Miscalculating Afghanistan : The Past Assuming the Future

"I stand squarely behind my decision."

"If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending US military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. "

"American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves."

U.S. President Joe Biden

Afghan passengers wait to leave the Kabul airport on August 16, a day after the Taliban captured the city [Wakil Kohsar/AFP]

Chaos is total in Kabul as the capital -- as expected but within a shorter time-frame than even the most pessimistic of analysts could have expected --  fell into the hands of the Taliban, swiftly declaring themselves the new government of Afghanistan. Afghans lost no time leaving the city, where thousands had entered earlier desperately fleeing from surrounding towns, villages and cities as they were first taken by the Taliban, hoping to find refuge and safety in the country's capital city.

As soon as the Taliban entered Kabul, Afghans streamed out of the city, walking the desperate distance to the Hamid Karzai international airport at Kabul where planes from international destinations were landing to evacuate their nationals as diplomatic missions emptied their embassies, planning to fly their citizens to safety back home. Afghans hoped that they too would be included in the evacuation process. Many of whom had worked with, had collaborated with, NATO member-countries as interpreters.

Most countries had indicated, after all, the responsibility to provide a safe haven to those Afghan nationals who had worked alongside them, including those locally engaged to work at the embassies, all of whom had the certain knowledge that they and their families would become targets of the Taliban. Some so desperate to escape that they ran after planes taxiing along runways, clinging to the planes and at lift-off, falling to their death.

 

Hundreds of Afghan people run alongside a U.S. Air Force plane, with some climbing on it, as it moves down a runway at the international airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday. (The Associated Press)

Their eventual fate is known, it has been acknowledged that those Afghans wherever they live in the country, wherever foreign troops were stationed, who worked as base cleaners, administrative clerks, interpreters, in any capacity whatever, were slated for revenge attacks by the Taliban whose fearsome reputation for atrocities escaped no one's notice. With that knowledge, in the expectation that it would yet take time before the Taliban succeeded in taking the country in its entirety, foreign governments fiddled with administrative niceties rather than flying those vulnerable Afghans and their families out to safety and absorption abroad as immigrant.

 

Thousands of people packed into the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday, rushing the tarmac and pushing onto planes in desperate attempts to flee the country after the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government. Here, people climb atop a plane as they wait at the airport. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)

The Taliban leadership initially claimed it had no interest in entering Kabul until it had completed the process of forming a transitional government. That declaration was soon upended, by the decision to physically occupy the city, sending in the 'fighters'; the purpose of which it was explained was to "prevent chaos and looting". Both of which, needless to say, are hallmarks of the Taliban mode of operation; the chaos they sow ensures that opposition will melt away out of raw fear, and the plundering is the Taliban reward.

 

Taliban fighters take control of the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the president fled the country on Sunday. (Zabi Karimi/The Associated Press)

 

There was no opposition when the Taliban reached Kabul's outskirts. Both the national police and the Afghan military melted out of sight, evaporated, left for greener pastures they might defend -- or not. With no defences, no opposition, no problems, the country fell to the Taliban just as Iraq fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant when Iraqi security forces panicked and fled, leaving ISIL to establish and enlarge its caliphate at will, just as the Taliban are now doing; returning the past to the future.

"I don't want to be owned by anyone. I want to stand on my own two feet. I love my country and we are the next generation of Afghans taking a step into the modern world."

"I went to work this morning and there were no police or soldiers at any of the usual checkpoints and no one in the office so I came home."

"The streets were full of people trying to get home to their families. No one knows what to do."

"I am afraid I will be kidnapped, imprisoned and raped for being a soldier. I am afraid for my future and for my family."

Kubra Behroz, 33, mother of two, officer cadet member of the Afghan National Army

Women who joined the Afghan National Army amid a western backed campaign now fear the Taliban will kill or rape them for being soldiers Kubra Behroz, who served in the Afghan National Army,

 

She became an officer cadet in 2011. It gave her pride as a woman and an Afghan to work alongside men as a member of her country's national army. She felt her life had a purpose and that purpose was to help protect her country and her people. Other recruits, Pashtun males, regarded her with amused contempt. The Taliban is comprised of Pashtuns, the majority ethnics of the country, though they are now encouraging other ethnic groups to join the Taliban. When Hamid Karzai was president, he spoke of the Pashtuns, the Taliban as his 'brothers'.

She fears for her future with good reason.  When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan twenty years ago, women were not permitted to exit their homes without a male guardian accompanying them, and the women were expected to wear burqas with full face coverings. Girls were not permitted to attend school. During the presence of foreign troops, NGOs and institutions in Afghanistan, schools were built for all children to attend school. The Taliban burnt them down. 

Women were not permitted to work. Hospitals were for men only. Women could only attend hospitals meant for women, and female surgeons too, even in the operating room, were forced to wear full burqas. The Taliban now solemnly declare in the absence of any opposition to their conquest of the country, that girls will be permitted to attend school, that women will not be forced to leave their jobs. Afghans know differently from their own experience. Owners of beauty parlours have painted over their windows; music shops have boarded up doors and windows, destroyed their equipment.

At work Kubra Behroz and her female co-workers have been warned by their male colleagues that they are in extreme danger, taunting the women. "They say the Taliban will cut off our heads if they find us", said Behroz whose brother, a soldier who was wounded in the fighting in Ghazni province last week, informed her of two women having been beheaded who had been police officers four years earlier. Reports are circulating of Taliban soldiers raping women and young girls, declaring 'marriage'.

When a senior Taliban was interviewed he insisted that everyone would be treated well, women would not lose all their recent gains, under Sharia. The very Islamic laws that permit such 'temporary' marriages that rape is viewed as. A girl or woman who is raped is expected to 'marry' her rapist by custom and tradition, or face being ostracized as one whose behaviour 'shames' her family and community.

