The Canadian Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, will make some comments later today on the Liberal government’s plans on counter radicalisation. The Liberals have promised to create a centre of excellence, to be known as the Office of the Coordinator for Counter Radicalisation and Community Engagement, to be housed within his department. The Minister […]
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How should we respond to terrorism?
I apologise for leading off with a statement of the obvious, but terrorism is real. We in Canada were reminded of that this week when the RCMP and its partners thwarted an attack by Aaron Driver in Strathroy. Regardless of whether Mr. Driver’s attempt was amateurish or not, whether he was an “A”-team member or […]
Another video, another promise of terrorism. You would think that we’d be getting tired of these by now. Every wannabe martyr goes online, films himself (or herself) – or gets someone else to film – rants on about how we in the West are the aggressor against Islam and Muslims, and threatens to kill us […]
Today in the small southwestern Ontario town of Strathroy a young man known to police for having terrorist connections was killed by security forces after he appeared to have exploded a device and had another in his possession. The victim, Aaron Driver, had been arrested in June 2015 after expressing support for Islamic State (IS) […]
In Cixin Liu’s science fiction novel The Dark Forest (sequel to The Three Body Problem), a race from the Alpha Centauri system has identified Earth as a suitable home and is seeking to thwart any efforts from our planet to interfere with their takeover plans. One of the new technologies developed by the “Trisolarans”, who […]
The other day I was reading a fascinating article in Discover science magazine on Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist who revolutionalised our understanding of psychopathy through years of studying inmates in Canadian correctional institutions. Some of his more famous subjects, familiar to all Canadians, include Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. His diagnsotic tool, the Psychopathy […]
There is no question that terrorism gets a lot of attention these days. Nary a day goes by without a story of an attack somewhere in the world. Most – not all, but most – of these attacks are carried out by some individual, some small group or even a large bunch with some tie […]
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Why does Islamic State hate us?
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks one of the most often asked questions amongst Americans (and many others) was: why? Why were we attacked? Why did so many innocent people have to die? Why did we deserve such a catastrophe? Why do they HATE us? The answers to those questions were spread all over […]
We expect a lot of those agencies tasked with keeping us safe. We demand that they identify those who mean us harm, investigate the nature of the threat they pose and take appropriate action to disrupt their criminal acts. When they fail to do so many are critical and want to know why they were […]
Media have one important job to do: report the news. Sometimes they also bring in people to help us understand the news and speculate on what it means. At times outside experts contribute much needed analysis and insight and at others provide little of value to the issue at hand. In reporting the news there […]