Does the term ‘Dirty War’ mean anything to you? By this I mean the upper case Dirty War and not some generic concept as I would bet that most wars, if not all, have a dirty phase to them. In this instance I am referring to the Argentine Dirty War from 1976 to 1983, a […]
Far right terrorism is our #1 threat! No, jihadi terrorism is! Which one is it? What do the numbers tell us?
If you think about it, there are a lot of things to be angry about today. Whether it is social inequality, racism, the inadequate response to global climate change, ‘collateral damage’ or just your everyday unfairness there are more than enough causes to get behind. For those who go beyond talk, i.e. activists, most are […]
In the late summer of 1982 I was driving back to London (Ontario) after having finished an intern job as a Spanish translator with the Multilingual Bureau at the Canadian Secretary of State department in what was then called Hull, Quebec (now known as Gatineau). I had had my first real exposure to a government […]
Do you remember when airplane hijackings were all the rage? They seemed to happen all the time way back then such that they even became a joke of sorts (albeit not for those on the plane!). Even Airplane!, the 1980 movie, made fun of them. Most incidents ended more or less peacefully I seem to […]
There are unanswered questions about Joshua Boyle and why the horrific ordeal he put his wife and kids through began in the first place.
I have long been fascinated by violence and our species’ propensity to use it. This interest does not stem from any personal experience of it – I grew up in a middle class southwestern Ontario home at a not too dangerous time in Canadian history – so I suppose that the draw for me stems […]
The word ‘assassination’ is an interesting one (NB I taught linguistics for 15 years at university so I find everything about language fascinating). It stems from a rather unique set of historical events a long time ago. From 1090 to 1275 a group of Shia Muslim fanatics known as the Asasiyun (Arabic for “those who […]
What do you remember of the dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile? Even if you are not well versed in Latin American history you are bound to know that his reign, from 1973 to 1990, was not good. Thousands of opponents, dismissed as ‘Communists’ or ‘leftists’, were killed, tens of thousands were probably tortured and close […]
(NB how’s that for an analogy?) When I was a kid I did not have a good impression of the military (Canadian in my case of course). My friends and I would laugh at those who joined the cadets or reserves, seeing them as ‘losers’. My childhood was first filled with images of US army […]