Juno News - December 14, 2018The True North Report： Are we desensitized to terrorism？
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Summary
Candice and Andrew discuss the recent terror attack in Strasbourg, and the lack of coverage of it on the mainstream media and social media, as well as the role of the media in covering terror attacks and how it affects us all.
Transcript
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Hi, we are live. I'm Candice Malcolm, and I am joined by my colleague of the TrueNorth
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Initiative, Andrew Lawton. We're trying something new here today, so we're trying to do the double
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streaming with both of us. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.
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Yeah, it's good. I mean, I can barely get my computer working most days, but today we're
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doing a technological experiment, so I make no guarantees. If anything happens, let me
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just say, first off, to all the people watching, it will be my fault. It doesn't matter what
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it is. If anything goes wrong, it will be on me. But anyways, good to be doing this.
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Well, yeah, so this is the guinea pig run, and hopefully things go smoothly. There's
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a lot to get to today. I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you, Andrew,
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about it, because I feel like we were bombarded for so long with these horrific terrorist attacks
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in Europe. They seem to happen so frequently that, you know, at first, when something happens,
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you know, the very first ones that occurred, maybe the Charlie Hebdo shootings that happened
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at that French satirical newspaper carried out by an ISIS jihadist, you know, there was
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just endless outpouring of, you know, sympathy and support and solidarity with France. But
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then you had, you know, one after another, after another, after another, they all kind
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of almost blend together. And now, I mean, there was a deadly terrorist attack that happened
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in Strasbourg this week, and it wasn't trending on Twitter. It wasn't, you know, on the front
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pages of the main media sites. You kind of had to dig to find out information about it.
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Did you notice that? And maybe you can provide just an overview and an update on what the latest
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Yeah, I will. And I think just to start off on the media component, that's a very valid
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point you raised, because I think that it shows a general complacency that we have about
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these sorts of terrorist attacks. I mean, we used to measure terrorism by the casualty account.
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And, you know, the 9-11 levels of numbers, you know, 3,000 people killed. And then it became
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where the frequency was far more relevant. So you'd have these, you know, attacks where
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there might not have even been fatalities. You know, someone runs a van in the road, maybe
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it's a couple, three, four, or maybe a few more. But now it's, this is back page news.
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And I remember when I was in Israel, not in 2015, but the first time I went in 2011, one of
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the people I had the chance to interview there was a Jerusalem Associated Press reporter. And one
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of the things he said is that, you know, what's the world is front page news about terrorism in
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the Middle East, in Jerusalem is back page news, because they're so used to it. And I feel that in
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the last seven years, there's been a flip there, where now these things are not front page news.
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And I don't take any nobility in that. It's like, not like, oh, well, you know, we're refusing to let
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ourselves be terrorized. No, it's people refusing to confront the realities of it. And to look at
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what's happening in Strasbourg, I have my computer open, just because there have been some developments
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recently here. But Sharif Shakat was the suspect, police shot him after a two day long manhunt. And there
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were three people that were killed at this at a Christmas market, which is not the first time we've
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seen that type of attack before. But as is the case in almost all of these, he was known to police
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and had been on a watch list as a security threat. And I find this infuriating, because we often hear
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about these lone wolves. And I think the line that's been used by a number of people is that
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the lone wolves are invariably always known wolves, because these are people that have been on lists,
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they've been on police radar, whether it was Faisal Hussain in Toronto, whether it's Sharif
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Shakat here, whether it's the people that have been involved in the past Paris attacks, Brussels
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attacks, Germany, it doesn't matter. They're known. And I think that the two are related here.
