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A few days ago, I wrote about the Canadian House of Commons Speaker, Peter Milliken’s, upcoming, historical constitutional decision. Milliken has had to rule on a request by the opposition parties to find the government of Canada in contempt of Parliament for refusing to release documents relevant to the on-going scandal surrounding the possibility that Canada was complicit in the torture of Afghan detainees. Effectively, there’s a charge that Canadian troops handed over detainees to Afghan authorities knowing full well that they’d be tortured. The government’s refusal to release full, un-redacted documents relevant to that charge has been seen by the opposition to run counter to the procedures of Parliament.

Basically, what it comes down to is a decision on who has privilege, and whether the executive would still be accountable to the House of Commons. If Milliken ruled in favour of the government (that is, that the documents won’t need to be brought forward), it would have repercussions not only for Canada, but would set a precedent for Parliamentary systems worldwide.

In his 45-minute speech on the matter, Milliken referenced many (often obscure) parliamentary documents of the past but finally decided that yes, precedence ought to be upheld, making the point that it is the job of the House to hold the government accountable. That means that the documents ought to be released. He did give a caveat regarding documents of a sensitive nature, but didn’t find that the government had put up a good case (basically) as to why they ought to be withheld this time. As for Justice Frank Iacobucci (who the government hired to read the documents and decide what was sensitive or not), Milliken ruled that he was a separate entity, answering not to the House, but to the government. Therefore, Milliken asked that a process be put in place so that the documents can be released to the MPs, while still keeping the information secret – to that effect, he referenced past legislation (from Australia) where it’s been done successfully.

He did, however, give the Members a bit of a slap of the wrist, expressing his disappointment with the fact that there have been allegations made toward the government that there are ulterior motives in keeping the documents under wraps. He deemed those charges as “unhelpful,” and concluded by stating that he would make time in the House for discussion on how to go about making the documents available. Milliken has given the House two weeks to figure that out, otherwise he’ll come down with a more stringent ruling, perhaps finding the government to be in contempt of Parliament – a hefty charge indeed.

So that’s it: the documents will come forth, uncensored. Eventually.

For the record, the leaders of the opposition parties were all present in the House for the ruling from the Speaker, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper was not.

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It wasn’t long ago that we were talking about Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video on hyper-consumption, and now we’re faced with another nine-minute music video from British alter-hip hopper M.I.A. Using a sample of Suicide’s 1977 track “Ghost Rider,” for her new single “Born Free,” she’s offered up a video/short film that explores an alternate reality kill-the-gingers discriminatory military campaign. And while it’s somber content hints at a more socially necessary message than that of Lady Gaga, what it reveals is equal vapidity wrapped in gravitas.

Watch the video after the jump (warning: pretty much NSFW)

The comparison of the two singers isn’t just for the sake of it; M.I.A. leveled that charge already when she told NME, that Lady Gaga “sounds more like me than I f—king do!”

She also said this about Gaga:

None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic… she’s the industry last’s stab at making itself important – saying, ‘You need our money behind you, the endorsements, the stadiums’ Respect to her, she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work, but my belief is: Do It Yourself.

It’s not too difficult to punch quite few holes in that quote – specifically that M.I.A.’s biggest hit so far relies heavily on a sample of the Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” (a track released in 1982), and that a DIY credo kind of goes out the window when your latest video makes prominent note of who directed it. Not to mention the very obvious fact that during the entire nine or so minutes of “Born Free,” M.I.A. isn’t actually seen at all.

It’s on that last point that M.I.A.’s video, despite sharing length, general ambiguity, shocking NSFW set pieces, and on-the-nose delivery, looks like it veers away from Gaga’s “Telephone”: that when we’re through watching “Born Free,” our questions aren’t about M.I.A.

That might seem like an important distinction, given questions about artistic intent with these two videos. After “Telephone” was released, Lady Gaga talked to Ryan Seacrest about her vision for the video and suggested that it was a commentary on over-consumption. But really, all “Telephone” taught us is that the thing we were guilty of consuming too much of was Lady Gaga.

