I read the Doug Saunders column to which Lauryn Oates refers, and it was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever seen appear in a major newspaper. Either Saunders has a cognitive disability or he was intentionally manipulating and lying about data. He referred to one report that indicated that the current NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was creating a situation in which Islamists were feeling more at liberty to mistreat women. Among other egregious distortions, Saunders implied it was because of the NATO forces presence in Afghanistan that conditions for women were worsening in that country.
Media coverage of Afghanistan over the past decade is notoriously prone to selective coverage of the negative -- the latest bomb blast or kidnapping -- while doing a dismal job of telling the story of the transformative progress that has occurred, and what exactly is at stake should security deteriorate this year upon the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Then there are the armchair pundits, who further help colour public opinion in the NATO countries towards unjustified pessimism. Last SaturdayThe Globe & Mailran an opinion article by Doug Saunders called"Was our Afghan saga useless -- or worse?"in which he suggests that Afghanistan may be worse off now than it was before international intervention (while simultaneously contradicting himself by noting that there are gains, though they may not last).
The reason The National Post has done so much better in the last year is in large measure due to the precipitous decline in the standards of journalism at its rival, The Globe and Mail. Doug Saunders' overt biases and manipulation of data to suit a personal, ideological agenda is a prime example.
Terry Glavin wrote today that:
I can't decide whether Doug Saunders' most recent attempt at journalism is downright creepy, disturbingly incompetent or merely comical. In any case, in his error-riddled essay he deceptively attributes any number of horrible things to UNAMA/NATO's "huge exercise" since 2006 that should accurately be attributed to late Obama-era half measures and a general shabbiness of the UNAMA/NATOs dismantling and withdrawal. Saunders claims a huge poll shows Afghans "overwhelmingly favour the Taliban over NATO forces and their own government," when the poll shows nothing of the kind - all polls that delve into that question in fact show the exact opposite. Saunders also claims that Afghan life expectancy (45-46) was actually better in the Taliban time, when in fact the WHO reports Afghan life expectancy today at 59 (m)and 61 (f). I even pointed out his misreading of the data to him several weeks ago, and sent him the references. He ignored them and reported what he knows to be untrue anyway. There's bullshit in almost every paragraph. Disgraceful behaviour by "Canada's national newspaper" today, and by Saunders.
...The story came from a village in Khashrood district of Nimruz province in Afghanistan.
A medical doctor assigned in the main hospital in Zaranj city, the capital of the province, who wished to remain unnamed confirmed that he was “made aware” of the incident and that it was “too late to do anything for her” as well the “remote area didn’t allow them to do anything”.
The girl was one of the several daughters of a man in his late 30s. For an unknown reason he gave his daughter to the Mullah of their village for a big amount of money. It is also common in Afghanistan's rural areas or 3rd level provinces/cities to marry young girls to old men, and trading their daughters for their debts or other items.
"Critical Thinking" as a term suggests the ability to objectively analyze and critique data. But as a methodology taught at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) it takes on an entirely different, sinister meaning worthy of a creation of the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell's 1984.
Turning logic on its head, the Marxist-influenced faculty teaches that Critical Thinking means to assume that American foreign policy is always in the wrong, that Western mainstream media is deceptive for the purpose of serving the government, that history is taught to further the aims of an oppressive patriarchy, and that the public, with the exception of those who are taught OISE's brand of Critical Thinking, are a mass of brainwashed dupes.
OISE's message - media is part of the conspiracy
In other words, at the University of Toronto's cultish ideological incubator for pedagogy throughout Canada, a "Critical Thinker" is someone who uncritically thinks exactly what they are told to at OISE.
That practice takes on an appalling twist at OISE's Centre for Media and Culture in Education. With the pretext of teaching "Critical Media Literacy" OISE is attempting to cast doubt that the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington were perpetrated by Muslim terrorists and that the Taliban was actually sheltering the al Qaida terror organization.
