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Perspectives

Godzilla, King of the Ecoterrorists?

Environmental activists’ frustration at a lack of meaningful action could lead to ecoterrorism

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Perspectives

Far right vs Islamist terrorists: who is more dangerous? This is the wrong question

Sigh. Another day another mass shooting in the US. Except that this time there were two mass shootings, back to back. On August 3 in El Paso, Texas a man opened fire in a Walmart, killing 20 and wounding 26 and a day later in Dayton, Ohio a gunman killed nine people. More needless deaths […]

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What terrorists do when the facts tell them they are wrong

It is hard to admit when you have made a mistake. After all, we want to be right every time and when it becomes obvious that we are not it takes a special effort to pronounce a mea culpa. Me, I have tried to be gracious when obvious errors are pointed out to me: perhaps […]

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Perspectives

When we torture the terrorists we become the terrorists

What Islamic State (IS) stood for and did while it governed its so-called ‘Caliphate’ is no secret. The terrorist group threw gays off rooftops, burned or drowned captives alive, raped women and girls (including the Yazidis, whom the jihadis considered apostates) and made their prisoners wear orange jumpsuits before beheading them. All of these actions […]

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Why terrorists’ use of CBRN is less frequent than you would think

FaceBook has pissed a lot of people off lately. If it is not their use of your data (which, by the way, you gave freely to the company) it is their inability to prevent or take down extremist material from their platform in a timely fashion or sanction those seeking to circumvent the democratic process […]

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Perspectives

The pitfalls of negotiating ‘peace’ with terrorists

War is draining. Whether we are talking about the men and women whom we send to war on our behalf, and who to be honest are the greatest at risk and hence usually the last ones who want to go and fight, or societies in general, I think we can all agree that war should […]

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The need to compare terrorists apples with terrorist apples

Just what constitutes ‘terrorism’? Ah, that is a tricky question, the answer to which depends on the respondent. We have legal, common, informed (and uninformed) definitions galore, which makes this issue hard to nail down. And, if you add in the emotional context it gets even more complicated. We read reports all the time on […]

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Perspectives

Are anti-vaxxers the new terrorists?

How many of you remember the mumps? The mumps is a viral infection that affects the salivary glands and is often associated with trouble swallowing or earaches. I think I had them as a kid – then again I don’t have a really good memory of my early childhood. I just read that the mumps […]

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Are Christians targeted more by terrorists than others? No

They often say that truth is the first casualty of war. States and militaries have all kinds of reasons to hide facts if for no other one than to cover up their ‘mistakes’ (except that military ‘mistakes’ usually imply lots of meaningless deaths). A good example is the US insistence that few if any civilians […]

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Perspectives

Canadian terrorists have killed many more abroad than here – let’s not forget that

When it comes to terrorism I suppose the mantra that most people hold to is somewhat akin to that found in the real estate industry: location, location, location. Attacks that happen in countries most cannot find on a map, or have no intention of ever visiting, or frankly don’t really care about (as harsh as […]