I confess to a bias. I am getting a bit paranoid. Call me crazy.
Despite most ‘thinking’ people pointing out that the gunman Michael Zihaf-Bibeau (MZB) was just a ‘crazy-with-a-gun’ and having that confirmed by his mother and most people who he came in contact with, the government persists in trying to convince the public that he had some kind of Islamic ‘terrorist’ connections. He did not. Schizophrenics off their meds sometimes think the devil is talking to them and giving them instructions. We don’t call that person a worshipper of Satan. We don’t think of them as an ‘enemy’ of the church. They aren’t against Christians or Jews or Hindus or Buddhists. They are against everything. They are nuts. We call them crazy. So why is the government making this incident out to be terror related? Why is the government calling for laws to make arresting people easier? Why is every statement phrased as if Islamic fundamentalist-based terror is on the verge of breaking out in this country? Why is our government hate mongering? Because that is what it is. Jim Keegstra said the same sort of nasty things about Jews in the 1980’s and he was convicted of hate crimes (“wilfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group”). And Keegstra had no credibility, a small audience and little to no influence. The government is much bigger than Keegstra and they keep speaking anti-Islamic rhetoric. The government is making it very hard to be a ‘Muslim in Canada’ regardless of their overall law-abiding behaviours and rejection of self-radicalized crazies who want to align with a mosque. The government may not be as overtly inciting against an identifiable group as Keegstra was but aren’t there almost 1,000,000 law-abiding, contributing Muslim-Canadians who, by inference, are at least more suspect than you or me? Isn’t that just a state sanctioned hate crime? Don’t get me wrong. There is some kind of hate thing going on amongst some Muslims somewhere. Al Queda and ISIL aren’t nice guys. But we have some First Nations who are alienated from Canada. Some Quebecers. Other ethnicities. Many of our poor. And some people alienated from society will identify with such an ‘enemy’ because that is what alienation, isolation and marginalization begets. So, why focus on the Muslim-wannabes? Because we alienated some individuals does NOT mean general society needs more controls, more laws, more restrictions. Don’t forget: MZB had been arrested previously. And tried and convicted. We let him go. MZB likely flew to Ottawa. He’s been through airports. They didn’t catch him. The only ones who seem to have had an inkling about MZB was the mosque who correctly labelled him a crazy and kicked him out. They didn’t have all the police and CSIS and rules and controls. They simply used common sense. What am I saying? I am saying there are enough rules. There are enough restrictions. There are enough police. For the general public, anyway. But there isn’t enough common sense. The nuts, the crazies and the so-called self-radicalized will not be caught by more restrictions on the public. They might be caught by mental health programs. They might be caught by churches. They might be caught by more social services. They will not be caught by cops. Maybe we should just fuggedabout more SWAT teams and simply contract the job out to Imams in mosques? “Hey, when some nut comes in spouting hate and wanting to be a Muslim, give us a call, would ya?”Our Off the Grid Home
The life, times and opinions of a reformed urbanite now gone feral.
Our Off the Grid Home 
There is something about the under dog. In the Spanish Civil War Canadians enlisted in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion as volunteers from the Canadian left (including communists) fighting for the Repubicans in the civil war against the fascists. The Foreign Enlistment Act of 1937 made it illegal for Canadians to go to Spain and fight Franco and the Nazi Germans and the Italian fascists. The Nazi Condor Legon flew its planes over Guernica and elsewhere amid great devastation and the sound of the JU 87 Stuka sirens. Are the F-18’s equipped with sirens? In 2014 are the tea leaves being misinterpreted again? Isn’t fascism on the rise in the Middle East? What are Canadian war aims?
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Canadian war aims should be non-existent. We have subs that sink, hardly any helicopters that don’t fall out of the sky or blow up and the second/third generation jets we buy from the US don’t have engines. Got battleships? I don’t think so. Hell, we wait for commercial airlines to get Ebola assistance to Africa. We don’t even have deep sea tugs as proved by the US pulling the Russian freighter in to Rupert and our own supply ship home from Hawaii. Harper may think he is a tough guy but he ain’t. He’s a doofus. You can’t bring a hockey stick to even a conventional war nowadays. Canada has brave Canadians who want to be good guys. That’s it. Ask the troops that were in Afghanistan….they will NOT rave about our equipment, that’s for sure.
