Pondering The Problem

"They go from being Muslims to being somewhat radical Muslims to being extremist Muslims to those that we worry about, which are extremist Muslims who want to do violence. A lot of it is, I think, marketing on the Internet. There are a large number of websites that advocate violent extremist action against the West."
Richard Fadden, Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Simply put, he believes what has become obvious enough even to the intelligence-unschooled mind reading the daily news; that extremists represent for the most part "individuals who feel that the Muslim world is under attack and that somehow Canada is contributing to that". A rather generous interpretation, giving an excuse-pass to those who choose to betray the democratic values of the West for the violence-response of Islamists to that imagined Islamophobia.

It represents a pathology of the human mind when emotions overtake reason and tribal allegiances loom large in importance with religious devotion leading the way to a situation of imagined victimization resulting in pious rebellion, where violence is meted out to demonstrate that one plays with the heritage and values of others at their own fragile risk. And it is a circuitous cycle of umbrage and revenge.

Al-Qaeda, as goes the new wisdom, has been diminished in strength and domination in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the response to the 9/11 attacks, but its affiliates in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and Somalia have grown to become "much, much more operational", and that as a result "in every single case", Canadians had joined the ranks of the newer, al-Qaeda-patterned affiliates.

The Canadian identified by Bulgarian officials in the bombing of the tour bus that killed six Israelis and the Bulgarian driver last year, though not publicly named is known to have emigrated from Lebanon, living in Vancouver until age 12, when he returned to Lebanon and was obviously conscripted into Hezbollah, his value highlighted by possession of a Canadian passport.

It has been discovered that this man is a relative of the terrorist who died while putting the explosives in place. This was not meant to be a suicide bombing. All of those involved were to have escaped detection and removed themselves expeditiously, before things went awry. DNA tests confirmed there to be a family connection, but it is as yet unknown whether the dead bomber was also a Canadian; he has not yet been identified.

"Hezbollah frequently deploys operatives who are related to one another, or who grew up together, since these longstanding ties bind the operatives together and make for a network that is much harder for intelligence and law enforcement officials to penetrate", explained Matt Levitt, a U.S. Hezbollah expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The two accomplices, one Canadian, one Australian, fled after the bombing to Romania, then returned to Lebanon. It is suspected that it was the Australian who was the bomb maker, receiving money transfers from Hezbollah. Police came across the Canadian's fake driver's license not far from the Romanian border. DNA taken from that license connected the two.

An online petition supporting a private member's bill to strip Canadian citizenship from dual nationals who commit treason through acts of war against other Canadians, posted on Minister Jason Kenney's Citizenship and Immigration website has been rushed with over ten thousand signatures in five days.

"We've never had such a significant number of supportive responses in such a short period of time", said his press secretary.