This piece originally appeared in The Hill Times on December 11 (http://www.hilltimes.com/2017/12/11/death-terrorists-necessary-not-necessarily-death/127716) All is fair in love and war, or so the saying goes. Except that nothing is usually fair in either, especially when it comes to war. We ought to have learned over the several millennia that we have been killing each other on […]
There are few people, I imagine, that condone the use of torture. Well, except those countries or governments who engage in it I suppose. The list of those actors is one that most would find obvious: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. And yet Amnesty International finds that torture is practiced in 141 nations, i.e three quarters of […]
This article appeared in The Hill Times on December 4, 2017 Canada is a nation of immigrants. After all, each and every one of us, with the exception of our First Nations, an immigrant or the offspring of immigrants, whether we can trace our families back to the 16th century or the 21st. Among many […]
Published in The Hill Times November 30, 2017 An awful lot has been happening in Saudi Arabia of late. There is a new sheriff-to-be in town, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – or MBS as he is known – and he is not wasting any time in making changes about the place. Scores of senior […]
Published in the Hill Times December 4, 2017 We in Canada do not have a lot of experience when it comes to terrorism. That is, of course, a good thing as the opposite scenario would be tragic. No, despite the fact that the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) in Ottawa has pegged the threat level […]
Having just spent three days in New York I have been thinking a lot about the terrorist threat to the West. The reasons for this are not solely tied to the fact that I was three blocks away from Monday’s mostly unsuccessful attack on the subway near Times Square. It is much more than that. […]
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Terrorism and the Big Apple
New York and New Yorkers have a reputation of being tough. Whether it stems from dealing with horrendous traffic jams or the constant crush of people everywhere I am not sure, but they do seem a rather resilient lot. This came out clearly today in the wake of yet another terrorist attack. I was staying […]
Another successful terrorist attack, another inquiry as to why it was not stopped. This is becoming a common occurrence at least in Western societies where the exigencies of liberal democracies demand accountability. There may very well be post facto reviews in non-democracies like Russia and Saudi Arabia as well but we do not tend to […]
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I was a teenaged terrorist
When I was in first year of high (secondary) school – grade nine as we call it (why is it that I cannot get a BareNaked Ladies song out of my head?) – I did something really stupid. I was about to bus home from a Friday night dance when I decided that it would […]
I, like many others I suspect, have grown tired and increasingly frustrated at trying to understand anything the Trump administration is doing. So many of its decisions seem to be made with little forethought or analysis and appear to be taken in a ‘screw you’ kind of way. What other interpretation can be given to […]