Protecting whose security?

The paper looks at the terrorist acts in each case (the kidnappings of government officials by the Front de liberation du Québec in 1970 and the bombings of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001) in the context of the perceived injustices each sought to rectify (English-Canadian imperialism in 1970 and American/Western imperialism in 2001). [...] It seems from the analysis that increased security following one model corresponds with decreased security following the other: for example, the citizen-centred model includes security for dissent to the projects and reproduction of the capitalist state, while the capital-centred model includes security for the exploitation or violation of security in the sense of the citizen-centred model. [...] While it is portrayed as neutral and as representative of the interests of all, this paper highlights its political nature, particularly the political expediency of the fact that it contains elements of two very different conceptions of security: the protection of state borders and state systems (corresponding to the reproduction of the capitalist state), and the protection of citizens from bodily [...] In the case of the Anti- Terrorism Act (2001), the scope of the terrorist attack, the social movement, and the legislation created is Brabazon g Anti-Terrorism Legislation and the Criminalization of Dissent / 3 much broader. [...] At the time that the American state and the US-led transnational capitalist class began to feel this threat from abroad and the threat of the protestors and organizers from within, the possibility of direct coercive American intervention abroad was still restricted by the stigma of the Vietman conflict and the 1991 Gulf War (Augelli and Murphy 1988: 141; Gill 1988: 204).