Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is in hot water with the moral equivalency crowd. Some of the comments on the article provide a glimpse into how confused Modern Leftism has become, equating Hamas to Israel, America, Canada, etc.:
"Terrorist" is just a modern propaganda term for "resistance fighter" or "patriot". Had the term been invented in the 18th century, the leaders of the French Revolution and the Boston Tea Party would have been labeled "terrorists".So says someone living on stolen First Nation land. From European ranks come a long line of thieves and killers of indigenous peoples.
Baird has no idea what Canadians think, feel or want their government to do. Him and Harper speaking for very few Canadians when it comes to the mess in the Middle East and his gratuitous "We mourn the loss in Gaza" but we fully support it is unbelievably insensitive and unqualified. Canada we have a rogue government, a government that came to power under the in and out scandal and should never have been allowed to remain the government of this country once they admitted to cheating in the 2006 elections. They need to be gone and the sooner the better. They have no clue of how to make things better but they have no problem with making them worse wherever they are.
Mr Baird's comments are completely detached from reality and from the values shared by every single person I know. On my Twitter, I am sick of seeing bodies of Gazan families, especially the dead kids. Cheering on Israel's ongoing massacre of an all-but-defenseless peoples is truly disgusting.
Leftists, progressives, social justice warriors - call them what you like - are people whose emotional and intellectual development stopped around the age of 12. This is why they are unable to view matters beyond the narrow lens of their feelings, and like most children on the cusp of the hormonal disturbance that is adolescence, unable to temper those feelings with facts that may detract from a good eruption of rage.
[sarc] If we truly wish to improve this world, the best way to start would be to decorate lampposts with strung-up progressives - if nothing else, it will improve the political discourse by limiting it to adults whose mental age matches their physical age[/sarc]
The only way to stop the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israelis is to convince Hamas and its backers that attacking Israel is so painful, any alternative has to be better (if we start by turning Qatar back into a patch of sand fit only for camel jockeys, i.e. take out their oil infrastructure, that would help). The Palestinians can have peace any time they want. They just have to accept that Jews have a right to live. A Progressichild who fails to graps this is not worth the oxygen it wastes.
"Under fire"? Being "under fire" from HRW is like receiving a sternly-worded missive from Screwtape. It means you're over the target.
"Mr Baird's comments are completely detached from reality and the values shared by every single person I know." That says a lot more about you than it does about him.
I am unable to comment on Globe & Mail articles. Just don't understand why.
Although it might be I have disparaged the Equivocation of the Librano talking points for decades now and the Globe & Mail seems to be replacing some of the void on stupidity, now occasionally demonstrated on CBC.
The latest hypocrisy from CBC is the number of programme commercials the mother-ship for Leftist thinking continually runs on FOX News
I wonder if "Friends of CBC" know this? Surely none of that" holier than thou" group would ever watch FOX. Cheers;
Brilliant summary of the Leftist mindset!
Wonder why democracy is doomed? These commenters vote.
Not just the CBC is leftist. That Jake Trapper on CNN is decidedly critical of Israel's actions never failing to whine about the collateral damage while giving short shift to the blizzard of rockets fired by Hamas.
I'm forever fascinated by the illogic so often demonstrated by leftists. Like budgets that will balance themselves, Hamas, Hezbolla, ISIS, Boko Harum et al will magically become benevolent entities and be healers of all conflicts, if we'd only leave them alone.
Yeah, that would have worked well with Hitler-because it worked so well for those who were on the wrong side of Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, Amin,....
Stupid doesn't half cover it.
It's pretty sorry for HAMAS - that after all their big big big plans to kill lots and lots of Israelis have come to naught,
all they can do is whine about their own losses.
Which are quite moderate. As for children, who count for nothing with HAMAS, supposedly more were killed
in digging the tunnels than Israel has killed with their bombardments. It is certainly believable, considering that the
attack tunnels are typically 20 m deep but in rather unconsolidated soil. Cave ins must be frequent.
I do like the military term, "under fire" thrown around with abandon. That's as close as these lily-livered goons come
to real fighting.
My latest contribution to CPC went off in the mail on Friday. If I'd known that John Baird was "under fire" (I must stop
laughing) from Human RIghts Watch my contribution would have been greater. Maybe Human RIghts Watch will sic its
attack wabbits onto him.
On the point of the use of the word terrorist, he has a good point. Its use is a reflection of moral cowardice as it weakens the definition of enemy to considering only their employed tactics. Islamic Jihad is the enemy (thoroughly enabled by Western progressives, the more threatening enemy) and Hamas is just one of its many variants. Using "Terrorism", the lefty opining for the G&M, can equate Baird and company with Bush which evokes the snide giggling of the vast numbers of progressive Canadian dancing monkeys.
Canadian progressives are emboldened after their victory in reaffirming Ontario's economic suicide pact. There's a good reason the G&M is free for most hotel customers - that is exactly what it is worth.
Commies all!
I just can't be bothered to "engage" with Leftist scum anymore. Wake me up when the Civil War starts, and I'll pitch in and help you guys take back the country.
Until then, I am not that interested - I'm too busy watching broke-@$$ hippies down the street trying to move house using a couple of bicycles and a kid's wagon. Priceless!
The proggy proclivity to side with terrorists makes sense when you realize that the progressive's main enemy is individual liberty.
