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.

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Wondering About Waiting Times?

Do you ever wonder why we have long waiting times in our hospitals?
Do you ever wait in the E.R. for four hours?
Do you have trouble getting a G.P.?
Is one of your children in a class of more than 30?
Did you or someone you know pay eight thousand a year or more for post-secondary education?

Why, in a nation of plenty, with the people determined to have good health care and good public education, do we have problems like these?

KPMG has the answer: Canada has the third lowest business taxes.

Third lowest. Lower than the United States. According to KPMG, we should push them even lower. Because the standard of living doesn't matter. Quality of education and health care don't matter. Nah. The free market and capitalism will float those boats, right?

No, the important thing is to have the lowest taxes. That is the greatest goal any nation can ever achieve. Oh, yes, the "Canadians are overtaxed" people are a bunch of kooks. They've been telling us for years, even decades that we're overtaxed and that we're a bunch of saps for going along with it. They never concerned themselves with the fact that we care more about services than tax rates. That's not their agenda.

These people, these economists, are wealthy - wealthy well beyond the means of ordinary Canadians. Their goal is to convince you that massive tax breaks for themselves (corporate taxes, stock option taxes and capital gains taxes) are somehow good for you as well. They get millions, you get a dollar and a half.

It's time to wake up and start calling them the liars and frauds they are.

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Finally, a Worthy Victim

If you've read a bit of Chomsky, you know what worthy and unworthy victims are. In short, a worthy victim (worthy of press coverage and government notice) is a victim being mistreated by an enemy. An unworthy victim is one being mistreated by an ally.

Omar Khadr has been tortured and abused by an ally, the government of the United States of America. Therefore, though there is some press coverage, the government will do nothing about it. The government will say that Khadr was in league with terrorists and that American justice must be allowed to run its course - even if the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Guantanamo bay to be illegal.

Huseyin Celil, however, is a worthy victim. He's accused of terrorism in China. China is an human-rights abusing enemy and must be confronted. Consequently:

The Conservative government initially took a firm stance on Mr. Celil's case – senior government officials said they saw no evidence that Mr. Celil was involved in terrorism, and the Canadian's case was championed at the highest levels of government in Ottawa.

You can see how this works. Human rights abusing enemies must be confronted while human rights abusing allies must not.

You can see the similarity. Both are accused of terrorism. In both cases there is no evidence (Even if Khadr threw a grenade, it wouldn't be "terrorism"). In both cases they are Canadians. In both cases they are incarcerated in violation of international agreements.

But the Canadian government ignores Khadr as much as possible, pretending American justice will serve Canadian interests while even the U.S. Supreme Court is doubtful. And Celil? The government works to get him in the news, even when we're just talking about benefits for his wife.

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Holy Cracker Redux

I've written before that I don't think it's worth my time to trash people's religions. It just makes religious people feel persecuted and causes the vilification of us non-religious people. So it's with mixed emotions that I read PZ Myer's story of putting a rusty nail through an apparently sanctified piece of tasteless bread.

Yes, the religious people are crazy for sending death threats to that other guy who walked out of church with a host and trying to intimidate Myers through his children. But then, they're religious people. They have a faith in something for which they have no evidence and that thing they believe is that the cracker is sacred. Myers makes the point that no object should be considered so sacred. That includes a sanctified host, a page of the Qu'ran and a page from the God Delusion (just to be fair).

As someone commented on the blog, "This is going to be epic."

And so it begins. There are calls for his resignation, his firing, etc. etc.

The most ironic, the most hypocritical, that I've seen has go to be this one from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League:

“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."

Really.

Really, honestly, you can't think of anything more vile than desecrating a cracker that you've waved your hands over and declared to be the body of the part of a deity that lived 2000 years ago?

I'd have to argue that you're simply not thinking hard enough.

How about "molesting choir boys"? How about "covering up the molestation of choir boys"? How about "moving priests around while they continue to molest choir boys"?

How about "living in opulence while preaching poverty to your followers"? Maybe that's more hypocritical than vile. It might come down to semantics.

I can think of a lot of things that are way, way worse, but maybe that's just because I look at the cracker and I see the cracker - which is all anyone can prove is there - while Bill Donohue and the Catholic League elevate this wafer to some station far above the actual human beings (who actually exist) who are being mistreated by his own church.

I suppose that makes me the crazy one.

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Abdelrazik: Sudan vs. Canada

Now I will admit that I am not an expert on Sudan. I don't know much about its history, its human rights record or the culture of its people. I've just always been given this vague sense that your average de-colonialized African nation is slightly more chaotic and slightly less observant of human rights than my own country.

I guess I was wrong. Not only has my government not done anything to get Omar Khadr out of Gitmo. Not only did it acquiesce to Maher Arar's torture in Syria. Our government (two governments in a row) have upset the Sudanese by disregarding human rights.

Go here and read the timeline at the bottom of the page.

Sept 28, 2004. Abousfian Abdelrazik is being held in a Sudanese jail, at Canada's request, and a Sudanese official doesn't like it:

He repeated there was nothing against him in Sudan, stressing those last two words. He said Sudan realized however that keeping an innocent man in detention was a human-rights violation ... He thought that protest and public attention would impact adversely on both our countries ... He said he was convinced Canada could deal with this airline ban if it wanted to.

