LP_468x60
on-the-record-468x60-white

Tag: terrorism

Politics is a sad as well as infuriating business. Consider for instance that the authorities have not just been caught allowing a flagrant, on-line-video-atrocity terrorist to come to Canada and become a citizen, they then burbled that we can’t expect them to keep such people out. This version of the Canadian Jedi mind trick seems to deflect the looming menace of actual accountability. But it actually underlines that they are smugly useless… and don’t even know it.

I was reflecting on this issue with respect to another, more minor matter, where the Trudeau administration twiddled its thumbs until a national rail strike started costing us billions a day then blurted out that they were just kidding about letting collective bargaining run its course. And I won’t here get into the wisdom, in principle, of privileging unions so they can hold the rest of us hostage. Or even the hypocrisy of claiming to then once the damage is done flip-flopping, leaving everyone bitter and distrustful.

My point here is simply that in explaining the decision, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon, whose qualifications for that post are anyone’s guess after a career in PR and political backrooms, proceeded to exude what sounds like deliberately evasive prose until the horrifying realization dawns on you that he’s talked this way so long it’s taken possession of his mind.

As Blacklock’s Reporter recounts, he churned out doublespeak about how the binding arbitration they’d shunned was secretly “in the best interests of millions of unionized workers” because “we found ourselves in exceptional circumstances,” and “made what I believe was the right decision in the best interest of millions of unionized workers in this country and small business owners and industries that drive this country” and “We had to make a decision, and of course a difficult decision.”

You get the idea? It’s soothing, even soporific, partly because it’s so tritely predictable, “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea” as someone once said of Warren Harding’s deliberate bloviation. But it commits him to nothing except his own excellence.

By the way, his explanation for getting the Labour post was “I was the House leader and they said, ‘Oh, you know what, not much going on in the summer. Then the Prime Minister called and said, “Well, I’d like you to be the Minister of Labour.” And I said, ‘Oh, well, that sounds like a fun job.’” Nothing like seriousness in the face of onerous duties. But I digress.

The point is, once you become sufficiently good at deflecting blame with vacuous verbiage, the overwhelming and disastrous Kruger-Dunning impression you create is of being so irresponsible and inept that you don’t even realize you’re advertising your unfitness.

So now to the infamous case of Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, granted citizenship dismembering an infidel on video for ISIS back in 2015, then being allowed to bring his son in to allegedly help allegedly plot an alleged terror scheme. Surely if ever there was a moment to say “We totally messed up, it’s on us, we can do better and should” it’s now?

Hoo hah. Instead, the National Post reports, our Public Safety Minister, Dominic LeBlanc, or technically “Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs” and equally qualified by past experience for all three by um having been Justin Trudeau’s babysitter, said nobody in authority could have known or done anything. For instance on security screenings that produced a “favourable” recommendation for both Eldidis: “Those decisions were made with the information that (CSIS and CBSA) had available to them at that time.”

As opposed to what? A Ouija board? It’s wind masquerading as substance. And it blows past the key question: why didn’t they have better information? Continuing the flow of panic-inducing reassurances, he said there was “no way” for CSIS or the Canadian Border Services Agency to access the infamous video. But other people did, including journalists.

So the “no way” doesn’t mean it couldn’t be found, just that they weren’t competent to find it. Which struck him not as shocking, even preposterous, but as routine. So to assure us they’re totally on the job, he insists that our fate is in the hands of nincompoops.

It gets worse when they assure that while nothing could have been done, everything is about to be. As in “I think it is reasonable for the government and for Canadians to ask how could this sequence of events… take place and what can we learn from that sequence of events to ensure the very best measures are in place.” Yeah. Like hire someone else, less jelly-like in word and deed.

It’s not just him. After opposition MPs berated the bureaucrats, one telling them “You didn’t do your job”, Liberal attack poodle Mark Gerretsen jumped in to praise the security and border officials for their “incredible work”. Which it was. Just not in a good way. More like Chief Inspector Dreyfuss’s verdict on Inspector Clouseau as “an extraordinary man”.

Speaking of Clouseau, the Post reports that Canadian Border Services Agency “executive vice-president Ted Gallivan said the border agency only found out about the video after it was reported by Global News in the days following the arrests.” Seriously. They found out from the press. But no worries: “It’s part of the review we’re asking ourselves, you know, questions about the procedures.” Now there’s a plan.

Or not. You can also watch online (h/t Sheila Gunn Reid) as a Tory MP tries to get a straight answer from a public servant about when Eldidi first got red-flagged, since he was refused a visitor visa in 2017 before being granted refugee status in 2019 etc. Instead he was told, as to a small child, that they routinely screen people and if something turns up like missing information it could be a concern.