Even at the best of times, when women were released from the fanatical strictures of the Taliban in their adherence to sharia law, Behroz faced ample violations of her human rights. Ever since she joined the military she has suffered violence of one type or another, from threats to home invasions. While at work her home was ransacked. More recently threats and anonymous phone calls are more frequent: "They speak in Pashto and then Dari and tell me they know how to find me", she said.

People crowd the tarmac of the Afghan capital's airport on Monday, trying to flee the country as the Taliban took control after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on the weekend, conceding that the insurgents had won the 20-year war. (AFP/Getty Images)

Identity Politics of Black Lives Matter

"Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) made a statement — while jurors in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin were not yet sequestered — which demanded street confrontations unless Chauvin were found guilty of murder. The trial judge correctly suggested that any conviction in the case might ultimately be thrown out on appeal, based on what Waters said. He condemned Waters' remarks in the strongest terms, but he did not have the courage to grant a defense motion for a mistrial. Had he done so, that almost certainly would have led to riots — which would have been blamed on the judge, not on Rep. Waters. So he left it to the court of appeals, months in the future, to grant a new trial -- which he should have granted."

Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School

Pictured: National Guardsmen and other law enforcement officers stand guard outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, on April 20, 2021. (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

Two things of a certainty: The former police officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police, did, through his deliberate actions, take the life of a former felon, George Floyd, while attempting to arrest him for having passed a counterfeit $20 bill in the purchase of a pack of cigarettes. That Mr.Chauvin caused the death of Mr. Floyd is irrefutable. There are witnesses everywhere to the act, which was captured on video and repeatedly aired to great public dismay and anger. The man was in custody, had been subdued when he resisted arrest, and handcuffed in the prone position, and met his death when his oxygen supply was cut off.

 

Through the evidence of the video, more incriminating than any credible testimony, it was clear that Mr. Chauvin was the instrument of Mr. Floyd's death. There may well have been extenuating circumstances; Mr. Floyd was a drug user and had fentanyl in his system, and his health was compromised by a heart problem. Clearly, however, it was then-Officer Chauvin's knee pressed to Mr. Floyd's neck for over nine minutes of agony for Mr. Floyd who gasped for relief to enable him to breathe, that was the cause of  his death.

"They're a good family and they're calling for peace and tranquility, no matter what that verdict is."

"I'm praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is -- I think it's overwhelming in my view."

"I wouldn't say that unless the jury was sequestered now, [would] not hear me say that."

U.S.President Joe Biden, at the White House

Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, has been convicted on all charges in the death of George Floyd.   Pool

 

That would, of course, be viewed as the President of the United States interfering with the justice system had the jurors not been sequestered. It was obvious enough that he expressed the opinion that the jury of twelve women and men, black and white, needed to find the defendant guilty as charged. Some, like Professor Dershowitz, feel the state overstepped itself in declaring the death of George Floyd a murder and not a case of manslaughter. Murder is usually premeditated, while Mr. Floyd's death was a miscalculation and a heartless oblivion to his suffering.

 

This was a case fraught with danger for society in general and peace and stability in particular. Black Lives Matter adherents, passionate in their rage over past injustices against the black community in America see their purpose as forcefully reminding the majority white communities in the country of their past and current responsibilities in having enslaved a people, forcing their labour for profit, and over the course of the years manifestly believing in the inferiority of blacks while committing grave human rights crimes against them.

 

The BLM movement has been influential both in the U.S. and abroad for the outrage it invokes that is credible and deserving. But it, like the Minneapolis police officer who committed a black man to death in an age-old manner, has transgressed the boundaries of civil behaviour, committing serious offences of their own in the process. Posturing, threatening, and committing violence against others, both black and white, destroying public and private property, creating chaos in their wake. Defying law and order.

 

Many now view the finding of guilty in the criminal trial of Mr. Chauvin just and deserving. During the course of his professional duties, after all, he committed the cardinal sin of overstating his public duty and in the process of disabling a struggling man, applying continual undue force resulting in his tortured death. Now, Mr. Chauvin is the one in handcuffs and Mr. Floyd's memory as a handcuffed and subdued arrestee has filed the final chapter in the sad and sorry event that transformed a nation into a BLM-revenge-fearing country.

 

Chauvin pressed his knee into the back of Mr Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes.  EPA

 

Having pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree unintentional murder involving "intentional infliction of bodily harm", third-degree unintentional "depraved mind" murder involving an "act eminently dangerous to others", and second-degree manslaughter involving a death caused by "culpable negligence", former Minneapolis police officer Chauvin has been declared guilty on all counts. And now faces a likely prison sentence of at least ten years, as a first-time criminal offender. Longer, if "aggravating factors" are proven.

 

There were four police officers in total at that scene where George Floyd died. One, at least, was an ethnic minority. The three officers other than Mr. Chauvin were fired by the Minneapolis Police Department when Mr. Chauvin as the perpetrator of Mr. Floyd's death, was fired. All others are due to face trial as the year progresses on charges of aiding-and-abetting in Mr. Floyd's death. None appeared to have made an effort to intervene, to persuade Mr. Chauvin to release Mr. Floyd from the excruciating pain of impending death.  

There is another story here. The story of hardcore animosity between black and white. Guilt on the part of the white community, accusations that cannot be denied from the black community. And a deadly rage that promised to unleash mayhem and even murder along with looting and destruction should Mr. Chauvin not be found guilty. Witnesses who testified for Mr. Chauvin have received threats and a general aura of violent intimidation hung on the air in anticipation of a verdict that could not have been other than it was.

The reasons twofold; that guilt was indeed his, as the evidence clearly demonstrated, though the charges might have been different; and the fear of violence once again erupting on a scale that might dwarf those that were mounted last year in the wake of the death of Mr. Floyd would be repeated. And may yet still be. The BLM movement appears to be addicted to the rage of violence and defiance of the law which nothing seems to appease.

