Is it just me or is it starting to feel like ‘deja vu all over again’, to quote the great New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra? Did I tumble down a time wormhole only to find myself back in 2003? Are we on the cusp of going to war in the Middle East – again? […]
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 seem to collectively have short memories. When something bad happens, or better yet several bad somethings occur over a short time span, we immediately declare this to be a new trend, as if these incidents have never been seen before. This, of course, is not usually correct. As the Old Testament’s Book of Ecclesiastes […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 6, 2019. I do not normally read the obituaries. It is not that I have no respect for the dead: it is just that I don’t take the time to see who has passed on. This non-practice is bound to change as I get older and […]
When it comes to terrorism we have this odd obsession with groups. We study them, we dissect them, we map their internal organisations, we draw up ‘top-ten’ most wanted members, and in many instances countries have created ‘terrorist entity lists’ (here is a link to Canada’s for example). It is as if groups are what […]
In many ways you have to feel for security intelligence agencies. I know full well that this is not an easy thing to ask as I cannot imagine most citizens want to cut these organisations any slack, or acknowledge that what they are called on to do – what WE demand they do, i.e. to […]
You gotta feel for Sri Lanka. The island nation went through a full quarter century of civil war as the government tried, and ultimately succeeded, in defeating a separatist movement led by an actual terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE for short. The war ended in 2009, allowing Sri Lanka to […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 29, 2019. In the Middle Ages there was in Europe the concept of cuius regio eius religio – Latin for the concept of “the religion of the ruler dictates the religion of the ruled”. In other words, if the king was Catholic, so were all his […]
No sooner had the smoke cleared from the multiple terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday than many immediately said, some with alarming certainty, that the acts were definitely carried out by Islamic State (IS). These claims were made despite the complete lack of evidence at the time and seemed to suggest that IS, […]
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 […]
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 […]