On the other hand, here we have a video with a message that actually doesn’t feature the artist. So, we might think, we have a winner. By not making herself the product, M.I.A. can take the moral high ground: her video was all about making people think.

But what’s all that violent imagery actually saying? Is it a simple reference to the infamous “hit a ginger” social network/South Park meme? Surely there’s more to it.

Not-so-wild speculation online is that it’s a commentary piece on the end of the war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tigers. It just so happens that M.I.A was born Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam in London to a former Tamil Tiger, Arular Arudpragasam.

During the Sri Lankan government’s final push to demolish the Tigers between 2008 and 2009, M.I.A. was outspoken in her defense of the rebels – she was even accused of supporting a terrorist group. She told the Daily Beast that what was occurring in Sri Lanka was “genocide.” Of particular relevance here was this quote:

They’re [the Tamils] treated like animals. They don’t have food or shelter and they’ve just been hit by a cyclone and the government hasn’t sent them any aid. It’s just out and out Nazi Germany.

That imagery sounds familiar.

But even with that background knowledge, is it at all clear at any point during “Born Free” that we’re not just being fed the same on-the-nose Discrimination Is Bad message that might come from any other artist? I doubt it. In any event, the video doesn’t add much to the debate, whatever it is, except make everyone nod a little knowingly at the deliberate juxtaposition between the visual content and the song’s title.

Unfortunately, much like with “Telephone” the real message ends up being too vague to have any impact. Whereas Gaga’s channel-flipping image chaos of competing set pieces mostly failed to add weight to the video’s message of consumption, the more complete linear narrative of the feature film motif equally fails to add any credibility to M.I.A.’s anti-discrimination diatribe. Both style choices simply end up being vehicles for the message, rather than part of it.

Ultimately, both “Born Free” and “Telephone” sell a shock factor rather than critical thinking. We ask questions about the images, not their meaning; we’re to be surprised that the visual exists at all, rather than be explained why. So, while the imagery in both is interesting and catches our attention, it’s almost entirely self-serving, and in the end, we don’t actually learn anything from it.

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This might have been inevitable. Gizmodo writer, Jason Chen, the man behind the Apple iPhone 4 leak (that included photos, video and a rather lengthy review of the phone) has had his home searched by police. They cops apparently took his computers, hard drives, and any documents “and/or notations pertaining to the sale and/or purchase of the stolen iPhone prototype and/or the sale and/or transfer of trade secret information pertaining to the iPhone prototype.”

Chen apparently presented the police with a letter from Gawker media COO and legal rep, Gaby Darbyshire which outlined the legalities (or illegalities, as it were) of taking possessions belonging to a journalist, but, seemingly, to little avail.

The iPhone leak from Gizmodo had obviously generated a lot of attention, and there was a lot of immediate speculation as to whether Apple would retaliate with legal measures. The iPhone prototype had been left in a bar by an Apple employee and then sold to Gizmodo. That the response from Apple was so delayed led many to believe that the leak had been intentional. That latter theory seems to be settled for the time being.

The full warrant, letter from Gaby Darbyshire, and an account from Jason Chen are posted at the Gizmodo site linked above.

Update:

As pointed out by Foster Kamer at the Village Voice, a quote from a Washington Post article on Gawker may now be of some significance to Jason Chen. As described above, Gawker’s Gaby Darbyshire was quick to point out California’s laws in regards to seizing journalist’s property, but Gawker founder Nick Denton might have scuttled that argument last year when he talked to the WaPo’s Howard Kutz. Denton described Gawker’s usual scathing language and said this:

We don’t seek to do good… We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention.

So, is Gizmodo writer Jason Chen a journalist? That, and perhaps the future designation of other bloggers, might  be one of the many things to come from the fallout of this unfolding technodrama.

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Just over a year ago, British MP George Galloway was about to come to Canada for a short, four-city speaking tour. That tour never happened – at least not in person, anyway, as he was barred from entering the country by the Canadian Border Services Agency. Now, a Federal Court hearing will determine whether that decision should be overturned, and Canadians ought to be paying attention.

