All Posts Tagged With: "terrorism"
Lethbridge congratulates “truther”
9/11 skeptic now works for magazine that denies holocaust
“Josh Blakely was appointed as a staff writer at Veterans Today which is a quite popular media venue based in the US. He has also appeared on several media outlets in the U.S. and Canada discussing his research area. Congratulations Josh!,” the University of Lethbridge wrote on their website last week.
We think they mean Josh Blakeney, the 9/11 conspiracy theorist who was hired as a columnist for Veterans Affairs. The National Post came to the same conclusion, questioning why Lethbridge would want to congratulate someone who goes to work for a magazine that suggests “the main purpose of keeping alive the Holocaust is to protect Jewish banking practices.”
This isn’t the first time Blakeney was in the news. His master’s thesis The Origins of the Global War on Terror: Intellectual Debates and Interpretive Controversies, generated an outcry because it was subsidized by an $8,000 Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship from the province of Alberta.
In a recent column for Veterans Affairs about the Sept. 11 “truther” conference in Toronto, Blakeney argues that 9/11 was a plot by anti-Islamic Israelis and that Islamic jihadists were not involved. He writes “documents going back to the 1980s, emanating from Tel Aviv rather than Washington… suggest that the “war on terrorism” was an Israeli inspired initiative.”
Oslo terrorist referenced Canadian universities in manifesto
Madman’s essay is hateful toward Muslims
Photo courtesy of L.C.Nøttaasen on Flickr
The terrorist who killed 76 with a bomb in Oslo and a shooting rampage at a children’s camp made reference to two Canadian universities in his rambling anti-Muslim manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence.
Dozens of universities are referenced in Anders Breivik’s 1,500 page essay. Of those, at least two are Canadian schools.
First, he recounts a scenario written about in a student newspaper at Ryerson University in Toronto. A Catholic student group had challenged a Muslim student group for space on campus.
“At Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada,” writes Breivik. “The largest student group on campus, the Muslim Students’ Association, has monopolised use of the multifaith room. Eric Da Silva, president of the Catholic Student Association, said the group looked into using the room for mass but was told by RSU front desk staff that the room was “permanently booked” by Muslim students.”
Later on in the manifesto, Salim Mansur, associate professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario is quoted as having written: “Democracy is in a cultural sense an expression of the liberal modern world that situates the individual as the moral center of politics and society. It is the idea of the inalienable rights located in the individual, rights that need to be protected, nurtured, and allowed the fullest unhindered expression that makes democracy so morally distinctive from other cultural systems. From this liberal perspective, the common error about democracy is to view it as a majority system of governance.”
The logic behind Breivik’s selection of this quotation is unclear.
Breivik confessed to the murders on Monday, according to police. Both his defense lawyer and his estranged father, a former diplomat, have publicly questioned his sanity.
New major in Weapons of Mass Destruction
School partners with FBI to offer master’s
Photo courtesy of Marshall Astor on Flickr
The Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s newest offering is the Master of Science in Strategic Studies in Weapons of Mass Destruction. Students will cover dirty bombs, biological attacks, possible power grid disruptions and more, reports the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
For now, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) will select all of the students from within its own trusted ranks. Eventually, law enforcement agencies will be able to enroll their own recruits for a fee. It’s unclear whether the program will ever be open to the general public.
Pakistan hunting for former Manitoba students
Both men wanted on terrorism charges
Pakistan has ordered its police to start searching for two former University of Manitoba students, Ferid Ahmed Imam, 30, and Maiwand Yar, 27, according to a report by The Express Tribune, a Pakistani Newspaper. The RCMP charged the men with conspiracy to commit terrorism on March 15. They alleged that the men traveled to Afghanistan to participate in the insurgency against NATO forces in 2007 and that Imam trained terrorists who planned blow up subway cars in New York City in Sept. 2009. Yar was in his final year of a mechanical engineering degree and Imam was in his final year of biochemistry when they left for Afghanistan.
U of M students probed by RCMP
RCMP counter-terrorism unit, CSIS and FBI search across the globe for missing students
Three Muslim University of Manitoba students have been missing since 2007 when they mysteriously left Winnipeg for Pakistan. They are being investigated as part of what the Globe and Mail calls “one of Canada’s most expensive and elaborate national security investigations since 9/11.”
RCMP counter-terrorism unit officers from across the country, and CSIS agents have descended on Winnipeg as part of the probe. The American Federal Bureau of investigation has “dispatched agents to the Middle East as part of their hunt, and the young men have been the subject of secret briefings to U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama,” the Globe reported.