OISE Lesson
The word "allegedly" is something media must use when reporting on a crime before the courts that has not been proven. Its use in other contexts is generally for the purpose of casting doubt on the veracity of a report. That word makes a number of appearances in OISE's Critical Media Literacy in Times of Warlesson.
According to OISE, the al Qaida terrorist network "allegedly" carried out the 9-11 attacks, "it was in Afghanistan that bin Laden..allegedly organized al Qiada and established training camps," and it was in Afghanistan where the Bush Administration "claimed" al Qaida was based.
From OISE lesson
All these terms, in the lesson, are not-so-subtle suggestions that the allegations of lunatic 9-11 conspiracy theorists are correct. Those being that the 9-11 attacks were planned by people inside the US government, and Zionists as a pretext for war.
Rather than being an educational institute, OISE is a centre of indoctrination. How else to describe a school that promotes and encourages Marxism, an ideology that inevitably results in totalitarianism and has led to decades of repression and tens of millions of political murders?
This sort of sympathy for the Taliban is common at U of T's OISE. One of the Marxist professors at the Institution that produces people who devise school curricula throughout Canada recently produced a paper that attributed the cause of women's oppression in Afghanistan not to the Taliban or the harsh form of Islam it represents, but to a conspiracy among western governments, corporations and NGO's.
OISE's professors are academics of the most anti-intellectual kind. They are a type, to use a description provided by Emma Teitel in Macleans, who speak "another language, a jargon you might misconstrue as scientific–only the words they (use aren't) shortcuts meant to simplify or summarize complex concepts, they (are) used to make simple concepts sound complex: Hegemonic, racialized, problematic, intersectionality... "
Toronto blogger Blazing Cat Fur received a visit from the police last week because he sarcastically mused OISE needs to be purged or burnt to the ground, whichever is more effective.
I have another idea. The spoiled, overpaid, dense OISE staff who are so sympathetic to the Taliban should be sent to live with those fanatics for a year. That dose of living outside their self-indulgent academic bubble might not do them so much good, but it would certainly benefit the students they would otherwise poison for that year.
Two young Afghan-Canadian women who helped disrupt Remembrance day services last November say they want to launch a defamation suit against Sun News. The presumptive grounds is their claim they were libeled when referred to as "Taliban supporters" "Islamists" and "Jihadists."
The pair do however, make it very clear they want NATO and western forces out of Afghanistan.
If NATO, including Canadian forces were to withdraw from Afghanistan, who benefits and who loses?
The obvious answer is that immediate gain would go to the Taliban, the fanatical Islamist terror organization, which would likely regain control of the chaotic Central Asian country. The clear losers would be Afghan women, upon whom the Taliban, during their rule and in areas they control, imposed the most brutal and restrictive controls. The Taliban prevented women from receiving education, from having employment, from going out in public in anything more revealing than a full-body burkah, and from leaving home without permission of a male relative, among other primitive dictates from the catalogue of Islamic totalitarianism.
So it follows to reason that those advocating a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are, consciously or not, acting in the de facto interests of and lending tacit support to the Taliban.
Which brings us to a pair of young women who gained notoriety last November for a reprehensible display during Remembrance Day services at Toronto's Old City Hall. Laila Rashdie and Suraia Sahar both insist they are neither Taliban supporters nor Islamists, as they had been described following the incident which they helped to instigate. From their appearance, that claim seems entirely plausible. Both wear modern western clothing and take advantage of Canada's generous education subsidies to all post-secondary students, privileges they would be deprived of were they living under Taliban control in what they often refer to as their "home country" of Afghanistan.
But by proposing a withdrawal of all foreign troops to Afghanistan, they are advocating for something the Taliban desperately wants so it can seize control in Afghanistan and restore their tyrannical rule.
