The Complaint Department (Encore)

Well Season Four of Bored on the Corner is coming to a close, so in the usual tradition I'm taking some parting shots at the issues I touched on in the last couple of months, and in some cases the responses to them.

Former American Vice-President Dick Cheney is still fuming over Barack Obama's wish to close down the prison at Guantanamo Bay -- would someone please explain to this man that giving terrorist suspects a fair trial isn't going to cause the sky to fall, or seas to boil? Honestly, Cheney's rhetoric is such an insult to common sense that it's a wonder that heads haven't exploded over it yet.

After Scottish MP George Galloway was banned from entering Canada, due to his Pro-Palestinian views and actions, he has sued the Canadian government for falsely accusing him of terrorism. I'm all for this, something needs to be done about the appalling double-standard in this country that says it's perfectly fine for Israel to shoot families and blow up hospitals, but donating medicine and diapers to Palestine is somehow siding with mass murderers. Incidentally, I've made an Access to Information Request to the RCMP, asking why they don't seem to be keen on shutting down the Jewish Defence League -- a very well known terrorist group, operating in Canada -- so far, there has been no response.

Evidently my rant about Twitter didn't fare very well -- possibly due to the scene where I jokingly go into a psychotic fit over how much the social networking sites on the internet just rip each other off, or spawn a ton of useless features. Alright, I won't try to be funny anymore, or go after pop culture. Ah who am I kidding, I've got an opinion and I'm sharing it dammit.

When I went after the continuing melodrama from the Christian Right, over gay marriage, I had this response from "IanLowen". He said, "Even if you are not Christian, you still cannot change a definition to fit your convenience." Once again, conservatives do not pay attention to a thing I say. First of all, show me where in the American Constitution, it says that only religious conservatives have rights? Second, open a history book: the definition of marriage has already changed a lot over time; back in the stone age it was defined as a caveman smashing a woman over the head, dragging her to his home, and raping her. More recently, it was just an elaborate business transaction. So stop using this bullshit about gays trying to destroy traditional marriage, unless your idea of picking up women involves carrying a club.

Speaking of gay marriage, I withdraw my sympathy for Carrie Prejean, aka Miss California. I'd previously stood up for her, after she got dragged through the mud by Perez Hilton over her views on same-sex marriage. I originally respected that she supposedly supported the choice, if not the philosophy itself... too bad she later turned around and said on national television that it shouldn't be around at all.

In more recent news, with the recession in such dire shape that Canadians from coast to coast are screaming at Ottawa to fix our pathetic Employment Insurance system -- or do ANYTHING besides waste millions of dollars on pet projects -- all we get from Emperor Stephen Harper are weak excuses, and ads on TV that go after Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff for having lived outside of Canada for over thirty years. So let me get this straight: a private citizen spending much of his adult life abroad is somehow a travesty, yet wasting time and public money on things that the people of this country hate and don't need, is good leadership? Get the fuck out of town.

Finally, I got some pretty hostile comments -- all from one person -- when I attacked the Oxford Police's handling of Tori Stafford's abduction and murder. In a nutshell, I was screamed at publicly for having such a strong opinion, and allegedly not doing anything direct to help search for the girl when she was believed to be alive. First of all, I don't recall it ever being said that I have to proclaim myself to be directly involved in a hot-button issue, in order to have a point of view. Canada -- at the moment -- still has Freedom of Speech. Second of all, there wasn't a lot I could have done; Woodstock is a part of the country I have hardly ever been to, I don't have a way to really get there, and even if I did, the Oxford Police were so stupid that they called off all searches mere days after Tori was taken. When the OPP came in to clean up that mess, they already had all the ground covered, so pretty much all I could have done was what I did anyway: keep Tori's name and face in the public eye.

I was also criticized somewhat for saying that the Oxford Police should be punished for their lax attitude towards the whole case -- I concede that my language at the time was more vicious than it needed to be, but the point still stands. The Oxford Police had every reason and oppourtunity to treat Tori's vanishing as a kidnapping, but they didn't. For some reason, a video that they insist shows a stranger walking Tori away from school doesn't constitute an abduction to them, though I suspect a lawyer or judge would disagree. At the very least, this was both stupid and extremely negligent. Therefore, I still maintain that unless Tori died before or just after she was reported missing, then the Oxford Police are partially responsible for her death, by their inexcusable lack of action. They are not only expected to, but paid to protect the public from these sort of crimes, and they dropped the ball for seemingly no good reason. If the officers in question are not willing or able to use some judgement and do their jobs, then they should find another line of work.

The good news about all of this is that I'm not the only one having these thoughts; since I pay attention to the world around me, and the way people think, I know for a fact that thousands -- even millions of people -- are equally pissed off at this bullshit. So to all the stupid and power tripping people out there, consider this a warning: you are being watched, and you are already wearing out your welcome. Push us further at your own risk. Enough said.

April Fool's from Bored on the Corner

Howdy-doodily-do, Corner-ites! Welcome to the April Fool's Edition of Bored on the Corner. Let's celebrate the day, by going through these headlines from the fine people at Fox News.

[Fox News has no real affiliation with Bored on the Corner]

Now that the anti-evolution film Expelled is out on DVD, the Christian Right has declared it the best documentary they've seen, since "The Flinstones".

A traffic light in West Virginia that had been broken since Christmas, has been fixed by a mystery repairman. Even though his identity is unknown at this time, it is said that he is already being asked to fix everything else broken in the town, including old stop signs, sewers, phone lines, gas lines, and the city council.

A statue of Colonel Sanders was beached in Osaka, Japan. Unfortunately, in addition to missing his hands, legs, and glasses, the statue of the KFC founder also suffered a shotgun blast to the head, when a local man thought it was a zombie and panicked.

According to The Pope, condoms make AIDS worse. Also, sunblock will give you worse sunburns, swimming with a life jacket will make you drown faster, or gravity will ultimately make you fly.

A former official with the Bush administration recently said that several Guantanamo inmates are probably innocent. According to sources, Dick Cheney responding by wondering if the commie bastard would like to go hunting with him.

In financial news, Chrysler president Tom La Sorda is threatening to pull his company out of Canada, if the Canadian Auto Workers' Union pushes for a deal similar to the one they made with General Motors. Mr. La Sorda calls the deal unacceptable, saying that in addition to wage cuts and taking back benefits, he'd like to have the union work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no pay, food, or water.

While Hamilton steel maker Stelco remains shut down, its rival Dofasco remains thriving, as it has done for many years. When Stelco was asked if they plan on asking Dofasco how they do it, we were told "Tips from a profitable company?! No, why would we ever want those?"

Before I go, I'd like to take this moment to recommend the Bored on the Corner movie of the month: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, in Fast and Furious: We're All Out of Ideas. That's it for me, enough said, take it easy, catch you next time, and may the forces of evil be confused on the way to your next blog.

(That oughta hold the little f***ers for another week.)

Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent

By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer Andrew O. Selsky, Associated Press Writer – 16 mins ago

AP – In this June 6, 2008 file photo, reviewed by the U.S. Military, a guard stands at a gate at the Camp …

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.

In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."

Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."

Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.

"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."

But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.

Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.

The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."

Archived -- Omar Khadr

Originally posted July 16, 2008.