Extraordinary Times

One can only suppose that throughout human history people have felt they're living in extraordinary times. In a sense, that's likely correct, since events are always occurring, natural and man-made, that surprise us and provide us with more than enough trials and tribulations to keep us busy trying to circumvent the harm they do to us. There's a limit to what humankind can do to fend off cataclysmic natural events that cause upheavals leading to mass human migration, and stress on the environment.

And, it would seem, there's also a limit to what humankind can do to defend itself from the relentless, ongoing onslaught from other humans who seem to feel that their destiny is to create other types of cataclysmic upheavals. Say, for example, overturn, through violent actions, the orderly and accepted methods by which human settlements have agreed upon, resulting in stable and safe societies. There will always be some groups resentful and aggrieved by the modus operandi of other groups.

Nature has endowed us with an unfortunate tendency to tribalism, a required reaction in ancient times to enable human creatures to persevere in small supportive collectives against the ravages of natural events and other small supportive collectives who would wage aggression for the purpose of achieving for themselves rare and needed natural attributes through territorial aggression.

We fought one another over resources that would enable us to live to see another day. Hunting territory, agrarian lands, ores that could be fired and shaped, lakes and rivers that could provide potable water for ourselves and our flocks of grazing sheep and cattle. The tribe to which one belonged was always the right one; the others were inevitably the wrong ones.

That was then, this is now. Religion was constructed by wise men to teach their flocks that peace was preferable to war, that all of humankind is related and thus needful of compassion and understanding and mutual care for one another. Which handily explains why, in the present era, Islamists have launched yet another jihad against the kuffars who know no better than to deny the supremacy of Islam.

This is getting a trifle tiresome. How much longer must the world flail against itself? And how much longer must Canada, with its carefully balanced and nuanced responsibility to its citizens, to ensure their freedoms and rights, be taken for a fool? There are those unfortunate instances when, because extraordinary times cause extraordinary crimes, and the free world seeks to cope with both, we are taken advantage of.

Because we try so hard to be rational and balanced and just. We don't always succeed, as in those thankfully rare instances when we fail our own citizens. But too, in the case of the truly dreadful experiences of Arab-Canadians having been taken prisoner in the lands of their birth and incarcerated and tortured, we have been seen to fail our responsibilities in part - while those who have suffered that torture must claim some responsibility also.

The world is an uncertain place, it is true. But we learn to cope with uncertainties. Mostly by avoiding those situations which promise to erupt with a series of uncertainties that will, in the end, land heavily upon us. If one escapes a tyrannical, unstable country for a democratic stable one, accept the new citizenship and destroy the old one. And never, ever, return to a country where it is certain that abuse of its citizens, and torture, are commonplace.

That said, if Canada has been sloppily unaware or its agents uncaring enough to cause harm to any of our citizens, it is dreadfully wrong, obviously regrettable, and does not reflect the wishes of Canada or its people. This country has acquired a lamentable reputation as being a possible haven for the world's psychopaths, those who cause limitless harm to others, then escape justice by fleeing to Canada for refuge.

We're so gracious, we hardly know when we're being used and abused. As in the case of two former Montrealers who were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. They were nominally 'Montrealers', in the sense that they were passing through, not citizens of the country, but as a respite from their other, more important dealings, being part of al-Qaeda, and engaging in jihad.

Yet lawyers for Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Ahcene Zemiri insist that the Federal Court of Canada order the country's security agents to give over details of interviews the men say they had with RCMP and CSIS agents in an effort to support themselves at trial, and hold Canada complicit yet again for failings at a time when it must protect itself from the incursions of jihadist agents.

Yes, the RCMP and CSIS do, from time to time, pass information to U.S. security authorities. This is quite simply what allies and good neighbours do. Canada cannot and would not control what happens with that data, that is hardly its concern; protection of its home turf and its citizenry is. The two men in question must themselves respond to the queries to be resolved at their trials.

Give support to a violent movement intent on destroying the peace and security of another country by impairing its civil infrastructure, by murdering its people, and pay the piper.