Harper: "You're On Your Own"

I think it's important to know, as a Canadian, whether or not your government has your back. It's important to know if the Prime Minister who flew a photographer to Cyprus to show off his generosity is actually anything more than an opportunistic hypocrite.

And the results are in:

According to the "federal factum" written by our government:

"States do not have a duty to protect citizens held by foreign countries."

"The judge erred by transforming obligations to respect the rights of children within Canada into a new duty to protect Canadian children subject to mistreatment by foreign officials outside the territory of Canada"

So now you know. If you're caught up in some foreign country, snared or framed by some local con artist, stuck in a jail cell and being punished by some third world warlord, being handled by some archaic, disreputable farce of a justice system ... well, now you know that your country does not have your back.

Someone should probably add that to the international travel advisory.

"Canadians traveling to all other countries are advised that their government will abandon them to any kangaroo court that kidnaps them. Please use caution when visiting the world."

h/t Galloping Beaver.

Recommend this Post

Khadr: Abused Child

It's never popular to refer to religion as child abuse. And it's impossible to make a blanket statement that all religion is child abuse. There are children who are raised in a healthy way which involves religion.

Omar Khadr was not such a child. He was sent off to Afghanistan by his parents and encouraged to take part in jihad. This is child abuse, just as any fundamentalist child rearing is child abuse. I don't care if you're a Mormon or a Muslim teaching that 14 year old girls should be married off to 50 year old men. It's child abuse and your religion doesn't protect you from the charge or the conviction.

Accusing of us anti-americanism (as the right wing is wont to do), Flaggmann and his ilk go on about the child abuse of Omar Khadr.

That's right. He was abused as a child. He was raised in a dogmatic, thoughtlessly obedient household. He was taught not to come to his own conclusions and think skeptically about life, religion and war, but to submit to the will of the clerics (who claim to know the Will of God). Then at some young age, he was sent off to war. Here, if you aren't faint of heart, is a picture purporting to be of the boy holding a pair of severed hands. If that doesn't scream "abused child" to you, I don't what does. What sort of parent raises a child who gleefully hoists a pair of severed hands?

Then, after being abused as a child, he was alleged to have killed an American soldier in firefight. He was captured. Unlike Michael Coren and others, I found the video disturbing, but maybe it's like that cave on Dagobah. The only thing in there was the thing you brought with you. I brought a sense of compassion. Michael Coren brings an ignorance of international law regarding child soldiers.

I see a boy so screwed up by his child abused past and Gitmo-abused present that he wailed about not having eyes and feet. Michael Coren dismisses this as "absurd". Of course it's absurd. You'd say some pretty absurd things too, if you'd been tortured.

My point is this weird inconsistency in the right wing. They're actually acknowledging that the kid was abused throughout his life. Inconsistently, and without compassion, they're using this as an excuse to abuse him more. It's as if they're saying, "Well, his parents screwed him up. May as well declare him a lost cause and execute him."

If someone has a better explanation, or at least an alternate paraphrasing, for this logic, I'd be pleased to hear it.

Recommend this Post

What's wrong with interviewing Khadr?

I'm seeing a lot of these questions on the blogs, comments sections and other outlets of right wing frustration. "The agents weren't beating up Khadr. They were totally professional. Looked like a completely fair and just interview to me etc. etc."

It's not the nature of the interview that was the problem. That's ridiculous. Have these people ever heard of context? It's the fact that you have a 15 or 16-year-old boy, obviously a child soldier, obviously having been tortured and we as a nation were complicit in taking advantage of the situation.

Are these people honestly arguing that all you have do is turn your back on a torture victim while other parties beat and waterboard him and then you can go back to questioning him? "Hey, I didn't beat him up, I just asked questions in a totally professional manner."

Are we going to blame or punish these agents? Not likely. Much like soldiers in battle, they had their orders. It was a post-9/11 world and terrorists were apparently everywhere.

(If you torture people until they admit they are terrorists and then torture them some more until they tell you about other terrorists, you'll find that there a lot of terrorists. And when a 16-year-old boy starts telling you that he has no eyes or feet, maybe he's been tortured just a little too much.)

