Mistakes have been made

The big news these past few days has been about the 17 men arrested in the GTA for plotting a terrorist attack on targets in Southern Ontario. While there was one man who was older, I believe he was a bus driver in his forties, most of them were young men from middle class families living in the suburbs. They attempted to purchase 3 tons of fertilizer that could be used in a bomb similar to the Oklahoma city bombing (by Timothy McVeigh which only used 1 ton of fertilizer). The alleged terrorists were said to have been inspired by Al Qaeda and certain websites they visited but otherwise are not known to have links to international terrorist groups. They don't seem like they were the most cunning of terrorists (which I suppose is a good thing). The fertilizer they tried to buy was actually from an undercover officer and the 'training camp' they went to was just some paintball on some land they were trespassing on north of the city.
The real question is how could these young men have taken such vile and misguided views of their society and religion? How could their friends and families have failed them so miserably as to not foresee this kind of turn and prevent it from happening?
Unfortunately these arrests have also brought Canada on to the US security through insanity bandwagon. There are already people calling for curtailing of freedoms in hopes of increasing security. Cracking down on rights and freedoms rarely deters those that are determined. However more (and better) education along with a little guidance and leadership would go a long way in preventing young men and women from throwing their lives away by making such horrible mistakes. At least it's good to know that our security agencies were able to stop these men before anything terrible happened.

The Hamas led government in Palestine has been having its share of problems recently as well. Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas has proposed a referendum on an independent Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution (effectively declaring peace with Israel). Hamas has condemned this as an attempted coup against their democratically elected government. Also, in response to the Israeli murder of a Palestinian family, the Hamas government ended the truce with Israel. Israel shelled a beach claiming they thought rocket attacks might be coming from there. As a result they killed members of a family including a mother and several children.