Canada: Toronto : Toronto, City of the Terrorist Wannabees
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As the number of reporters on hand to fill TV screens with pictures of captured terrorists, has itself grown to the size of an invading army, and the amount of column-inches and size of headlines worldwide stretches to the moon and back three times (or is it four?), here in Toronto we're beginning to pick thru the debris of the event that has left our complacency shattered.
First, I want to thank the Mayor of Metro Toronto, David Miller, for his impeccable decorum in backing the police and other pro-active autorities in pursuing and handling the logistics that brawt those arrested to the bar of justice. The safety, good order, and civility of the city has been our Mayor's main concern (no matter what otherwise may be our political differences with him and his style and his bid for re-election). He was informed by the police of the would-be terrorist cell's existence, development, and presumably also of the police plan to conduct a sting and make arrests at the appropriate moment. More largely, this exemplary action with the Mayor's foreknowledge serves on another front where the Mayor and police are cooperating in a way not seen for many years previous. The police action against terrorists is an example to the youth gangs playing the drugs-and-guns combo that have so disfigured civic life in Toronto for some time, resulting in deaths even to innocent passersby.
Second, some Canadians, like John Lawrence in Canadian Free Press are beginning to ask why the educational system and Canadian culture in general do not engage the hearts and minds of these wannabe terrorists. Lawrence's article in Canadian Free Press touches on this matter momentarily in writing about the educational system, given the age of the raised-here-immigrants and born-heres among the wannabee-terrorists, most of them in their twenties and teens, parents and kids who had it so good in their Islamic countries of origin.
Take the recent statements by a federal official regarding the arrests of a group of young Canadians on terrorism charges this week. The official stated that he expects some serious reflection in government and security circles about how young people raised in Canada could allegedly conspire to commit such crimes. He went on to add that "Most of them went through the school system here. They're not just off the plane. So there will be some questioning going on."
Update: The Atlanta, Georgia connection of two of the Toronto Terribles comes to the fore in an article for Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Bill Torpy, "Trip to Canada fateful for Georgians" (Jun11,2k6). Torpy provides a number of significant details I hadn't yet encountered: "[USA] Federal authorities accuse the two Georgia men of being involved in international terrorism activities. They are accused of making suspicious videotapes of the U.S. Capitol and three other Washington locations and traveling to the mountains of Georgia to conduct military-style training exercises. Sadequee allegedly provided Ahmed information on how to receive military-style training in Pakistan. ¶ Both are being held in federal custody." - P
What kinds of questions will be asked? I can imagine the architects of our public education system and the psychologists and social professionals that attempt to guide our youth through a stringent goal-based curriculum will have to do more in their aim of convincing our young people that this is utopia. They will have to try and figure out why anyone would not readily succumb to our ideals and what can be done to ensure the next generation buys into the program we are running.Leaving aside for now the telltale rhetoric of the writer--"buys into the program we are running"--which is quintessentially a part of the problem when the h+est civic value tawt in schools is consumerism: let's go to the next consideration that pops out at us from the haystack of news coverage.
Third, crackerjack immigration-lawyer Barbara Jackman is working the Supreme Court already by way of the press, in advance of a case the Canuck Supremes will hear on what to her is the notorious security certificate (she herself is considered "notorious" by many in the field as a security obstructionist). Jim Brown of Canadian Press (via Canada.com reports:
Barbara Jackman says she's worried the climate of public apprehension could affect the high court as it considers a challenge to the security certificate system - a key legal tool used by the government to detain and evict some terrorist suspects from Canada.----------"Judges are human beings, the same way anyone else is; obviously they read the news," Jackman said Tuesday.
A wee sidebar on the monumental salareies paid the Supremes to keep their "jurisprudential objectivity," if you please? See Rory Leishman of London Free Press in a recent column he wrote on the subject. Back to Jackman's cajoling >
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"Of course it's going to impact in some way . . . . Any time there is an attempt to create a public hysteria on the part of the government, yeah, it does make (my) job harder."This is just one example, one so strikingly dissimilar from the appropoach of Toronto's Mayor (who was privy to the time table of apprehension by police). Mayor Miller knew that the development of the terror-stopping case and its step-by-step procedures had an internal time-factoring of their own. But Ms Jackman wants to win her own case to get the security certificates struck down, and so thinks that everything that happens do so to stop her cause.Jackman represents Syrian-born Hassan Almrei, one of three men challenging the security certificate regime. The others are Algerian native Mohamed Harkat of Ottawa and Adil Charkaoui who came to Montreal from Morocco.
They are trying to overturn provisions of Canadian immigration law that allow Ottawa to issue ministerial certificates branding people without permanent resident status a threat to national security.
Much of the evidence is then heard in secret by a Federal Court judge, with only scant details disclosed to the defendant and the public.
The law also provides for indefinite detention of suspects, many of whom have spent years behind bars while their cases go through the courts.
Fourth, now comes the TV critic for the Toronto Star, anxious to make the present case against the terrorists live up to TV's 24 star Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) in this episode confronted by his Canuck nemesis Tony Acerbusyass (played by Antonia Zerbisias. Tony is of the opinion that the "Time is right for skepticism," and we may be assured she will fiddle this tune long after everyone has stopped listening.
