Search: “Terrorists”

When I was quite young, growing up in London (Ontario), an elderly man would make and take care of an outdoor ice rink for the neighbourhood kids. He would not charge anything for this and – yes I know this is nostalgic! – there is nothing better than playing hockey outside during a Canadian winter. […]

PLEASE! Before you excoriate me and engage in ad hominem attacks based on the title of this blog – not that I have not been subject to both before! – read to the end. Then, if you still think I am a knuckle-dragging troglodyte have at ‘er. Shortly after the creation of the Soviet Union […]

We all remember when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau uttered the famous line “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” right? It was during one of the Munk debates in the lead up to the 2015 federal elections after which he became our leader. In that debate, Mr. Trudeau was responding to plans by the […]

My wife and I are quite taken by British programming. We have watched Midsomer Murders – all 19 seasons we have access to – at least twice and other similar series on Netflix and Acorn TV. We are currently making our way through George Gently, starring Martin Shaw (and Lee Ingleby, who also played Stan […]

I have to confess that I am a fan of the CBC. Not out of any sense of Canadian nationalism necessarily, although there is probably some of that too. No, I like the CBC because I like the variety of its programming, especially the radio offerings. I try not to miss episodes of The Debaters, […]

There is so much that has gone awry in the so-called war on terrorism that a complete list is probably uncompilable – and certainly too much for a blog piece. I have already made many arguments as to why this is not a good way to view or frame our efforts at preventing or thwarting […]

There is no question that there is a lot of terrorism about. Even a cursory glance at the news on a daily basis will uncover stories like an attack on a school by the Taliban in Afghanistan, an Al Shabaab strike on a Mogadishu hotel, yet another Boko Haram use of young girls as suicide […]

We have witnessed in recent weeks a depressingly long list of mass shootings in the US. El Paso, Texas. Dayton, Ohio. Gilroy, California (at a garlic festival). Events of this nature are occurring, or so it seems, with alarming frequency. It is best not to extrapolate from single or even multiple events to posit a […]

It has been a while since I have had legitimate occasion to quote the great New York Yankee catcher and inveterate mangler of the English language, Yogi Berra, but today is one of those days where I really need to lead off (get the baseball analogy??) with him. Of all the phrases he uttered over […]

Governments often do whatever they can to control messaging that reflects poorly on their mandates. This should not be of surprise to anyone as, like ruling parties, most of us do not want information that casts us in a negative light to gain wide exposure. With states it is a little different as these are, […]