harper's environmental plan, khadr's trial: both frauds

Al Gore has called the Tory environmental plan "a complete and total fraud" "designed to mislead the Canadian people". Conservative Environment Minister John Baird points to Gore's eight years as Vice President, which doesn't change the validity of Gore's observation.

* * * *

Readers have also asked me to blog about the impending "trial" of Omar Khadr, the Canadian who has been held at the US Guantanamo Bay concentration camp since 2002, when he was 15 years old. Now 20, Khadr was imprisoned without charges for five years. Last week, the US charged him murder, attempted murder, spying, and providing material support to the enemy and conspiracy, and plans to try him before a military court.

Khadr's detention, his imprisonment without charges, and the tribunal he will face are a totalitarian nightmare worthy of Orwell or Kafka. I don't know what, if anything, Khadr has done. I do know that the US's response is so far outside of what civilized societies governed by the rule of law are supposed to do that it renders anything that comes from it utterly meaningless.

Guantanamo should be emptied. It should stand empty, forever, as a beacon of caution, a monument to human potential, like Auschwitz. Whatever happens to the US in the future, this will always be its eternal shame.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

sharia

This morning I see that Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario, is banning the Muslim religious court known as sharia . This ends months of debate about whether sharia would be legal and binding in Ontario. I'm quoting at length from the story in today's Toronto Star because many US readers are likely not up on this. In a surprise announcement that caught both supporters and opponents of sharia law off guard, Premier Dalton McGuinty says he will move quickly to ban all religious arbitration in the province. McGuinty made the announcement in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press yesterday after months of debate and controversy surrounding use of Islamic sharia law in family arbitration. "I've come to the conclusion that the debate has gone on long enough," the premier told the news agency. "There will be no sharia law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians." The announcement prompted t
Read more

can of worms

I'm opening a sticky subject here, my need to understand causing me to throw caution to the wind. It's about Alberta. Alberta vs. the rest of the Canada. The Globe And Mail runs something about Alberta's gripes every day, and I try to follow along. If it weren't for wmtc's resident Albertan , and the ensuing arguments in comments, I would've had no warning. It's not something Americans know about. As is, observing for more than a year, I have only the smallest of clues. Here's what I know. Please pardon my ignorance and oversimplification, but I have to start somewhere. The province of Alberta is rich, because it has oil. The province of Alberta is conservative, relative to the rest of Canada. Hmm. Funny how those two go together. Because of its great oil wealth, Alberta revenue helps fund services in the rest of Canada. (These are transfer payments?) Apparently many Albertans resent this. They want to keep Alberta's money in Alberta. They don't
Read more

low confidence

I'm excited about today's no-confidence vote . Only three months after moving here, we'll get to see a government fall, a campaign, and an election, in a system very different from what we're accustomed to. Even the expression "the government will fall" strikes us as oddly dramatic and revolutionary. My sense of current Canadian politics, for what it's worth, tells me that very little will change from the upcoming election. I'd be surprised if the Liberals didn't win. So it's kind of cool to see this happening without a lot at stake. On a semi-tangential note, have I mentioned I'm completely down with "Corner Gas"? Excellent show; I love the deadpan humour. (Great website, too; check it out .) So was that really Finance Minister Ralph Goodale ragging on Brent Butt's camera last Saturday night?
Read more