Satan’s Day, Gay Marriage, Canadian Terrorists

It’s a three-fer today.  Three subjects, no waiting…

Today is the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the 2000 series.  I suppose with a bit of manipulation you can label it Satan’s Day, as the day contracts as 6-6-6, or the Sign of the Beast from the Book of Revelations in the Bible.

This means the World Will Come To An End.  Or Not.  It depends on how much stock you put in the Book of Revelations.  So light a black candle and slaughter a goat in celebration of the Prince of Darkness, if that is your particular brand of theology.

For the rest of us, we get to watch two interesting bits of theatre play out for our entertainment.  The first is Dubya.  The war is going badly, some Marines quite possibly going off and murdering a bunch of people near Haditha in Iraq is not a good story to have out.  Bush’s buddy Ken Lay getting years in the crowbar hotel.  Scooter Libby pointing at Cheney. 

White folks wanting to ship all the Mexicans back to Mexico, unless they’re actually cutting the lawn at the Golf Club. 

The rich getting insanely richer and now the middle class is taking it in the ear.  People are waking up in the US and realizing the immigration and border system is irredeemably pooched, jobs being relocated, debt increasing and real income in the toilet.  Plus, the most recent polls put Bush’s popularity on par with a bowl of mealworms in your sock drawer.

Dubya needs a distraction to keep the citizens from marching on Washington.  When in doubt, wrap yourself in the flag, or bash fags.  Well, wrapping yourself in the flag right isn’t the best idea.  Americans remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner of a few years back.  That leaves fags.

The Dubya Brain Trust decided to put on a distraction by sending a Bill down to the Senate making same-sex marriage illegal, regardless of what various states have to say about marriage.  The sad truth is the tactic worked.  Various Senators, pundits and media bottom feeders have lined up for a supersize serving. 

The usual suspects are up on their back legs about same-sex couples getting hitched.  There has been no mention of various Mormons committing polygamy, as that is a “private matter” and “faith-based” and the government doesn’t get involved in religion.  Unless it is a different religion from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which means they can crap all over it.

But fags and dykes?  Hell yeah, open season baby!  My attitudes have been consistent for years.  Heterosexuals have screwed up marriage for hundreds of generations.  Why not give homosexuals a run at it?  As long as the parties involved are of the age of majority, both consent and no animals are involved, I have no issues with it.

 However, the media likes a good distraction and they’ve bought it as this week’s talking point to keep us amused and confused.

The second fun-show is closer to home.  I live in Toronto and I can see the CN Tower from my apartment.

Seventeen people have been arrested in the Toronto area, suspected of being terrorists.  The RCMP, local cops and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (Our domestic and foreign CIA, called CSIS, or SpiesCanada) busted the group buying three tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to bake up a bunch of home-made Timmy McVeigh bombs.  The story is the group wanted to blow up the CN Tower, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Peace Tower in Ottawa. 

There is no word if the suspects had planned to use Ryder Truck Rental or U-Haul as their transport of choice.  My personal preference is still for Ryder, as Timmy McVeigh used Ryder and so did the nutbars who did the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.  (“Ryder, we’ll rent to anybody with a grudge!”) 

I don’t doubt that the folks involved are quite possibly bad guys.  At least on the face of it, radicalized fundamentalist religious people, determined to blow stuff up to make a point or three, is a concept that we all understand regardless of race, upbringing or religion. 

Here’s the difficult side:  The cops have not disclosed, except to their media buddies, the evidence.  It seems that there was a sting operation involved.  Urban apartment dwellers don’t normally need three tons of agricultural fertilizer to feed a window box planter of green peppers and petunias.  Three tons takes up, roughly, the size of your livingroom, piled floor to ceiling, wall to wall. 

The defense lawyers were not allowed to meet their clients until a few minutes ago, more or less as the accused were being marched into court to be charged.  Of course, the defense lawyers have not been allowed to see any of the evidence, except that which was printed in the newspapers.  The cops did manage to brief the Mayor and the Prime Minister, over the past few months, who both said “They’re toast, fry’em”

Now you and I both know that cops never, ever go after people because of their skin colour or religious background.  You and I both know that cops never entrap people or encourage them to do bad things.  You and I know that CSIS would never gather a wad of shaky semi-facts and then slap “Secret” all over it to prevent the defense from actually questioning the veracity of the source or evidence.  And, you and I know that our cops would never, ever, act as judge, jury and jailer on the same day, even with excellent media coverage readily available and widely reported.

I am going to keep my counsel until I can read or see some of the evidence.  If the accused were planning on doing bad things and the evidence supports this in open court, then I’ll be the first to offer to drive the guilty to prison, strapped to the hood of my car.  I’ll gladly beat them with an axe handle the whole way to Kingston Penitentiary and stop from time to time to let others take a whack at them, $3 a go, proceeds to charity.

But if the evidence is only from a sting operation with a security operative encouraging the group to do bad things, or leading them to someone who was a real nutbar, then I’m going to be upset.  That crosses the line and brings up an unholy stench.

If they are guilty, then they are Canadian home-grown cement-heads, just like McVeigh was an American home-grown cement-head.  It has nothing to do with our immigration or security profile, just like McVeigh was under the radar in the US, or the July 2005 subway bombers in the UK were under the radar.  And they’re not Saudis on bogus student and visitor visas looking for flight training.  Sorry to bring that one up.