Juno News - June 23, 2020


We must always remain vigilant against terrorism

Mentioned
Terry Molesky Sikh Talvinder Singh Parmar Jagmeet Singh Barba Kalsa
Getting fired for “liking” conservative tweets The media won't admit it but Trump was right

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

142.35

Word count

901

Sentence count

46

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

35 years ago today, a Calistani terrorist group based in Vancouver, British Columbia, murdered 329 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in our history. On June 23rd 1985, Air India Flight 182 was headed from Montreal to New Delhi with a stopover in London. The Boeing 747 was approximately 120 miles off the tip of Ireland, flying in an altitude of 31,000 feet. The plane exploded and disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 people on board.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 35 years ago today, a Calistani terrorist group based in Vancouver, British Columbia,
00:00:11.840 murdered 329 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in our history. On June 23rd, 1985, Air
00:00:21.760 India Flight 182 was heading from Montreal to New Delhi with a stopover in London. The Boeing 747
00:00:29.920 was approximately 120 miles off the tip of Ireland, flying in an altitude of 31,000 feet,
00:00:37.200 when a bomb planted on the plane was detonated. The plane exploded and disintegrated over the Atlantic
00:00:43.840 Ocean, killing all 329 people on board, including 268 Canadians, 27 British and 24 Indian citizens.
00:00:55.600 It was and remains the largest mass killing in Canadian history and was the deadliest act of
00:01:02.960 aviation terrorism until the September 11th Al-Qaeda attacks in 2001. The subsequent investigation
00:01:10.960 and prosecution was the most time-consuming and expensive trial in Canadian history. It cost
00:01:18.080 130 million dollars. The report was finally released in 2010, 25 years after the initial terrorist attack,
00:01:26.960 and it drew two major conclusions. First, it found that a cascading series of errors by the Government
00:01:35.120 of Canada, the RCMP and CSIS had allowed this terrorist attack to happen. And second, it found
00:01:42.320 that the Babar Khalsa terror group was responsible for the attack. Babar Khalsa is a Kalistani terrorist
00:01:50.400 group made up of Sikh militants whose main objective is to create an independent Sikh country
00:01:57.280 called Khalsa to carve it out of India, and to avenge a pogrom that happened in 1984, as well as
00:02:04.240 Operation Blue Star, which was a military attack carried out by the Indian government against a Sikh temple.
00:02:12.480 The cell responsible for the Air India attack was based in Vancouver, BC, and the mastermind of the
00:02:18.480 attack was determined to be Talwinder Singh Parmar. He was never convicted, however, and was killed in a
00:02:25.280 gunfight with police in Punjab in 1992. Sadly, and despite these facts, many Kalistani activists and sadly many
00:02:34.960 Sikhs in Canada still openly praise and glorify Parmar. This is despicable and should be called out 1.00
00:02:42.160 every single time. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was once among those who refused to accept that Parmar was
00:02:50.160 the mastermind of the Air India attack. Here is an interview he did back in October 2017 with Terry
00:02:57.280 Molesky of the CBC. Notice how he refuses to answer the question, attempts to change the subject and cannot
00:03:04.960 unequivocally condemn Parmar or Calistani extremism.
00:03:09.120 Do you think that some Canadian Sikhs go too far when they honour Talwinder Singh Parmar as a martyr of the Sikh nation,
00:03:18.720 when they put up posters of him as a Shaheed, a martyr, when he was the architect of the Air India bombing?
00:03:24.720 Do you think that's appropriate?
00:03:26.240 Well, I think it's so important that we really clarify a misconception that exists. There has been
00:03:32.400 a lot of work and seems to be creating a conflict that's between Hindus and Sikhs. And for me,
00:03:39.120 that's something that really offended me. I grew up with a lot of close friends and dear family friends
00:03:43.840 that were from the Hindu faith that told me stories of how they actually put themselves at risk to save
00:03:49.840 their Sikh neighbours. And so for me, one of my goals was to erase this false narrative of a Hindu-Sikh
00:03:55.440 conflict. And what I really believe in...
00:03:56.960 Forgive me, but you could do that right now by saying, no, it isn't appropriate to put up posters
00:04:01.920 of Canada's worst ever mass murderer as a martyr. Do you think that's appropriate? 0.54
00:04:06.720 Well, let me just clarify your point here. It's so important that we rid this notion that there's
00:04:10.720 ever been a conflict between Hindu and Sikhs. It's never been the case.
00:04:14.000 So you won't denounce those posters of Parmar?
00:04:16.880 I don't know who was responsible, but I think we need to find out who's truly responsible. We need to
00:04:21.440 make sure that the investigation actually results in a conviction of someone who's actually
00:04:25.280 responsible. And we need to, as a society, collectively, unequivocally denounce any time
00:04:32.320 innocent lives are lost. That is something unacceptable. All Canadians stand together,
00:04:36.160 united against any forms of violence, terror against Canadians, and in fact against anyone
00:04:41.120 around the world. It's also worth noting that after this interview, the left tried to accuse
00:04:46.080 Terry Molesky of racism, saying that it was unacceptable for him to even ask these questions of Jagmeet
00:04:51.600 Singh. Jagmeet Singh himself accused Terry Molesky of racism, saying, quote,
00:04:56.880 it was offensive to me that that was even a question, unquote. Look, I'm no fan of the CBC,
00:05:02.880 but on this issue, I am 100% on Terry's side. There is no room for model answers or obfuscation when it
00:05:10.800 comes to the need to clearly and unequivocally condemn terrorism, especially when these pernicious
00:05:18.320 rumors and conspiracy theories are so rampant. I'm pleased that Jagmeet Singh finally came around and
00:05:25.840 now says that he accepts the facts and that he condemns Kalistani terrorism. In March 2018, Jagmeet said that he
00:05:34.480 now rejects glorification of the Air India bombing and he accepts the findings of the investigation,
00:05:42.240 namely that Talwinder Singh Parmar was the mastermind responsible for that deadly terrorist attack that
00:05:49.600 killed 329 innocent men, women, and children. Today, we honor the victims and remember that evil act of
00:05:59.040 terrorism. Let us always remain vigilant against terrorism and other threats to our security
00:06:05.760 and our freedom. For True North, I'm Candace Malcolm.