The Dog Days of August
Over two weeks after the Danforth shooting in Toronto and what has changed?
Nothing. Oh, the local business association put up 'Danforth Strong" banners around where Faisal Hussain stalked the streets shooting people. At this rate, sometime in the coming century, the last of us will die clutching a banner reading "Cedar Lake Strong" or something... if the Salafists and the Twelvers haven't started nuking each other by then.
The political reaction to the attack continues to be beyond contemptible.
Toronto's ineffectual so-called Mayor John Tory is trying desperately to look like he is taking some action of some kind, without ever actually coming to grips with any sort of reality. He cannot acknowledge that Muslim terrorism exists or that ethnically derived drug gangs are shooting each other.
Instead, Tory is telling tens of thousands of Canadian gun owners who live in Toronto to get out of the city, and blaming Ottawa for not immediately implementing a handgun ban. If the Oxford English Dictionary comes up with an illustrated edition soon, there will be a real debate as to whether to paste Tory's photograph beside the word 'pathetic' or 'useless'. Why not both?
Our prime minister is even worse. To judge by his twitter feed, he was at a balloon festival and was looking tremendously earnest while pumping the hand of somebody at some work site. Otherwise, particularly with the Saudis trying to intimidate our country and jailing dissident women for arguing against Sharia Law, our champion of feminism and democracy is quite missing in action.
Elsewhere in Canada, the Prime Minister's Honourable Member in Chief for the Muslim Brotherhood, Iqra Khalid, handed out a Certificate of Appreciation to a Mr. El Maoued. Unfortunately, this chap has a track record of encouraging terrorism - particularly against Jews. Dame Khalid then had to rescind the award and promised to be more careful in future. We're sure she will be -- if closely monitored.
However, the Dog Days of August, do bring on the strangest news stories and one with legs is on the anti-terrorism side of the ledger. The late and unlamented Faisal Hussain's brother Farad remains in a coma after carelessly handling his stash of 42 kilos of Carfentanil, which is about 5,000 times stronger than pure heroin. Unfortunately, this has been interpreted as a potential chemical weapon plot.
For those who think that is the case, drop it, please!
Farad Hussain's competence as a chemist is already proven... that's why he's in a coma and the police seem more interested (as they should be) in his 31 assorted models of Glock Pistol - some of which were clearly prohibited for sale in Canada. The 'source' who said these were stolen in Canada knew no such thing.
In March 2017, after years of pleading by various nations, China finally agreed to stop openly selling carfentanil to anybody who wanted a supply of it. It seems a lot of druggies, seeking to give more 'kick' to their product stocked up, and major stashes have been turning up all over the Western World in the last 18 months.
In the history of chemical and biological weaponry, particularly in terrorist hands, there is a yawning gulf between the theoretical and the achievable. A teaspoon of Botulin Toxin A is, theoretically, enough to give an LD50 dose to every human being on the planet... but try to get everyone to line up for it. When weaponized as a bioagent, about 11 tons of botulin toxin slurry is necessary to affect a square kilometer under ideal circumstances.
In the year before their clumsy sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo released Anthrax in downtown Tokyo... nobody noticed. Other terrorist attempts to use chemical and biological weaponry have been even worse. This is why the Tamil Tigers and Daesh stopped adding chlorine cylinders to their truck bombs, they caused more damage by using more explosive instead.
42 kilos of carfentanil could be weaponized as an airborne agent, yes. Maybe enough, should a pair of mooks like the Hussains manage it, to get most of the people in a large theatre if they can switch off the ventilation first. However, most of our big-city paramedics can recognize the symptoms of a severe overdose these days (thanks to carfentanil already) and have the treatment for it at hand. Kilo for kilo, a terrorist might derive more satisfaction from resorting to high explosive.
Justin Trudeau and John Tory's responses to the Danforth attack have been lame enough, those of us who are more concerned about traditional terrorist attacks have to compensate for them. However, there is no reason to 'over-egging the pudding' about Carfentanil, and we should stop. A Jihadist gunman on one of our major streets is enough in itself.
