Juno News - The True North Report： Are we desensitized to terrorism？

00:00:00.000 Hi, we are live. I'm Candice Malcolm, and I am joined by my colleague of the TrueNorth

00:00:18.120 Initiative, Andrew Lawton. We're trying something new here today, so we're trying to do the double

00:00:22.860 streaming with both of us. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:27.560 Yeah, it's good. I mean, I can barely get my computer working most days, but today we're

00:00:31.900 doing a technological experiment, so I make no guarantees. If anything happens, let me

00:00:36.840 just say, first off, to all the people watching, it will be my fault. It doesn't matter what

00:00:40.320 it is. If anything goes wrong, it will be on me. But anyways, good to be doing this.

00:00:44.280 We'll blame Andrew, no problem.

00:00:46.280 Yes. Well, that works for most things.

00:00:48.280 Well, yeah, so this is the guinea pig run, and hopefully things go smoothly. There's

00:00:54.080 a lot to get to today. I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you, Andrew,

00:00:58.900 about it, because I feel like we were bombarded for so long with these horrific terrorist attacks

00:01:06.080 in Europe. They seem to happen so frequently that, you know, at first, when something happens,

00:01:11.960 you know, the very first ones that occurred, maybe the Charlie Hebdo shootings that happened

00:01:17.620 at that French satirical newspaper carried out by an ISIS jihadist, you know, there was

00:01:23.240 just endless outpouring of, you know, sympathy and support and solidarity with France. But

00:01:32.100 then you had, you know, one after another, after another, after another, they all kind

00:01:35.240 of almost blend together. And now, I mean, there was a deadly terrorist attack that happened

00:01:39.280 in Strasbourg this week, and it wasn't trending on Twitter. It wasn't, you know, on the front

00:01:45.940 pages of the main media sites. You kind of had to dig to find out information about it.

00:01:52.540 Did you notice that? And maybe you can provide just an overview and an update on what the latest

00:01:56.720 is from Strasbourg.

00:01:59.040 Yeah, I will. And I think just to start off on the media component, that's a very valid

00:02:03.380 point you raised, because I think that it shows a general complacency that we have about

00:02:09.100 these sorts of terrorist attacks. I mean, we used to measure terrorism by the casualty account.

00:02:15.940 And, you know, the 9-11 levels of numbers, you know, 3,000 people killed. And then it became

00:02:21.440 where the frequency was far more relevant. So you'd have these, you know, attacks where

00:02:26.180 there might not have even been fatalities. You know, someone runs a van in the road, maybe

00:02:30.200 it's a couple, three, four, or maybe a few more. But now it's, this is back page news.

00:02:37.780 And I remember when I was in Israel, not in 2015, but the first time I went in 2011, one of

00:02:44.100 the people I had the chance to interview there was a Jerusalem Associated Press reporter. And one

00:02:50.000 of the things he said is that, you know, what's the world is front page news about terrorism in

00:02:55.480 the Middle East, in Jerusalem is back page news, because they're so used to it. And I feel that in 0.98

00:03:00.760 the last seven years, there's been a flip there, where now these things are not front page news.

00:03:06.400 And I don't take any nobility in that. It's like, not like, oh, well, you know, we're refusing to let

00:03:11.660 ourselves be terrorized. No, it's people refusing to confront the realities of it. And to look at

00:03:17.060 what's happening in Strasbourg, I have my computer open, just because there have been some developments

00:03:21.360 recently here. But Sharif Shakat was the suspect, police shot him after a two day long manhunt. And there

00:03:30.620 were three people that were killed at this at a Christmas market, which is not the first time we've

00:03:36.220 seen that type of attack before. But as is the case in almost all of these, he was known to police

00:03:44.640 and had been on a watch list as a security threat. And I find this infuriating, because we often hear

00:03:50.720 about these lone wolves. And I think the line that's been used by a number of people is that

00:03:55.160 the lone wolves are invariably always known wolves, because these are people that have been on lists,

00:04:01.040 they've been on police radar, whether it was Faisal Hussain in Toronto, whether it's Sharif

00:04:05.960 Shakat here, whether it's the people that have been involved in the past Paris attacks, Brussels

00:04:10.660 attacks, Germany, it doesn't matter. They're known. And I think that the two are related here.

00:04:16.520 When you look at on one hand, names that are known to authorities and people that are still committing

00:04:22.160 acts of terror. And on the other side, these acts of terror are not actually getting much in the way of

00:04:27.760 media coverage. And there's a general ignorance or a malicious ignorance that comes about when people

00:04:35.260 just don't pay attention to these things. And that's what we're seeing with Strasbourg. And I

00:04:39.760 think that's incredibly problematic for a number of reasons. But even just for the pragmatic reasons

00:04:46.540 alone, that you've got all these people on watch lists, and that only becomes relevant information

00:04:51.580 after they commit an act of terror.

00:04:54.080 Well, exactly. I mean, the question of how can someone be on a terror watch list? How can

00:04:58.800 authorities be actively aware of a person somehow tracking, you know, their every movement? You

00:05:04.960 know, it gives you some sort of peace of mind in Canada to think, okay, you know, the government

00:05:10.680 says that there's 60 terrorists that had traveled abroad to fight for ISIS or other groups. You know,

00:05:16.200 they're back in Canada, but at least the government is monitoring them. So hopefully they won't,

00:05:20.220 you know, do anything horrible. And they would be able officials to be able to stand in and stop

00:05:26.520 them. But then you have stories like this of someone being on an official watch list. I remember

00:05:32.060 it was the same thing with a UK terrorist who blew himself up at the Ariana Grande concert.

