A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of "lone wolf terrorism" . Now we have had our own version of the same thing, a terrifying and spectacular act of violence in which an Iranian immigrant called Man Horan Monis held a group of staff and customers hostage in a cafe in Sydney's Martin Place for 16 hours. The standoff ended with Monis' death and that of two of his hostages. In its wake, government leaders and commentators have been asking the same question I did. Was Monis a terrorist, or was he just a criminal? On the one hand, he had a history of espousing radical Islamism and claimed to be acting in support of the Islamic State. On the other hand, he didn't even have an IS flag to display, and had to ask police negotiators to bring him one. His previous crimes appear to include writing hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan along with violence of a less political nature including a string of sexual assaults and bei
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson