Those Americans of Good Will who believe in the American dream as outlined by Martin Luther King of a country of pluralism, diversity , helping out those in need and not just those filled with Greed should vote against these Republican fear merchants and the merchants of hate.
Update on Scott Wheeler's PR propaganda - racism, Nativism, fear mongering, the old Red Scare brought back -they compare Obama to Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Pol Pott, Mao and every evil person who ever walked the earth .
Rachel Maddow points out the attacks on Obama boil down to -"He's Black so Be Afraid"
Message from Republicans to American voters -"White people be afraid -don't forget Obama is Black & therefore Not one of us ie not white , a secret Muslim, secret communist or even one of the Lizard People "
Rachel Maddow- GOP revives -scare white people- tactic
Omar Khadr : Canadian Citizen and designated "Child Soldier" held in Guantanamo by US government indifferent to International Law.
Barbaric Guantanamo Bay Forced Feeding Chair- for those on hunger strikes
What happened to common decency - Is this crossing the line
Guantanamo Bay : America's Shame
"...In conclusion, while those who exult in the depths to which America has sunk over the last nine years, since "the gloves came off" following the 9/11 attacks, will rejoice in Khadr's 40-year sentence (and will complain that his real sentence is only eight years), anyone who retains a shred of decency and respect for the rule of law will be more inclined to accept the words of Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's long-term Canadian civilian lawyers, who stated after the military jury announced its sentence:
The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar's case. Politics also played a role. To date, there have been in excess of 1,200 US troops killed in Afghanistan, yet it is only Omar who has been put on trial."
Today's Talking Points - ( Definition: Talking Points- Dumbing down so even Americans and conservative Canadians might be able understand)
*Justice American style
*Justice versus revenge
*Omar Khadr's "Show Trial" mere entertainment for the American citizenry
*Coerced confession after abuse and threats and a bit of torture
*American Judicial system a sham
*Trumped up charges - fabrications and lies on the part of his accusers
*And still Americans wonder why so many around the globe distrust Americans and others who hate America-
*They distrust and /or hate America for its hypocrisy
*America invades countries on a whim and wraps itself in the Flag and the Cross.
*America is the World's Greatest Bully which knows no bounds and has no shame
* Americans believe they have the right to the world's natural resources at bargain basement prices and has the right to exploit workers in foreign nations
*Americans in general favor torture , renditions, assassinations, drone attacks on family gatherings, Death Squads, rigging election campaigns at home and abroad and is anti-Democracy and will use force if necessary to oust any government that does not give free-rein to American businesses or dares to insist that the superwealthy pay their fair share to maintain a decent civilized just society for all and not just the privileged.
America once again snubs and breaches International Law and Agreements by pursuing the case against Omar Khadr , putting him on trial ;coercing him to sign an outrageous self-incriminating indictment and confession to offenses which he did not commit or did so unknowingly.
What was his crime ? His crime was that of being a child of 15 who obeyed his parents and took part in a conflict which he may or may not have understood.
Canadian Security Intelligence Service CSIS
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) plays a leading role in protecting the national security interests of Canada by investigating and reporting on threats to the security of Canada. Guided by the rule of law and the protection of human rights, CSIS works within Canada’s integrated national security framework to provide advice to the Government of Canada on these threats.
from their website CSIS
Interesting that they claim (insincerely) to respect the rule of law and human rights since they did nothing to help Omar Khadr a designated "Child Soldier" under International Law who is a Canadian Citzen being held in a foreign prison where he claims he has been abused, neglected, beaten , tortured , put into solitary confinement for breaking some minor regulation . All of these are reason for insisting on the return of Omar Khadr by the US government which is in fact breaking "International Laws" including the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Rulings and War Crimes.
CSIS officer interviews Omar Khadr in a nasty aggressive unsympathetic manner.
When Khadr tries to tell about his abuse , neglect and times spent in solitary the CSIS representative tells Khadr to stop making up stories even though he shows the officer his bruises. The CSIS guy tells him that he nor anyone else can get him out of the prison. He tells Khadr he must confess to everything the US military and CIA says he did. It never occurs to our heartless man from Ottawa that Khadr might be telling the truth. When left alone Khadr seems to shut down while just muttering and then sort of singing and rocking as if he were mentally disturbed possibly going into a regressive state of mind .
