Nov. 19, 2006: 8

“Canadian bureaucratic terrorism.”

The strange case of Myriam Bédard -- Sudden departure to United States latest contentious behaviour from Olympic champion , Tu Thanh Ha / James Christie, Nov. 9, 06, Globe and Mail

MONTREAL AND TORONTO — She was once a Canadian sports icon, but these days Myriam Bédard's life has spun into a bizarre tale of estrangement from her family, repeated courthouse appearances, claims that she and her husband are victims of persecution — and a sudden departure to the United States. [....]

Ms. Bédard first came to fame as a two-time gold medalist in biathlon.

Her slide from sports hero to eccentric outcast began in 2004 when she said that her boyfriend, Nima Mazhari, persuaded then-prime-minister Jean Chrétien to keep Canada out of the war in Iraq.

A few months later, Mr. Mazhari was charged with stealing paintings from a Montreal artist. He acted as his own lawyer at his preliminary hearing, which ended with a decision to send him to trial next spring. [....]

... during Commons committee testimony where she made a series of eyebrow-raising, unsubstantiated allegations.

Bedard mentioned "drugs" but that story died ... lack of mention in the mainstream press. Why would the press not investigate further? I heard her say "drugs" in her testimony ... but the word disappeared from Hansard. It reminds me of what is going to happen to history in the bits and bytes age when the delete key is so handy ... and of the links that disappear on this website ... or of the words with spellings altered slightly ... no use in a search ... that kind of little thing.

Related -- etc.

Frost Hits the Rhubarb Aug. 11, 2005: Updated Again: Has Myriam Bedard Joined a Very Select Group? ... "Myriam mentioned drugs in her testimony"

frosthitstherhubarb.blogspot.com/2005/08/
updated-again-has-myriam-bedard-joined.html

Search: Myriam Bedard -- and, while you're at it, any of the rest:

[....] terrorism and Canada
Canada turning a "blind eye to terror," reports TIME Magazine Time included an excerpt from Stewart Bell's book, and more.
Time's Tim McGirk interviewed Abdurahman Khadr's sister Zaynab in Islamabad, Pakistan
Anti-American, anti-Israel Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish
Whistleblowers, Check out Qui Tam
Update: Does the Slush Fund Government Really Want Effective Whistleblower Legislation?
Does the Slush Fund Government Really Want Effective Whistleblower Legislation?
What did Canadians expect? Right! Well, here it is.
Whistleblower bill 'deficient,' says integrity watchdog
Book -- Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism to the World
Stewart Bell's book
"91 War Criminals Evade Ottawa" [....]

Whiskey on the Rocks — 25 Years Old, by Baron Bodissey

gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/11/
whiskey-on-rocks-25-years-old.html

My father worked for Signals Intelligence as a cryptographer during World War Two and the Cold War. [....]

But, whatever it was, we all knew it was serious Cold War stuff, because he had Army signals manuals and a Russian-English dictionary in the house. No need to ask why that would be…

Strangely enough, he also had a Swedish-English dictionary. During an email exchange with Kepiblanc, our Danish reader and translator, I mentioned this fact to him. Since I was aware of the attitude the Danes have towards Sweden, I knew it wouldn’t offend him if I implied that Swedish neutrality during the Cold War had not been considered entirely trustworthy by NATO.

And, indeed, he wasn’t offended. In fact, he had a little story to tell. [....]

Worth reading.




"Throwing Rumsfeld Under the Bus", by Dymphna, Gates of Vienna, November 08, 2006

gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/
11/throwing-rumsfeld-under-bus.html

[....] Clearly, there are problems in Iraq, and those difficulties ultimately led to Mr. Rumsfeld’s departure. But there have also been successes in the War on Terror, namely the liberation of more than 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan, and untold victories that we may never know of. Such victories are accomplished by a special forces team that takes out a high-value target in the back alleys of Baghdad, or an NSA analyst who identifies—and prevents—a money transfer to an Al Qaida cell preparing an attack in the Middle East, or here in our homeland. Prevailing in these small and seemingly unrelated events is how the War on Terror will eventually be won, and Mr. Rumsfeld deserves some of the credit for those successes.