 

People gathered in Minneapolis to celebrate the verdict and pay tribute to George Floyd   Getty Images

Fascism's Stranglehold

"[The discovery is a] disgrace [for the police in the western region of North Rhine-Westfalia and impacted the force] to its core."

"We are talking about the nastiest and most disgusting neo-Nazi, racist and refugee-hostile hatred."

"I have to tell you that this process makes me speechless. And I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since I found out about it."

"We have to ask unpleasant questions of ourselves. Who knew about this? Why was this tolerated for years? By whom?"

Herbert Reul, interior minister, North Rhine-Westfalia

 

"The battle against right-wing extremism is in the DNA of the police." 

"The fact that there are, nevertheless, officers who share radical, far-right and xenophobic content in chat groups is unbearable."

Michael Maatz,  regional deputy chair, GdP union

Dozens of officers in Essen were asked to hand in their badges and weapons.  BERND THISSEN/DPA/AFP via Getty Images

Germany is undergoing yet another neo-Nazi scandal, to augment those that have already been revealed polluting their national military and law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine police officers yesterday were suspended on charges of taking part in extremist chat groups sharing images such as swastikas and depictions of genocidal victims in gas chambers. Photographs of Hitler, Third Reich flags and another image showing a Black person being shot were part of the images shared on these chat groups.

 

There were 126 images in total, many of them grounds for lawful punishment, shared on five WhatsApp chat groups predominantly or exclusively dominated by police officers, 25 of whom were on the same police force in the city of Essen, asked to hand in their badges and weapons yesterday. Disciplinary measures are underway for the intention of termination against 14 of the officers, eleven of whom are suspected of having carried out criminal offences.

 

At 34 locations such as private homes and police stations, early morning raids were carried out. Extreme-right scandals have plagued police and military units in Germany. Prominent public figures have received death threats from neo-Nazis. Left-wing politicians and lawyers in recent years have been threatened, the incidents linked to police computers. The WhatsApp chat groups were revealed when an inquiry was launched into those threats, where it was revealed officers shared racist and anti-Semitic content.

 

A group of neo-Nazi "preppers", called Nordkreuz was discovered in 2017 who, according to authorities, were preparing themselves for "Day X", amassing lists of political opponents and storing weapons and body bags toward the goal that "Day X" evidently represented for them. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer disbanded a combat unit of Germany's elite Special Forces Command in June in the light of suspected extreme-right ties in the ranks.

 

German authorities, according to security experts, have failed to tackle the problem of resurging fascism directly and have avoided answering the obvious; whether police can be trusted to investigate themselves. No officers have yet been charged with relation to the death threats. A police officer who founded Northkreuz who had served in the German military, had been given a 21-month suspended sentence on weapons charges last year.

 

Minister Horst Seehofer in the Bundestag.  Hannibal Hanschke /REUTERS

Horst Seehofer, German interior minister, has resisted any assertion of structural racism within the security forces. He cancelled a scheduled study of racial profiling by police back in July with the explaintion by his ministry that there was no necessity to proceed with the investigation since racial profiling is illegal. He spoke, rather, of a study into police-directed violence. 

 

Far-right networks in three of the country's sixteen federal states, cautioned a spokesman for the federal interior ministry, should not be taken as a"structural" racism issue among the nation's 300,000 police officers. Adding that it was too early to re-evaluate the decision that the racism study be shelved, Steve Alter was anxious in his statements to impress upon the news media that the interior ministry continues to trust the democratic, law-abiding judgement of Germany's security officers.  

After an officer's cellphone had been confiscated over suspicion of media leaks, what was discovered was the presence of the offending chat groups, one of which started in 2012, another created in 2015, where most of the offensive material was found to have been posted and shared. Leading Mr. Reul to warn that there may well be further shocking revelations since cellphones belonging to other officers were seized on Wednesday for examination.

Herbert Reul, North Rhine-Westphalia's interior minister presents the state's unit for arrests and securing evidence in February 2019    (EPA)

Black Victimhood

"The likelihood of a Black person being shot by police in Toronto is just as high as for a Black person in the average city in the United States."                                 "The time for debate about whether systemic racism or anti-Black racism exists is over."                                                                                                                         "It is incumbent upon us all to re-envision the practices, the policies, the procedures, and importantly, the perceptions that shape policing in our city."            "The disproportionality, and the disparities in the commission report are more than just statistics. They are Black lives and Black Lives Matter."                                    Ena Chadha, interim chief commissioner, Ontario Human Rights Commission

"[Black people are more likely to be] arrested, charged, overcharged, struck, shot or killed by Toronto police."                                                                                "[Black people in Toronto are] disproportionately [arrested, charged and subjected to use of force by the city's police force]."                                                                 'A Disparate Impact' report

"This disparity cannot be explained away by racial differences in criminal history, civilian behaviour towards the police at the time of the incident, civilian weapons use, civilian mental illness, civilian intoxication, or local crime rates."                   Scot Wortley, criminology professor, University of Toronto

Black Lives Matter protests in Toronto. (Evan Tsuyoshi Mitsui/CBC)

"At the end of the day, when someone calls 911 they need to know that a police officer will show up at their door." "But is there an opportunity for other community agencies to do more? Absolutely."  "[Ontario has been] very active in doing things already [by increasing investment in community mental health and addiction resources, which account for 40 percent of calls to emergency services]."                                                                                   Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones

Critics of Toronto police call for reform in the way mental health calls are treated, that mental health professionals, not police should be responding to mental health calls, pointing to the death of a 29-year-old Black woman, Regis Korchinski-Paquet who fell from a balcony while police were present in her apartment, called there by a relative who had alerted police to something going awry, wanting her taken to a mental health facility. For their part, police felt they were responding to a possible assault call. 

