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Terror lives here
Re Suspect's Profile Similar To Other Second-Generation Citizens Who Have Attacked European Cities (May 24): You can only surmise what caused the Manchester suicide bomber to feel such hatred for the society in which he found himself. An inability to find work? Racist slurs? The glamorization of being a warrior in the name of IS?
The shadowy figures who reach out to these disaffected youths, getting them to sacrifice their young lives while they themselves stay safely in the background, are the ones who deserve our greatest hatred. Their religion is not Islam, it is murder, devastation and hatred.
Vivienne Utriainen, Toronto
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It is absurd to connect jihadi violence by a British citizen to a "feeling of cultural dislocation." A feeling of cultural dislocation is wholly insufficient to explain the full character of jihadi violence.
Like many jihadis before him, the Manchester bomber was born, raised, and for a time attended university in one of the great European cities. He was British. Islamist terrorism isn't merely a matter of poverty, education or lack of economic opportunity. It results from a person's specific beliefs about specific doctrines, particularly those related to jihad, martyrdom and Paradise. The jihadis themselves tell us this ad nauseam.
Until this fact is fully acknowledged, any attempts to counter Islamist terrorism will be futile.
Mark Bessoudo, Toronto
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While some may claim such perpetrators of terror have acted in the name of Islam, nothing could be further from the truth.
Ironically, the attack in Manchester took place just days before the start of Ramadan, a month where Muslims across the world practise discipline and engage in acts of charity and social welfare. IS, which has claimed responsibility for the attack, has gone completely against the fundamental teachings of Islam.
If we fall victim to creating a xenophobic atmosphere, we will only be contributing to the hatred rampant in the world.
Osama Sobhi, Calgary
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Health injustice
Re Overcrowded Hospitals Standard In Ontario (May 22): Hospital crowding is the principal cause of ER crowding, dysfunction and the associated increased risk of medical error, morbidity and mortality.
A crowded ER forces patients to suffer the indignities of hallway medicine – a lack of privacy, basic human needs left unmet and a loss of dignity. Canadian emergency physicians are fed up. We are tired of being a party to this fundamental injustice.
If we are to resolve this, we have to acknowledge that a crowded hospital is a dangerous one. Internationally, it is recognized that a safe hospital occupancy rate is 85 per cent. Most Canadian hospitals are nowhere near this safety level: Canada ranks No. 33 out of 34 OECD countries for hospital-bed availability.
The Canadian Medical Association president has stated that he doesn't know how many beds are needed to restore functionality in Canada and wants to wait for transformational change. Canada's emergency physicians are not willing to endure this wait and condemn our patients to decades more of suffering.
More beds are needed.
Alan Drummond, MD, Canadian Association Of Emergency Physicians
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Witness to the past
Re 'This Is A Material Witness To The Past' (Folio, May 22): If Quebec's museum curators are looking for more material evidence of the FLQ's bomb campaign than a statue's separated head, they might check out the rooftops of two-storey houses on Westmount's Lansdowne Avenue, just below Westmount Avenue.
As a child, I lived in a three-storey house one street over. From my brother's bedroom window, we had a clear view of the mangled red metal lying on the roof of the Lansdowne house directly behind our own: all that remained of the Lansdowne Avenue mailbox after the FLQ had planted a bomb in it.
The FLQ didn't just plant a bomb under Queen Victoria's statue. They put them in Westmount's public mailboxes, because they didn't give a damn for human lives.
As children in those days routinely mailed letters, that included children's lives.
Anne Thackray, Toronto
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Green economics
Re How To Sell Climate Change To Trump: Jobs, Jobs – And Tech (May 23): Eric Reguly reports that China is already eating the United States' lunch in the renewable energy sector.
So it appears that the question for Donald Trump is: "Do you want to simply wear the hat – or actually 'Make America Great Again,' with American jobs and ingenuity in renewable energy and clean tech? What's it gonna be, Mr. President?"
Tom Cullen, Toronto
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One thing is increasingly clear in Canada. The federal and more than one provincial government are failing to connect the dots, and understand and act on the big picture: We must move rapidly to a green economy, leaving dirty resources in the ground.
The extraction of these resources is not the only way to create jobs and drive the economy. We have only to look at the recent reports on China in the oil patch to see that we are headed down the road to failure (Asia-Bound: Chinese-Backed Firm Sees Export Opportunity For Alberta Oil, Report on Business, May 22; China's Return To The Oil Patch, Report on Business, May 20).
We were recently in the U.K. and were amazed to see the number of wind turbines, the huge arrays of solar panels. We have been in countries such as Germany, where the use of renewables has increased, and Costa Rica, where renewables are the dominant source of power. That is the way Canada must go.
If the current politicians and parties do not understand this, then we need to get rid of them and elect those who do.
Roger Emsley, Delta, B.C.
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Actual conversation?
Re Love, Sex And Caffeine (Facts & Arguments, May 23): Elliot Katz's discovery of a writing muse at his local Toronto cafés strongly suggests that not only is he a good writer (as evidenced by his article), he must be a rather good explorer as well.
The only thing that I have found in my cafés here in Ottawa is people tethered to one device or another, essentially insulated from any real-life interaction.
An odd conversation here and there might threaten to bloom now and then, but it normally quickly withers on the vine and silence once again reigns supreme.
The dearth of opportunities for discourse with complete strangers is one of the most easily identified impoverishments of our so-called culture. Cultures that were enjoyed by Leonard Cohen in Montreal, or found in old Vienna and Paris, café cultures populated by people for whom actual conversation over a simple coffee was their one and only objective seem much richer by comparison.
I fear the trend in café culture is taking us to a dark place.
Charles Sager, Ottawa