July 20, 2008
I have a few concerns with the article you wrote about Omar Khadr (in the Sunday Sun, July 20th, 2008).
First, lets talk about what you said: Essentially, that the media has had a “drama-queen”, overly sympathetic response to the Omar Khadr Gitmo detention videos. You say we should not feel sorry for him, because the “boy terrorist”, as you call him, threw a grenade that allegedly killed a US Army medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer. And the reason he broke down and cried is because he thought the Canadian agents were there to take him back to Canada, but when the agents started asking him “the tough questions”… “he knew the jig was up, and that there was no going home”. Moreover, if Omar had killed a Canadian soldier we would not feel sorry for him.
I think you have made a decent effort to present a different point of view about these videos. The problem is, anybody who ascribes to this point of view has to conveniently forget some important facts.
1) Charges against Omar were dropped in 04 June 2007 because he could not be deemed an “unlawful” enemy combatant by the US’s war crimes tribunal. He has not been charged since.
2) Omar has not been convicted of any crime.
3) There is another side to the story. Omar’s defence team argues there is corroborating evidence, including evidence submitted by a ballistics expert, to suggest Sgt. Speer was killed by friendly fire – by an American grenade.
I am not saying I believe either story. What I am saying is that you cannot deride Canadians for feeling sorry for somebody who has been held for 6 years, without being charged, without being convicted, and when there has been no real effort of repatriation by the Canadian government. In Canada we have never let somebody rot in a jail cell for 6 years without even charging them.
And what makes him a “terrorist”? If he was out there killing American soldiers, then he, even as described by his American prosecutors, is an “enemy combatant”. He did not explode himself in a crowd of civilians or detonate a truck-bomb in a marketplace.
You ask us “if this Canadian poster boy terrorist had killed (a Canadian soldier), would there be the same outrage being expressed today over his treatment in detention?”
The question is designed to appeal to our patriotism, our respect for Canadian soldiers, our sentiment for those who have died there. But the question is actually invalid. Think about it: 1) We don’t know that Omar killed anybody – again, he hasn’t even been charged, let alone convicted. 2) If a Canadian citizen like Omar Khadr was accused of killing a Canadian soldier, he certainly would not end up at Guantanamo. He would be shipped back to Canada and would go through due process. He would be tried under the Young Offenders Act. He would have evidence presented against him – and for him. He would retain his rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (ie: he would be given rights to counsel before any interrogation - shamefully, something our own agents did not do when they interrogated Omar). He would not sit in a detention cell for 6 years. He would not ever be awoken every three hours and moved to a different location – a sleep deprivation technique designed to induce compliance to interrogation. He would be able to communicate with his family.
Your question is flawed, intentionally I think. You end your editorial by reminding us that “Pte Colin Wilmot, by the way, was buried on Wednesday in his home town of Fredericton”. You are using the death of one of our boys to promote the view that Khadr deserves what he is getting; you are using a dead Canadian soldier as a tool to advance a flimsy argument. The “jig” is up.
Sincerely, but with apologies to your mighty moustache,
Mercuda
December 26, 2007
Straight up, cut and dry: America has given Iraq the gift of less death this Christmas, and anybody who can’t celebrate less death is unpatriotic. Here is somebody who agrees with me in saying that less death is a “gift”, a lot like less rape.
Did you know that in the month of December only 11 U.S. soldiers died as a result of combat action in Iraq? That’s only 11 more deaths than Canada suffered in Iraq this month.
And did you know that there were only 371 Iraqi civilian deaths this month? In fact, there were so few deaths, that people are throwing celebrations instead of mourning every time somebody dies. It’s that good! Besides, under the Saddam Hussein regime, 533,170 people were dying every day! At that rate the population of Iraq would have been wiped out in less than a month.
Lastly, there were only 60 Iraqi security forces deaths this month. And if you combine these deaths with the number of American soldier deaths you get 71, which is only 3 deaths less than the overall American soldier deaths in April 2003 after the invasion when there were no Iraqi security forces.
The progress is plain to see:
American forces deaths in April 2003 - 74
American forces deaths combined with Iraqi security forces deaths in December 2007 - 71
See? 3 less deaths! HOOAH!
