January 4, 2010

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 – Wine & Cheese starts at 5:15 pm, Program from 5:50 – 7:00 pm

Location: University Room, The Vancouver Club, 915 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, B.C.

Jonathan Manthorpe, Foreign Correspondent and Columnist Vancouver Sun

Please join us on Thursday, January 21st to welcome our guest speaker Jonathan Manthorpe who will address our Society on “Marketing the Al-Qaida Brand: Osama Bin Laden and Franchised Terrorism”. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in December that while the death or capture of Osama bin Laden would be a psychological victory over Al-Qaida, his removal would not defeat the terrorist group. McChrystal was reflecting what many analysts and counter-terrorism experts have come to believe about the campaign against Al-Qaida. This is the first terror and guerrilla war of the digital age. Bin Laden is now little more than a figurehead, but all the information required for disenchanted young Muslims to sign up as franchised Al-Qaida terrorists and even to plan bombing campaigns is available on the Internet. There’s a strong body of analytical opinion that bin Laden and the core of Al-Qaida has not directly commanded any attacks since September 2001 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. The real threat now is home-grown youths inspired by bin Laden, such as the July 2005 attackers of the London subway system, or the five Americna Muslims from North Virginia arrested in Pakistan in December as they sought terrorist training. And the way the digital age has been embraced to serve a medieval cause was clearly seen in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India, where a terror group leader in Pakistan directed the whole operation by cell phone.

Jonathan Manthorpe has been a foreign correspondent and columnist for over 30 years and The Sun’s International Affairs for over a decade. He came to Vancouver in 1998 after five years as the Southam News Asia correspondent based in Hong Kong from where he travelled and wrote on events throughout the Far East, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

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Manthorpe and his family were posted to Asia direct from Africa where he spent nearly five years as the regional correspondent for Southam News based in Harare, Zimbabwe. During this time Manthorpe reported on the transition from apartheid to majority rule in South Africa and covered major wars, famines and social upheavals across the continent. This posting followed nearly a decade in Europe where Manthorpe was sent in 1979 as the Toronto Star’s European Bureau chief. In the early 1980s Manthorpe spent two years as a special adviser in London to then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau during the campaign to patriate Canada’s constitution. After the completion of that project Manthorpe became the European Correspondent for Southam News.

For most of the 1970s Manthorpe was a political correspondent for the Globe and Mail and then a daily columnist for the Toronto Star. He grew up in Toronto, but trained as a journalist in Britain where he won the national prize for the top graduate of the year in 1969. Manthorpe has won the Mitchener Award for journalism and several international prizes for his writing.

Location: University Room, The Vancouver Club, 915 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, B.C.

Time: Wine & Cheese starts at 5:15 pm, Program from 5:50 – 7:00 pm
Cost: $30 for a Member accompanied by a spouse or a family member
$20 each for Member, a Member’s guest or a non-Member

(The ticket cost includes one beverage ticket per attendee for 1 glass of wine or beer, or for 2 soft drinks. Additional drinks can be purchased from the bar)

Please inform our Society Administrator, Linda Metcalfe, of your attendance by Email at [email protected], by mailing or faxing the attached form, by voice registration at 604-290-0880, or registering online here.

Ian E. Marshall, Secretary
Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Society of British Columbia

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