Crazy Foreigners

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Great Homos in History

Crazy Foreigners

Die Welt reports that the fat bastard Belgians are teaching their children that Ataturk, revered father of the modern secular Turkish state, was a total homo.  Not surprisingly, initial response from the Bosporus is not receptive to this claim. 

No time to translate the whole piece- feel free to work on it yourself and update as appropriate.


Posted by GeekLethal on 03/28/07 at 12:40 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

And you think 911 is slow to respond?

Crazy Foreigners

I guess it might be in certain areas, but it’s instantaneous, when compared to something like that reported in this UK Telegraph story:

Two female students had heard Mr Safronov’s body land and reported that he was still alive. They rang emergency services and were told to ring back in 30 minutes if the journalist was still moving. By that time he was dead.

[Wik] Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Alsø wik] Unrelated memo to myself: Don’t even think of pissing off Vladimir Putin.


Posted by Patton on 03/06/07 at 02:04 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Monday, March 05, 2007

Learning about nature

Crazy ForeignersLead Pipe Cruelty

All these years, I’ve never really given much thought to them, and have remained uneducated about wolverines.

What, to my wondering eyes, should appear the other week but an article insert in the Economist of Feb 15th (really, just a sidebar), including a picture of a wolverine.  Who knew they looked so much like beavers?  Or would that be better stated as “fat-assed ferrets”?  Silly me - I’ve always assumed it was just a small wolf. Not being from Michigan, I guess it’s OK for me to have had such a gap in my knowledge.  It’s a shame that the online article omits the picture of the wolverine, as it was truly a nasty looking bugger.  None of the first couple hundred wolverine pictures available in a Google Image search, after omitting those 90% which seemed to be related to the X-Men movies, came even close to capturing the bugger’s nasty buggerishness.

Oh, and that article? (sorry - subscription only, near as I can tell, though how it classifies as “premium content” is a bit beyond me).  It’s about the proposed rebranding of Canada, and is entitled “Tenacious, smelly—and uncool”.  No, they weren’t talking about Canada in the title, they were talking about what a poor choice a wolver-rat would be for a national symbol.

Close your eyes and think of Canada. Perhaps the picture that comes to mind is one of a country of cold winters and civilised prosperity. But Stephen Harper, the country’s Conservative prime minister, has another idea. This month he suggested that the national image was best captured by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.

That seems odd. Wolverines have some unpleasant habits. They emit a foul-smelling musk and eat carrion. They are close relatives of skunks and their name translates as “glutton” in French. But Mr Harper was thinking of their reputation for aggression and tenacity in the face of much larger predators. Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear, he said. “We may be smaller but we’re no less fierce about protecting our territory.”

The Economist goes on to remind readers that it’s already suggested new symbology for Canada, back in 2003 - a moose wearing shades.  So yeah, that’s rather cool - a lot better than a nasty smelling sharp-clawed mole-like creature that eats carrion.

[Wik] What? Ohio State fan?  Moi?


Posted by Patton on 03/05/07 at 01:25 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Permalink

Friday, January 26, 2007

Area Organized Crime Families Fearful of FBI Anti-Mob Investigations

Crazy ForeignersUnmitigated Gall

Reuters reports that in the aftermath of the recent round up of hundreds of illegal undocumented aliens workers, known to me as scofflaw foreigners, some people in California are fearful.  Why are they fearful?  Let’s hear what Rosa Maria Salazar has to say.  She is a cook at a Salvadoran cafe in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles:

“We’re terrified. The police could come for us at any time and deport us.”

As an aside, she made the above comment in Spanish.  Reuters helpfully translated.  But why is Rosa Maria frightened?  Because, well, she’s an illegal alien.  She is here in this country illegally, and she is working illegally.  I am sure that Rosa Maria is a nice woman, hard working and eager to make a better life for herself.  No doubt that was difficult in her native Guatemala.  But I am not overly moved by her terror.  She has every right to be concerned that agents of our government will come and send her away, because, that’s their job and she is a utterly and completely legitimate target for their scrutiny.  She’s breaking our laws just by being in Los Angeles.

