Author: Phil Gurski

OK, OK, I am getting fed up with hearing about the Khadr family and I am pretty sure I am not alone in this.  Canada’s #1 Al Qaeda-supporting clan has been a pain in the ass for decades and I for one just want them to go away – literally if possible.  They have become […]

When you look at what is happening around the world these days – riots in France, Brexit, anti-immigrant feelings, a general feeling of being pissed off at the status quo – it should come as a surprise to no one that there are groups of people who want to get away from it all.  The […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018. Way back in medieval times there was a concept known as sanctuary.  Under this notion, those who had committed crimes could place themselves beyond the long arm of the law by hightailing it to a church or monastery, where supposedly divine law trumped the […]

This piece and a rebuttal both appeared on the Resilience Post Web site on December 6, 2018. One of my favourite Monty Python skits (and I have tonnes of those!) is the one in which John Cleese plays a drill sergeant who is teaching a bunch of recruits how to defend themselves against an adversary […]

Today marks a very solemn occasion in Canadian – and world – history.  29 years ago, on December 6, 1989, misogynist Marc Lepine  went into a classroom at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique and, after separating the men from the women, killed 14 of the latter before cowardly taking his own life.  His excuse?  Lépine’s suicide note blamed […]

A little less than a month ago we marked (‘celebrated’ is definitely the wrong word) the centenary of the end of the First World War.  This was a solemn occasion on which we recalled the deaths, injuries and destruction in not only the ‘Great War’ but also in WWII, the Korean War and others.  It […]

Once a month or so I get an email entitled “Updates on Radicalisation Research” from something called ‘Radicalisationresearch.org’ ( I assume it is from the UK because of the way ‘radicalisation’ is spelled – either that or Canadian although I doubt that).  This newsletter usually lists a dozen or so papers written in a number […]

Keeping with the theme of the OPV/TSAS conference on PVE (preventing violent extremism) in Edmonton last week I’d like to pick up on a theme that is getting a lot of attention in Canada, that of right-wing extremism (RWE for short).  There was a panel on this menace that I had to unfortunately skip as […]