People marched in Ottawa today to yet again demand action in the case of Raif Badawi. Badawi is known for being a Saudi blogger who made the ostensibly terrible decision to bother his government. Though he managed to ship his wife and child to Canada, he was captured and sentenced to being tortured on the grounds that he questioned whether there really is an invisible man in the sky who is omnipotent and omniscient and if you displease him in one of the myriads of arbitrary ways written in some book authored by a primitive several centuries ago will send you to a place where you will burn and suffer and cry and writhe for all eternity, but he loves you. When questioned about the wisdom of not waiting until he had left Earth's mental asylum to speak up about this topic, Badawi was heard screaming incoherently and begging for help.
Saudi officials then came to inform us of his condition, assuring us that as citizens of the latest member of the UN council on human rights, they knew perfectly well how to treat prisoners fairly and humanely. They could not stay much longer however as they had to get ready to go and cut off a woman's head for not being accompanied by a man in public, then they had to pull an all-nighter of flogging people for crimes against humanity such as looking at the wrong person or saying they think democracy looks kind of cool.
Justin Trudeau, who is to be sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada this wednesday, commented that he would do everything in his power to appear as if he is doing something about it while not actually doing anything. He then left to finalize yet another arms deal with Saudi Arabia, sure to bring in a lot of money for Canada so they can give it to corporations and pay for luxuries for politicians instead of funding social services.
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