October 24, 2006
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? From 1960 to 1963, Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram explored obedience to authority with a series of experiments. This subject was important because of the holocaust and other atrocities, and it continues to be important when we think of the recent incidences at Abu Ghraib. Milgram wanted to focus on the way people came to view themselves as means for carrying out the wishes of others, or in other words, the essence of obedience.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? He did this by finding out how much pain somebody would inflict on another simply because they had been ordered to by a Yale experimenter. He chose this type of experiment because it would allow for a good amount of variation and variables could be controlled, in turn eliminating rival explanations for obedience. It was conducted like this: Two people would arrive at an official-looking Yale lab to conduct an experiment on punishment and learning, and each were assigned the role of “learner” or “teacher”, however the learner was in fact always an actor hired by Milgram. After an explanatory brief by the experimenter (also an actor) the learner was strapped into a chair with an electrode attached to his wrist, and the teacher, or naïve subject, was seated in a room with the experimenter and instructed to read word-pair questions. When the learner answered incorrectly the subject would administer electric shocks of increasing intensity using a shock generator. In reality, however, no shocks were given, although the sequentially spaced grunts, protests, and screams from the learner/actor would have convinced any subject otherwise. What would an ordinary person do when told by an apparently legitimate authority to administer up to 450 volts, where the shock generator read “DANGER – SEVERE SHOCK”, to another?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? When Milgram surveyed people asking whether they or the subjects would administer the shocks, the answer was no. The experiment, however, proved otherwise. Milgram explained the source of this error by noting that respondents too often focused on the autonomous individual abstractly rather than on the situation and context.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Milgram conducted numerous innovative and essential variations of the basic experiment described above, and the results are shown in the table below. Obedience here is measured by the number of subjects that proceeded to the highest level on the shock generator, by which time the learner was apparently unconscious.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Description of Experiment? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? %? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Learner protests vocally.
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63
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Exp. moved to basement of building, learner complains of heart problem.
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65
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Actor switch – new experimenter is unaggressive, new victim looks tough.
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50
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Women as subjects.
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65
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Learner participates on condition that he is let out when he asks.
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40
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Exp. moved to an office building in an industrial city.
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48
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Below we see the effects of physical distance between the subject and learner and subject and experimenter:
No vocal complaint heard from learner, wall separates learner and teacher.
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65
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Learner protests vocally, learner and teacher in same room.
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40
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Learner only receives shock if teacher puts learner’s hand on a shock plate.
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30
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Experimenter gives orders by phone.
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23
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? For experiments 12 to 16 Milgram altered the roles of people involved in the experiment, playing with the position, status, and actions of participants, and for experiments 17 and 18 Milgram examined group effects and the significance of conformity. Again, such variations and his control over variables allowed him to account for rival explanations.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? He discovered, for example, that obedience was highest when people perceived a legitimate authority. It was also high when the subject performed subsidiary acts or merely witnessed the situation instead of shocking the learner themselves. It was low, however, when the subject was faced with two rebelling peers.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? These results led Milgram to the “keystone” of his analysis, which he termed the agentic state - the mental state people enter when they see themselves as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes. It is, in essence, openness to regulation from authority. While the results were disturbing, Milgram saw this as evidence that people are born with a potential for obedience that has caused considerable devastation in the past, and is sure to affect the future.
October 9, 2006
Because today it was all over the news that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. And now North Korea has confirmed suspicions that they are as big of a dumbass as the rest of the nuclear states.
Not only do both North Korea and the U.S. have nuclear weapons, but both countries:
1)? Are led by mental midgets
2) Are good at keeping their populations ignorant, and;
3) Spend more on their military than anything else in their budget.
Years ago, President Bush said he would not tolerate nukes in North Korea, and today he lived up to his word by… uh… making a bunch of phone calls and trying his hardest to make a face that resembled the face of somebody who knows what’s going on.
Officials in the Bush administration are baffled as to why North Korea would want to destabilize the region by developing a sort of pre-emptive first strike capability.
“I mean, it’s as if they are afraid somebody is going to attack them first”, said Condoleeza Rice over the phone.
U.N. officials are considering sanctions, which? would be convenient since the five permenent members of the U.N. security council? (the U.S., China, Great Britain, France, and Russia) are all nuclear powers. North Korea is like the retarded kid they won’t let into the treehouse.
Hey, I have an idea. Why doesn’t the U.S. lead the world in a project to disarm all countries of nuclear weapons?
?
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October 3, 2006
I was reading an article today and couldn’t help thinking on how truth its content was. A little while back one soldier was taken away from Israel and we had to watch his entire life, the plea of his parents, the cause of Israel and finally how Israel “retaliates” by wiping an entire country. Now for over two months, Palestine has had 1.4 million people in an “open” jail of 380 kilometer square. Over this period of time 239 individuals were tagetted by Israel as militants or terrorists. Out of these 239, 36 were children according to human watch… Terrorists indeed.
Now maybe we can understand why someone who has nothing to lose is ready to give his/her life to go at an ennemy who leaves nothing behind but hatred, corpses and destruction. The state of Israel has been condemned by anyone who has any sense of humanity and decency, this includes rabbis, priests and immams.
Is it time yet for the international community to drag the war criminals to justice? Or should we still dwell about? the? possibility that? it was an accident for the majorit of lebanon to be wiped out.
September 24, 2006
A few days ago, Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan foreign minister travlled to the US as Venezuela’s chief diplomat.
Nicolas Maduro, accused the US of having detained him illegally, searched him, taking away his papers while travelling as a diplomat.
The US Homeland Security department denied the allegations made by Nicolas Maduro.
A few hours ago the US state department apologised to Nicolas Maduro who was detained for 90 minutes at New York’s JFK airport as he travelled home.
It is not the first time that the US has been playing around with UN diplomats.
Last year the US State Department refused to grant visas to an Iranian delegation who was supposed to make a speech at a conference organized by the UN.
Any country is required to grant visas to officials taking part in UN meetings.
Same incident has happened with Yasser Arafat.
These incidents show the role that the US? has been? trying to play on the international scene and their path to unilateralism.
June 23, 2006
On Thursday Fox News reported that seven marines and one sailor were being charged with the premeditated? murder of an Iraqi civilian.
Although Fox neglected to mention that the Iraqi was also mentally handicapped, they covered most of the details quite well, including the charges of conspiracy, larceny, and obstructing justice. They even went on and spoke about the May 9th killings of three other Iraqi civilians, saying that a fourth soldier has been charged.
Holy fuck! If it takes this many Americans to kill such a small number of unarmed civilians, imagine how many it’s going to take to kill the rest of the insurgents.
It has to be true. You know why? Because I heard it on FOX NEWS!
February 9, 2006
Now most of you have recently read or heard about the 2002 attacks that were unfoiled by the vigilent US defense team. What is surprising is that we hear about it now… 4 years later. And what’s even funnier is that the mayor of LA hears about it now!!! Now, it is interesting times that this comes at. Now most brainless monkeys will watch this and say ohhh SHOE BOMBS. They were going to get through to the cockpit with shoe bombs!!! Now that’s in 2002, a year after the 2001 attacks. Now i am not too sure how many people travelled between the States and Canada, but I happened to have done so and if someone managed to bring a shoe bomb on board at that time then bravo! Now let’s leave that aside and concentrate on something even more hilarious. Well apparently to carry this attack on, Al-Qaeda was supposed to use Chinese Men… Now, that’s very very funny, why would Chinese Men want to carry attacks on for Al-Qaeda, an afghan based group? Now for the first time I will generalize something about a group of people and I think Americans gave the world the right to do so by electing a dumb ass for president, most americans will believe this story, because a large majority of americans are not very bright and somewhat anti-social!!! I noticed this in Germany as we had an American in the group and he got labelled as anti-social the first night and it was a very diverse group with an Australian, Canadian, English, French, German, Swedish… Maybe it’s that arrogance or that belief of being better than everyone else? I am not too sure but one thing is certain is that the hate is increasing and some love it because they will raking in the money soon.
January 13, 2006
In the light of the new international drama going on about Iran, which will ultimately be an excuse for an invasion by the “Crusaders”. I have been posting much lately but try to get the good stuff accross whenever I get a chance.
The first one is by an ex-military (I believe he is a general but I am not 100% certain on that) in regards to the iraq war and the to-come iran war. Very interesting. There is also an audio version of it for those would rather listen to it: Article / Audio file are listed here.
This second one is a little bit of a longer read and written by a Native-American professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies. He actually gave a live speech and referred to “Chickens coming home to roost” in reference to 911. Of course, one can imagine the amount of trouble he went through after he expressed his opinion in the land of “free” speech. Read the article here and if interested buy the whole book.
Whatever you do though, don’t stop using your brain because the moment you do, you are done for. You are a grain of sand taken away by the sea.
December 19, 2005
Mr Cheney, can I say something ?
“Being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences ”
Is Bush a president or a king ?
Fifth speech in less than three weeks… Looks like there are some problems in sight for Mr Bush 
Looks like an excinting 2006 year is to come !
