When it comes to the Middle East, Ottawa sits on its hands to keep Trump happy

A good op-ed piece on Canada abstaining from voting, on Jerusalem being recognized as the capital of Israel, in the UN General Assembly. As the piece says that this abstention was against Canadian official foreign policy on Israel & Palestine but when push came to shove, when it was time to stand for your principles, when it was time to show the so-called "bully" of the world that the world will not meekly follow whatever Mr. Trump will say, then Canada quietly, feebly, meekly, ran away from the fight with its tail between its legs.

That's Canada for you, ladies & gentlemen !!! That's the so-called "leadership" Canada is trying to show to the world !!!

If you may recall that there were dozens of Justin Trudeau's pictures circulating on the web, after his election win, showing him sitting for Iftars with Muslims & fasting for a day with Muslims, & several other pictures of him mingling with Muslim voters. Him & his party officials "opened the gates" to Canada to refugees running away from US, to Canada.

People all over the world, & esp. Muslims, were proudly saying that Canada is the best country to live in & Justin Trudeau & his party support Islam & Muslims. However, when it came to show how much skin you have in the game, principles & all that verbal support for Muslims evaporated in the thin air, & Canada acted like an Ostrich; bury your head in the sand & hope for the problem to go away. All those pictures & oral support was just for electoral show, because, actions speak louder than words, & such an important vote, regardless of it being not legally binding, was still politically important, & needed Canada to show where it really stands in foreign policy circles. Couple this decision with Liberals not backing away from selling armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, amounting in the billions, even though, the whole world knows that Saudi Arabia openly violates human rights, & we can see how much Liberals, & Justin Trudeau, support Muslims.

This vote was the time for Canada to show if it can make decisive decisions. A leader makes decisive decisions, rightly or wrongly, & then stands firm on those decisions. Donald Trump's actions might be horrendous, & pretty much, every American leader before him, but, US is still considered a world leader in foreign policy matters, even after making horrible mistakes with even more horrendous consequences several times, from World War 2 (dropping atomic bombs on innocent Japanese) to invading Vietnam to putting through Iraqis, Afghanis, Libyans, & now Yemenis, from unforgettable nightmarish life-long moments, but still, what America says, goes.

Yes, certainly, desperate times like these need leaders, who, despite heavy odds against them, take a strong & decisive stand for their principles they believe in. If you don't stand for your principles, then you don't have any principles. You are merely going along wherever the wind takes you. Nobody will ever take you seriously & you will never be considered as a leader in anyone's eyes. That's Canada for you.

Regardless of how much Canada wants to become the darling of the world, & be considered for leadership roles in the international fora, Canadian leaders are too afraid of making ripple effects. But that's what makes you a leader. It's too easy to be a nice person when everything is going great. Tough & testing times separate the men from the boys, & separate the followers from the leaders. This vote in the UNGA was the time when Canada should've stood up for its principles, regardless of its ongoing trade negotiations, & voted with other G7 countries, because, at the author says near the end of the piece, those trade negotiations still might not work out in favour of Canada, because, hey, after all, who listens to a follower!!!

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https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/12/21/on-the-middle-east-ottawa-sits-on-its-hands-to-keep-trump-happy.html

And so the year draws to a close just as it dawned — with Canada walking on eggshells around Donald Trump.

Thursday at the United Nations, the Liberal government had two choices. It could poke Trump but stand on principle, or continue a pattern of voting with the U.S. on the Middle East.

With the world watching, it did neither.

It abstained.

It moved to the sidelines and let the rest of the world take a position.

Mostly, it didn’t want to rattle Trump’s cage with the future of NAFTA very much in doubt.

A vote to declare Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel “null and void,’’ passed 128 to nine with 35 abstentions.

The U.S. won the support of key allies like Togo, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Honduras, Guatemala and, of course, Israel.

Take Israel out of the equation and the entire population of those backing the U.S. is less than the population of Canada.

Canada, on the other hand, was the only G7 nation beside the United States that did not vote to condemn the move by Trump.

An abstention, at first glance, does seem to be a craven move, especially in light of the crass threats and bullying delivered by the American ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.

Haley was defending Trump’s right to make an unnecessary, provocative move in the Middle East for strictly domestic political reasons.

