Latest news with #Sept.11
Calgary Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Calgary Herald
No arrests at G7 summit protests, says security group
Article content 'Thankfully we were able to have that pilot safely exit the controlled airspace, land and then an investigation started into exactly what happened there,' he said. Article content 'Some of our partner agencies are looking at applicable regulatory offences, but at this time, it's not my understanding that any charges have been laid.' Article content Airspace restrictions in effect during the summit were lifted at noon Wednesday, while the Controlled Access Zone established around key summit venues is also no longer in effect. Article content Motorized vehicles are again able to access Highway 40 from the intersection on Highway 1 to the closure gate at the junction of the Kananaskis Lakes Trail. Article content The tunnel on Airport Trail N.E. in Calgary was expected to reopen Wednesday afternoon and the designated demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff are no longer in effect. Article content Article content However, the Highwood Pass/Highway 40 will not reopen to all vehicular traffic until this Saturday, according to ISSG. Article content Article content 'As foreign dignitaries continue to depart Alberta, residents in these communities may see some continued security presence for the coming days as the ISSG clears equipment, and police vehicles, and assists with clean-up duties at designated sites,' the security group said in a news release. Article content 'It's important to remember we're not finished,' Hall said. 'We have a lot of work to do to demobilize our security posture and all of our respective organizations need to wind down their operations. At some point, we'll tally all those costs and those will be made publicly available.' Article content In 2002, when the then-G8 summit was last held in Kananaskis Country, the City of Calgary's security-related costs totaled $34 million, according to Calgary Herald archives. That was the first summit held after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, which led to a more robust approach to security and policing in general, and the first held after a protester was shot dead by police in Genoa, Italy during the 2001 summit. Article content Article content This year's G7 gathering saw several security protocols in effect, including checkpoints blocking traffic, the closure of nearby hiking trails and common areas, motorcade training drills, temporary road closures in Calgary, airspace restrictions, the establishment of four designated protest zones in Calgary and Banff, and even wildlife monitoring. Article content At the summit itself, snipers were positioned on rooftops, adjacent businesses were sequestered and soldiers or police officers were stationed at trailhead parking lots in the G7 exclusion zone. Article content Costs for hosting the summit will be provided by Public Safety Canada, and operational costs incurred by the event will be covered federally through the Major International Event Security Cost Framework, according to a statement from the City of Calgary.
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
As Israel strikes Iran, many wonder if the US will deepen its involvement
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Israeli strikes kill top Iranian generals, take out air defenses and damage nuclear sites, many wonder if President Donald Trump will deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict. Trump has long railed against what he refers to as the 'stupid, endless wars' waged by his predecessors, including in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. helped overthrow governments. But with Iran's government looking increasingly fragile, if the U.S. does get involved, its strikes could help severely damage the country's nuclear program or even end its 4-decade-old theocracy. 'I may do it, I may not do it,' Trump said in an exchange with reporters at the White House about whether he has decided to order a U.S. strike. 'I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.' But the recent history of U.S. attempts to remake the Middle East by force is one of costly blunders and colossal failures — and there are plenty of hard-earned lessons for anyone who wants to try it again. Initial success is often fleeting U.S. special forces and Afghan allies drove the Taliban from power and chased Osama bin Laden into Pakistan within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. American tanks rolled into Baghdad weeks after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Both wars went on for years. The Taliban waged a tenacious insurgency for two decades and swept back into power as the U.S. beat a chaotic retreat in 2021. The overthrow of Saddam plunged Iraq into chaos, with Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias battling each other and U.S. forces. Israel may succeed in taking out Iran's air defenses, ballistic missiles and much of its nuclear program. But that would still leave hundreds of thousands in the military, the Revolutionary Guard and forces known as the Basij, who played a key role in quashing waves of anti-government protests in recent years. Ground forces are key but do not guarantee success Airstrikes have never been enough on their own. Take Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, for example. His forces withstood a seven-month NATO air campaign in 2011 before rebels fighting city by city eventually cornered and killed him. There are currently no insurgent groups in Iran capable of taking on the Revolutionary Guard, and it's hard to imagine Israeli or U.S. forces launching a ground invasion of a mountainous country of some 80 million people that is about four times as big as Iraq. A split in Iran's own security forces would furnish a ready-made insurgency, but it would also likely tip the country into civil war. There's also the question of how ordinary Iranians would respond. Protests in recent years show that many Iranians believe their government is corrupt and repressive, and would welcome its demise. But the last time a foreign power attacked Iran — the Iraqi invasion of 1980 — people rallied around the flag. At the moment, many appear to be lying low or leaving the capital. Be wary of exiled opposition groups Some of the biggest cheerleaders for the U.S. invasion of Iraq were exiled opposition figures, many of whom had left the country decades before. When they returned, essentially on the back of U.S. tanks, they were marginalized by local armed groups more loyal to Iran. There are several large Iranian opposition groups based abroad, but they are not united and it's unclear how much support any of them has inside the country. The closest thing to a unifying opposition figure is Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the theocracy to power. But many Iranians have bitter memories of repression under the shah, and others might reject Pahlavi over his outreach to Israel, especially if he tries to ride to power on the back of a foreign invasion. Chaos is practically guaranteed In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — and in Syria and Yemen after their 2011 uprisings — a familiar pattern emerged when governments were overthrown or seriously weakened. Armed groups emerged with competing agendas. Neighboring countries backed local proxies. Weapons flowed in and large numbers of civilians fled. The fighting in some places boiled over into full-blown civil war, and ever more violent extremist groups sprouted from the chaos. When it was all over, Saddam had been replaced by a corrupt and often dysfunctional government at least as friendly to Iran as it was to the U.S. Gadhafi was replaced by myriad militias, many allied with foreign powers. The Taliban were replaced by the Taliban.
