Photo taken on September 11, 2001 shows the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burning after two planes crashed into each building in New York. The buildings collapsed on that day claiming 2,753 lives. September 11, 2026 marks the 25th anniversary of this event. Photo by STAN HONDA /AFP/Getty Images

 

"Do not refer to the Sept.11 attacks as terrorist attacks. [Refer to the] longstanding language guidance [on the Sept.11, 2001 al-Qaida attacks]."

"The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes in Washington D.C. Pennsylvania and Manhattan."

"The World Trade Center was destroyed [CBC internal language guide]."

Basem Boshra, senior director, journalistic standards and public trust, CBC News

 

"Refusing to call it an act of terrorism dishonours the victims, their families, the survivors, and the first responders who witnessed the horrors of that day."

"Trying to sanitize or rewrite that history is deeply offensive and does a disservice to everyone who was affected by the attacks."

"[The CBC is redefining] terrorism in a way that downplays the atrocity [of the terrorist attacks]." 

Conservative Member of Parliament Rachel Thomas

 

"It is wholly inaccurate to state our journalists have been urged to declare that this was not a terrorist act."

"[The memo represents a reminder to adhere to the CBC's language guide for] the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism'."

"CBC preferences use of these words with attribution to credible sources, a practice shared by many of the world's top journalistic organizations."

Kerry Kelly, CBC public affairs spokesperson 

 

"[Staff will use the terms but they will always be] attributed to government officials, authorities, experts and politicians." 

"But CBC News does not itself designate specific groups as terrorists, or specific acts as terrorism, regardless of the region or the events, because these words are so loaded with meaning, politics and emotion that they can end up being impediments to our journalism." 

Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor in chief, general manager

 

"[Employees are urged to] exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist or terrorism [because they can be] highly contested [in some instances and potentially raise questions about the CBC's] consistency and impartiality [in covering other attacks]."

"Terrorism generally implies attacks against unarmed civilians for political religious or some other ideological reason But it's a highly controversial term that can leave journalists taking sides in a conflict."

CBC Language Guide 

Confusion has been swirling about how CBC News journalists use the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism,' particularly in connection with the al-Qaeda attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

Al-Qaida, the Islamist fundamentalist terrorist group operating under the late Osama bin Laden, is listed as such under Canada's terrorist list. The United Nations lists the group as terrorists. There is little doubt that  al-Qaida is acknowledged as a terrorist group almost universally, many of the Arab countries of the Middle East as well, including Saudi Arabia where it was formed, with 'radicalized' Saudi Arabians their operatives in the suicide mission that killed almost three thousand people in the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

 

Canada's once-respected public broadcaster, under its current administration -- well infiltrated by noxious Islamist figures that also occupy positions of trust and authority in many other Canadian institutions under the Liberal government that has seen fit to transition Canada from a nation wedded to social justice through democratic order and Western values to one that accommodates itself to the transformative presence of Muslim Brotherhood adherents -- now carefully sidesteps naming terrorism for what it is, implying in the manner of its coverage that there is room to excuse the excesses of baleful violence against the West in sympathy with the 'oppressed' of the world.

 

In that atmosphere of submission to an alternative view of Islamist jihadists where to name them as such is to burden Canada's Muslim population with institutional 'Islamophobia' which must at all costs be avoided, the CBC's operational chiefs see the value of soft-peddling Islamist extremism expressed in terrorism's slaughter of those opposing Islamic conquest, including innocent civilians who are used as proxies-for-slaughter in lieu of more prized goals such as Western officials viewed as Islam's enemies, even those who compromise themselves by their eagerness to cull favour with their growing Muslim populations.

 

The despicable position taken by the mealy-mouthed expositors of journalistic 'balance' and 'neutrality' in the face of the evil represented by barbarian hordes of Islamist jihadists whose mission is to kill, to instill fear and apprehension in the minds of those they terrify tests our civilizational mores and certainties. Prostrating themselves before the alter of accommodation, they have lost the confidence of the public who judge the public broadcaster on the quality of the journalism they place on display and find it wanting. Those same Canadians would be satisfied to see the CBC defunded by taxpayers and for it to become as totally defunct as it is morally.