The problem with Galloway – that is, the reason he was banned from Canada in the first place – is that the Canadian government considers him to be a supporter of a terrorist group. That charge stems from a financial donation (approximately $40,000) that Galloway made to, as he put it, “the ministry of health in Gaza to pay for the salaries of the doctors and nurses who hadn’t been paid… it’s a symbolic donation.” However, the Canadian government has attributed that to financially supporting Hamas, the governing party of Gaza, a group that it considers as a terrorist organization.

But it gets a little tricker. The decision to ban Galloway from Canada was taken by the CBSA, but all along there have been charges that it was actually the Conservative government of Canada that prompted that action. According to the Globe and Mail, an immigration officer in London told Galloway’s assistant that “Mr. Galloway has been deemed inadmissible by Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, and that he [Mr. Galloway] would be denied entry at a Canadian port of entry.”

In fact, the Globe asserts, the decision to bar Galloway from entering Canada (a decision that Minister Kenny maintained operated under normail bureaucratic avenues) actually took less than  two hours, and stemmed from an email sent by Kenney’s communications director, Alykhan Velshi, to the Immigration Department’s director general of communications, Edison Stewart. From the Globe:

Mr. Velshi sent along copies of articles quoting Mr. Galloway’s articles, as Mr. Stewart forwarded the case to senior officials including Stéphane Larue, the director-general of the Immigration Department’s case-management branch, who said he would ask CBSA to do a “very quick inadmissibility assessment.” Mr. Velshi chimed in that if it came up to Mr. Kenney, “I can fairly predict that he will not ever give a [entry permit] to someone who advocated the kind of things George Galloway advocates.”

Which all means that there’s a bit of explaining to do on all sides. It seems the two most important questions that need answering are: Where exactly did Galloway’s money go? And, was the decision to bar him from Canada in fact one that was made entirely by the immigration minister, and not via the regular channels? At the time, the Tories denied having anything to do with it, and in fact Kenney said that he didn’t have the power to bar someone, only to overrule a CBSA decision.

Third, and perhaps just as important, is the question of whether Canadians were denied a basic right by Galloway’s forced absence. The CBC put it this way:

At the time [of the entry refusal], Federal Court Judge Luc Martineau said he wasn’t satisfied that the necessary conditions had been met to issue an emergency injunction.

One of the conditions is called “irreparable harm” — in this case, whether or not the rights of Canadians will be infringed if they don’t get a chance to hear Galloway.

In the end, Galloway made his appearance anyway, only via video link from New York, not in person. That means that Canadians – at least the ones who wanted to – heard him speak, thereby assuring that their rights were met. But that’s a fairly tricky argument, given the ease of video conferencing. Effectively, if that’s the standard, everyone would be barred physically, with the recommendation that they download Skype.

The review of the decision will begin Wednesday (it was due to begin today, but was postponed thanks to a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association falling and hurting herself), and undoubtedly will bring with it a whole new set of headlines and of pro-versus-con protests from those gathered outside the court building.

Canadians ought to be interested in this decision, as it addresses some fairly fundamental questions about our country and what value we place on freedom of expression. Was the government right to bar Galloway before he even said anything to Canadians, thanks to some rather unclear financial ties to a terrorist organization? Or should we let Galloway – and perhaps others – enter the country and voice what might be very controversial opinions? Where, or how, do we draw that distinction?

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Information is power, right? Or something like that, anyway. And information about sex isn’t just powerful, it’s also apparently pretty scary – at least, according to the vocal opponents to Ontario’s proposed changes to sex education courses for public schools. The details sparked a fairly strong public reaction this week, and forced the Ontario government to step back from its plans to introduce the new curriculum changes in September. The about-face came after opposition that ranged from simple doubts about how much information kids ought to have at a young age, to accusations that the province was trying to push a homosexual agenda. Let’s discuss.

