Engaged Spectator

Still need an example of how ridiculous many conservative positions are.

Well then, bring up the issue of government funded & supported safe injection sites,in particular Insite.

Then stand back and prepare to be perplexed.

Definitely read Adam Radwanski’s musing on this issue….

Tony Clement is taking heat again for his increasingly indefensible antipathy toward Insite, this time for apparently discouraging research into the safe-injection facility even as he purported to want more of it.

This being a bit of a pet issue, I’m inclined to go off on Clement. But since others already have that covered, I’ll move things along a bit with a curious side-story from the same International Journal of Drug Policy article that goes after Clement (not yet available online, as far as I can tell):

“It is also interesting that the national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has funded several reviews of SIF [safe injection site] research. Interestingly, when the first two reviews … suggested that SIF are likely a useful tool to reduce drug-related harm,” the RCMP issues a press release in an effort to distance itself from the conclusions of those reviews. They subsequently funded a known anti-harm-reduction activist to prepare a third review. This review was recently placed on a website funded by the Drug Free America Foundation and operated by the Institute on Global Drug Policy. Neither of these organizations is a scientific body…”

I’m never entirely comfortable with police forces or their leaders wading uninvited into social policy debates. But attempting to manipulate those debates toward their preferred outcome in the manner the Journal alleges takes it to a whole other level, doesn’t it?

Well its good to hear that you’re uncomfortable Adam,but surely your not surprised…are you ?

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Well that Depends…

For instance if its a 15 year old from Africa,who by his own admittance has killed more people (other blacks)than he can count,well he’s a victim(and in all liklihood he is).

Indeed Ishmael Beah is the toast of the book publishing circuit.

That said,it’s very easy to forgive others for the crimes they committed.Particularly when they happen in far away lands,that many of us have no connection with,real or imagined.

What of the families of those killed ,by Ishmael Beah ,would they be as forgiving or understanding ?

But if you are a 15 year old brown Muslim kid who supposedly threw a(that means one) grenade that supposedly killed,an American/white person i.e one of us.Forgiveness & understanding are in short supply.

A Canadian captured in Afghanistan at age 15 can be tried for murder in the Guantanamo war crimes court, a U.S. military judge ruled in rejecting claims that he was a child soldier who should be rehabilitated rather than prosecuted.

And the evidence(hard) ?… well there is none.That’s where the military tribunal comes into play.

And before Canadians get all smug or outraged by U.S actions.

Lets not forget that Canada is the only Western country,unlike for example Australia & the U.K,that refuses to defend the human & civil rights of it’s citizens(never mind those of it’s children), incarcerated by the U.S military.

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