Jagmeet Singh, NDP Leader

Quote:

Canada isn't led by a government fixated on wiping out at worst or forcing into subservience at best any and all languages cultures other than that of Protestant anglophones from the British Isles and northern Europe.  

Are you forgetting "Pastagate"? 

My prebuttal:  just being facetious; carry on.  :)

Oh, and apology for the misattribution of Urback's statement to Wood.

voice of the damned wrote:

Since I can't think of any Canadian Catholic politicians who have had anything to do with the IRA in living memory, the only real way I can think of to test the statement is to analogize from another country. If you can think of any Canadian politicians who would prove or disprove the point, I'd be happy to hear about them.

I would say the proof is the dog that didn't bark. Since Canada has had loads of Irish-Canadian politicians, and none have associated themselves with the IRA in recent times, that's the best proof we have that if anyone did the consequences would be pretty negative.

Quote:

Since Canada has had loads of Irish-Canadian politicians, and none have associated themselves with the IRA in recent times, that's the best proof we have that if anyone did the consequences would be pretty negative.

Or else it's proof that:

a) they didn't publicly take a side

b) they didn't privately take a side

c) they took a side, but nobody reported it

Don't mind me, Brookmere.  Just trying to explore all logical explanations.

Douglas Todd: NDP Could Suffer From Jagmeet Singh's Links To 'Blood Hatreds' Say Observers

http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-ndp-could-suffer...

"To what extent (do Canadian voters) want this issue colouring the position of the NDP when it comes to relations with India? asked Resnick. 'And just as importantly, to what degree do we want to see the internally divided politics of the Sikh community spilling over and influencing the politics of our federal parties."

We have already seen this phenomenon in the case of lobbies that have effectively captured Canadian foreign policy on Israel and Ukraine.

The strange loyalties of Jagmeet Singh

"All of this should be deeply troubling, not just to the party Mr. Singh now leads but also to the rest of us. A man who wants to be prime minister is up to his neck in the ethno-nationalist politics of another country and another time and place. He is deeply sympathetic to the more militant wing of his own ethnic community. He is heavily indebted – some say overly indebted – to the Sikh ethnic vote for his job. One reason he won the leadership was that he managed to sign up more than 10,000 B.C. Sikhs as new party members. ”My concern is too many Sikhs have signed up as NDP members because of Singh’s Punjabi identity and because he’s a baptized Sikh,” radio host Harjit Singh Gill told the Vancouver Sun’s Douglas Todd.

You’ve got to wonder how thoroughly Mr. Singh was vetted for his job. Did his beard and bespoke suits bedazzle people into skipping the tough questions? Did anybody worry how the divided politics of the Sikh community would spill over into federal politics? Did anybody worry about the consequences of such a major shift to voting-bloc politics? Or were those questions considered too rude to ask?"

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-strange-loyalties-of...

And for those who may say this is a minor issue being blown out of proportion by Liberal-loving CBC (or whatever), Singh is receiving negative coverage about his response to this controversy even here on Rabble, from Karl Nerenberg:

Jagmeet Singh breaks his silence, but did he provide good answers?

"Refuses to categorically condemn violence

The real sticking point in most of Singh’s interviews, and most notably the one he did with Carol Off on CBC radio’s As It Happens, was on the question of violence.

CBC’s Off repeatedly asked Singh if he would say yes or no as to whether or not he approved of violence in the furtherance of Sikh goals. Singh simply refused to answer. He kept returning to the phrase: “It’s complex.” 

Non-violence is not the only way to further the liberation of peoples denied their rights and self-determination, of course. While Mahatma Gandhi practiced non-violence, not all of his admirers and supporters did; and others whom we now see as heroes of peaceful transition, such as Nelson Mandela, never foreswore recourse to armed struggle.

Still, one has to wonder what possible good could come out of violence in support of an independent Sikh country, Kalistan, or of the more modest goal of greater autonomy for India’s predominantly Sikh region.

Many Canadians listening to Jagmeet Singh on Thursday would have liked to hear the leader of a party that has throughout its history favoured peaceful and non-violent solutions make a stronger statement against any use of violence in furtherance of Sikh goals.

Nobody wins when blood, often the blood of innocents, is shed. Jagmeet Singh could have said at least that much without arousing the ire of key elements in the large Canadian Sikh community.  

And even if he did anger some, the current NDP leader probably should have found a way to say what every one of his predecessors would have said without a moment’s hesitation. "

http://rabble.ca/news/2018/03/jagmeet-singh-breaks-his-silence-did-he-pr...

Pondering wrote:

 In my view this is getting racist.

I am asking for an apology from you nicely. I am sure others will follow.

This is not racist and to call it as such is both an issue of minimizing racism and insulting people in the worst possible way.

There are two issue and there is the highest of standards here.

1) condemning vilence. Singh was a bit slow to do this and really was not as clear earlier on as he should have been. What he has said on this point satisfies me now but I am not happy that it was so hard to get him to do this clearly.