This Reuters article is full of not so sly bias toward the “victims” of this latest sweep.  Observe:

The 55-year-old undocumented worker from Guatemala is among many Hispanics deeply shaken by recent immigration raids at the heart of Latino communities in southern California.

I imagine that most of those frightened Hispanics are also illegal aliens.  American citizens of Hispanic descent really don’t have to worry, now, do they?  Should we be concerned that criminals are “shaken” by police patrols?

The-seven day Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep, dubbed “Operation Return to Sender,” targeted jails across five counties in the Los Angeles area, where police took 423 of what they called “criminal aliens” into federal custody for deportation, after being held on charges unrelated to their immigration status.

And look, more than half of the people rounded up were already rounded up, albeit for other crimes.  Is the Hispanic community, and indeed concerned citizens throughout this great nation expected to weep for shame because 400 people already in jail are deported?  Sheesh.

Federal agents from seven teams also fanned out in local communities, where they nabbed 338 undocumented immigrants, more than 150 of whom were classed as “immigration fugitives”—foreign nationals who ignored final deportation orders.

And of the other half, almost half of them were not merely here illegally, but were actively running from immigration officials.  These aren’t the grey masses of illagals, people who are in this country but under the radar.  These are people who we have specifically told to go home, and for some reason are still here.  Why were these “final deportation orders” not accompanied by a Federal Marshall and a plane ticket?  Of the others, these undocumented immigrants yearning to be free, well they are 188 out of an estimated 2.5 million in California alone.  It’s a start, but hardly a solution.

“We hadn’t seen anything like this here before, and it came as a shock,” said Antonio Bernabe, a community worker who runs a day labor program at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Why the fuck would this come as a shock to you, Antonio?  The fact that we haven’t enforced our laws for decades might have lulled you into a false sense of security, but the writing has been on the wall for a little while now.  And why aren’t you in jail for helping criminals evade justice?

“The police didn’t just take people with deportation orders, they took anybody ... guys who were just hanging out in the street and even from a Jack in the Box restaurant ... and now people are afraid to go out,” he added.

Well, damn, that’s just like, terrible.  They took anybody who wasn’t here legally.  How… fascist. 

“We used to feel secure here,” Nicaraguan electrician Manuel Salomon told Reuters as he sipped coffee in a Mexican bakery in the city. “But it looks like that honeymoon is over.”

I certainly hope so, Manuel.  I hope that you get arrested and deported.  And then I hope that you turn around, and make your way back to this country legally.

This article, and many like it, are ridiculous in the euphemistic treatment of this issue.  Calling Manuel, or others, “Undocumented Workers” or some other truth dodging phrase does not erase the fact that they are people who are breaking our laws, and have been showing contempt for laws since the moment they slipped across the border.  They are illegal aliens – a nicely accurate phrase that has almost completely disappeared from the major media.  I am not against immigration.  I do not hate Hispanics.  I am against illegal immigration, and I think that most people on this side of the issue realize that they are different issues despite the efforts of some on the other side to conflate them.


Posted by Buckethead on 01/26/07 at 02:28 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Monday, December 18, 2006

Boomtown?

Crazy ForeignersFilthy Lucre

Newsweak is reporting that Iraq’s economy, despite all the bombings and blood and death, is booming.  According to one measure, 17% this year and projected for 13% next year.  Amazing, really.  I would imagine that a fair chunk of that healthy growth rate is the result of starting small - the first part of the growth curve is easy.  Still and all, the fact that things are getting together enough for this sort of thing to happen is encouraging, especially in the face of the constant reminders that things are very, very bad indeed. 


Posted by Buckethead on 12/18/06 at 09:15 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Filthy Lucre • Permalink

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants.

Crazy ForeignersEntertainment

Behold the glorious Chingrish of actual English Subtitles used in films made in Hong Kong.

