Category Archives: David Harris
Ezra Levant and David Harris: Whitewashing the Islam out of Islamic terror
If I remember the press conference of last night correctly, the man had actually changed his name to Osama Husain after his two heroes, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Husein. Although I don’t see the connection to Saddam. He was more or less secular and killed a whole pile of Muslims.
Clare Lopez and David B Harris part 3 and 4 of 4
Hoping for peace through escapist-illusion and weakness
From The Ottawa Citizen
Pastor bashing didn’t buy peace
By David B. Harris, Citizen Special September 10, 2010 7:55 AM
What do Stephen Harper, Barack Obama, Gen. David Petraeus, Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have in common?
They each need to get a grip on themselves the next time they want to whack a wacky pastor. Each sacrificed valuable resources to condemn and plead with once-aspiring Koran-griller, Florida Pastor Terry Jones, a bizarre fourth-string in the evangelical band. Congregation size: 50, on an inflationary day.
Yes, by now all agree: a nutty fringe leader was compromising social cohesion, foreign relations and military security with grotesquely silly, gratuitous and hurtful plans for a Koranic cook-off.
But this portrayal missed key considerations. In the extent and scope of their criticism of Jones’ aims, senior U.S. officials, including Clinton and Gen. Petraeus, exceeded their constitutional remit in ways that could undermine future security and liberal-democratic ways. The same can be said of Harper and his defence minister.
Their warnings and beseechings raised immeasurably the stakes in this matter. Politicians risked the possibility that a government failure to apparently force Jones to stop — a constitutional impossibility, in any event — would produce more blowback than ever. Now that this pressure has forced Jones to climb down on his own, liberal-democracy’s enemies at home and abroad will be emboldened. The outcome doubtless confirms their doctrinal belief in a soft West that is vulnerable to ever-increasing levels of terrorism and stealth-jihadic demands for endlessly-Islamizing “accommodation.” Continue Reading →
This is our future: David Harris
Recent terror threats have been stopped, but we have refused to heed the warnings. Ottawa Citizen
????
By David Harris, Citizen Special August 28, 2010 3:02 AM
This is your future. That was my wretched thought on behalf of Canadians as I watched Thursday’s Project Samossa news conference.
Samossa was the major national security investigation that erupted this week in counterterrorism raids and the arrest of four Muslim-Canadians. The government’s charges against three of them imply a wealth of evidence that will shock the conscience of Canadians.
These charges and limited revelations suggest that we could be front-row witnesses to the most vile of manifestations of the Islamist jihad in this country. The allegation is that people living among us and enjoying the immense privileges of Canadian citizenship, are siding with enemy forces aiming to kill and maim our boys and girls serving in Afghanistan — and maybe residents of Ottawa and other Canadian centres, too.
We shouldn’t be surprised.
The Toronto 18 showed us the savagery of the 7th-century war that is being imported into our 21st-century neighbourhoods. Defendants included those who should have been a credit to educated youth. From some we would have expected gratitude of immigrants who had been welcomed to a gentle and generous nation. Canadians’ reward was instead a conspiracy to rent Toronto with explosives, and blast our Parliament with invasion and a prime ministerial beheading.
Further hints — and only hints — of our growing predicament come from a series of recent convictions.
Think of Momin Khawaja, the handsome Department of Foreign Affairs software consultant and moonlighter in international bomb-making. Then there was Said Namouh, Quebec-based Moroccan bomb-plotter, and the Groupe Fatah Kamel, which drove a French counterterror magistrate to pin Canada as an international centre of North African Islamic extremism.
These threats were headed off by good luck and good security work, but are auguries of future violence, economy-defying instability and further pressure on civil liberties.
But why must this be our future? Because we refuse to heed warnings, learn basic lessons and act in a responsible way to preserve our well-being. Continue Reading →
Security officials are afraid to look out for our safety
By David Harris, Citizen Special August 11, 2010 7:54 AM
Undue deference to Islamic face coverings poses a threat to airport security, writes David Harris.
Photograph by: Christopher Furlong, Getty Images, Citizen Special
When government ministers decide to sound ministerial, the result can be a strange mixture of decisive sounds and ambiguous noises. You could hear it during John Baird’s shambolic finale as transport minister, when he struggled with security checks of face-veiled air passengers.
“One hundred per cent of people must be verified at the gate,” Baird declared. “There is one law for all.”
It seems like straightforward government policy. But is it?
Sadly, there is a troubling ambiguity hidden in the government’s approach. To understand why it matters, remember the background — including the hidden background — of this episode.
Despite a burgeoning bureaucracy and millions spent monitoring aviation screening, it took a smudgy YouTube video to awaken the government to the fact that face-veiled passengers appeared to be bounding onto planes without necessary security checks. The tentative verdict: Some airport security staff, confronted by unco-operative masked travellers or their male handlers, simply give up and allow boarding without face identification.