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
After labeling transfers to Guantánamo as ‘fake news,' Trump deports Haitians from there
Only days after Trump administration officials denied plans to transfer undocumented migrants to an American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before deporting them, a U.S. military plane flew 20 Haitians from the military installation to Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. While 11 of the migrants who landed back in Haiti's gang-controlled capital had been picked up at sea near The Bahamas while reportedly en route to Florida, nine others had been transferred to Guantánamo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in the United States, two sources told the Miami Herald. 'Some said they had been in two [detention] facilities in a week,' a Haitian official told the Miami Herald after confirming the U.S. military flight's quiet arrival in the Caribbean nation. The aircraft landed at 12:05 p.m. Tuesday at Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Haiti's capital, where armed gangs control most of the roads in the surrounding area and the metropolitan area was plunged into blackout hours later after the main Péligre hydroelectric power plant was forced to shut down by protests. Deemed too dangerous for U.S. citizens, the airport has been off limits to U.S. commercial and cargo flights since November, when gangs opened fire on Spirit Airlines and also hit JetBlue Airways and American Airlines with bullets, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to issue an ongoing ban. The Trump administration has scheduled the repatriation of another 61 Haitians back to the country on Wednesday. That flight is going to land in Cap-Haïtien, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. With the only international airport accessible to the outside world, Cap-Haïtien has received an average of one U.S. deportation flight a month. Tens of thousands of Haitians have also been deported home from the neighboring Dominican Republic. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Miami Herald questions about why the Haitian migrants were transferred from the United States to the naval base in Cuba. Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt labeled reports that the administration planned to send thousands of migrants, including nationals from Western European countries, to the controversial detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as 'fake news.' 'Not happening,' Leavitt posted on X. Guantánamo Bay, which has a prison for suspected terrorists tied to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has long had a facility to house migrants, mostly Cubans and Haitians picked up at sea while their asylum claims are heard or they are resettled in a third country. But one of President Donald Trump's first official acts upon returning to the White House earlier this year was ordering officials to prepare Guantánamo to hold as many as 30,000 migrants. Trump's directive marked a dramatic expansion of the facility's use for immigration enforcement as part of his mass deportation campaign. In February, the administration sent more than 150 Venezuelans to Guantánamo before deporting them back to their home country. At the time, advocates and lawyers raised alarms that jailing them there was inhumane and violated the immigrants' constitutional rights. The following month, an undisclosed number of migrants at the facility were then transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. In recent weeks, top White House adviser Stephen Miller has put pressure on immigration officials to ramp up immigrant detentions to 3,000 a day —a goal that is likely to overcrowd already full detention centers. Guerline Jozef, executive director of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, said the transfer of Haitian nationals to Guantánamo Bay was 'covert' and their deportation from the base 'is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a flagrant violation of international human rights and civil liberties. 'Guantánamo is a black site designed for secrecy and exclusion. Haitian immigrants—and asylum seekers—are once again being subjected to the same cruel, barbaric and inhumane treatment they were subjected in the 1990s, held without access to counsel, without notice to their families or legal advocates and deported under the cover of darkness,' Jozef said. 'These individuals have been stripped of their most basic rights under U.S. and international law.' Jozef, who lobbied against such a plan during the Biden administration and denounced the Trump administration's directive in January, said she and other advocates 'are deeply familiar with Guantánamo protocols. This is not how immigration detention is supposed to work. The decision to disappear Haitians and others into this military pipeline reveals the racialized logic of U.S. immigration enforcement. We cannot allow a system built for indefinite detention and torture to become the new front line of migrant removal. This is a human rights emergency and a moral disgrace.' For Haitians, the infamous military base in Cuba has a troubled history. About 34,000 Haitians were detained at the base in the early 1990s after the Haitian military led a coup against the country's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The Haitians were detained at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard while trying to reach Florida in makeshift boats. At the base, they were held behind barbed wire fencing where, along with similarly detained Cuban refugees, they were subjected to inhumane conditions. The base was finally ordered closed in 1993 after a federal court ruling found that the government had unlawfully held migrants at the offshore detention center. Despite the court order, the U.S. maintained its right to hold refugees at the base and has long operated a migrant facility there where individuals picked up at sea and who claim fear of persecution in their home countries are taken for interviews.
USA Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump must back Israel against Iran. 'Kooky' Carlson is wrong about nuclear threat.