First, let’s get to those juicy controversial details of the proposed changes. From the Globe and Mail:

The revision…will for the first time teach Grade 3 pupils about such topics as sexual identity and orientation, and introduce terms like “anal intercourse” and “vaginal lubrication” to children in Grades 6 and 7. The new curriculum begins in Grade 1 with lessons about the proper names of body parts. […]

Some of the most controversial changes are in the Grade 3 curriculum. In a discussion on human development and showing respect for people’s differences, for example, teachers are invited to discuss “invisible differences,” including gender identity and sexual orientation, in an effort to reflect the fact that more and more students have same-sex parents.

Most of the reaction hit on two points: that teaching kids the proper names of body parts (read: penis, etc.) would start at such a young age, and – unsurprisingly – that there would be mention of the fact that there are gay people on planet Earth and that, y’know, they live among us.

The president of Somali Parents for Education told the Globe and Mail that, “There’s a big reaction in the Muslim community. We believe that basically that sex education may be taught by the parents to their children. It’s not public, it’s a private matter…”.

And the suggestion that kids might learn about same-sex relationships, especially in conjunction with things like “anal intercourse,” had others simply heaving with passionate anger.

The National Post reported that Charles McVety of the Canada Christian College had this to say on the matter:

It’s not about this curriculum, it’s about changing the culture in our schools… We warned the country about this when same-sex marriage came in. We changed the laws in this country, redefined marriage, the end result now this is coming into our classrooms.

This is part of a militant homosexual agenda to normalize homosexuality in everyone’s mind and thereby promote homosexuality. If we teach our children these things … guess what? That’s what they’ll practice.

First, a quick note on the “militant homosexual agenda”: utter bollocks. That’s like saying that eating too much chicken will make you gay, or that learning that there are short people in the world will stunt your growth. It’s ridiculous. Let’s move on.

Second, kids already sort of know that stuff like homosexuality and intercourse exist. Duh, they watch Gossip Girl and it’s not 1955. It’s not even 1995 for that matter – the kind of information highlighted by the proposed changes is ubiquitous in school hallways, thanks to things like the Internet, popular culture and, oh yeah, the fact that kids are curious and they speak to one another.

Don’t believe me? Just ask Ontario medical officer of health, Dr. David McKeown, who said this:

Kids need clear, unbiased, age-appropriate information and parents need the support offered by a strong sexual health program in schools. In a culture where unreliable information is rampant, it is essential that our schools protect public health and promote healthy sexuality by providing evidence-driven and comprehensive sexual education. Research shows that when young people have good sexual health knowledge, they postpone sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy, and they practice safer sex when they become sexually active.

Right. Young people have a certain amount of information and what they’re most likely not searching for is ways to put it into practice so much as for validation of their knowledge. Granted, having a parent discuss it is a good step, but there’s also something to be said for learning the basics as a group – it has a way of normalizing everything, and suddenly the information doesn’t seem so exclusive. I remember being a teenager sitting in a sex ed class. When the teacher showed us pictures of genitalia or when we saw spermicidal lube for the first time, we laughed it off and fooled around, but that didn’t mean we weren’t listening.

Knowing about sex is kind of like knowing a lot about politics. On the surface the process seems pretty straight forward: you put your vote in, and democracy comes out. But actually, once you start looking into it a bit, you realize that the details quickly start to make the whole situation a lot more complicated. Suddenly, the political process adopts a few more facets, with plenty of opportunity for mistakes when you least expect them. But having more information doesn’t mean that you’ll stop voting, it just means that you’ll suddenly be able to properly contextualize your actions, and have an adequate framework in which to place the potential consequences of your voting practices. It makes you a more conscientious citizen. Like I said at the beginning: information is power.

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For those who have been paying attention, it’s now pretty clear that something named Nick Clegg is causing that humming sound that can now be heard around Blighty. Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party has rocketed to a rather strange position in the UK election – that is, first. Sort of.