Oh, she was going to take names. She wasn’t going to forget this vote.

She was going to remember when nations come calling for America’s financial help or its global influence.

It was an appalling performance, coming on the heels of Trump’s flat-out threat to cut off aid to anyone who voted against him.

Don’t disrespect us, Haley warned.

The Americans were going to take their ball and go home if others were mean to them.

In short, it was the type of speech that should have sent nations on the fence into the “screw you’’ camp against Washington.

Canada stayed quiet.

In Canada’s case, an abstention does send a message, because the Trudeau government, like the Stephen Harper government before it, has slavishly backed the U.S. in voting against UN resolutions perceived to be anti-Israel.

But overwhelmingly the message sent by an abstention was that Ottawa didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to take a stand, wished that this would just go away.

It was in keeping with Ottawa’s initial non-reaction reaction to the Trump move, a statement that did not mention the U.S. or the president, but merely affirmed Canada’s support of a two-state solution that includes agreement on the status of Jerusalem.

By abstaining, we did not support Trump, nor did we poke him, but, of course, Washington immediately spun the results to indicate those who had abstained had backed them.

It’s been a long year for a government dealing with Trump as a neighbour and with NAFTA talks resuming next month, 2018 could be tougher.

We have been “disappointed” by his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, and have “disagreed vehemently” with ridiculous tariffs his commerce department slapped on Bombardier.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland skilfully vowed Canada would take on a greater global leadership role as the U.S. turns inward (without mentioning Trump) and, with U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer at her side, she delivered the message that a “winner-take-all” mindset cannot lead to a satisfactory renegotiation of NAFTA.

In Ottawa’s defence, no one sitting at the General Assembly Thursday, with the exception of Mexico, was living cheek-by-jowl with a president whose next move might jolt this country. Mexico also abstained Thursday.

Canada has bilateral interests with the U.S. that compel it to be careful, certainly more careful in condemnation of Washington than countries separated from the U.S. by an ocean.

In its most important bilateral relationship, the Liberal government has been dealing with a man in the White House who stands against virtually everything this country stands for.

And it is doing it with its most important trilateral trade relationship hanging in the balance.

This country has lost its voice on the Middle East so as not to upset the U.S. president.

Thursday, Canada could not even vote for a resolution that reflected its official policy.

Ottawa sat on its hands to appease a leader who has toyed with us during NAFTA negotiations.

They could find that tiptoeing on eggshells and losing our international voice may make no difference because if Trump wants to walk away from NAFTA, he will.

A year of playing nice and biting our tongue could still count for nothing.

Opinion on Canadian federal election result

Saw a few posts from people on my TL that today was a great day for Canada because of the new PM's swearing-in ceremony etc.
 
Really? The only reason I vote is that when I criticize a government, no one can say that since, you didn't vote, you lost your right to criticize. Although, I'm not a fan of Conservatives, deep in my heart, I already know NOTHING will change for the small guy.
 
Let me emphasize that point again (for slow people), NOTHING will change for the general public.

 
If Stephen Harper was such a bad guy that the whole country took a sigh of relief with the Liberals win, then why did people elect him back in 2011? And he had been the PM of Canada 5 years before that, too. So, the public already had a little taste of what Harper was all about. Did Harper hypnotized the public somehow in 2011? Heck, he isn't even a "hottie" like JT.
 
I remember seeing this same enthusiasm which I see for Justin Trudeau now, back in 2008, with the election win of Barack Obama. Heck, people all over the world were mesmerized with his win & there were so many hopes attached to his win. Well, we can see how much he actually achieved in his past 7 years of presidency. Except, the Affordable Healthcare Act, he has failed to achieve everything, from closing Guantanamo to controlling emissions to improving checks & balances on Wall Street.
 
Only reason Liberals won in Canada because the general public around the world only wants to keep changing political parties. Let's take a quick look at the tennis match of politics played in some countries around the world:

US: 8 years of Democratic rule (Clinton) is followed by 8 years of Republican (Bush Jr.) & then back to Democrats (Obama) & then back to Republicans (Bush Jr. II in 2016) & so on so forth.