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When you look at on one hand, names that are known to authorities and people that are still committing
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acts of terror. And on the other side, these acts of terror are not actually getting much in the way of
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media coverage. And there's a general ignorance or a malicious ignorance that comes about when people
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just don't pay attention to these things. And that's what we're seeing with Strasbourg. And I
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think that's incredibly problematic for a number of reasons. But even just for the pragmatic reasons
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alone, that you've got all these people on watch lists, and that only becomes relevant information
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Well, exactly. I mean, the question of how can someone be on a terror watch list? How can
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authorities be actively aware of a person somehow tracking, you know, their every movement? You
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know, it gives you some sort of peace of mind in Canada to think, okay, you know, the government
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says that there's 60 terrorists that had traveled abroad to fight for ISIS or other groups. You know,
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they're back in Canada, but at least the government is monitoring them. So hopefully they won't,
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you know, do anything horrible. And they would be able officials to be able to stand in and stop
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them. But then you have stories like this of someone being on an official watch list. I remember
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it was the same thing with a UK terrorist who blew himself up at the Ariana Grande concert.
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Yeah, it was also well known to authorities. He had just traveled back to Libya, and it only
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been in the UK for a couple of days when he carried out that just gruesome attack. So, you
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know, it's not a lot of solos for the families of the victims, that there's even any competency
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when it comes to, you know, especially in Europe. But the communication and the activities by these
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security officials is supposed to keep us safe, and yet they can't even keep talking to the people
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Yeah, and I think the one big question mark that's over these is, where is the actual watching of
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people on watch lists? I mean, a watch list is not meant to just be some obscure database buried
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on the hard drive of some police agency. A watch list is supposed to be about the actual watching
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part. And, you know, for all the people go on about no-fly lists. Well, the no-fly list at least is
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somewhat enforced, because if someone's on a no-fly list, it means that you know they're not going to be
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able to fly. And if someone is on a watch list, it stands to reason that we are keeping tabs on them
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in some way. And I know that law enforcement agencies will say, well, we can't surveil people
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24-7, and I get that. But surely what they're doing isn't working when you've got so many of these
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people that they're saying, oh, yes, you know, he was known to authorities as being a radical. And I'm
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like, well, what good did that do? I'd rather they say, well, he was a complete stranger to us.
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No one saw this coming. We had no idea who he was. Like, you know, he was a saint. He was an
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angel. Because then I'd say, all right, well, I guess this couldn't have been prevented. But every
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single time one of these attacks take place, and we know that police literally at some point made
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the determination that, you know, we think this guy is someone to watch, that suggests that a lot
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of these, if not most of these, are preventable. And, you know, terrorism is bad enough. When you put in
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that something could have been prevented, it becomes an absolute abomination. And Europe has
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become far too forgiving and far too complacent. And we know that North America is often downstream
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of what trends are going on in Europe on demography and terrorism by sometimes five or 10 years. And
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I hear that's the case here. So it's one thing to look at Europe and say, you guys need to smarten up.
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We also need to make sure we don't follow that example. And I know you've done a lot on this,
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of pointing out how the current government has been very much disengaged from really monitoring
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actively a lot of the returning ISIS fighters. And that suggests we may be closer to Europe than,
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you know, we usually are. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, I wanted to bring up another case of a terrorist
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attack that happened this week in another part of the world that, you know, sometimes it feels like
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Canada is becoming more and more like Israel. I think Israel has long been saying, you know,
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we've had to live with the reality of terrorism in our backyard and at our borders every single day
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for decades. And this reality is just kind of coming to fruition in Europe and in Canada. So,
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you know, I think Israel does a lot of things right when it comes to combating terrorism and
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actually having a stomach to confront it and name it and do what's necessary to stop it.
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Unfortunately, you can't stop everything. And so on Sunday evening, there was basically a drive-by
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shooting where a Hamas terrorist took out a gun and just mowed people down at a bus stop
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in Israel. He shot seven people. One of the couples that he shot, this is just absolutely devastating,
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a Canadian couple, a 21-year-old man whose family is from Montreal, and his Israeli wife who was eight
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months pregnant, the terrorist shot her in the stomach. I don't know. I don't know how you can
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look at people waiting at a bus stop and see them as an enemy target, like a military target. I also
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don't know how you could see an eight-month pregnant woman and see her stomach, her pregnant stomach,
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as a target. But anyways, this terrorist shot her in the stomach. The baby was delivered. It was alive.