It's worth noting that Toronto has a (newly retiring) Black police chief, appointed back in 2015. His deputy chief was also Black, and is now Ottawa's chief of police. Many police chiefs in the United States are also Black. Some of them are Black women. Yet police in both countries are charged with prejudicial racism, that they deliberately target Blacks for suspicion of crime commission. Police are a professional public safety group. They become very familiar in the commission of their duties at every level where crime most commonly emanates from.

They also develop a fine-tuned sense of the relationship between elements of any population with the culture of crime. With gangs, drug dealing, weapons possession, and all the public/social malfeasance that follows from those propensities. Blacks do indeed become targeted for questioning, stopping, suspicion of anti-social acts, from drug dealing and weapons smuggling to competitive challenges between gangs leading to shootings, wounding and death.

That being so, they become a 'targeted' community in the sense that police, the guardians of public safety and security, are attuned to what occurs in those communities, dealing with the outcomes as best they can. Yet, in 'progressive' social cultures they come under fire by complaints and accusations that they're too hard on the criminal element among Black populations, as though being Black requires them to have special consideration. Black police and their Black police chiefs seem somehow to believe otherwise.

They respect their own cultural community to the extent that they see no reason why those within the community cannot be expected to respect society and their place within it by adhering to the public weal, eschewing criminality and living normal lives rather than choosing to be thugs, drug dealers and gang members. But the Ontario Human Rights Commission is convinced that the problem lies not with the culture of the Black underclass community but with police in general, whose reaction is too harsh.

The report published by the Ontario Human Rights commission lingered on the fact that Black people representing 8.8 percent of the population of Toronto, manage to represent close to a third of all charges. Refusing to credit the fact that smoke both precedes and follows a fire, the OHRC prefers to blame police reaction rather than a dire need for the Black social underclass to reform itself. The OHRC's first interim report after its inquiry was launched in 2017 found between 2013 and 2017 it was 20 times likelier for a Black person to be shot and killed by police than a white person.

Whether the study undertook to assess and analyze the number of Blacks shot, wounded or killed by other Blacks is as yet unknown, but that this is a problem of immense proportions certainly is not. The enquiry also highlighted that officers sometimes lack a legal basis for stopping or detaining Black people, searching them without justification, making unnecessary arrests and laying unnecessary charges. In the opinion of the Human Rights Commission obviously, which knows nothing about finely honed police intuition and experience.

The protests sparked by the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May which led to protests and demonstrations by Black Lives Matter worldwide, that were often offensive and violent and ultimately led to the impression that among Blacks white lives don't matter, did nothing to achieve sympathy other than among 'woke' progressives whose 'guilt-by-whiteness-colonialism' sought to expunge itself through unquestioning support.

Jihadi Lone Wolf Mental Illnesses

"As part of our investigation into the homicide, we came across evidence that led us to believe there may be a terrorism-related offence."
"And that’s what’s brought us to today where the updated charge was laid in court this morning."
Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray

Saad Akhtar has been charged with the terrorism-related murder of a 64-year-old Toronto woman. Family Handout

"[There were two reasons to apply the charge].One, signalling, and calling it what it is, if authorities think it’s terrorism. And two, it gets you from second degree murder to first-degree murder without having to prove that the murder was ‘planned and deliberate’."
"That in turn gets you a longer sentence in terms of the parole ineligibility going from 10 to 25 years, but still life in prison."
Michael Nesbitt, law professor, University of Calgary

64-year-old Hang-Kam “Annie” Chiu, the victim of a deadly hammer attack

In Toronto on Friday evening, 64-year-old Hang-Kam Annie Chiu happened to be strolling along Sheppard Avenue in the north-east end of the city. She was accosted by 30-year-old Saad Akhtar wielding a hammer with malice aforethought, killing the woman who was, according to the murderer's mother, unknown to both him and his family. He had chosen her to die at his hands.

According to the Toronto Police Service, Akhtar voluntarily turned himself in to police who charged him with first-degree murder. And then new information came to light which led to an updated charge, that of first-degree murder including terrorist activity. Upon discovering new evidence the Toronto police had turned to the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team -- an RCMP team specializing in terrorism cases -- for advice, and this presumably was the outcome.

A note was evidently discovered tucked under the slain woman's body, revealing that the murder, albeit random and puzzling in nature, had been committed in the fulfillment of 'terrorist reasons'. In a later interview after the arrest of the obvious Islamist jihadist, his mother revealed that her son had been studying computer programming at Ryerson University, that the woman he killed was a stranger to him, and that her son suffered from a mental illness. Diagnosed with ADHD and obsessive -compulsive disorder.

He was not, she emphasized, capable of a violent act such as he has been charged with. A trial and jury will most certainly reach their own conclusions on the evidence which will exclude a mother's trust in a son she described as troubled but refusing help. His usual Friday evening mosque attendance last week did not see him returning home immediately afterward. Instead, he had decided to fulfill a mission incumbent on the faithful in Islam; personal jihad.

Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Society hosts an awful lot of people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures diagnosed with ADHD, who somehow learn to lead fairly normal lives. Many people suffer from many types of 'abnormal' mental states to which they learn to adjust their lives; among them people with obsessive personalities, those whose compulsive passions would never lead to violence, much less plotting to murder perfect strangers leaving explanatory notes behind.

A flower memorial where Hang-Kam “Annie” Chiu was murdered

Clearly, though purportedly mentally unstable, he had no wish to become a martyr to claim his reward in Paradise. Under the Canadian Criminal Code, a suspect can face charges of first-degree murder irrespective of whether the killing was 'planned and deliberate' as long as it resulted from an offence considered to represent a terrorist action. A first-degree murder charge merits a longer prison sentence. Parole eligibility is ten years for second-degree murder; 25 years under a first-degree charge if found guilty.

