Ezra Levant

CBC taking bite out of ... Apple?!
Nope, not even a nibble — and why do we need a government music store in the first place?

The Canadian government has decided to start a new business, and go head-to-head with Apple's phenomenally successful iTunes online music store.

Others have tried to take on Apple. Canada's most successful hi-tech company, Research in Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, is having a tough time battling Apple's iPhone.

It's not surprising — Apple has a growing army of loyal customers and a constant stream of new products.

They made a $26 billion profit last year, and are sitting on $98 billion in cash. The only people more fanatic than Apple customers are Apple employees.

This is the market the Conservative government has set its sights on. The government's Crown corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, announced last week it's going to jump into the online music business.

Let's compare the two competitors. The CBC is creaking under the weight of no fewer than 10 different labour unions; its corporate culture is a toxic mix of entitlement and work-to-rule sullenness; it's run by political appointees, not real business executives. And they're going to take a run at Apple's iTunes, which has 88% of the legal online market for music sales. Apple has sold more than 10 billion songs online and now sells TV shows, movies and computer applications online.

That's sort of like a leaky canoe paddling out to take on an aircraft carrier.

There are other companies besides Apple selling online music. Good for them — good luck to them. May the best company win — and may the consumer win. But why the hell is the Canadian government getting into that business?

Does the CBC really attract the best business minds in the country? Is it a hothouse for entrepreneurial talent? Of course not. But they don't have to be. Because they don't have to convince any investor to put up money to take on iTunes, or any bank manager.

When they screw up, their CEO doesn't step down — as happened with BlackBerry's CEOs recently.

The CBC just has to go to the Bank of James Moore. He's the "Conservative" cabinet minister who keeps giving them corporate bailouts year after year — $1.1 billion in 2011.

Graham Henderson, a spokesman for the music industry, says it's an "entrepreneurial" deal. He says it's "good for creators, fans, investors and taxpayers."

If it's good for investors, why does it need government money? If it's good for taxpayers, why do we have to bail out the CBC every year?

Why can't we see the terms of the deal? Why is it a secret?

We're still paying for past government adventures in hi-tech businesses. The foolish "Conservative" government of Alberta once invested in a cellphone company called Novatel.

Oh, they were going to make a killing, and totally flatten Nokia, Motorola and the other private companies of the day. They even boasted their phones came with a free volume control button and a "function" button.

Taxpayers took a bath.

Politicians in France were even more audacious. They planned a government-run alternative to the Internet itself, called Minitel. You could only get it through the French government. It was going to be awesome.

Total blowout.

But James Moore thinks he and his CBC friends will succeed where these other government-funded boondoggles have failed.

The CBC is a failure at what it does now. It blows through $1.1 billion a year, and it has been made irrelevant by the 500-channel universe. It no longer has a rationale, other than inertia. It's less relevant than ever, but more arrogant than ever.

Sell the CBC. Set them free.

Let private investors take the risks. Go take on Apple. Go buy BlackBerry. Buy Minitel. Who cares! Just keep taxpayers out of it.

If James Moore thinks expanding the CBC into the Internet business is what being a conservative is about, then he ought to look the word up in the dictionary.

We don't need a government news channel, and we don't need a government music store, either.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Death and dishonour
Shafia murders the latest sad chapter in war on Muslim women

The jury in Kingston got it right: The evil Shafia family has been sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 25 years, for killing the girls in their family.

Mohammad Shafia, his polygamous wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their demon son Hamed Mohammad Shafia, were motivated by a medieval belief that women are the personal property of men, to be owned by men, and disposed of by men.

Mohammad and his son Hamed decided the three beautiful girls in the family needed to be killed, needed to be drowned like kittens in a barrel. Because they didn't want to live in a cage, which is the norm for women in Islamic fascist states like Saudi Arabia, or the Afghan culture from which the Shafias hail.

Zainab, Sahar and Geeti, just 19, 17 and 13 years old, respectively, were murdered. Rona, one of Mohammad's polygamous wives, was murdered, too.

A quadruple homicide.

Paul Bernardo, Canada's most notorious serial killer, was convicted of three murders.

The Shafias killed four. Of their own family.

Judge Robert Maranger said: "It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime."

Difficult, but not impossible to conceive of it. Because there have been more than a dozen honour killings in Canada in recent years.