But we are NOT talking war-footing here. We are talking about war-on-your-own-people here. This fear and hate mongering is creeping up to a martial law situation here, at home. The rhetoric is scary. It does remind me of Fascism but only because I have read about it not because there is enough evidence.
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I look at Harper (and any politician for that matter) as craven opportunists. If they could get a sympathetic headline and ahead in the polls, they’d push their dear old granny under a steetcar.
This new legislation ( or the next Omnibus Bill) is vote pandering and unnecessary.
We have adequate laws now to deal with any situation that arises. The problem isnt the Laws already on the books. Its the lack of testes in the Crown Prosecutors office, the police, the CSIS spooks, to do anything with the info they have.
I shudder at the thought of the police having even more powers of arrest for whatever new law the parliament dreams up.
Because the police are pure as the driven snow and would never abuse the powers………would they?
Tell that to the hundreds of people arrested enmass during the 1970 FLQ crisis in Quebec and the War Measures Act. My friend was 16 at the time and was out with his friends drinking in a park in a small quebec town hundreds of miles from Montreal. A cop that hated them , arrested them all under the W.M.A. 16 year old kids out drinking and they’re thrown in jail for a bs charge. A week before their parents could get them out. Those guys HATE the govt to this day for that.
Killing mosquitos with bazookas causes a lot of collateral damage.
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I know. This is all so destructive. And exploiting that poor soldier and his family for political appearances is embarrassing. The guy shouldn’t have been there in a public way at all. If he was going to attend, he should have just consoled the family and left.
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Agreed. While I understand why Harper was AT the funeral (for so many different reasons). He should have taken the high road and just showed up as a private citizen sitting in the pew with his family. Nothing wrong with that. But to use it to gain political points or to push an agenda.
Crass, very crass.
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Fascism: an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. Harper thinks he knows the hearts of Canadians.
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I’m sure you recall 1983 and the Squamish Five, Direct Action, Litton Industries, BC Hydro sub-stations, Red Hot Video, and opposition to pollution which led to direct attacks but not to the Canadian government over reacting to the deeds of these five misguided idealists. These five went to jail, Canadians laws were sufficient for the crisis.
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Everything about this – from a government’s role point of view – is nauseating. So, I am biased. I am cynical. I am poisoned. I see no good being done here. None.
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You are right! Why are we experiencing uproar in our federal politics? Why? Canada is hypothetically a pluralistic tolerant nation of diversity. It seems that what we currently are experiencing is a battle of mythologies. I’ve never felt fear as a Canadian but I’m increasingly hearing that I ought to be fearful. Where is the message of hope from our governments? All this doom and gloom! Why?
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Part of it is the ‘right wing agenda’ created by the Bush administration and pushed by Carl Rove. Harper follows. By all accounts Rove was a brilliant strategist politically speaking. Fear sells security. And security is what governments sell. So, it makes sense in an ugly political kind of way. Scare ’em with the bogey-man and then ‘hug ’em and tell them you’ll take care of ’em’. But, truthfully, I don’t get it either. I don’t think it is p-l-a-n so much as a mindset or attitude. These people like having enemies whether real or made up. Like the KKK or the Nazis. Gives ’em something to do, I guess…..GWB loved drawing lines in the sand….”Bring it…” he said. It’s an attitude.
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fear also sells newspapers, tv, radio etc. The Media loves stories like this.
The worst thing anyone can do is commit a crime in the dog days of summer when Parliament is in recess, the stock market is snoozing, most people are on holidays…….”Man Bites Dog” is the main headline on the front page.
Fear and sex sell.
Jian Ghomeshi just hasnt figured that out yet…….
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Editorialist have Harper over playing his hand if he were to go all heavy-handed with new security laws.
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Like I said, “thinking people….”
I don’t trust the media to get it right, of course, but, if you are thinking at all, this one should be easy. Harper gets heavy handed and this might be his undoing politically. Canadians are pretty wedded to the ‘sense of freedom’ they have (albeit thinly-veiled slavery). It would be easy to campaign against overt State control, ie, CCTV, roadblocks, the Harper version of the Homeland Security and the Patriot Act.
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