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 […]
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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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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 […]
Are we in the West suffering from collective naivete? Are we ignoring an obvious threat to public safety? Are we failing to understand that there are citizens among us who can do real harm? I am referring of course to the phenomenon of ‘foreign fighters’, Westerners who left of their own free will to join […]
I suppose that in many ways none of this should be unexpected. Its obviousness does not make it right, however. There are lots of things that we do not question that are nevertheless the wrong way of looking at things. I am referring here to the belief that we are at ‘war with terrorism’. The […]
The city of New York, the site of the world-changing events of 9/11, appears to have suffered its worst single attack of terrorism since that fateful date 16 years ago. A man drove a rented Home Depot truck onto a pedestrian pathway in lower Manhattan, striking cyclists and killing at least eight (six were declared […]
We learned today that a Canadian, Joshua Boyle, has been rescued in Pakistan, together with his American wife and three children born in captivity after having been held for five years by the Taliban. Mr. Boyle and his very pregnant spouse were taken by the terrorist group while ‘backpacking’ through central Asia, including Afghanistan. It […]
In the wake of the recent storms that ravaged the eastern Caribbean and Florida a lot of Canadians were stranded in resorts and hotels and undoubtedly were suffering under horrible conditions, life-threatening ones even. Many savaged the Canadian government and Canadian airlines for not acting more quickly to get them home and out of harm’s […]
Remember the ‘refugee crisis’ of a few summers ago? We all were riveted by the pictures of hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians, Iraqis and many others, risking their lives in overland journeys or even more perilous sea voyages, fleeing danger and violence in their homelands to start a new life in Europe. Some countries […]
Before this piece goes any further I need to spell out that I am not a big fan of the use of force unless absolutely necessary (and when necessary it is best to use it wisely while still protecting the lives of the force wielders). Clearly it is required in some situations but if public […]