And there are literally thousands of them each year, predominantly in countries dominated by medieval, fascist interpretations of Islam.

That's what it is: A war on women. But not a war on all women. These are not Amish girls being drowned in a barrel. These are not Australian girls, or girls from Honduras.

What they have in common, in more than 90% of the cases globally, is their killers are extremist Muslim men. Bullies.

It's the logical extension of women being forced to wear the burka. Surveys from Paris, France, show that more than 70% of women who wear a veil say they do so out of fear — including fear of violence.

Forcing women to cover their face is part of the same toxic culture that says young women in Canada must live like young women in medieval Arabia. And if you subscribe to that culture, that code of living, then you can understand the brutal logic the Shafias carried out: If men own women, and women don't obey men, then men can kill the women.

While the court in Kingston got it right in the end, the Canadian government failed these four murdered women beforehand.

The terrified girls called authorities. They ran away from home. They told teachers about the threats of violence they faced from their father and brother. One even fled to a battered women's shelter. They talked to cops.

But every time, authorities saw they were Muslim, so they backed down. In the name of multiculturalism. In the name of cultural sensitivity.

In the name of tolerance, our tolerant society tolerated the intolerable. Only now that they're dead, have we roused ourselves to give a damn.

Either we believe in the Criminal Code or we don't. Either we believe in non-violence or we don't. Either we believe in the equality of men and women or we don't.

Either we believe that everyone is protected by the law — that no one is above it because they're a Muslim man, and no one is below it because they're a Muslim woman — or we don't.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Sweetheart deal

In a revealing new book, The Enemy Within, the Sun's Ezra Levant brings Omar Khadr's story back into the public eye. Having completed his U.S. sentence in October 2011, Omar Khadr could return to Canada at any time. He may well be released, thanks to a lenient system that will likely credit him for the time he has served awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay. With Parliament back in session, Levant brings his razor-sharp perspective to bear on a story that is vital to our notions of citizenship and justice, and to our national security.

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In his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to shut down the U.S. prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

After becoming president, he didn't: the heavy responsibilities of a president leading a War on Terror quickly replaced the easy promises of an inexperienced candidate.

But getting rid of Guantanamo's celebrity inmate, Omar Khadr, remained a political priority.

And so, despite conclusive evidence of Khadr's crimes, including video footage of Khadr assembling terrorist bombs, the Obama administration offered Khadr a plea bargain. He would be sentenced to eight years for his terrorist crimes but need serve only a single year in a U.S. prison.

After that, he could be returned to Canada, where he would be eligible for full parole immediately.

That deal was accepted by Khadr on Oct. 13, 2010, but its terms were kept secret from the U.S. jury at Guantanamo Bay that still met to sentence Khadr. They handed him a forty-year sentence.

Forty years, pled down to one year. That's a 97.5% discount.

But the deal wasn't just between Obama's prosecutors and Khadr.

Canada played an essential part in issuing the get-out-of-jail-free card. Without Canada's diplomatic assurances, the promise of a transfer back to Canada, and to freedom, would have been meaningless.

Without Ottawa's nod at allowing a confessed and convicted al Qaeda terrorist back on to Canadian soil, Khadr wouldn't have accepted the plea and Obama's prosecutors wouldn't have offered it. In fact, the deal specifically promised that the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs would give Khadr a "diplomatic note" confirming their support for the plea deal.

So, Canada's Conservative government, which had for years so vigorously fought off court challenges to compel them to bring Khadr back to Canada, battling a full court press of public attacks from Khadr's personal lobby in the media, the legal profession, and opportunist politicians throughout, suddenly gave everything away in a fire sale.

It's one thing for a liberal U.S. Democrat to go soft on crime. But what about Stephen Harper¹s Conservatives, who have made criminal justice, including "truth in sentencing," a centrepiece of their political platform?

Terrorists on the street in Canada are taken seriously. And terrorism in Afghanistan isn't an abstract matter for Canadians either; more than 150 Canadian Forces personnel have died there, the overwhelming majority of them brutally killed by improvised explosive devices exactly like the ones Khadr was filmed assembling. In fact, the very first Canadian casualty in Afghanistan fell victim to an IED planted by a teenager.

Yet Khadr's sweetheart deal was approved by the Canadian Conservative government in a series of secret negotiations. The Canadian public was kept in the dark until the deal was already done. U.S. prosecutors were bushwhacked.

