Yesterday, in "The friend of mine enemy is likewise mine enemy", I expressed shock -- shock, I tell you -- at the Canadian government's sudden discovery of an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up a VIA Rail train somewhere between Toronto and New York, and its sudden rush to push forward draconian anti-terrorism legislation that had been languishing on the order paper for a year.
Some have accused me of being cynical, for having suggested that it was more than a coincidence that this should have happened on the very day Canada's House of Commons was supposed to debate a motion which would have allowed MPs to speak more freely about the issues of the day.
OK, call me a cynic, but don't say I'm the only one who discerns a hidden agenda in the pronouncements and actions of "Call me Steve" Harper and his toady Toews. Check out "Conservative anti-terror bill and arrests match up beautifully, don’t they", by Heather Mallick, in today's Toronto Star.
Ms Mallick calls the anti-terror bill shameful, and the arrests dubious. She states (as the fact is) that the tip from the alleged terrorists' imam, on which the Mounties acted, was a year old -- just like the legislation itself.
"How odd," she writes. "The week after the Boston bombings, the Conservative government had MPs suddenly debating an anti-terror bill that had long been hanging around with its hands in its pockets. The very same day, conveniently, the RCMP arrested two alleged terrorists."
Odd indeed. Enough to make even Walt cynical.
Showing posts with label Via Rail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Via Rail. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Canadians follow American policies, provoke same terrorist response
The burden of Walt's recent posts about the Boston Marathon bombing and now the alleged plot to blow up a VIA Rail train has been that Islamic extremists -- homegrown as well as imported -- are doing their damnable thing to protest American policies and actions in the Middle East.
As American presidents from Teddy Roosevelt onwards have not yet learned, if you keep on playing the bully -- trying to impose your ideas of what's right and good on other countries and other cultures by force of arms -- the 97-pound weakling will eventually fight back.
Walt doesn't know all his readers and followers by name [but he knows where some of you live! Ed.] but notes with delight sympathetic comments that appear on the Net and in the Twitterverse. One such was released into the ether yesterday by a possible "Waltist" -- Max Depontailler, a staffer for Céline Hervieux-Payette, former leader of the Liberal opposition in the Canadian Senate. Here's a screen grab of a comment M. Depontailler immediately regretted making.
This was posted yesterday, following news of the arrest of two Muslim fundamentalists who were allegedly plotting to blow up a VIA Rail train at the Whirlpool bridge near Niagara Falls. M. Depontailler thought he was tweeting from his own account. Too bad for him he was still on the account of his boss! He deleted the post almost immediately, but it still appears on a number of cached sites.
Mme Hervieux-Payette hasn't commented publicly, nor is she likely to, since in times past she has expressed similar sentiments herself. In 2006 she wrote to American critics of the seal hunt that what she finds horrible is ”the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.”
Which brings us back to Walt's (and Max's) point. As Americans (and Canadians) search for the root causes of the terrorist attacks on their countries, they might well start by looking in the mirror.
"Call me Steve" Harper might well ask himself why he would choose to ally Canada so closely with the USA, given the ROTW's resentment of American political and cultural imperialism. He might just as well sew a great big red-and-white target on the maple leaf flag.
As American presidents from Teddy Roosevelt onwards have not yet learned, if you keep on playing the bully -- trying to impose your ideas of what's right and good on other countries and other cultures by force of arms -- the 97-pound weakling will eventually fight back.
Walt doesn't know all his readers and followers by name [but he knows where some of you live! Ed.] but notes with delight sympathetic comments that appear on the Net and in the Twitterverse. One such was released into the ether yesterday by a possible "Waltist" -- Max Depontailler, a staffer for Céline Hervieux-Payette, former leader of the Liberal opposition in the Canadian Senate. Here's a screen grab of a comment M. Depontailler immediately regretted making.
Mme Hervieux-Payette hasn't commented publicly, nor is she likely to, since in times past she has expressed similar sentiments herself. In 2006 she wrote to American critics of the seal hunt that what she finds horrible is ”the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners – mainly blacks – in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.”
Which brings us back to Walt's (and Max's) point. As Americans (and Canadians) search for the root causes of the terrorist attacks on their countries, they might well start by looking in the mirror.
"Call me Steve" Harper might well ask himself why he would choose to ally Canada so closely with the USA, given the ROTW's resentment of American political and cultural imperialism. He might just as well sew a great big red-and-white target on the maple leaf flag.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The friend of mine enemy is likewise mine enemy
The Boston Marathon bombing has provoked a fit of "terrorist target envy" in the Great White North. Canada's Prime Minister, "Call me Steve" Harper, is seriously vexed. He and his bumboy John "Nancy" Baird have been so vocal in their attacks on the enemies of Israel, yet the Islamic extremists keep targetting the Excited States of America. Tain't fair!
Sergeant Dudley Dooright of the RCMP and Col. Beau Gosse of CSIS (Canada's feckless "intelligence" agency) were duly summoned to Ottawa and told they'd better discover ["manufacture", surely. Ed.] some kind of Islamic fundamentalist threat to the Land of the Maple Leaf and Home of the Bieber right sharpish.
