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

 The Sampson option: In his statement yesterday, Mo Sharpton, er, Elmasry drew a comparison between Omar Khadr and William Sampson, the Canadian who was incarcerated in a Saudi prison. The only reason the government took action on Sampson’s behalf and has ignored Omar, according to Mo, is because Sampson is “white,” Omar is “brown,” and Harper’s a flagrant “Islamophobe”.

Bill Sampson, who was accused of a trumped-up charge, repeatedly tortured, and forced to languish in a Saudi jail for three years, might have something to say about the government’s efforts—or, rather, the distinct lack thereof. You can read all about it in his book, Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison.

There is a comparison to be drawn here. It’s between a government’s "shocking indifference" for the plight of a “white” Canadian falsely charged and plunked in a Wahhabi hoosegow, where he endured 31 months of solitary, and its genuine concern for a “brown” Canadian, a real live jihadi terrorist, stuck in a Pakistani prison. I'm speaking, of course, of Omar’s late papa, who was sprung from jail solely because then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien took it upon himself to personally put a word in the ear of Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister; the P.M. deigned to do the equivalent for Sampson.

But that wasn’t about “race” so much as it was about Chretien’s and the Liberals’ utter cluelessness, as well as their "Islamophilic" desire to pander to Canada’s Pakistani community.

Posted by: scaramouche at 10:08 | link | comments

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