Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

“Christmas sale” over at BMEshop. For the next 48 hours, if you enter “HO-HO-HO-HO-HO” as a coupon at checkout, you'll get 15% knocked off your order. Maybe it'll help balance out all the stupid Christmas virus emails floating around this week.

I wanted to real briefly mention two news stories. First, in “Dispatches from Iraq” this week is the story of a 16-year old Iraqi student's interaction with US soldiers trying to stem the pro-Saddam movement in Iraq by beating up children.

[The US soldiers] were looking for boys who had been at a pro-Saddam demonstration the day before. "It's against the law," explained Lt. Col. Leopoldo Quintas.

"It's subversive," added his public affairs officer.

Ibrahim and several other detained boys were put in the back of a truck. The truck broke down and had to be towed by a tank. "We were laughing," he said, all tough and unconcerned, wearing his bandaged wrist like a trophy and using a single crutch to support the leg he said was kicked and beaten with a stick. "We knew we hadn't done anything. One of the Americans said in Arabic, 'Incheb!' Shut up!" Ibrahim was full of himself, laughing at the Americans to their faces, getting beaten for his defiance, and then asking for more. "The more I laughed, the more he hit me. It shows what kind of a weak man he was to hit a boy," he sneered.

"They had no right, no right to come!" Mr. Hamza, the Arabic teacher, was indignant. "Is this American democracy?"

Anyway, the story is interesting, not just because of the commentary on the forced application of “democracy” (because democracy is having a neo-con dictatorship, not power-to-the-people or voting after all), but because of the commentary on how similar youth is all over the world.

The other story I wanted to mention was “Uncle Sam Wants You, Eh?” about US military recruiters sneaking across the Canadian border to try and trick impoverished Inuit and other First Nations citizens to join the US army (since under a 1794 treaty they were granted dual status). I know, you're saying to yourself right now, “at least it's better than the draft!”