Brandon Proust posted:

My facebook feed is split evenly between young bitter NDP supporters using this to take potshots at Trudeau, and old bitter Bloc supporters using this to take potshots at Trudeau.

Franks Happy Place posted:

I will join a Vancouver goon meet, on the condition that CI do a dab with me in the spirit of chillaxing a bit.

The rest of you can have dabs too, of course.

PT6A posted:

They should hire an autist to figure out these rules for them and also any train schedule they may need.

Helsing posted:

I know it's in poor taste for me to speculate on how a woman who got hit by a man could have played it better, but this is Something Awful so I'll do it anyway. Regardless of how she felt inside it likely would have been a much savvier play for Brousseau to make light of the incident, maybe make a joke about how she's a fighter and she can take it, and then perhaps a quip about Trudeau having anger issues or being petulant. The average person may think they sympathize with the weak but when they actually express their support it's almost always for the strong.

Helsing posted:

The problem with the NDP position in Elbowgate is that on the most basic and animalistic level it makes them look sound weak and, regardless of what they might pretend, most of the public instinctively despises weakness. "I was battered by the Prime Minister" will just make people invent reasons to hate you. Outside of tumblr and a few sociology departments very few people are going to be more inclined to support a party that casts itself as a victim (and in my opinion Brousseau is a victim here, albeit in a fairly minor incident,) because our natural instinct as humans is to look for reasons that victims must have caused their own misfortune.

I know it's in poor taste for me to speculate on how a woman who got hit by a man could have played it better, but this is Something Awful so I'll do it anyway. Regardless of how she felt inside it likely would have been a much savvier play for Brousseau to make light of the incident, maybe make a joke about how she's a fighter and she can take it, and then perhaps a quip about Trudeau having anger issues or being petulant. The average person may think they sympathize with the weak but when they actually express their support it's almost always for the strong.

The Butcher posted:

Fuckin' bingo.

Easy win, totally wasted.

Brannock posted:

P-Value Hack posted:

I love this new set of coins specifically because I know how butthurt CI will get over it

Pixelante posted:

What's the age range on NDPs? Almost all of mine are 35-45 and saying, "welp, cancelling that membership." They're all British Columbians, though... and the Libs have not exactly been awesome over here. And by Libs I mostly mean Christy Clark who seems to be a cartoon villain who escaped from TV and is wearing a human flesh mask.

THC posted:

Canada Post has a new line of Star Trek anniversary stamps. I had almost forgotten how Canada sometimes likes to claim an American TV series as part of its cultural heritage because it starred William Shatner

P-Value Hack posted:

I love this new set of coins specifically because I know how butthurt CI will get over it

P-Value Hack posted:

I love this new set of coins specifically because I know how butthurt CI will get over it

MonsieurChoc posted:

It's hosed up that we're talking about this non-event instead of the law that was being voted on or any of the other actual important poo poo going on, jesus christ.

This is why it took me weeks to catch u with the thread. Because I'm depressed about my country (and my province but we don't really talk about how lovely Quebec is around here).

Keg posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan,_Alberta

Helsing posted:

The problem with the NDP position in Elbowgate is that on the most basic and animalistic level it makes them look sound weak and, regardless of what they might pretend, most of the public instinctively despises weakness. "I was battered by the Prime Minister" will just make people invent reasons to hate you. Outside of tumblr and a few sociology departments very few people are going to be more inclined to support a party that casts itself as a victim (and in my opinion Brousseau is a victim here, albeit in a fairly minor incident,) because our natural instinct as humans is to look for reasons that victims must have caused their own misfortune.

I know it's in poor taste for me to speculate on how a woman who got hit by a man could have played it better, but this is Something Awful so I'll do it anyway. Regardless of how she felt inside it likely would have been a much savvier play for Brousseau to make light of the incident, maybe make a joke about how she's a fighter and she can take it, and then perhaps a quip about Trudeau having anger issues or being petulant. The average person may think they sympathize with the weak but when they actually express their support it's almost always for the strong.

Arivia posted:

It's nice that there's 4 men and a woman in a supporting role.

Booourns posted:

Has Mulcair explained why some of his party members were blocking the lane like children to begin with?

quote:

Torture, murder charges dropped against ex-soldier Matchee

The long saga of Cpl. Clayton Darrell Matchee, a former Saskatchewan soldier charged with torture and murder in the 1993 death of a 16-year-old Somali youth, has come to an end.

Matchee couldn’t believe it when she got a call last Thursday from her family’s lawyer that charges against her son Clayton would be withdrawn.