So how would a modicum of human and women's rights be preserved in Afghanistan if NATO were to pack up and leave? Ms. Sahar offered the phenomenally simplistic, nonsensical solution of providing education and health care. Things that have improved significantly under NATO's presence and would be eradicated under the Taliban. How women are going to receive these services without a competent armed force to preserve them is something she neglects to delineate because she obviously doesn't have the slightest clue.
What does seem apparent is Ms Sahar and Ms. Rushdie lack the mental acuity to connect rather obvious dots and comprehend that what they advocate serves to support the aims of the hateful Taliban Islamists.
Of course, profound, or even average insight is not something one expects from the sort of people who write things like,
"The ugly side of freedom is the state-run military spectacle supporting the NATO-led imperialist war and occupation in Afghanistan but parading as a false guilt-trip memorial for those who sacrificed to fight for “our” freedoms. Well, just in case you selectively forgot, your parade is and has always been on stolen, occupied, Native land - what about their freedoms to sovereignty and the Afghan peoples for self-determination? What about our freedom of speech which was infringed on when an officer called our message “trash” and “laughable.” We courageously endured a violent and racist crowd calling out: “go back to your country”, "
There's a priceless humor in the irony of the blatant hypocrisy of two women who refer to Afghanistan as their home condemning Canada as a settler colonial society on stolen land and then bitching about people who tell them to "go home". Unfortunately for the duo, understanding that appears to be beyond their cognitive abilities. If they actually believe the idiocy they propound, what are they doing here settling, occupying and stealing land from its rightful owners? If, as they have repeated, Afghanistan is their "home country," shouldn't they stop being occupiers, pack up, and go to a Taliban-occupied part of Afghanistan to experience what Afghan self-determination would actually be like if they got their wish for a NATO withdrawal?
Apparently that's something they want for other unfortunate Afghan women, but not for themselves. Maybe, though hypocrites, they aren't quite as stupid as they sound.
There are plenty of opinions and honest disagreements about the Canadian military role in Afghanistan and anyone has the right to speak out and demonstrate against it. But Remembrance Day services are solemn occasions meant to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and the principles that represents. To choose the particular location and occasion of a Remembrance Day service to insult and demonstrate and intentionally offend those who have come to mourn is callous and disgusting. Anyone who does that, as my friend Michael Coren has observed, is in my opinion no better than the moral troglodytes of the Hillsboro Baptist Church who defile military funerals with their "God hates fags" protest signs.
While writing about their own courage, the pair of hypocrites who claim their free speech was deprived neglected to mention the police were actually protecting them from an angry mob they had riled up with their offensive display.
Rashdie and Sahar protest that they, with their banner, were not the ones shouting slogans during the moment of silence at the service and they were only one of four protest groups their to offend those honoring and mourning lost soldiers. To the casual observer, there would be no distinction between the two dozen or so ragged radicals who were intermingling and shaming themselves on that occasion. And, as a video shows, the pair certainly enthusiastically participated in foul-mouthed, shrill, shameful hysteria that continued the disruption of the services that day.
The pair tried to justify themselves when they wrote,
In 2001 we watched the invasion of our home country, Afghanistan. Fast forward 11 years later: Afghanistan is still occupied, and every year on Remembrance Day we are reminded of it. It has become painfully obvious that Remembrance Day is used as a war propaganda tool. If one is going to take offense to our presence, direct your misguided anger at those responsible for why we are taking offense.
No one has the right to physically attack someone for their opinions. But someone would have to be a complete idiot to go to a service at that nature, provoke the crowd, and not expect such a response. While taking advantage of the freedoms that Canadian soldiers have fought and died to preserve, they came to a memorial to metaphorically spit on the graves of the people who gave them the rights they abused.
Their idiocy continued with:
This is a settler-colonial society, reinforcing itself through racism, which we witnessed at the Remembrance Day ceremony. This is what explains why a handful of racist, white men screamed in our faces to "go back to your country." They believe that they are the rightful owners of this land. We are never accepted as real Canadians in their rigid, exclusionary and alienating cultural terms. We are always deemed as a potential foreign threat especially when we reveal this status quo and hypocrisy.