Right on cue, Canuck police and intelligence services arrested two men with beards yesterday, accusing them of plotting to attack a VIA Rail passenger train "with the intention of inflicting mass casualities and causing terror on Canadian soil". All this with the "direction and guidance" of "al-Qaeda elements in Iran", of course.
"Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in people being killed or seriously injured," a Mounted Police spokesthingy told the press yesterday. He was apparently referring to VIA's passengers -- Tyler and Tracy Luney of Pickering ON -- and innocent people passing the train on bicycles and skateboards.
The RCMP said the suspects had scouted railroads in the Toronto area as part of their preparations. The pair had been under investigation for an extended period of time and investigators said they were ready to act if they went into action. [I know it's early, but can you try to write more coherently? Ed.]
The Mounties also said that the suspects "are not Canadian citizens". Doubtless someone -- perhaps Immigration Minister Jason Kenney -- knows where they came from and how they got into Canada, but this information has, errr, not been forthcoming.
Yesterday's arrests come at an auspicious time for the Harpoon government, as Canada's House of Commons gets set to debate a bill that would strengthen Canada's anti-terrorism laws.
The timing of the debate is more than a little suspect. The "new" bill S-7, which will authorize such things as arrest without trial, was introduced in Canada's Senate a year ago. That august body (Hello, Senator Puffy!) gave it some quasi-sober thought and sent it to the Commons, errr, four months ago.
Why the sudden urgency to proceed with it now? Well, Monday was supposed to be an "opposition day" on which newly-crowned Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was to introduce a motion to limit the powers of the party whips to control which MPs could speak and on what issues. Since the governing Conservatives are grappling with a backbench rebellion on that very issue, the draconian anti-terrorism bill suddenly took priority.
Speaking from behind his moustache, Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews averred that, "Today's arrest shows that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada. The success...is due to the fact that Canada works very closely with its international partners to combat terrorism."
Walt says it's the "international partners" that are the problem. The threat of terrorist attacks on Canada and Canadians increases proportionately as the Harper government's support of Zionism and American adventurism in the Middle East. If, when al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists point their guns at the USA, Canada is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Uncle Sam [and Uncle Bibi. Ed.], Canada is bound to get hit. Call it "collateral damage".
Further reading: "Don't call in an air strike just yet!" (WWW 19/4/13) and "Walt's solution to the threat of terrorism" (WWW 16/4/13).
Sergeant Dudley Dooright of the RCMP and Col. Beau Gosse of CSIS (Canada's feckless "intelligence" agency) were duly summoned to Ottawa and told they'd better discover ["manufacture", surely. Ed.] some kind of Islamic fundamentalist threat to the Land of the Maple Leaf and Home of the Bieber right sharpish.
Right on cue, Canuck police and intelligence services arrested two men with beards yesterday, accusing them of plotting to attack a VIA Rail passenger train "with the intention of inflicting mass casualities and causing terror on Canadian soil". All this with the "direction and guidance" of "al-Qaeda elements in Iran", of course.
"Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in people being killed or seriously injured," a Mounted Police spokesthingy told the press yesterday. He was apparently referring to VIA's passengers -- Tyler and Tracy Luney of Pickering ON -- and innocent people passing the train on bicycles and skateboards.
The RCMP said the suspects had scouted railroads in the Toronto area as part of their preparations. The pair had been under investigation for an extended period of time and investigators said they were ready to act if they went into action. [I know it's early, but can you try to write more coherently? Ed.]
The Mounties also said that the suspects "are not Canadian citizens". Doubtless someone -- perhaps Immigration Minister Jason Kenney -- knows where they came from and how they got into Canada, but this information has, errr, not been forthcoming.
Yesterday's arrests come at an auspicious time for the Harpoon government, as Canada's House of Commons gets set to debate a bill that would strengthen Canada's anti-terrorism laws.
The timing of the debate is more than a little suspect. The "new" bill S-7, which will authorize such things as arrest without trial, was introduced in Canada's Senate a year ago. That august body (Hello, Senator Puffy!) gave it some quasi-sober thought and sent it to the Commons, errr, four months ago.
Why the sudden urgency to proceed with it now? Well, Monday was supposed to be an "opposition day" on which newly-crowned Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was to introduce a motion to limit the powers of the party whips to control which MPs could speak and on what issues. Since the governing Conservatives are grappling with a backbench rebellion on that very issue, the draconian anti-terrorism bill suddenly took priority.
Speaking from behind his moustache, Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews averred that, "Today's arrest shows that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada. The success...is due to the fact that Canada works very closely with its international partners to combat terrorism."
Walt says it's the "international partners" that are the problem. The threat of terrorist attacks on Canada and Canadians increases proportionately as the Harper government's support of Zionism and American adventurism in the Middle East. If, when al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists point their guns at the USA, Canada is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Uncle Sam [and Uncle Bibi. Ed.], Canada is bound to get hit. Call it "collateral damage".
Further reading: "Don't call in an air strike just yet!" (WWW 19/4/13) and "Walt's solution to the threat of terrorism" (WWW 16/4/13).
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