“I asked him, ‘Is it real, is it true?’ And he said, ‘It’s true Celine, it’s true, it really happened. Clayton is free,’ ” Celine said Monday from her ranch on the Flying Dust First Nation located near Meadow Lake.

“It’s over. It’s been 15 years and it’s finally over.”

Ex-corporal Clayton Matchee, a former Saskatchewan soldier, had been facing charges of torture and murder in the 1993 death of a 16-year-old Somali youth.

The military dropped all charges, closing a dark chapter in Canadian military history and ending a living nightmare for the Matchee family.

For Jessie Lens, Clayton’s 22-year-old daughter, the story has been a hardship she’s carried her whole life. Now, she says, a weight has been removed; she will no longer have to tell her father’s story over and over again. She cuts hair at her salon in Meadow Lake.

“I’d tell people who I am . . . and they would be like ‘Matchee’ and you could see a light go off,” Lens said.

“I’d have to tell the whole story again and again, so they got the story straight. . . . We’ve wanted this for a long time. It should have been done a long time ago.”

Clayton Matchee was serving with the Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia. On March 16, 1993, members of the regiment arrested Shidane Arone, a teenager they found hiding in a portable toilet in an abandoned American naval engineers’ compound.

Within an hour of the arrest, a soldier in the guard tower of the Canadian compound heard screams of pain coming from the bunker where Arone was being held.

Inside, the teenager was shackled and his hands were cuffed behind his back, a wooden baton placed under his arms. He was blindfolded, beaten with fists and a riot baton and kicked about the head, body and feet. A lit cigar was used to burn the soles of his feet. His final words were “Canada, Canada.”

A fellow soldier took photographs of Matchee pointing a loaded pistol at Arone’s head, his face bloody and the blindfold still in place. The pictures were broadcast around the world, doing lasting damage to the Canadian military’s reputation abroad and underscoring accusations of ingrained violence and racism among Canadian soldiers.

The Matchee family has argued Clayton was adversely affected mefloquine, a medication he was taking to prevent malaria.

Matchee tried to commit suicide two days after he was implicated in the death of Arone. The attempt failed, leaving the soldier with permanent brain damage, and placing him under the permanent care of Celine.

Experts have said he will never recover from his injuries and now has the mental capacity of a three-year-old.

Every year since he was charged, the Saskatchewan Review Board held a hearing to reassess whether Matchee is fit to stand a criminal trial.

The military also has held its own hearing every two years to determine if there is sufficient evidence to continue with a trial against Matchee. The military sought documented proof he was no longer a threat to the public.

Everything changed last week when military prosecutors discussed the issue with the review board. Matchee was released from a psychiatric hospital in North Battleford in February. The review board reported there have been no incidents constituting a risk since Matchee’s release.

“The case is closed,” said Lieut.-Col. Bruce MacGregor, the deputy director of military prosecutions. “This was the real evidence we needed.”

For Celine, having Clayton at home has been a difficult task. It meant, though, he was able to attend his daughter Jessie’s wedding last month, walking her down the aisle.

The decision, too, increases the chance Clayton will get into a long-term care facility. In the past, the family’s attempts have been denied because care home officials were worried about the pending charges. Now, Celine said she hopes her son will find proper care.

“I’ve spent so long standing beside my son and fighting for him,” Celine said, “And now, finally, it’s finished.”
*****


Clayton Matchee timeline:

March 16, 1993 — Somalia teenager Shidane Abukar Arone dies from head injuries inside a Canadian military compound in Belet Huen, Somalia, during an ill-fated peacekeeping mission.

March 18, 1993 — Implicated in the death of Arone, Clayton Matchee is permanently brain injured after attempting to hang himself with his boot laces.

March 20, 1994 — Kyle Brown, the soldier who took infamous photos of Matchee and Arone and played a secondary role to Matchee, is found guilty of manslaughter for his role in the death. He serves one-third of his five year sentence.

September 1995 — Canada’s elite Canadian Airborne Regiment is disbanded.

July 1997 — An inquiry into the Somalia affair is called. Despite being cut short by government, the inquiry finds deep and systemic problems in the leadership of the Canadian Forces.

June 2004 —The Supreme Court rules, in the case of Rejean Demers, a mentally disabled Quebec man who was accused of sexual assault, that where an accused is found permanently mentally unfit to stand trial, the court may stay the charges if they do not pose a significant danger to the public,

September 2004 — Matchee attends a hearing in Saskatoon with his parents and several members of his extended family. The judge rules Matchee is still unfit to stand trial despite sufficient evidence to prosecute.

February 2008 — Matchee is released from a psychiatric hospital in North Battleford to stay with family. He is visited by doctors and psychiatrists to assess if he is a risk to the public.