After his performance in the first ever leaders debate where he worked his outsider, third party, afterthought status to a distinct advantage, the UK press – not to mention everyone else – has been preoccupied with the charismatic Clegg. Not surprisingly, his message of a change from the usual Labour/Tory dichotomy drew comparisons to Barack Obama, no doubt to the annoyance of both incumbent Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, both of whom had already attempted to channel Obama in the run-up to this election. But it was, after all, Clegg who had meetings with Democrat election brain Howard Dean.

But never mind, because it’s Clegg who has the nation’s ear now. So could he really become the next Prime Minister of Britain? It’s no real stretch, even after he fared slightly less impressively in Thursday’s second television debate, to consider the possibility. After all, in the lead-up to the second debate, the Lib Dems held a wide margin over the other two major parties in polling – capturing somewhere around 33 per cent of support from Britons.

On his blog at the Telegraph, Philip Johnston explains the possibility of a Lib Dem victory this way:

…while the electoral system works against the Lib Dems if they gain around 22pc of the votes, as they have at the last four general elections, once they move into the upper 30s they start winning seats everywhere because they are second in so many of them… with 40pc support, the Lib Dems (unlike the Tories) would probably have an outright majority. With 42pc they win by a landslide.

The other key point is that voter registration in Britain has suddenly surged. Whether that means that more people are gearing up to vote for their trusted Labour or Tory parties in reaction to a possible Lib Dem victory (or at least a minority government, with the Lib Dems in position to swing legislation), or whether they’re signing up to vote Clegg remains to be seen.

There are a couple of interesting things to talk about when discussing Clegg and the reaction to his rise in the polls. First, is the allegation that he is “anti-American”: During Thursday’s debate, Gordon Brown made this point at least twice, with at least one of those times seemingly out of the blue. The anti-American charge stems most likely from his outspoken opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but also probably from this speech that Clegg made at Chatham House only last month. In it, he highlighted what he believes to be Britain’s mostly subservient role to US foreign policy that developed during the Cold War.

Clegg said:

Let me be clear. I’m an Atlanticist much like everyone else. I spent a happy time working in the United States. I think it is vital to our interests that we maintain a positive, strong and even uniquely warm relationship with the United States. But it is not our only relationship and it mustn’t become a relationship that at every junction, every time a decision is made we have no choice but to follow the decisions made in the White House. And yet that seems to have been happening with greater velocity and frequency in recent years rather than less. […]

I believe there is no case for the like for like replacement for that [Cold War Trident Missile] system. And I believe one of the reasons there is a deafening silence on that issue is because that missile system is cemented by a sense of indebtedness to our American friends.

In the same speech, Clegg was critical of the silence on the “disproportionate military incursion” in Gaza in 2008, suggesting clearly that the lack of outspoken opposition from either Labour or the Conservatives was because of pressure from Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the U.S. Perhaps these are harsh words, but considering the last decade of the UK/U.S. relationship – especially the palpable annoyance about the Iraq invasion – is it little surprise that Clegg’s positions are finding sympathetic ears?

At the National Review, Clegg’s comments haven’t gone unnoticed. An article titled ‘Five Reasons American Conservatives Should be Worried about Nick Clegg,’ highlights the following items: his anti-Americanism; the fact that he’s not an Atlanticist; that he doesn’t believe in a nuclear deterrent; that he is a “fervent” supranationalist; and that he “harbors strong anti-Israeli views.” The thing is, I expect these points are probably exactly where the rubber hits the road for a lot of UK voters.

It seems that even Rupert Murdoch (by extension) has also become concerned with Clegg’s rise to the top. On his Newser site, Michael Wolff (who, let’s not forget, wrote his own pretty fawning piece on David Cameron for Vanity Fair not too long ago) provides a mostly anecdotal account of how Rebekah Brooks, editor of the Murdoch-owned Sun tramped over to the Independent to complain in person about the latter’s headline “Rupert Murdoch will not decide the outcome of the election, you will.” Murdoch’s relationship with political elites in Britain is not really up for question. As former Sun editor, David Yelland, wrote for the Guardian (acknowledging that it’s not always a Murdoch-run paper that’s guilty of ignoring the Lib Dems):

While it would be wrong to say the Lib Dems were banned from Murdoch’s papers (indeed, the Times has a good record in this area), I would say from personal experience that they are often banned – except where the news is critical. They are the invisible party, purposely edged off the paper’s pages and ignored. […]

What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.

