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Idiot or collaborator? Both?

Phil Gurski, a former analyst for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), says that going into the meeting with Trudeau there were enough unanswered questions to have given pause to staff at the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), including Boyle's decision to take his pregnant wife backpacking to Afghanistan in the first place.

"What was the actual motive, shall we say, behind this whole trip in the first place?" Gurski said in an interview with CBC News, noting that there are many other places where travel would have been safer. "Somebody in the PMO should have said: 'Is this really the kind of person that we want?'"

**

Boyle did not arrive at the PM’s office as just another released hostage.

First, he was once briefly married to Zaynab Khadr, the jihad-loving big sister to Omar Khadr, the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, two of the children of the late Ahmed Said Khadr.

He was a suspected bomber being held in Pakistan when then Prime Minister Jean Chretien went to bat for him with then Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto. ...

Then there are the curious circumstances of Boyle and second wife Caitlan Coleman’s capture in Afghanistan.

Boyle, who describes himself as a “pilgrim,” has always said they just wanted to help villagers living in remote Taliban-controlled Afghanistan where no aid workers dared venture; there are U.S. intelligence officials who don’t entirely buy that.

Justin has a talent for rudeness and contempt, something he reserves for the Canadian electorate (who strangely tolerate it). He also has propensity for douchebaggery.


But his meeting with Boyle is something else.


I imagine it never occurred to him to avoid someone whose story has more holes than withered old hosiery. In a way, it shouldn't have. Justin has rubbed elbows with all manner of questionable sorts (like Uncle K. , for example). Even his own ranks are infiltrated with supporters of mad theocratic states. It would not stretch the imagination that Justin truly thought Boyle's dubious story and his connection with the Khadr family (cue cheque-signing here) was right up his alley.



Also - how does one rehabilitate rapists and murderers, Justin?

Despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s naïve assumption we can “de-radicalize” these fighters and “re-integrate” them into our society, the reality is far more complicated.

Those who travelled to Iraq and Syria did so because they were true believers, devoted to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

They believed it was their religious duty to join the Islamic Caliphate – a kingdom ruled by sharia law, led by a man considered the religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Mohammed.

When an al-Qaida offshoot in Iraq declared itself a “Caliphate” in the summer of 2014, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an estimated 100,000 Muslims from around the world travelled there to be a part of it. They believed al-Baghdadi was a descendent of their prophet, and the leader of all Muslims.

Some who joined Islamic State were militant fighters, others were ideological adherents.

The Islamic State was more than just an army, it was a society with its own governing institutions based on Islamic law.

Thanks to unions, people like Wynne get to remain in office for a long time:

The premier of Ontario accused the children of Tim Hortons’ billionaire co-founders Thursday of bullying their employees by reducing their benefits in response to the province’s increased minimum wage.

Whose idea was it to raise the minimum wage, Kathleen?


Also - it's just money:

Ottawa and the provinces will rake in more than $16 billion from carbon pricing between 2018 and 2020, while failing to achieve the Trudeau government’s 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target.

My $16-billion estimate — the bulk of which will be paid by Canadians in higher taxes and prices for most goods and services — is a conservative one.

It doesn’t factor in the full financial impact of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mandatory minimum national carbon price of $10 per tonne of emissions, which kicked in Jan. 1, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has already conceded in its recent report to the United Nations under the Paris climate accord, that Canada won’t achieve Trudeau’s target of reducing emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.

That would require Ottawa to reduce Canada’s current emissions of 722 megatonnes annually (based on 2015 figures, the latest available) to 613 megatonnes by 2020, or by 109 megatonnes. 

Reducing Canada’s emissions by 109 megatonnes annually (a megatonne equals one million tonnes) by 2020, would mean the equivalent of shutting down Canada’s entire electricity sector (79 megatonnes of annual emissions) plus 41% of the agriculture sector (73 megatonnes of annual emissions), in three years. 

Simply put, that’s impossible.

Where did the love go?

The campaigns consistently portray a united Indigenous anti-development front and allies of the green movement, but some Indigenous leaders are becoming alarmed that they could be permanently frozen out of the mainstream economy if resource projects don’t go ahead.

They said in interviews they’ve had enough of activists invading their lands, misleading them about their agendas, recruiting token members to front their causes, sowing mistrust and conflict, and using hard-line tactics against those who don’t agree.

“The best way to describe it is eco-colonialism,” said Ken Brown, a former chief of the Klahoose First Nation in southwestern B.C. “You are seeing a very pervasive awakening among these First Nations leaders about what is going on in the environmental community.”

(sigh):

More than a dozen lawmakers last month met with a Yale University psychiatry professor for two days to discuss President Trump's fitness for office, Politico reported Wednesday.

Dr. Bandy X. Lee reportedly met with the group of lawmakers on December 5 and December 6 and warned them the president is "going to unravel." All of the lawmakers in attendance were Democrats, except for one Republican senator.

Yes, about that:

The White House on Wednesday defended Donald Trump’s tweet about the size of his nuclear button, saying Americans should be concerned about the North Korean leader’s mental fitness, not their president‘s. 

Why worry about the only fat man in North Korea and his missiles when one can worry about the Tweeter-in-Chief?

Some people ...




Once again, the dance repeats itself:

North Korea on Wednesday re-engaged the communications channel in Panmunjeom, calling the South side at 3:30 p.m. and opened the way for further discussions on Seoul’s offer of high-level talks.

Kim must be running out of caviar.




This:

The extremist ISIL group’s branch in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula has taken a simmering dispute with the Palestinian Hamas group based in nearby Gaza to new levels in a 22-minute video calling on its followers to attack the group and executing what it said was a collaborator.

It’s an escalation that analysts say has the potential to destabilize an already fragile security situation in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave that Hamas has controlled for the past decade.

Japan's belief that Pakistan will follow the honour system is erroneous:

Foreign Minister Taro Kono told his Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Asif in Islamabad on Thursday that South Asian countries must not allow “loopholes” in U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

Asif responded that Pakistan is striving to fully implement the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and wants to cooperate with Japan on the matter, according to a Japanese Foreign Ministry statement.

Pakistan, itself known to be a nuclear-armed state, maintains friendly relations with North Korea.

And now, a dog and dominoes: