We in Canada are, disturbingly to some, becoming used to this story. A Canadian travels abroad, to a native land or elsewhere, is picked up by local authorities, placed in jail (often in appalling conditions and sometimes allegedly tortured) and eventually released when the foreign government decides there is no case against him. He returns […]
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A pattern is emerging when it comes to the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the West. People of all faiths and backgrounds denounce the attack, politicians swear that their nations will not be cowed by fear, candles and late-night vigils abound, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris is lit with the colours of the […]
Terrorists are hateful people, of that there is no doubt. What they hate varies based on the underlying ideology of the group to which they belong or through which they derive their inspiration and yet there are similarities at times. Most of them hate society or governments or policies or something else and have concluded […]
In the wake of yet another horrific – but not ‘cowardly’: the terrorists most likely knew they would die in their efforts – attack in London, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said ‘enough is enough‘! She added that there was ‘too much tolerance of extremism’ in her country and that the UK’s counter terrorism […]
When we fear everything is terrorism
There is a famous line in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz where the protagonist Dorothy, who has just landed in a strange country courtesy of a tornado, looks around and tells her dog Toto “we’re not in Kansas anymore”. That sentence has been used countless times over the decades and has come […]
Terrorism is sure getting complicated. The good old days, if I may call them that, were easy by comparison. Terrorists were easy to spot because they tended to chuck bombs or fire weapons at people, the larger the crowd the better. Then we got to the airline hijacking phase in which most incidents ended relatively […]
I am sure you have all read the stories. In the aftermath of an arrest of a mass murderer (or a terrorist), neighbours, friends and colleagues are interviewed about what they knew about the suspect. Here is what they tend to say: I never saw it coming! He was the nicest guy! I can’t believe […]
Jumping the gun on terrorism – again
I know that in a world of 24/7 news and intense competition to be first with a breaking story that time is of the essence. Individuals and news outlets feel that they do not have the luxury to wait to publish for fear that another individual or outlet will scoop them. In their haste, there […]
It is natural for like to gravitate to like. We tend to associate with people that look like us, think like us, have the same fundamental beliefs as us. We also tend to read news items with which we agree, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. There is probably something to do with evolution behind […]
Neutralising the radicalisers
If there is one thing that any serious researcher or professional who has studied radicalisation to violence knows all too well is that the process or path from normalcy to extremism does not happen in a vacuum. And it certainly does not take place on one’s own. The term “self-radicalisation”, all too frequently uttered by […]