Canada: Conservatives (Mulroney) followed by Liberals (Chretien / Paul) & then back to Conservatives (Harper) & now back with Liberals (Trudeau).

UK: They are little bit unpredictable. 18 years of Conservatives were followed by 13 years of Labour & then back to Conservatives (coming up to 6 years now).
 
Pakistan: PML-N & PPP play the match.

Outlawing Public Opinion in Spain

Is this the modern democracy where public opinions matter less & less, perhaps, of no value. "Elected" governments might as well be dictatorships, because laws are being made "for the safety of the public," but they are that much against the "safety of the public."

Public is not stupid that they can be lulled into thinking that invading armies are standing at the borders & we need these strict laws against public opinions (e.g. Spain's Citizens' Security Law or Canada's anti-terrorism law). The general public is made busy by the government into surviving for themselves that they don't have time to do anything else but work, work & more work.

Is this really the modern world? Have we really progressed in a millennium when Kings used to rule the citizenry with a heavy hand?
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/04/outlawing-public-opinion-spain-150410082431492.html

When Spain first started making noises about an impending "Citizens' Security Law" that would criminalise various forms of popular protest, optimists may have assumed the flirtation with overt fascism couldn't last. At the very least - they might have reasoned - the government would have to retreat to semi-fascist mode.
 
Not so.
 
Approved on March 26, & expected to come into force on July 1, the law might be mistaken for something out of the Franco playbook. Dubbed the "gag law", it prescribes fines of up to 600 euros ($635) for disrespecting police officers, up to 30,000 euros ($32,000) for disseminating images of state security forces that might endanger them or their operations, & up to 600,000 euros ($635,000) for unauthorised street protests.
 
Inverse logic
 
These punitive measures are especially handy, of course, in an era of brutal austerity measures, home evictions, & other government efforts in Spain that have triggered collective action on a mass scale. In 2012, evictions were reportedly occurring at a pace of 500 per day.
 
While conveniently pre-emptively criminalising protests against the legislation itself, the gag law relies on an inverse logic, in which the real threat to citizens' security comes not from the lack of a roof over one's head or a physically abusive police force but rather from opposing the injustice of such realities.
 
In an open letter to the European Parliament, human rights groups warned that targeting those who disseminate images of police "could hinder the documentation & reporting of abuses committed by law enforcement personnel & reinforce the climate of impunity".
 
Expelling justice
 
Tacked onto the bill as a last-minute bonus is a provision validating the summary expulsion of migrants who jump the border fence between Morocco & Spain's African outposts of Ceuta & Melilla.
 
After all, we can't possibly have "citizens' security" with too many black folks in the mix.
 
As noted on the website of the International Federation for Human Rights, the move not only "restrict[s] the right to seek asylum & violate[s] the principle of non-refoulement & the prohibition of collective expulsions" but also "exposes migrants to a serious risk of torture & ill-treatment by denying them the possibility of filing a claim against law enforcement personnel in case of abuse".
 
But the anti-migrant provision is merely the culmination of an already common practise of automatic deportation along the Spanish frontier. In October 2014, the AFP reported on a video of truncheon-happy Spanish police beating a young, barefoot Cameroonian man & then escorting him, in an apparently unconscious state, back to Moroccan territory.
 
Another good reason to discourage filming the police at work - & another reason the 600-euro fine for disrespecting the police seems a tad steep.
 
The old terrorism card
 
Of course, no citizenry would be completely secure without robust protections against "terrorism" - that time-honoured threat that has, particularly in the post-9/11 era, been invoked to justify the trampling of rights worldwide.
 
In addition to the Citizens' Security Law, the Spanish government has also approved reforms to the nation's criminal code that will greatly enhance its punitive capabilities.
 
For example, folks will now be eligible for prosecution as terrorists for such behaviour as regularly visiting websites deemed to be terrorist-friendly. Helpfully, the criminal code's definition of "terrorism" is sufficiently sweeping to prevent any potential offenders from slipping through the cracks.
 
Included on the list of terroristic acts are efforts to disrupt government functions & "the public peace", as well as "the commission of any serious crime against … liberty".
 
A recent article on the Spanish Gizmodo website points out that internet activity alone "can be punished with 1 to 5 years in prison".
 
