Sunday, June 04, 2006

"...and the Real Enemy was us"

Like everyone else, I am trying to come to terms with yesterday's events.

Debris Trail has posted an awesome piece about our collective willful blindness with matters concerning security in our own country. It is worth the read for the literary value alone. The message resonates long afterward.

I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers here, but I do think that we need to question our unremitting and sacrosanct commitment to multiculturalism, political correctness and fear of the appearance of racial profiling with regards to matters of national security.

Muslim leaders and parents of the accused are trying to diffuse the situation with comments like:

"I'm shocked. It's crazy. It's just crazy. It has no meaning whatsoever," said Mohammed Abdelhaleen, father of accused 30-year-old Shareef Abdelhaleen. (CTV)


Aly Hindy, an imam at a Toronto mosque, said he knew most of the accused and believed they were not involved in terrorism-related activities.

"But the problem is these days when a Muslim commits fraud, it becomes terrorism. When he commits stealing it becomes terrorism," he told reporters outside the courtroom. (CBC)


According to a CTV Newsnet report, one of the brothers of the accused said of his sibling, "He's not a terrorist. He's a Canadian citizen".

Now is the time to come to terms with the fact that this is not a mutually exclusive concept.

15 comments:

RGM said...

I've seen a couple people posting on this topic this morning, myself included. Like you, I don't have all the answers. The last quote you provided sums it all up quite nicely, and you are bang-on when you say that terrorism and Canadian citizenship are clearly not mutually exclusive. This illusion has been shattered by these arrests; if only the illusion didn't exist in the first place.
I am not sure that changing, or even really engaging in a lengthy discussion on our policies on multiculturalism is the answer. These 17 people do not represent Islam, they represent a politicized perversion of that religion and highlight that there is a struggle within Islam, a clash within a civilization if you will. They have had their minds warped by someone who subscribes to the ideology of Osama bin Laden, to carry out attacks that woul kill their fellow Canadians, possibly even fellow Muslims. In short, they represent themselves and their ideology, not their religion.
We must always be vigilant against terrorist activities in order to fulfill the beautiful words of the last line of our national anthem: O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

RGM, that is the conundrum: To somehow ferret out the terrorists without unfairly maligning a whole segment of our population. It is a daunting task. Not sure how we'll go about it, but we must.

Anonymous said...

Joanne there used to be a cartoon strip called Pogo who had a saying “I’ve seen the enemy and it’s us”

Liberals have brought Canada to a position of isolation in the world. We only trade with the US and our captains of industry do not have third world subsidiaries. They do not come back and warn us about what is happening in the world. Instead we get Neil MacDonald on the CBC this morning warning us that the enemy is Harper’s new best friend Bush. I’ve seen the enemy and it’s our CBC and the rest of the Liberal propaganda machine.

Canada needs to get beyond its irresponsible adolescence. We need to rediscover our values and re-introduce them into our schools.

Our kids should pledge allegiance to our flag every day and Canada should have our children state clearly that to be Canadian means that men and women are equal. That we believe in the separation of church/mosque and state. Diversity of thought is healthy but not all cultures are healthy; some cultures are tribal and no longer suitable in a modern world.

This isn’t complicated. The truth will set us free again. We know who and what the enemy is, let’s get on with the fight to restore our values and extinguish the multiculti, politically correct left.

nomdenet

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Nomdenet - Thanks. That's what I was thinking of, from way back when. I tried searching on google and came up with lots of variations. Well, I won't change the title of the post now. But thanks for the Pogo reference.

Boy, you're right about CBC. And I'm going to burn all my Neil Diamond CD's.

"The truth will set us free again." If you look at the top right hand column of my blog, you'll see that this is the cornerstone of my blog.

Blake Kennedy said...

"Further discrimination against this culture would only give radical clerics more ammunition with which to sway impressionable youths."

But, didn't you read that wonderful piece of haute litérature at Debris Trail, dirk? The one Joanne favourably quotes? It says there that we are at war with fundamental Islam. They should be kept from coming within our country and we should kill them, just as the Blackfoot killed the Prairie Cree. Just read:

"They may have been no better than the Prairie Cree whom they feared and hated, but they understood that Blackfoot and Cree did not mix. They knew in the starkest of terms where danger to their kind was. Sadly, that can not be said of the vast educated know-it-all Socialist Utopian masses that are the guardians of Liberal Democracy today. Like some androgynous beings, our most critical and base survival instincts have been browbeat out of us."

See? The truth is found in cultural and racial war, and genocide. To deny this is to let the terrorists win. Any sort of Liberal Socialist feelings like, not wanting to kill people, and, wanting the same freedoms extended to all without regard to race of religion, are merely bourgeois institutions that need to be purged. Base instincts, not cultured ones, are to be obeyed without hesitation and to say otherwise clearly means you have no balls.

Further attempts by you to try to find a rational way out of the problem, build bridges, and bring Muslims alongside us and not alienate them further is just a demonstration that you are in league with the terrorists. For shame. How many tonnes of ammonium nitrate are you keeping in your garage, dirk? How many people are you planning on killing on tomorrow?

;)

OMMAG said...

Right ...How many wake up calls do you need?

Blake Kennedy said...

"And hey, I saw you mention Racial Profiling. I'm actually all for it. Just as soon as we start rounding up groups of white middle-class white collar dudes everytime there's a serial killer loose."

Nice!

Paul said...

Blake:

"It says there that we are at war with fundamental Islam. They should be kept from coming within our country and we should kill them,",

How, pray tell, do you make the leap that the article condones killing them?????????????

Blake Kennedy said...

Uh, the part where the Blackfoot kill the Prairie Crees and are held up as a positive example?

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Debrs Trail, there are certain individuals on this blog that I don't respond to anymore, but I will respond to you.

First of all, your own words:

"...modern humankind has become so “civilized” and “sophisticated” that it has become a tenet that all peoples, cultures, and religions are compatible with Liberal Democracy, and that to question this creed is tantamount to Neanderthal logic..."

Secondly, what I took out of your exquisite prose was not a literal how-to-relaliate manual (although smaller minds may have taken it that way), but rather a form of wake-up call that our exreme and paranoid political correctness may be taking us to the brink of destruction; that we should start focussing a bit more on self-preservation.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

BTW, "Dust My Broom" and Christie Blatchford both have a lot to say about the elephant in the room.

Anonymous said...

Tues (tonight) on CBC Newsnet, something worth taking a look at about the very question of what is termed "home-grown terrorist(s)"

Regardless of one's feelings on the CBC or it's staff, I think this special show deserves watching.

It's seems a real pity that the Keepers of the Eastern Gate on Turtle Island didn't have tougher immigration laws and more stringent security at the purported time of "first contact" with Europeans.

The Euros could still be "back home" doing each other in, and the aboriginals could still be here doing their thing.

The only possible difference could well have been that the First Nations Peoples, more than likely would not have savaged the environment anywhere close to as bad as the non-aboriginals have.

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Interesting perspective, Tango.

Do you have a time for that program? It sounds very interesting. I've heard of CTV newsnet, but not CBC newsnet. I'm a little confused there. thanks.

Paul said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Paul said...

Thanks Joanne: I thought that if I stated the obvious I'd be preaching... which is what I already fo too much of :)