As of writing, the Sun’s website’s top story is titled “Cam’s Slam Dunk,” referring to Cameron’s apparent victory in the latest TV debate, even though that “slam dunk” margin, by the Sun’s own poll was roughly 1.2 per cent. Not that the rest of the UK’s press is any under any less suspicion of political leanings. The Guardian, for example, is claiming Clegg collected 33 per cent of viewer support, versus 29 per cent for both Cameron and Brown, but to its credit, the Guardian headline reads, “Nick Clegg scores narrow victory in second TV debate.” There’s at least something to be said for not using unnecessary hyperbole.

In either case, what’s perhaps as important as Clegg’s rise to fame is Gordon Brown’s apparent precipitous fall off the front pages, and thus, for all intents and purposes for the short-term anyway, out of the public eye. What’s interesting about this is that, as noted earlier, unless the Lib Dems manage over 40 per cent of the vote (about 43 really), and if the most recent polls hold roughly steady, Britain will have a hung Parliament with Brown still at the helm. Meaning, simply, that all that may come of Clegg’s surge is that unless it’s a very, very impressive and sustained one, the pre-election predictions will stand. It will have all just been a bit more interesting than expected.

Image by jenny8lee via Flickr

Back in November, I talked to Meredith Carey of the Chicago Underground Library about their efforts to collect and archive as much of the city’s small press media as possible, and we couldn’t avoid the very real problem posed by the internet: that it is a home to everything and, potentially, nothing at the same time. In other words, all kinds of information is available online, but only part of it will ever be saved in a way that would be accessible in the future for historians or the average curious user. As Carey put it:

“What do [blogs] become after we have several decades of the internet under our belts? Kind of an infinite dead letter office, but a public one, but so many of the things in it completely forgotten by anybody at all. So what is it?”

Now that the Library of Congress has decided to store the complete Twitter archives – that is, every tweet ever tweeted, starting six months from now – that question might be a bit easier to answer. At least in the future there will be some record of part of the online experience, open to access by historians who are curious about the day-to-day ramblings of anyone from a movie star to your local Starbucks barista.

As Christopher Beam points out at Slate, using the Twitter archive, historians in the future will be able to trace social movements and trends as they occurred in real time. They’ll be able to see, for instance, the online babble grow to a crescendo over things like the recent WikiLeaks Iraq video release, or even something like Justin Bieber’s rise to fame. Beam writes,

Or take the history of adolescents. The source material for studying how and what kids think has always been limited to school papers, letters from parents and teachers, the occasional diary. Again, mostly “top-down” history. There’s little real-world data about how kids interact with each other. Blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates offer glimpses into the lives of children on a scale that no randomized study could re-create.

That’s not to say that in the past this kind of information hasn’t existed; teenagers (along with everyone else) have been documenting their thoughts for decades. But what is different is the immediate interaction between the masses – something that even written letter correspondence could never quite achieve in the same way. It’s no longer a question of whether an event or social happening was important, it’s more a question of how important and how quickly. Or, conversely, how a massive international news story might go completely unnoticed by most of the Twitterverse. That is to say, historians will be able to track public knowledge as well as ignorance.

It also means that tracing someone’s personal history, while not complete, will suddenly become a bit easier. Just think of having a year or two’s worth of tweets at your disposal to peruse in the future. Cumulatively, it would reveal personal trends, interests, disgusts, and, in small detail, important events. As interestingly, there will be the responses to many of these posts, setting each one in a broader social context. Anything from a tweet on a news event to thoughts on an episode of Mad Men is potentially a window into both social trends and someone’s personal relationships with their ‘followers’.

However, although the Library of Congress has committed to saving Twitter’s chatter, and though this massive archive will shed light on the random thoughts of the historical hoi poloi, we’re still stuck with fairly simplistic thoughts, limited to the 140-character limit.

