ICLMG 24/10/2012 - Bill S-7, the Combating Terrorism Act, has passed second reading on Tuesday October 23, 2012 and will now be referred to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. 183, mostly Liberal and Conservative MPs, have voted in favour of the bill and 93, mostly NDP MPs, have voted against it. Bill S-7 contains two anti-terrorism provisions regarding "investigative hearings" and "preventative detention" that were never used and expired five years ago. It is also looking at new measures to deter acts of terrorism and would make leaving the country with the intent to commit an act of terrorism a new offense. The ICLMG has asked to appear before the Standing Committee. More details to come.  

 

Read the debates in the House 

The Canadian Press 23/10/2012 - The federal spy watchdog says confusion over how Canada's no-fly list should work has "significantly undermined" its potential to help keep the skies safe. In its newly released annual report, the Security Intelligence Review Committee reveals there is uncertainty in government over who should be on the no-fly roster.

Read more

Security Intelligence Review Committee 2011-2012 Report

CSIS needs new policies for handling underage radicals: watchdog

 

The Washington Post 23/10/2012 - Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the "disposition matrix." The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the "disposition" of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.       

 

Read more  

 

The Washington Post 24/10/2012 - A burly 25-year CIA veteran with a stern public demeanor, Brennan is the principal architect of a policy that has transformed counter-terrorism from a conventional fight centered in Afghanistan to a high-tech global effort to track down and eliminate perceived enemies one by one. What was once a disparate collection of tactics - drone strikes by the CIA and the military, overhead surveillance, deployment of small Special Forces ground units at far-flung bases, and distribution of military and economic aid to threatened governments - has become a White House-centered strategy with Brennan at its core.

Read more

Video: Behind the U.S. targeted killing program

Drones: a non-issue in US presidential debate riles Pakistan

CIA seeks to expand drone fleet, officials say

Joe Klein's sociopathic defense of drone killings of children

How Obama expanded the National Security State

 
Read more

UK to double number of drones in Afghanistan

Rabble.ca 23/10/2012 -  While Omar Khadr returned from Guantanamo Bay this fall, another abandoned Canadian will shortly mark 11 years behind bars, much of that time in an Indiana hellhole known as Little Guantanamo and Gitmo in the Heartland. The case involves classic hallmarks of a national security system riven with physical and psychological torture: death threats, forced confessions leading to apparently trumped-up allegations, lengthy periods of solitary confinement, indefinite detention and the complicity of the RCMP. Khalid Awan is a Canadian citizen, a Muslim originally from Pakistan who was working as an immigration consultant in New York City in the fall of 2001. Like tens of thousands of Muslims detained after 9/11, he too was targeted by officials whose racial profiling resulted in his extraordinary and violent takedown arrest and detention in October 2001. This was designed to compel his appearance as a "material witness" at the grand jury investigating Osama bin Laden's involvement in the attacks (a simple subpoena would have done the trick). Since that day, Awan has been imprisoned under an escalating series of allegations and charges that can only be described as outrageous.

Read more