Where is the Canadians' Outrage?

I read most posts on this board, but seldom post and now must ask the
question with hope that discussion can be meaningful and devoid of the
hysteria too often exhibited herein.

On Monday the Canadian government released a highly censored report on
the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian/Syrian citizen who gained attention,
and much discussion here when he was detained at JFK enroute from
Tunisia to Montreal and sent to Syria in 2002. Most discussion here
was highly critical of US officials who were involved in this event, US
policy in general, and US government and media information
dissemination.

Monday's report, however, identified RCMP as the initiator of the event
by supplying false and misleading information to the US, and other
national officials that was acted upon eventually causing Arar's
imprisonment in Syria for about a year.

Where are the posts from those Canadians who are so often so eager to
criticize every US based event upon which they disagree? Are we to
believe they missed Monday's reporting, or are the events they were so
quick to villify somehow now okay that they were initiated by Canada
itself? Do they have any opinion at all on the censorship of this
"final" report on the Arar situation.

Can those bilingual French-Canadians use just two words of Latin, mea
culpa?

kokonutty wrote:
Where are the posts from those Canadians who are so often so eager to
criticize every US based event upon which they disagree?


There were here 4 years ago when the news of the illegal US kidnapping
and rendition to Syria for torture first surfaced. The difference back
then is that American reacted violently against people who made such
posts abnd accused them of being against the USA and pro terrorists.

Until americans not only start to accept that their governmebt is evil
from an international perspective, it is pointless to argue. As long as
a large percentage of americans blindly support their government's
action and refuse to accept that their government could ever do stuff
like torture or have human rights violations and not respect the
contitution,s requirement for due legal process for everyone, then it is
totally pointless to argue.

We can only point to some facts and let americans refuse to accept those
until years later when they realise we were right all along and, like
the germans after WWI, will wonder how the hell they could have remained
so blind to the terrible acts performed by you regime and will bee truly
ashamed of what their country has done.

Where is the outrage in the USA because Condi Rice was not able to
garantee that no torture had taken place at the secret CIA prisons, she
could only confirm that no american personnel performed torture. This is
effectively an admission that the USA hired foreigners to perform torture.

Next time some country refuses access to the red cross, the USA better
not complain, because it has refused unfeathered access to the detainees
in its gantanamo bay concentration camp that is still without due legal process.

And sicne when does the USA have the right to kidbnap innocent
bystanders in a foreign country and detain them without charge in a
concentration camp, making unsubstantiated claims that they are
terrorists ?

Only once americans really wake up and start to get their media to
really question their government can meaningful discussion happen
between americans an non americans. Until then, go back to Fox/CNN and
believe your government is a defender of democracy and is making the
world better.

nobody wrote:
kokonutty wrote:
Where are the posts from those Canadians who are so often so eager to
criticize every US based event upon which they disagree?



Typical, trite, non-responsive, boilerplate anti-American rant snipped.
We already have heard your tired weatherbeaten gripes countless times.
That was not today's question. Today we are asking about the Canadian
government's involvement.

Let's try again:

1. What are your viewpoints on the RCMP initiating this event by
falsely declaring Arar and his family "suspicious"?

2. What are your remarks involving the Canadian censorship of its own
report?

Try to stay focused. Anyone else?

kokonutty wrote:
1. What are your viewpoints on the RCMP initiating this event by
falsely declaring Arar and his family "suspicious"?

Simple: RCMP were simply puppets of the USA after 9-11. Remember that
the USA government threathened to close the border unless we did what
they wanted us to do. And that means getting the RCMP to be ridiculously
suspicious and building a big bad black list of people who walked within
a couple of metres of another person on that black list.

(In the end, this is what happened to Arar, he happenned to walk next to
someone the RCMP was profiling, so he got included in the list of people
to check for. That list was sent to the USA as part of compliance with
USA request for cooperation on the "war on terror". The USA then took
whatever action it wanted with that list without qualification on
individuals, assuming all of them were close relatives to Ossama. Just
like it included Cat Stevens on its list of terrorists and forced a
whole flight to divert.

