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Militants blamed in Sri Lanka attacks had incendiary leader

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The purported leader of an Islamic extremist group blamed for an Easter attack in Sri Lanka that killed over 320 people began posting videos online three years ago calling for non-Muslims to be “eliminated,” faith leaders said Tuesday.

Much remains unclear about how a little-known group called National Thowfeek Jamaath allegedly carried out six large nearly simultaneous suicide bombings striking churches and hotels on Sunday.

However, warnings about growing radicalism in the island nation off the coast of India date to at least 2007, while Muslim leaders say their repeated warnings about the group and its leader drew no visible reaction from officials responsible for public security.

“Some of the intelligence people saw his picture but they didn’t take action,” said N.M. Ameen, the president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka.

Tension coursed through Colombo on Tuesday as the military took on emergency war-time powers, allowing them to conduct warrantless searches and detain suspects for up to two weeks before a court hearing.

Such powers haven’t been invoked since Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war, when people feared that unclaimed bags or debris could hide a bomb. On one commuter train Tuesday morning, panicked passengers shouted over one unclaimed piece of luggage until its owner was found.

Authorities have blamed National Thowfeek Jamaath for the attack. Its leader, alternately known as Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, became known to Muslim leaders three years ago for his incendiary speeches online.

“It was basically a hate campaign against all non-Muslims,” said Hilmy Ahamed, the Muslim council’s vice-president. “Basically, he was saying non-Muslims have to be eliminated.”

Zahran’s name was on one intelligence warning shared among Sri Lankan security forces, who apparently even quietly took their growing concerns to international experts as well.

Anne Speckhard, the director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, said a Sri Lankan intelligence official approached her at a conference in February with a surprising question. She was worried about what she described as a violent, homegrown jihadi group that “would just disappear” when the government tried to crack down on them.

“The intel person kind of came up to me and said, ‘You know, we’re kind of worried about this new group and there’s some activity going. What do you think?'” Speckhard told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “It just kind of blows my mind that’s who it was.”

As far as the planning, Speckhard noted that Sri Lanka was “a part of the world that developed suicide vests” during the civil war against the Tamil Tigers, a secular, nationalist group that once was the world’s top suicide attacker. But the style of Sunday’s attacks, targeting churches on Easter and hotels frequented by foreigners, followed that of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

“It is a simple attack that is well thought out,” Speckhard said. “I do believe well thought out is a product of being in touch with someone from the outside.”

That’s a feeling shared by the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor.

“The degree of sophistication in the making of the bombs indicates that the attackers did in fact have help from outside Sri Lanka, which could have come via co-ordination with external militant groups such as al-Qaida or the Islamic State, from Sri Lankan fighters returning from battlefields in Iraq and Syria, or from a combination of the two,” a Stratfor analysis said Tuesday. “Clarity on the nature of such networks, however, will have to wait for the emergence of more details about the attacks.”

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka attack via its Aamaq news agency on Tuesday, but offered no photographs or videos of attackers pledging their loyalty to the group. Such material, often showing suicide bombers pledging loyalty before their assaults, offers credibility to their claims.

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Follow Jon Gambrell and Bharatha Mallawarachi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap and www.twitter.com/bharatha77

Jon Gambrell And Bharatha Mallawarachi, The Associated Press


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Kananaskis G7 meeting the right setting for U.S. and Canada to reassert energy ties

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Energy security, resilience and affordability have long been protected by a continentally integrated energy sector.

The G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, offers a key platform to reassert how North American energy cooperation has made the U.S. and Canada stronger, according to a joint statement from The Heritage Foundation, the foremost American conservative think tank, and MEI, a pan-Canadian research and educational policy organization.

“Energy cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States is vital for the Western World’s energy security,” says Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and one of America’s most prominent energy experts. “Both President Trump and Prime Minister Carney share energy as a key priority for their respective administrations.

She added, “The G7 should embrace energy abundance by cooperating and committing to a rapid expansion of energy infrastructure. Members should commit to streamlined permitting, including a one-stop shop permitting and environmental review process, to unleash the capital investment necessary to make energy abundance a reality.”

North America’s energy industry is continentally integrated, benefitting from a blend of U.S. light crude oil and Mexican and Canadian heavy crude oil that keeps the continent’s refineries running smoothly.

Each day, Canada exports 2.8 million barrels of oil to the United States.

These get refined into gasoline, diesel and other higher value-added products that furnish the U.S. market with reliable and affordable energy, as well as exported to other countries, including some 780,000 barrels per day of finished products that get exported to Canada and 1.08 million barrels per day to Mexico.

A similar situation occurs with natural gas, where Canada ships 8.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the United States through a continental network of pipelines.

This gets consumed by U.S. households, as well as transformed into liquefied natural gas products, of which the United States exports 11.5 billion cubic feet per day, mostly from ports in Louisiana, Texas and Maryland.

“The abundance and complementarity of Canada and the United States’ energy resources have made both nations more prosperous and more secure in their supply,” says Daniel Dufort, president and CEO of the MEI. “Both countries stand to reduce dependence on Chinese and Russian energy by expanding their pipeline networks – the United States to the East and Canada to the West – to supply their European and Asian allies in an increasingly turbulent world.”

Under this scenario, Europe would buy more high-value light oil from the U.S., whose domestic needs would be back-stopped by lower-priced heavy oil imports from Canada, whereas Asia would consume more LNG from Canada, diminishing China and Russia’s economic and strategic leverage over it.

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The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

As the nation’s largest, most broadly supported conservative research and educational institution, The Heritage Foundation has been leading the American conservative movement since our founding in 1973. The Heritage Foundation reaches more than 10 million members, advocates, and concerned Americans every day with information on critical issues facing America.

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Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

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From Conservative Party Communications

Yes. He must be disqualified. I find it incredible that Mark Carney would allow someone to run for his party that called for a Canadian citizen to be handed over to a foreign government on a bounty, a foreign government that would almost certainly execute that Canadian citizen.

 

“Think about that for a second. We have a Liberal MP saying that a Canadian citizen should be handed over to a foreign dictatorship to get a bounty so that that citizen could be murdered. And Mark Carney says he should stay on as a candidate. What does that say about whether Mark Carney would protect Canadians?

“Mark Carney is deeply conflicted. Just in November, he went to Beijing and secured a quarter-billion-dollar loan for his company from a state-owned Chinese bank. He’s deeply compromised, and he will never stand up for Canada against any foreign regime. It is another reason why Mr. Carney must show us all his assets, all the money he owes, all the money that his companies owe to foreign hostile regimes. And this story might not be entirely the story of the bounty, and a Liberal MP calling for a Canadian to be handed over for execution to a foreign government might not be something that the everyday Canadian can relate to because it’s so outrageous. But I ask you this, if Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?

“He has never put Canada first, and that’s why we cannot have a fourth Liberal term. After the Lost Liberal Decade, our country is a playground for foreign interference. Our economy is weaker than ever before. Our people more divided. We need a change to put Canada first with a new government that will stand up for the security and economy of our citizens and take back control of our destiny. Let’s bring it home.”

 

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