As Beam rightly posits, “The real challenge will be figuring out what happens to private digital missives, like the contents of someone’s Gmail account.” That’s not to mention blogs, or an online zine, or any other user-produced content that will eventually be lost, un-archived, un-saved to the dark eternal ether of the web. It will technically still exist, but uncovering it will be incredibly difficult. That means that while we’ll be able to know the quick off-the-cuff remarks and retorts of a massive amount of people, we’ll be missing out on things like the prose, syntax and – most importantly – more personal day-by-day details of those same users. No doubt, however this kind of archive will most likely come.

Video:

Cameron wasn’t injured in the incident, as the egg glanced off his shoulder, mostly hitting a police officer next to him. Yesterday, Cameron had been stalked by a man dressed as a giant chicken.

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You wouldn’t know it by walking most Canadian streets in the last few months, but there is a rather serious constitutional debate raging in Ottawa that might change the parliamentary system as it’s known not to only Canadians, but to many others around the world. One of the more interesting asterisks on the on-going debate over whether detainees were handed over to Afghan officials by Canadian soldiers with full knowledge that they would be tortured, is the debate over parliamentary procedure, and who – the House or the Prime Minister – wields more power.

Back in December, not long after diplomat Richard Colvin testified to a parliamentary committee that all Afghan detainees passed on by the Canadian military had been tortured by Afghan authorities, the opposition parties (the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois) requested that the Conservative government release all federal documents related to the allegations. That was put on hold when Prime Minister Harper prorogued Parliament until March, but when the House resumed, the opposition again asked to see the documents.

The government obliged… sort of. Gradually, thousands of pages of documents have been released, but it has been heavily redacted and much of the content (sometimes full pages) has been blacked out. The government has maintained that the documents contain sensitive material, crucial to not only Canadian military security, but also the security of its allied forces like the U.S. To that effect, the government also hired former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci to review all the documents to determine whether they could be released to MPs, or whether they were too sensitive.

Despite all of this, the government might still be at fault, and could risk being found to be in contempt of Parliament. Contempt of Parliament, officially, is defined this way:

…any Act of the Parliament of Canada defining such privileges, immunities, and powers shall not confer any privileges, immunities, or powers exceeding those at the passing of such Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and by the members thereof.

Or, as the House of Commons Procedure and Practice manual describes it:  “Any conduct which offends the authority or dignity of the House, even though no breach of any specific privilege may have been committed.”

In effect, the allegation here is that the government – that is the executive – is placing itself as an authority above the Parliament, which is counter to the constitution. The opposition parties felt so strongly that this was the case, that last month they asked the House Speaker, Peter Milliken, to find the government in contempt of Parliament.

That decision is due either Thursday or sometime next week, and the implications are interesting. Simply put, if Milliken finds in favour of the opposition, then the documents will be released. On the other hand, as University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes told the Globe and Mail, “If the Speaker rules against the opposition motions… the executive would no longer be accountable to the House of Commons.” And that, without question, is fairly significant.

But even if the far-reaching implications, though speculative, could change much in the way our government works (at least, on paper), there are more immediate concerns for the average Canadian. The G&M continues:

Technically, [Milliken] will rule only on whether the government appears to be in contempt. If he finds against the government, a parliamentary committee will thrash out the issue, and the matter will be brought back to the House for a final vote.

Rather than release the material, the Conservatives could force an election by making that vote a matter of confidence in the government.

If – and it’s a rather big ‘if’ at this point – there is a vote of non-confidence in the House after all that parliamentary wrangling, and Canada goes to the polls on this question, it’s safe to say that most of us will be in the dark on what exactly we’re voting for or against. At least theoretically, an election prompted by this debate might have a referendum type of feel to it, essentially asking Canadians what party they feel falls on the correct side of constitutional law. Quite frankly, I doubt we’re ready for that.