Ferid Imam, Muhannad al-Farekh and Miawand Yar have not been in contact with their families and the investigation has caused broader distress among the Winnipeg Muslim community. Officers have interviewed several other men in relation to the case. “It’s been going on for three years. Families have come to me for stress and counselling,” Shahina Siddiqui, executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association, told the Winnipeg Free Press.
As of Friday, the RCMP is treating the students as officially missing, and would not comment on the nature of the investigation.
Terrorism hoax against Quebec college
Third such hoax in the last year to result in charges being laid in Quebec alone
A Montreal man faces a serious criminal charge following a terrorism-related hoax last year involving a suburban college. The RCMP said Wednesday that 50-year-old Murad Hossain has been charged by summons and is to appear in court on Sept. 28 on a charge of perpetrating a terrorist hoax and another of public mischief.
The charges were laid Tuesday following a year-long investigation into the alleged attack aimed at John Abbott College, said RCMP Cpl. Caroline Letang. The threat had been kept under wraps by police and the institution at the time. Mounties, Montreal police and John Abbott College received a letter in mid-May 2009 warning of a potential terrorist attack against the college by a group of Pakistani students.
A police investigation revealed the letter was a hoax and the alleged attack was unfounded. “It was a hoax resulting from a single isolated action,” Letang said. Letang says investigators weren’t able to establish any ties between Hossain and any known terrorist group.
The hoax charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail. An official at the college located on the western tip of the Island of Montreal had no comment as the case is before the courts. But the college did confirm that at no time was Hossain a staff member or student at the institution.
Letang said this is the third such terrorism hoax in the last year to result in charges being laid in Quebec alone. “The RCMP has also investigated two other similar cases that resulted in serious criminal charges that were laid,” Letang said. “It is important to remind people that allegations of that nature are taken seriously.”
The Canadian Press
U of T prof takes the stand in defense of accused terrorist
Law prof says messages glorifying jihad do not advocate violence against Canadians
A leading expert in Islam and University of Toronto professor says texts glorifying jihad seized from the home of one of the so-called Toronto 18 do not advocate violence against Canadians.
Mohammad Fadel, a law professor at U of T, is the final defence witness at the sentencing hearing for 22-year-old Saad Khalid.
Khalid has pleaded guilty to taking part in a domestic terror plot that involved plans to detonate bombs at a number of high-profile targets over three days.
Fadel told a Brampton, Ont., court today the five documents found on Khalid’s laptop and on a memory card in his bedroom are simply moral arguments, not legal decrees that must be followed.
Even the most “incendiary” text, one that singles out the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, only calls for Muslims to donate money to the Taliban and pray for victory.
It’s expected final submissions at the sentencing hearing will begin Friday.
- The Canadian Press
Ayers denied entry to Canada. Again.
Former militant, current education professor was last turned away in January
The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that William Ayers, the Chicago-based education professor who was denied entry into Canada last January, has been barred from coming to Ottawa to speak at a major academic conference.
He was set to speak today at a humanities and social sciences conference hosted by the Canadian Society for the Study of Education.
Although Ayers was a co-founder of the radical group Weather Underground in the 1960s, he has since made a name for himself in the field of education. He was set to prepare a lecture entitled “Bridges and Borders: Democratic Education in a Time of Crisis.”
The talk was expected to draw a crowd at the conference, which was expected to attract around 8,000 academics to Carleton University.
However, according to the Citizen, Ayers called conference organizers a few days ago and said he couldn’t get an entry visa.
A conference organizer says Ayers will still deliver his Monday lecture by video conference.
“We’re disappointed,” she said. “We were happy to have him come and speak. And so were our members.”
For more on this story, click here.
Al-Qaeda goes to college
‘The war on terror has been a double-edged sword for higher education’
From The Times Higher Education:
This is a fascinating book, but it isn’t about al-Qaeda attacks on any US university, or even its sympathisers in American higher education. As the author explains: “So far, no jihadist terror attacks have been directed at US universities.” What Castagnera writes about are the ways in which the “War on Terror” has affected what universities do and how they do it.
His thesis is as simple as it is cheering. “The war on terror”, he writes, “has been a double-edged sword as far as higher education is concerned.” It has led “on the one hand (to) a loss of innocence”, owing to “the inexorable, irresistible demand for ever-tighter security measures”. But on the other, it has provided “an enormous windfall for many colleges and universities”, defined in terms of better campus security, large amounts of government funding for terrorism-related research and generous gifts to academia from Saudi Arabia.
