The Great Whitewashed North
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The conservative government of Canada have tried to use every trick in the book to cover up their knowingly handing over Afghan prisoners to be tortured. Their tactics have included outright denial, stall tactics, smearing the messenger, 'pro-roguing' (postponing parliament for a certain amount of time so as to draw away attention from the scandal) and finally when required to show the papers about the torture, the government simply showed up with pages of blanked out text. Their claimed reason for this is that, "to show the public the contents of the text would be to pose a threat to national security."
Sorry conservatives the country just doesn't buy that covering up torture is in the best interests of national security. Your government is a disgrace to our nation. Your frantic attempts to cover up, what even you realise now was a major error/crime, and which makes you nauseous/unable to sleep at night, is simply too transparent. You may have managed to get just over a third of the voting population to vote for you, which you ludicrously called a mandate, but as they say you can't fool all the people all the time. The speaker is now demanding by law that you turn over the uncensored information on torture. There is nowhere left for the Harper government to run, but to face the cruel and painful facts about its complicity in torture.
Recently I saw a great documentary about another epic disgrace to Canada, which took place under the previous Conservative government under Brian Mulroney. The documentary was called Kanehsatakeh 270 Years of Resistance. I can't remember being more ashamed of Canada. The Canadian military bayonetted a 14 year old Mohawk girl who was leaving a siege and protecting a 4 year old. The Mohawks and other indigenous peoples were defending the burial graves of their ancestors from being turned into a giant golf course and that's just one of the horrors comitted on Canadian citizens defending their homeland shown in the film. The finale of the film shows one of the most shameful events in Canadian history with Canadian soldiers beating the living daylights out of the natives (men, women and children) who were leaving peacefully from being under siege for 78 days by the Canadian military, complete with heavily armored vehicals, barbed wire and helicopters. The military's orders from their MP in the final stage of the siege was that if they move it was 'shoot to kill.'
Every Canadian should watch this documentary and do some deep soul searching. This is Canada's Kent State. Every part of the Canadian mythology of a peaceloving, free and democratic country is annhilated by the film's footage of the events that took place.
The documentary can be watched online for free:
