VIDEO: Please help find a cure for little Justin's problem

I know, I know... WWW has had a lot of stuff about Canadian politics lately. Like there's nothing going on in American politics? Like anybody cares about Canada? Really though, things are heating up in the Great No-longer-white North. Canucks are fed up, not just with winter but with their Liberal leaders in both Ottawa (the country's capital) and Toronto (the city that thinks it's the country's capital... or maybe the country itself, since TROC doesn't matter.)

In Ontario, a provincial election is due in June. In anticipation thereof, the province's oxymoronic Progressive Conservatives have fallen into their traditional trap of forming a circular firing squad. There is now a fifth candidate in their unexpected leadership contest (see previous posts on Tanya Granic Allen), none other than Patrick Brown, who just got turfed out of the leadership, a victim of #MeToo, but has now been okayed to throw his batter chapeau back in the ring.

Meanwhile, alleged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been touring India, with his ultra-photogenic family in tow, all decked out in native costumes which the Indian meeja say are waaay over the top -- too Indian even for Indians. See "Trudeau family criticized for overdoing it on their traditional Indian outfits" (Global News, 21/2/18) and try not to gag at the pix of a white man gone native.

Worse for Hairboy are the stories, which contain more than a grain of truth, that he is sympathetic to Sikh separatists who are fighting to turn the Punjab into an independent homeland, which they call "Kalistan". Thanks to Trudeaus I and II, there are hundreds of thousands of Sikhs in Canada, huddled together in the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver, from which they send lakhs of rupees back to India to fund the separatist cause.

They also turn out reliably to vote Liberal. There are four of them in Junior's cabinet, all of whom accompanied him on his visit to their Golden Temple at Amritsar. Another one, Jaspal Singh Atwal, has joined the group and was invited to a reception to be held by the Canadian High Commissioner to India, my good Mister Patel. One of Walt's favourite pundits, Terry Milewski, revealed yesterday that Mr Atwal was convicted of the attempted murder of Malkiat Singh Sidhu, another Sikh who was also an Indian cabinet minister, on Vancouver Island in 1986. How embarrassing! Mr Atwal has now been officially uninvited.

It becomes more evident every day that Justin Trudeau has problems. Jill Colton, a former lamestream media personality with a degree in communications and a diploma in broadcast journalism, now doing commentary on You Tube, has got to the root of Junior's personality disorder, and is starting a campaign to get some professional help for him. Here's her pitch.



Walt has only one thing to add... for now.

Has the West forgotten the lesson of Pearl Harbor?

Walt has not forgotten about the "situation" in Ukraine. There has been an election, and Poroshenko, the Chocolate King, has become the Chocolate President. The people of the Donbas and other eastern regions of the Ukraine didn't get to vote, since Russian-speaking armed gangs disrupted the polling. Russia denies arming and supporting the separatist thugs, and claims to have pulled its troops back from positions near the border. But it retains control of the Crimea.

The question has already been asked, but let's put it out there again. Where will Russia stop? If the rest of the world accepts the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea, will that be enough to satisfy Putin? Or is this a repeat of the German annexation of the Sudetenland in the run-up to World War II?

There are those -- notably in the United States Department of State -- who believe that it's improbable that Russia would try to occupy any more Ukrainian territory, and in so doing risk war with the West. While admitting that war is possible, they think it highly unlikely. Putin wouldn't be that stupid, they say. He must know that Russia would lose any war with the West, they say. And Russia doesn't want war any more than we do...they say.

Similar things were said about Japan in 1941, right up till December 7th and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. War with Japan was not impossible, but improbable...they said. For that reason, it was OK for the United States to let down its guard, and not pay too much attention to the threats, implicit and explicit, coming from the Land of the Rising Sun.

The resultant complacency and lack of preparedness was the chief cause of the disaster of December 7th, "the Day of Infamy". So wrote Professor Gordon W. Prange in several lengthy historical manuscripts published posthumously by his co-workers Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon as Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (McGraw-Hill, 1986), which Walt just finished reading.

Prof. Prange was a Professor of History at the University of Maryland from 1937 to 1980, with a break of nine years (1942–1951) of military service overseas, including a stint in Japan during the US military occupation, when he was the Chief Historian in General Douglas MacArthur's staff. That period coincided roughly with the several investigations into the Pearl Harbor debacle, including that of the Joint Congressional Committee, 15 Nov. 1945 to 15 July 1946. The testimony at and reports of those inquiries are quoted extensively in his books.

Edward F. Morgan was an assistant counsel to that committee, and drafted its final report. He included a list -- quoted in its entirety -- of no fewer than 25 "supervisory, administrative and organizational deficiencies" apparent in the US Army and Navy. Here, with Dr. Prange's comments on relations between the West and Russia, is No. 18.

18. Failure can be avoided in the long run only by preparation for any eventuality.

[Morgan wrote]: The record tends to indicate that appraisal of likely enemy movements was divided into probabilities and possibilities. Everyone has admitted that an attack by Japan on Pear Harbor was regarded as at least a possibility. It was felt, however, that a Japanese movement toward the south was a probability. The over-all result was to look for the probable move and to take little or no effective precautions to guard against the contingency of the possible action.

"Here was the old problem of enemy intentions versus capabilities. U.S. military leaders in 1941 were far too concerned with what Japan might do, not with what it was able to do. Yet history has shown that if an enemy can launch a certain kind of attach, in all probability he will do exactly that. His intentions cannot hurt his opponent; his capabilities can

"Thus, while the United States would infinitely prefer peace with the Soviet Union, if the Russians...are able to overrun Western Europe in a conventional war, the United States and its NATO allies must assume that they will do so under the right set of circumstances. Furthermore, if the Soviets have the capability of knocking out the United States in one huge preemptive nuclear strike, American leaders must assume that that is what they will do if conditions are propitious. Any other attitude on the part of the United States would be irresponsible.

"The ultimate lesson which Pearl Harbor should teach American political and military leaders, as well as every person in the United States, is this: Always be prepared for the worst contingency."

Innocent questions from Walt to Hussein Obama, John Kerry et al. -- not forgetting David Cameron, Steve Harper, Angela Merkel and whoever's running France these days: Are we prepared? Or are we just assuming the improbability of Putin doing something foolish, like moving his armies westward? Just asking...

Update on Canada's "native question"

For those following Chief Theresa Spence's hunger strike and the Idle No More "movement" -- and it seems not many of you are, but what the hell -- here's the state of play as of Sunday.

Many chiefs attended Friday's big powwow with "Call me Steve" Harpoon, but not as many as would have been desirable. Leaders from Manitoba, Québec and Ontario boycotted the affair, for reasons which weren't made clear. Ordinary Indians were not seen or heard. Perhaps the problem is too many chiefs and not enough Indians?

The Dear Leader was obviously under great pressure to give the Assembly of First Nations and its Grand Chief, Shawn Atleo, something to take back to the people. So Harper adopted the classic Canuck solution and promised, errr, further meetings "at the highest levels". Don't be surprised if a Royal Commission comes next.

Amongst those who didn't pass the peace pipe around the campfire [No more clichés, please! Ed.] Was Theresa Spence, the managerially inept chief from Attawapiskat who has become the idol of the Idle No More protesters. [You didn't say no puns! Walt] Ms Spence didn't go because she had taken the position that the Governor-General should have been at the meeting to, so if he didn't go, she wasn't going.

That didn't stop her, though, from going to Rideau Hall for the G-G's "ceremonial meeting" with the chiefs afterwards. That Her Britannic Majesty's representative met with the Indian chiefs face to face betokened (according to them) recognition that that First Nations were indeed "nations", thus the chiefs could negotiate directly with the Queen (or her stand-in) if they wished.

The logical extension would seem to be that what the Indians really want -- and that's the big question -- is something like "sovereignty association" with the rest of Canada (TROC), which is what Québec separatists have been pushing for since roughly 1867.

The idea of "separate but equal" territories -- that phrase was actually used by the Indians -- was tried in the 20th century in, errr, South Africa. It was called "apartheid". Of course when the white Africans told the black Africans that "separate development" was the way forward, the rest of the world (TROW) accused the whities of racism, genocide, yada yada yada.

Walt is waiting to see what Canada's usual gang of multicultists and "progressive thinkers" make of the idea. Come to think of it, "separate but equal" was tried in parts of the USA too. There it was called "segregation", and denounced as racist, genocidal, etc. As for apartheid, that ended in 1994 and black South Africans now run the whole country. Look how well that turned out.

Meanwhile, Chief Spence is continuing her hunger strike, for reasons which (again) have not been made clear. Some other chiefs has rather unkindly suggested that she should return to Attawapiskat and answer some questions about the missing millions referred to here last week. Members of Chief Spence's band are... hmm... restless.

Hans off Xinjiang!

The death toll in this month’s violence in the Chinese province of Xinjiang is climbing closer to 200. This past weekend Chinese "security forces" (believed to be regular army troops disguisesd as policemen) shot and killed two more Uyghurs, armed with clubs and knives.

The rioting began when Uyghurs protested clashes in June between police and Uyghur migrant workers in the southern province of Guangdong. There too protesters armed with tools and primitive weapons were killed by heavily armed police.

In the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi, crowds of Uyghurs rampaged through the city, attacking ethnic Han Chinese. The Communist government says the majority of those killed were Han Chinese. Uyghurs say they believe many more from their and the Hui ethnic groups died in the government crackdown.

There are about 9 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. They are the majority in that province, but thanks to government-sponsored colonization by Han Chinese, are now a minority in Urumqi. The Uyghurs have complained for decades about the influx of Han Chinese and Communist restrictions on their Muslim religion. They accuse the Han of discrimination and the Communist Party of trying to erase their language and culture.