"On behalf of the RCMP, I would like to extend our thoughts and prayers to the victim's family and to the communities that are affected by this horrific event."
Superintendent Christopher deGale, O Division, RCMP 

How strange it is that whenever an Islamist jihadist works themselves into a religious frenzy of hatred against those Islam considers enemies within Western society deserving of death, and executes a personal plan with or without like-minded accomplices, friends and family come forward to attest to the attacker's character, that such a diabolical act of deliberate violence ending the life of some poor innocent does not reflect who the killer really is. That in fact, a mental state is responsible for the crime, and as such appealing for sympathy, not condemnation.



 

Hong Kong in Extremis 

"If they [protesters] continue such dangerous actions, we would have no choice but to use minimum force, including live rounds."
Louis Lau, Hong Kong police spokesman

"The protesters have been reacting to the police."
"We haven't fought back as much as we could. I would be prepared for jail. We are fighting for Hong Kong."
Joris (last name withhold) 23, civil engineer

"Hong Kong's Chief Executive has the responsibility to do everything possible to prevent a massacre. She must order the police to exercise restraint and not to use live ammunition or other forms of lethal force."
"A bloodbath on a Hong Kong campus would be devastating for Hong Kong as a whole."
Malcolm Rifkind, former British foreign secretary

A protester arrested while trying to leave the campus  Reuters

The demonstrations have been ongoing for five months. While Beijing denies it has been interfering in the civil operations of Hong Kong, blaming foreign influences for inciting the people of Hong Kong to engage in violent riots against the police, demonstrators attest to the fact that it is the hand of the Chinese Communist Party exercising its options from Beijing under the direction of President Xi Jinping to wrest total control into the mainland orbit that has caused them to react to protect the island state's semi-autonomy.

Over the weeks of protests vociferous claims and counter-claims, actions and reactions have escalated with violence on both sides turning Hong Kong into a totally disrupted metropolis in virulent discontent with the status quo. Beijing's move to impose greater authority precipitated the unrest and its obvious agenda has strengthened the resolve of protesters. Adult children whose parents are in support of the status quo, including Beijing's transparent entitlement aspirations join the protests in defiance of authority while not disclosing their involvement.

Trapped inside Hong Kong's Polytechnic University with police water cannons and armoured vehicles laying siege on the periphery, raging battles have continued day and night with students determined to escape arrest and incarceration and to carry on with their chosen path of defiance. Students have responded to police tactics by making petrol bombs and hurling bricks with improvised catapults. Someone shot an arrow through a policeman's leg.

Normalcy is elusive; neither the police nor the demonstrators are willing to cede to the other; not to restore calm and reassurance to the business community and international investors, nor to placate the wild emotions of defiant rage against authorities imposing their stealth agenda on the city and its millions of residents. There are injuries aplenty among the protesters.

Some people on the front lines have been injured; scalding chemical burns from the water cannon jets have injured others; the chemicals no doubt related to the colours in the water jets, to enable police to identify those involved in the protests; if they're on the front lines, they must be protest leaders and therefore arrests are mandatory to interrupt the leaders' influence.

Frantic to escape the university siege, activists trapped at the Polytechnic were anxious for release. "If we can only hold on till dawn, more [protesters] might come", one exhausted protester said with faint hope. Among the protesters there were some busy, building fires inside campus buildings. China's financial hub in wild disarray, with major highways blocked off, the tunnel link between the Kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong disrupted, has created chaotic confusion.

Three of the protesters have so far been shot. Universities abroad have recalled their students, enabling their transfer out of Hong Kong, to return to their places of origin, in the U.K. and Canada, leaving the exchange programs in Hong Kong behind. "We've been trapped here, that's why we need to fight until the end. If we don't fight, Hong Kong will be over", 19-year-old Ah Lung declared.

Masks of any kind were outlawed by the administration weeks ago, but that hasn't stopped the wearing of gas masks or the use of handkerchiefs to tie over mouths and noses as protection from the miasma of tear gas floating about. Protesters on the university roof fired arrows and threw flaming projectiles with their catapults toward police lines.

Petrol bombs played havoc on Sunday when violence was at a high-water mark setting fire to armoured police vehicles.

More than 200 devastated parents are sitting outside #PolyU and hoping to see their kids. Several hundred students are still locked in PolyU and these parent are helpless. They can only wait. Nathan Law, Hong Kong

Toronto The Good

"This is not a normal weekend in the City of Toronto."
"I find it disturbing when you've got over one hundred people and someone would be brazen enough to pull out a gun and start shooting."
"It’s very solvable, because we have a lot of people that were there... We’ve got a lot of resources on this one, [and] we will definitely be in good shape to solve it if we have witnesses come out and help."
"When I’ve got 13 people right now in the city that have been shot, that have a bullet in them, I’ve got concerns for that."
"I can tell you that we will be putting additional resources in specific places that we think will help deter and reduce the gun violence that’s occurring in the city."
"Most of the shootings are occurring at nighttime and a lot of the places and some of the people that have been shot aren’t necessarily 9 to 5, wife and kids at home."
Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders

Toronto Police were called around 2:15 a.m. on Monday to a nightclub called District 45 in the city’s northwest. Five people were shot.

"This was always put forward as a part of the answer to gun violence together with changes to other laws affecting things like bail, additional support for police and the paramount need for all three governments to invest together in kids, families and neighbourhoods."
Toronto Mayor John Tory

Canadians tch-tch the violence taking place in the United States, with sensationalized reports of one mass shooting after another, multiple deaths and inexplicable repeats leaving a nation mourning its unenviable record of violent hate crimes in a divided society. In the United States the powerful gun lobby works in overdrive to ensure that no laws can be enacted to interfere with the freedom of Americans to own guns, including rapid-fire automatic weapons. And it is increasingly these powerful weapons that are deployed by psychopaths with their pathological hate to wreak havoc in society, from school shootings by youths to large-gathering massacres at film showings or open-air concerts shot up by sociopathic loners.