The agreement was signed by Khadr, his two lawyers, and two representatives of the U.S. government, but it was cooked up in a backroom deal among Obama's inner circle, Khadr's lawyers, and a cooperative Canadian government. Khadr's one-year U.S. sentence expired in October 2011, and his transfer to Canada could happen at any time.

Khadr wants that to happen. So does the Obama administration. And so do a lot of Khadr's allies, from the Canadian Bar Association to the CBC. And, of course, no one wants Khadr's public release more than al Qaeda itself, who knows the immense public relations value that comes with having a convicted terrorist set free, triumphant and remorseless.

Khadr has never abandoned his grotesque, murderous interpretation of the Koran and Islam; he has never once renounced his allegiance to al Qaeda; and throughout his detention, his family, a pillar of the al Qaeda community, has continued to propagandize for Islamism and to publicly undermine the Canadian and American war against terror.

His release is an advertisement for al Qaeda, both in revealing the weakness of will it has always accused Westerners of possessing and in recruiting yet more teenagers to its cause by proving that they, like Khadr, will escape harsh punishment should they ever be caught murdering Western soldiers.

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Excerpt from The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr. Copyright 2012 Ezra Levant. Published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

Whitewashing Omar Khadr
Confessed terrorist will soon walk free in Canada

In a revealing new book, The Enemy Within, the Sun's Ezra Levant brings Omar Khadr's story back into the public eye. Having completed his U.S. sentence in October 2011, Omar Khadr could return to Canada at any time. He may well be released, thanks to a lenient system that will likely credit him for the time he has served awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay. With Parliament back in session, Levant brings his razor-sharp perspective to bear on a story that is vital to our notions of citizenship and justice, and to our national security.

---

So, what can we expect to happen with Omar Khadr when he inevitably returns to Canada?

Unfortunately, it's not hard to guess. When Maher Arar came back to Canada after he was released from a prison in Syria, he was hailed as a hero and celebrity. Every anti-war, anti-Western activist with an axe to grind--which includes a large swath of Canada's mainstream media--turned his homecoming into a triumph. If only they treated our wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan so warmly.

If Maher Arar became a minor celebrity after his wrangle with the Syrian security system, with a secondary role played by Washington and Ottawa, it's a virtual lock that Omar Khadr--the leading man in a supposed morality play pitting the Bush administration, perennial bugbear of the left, and its Guantanamo "gulag" against a purportedly naive and pitiable "child soldier" from Canada--is set to become nothing less than a superstar.

Unlike Arar, who enjoyed only a fraction of the sympathy and media coverage, Khadr will be coming home to the built-in fan club that he's amassed since his capture. Arlette Zinck, the professor at Edmonton's King's University College who struck up a tender pen pal relationship with Khadr -- "Whenever you are lonesome, remember you have many friends who keep you in their prayers. Each morning at 9 o'clock, I include you in mine," she wrote to him in Guantanamo, referring to Khadr as "my dear student"--has led the charge in turning her campus into a factory for Khadr groupies.

Zinck actually testified in Khadr's defence, calling him a "considerate young man ... thoughtful and generous in spirit" in a sentencing hearing for a murder he himself confessed he took pleasure in reminiscing about (how considerate). In 2008, her school hosted a talk by Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's lawyers, to give a speech about how "a young Muslim man has been branded a terrorist without trial" and the failures of the Canadian government in supporting Khadr's case.

Along with a "consortium of activist groups," Zinck's students organized a rally later that year drawing seven hundred Khadr supporters to cheer for Khadr in downtown Edmonton, and Zinck herself has said she would personally recommend Omar Khadr's application to attend King's University College as a mature student.

But then he probably won't have the time. Or the need. Omar Khadr isn't likely to spend much time in prison once he applies to be released to Canadian custody in late 2011 after serving just one additional year in Gitmo (part of the plea agreement with the Obama administration). Under current Canadian law, Khadr should be able to apply for parole after serving one-third of his sentence --and his nine years in pre-trial custody means he's already done that (even statutory release kicks in after two-thirds of a sentence). A free man,

he'll have a career waiting for him here in Canada as a top speaker on the anti-American lecture circuit. Every pro-Islamist campus club, every unreformed mosque, as well as conferences for the reflexively anti-American New Democratic Party and the Canadian Bar Association, the national lawyers' group that for years churned out reams of press releases calling for Khadr's release and return to Canada, all are sure to hound the freed terrorist to come speak to them, paying him thousands of dollars an hour for the pleasure.