Speaking of hypocrisy, the pair, that alternatively posture themselves as either Canadian or Afghan, depending on which suits their needs at the moment, claim to be "peace activists." It brings to mind the sort of peace activism the late Christopher Hitchens described when he wrote, "in reality, they are straight out pro-war, but on the other side."
That seems evident from an article penned by Leila Rushdie in which she wrote:
We should support the Palestinian national fight for liberation against a military super-power threatening the Near East. The Zionist project is founded upon colonialism and genocide of Palestine. Palestine acts in defense to a colonizer that has been viciously taking Palestinian land and lives in one hand while shamelessly claiming peace and negotiations in the other. The comparison maps of Palestine since 1946 till today speak for itself about the intentions of Apartheid Israel: its about land, not peace.
Aside from other apparent idiocies, for so-called peace activists such as Rushdie and Sahar, Western troops fighting against Islamic Jihadists who throw acid in the face of Afghan women who want an education is bad, but Muslim Jihadists who murder Israeli civilians to replace a liberal democracy with an Islamic state is just fine.
But remember, Ms Rushdie and Ms Sahar are not Taliban supporters, Islamists or Jihadis. They just, by remarkable coincidence, share a lot of desired outcomes with them.
Canada will burn (,) praise Allah.” Five words defacing a Toronto War Memorial on Remembrance Day, sent shock waves through the country. Memorials to our war dead have been vandalized before, but by petty thieves stealing metal plaques. This, however, was the first time hostility towards Canada was demonstrated, albeit with an Islamic angle.
Like most Muslim Canadians, I cringed at the implications of this act. How much more will the ordinary Canuck take before, as the Quebecois put it, they reach “le point de bascule.”
The United States has been incredibly patient with Pakistan. And we have been so despite certain undeniable and deeply disturbing facts. Most importantly, Pakistani army and intelligence officials continue to support the Haqqani Network and other terrorist groups in Pakistan that are killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the vast majority of the material used to make improvised explosive devices used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan originates from two fertilizer factories inside Pakistan.
The time has come for the United States to fully review its relations with Pakistan. We must assess the nature and levels of our support for Pakistan. In particular, all options regarding U.S. security and economic assistance to Pakistan must be on the table, including substantial reductions and stricter standards for performance. Most of all, U.S. policy toward Pakistan must proceed from the realistic understanding that certain actions of Pakistan’s military are contributing to the death and injury of our men and women in the military and jeopardizing our national security interests.
A phone number of someone at the BBC was found in phone books and programmed into the mobile phones of a number of militants seized by the Americans.
The number is believed believed to be based at Bush House, the headquarters of the BBC World Service...
The US assessment file said forces had uncovered many ‘extremist links’ to the BBC number – indicating that extremists could have made contacts with employees at the broadcaster who were sympathetic to extremists or had information on ‘ACM’ (anti-Coalition militia) activities.
I'm surprised a number at The Toronto Star hasn't turned up there too.
The Munk Centre is the University of Toronto's showpiece for Global Studies and frequently features brilliant speakers and fascinating presentations. But as Johnny Carson used to say when one of his jokes bombed, "they can't all be gems."
Case in point, a dual program on Tuesday evening called, "In Conversation with Brian Stewart."
In fairness to The Munk Centre, it did provide one thoughtful speaker that evening who provided pertinent facts and intelligent analysis in the person of Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance.
Stewart is a former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporter who is now affiliated with the Munk Centre. There were two parts to the program. The first was billed as "Canada and Afghanistan" and was an hour of Stewart posing questions to Vance, who is Chief of Staff, Land Strategy for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Vance offered insights into the Afghanistan situation and Canada's military role that are worth noting. Aside from the obvious fact that the rights and lives of most Afghans have improved since the removal of the Taliban, it's critical to note that despite the implications by friends of the Mullah-ruled Iranian dictatorship, like the Canadian Peace Alliance's James Clark, most Afghans want NATO to be there. They don't want NATO to stay forever, but they do want them to remain until Afghanistan is secure enough to prevent a resumption of Taliban rule. The voices of Afghans who condemn NATO's presence in their country are almost always those who don't live in Afghanistan.