Like many millennials, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are seared into my brain. After that loss of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans, I felt seething rage and a deep level of patriotism. But then I watched over the next 20 years as thousands of young Americans went to war, sacrificing their future, their health and too often their lives, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, as Israel and Iran fire missiles into each country's densely populated cities and President Donald Trump weighs sending American warriors into the fight, the same complex thoughts and feelings I experienced during the U.S. invasion of Iraq have surfaced again. I support Israel's decision to attack Iran to stop the development of nuclear weapons. Iran's oppressive regime fuels terrorism in the Middle East and beyond and threatens the existence of Israel as a nation and Jews as a people. Iranian leaders must not be allowed to control weapons that could kill millions in minutes. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. President Trump blasts 'kooky' Tucker Carlson That's why I was disappointed to hear former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia break so sharply with the president on how to respond to Israel's war with Iran. I support conservatives offering different opinions on domestic and international policies, but this isn't the time for a feud among the president's allies. Trump's decisions in the next few days may well determine if the world can step back form the terrible threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. On June 13, Carlson labeled anyone who supports America's direct involvement in the attacks on Iran as "warmongers." Trump, in response, blasted Carlson, posting on Truth Social: 'Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.' Iran has long history of supporting terrorists I'm no warmonger, and I don't think Trump is, either. The real warmongers in this conflict are the Iranian leaders who fund Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. They have bankrolled the slaughter of Israeli civilians and others for decades. And they continue to shatter any attempts to restore peace in the Middle East. One snapshot into their mindset: In 2017, the Iranian regime erected a doomsday clock in Tehran's 'Palestine Square,' predicting Israel's destruction by 2040. And now Iran appears on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. I don't want Americans dying in another never-ending war, but we also can't sit back and watch as Iran builds a nuclear arsenal and targets one of our closest allies. This is a moment that demands strength and finesse, caution and courage. It's a moment when Donald Trump must rise above the noise and stand firm against jihadist enemies who vehemently hate America and our ideals. Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
There's one simple answer to why Donald Trump acts like that
Our country's current system of governance is one of a reality show, rather than an administration. To understand this production, we must understand what the lead actor understands. Donald Trump is running the presidency like a reality TV script. One consistent priority in reality TV is contention and conflict. If there is no conflict, the audience loses attention. Our lead actor craves attention, and thus must create conflict to keep us watching. Conflict engages the audience's emotions. The emotions that create the strongest engagement are anger and hate, which are responses to fear. Fear is deeply rooted in our brain's amygdala. Our amygdala evolved as a strong fight or flight response, because it was necessary for our survival in a dangerous world. Anger and hate require an object or stimulus to fear. If an object is not organically available, Trump creates one. It is important to the lead actor to control the fear messaging. He has to fabricate a fear that he claims will threaten your survival so that you will become angry and engaged in his narrative (or delusions). Constant reinforcement of fear messaging creates radicalization. This outcome was on display recently in Kansas City at the World War I Museum and Memorial, where a uniformed white supremacist group marched and expounded hate and anger speech. Understand that anger and hate are rooted in fear. In this case, the fear is of any person that doesn't look like them: white Caucasian. If people can be convinced to get angry and hate by a fabricated fear, then they have been radicalized. Radicalization leads to extreme views, which results in extreme actions. We witnessed this on Sept. 11, 2001, just as we did and on Jan. 6, 2021. The bottom line is the audience of Trump's reality script subscribes to his fabricated contention and conflict, which in fact has no basis in reality. Immigrants are not criminals, rapists and murders released from prisons and mental institutions. Researchers such as Jacob Stowell, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, have found that undocumented immigrants actually commit crimes at lower rates than natural-born citizens. A reality show script dictates that the fear must be maintained, whether facts support the narrative or not. Reality TV also requires constant upping the ante in order to maintain and increase the viewing audience. In our present script, this is done by building perceptions about the imagined enemies through stereotyping and false narratives. Facts don't matter once emotion has been triggered and the brain's amygdala has been engaged. The amygdala responds to threat, perceived or factual. Fear, hate and anger can be trained, but they always require an object or enemy (such as immigrants). The training continues with the 'America first' slogan, which can be translated as 'America against the world.' Again, another perceived enemy is created — the rest of the world. The more triggers and enemies that are created, the more the amygdala is engaged. That engagement leads to a stronger survival response, which increases the potential for radicalization. So given the expansion of enemies, the script must be closely guarded and not contrasted with factual evidence. If we can reframe the contentious reality script, we can change the paradigm from competitive to cooperative. Evolutionarily speaking, our species is a herding species and not predatory. We do better when everyone is a resource and not a competitor. We do not do well breaking our interactions down to winners and losers. The more people that thrive the more we all thrive. History has shown time and again that we are the victims of the casualties we create. Reframing the narrative should involve changing 'America first' to 'global partnering,' and immigrants should be recast as our workforce. Florida recently moved to lower the working age for children because of the loss of its immigrant workers. That would be sacrificing our children to our fear of immigrants. The U.S. sees lower unemployment rates when there is more immigration. Americans do not lose jobs to immigration. We are not conservative or liberals, or Republicans or Democrats. We are Americans, and we are all resources to further the United States as a global partner. We the people invite all nations to join us, optimizing our human resources to improve the quality of life for everyone.
