November 9, 2003

Liberty, War & Politics

Maher Arar: Canadian Citizen Betrayed to Torture

Man says CIA sent him to Syria for torture (original: http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031105-022109-9250r.htm, found alternative link)
UPI, Washingtontimes.com, November 5, 2003

…A Canadian says the CIA detained him last year in New York as a suspected terrorist and then sent him to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months…

 

Read Mr. Arar’s story. I’ve excerpted some quotes:

Statement by Maher Arar
CBC News Online, November 4, 2003

…There have been many allegations made about me in the media, all of them by people who refuse to be named or come forward. So before I tell you who I am and what happened to me, I will tell you who I am not.

I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of al-Qaeda and I do not know any one who belongs to this group. All I know about al-Qaeda is what I have seen in the media. I have never been to Afghanistan. I have never been anywhere near Afghanistan and I do not have any desire to ever go to Afghanistan…

…I met my wife, Monia at McGill University. We fell in love and eventually married in 1994. I knew then that she was special, but I had no idea how special she would turn out to be.

If it were not for her I believe I would still be in prison…

…I spent 10 months, and 10 days inside that grave…

 

During the week, I heard a compelling interview with Maher Arar and his wife on CBC Radio’s The Current in which he described his terrible ordeal. I was impressed by his wife who put all that effort into saving him. Here is a clear-cut case where the institution that worked to save an unjustly accused man was the traditional family – his wife. Mr. Arar didn’t visit Syria voluntarily. He was forced to go there. Governments humiliated him, failed him and condemned him.

Canadian authorities helped get him home, but the question has to be asked how and why Canadian authorities allowed American authorities to do this to a Canadian citizen. Why wasn’t he sent back home to Canada? Is it another indicator of our subservience to the U.S. government?

Canada, like the U.S., has a tradition of respecting individual rights and the rule of law rather than blindly worshipping arbitrary power. We must remember the truth that innocent people are often arrested and falsely accused. Every accused person needs due process.

Many Americans have forgotten their own heritage of rights and liberties except as a mantra for war-making. They bow to their huge government and believe everything they are told. Many Canadians are degrading their own sense of justice by following along with Americans in absorbing the propagandist fantasies of the U.S. government and justifying its abuses.

 

October 3 interview with John Manley, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada: (see sidebar)

…Again, occasionally things happen that could be handled differently, and the important thing is then to go back and say, well, what were the steps, what were the procedures, what processes were followed in this case, and how do we ensure that we operate in accordance with international principles in the future?

 

Mr. Manley makes it sound so complicated.
Here are some basic points to assist the Canadian government in future:

• Determining guilt is not a matter of opinion or emotion.
• I don’t know what “international standards” he is referring to, but in Western civilization, governments are required to justify detention of prisoners before a judge, and torture is not used as a method for determining innocence – which was the end result in this case.
• If someone, possibly innocent, must be detained because of uncertainty over terrorism, they should be treated with the utmost respect.
• Being complicit in torture should be a crime.
• Governments are not above the law.
• Canada is a sovereign nation and it’s not necessary to follow every order and sick idea from the U.S.
• Canada’s decisions should be made based on justice and not on fear of economic or other retaliation from the U.S.
• Canada, in failing its citizens and its standards of justice, is lacking in self-respect and is going to lose respect from every nation if it keeps this up – including past and future immigrants and Americans.

 

Keep Refighting the Good Fight
Be part of the War Party’s problem
by Matthew Barganier, Antiwar.com, November 3, 2003

 

***Book Review: ‘Social Economy and the Price System’ by Raymond T. Bye, Macmillan, New York, 1950
by Murray N. Rothbard, Lewrockwell.com, 1952 article

…The theme runs constantly throughout the book: the consumer – every person – cannot be trusted to run his own life and make his own decisions. At every turn, he must be guided, harassed, and commanded by the all-wise State, acting presumably under the advice of alleged “experts” in the proper procedures of tyranny…

 

Airbrushing History?
by Joseph Sobran, sobran.com, October 23, 2003

About Stalin’s mass starvation of Ukrainians and how the Western media covered it up.

…In Duranty’s case, it [the New York Times] allowed itself to be the tool of government lies; they just happened to be the lies of a foreign government. And the purpose of those lies was to conceal a policy of mass murder rarely equaled in history…

 

Boundaries of Knowledge

 

China’s version of Bigfoot (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2003/06/30/123419-ap.html)
Cnews.canoe.ca, June 30, 2003

Six people, one a radio reporter, say they saw the “mythical ape-like animal” in central China’s Shennongjia Nature Reserve…

More than 100 hundred sightings in that area. Also hair samples.

 

Original link