"Reasonable" Green Candidate Cheered 9/11

A couple hundred bloggers have already written about the Green candidate for national office in Vancouver who wrote after 9/11 that he wanted to pump his arm in the air and shout "Yeah!" as the tragedy unfolded ... but there's a bit more to this outrageous story that was broken by Katie Rook, writing in Canada's National Post:

A federal Green party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway is standing behind a controversial editorial he wrote more than four years ago in which he describes the falling of the World Trade Center twin towers as "beautiful."

The editorial, entitled, A Revolting Confession, was first published on Nov. 28, 2002 in an alternative newspaper, The Republic of East Vancouver, which Kevin Potvin [photo] founded.

"When I saw the first tower cascade down into that enormous plume of dust and paper, there was a little voice inside me that said, 'Yeah!' When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said, 'Beautiful!' When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken me over, and I felt an urge to pump my fist in the air," Mr. Potvin wrote in the editorial.

The 44-year-old bookstore owner, who ran for municipal office in Vancouver in 2005, said he at first withheld the editorial, publishing it only after he was approached by others who felt the same way.

Potvin did write in the editorial, "This is a revolting confession." Does that mean he feel's it revolting that he thought that way, or revolting that he confessed it? I'm not sure, but in either case, it wasn't revolting enough to keep him from sharing his thoughts with others.

In the interview, Potvin not only showed callousness towards the tragedy, but also stood as a defiant example of multiculturalism and secular moral relativity run amok:

"Let's face facts. If the news on the morning of September 11 was that 3,000 Tanzanians or Burmese had been killed, they wouldn't have broken in on regularly scheduled programming, or cancelled football games, and there'd be no conversation about it the next day."

It's been five and a half years since Potvin wrote the editorial, plenty of time to rethink his thoughts and offer an apology for them. But instead, he's moved further into the whackosphere:

"I have no idea what happened on that day, but it's certainly not the story that Washington propagates."

This is a man who's running for national office -- albeit, at impossibly long odds, since the previous Green candidate for the seat got 1.8% of the vote -- who, were he to win, would be taking his 9/11 viewpoints to Ottowa and would use his voice to sway Canadian foreign policy.

I poked around a bit and found that Potvin is still writing in his little journal, The Republic of East Vancouver. (Interesting, isn't it, how blind the the hard Left is? The world is littered with mis-named Republics of This and Republics of That which arose during the Leninist/Stalinist era for the sole purpose of exploiting the people, yet they soldier on under the illusion that Socialism is viable.)

In it, he wrote:

My nomination as the Green Party candidate for Vancouver Kingsway went uncontested on March 24, and so the campaign is off and running. Thanks to all who came out to support me, and to those who wanted to but couldn’t attend!

The result of a Green win in Vancouver-Kingsway will be all other national parties taking a much more serious look at responsible economic policies and realistic industrial policies in light of what we’ve learned about global warming the last few years.

Ah, Potvin, you dog! What a grand vision! All national parties will look at you, a man who wanted to cheer as terrorists attacked North America in the name of anti-Democratic, Islamic repression, a man who since has devolved to the point where you actually thinks America did this to itself ... and they will see you as the new source for "responsible" and "realistic" policies.

He then lays out how he plans to take the election with an 850-vote victory margin.

He concludes;

“How?” is the remaining question.

Well, here's an idea. He could fly an airplane loaded with innocents into a building loaded with innocents somewhere. That should get him a lot of attention, and I'm sure they'd all hear a little voice inside of them that said "Yeah!"