This is what CONs do

From serial sexual predator Vic Toews' office:

The federal public safety minister's office tried to scale back an apology the RCMP delivered earlier this year to the families of serial killer Robert Pickton's victims, Postmedia News has learned.

A senior adviser to the RCMP commissioner later wrote that the government's proposed revisions — which ended up not being adopted — drained the apology of its "purpose" and "impact," according to internal emails obtained under access-to-information laws. [...]

On Jan. 27, just days before RCMP investigators were scheduled to start testifying at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry in Vancouver, British Columbia's top Mountie, then-assisstant commissioner Craig Callens, released a statement to media regarding the force's handing of the Pickton investigation.

"I believe that, with the benefit of hindsight, and when measured against today's investigative standards and practices, the RCMP could have done more," the statement read in part.

"On behalf of the RCMP, I would like to express to the families of the victims how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones, and I apologize that the RCMP did not do more."

Pickton, a pig farmer, was arrested in 2002 and eventually convicted of six counts of second-degree murder, though the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C. He once told an undercover officer that he killed 49.

Email records show that shortly before the RCMP statement was issued, Julie Carmichael, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, wrote to Daniel Lavoie, the RCMP's executive director of public affairs in Ottawa, requesting changes to the text.

"Daniel — please find attached the revised product," she wrote. The next line was underlined for emphasis: "Please ensure the statement issued is reflective of these changes."

The revised statement did not include any acknowledgement that the RCMP "could have done more" in the Pickton investigation and the apology was limited to saying "how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones."

Is the Conservative Party of Canada accountable? No.

But it's clearly abject, callous, venal and odious.

Too little, too f**king late!

This is not a sincere apology and only slightly, a recognition of responsibility. It smacks of a CYA attempt by RCMP lawyers to head off litigation as damning details keep tumbling out, in spite of officials' attempts to do damage control.

The RCMP issued a public apology Friday to the families of the women murdered by Robert “Willie” Pickton, admitting the “RCMP did not do more” in the investigation before he was charged.

The prepared formal apology came after days of testimony at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, in which the way that the RCMP and Vancouver police handled the investigation into the murders of six women Pickton was convicted for -- as well as the disappearances many other women -- has been challenged.

According to this revelation, the RCMP tipped Pickton off; they let him know that he was a target of their investigation - a "known subject".

Incompetence and malfeasance, that's what it appears to me. Isn't it obvious - particularly in light of allegations that women working for the organization suffered systemic discrimination and ongoing, unofficially sanctioned, sexual harassment at the hands of fellow male RCMP officers.

A Few Good Women ...

When my daughter was 8 years old, she expressed a desire to work for the RCMP. Back then - and it wasn't that long ago, folks - some Canadians still took pride in our national police force. It was a collective romantic delusion.

Had she persevered in this interest, I would have supported my daughter's choice but I would have feared for her psychological and physical well-being. Even then, I knew that sexism was rampant in the RCMP, a systemic disease.

Flash forward a decade or two. Early this month, RCMP Corporal Catherine Galliford went public with her experience of the sexual harassment unofficially tolerated and sanctioned within the organization.

She has accused a supervisor of exposing himself to her, and says she suffered other unwanted sexual advances.

"I went to every boss I had at the time and I kept on saying, ‘Please don't make me work with these people.' And they didn't do anything," Galliford told CTV News.

She claims that several senior officers were responsible for the harassment.

On one occasion during the Pickton investigation, she says that a supervisor told her: "I have a fantasy about Willy Pickton escaping from jail and tracking you down and ripping your clothes off and stringing you from a meat hook and gutting you like a pig.'"

"My supervisors were laughing," she said.

The Mounties released a statement Tuesday saying that it could not comment on Galliford's allegations but that harassment "is not tolerated." [...]

According to police psychologist Mike Webster, however, complaints like Galliford's aren't that uncommon in the world of policing.
"This remains a man's world. It's very difficult for females to get by in that man's world," he said.

Galliford is scheduled to testify at the official inquiry into the Pickton investigation.

Galliford, 44, is slated to testify at the inquiry in January, but says she won’t be testifying for the RCMP, but rather on behalf of the victims.

In an interview, and in a 115-page statement given to the RCMP, Galliford said top Mounties had “enough evidence for a search warrant” of serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm in 1999. From 1999 to 2002 14 women were brutally murdered by Pickton, a fact that haunts Galliford.

