Terrorism is not always as ‘in your face’ as we sometimes think. Campaigns of violence, often mislabeled as the work of ‘insurgents’ or ‘militants’ can go on for years and even decades with little reverberation in the news, especially if the killing occurs in a faraway land or part of a country well off the […]
There is something about me you need to know because it helps you to understand why I do what I do. As I have often made clear, I spent 32 years in the Canadian intelligence community as an analyst working on information ranging from intercepted communications to human sources. I was paid to understand what […]
When you have a bee in your bonnet you tend to seek out whatever information you can muster to support your position or satisfy your need to be right. Whether we are talking about the political party you back or the sports team you cheer for you are constantly on the hunt for evidence that […]
In all the debates about what is more important today from a terrorism angle, i.e. where we should put the greatest concentration of resources to counter it, I find there is one glaring omission. As we go back and forth on whether to put all our eggs in the jihadi basket or the far right […]
A version of this piece appeared in the Globe and Mail online on September 25, 2019. In much of the debate over what to do with ‘Jihadi Jack’, who is now all ours thanks to the UK decision to revoke his citizenship, a lot of arguments for and against repatriation were made. One of the […]
Does the term ‘Dirty War’ mean anything to you? By this I mean the upper case Dirty War and not some generic concept as I would bet that most wars, if not all, have a dirty phase to them. In this instance I am referring to the Argentine Dirty War from 1976 to 1983, a […]
Far right terrorism is our #1 threat! No, jihadi terrorism is! Which one is it? What do the numbers tell us?
If you think about it, there are a lot of things to be angry about today. Whether it is social inequality, racism, the inadequate response to global climate change, ‘collateral damage’ or just your everyday unfairness there are more than enough causes to get behind. For those who go beyond talk, i.e. activists, most are […]
In the late summer of 1982 I was driving back to London (Ontario) after having finished an intern job as a Spanish translator with the Multilingual Bureau at the Canadian Secretary of State department in what was then called Hull, Quebec (now known as Gatineau). I had had my first real exposure to a government […]
Do you remember when airplane hijackings were all the rage? They seemed to happen all the time way back then such that they even became a joke of sorts (albeit not for those on the plane!). Even Airplane!, the 1980 movie, made fun of them. Most incidents ended more or less peacefully I seem to […]