To illustrate that, while millions of Afghans left the country as refugees during Taliban rule, millions are now returning since the NATO intervention. That fact alone should be ample testimony to the benefit of NATO's role in Afghanistan.
The best answers are often elicited from a questioner who challenges the person being questioned. Because an idea or proposition is offered doesn't mean it should be accepted. However there was something about Stewart's questioning, having alternated between cynical and uninformed, which brought to mind the worst practices of the old CBC. Stewart made weird allegations parroted from a group of communists about "the militarization" of Hockey Night in Canada and concluded with a condescending congratulation of Vance for his "honesty," as if anything less could have been expected.
Stewart's position couldn't have been made more apparent than by his shift to the role of obsequious acolyte in the second part of the program called, "Obama Watch: Historians Review the Obama Foreign Policy Record"
One of the secrets of academia is that a PhD is no guarantee of great intelligence. Sometimes all it means is that an individual who possess one is better trained to articulate banal ideas than the average person. Historians John Milton Cooper and Robert Bothwell provided ample reminder of that. They shared the stage with the Munk Centre's Ronald Pruessen and what was supposed to be a critique of US President Obama's foreign policy instantaneously descended into Cooper bloviating about a Zionist takeover of American politics, only to be echoed by Bothwell's conspiratorial assertion that Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu is more powerful in American politics than Obama.
Pruessen seemed embarrassed by his colleagues and while he sensibly (sanely) stayed away from that delusional line of distraction, he did not challenge it. That is understandable since it might have inspired ostracism given the the anti-Zionist zealotry often prevalent at U of T, which includes entire departments devoted to it.
While it was shocking to hear an outburst from Cooper and Bothwell that could just as easily have been a recital from a neo-Nazi website or a squawk from a Maoist nut like Norman Finkelstein, what was most surprising about the hour-long panel was that among all the many assertions, not once was a single historical fact introduced by any of the historians to substantiate them. Finkelstein routinely presents facts and data out of context, but at least he actually uses facts on occasion.
Such was not the case with the historian's panel. A panel that was ostensibly about Obama, overwhelmingly became just a group denunciation of George W Bush. Cooper and Bothwell seemed personally affronted by the popular conception that Bush's push for democracy in the middle east could in any way be responsible for the wave of pro-democracy rebellions spreading across the region. Cooper appeared to revile Bush to the extent that he could barely bring himself to say his name, almost always referring to him as "the last president," bringing to mind the way that Islamist fanatics cannot bear to say "Israel" and refer to it as "the Zionist entity."
Cooper's oft-repeated use of the term "right-wing", spitting it out as if it were a diabolical curse, implied an ideologically-inspired intellectual vacuity, as if by virtue of an idea's being from a particular part of the political spectrum, it was automatically disqualified from any validity. The best US president of the last two decades was Bill Clinton, whose success was in no small measure derived from his ability to recognize good ideas and adopt them, regardless of their source. The reason the Republicans were so frustrated by him, and their attacks against him so personal, was because it is almost impossible to attack the politics of someone who appropriates your best ideas and implements them as his own policies.
Of course, Bill Clinton possesses one of the most politically astute minds in the world, and Messieurs Cooper and Bothwell, to put it politely, do not.
It was staggering to hear the panel unanimously postulate something that should be discouraging for any supporter of Barack Obama as it is for anyone who welcomes global stability: their positive assessment of an Obama presidency leading to a weaker America. At that point, I realized I was listening to a panel of 20th century historians who have learned absolutely nothing from the history of the 20th century.
