How about neither?
First you read this (hat tip: Ross M.):
RCMP commissioner says organized crime and terrorists working closely
at 19:56 on May 8, 2006, EST.
OTTAWA (CP) – The head of the RCMP says his agency is increasingly concerned about evidence that organized crime groups are helping to fund terrorists.
Giuliano Zaccardelli’s observations Monday may come as a shock to some, but not to those who monitor trends in law enforcement. Almost every conceivable type of crime racket helps to finance terrorists whose chief goal is killing Westerners, said one expert in the field.
That includes hashish baggies being peddled on street corners, cocaine trafficking, prostitution, pick-pocketing, knock-off designer items and credit card fraud.
Zaccardelli wasn’t quite that specific during his appearance before a Senate committee Monday. But he said the evidence is clear, and continually mounting.
“That is a trend we’re watching and monitoring and has the potential to cause us some serious problems,” Zaccardelli, commissioner of the RCMP, told senators on an anti-terrorism committee.
“There seems to be an emerging trend. . .that some terrorist groups are clearly using certain organized crime groups to funnel or to fund some of their activities.”
Images of Osama bin Laden sitting around basement tables with pinstripe-suited mobsters to plot drug deals and terrorist bombings are probably far-flung.
But there are more subtle links. And Zaccardelli says the RCMP is paying increasingly close attention.
Zaccardelli said that terrorist ties to organized crime were traditionally low-level, or not serious enough to make it a top RCMP priority.
He told the committee that his force has become increasingly vigilant since the terrorist attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Terrorism is a real and present danger. . .It has been said it is not a matter of whether – but only of when – Canada will encounter its own 9-11.”
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said Zaccardelli’s charge came as no surprise.
“It’s a longstanding concern,” he said.
“We do know that certain organized crime activities do lead to money going back to terrorist groups.
“That’s been an item that (concerns) intelligence forces – not just in Canada, but around the world.”
[…]
And then you read this:
Terrorists work with gangs: RCMP
Top Mountie says force stretched thin – Can only investigate a third of threats
May 9, 2006. 01:00 AM
BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
OTTAWA BUREAUOTTAWA—The Mounties are able to investigate just one-third of the organized crime threats in Canada at the very time that more and more terror groups are using criminal schemes to fund their activities, RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli says.
[…]
Here’s a novel unliberal pro-Canada idea: Why not fund them so that they can investigate three-thirds of organized crime and terrorism, and then fund them more just to be safe? Or would that be seen as sane and “American-style” —because if so, never mind! That wouldn’t be liberal!
Possible sources of cash to defend our nation and its families who built it: the one BILLION dollars per year that funds the leftist state-run media, the CBC, which should be banned in Canada and the ban enshrined as such in our Constitution, and which makes Canadians dumber every minute they watch it.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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