 

That the CBC, under pressure applied to Prime Minister Mark Carney by Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, by a threat made by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation over the outrage expressed by its director Kash Patel, and by the reaction of ordinary Canadians, offended and horrified that their public broadcaster is loathe to name the obvious for what it is, reflected on its original decision-making and recanted this latest order, is telling. Telling also that its withdrawal of the order not to name the 9/11 horror as a terrorist attack, and that this rescinding of the memo is to apply only to 9/11.

 

And not to CBC's regular 'neutral', non-subjective reports on the terrorist attack by Hamas on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, and the resulting invasion of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, in a defensive move to destroy the terrorist group controlling Gaza once and for all for which it is universally condemned by its erstwhile allies. The CBC reportage on a tiny nation fighting back against Islamist jihadists whose terrorist death-cult agenda cannot rationally be denied, is shameful, and it will continue; no slack given to public outrage over that since it is too controversial in and of itself, impacting for the present time, only Canadian Jews, not the overwhelming presence of Muslims now living in Canada. 

 

 

 

Basem Boshra, CBC

 

"...To be clear, CBC News has never said what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have stated in recent days. We have reported fully and accurately on the reasons and motivations for those attacks as determined by police, governments and an independent commission. We've just made sure to do it with attribution."

"Clarity and understanding are at the heart of our journalism. The leaked excerpt without context or explanation has raised more questions for the public that we must now answer."

"After reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism." 

"We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding."

"At the same time, as new acts of politically or ideologically motivated violence occur in our world, we will continue to follow the journalistically sound practice of attributing causes and motivations to officials and experts."

Basem Boshra, Senior director of journalistic standards and public trust

 

On Thursday, 7 August, 35-year-old Mohammed Khatib learned that his refugee status in Belgium was being revoked — allegedly over his verbal support for Palestinian armed resistance and alleged links with international terrorism. Khatib is the Europe coordinator of the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun. A Palestinian himself, he co-founded the organisation in 2011 after fleeing to Belgium from Lebanon in 2010, where he had grown up in the Ain El Hilweh refugee camp.

The decision to revoke his refugee status follows a campaign labelling him a “hate preacher,” initiated by the Belgian far-right on social media and taken up by former State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Nicole De Moor, who announced a procedure against him in October 2024.

The case, overseen by the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA), is based on information collected by the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA), which classifies Khatib a “serious” security threat.

Ciara Carolan, The New Arab 

 

In Belgium, showing solidarity with the Palestinian cause has become a serious legal and personal risk for refugees living under strict migration policies  The New Arab

 

"Canadians have witnessed an explosive rise in extremist rhetoric, ideological radicalization, and politically motivated violence, along with an unprecedented rise of antisemitism."

"As concerns about public safety have grown ... so too have questions about how governments balance humanitarian objectives with security considerations."

"The purpose of this research is not to tell Canadians what they should think. It is to help illuminate what Canadians do think, and to contribute a more informed discussion about the complex issues affecting Canadian society. Understanding public attitudes toward security, extremism and social cohesion is an important part of understanding the environment in which antisemitism and other forms of [hate] emerge and evolve."

HR Canada Charitable Organization  

Samidoun has been outlawed in Canada -- presumably, since it has been placed on Canada's terror list along with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and so many other terror groups. It has been outlawed elsewhere as well, notably Germany. But it is in Vancouver, Canada, that Samidoun chose to make its home where it engages in anti-Israel propaganda and promotes antisemitism generally, and despite its listing still uses its Vancouver headquarters with seeming impunity.