The World Uyghur Congress claims (and Walt agrees) that the Han Chinese persecution of the Uyghur and other minorities is nothing less than state-sponsored genocide!

This hardly comes as a surprise. A government-encouraged myth of racial superiority has long been a hallmark of totalitarian ideologies -- Communism and Naziism for instance -- and nations bent on dominating the world -- Russia, Germany, Japan, but also 19th-century Britain and 20th-century America. "Hey, these people are inferior and we’re doing them a favour by imposing on them the benefits of our civilization!"

I lived and worked in China for three years. It appears to me that Han Chinese believe that they really are superior to all other races, including us "long-noses". They think the Uyghurs (and Tibetans and other "nationalities") should be grateful for the rapid economic development which has brought schools, airports, and oil wells to the sprawling and hitherto undeveloped region.
Of course "development" also brought millions of Han Chinese who now occupy the best land and dominate business and government, while the original peoples of Xinjiang (formerly known as East Turkestan) are pushed into the barren hinterlands.

The rioting in Xinjiang echoed violence in Tibet before last year’s Olympics, but international reaction has been distressingly different.

Last year, Western countries put pressure on Beijing to hold a dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy even threatening to boycott the Beijing Olympics if China refused. Beijing's protestations that Tibet was an internal Chinese affair were disregarded.

This time, however, the Western response is tepid. The USA has adopted a mild tone, with President Obama merely calling on "all parties" in Xinjiang "to exercise restraint." In so doing he suggests that the Uyghurs with their bricks and bottles are as much to blame for the deaths as the Chinese with their machineguns and tanks.

The European Union has gone even further, taking the position that violence in Xinjiang "is a Chinese issue, not a European issue." Serge Abou, the EU's ambassador to China, said Europe also had its problems with minorities and "we would not like other governments to tell us what is to be done."

Yes, the EU should know something about "problems with minorities". Didn’t one of its chief member states come up with a "final solution" to the problem of the inferior races?

The reason for the reluctance of the western powers to "interfere" in this "internal Chinese matter" is, of course, money. It’s not the not-so-almighty dollar now, but the nearly-almighty yuan! China is now seen as an indispensable partner of the USA and Europe in sorting out their self-made financial crisis. "Leave the Chinese alone, or they won’t bail us out!"

Then there’s the religious question. If the Uyghurs were Christians or (especially) Jews, the world would be up in arms, figuratively speaking at least. But they’re not. The Uyghurs are -- horrors! -- Muslims!

Such condemnation of Chinese oppression as has been expressed has come chiefly from Muslim countries. The Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference, which represents 57 Muslim governments, declared: "The Islamic world is expecting from China, a major and responsible power in the world arena with historical friendly relations with the Muslim world, to deal with the problem of Muslim minority in China in broader perspective that tackles the root causes of the problem."

The country that has taken the strongest position is Turkey, whose people share linguistic, religious and cultural links with the Uyghurs. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan actually went so far as to characterize what has happened as "a kind of genocide" and said his country would bring the matter up in the United Nations Security Council.

Yeah, a fat lot of good that will do, given that one of the permanent Security Council members -- China -- has a veto over any action that the Council might take, right down to a toothless resolution expressing its dismay.

One problem for the Uyghurs is that the world at large knows little about them. The WUC’s Rebiya Kadeer, the U.S.-based Uyghur activist accused by Chinese officials of instigating the violence, is seeking American support for the Uyghur cause. Leading a protest march to the Chinese embassy in Washington, she called on the USA to open a consulate in Urumqi. This, she said, "would be a clear signal that the United States is not indifferent to the oppression of my people." Don’t hold your breath, Rebiya!

The Uyghurs lack a charismatic figure such as the Dalai Lama to lead them. But China, perhaps unwittingly, may provide the solution. The Communists liken Ms. Kadeer to the Dalai Lama, calling them both "separatists." The People's Daily actually called Ms. Kadeer the "Uyghur Dalai Lama" and warned the Nobel committee not to award her the Peace Prize. Beijing may not realize it, but likening Rebiya Kadeer to the Dalai Lama may actually win her supporters in the West.

Walt’s Canadian readers will agree that "separatist" is a pretty loaded word. But Beijing has a different way of dealing with "separatists" than Ottawa does. Human rights advocates can organize protests and fill the newspapers and airwaves with criticism, but the Communist Chinese will not stop their campaign of genocide until they have achieved total domination of Xinjiang, Tibet, _________ and ________. Fill in the blanks for yourself.

Walt recommends three books by Frank Ching, a leading authority on Chinese history and politics: China: The Truth About Its Human Rights Record; Hong Kong and China: One Country, Two Systems?; Hong Kong and China: For Better or for Worse