Search: “far right”

I must confess that I am feeling a little frustrated with my US friends these days.  There is a lot to admire in the US of A and that is why so many people want to move there.  True, they have their problems, and they have Donald Trump, but don’t we all (except for Trump […]

By now I am sure that you are aware of the fact that a referendum carried out by the Colombian government on a peace deal with the FARC was narrowly defeated.  The difference between those in favour and those opposed was razor-thin, something like 50.2-49.8%  In other words, the vote could have gone either way. […]

Imagine that you are the parent of Steven Sotloff, or Alan Henning, or Moaz al-Kasasbeh, all of whom were assassinated brutally by Islamic State. The first two were beheaded while the third, a Jordanian pilot, was burned alive.  Your children were taken from you and died in some of the most horrific ways possible. Now […]

Wouldn’t it be great if the whole were always the sum of its parts?  That way, if we could ensure that we have all the ingredients and understand how they go together we could reliably predict what the end state would be.  If only life were like math: 2 + 3 + 4 = 9 […]

The US has suffered through two scary incidents in the past 24 hours.  Fortunately, as of the time of writing, no one has died in either event.  A man dressed in a security uniform knifed 8 people at a mall in central Minnesota.  There are reports he talked of Allah and asked at least one […]

A very odd thing happened yesterday in Canada.  A poll appeared to show that a majority of my fellow citizens support the screening of potential immigrants by giving them some sort of “values test“, in keeping with a suggestion by a wannabe Conservative leadership candidate, Kellie Leitch.  Canada thus appears to be following in the […]

Today in the small southwestern Ontario town of Strathroy a young man known to police for having terrorist connections was killed by security forces after he appeared to have exploded a device and had another in  his possession.  The victim, Aaron Driver, had been arrested in June 2015 after expressing support for Islamic State (IS) […]

Media have one important job to do: report the news.  Sometimes they also bring in people to help us understand the news and speculate on what it means.  At times outside experts contribute much needed analysis and insight and at others provide little of value to the issue at hand. In reporting the news there […]

In 1996 then First Lady Hillary Clinton published a book It Takes a Village which was essentially a tome on how to raise children.  The main argument centred on the responsibilities that everyone has to contribute to the shaping of productive, well-adjusted citizens and was a bit of a call to an earlier age where this […]

Today (July 22) marks the fifth anniversary of one of the darkest days in Norway’s history.  Anders Behring Breivik set off bombs outside a government complex in Oslo, killing 8, then traveled to an island called Utoya where a young person’s political function was occurring and massacred 69 people. Today also marks the fifth anniversary […]