The Canadian Islamic Congress and Canadian Arab Federation have been vocal supporters of Khadr's defence and will surely welcome him with open arms onto their staff: Who better to fundraise among their Israel-hating, America-hating supporters? Perhaps Judy Rebick--the founding publisher of the left-wing webzine rabble.ca,

who hailed Khadr as a new Nelson Mandela--will offer him a regular column to share his views with thousands of readers, and, as a professor of social justice and democracy at Toronto's Ryerson University, maybe she'll make him a featured speaker at her school. That is, when he isn't busy with Professor Zinck's students.

No doubt both will be in a race with hard-left universities like York University in Toronto, the University of Ottawa, and Concordia University in Montreal to be the first to award Omar Khadr an honorary doctorate degree. He could be the first terrorist ever nominated for the Order of Canada. What's less sure is that the nomination will be declined.

Khadr will be courted by on-campus radio stations and left-wing reporters, becoming the go-to guy to comment on radical Islam, terrorism, Afghanistan, the fight against al-Qaida, American security, the evils of Israel, and a hundred other topics where his supposed expertise can be deployed to advance the same distorted world-view that's been used to tilt virtually every Khadr story reported here over the last nine years.

If the CBC isn't already planning a reality show around Omar Khadr and what they'd surely call his "struggles" to adapt back into Canadian society, it's because they're not quite quick enough on the uptake: Just give them a few more months and tax dollars. Khadr's plea deal with the U.S. government may forbid him from personally profiting from telling stories about his crimes or the time he spent in Guantanamo Bay, but even if that portion of his plea deal with Washington were enforceable in Canada, it would be stunningly simple to get around: Either by funnelling the money to someone else--or perhaps even another fellow jihadi--or by ensuring that whenever and wherever he speaks, he refers to it as a more general discussion about the evils of Islamophobia.

Other notorious murderers have to live under strict conditions when they're released: The child-killer Karla Homolka was ordered to keep police constantly apprised of her whereabouts after she was let out of prison. But will Canada's National Parole Board require anything like that for Khadr? And as he's travelling the country for all his speaking tours, media appearances, and awards, how many Canadians will be forced to share an airplane ride with the committed al-Qaida terrorist? There's nothing right now that would stop the avowed jihadi from boarding the same Air Canada flight as you and your family, nor from loitering outside synagogues and Hebrew schools.

What fun it will be for Canadians to have to live with a confessed murdering Islamist walking free among them (you can be sure that any attempts by police or security to keep tabs on Khadr will be met with vigorous civil rights lawsuits by his friends in the Canadian Bar Association, and any landlord who refuses to rent him a flat or employer who refuses him a job is bound to find him-or herself in court facing down a phalanx of pro-Khadr lawyers).

The spectacle of an admitted al-Qaida terrorist with American blood on his hands smiling down at us from podiums and TV screens for years to come is chilling enough. But what's sure to prove even more alarming about all the publicity and support that Omar Khadr is bound to enjoy when he comes home is that there's nothing to stop him from spewing whatever vileness he wants. No one can tell Omar Khadr what to say. He can condemn our American allies --or our own soldiers--before a national audience with all the vitriol of a radical imam and get paid handsomely for it; he can denounce Canada and our soldiers just as easily. And, yes, he's perfectly free to share his vicious hatred for Jews, Christians, and Americans. Omar Khadr will be free to spout as many militant lies as he likes, and, unlike other dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida supporters, he's got a massive and sympathetic national fan base eager to hear him out.

After all, other terrorists released from Guantanamo Bay are frequently compelled to complete at least some kind of nominal de-radicalization process before being released again onto the streets of their home countries. But there's nothing to date requiring Omar Khadr to do any such thing. Even German soldiers, after the Second World War, were required by the Allies to complete "deNazification" programs to rehabilitate their odious views about Jews and other minorities. After years of stewing in the propaganda and hatred of Hitler's suffocating culture of indoctrination, they required some sort of antidote. Khadr, meanwhile, went from growing up with a family of terrorist radicals to palling around with terrorist radicals in the Hindu Kush, to spending his days consorting and studying the Qur'an with terrorist radicals in Guantanamo Bay. Don't expect him to return to Canada as a big supporter of multi-ethnic harmony, democracy, women's rights, and peace.