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And sadly, it died of its injuries, the baby's injuries yesterday, which is really just horrifying
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and sad. You know, the most despicable kind of crime imaginable is killing a baby. And so,
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you know, you have that connection to Canada. I think that there has been a little bit of outcry.
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I've seen bits of it, but I don't think that this is really even making media, making news, and certainly
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not the mainstream media. And, you know, it just kind of serves as a reminder, not only that this kind
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of stuff is an everyday occurrence in Israel. The terrorist who did the shooting was killed, and he's
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being praised. You can see the praise on social media from Hamas propaganda sites, as well as verified
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Twitter accounts that claim to speak for the Palestinian government, glorifying this man, calling him a
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martyr, calling him a hero. And again, you know, this is sort of the mentality and the reality of these just
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deranged ideological jihadists. They see people in everyday situations as targets. They kill them. And, you know,
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then they get celebrated and praised within their communities. And there's a bias in the media as
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well, Andrew, as you well know. You know, the Guardian newspaper reported, you know, four people
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died in Israel, two Israelis, two Palestinians. They make it seem like it's just this total equivalence
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between the two sides that died. It's like, okay, well, the two Palestinians who died were the terrorists
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who killed the two Israelis, and then the terrorists were killed by Israeli forces. So that's not really
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an equivalency, and to sort of paint it as just, oh, there's a violent clash, and four people died,
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two from each side. It doesn't really properly paint the picture of what has actually happened,
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which, again, is just, you know, incredibly, incredibly sad. I don't know, you've been to Israel
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a couple of times. Do you think that there's things that we can take away from this, that we can learn
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from something like this? Or, you know, how can we ever protect ourselves from these kind of
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Well, what makes the Israel example, I think, so insidious is that the willingness for people to
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commit what we would characterize as acts of terror, as I think this one very accurately is described by,
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is not a radical view in some of the Palestinian pockets. It's quite a mainstream view.
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And look, in 2015, I was in Israel, and you and I were actually on the same trip. And I remember
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one of the most really standout moments of that delegation for me was speaking with a man who
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was a Palestinian talk show host. And what was fascinating is that we were sitting down with
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him, and at the time, in 2015, there had been a rash of stabbings in the streets of Israel,
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of, you know, Palestinian terrorists stabbing, you know, random Jews. And one of them, a couple
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days earlier to this, had been an older lady, which I think is, you know, one notch below a
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baby as far as the level of evil goes. And I was asking this guy, who was speaking very candidly
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with us about this, and he had said that he had did a topic on his show, his call-in talk show not
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long ago, Is It Okay to Stab Jews in the Streets? And he was so proud to say to me, most called in who
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said, most who called in said no. And I'm thinking, I was a talk show host at the time,
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and I'm thinking, you know, how well would that go over if I had said, all right, is it okay to,
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you know, stab Jews in the streets? Call now. Your call's after news and traffic. And to find even
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one person in North America that would say, well, yeah, you know, I think they've got it coming.
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But there, it was like a 60-40. Like, you know, 40% of the people that called in said, yeah,
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yeah, stabbing Jews. So this is not a radical view. And I think that in that case, Israel is in a
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perpetual state of war. I mean, that's exactly what it is. And except Israel is hell-bent on going after
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the terrorists, whereas the terrorists are hell-bent on going after anyone who's Israeli. And they view
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no distinction between an IDF soldier in fatigues and a pregnant Canadian woman and her child. They are
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both the same. They are both completely fine with those being casualties of war.
