SpankyMcFarland

Yeats speaks of ‘character isolated by a deed’. Here is one such moment among many that shows the utter unfitness of Donald Trump for any position of trust: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/general-mark-milley-trump-coup/675375/

We should have been much tougher on Khalistan militants over the last forty years. The Air India bombing removed all doubt as to how dangerous they were. Sikhs who spoke out against them risked death here.

Anybody here like frozen fingers? On their thigh? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12541273/Ex-Trump-aide-Cassidy-Hutchinson-27-claims-Rudy-Giuliani-79-groped-her.html It’s an oldie but…we should send him a message: Stop your fooling around, Time to straighten right out. Better think of your future Else you'll wind up in jail. Rudy, A message to you you, Rudy, A message to you.

Meaning that an accusation of terrorism in India merely means you have annoyed the government in some way. It does not necessarily imply that there is evidence of a standard admissible in a Canadian court supporting a charge that you carried out violent acts. The authorities just bring a claim to court, say it’s related to national security and throw you in jail for years. The whole point is to delay a trial because the evidence is often rubbish. Some more info on the Swamy case: https://www.christianpost.com/news/u-s-congressman-demands-india-investigate-death-father-stan-swamy-prison.html One thing India isn’t short of is good examples of bad behaviour by the authorities: The following statistic says all that needs to be said about this law: 2.2%! Even for India’s notoriously ramshackle system of justice that sounds a little low. https://apnews.com/article/india-991831e0e69d516fe2eff4a7a928f2df When a foreign country sends you evidence for extradition, a certain level of trust is required. India is clearly struggling to meet that level.

As I’ve already pointed out, some of the terrorist cases in India are grotesque. If you’re advocating for the rights of Dalits, Tribals or other marginalized groups, expect to be called a Maoist revolutionary. https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/the-16-activists-arrested-in-relation-to-the-bhima-koregaon-case-are-victims-of-witch-hunt/article35259424.ece https://www.ncregister.com/news/anger-and-silence-over-revelations-indicating-father-stan-swamy-was-framed https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59933451 For Muslims you can fill it in yourself - say anything about the crackdown in Kashmir while actually in Kashmir and you are liable to disappear (sounds like a song). There’s a reason VS Naipaul’s book about the country bore the title, India: A Million Mutinies Now. The place is held together by many things but brute force applied with scant respect for the rule of law is certainly one them. While it may not be China (yet), it sure as heck ain’t Norway either.

You may not know this so it’s great I’ve a chance to tell you. Canada is a very dangerous place for Indian students.

Canada has a promising future. We’re a young country with lots of space, water and mineral resources. Yes, there are some teething problems right now but let’s take a long view.

I’ve no objection to any of that either way. However, I suspect ‘Jewish Month’ might be a better way to put what you don’t want there.

Unfortunately, the regime in Saigon was corrupt and sectarian. America backed a poor horse there and ended up having to do way too much of the fighting.

The Eastern Front was the war. America played a key role supplying the Soviets but not in the actual fighting. The Western Front was a sideshow.

I think the US set a bad precedent with its drone assassination program which is now coming back to our door. The basic point is that we all must respect the sovereignty of other countries and think long and hard before killing people on their soil. If not, absolute chaos will ensue. We can argue about whether Nijjar was a terrorist but if the Indians killed him they certainly are. I need hardly add that if Trudeau’s allegations are proven false he must resign.

There’s a lot of grey. All over the world, opponents of governments are being labelled terrorists even if they don’t do anything violent themselves or direct any violence. Just google what dissidents, opposition politicians, basically anybody Erdogan doesn’t like the look of in Turkey go through or advocates for the poor in the likes of India. Say Salman Rushdie was advocating for a new country for Indian atheists and Modi had him killed in Canada for it. Would that be justified? The last line you have there is troubling. Insurgencies often spill over borders. If we allow extraterritorial assassinations of this sort we can say goodbye to Canada as we know it.,

Excellent, although Mr. Modi may have a lengthy list in mind. I presume it’s not just India you’d like to help in this regard? Can other countries ‘take out’ people they claim to be terrorists here too? Seems only fair. And why let foreigners have all the fun? I’m sure there are many of us Canadians who just know we’ve found a terrorist or two in our community.

What’s also conspicuous in the statements made by Indian officials is no condemnation of the event which really saps their credibility.

I notice those defending this killing, like Terry Glavin at the NP, don’t spend too much on Modi’s history of targeting minorities and dissidents in his own country. It’s an ugly record. The label ‘world’s biggest democracy’ deserves an asterisk.

One is surely not enough, though. Give us a ballpark figure of how many you’d like to see in Canada per annum. Perhaps we could schedule these events at the weekends to avoid any unnecessary disruption?

But gay teens are real, right? There has to be some accommodation with that reality?

No, they had to be careful about jeopardizing the Special Relationship there which annoyed the hell out of them. India has no such qualms about upsetting us. We are like Lebanon to the Israelis. They think they can do what they want here.

I don’t know if this guy was really a terrorist as we would define it. Advocating for a Sikh country is not terrorism here, just as supporting an independent Scotland or Quebec isn’t either. As I posted earlier, India makes ‘absurd’ (to use its own adjective) criminal accusations of terrorism against people it doesn’t like that take years to come to court. Conveniently, the evidence is kept secret because of national security concerns and, in the interim, the accused languishes in jail. I’m not saying he wasn’t a terrorist either but I wouldn’t believe one thing the Indian government alleges without corroboration.

India is worse than it was in terms of religious intolerance. Sikhs are somewhat anomalous in this regard as they tend to be fairly prosperous, living in India’s bread basket, Punjab. Other groups have suffered more under Modi, e.g. Christians, Muslims and lower or no caste Hindus. Many Modi supporters in the West avert their gaze when anti-Christian acts are discussed. So is Israel alarming? It defines itself as a Jewish state. Most European countries started quite recently as ethnostates, highly homogeneous in terms of ethnicity and religion. It’s a natural human tendency.

It’s worse than that. Upper caste supporters of the BJP want to dominate everybody else: Muslims, Christians, lower caste Hindus and those of no caste (Dalits and Tribals). India is a Dickensian nightmare for them with no access to the legal rights the country claims to offer all citizens.

His immigration travails are irrelevant. On the terrorism accusation, that’s harder to determine. However, India has imprisoned many critics of its brutal, sectarian, casteist regime who are clearly not terrorists at all. https://www.article-14.com/post/the-sudha-bharadwaj-the-govt-doesn-t-want-you-to-know If he isn’t a terrorist as we understand it, India could still regard him as such because he is a separatist. Imagine if the UK assassinated Canadians who believed in an independent Scotland or Wales? We have a problem with Sikh militancy but what India has done to combat it is utterly outrageous. Canada is a testing ground for illiberal regimes. They try out policies here they may then go on to use against bigger fish, ultimately the US. Like the tyrants of the Arab world, demagogues like Modi and Erdogan hate our pluralistic, tolerant system of government.

I already criticized our investigation of the Air India bombing on this thread and have said a lot more elsewhere on Sikh extremism in Canada. The problem here is India talking the law into its own hands. Our law. Would you be happy for any country to kill people in Canada that it considers terrorists? Just bypass all that legal malarkey and send in the lads? How many killings would you allow Modi per annum? And how many mistakes à la the Mossad in Lillehammer? That would be fine on your street?

Has China killed anybody here yet that we know of? I’m not saying the CCP aren’t fully capable of it but this act is even more serious than harassing Chinese Canadians. It’s a big step further and anybody who thinks it doesn’t affect them has a highly limited imagination.