Author: Phil Gurski

In the wake of the stunning Liberal victory on October 19, two stories have caught my eye that have a bearing on terrorism. The first had to do with the surprise surrounding the “miraculous” comeback of the Liberals who, four years ago, had been declared all but dead.  With their measly 34 seats, there were […]

“Big data” is going to solve a lot of problems we are told.  The ability to amass and analyse huge corpuses of information will assist in spotting business trends, preventing diseases, combating crime and other amazing things.  The collection of all this will allow us to become better predictors of a whole gamut of phenomena.  There […]

There are a lot of misconceptions out there on how intelligence agencies do what they do.  It is not hard to see why this is: after all, spy services work in the shadows and seldom say anything publicly (“I can neither confirm nor deny…”).  On the contrary, if these organisations were open books then they […]

Now that Stephen Harper is an ex prime minister, we can be sure to see dozens of articles on his legacy as our leader (in fact, they started to appear hours after he lost the October 19 election).  Depending on your political stripe, he is either a great PM or one of the worst.  There […]

If there is one thing that terrorist groups like the Islamic State are good at doing, it is getting their message out.  Videos, blogs, tweets, online magazines like Dabiq,  photos and other social media promote the group’s goals, strike fear in the hearts of many and at the same time draw Westerners and others to […]

Canadians have overwhelmingly voted for change.  Mr. Harper is now a former prime minister and Mr. Trudeau is now prime minister elect. The new government will have a lot of challenges before it: the economy and income disparity; the environment; immigration and our role in the refugee crisis; First Nations; and many more. But what […]

As worthy and beneficial as religion can be, it is nevertheless true that religion has also been behind some of the worst forms of violence.  We in the West tend to see religion as a nice thing to have although I think we are increasingly moving towards a post-religious society, at least in Canada.  Whatever […]

Spoiler alert: I am not getting into the debate about “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” (sorry). The word “terrorist” conjures up all kinds of images, from shadowy figures with evil intent to soulless monsters who like to kill.  Complicating matters is the plethora of definitions out there.  Every country – and even […]

In the wake of yet another mass shooting in the US (how many this year?  Too many to count), the analysis bandwagon revs up its engine.  We need more guns.  We need fewer guns.  We need more laws.  We need fewer laws.  We need…. It’s all someone else’s fault.  Blame the shooter because he (I […]

As we near the end of a very long federal election campaign, I’d like to review what, if anything, has been said that touches on terrorism and national security  Spoiler alert: not much.  But a lot that has nothing to do with terrorism may actually have a significant impact on how safe we will be […]