Excerptcize

Archive for November, 2009

One thing that I’ve that I’ve learned in my short time in the blogoshpere is that snark plays. I had hoped to avoid resorting to it as much as possible.  Sadly, my initially positive reaction to the news that Barack Obama’s Justice Department is going to prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed along with four other co-conspirators in the 9/11 attacks in federal court turned to my snide statement entitling this post after further learning that Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had reached a decision on the path forward in the cases of five other detainees currently held at the US Army base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba that follows a different course of action.  The AG’s just and correct decision to try the five co-conspirators federally is diminished in light of the decision to let five other detainees military tribunals move forward; amongst those five that will remain in front of the ad-hoc military tribunals is a Canadian citizen largely forgotten by his country, Omar Khadr.  Khadr remains the last citizen of a western nation still held at the Guantánamo detention facility (all news stories that I read make note of this fact so it must be an important distinction.)  Now 23 years old, he was 15 when he was initially captured by American forces in Afghanistan in July of 2002, implicated in the death of Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer.  Guantánamo has been his home ever since.

Forget for a minute that as a 15 year old and that under any judicious application of international law would be considered a child soldier and as such should be afforded a different standard of justice.  In the Orwellian Newspeak employed by the previous US administration he was deemed first an ‘enemy combatant’;  when it was realized that the thrown together ‘legal’ process devised by the Bush White House did not have any standing to prosecute him as an ‘enemy combatant’ he was quickly reclassified as an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ in order to allow his case before the military tribunal to go forward.  There was no room for the distinction of ‘juvenile’ in this new system of justice.  To Canada’s great shame, the position of both the current Harper government as well as the Liberal governments that preceded it has been that they will not undermine our American allies justice system by seeking to return Khadr to Canada to face justice here.  The argument has been that the US is more than capable of administering justice and that it would be a waste of resources to seek Khadr’s return.  As my sarcastic aside above alluded to, all detainees in the black hole that is Guantánamo deserve a better application of justice, regardless of their country of origin.  The distinction that Khadr is the last western citizen being held at Camp X-Ray is not without merit however; it indicates that other nations where the rule of law is a bedrock principle have recognized the myopia present in the US’s misguided execution of the farce that is the ‘Global War On Terror’.  The fact that detainees would not be capable of receiving justice was clearly evident from the beginning of their incarceration; the mere act of holding these prisoners in Guantánamo itself being an affront to justice.  All other western nations with citizens being held there were able to see this and to their credit all successfully advocated for the release of those prisoners back to their country of origin; only Canada has failed in the advocacy of it’s own citizens.

• Canadians Against Prorogation: Vancouver Edition [/caption] January 23rd, 2010 saw thousands of people of all political stripes (as well as those lacking any stripes) from across the country come together in peaceful protest to demonstrate their displeasure with Prime Minister...
• Innovation Stiffling Government Aids Groundbreaking Artistry To follow up on an earlier posting that contended that government sponsored initiatives are capable of producing innovation in broadcasting I thought it was also worth highlighting our CanCon radio requirements and the Canadian Music...

• Video Court Reporting Services As A Way To Create Depositions. Various witness statements do not necessarily occur inside of the court procedure. When they are offered outside the court, they must be precisely described to...
• Canadian Pharmacies Many people are preaching the benefits of choosing a Canadian pharmacy over American pharmacy options, but this opportunity for acquiring your medications across the border...

Last week The Colbert Nation stepped up in a big way by becoming the official sponsor for US Speed Skating; their primary sponsor was the bank DSB until October 19th, 2009 when they were declared bankrupt by the Dutch courts.

• I Have a Counterfactual to Something Yglesias Said In passing along some thoughts on the now in theatres film Pirate Radio, Matt Yglesias makes the following observation:It also comes [...] with a strong libertarian, anti-statist message. And of course it’s quite true that...
• Lil Harper and the Environment Seeing this news clip* over the weekend got me to wondering about Canada's current environmental policy.  I was getting ready to slag the governments inaction on this front over the past couple years but I figured...

• Canadian Fishing Excursions Canada is on the top of the list when it comes to monumental fishing. Canadian fishing trips guarantee any fisher unlimited fishing options that are...
• Speed: a sports photoretouching piece As a dedicated desktop and mobile GUI designer, I didnt expect that I would stumble on photoretouching or photomanipulation a couple years back.  I was...