Your Singhs today (anti-terrorism edition)

Just two years after his predecessor was gunned down in the Sikh-majority city of Surrey BC, the leader of Sikhs for Justice in Canada was arrested in Oshawa ON this past Friday on a dozen firearms charges. Inderjeet Singh Gosal, 36, seen here exercising his First Amendement rights at the Indian High Commission in Ottawa on September 11th

was charged with crimes including illegal possession and careless use of a prohibited handgun for purposes dangerous to the public peace. Arrested with him were Arman Singh, 23, of Toronto, and Jagdeep Singh, 41, a resident of New York.

Mr Gosal had replaced Hardeep Singh Nijjar as a primary organizer of Sikhs for Justice in Canada, a group that petitions and campaigns for a state they would call "Khalistan", separate from India. Four men allegedly linked to Mr Nijjar's murder are in custody awaiting trial. [What? No bail for them? Ed.] 

In a statement, Sikhs for Justice said Mr Gosal’s arrest is "in fact a case about the Canadian government’s duty to protect the life of a Canadian citizen." Mr Gosal told Bloomberg News earlier this month that Canadian authorities had repeatedly warned him his life was at risk, and he declined an offer of witness protection. 

Sikhs for Justice is banned in India and Indian media outlets described Gosal as a terrorist. The Liberal government of Canuckistan, which relies heavily on the Sikh vote in Peel Region ON and Surrey region BC -- see WWW passim -- has not designated a terrorist organization in Canada and it asserts its activities are peaceful and legal. 

Canada’s national security adviser, Nathalie Drouin, traveled to India and met with her counterpart, Ajit Doval, on Thursday. She said in a statement they discussed their respective security concerns and committed to non-interference including refraining from transnational repression. No-one from any level of government was available for comment on Mr Gosal's arrest. Nor has any answer been given to Walt's question about a possible link between this arrest and the events detailed in "Your Singhs today -- What's going on here?", WWW 4/9/25.

Walt explains the link between events in Hong Kong and Québec

The events of yesterday and today on two opposite sides of the world say something (to those who are paying attention) about the natural desire of "nations" (in the French sense of the word) to protect their culture and identity when threatened with submersion in a larger multicultural society.

At 0400 EDT on Sunday, Québec's National Assembly -- note the term -- passed, not without opposition, Bill 9, which sets out the framework for a Québec values test that all immigrant wannabes will need to pass in order to become permanent residents of la Belle Province. The new law allows the government to cancel some 18,000 applications to immigrate.

The opposition Liberals complained that since putting Bill 9 on the table in February, the Québec government has provided "no credible explanation" for doing that, but the province's Immigration Minister argued that "We are changing the immigration system in the public interest, because we have to make sure that we have an immigration tied to the needs of the labour market."

What does that mean? The opposition whines that the new test will discriminates against prospective immigrants from Third World shitholes, who don't speak French and don't have the European/American work ethic or experience. Being a truck driver in the Punjab or a street vendor in the Congo won't count for much, it seems. Nor will wanting time off to observe religious holy day.

Which brings us to another proposed law, Bill 21, which will come to a vote later today or tomorrow, since closure has been invoked to end any further argy-bargy over what has been nicknamed "the Secularism Bill" or, more tellingly, "the anti-Muslim Bill". Bill 21 is a proposed ban on the display of religious symbols in the public service, included in the proposesd Charter of Québec Values, which Québeckers have been fighting for (or against) for donkey's years.

Under the new law, anyone giving or receiving public-sector services must not display any headgear or other accessories or symbols of any religion. That includes Jewish and Christian symbols like the kippah and the crucifix, but critics whine that the clear target is Muslim women who wear the hijab, niqab or burqa. (If you're not sure what these things are, see "Hijab, niqab, burqa -- what's the difference?", WWW 28/7/10.)

Last Wednesday, the National Assembly spent more than an hour going over just one phrase — "in fact and in appearance" — in the religious symbols bill. Minority groups, legal experts, SJWs, multiculti types and (of course) United Nations human rights monitors have expressed concern that Bill 21 will institutionalize discrimination and... wait for it... racism. Be that as it may, the new régime was one of the main planks of the CAQ election platform, and Québécois voted for it, overwhelmingly, last fall. Now they're going to get what they voted for. Imagine that!

Meanwhile, in "Fragrant Harbour" (aka Hong Kong) today, hundreds of thousands took to the streets again today as the Umbrella Revolution (v.2) continues. On Saturday (local time) it appeared that the pro-Beijing puppet government of the former British colony had caved, as Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that an extradition bill that would allow some suspects to be sent for trial in mainland China had been "suspended indefinitely". But, the pro-democracy demonstrators say, that's not the same as "withdrawn altogether and forever".

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents, mostly clad in black, jammed the city's streets Sunday in a vehement show of opposition to proposed legislation that has stoked fears of expanding control from Beijing. They carried signs reading "Hong Kong is not China!", and that is precisely the issue. When the perfidious British handed the colony over to the Communist Chinese in 1997, the Reds pledged that Hong Kong's "special status" would allow it to keep the Western legal, electoral and social systems and values which had been in place for over a century. Yeah... sure...

