The Globe and Mail 24/04/2013 - Just days after an alleged plot to attack Via Rail was foiled, the Harper government has passed legislation that grants police extra powers in the fight against  terrorism - but ones that come at a  controversial cost to civil liberties in Canada. S-7, the Combatting Terrorism Act, should become law in a matter of months, if not weeks,  after clearing the Commons on Wednesday evening. It was previously passed in the Senate. The NDP, the only major party to oppose S-7, said the record since 2001 demonstrates that Canada has managed to prosecute the fight on terrorism without requiring these powers that encroach on civil rights. A spokesman for the Canadian Bar Association said it did not feel the new measures will be effective in combatting terrorism and called them inconsistent with Canada's legal traditions.

 

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The Toronto Star 23/04/2013 - We've been here before. After the Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on New York, then prime minister Jean Chrétien's majority Liberal government set the precedent by passing its similarly named Anti-Terrorism Act. In that case, too, smoke from a highly politicized and emotional debate about terrorism blotted out the sun, legitimizing the imposition of draconian laws with scant regard for civil rights. But what's clear from both the Toronto 18 and VIA Rail cases is that the police and security services already possess the tools they need. What the law will do, worrisomely, is bring back measures that erode our civil liberties here at home. The Chrétien Liberals rushed the provisions onto the books after 9/11, but they were never used as intended and lapsed in 2007 under a five-year review process and sunset clause. For years Parliament wisely rebuffed efforts by the minority Harper government to bring them back. Until today.

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Opinion: Conservatives playing politics with anti-terror bill: Tim Harper

Matt Gurney: Vic Toews is wrong. The Boston attacks say nothing about Canadian laws

The Guardian 24/04/2013 - In the last several years, there have been four other serious attempted or successful attacks on US soil by Muslims, and in every case, they emphatically all say the same thing: that they were motivated by  the continuous, horrific violence brought by the US and its allies to the Muslim world - violence which routinely kills and oppresses innocent men, women and children. It should go without saying that the issue here is causation, not justification or even fault. It is inherently unjustifiable to target innocent civilians with violence, no matter the cause (just as it is unjustifiable to recklessly kill civilians with violence). But it is nonetheless vital to understand why there are so many people who want to attack the US as opposed to, say, Peru, or South Africa, or Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan, or Portugal. It's vital for two separate reasons.

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Video: Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam: CAIR CAN press conference on Parliament Hill

Opinion: Trudeau was right to question terrorism's root causes

Stephen Harper's search for the root causes of terrorism

Juan Cole: Terrorism and other religions

Matthew Behrens: The cluster bombs of Boston and drone strikes of Yemen

Glenn Greenwald: Why is Boston 'terrorism' but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?