he is doing it, and that's what is happening here.

And as I used to warn those who hated Omar because they hated his family.

The day he violated Omar's Khadr's rights and got away with it, was the day he thought he could get away with violating OURS.

And now that they have seen what he has done to this country with their own bleeding eyes, surely they must understand this:

We will not be safe. or clean, or Canada, until the day him and his grotesque Cons are driven from power.

And this depraved torture monster is sent to the place he rightfully belongs...



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