They all agreed that America, in the absence of another superpower, was too strong, and it's weakening would be a good thing for the world and the USA . What they didn't say was who they assumed would fill the power vacuum left by a debilitated United States. Unless they meant a nuclear Iran or authoritarian China, the natural assumption would be Europe.
If nothing else can be learned from the history of Europe over the last 100 years, it is that Europe is incapable of functioning for any length of time without a strong America. Cooper, who wrote a well received biography of Woodrow Wilson, the US President at the close of World War 1, seemed to have forgotten the cause of that war was European instability. It took a strong America to end that conflict, since Europe was unable to solve its own problems. History repeated itself with the American intervention needed to end World War 2. It was America's support for western Europe that prevented the Soviets from dominating that continent during the cold war. And if any further reminder was needed, though it shouldn't be, it is the resolution of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, which threatened to turn into a regional war while Europe criticized and ineffectually dithered until an American bombing campaign ordered by President Clinton concluded that crisis.
Given their other proclivities, maybe it should not have been surprising that those obvious facts didn't factor into the assessment of the historical trio.
The Munk Centre provides a tremendous service in presenting different voices and divergent views so that students, academics, and the public can be exposed to a variety of ideas. A moderator who challenges the preposterous rather than allows his own prejudices to be reinforced would provide a good enhancement for these events.
One consolation from the historian's panel is that it conclusively proves that Linda McQuaig is full of..hot air.
Even in a week that concentrated all eyes on the magnificent courage and maturity of the people of Cairo, a report from Kabul began with what must surely be the most jaw-dropping opening paragraph of the year. Under the byline of the excellent Rod Nordland, The New York Times reported: “International and local human rights groups working in Afghanistan have shifted their focus toward condemning abuses committed by the Taliban insurgents, rather than those attributed to the American military and its allies.”
The story went on to point out that the Taliban was culpable for “more than three-fourths of all civilian casualties” and informed us that some human-rights groups are now so concerned that they are thinking of indicting the Taliban for war crimes. “The activists’ concern,” Nordland went on, “would have been unheard-of a year ago,” when all the outcry was directed at casualties inflicted by NATO contingents.
The story became more mind-boggling as it unfolded. One had to ask oneself what had taken the human-rights “community” so long.
One wonders whether some of the so-called "anti-war" groups are, as Chrsitopher Hitchens observed, really pro-war but for the other side.
For those of you who thought religions which practiced human sacrifice were a thing of the past, the Taliban's version of Islam proves otherwise.
WARNING: These videos contain disturbing, graphic content of a young couple stoned to death by the Taliban because the bride ran away from an arranged marriage.
A classified cable from 2007, released recently by wiki-leaks. revealed that the Iranians had promised security cooperation in Iraq, but only if their Revolutionary Guards did not receive a terror group designation:
"Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) xxxxxxxxxxxx told London Iran Watcher xxxxxxxxxxxx that Iran's cooperation on security in Iraq, though not yet evident, would be forthcoming, but in the same breath argued that a U.S. terrorist designation of the IRGC would prevent any such cooperation."
There has, for a long time, been a movement to have the Iranian Revolutionary Guards listed as a terror group in the west. There are clear terror links to them and they have a history of support for terrorism.
The leak helps explain why that designation may not yet have occurred.
The cable also confirmed the role of Iran in formenting terror and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan:
"for the USG to hold its hand on designation came xxxxxxxxxxxx engaged with the invited group at length on Tehran's view of U.S.-Iran relations, Iraqi security, and the nuclear issue. xxxxxxxxxxxx candid remarks, which included extremely vigorous exchanges with xxxxxxxxxxxx alternated between aggressive characterizations of Iran's relations in the Persian Gulf, admissions of the IRGC's presence and role in Iraq and Afghanistan, and apparently earnest statements of Iran's desire for cooperation with the United States."