 

Canada's Liberal-led governments appear to have a soft spot for Palestinian 'rights' and have latterly emerged as a stern critic of Israel; its previous warm relations with the Jewish state seem to have evaporated in the last decade, even more so since the barbaric slaughter that took place in southern Israel when thousands of Palestinian terrorists and civilians led by Hamas spilled over from Gaza to commit mass murder, torture and rape of Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023.

 

Palestinians have been given favoured status through immigration, refugee intake and illegal migration. Nor has there been a shortage of arrivals in Canada of members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps where their family members live in quiet security, their presence alarming to the nth degree to the far more numerous Iranian-Canadians who loathe the Iranian regime and fear their representatives in Canada whose presence seems not to bother the government of prime minister Mark Carney one whit.

 

Adil Charkaoui watches over a pro-Palestinian march in Montreal in late 2023. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

 

Interestingly, it seems at long last that ordinary Canadians have had enough of Palestinian 'student groups' creating chaotic scenes of anti-Israel propaganda and threats against Canadian Jews. Foreign coordinated marches, demonstrations and other forms of public displays of civil disobedience and lawlessness where keffiyeh-clad and masked pro-Hamas followers demonstrate their choice of 'human rights defence' by calling for an international Intifada, for a 'Final Solution', and chanting 'From the river to the sea'. Nor have mass public prayers shutting down roadways and intersections proven enchanting to the greater Canadian public. 

"Exporting the revolution, giving birth to and exporting terrorist groups is part of the Iranian regime. The names [of the groups] are not important. Terror is the most important mission inside and outside Iran, outside is even more important.These regimes have to reflect their image, superiority and power, in order to expand. Iranians actually co-operate with Russia and China. They learned it from them."

"Western countries are kind of honest and naive, and in obeying the law and liberal and democratic values, they sometimes fall in that trap of not knowing they help these dictatorships. They use your systems of being honest and good and trying to help the poor, and they abuse it."

Iranian-born, Israeli terrorism expert Beni Sabti  

A recent poll has resulted in just under fifty percent of Canadians revealed to be opposed to the Liberal federal government's decision to expedite student visa processing for Palestinians from Gaza. Immigration Minister Lena Diab last month announced her decision to expedite visa processing for 37 students from Gaza, along with their families. Commissioned by the HR Canada Charitable Organization, the Leger poll asked respondents whether they believed the policy would help students whose education had been disrupted by war, or whether they felt "speeding up the process could make it more difficult to adequately identify potential security risks, including individuals with extremist affiliations". 

 

The decision to expedite visa processing was opposed by forty-three percent of respondents, while 38 percent supported it, and the remaining 19 percent answered "I don't know". Results that demonstrate notable public concern and uncertainty for the planned acceleration of visa processing for Gaza Palestinian students related to perceived security risks in permitting radicalized Palestinians into Canada. Indubitably because Canadians have seen more than enough of such radicalized Palestinians already in Canada and making their presence all too well known. 

 

Muslims pray outside McGill University during an anti-Israel protest in Montreal on October 7, 2024 — the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel. Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia/

  

"Our mandate is to advance education on issues relating to antisemitism and discrimination, with a particular focus on how public perceptions and media narratives shape those conversations."

"Understanding how Canadians view, and are talking about, issues that intersect with security, extremism, and humanitarian policy helps provide important context for that work."

"[Canadians have been exposed to a growing number of incidents involving Islamic extremism in recent years], and this poll suggests those concerns are reflected in public opinion."

"The results indicate that appropriate security screening for those arriving from countries where these ideologies are prevalent is an issue of significant concern for millions of Canadians."

