The plot to behead Stephen Harper

They have lots of good columnists ---Simpson, Duhatschek, Shoalts, Ibbitson and John Doyle. I'm not paying $16.00 a month for the privilege. It's highway robbery.

What's the "swim coach" reference mean, JJ?

 

Online interview with two Canadian Muslim MP's including the famous (at least in the GTA) Wajid Khan who was a former pilot in the Pakistani airforce who now runs an extremely successfull car dealership.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060607.wkhanomar0607/BNStory/National/home

Omar Alghabra, a rookie MP for Mississauga-Erindale:

I think, the Conservative government is ignoring the calls of many Muslim community leaders to work with them on dealing with issues of radicalization and marginalization.

Especially after the fact. Here we see municipal leaders, police forces engaging the communities including the Muslim community, but none of the Conservative officials have done any steps.

 

Marsden is the one in the Simon Fraser swim coach scandal.

 

Sorry, I'm a dumb Easterner. I vaguely remember something about it.......

 

You can read all about the swim coach on these two links. If you already think Marsden's a crackpot, as I'm sure you do, you'll be shocked at how much lower your opinion of her can go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsden-Donnelly_harassment_case

And here's the main Marsden article which condenses that case and details other similar instances, including one involving the woman who had helped her with the above case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Marsden

I know Wikipedia has a bad rep as perhaps not the most reliable site to gather information but, as you'll see, there are dozens of footnotes that back up everything.

 

The woman's a psycho.

This stuff is even worse than her nutbar "political" commentaries.

Glad to see she's found her soulmate in O'Reilly. They deserve each other.

 

Meh, I had to look it up. But once I saw SFU, I remembered it well ... that time in B.C. did me some good, I guess.

 

The unbelieveably annoying Margaret Wente --uberyuppie--has a column that I could actually read from start to finish (no links, it's a Globe & Mail column)
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Here in Canada, we're shocked (shocked!) at how certain Americans are hyping the terrorism story. "There's a large al-Qaeda presence in Canada," declared the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. CNN played the story as "The enemy north of the border." The ever-reliable Fox News said we are a "gateway for terrorists." The right-leaning blogs are going nuts. Come on, you guys! Get a grip!

But you can't really blame them. Not if they're getting their news from us. Yesterday, we were informed in giant headlines our would-be terrorists were plotting to storm the CBC and behead the PM. How were they supposed to know that us locals found these headlines less scary than amusing? After all, many of us would like to storm the CBC. Decapitating the PM also has a certain appeal in some quarters, although not, generally speaking, the same quarters that want to storm the CBC.

And that's the problem with trying to wrap your head around this case. How dangerous is crazy talk? When does crazy talk cross the line into incitement, and to what extent is that a crime? At what point does a gang of hotheads morph into a terrorist cell, and revenge fantasies into a plot? When does the plot become credible? Are we dealing with terrorist masterminds, or are they just a bunch of stupid goofs?

"To call them Muslim terrorists, in my estimation, is a mistake," says University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson. "They are low-ranked idiots."

He's got a point. Unfortunately, plenty of suicide bombers are low-ranked idiots, too.

You don't need a terror mastermind to turn our world upside down. All it takes is a guy on the subway with a bomb in his backpack, or a stupid goof with a gun. Remember the terror in Toronto after someone opened fire on Boxing Day and killed an innocent civilian. Now imagine the terror quotient if it had been self-proclaimed jihadi, instead of a gang member with a bad aim.

Although it's early days, enough details are emerging to reveal the dimensions of the allegations behind the weekend arrests. Most of the 17 people (who include five juveniles) appear to be bit players. The Crown believes the ringleader was 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad: It was he, prosecutors think, who organized the gun-running, the training (such as it was), and the purchase of fertilizer for the truck bombs. The other main figure is Qayyum Jamal, a 43-year-old malcontent whose incendiary talk about jihad purportedly attracted a crowd of young acolytes.

According to police, the plot got going after two Muslim men from Atlanta visited some of the Canadians in March of 2005 to discuss potential bombing targets. The Canadians were also in touch with Younis Tsouli, a 22-year-old in London, England, who authorities say ran al-Qaeda-linked websites and distributed jihadist propaganda on the Internet -- including instructions for making car bombs.

Counterterrorism agents who spoke with The Wall Street Journal say that all of the contacts between Mr. Tsouli and the Canadian group were only about ideas. "In fact, the only resources they could offer each other was advice," said one. "There was no money, no training camps. They were just comparing ideas, not operating as an organization. It was more like a terrorist coffee klatch."

Other people weren't impressed with their expertise, either. A local man interviewed by the Toronto Star remembers their hapless training efforts in the bush. When they tried to walk through a marsh, several stepped off the trail and fell through the ice. Their leader even complained to him. "He said, 'I've got to show these kids everything. They don't know anything. They can't even keep their feet dry.' "

It's likely the Canadians never had a chance. Western nations now work closely together on combatting terrorism and monitoring the Internet, and they were on to the Canadians almost from the start. Shortly after their visit to Toronto, the pair from Atlanta were scooped up on anti-terrorism charges. The Londoner was arrested last fall. You'd have to be a very stupid goof, indeed, to carry on your plotting after that.

Unlike the Americans, the people on my street are taking the headlines in stride. There was an initial flutter, but now they're a lot more worried about the Oilers. That seems about right to me, for now. The trouble is that no one knows how many stupid goofs there are out there, surfing the Net with their twisted fantasies of glory. And no one knows when some of them might get lucky.

 

Forget the FLQ -- after a brief reading up on her, I'm convinced these "terrorists" have a long way to go before getting the juice of a Rachel Marsden.

 

"Low-Ranked Idiots?"
What are they? Other Idiots Receiving Votes? Idiots On The Bubble?

 

Idiots Dropped Out of This Week's Rankings

 

Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

Now we're up to our long distance dedication, about a little terrorist named Snuggles Ahmad.....