The question is this: although these agents have no responsibility, as they say here, to seek consular or welfare visits for people like Khadr, are they still bound - as human beings and agents of the Canadian government - to see to the Charter Rights of Canadian citizens?

Were they aware of what had been done to the boy and, once made aware, did their behaviour toward him change?

Our nation has an obligation, through treaties and commitment to human rights, to not take advantage of torture. Did we knowingly do this? Are we still doing it now?

Recommend this Post

He's a Boy. He's just a boy.

So they're releasing the Khadr recordings. We can now see, in all its glory, what it looks like to interrogate a 16-year-old boy who was first brainwashed by religion in childhood, then traumatized by combat at 15 and finally tortured at 16.

Tell me that's right. Tell me there isn't something wrong with humanity when you see that child crying for relief and all his interrogators can do is say, "tough luck".

Omar Khadr isn't a Muslim. He isn't a Christian or an atheist. He's not a Canadian or an Afghan.

He's a child, a human child.

He's a crying child begging for someone in authority to pull him out of the absolute bullshit in to which he was involuntarily delivered. He's suffered like this for six years, almost the maximum punishment Canada would ever give a child who committed a crime at the age of 15.

Go ahead, watch the video. Watch the uncaring interrogators trying to play good cop, bad cop. "Do you want a chocolate bar?" "Turn on the air conditioning" Watch them walk out because they can't bear to see him cry. Watch them walk out because they can't bear to see what's been done to this poor, pathetic wretch of a child.

Omar Khadr isn't alone, not even Gitmo is alone. Children are being drafted in to military service all over the world. They're being terrorized by governments, by armies, by paramilitaries the world over. And it's our greed that's doing it. Our greed, as we scrape the bottom of every barrel for every last vestige of oil, minerals and cheap labour, is what leads to children in these situations. We have more than enough power to stop all of it, but that power is rarely used for anything but making it worse.

Let's get this boy home. Let's demonstrate to the world that we're trying to make it a better place, a safer place for children. Let's take at least one god damned step in the right direction.

Recommend this Post

Fair Trial Would Free Khadr

Therefore, we need to give him an unfair trial.

That makes perfect sense, as long as you're a Globe and Mail Editorial writer. I'm charitably assuming they wrote this editorial at 3 a.m., wired up on espresso.

What an argument:

According to documents released by the Federal Court of Canada this week, Canadian officials who visited Mr. Khadr, still oozing blood from a six-month-old wound, reported that he had undergone sleep deprivation (being moved every three hours for 21 days) to soften him up for their visit, and would then be put in isolation for three weeks. What Canadian court would accept any statements made by a 16- or 17-year-old under such duress, and without being allowed to see a lawyer?

Right. He was totally tortured and all of his statements were coerced and therefore invalid.

Is there enough of a prima facie case to try him for murder? It is not clear that anyone witnessed him throw a grenade, as alleged, and U.S. government documents state that an adult al-Qaeda fighter was next to him.

Right, so there's no evidence he did anything wrong.

As a barometer of how our courts might view a war-crimes prosecution against Mr. Khadr, recall that the Supreme Court of Canada, in the 9-0 judgment that led to the making public this week of some Canadian documents on Mr. Khadr, wrote forceful reasons in May, asserting that Canada and the United States had violated their international human-rights obligations in his case.

First of all, there was no "war crime". Throwing a grenade at civilians, or leaving their landscape littered with mines and cluster bombs, would be a war crime. Throwing a grenade at invading soldiers (if we could ever prove he did such a thing) would be an "act of war", making Khadr a "prisoner of war". Uniform or not, if soldiers were attacking his village and there was a firefight, he wasn't committing a war crime.

Second, yes indeed, his human rights are being violated.

So what should we do? Demand his freedom? Demand that evidence be presented or the accused be set free? Demand that he be returned to Canada for rehabilitation from his traumatic torture?

Nope:

Help arrange a plea bargain with the United States and Mr. Khadr and his lawyers that would address legitimate security concerns while giving him an opportunity to rehabilitate himself at home.

What? He should cop a plea and admit guilt because there's no evidence he's guilty of anything?

Recommend this Post