Cowboy without a gun, PM invites Sikhs to run

Canada's Tory Prime Minister - the unarmed cowpoke.

Earlier this week Canadians watched the Air India Inquiry go into sudden recess because key witnesses had refused to appear and testify. The startling reason they gave was that they were afraid for their lives and for the lives of their families. To many that sounded like nonsense and we were disappointed that they could not trust in the abilities of the RCMP and the Vancouver Police to serve and protect. Today we know that they were smart not to testify, and they must never testify. In fact it seems that someone (a journalist?) must have leaked word to the victim families that the Prime Minister of Canada was about to send a message to Vancouver making peace with the Sikh terrorists. They seem to have had some sort of advanced notice. The evidence is in today's Vancouver SUN.

In a stunning capitulation to criminal violence, Tory politician Stephen Harper yesterday bowed down to his political masters in British Columbia, and informed the Sikh community that there will be no prosecution of the terror bombers who blew up the Air India 747 twenty-two years ago. Yesterday he invited a staffer at the SUN into his healing circle, and sat for a prearranged interview. What a betrayal of the justice system!

Harper said: "The reality is we will probably never see justice truly done in the sense of people being held responsible for
these actions and we may not know everything that we should know, but I think through the inquiry process, we will learn everything that there still is to be learned and that that will hopefully provide not only some measure of comfort..."

Of course what Harper is really seeking is not a healing process but to build electoral support among the Sikhs of the Lower Mainland, among whom his Tory party is still mocked and disdained. By throwing in the towel and capitulating to political terror, (and to the racist editorial writers in the Punjabi English language newspapers) Harper is signaling that he is actively seeking Sikh candidates for the next federal election, and that he will give them priority status in his government. The "healing process" will of course include a few Sikh cabinet ministers if they deliver the electoral boost the Harperites need in urban B.C.

Harper's government has been holding terrorism in check only because our Intelligence is good and the first wave of Muslim conspirators have been T-shirt terrorists... loud mouths who boast of actions they are largely incapable of committing. When the man-pack claymores start going off in Eaton Centre, the Go-Trains start melting, and the Canadian Forces recruiting centres get shot up, lets see how tough our hapless PM looks wearing an ill fitting pair of six-guns. I for one won't be impressed by the contingency-rhetoric his handlers are already stuffing into his three ring briefing binder.

"Don't bother."

Tory, Tory Pants on Fire

Gordon Smith - truth teller

Wow, what an interesting month April was! On every front imaginable - Science, Literature, Military Affairs, Politics, Technology, Law Enforcement, Education, you name it… there were wonderful developments. Too bad I was so busy with other projects that I couldn’t spare more time for Blog articles. Regrets... there are a few.

Terrorism Investigation was Sabotaged

And what do we find in this morning’s fish basket? The Commission of Inquiry into the [Sabotaged] Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182, yesterday heard from an aging ex-Tory bureaucrat who attempted to heap scorn on the bombshell revelation offered last week from James Bartleman, Ontario’s Lt. Governor. Bartleman recall, testified that he was riffling through a 100 page daily stack of electronic intercepts prepared by Canada’s super-secret monitoring agency, the CSE, when one transcript seized his attention.
It was very specific about a threat to an AIR INDIA flight originating in Canada. As there was a top level meeting underway in the building of an ad hoc task force specifically assembled to deal with Sikh terrorism (CSIS, RCMP, External Affairs and Solicitor General) Bartleman ran down the hall with the document in hand to share it with the players. The RCMP careerist he handed it too wasn’t thrilled to see him. Let’s refresh our memory of how Bartleman’s recollection was reported in the press last week.

1) “Bartleman told the inquiry he took the classified document, an electronic intercept, and showed it to an RCMP officer who "hissed" at him that of course the RCMP had seen the report and taken appropriate action. Within five minutes of seeing that document, I was showing it by hand, to a senior RCMP officer in a position to take action.”

2) “The man flushed and, according to Mr. Bartleman, replied that "of course" he had seen it and he didn't need to be told how to do his job. Believing the matter to be in hand, Mr. Bartleman returned to his office.” He added that he had embarrassed at the time, because he had never in his career in public service been spoken to like that.

3)“He asked a senior Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, whose identity he cannot recall, if he was aware of the threat. His reaction startled me. He flushed and told me that, of course he had seen it, and that he didn't need me to tell him how to do his job."

4) Asked at a news conference why he had offered to testify, Bartleman said: "I thought that as I was director general of intelligence analysis and security at the time of the terrible event, I believed I could be of assistance to the inquiry. …I thought it was my civic duty to tell the commission what I knew, whatever the consequence." It was!

Now here is where the basket starts to smell. Yesterday Mr. Gordon Smith, now a university lecturer, did his utmost to discredit Bartleman’s testimony. "I think it's possible ... that he has conflated several events and run them together and his memory in that sense is playing tricks on him." More astonishing, he implied inaction on Bartleman’s part! "I would have thought he would have come forward immediately," Smith said of Bartleman. "That would have been a very relevant piece of information for a lot of us to have." Is this guy for real??

Is there any thinking person in this country who doesn’t understand what happened following the terrorist bombing in 1985 which massacred people? The careerist in Law Enforcement, Intelligence and assorted bureaucracies weighed the value of a genuine, balls to the wall investigation – against their pension points, and selfishness won out.
Yesterday the head of this Inquiry, Supreme Court Justice John Major, stated the obvious. Gordon Smith had been bought in to discredit his old “friend” Bartleman. Major noted the government is losing control of the official story line is making an “effort to discredit Mr. Bartleman”. Smith, predictably, stepped outside the hearing room to express his outrage that his rendition of events is not believed. Boo Hoo!

I am reminded of another man named Major who investigated the case. Bernard Major, a former Scotland Yard detective, investigated the case for the insurance adjusters on the case. His views were reported in the Vancouver SUN in 1994 – “Police failed to act on Bomb Tip, prober says”. I’m also reminded of a PROVINCE story around that time which revealed that RCMP officers had shredded transcripts and tapes of thousands of wiretaps, before giving carefully weeded material over to investigators. So determined were they to destroy the evidence of what they overheard Sikh terrorists discussing that they pulled hard drives from computers which contained transcripts, took them into the RCMP garage on Heather Street and busted them up with metal grinders.

Truth is dead in this country. As dead as the 327 bombing victims of flight 182. This photo shows the wreckage of the Air India 747 jumbo on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This picture doesn't lie but everyone with a tongue in their mouth has.