But enough public outrage could cause Canada's legal system to grudgingly keep Khadr behind bars. If Canadian courts don't give him credit for time served, and if he's treated as an adult, not a young offender, Khadr could serve as much as 21/2 years in jail before being paroled. And the parole board could put conditions on him, such as living in a halfway house and seeking employment. Section 810.01 of the Criminal Code allows a judge to order participation in a treatment program or even the wearing of a monitoring device.

It's theoretically possible--it could happen that Canada's legal establishment will suddenly make a 180-degree change in their view of Khadr, and treat him as a convicted terrorist. Even then, he'll be out on our streets while still in his 20s. But there's only one sure way: Convincing the Conservative government not to let him back into Canada in the first place.

The Khadrs were once upon a time considered among the most reviled, most dangerous people ever to make this country their home. Thanks to years of hard cheerleading on our campuses, in our political movements, and in our newsrooms for the family's most favoured son, Canada will soon become Omar Khadr's country. The rest of us will just be forced to live in it.

Excerpt from The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr. Copyright 2012 Ezra Levant. Published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

Toe-to-toe with Greenpeace
Comments reveal why group prefers stunts to debate

Greenpeace is pretty good at stunts — it's their trademark.

Sometimes it's jokes, sometimes it's criminal breaking and entering. Like when they broke out of the Calgary Tower and unfurled their propaganda banners in 2010.

Before that, they specialized in vandalizing oilsands mines and refineries near Fort McMurray. It's easy to get media attention if you're willing to break the law, and Greenpeace certainly is.

In gentle countries like Canada, at least.

So far, no Greenpeace stunts have been recorded in the world's largest oil-producing countries, like Iran or Saudi Arabia.

But stunts aside, what if you could sit down with a Greenpeace executive — no photo ops, no gimmicks — and have a conversation? Is there anything underneath the B.S.?

On Friday morning, I tried just that. The Canadian Bar Association sponsored a debate between Mike Hudema, Greenpeace's anti-oilsands executive, and me.

Ninety minutes of talk — no stunts, no crimes. It was illuminating — and depressing.

Hudema trotted out every shopworn cliché, rumour and slander about the oilsands — claiming it's anti-environment and even anti-aboriginal. (That last one is precious: The oilsands are the number one employer of aboriginal people in Canada. Which is good, considering Greenpeace is largely to blame for shutting down the aboriginal fur trapping industry.)

I made my points, too, about ethical oil — how the oilsands are superior to OPEC oil by four measures of liberal values: Environmental responsibility, peace, treatment of workers and human rights.

Back and forth we went.

So far, so predictable. But near the end of the debate, the conversation turned to how things would be different if the oilsands were somehow shut down. Besides massive unemployment and the loss of billions in tax revenues for the government.

His comments were amazing and show why Greenpeace prefers stunts to debates.

Hudema said two things that still have my head shaking.

He said the oilsands "feed our addiction to oil."

As in, people use oil because the oilsands supplies it. As in, if the oilsands weren't there, people wouldn't be driving.

Uh, no.

We know this isn't true, because people were driving before the oilsands were a major producer. The U.S., which takes 99% of our oil exports, simply bought their oil from Saudi Arabia instead. That's what the oilsands do: They don't make Americans fill up their cars with gas. They let them fill up their cars with oilsands gas instead of Saudi gas. China and India are using more oil because they're no longer dirt poor, so they're buying cars too.

They're going to buy their oil from Iran and Saudi Arabia if they don't buy it from us.

Hudema's second whopper was more of a confession: Greenpeace doesn't have a clue of how to run the world without oil.

Hudema drove down from Edmonton for our debate. He jets around a lot too. Hudema calls for a green future, but when pressed on a real life version of that — as opposed to science fiction — he gets vague pretty quickly.

Sorry, we can't run cars on solar panels or windmills. Even experimental electric cars need electricity — much of it generated by coal.

Greenpeace is good at getting attention, because stunts and crimes make headlines.

But scratch beneath the surface and they really have no clue about how to get the world off oil. They just want the world to buy it from OPEC rather than Canada.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY