On Monday Harper's Politburo staged a nimble bit of Kabuki theatre, as my co-blogger dubbed it.
No longer content to exploit Canadian children and their families for PMSHithead's photo ops, the PMO rallied RCMP resources in support of an emergency debate on Vic Toews' testerical bill for Combatting Terrorism. Alison at Creekside has everything you need to know about the Harper government Con job in this regard: the background, the public histrionics, the tactics.
And now, this:
Internal e-mails obtained by CBC News show that RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has ordered all senior Mounties to get clearance from his office before committing to any meetings with MPs or senators.From here.
Specifically, they are to notify a liaison office that co-ordinates RCMP strategy with the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has instructed senior Mounties to notify his office before accepting meetings with MPs and senators, similar to the approval required for his own meetings by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews last year.
In an email dated March 22 from Paulson to more than 50 chief superintendents, assistant commissioners and deputy commissioners, the commissioner said that meetings or lunches with parliamentarians "can have unintended and/or negative consequences for the organization and the Government.
The development has opposition critics accusing the government of undermining the independence of the police. "There's a very large pattern in this government of trying to control information," said NDP MP Randall Garrison.
RCMP commissioner not 'muzzled,' Toews says.
"It's not appropriate for the government to reach into the police operation. It's a very, very fundamental part of what we must be assured exists so that the police aren't doing the work of the government, they're doing the work of the public."
Garrison, who is the NDP critic for public safety, said "these memos raise some very serious concerns about whether the government is interfering in the operations of the RCMP to try and assist in controlling their political message. So I think it's very serious."
Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell, critic for an RCMP reform bill, C-42, said he feared the "politicization of the police force."
In preparing this post, I reviewed news items about the RCMP covered by MacLeans.
First, beyond the ongoing, systemic, violent misogyny within the force and in the field, this "incident" struck me as quite symptomatic of the noxious, agonic macho culture of the RCMP.
The document says Const. Martin Simpson wired an SD-100 soft detonator inside the doll “with the assistance and planning” of fellow squad member Cpl. Nigel Blake while Hempston was away on Christmas holidays. The detonators, “classified as high explosives,” were seized when a film company tried to import them in 2003. RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau, speaking for B.C.’s E-Division headquarters, offered a markedly different account in an statement, saying an unnamed RCMP member had a “low energy” pyrotechnic squib detonate in his hand. “The member was transported to hospital for treatment with superficial injuries.”From here.
When Hempston returned from holidays, he noticed the doll on his desk had been tampered with and picked it up with both hands. It exploded when he turned it on. Among the severe injuries he sustained, according to the lawsuit: damage to his hands that required several surgeries, nerve damage and a loss of feeling in his fingers and thumb, carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, hearing loss requiring hearing aids, tinnitus in both ears, chronic post-traumatic stress, anxiety, nervous shock and “loss of faith in his colleagues.”
The supposed prank raises a number of troubling issues: the cavalier handling of explosives by the elite 14-member disposal unit; the decision not to charge the perpetrators, although an independent police investigation recommended criminal charges; the fact that Hempston continues to work in a tense environment with colleagues he is suing in a bomb unit that demands teamwork.
This is how a RCMP officer threatened and abused Ashley Smith.
Instead of investigating spousal abuse, which is a form of gendered terrorism when enforced by individual sociopathic males whose actions are implicitly sanctioned by authorities, the RCMP set up a sting operation to entrap the female victim.
This occured in the same province where the alleged group rape and cyber-harassment of Rehtaeh Parsons was desultorily investigated by the RCMP.
DJ! also posted about serious miscarriages of justice, at the hands of the RCMP.
So. Who will be carrying out and enforcing the provisions of S-7?
The RCMP. As Alison put it:
Let's suppose you know someone, perhaps your landlord or a colleague at work, that the government suspects may one day in the future commit an act of terrorism. You can be detained for up to 3 days without charge while being questioned. You don't get to hear, let alone challenge, any evidence given against you or your colleague, even if it's tortured out of someone you've never heard of in Syria, and you can be held without trial for a year if you don't co-operate.
Every one of us is as vulnerable and exposed as this man was, merely for contacting Harper's office to register his opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Who needs the Spanish Inquisition when Harper's Politburo, or "The Centre" has the RCMP to do its bidding?