And Toronto? Canada has fairly stringent gun laws, with most automatic and semi-automatic weapons outlawed. Not for sale, that is. Through conventional, legal means, that is. But anything is available on the black market. Gun enthusiasts, hobbyists, hunters and sport-shooters can have their weapons of choice to a degree and are enjoined by law to safely store weapons and ammunition. There are no open-carry permits in Canada other than for law enforcement agents. But petty criminals, hard-core criminals and gang members alike know how to get around the law. Proscribed weapons can and do make their way into the country.



Police are often called to various parts of the city to deal with shootings where people are injured in gang crossfire, and to respond to killings. These often take place in poor parts of the city where subsidized housing exists, where gangs and drugs are endemic, where residents have no intention of speaking to police and/or helping with information that might aid in removing the gangs from the streets, even though the residents of the area themselves are the most vulnerable victims of the gangs and guns, but withhold aiding police for fear of repercussions.

Close to a dozen shootings took place in Toronto over the long weekend just over. At a packed nightclub in north Toronto, the District 45 nightclub saw seven people injured on a crowded evening.
An at-capacity crowd in the nightclub saw gunshots fired and two men and three women were injured. Later that same day another two people brought themselves to hospital for attendance to their own gunshot wounds, at yet another nightclub; one male victim in life-threatening condition. Suspects? None, as yet.

Another two men were sent to hospital, a vehicle riddled with bullet holes a little later that early Monday morning in the wee hours over Sunday on the Civic Holiday weekend. “They’ve been saying, ‘We’ve been trying to get the guns off the streets for as long as I can remember. If they had a solution, they would have implemented it by now”, observed Ryerson criminology professor Tammy Landau.

Canada's laws are  stricter than those in the US.

• All gun owners have to be licensed, and all handguns and most semiautomatic weapons have to be registered.
• Handguns can't be carried out of the home, either concealed or openly, except with a specific license, which is usually only given to people who need guns for work.
• Licenses require training in gun safety and an extensive background check.
• Guns have to be kept locked and unloaded.

Handgun regulations are much stricter in Canada. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Figures for 2016 register approximately 7,100 victims of crimes involving guns in Canada, which includes 223 gun homicides. The same year, there were 2,026,011 firearms licenses in Canada.
 On the other hand, according to Statistics Canada, there has also been a steady increase in reports of thefts of firearms. There were 1,116 reports of break-and-enters committed to steal firearms in 2016, a considerable increase from 276 in 2009.

Upholding a Drug Trafficker's Charter Rights

"The impact of the over-policing of racial minorities and the carding of individuals within those communities without any reasonable suspicion of criminal activity is more than an inconvenience."
"[Given that three police officers entered a small private backyard without a warrant or permission to question five racial minorities], these young men would have felt compelled to remain, answer and comply."
Supreme Court of Canada

"[Reasonable and well-intentioned members of the public would consider a decision to exclude the evidence and exonerate someone] who was prepared to reach for a loaded weapon during a violent struggle with the police as not merely alarming, but intolerable."
Supreme Court Justice Michael Moldaver, dissenting opinion

A view shows the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. On Friday the high court ruled that Tom Le's charter rights were violated. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

A majority of the Supreme Court of Canada claimed that actions of police in May of 2012 one night amounted to arbitrary detention, representing a serious violation of 20-year-old Tom Le's -- a resident of a Toronto housing complex considered to be a "problem address" where drug trafficking was known to occur -- Charter rights. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they pointed out, protects people like Mr. Le from 'harassment' of this type.

Police, they concluded, had no reasonable cause to enter the backyard where Tom Le, an Asian-Canadian, was standing in conversation with four young black men late at night. The police officers had been informed by security guards at the complex who patrol the housing co-operative that the place gave them concerns about drug trafficking in the rear yard where a suspect had been recently seen.

Two officers entered the yard and began asking questions, requesting identification, a process known as 'carding', which has come under question for appearing to disproportionately target young men of racial minority backgrounds. That police intuition, allied with the very reality that it is young men of racial minority backgrounds that have a tendency to engage in illegal pursuits like drug trafficking disproportionate to their numbers in society, appears to be of little moment to this reasoning.

A third officer patrolled the perimeter of the property, stepped over a low fence, and advised a man to keep his hands visible. While another officer questioned Mr. Le, demanding his ID, he asked about a satchel the man had slung across his body. Mr. Le failed to respond to the query over the contents of the satchel, choosing to flee. He was tackled and apprehended a short distance away.

His bag was scrutinized and seen to contain a loaded handgun and a large amount of cash. He was arrested, taken to the nearest police station, where he then handed police 13 grams of cocaine in his possession. At trial, Mr. Le pleaded not guilty, arguing the seized evidence should be excluded, since police had violated his constitutional rights of freedom from arbitrary detention and unreasonable search.

When the trial judge found for the police, that they had legally detained the defendant, Mr. Le went on to challenge his conviction in the Ontario Court of Appeal which upheld the trial judge's finding of guilt. From there, he took his case to the Supreme Court. This, of course, is the very same Canada that bemoans the trafficking of drugs, cut with fentanyl and carfentanil that is increasingly taking the lives of young Canadians from drug overdoses.

Majority rules. Of the nine members of the Supreme Court, two dissented -- Justice Michael Moldaver and Chief Justice Richard Wagner -- while seven of their colleagues agreed with drug trafficker Tom Le that his Charter rights had been injured, and that the incriminating evidence that made for his conviction be set aside, so that absent 'evidence' he was free from conviction of criminal activity.

What's that old saying? The law is an ass!