Makes you wonder about the whole "liberty" clause.
 
The next step
 
Last month, the Guardian quoted Jorge Fernandez Diaz - Spain's interior minister & the curator of the Citizens' Security Law - on the merits of the initiative: "It's a law for the 21st century. It provides better guarantees for people's security & more judicial security for people's rights."
 
In a matter of 3 seconds, an item worthy of interment in Franco's mausoleum was thus recast as the pinnacle of modernity & justice.
 
By this logic, regression is progress, slavery is freedom, & black is white.
 
Meanwhile, according to the Spanish daily El Pais, a December survey indicated that 82% of respondents believed the law needed to be abandoned entirely or at least modified, while 79% considered the prescribed fines excessive. 71% contended that the project did not aim to ensure public security but rather to protect the government from protests.
 
It seems there's only one thing left to do: Outlaw public opinion surveys.


 Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

Harper's niqab ban plays dangerous politics

A great opinion piece. Democracy & elections in the West seem to be always based on some kind of fear that "you better vote for me, otherwise apocalypse will come." Sort of an election campaign from the "uncivilized" & "barbaric" developing world.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harpers-niqab-ban-plays-dangerous-politics/article23340295/

Zunera Ishaq hails from Pakistan where she was a high school teacher, lives in Mississauga, Ont., is 29 & has 3 kids. She came to Canada in 2008, passed her citizenship test 5 years later with flying colours, & is now ready to take the oath of citizenship. She’s been “imagining [this moment] for so long” because she’s anxious to be a full & active member of Canadian society. She & her husband chose Canada over other countries, she says, because “It is especially important to me to live in a country of religious freedoms since I am a devout Muslim.”

She’s already a volunteer at her eldest child’s school – a public school – & at a local women’s shelter, & once she becomes a citizen she is determined to have an active say in her country’s future. Her lawyers, Lorne Waldman and Naseem Mithoowani, have been impressed by her feistiness, independence & determination. Zunera Ishaq would be, from all accounts, a model Canadian.

Yet if it were up to the Prime Minister of Canada, Ms. Ishaq would have to settle for “imagining” her citizenship until hell freezes over. Why? Because she wears a niqab, which covers her entire face except her eyes. Ms. Ishaq says in a court affidavit that “I first started wearing the niqab when I was approximately 15 years old….After I had done research….I came to the conclusion that the niqab is mandatory to my faith.” While many Muslims disagree, each is free to make these decisions for herself.

It’s perfectly legal, harms no one, but is providing ammunition for Stephen Harper’s election campaign.

The story begins in 2011, when then-immigration minister Jason Kenney arbitrarily decreed that faces couldn’t be covered at citizenship oath-taking ceremonies. This was a direct blow to Ms. Ishaq. She is prepared to unveil herself in private to an official before taking the oath, but will not appear unveiled at the public ceremony. She approached the University of Toronto’s legal aid clinic who put her in touch with Lorne Waldman, one of Canada’s top-notch immigration lawyers. Mr. Waldman went to court to challenge the government & won. In his words, “The Court found that the policy of requiring a woman to remove her facial covering, where there is no question of identity or security, was illegal. The government is required to follow the law.”

Well, not so fast. Never mind the law. We’re talking about politics here. The government has decided to appeal the ruling against them, as just one of their battery of pre-election attacks against Muslims here & abroad. For what I believe are crassly political motives, they are deliberately inflaming Canadians against each others. Now we know what Conservatives mean by “Canadian values.”

Ms. Ishaq has been personally singled out for the national spotlight by no less than Stephen Harper himself. In fact the entire government of Canada seems obsessed by this one woman ... .

Quite simply, the Conservatives have decided that she is a useful weapon in their re-election campaign. By scapegoating her while introducing their much-criticized new anti-terrorism bill, they hope to convince frightened voters that the Conservatives are their best hope against dangers of all kinds. But in doing so, they are instead actually jeopardizing the country’s security. Stephen Harper & his minions are actually subverting the work of our security forces by alienating much of the Muslim community.

