"Astonishing"

"The Saudi's are ever our friends and our allies..."


Here's the sequence of events that I've gathered about the case of a 19 year old Saudi Arabian woman who was raped last year:

1) A recently married Saudi woman was having an affair with a man.

2) She met this man in a car in order to retrieve a photo of the two of them together (it's against the law for a woman to be seen in public with man to whom she is not related.)

3) Two men somehow enter the car, and drive them to a secluded area somewhere in the province of Qatif.

4) Both the man and woman are repeatedly raped (the woman 14 times) by several attackers.

5) In court the two victims were each sentenced to 90 lashes for their crime of "illegal mingling". (Seven attackers received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.)

6) Upon appeal, the woman's sentences were increased to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail, because the courts felt that she and her lawyer used the media to sway their influence and aggravate the judges. Her lawyer was banned from the courtroom, had his legal license taken away, and awaits a disciplinary hearing.

7) The attackers' sentences were also doubled.


The Canadian government has openly condemned the case, calling it "barbaric".

The US state department, however, is against any "foreign interference" in the case.
They did, however, call the case "astonishing".

You want astonishing??? Try a little foreign interference in a little place called Iraq.
Or hell, let's get give a little interference that other evil country, Iran!

It's always astonished me that although most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi's, Osama bin Laden himself is a Saudi, and even though Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, the American government (or average voter, for that matter) never looks down upon that particular country. For an explanation why, you need look no further than Bushy's comfy relationship with the royal family.

Sans-oil, you can bet America would hate their living guts.
Because America loves to hate people's guts.

The Animal Years, V for V, and C'Mon C'Mon

As usual it took me about 3 months to get my ass in gear and figure out my top 5's for the last year. I try to do it near my birthday, but it never works out.
I'm just too fuckin lazy.

In other news, I read an article on the BBC today that looked at the cost of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Current estimates put the average cost of the war on terror at $20 000 per 4-person family. But thankfully every American will be saving huge at the gas stations...
Well at least everyone has a place to live...
And the American economy as a whole is surging...

I remember getting in an argument with an American kid one time, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, and I told him that every great empire that has ever existed in the world has fallen. And the USA is no different. It's becoming more evident by the day that America will not be the dominant world power in 20 years, and that fills me with a sense of satisfaction.
At the same time it makes me wonder how China and India will run the world once they've got the power. Let's just hope the US doesn't get pissy and start nuking everyone.

At long last, I'm finally off my disgusting antibiotics. I drank heavily about 5 or 6 times while I was on them, but I survived the pain in my liver. I did get a good lecture from the wife about it though.
She's probably right... after all, nobody wants hepatitis!

Poppies... don't they grow those in Afghanistan?

The only thing that I remembered this morning at 11:11 was a clip from a dream about myself falling asleep. Not that I slept in on Remembrance Day on purpose, but it just so happened that a good buddy of mine was in town from BC and we had to celebrate with a few brews.

I think it's funny how quickly people can forget why we have a remembrance day in the first place. To me, it represents a day that we should reflect on why all wars should be avoided, not just that single day of the year that we pay our respects to the soldiers of the past.

But you don't see many people in the streets protesting our involvement in Afghanistan. Canada's reputation as global peacekeepers has been transformed to American lapdog, and we all seem content enough to accept that. We've got no business in a "war" that is designed to be self perpetuating. All it does is create an atmosphere with more killing and more occupation and oppression.

And isn't that what we're supposed to remember today? The vets don't show up to parades in their wheelchairs to sing the praises of current soldiers - they're there to remind us that there ought not to be any more soldiers in the world. They remind us of all the terrible things they had to live through in order to preserve our lives and freedoms, in hopes of persuading our generations to make the world a better place. I'm sure they wish that the war they fought in was the last one the world would ever see. And it's all too easy to dismiss their ideals because we've never been in their shoes.