Guantanamo Bay child soldier CSIS interrogation - Omar Khadr
Odd how so many Americans including the mainstream Media in the united States and the right-wing hawks in the GOP and Democratic Party and including President Obama have shown such a lack of sympathy or empathy for a "Designated Child Soldier " in favor of getting their "Revenge" and "Their Pound of Flesh" and Justice, fairness, compassion, common decency, common sense and the rule of law be damned.
My understanding of the law is that justice is to be tempered with a little compassion but to most Americans it seems notions such as Compassion, sympathy, empathy and common decency are seen as a sign of weakness and as a character flaw in individuals. Meanwhile they preach that their nation is the chosen nation of God. That they are the "Good Guys" . But the Americans rounded up the innocent with the guilty and proceeded to treat all prisoners as if they were enemy combatants and ruthless terrorists no matter the circumstances. But we also know that the US government and military knew but did not care that the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib and Bagram.
If God is on America's side then the Christian God is a despicable bully and a tyrant .
who is only deserving of contempt.
The Conservatives in America including the Religious Right are always going on about family values and that children should not rebel against their parents but to obey their parents without question and yet they punish an individual who was only 15 at the time of his being a soldier and was a soldier because he obeyed his parents and others in positions of authority.
Of course the Canadian government should be ashamed of the part it played in dealing with a Canadian citizen improperly incarcerated by a foreign country ie USA. The Canadian government and its people are also guilty in allowing "a Child Soldier" to be kept incarcerated and being abused , tortured, denied due process for 9 years and treated as guilty and that it was up to him to prove otherwise.
Must the Canadian government and its citizenry continue to kowtow to the bullying of the American government . Are we becoming the 51 st state.
When a Canadian official visited Khadr he was unsympthetic towards Khadr and wanted him to confess to whateverthe American authorities claimed he had done. After 9 years he finally caved in and signed a confession under duress and after being abused and tortured. Legally this confession is useless and is not worth the paper it is written on.
Omar Khadr Jury Hammers the Final Nail Into the Coffin of American Justice by: Andy Worthington, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed, Nov. 01,2010
...everything about the last week's events has been a travesty of justice that heaps shame upon the United States and convicting Khadr for being an "alien unprivileged enemy combatant," who was not even allowed to legitimately be in any kind of combat situation whatsoever, is an almost incomprehensible farce.
Moreover, the analysis of the last week's events as a disturbing travesty of justice is supported by the United States' ratification, in December 2002, of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict and also by analyses of the legislation authorizing the military commissions, which reveals that the war crimes that Khadr agreed to committing as part of his plea deal are not war crimes at all.
Under the terms of the UN Optional Protocol, which deals with prisoners who are under 18 when their alleged crimes take place, signatories are obliged to "[r]ecogniz[e] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities," and are also called upon to ensure "the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict."
.. As Lieutenant Colonel Frakt commented, "Astoundingly, according to the Pentagon, a detainee may be convicted of murder in violation of the law of war even if they did not actually violate the law of war."
In other words, then, a former child prisoner, who should have been rehabilitated rather than punished, because the responsibility for his actions lay with his militant father, was convicted on war crimes charges that were invented by Congress and were then reworked by the Obama administration so that the glaring contradiction between real war crimes and invented war crimes could be papered over with a veneer of legitimacy.
Small wonder then that, in the "Statement of Fact" that Khadr signed as part of his plea deal, he was also obliged to waive his right to appeal, in a passage that stated that he "does not have any legal defense to any of the offenses to which he is pleading guilty."
...In conclusion, while those who exult in the depths to which America has sunk over the last nine years, since "the gloves came off" following the 9/11 attacks, will rejoice in Khadr's 40-year sentence (and will complain that his real sentence is only eight years), anyone who retains a shred of decency and respect for the rule of law will be more inclined to accept the words of Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's long-term Canadian civilian lawyers, who stated after the military jury announced its sentence:
The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar's case. Politics also played a role. To date, there have been in excess of 1,200 US troops killed in Afghanistan, yet it is only Omar who has been put on trial.
Edney followed up by referring to those two polarized worlds of opinion that I mentioned at the start of this article, saying that those watching the military commission "may choose to believe that through his plea Omar finally came clean and accepted his involvement in a firefight when he was 15 years of age," or, conversely, that they may have concluded that "this was one final coerced confession from a victimized young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time because his father placed him there.''
and so it goes,
GORD.
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