2) A political public figure, who is leader of a party, has to harmonize positions when it comes to the division of a foreign country Canada has good relations with and officially respects the territory of . He can be sympathetic privately but needs to say that as leader of the NDP he will not support division of India or seperatist movements there. India is also a special case when it comes to bloodshed and divison. This last year was an aniversary reminder of that.

If he cannot do the second, I am sorry but he is unqualified. I am sorry but if you persist in calling people like me a racist for sayign this, then things are going to get very, very nasty as they would need to be.

It is not racist to expect Canadian political leaders to not bring  to Canadian politics a personal belif that contradicts long standing foreign policy of Canada with resepct to the territorial integrity of another country.

Singh has four choices:

1) Make clear he supports the territorial of India absolutely.

2) Put his belief to the NDP as a party and accept the result of members.

3) Resign

4) Drag his party down until the party gets rid of him

There is not another choice here. Singh has a platform as leader of the NDP. He can use it to advance ideas and policies compatible with the NDP but to use it as a stage to advance a divisive movement that is not expressly support by the membership is a conflict of interest. To be asked these questions, fail to answer directly, and to have attended these events as MPP of the provincial wing, without having been clear on the positions is terrible.

His comments are helpful about violence but they are not complete on the politics and this is far too long for them not to be.

You can disagree, and we can argue, but to call me racist for this opinion is absolutely over the line. and that is what you are now doing by calling objections to the mess that Singh is putting the party to as racist.

I think race is very much involved in some of the critique of Singh. If he did not have Indian ancestry this whole topic would be a non-issue.

That said, I did not support him in the leadership race and I believe if he is leading us into the next election, we will have significant challenges.

brookmere wrote:

voice of the damned wrote:

But still, contra Urback, a prominent public figure in Canada can apparently speak at a pro-Sinn Fein meeting with Gerry Adams and praise the organization's history all the way back to 1922, without it causing much of a ripple in the media.

Urback said "politician". How many elections has Sid Ryan won? And I doubt many Canadians outside the organized left, the unions and the media would recognize his name, nor would the latter consider much that he says newsworthy.

Well, if we're getting technical, she didn't specify that the politician in question had to make any particular statements, she just said "If a Catholic political leader happened to be at rally with posters glorifying Irish Republican Army terrorists, he would almost certainly get these questions, too."

So, Charlie Angus, who I gather from wiki is Catholic, and is definitely an elected politician, was at that meeting that seemed to be very much about glorifying Sinn Fein and its leader Gerry Adams. If there was widespread crticism of him at the time, I have yet to hear about it.

Admittedly, I don't know if they had actual posters of Adams there. The presence of the man himself would seem to render that an irrelevant point, however.

Rev Pesky wrote:

Too little, too late. 

One wonders if Singh would have won the party leadership if this issue had come up during the campaign.

Does it really matter? Wouldn't make any difference who won, guaranteed something like this would have come up for the other candidates had they won. That's how the liberal corporate media works. Dig up dirt and turn nothing into a huge thing!

Meanwhile today Jagmeet Singh joined striking workers on the picket line at York University. To tell them he is on their side. So he has moved on and has put the Sikh separatism issue behind him.

From Mighty Middle:

Meanwhile today Jagmeet Singh joined striking workers on the picket line at York University. To tell them he is on their side. So he has moved on and has put the Sikh separatism issue behind him.

​He may have put it 'behind him', but I doubt it's going to disappear that easily. I think if it was something he did as a teenager, he might be able to slough it off. But he was at that San Fransico conference in 2015. He would have been 35-36 years old then. Hardly a youthful indiscretion.

though not a Jagmeet supporter for leader.

i find this association to violence by proxy hilarious when the religious right in Canada is producing this...

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/edmonton/orion-rutley-guilty-threats-...

follow the links embedded for some eye openers of how the right in Canada thinks and is starting to act on verbally.

he may have to step down or he can call the hypocrites on their bs and stay.

the good ol christians can rub shoulders with Israeli oppressors of people in their homeland and it's all good.

the good old christians can continue to try and steal unceded territory and try to destroy heritage or at the very least ignore it's going on right here at home.

they're all taking pictures with each other in event after event with rappers and abusers, but god lord another religion person who knows a violent lyric rapper is dangerous.

hypocrisy abounds.

I think this is a huge issue for the NDP, and Singh's response so far has been incomplete and unconvincing. Here are quotes from another piece on iPolitics:

Jagmeet Singh must disavow political violence if he plans to lead Canada

"Jagmeet Singh is a Sikh separatist, something in which he once took considerable pride but has kept under wraps since becoming NDP leader last fall. There is nothing wrong with being a Sikh separatist and a Canadian politician, despite the protestations of India’s ruling BJP party, that thuggishly populist receptacle of choice for the country’s Hindu majority.

His belief in self-determination has led Jagmeet Singh, an avowed proud Canadian, to nonetheless endorse Quebecers’ right to determine their own future. Again, there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, given the extent to which federalist Canadian leaders have demonized Quebec’s independence movement, Singh’s take on Quebec take is refreshing. 