The Long, Steep Road to Democracy

"Every week they come [Kabul police] asking for 100,000 Afghanis ($1,500)."
"But this month we finally started rejecting the bribes and this is why they are retaliating."
Malik Ahmad Shah, head, Hotak shura, Banayee, Kabul, Afghanistan

"They came to our home, spewed bullets everywhere, shot my brother in his neck, and dragged him out while he was bleeding to death. He was innocent! Unarmed!"
"They shot him in the neck without even a warning shot for him to surrender."
"Does anything like this ever happen in your country?"
Nawid Hotak, brother of Engineer Hotak, shot to death by Kabul police

"This was unexpected [last week's suicide bombing in Kabul]. We must now investigate whether the bomber came from among them [the Hotak clan] -- that this was revenge."
"Their so-called demonstration on the road was just a typical obstruction technique aimed at preventing us from entering farther into their village. That is perhaps what stopped us from finding the explosive vests that we suspect they possess and sell."
Major General Mohammed Salem Ehsas, Kabul police chief

A suicide attacker blew himself up near a crowd of police and protesters in Kabul on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 25 others, in the latest deadly violence to bring carnage to the Afghan capital.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant regional affiliate in Afghanistan has certainly been actively involved in suicide bombs in the country's capital. And when a dozen police officers were killed last week in yet another such bombing it was expected that they had been responsible; either ISIL or the Taliban, but ISIL took credit. Maj.Gen. Ehsas failed to be convinced. He felt that the blast that took place where residents of a Kabul suburb had established a roadblock to stop police from entering their main street, was mounted by the villagers themselves.

Previous to that blast a drug bust took place with city police raiding the home of the Hotak family, members of a a Pashtun clan known for selling black market liquor, narcotics and weapons. During the raid, the youngest of three brothers of the Hotak family known as 'Engineer' Hotak was killed. And it was that killing and the confiscation of a cache of illicit goods that Maj.Gen.Ehsas was convinced was behind the bomb blast as police were assembled and stopped from proceeding into the village.

Confiscated items, ranging from heroin to homemade liquor in water bottles, are displayed at Kabul police headquarters after the raid. (Kabul Police)

He felt that the suicide blast occurred too quickly during the impasse between militant villagers and the police, to have been carried out by Islamic State. The spontaneity with which it occurred belied the obvious need for planning, communication, arrival and execution, leaving the only reasonable suspect, in his opinion, to have been a local from the Banayee neighbourhood of Kabul. It was the Hotak clan that clogged the major highway stopping the police from proceeding, and his conclusion seemed logical to him.

Police claim to have discovered two kilograms of heroin, three of opium, over 500 ecstasy tablets, and hundreds of litres of homemade alcohol stored in buckets and water bottles, along with guns and grenade at the home. The police took possession of all of that contraband, and left behind a living room carpet deeply soaked in blood, a metal door kicked in, living room walls pocked from bullets ricocheting about the interior of the Hotak home. The blood was that of Engineer Hotak, smeared down the staircase to the front door.

The Hotaks consign the police display of confiscated goods to an elaborate setup to hide the corruption of Kabul's police. As for the suicide bombing, obviously a militant group took swift advantage of the presence of police. The head of the Hotak shura described how police have been extorting shopkeepers in Banayee since 2014. They had supported Ashraf Ghani who had won the presidency, while the police had given their support to Ghani's rival, Abdullah Abdullah. While at one time Banayee was known with reason to sell drugs and alcohol that is no longer the case.

Nawid and Ziarmal Hotak hold pictures of their brother, Engineer Hotak, 22, who was killed in a police raid in the Banayee neighborhood of Kabul on Thursday. (Max Bearak/The Washington Post)

It was the refusal by shopkeepers, said Malik Ahmad Shah, to continue to pay the bribes to the police that led to the raid, the killing of Engineer Hotak, and the display of planted weapons and drugs, 'confiscated' from the home by police. It is generally acknowledged that Kabul's police are corrupt, with bribery and extortion widespread. Maj.Gen.Ehsas went so far as to admit that to be the case. Still, he told a Washington Post reporter, the police raid demonstrates just how seriously the police force takes its Islamic duty to eradicate "mafias" like the Hotaks.

Seems like Afghanistan qualifies as a "shithole" nation, despite its pledges of reform and aspirations to democracy, albeit Islamist-style.

A Man of Proud Valour Martyred

"He's a hero; he saved many lives. All seven of those policemen are heroes but especially him."
"Just think if that suicide attacker got past the gate, what would have happened -- you cannot even imagine."
Basir Mujahed, Afghan Police spokesman

"My son sacrificed himself to save other people."
"He had two bachelor degrees, one in political science and another one at the police academy. He studied five years in Turkey. He came back from Turkey a year and a half ago. He was 25 years old and he was single. He has three brothers and one sister. He and I are the only police in our family. He was a very sporty guy."
"I lost my bodyguard in this incident as well. He was my bodyguard for the last 15 years, he was like my son. His name was Noor Agha, he left three children behind."
General Sayed Nizam Agha, Afghan Police commander

Afghan security officials inspect the explosion site after a suicide attack in front of a wedding hall in Kabul, Afghanistan on November 16, 2017 (Picture: Getty)

Afghanistan has been mired in conflict for the last several hundred years. In the 19th Century Russia and Britain contested one another to achieve conquest, trade and access to India through Afghanistan. More recently Russia occupied Afghanistan in an effort to ensure that its own choice of leader sympathetic to Russian interests was ensconced. That was followed by a U.S.-led invasion of the country when the-then ruling Taliban, majority Pashtun fundamentalist Islamist tribesmen, led the country under Sharia law and played host to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11.

The UN-NATO-US coalition has long since left Afghanistan. NATO member countries left behind military trainers to aid in ensuring that the Afghan police and military would be coached in the best strategic military and police practices. That both the police and military, like the government and society at large are inherently corrupt and that warlords continue to influence the government is well known. Also well known is that police and military conscripts are notoriously unreliable, going AWOL without a second thought.

