Tag: ISIS

Why Cars Intentionally Ramming Into Crowds Is A Relatively New Problem

It’s happened again. In Toronto, a suspect used a Ryder van to drive into a crowd, this time killing 10 people and injuring 15 others just trying to get through their Monday routine. It is yet another example of cars—one of the most high-profile symbols of independence and Western wealth—being used as weapons against civilian populations with increasing regularity, and not as bombs or deliveries for explosives, but on their own.

This is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it’s also a byproduct of the other ways that we’ve cracked down on terrorism in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Of course, problems—including violent ones—involving cars are well-known and well-documented. Cars have been around for more than a century now and things like traffic, theft, and drunk driving crashes have been around for only slightly less time.

Why Cars Intentionally Ramming Into Crowds Is A Relatively New Problem

This might be the most controversial theory for what’s behind the rise of ISIS

A year after his 700-page opus “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” stormed to the top of America’s best-seller lists, Thomas Piketty is out with a new argument about income inequality. It may prove more controversial than his book, which continues to generate debate in political and economic circles.

The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality.

NYTimes