Great line of the day

At The Galloping Beaver, Dave writes about how Canadians need to rise above fear:

. . . So the terrorist threat, against which we felt our identity alone as Canadians would protect us, is as real as it always was. Nothing has really changed, except that this time the possible act of violence was thwarted. No act of terrorism occured. And if a new part of the Canadian identity is to live in fear that one might happen, well, we all might as well turn in our multi-coloured money, our touques and our passion for winter sports for a multi-coloured threat level system, kevlar helmets and unwarranted paranoia.

Emphasis mine.

Those were the days

Does anyone remember the FLQ (Front de libération du Québec)?
I do.
With all the stories recently about the Mississauga terrorist wanna-be's, I thought I would look up the FLQ again. Maybe its because I was in my teens when they were most active, but I remember the FLQ as pretty scary.
Talk about your "home-grown terrorists", for my generation, this means the FLQ. They were the real thing.


1963 Westmount bomb


Quebec student rally in support of the FLQ


Police cordon at the surrender of Liberation cell, December 1970.


Wanted poster.


FLQ Manifesto

[Formed in 1963,] the group's declarations called for a Marxist insurrection, the overthrow of the Quebec government, the independence of Quebec from Canada and the establishment of a workers' society . . . Some of the members were organized and trained by Schoeters, a Belgian revolutionary and alleged KGB agent, whose hero was Che Guevara . . . At least two of the FLQ members had also received guerrilla training in selective assassination from Palestinian commandos in Jordan.
Various cells emerged over time: The Viger Cell, the Dieppe Cell, the Louis Riel Cell, the Nelson Cell, The Saint-Denis Cell, the Liberation Cell and the Chénier Cell . . . In 1966 a secret eight-page document titled Revolutionary Strategy and the Role of the Avant-Garde was prepared by the FLQ outlining its long term strategy of successive waves of robberies, violence, bombings and kidnappings, culminating in insurrection and revolution . . .
From 1963 to 1970, the FLQ committed over 200 violent political actions, including bombings, bank hold-ups and at least three deaths by FLQ bombs and two deaths by gunfire. In 1963, Gabriel Hudon and Raymond Villeneuve were sentenced to 12 years in prison for crimes against the state after their bomb killed Sgt. O'Neill, a watchman at Montreal's Canadian Army Recruitment Centre. By 1970, twenty-three members of the FLQ were in jail, including four convicted murderers, and one member had been killed by his own bomb. Targets included English owned businesses, banks, McGill University, Loyola College, and the homes of prominent English speakers in the wealthy Westmount area of the city. On February 13, 1969 the Front de libération du Québec set off a powerful bomb that ripped through the Montreal Stock Exchange causing massive destruction and seriously injuring twenty-seven people. . .

And here are some of the events of the October Crisis:

On October 5, 1970, members of the FLQ's Liberation cell kidnapped James Richard Cross, the British Trade Commissioner as he was leaving his home for work. Shortly afterwards, on October 10, the Chénier Cell kidnapped the Minister of Labour and Vice-Premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte, while he was playing football with his family on his front lawn. On October 17, callers to a radio station announced that Laporte had been murdered and divulged the location of the map which led to the discovery of his body . . . Early in December 1970, police discovered the location of the kidnappers holding James Cross. His release was negotiated and on December 3, 1970, five of the terrorists were granted their request for safe passage to Cuba by the Government of Canada after approval by Fidel Castro.
In July 1980, police arrested and charged a sixth person in connection with the Cross kidnapping. Nigel Barry Hamer, a British radical socialist and FLQ sympathizer, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months in jail.
In late December, four weeks after the kidnappers of James Cross were found, Paul Rose and the kidnappers and murderers of Pierre Laporte were located in the corner of a country farmhouse basement. They were tried and convicted for kidnapping and murder.

