Search: “The Hill Times”

I am far from the only one to label the recent trip by our Prime Minister to India a disaster.  Several media outlets have called it so and I will leave it to the reader to follow up on those.  What I wish to pursue is the Jaspar Atwal affair.  For those Canadians living in a parallel […]

New York and New Yorkers have a reputation of being tough.  Whether it stems from dealing with horrendous traffic jams or the constant crush of people everywhere I am not sure, but they do seem a rather resilient lot. This came out clearly today in the wake of yet another terrorist attack.  I was staying […]

A few weeks ago I found myself on a panel at a National Judicial Institute conference at the storied Algonquin resort in picturesque St. Andrews, New Brunswick along with Federal Court judge Richard Mosley and retired Ontario Superior Court judge Douglas Rutherford.  The three of us were asked to discuss the challenge of trying terrorism […]

Parliament Hill in Ottawa is one of those treasures found only in liberal democracies.  Anyone can show up and lobby, protest, shout his lungs out or carry a placard peacefully and silently, no matter what the cause.  It is also a great place to watch the fireworks on Canada Day as long as enjoying 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 […]

Think what you want about fake news, or “alternative facts” as they are now known, but I think we can all agree that this is not a good development.  People can definitely disagree on what facts mean and what their implications are, but it is simply wrong and indefensible to say that something is X […]

As if the recently terminated (and interminable) US Presidential election campaign wasn’t bad enough, right on cue at least two terrorist groups have threatened to carry out attacks to disrupt it.  The first out of the box was apparently Al Qaeda, at least according to US officials, who warned about non-specific plots in New York […]

Surprisingly, if there is one issue many people differ on it is what constitutes terrorism.  There are so many different definitions and in some places, like my country (Canada), it is not even spelled out in law (the Canadian Criminal Code outlines what a terrorist act is, not terrorism per se).  You would think that […]

If there is one thing we know about terrorism it is that what we do – or what we don’t do – has a real chance of effecting what terrorist groups do.  For terrorist groups are really good at telling the world why they use violence and usually place the blame for their carnage on […]

In the ill-named “war on terror” small victories, let alone crushing ones, are hard to find.  It seems that no matter how many terrorists we kill more rise up like the warriors that sprang from dragon’s teeth in Greek mythology and we see more attacks (one more today in Jerusalem).  So it is little wonder […]