1. I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.
7. Take my advice, or I’ll spank you without pants.
8. Who gave you the nerve to get killed here?
10. You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.
11. I’ll fire aimlessly if you don’t come out!
14. I have been scared shitless too much lately.
16. Beware! Your bones are going to be disconnected.
18. How can you use my intestines as a gift?
19. This will be of fine service for you, you bag of the scum. I am sure you will not mind that I remove your manhoods and leave them out on the dessert flour for your aunts to eat. [sic, of course]
20. Yah-hah, evil spider woman! I have captured you by the short rabbits and can now deliver you violently to your gynecologist for a thorough examination.
21. Greetings, large black person. Let us not forget to form a team up together and go into the country to inflict the pain of our karate feets on some ass of the giant lizard person.


Posted by Johno on 12/05/06 at 02:44 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Entertainment • Permalink

Friday, October 13, 2006

Reefer Madness

Crazy ForeignersWar

Long understood as an enemy by uptight people everywhere, pot is now recognized as a bona-fide obstacle on the battlefield.

Canadian soldiers are having a tough time trying to fight in Afghanistan’s forests (forests!) of 10’ tall pot plants.  In addition to all the marvelous, world-changing properties that hippies say weed has, unwashed peaceniks will be happy to know that it also dissipates heat and stores moisture in amazing quantities.  The net tactical result is that it is not so very difficult to thwart the Canucks’ thermal imagers.  Pot can bring peace, after a fashion, by making it hard to find people to kill.  Not surprisingly, the immediate remedy of removing the interfering ganja was to try and burn it. 

These are professional soldiers people, and I absolutely trust their judgement on this issue: burning the weed was the best military solution. 

Well, it turns out that they store so much water it’s damned near impossible to burn the stuff.  Except for a few stands that were already dead or d(r)ying, which went up quite nicely but did cause- ahem- “ill effects” on a unit downwind of the burn.  I’m assuming they meant “ill” as in nausea, not as in “License To”. 

No lasting effects were reported, although the entire stockpile of pre-positioned NATO tactical cookies in theater seems to have vanished.


Posted by GeekLethal on 10/13/06 at 02:24 PM
Crazy Foreigners • War • Permalink

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

When the going gets tough, the Europeans go fascist

Crazy Foreigners

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has a interesing post on the continuing unraveling of EADS/Airbus, following BAE’s divestiture of its 20% stake in the Pan-European aerospace firm.  This is just part of the problem with Europe, as many have noted.  It seems to me that there might be, in the relatively near future, a convergence of catastrophe for Europe.  There’s the looming demographic collapse, and its corollary the growth of unassimilated Islamic minorities, stultified economies, military impotence, and so on.  Let us keep in mind what the traditional European response to these sorts of trouble is, and hope that they come to their senses before it gets really bad somewhere around 2020.


Posted by Buckethead on 10/11/06 at 01:12 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Fox, Henhouse.

Crazy ForeignersDarwin Award Contender

I know that I will sleep soundly at night if the French were overseeing the Iranian nuclear enrichment program.  I mean, seriously, what are the chances that the French would allow anything bad to happen?


Posted by Buckethead on 10/03/06 at 04:23 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Darwin Award Contender • Permalink

The Queen’s English as a Second Language

Crazy ForeignersFilthy Lucre

About 2 months ago I had a phone interview with an organization in the UK.  More precisely the interview was with an HR firm that organization had hired to conduct this particular search.  I didn’t believe anything would come of it- a belief that was borne out as it happens- and that’s not really my point.  My point is that it was funny getting past the language barrier.

The woman running the search was supposed to call at 11 local on the designated day.  Her assistant called instead, and explained that the boss was running late with other calls and, if it was quite alright, she would like to call back in 20 minutes.  That’s the translated version. 

At that moment though I was having trouble:

“Yes?” [Me, in standard by-God Amurrican English.  Since I was expecting this call, I wasn’t as abrupt as I usually am.  But I still answered like I had just eaten a rare steak.  I’m not sure why, but that was an important image to convey telephonically.]

“Hello, is this Geeklethal?” [Him, with the Queen’s diction, polite and helpful with just a wisp of priss.]

“Yes.”

“Geeklethal, this is Mott Hooply with Frothingsham Limited.  I gribniff the eltra docalax for katy in the hibell and foralently.”