The person seemed unaware that the big issue wasn’t what they’d do if something did turn up, say an Islamist dismemberment video. It’s why they didn’t find it. And when asked directly if the 2017 refusal was on security grounds he pleaded ignorance… meaning he didn’t bother checking before appearing before the committee to help them not assign blame. And what’s really revealing isn’t the evasiveness, it’s the blithe certainty that evasiveness in such a situations is just the ticket.

They literally don’t think it’s a problem if it happens, only if they somehow get tagged with it. Thus another CBSA high-flier, their “vice-president of intelligence and enforcement”, explained that the son was allowed to remain in Canada as a refugee, rather than being sent back to the U.S. under the Safe Third Country Agreement, because he had a family member already in Canada, prompting a Bloc Québécois MP’s incredulous “Even if the family member is a terrorist?” Well you see procedures were followed, answers were given, accountability was foiled.

To ice the cake, or deep-six it, another of these top public servants, with their high salaries, iron job security, and juicy pensions, declared complacently that CSIS only realized the security threat this June (when the French security service actually did its job then tipped them off). But when Tory MP Frank Caputo asked whether there wasn’t “some kind of failure that we didn’t know about his activities beforehand”, she chirped “I would respectfully disagree with the premise that there was a failure in this case.”

Yeah. You would. And listen to why: “As referenced earlier by our minister, there are several lines of defence. Security screening programs are one, and they do begin before people arrive in Canada.” Then they do checks once they’re here. And, she insisted, “the third line of defence, which are national security investigations, in this case was very successful. And I can again assure the committee that as soon as CSIS had that information, we acted, we assessed, and mitigated the threat in conjunction with our security partners.” As for getting it, meh.

When Caputo tried to get her to commit that it was reasonable to be concerned that they cleared all the screenings and only got caught this year, and there might be others, she smiled. “I again can assure the committee that the service takes its security screening responsibilities very seriously, and we take the time and due effort with every file that is referred to the service to make assessments which we provide to our partners, which go to decisions that can be taken based on the information that is available at the time.”

Note the barrage of passive-voice constructions. And the blithe unawareness that they had failed, or that their complacency in the face of it was far more worrying than the initial failure.

Apparently talking and thinking this way is how you get ahead in Ottawa. But if it’s what happens when you take your responsibilities seriously, and this famous time and due effort, you’re just not up to the job in which you remain firmly ensconced. Which isn’t reassuring, it’s terrifying.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

john-robson

More from John Robson

Click here for more

Many people are asking in bewilderment where the revolting outburst of pro-Hamas propaganda and agitation from the halls of academe to the streets of Canada’s major cities and those of every Western nation came from. So we have to talk about the intellectual malaise gripping our elites. But also, finally, about immigration.

Raising the latter issue gets you pilloried as a racist, I know. But we can’t let ourselves be bullied right out of public debate. Especially not now, because a lot of the problem is large numbers of people who have come from countries where they sprinkle “Death to Jews” on their morning cereal. And you know it.

Those protestors calling for the destruction of Israel are not neo-Nazi farmers from Saskatchewan honking truck horns in defence of traditional Canadian values like free speech. Some are privileged left-wing zealots, including the lost souls holding up signs like “Queer Jew for Palestine” of whom I can only quote Philip K. Dick’s haunting maxim that “Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once Thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble…” But the vast majority chanting in public about driving the Jews into the sea are immigrants and the children of immigrants. It’s hidden in plain sight.

As I’ve written elsewhere, part of the extraordinary upwelling of support for terrorism and of hatred toward Jews clearly comes from the commanding heights. It comes from universities, public sector unions, politicians and others in the state sector where left-wing ideologies of DEI, critical race theory and deconstructionism rampage unchecked. But a lot of it comes straight in through our open doors, without any effort to conceal itself, because of our bizarre immigration policy and its even more bizarre intellectual underpinnings.

Part of it is a kind of soft multiculturalism that insists that all cultural habits are at bottom the same, so it doesn’t matter what exotic food you eat, magic hat you wear or colourful dance you do. This vision seems to me to make culture itself impossible, by declaring all symbols and habits charming but meaningless, thus giving us a Prime Minister who professes Roman Catholicism while disregarding its teachings on sexuality without any perceptible thought. But it is at least somewhat benign. Kiss, rub noses, whatever. We are the world. Peace, man.