Amanda Eskenasi, education director, HR Charitable Organization 

 

Holding Beijing Responsible

"Ottawa can't seem to shake this tendency to flatter."
"I'm not suggesting that we need to insult China or provoke a quarrel. We should simply be guided by the facts. And right now the facts argue for the case that China was delinquent, that it wasn't transparent enough. That's not a conspiracy theory."
"When you start acknowledging the truth, then positive and corrective action is possible. As long as you're in denial, there's no hope of action that will ameliorate the situation."
"This is a tremendous missed opportunity and it's not too late for the government [of Canada] to slowly turn the ship around."
David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2009 -- 2012

"You have to draw a line. You have to stop such behaviour."
"You have to acknowledge that if you dealt with this issue with a lot more transparency we would have avoided an international crisis that has led to one of the greatest recessions of our times."
"Cabinet did not fully realize what I call the dark side of China."
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2012 -- 2016

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Wednesday August 31, 2016. China has rejected Canada's efforts to inject labour standards into a free trade agreement. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was leader of the-then opposition Liberal Party of Canada, campaigning during the 2015 general election that brought him to the helm of government, he stated his intention of bringing Canada closer to China, with the ambition of signing a free trade agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, in contrast to the previous government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper who distrusted the CCP and its obvious untrustworthiness, much less its penchant of abusing human rights.

In his 2018 trip to Beijing, Trudeau fully expected to sign that free trade deal he had placed so much stock in. And China might have been pleased to sign such an agreement, giving it even more influence in Canada, had it not been for Trudeau's usual insertion of recognized rights for aboriginals, environmental policy and gender-based analysis, so much a part of his 'progressive' agenda, even in the face of his conflicted admiration for authoritarian-style governments because they can 'turn on a dime'. And although Trudeau considers Canada, under his aegis, a post-national country, Xi Jinping celebrates Chinese nationalism.

A memorial this month for victims of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Officials have been faulted as having at first mismanaged and concealed the breadth of the epidemic.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock

Canada treads lightly in its relationship with its southern neighbour and largest trading partner, the United States, and most particularly under the leadership of its current president, not known for his steady, guiding hand of objective and open policies. Canada owes much of its international security and its economic health to the fairly open trade and intertwined closeness of Canada's production with that of the United States. And when an extradition request from the U.S. for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou led to her arrest in Vancouver, China unleashed the full force of its bitter enmity.

Ever since, the Liberal government has tread lightly, hoping to soften Beijing's acid vituperation and re-ingratiate itself with a world power that knows no constraints or restraints, exercising contempt for other nations' scruples while itself threatening international stability. No greater harm has been done to the global community than when the CPC decided to withhold vital information from the World Health Organization on the seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic ravaging Wuhan, unleashing a deadly coronavirus on an unprepared international community.

According to David Mulroney who has experienced ample reflections of China's moody manipulation, Ottawa's "almost humiliating" posture regarding China has as good as given China a green light to continue presenting itself as a champion of industry and morals rather than the criminal ideology that Trudeau's craven attitude avoids speaking of. In providing incorrect information to the WHO, China deliberately chose to place the world in danger. Canada, along with other first-world countries have an obligation to social health and security to name China for its disregard of moral responsibility, much less the crass looter of world resources that it is, in the interests of furthering its own industrial conquest.

The Trudeau cabinet has bent itself like a pretzel to avoid criticizing either China or the WHO, when both have been responsible for the current situation the world finds itself in, trying to control a deadly virus with success nowhere in sight, while millions are threatened and countless lives are needlessly lost. China's aggression and rejection of responsibility only ensures that it will continue to place the world community in danger from its reckless totalitarian decision-making impacting the world outside China.

The Chinese people deserve better from their government. The world community expects better from the Communist Party of China, but Xi Jinping and his colleagues heed no accusations that they cannot attribute to the false cries of 'racism' while bullying the world order and focusing on becoming the next and premier world power. It already considers itself to have achieved that status.

In laying the world low, killing an untold number of people through neglect and arrogance, destroying the world economy, Beijing still comes out ahead, placing its industries on overdrive to satisfy the world's new vital need for medical equipment and drugs in a desperate effort to allay the harm done by China, while China profits. And it will vigorously and effectively fend off any demands that may arise for an impartial international investigation into the true emergence of the Wuhan novel coronavirus.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology opened in 2018 with the founder of a French bio-industrial firm, Alain Merieux, acting as a consultant in its construction Hector