A defamation suit is a fairly strong reaction to online comments, granted, but it raises the question of how not only to moderate comment threads, but how to possibly ensure that the level of discussion that takes place within them is slightly better. Is it even possible?

Recently, a New York Times article suggested two solutions to what is if not a problem, at least a growing annoyance. First, let’s address its second suggestion: forcing people to use real names and email addresses. The Times says that, along with mirroring social networks, and using pictures:

If commenters were asked to provide their real names for display online, some would no doubt give false identities, and verifying them would be too labor-intensive to be realistic. But news executives say that merely making the demand for a name and an e-mail address would weed out much of the most offensive commentary.

The problems with this are fairly evident, including the one cited by the Times – that people simply won’t use their real names. Over at Salon, co-founder Scott Rosenberg says that instead, the solution must be active thread moderation. That means someone who will engage with the commenters as much as delete offensive material. Not only that, but:

The problem is that once an online discussion space gets off to a bad start it’s very hard to change the tone. The early days of any online community are formative. The tone set by early participants provides cues for each new arrival. Your site will attract newcomers based on what they find already in place: people chatting amiably about their lives will draw others like themselves; similarly, people engaging in competitive displays of bile will entice other putdown artists to join the fun.

Which I think is an astute observation; often once the discussion gets moving in a negative or profane direction, its inertia carries it to disappointing places as the thread continues. We’ve all seen that. Instead, Rosenberg suggests that when things go this way page editors or moderators would be better served to shut down the comment thread for a time, and “reopen it when you’ve got a moderation plan ready and have hand-picked some early contributors to set the tone you want.”

Here’s where Rosenberg hits a bit of a tough spot. What, exactly, is the “tone that you want”? He says it’s about building a discussion area that’s “appealing from the start,” but that is probably more difficult to do than turning around a negative comment thread, because it essentially means that you’re limiting discussion from the very beginning. You’re also editorializing people’s reactions, which puts you in tricky territory that’s open to accusations of censorship, and suggests that you don’t trust your readers. That might not ingratiate the site to users, profane or not.

The other direction that the Times suggests is one that some sites are already using: ranking comments and “giving more weight to comments from some readers than others, based in part on how highly other readers regard them.”

A little while ago, Gawker and its subsidiary sites introduced a new commenting system, sort of like the one described by the Times. It was described on Jezebel like this:

In order to gain some more control of the comments… the comment threads will be broken up into two sections, or “tiers”: Tier 1, which will appear directly below each post and house only the contributions of starred commenters, and Tier 2, which will house the contributions of everyone else (those without stars). To view Tier 2, click on the directive “Show all comments on this post”: you will then be able to see all the comments – Tier 1 and Tier 2 together.

As it turns out, the cull worked; comments on the Gawker-owned sites have jumped. Gawker Media CTO Tom Plunkett effectively refuted Rosenberg’s more-moderation-equals-better-threads assertion by stating:

…purging commenter accounts is not a solution for the out-of-control commenter community. Nor is a large moderation staff. We believe pruning, and a commenting platform as we have implemented, will lead to increased participation, while at the same time encouraging quality.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this success, but I’d imagine the most basic is that people – even internet trolls – seek some form of legitimization, even if it’s for a fairly anonymous opinion posted online. Better still that the recognition comes not from fellow commenters, but from the site itself, because then one’s voice is even louder and carries more weight. (As many of you know, here at True/Slant user comments aren’t just called out by the site when they’re worthwhile, but from the author of the post, which makes it a bit more personal.)

In effect, what’s being encouraged is a rational form of discussion that slowly accomplishes what Rosenberg suggested – giving the site the “tone that you want” – only this way, it’s a bit less authoritarian. And, much as it is with a comment thread that’s difficult to change once it’s started, the quality of comments and level of discussion will build on itself, much like it has at a site like Videogum, which tends to feature some of the wittiest comment thread material on the web.

In any case, we might be nearing a tipping point on the internet, and the online world might soon see a rise in thread moderation, of tiered commenting systems, and – one hopes – generally, more informed and rational web chatter.

*Thanks for the tip, Coates