[grainfedprairieboy]

neopundit neopundit:

stupid conservatives

That's an oxymoron. By definition, if a Conservative is "stupid" then he/she must be a Liberal.

[TheGup]

I just showed how the links aren't baseless. Is anyone who accused the attacks as baseless going to confront the facts?

[Delwin]

TheGup TheGup:

I just showed how the links aren't baseless. Is anyone who accused the attacks as baseless going to confront the facts?

So Kenny spoke at a rally for a listed Iranian terrorist group, I guess the Conservatives have terrorist links aswell.

[TheGup]

...Were you Liberals not just complaining in this thread how we could not justify our own actions, and how we had to bring you into it? Did you not just do the same?

[Delwin]

TheGup TheGup:

...Were you Liberals not just complaining in this thread how we could not justify our own actions, and how we had to bring you into it? Did you not just do the same?

O.K. then more directly, you got any proof ?

[Delwin]

The dinner was attended in May 2001, the LTTE was added to the terrorist list in april 2006, Anything else ?

[TheGup]

$1:

Canadian diplomat blasts former Liberal government for funding Tiger terror in Sri Lanka
Tue, 2006-09-19 14:02

Toronto 19 September, (Asiantribune.com): In a scathing attack on the politics of granting easy refugee status to terrorists the former Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Mr Martin Collacott, has revealed that the FBI has identified Canada as a major source of illegal fundraising to the Tigers because "the federal Liberal government, in an effort to bolster support in the Tamil community, refused to classify the Tigers as a terrorist group despite several recommendations from CSIS to do so."

"This gave the Tigers the freedom to intimidate and extort money from the same Tamil community whose support the Liberals sought. The government's inaction was particularly difficult to justify given that the Tigers are one of the most vicious terrorist movements in the world," he wrote in an article published in the Ottawa Citizen.

He also accused Canada of "extending the civil war and terrorist violence in Sri Lanka through funds channeled from Canada."

Pin-pointing Canada’s "dysfunctional refugee determination system" he says that it helped to flood Canada with Tigers cadres and "establish a major presence in Canada" with ease.

"By 2000 the Toronto police Tamil Task Force estimated that Canada's largest city was home to as many as 8,000 members of Tamil terrorist factions, most notably the Tigers," he stated.

$1:

Journalists employ a special term when a politician accidentally speaks a forbidden truth out loud: They call it a "Kinsley gaffe," after the legendary American editorialist Michael Kinsley, who pointed out in 1992 that the word "gaffe" is never really used by native writers of English except to describe such a situation.

The catcalls of "shame" that drowned out the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Wednesday are the infallible sign of a Kinsley gaffe. Mr. Harper was about to describe an article from the Vancouver Sun pointing out that the father-in-law of an important young Liberal MP and organizer was once a spokesman for Babbar Khalsa, a group officially recognized by the Canadian government as a terrorist organization. This same individual is a potential witness in the Air India investigation — the very same investigation that will be shut down if Stéphane Dion prevails in his newfound and oddly passionate quest to kill provisions of the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act that permit such investigations.

None of the Liberals leaping to their feet to denounce the PM have bothered to deny the facts presented in the Sun by CanWest's Kim Bolan: given Ms. Bolan's international reputation as an investigator and chronicler of Sikh separatist activity, it would be foolhardy to try. It is supposedly the context in which the fact was brought up that bothers them. Or so they say.

No one -- including us -- is accusing the MP in question, Navdeep Bains, of any illegal behaviour. And Canadian voters are entitled to make their own individual judgments on whether the Prime Minister was engaging in dirty pool by opening the pages of the Sun in the privileged environment of the House of Commons. But they are well advised to ignore the slanted, indignant language that some other media outlets are trying to disguise as impartial reporting.

The PM is being accused of suggesting that the Liberals changed their policy on anti-terror legislation to protect Liberal Mr. Bains' father-in-law, Darshan Singh Saini. In fact, it is only by clairvoyance that reporters can claim to know what Mr. Harper would have said in his complete reply. He was shouted down long before he had the chance to make the "suggestion" being freely attributed to him (and readers may wonder why the Liberals did not sit quietly and let him continue covering himself with "shame").

But even if Mr. Harper intended to suggest what he is being accused of suggesting, his only "shame" lies in saying what millions of Canadians are thinking. The Sikh voting bloc Mr. Bains dragged to the Dion camp (via Gerard Kennedy) at the Liberal convention in December is a critical reason why it is Mr. Dion, as opposed to Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, who now sits as Leader of the Opposition. Why would it be out of bounds to suggest that Mr. Dion's sudden and stalwart opposition to key anti-terrorism provisions -- even over the objections of many influential members of his own divided caucus -- might somehow be traced to those same provisions being potentially used to compel testimony from a close family member of a kingmaking MP?