00:05:38.060 Yeah, it was also well known to authorities. He had just traveled back to Libya, and it only

00:05:41.860 been in the UK for a couple of days when he carried out that just gruesome attack. So, you

00:05:46.340 know, it's not a lot of solos for the families of the victims, that there's even any competency

00:05:51.780 when it comes to, you know, especially in Europe. But the communication and the activities by these

00:05:57.980 security officials is supposed to keep us safe, and yet they can't even keep talking to the people

00:06:01.820 they know are terrorists in our communities.

00:06:03.980 Yeah, and I think the one big question mark that's over these is, where is the actual watching of

00:06:10.800 people on watch lists? I mean, a watch list is not meant to just be some obscure database buried

00:06:16.300 on the hard drive of some police agency. A watch list is supposed to be about the actual watching

00:06:21.980 part. And, you know, for all the people go on about no-fly lists. Well, the no-fly list at least is

00:06:27.500 somewhat enforced, because if someone's on a no-fly list, it means that you know they're not going to be

00:06:31.580 able to fly. And if someone is on a watch list, it stands to reason that we are keeping tabs on them

00:06:37.360 in some way. And I know that law enforcement agencies will say, well, we can't surveil people

00:06:43.200 24-7, and I get that. But surely what they're doing isn't working when you've got so many of these

00:06:49.140 people that they're saying, oh, yes, you know, he was known to authorities as being a radical. And I'm

00:06:54.580 like, well, what good did that do? I'd rather they say, well, he was a complete stranger to us.

00:06:59.820 No one saw this coming. We had no idea who he was. Like, you know, he was a saint. He was an

00:07:04.240 angel. Because then I'd say, all right, well, I guess this couldn't have been prevented. But every

00:07:08.880 single time one of these attacks take place, and we know that police literally at some point made

00:07:14.440 the determination that, you know, we think this guy is someone to watch, that suggests that a lot

00:07:19.320 of these, if not most of these, are preventable. And, you know, terrorism is bad enough. When you put in

00:07:25.360 that something could have been prevented, it becomes an absolute abomination. And Europe has

00:07:31.500 become far too forgiving and far too complacent. And we know that North America is often downstream

00:07:38.380 of what trends are going on in Europe on demography and terrorism by sometimes five or 10 years. And

00:07:45.620 I hear that's the case here. So it's one thing to look at Europe and say, you guys need to smarten up.

00:07:50.840 We also need to make sure we don't follow that example. And I know you've done a lot on this,

00:07:56.300 of pointing out how the current government has been very much disengaged from really monitoring

00:08:03.580 actively a lot of the returning ISIS fighters. And that suggests we may be closer to Europe than,

00:08:09.100 you know, we usually are. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, I wanted to bring up another case of a terrorist 0.59

00:08:13.420 attack that happened this week in another part of the world that, you know, sometimes it feels like

00:08:18.560 Canada is becoming more and more like Israel. I think Israel has long been saying, you know,

00:08:23.680 we've had to live with the reality of terrorism in our backyard and at our borders every single day

00:08:30.300 for decades. And this reality is just kind of coming to fruition in Europe and in Canada. So,

00:08:37.640 you know, I think Israel does a lot of things right when it comes to combating terrorism and

00:08:42.920 actually having a stomach to confront it and name it and do what's necessary to stop it.

00:08:48.560 Unfortunately, you can't stop everything. And so on Sunday evening, there was basically a drive-by

00:08:54.300 shooting where a Hamas terrorist took out a gun and just mowed people down at a bus stop

00:09:01.140 in Israel. He shot seven people. One of the couples that he shot, this is just absolutely devastating,

00:09:09.400 a Canadian couple, a 21-year-old man whose family is from Montreal, and his Israeli wife who was eight

00:09:16.020 months pregnant, the terrorist shot her in the stomach. I don't know. I don't know how you can

00:09:21.600 look at people waiting at a bus stop and see them as an enemy target, like a military target. I also

00:09:28.780 don't know how you could see an eight-month pregnant woman and see her stomach, her pregnant stomach, 1.00

00:09:32.760 as a target. But anyways, this terrorist shot her in the stomach. The baby was delivered. It was alive.

00:09:38.600 And sadly, it died of its injuries, the baby's injuries yesterday, which is really just horrifying

00:09:45.680 and sad. You know, the most despicable kind of crime imaginable is killing a baby. And so,

00:09:53.960 you know, you have that connection to Canada. I think that there has been a little bit of outcry.