Try selling a “Canadian values” test to Justin Trudeau, who as I’ve also written elsewhere had no idea that a great many Canadian Muslims held “conservative” views on sexuality. When he found out, his characteristically clueless and mean-spirited response was that they were being brainwashed by “misinformation and disinformation… particularly fuelled by the American right-wing”. And the same Justin Trudeau, who I am confident does not have a copy of Magna Carta on his wall, told an American publication Canada was the “first postnational state” and added “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”

Be careful what you wish for. Because if there still were a mainstream, Hamas supporters would be outside it. Instead they’re marching boldly in our streets in large numbers. And a major reason is a much harder multiculturalism that says all cultural habits are good except those of the West. Thus giving us a Prime Minister who literally claims Canada is committing genocide now, with him in charge, without any perceptible thought of stepping down, let alone surrendering himself for trial. And academia is riddled with people who call Canada a racist, patriarchal “settler” state that should be abolished on the spot, so of course they want to bring in people from other places with other habits, including religious ones, because they are better than ours.

Remember right after 9/11 Sunera Thobani said women would never be free until Western influence was eradicated worldwide. In one sense it is inane, since no sane person thinks women are treated better in non-Western societies. Even if Margaret Atwood saw chadors in Afghanistan and hallucinated George Bush’s America forcing women into sack-wearing sexual slavery, historically the United States is the birthplace and home of feminism, from the Seneca Falls Convention onward. But in another sense such claims are malevolent, because the whole point is to make you grovel before ideas you know are false.

Here one risks getting into the fever swamps of “replacement theory”. But there’s no conspiracy. It’s just that radical leftism really is radical, and if you ignore it or pretend it’s cute and cuddly, you are astounded when people carry pictures of Chairman Mao, burn churches or shout “Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea” and wave images of gliders. Or when people like Laith Marouf aren’t ostracized by our politicians, they’re subsidized by them.

At some point neither coincidence nor error can explain it. But now that you’ve been astounded, and horrified, do we change course?

For decades the political establishment here and abroad, from left to pseudo-right, has been as united in their support for massive immigration as on any topic you can think of. Even abortion. And as vicious in their rhetorical pillorying of dissent as racist as they are spurious in their justifications, like the one about needing mass immigration to build houses for all the immigrants we let in to build houses for immigrants.

It’s time to push back, because this raw, unashamed anti-Semitism didn’t come from outer space. But it came from somewhere. And we all know where. Those crowds chanting “Gas the Jews” at the Sydney Opera house (no, really) were not immigrants from Norway, or grandchildren of immigrants from Britain. They or their parents came from places where fundamentalist Islam is dominant. And you know it and I know it.

What’s more, they know we know. Now they’re watching to see whether we care enough to do anything.

If I need to say I’m not talking about race, I’ll say it, and the usual suspects will deny it. But I’m not. I’m talking about culture, and culture isn’t just about the spices, or primarily about them. It’s about habits of thought and behaviour. It’s about world view. And yes, it’s about religion.

Islam is not a race. And of course many Muslims are not in the “itbakh al-yahud” crowd, and some have even dared speak up. But far too many are. In much of the Middle East broadly defined the blood libel is not even controversial. And if you bring in many thousands of people a year who believe it, they will flaunt it and despise you.

What becomes of our politics if we get a solid, make-or-break-governments bloc of left-wing big-city MPs who not only don’t denounce Hamas, they support it? Because we can, by continuing to bring in vast numbers every year from places where Hamas is popular and Judaism is illegal, along with homosexuality, and having them congregate in major urban areas. But why would we want to?

Thanatos, referred to above, is the death wish. And one could claim that the entire progressive ideology of the modern West is a death wish. But if so, it is not one most of us share. Is it really despicable to ask that potential immigrants say they do not believe Jews routinely commit ritual murders of non-Jewish children? If so, despise me and tell the world what you are.

That we would throw open our doors and our arms to people from anywhere in the world fleeing poverty or oppression and wanting to live the Western way is admirable. That our leaders would throw open our doors and their arms to people who share their hatred of the Western way is appalling. And that we would let them is stupid.

People are calling the Hamas incursion, and the widespread cheering for beheading Jewish babies, raping Jewish women and other anti-Semitic atrocities an inflection point. And I think it is. But it could bend either way.

If we want to keep Canada a land of decency and freedom, a refuge from persecution for those of all races and origins, if we do not wish to become judenrein in short order, we cannot allow ourselves to be bullied into silence on immigration policy any longer.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.

john-robson

More from John Robson

Click here for more Canada