Search: “Terrorists”

On this day in 1910, a time bomb built of 16 sticks of connected to a cheap windup alarm clock exploded in an alley next to the Los Angeles Times.

Terrorists acts vary widely – very widely – in scope. At the one end, the end with the highest casualties, we have 9/11 of course: almost 3,000 dead, countless wounded and trillions of dollars in damages. At the other end we have no casualties (dead or wounded): this is not to say that people are […]

In all the terrorist movements in all the nations over all the years there is usually a debate over just what is terrorism after all. Depending on which side of the fence you happen to be on, terrorists are either ‘freedom fighters’ and heroes or cold-blooded monsters who only understand violence and hence must be […]

Japan is not a nation one normally associates with terrorism. In fact, aside from the Aum Shinrikyo attacks in 1995 in the Tokyo subway, I challenge anyone to come up with a long list of attacks or even attempted attacks in the ‘land of the rising sun’. It just doesn’t seem to be the target […]

Terrorism is not always as ‘in your face’ as we sometimes think. Campaigns of violence, often mislabeled as the work of ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’ can go on for years and even decades with little reverberation in the news, especially if the killing occurs in a faraway land or part of a country well off the […]

When you have a bee in your bonnet you tend to seek out whatever information you can muster to support your position or satisfy your need to be right. Whether we are talking about the political party you back or the sports team you cheer for you are constantly on the hunt for evidence that […]

A version of this piece appeared in the Globe and Mail online on September 25, 2019. In much of the debate over what to do with ‘Jihadi Jack’, who is now all ours thanks to the UK decision to revoke his citizenship, a lot of arguments for and against repatriation were made. One of the […]

I have long been fascinated by violence and our species’ propensity to use it. This interest does not stem from any personal experience of it – I grew up in a middle class southwestern Ontario home at a not too dangerous time in Canadian history – so I suppose that the draw for me stems […]

(NB how’s that for an analogy?) When I was a kid I did not have a good impression of the military (Canadian in my case of course). My friends and I would laugh at those who joined the cadets or reserves, seeing them as ‘losers’. My childhood was first filled with images of US army […]

There are terrorists groups that have their rise and fall over time. Some groups are remarkably resilient and longlasting, such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which is pretty close to a century old. Others are a flash in the pan such as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) which lasted only between 1973 and 1975 […]