What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan?For more detail on homegrown terrorist attacks (e.g. Madrid and London), see Benjamin and Simon's The Next Attack. It's interesting how much it resembles the open-source movement--people inspired by a common ideology can work on independent projects/attacks.
I mention in particular Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia.
... Why should fear, killing, destruction, displacement, orphaning and widowing continue to be our lot, while security, stability and happiness be your lot?
¡°This is the largest counter-terrorism operation and arrests in Canada since the creation of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the amendment of the Criminal Code to better define terrorism,¡± Portelance [from CSIS] said.I'm open to the notion that anti-terrorism laws may have facilitated the investigation, but lets talk about the specifics!
How religious identity and Muslim Americans' sense of their place in the society evolves will directly affect America's domestic security. The more disaffected individuals, the greater the danger that jihadists will gain a foothold in the United States. While the danger of radical outsiders coming into the country will always exist, the chance of a successful attack will be magnified if American citizens link up with them or if groups of American self-starters emerge. The question now is whether conditions are developing that would make these events more likely.posted by russilwvong at 7:16 PM on June 3, 2006
There is good reason to worry. The same government dragnet that demonstrated the low level of terrorist activity has created a new uncertainty and even animosity on the part of Muslim Americans. ... more than 760 immigrants secretly arrested and detained, some for many months. ... seventy men, all but one of them Muslim, have been jailed for weeks or months as "material witnesses" since 9/11, without having been charged with crimes. These and other actions, like the wholesale and seemingly random interrogation of thousands of American Muslim men, sent shock waves throughout the community. One of the sorest points for American Muslims has been the aggressive prosecution strategy set by former Attorney General John Ashcroft. This has led to a series of shoddy cases and a succession of dubious sting operations. ...
Incidents like these have engendered a sense of vulnerability and resentment among many Muslims and have succeeded in instilling a fear of Muslims among the general popuation. Opinion surveys show that one in four Americans holds a negative stereotype of Muslims. About a quarter of the respondents in a July 2004 poll believed that Muslims "value life less than other people" and "teach their children to hate unbelievers." ... More disturbing is the fact that nearly half of those queried in a December 2004 poll believe that the U.S. government should curtail Muslim civil liberties, with a quarter stating that Muslim Americans should be required to register their whereabouts with the federal government.
Such opinions could initiate a dynamic of alienation and hostility of the kind found in Europe. Significant numbers of Muslim Americans, polls show, feel that they receive neither respect nor tolerance. According to one survey, nearly 75 percent of Muslims "either know someone or have themselves experienced an act of anti-Muslim discrimination, harassment, verbal abuse or physical attack since September 11." The incidents include pulling the headscarves off girls' heads, spitting, and verbal epithets. Of course, large majorities of Muslims already strongly disagree with U.S. policies in the Middle East and toward the Muslim world in general, a fact that cannot be overlooked in gauging the potential for greater alienation.
According to sources, the suspects allegedly planned to target the spy service because many of them had encountered agents early in the investigation, when they were interviewed and put under surveillance. They also were allegedly angered by media reports accusing CSIS of racial profiling of Muslims.bizarre!
Many of the agents were known to members of the group only by aliases, but the belief that the office had been targeted led to months of unease among CSIS staff, sources said.
In a very recent case, former Canadian resident Ehsanul Islam Sadequee has been accused of conspiring with a Georgia Tech student, Syed Haris Ahmed, to attend a militant training camp in Pakistan and planning terrorist attacks against targets in the United States.It sounds to me more and more likely that the arrests are justified: you don't hang out with the likes of Ahmed and Sadequee and order up tons of a base component of bad-ass bombs, without coming across as a realistic threat.
Ahmed was indicted in April on charges of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. Sadequee was interviewed at JFK International Airport in August 2005 before boarding a flight bound for Bangladesh and thus far, it is believed, has not returned to the United States. Federal authorities since have filed an affidavit supporting an arrest warrant for Sadequee that provides great detail about the allegations in the case.
The affidavit claims that Sadequee -- a U.S. citizen who attended high school in Ontario -- made false statements to FBI agents when he was interviewed about a March 2005 trip to Canada. Sadequee told the bureau he had traveled alone, but the FBI had evidence that he and Ahmed had been traveling together. The purpose of the trip, according to the affidavit, was to meet with Islamist "extremists" in Canada. Ahmed reportedly said during his interview that they discussed possible targets for a terrorist strike in the United States, such as oil refineries, military installations and the global positioning system, and made plans to attend a military training camp in Pakistan.
The affidavit also notes that three people Ahmed and Sadequee met with in Toronto are subjects of an FBI international terrorism investigation (and thus, presumably, were under the scrutiny of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and CSIS.) Also, Ahmed and Sadequee reportedly traveled from Georgia to Toronto and back via bus. Though they still had to pass through immigration and customs inspection points, the security procedures applied to bus passengers are far less intensive than those used by the airline industry.
Omar Farouk wandered slowly around the huge Rexdale mosque yesterday, pausing briefly at each of the three dozen broken windows and glass doors.Not pretty.
[...]
Farouk said the attack, which appeared to be the work of a single vandal using an axe or hammer, was the first vandalism at the mosque since a single window was smashed the night following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001.
When Marc Lepine killed 14 women in 1989 at Montreal's ?cole Polytechnique (commonly known as the Montreal Massacre), Lepine left a note that mentioned Denis Lortie. Lepine seemed to admire Lortie.posted by Chuckles at 12:31 PM on June 6, 2006
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Scary stuff, as Canada begins to be singled out by Taliban commanders due to the increasing long term presence in Afghanistan, and the list of Western countries that have not yet been directly affected by Islamic fundamentalist extremism dwindles to pretty much Italy and Canada.
posted by loquax at 7:55 AM on June 3, 2006