Dion to Liberals: We Don't Tell It As It Is

We knew that before but now it's official.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said he disagreed with Dallaire's choice of words, and hinted the senator could be disciplined.

"This is a matter to deal with the (party) whip, and we'll deal with that," Dion told reporters.

This is about what we have come to expect from the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Abstainers.

Omar Khadr Is a Child Soldier-Period!

If anyone can talk with authority on human rights and child soldiers it is Senator Roméo Dallaire.

The CBC reported that:

Canada has sunk to the moral equivalent of al-Qaeda by failing to treat Canadian Omar Khadr the same way it treats other child soldiers, Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire said Tuesday.

Dallaire, who appeared before a foreign affairs committee on international human rights, said Khadr is clearly a child soldier who shouldn't be prosecuted by an illegal court system at Guantanamo Bay but reintegrated into society.

Canada is heading down a slippery slope by failing to obey the United Nations conventions on child soldiers to which it is a signatory, he said.

"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties in order to say you are doing it to protect yourself … you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.

"We are slipping down the slope of going down that same route."

When Senator Dallaire speaks the government should listen and pay heed rather than countering with a political defence of the United States Bush government's illegal actions. Perhaps Stephen Harper prefers to shake hands with the devil.

Cuba Has Surrounded Gitmo...

...with organic fruit and vegetables !

From: Oxfam Canada

Cuba: Organic Farming Improves Lives

Oxfam has helped the Cuban Association of Agriculture and Forestry Professionals (ACTAF) convert 13 hectares in the urban periphery surrounding Guantanamo into an organic, urban agriculture farm. 106 stable jobs were created - 51 of the workers are women. The majority live in the neighbourhood and their new union is now pushing for a day-care center for their kids.

“The people like this work because it’s close to their homes. They’re better paid then in other jobs, they can buy affordable fruits and vegetables for their families and they feel they’re doing something important”, said Oscar Borges, the Project Coordinator for ACTAF in the province. “For us it has been a great experience to work with Oxfam because there was always dialogue, flexibility, comprehension and respect.”

The fruits and vegetables are grown without any chemical inputs. Instead, the farmers produce their own fertilizer using organic compost and worms. They produce their plants in a new greenhouse. The project has contracts with government institutions to deliver produce to hospitals, child care centers and workplaces throughout the neighbourhood of 55,000 people. Their excess produce is sold to local people at affordable prices in a small shop on the farm and by bicycle around the community.

Odalys Puente manages the farm after years as an agricultural worker. For her “our goal is not to maximize our own benefits, but to contribute to good, healthy and available food for our people and be able to live our life with dignity”.

A class room has been built and equipped and is used for training farm workers as well as ACTAF members in the province. The project provided input and funds for a new edition of a technical manual for this kind of organic agriculture that will be used across the country.

Omar Khadr: al-Qaeda Says it Best

Ironically, perhaps the best description of Omar Khadr's status as a child soldier was stated by the terrorists themselves, in a biograpphy of Omar Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, in the "Book of 120 Martyrs in Afghanistan", posted online at the Al-Fajr media centre, al-Qaeda's online news service. The CBC website states that the biography praises Ahmed Said Khadr for "tossing his little child in the furnace of the battle."

Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was adopted and signed in 2002, the use of anyone under the age of 18 in combat is illegal under international law. National armed forces are permitted to recruit individuals below the age of 18, but are strictly forbidden from deploying them into combat. Non-state actors and guerrilla forces are forbidden from recruiting anyone under the age of 18 for any purpose. (Military use of children - Wikipedia)

Indeed, do we consider "a little child tossed in the furnace of the battle by his father" a terrorist or a victim. International law requires that we consider child soldiers to be victims not warriors.