Monday Post

Over the week-end, both the Canadian and American governments expressed their great displeasure of justice, prudence and common human decency and set the admittedly unrepentant killer and terrorist Omar Khadr free. He is now in Millhaven waiting for the day he will be free (which I believe will be sooner than one thinks).


Despite what Khadr's lawyer thinks, it's not difficult to vilify someone who never expressed remorse for killing a medic, a husband and father of two, as well as maiming the man's compatriot and brother-in-arms:

Omar Khadr spent a second day at the Millhaven federal penitentiary on Sunday under a 23-hour-a-day lockdown with a member of his legal team accusing the Harper government of "stoking public opinion" and "vilifying" his client.

"There's no need to be stoking public opinion against Omar," Khadr's lawyer John Norris said in an interview from Toronto with CBC News.

"They are, I think frankly, setting him up for failure," Norris said.

Again, this terrorist royalty and his worthless family have never had any intention of being Canadian and denouncing the evils of jihad. By default, they set themselves up for failure.


Mrs. Khadr, happy that her son has returned, wants her baby boy to be loved:

Visibly emotional, the mother of Omar Khadr said the fact her son has returned to Canada a convicted war criminal doesn’t make her happy and Canada needs to do more to give him his rights back.

“If he’s treated as a criminal, a convicted war criminal, I’m not happy,” Maha Elsamnah told the Star on Sunday. “I want him to come back as a person who has been abused and misunderstood. I want Canada to give him his right.”

Let's backtrack a bit:

Wife Maha Elsamnah took her then-14-year-old son Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al-Qaeda training....

The Globe and Mail today quotes Khadr family members saying that if Abdul Karim is ever going to walk properly again, it will through the efforts of the Canadian health-care system. To mark the occasion of their return, the Globe and Mail quotes Elsamnah insisting just a month ago that Al-Qaeda-sponsored training camps were the best place for her children. "Would you like me to raise my child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs or having some homosexual relationship? Is it better?" ...

Rejoicing in the family's citizenship, Elsamnah said she picked up health-care forms for Abdul Karim. "We've just been to the [Ontario Health Insurance Plan] office. That's it. They said we have to fill out forms." She added said her son will have trouble waiting out the three-month residency term required to qualify for publicly funded health care. Elsamnah added: "I'm proud of what we are and I'm proud we're in Canada now. Believe me, I will not force myself on anyone as a Canadian citizen. . . . I'm demanding for my kids? Is that wrong? Is that a crime?"

Well, somebody's feeding at the trough!

Mother Khadr feeding her family. The one at the end is Zaynab, I think.

Related: Obama- whose government is partly responsible for the aforementioned injustice- has waived sanctions on countries that use real child soldiers:

"When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that's slavery," Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty." 

But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community. 

Late Friday afternoon, Obama issued a presidential memorandum waiving penalties under the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 for Libya, South Sudan, and Yemen, penalties that Congress put in place to prevent U.S. arms sales to countries determined by the State Department to be the worst abusers of child soldiers in their militaries. The president also partially waived sanctions against the Democratic Republic of the Congo to allow some military training and arms sales to that country.

Americans, vote accordingly.



In the meant time, if you can help the Speer children, please do.


Many thanks.



In other news, misconduct in science journals:

A new study finds that fraud in scientific research is growing at a troubling rate, even though it remains rare overall.

A review of retractions in medical and biological peer-reviewed journals finds the percentage of studies that had to be withdrawn because of scientific misconduct has jumped several-fold since the mid-1970s.

The study says fraud or suspected fraud is by far the biggest reason for retractions, outweighing errors and plagiarism.

Fraud is detected only a handful of times for every 100,000 studies published. Study author Arturo Casadevall says a few scientific scofflaws cause big problems that can hurt people. He says one reason may be pressure to hit it big in science.

Thanks for doing science a misdeed, liars.



Why Celebrity Apartheid Week matters:

Once upon a time, Hollywood producers and studios routinely consulted with Christian pastors and church denominations for script approval on virtually every new film.

Today, they are more likely to consult with Muslim imams and Islamist pressure groups to determine if their movies are appropriate for release.

 A new report from the Express Tribune, with the International Herald Tribune,  last week said filmmakers working on projects depicting the U.S. Navy SEAL mission to Pakistan to kill terrorist Osama bin Laden are having second thoughts.

“Filmmakers in Hollywood are terrified of inciting further retribution against America over a string of new films showing the U.S. mission,” the report said.

The report said at least “one fearful studio has asked an Islamic cleric to vet its script.”

“Senior executives at another studio have entered into intense briefing sessions with the U.S. State Department officials to minimize or expunge any content which otherwise might be viewed as offensive.”

Gone are the days when the writing was fresh and original and the writers proudly stood by their work. Now, we have the most craven, cowardly kind of hackery and apology. Not that one expects anything but shameless demagoguery and tinsel from Hollywood these days....


But wait! There's more!

Matt Damon's new movie, "Promised Land," is a propaganda piece that trashes fracking techniques used by American oil companies. 

The movie presents American oil companies as greedy corporations that trash and pollute small-town America in attempts to extract oil and gas from shale formations. Yet, because fracking has been proven environmentally sound in the real world, the movie suggests oil companies might be planting "doom-saying" environmentalists in order to undercut the legitimacy of environmental voices all-together. ...

Why would someone go to all this trouble to criticize American oil companies? Maybe it's all about lessening the competition. After all, the movie "is financed in part" by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), an OPEC member country.

U.S. oil and gas companies are now using fracking techniques to get natural gas well: Cheniere Energy is about to start exporting 2.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from Louisiana. Since the UAE ranks sixth-worldwide in natural gas reserves, 2.2 billion cubic feet a day flooding the market from Louisiana cannot be welcome news.

Is the sequel about a famous actor being duped into doing OPEC's will?



And now, Halloween costumes of yore (only thirty days left, you know).



(With thanks)