So how many years are going to go by before we find ourselves paying compensation for suffering by these people: (found via Steve Bates at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat) :In a move hailed by one native leader as a "turning point in the history of our nation," Canada on Wednesday formalized a landmark compensation deal for an estimated 80,000 former residential school students.
The country's largest-ever class-action settlement came into effect, ending what Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine called a 150-year "journey of tears, hardship and pain — but also of tremendous struggle and accomplishment."
[snip]
Thousands of the former students say they endured sexual, physical and psychological abuse while attending the schools, which were run by churches and funded by the federal government from the 1870s until the mid-1970s.
The federal government-approved agreement will provide at least $1.9 billion to the former students who had attended 130 schools.
[snip]
Still, not all survivors have opted to take the lump sum. A group of about 200 people who endured very serious abuse and trauma have rejected the cash, choosing instead to take the federal government and religious organizations to court for running the institutions.
Many people who have said the financial compensation cannot heal their emotional wounds can seek support from a truth and reconciliation commission, which was set up as part of the settlement agreement process. It allows people to share their experiences in the schools and put them on the record.
Detainees the age of 11? Should we ask if anyone running this House of Wisdom can actually speak the native language? How do they verify what is being taught to whom? And who the hell thinks that 'bending them back to our will' is a good thing? Who the hell is in charge of this horror? WTF??The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.
Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind." Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the military calls the "House of Wisdom."
The religious courses are led by Muslim clerics who "teach out of a moderate doctrine," Stone said, according to the transcript of a conference call he held from Baghdad with a group of defense bloggers. Such schooling "tears apart" the arguments of al-Qaeda, such as "Let's kill innocents," and helps to "bring some of the edge off" the detainees, he said.
2 comments:
"Bending them back to our will" is what the entire Cheney/Bush administration is about. Wealth is great; power is great... but what they really want is to demean their adversaries as much as possible. Remember, I know whereof I speak: I watched what these (expletive)s did to my state for six years before they did it to the rest of the nation.
Canada may have its problems, but compared to the U.S. under the Bushists, they are enlightened beyond words.
The word demeaning fits this administration perfectly. The obsessive focus on the humiliation of Saddam, of our 'enemies', the very style of torture they chose.
Wills can be bent, but when they revert back there is terrible anger. We will be paying for Bush's blunders for decades and generations.
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