More of Harper's Warped View of Democracy.

According to a news item that quotes Minister of State for Francophonie Bernard Valcourt:

No reason to boycott the Francophone Summit, said Minister Valcourt to The Associated Press. According to him, the Congolese people could benefit from the presence of foreigners in its country.

Unless of course, these visitors are present to ensure that women and children violated during war and armed conflicts have their human and legal rights respected.

The Harper government trashed and scrapped the Canadian NGO Rights and Democracy, not before hounding its director Remy Beauregard to death and grinding its projects into the dust, including Monitoring the Work of International Criminal Bodies in Pursuing Crimes of Sexual Violence Committed During Armed Conflicts in Africa.

From here:

Even before war erupted in the Congo, women and girls were treated as second-class citizens. Both the law and social norms of the country define the woman's role as that of a person who is subordinate to men. Although women are often one of the main - if not the main - source of support within the family, the Congolese Family Code dictates that women must obey their husband, the recognized head of the household. The country's customs and practices also regard women and girls as subordinates.

In the past few years, brutality against civilians, and sexual violence in particular, have constituted an integral part of the war in the Congo. The various armed groups involved in acts of sexual violence against women and girls continue to be rewarded for their crimes by both their leaders and their powerful allies.

According to the activists, the situation of rape victims is exacerbated by the stigma attached to the violence they have suffered. In many cases, these women and children are ostracized and relegated to the margins of society.

The violence perpetrated against women comes in many forms, including assassination, massacre, rape, sexual slavery, kidnapping, unlawful detention, enrolment of young girls in the combatant forces, forced prostitution, etc. Women's organizations have estimated that, at the height of the war, 100 women were raped each month in the sole region of South Kivu, the epicentre of the armed conflict.

Needless to say, the victims of gender-based violence undergo extreme suffering as a result of the psychological damage and physical injuries inflicted upon them, in addition to having to deal with society's rejection of them. But how can we measure the extent of this problem? We can't, according to Lysette Banza, who points out that "most female victims of rape prefer to keep silent in order to avoid being cast out of society or singled out. This explains the existence of a dark figure in relation to the official statistics on women who have been raped."

In view of this, human rights organizations have undertaken to conduct studies aimed at assessing the scope of the problem and to propose possible avenue of solutions, while identifying those responsible.

Thus Stephen Harper will attend Le Sommet de la francophonie in the DRC, and will be treated lavishly will all the fawning and attendant largesse that one tinpot dictator can expect, in such a *democratic* environment.

Given PMSHithead's own triumphant and CONtemptuous defilement of democratic traditions and practices in Canada, it is only fitting.

Tweet source.

Self-Pitying Toews and victims of CON bullies

Rights and Democracy, the organization that Remy Beauregard gave his life to defend, has now been euthanized by the Harper government.

Meanwhile, the Vic Toews pity party goes on and on.

God's wrath is fickle and and unjust.

Remember when Vic Toews threw himself a pity party and nobody came?

Oh. Wait.

While no laws were broken, the Conservatives want to learn if anyone else was involved and if Carroll is being used as a scapegoat to protect key staffers. [...]

Toews also wants the committee to look into Liberal MP Justin Trudeau's role in the affair. He was one of the first to retweet the volleys to his followers.

"It's very clear Justin Trudeau is in vikileaks30 up to his neck," said Toews.

Opposition MPs say the Conservatives are hammering the vikileaks issue to change the channel on allegations of election fraud.

Pretty loose and cheap talk for a serial adulterer and sexual predator. CONtempt of Parliament - it's how the CPC rolls. Attack others for actions that they're guilty of advocating and practicing.

I hope Trudeau sues Toews for slander and defamation, though I suspect his generosity of spirit is greater that Vic's vile spleen.

The Thick and the Brain-Dead.

One would think that the odious little pedants and sycophants who were appointed to the board of Rights & Democracy by Stevie Spiteful might have learned their lesson.

But it doesn't seem to have registered with the organization's current president Gérard Latulippe, who can be heard in this Radio-Canada interview regurgitating the same manure that Aurel Braun spread last year even though the Deloitte and Touche forensic audit, thousands of of R&D dollars later, does not support their tawdry attempt to smear Remy Beauregard.