“...?” [The ellipsis, here, means near total incomprehension: face pinched; eyes shut tight; lips frowning with grim tension like I was a mathematician working on fucking Enigma and the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic hung on whether I could just get the damned key and I knew I was close, but I couldn’t get my mind working on the problem because all I had going on in my skull was my own voice yelling ‘FUCKING *WHAT* did he just say!?’ So, that’s what those three dots meant there.  Moving on.]

“If that’s alright...?”

“Ah, ok...” [As I slowly worked on a general sketch of comprehension, with growing awareness of an awkwardly long pause over what was probably a very routine and undemanding question.]

“And shall she criff at this number, or friddle theraflu alta?”

“....Ahhh, this number’s............ffffine?” [Near-total guess, there.]

“Splendid!”

Phew, this is going to be harder than I thought, um, I thought.

When she did call 20 minutes later, it again took a few minutes to shift my eargears into British but more surely and with less grinding than with her assistant.  At first it was like I was speaking to her on the Moon, with a gap between her question and my answer.  But the gap was due not to distance but me “translating” what she’d asked me.  I had to listen carefully, wait for my on-board translation matrices to filter it, re-understand it in American, and go from there.  Later I realized that my brain does precisely the same thing, in the same way, when trying to navigate a conversation in German- starts out ok, readily grasping the first few words in the sentence, then falls off a cliff, then comes many seconds, sometimes minutes, to recreate in my mind what that was all supposed to have meant- if I ever even get an answer.  Funny it was the same in unfamiliar English too.  It smoothed out after a bit, and by the end was cruising right along, but never quite got the ease of comprehension we all have with each other as native American speakers.

So I basically had to blather about how dynamite I am, which if you’ve never done it on the phone in this manner is hugely awkward.  It is in such a situation that we realize how much we rely on body language, eye contact, and a dozen other physical cues from our audience that we use in turn to modify our speech.  Such body language is probably not so very culturally distinct as speech. 

Compounding that awkwardness was the distinct sensation that the more I spoke, the more I felt that what she heard on the other end was not my disciplined, thoughtful responses to her questions- themselves the result of careful reflection on a brief but respectable career - but more like “UUU HUH HEEILK YES’M I SHO’ NUFF AM DA MAN FO’ DA JOB”.  I felt as if I was from the deepest piney woods of Fuckbuckle, Arkansas, was applying for the presidency of Harvard, and any second would ask the women on the hiring committee who was keeping the house all day if they were here?

Well, since I wasn’t subsequently invited to England for a real interview, I didn’t have to figure out how I was going to communicate with them on their home turf in their own language.  But after that call I could see some QESL (Queen’s English as a Second Language) coursework in my future. 


Posted by GeekLethal on 10/03/06 at 11:04 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Filthy Lucre • Permalink

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

What’s next?  The gubmint gonna tell me how to piss?

Crazy Foreigners

Without putting too fine a point on it, yes.


Posted by GeekLethal on 09/27/06 at 01:20 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Scarier than Dick Cheney

Crazy ForeignersPartisan Politics

Another post long delayed is an update to my post on the laws of civilized warfare.  Or as Ken McLeod would have it, “Civilised Warfare.” Shortly after writing my piece, I was cruising around my internet neighborhood, and dropped in on the Maximum Leader.  He had posted a link to an editorial by one Sam Harris in the LA Times.  Mr. Harris is a liberal, and recently the author of a book that slams religion.  All of them.  (At least he is even-handed in his contempt.  Like the saying goes, you’re not a bigot if you hate everyone.) Normally I avoid reading the LA Times, so I would likely have missed this article if not for the intervention of our Dear Leader.

Now, one would expect that a liberal religion hater would also hold a typical package of left-leaning beliefs.  You would be wrong.  The whole article is worth reading, and you should be reading Naked Villainy on general principles.  But one bit bore directly on my post of last week.

In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise.

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

This summary is, tragically, far better written than my own.  But it again hits the point that unless we are to completely discard any sort of moral viewpoint of human action in the world, we have no choice but to view some people, groups, and actions as inherently better than others.  (The alternative is to view the world through a lens of expediency, which is what McLeod seems to suggest, despite his claims of compassion.)