Yet despite their remaining off the US State Department's list of terror groups, the Iranians failed to keep their word, as a subsequent cable in 2009 reveals:
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - Quds Force (IRGC-QF) officers are active in Iraq, conducting traditional espionage and supporting violent extremists as well as supporting both legitimate and malign Iranian economic and cultural outreach. Iraqis and their government have demonstrated increasing willingness to push back against malign Iranian influence in the last year. Working with the Iraqis, we have succeeded in stopping some IRGC-QF activity through military operations and diplomatic engagement, while we prevented some IRGC-QF officers from entering Iraq through explicit warnings that we would target them unilaterally.
You can read the entire 2007 wiki leak below (click each one to enlarge)
Eye on a Crazy Planet is a non-partisan Canadian blog insofar as it takes positions on issues rather than political parties. (OK, I don't consider the NDP or Greens to be real political parties).
Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae reminds us that the Liberals understand the need for the defense of liberal democracy.
"The terrorists do not have a timetable. The terrorists do not have resolutions that say this is what has to happen and this is the day we have to do this and we have to do that.
The terrorists have a different objective, and we need to understand that as a House. Canadians have to come to terms with the need for this continuing engagement; they have to come to terms with the need for us to stay involved and stay engaged, not at the expense of our own people, not at the expense of our democratic traditions and not at the expense of how we do business as a country, but as partners."
Bob Woodward discusses the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush presidency and the state of contemporary journalism with Justine Rosenthal of The National Interest
Donilon is a protege of Warren Christopher, who was a realist as Secretary of State during Bill Clinton's first term. Christopher and Donilon pushed for America to remain aloof from the Balkans war. Donilon raised his eyebrows over Madeleine Albright's approach to foreign policy during the Clinton years. He is a believer in quiet diplomacy. Donilon, a seasoned operator and lawyer, who first worked in the Carter administration, will push for decoupling from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Vic Toews, our Minister of Public Safety, is quoted as saying:
"[I]t’s so very important that we have cooperation from the groups where these individuals are coming out of so that our security authorities can better assess the situation and protect Canadians."
He was referring specifically to the case of three Muslim students who have gone missing. There is suspicion, and only suspicion at this point, that the three are training somewhere in Jihadistan and planning to come back to Canada as fully-trained terrorists.
The article continues:
The minister, who represents a southern Manitoba riding, urged groups that have spawned extremists to report their suspicions and held up Somali Canadians as an example.
Balgow soon gets into his mendacious sarcasm:
I know, at first hand, that communities can spawn radicalism. And I want to do something about it.
The first hurdle to overcome is to figure out which community gave rise to me. The white community? The Christian-in-name-only (United Church) community? The anglophone community? The central Canada community? The NDP community? All of the above? Still more?
I ask only because I demand to know what leaders were accountable for me, and disgracefully dropped the ball, allowing me to flourish in their midst.
Once we have that one figured out, I’ll know where to begin. As a conscientious citizen who believes in the rule of law, I want to keep an eye on those in my community who might be up to no good.
It probably escaped Baglow's attention (or maybe not) that today is the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the October Crisis. For those unfamiliar, that was when a Quebecois separatist group, the FLQ, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross and Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. Laporte was murdered by these fiends.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to declare martial law in Quebec until the crisis was resolved.
Canada is currently in a war in Afghanistan fighting the jihadists that Baglow stupidly underestimates.
The reason that terror plots in Canada can be dismissed by Baglow in the way he does is because CSIS, the RCMP, local police and agencies working under the aegis of the Department of National Defence are doing their jobs well.
We live in a democracy. We are the government. So when the government asks us for help in preserving our own safety, we can choose to mock and do nothing like Baglow, or we can provide what help we can when those opportunities arise.
Baglow and his friends on the fringes have become increasingly shrill as his ideology has become more marginalized within the mainstream of Canadian society. It must be hard for him to sit on the sidelines, knowing how much better things would be if only people outside the NDP's Socialist Caucus took him seriously.