CSIS & the Mounties badly need the co-operation of the Muslim community to provide information about security risks among them. Yet even moderate Muslims – the large majority – are outraged by the way the government has, among other things, been picking on this one harmless Muslim woman, & in the process mocking the right of all Muslims to follow their religion in the way they want. Out of sheer political opportunism, Stephen Harper is undermining that community’s trust in official Canada while very likely estranging & radicalizing some Muslims, perhaps dangerously. How can he possibly not understand this?

Other Canadians are also guilty of this reckless behaviour, further angering all Muslims & in particular alienating younger ones. Far too many of these provocateurs are from Quebec, people with responsible positions as political, community & judicial leaders. They are not merely bigoted & intolerant. They are also divisive & destructive. They are playing into the hands of ISIS. As they surely must understand, they are sending an unmistakable message to every Muslim in the land: You are not one of us & we don’t trust any of you. And that message is being heard loud & clear by Muslims everywhere, with predictable repercussions.

Is it really too much to expect the Prime Minister of Canada to act responsibly at a time like this? It seems it is. Politics trumps all, even if it means turning other Canadians against Muslims & turning Muslims against official Canada. The consequences of both remain to be seen.

Muslim groups accuse UK government of criminalizing Islam

If we replace Britain, in this news story, with Canada, we will still get the same story that government is trying to pander for votes by criminalizing Islam. Since, Canadian government also has nothing to show on improving economy & jobs, passing security bills like Bill C-51 & Muslim women's veils have been made the focal point of this year's election.

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More than 60 imams & leaders of Muslim organisations have signed an open letter to the government accusing it of criminalising Islam.

 

They said that the "terror threat" was being exploited for political capital ahead of the general election.

 

Signatories include journalist Yvonne Ridley, former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg & members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

 

The 61 signatories criticised the "demonisation of Muslims in Britain.... despite their disavowal of violence & never having supported terrorist acts".

 

The letter accused the government of trying to deflect attention from crises in the economy & health service, while trying to silence criticism of foreign policy.

 

It condemned the exploitation of the "terror threat" for political capital as "the big parties inevitably try to outdo each other in their nastiness", in the run up to May's election by playing on public fears about security & immigration.

 

The letter cited the targeting of Muslims through anti-terror legislation: "The latest Act of Parliament, the Counter-Terrorism & Security Act, threatens to create a 'McCarthyite' witch-hunt against Muslims, with nursery workers, schoolteachers & Universities expected to look out for signs of increased Islamic practice as signs of 'radicalisation'".

 

"Such a narrative will only further damage social cohesion as it incites suspicion & ill feeling in the broader community.

 

"The use of undefined & politically charged words like 'radicalisation' & 'extremism' is unacceptable as it criminalises legitimate political discourse & criticism of successive governments," the letter said.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31834549

Knife Fight (quote)

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Stephen Harper & the niqab gambit

It's funny how politicians / leaders everywhere around the world play upon one & only one emotion of public: fear. Politicians, essentially, treat the general public as little children. Just like parents make up scary stories to make their kids to do something, e.g. eat their veggies, politicians take a small incident, blow it up a thousand times, & scare people to do their own bidding.

So be it the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ("North America is against the development of South America") or the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini ("immigrants are to blame for the poverty of South Africans") or Mr. Nigel Farage of UKIP blaming Islam & Muslims (behind the cover of anti-immigration) for economic woes of UK or Mr. Stephen Harper preaching Islamophobia to the Canadian crowds. What they all forget are the consequences of their statements? We can see the dire consequences of King Goodwill's statements in South Africa right now. Now, Mr. Zwelithini is asking for calm & blaming the media for misinterpreting his statements but the damage is already done. People are dead. Families are destroyed. Livelihoods are stolen. Those people who lost their lives won't come back now.
 
Since, the current government of Canada can't exactly win on job creation or economy, let's scare people about Islam & Muslims. Will Mr. Harper take responsibility when a Muslim woman, who is veiled or even simply wearing a hijab, is assaulted on the streets of Toronto? Will Quebecers come out in the support of Muslims when a Muslim woman is assaulted on the streets of Montreal?

After all, the general public keeps proving itself gullible, naïve,  & a fine example in idiocy; they will believe anything & will diligently act upon it, too.
 
Majority of general public (all over world) = sheep = zombies ... all follow one without thinking.
 