Tolerance, compassion and fairness are virtues.  What liberals so often fail to realize is that they are far from the only virtues.  When we look out at the world we must make judgments, we must discriminate between the good and the bad.  If we lack the courage and confidence to look at someone and say, “That’s wrong” we have no compass for guiding our own actions in the world. 


Posted by Buckethead on 09/26/06 at 03:49 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Partisan Politics • Permalink

Monday, September 25, 2006

Head Butts don’t always hurt

Crazy Foreigners

At least not permanently.  According to the WSJ, in a story last week, “Soccer Star Zidane May Have Lost His Head, But(t) It Hasn’t Hurt Him”.

Good for him.

Rash actions in the heat of the moment, particularly during a sporting event, seem easy to forgive.  Exceptions, of course, exist - think Woody Hayes’ attack on Clemson’s Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl.  Quite an embarrassment, and one he never really lived down. It differs both because he wasn’t a contestant, and because it was clearly a childish hissy-fit, unlike Zinedine Zidane’s head butt of Marco Materazzi, who, let’s be serious, probably earned it.

Seeing the story, however, reminded me of an idiotic picture that circulated shortly thereafter. Just because it was idiotic doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny, however, and the WSJ story provided a cheap excuse to post it, so I will:


image

(Note: That’s an animated picture, and I got tired of watching it move on our page, so click to see it in its native, full motion, form. It’s far less funny if the animation is disabled in your browser, to the point of “not at all funny")


Posted by Patton on 09/25/06 at 10:17 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Friday, September 22, 2006

More shit from my inbox

Crazy Foreigners

Clearly, posts based on the contents of one or more of the roughly 200 non-SPAM email messages I get per day are easy.  Why, they practically write themselves!

But that’s not the point.  The point is to give me a jumping off point to opine about one thing or another, and Steve Elliot, of Grassfire.org, has done just that.  I have no idea how I ended up on their mailing list - I’m not aware of anything they’ve had to say (at least in the periodic “Please sign this petition!” emails I’ve gotten from them) that I think is worthy of even clicking the link to go to their site. That, plus internet petitions are generally tools for twits. This latest, however, coerced me to action.

That action?  To ridicule the silliness of the Grassfire.org actions, if not their intentions.  Actually, come to think of it, I’m ridiculing their intentions, too. Here’s an excerpted version of their ‘plaint for this week:

If you didn’t see Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez call President Bush “the devil” during his U.N. speech, go here and see for yourself: redacted

Thanks, Steve - I didn’t see it, but I read about it, and have no need to go watch Chavez make an ass of himself on tape delay. Continuing:

Here is what Chavez said:

“Yesterday, the devil [President Bush] came here. Right here.  Right here.  And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”
--Hugo Chavez

Then Chavez made the sign of the cross as if praying to God for deliverance from the “devil” (President Bush)! This was one of the worst mockeries of a U.S. President ON OUR OWN SOIL by a foreign leader in history!

Did you know this fascist thug also own (sic) Citgo oil company and is making untold millions on Citgo profits to undermine our President and the troops?

Chavez is using OUR MONEY to attack and undermine our President and our nation!

In response to this outrage, thousands of citizens are sending Chavez a message by joining the Citgo boycott. Go here to send Chavez a message: (also redacted) We want to rally 100,000 signers in the next 7 days and deliver these petitions to the main distributors of Citgo Gas, including 7-Eleven.

Thanks for your immediate action!

Steve Elliott, President
Grassfire.org Alliance

So, if I read him correctly, Hugo Chavez “own” Citgo Oil?  Technically, as well as factually, no, he doesn’t.  He controls it, as part of his country’s nationalized OPEC member, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, and controls it quite poorly, on reflection.  So any damage “needed” to Citgo, he seems clearly able to inflict on his own without the help of me or any of my more gullible co-mailinglist-members.

And, about those gullible souls who might “Take ... immediate action!” because of Chavez’s actions “ON OUR OWN SOIL!” and what he does to us with “OUR MONEY!” (yeah, I added a couple exclamation points, but only because Steve must have forgotten these guaranteed-to-enflame necessities from the toolbox of all rabble-rousers), I hope there are few, not because I wish Elliott or Grassfire any particular harm, but because this is a meaningless gesture, designed to enflame the rubes among us and generate funds for Grassfire, nothing more.

