test blog 5

James Travers, Toronto Star : It will be twelve months ago Friday that the Commons passed a motion demanding the government release documents revealing what ministers and generals knew about Afghanistan prisoner abuse. Since then, an ugly fight that included the padlocking of Parliament and a celebrated ruling by Speaker Peter Milliken fizzled into a hapless skirmish, leaving Canadians none the wiser. For the Prime Minister, the triumph is now as complete as it was once improbable. Memory struggles for a better example of a minority leader so successfully beating the odds in sweeping aside public interest to escape a crisis. Harper’s position last December was precarious. Diplomat Richard Colvin’s compelling testimony and Chief of Defense Staff Walt Natynczyk’s sudden reversal had blown gaping holes in the always suspect, never sustainable argument that official Ottawa was alone in never hearing a discouraging word about mistreatment and torture. Worse, Conservatives were caught in a ...

Further to my recent post, "thoughts on rape charges against julian assange" , please read this excellent letter by Katrin Axelsson, of Women Against Rape , published in The Guardian . Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations (Report, 8 December). Women in Sweden don't fare better than we do in Britain when it comes to rape. Though Sweden has the highest per capita number of reported rapes in Europe and these have quadrupled in the last 20 years, conviction rates have decreased. On 23 April 2010 Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs-Posten that "up to 90% of all reported rapes never get to court. In 2006 six people were convicted of rape though almost 4,000 people were reported". They endorsed Amnesty International's call for an independent inquiry to examine the rape cases that had ...

I've just learned that the company that hosts my domain - wmtc.ca - is involved with WikiLeaks. It sounds like they're struggling to do the right thing in an extremely challenging situation. I received this email, which is also available on their blog. It is not very often we send out an all-member email blast, so when we do, it's usually pretty important. First and foremost, everything is ok. Please read the information that follows carefully but understand that we would never do anything that we thought put our members at risk. The Basic Background: On Friday, Dec 6th, easyDNS was mistakenly identified in various online channels as the DNS provider who revoked DNS Services for the controversial website Wikileaks, and a large internet backlash ensued against us. In fact, the Wikileaks DNS provider was a free DNS provider in New Hampshire called "EveryDNS.net". At some point this was mistakenly reported as "easyDNS", and it gathered momentum from there. ...

From Avaaz: The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free press advocates everywhere. Legal experts say WikiLeaks has likely broken no laws. Yet top US politicians have called it a terrorist group and commentators have urged assassination of its staff. The organization has come under massive government and corporate attack, but WikiLeaks is only publishing information provided by a whistleblower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel etc) to carefully vet the information it publishes. The massive extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week! WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it's partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New Yor...

It need not be said - but I will say it anyway - that I stand in solidarity with victims of rape and sexual assault, everywhere, always. But somehow, it must also be said that not all accusations of rape are valid and true. Historically, women who reported rape were easily dismissed, or rape went largely unreported, because the victim and assailant knew each other, or had had consensual sex on other occasions, or the victim was sexually active, or any number of dangerous myths used to control women's behaviour. This has changed - although not entirely - in North America, because of the influence of feminist activism, but is still the case in many parts of the world. Also historically, rape has been used as a weapon against powerless men. In the US South, African-American men were routinely accused of rape before they were lynched and murdered. These accused men had not adequately displayed their submissive status, whether intentionally, as an act of resistance, or in the imaginatio...

I met with the police again yesterday, and was so dissatisfied that I chose the third option for the complaint: I escalated it to an investigation. I don't think what happened to me warrants an investigation, but no other option was acceptable to me. Background: Part I: What happened . Part II: My complaint is "withdrawn". Part III: The OIPRD calls me . The day after I received the call from the OIPRD, the complaint coordinator - the female detective who misinformed me - called. She was shocked - shocked! - to hear that I was withdrawing my withdrawal. In all her years in her position, this was the first time such a thing had ever happened. I told her if that's true, perhaps it's because most complainants don't discover the truth. I related to her what I was told: that a "withdrawn" complaint is indeed withdrawn, and never intersects with the officer's performance evaluations or personnel file in any way. I told her I believe she intentionally...

Imagine how bad, how blatant, how incontrovertible, the evidence must be: Rosie DiManno agrees with us. Sorry chief — truly I am — but sorry just isn’t good enough. A man of integrity, which Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is, would at least offer to resign. And a police services board that has the authority to hire and fire this city’s top cop — no one else can do that — should think seriously about terminating Blair’s renewed contract. Some professionals, because of the power they wield and all the moral heft they carry in our society, don’t have the luxury of being so profoundly wrong or misguided. It is not simply about taking the blame for the misdeeds of others — officers who answer ultimately to their chief through the chain of command — because the buck stops in that brass-and-braid invested office. It’s about acknowledging one’s own misjudgments, statements and actions (or inactions) that have brought law enforcement into disrepute, from the top down. Blair is neither a privat...