Author: Phil Gurski

This blog is going to get me in a lot of trouble, but I really feel the need to write it. I want to comment on a few recent items in the news that have to do with Israel and its annoying practice of labeling any criticism as antisemitic.  Not that this is new but […]

I see that the only person convicted in the 1985 Air India bombing has been let go on strict conditions.  The Canadian government had little choice as he had served two-thirds of his sentence and was eligible for statutory release (see story here). On the one hand, all kinds of people are granted statutory release […]

There is  a lot of debate here in Canada on what we should do about IS.  The Trudeau government made a promise during the 2015 federal election campaign that if elected it would rescind the mission of Canadian CF-18s which are part of the international airstrikes on IS.  Mr. Trudeau had dismissively labelled the decision […]

We’ve had a tough time coming up with a name for our fight against terrorism. Leaving aside the ill-considered “crusade” that was used right after 9/11 (who the hell thought that was a good idea?), we have cycled through the Global war on Terror (GWOT) to the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE) – what […]

I just realised that the title of this blog is a little ambiguous.   For the purposes of this entry I don’t mean using legislation to deal with the effects of radicalisation (passport seizure, peace bonds, arrests, etc.).  No, here I mean using law enforcement personnel to help stop radicalisation before it starts. We know […]

We know that terrorism is an all too common occurrence these days.  It seems sometimes that there are attacks everywhere all the time.  In the past ten days alone we saw successful plots in Istanbul, Jakarta and Burkina Fasso – in the latter two seven Canadians were killed. In light of all this, what is […]

In the wake of the attacks in San Bernardino the gun debate veered down the usual path. Guns are bad. Guns are good. Obama wants your guns. We need new laws.  We need to apply the laws we already have.  We should get rid of all laws.  Etc.  Etc. Etc. As well, calls for better […]

For those who missed it, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) held its annual conference on Friday at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.  The CASIS conference has been around for quite some time and I remember attending 2-3 day events back in the 2000s where hundreds of participants signed up.  CASIS […]

The new Liberal government sure has made some rapid changes to the practices of the previous Conservative government.  The long-form census  has been restored.  Scientists have been unmuzzled.  And there is a sense, as stated by the PM himself, that “Canada is back”, meaning that the ideas and values most often associated with the majority […]

The  other day a young Muslim in Marseilles attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete.  The victim was able to fend off some of the blows with a copy of the Torah and suffered only minor injuries.  Attacks on French Jews are of course not new: last year’s siege of a Jewish grocery in Paris […]