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One recent poll put the Conservatives in first place in Quebec City, with similar results in the swath of mostly rural regions west of the province’s capital city.
 
... by coming out against the wearing of the face-covering niqab during a citizenship oath, which was the subject of a recent court decision, & the threat of another terrorist attack on Canadian soil, Harper hit upon a strain of collective fear in the province—where, as another recent poll suggests, nearly 80% of people are worried about a terrorist attack & the indoctrination of young Quebecers by Islamist extremists.
 
And what goes for Quebec goes for the country as a whole. The recent threat of an attack ... has only underscored the Canada-wide support for the government’s new anti-terrorism bill, which, according to recent polling numbers, is at nearly 85%.
 
Since the terrorist attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, the Prime Minister has taken to peppering his speeches with the words “jihad” & “terrorism,” whether speaking in Montreal or British Columbia or Brisbane, Australia. His national poll numbers have trended steadily upward, while the two opposition parties, the NDP & Liberals, have seen a corresponding decrease, according to poll aggregator Éric Grenier. “Jihadi terrorism, as it is evolving, is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced,” Harper said in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill recently. “We will not be intimidated by jihadist terrorists,” he said in Delta, B.C., in a speech otherwise devoted to infrastructure spending.
The message seems clear: Appealing to Canadians’ baser fears doesn’t only work—it’s also a rare source of national unity.
 
Quebec’s Muslim population more than doubled between 2001 & 2011, in large part because of Quebec’s immigration policy favouring new arrivals from French-speaking countries. This influx of French-speakers, primarily from North Africa, were decidedly different in appearance & in their religious practices, spurring the so-called “reasonable accommodations” debate.
 
Fear of Muslims erupted in Quebec’s overwhelmingly white hinterland (the very area Harper covets today) over the spectre of mosques on their skylines & pork-free fèves au lard at the sugar shack. The town of Hérouxville, home to exactly zero Muslims, banned public stonings.
 
Then the attacks started. Certainly, Quebecers were as aghast as the rest of the world at the various terrorist attacks against Western targets. Yet the attacks against soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu & on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill were a special kind of horror: Both perpetrators were pure laine francophone, born-&-bred Quebecers ostensibly radicalized by fundamentalist imams & the outer margins of the Internet.
“The fact that these 2 guys were from Quebec was a wake-up call,” says Quebec MNA Nathalie Roy, the critic for secular matters for the right-of-centre Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ). “It’s unthinkable that Quebec citizens would go so far as to renounce our values & our rights.” The attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which Islamist gunmen killed 12 in & around the office of the Paris-based satirical magazine in January, had particular resonance in Quebec. Proportionally, it received nearly 3 times the media coverage in the province than elsewhere in the country, according to Influence Communication, a Montreal-based media-monitoring company.
 
The issue of Muslim & societal values came up yet again with a recent Federal Court decision that struck down a prohibition on the wearing of the niqab while taking the public citizenship oath. Like most court decisions, there are nuances to what Federal Court Judge Keith Boswell wrote. The issue wasn’t about identification, since the woman in question, Zunera Ishaq, had already shown her face to citizenship authorities.
 
Nor did Boswell’s decision outright allow for the wearing of the niqab during the oath. It only quashed a 2011 government directive barring the Muslim face-covering during the ceremony because it prevented citizenship judges from “allowing the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization,” as outlined in the citizenship regulations.
 
These nuances were mostly overlooked in the ensuing outrage over the Federal Court decision. This outrage was at a full boil when the Prime Minister first announced his government’s intention to appeal Boswell’s decision during a stop in Victoriaville, Que.
 
... Harper’s statement, uttered in both official languages, was a master stroke of quotable outrage. “I believe, & I think most Canadians believe, that it is offensive that someone would hide their identity at the very moment where they are committing to joining the Canadian family,” he said. “This is a society that is transparent, open, & where people are equal. And that is just . . . I think we find that offensive.”

Among those who listened at Harper’s side was Victoriaville Mayor Alain Rayes. Born of Egyptian immigrants, Rayes has been mayor of the city of 45,000 since 2009. A fit 43-year-old with a ready smile & an informal way about him, Rayes is being heavily courted to run for the Conservatives in the next election. He says the vast majority of his constituents see eye-to-eye with Harper on the topics of terrorism & societal norms.

