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What do you do if you are the parent of a terrorist?

Parenting is hard. I have first-hand experience as I am the father of three children – all wonderful of course;) But they were not always wonderful. Or rather there were challenges along the way, from fussy infants to sullen teens. Every parent goes through these phases and – one hopes – comes out still sane […]

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One person’s terrorist is another person’s son?

There are few terms that rank up there with terrorism when it comes to emotional responses and controversy. The word is associated with one of the most serious crimes humans can commit: I think that ‘genocide’ is maybe the only worse act we are capable of. And while there are multiple legal definitions around the […]

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Usually it is all about the radicalisers

After four years and almost 1,000 blogs (have I really written that many??) it should not surprise anyone that there has been some repetition along the way. As this is a blog on terrorism there can’t be that much to say, can there? Yes, unfortunately, there is always some heinous act against innocent people to […]

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Are Christians targeted more by terrorists than others? No

They often say that truth is the first casualty of war. States and militaries have all kinds of reasons to hide facts if for no other one than to cover up their ‘mistakes’ (except that military ‘mistakes’ usually imply lots of meaningless deaths). A good example is the US insistence that few if any civilians […]

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Podcast #8 of An Intelligent Look at Terrorism: What happened in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday?

Episode #8 of the podcast series An Intelligent Look at Terrorism is now available on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Podbean! My take on the Sri Lankan attacks  Youtube https://youtu.be/ckw6haPYDLI LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6527265196837343232 Facebook https://twitter.com/ResiliencePost/status/1121498494924140546 Twitter https://twitter.com/ResiliencePost/status/1121498494924140546 Podbean https://anintelligentlookatterrorism.podbean.com/e/on-the-terrorist-attacks-in-sri-lanka/

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Perspectives

Sri Lanka’s terrorist attacks and intelligence failure? What intelligence failure??

Imagine the following scenario. The weather outside is awful. It has been snowing for three days now and a lot of the white stuff has accumulated on the ground. In addition, the temperatures have hovered around zero (Celsius or 32 Fahrenheit) so there is a real risk of ice on the roads. Every TV station, […]

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Is tit for tat terrorism now inevitable?

When you are a child your first instinct is to hit back at others who have hit you or with whom you are frustrated (I see this a bit with my 19-month old grandson). We have to be taught not to lash out at others – in other words to resist our natural reactions. This […]

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Maybe Alek Minassian wasn’t an ‘incel’ terrorist after all

I am not a “I told you so” kinda guy. I have been wrong enough times in my life, even as an intelligence analyst, to know that thinking I am always right is not a good strategy. Not too mention annoyingly arrogant. Still, I want to return to the attack on Yonge Street in Toronto […]

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Something about the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks does not add up

As I continue to read and hear more about yesterday’s horrific terrorist attacks across Sri Lanka I find I am left with more questions than answers. I am supposed to be a terrorism ‘expert’ – how I dislike that term since it appears that just about everyone (and everything, including my dead cat) seems to […]

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Afghanistan, terrorism and Canada: the nexus that never goes away

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 15, 2019 As all Canadians know, our country has a longstanding relationship with Afghanistan. In the aftermath of 9/11 the government decided to send our military, first special forces, then regular troops, to engage in what began as counter terrorism (CT) and ended as a combination […]