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Rating: 
Summary: A powerful indictment of complacency
Review: Stewart Bell's book is a vital contribution to the growing awareness that terrorists have penetrated and used Western societies to advance their goals. Complacency and a false understanding of tolerance in Canada has perpetuated, and continues to perpetuate, not only the political leadership's blindness to the problem, but a public discourse that can't comprehend the distinction between Islamist terrorism and Islam, allowing terrorists and their sympathizers to plead victim-hood when held to account.
I recently read an article dutifully relaying as factual the irresponsible comments of a Toronto human rights lawyer synonymizing Islamist terrorism to Mandela's ANC. This analogy is not only false--the ANC's violence was reluctant, rare, and assidiuously avoided civilian casualties while the entire object of Islamist terrorism is to maximize civilian casualties--but serves to demonize the emasculated Canadian counter-terror agencies and inhibit their ability to protect Canadian society.
The incomprehension of Canada's public, legal, and political circles of the relationship between terrorism and the networks that support them are troubling, and even more troubling after after September 11 made such issues so vitally immediate. The Canadian legal community's lack of conscience over their responsibility to civilians targeted in other countries is especially baffling. Given Canada's cultural past-time of condescending to Americans, it seems that the habit is so ingrained that it is hard to devote attention to anything else.
Bell's book details a range of failures in Canada's establishment towards terrorism, focusing on Sikh terrorism, the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah and Hamas, and lastly al-Qaeda. Complacency, appeasement, and denial are the main themes that run through the book, written in a journalist's narrative style. What is most troubling is the lack of awareness, let alone the absence of a sense of responsibility, to victims of terrorism in other countries.
This is not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon, by any means. Successive American administrations failed to treat terrorism seriously, and as anything other than a series of particular, isolated crisis management problems. Western societies in general are, by their very nature, given to infiltration and penetration by terrorist organizations.
But it is important to come to terms with this history, acknowledge failure, and move on. For Canada, this will require a different cultural attitude than what is now popular. The idea that, as Bell puts it, terrorism is a problem solved by "smothering them with niceness" can only be termed oblivious. With a Labour Party that treats terrorism as a public relations/media issue, rather than as a fundamental security threat not only to historical allies but to themselves, is frustrating to others.
As more and more terrorists--whether Tamil, Hezbollah, of al-Qaeda--are caught with Canadian passports, linked to support networks in Canada that are perceived in the world as tolerated by Canadian society, Canadian citizens must be prepared to be perceived very differently in the rest of the world.
Bell's book is more a theme with a narrative built around it, rather than a comprehensive scholarly account of this problem, but he makes the case well and in a way that is very accessible to readers.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wakeup Call for Canada
Review: Stewart Bell, a seasoned journalist who has written on terrorism for a dozen years, has been criticized for allegedly targeting minority ethnic groups. But this is no hysterical racist on a crusade; the author is a calm, dispassionate observer who has done his research and analysis in a painstaking and objective manner. His targets are the tiny but terrifying minorities within minorities, and the politicians who tolerate and thus encourage them. Even if one believes, as so many Canadians seem to, that Canada is an unlikely target for terrorism, it is certainly not in our interests to continue harbouring terrorism aimed not only at faraway "enemies", but at our nearest neighbour and chief trading partner. Cold Terror is a serious treatment of a vital problem for which Canadians should demand swift and decisive action.
Rating:
Summary: Cold Terror
Review: Stewart Bell, a seasoned journalist who has written on terrorism for several years, has been criticized for allegedly targeting minority ethnic groups. But this is no hysterical racist on a crusade; the author is a calm, dispassionate observer who has done his research and analysis in a painstaking and objective manner. His targets are the tiny but terrifying minorities within minorities, and the politicians who tolerate and thus encourage them. Even if one believes, as so many Canadians seem to, that Canada is an unlikely target for terrorism, it is clearly not in our interests to continue harbouring terrorism aimed not only at faraway conflicts "of which we know little", but at our nearest neighbour and chief trading partner. Cold Terror is a serious treatment of a vital problem for which Canadians should demand swift and decisive action.
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Summary: Bell Exposes Canada as Haven for Terror
Review: Still reeling from 9/11, Americans will be shocked to read Stewart Bell's account of how the Canadian Government has allowed Sihk, Tamil and Islamic terrorists to come into our home and turn it into a safe house for international terror. Bell, who writes for the National Post and is Canada's leading reporter on national security and terrorism, has taken on the courageous task of warning Canadians about the terrorists living amongst us. This has stirred up a real hornets' nest. For his troubles, he has been threatened by many who don't like his message and has been branded as anti-Islamic by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Bell's litany of terrorist incidents around the world involving Canadian terrorists is long enough to qualify Canada for membership in the Axis of Evil. The most infamous are: the 1985 Air India bombing; the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York; the 1993 assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa; the 1995 blast at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad; the murder of 58 tourists in Egypt in 1997; the 1997 truck explosion in Sri Lanka that killed 100; the bloody Bali night club bombings in 2002; and the 2003 attack on the housing compound in Riyadh. Americans need to read this thoroughly-researched and well-documented book to learn about the threat they face from Canadian-based terrorists.
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Summary: We are all accomplices...
Review: We continue to be complacent while our elected officials welcome known terrorists and terrorist groups to our democratic paradise. If ever there was a book that desperately called Canadians to action, it is "Cold Terror". Our country is run by a party who cares more about votes that our, or anybody else's, national security. My parents are immigrants from South America. They came here to get away from terrorism, only to be enmeshed in it. To be anti-terror is to be anti-immigration here - what a crock. I've had enough. We need a new government. Now. This book made me realize how crucial our votes - our only real weapon of change - are. Bell names names in his meticulously researched essay. If your MP is here, you'll be furious - unless you're a terrorist; then you'll be delighted to find Canada is, more than ever, paradise.
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Summary: You have two of my reviews for same book
Review: You've got two reviews from me up for this book. One I wrote for Amazon.com and the other for Amazon.ca. Please remove the one for Amazon.com.
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