Today's News

So today, it turns out, according to this story in the Guardian, that Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons during the years of Apartheid in South Africa.

The story is also subtitled: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons

The story says in part:

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

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Also yesterday the NY Times editorial was about Omar Khadr and the mistreatment of him as a child. They say in part:

Mr. Khadr was not a mere bystander. He was indoctrinated into armed conflict by his father, a member of Osama bin Laden’s circle who was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003. But if his trial goes forward this summer as scheduled, he will be the first person in decades to be tried by a Western nation for war crimes allegedly committed as a child.

That has drawn justified criticism from United Nations officials and civil liberties and human rights groups. The conditions of Mr. Khadr’s imprisonment have been in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and international accords on the treatment of children.

Bring Omar Khadr home! people - we should be ashamed as a country not to restore a citizen, who was born in this country and who was recruited as a child soldier by his family, no less than if he had been dragooned by some militia in Africa, which this country condemns. We cannot have policies that are only trotted out when they are convenient - If we believe in the rule of law, as a country, (I do, but I know that Harper and Harperites do not, or at least they cause serious questions about their commitment on a regular basis) we must always condemn those who recruit and train child soldiers whether they are from our country or some other. Those child soldiers deserve a chance at life, rehabilitation and reintegration. At 15 Khadr could likely have been rehabilitated - and integrated into Canadian society - but after 7 years in Guantanamo - tortured and threatened and spending all of that time with jailers, and with others who also believe in extremism - that may never be possible, and that is the fault of Canada along with the U.S.