Aug. 31 -- I'm going to do a somewhat lengthy preface before I get to the meat of this post, so please just bear with me because I could easily be misunderstood in this matter and don't want to be.

Even as events were unfolding on Sept. 11, I tried to hold onto my reason against paranoid thoughts and counselled myself to breathe deeply and think. I know that both irrational fears and intense fury can turn us into lynch mobs to the point that we later reflect and ask ourselves My God, what have we done.

But, even knowing all this, I confronted a steel within myelf that day which has never left me: I am willing to kill to protect my land and my values. I know how to aim, load and fire. On Sept. 10, I would have hesitated to pull the trigger. On Sept. 12, I would have fired several times.

Never, never underestimate the intense debt we owe to the passengers and crew of Flight 93. I may die, but I'm taking you bastards with me before you can murder my people.

Yeah, I scare me. My countrymen scare me. I know us; I know that even in the most timid there is a fire that has never been quite extinguished and try as they might, the transnationalists have never succeeded in making us forget that we're here in America because we didn't want to stay there wherever there was, and we don't want to go back there. It's a simple corollary from that to why would I listen to those fools in Europe now when I already ran as fast as I could away from them?

When I've confided all that to Canadian friends, many look patronizingly comforting and think she'll get over it. Well, I haven't. I won't. Until Canada is attacked, no one here can state with absolute confidence what they'll do and think. Somehow, however, I believe that whatever the Feds say, most Canadians will revolt at being told to Pay Tribute and Move On.

Yesterday, The Canadian posted "Islam Uber Allies" which linked to this article on Front Page Magazine and I'll admit that, although I wasn't entirely dismissive, I was a bit skeptical because I wanted to be. It violates my world view, you see, because I believe that people emigrate to a new country because they wish to be remade, not because they wish to remake their new homes.

I guess it goes without saying that had I read something like this two years ago I would have rolled my eyes, muttered some liberal stuff, and clicked onward to other web sites.

Had I read this article one year and eleven months ago I would have bookmarked it for future reference but retained some skepticism and filed it under future considerations.

On the one hand we have the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Canadian Muslim Congress and their shrill, racist-baiting responses whenever anyone is detained. On the other we have Muslim residents of Dearborn Michigan who took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Baghdad, and the Muslim community in Rochester, NY, who contacted the FBI because of some odd behaviour it had noticed among those who were ultimately convicted.

I believe in the depth of my heart that many of the breakthroughs we've had in tracking down and rounding up those in terrorist cells have come from tips from the Muslim communities in North America and Europe. I can't prove it; it's just something I chose to believe.

Today I don't know what to think about things like the article in Front Page Magazine, but I do know that I can't stop trying to work this out and trying to find a new world view that accomodates both my basic confidence in my fellow humans and my willingness to defend those things which I cherish.

There is in this, as in all things, a balance, and it is finding the balance that is our biggest challenge and could be our greatest triumph.

I say all that as a preface to the following link to Australian news Pacific plot in book of terror that contains some rather frightening aspects of Jemaah Islamiya, the group accused of bombing Christian churches in 2000, the Bali bombings of Oct. 2002, and the recent bombings in Jakarta.

It's difficult to read, as was the Front Page Magazine article, because it violates some truths we've always held dear. What is striking, though, is that Australia is confronting many of the same problems as Canada in that they embrace values of inclusion and diversity yet have drawn a line in the sand against terrorism, and I suspect a lot of Australians are reading this article (or, did, given the time difference) with much the same discomfort level as I.

TERRORIST group Jemaah Islamiyah has drawn up plans for a suicide bombing campaign designed to transform Asia and the Pacific region into Islamic provinces.

The scheme is revealed in a 40-page manifesto - the Pupji book or General Guide to the Struggle of JI - which also shows that Jemaah Islamiyah is a well-formed organisation with a constitution, rules of operation, and leadership structure.

The book refers to "love of Jihad in the path of God and love of dying as a martyr" as one of the group's 10 guiding principles.

