Tag Archives: Terrorism

Militarism and the Paris attacks – why more war isn’t the answer

“An act of war”, thundered French President Francois Hollande. The nation would respond “ruthlessly” towards the “barbarians” who planned this “cowardly” attack.

These words have power.

The past few days I feel like I’ve been living in a strange time warp. All the worst aspects of the reaction to 9/11 are playing out again – the flag-waving hyperpatriotism, the muscular aggressive posturing, the xenophobic threats, the total erasure of historical causes, the incessant vapid useless questioning of “why to they hate us?” – only this time, we’ve got Facebook and Twitter to amplify the loudest and stupidest voices.

And, to be fair, to act as a corrective.

After the recent carnage in France, my social media feeds have been filled mostly with the exact kind of critically-minded anti-racist don’t-forget-about-all-the-Muslim-victims-of-Western-state-terrorism thoughts and feelings that I’ve had myself – so much so that the odd anti-refugee post that strays into the mix is immediately drowned out.

Honest to God, I live in a little progressive/radical bubble.

It’s a pretty comfortable bubble, but it’s insulating, and when it comes right down to it, I haven’t got much of a clue what’s going on outside of it.

And so it came as a big surprise to me when I found out earlier today that the only mosque in my hometown of Peterborough, Ontario was set on fire last night. The mosque is not five minutes away from where my parents live. Nobody was inside at the time, thank goodness, but just half an hour before the fire was started, around seventy people were apparently there celebrating the birth of a baby.

It shouldn’t have surprised me, really. Peterborough, lovely and progressive as it can seem, has a deep undercurrent of ugly racism running right through it – and in that sense, it’s a lot like most every Canadian city or town I’ve ever been in.

And really, when even people like the supposedly “socialist” Hollande deploy hateful vicious rhetoric, it shouldn’t be shocking that some fragile white folks feel incited to take some kind of grossly misled “revenge” against people who had literally nothing to do with what happened in Paris.

“Barbarians”, “cowards”, “we will be merciless”.

These words have power. Continue Reading

Update on the ongoing Nuttall-Korody trial

Image description: A courtroom sketch of Amanda Korody and John Nuttall (Felicity Don/The Canadian Press)

As regular readers of The Alfalfafield will know, I’ve been closely following the ongoing trial of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody, two now-convicted terrorists who contend that they were entrapped into a plot by their handlers in the RCMP.

The pair were poor ex-heroin addicts living on welfare who had recently converted to Islam when Nuttall encountered an undercover CSIS agent provocateur at his local mosque. Alarmed at the agent’s extreme behaviour, Nuttall reported him to the authorities – ironically, to CSIS itself. It’s unclear how this initial contact with law enforcement metastasized into a massive undercover RCMP operation, but Nuttall’s attorney, Marilyn Sandford insists that the two agencies cooperated, as they are empowered to do under the RCMP’s INSET program.

Unfortunately, no court can compel CSIS to turn over any documentation it may have on the matter, and Sandford suggests that CSIS may have deliberately avoided sharing anything in writing with the Mounties in order to avoid the court disclosure process.

Regardless, Nuttall and his partner soon found themselves entangled in an elaborate plot. Upon meeting somebody who presented himself as a jihadist, Nuttall boastfully claimed that he was plotting a terrorist attack. The only problem for the Mounties was that he was entirely incapable of formulating or executing any kind of feasible plan.

His early schemes involved building a missile and launching it at Seattle (which he mistakenly believed was a mere thirty kilometres away from Vancouver) and hijacking a nuclear submarine. As far as I’ve been able to figure from the media reporting on the trial, neither Nuttall nor Korody had invested any time or effort into pursuing any kind of plot prior to their being contacted by undercover RCMP officers.

Indeed, even after their handler (and an ever-growing web of extras) got them to agree to engage in a plot, he found it extremely difficult to even get them to put down the bong, turn off their video games, and leave their dingy basement apartment. Continue Reading

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