And I hadn't remembered these much more recent events:

. . . terrorist activities continue to occur at the hands of isolated members of the organization. In 2001, Rhéal Mathieu, a member who in 1967 was sentenced to 9 years in prison for terrorist activities including murder, was convicted of the attempted firebombing of three Second Cup coffee shops in Montreal. Mathieu targeted Canada's largest specialty coffee retailer because of the company's use of its incorporated English name Second Cup. For this offence, a judge sentenced Rhéal Mathieu to one month in jail in addition to the nine months he had already been held. He was also given a six-month sentence to be served concurrently for illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun and a .38-calibre revolver. Shortly thereafter, seven McDonald's restaurants were firebombed. According to a spokesman for the company, the bombings resulted in customers being afraid to go to Second Cup coffee shops, resulting in a substantial loss of business. The company changed their signs to Les cafés Second Cup.

Great line of the day

Dawg writes about the happiness of the right-wing bloggers that Canada finally has its very own treehouse of horror:

Seeping through every crack in the foundation of our polity is the presumption of guilt, unfettered paranoia, vengefulness, opportunist attacks on more-accessible-than-ever targets of the far Right, and a pure unadulterated hateful raving that beggars description. Add to this unsavoury ooze a call for the return of capital punishment, and bizarre pre-emptive attacks on the defenders of an open society, and we have it all wrapped up in a ball. It's Them versus Us. Darkness versus Light. Pure Evil versus All That We Hold Dear.

Emphasis mine.

The one-L Philip is a prince...

Now here's a book I want to read -- The Duke of Hazard: Wit and Wisdom of Prince Philip. Some examples:

"I am truly fed up with the opening and closing ceremonies [of the Olympics]. They are a pain in the neck," Philip told the newspaper . . . "Opening and closing ceremonies ought to be banned. Absolute bloody nuisances" . . . The 100-page book includes details of an infamous gaffe in Beijing, China, in 1986, when the prince told British students 'if you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed.'
It also recounts an occasion in Cardiff, Wales, when he addressed young members of the British Deaf Association who were standing close to a band playing steel drums.
'Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf,' the prince told them.
In Hungary, the prince is said to have told a British man he must have only arrived recently as he hadn't 'got a pot belly' and in Scotland, asked a driving instructor how he managed to 'keep the natives off the booze long enough' to pass their driving test.

I met Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth on the Royal Yacht Britannia, along with a hundred other people, during a royal visit to Victoria when I was a reporter. What impressed me about both of them was their ability to make charming small talk to total strangers who were all totally awe-struck and thus tongued-tied. And Philip didn't say anything outrageous at all, darn it -- as I recall, the conversation was mostly about the weather, ho hum, but somehow it sounded more interesting when they were talking about it.
(By the way, only Ogden Nash fans will understand the title to this piece...)

Why did they do this?

I hope we find out more about the Ontario terrorism plot soon, because here's something already that I don't understand.
From the Globe and Mail photo gallery, here is a photo from Saturday's press conference:


Globe and Mail cutline: Items are shown on display during a press conference in Toronto. The bag of fertilizer, top, was not seized during the raid and was there for display purposes only.

Emphasis mine.
So apparently someone from the police department went out and bought a bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to put on display at the press conference?
Why would they do this? So that reporters would know what fertilizer looks like? Because someone thought that all the guns and electronic gear and cell phones didn't tell enough of a story?
One of the Toronto Star stories talks about the importance of the case to Canadian law enforcement:

The case is critical for Canada's international reputation and will be scrutinized worldwide as it works its way through the courts.
There has been cause for skepticism concerning the ability of Canada's intelligence and police services to prosecute security cases. Since 9/11, the majority of high-profile security investigations have ended in international embarrassment, such as the acquittal of suspects in the Air India bombing case and the Maher Arar affair which raised questions about international information sharing, exposed an inexperienced federal police force and left an Ottawa man broken after his deportation, detention and torture in Syria.
Then there was Project Thread, a 2003 joint immigration-RCMP case touted as the dismantling of an Al Qaeda cell, but ending in a routine immigration case that sent Pakistani students home branded terrorists.