We recall that in 2000, the Liberals used the same specious calls of "shame" to attack Reform politicians who questioned the Liberals about their party's stance on a Tamil terrorist group. Yet it was the Liberals themselves who were disgraced when it turned out Paul Martin and Maria Minna had attended a fundraising event for a group identified by the U.S. State Department as a front for the Tamil Tigers, which -- like the Babbar Khalsa outfit for which Mr. Bains' father-in-law once acted as spokesman -- is classified as a terrorist group under Canadians law (over Liberal objections, of course).

Even given the premise of Mr. Bains' personal unimpeachability -- a premise to which the Prime Minister's press secretary was glad to assent on Wednesday evening -- this may be a trickier question than it appears. The premise that a Member of Parliament's family connections are irrelevant can easily be carried to the point of absurdity. In gratitude for delivering the votes of his fellow Sikhs in Montreal, Mr. Dion appointed Mr. Bains to the party's national election readiness committee last month. If an equally important Conservative had a father-in-law who stood to benefit from a newfound Conservative policy, are we to believe that no reporter or opposition member would dare ask uncomfortable questions? No one can show that Bains' family connections to a possible Air India witness have played any part in the sudden Liberal rediscovery of civil liberties, but when did it become inappropriate for a politician to point out a potential conflict of interest amongst his opponents?

It seems to have happened right around the time the conservative parties reunited and formed a national government. We recall that some of the publications now lashing out at Mr. Harper were quite happy to wallow in "family legacies" when it came to Stockwell Day's Western-separatist father or Preston Manning's ancestral Social Credit connections. Could the apologies owed to these men have gotten misplaced in the mail?

Second one was an editorial in the National Post recently.

[TheGup]

Should I continue, or has that shut you up?

[Delwin]

TheGup TheGup:

Should I continue, or has that shut you up?

Your talking about a dinner for a group that is supposedly linked to the Tamil Tigers(by whom we don't know) at a time(may 2001) when the Tigers weren't even on the Canadian terrorist list. That didn't happen until April 2006.

Very weak, even if you can miraculously connect the group to the tigers, and prove that the members inattendance are also linked, then prove that Martin had knowledge of the connection, it's all irrelevant since, the Tamils themselves were not even considered terrorists in this country at that time.

Real strong connection there.

[TheGup]

See the above for why they weren't even labelled terrorists. Did you even read what I posted?

[Delwin]

TheGup TheGup:

See the above for why they weren't even labelled terrorists. Did you even read what I posted?

Oh right Martin Collacott's highly impartial opinion. Now we have our proof.

$1:

Martin Collacott is a Senior Fellow at The Fraser Institute, where he studies immigration policy, the treatment of refugees, and related issues involving terrorism.

Mr. Collacott has 30 years of distinguished service in the Department of External Affairs for Canada. His assignments included Director General for Security Services and in this capacity he was responsible for the coordination of counter-terrorism policy at the international level.

Did he recieve that from the mountain top or was it a talking bush ?

[TheGup]

If I had to guess, he found out that information WHILE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS! Would that not make sense?

Jesus Christ, talking to you is like talking to a rock.

[Delwin]

TheGup TheGup:

If I had to guess, he found out that information WHILE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS! Would that not make sense?

Jesus Christ, talking to you is like talking to a rock.

Come on now, he is a member of the largest conservative think tank in the country. Don't you think that gives him reason to discredit the Liberals? Why didn't you just post a quote from Harper and label it proof.

You know those guys are just human like you and me, it still helps when there is evidence to back up what they say.

[grainfedprairieboy]

Delwin: Your blind loyalty to the party on this point is something you may wish to reflect upon. I strongly suppot much of what the conservatives do but certainly not all. The Liberals were very very bad in supporting a terrorist party that was identified to them by CSIS. Even the party wants to bury this so why do you think you can defend them? They cocked up now move on.

[dougC]

Why don't the conservatives be a little honest here too.

This is all about Harper freaking when he saw Dions' numbers after the leadership convention. There's nothing he wants more than his majority government. It's silly to act like he's attacking Dion as some sort of public service campaign. It's pure ambition on his part and his actions have lowered the level of discussion in our Parliment to where the issues don't matter anymore. Things were bad enough already, this makes them much worse.

I'd say that even more than Chretien, Harper is driven by personal interest.