00:09:59.900 I've seen bits of it, but I don't think that this is really even making media, making news, and certainly

00:10:05.660 not the mainstream media. And, you know, it just kind of serves as a reminder, not only that this kind

00:10:12.920 of stuff is an everyday occurrence in Israel. The terrorist who did the shooting was killed, and he's

00:10:19.980 being praised. You can see the praise on social media from Hamas propaganda sites, as well as verified

00:10:25.900 Twitter accounts that claim to speak for the Palestinian government, glorifying this man, calling him a

00:10:33.400 martyr, calling him a hero. And again, you know, this is sort of the mentality and the reality of these just

00:10:41.920 deranged ideological jihadists. They see people in everyday situations as targets. They kill them. And, you know,

00:10:52.120 then they get celebrated and praised within their communities. And there's a bias in the media as

00:10:56.660 well, Andrew, as you well know. You know, the Guardian newspaper reported, you know, four people

00:11:03.460 died in Israel, two Israelis, two Palestinians. They make it seem like it's just this total equivalence

00:11:09.120 between the two sides that died. It's like, okay, well, the two Palestinians who died were the terrorists

00:11:14.660 who killed the two Israelis, and then the terrorists were killed by Israeli forces. So that's not really

00:11:20.180 an equivalency, and to sort of paint it as just, oh, there's a violent clash, and four people died,

00:11:25.340 two from each side. It doesn't really properly paint the picture of what has actually happened,

00:11:33.180 which, again, is just, you know, incredibly, incredibly sad. I don't know, you've been to Israel

00:11:39.780 a couple of times. Do you think that there's things that we can take away from this, that we can learn

00:11:44.760 from something like this? Or, you know, how can we ever protect ourselves from these kind of

00:11:49.580 random, one-off killings that happen?

00:11:53.820 Well, what makes the Israel example, I think, so insidious is that the willingness for people to 1.00

00:12:01.180 commit what we would characterize as acts of terror, as I think this one very accurately is described by,

00:12:06.780 is not a radical view in some of the Palestinian pockets. It's quite a mainstream view.

00:12:12.140 And look, in 2015, I was in Israel, and you and I were actually on the same trip. And I remember

00:12:19.680 one of the most really standout moments of that delegation for me was speaking with a man who

00:12:27.220 was a Palestinian talk show host. And what was fascinating is that we were sitting down with

00:12:34.960 him, and at the time, in 2015, there had been a rash of stabbings in the streets of Israel,

00:12:41.180 of, you know, Palestinian terrorists stabbing, you know, random Jews. And one of them, a couple

00:12:45.180 days earlier to this, had been an older lady, which I think is, you know, one notch below a 1.00

00:12:50.500 baby as far as the level of evil goes. And I was asking this guy, who was speaking very candidly

00:12:56.780 with us about this, and he had said that he had did a topic on his show, his call-in talk show not 0.93

00:13:01.780 long ago, Is It Okay to Stab Jews in the Streets? And he was so proud to say to me, most called in who

00:13:07.560 said, most who called in said no. And I'm thinking, I was a talk show host at the time,

00:13:11.700 and I'm thinking, you know, how well would that go over if I had said, all right, is it okay to, 0.96

00:13:15.220 you know, stab Jews in the streets? Call now. Your call's after news and traffic. And to find even 1.00

00:13:20.720 one person in North America that would say, well, yeah, you know, I think they've got it coming.

00:13:26.340 But there, it was like a 60-40. Like, you know, 40% of the people that called in said, yeah,

00:13:31.240 yeah, stabbing Jews. So this is not a radical view. And I think that in that case, Israel is in a 0.90

00:13:37.800 perpetual state of war. I mean, that's exactly what it is. And except Israel is hell-bent on going after

00:13:44.860 the terrorists, whereas the terrorists are hell-bent on going after anyone who's Israeli. And they view

00:13:50.500 no distinction between an IDF soldier in fatigues and a pregnant Canadian woman and her child. They are

00:13:57.620 both the same. They are both completely fine with those being casualties of war.

00:14:03.740 So it's just so evil and so reprehensible. And, you know, like you said, it's not just,

00:14:09.200 you know, admitting that those are your views, you know. It's not like calling into a, if a pollster

00:14:14.320 calls your house and asks, you know, what are your private views when it comes to, like, personal

00:14:19.060 social issues. It's like, you know, they're so not ashamed of wanting to kill people who aren't them

00:14:25.560 that they'd be willing to express their views openly on a talk radio show, you know, even with

00:14:29.820 identifying their names. And again, it goes to the sort of much deeper structural issues at play

00:14:36.400 here. The fact that they, you know, there's propaganda in the schools that they're raised,

00:14:40.520 you know, brainwashed and embedded with these ideas. As we know, the Canadian government gives a

00:14:46.120 lot of aid to the Palestinian areas and Palestinian people in and around Israel. And part of the major

00:14:52.400 concern is like, how is this money being spent? How is it being monitored? The United Nations group

00:14:58.060 itself, UNRWA, has long documented ties to Hamas, to terrorism, to using UN facilities like,

00:15:07.660 you know, meeting rooms, ambulances, all this kind of stuff to help run guns and to smuggle weapons and

00:15:15.020 to be active figures in the war. And then, you know, Canada is paying these organizations. There's

00:15:21.380 not really any kind of transparency or proper monitoring of our funds. So it's just, you know,

00:15:26.920 it's such a terrible and sad situation over there. And I don't really see it getting any better. I'm

00:15:34.700 just, you know, hoping that, well, hoping that stuff doesn't ever really spill into Canada. And I do want

00:15:41.560 to talk about on that topic, the Canadian government released its annual report yesterday on the terrorist

00:15:47.400 threat to Canada. I put a quick analysis up of it, just sort of my overview in the sort of weird

00:15:54.660 political correctness that it seeped into it, and sort of lack of willingness to identify ties to ISIS.