Sudan later offers to fly Abdelrazik home to Canada, but Canada apparently thwarts that too.

Doesn't anyone find it offensive that other countries are having to remind and teach Canada about human rights?

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The Real Crime Wave

I remember receiving my first constituent report from the Hon. Minister of Defence Gordon O'Connor. There was a whole bunch of scare mongering and other nonsense about crime without any mention of the fact that crime rates were going down. Bereft of real platform issues beyond letting rich people get richer and having a bigger military with which to play, they were forced to invent problems. At the end of the newsletter was a questionnaire: Are you afraid of crime? Do you want your government to take action on crime? etc. etc.

I said, "No. I'm not afraid of crime. The crime rate is going down. Now stop with the fear mongering and find something real to do with your time."

But I think I was wrong. Crime and crime rates are going up. The following graphs demonstrate this very well.

As you can see here, and according to this report from CTV Toronto, there's a recent increase in the number of people not paying for their gasoline. I've always been told to worry about immigrant youths, but I guess it's the wealthy people with large vehicles who are the problem.


Then we have this problem, where the Government of Canada was illegally ordering prisoners detained by Canadian soldiers to be handed over to a regime in Afghanistan that is well known for its use of torture. This is a pretty serious crime wave and we really ought to start getting tough with the people ordering these crimes. No use going after the soldiers. I'm sure my MP, Gordon O'Connor, being so concerned about crime, will want to find the guy who gave the orders and lied about how well monitored the prisoners were. That guy should probably go to jail. (Of course, I had to make up all of the numbers in this graph as Al Qaeda could break in to your kitchen and steal all of your cookies if they knew how many people Canada had detained. All we know is that about 200 of them escaped a few weeks ago.)


Then there's this problem. There's been a 100% rise in the number of Canadian juveniles (child soldiers) captured by foreign powers and tortured by them. Worse, Canada is complicit in this as our government has not protested this mistreatment. This is out of control. Someone has to step in with some mandatory minimum sentencing for whomever is failing to protest this horror.


And lastly, because a reader thankfully mentioned it, I should bring this up. While Taser related deaths did decrease temporarily in 2006, we can see that they're on the rise again in Canada. While not technically, legally speaking a crime, these are still very worrying.


Well, it's all there in black and white (and blue). The Conservatives are right. Crime is out of control in this country and it's time somebody started getting tough on it. I think enforcement is the key, at least in the short term, and then perhaps some civic education for those who are likely to be working in areas where these crimes could happen in the future.

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Those Strong Conservative Women

In case you were wondering, all you women who aren't on the conservative side, your problem is that you're weak. That's what I heard.

It's important to understand your opponents so you can figure out how to argue with them and so you can see how they picture you. So maybe this will help us decipher "the conservative woman".

Strong women will identify with the Conservatives, wet noodles will vote for any lefty party that promises them eternal welfare. They don't care that their children will suffer, they have no self respect, and can't cope with life.

We're a little vague at this point as to what a "strong" woman is. This reeks of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If a weak woman is found among conservatives, then she's not a real conservative. If a strong woman is found elsewhere, she's not really strong. If your mother raised the three of you after your alcoholic father beat her up and left town, she's still weak if she votes NDP.

"Strong" probably doesn't refer to physical strength, although that is hinted at. We'll get to that later. It's the rest of you women, the wet noodles, that I'm thinking about. Your devotion to social causes and the welfare of others is apparently a sign of weakness. The fact that infant mortality, life expectancy and other indicators are better in a society when we all take care of each other isn't a good thing, it's a sign of weakness. Your children will grow up with this social weakness and won't be able to cope [properly?] with life.

Of course, we wouldn't want you going away with the thought that conservative women are the Klingon matriarchs that the above paragraph implies, so we'll throw this in:

Conservative women help real people in real need, they don't write a paper about it.

More of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Conservative women only care about those who deserve their help. I wonder if Kimberly Rogers counts? The Mike Harris PCs didn't think so.

Maybe we'll go back to the beginning of the article. The blogger in question was apparently surprised to meet a woman who did things:

While her husband was working, she found a house and bought it. This lady was no shrinking violet. She did what was needed, and never looked back. She is a perfect example of how our country was born.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that women didn't have a vote when the country was born, we have the blogger's reaction to this woman who went and bought a house while her husband was working.

How much money does this anonymous couple have that one of the spouses could go off and buy a house while the other was working? I think we begin to understand, at this point, what "strong" means. It means "I have enough money to take care of myself". As well, we might point out that your mother is a weak, wet noodle if your family doesn't have enough money for her to go out and buy a house while her husband is at work. Additionally, just to belabor a point, is she allowed to go to work herself?

Now put this definition of strength (having enough money to buy houses without consultation) with the idea of charity (real people in real need) and you have a good idea what Hunter's definition of a Strong Conservative Women is: a woman with a rich husband and a discriminating sense of charity that probably doesn't include the unintentionally pregnant.

This is probably not the image that "Hunter" wished to project, but there it is. If you and your family don't have enough money to take care of all of your needs, you're weak. You're weak, your parents were weak (especially your mother) and you're raising weak children. You deserve your situation (inherent in your weakness) and are consequently not a "real person in real need."

Congratulations. We can now tell them apart.

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