“It’s an aberration to hear [NDP Leader] Thomas Mulcair say he is against the anti-terror bill, or to hear [Liberal Leader] Justin Trudeau say he finds it normal that a person doesn’t remove her niqab during a citizenship oath. I’m not against the veil or freedom of religion, but there is a limit,” Rayes says.
 
The CAQ, meanwhile, proposed a motion to perform background checks on anyone requesting a permit to build a mosque in Quebec, as well as a law banning any form of speech that “goes against the values inscribed in Quebec’s charter of rights.” It was voted down in Quebec’s National Assembly.
 
This makes for fertile political ground for the Conservatives, says Quebecer Stephen Brown. “In Quebec, if a deeply unpopular prime minister comes & says, ‘I want to protect you & your culture,’ he’s going to have an immediate audience. The fear of extremist Islam, which is justified, is like political catnip,” says the 28-year-old volunteer with the Quebec-based Canadian Muslim Forum.
 
The Tories may find this a winning strategy outside of Quebec, as well. An Angus-Reid poll published in mid-February suggested that 82% of Canadians support Bill C-51, the Conservative government’s anti-terrorism legislation. An earlier Angus-Reid poll, published about a month after the attacks in Saint-Jean-Sur-Richelieu & Parliament Hill, suggests why this support is so high. 62% of Canadians (including 60% of Quebecers) believe homegrown terrorism is a serious threat.
 
The terrorist attacks in Canada in 2014 have had a similar effect on public opinion as the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, says University of Toronto professor & terrorism law expert Kent Roach. In both cases, politicians leveraged the collective fear of terrorism to pass more stringent laws. “Like the Anti-Terrorism Act enacted after the 9/11 attacks, Bill C-51 is an omnibus bill that is being enacted amid fears of additional terrorist attacks. In both cases, there are almost daily media accounts of terrorist threats to Canada,” Roach says ... .
 
Citizenship & Immigration Minister Chris Alexander sent out a note to supporters criticizing the Federal Court for its stance on the niqab. He also noted his government’s intention to appeal the decision “allowing people to wear the hijab,” thus, knowingly or not, conflating the niqab & the hijab, 2 very different articles of clothing. (The term hijab is widely used to describe a head scarf that doesn’t cover the face.) ... And it took just over a week into his tenure as Canada’s new defence minister for Jason Kenney to proclaim the “high probability of future jihadist attacks from within”—a contention, coincidentally or not, that 62% of Canadians believe, according to the Angus-Reid poll. (A bit of perspective: Canadian-born terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 2 people in 2014; in 2011, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data, 2,158 Canadians died in motor vehicle accidents.)
 
As the Conservatives have shown across the country, fear of jihadists & face-coverings alike is a far more exploitable subject that also happens to dovetail with the government’s tough-on-crime agenda. “If I were Stephen Harper’s political adviser, I’d tell him to do exactly what he’s doing,” says Brown of the Canadian Muslim Forum. “Fear is the most powerful human emotion &, if people are afraid, they will be willing to give you more power in the name of protecting them.” In promoting this fear in Quebec & beyond, perhaps Stephen Harper has found the key to national unity after all.

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-niqab-gambit/

Aldous Huxley on Modern Government

Canads's secret arms deal with Saudi Arabia

Just in case, if you were thinking after reading (assuming you read & not closed your eyes & jammed fingers in your ears) that article about how an activist crashed a glitzy arms industry dinner, that it's all other countries & got nothing to do with Canada, & Canada is the beacon of peace. Well, here's an article on arms deal between Canada & Saudi Arabia, & ironically, government isn't revealing much info on the deal ... wow, what a great democracy ... people cannot know what the gov't is doing ... the same people who voted for the govt.

My tax $$$ are going to support human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia. I don't think I voted for that in last election (I voted NDP). Isn't this a great feeling that Canadians are supporting human rights abuses in foreign countries? Then, when people in those countries don't feel that great about us, we are like, "they don't like our way of life." Frankly, why would or should they? We are complicit in them being abused through our tax $$$.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadas-arms-deal-with-saudi-arabia-shrouded-in-secrecy/article22547765/