...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Bad connection: Halifax Chronicle-Herald writer Will King has a flash of insight—Omar Khadr is a lot like the iPhone.

Or, to be more accurate, he’s like the opposite of the iPhone. You see, while Canadians are lining up, signing up and clamouring madly for the iPhone, a mere technological gizmo, no one seems to be doing the same for Omar, a bloomin’ human bean:

TWO RECENT stories come to mind which, at first, seem unconnected; but after a little thought, I realize they both are tightly woven within the fabric of what we call society. And I wonder: Just what is it that we are covering with this fabric?

A little more than a week ago, the Apple iPhone was released in Canada and the response was many people giving up their sleep willingly to stand outside the stores all night, in hopes of being one of the first people to own this device.

In contrast, last week it was reported that Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since he was 15, had his own sleepless nights. His were not because of a youthful desire for an iPhone, but at the hands of his captors: It was reported they had routinely awakened him after intervals of three hours of sleep, and moved him in order to "soften him up" for a visit from CSIS agents who were to interrogate him.

One story is about action and the other about inaction.

When the iPhone was announced months ago, a petition was started protesting the fact the data usage plans that existed to go along with the iPhone were too pricey. If iPhone users were to use the devise to watch YouTube videos, download music, e-mail, etc., things needed to change.

Concerned potential iPhone users signed a petition whose site states: "The only way to have power to make change is in the number of people willing to fight for their rights. They know we need our phones. That gives them power. We need to get more than a petition going. We need to get a list of people together that is big enough that we can demand fair voice and data plans."

Ottawa South MP David McGuinty also spoke up and asked for support for C-555, the Get Connected Fairly Act, and the national media picked up the story. The carrier released a new data plan.

But what has happened to Omar Khadr, a human being, a once 15-year-old captured prisoner of war? Where is he? Where’s his petition? What’s the plan for him?

Omar Khadr is not an iPhone. He cannot download the newest hip-hop video; he does not have Facebook or flash-embedded technology; nor can his tortuous treatment, it seems, raise the furor that an unfair data plan can.

Omar Khadr is a human being; he bleeds, feels alone, cries, has fears. There was a time when we cared more for human beings than for our commercialized existence…

Maybe if he could download the newest hip-hop video and had flash-embedded technology, there’d be more incentive to spring him.  But probably not, since he has yet to account in an American court for the charges that landed him in the cooler. Also, bringing him “home” entails returning him to the loving arms of his unlovable Taliban ma and sis—not exactly an appealing prospect.

As for our supposed heartlessness: we’re not the ones who divest children of their humanity by turning them into technological objects—human killing machines.

Hmmm. I guess Omar is kind of like an iPhone.

Posted by: scaramouche at 08:53 | link | comments

Comments: