Crescent International
While former US vice president Dick Cheney is universally despised and considered a war criminal, the elite consider him their hero. The Toronto chapter of the International Economic Forum of the Americas has invited him to speak in Toronto tomorrow. Massive protests are planned to denounce Cheney as a war criminal. the International Lawyers group has called for his arrest. It will be an interesting Halloween night in Toronto.
Toronto,
October 30, 2013, 11:37 EDT
Lawyers Against the War, an international group of lawyers, have demanded that former US President Dick Cheney not be allowed to enter Canada, and if he sets foot, that he should be arrested on war crimes charges. The lawyers group wrote that Cheney is "suspected on reasonable grounds of authorizing, counseling, aiding, abetting and failing to prevent torture.”
Cheney is due to arrive in Canada tomorrow (October 31) to address the Toronto chapter of the International Economic Forum of the Americas. If he manages to come—last year he cancelled a similarly planned visit due to massive protests—he will again receive hostile reception from many anti-war and peace groups.
The Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA), an umbrella group of hundreds of organizations across Canada plans to protest his presence in Canada and will hold a rally outside the Metro Convention Centre on Front Street where Cheney is scheduled to speak at noon tomorrow. His visit has been dubbed Halloween night with Cheney depicted as a blood sucking vampire.
The International Lawyers group said “Once Richard (Dick) Cheney enters Canada … it must ensure that Dick Cheney is either investigated and prosecuted in Canada for the indictable offense of torture or extradited to another country willing and able to do so."
Cheney served as vice president in the administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009). He was the principal architect of the post-9/11 torture tactics and of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While the Afghan war is still continuing resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis, in Iraq, the US killed an estimated one million people.
Cheney has openly admitted he was "a big supporter" of waterboarding and other torture practices that he euphemistically called enhanced interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects. These included sleep deprivation, beatings across the face with iron rods, sodomizing victims with glass bottles, tying electrodes to victims’ genitals and other exotic methods that Cheney’s warped mind could conjure up.
In the mid-eighties then Senator Cheney led the campaign to declare Nelson Mandela a “terrorist”. This not only supported Mandela’s incarceration by the apartheid regime but also barred the international icon from setting foot in the US unless a formal waiver was granted by the US Secretary of State for him to do so.
While Mandela, now 95, is universally acclaimed for his humanity and compassion and has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize, Cheney is reviled globally as a war criminal. Why Canada would allow a war criminal to set foot here is something all Canadians must ponder over.
Last year, an International Tribunal attended by such well known figures as the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad and international judges convicted Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials for war crimes. They were found guilty of torture and cruelty. While largely symbolic, the verdict sent a message that war crimes cannot go unnoticed even if they remain unpunished because of the current corrupt global system.
Cheney, 71, has had six heart attacks and a transplant but he has cheated death so far. Perhaps he has nine lives. Some of his opponents have alleged that he was given the heart of a pig!
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