00:16:03.240 One of the weird things, Andrew, in the report is that it stated over and over again, that there were

00:16:07.040 no terrorist attacks in Canada in 2018. Now, you have to have a pretty warped understanding of the world

00:16:15.240 in current events and what's happened in 2018, to make a claim like that, which is what the federal

00:16:22.840 government has done. They acknowledge that there were violent attacks, and that there were deadly

00:16:28.400 attacks in Canada, but then just sort of plainly state that they weren't terrorism. What's your take

00:16:35.300 on that? Well, I always dislike making these things or anything about semantics only, but

00:16:43.720 the characterization and classification when it comes to terrorism is important, more so than

00:16:49.940 most other distinctions of violent crime, because the way you tackle it is different. I mean, the way

00:16:54.560 you tackle, you know, gang violence in Toronto is different than the way you tackle domestic violence,

00:16:59.560 which is different from the way you tackle terrorism and radicalism. And I think the Faisal 0.97

00:17:04.980 Hussein case was a classic example of this, a Dan Forthaf shooter, where, like a lot of these cases,

00:17:11.620 it may seem like there's a bit of a gray area. Can you say it's terrorism? Can you say it's mental

00:17:16.920 illness? Can you say it's whatever? And I think the line between those two oftentimes is very blurry

00:17:23.220 because of the types of people that ISIS is trying to propagandize and radicalize. And any time there

00:17:30.700 is at all an ideology component of this that involves radicalism, you have to explore the

00:17:40.220 terrorism angle. And what we're seeing a lot of now is where police will say, we can't rule it out,

00:17:46.200 and that's the end of it. And then you think, all right, you know, maybe they're still looking into

00:17:49.560 it until you get to the end of the year. And a report comes out that said, no terrorism, problem

00:17:53.660 solved, it's magic. And when governments do that, they're trying to say that there is no problem

00:17:59.640 whatsoever. And this is the type of report that will be used by people. And I think we're already

00:18:04.860 seeing it to say, oh, you know, there's more of a threat from right wing extremists and, you know,

00:18:09.920 right wing radicals and, and, and this sort of stuff. And that's going to happen a lot more because

00:18:15.400 just because you put in a report that nothing happened doesn't mean that nothing happened.

00:18:20.480 But this becomes the basis of government policy on it. And look, a life lost is a life lost. And I

00:18:26.600 think that we can't lose, we can't make, make every tragic incident political, but you have to

00:18:31.600 understand the political undertones that are taking place through this. And we've got a government that

00:18:36.640 would much rather focus on doing absolutely nothing and saying that everything is a random act of

00:18:42.480 violence, then suggest that there is a global threat that terrorism poses.

00:18:49.340 Well, you know, there's a couple of things that are interesting about what you said. First of all,

00:18:54.060 mental illness is not a motive. Mental illness doesn't cause you to wake up one morning and decide

00:19:00.620 to go butcher a bunch of people randomly indiscriminately on the street. I mean, a person

00:19:06.600 having mental illness may contribute to, you know, their episodes and their willingness to carry that

00:19:13.100 something like that out. But that's not the thing that sparks your decision to do it. And so the, you know,

00:19:18.040 the whole idea of the whole concept behind terrorism is as politically motivated violence. And so I just,

00:19:26.140 I just really don't understand how, you know, in the case of the Danforth shooter, it was like, well,

00:19:32.360 his family said he's mentally ill, case closed, like, that doesn't really give us any further insight

00:19:39.540 into why this man decided to commit such a heinous crime. And, you know, at the time, the police said

00:19:46.500 that they hadn't, like you said, they hadn't ruled out terrorism. But then they never provided any kind

00:19:51.940 of update to the public to say, you know, we monitored his social media account, which they did.

00:19:56.940 And there were reports that said that authorities found that he had visited ISIS propaganda websites.

00:20:03.180 ISIS themselves took responsibility for the attack. Now, the police now say that that was a false.

00:20:08.420 Not according to the government.

00:20:09.720 That was false. Yeah, they falsely took credit for the account. It's like, okay, prove exactly why you say

00:20:16.220 that's false. Like, you throw the word falsely in there as if that's a fact that's been proven. But there has been

00:20:22.260 other connections. And it's like, you just look at the guy, you know, he basically fits the mold

00:20:28.140 exactly of a would be jihadist terrorist. I think he I'm not I can't remember the exact details. I know

00:20:36.780 his family came from Afghanistan. I can't remember if he was born in Canada, or Afghanistan, but he had

00:20:42.220 recently visited Afghanistan, he had traveled there. I know the police report that they did release

00:20:47.540 to media, and then I think it got leaked to the public, showed that when his parents were

00:20:52.420 interviewed immediately after the attack, they gave completely contradictory accounts

00:20:56.800 as to what what his background was, you know, the mom said that he'd never left Canada,

00:21:02.880 the dad said that he traveled to Afghanistan. The mom said that he didn't play video games. The dad

00:21:09.540 said that he spent all his time playing video games. It was just sort of this weird, like disconnect.