There were MANY people who were wrongly handled by both governments
because of the USA paranoia.

What this shows is that even the former government, hated/despised by
Bush because they didn,t comply with EVERY Bush govt demand, had
cooperated with that regime far more than we had been led to believe.
And one can only excpect that George W Harper is doing even more "cooperation".

However, Harper has stated that what happened to Arar was wrong and that
the country will apologise. So it remains to be seen if Harper will
punish the RCMP and ensure such irrational overzealous profiling doesn't
happen again.

What is also possible is that the privacy commissionner may get involved
in this and prevent RCMP/CSIS from exporting any data to countries that
would misuse this data, or unless the canadian agency has real proof
that the person is in fact a danger.

There is/was a case of an egyptian national in canada arrested and held
without charges because the Egyptian government sent a message to CSIS
(our CIA) advising that they considered that person dangerous, but due
to sensitivity/national security reasons, they could not give the
canadian government the evidence.

So Egypt tells Canada this guy is dangerous but won't say why. Canada
cannot try him because there is no evidence and he hasn't broken any
canadian law. Canada decided to detain him indefinitely because they
didn't want someone to be let loose if some country decided he was
dangerous. The person doesn't want to return to Egypt to face his
accusers because he is not likely to get a fair trial. And since Canada
is constitutionally prevented from agreeing to an extradition to a
country that does not garantee death penalty will not be used on that
individual, Canada would probably not be able to extradite him to Egypt.

If Egypt is unwilling to produce any evidence and go through formal
extradition process, and if the guy hasn't committed any crimes here,
then the government has no business detaining him without due legal
process. By doing so, any country can send some opposition leader to
Canada, then call up the canadian PM and advise that such and such is
dangesrous and that Canada shoudldn't let him roam freely.

The law that permits this to happen was signed many many many years ago
but had rarely been used up until 9/11 when Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz
took control and told many countries to implement their version of the
patriot act. Considering our proximity to the USA, our version was
rather weak, but still wrong. Same with the concept of forcing airlines
to send reservation data to some undefinied government agency who is
then free to send your private data to the USA, not only without privacy
garantees, but also with statements from USA authorities (US ambassadors
and US lawyers representing Arar) that stated categorically that
visitors to the USA no longer have any rights.


Australia's version of patriot act is even worse. Suspects are not
allowed to discuss their case with the public or media.

2. What are your remarks involving the Canadian censorship of its own
report?

What censorship ?
http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/26.htm

or
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/ar...r_inquiry.html



For all the wrongs that were committed by Canada in this, at least
canada recognized the problem and worked with Syria to repatriate the
citizen and setup a national commission to study this particualr issue
with a long list of recommendations.

In the USA, the government is fighting to maintain the right to keep
human rights and due legal process suspended and the populatioN/media
are not demanding that there be formal investigations of all the
allegations of torture, violation of geneva convention etc that have
happened in the USA.

In the USA, the government is fighting to maintain the right to keep
human rights and due legal process suspended and the populatioN/media
are not demanding that there be formal investigations of all the
allegations of torture, violation of geneva convention etc that have
happened in the USA.

And while all this is happening, Canada- along with Europe - is
playing political correctness and looking for the appropriate
justifications and reasons why fanatics are trying to kill the local
population. Canadians believe that 'niceness' by itself will prevent
fanatics who are bent on destruction.

Outrage? This only runs one direction - and that is against anything
which originates in the US of A. It is perfectly acceptable to look the
other way when two captured US soldiers are brutally tortured and
killed. Because screams of the Geneva Convention do not apply in such
situations.

BTW: Read the Geneva Convention. The statues apply to uniformed
troops or a militia with recognizable clothing. It does not apply to
those dressed as civilians, and who - after shooting at US troops -
drop their weapons, surrender, and demand to be treated as lawful
combatants.

So an astute headline writer would have penned this?

Sgt. Preston: "The Devil Made Me Do It"