Author: Phil Gurski

Like a lot of people I enjoy traveling.   I had some amazing opportunities to see the world while I worked in intelligence and I have continued to voyage abroad in retirement.  There is so much that our planet has to offer and it is indeed a privilege to see it close up. When I […]

If there is one thing that is true about all Islamist extremist groups is that they are full of hate.  They hate other Muslims.  They hate the Shia.  They hate the Sufis.  They hate non-Muslims.  They hate LGBT.  They hate choice.  They hate everything in their warped world view.  Hate.  Hate.  Hate. One other thing […]

The horror of what happened in Nice compounds the horror of what happened in Paris in January and November of last year.  These large-scale attacks got a lot of attention, but there were also some smaller ones like the killing of a police officer and his wife and an attempt to blow up a gas […]

As I write this blog events in Turkey are still unfolding.  Whether we call this a successful coup or an attempted coup is not relevant to what I hope to convey here.  Suffice to say that a tactic the Turkish military used all too frequently in the 20th century appears to have resurfaced. I have […]

If I have said it once, I have said it many times: it is best to wait for information to come in before issuing “definitive”analyses of what has just happened.  The tragic attack in Nice may be over but it is far too soon to give in to speculation about who was responsible and why […]

The shootings in Dallas last week are a tragedy no matter what your political stripe.  The murder of five police officers, those we entrust to keep us safe, tends to hit hard.  The apparent unjustified shootings and deaths of several black Americans by police officers in recent months is likewise a very sad series of […]

Every day we seem to read about yet another terrorist attack attributed to Islamic State.  Whether or not the group claims the event – and there is a lot of analysis over when it does and when it doesn’t – there is no question that in the minds of most people IS is the world’s […]

It seems like a no-brainer.  If we could identify the factors that lead someone to embrace terrorism, or at the very least point to those vulnerable to terrorist messaging and recruitment, we could achieve several things.  We could identify individuals who exhibit those risk factors and get them help before it is too late.  Or […]

The last few years have seen an incredible spike in the creation and deployment of Countering Violent Extremism (or CVE) programmes around the world.  Although the meaning of the term is still developing, CVE generally is used to cover any effort that aims at stopping violent extremism (or radicalisation) from beginning or undo it once […]

There is a very important distinction in most Western courts of law between actus reus and mens rea, Latin for respectively, guilty act and guilty mind (more or less).   We  have decided that in order for a crime to have been committed, the alleged guilty party had to have the intent to commit that […]