00:21:13.480 And even the mental illness rationale was split. I think it was the dad said, yes, he had had mental

00:21:19.500 illness issues. And the mom said no, or it might have been the other way around. Yeah, it was the

00:21:23.400 other way around. We're talking about, you know, a family of four or five that lived in like a three

00:21:28.600 or four bedroom apartment here. I mean, we're not talking about people that, you know, lived in some

00:21:32.760 20 bedroom mansion and never saw each other. Like these were people in very confined spaces that somehow

00:21:38.180 had no idea what the lives of each other were like. Right? Yeah. So it was just very

00:21:42.900 strange. And so, you know, at the time you can kind of say, okay, there's a lot of public anger and

00:21:48.940 frustration. People obviously feel like their city is under attack in Toronto. And, you know,

00:21:54.020 there's a lot of misreporting and misremembering that happens in the wake of these kinds of attacks.

00:21:59.380 Eyewitnesses are sort of, you know, they're known for not remembering things accurately. And it was

00:22:06.700 interesting to go through all the different eyewitness accounts describing the shooting because there was

00:22:11.600 just a lot of, you know, information is just proven to not be true about what the suspect looked like

00:22:18.540 and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, you kind of expect, okay, there's, there's, there's hype after

00:22:23.940 terror attack, and then things calm down. And maybe the police will put out like a comprehensive report

00:22:29.200 a couple months later, like this is what happened. This is who this guy is. This is the motive. This is

00:22:33.740 where he got the guns. This is, you know, and the other thing, you know, a lot of people speculated that he

00:22:39.140 was a experienced shooter, just by the way that he was able to carry out that gruesome attack at the

00:22:44.500 Danforth. And so, you know, we're still waiting for the police to release that report. And then

00:22:49.860 in this public safety report put out by the Trudeau government yesterday, it kind of just makes it

00:22:55.840 seem like everything's already been determined. You know, the facts are settled. And we all agree.

00:23:01.700 Yeah, it wasn't ISIS. And yet, it's like, well, where's where's the information coming from? Where's this

00:23:06.920 report coming from? And I think that that is quite a disservice to Canadians to not really know what's

00:23:13.340 going on. And then there was another, another few examples, you know, the, the Somali migrant who

00:23:18.680 drove through, he had two, he first was in his own car, then he commandeered a U-Haul truck, and he ran

00:23:27.340 through a crowd of people in Edmonton. He got out and stabbed a police officer, and then he continued

00:23:31.980 his rampage. They found an ISIS flag in his car. And yet the report talks about him and doesn't

00:23:37.320 mention ISIS at all. The woman at Canadian Tire who was swinging a golf club and attacking people 0.92

00:23:43.700 in the store, I think she was stabbing people as well. She said multiple times that she was part of

00:23:48.440 ISIS and that she was doing it for ISIS. And the report doesn't mention that she was part of ISIS or

00:23:54.440 she believed. No, and there was a case that might have been two years ago, I can't remember the guy's

00:23:58.220 name, but the one who stabbed a couple of soldiers at a military recruiting center in North Toronto.

00:24:03.300 And he kept saying, you know, I'm an ISIS terrorist, I'm an ISIS terrorist. And they're like, no,

00:24:06.880 you're not. You're mentally ill. He's like, no, I'm doing this for ISIS. And the police said, no, 1.00

00:24:10.500 no, no, no, no, you're sick. And he's like, no, I'm, it's like, what does a guy have to do to be

00:24:14.380 taken seriously as an ISIS terrorist now? Like, like, I'm convinced that bin Laden could come out of the 0.96

00:24:19.180 grave and say, you know, I, I hereby resuscitate Al-Qaeda. And they'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, 0.78

00:24:23.280 come on, you're, you're ill, you know, here, sit down, have a Snickers bar. Like, it's,

00:24:27.220 it's insane that we don't even take people at their word, let alone investigating further when

00:24:31.660 these things come up. And, you know, it's funny, you mentioned the side of this that I think has

00:24:38.380 not gotten as much play as it needs to. And that is just the serialization of these things. Because

00:24:44.260 when you have this society, and we were talking about this earlier with Strasbourg, where these

00:24:49.980 things are so commonplace, it becomes very easy for governments to never worry about, you know,

00:24:55.240 tying up these cases with a bow and actually putting out that report. And I'll give you one

00:24:59.740 example of this. Look at the Las Vegas shooting in the US, the most deadly mass shooting in, you know,

00:25:06.040 the modern American world, one of the most horrific events globally, as far as that time goes and mass

00:25:13.320 violence. So many question marks in that case, so many red flags, so many issues. I mean, ISIS took

00:25:19.580 credit for that one as well. But no resolution. And it could be that police are not convinced they

00:25:26.760 can resolve it. But people just move on. And every couple of months, someone says, Oh, whatever,

00:25:31.340 whatever happened with that Vegas shooting, and then people move on. And because we are so accustomed

00:25:36.260 to these acts of violence, now, there is no accountability, because people will have moved on

00:25:41.920 to the next one into the next one. And especially in Europe, by the time the Strasbourg case happens,

00:25:47.000 we're four terrorist attacks behind or seven terrorist attacks behind the cases that the

00:25:52.960 police are actually, you know, really doing the deep dive into and finding the motive of.