Mr. Rumsfeld deserves some of the credit for those successes. Marshaling our forces to fight this war was an exceptionally difficult job, and Rumsfeld should be commended for re-orienting our military to fight a long war against Islamofacism.

... Defense Secretaries fight wars with military forces that are largely shaped, trained and equipped by the predecessors. Today, we have an Army with only 37 active duty combat brigades, a result of cutbacks endorsed by Bill Cohen, William Perry, Les Aspin and even Dick Cheney. Ditto for the military brass that warned we would need 350,000 troops to secure Iraq. They offered those warnings with the full knowledge that troop cuts they had previously supported—or failed to prevent—would make such force levels an impossibility. Yet, critics who assailed Rumsfeld for “insufficient” force levels in Iraq conveniently ignore the fact that our current combat structure was heavily influenced by decisions made a decade ago—or longer. [....]

Comments re the post from Dymphna and Spook 86

Dymphna said...
www.blogger.com/profile/4896992
11/09/2006 5:33 PM

[There] comes a time in a military officer's career where he can decide to DO something, or he can decide to BE somebody and let himself be groomed for high command.

A case in point: the media are killing us in this war. They are determined to make us lose. I present as one small piece of evidence James Q. Wilson's article, The Press at War.

www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009203

He presents damning evidence of their skewed and negative view of this war, of war in general, and of America's need to defend itelf.

Pipes on airport profiling in Costco Connection

Costco Wholesale’s business magazine, The Costco Connection, reaches 5.5 million readers and each month features a debate page in which a topic of national interest is explored. The November issue asks "Should airport security procedures include ethnic and religious profiling?" Several Costco members offered opinions and two experts - Rebecca Hershey of Amnesty International and myself - wrote brief opinions.

The discussion is best viewed in the original, at http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200611/ [....]

Should airport security procedures include ethnic and religious profiling? , the part by Daniel Pipes only, Costco Connection, November 2006

www.danielpipes.org/article/4122

[....] Yet, whatever the president says at the loftiest levels of policymaking, the post-9/11 traveler boarding an airplane in the United States encounters something quite different: an insistence that everyone is equally suspect. Department of Transportation guidelines, for example, forbid security personnel from relying on "generalized stereotypes or attitudes or beliefs about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity." [....]

Instead, law enforcement must focus on the motivations behind violent acts. Radical Islam inspires Islamist terrorism. All terrorist jihadists are Muslim, using intelligence to focus on the 1 percent of the American population that is Muslim is both logical and inevitable. [....]

Use what works.



Islamists infiltrate four universities , Abul Taher and Dipesh Gadher, The Sunday Times, November 12, 2006, posted by starboardside

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=1060&mforum=elwoodpdowd

[....] The charity has received reports from students about fundamentalists operating in at least four UK institutions: Brunel University, west London, Bedfordshire University, Luton, Sheffield Hallam University and Manchester Metropolitan University.

[....] Sheffield Hallam University [....]

Shakeel Begg, another radical cleric, recently urged students at Kingston University, southwest London, to wage jihad in Palestine. In a tape-recorded speech obtained by The Sunday Times, Begg, who is a Muslim chaplain at Goldsmiths College, part of London University, said: “You want to make jihad? Very good . . . Take some money and go to Palestine and fight, fight the terrorists, fight the Zionists.”

British-born Asif Hanif, who killed three people in a suicide attack on a bar in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2003, had attended Kingston.

Admani said some extremists win their peers’ trust in university prayer rooms before inviting them to off-campus lectures.

In other cases, groups banned by the National Union of Students, such as Hizb-ut Tahrir, are thought to be operating under alternative names. [....]

Iran: We will crush Israeli attack , ShanghaiDaily.com , Created: 2006-11-13 CST, Updated: 2006-11-13 CST

www.forumsvibe.com/elwoodpdowd/view
topic.php?t=1067&mforum=elwoodpdowd

IRAN'S Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday his country's Revolutionary Guards would strongly and immediately respond to any Israeli attack.

"If the Zionist regime commits such stupidity, the response by the Iranian military will be swift, strong and crushing," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said. "Iran will take no longer than a second to respond."

Israeli officials have commented recently that the country's military would consider bombing Iranian nuclear facilities to thwart what it has described as an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran says it wants to use nuclear power to generate electricity. [....]