She says she will testify that both RCMP and VPD officers, even after the Missing Women Task Force was formed in 2001, engaged in sexual liaisons and harassment, watched porn and left work early “to go drinking and partying.”

This is the work environment my daughter would have had to endure, had she signed up to become a RCMP officer.

Grand merci to Antonia Z.

These are the faces of "honour" killings.

Anti-feminist rightwing religious zealots like "Debra Moore" are using the language of feminist activism to vent their xenophobic spleen.

"Women are being brutally murdered throughout the world in the name of Islam, and the mainstream media is totally silent. Someone needs to stand up for these women who are being executed by those whom they should be able to trust the most: their family members, through a crime known as an “honor killing”. And it is not unique to the Middle East; it is taking place in the West, including the United States.Where are the feminists? MIA once again. If there ever was an instance when feminists should speak up, this is clearly the case. But, it is not politically correct to insult Islam. The result is more and more women will die because no one is willing to confront this abominable practice."

From here. Moore is a self-styled fundamentalist christian crusader. She could be describing garden-variety 'domestic' femicide (except for the strident islamophobia), a form of violence against women and children that is tolerated in many cultures and countries. Until feminists in the 1970's started diligently and systematically dedicating themselves to the establishment of shelters and to reforming criminal laws, "family" violence was largely viewed as a private matter in North America. Even when women and children died. Even now, Antonia Zerbisias writes here:

Toronto author Brian Vallee points out in his 2007 book The War on Women, nobody counts the dead, nobody connects the dots, nobody calls out the problem. "Compare the raw numbers," he writes of the period 2000-06. "In the same seven-year period when 4,588 U.S. soldiers and police officers were killed by hostiles or by accident, more than 8,000 women – nearly twice as many – were shot, stabbed, strangled, or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. In Canada, compared to the 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers killed, more than 500 women – nearly five times as many – met the same fate."

These are horrific numbers; where is the rightwing christian fundamentalist outrage?

Dennis Gruending thoughtfully yet rigorously dissects a type of news reporting that’s little more than floridly opinionated and pretentious tabloid coverage. Respected for his well-researched and eminently knowledgeable writing on spiritual and political matters, Gruending observes:

The unfortunate truth is that men have used the power of religion for millennia to force women into submission. Some fathers of the Christian church, including Pope St. Gregory, Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, said women should be ashamed of themselves for merely being women, that they were slow, unstable, naïve and useful only for “animal sex and motherhood.”

Some will argue that Christian churches don’t hold those views today. I would respond that while most Christians do not view women as inferior, a fundamentalist minority continues to do so.

Has it finally occurred to you who the murdered/missing women in the photographs are? Those are the confirmed and presumed victims of Robert 'Willy' Pickton's religious mission. Those are "honour" killings, as defined by the terms of his christian upbringing. The defense argued that Pickton suffered from diminished intellectual capacity yet in his letters to a pen-pal, he clearly lays out the inspiration, the reasons behind his campaign to eliminate evil, as he understands the Bible to tell him so.

Two letters The Sun obtained ... may provide the public with the first real insight into what motivated the mass murderer. ... “I know I was brought into this world to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways. They even want to dis-re-guard the ten command-ments from the time that Moses in his day brought in power which still is in existence today,” wrote Pickton ...The letter was written Feb. 26, 2006, at the beginning of Pickton's voir dire, to California resident Thomas Loudamy who has a hobby of corresponding with prisoners and collecting their return letters. The second letter, written Aug. 22, 2006, is also replete with biblical references and Pickton provided his own interpretation of Ephesians 5:5. “You can be sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will in-herit the kingdom of God .... Don't be fooled by whose who try to excuse these sins, for the terrible anger of God comes upon all those who disobey him,” Pickton wrote.

The Sun looked up Ephesians 5:5 in The Jerusalem Bible and found a chilling interpretation, given the fact Pickton has been convicted of killing sex-trade workers: “For you can be quite certain that nobody who actually indulges in fornication or impurity or promiscuity — which is worshiping a false god — can inherit anything of the kingdom of God.” ... In the religious portions, Pickton refers to himself as a “condemned man of no wrong doing” just like his “father.” Pickton also referred to Acts 14:22, which he interpreted as: “In each city they helped Christians to be strong and true to the faith. They told them that we must suffer many hard things to get into the holy nation of God.”

Altering a quote from Mark Steyn, plucking at one of the islamophobic chords in his MASSIVE repertoire: "Must be convenient to have a [biblical] code that obliges all your pathologies."

The photo montage came from Montréal Simon's blog, here.