00:25:57.700 And I'm convinced there's never going to be a final report of the Faisal Hussein case. I think the last

00:26:04.000 one that will ever really be, you know, permanently cemented and understood as terrorism will be the

00:26:09.920 2014 Parliament Hill shooting. And we can look in the four and a half years since then, and find

00:26:16.980 numerous examples where someone has in the name of Islamic extremism committed violence. But we're so 0.98

00:26:23.160 focused as a society and our government is so focused on trying to find anything they can to to even

00:26:30.060 dent that narrative by putting in, you know, some other factor that they'll eradicate the terrorism

00:26:36.320 narrative. And, you know, if you look in the UK, for example, their policy is it's terrorism until

00:26:42.060 we prove otherwise, because they know how common these things are. And I think that approach creates

00:26:46.720 different flaws. But in Canada, if they find one little thing that they think it presents an

00:26:53.280 alternative motive, or might even suggest that they're going to go with that and completely

00:26:58.120 disregard the terrorism motive. And that was what they did with Faisal Hussein is that, you know,

00:27:03.520 they have some ambiguity about the mental health diagnosis. So let's get rid of the terrorism. And

00:27:08.500 that's what we're going to see a heck of a lot more of now, because people seem to be buying into

00:27:13.960 it. Well, and you know, just because you have a mental illness doesn't rule out terrorism, like you 0.93

00:27:18.620 could be mentally ill, and easily recruited by ISIS and carry out an attack. And I think you're right, 0.71

00:27:24.160 there's so there's so many like weird euphemisms that we use when talking about this stuff that it

00:27:27.480 helps us, it prevents us from properly understanding, like what is going on. So, you know, I think one of the

00:27:33.500 things that ISIS has done is taking credit for attacks where they think that their tactics were

00:27:39.100 carried out or like they're, you know, like, like the guy in North York who jumped in a rental van

00:27:45.340 and plowed through a crowd of people, right? You know, we've seen this happen in Christmas markets,

00:27:49.540 we saw this happen in Nice, this is straight out of the ISIS playbook of their tactics, like how they 0.98

00:27:54.660 carry out and kill and what they've called on people to do ISIS called on people to get in their car 0.99

00:27:59.320 and run over infidels. So when that happened in Toronto, it was like, well, this is an ISIS inspired 0.92

00:28:04.920 attack, it's using the ISIS tactics that happen. Now, the individual who carried out the attack

00:28:10.680 didn't happen to have anything to do with ISIS, he happened to have some other ideology that led him to

00:28:16.160 carry out the attack, which, again, I would argue makes it terrorism. But we, you know, because we don't use

00:28:23.480 ISIS inspired attacks, you know, they consider lone wolf attacks, like if an individual is self radicalized,

00:28:29.320 and then he decides on his own that because of ISIS, he's going to carry an attack. They call that an ISIS

00:28:34.080 inspired attack, which isn't, it's just a plain old ISIS attack. That's also part of their strategy is to 0.88

00:28:39.780 have people who aren't necessarily soldiers who have trained in Syria and Iraq carrying out attacks,

00:28:45.460 but having, you know, Canadians or Americans or Australians, you know, pick up the robe of terrorism

00:28:51.320 and carry it out. And in the report, they kind of acknowledge that they said, you know, there are a

00:28:56.240 lot of people who have replicated the tactics of jihadi terrorist groups, the whole section on

00:29:02.700 right wing extremism, which mentions that young street van attacker was sort of the right wing

00:29:10.540 terrorism. One thing that I thought was at least, you know, helpful was that they admitted in the

00:29:16.180 report that, you know, what right wing terrorism is on the rise, but it's not really a thing in Canada,

00:29:20.920 it's, it's a sort of online phenomenon. And it pales in comparison with the threat of both ISIS

00:29:27.220 and Al Qaeda, which, again, the report was like, you know, one half like hard nosed police report

00:29:34.720 from professional security agents and officials who have worked probably all over the world and

00:29:39.940 understand the real threats we face. And then you could tell, you know, a true to liberal official

00:29:44.640 had gone through and edited and added in things here and there to make it more politically correct

00:29:49.360 and more palatable. But it was sort of overall helpful. And I think, you know, even, even with

00:29:55.820 the Al Qaeda connection, we kind of forget that that's still a thing, still an active organization.

00:30:03.300 It was a good segue, Andrew, to talk a little bit about Omar Khadr, who's back in the news.

00:30:08.920 Let's, let's do a little overview of why he's back in the news. And then we'll, then we'll wrap this up.

00:30:13.480 Yeah. So, I mean, just for people that are looking for the latest on this, the case is

00:30:19.940 not going to have a decision announced until next week. So you're not missing it if you've been

00:30:23.900 looking online for it. But Omar Khadr says he has been continuously traumatized by the bail

00:30:30.700 conditions, which he says are so restrictive. It's, you know, he's never really finished being

00:30:35.860 at Guantanamo Bay. So, you know, we've been hearing, yeah, we've been hearing for years that,

00:30:42.100 you know, Guantanamo Bay is just, you know, like being in Abu Ghraib for, you know, so long. And,

00:30:47.360 you know, it's just ongoing torture. And the fact that Omar Khadr thinks, you know, walking around

00:30:51.580 free in Edmonton with 10 and a half million dollars is, is just as bad as being in Guantanamo Bay.