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So it's just so evil and so reprehensible. And, you know, like you said, it's not just,
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you know, admitting that those are your views, you know. It's not like calling into a, if a pollster
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calls your house and asks, you know, what are your private views when it comes to, like, personal
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social issues. It's like, you know, they're so not ashamed of wanting to kill people who aren't them
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that they'd be willing to express their views openly on a talk radio show, you know, even with
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identifying their names. And again, it goes to the sort of much deeper structural issues at play
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here. The fact that they, you know, there's propaganda in the schools that they're raised,
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you know, brainwashed and embedded with these ideas. As we know, the Canadian government gives a
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lot of aid to the Palestinian areas and Palestinian people in and around Israel. And part of the major
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concern is like, how is this money being spent? How is it being monitored? The United Nations group
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itself, UNRWA, has long documented ties to Hamas, to terrorism, to using UN facilities like,
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you know, meeting rooms, ambulances, all this kind of stuff to help run guns and to smuggle weapons and
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to be active figures in the war. And then, you know, Canada is paying these organizations. There's
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not really any kind of transparency or proper monitoring of our funds. So it's just, you know,
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it's such a terrible and sad situation over there. And I don't really see it getting any better. I'm
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just, you know, hoping that, well, hoping that stuff doesn't ever really spill into Canada. And I do want
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to talk about on that topic, the Canadian government released its annual report yesterday on the terrorist
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threat to Canada. I put a quick analysis up of it, just sort of my overview in the sort of weird
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political correctness that it seeped into it, and sort of lack of willingness to identify ties to ISIS.
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One of the weird things, Andrew, in the report is that it stated over and over again, that there were
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no terrorist attacks in Canada in 2018. Now, you have to have a pretty warped understanding of the world
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in current events and what's happened in 2018, to make a claim like that, which is what the federal
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government has done. They acknowledge that there were violent attacks, and that there were deadly
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attacks in Canada, but then just sort of plainly state that they weren't terrorism. What's your take
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on that? Well, I always dislike making these things or anything about semantics only, but
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the characterization and classification when it comes to terrorism is important, more so than
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most other distinctions of violent crime, because the way you tackle it is different. I mean, the way
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you tackle, you know, gang violence in Toronto is different than the way you tackle domestic violence,
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which is different from the way you tackle terrorism and radicalism. And I think the Faisal
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Hussein case was a classic example of this, a Dan Forthaf shooter, where, like a lot of these cases,
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it may seem like there's a bit of a gray area. Can you say it's terrorism? Can you say it's mental
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illness? Can you say it's whatever? And I think the line between those two oftentimes is very blurry
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because of the types of people that ISIS is trying to propagandize and radicalize. And any time there
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is at all an ideology component of this that involves radicalism, you have to explore the
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terrorism angle. And what we're seeing a lot of now is where police will say, we can't rule it out,
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and that's the end of it. And then you think, all right, you know, maybe they're still looking into
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it until you get to the end of the year. And a report comes out that said, no terrorism, problem
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solved, it's magic. And when governments do that, they're trying to say that there is no problem
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whatsoever. And this is the type of report that will be used by people. And I think we're already
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seeing it to say, oh, you know, there's more of a threat from right wing extremists and, you know,
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right wing radicals and, and, and this sort of stuff. And that's going to happen a lot more because
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just because you put in a report that nothing happened doesn't mean that nothing happened.
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But this becomes the basis of government policy on it. And look, a life lost is a life lost. And I
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think that we can't lose, we can't make, make every tragic incident political, but you have to
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understand the political undertones that are taking place through this. And we've got a government that
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would much rather focus on doing absolutely nothing and saying that everything is a random act of
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violence, then suggest that there is a global threat that terrorism poses.
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Well, you know, there's a couple of things that are interesting about what you said. First of all,
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mental illness is not a motive. Mental illness doesn't cause you to wake up one morning and decide
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to go butcher a bunch of people randomly indiscriminately on the street. I mean, a person
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having mental illness may contribute to, you know, their episodes and their willingness to carry that
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something like that out. But that's not the thing that sparks your decision to do it. And so the, you know,
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the whole idea of the whole concept behind terrorism is as politically motivated violence. And so I just,
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I just really don't understand how, you know, in the case of the Danforth shooter, it was like, well,
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his family said he's mentally ill, case closed, like, that doesn't really give us any further insight
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into why this man decided to commit such a heinous crime. And, you know, at the time, the police said
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that they hadn't, like you said, they hadn't ruled out terrorism. But then they never provided any kind
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of update to the public to say, you know, we monitored his social media account, which they did.