The marchers, who numbered over a million earlier last week, are demanding that Hong Kong's leader first scrap the proposed extradition law, then resign. Last week the peaceful protests degenerated into violent clashes with the police, who fired rubber bullets and teargas at the unarmed (except for umbrellas) demonstrators. Several protesters were injured and scores were arrested, in the toughest test of the territory's special status since the Communists took control.

The link between these events is that both betoken the determination of citizens of a part of a larger whole to assert their autonomy, especially when it comes to "values". "Hong Kong is not China!", its people cry, and Québécois said (in French, of course) in last October's election "Québec is not Canada!" They are both examples of a "distinct society", a loaded phrase which carries with it -- if the larger society, China or Canada, denies the special status and rights of the smaller one -- the threat of separation, perhaps even peaceful or not-so-peaceful revolution.

Why the Canadian Army is "suspending" ops in Iraq

The big guys with the beards aren't ISIS jihadis or Iraqi "soldiers". They're Canucks! You can tell because they have better camoduds, with their maple leaf flag (cleverly died green) on the shoulders. They are pictured "advising and training" Kurdish Peshmerga "fighters" somewhere in northern Iraq.

"Gee whillikers, Walt! You mean there are Canadians fighting alongside the brave American forces in Iraq?" Well, not exactly, Bobby. There are Canadian Armed Forces personnel in Iraq, all right, but not all of them are, errr, fighting. There are intelligence officers (as in that great oxymoron "military intelligence"), a helicopter detachment and a medical contingent based in Erbil, the Kurdish capital. Separately, in Kuwait, there is a surveillance plane and an air-to-air refueller.

But yes, there are several dozen Canucks out there in camos, holding guns and other implements of destruction. By way of apology for not jumping at the chance to join the first Iraq fiasco, the government of former Canuck Prime Minister Steven Harpoon in 2014 sent roughly 200 Canadian commandos to "provide advice and assistance" on the ground in northern Iraq in an effort to help defeat ISIS militants. This summer, when it looked like the war was finally going to be won, the alleged government of Junior Trudeau extended the mission for two years.

And then, just as Walt predicted (lifetime pct .991) the war against ISIS took a sudden but not unpredictable turn in another direction. Having cleared the Islamists out of Mosul, the Kurds decided that it was time to consolidate their victory and assert their independence from the rest of Iraq. They held a referendum of sorts and voted to declare their own republic, a formalization of the autonomous state which already existed (in theory) in northern Iraq. The so-called national government of that wretched country, dominated by Shia Muslims, did not take kindly to the challenge to its authority, and sent their army, along with Shi'ite militias, to put the Kurds in their place... or out of their place, looking at it from the Kurds' point of view.

The Arab Iraqis seized the northern oil city of Kirkuk from the Kurds, with surprising ease, a few days ago, and are expected to move against Mosul and the Kurdish capital, Erbil, at any time. That puts the Canadian special forces in an awkward position, since they are based in Erbil and, if the Kurds take a stand against the Arab Iraqis, would be expected to lead their "trainees" into battle against the Iraqi forces whom the Canucks have also been "training".

What would you do, if you were the peace-loving Canadian Minister of Defence (who happens to be a Sikh) or his pussified boss, Justin Trudeau? Would you take the side of the "national" government of Iraq or the separatist Kurds? (See "Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who", WWW 16/10/17.)

Perhaps you have already guessed the answer. It is not the Canadian way to offend anybody... anybody! Canadians, or their government at least, see themselves as the great peacemakers who can bring sanity and stability to a world dominated by crazy warmongers like Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. (That's M Trudeau's view, not Walt's!) So, rather than take sides, the clever and peace-loving Canadians have decided to do... errr... nothing, "until greater clarity exists".

That's the word from Col. Jay Janzen, the director of military strategic communications for the Canadian Armed Forces, in a brief statement made while everyone was watching the World Series last night. "Given the fluidity of the current situation, Canada's Special Operations Task Force has temporarily suspended the provision of assistance to various elements of Iraqi security forces," he said. "Once greater clarity exists regarding the interrelationships of Iraqi security forces, and the key priorities and tasks ahead, the task force will resume activities."

Monitoring the situation without taking sides might seem like the sensible and moral thing to do, but, as with everything the Trudeau government does, there is an agenda behind the decision to put a temporary hold on their training of Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the wake of fighting between the two factions. The Canadian government is deathly afraid of two connected ideologies: separatism and nationalism.

Almost since the day of Canada's creation, just over 150 years ago, the federal government has been fighting to keep the people of Québec --
distinct ethnically, linguistically and religiously from the rest of Canada -- from seceding. In the most recent referendum on the question, in 1995, the people of La Belle Province voted by the narrowest of margins to not become un état -- an independent state. But the spark of separatist sentiment is hard to extinguish, and now it is being fanned into flame by the rise of separatist/nationalist movements in Scotland, Catalonia, and, yes, "Kurdistan".

Just yesterday, Junior Trudeau affirmed his support for a united Spain. Statements by Canadian politicians on the Kurdish question show that the only support for the ideal of Kurdish independence comes from the (federal) Bloc Québécois and the (provincial) Parti Québécois. If the independence of the new Catalan republic is recognized, if the Kurds succeed in driving the Arab Iraqis out of their region, Canada's Liberals will have yet another battle to fight to uphold their ideal of a post-national society. Stay tuned.