September 2008 — Murder and torture charges against Matchee are dropped because the military prosecutor decides there is sufficient evidence he does not pose a threat to the public.

Booourns posted:

Has Mulcair explained why some of his party members were blocking the lane like children to begin with?

MonsieurChoc posted:

Because I'm depressed about my country (and my province but we don't really talk about how lovely Quebec is around here).

quote:

‘It takes everything’: Veteran went ‘off the grid’ after torturing teen in Somalia left him with PTSD

In late 1998, former soldier Kyle Brown suddenly left his oilpatch job, walked out of his apartment, dumped his ID and disappeared “off the grid.”

For a long time, “the dark years,” Brown hid from his friends, from the government and from his past in a fog of drugs, alcohol and isolation.

Brown’s troubled past was hard to escape. The former Canadian Airborne Regiment soldier served 40 months in prison for manslaughter and torture for his role in the horrific beating death of 16-year-old civilian Shidane Arone in Somalia in March 1993.

It was a shameful episode for Canada’s military and led to the airborne being disbanded.

Clayton Matchee, the senior soldier on guard who set out to “rough up” the prisoner, never went to trial after a failed suicide attempt two days after the events left him brain damaged.

When Brown got out of Bowden prison in 1997, he tried to start a new life, went back to school, found a job, wrote a book with journalist Peter Worthington called Scapegoat, and met a woman.

The Somalia mission left its mark on Brown — the trauma of events and possibly the side-effects of anti-malaria drug mefloquine with can cause nightmares, anxiety, aggression, cognitive impairment.

At home, Brown began to experience mood swings, anger, and re-living the trauma of the mission, a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, he was told. New studies show mefloquine poisoning can bring on symptoms similar to PTSD. Brown isn’t sure what causes his symptoms.

Brown agreed to a rare media interview — the first in years — because he wants to support a renewed push by former airborne soldiers to put a stop to the military’s use of mefloquine.

The group also wants Veterans Affairs to provide treatment for those still suffering from mefloquine’s side-effects, including damage to the central nervous system.

Brown’s PTSD-like symptoms flared up when the military came to his door, as happened every other year. The military needed Brown to provide evidence at a biannual hearing into Matchee’s fitness for trial.

“So the army was tracking me, the last people on earth I wanted in my life,” Brown said.

Each time, those visits took Brown right back to the horrific night, “in the pit with Matchee” and the dead teenager.

“The last time they found me in Fort McMurray, and I said, ‘You won’t fine me again.’ ”

For a long time, Brown holed up in Edmonton’s river valley, living under a tree in a tent, with a blanket and crack pipe.

Every few months, he would surface and let his family know he was still alive, then go underground again.

But in September 2008, his life took an unexpected turn.

“One day, I happened to be on the LRT and I picked up Metro newspaper and saw an article on Clayton Matchee.

“It said he was deemed unfit for trial, all charges were dropped and they were sending him back to his family.

“That was it, my private war with the government was over. My life changed.”

Brown found a job and a girlfriend and life began again.

But it is never easy. He struggles with alcohol, anger and an emotional roller-coaster.

“I can go from completely normal to rage in seconds. It’s affecting my marriage,” says Brown, who loves his three-year-old daughter.

He has been through rehab and lots of therapy. A few years ago, he went to Powell River, B.C. for intensive therapy that forced him to relive the fateful night with Matchee and Arone. “I did a lot of healing.

“You want to know what PTSD did to me? It’s the great destroyer and stealer of happiness. The great usurper, it takes everything. ”

“The symptoms never go away, you just manage them.”

CLAM DOWN posted:

gently caress that, I'll be butthurt because those are so goddamn bad ugh

Hexigrammus posted:

drat, they're real..

I cannot tell the difference between bad satire and reality anymore.

Constant Hamprince posted:

There's a woman on the opposite side of each one.

CLAM DOWN posted:

Do we actually have multiple sets of Star Trek coins available solely because Shatner is Canadian? Ugh

MA-Horus posted:

gently caress the Airborne regiment and gently caress those guys

Oh no you have PTSD from torturing a kid, gently caress your own face.

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

Lets not forget that organized white supremacy was rampant in the Airborne and their home base Petawawa.

PT6A posted:

Why do Canadian place names always sound like retard babble anyway?

Wikipedia posted:

Petawawa originates from a local Algonquin language word, biidaawewe, meaning "where one hears a noise like this".

PT6A posted:

Why do Canadian place names always sound like retard babble anyway?

Ikantski posted:

Albertan history curriculum itt