And so chialeux et rechignant, he is. You'd think that someone who just enjoyed an all-expenses-paid sojourn in Ottawa, on the tax-payers' dime would be less whiny.

Mind you, Latulippe and Braun's bivouac in luxurious accomodation near Parliament Hill was a set theatrical piece, a veritable Lobsters' Quadrille played to perfection. We predict the "scoundrels" who are attempting to run Rights and Democracy into the ground will never appear before the House of Commons' foreign affairs committee.

More about the "scoundrels", here.

Beleaguered by ReformaTories . . . and by Burglars

We've blogged about the beleaguered-by-ReformaTories human rights group Rights and Democracy before: here and here.

The peculiar story just got peculiarer.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that the group's Montreal offices were hit by burglars. A couple of lap-tops were stolen and the police are still investigating.

Hmmm. That's the second time today that the word 'Watergate' floated through my mind.

Earlier, I was reading JJ the Unrepentant's blog on the arrest of James O'Keefe. Who dat, you ask?

JJ quotes from the source:

A conservative activist who posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN and the son of a federal prosecutor were among four people arrested by the FBI and accused of trying to interfere with phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office.

Activist James O’Keefe, 25, was already in Landrieu’s New Orleans office Monday when Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel, both 24, showed up claiming to be telephone repairmen, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office said Tuesday. Letten says O’Keefe recorded the two with his cell phone.

In the comments, J.A. Baker draws our attention to his tweets on the matter.

One of them was 'Shallow Throat'. . .

the lie has become ... a pillar of the State (re:redux)

They LIE.
They lie they lie they lie THEY LIE!

Over at Canadian Cynic, C. C's ... and you don't fuck with Kady O'Malley illustrates how the ReformaTory foot soldiers have received their talking points and marching orders. They're all over the comments sections of online media, spewing the same lies over and over again like Attack Parrots™©.

They LIE.
They lie they lie they lie THEY LIE!

From Paul Wells' latest article about Rights & Democracy and the comments that follow from ReformaTory acolytes, we learn there's a hierarchy amongst the Attack Parrots™©: the MASSIVE prevaricators, the doublethinkers and the common liars.

They LIE.
They lie they lie they lie THEY LIE!


Update: And perhaps they also have "friends" who read obituaries and know when to break in during a funeral to steal the good stuff.

"In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State - Alexander Solzhenitsyn."

This bit from David Matas is deliciously ironic and perhaps unwittingly transparent:

"Human rights NGOs are reluctant to take money from governments, for fear that it might compromise their independence. Political NGOs are not as reluctant, and are often financed by sympathetic governments. GONGOs, government organized NGOs, have been a traditional feature of communist regimes, but they proliferate wherever repression is found. ..."

Is Matas admitting it's effectively what Harper and his bullies are putting in place, a Rights & Democracy GONGO that will further their dominionist imperative? The hounding to death of Remy Beauregard by a trio of ideology-driven party goons leaves no doubt as to Stevie's intent and his appetite for whatever means it takes to move Canada in the "right" direction.

ReformaTory Vitriol

One of the excellent uses people are making of the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group is posting links, old and new, to potent examples of the Harpocans' arrogrance, misuse of power, spitefulness, and disdain for Canadian institutions and values.

Here's one that combines all those ReformaTory features -- plus someone DIED.

The entire staff of a government-funded rights advocacy group is calling for the resignation of three Conservative appointees from the board of directors, including the chairman.

The extraordinary letter from the staff of Rights and Democracy – a non-partisan, two-decade old advocacy body – follows the death last week of president Remy Beauregard, who died of a heart attack following a vitriolic board meeting.

I don't know anything about Rights and Democracy or its president. But my sweetie has a heart condition and the people around him, family, friends, co-workers, know it. Of course, people do have heart attacks out of the blue, but most of them happen to people with known problems. If it were known that M. Beauregard had a heart condition, it's pretty disgusting that the people around him let a meeting with him get so out of control as to be described as 'vitriolic'. Because we know how well ReformaTories do vitriol. Like this guy:




On the brighter side, it looks like spines are sprouting up everywhere. Well, except for our absolutely useless opposition parties.

ADDED: I should have included a link to Rights and Democracy's site. It looks like they do good work.

MEA CULPA: I hadn't read Dr Dawg on this before I wrote. You should.