The problem for Jagmeet Singh — and the likely reason why he has kept his Sikh advocacy secret, until the Globe and Mail and the National Post dragged it from the depths of YouTube this week — is violence. Specifically, the advocacy for and veneration of violence seemingly intrinsic in the Sikh secessionist diaspora.

... Jagmeet Singh’s ideology has also clouded an otherwise acute political mind. Much has been made of how, during an interview with the CBC’s Terry Milewski last fall, Singh refused to condemn Sikh separatist leader Talwinder Singh Parmar, the chief architect of the 1985 Air India bombing. 

This is bad enough, but in a later exchange with Milewski, Singh said “we need to find out who is truly responsible, and makes sure an investigation results in a conviction” — a suggestion, broadcast on live national television, that Singh didn’t believe Parmar was responsible for the death of 329 people. This tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, which has Indian agents bombing the plane to justify the majority Hindus oppression of the Sikh minority, flies in the face of all established evidence laid bare in at least two government reports. And Jagmeet Singh routinely lent it legitimacy up until this week. Only political expediency has brought him to the point of accepting the truth of Parmar’s complicity in the bombing nearly 33 years ago. 

This political expediency further pushed the NDP leader to acknowledge another truism: that Milewski’s line of questioning during their interview wasn’t racist, as Singh himself and many others intimated afterwards. In fact, given Jagmeet Singh’s own history, it was wholly legitimate.

... Jagmeet Singh is the product of a different form of nationalism—one practiced far more amongst the Sikh diaspora than those actually living in the would-be territory of Khalistan. This nationalism on full display at the various event attended by the NDP leader, legitimizes fresh violence in the name of old grievances. It makes martyrs out of mass murderers and allows conspiracy to subvert published fact.

For a self-described man of peace, it isn’t particularly reassuring that Jagmeet Singh espoused this caustic brand of nationalism, or that it took the threat of consequence for him to (partially) renounce it. Yet we can be thankful for this much: The political reality of the country he wishes to lead, one with its own long history of separatist struggles, forced him to do so."

Damning stuff. There's more at the link: 

https://ipolitics.ca/2018/03/16/jagmeet-singh-must-disavow-political-vio...

Former BC NDP candidate Morgane Oger just weighed in tweeting

Leaders who happen to be members of marginalized communities are routinely accused of things they are have nothing to do with, and their actual statements are often ignored. I stand with @theJagmeetSingh on current attempts to paint him as someone he clearly is not. #ndp #bcndp

https://twitter.com/MorganeOgerBC/status/974803669949403136

@Rev Pesky

I don’t like the word “terrorist” because its a word that’s used hypocritically. If you’re going to use the word terrorist then Canada USA Britain Israel etc etc are also terrorists. Using violence or the threat of is nothing new and many times has actually brought in peace (see North Korea missle nuclear achievement). 

I think Jag is going to come out of this further ahead. First off, free advertising. Secondly he’s a Sikh, his opinion fucking counts! Justin is a rich privileged white person working as corporate media circus freek side show. When white people start claiming they now how to solve problems and chaos they created in the first place, I’m sure People of European decent will give you a chance, but don’t take visible minority’s for granted. 

Pondering wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Pondering wrote:

 In my view this is getting racist.

I am asking for an apology from you nicely. I am sure others will follow.

That wasn't aimed at you. I feel that the pundits attitudes are racist. 

The problem is that you characterized the objection as being racist. It isn't at all. It is now and will be used by racists but the ammunition unfortunately is not.

It is important to acknowledge directly that in my opinion the right plays more games with stuff like this and harl truths than thte left. Life is not fair. The Left has to not feed the right with the argument they will use. By being unclear Singh has been incompetent in this giving his ennemis fuel to attack him. We will not see this now but will during the election if he is not careful.

This is tragic becuase Sing is highly articulate, very likeable and has so much potential. If this story is the thing that blows up, it would be the greatest of missed opportunities.

As for Trudeau -- I think that the smae things are in play. Trudeau is significantly responsible but it also is feeding into the worst of the worst.

Canadian politicans have to be quicker to disavow violence and contacts with people who advocate it. They also have to avoid public stands on separatist movements. Just as I cannot go off on my oen working for an employer in their name a political leader has some limits. When it comes to Sihk independence this is a matter for a party to decide on and not the whim of a leader and no leader should suggest otherwise. Singh can make a case to the NDP for them to back his position -- he has a right to do that -- but he should not use his leadership to take the NDP on a position that the party is nowhere near when it can affect relations with another country. As well the damage he will do to his party is unnecessary.

I am not against him. I want him to succeed.

Chrystia Freeland is also 'up to [her] neck in the ethno-nationalist politics of another country.' If Singh has to renounce Kalistan, Freeland should renounce Bandera fascism in Ukraine.

From Mighty Middle:

Leaders who happen to be members of marginalized communities...

​One thing the Sikhs of BC are not, is marginalized.