The Globe and Mail featured a fascinating story in its weekend edition (August 12) on suicides in Toronto in which people throw themselves in front of subway cars. This has to be a particularly gruesome way to take one’s life and I really feel for the drivers of the subway. I have heard that they […]
Category: Perspectives
I am not going to jump on the bandwagon and categorically call what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday an act of domestic terrorism. At least not yet. There are still too many unknowns. All we know so far is that James Alex Fields, a 20-year old man from Ohio, left his home to join an […]
I see that Ernst Zundel died the other day. For many Canadians of a certain age Mr. Zundel was famous, or rather infamous, for being, well, to be blunt, a pain in the ass. He was a Holocaust denier, a neo-Nazi and an all-around rabble-rouser. He often surrounded himself with hard-hatted supporters when he made […]
A year ago Canada dodged a terrorist bullet when the almost 25-year old Muslim convert Aaron Driver climbed into a cab outside his sister’s home in Strathroy, a small town not quite 40 km from London, Ontario, set off an explosive device that didn’t do a lot of damage to either himself or the taxi, […]
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The terrorist view from Bangladesh
Sometimes small things point to large changes. During my short visit last week to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, I had the opportunity to sit down with one of that country’s leading political scientists to talk about terrorism and PVE – i.e. Preventing Violent Extremism, the newest iteration of CVE – Countering Violent Extremism. We […]
Most citizens don’t like terrorists and think they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. I suppose there is something about terrorism – the targeting of innocent people, the levels of carnage, the boastful statements by groups and threats of future attacks – that really bothers people. It is hard to find […]
Last Saturday’s arrest in Sydney, Australia of four men in an alleged terrorism plot was the latest in a series of interdictions by Australian authorities. In this supposed plot, four men are being held under special anti-terrorism powers for planning to place a bomb on an aircraft, hidden in a ‘meat mincer’. Other reports noted […]
One country that remains a mystery to many is Saudi Arabia. A relatively new state – it really only dates from 1930 – this desert land sprang from an odd mid 18th century agreement between a very conservative religious tradition, Wahhabism, and the rule of a single family, the Al Sauds. The Wahhabis care for […]
July 1 is of course an important day for Canadians. We may not wear our patriotism on our sleeve as often as out southern neighbours in the US, but July 1 – Canada Day – is an exception. Average Canadians drape themselves in the national red and white flag, paint maple leaves on their cheeks […]
Most people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the sanity behind terrorism. Surely those who knowingly and willingly kill themselves by detonating a bomb strapped to their waist or driving a booby-trapped car into a crowd of people cannot be psychologically normal, can they? It is probable that we also have a hard […]