So please, folks, if you have confidence in your case, you don't need to be buying a bag of fertilizer to try to make it scarier.

Four out of ten

Hmmm...this is interesting.
From the way the Tories talk, you would think more people supported their policies. But Decima Research's new poll finds that only four out of ten Canadians support the mission in Afghanistan, while even fewer, only three out of ten, would say it is OK to abandon Kyoto.

Great line of the day

James Wolcott flags two posters from The Corner annoyed by inadvertantly encounting 'liberal' moments during their vacations -- like, Disneyland signs in Spanish, and a Scottish performer playing Lennon's Imagine.
I guess when these people stay at home, they organize their day to keep themselves safe from such horrific experiences.
Anyway, Wolcott writes:

. . . this is what the world is like now, get used to it. You're going to hear messages in Spanish, and discover that other countries aren't going to break out their nationalistic colors just because you arrive at the airport with your tourist fantasies intact. For conservatives, the cultural comfort zone is shrinking, and will probably continue shrinking until it's no bigger than a choke collar. It's probably only a matter of time before Krikorian attends a NASCAR race and complains that one of the concessionaires seemed kinda gay.

Emphasis mine.

Three Oklahoma Citys

I snarked a few days ago that if we actually had "home-grown terrorists" now living in Canada, why didn't we arrest them.
Well, it looks like we did. And recovered enough fertilizer to cause the equivalent of three Oklahoma City bombings.

What's that smell?

To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat.
Anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

Canadians will be plenty bitter if the US gets everything it is asking for in the softwood lumber deal.
The Gazetteer has the story.
Canada should know better by now -- we can never be nice to the United States, they just see it as a sign of weakness. Being natural born bullies themselves, combativeness is what they respect.
Ross flags a Vancouver Sun report that the US wants to have everything their own way in the softwood lumber deal -- if I understand the situation correctly, they don't want BC producers to be able to cut prices on their pine-beetle infested timber, while they also want Canadian manufacturers to continue paying extra tax on finished lumber products.
BC Forests minister Rich Coleman says don't panic -- yet:

"Everybody knows we are not going to sign a final deal that does not meet our expectations. If it was presented as a fait accompli in the final deal, yeah, I would have some concerns on some of these issues. But I don't have that in front of me right now, so I am not going to try to inflate any type of emotions around the table over the next week or so as we try to get to where we can get common language."

The story also notes, however, that forest companies are still filing their own lawsuits in the U.S. Court of International Trade "to protect their interests should the deal collapse."

Harper's war on gay people: I know which side I'm on.

Harper has declared war on gay people. Again. And once again, this is not a fight Canadians wanted. But fight we will.
Dave over at Galloping Beaver lets us know that petulant little Stevie is blinded by the right -- he is pandering to the wingnuts by announcing a vote about gay marriage in the fall.

[The] religious right . . . wanted a vote delayed long enough to mount an intensive campaign and to lobby, threaten or otherwise secure the votes of MPs . . . This is nothing more than proof that the religious right commands a priviledged position in the Conservative Party and that we can expect their homophobic, anti-abortion, bigoted perspective to be advanced at any opportunity.

So now we all get to listen to a whole summer of "well, of course I'm not prejudiced against gay people but I really do believe that civil unions are good enough for the likes of them!" Subtext: you should be glad we let you ride on our bus at all, so just sit at the back and be grateful!
And so to anyone who dishes out the "I'm not prejudiced" argument, I repeat what I said back in January:

We don't get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side.
I have been thinking lately about how to reply to the apparently-reasonable-sounding argument that I hear from Conservatives and religious people that a person can support gay rights without supporting gay marriage.
But you can't. Not anymore.
We don't get to choose the battle.
No one decided that the second world war would start in defense of Poland. But once Germany invaded, no one could just sit back any longer and say "Sorry, boys, can't fight now because we just aren't organized well enough quite yet. Let's put this off until something else outrageous happens."
No one decided that the right to have an abortion should define the women's movement. But this issue came to symbolize the most basic right, for women to control their own bodies, and therefore people who do not support a woman's right to choose are not feminists and cannot claim to be.
No one decided that the black civil rights movement would make its bones through a bus boycott in Montgomery. But once this boycott began, the black people of Montgomery had to keep on walking no matter how tired they were and how violent things became. The people couldn't say "Sorry, boys, this is really inconvenient for everybody, so can you please take your cause to some other city?" No, Montgomery became a battle that had to be won.
And so it is now with gay marriage. The battle is real and immediate and personal to many gay people, but its has also become symbolic. The Christian Right hysteria against gay marriage is one of the factors that has made this battle so important, because the core of their opposition to gay marriage is bigotry and hate against gay people, which cannot be allowed to win.
When someone says "I don't support gay marriage but this doesn't mean I am a bigot", this simply isn't true. Not anymore. The battle lines have been drawn.
The choice is which side you are on.
You ARE a bigot if you don't support gay marriage.

Great line of the day

Sidney Blumenthal describes the war paradigm of the Bush administration vs. the US constitution:

They believe fervently that the constitution is fatally flawed and must be circumscribed. The Bush administration's holy grail is to remove suspects' rights to due process, speedy trial and exculpatory evidence. The war paradigm is to be strengthened to conduct permanent war against terror that can never be finally defeated. There is no exit strategy from emergency.

Emphasis mine.

Quid pro quo

The Tories were so upset about millions flowing to Quebec advertising agencies -- but apparently in just the last four months they have lost the $5 BILLION which had been allocated for the Kelowna accord!
Funny how this works, isn't it? When governments want to do something, then finding the money is no problem. But when they don't want to do something -- like fulfill the Martin Government promise for $5B in funding for Aboriginal people -- then all of a sudden, well, sorry guys but we just can't find the money.
This story hints at what I think will be the Harper government scenario -- that the Tories intend to force through a new Indian Act as quid pro quo for the Kelowna funding:

Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice has been harshly criticized by some native leaders who say his government is discounting the results of 18 months of good-faith Kelowna talks. "We've said all along, those are laudable targets and objectives and we're supportive of them," Prentice said Friday in an interview.

[Editorial interjection: bullshit!]

He attended the conference in Kelowna last fall as premiers and most native leaders hailed what was billed as an historic milestone in aboriginal relations. "Everyone stood behind the expression of the goals and objectives," Prentice acknowledged. "The issue is ... advancing the money towards those goals and objectives. How's it going to be done? None of those questions were answered."
For his part, Prentice says structural change will be needed to get First Nations out from under an oppressive, outdated Indian Act.
He'll move soon to enhance the rights of aboriginal women, improve education standards and the native child-welfare system, he said.
"You'll see progress and you'll see a roadmap of where we're going to go."

"Structural change" is, I think, code for getting rid of Aboriginal tribal councils, which are perceived as obstructuve and corrupt. And I think that roadmap will say that Aboriginal people won't get the Kelowna money until the Tories pass a new Indian Act.

Today's pop quiz

Media Matters reports this exchange on CNN:

Discussing U.S. negotiations with Iran over its purported nuclear program, CNN senior national correspondent John Roberts commented that 'Iraq endured 11 years of sanctions, and, you know, we still had to go to war to get rid of what it was that they had.' . . . Blitzer responded: 'Good point, John.'

Here's the quiz:
1) What was it, exactly, that Iraq had?
2) Why did the United States "have to go to war" to get rid of it?
3) Why did neither Blitzer nor Roberts remember that Iraq actually didn't have any weapons?
4) And why did they think this had anything to do with Iran anyway?

Pop quiz

1. Do you think Joe Volpe has any chance whatsoever to be elected as leader of the Liberal party?
2. And if so, are you nuts?

That was then, this is now

As someone who lived through the Vietnam War, it struck me as ironic to read Juan Cole's report that Vietnam has won a contract to supply rice to Iraq.
And in 2035, I guess, my children will be amused to see reports of Iraq having a US contract to supply gasoline to the US army fighting in China. . .