What's more, the media must now move into an entirely different mode — the innocent-until-proven-guilty mode. A little more skepticism — and more important, some moderation — is in order, please. Problem is, the story is in danger of running out of control.I like Christie Blatchford, she's an ace crime reporter, she goes to a crime scene or a court house and writes raw perception, feelings and all. (It's a predilection of reformational philosophy-lovers to enjoy crime fiction and, in my case occasoinal good crime and crime-court reporting.) I don't know just who added the usually-editorial "thus" (sic) which is inserted into Ms Christie's piece. Probably Tony, wanting to alert readers to just how perceptive Ms Christie is in knowing that these garbed figures are women. But, if reporter Christie is herself the author of the "sic," it demonstrates the the terrorism-specific semiotics of the attire: one can't know for sure either the gender or the agenda of the person so hidden. Do we really know whether the mastermind of the cell was attired in a burqa among all the burqas in the crowd at court, checking out whether any of his men bore the demeanor of a squealer? I agree with Ms. Zerbisias that it's the correct time to be skeptical of sand-throwers, particularly of her kind, like Toronto Star's Tom Walkom, whose left-lining whining is always predictable. I think this is precisely not the time for usuals to shift into that mode which is their reflex action. Wait a bit, dear dogs of suspicion, and I would be the first to unleash you. Take a cue from the Mayor. Believe me the arrested and accused will have their interminable day in court, altho where security certificates are applicable, they mite as well be used to the full extent possible. My first reaction is to suspect the suspects, while Zerbisias and Walkom's is to suspect the police--how come, do you suppose, dear reader?For example, because the Star had such a jump on the competition, with so many GTA-based reporters and resources, plus the advantage of a Sunday edition, we had the names, residences and other personal details of the suspects plastered over three pages.
Yesterday, the other papers followed suit, drawing out what must be the considerable anguish of the families, personified by a very distraught relative who appeared on CBC Newsworld insisting his son, Sareef Abdehaleen, 30, was innocent.
"To everybody now, these people are guilty already,'' he said.
Not just "these people,'' but all Muslims, according to some sources.
At least the Globe and the Star, in yesterday's editorials, urged readers not to start labelling Muslims with the "t-word," and target them for hate crimes.
The Star also took a few steps back, both on Sunday with a column by Thomas Walkom imploring people to view events with a critical eye, and again yesterday with a report by Linda Diebel on how the police played up the arrests for maximum spectacle.
But read yesterday's editorial in the Post: "The Jihadis among us," and even more egregious, Christie Blatchford's front-page column in the Globe, and you'll see first: calls for stepped-up law enforcement and diminished civil rights, Bush-style. And second: a Christie-nacht screed against a single community, tantamount to hate speech.
"The accused men are mostly young and mostly bearded in the Taliban fashion," wrote Blatchford. "They have first names like Mohamed, middle names like Mohamed, and last names like Mohamed. Some of their female relatives at the Brampton courthouse who were there in their support wore black head-to-toe burkas ... which is not a getup I have ever seen on anyone but Muslim women (sic).''
Sam Grewal reports on the h+ school and college scenes regarding alienation among some Muslim youth (five of the arrested could not be identified because of their age). His article, the best of the lot from Toronto Star, should be required reading for all Torontonians. It bears your scrutiny and reflection, dear Torontonians among refWrite readers. May I address you as refWrite Torontonians?
I've registered my uneasiness about burqa-wearing in Toronto under the present circumstances, but let's not extend that queasiness on my part to the scarves some Muslim young women wear in public (school), nor to the turban's some Sikh young men wear on the street. Scarves and turbans are just symbols, religious symbols that attract negativity from others--not least of all from my own fellow whites, especially among our younger ages--religious symbols that unfortunately attract negativity and racism and, now, perhaps fear. But, burqas and knives are a different matter, because they do carry security and safety implications. These matters can and will be discussed, laws may change and change back again if and when problems arise due to the lethal or intimidating potential of some of these otherwise innocuous symbols of religious identity. The discussion among all the citizenry should be ongoing, and provbably will be.
The bottom line in the myriad questions that cluster around the arrest of alleged terrorists who base their proclivities on a version of a religion is this: All of us must welcome our Muslim neighbours, even if the police have to be aware that a very small minority of them hate our society, hate our own leading racial profile (white), and are drawn to the practice of distorted-religion-based terrorism. - Politicarp
Full disclosure: Politicarp is white, blonde, blue-eyed, male, old, and subject to longterm illness (not AIDS-HIV) - and, one may wryly add, has occasionally experienced discrimination based on all these mentioned personal factors, even to the extent that a whole website has been created, using my name, for the purpose of mocking and belittling me. The perpetrator is of the same race, appears to be in the same age range, and lives around the corner from me. Hatred is his hobby, a distorted outlet for his creativity and flare for demented fictionalization of living persons.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
Beheading plan dropped, but not charges
I got apt expression "terrorist wannabees" here
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