They will side with anyone and anything that advances their war against freedom.
"Terrorist" is just a modern propaganda term for "resistance fighter" or "patriot". Had the term been invented in the 18th century, the leaders of the French Revolution [...] would have been labeled "terrorists".
And they were. The very word "terrorist" comes from the French "Terroriste". The Comité du Salut Public led by Maximilien Robespierre had decided that, in order to save the Revolution from the Royalists and other counter-revolutionaries, they would need to rule by terror "règner par la Terreur". Partisans of la Terreur were known as "terroristes" and, in the days of the guillotine, you wanted to be know as a terrorist lest you'd end up going on a date with a sharp blade.
The term "terrorist" WAS invented in the 18th century, the leader of the French Revolution were actual terrorists and very proud to be so. That is, until they got THEIR date with a sharp blade.
Hamas wants to kill Jews as they consider them less than dogs. They regularly recruit suicide bombers are the promise of a better life after. In fact all those that die in the service of Allah will go to a better place with rewards. The whole idea suffers when the 5 o'clock news shows the wailing over the dead. I would have thought more a celebration. Jim Jones koolaid would be standard fair for the true believers.
IDF fights Hamas in Gaza and hardly a peep from the Arab world. The biggest yipes are from the UNHRC. The UN presence in Gaza has been exposed numerous times for fronting Hamas rocket sites and weapons storage. Creditability shot they continue to whine their tired message.
The clandestine story yet to be told is what IDF Special Forces are doing while this campaign goes on. Planning for this Gaza action has been long standing as Israelis know about the tunnels. One has to suspect there are bigger things afoot.
“If Hamas broke the ceasefire, it does not make it responsible for more Israeli attacks"
Seriously ... how does one even debate someone who is capable of making such a nonsensical statement?
The conflict between the hamas terrorists and the liberal democracy of Israel once again demonstrates that the international socialists of today and the national socialists of 75 years ago are cut from the exact same Jew-hating cloth.
The author is aware, I hope, that 'reality' and 'the values shared by every single person I know' are not synonymous terms.
John Baird, 100%, "the moral equivalency crowd", SQUAT.
Strange world. The Arabs are secretly hoping that Israel crushes Hamas while the UN is the only Hamas ally and cheering section left.
These are the desperate cries of the anti-Semitic Canadian left, Union run politburo.
The socialist elite in frustration mode.
Excellent description of the mindset of the left, and, excellent points about what should be done to defeat terrorism. Eventually it will come to this unless we collapse from within first.
The comments referenced in this post are, I am sad to say, mostly "received wisdom" among the academics at my university and probably most of the others in Canada. While most of them are leftists, they choose cognitive dissonance with regard to the political and social values of Hamas and other terrorist groups. There are also a small percentage who are consciously anti-Semitic, though most are at pains to distinguish their hostility to Israel from their reverent sympathy for "the Jewish people" or individual Jews. More to the point, however, is that these comments are a manifestation of Harper Derangement Syndrome. These people are not motivated primarily by hatred of Jews (or even of Israel), and, in rare moments of self-awareness, they may even feel somewhat uncomfortable making common cause with Russian and Palestinian thugs, but they will allow nothing to cloud their loathing for Stephen Harper and his associates. Many who have spent their lives working for the NDP and have "Jack's Prayer" in a frame on their marble fireplace mantles, are now falling in behind Justin Trudeau, projecting on to this empty cardboard cut-out their hopes and dreams. Some prefer to think that their fellow Canadians were tricked into voting in a majority Conservative government or that the last election was somehow "stolen", but their underlying opinion of people who vote Conservative is one of contempt and disdain.
Israel haters seek to remove all nuance from language - if terrorist is used in one context then it's used for an unrelated (ie insurgency vrs sovereign state for example) but apparently "equivalent" example, then they're both "terrorism" with the accompanying evil intent. That way aggressors can be victims, people defending themselves from terrorists are terrorists themselves. Once the lexicon is muddied and churned about sufficiently, then one thing can be equivalent to another, then judged to be exactly the same - equal. The climate change debate is following the same path.
IOW you can change the meaning of words completely, just add your nuance and bias, so they mean anything you need or want them to mean.
Supporting Israel becomes cheering dead Palestinians. Attacking Israeli troops in Israel through tunnels being destroyed becomes them "breaking the ceasefire."
They have common cause with the the criminal who says he "earned it" when he steals.
The great irony is many groups who support Palestinians, though refusing to understand the plight Hamas has put Gazans through, such as trade unions, gay pride groups and academics, would be the first to the gallows in the sharia/Islamist caliphate.
When you start a war you can expect the people you attack to fight back.
When this happens you protect your children and all civilians but these idiots put them in harms way, using them to gain sympathy. Those bad Israelis for daring to defend their country and it's people after they were attacked first.
The Islamists will not stop their attacks until they are either stopped by the rest of the civilized world taking serious measures and isolating them, keep them the hell out of Western civilization, let them have at each other like tribes throughout history, including Indians in North America who wiped out whole tribes of their people.
But, first and foremost, leave Israel alone to hammer their attackers down and finish the job once and for all while supporting them wherever we can.
Israel is fighting OUR war for us at this point in history: the war of the civilized against the barbarian. If it comes to our shores, yeah - I think we'll make a good showing against the kind of scum who showed up in Calgary and their pathetic hippie catamites.