I consider it no different than the several-per-week pretend-solicitations of my opinion or involvement in some God-forsaken pretend-grown-up activity put together by the Republican Party.  And, lest Ross get all chubby, the DNC is no different, and no more intelligent in its pretense to actually give a shit what any of its Middle America adherents think, only about the money they can milch (or would that be “mulct”?) for the latest cause du jour.

Puh-leeze.  If you don’t want to buy Citgo gas, go buy some other gas.  But don’t pretend Chavez’s distributors will give a fat rat’s ass about some Intertube-circulated pseudo-petition expressing the nation’s indignation about the way he acted at the U.N. toward GW Bush.

Here’s a couple clues for those who might think Elliott has a point:  Bush almost certainly doesn’t care about Chavez’s opinion of him, and less so about any words he might use to enunciate it. Including this nugget, from a NY Times story on the matter:

[Chavez] brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died. (Mr. Chomsky, 77, is still alive.)

I mean, “everyone” knows Bush is dumb as a bag of hair, right?  But even Bush knows Mr. Chomsky is still alive.

Furthermore, he made this speech at the United Nations General Assembly, and nobody who’s got a lick of sense actually believes the General Assembly is worth the powder it would take to blow it to hell.  The UN does such a poor job at most of what it does that the few good things it does are lost in the backwash.  So who cares where he made this inane statement?

Elliott does, or claims to.  Whatever nit-wits sign his petition do, or claim to.  I do not.

[Wik] No, I don’t know why I turned into the hyphenation queen for this post.  It’s just how it came out.

[Alsø wik] Odd, this entire embargo thing must not be working out.  I got a follow-on from Steve today (9/26/2006) informing me that:

In the next seven days, I want to deliver 50,000 petitions
to 7-Eleven which distributes Citgo gas at thousands of
locations. Please help.
No offense, but tough shit, snookums - boycotts of volatile commodity items seldom make sense, and seldom achieve the desired effect. I hope that the shortfall in signatures is because most of his recipients realize this.  Otherwise, it means the internet is broken, and that would suck. Too bad about the inability to meet the reduced and extended expectations.  And, yes, I’ve unsubscribed from his mailing list.


Posted by Patton on 09/22/06 at 01:45 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

US Government Tortures Canadian Citizens

Crazy ForeignersLead Pipe CrueltyUnmitigated Gall

Canadians are widely seen as the closest thing to being American, world-wide. So what’s up with the US government torturing Canadians? Should the Canadian government begin torturing US citizens? As a Canadian living here in the US, I am hopeful that black-masked thugs will not show up in the middle of the night, slap my fiance to the floor, and extradite me to a secret CIA prison in Syria, where I can be tortured into saying just about anything. It won’t be hard; I won’t last.

As a “guest” of the CIA, Maher Arar confessed, under torture, to having attended weapons training in Afghanistan and being an al-Qaeda member. We know now that he’s never been to Afghanistan (or anywhere near it). So good job there on the “interrogation”—what we’ve shown is that someone being tortured will say whatever they can to get it to stop.

This guy is a regular guy. He’s an engineer who was doing nothing but minding his own business.

If you support Bush’s policies in this area, your positions are fairly limited:

  • This was wrong and it shouldn’t have happened, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Nobody was supposed to know.
  • This was wrong, it shouldn’t have happened, and it’s illegal. Someone should be held responsible.
  • This was OK because he was a foreigner. Americans don’t have anything to worry about.
  • This was OK because he was of middle eastern descent. Normal Americans don’t have anything to worry about.
  • We’re in a war and we don’t have to explain shit to any other stupid country.

I’ve left this article plural deliberately. This is the one guy that we know about. Are there others? How many other Canadian citizens has the US government abducted? And where are they?

What’s the official position of the US government on compensation for Arar? 


Posted by Ross on 09/19/06 at 03:18 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Lead Pipe Cruelty • Unmitigated Gall • Permalink
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