00:30:56.740 So just Guantanamo Bay is actually not as bad as, as perhaps he was making it out to be. But he says

00:31:01.960 that bail restrictions, because people forget this, he has not been exonerated, he has not

00:31:05.740 been cleared. In the eyes of the American military court system, he is still a convicted, confessed

00:31:11.520 murderer and terrorist. And people forget that he is technically on bail. He hasn't completed his

00:31:18.260 sentence. He hasn't been freed. His conviction hasn't been overturned. He was released from prison

00:31:23.480 pending that appeal. So that, I think, just from a legal jargon perspective, is important here.

00:31:30.400 And a lot of the restrictions that were put in place were very reasonable. At first, it was that he had

00:31:34.820 to have, be following a curfew and staying with his lawyer and his family. And he could only leave

00:31:41.400 for work or school. And then the internet restrictions got pulled back and the travel

00:31:46.800 restrictions got pulled back. He's been given temporary access to Ontario a couple of times for

00:31:53.160 family reasons. And one of the most fundamental things that would be expected of any terrorist is,

00:32:02.800 like any other criminal, not cavorting with people that are in that world still. And this is true if

00:32:08.740 you're a mobster on bail, you don't get to talk to your friends in the mob. And if you're a terrorist 0.76

00:32:12.780 on bail, you don't get to talk to terrorists. And the one thing that really comes back here is that

00:32:18.820 Omar Khadr wants to ease the restrictions so that he can get a passport to travel to Saudi Arabia and

00:32:24.740 so that he can, you know, have unsupervised contact with his older sister, Zainab. And, you know,

00:32:32.540 if you were to accept the Omar Khadr slash CBC slash Justin Trudeau narrative that Omar Khadr is the victim

00:32:41.000 in all of this, let's take for a moment at face value what they say. There is zero ambiguity

00:32:47.240 that his sister is a radical, that his sister is a terror sympathizer. She has said in interviews

00:32:52.920 on record that she supports al-Qaeda, that she supports bin Laden. In one interview, when she

00:32:59.000 didn't know that Omar Khadr would later recant his confession, she said that most families should be 0.83

00:33:04.200 proud to have someone like Omar who would throw a grenade and kill a soldier. Like, this is, if you're

00:33:10.260 to find one weak link in the Khadr family short of the father, who is an al-Qaeda financier, it would be

00:33:16.060 Zainab Khadr. And for Omar Khadr to want to have unsupervised contact with her completely nullifies

00:33:24.440 what he was telling Canadians all the way through his legal process once he got out, which is that,

00:33:30.000 you know, he's not his family and he was the victim of all of this. And, you know, they've said some

00:33:34.880 things that he doesn't like. And, you know, I reread the other day Michelle Shepard, who was a Toronto

00:33:40.200 Star reporter who's a complete shill for Omar Khadr. And I reread her piece about it. And I found

00:33:46.040 that quote where he says, oh, you know, my family was hurt and troubled and, you know, I'm not them

00:33:51.460 and people need to judge me on my own. Well, if I am judging Omar Khadr on his own, why does he want

00:33:57.200 to have such close contact with someone who, by all accounts, he should be mad at? Because she's the

00:34:02.960 very representation of the family that got him into trouble in the first place because the family

00:34:08.960 had these inextricable links to Al Qaeda. And I think that this is so revealing in many ways,

00:34:15.220 because Omar Khadr would be a lot more believable if he had taken a zero tolerance approach and said,

00:34:20.260 you know, I don't want anything to do with the radicals in my family. My sister, she's not my

00:34:25.960 sister anymore. She's going to get up there and talk about how great bin Laden is and how he's the 0.68

00:34:30.480 great martyr. And the problem is, though, is that all of this seems to be irrelevant to the court system

00:34:37.440 and to the government. There is not a single thing that Khadr has asked for in the Canadian

00:34:42.620 courts that he has been turned down. And even with suing the federal government, he asks,

00:34:48.660 you know, for millions of dollars, he gets millions of dollars. So I'm convinced that Friday at 1pm

00:34:53.400 next week, when the judge reveals her decision, it will be that, you know, Khadr has demonstrated that,

00:34:58.860 you know, he can do all of this stuff. Because, yeah, he is a model citizen now. He doesn't need to.

00:35:03.080 There's no grenade. There's no IED. But this is going to be for Canadians, a watershed moment here

00:35:09.260 of how much you are prepared to completely put your head in the sand about his own comments. I mean,

00:35:15.420 his own comments right now are now being nullified by this.

00:35:19.160 It's a really good point about his family and also just, you know, the life that he's lived in the

00:35:23.740 public for the last decade or two. You know, he's he is used to sort of getting his ways used to being

00:35:29.660 painted as the victim, shown incredible deference and sympathy from journalists. I have a friend who

00:35:36.140 worked for the State Department. He was down in Guantanamo Bay as an official down there, a spokesman.