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And there were reports that said that authorities found that he had visited ISIS propaganda websites.
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ISIS themselves took responsibility for the attack. Now, the police now say that that was a false.
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That was false. Yeah, they falsely took credit for the account. It's like, okay, prove exactly why you say
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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
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other connections. And it's like, you just look at the guy, you know, he basically fits the mold
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exactly of a would be jihadist terrorist. I think he I'm not I can't remember the exact details. I know
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his family came from Afghanistan. I can't remember if he was born in Canada, or Afghanistan, but he had
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recently visited Afghanistan, he had traveled there. I know the police report that they did release
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to media, and then I think it got leaked to the public, showed that when his parents were
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interviewed immediately after the attack, they gave completely contradictory accounts
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as to what what his background was, you know, the mom said that he'd never left Canada,
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the dad said that he traveled to Afghanistan. The mom said that he didn't play video games. The dad
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said that he spent all his time playing video games. It was just sort of this weird, like disconnect.
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And even the mental illness rationale was split. I think it was the dad said, yes, he had had mental
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illness issues. And the mom said no, or it might have been the other way around. Yeah, it was the
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other way around. We're talking about, you know, a family of four or five that lived in like a three
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or four bedroom apartment here. I mean, we're not talking about people that, you know, lived in some
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20 bedroom mansion and never saw each other. Like these were people in very confined spaces that somehow
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had no idea what the lives of each other were like. Right? Yeah. So it was just very
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strange. And so, you know, at the time you can kind of say, okay, there's a lot of public anger and
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frustration. People obviously feel like their city is under attack in Toronto. And, you know,
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there's a lot of misreporting and misremembering that happens in the wake of these kinds of attacks.
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Eyewitnesses are sort of, you know, they're known for not remembering things accurately. And it was
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interesting to go through all the different eyewitness accounts describing the shooting because there was
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just a lot of, you know, information is just proven to not be true about what the suspect looked like
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and all this kind of stuff. Anyway, you kind of expect, okay, there's, there's, there's hype after
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terror attack, and then things calm down. And maybe the police will put out like a comprehensive report
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a couple months later, like this is what happened. This is who this guy is. This is the motive. This is
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where he got the guns. This is, you know, and the other thing, you know, a lot of people speculated that he
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was a experienced shooter, just by the way that he was able to carry out that gruesome attack at the
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Danforth. And so, you know, we're still waiting for the police to release that report. And then
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in this public safety report put out by the Trudeau government yesterday, it kind of just makes it
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seem like everything's already been determined. You know, the facts are settled. And we all agree.
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Yeah, it wasn't ISIS. And yet, it's like, well, where's where's the information coming from? Where's this
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report coming from? And I think that that is quite a disservice to Canadians to not really know what's
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going on. And then there was another, another few examples, you know, the, the Somali migrant who
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drove through, he had two, he first was in his own car, then he commandeered a U-Haul truck, and he ran
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through a crowd of people in Edmonton. He got out and stabbed a police officer, and then he continued
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his rampage. They found an ISIS flag in his car. And yet the report talks about him and doesn't
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mention ISIS at all. The woman at Canadian Tire who was swinging a golf club and attacking people
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in the store, I think she was stabbing people as well. She said multiple times that she was part of
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ISIS and that she was doing it for ISIS. And the report doesn't mention that she was part of ISIS or
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she believed. No, and there was a case that might have been two years ago, I can't remember the guy's
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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,
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
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,
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
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
00:27:18.620
could be mentally ill, and easily recruited by ISIS and carry out an attack. And I think you're right,
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
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
00:27:59.320
and run over infidels. So when that happened in Toronto, it was like, well, this is an ISIS inspired
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
00:38:54.580
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.