New Media

Twenty three seconds in.

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur.

When you consciously align your movement with anarchists, don’t be surprised when the result is anarchy. Years of planning by Vancouver anti-Olympics agitators seems to be up in smoke. Infighting has erupted between more conservative critics calling for non-violence and anarchists throwing out their Leninist vanguard model in favor of Three Stooges tactics.

The pie in lawyer-activist David Eby’s face may not rise to the level of violence in some people’s eyes (despite those inept blowhards who would categorize it as terrorism). Still, it’s hardly a substitute for constructive discourse for a movement that desperately requires a change in tactics if it doesn’t want to become entirely irrelevant over the next few days.

“You just watch seven years of organizing evaporate. It was as if I just watched two chairs through a store window destroy a lot of what lots of people have been trying to do for a long time. There still is that potential to build something bigger. We were on the cusp of grasping something different. We might still, but in my view it took a drubbing on Saturday and it took a worse drubbing on Wednesday. It set such a nasty tone for everything that followed.

“The left in Vancouver is famous for this and there was beginning to be change. That coalition was looking like it could be powerful and change Vancouver’s social justice scene. And then a day later, it faltered. Wednesday’s meeting was one of the nastiest things I’ve ever seen in Vancouver’s political scene.”

The radicals have the initiative. Fortunately for Eby, this time it was just a pie.
Shut Your Pie Hole, Traitor!

Is Google making us all dumber? Or are we evolving to a different kind of intelligence?

“What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence,” he said. “The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.”

Think about that for a minute.

If we remain true to our tradition as Canadians and responsible members of the international community, we’re going to help finish the fight in Afghanistan — notwithstanding those commentators who seem to think that we ought to put down our weapons at the behest of the IOC or VANOC at the same time that Taliban snipers are shooting at ISAF soldiers from behind human shields.

The scary thing is that I can’t detect the slightest trace of satire in the Georgia Straight’s latest hit-and-run propaganda attack on Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. I think editor Charlie Smith might actually be serious:

I think it’s time for the IOC to include some penalties for those who violate the truce, including NATO leaders.

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Chief of the Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk, and U.S. vice president Joe Biden were refused entry into Vancouver Olympic venues for being warmongers during a truce period, perhaps this world would suddenly get a little more peaceful.

Smith seems to suggest that UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon actually wants Canadians to throw down their weapons and bug out of Afghanistan ASAP.

That’s a distortion of the truth. The UN bigwig couldn’t have been more clear about the importance of Canada’s boots on the ground. Remember this?

Once again, the opportunists are on the rise, seeking anew to make Afghanistan a lawless place — a locus of instability, terrorism and drug trafficking. Their means are desperate: suicide bombs, kidnappings, the killing of government officials and hijacking of aid convoys. Almost more dismaying is the response of some outside Afghanistan, who react by calling for a disengagement or the full withdrawal of international forces. This would be a misjudgment of historic proportions, the repetition of a mistake that has already had terrible consequences…

The United Nations, alongside national and international counterparts, non-governmental organizations and Afghan civil society, will continue to provide the Afghan government whatever assistance it needs to build on these achievements. Our collective success depends on the continuing presence of the International Security Assistance Force [emphasis added], commanded by NATO and helping local governments in nearly every province to maintain security and carry out reconstruction projects.

In any case, there can be no truce with these fanatics. Their idea of a ceasefire is an off-season to recruit child suicide bombers and make some point about the unifying spirit of religion by spraying acid in the faces of girls who want to learn to read.

Let’s be clear. The UN wants us in Afghanistan. Our NATO allies want us in Afghanistan. The long-suffering Afghan people want us in their country. The only true warmongers are those who would have us abandon the field to let the Taliban conquer an entire nation.

Just so we’re all on the same page, killing dangerous jihad-obsessed fanatics hunkered down along the Pakistan frontier with drone-fired Hellfire missiles is good.

The US has recently stepped up its drone attacks as the CIA hunts a bomber who killed seven CIA employees late last year in the border area.

In contrast, there seems to be a problem with killing a dangerous jihad-obsessed fanatic enjoying a stay at a Dubai luxury hotel.

Britain’s relations with Israel are entering a period of crisis over the apparent use of cloned UK passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

OK, got it. Keep the game in bounds, gentlemen. After all, what distinguishes us is that we play by the rules — as opposed to the enemy, who uses children as human shields.