00:35:43.020 And, you know, he just always shook his head at the Canadian and European journalist delegations that

00:35:47.400 would come. I'm talking about J.D. Gordon here, who he's, you know, sort of a Washington official that

00:35:56.840 I've worked with in the past. Anyway, he basically would laugh because it was always during the

00:36:03.020 Canadian winters that all of a sudden all these journalists would want to come down

00:36:05.900 to cover every aspect. It's like what a coincidence they want to be like in the nice Cuban 0.92

00:36:10.900 hot weather. But, you know, Omar Khadr is used to this kind of treatment and almost a weird kind

00:36:17.940 of privilege. And then at the same time, you know, his whole thing, the reason why people have

00:36:22.740 sympathy for him is that they say his wicked family, his evil family has brainwashed him and

00:36:28.220 he was just this poor child who was manipulated. And it wasn't he wasn't acting on his own. He was

00:36:33.740 acting. Yeah. The media narrative has been to separate Khadr from the Khadr family. And now they

00:36:39.480 have to confront the narrative that they've created. Yeah. It's like, no, he wants to be part of his

00:36:44.000 family. And if you look at sort of some of the statements going back, yeah, he said, I'm not my

00:36:49.200 family judge me based on me, but he's never come out and fully condemned them. He's never said

00:36:54.040 the things, you know, that we're saying that his family, you know, had an evil ideology,

00:36:59.180 that what they did to him was wrong, that they were terrorists. He's never used a kind of strong

00:37:04.020 language. He's never. No, he said like they were troubled, they were mistaken, they were angry. He's

00:37:09.440 just like, oh, yeah, they were they were going through a bad day. And like all of us, I mean,

00:37:12.840 when you go through a bad day, you pledge allegiance to Al Qaeda. I mean, that's just that's just a regular

00:37:16.780 Friday in Ontario. But it's insane. Yeah. And he kind of does that, you know, everyone has

00:37:21.660 their family and we all have family problems. It's like, well, no, you know, the whole case

00:37:26.860 upon which you're being treated specially is because supposedly these people brainwashed

00:37:31.860 you. You'd think that he would have a lot more things to say to separate himself. I think

00:37:37.860 that this, you know, every every time he's asked for something, as you mentioned, he gets

00:37:42.540 it. It's like he asked for an inch, he takes a mile, he goes further and further and

00:37:46.180 further. And I think this is getting to the point where it's a tipping point. I mean, the Canadian 1.00

00:37:49.740 public, I think, is already clear that they're not on this guy's side, that the backlash that

00:37:54.860 Trudeau received after paying Cotter that 10.5 million dollars, which happened in a very secretive

00:38:01.020 kind of like quiet way. You know, I think that that was overwhelming for the liberals. I don't

00:38:06.240 think they saw it coming. But even now, it's like the whole narrative and the story of him being

00:38:11.140 so separate from his family and wanting to be different and just wanting to live a normal life

00:38:15.160 in Canada. Well, you know, living a normal life in Canada doesn't include getting to talk

00:38:19.500 to your terrorist sister. It doesn't include traveling to Saudi Arabia. It doesn't include 0.82

00:38:23.960 getting to completely erase, you know, the mistakes you've made. And now he's challenging

00:38:29.600 that decision that was made by the U.S. military tribunal, where, you know, the entire confession

00:38:36.460 and his apology to the Spear family, the soldier, the U.S. medic that died from the grenade

00:38:43.300 that he confessed to shooting while he was saying that that confession came under duress

00:38:47.160 and that he didn't really mean it. So it's like, okay, so he's, is he even sorry? Does

00:38:52.500 he even acknowledge the past?

00:38:54.580 Yeah, he's also got the 100 million U.S. dollar judgment against him, which was by, again,

00:39:00.740 in Utah, the one from Tabitha Spear's family, or the family of Christopher Spear, Tabitha Spear.

00:39:06.720 And then he's also got, and people forget, it's not just his confession that the whole

00:39:11.120 case hinged on. I mean, there was evidence at the scene, including, by the way, video

00:39:15.020 evidence of him making IEDs. So it's very possible, in fact, probable, that he has a death

00:39:20.340 toll that's much higher than just Christopher Spear. So we're not talking about this guy who

00:39:25.540 was just wandering through the foothills of Afghanistan and, you know, caught in a crossfire

00:39:30.080 here. Like, this is someone who was actually a cog in the Al-Qaeda machine there. And for

00:39:36.440 him to, like, use what, you know, people will be saying around Christmas time, of, oh, that's

00:39:39.880 just, you know, kooky Aunt Kay that gets into the eggnog. Like, oh, actually, yeah, everyone's

00:39:43.780 got the kooky cousin who's a terrorist. I mean, that's not my family, but he's just thinking,

00:39:47.800 oh, yeah, you know, whatever. It's family, right?

00:39:50.220 It's, yeah, it's interesting. Okay, well, we'll wait, and hopefully, we'll find out what happens

00:39:56.840 next Friday. We'll await reports from True North Initiative. You can find all the updates

00:40:01.260 here on our site. So thank you. I think this was a pretty good test run of doing the side-by-side

00:40:08.040 video with Andrew and I. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to check out the True

00:40:13.200 North Initiative's website, join one of our clubs. We've got a lot of exciting news coming

00:40:18.520 up in the new year, lots of reporting and special perks and products for our followers and our

00:40:26.100 supporters. So thanks so much for watching, Andrew. Thank you so much for joining me.

00:40:30.600 Thank you all.

00:40:31.260 All right.

Juno News - December 14, 2018

The True North Report： Are we desensitized to terrorism？

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