And though the foreign troops stationed in the country for years fought against the Taliban, they would re-surge every spring, coming down from the mountains separating Afghanistan and Pakistan to mount fresh attacks. Infamously Pakistan gave the Taliban cover, training and armed them hoping to continue destabilizing Afghanistan ... and then their own Pakistani Taliban arose with the warlords plaguing the government of Pakistan just as they had Afghanistan; the killing of Benazir Bhutto signalling a temporary change.

General Sayed, proud of his son, and heartbroken by his death, along with that of his long-time bodyguard, was no doubt aware that his son, as a police commander, was involved in an anti-corruption campaign. Perhaps he wasn't aware  until the moment he lost his son that Police Lt.Sayed Basam Pacha was also courageous beyond belief. Through religious fervor, a Taliban attacker with a suicide vest was prepared to sacrifice his life to achieve mass murder. Through patriotism and valour, Police Lt.Sayed was prepared to sacrifice his life to save others.

On Thursday in Kabul Afghan Police Lt. Sayed and other officers from the police company he commanded were guarding dignitaries and civilians when a man approached the guarded gate and his demeanor immediately led the police to suspect he was a suicide bomber. Ordered by Sayed Pacha to stop, the man began running and so did the officer who stopped him by throwing his broad, muscled arms around the man in a deep bear hug. But nothing would stop the man from detonating his explosive vest.

In total fourteen people died, among them Police Lt. Sayed, six civilians and seven other police officers. Another 18 were wounded. Also among the dead was his father's trusted, reliable, and highly regarded bodyguard, dispatched by his father to assist his son at an event where high-profile political personnel were in attendance. In a country that remains mired deep in vicious, violent Islamist dysfunction. Where the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fester, threaten, and attack.

Policeman, Lieutenant Sayed Basam Pacha, 25, whose bear hug stopped a suicide bomber from killing more people outside a restaurant in Kabul

Irreconcilable Perspectives

"[The Temple Mount attack represents] an extremely serious event which crossed all red lines. The investigation is ongoing. We will need to reevaluate all of the security arrangements on the Temple Mount and its environs."
"I call on all public leaders to act to calm the situation and ensure quiet in Jerusalem."
Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan

"Israel must reopen Al-Aqsa mosque and the Haram al-Sharif [compound] immediately."

"[Israel must] refrain from taking any step aimed at changing the historical [status quo; restraining Jews from praying at their most holy site, permitting the Jordanian Waqf authority to control the site on behalf of Muslims exclusively]."

PA information minister Mohamed Momani

Master Sgt. Kamil Shnaan, left, and Master Sgt. Haiel Sitawe, right, the police officers killed in the terror attack next to the Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem on July 14, 2017. (Israel Police)

Three Israeli Palestinians, Muhammad Ahmed Muhammad Jabarin, 29, Muhammad Hamad Abdel Latif Jabarin, 19 and Muhammad Ahmed Mafdal Jabarin, 19, plotted to obey Islam's stern injunction that all its faithful must engage in jihad, and for that purpose they killed two Israeli policemen standing duty on the Temple Mount. They made lethal use of two Carlo-style submachine guns and a pistol to succeed in their attack. One of the terrorists attempted to stab an officer after being apprehended.

In honour of their noble deed the clan they belonged to in their remote northern Israeli village erected a mourning tent. The abhorrent violence by Palestinians heeding the incitement of Mahmoud Abbas and their religious leaders who speak of Jews defiling the sacred precincts of the third holiest site in Islam, represents one element of authority inspiring those they serve, to commit these unspeakable acts of carnage.

Investigations proceeded to fully appreciate just how it was possible for three Palestinians bent on mayhem and murder were able to enter the area armed, and it was ascertained that in all likelihood they had assistance from those within the Temple Mount complex. Searches were ongoing to determine whether other weapons were present. To close off the murder scene, access to the Temple Mount was closed for the first time in memory, to Muslim Friday prayer.

Eliciting a furious response from Mohammad Hussein, the Palestinian grand mufti of Jerusalem, who took the occasion to call on Palestinians to defy the Israeli police-investigative shutdown. "We completely reject the ban by Israeli authorities." Well, of course they do; the tragedy for them is that three Palestinian heroes met their deaths, not that two Israeli policemen were murdered. "We have urged our Palestinian people to rush to al Aqsa today and every day to hold their prayers", he told Reuters.

Despite that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement from his office that the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary would be reopened once the security evaluations and the sweep for weapons was completed on Sunday, Muslims are outraged at their inability to access the Al Aqsa mosque as though nothing unusual had occurred, claiming the incident of locking them out of their prayer space represents Israeli "terrorism".

Border Police officers walk on the Temple Mount after a shooting attack in the area left three people injured, two of them seriously, on July 14, 2017. (Israel Police)

"We cannot allow for agents of murder who desecrate the name of God, to drag us into a bloody war", emphasized Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, of the delicate maneuvering that Israeli authorities must negotiate in efforts to allay Muslim concerns, iterating and reiterating that Israel has no plans to upset the status quo  and the site, administered as it is, "will be preserved".

A call from PA President Mahmoud Abbas to Mr. Netanyahu expressing concerns over a possible escalation in overheated emotions, entirely justified on the part of Palestinians, it would seem, can fairly well be interpreted as a dark warning that should conditions not return to 'normal' favouring Muslim priorities there will be untoward consequences from an outraged and abused Palestinian population.

It is as though the events as they unfolded as described by Israeli police chief Roni Alsheikh, describing the attackers opening fire on the Israeli officers from inside the holy site, never occurred. As though weapons had never been brought into the holy compound by these devout Muslims. As though after shooting the two policemen, one of the assailants hadn't made use of a knife to attack an officer checking whether he had explosives on his person, leading to his defensive death.

To the Palestinian community, and to their sympathizers, three Palestinian men were killed by representatives of the Israeli occupation. And just incidentally, and of no consequence, two Israeli policemen lost their lives.