We Canadians are a deferential bunch. Our national phrase is ‘sorry’ (NB if you want to find a Canadian in a crowd quickly just step on everyone’s toes. The first person to say ‘sorry’ to you is the Canadian). We really try not to offend anyone. This deep-seated desire to be inoffensive even extends to […]
Author: Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. Phil is a 32-year veteran of CSE and CSIS and the author of six books on terrorism.
We all know that the Internet and social media, that wonderful technology that burst onto the scene, and which seems to burst more and more every day, with such promise and excitement has also spawned a darker side, a piece that is nasty and brutish and which is contributing to hatred, intolerance and, in the […]
If you have never heard the comedy routine ‘The 2,000 year old man” by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, you are really missing something. The original dates back to 1961 but it is still very, very relevant and very, very funny. In one part, Mel Brooks, playing the 2,000 year-old man, says that WWII lasted […]
When did we become so reluctant to call a spade a spade? Or a terrorist a terrorist? Or a religious terrorist a religious terrorist? Are we so fearful of offending anyone for the slightest of reasons that we are incapable of labelling things what they are (NB I will not get into the inability of […]
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Are anti-vaxxers the new terrorists?
How many of you remember the mumps? The mumps is a viral infection that affects the salivary glands and is often associated with trouble swallowing or earaches. I think I had them as a kid – then again I don’t have a really good memory of my early childhood. I just read that the mumps […]
He’s back!!!! Just when you thought – or at least when the US President thought (hey, at least he didn’t say, er I mean tweet, ‘Mission Accomplished!!’) – that Islamic State (IS) was yesterday’ problem, lo and behold a video appears in which the leader of the terrorist group and ex-‘Caliph’ (of a pretend ‘Caliphate’) […]
Has something happened to Rudy Giuliani? The iconic former mayor of New York – remember the important role he played in the aftermath of 9/11, rallying Americans? – seems, to me at least, to have ‘lost it’. And I am not referring to his obsequious ass-kissing of boy President Trump, for whom he acts as […]
The Muslim Brotherhood (or MB as it is often abbreviated to, not to be confused with MBS, which is Muhammad bin Salman, or ‘Mister Bone Saw’, Saudi Arabia’s powerful king-in-waiting) has been around for a long time – since the 1920s. It is a political party infused with Islamic principles that seeks to govern by […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 22, 2019. Pop quiz! How can you tell an election is coming up in Canada? a) the government puts out a report that some identifiable part of our society takes offence to; b) that part happens to be concentrated in several ridings the ruling party currently […]
The news cycle is an unforgiving beast. Especially today when far flung events in hitherto remote corners of the world are made available to us in a flash thanks to the wonders of the Internet and social media (question: how many of us remember what it was like to keep up on such events before […]