IMHO Child Soldier Is Just Another Way Of Describing Cannon Fodder...

...Kadar doesn't fit this description by any stretch of the imagination.

Today’s letters: Just who is a child soldier?

Paul Russell  July 17, 2010 – 8:00 am

 

REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

Child soldiers in an ethnic Hema militia camp in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Re: Spinning Omar Khadr, Chris Selley, July 1.

Is Omar Khadr a “child soldier”? Columnist Chris Selley thinks so, while Ezra Levant thinks not. Prime Minister Harper is skeptical.
International law instruments define an underage fighter as any soldier under 18. Mr. Khadr was a child when he fought in Afghanistan, and he is a form of soldier. But let’s not be blindly formalist about our choice of words.
The special terminology of “child soldier” was coined in African conflicts where children are abducted from their homes in order to serve some warring group, and then often made to perpetrate violence against their village and family. That is not Omar Khadr, whose own father brought him into the battlefield. His situation is more reminiscent of a teenager raised by an underworld crime family who is charged with being a hit man. That would be a young offender who gets special procedures from the justice system, but who would not be exonerated as would a child abducted in Sierra Leone, Liberia, or northern Uganda.
Canadian legal values say that everyone, including those held at Guantanamo, deserves due process, and that anyone under 18 should get special treatment as a young offender. But to confuse Omar Khadr with the horrific story of African child soldiers by using the same terminology is unfair to those children from African conflicts and their families.
Professor Ed Morgan, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law.
I’m flattered that for two days in a row, Chris Selley felt moved to respond to my column about Omar Khadr that was published in Sun newspapers.
I’d like to reply to only one point: Mr. Selley’s Friday column was subtitled “No matter what Ezra Levant says, the term ‘child soldier’ applies to anyone under 18.”

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If There Were More Vinay Menons There Would Less Comrade Millers

Toronto making me mad as hell TheStar.com - Columnist - Toronto making me mad as hell

June 23, 2009

Vinay Menon

You've heard of road rage, air rage, cubicle rage, retail rage and even gym rage. But is it possible to suffer from city rage?

On Sunday, I returned home from a barbecue to an unpleasant discovery: A fiend had smashed into my locked shed and absconded with my lawn mower.

"Can you believe this?" I asked my wife, who seemed more concerned with the length of our grass than the actual theft. "Our Lawnhog was abducted in broad daylight. What is happening to this city?"

As I stood in the crime scene, examining the shed's mangled door frame, my blood boiled. It wasn't just the electric mower or the oversized black urns (stolen last year) or the fact someone had once squeezed through our kitchen window while we were sleeping, swiping a few household items, including the keys to our car.

No, as I walked toward the front porch, across a slab of sidewalk spray-painted with graffiti, my anger went beyond property theft.

These days, admittedly, everything about Toronto is making me mad: Construction, dirty parks, appalling customer service, endless fees, abysmal leadership, dysfunctional council, inept urban planning, potholes, expensive goods, dilapidated neighbourhoods, aggressive panhandlers, the ongoing futility of our hockey squad.

Toronto the Good has become Toronto the Enraging.

The other night, after ordering sushi, I glanced at the bill and noticed I had been charged for the plastic bag in which our food was delivered. Granted, five cents is no big deal. Still, as I choked down sashimi, I could feel a bad case of city rage burning in my mouth like wasabi.

It wasn't the money. It was the principle.

"Can you believe this?" I asked my wife. "What are we supposed to do? Courier a canvas bag to the restaurant before we order? Next time, maybe I'll ask if the poor delivery guy can balance our miso soup on his head instead of using a bag."

Then there's the municipal strike, which started yesterday. Whether this labour action is short-lived or long lasting, one thing is clear: Once again, honest, hardworking, law-abiding taxpayers are being held hostage by a system that always puts them last.

That should be Toronto's new motto: Where Citizens Are Taken For Granted.

A disruption to garbage pickup after we just started paying new fees for garbage pickup?

Charging residents with "illegal dumping" after they left bags outside a designated transfer station yesterday because pickets had blocked their access?

Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off if a crime syndicate took over our waste removal system.

Thug: "How much are you throwing out this week, bub?"

Citizen: "Ah, let's see, two bags and a box of recycling."

Thug: "That'll be three bucks. And don't worry about it. You'll never see this stuff again, if you know what I mean."

As it stands now, we do all the work – recycling, reusing, sorting, hauling freakishly big bins to the curb – and keep getting told that we're not doing enough. We pay a lot of protection money for not a lot of protection.

The shuttering of daycare centres is also galling. Shouldn't "taking care of children" be deemed an essential service in a civil society? Believe me, young parents are already struggling with a raft of recessionary realities.

That's right, I forgot, "reality" is never a factor in a municipal strike.

And let's not get started on the cancellation of island ferry service, parks maintenance or summer camps. Why, it's enough to make a person drink – assuming, that is, LCBO workers aren't also on strike tomorrow morning.

What is happening to this city? It is making us furious.

vmenon@thestar.ca

Defining Old And New Testament

In His Hands

During his recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, Evan Thomas, who is Newsweek's assistant managing editor, engaged in a spirited praise-the-dear-leader contest with tingly-legged host Chris Mathews. Thomas' chances weren't looking good at the outset because defending champion Mathews, speaking right before him, set what appeared to be an impossibly high bar:

The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world; if he can, he will be honouring what happened on D-day 65 years ago tomorrow, he will be delivering the world, once again, from evil.

In a stunning upset, Evans cleared the bar with ease, and soared to new heights:

Reagan was all about America...Obama is 'we are above that now.' We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial, we stand for something. I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of god, he's going to bring all different sides together.

Noemie Emery, in the Weekly Standard: "There is the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament, but this is the God of the Newsroom. Religious tradition tells us that God created man in His image, but the press has created this God in its image--diverse, multilateral, and nonconfrontational..."

Posted by EBD at 12:15 AM