It shows that JI is not just a loose amalgamation of extremists which can be paralysed by the arrests of senior figures.

Events since the Bali bombing also demonstrate that the group has moved to embrace suicide bombings as a preferred method of achieving its aims.

Until Bali, JI had not adopted suicide bombings, despite its constitution approving them.

It has now carried out at least two, including the bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta.

The book was secretly used in the trials of the Bali bombers to draw out evidence about the organisation behind the murders of 202 people, including 89 Australians.

But prosecutors did not reveal that the source of their apparent insights into JI came directly from the organisation's own manifesto.

The Pupji book refers to the education and training of members in physical fitness and weapons.

Written in a combination of Bahasa Indonesian and Arabic, the book was discovered by police during a raid on a Solo home in central Java last December.

In that raid, men now known as the "Solo Group" were arrested for helping to shelter alleged JI leader and accused Bali bombing controller, Mukhlas.

Prosecutors have used contents from the book to help them question Mukhlas in his ongoing trial.

Information from the book also was used at the Jakarta trial of alleged JI spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.

A verdict in Bashir's treason trial will be handed down tomorrow.

High-ranking JI members have told the court they have read the Pupji which is said to have been written by co-founder of JI, the late Abdullah Sungkar.

The book includes flowcharts of the JI hierarchal structure and illustrates how the organisation works. It does not include names of any members.

It reveals the group is led by an amir or supreme leader.

The amir appoints leadership councils, the advisory council, edict council and legal council. Under them are regional groups known as Mantiqi.

All members must swear a compulsory oath of loyalty to the amir.

The Pupji says funding for JI comes from contributions, donations and acceptable sources.

While the book does not refer specifically to bombing operations or violent campaigns to kill westerners, oblique reference is made in the section on "strength development operations".

This talks about combat operations in which education and training is imperative in subjects such as physical fitness and weapons training, tactical thinking, strategic thinking, leadership and vision.

The basic reason, I think, that this is hard to take seriously is because we became much too dismissive during the Cold War about allegations of communist plots and spies. It was all propaganda, you know, forgetting that the Soviet and Chinese blocs were also spinning propaganda.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, and there's been too many conspiracy theories about the assassination of JFK for anyone to be certain anymore about his guilt or innocence.

Sen. Joe McCarthy had nothing to do with the House of Un-American Activities because duh, it was a House committee and he was a Senator. When Ann Coulter pointed that out, I gasped in humiliation that I'd missed so obvious a breakdown in logic.

Two things we did learn after the fall of the Soviet Union is that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty, and Alger Hiss was a communist who maintained relations with the USSR.

I was a useful idiot in the 60's and 70's.

You can look it up.

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Aug. 16 -- The Daily Telegraph (UK) nails political leaders on both sides of the border with pinpoint accuracy: It's all your fault, Canada and US tell each other.

Canadians' long-standing love-hate relationship with their neighbour has soured recently amid Canadian opposition to the war in Iraq.

President George W Bush and Mr Chretien have a cool relationship, not helped when the prime minister's press aide told a reporter the US president was a "moron".

The British can be masters of the understatement.

Meanwhile, back in the real world (i.e., unpopulated by politcians and pundits,) my neighbours are proving to be among the world's finest: when it started raining, people whooped and hollared in gladness, then surged outdoors for some relief from the heavy, humid heat that we woke up to. And they are now busy arranging car pools for the beer store.

Guess they didn't read the doom and gloom outlook in today's Toronto Star and realize that they are supposed to be apprehensive and fearful.

UPDATE: The Toronto Sun tells that my neighbourhood isn't the only one that decided to party:

Spontaneous parties erupted all over the city Thursday night as many Torontonians chose to gather in the streets rather than sit in their darkened homes. Eric Brazier, 25, was on his way home with a friend during the largest blackout in North American history when he stumbled upon one such impromptu party on Yonge St. just north of Eglinton Ave.

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