Terrorists acts vary widely – very widely – in scope. At the one end, the end with the highest casualties, we have 9/11 of course: almost 3,000 dead, countless wounded and trillions of dollars in damages. At the other end we have no casualties (dead or wounded): this is not to say that people are […]
We must remind ourselves that all of this is alleged and not proven. Cameron Ortis is, of course, innocent until any of this is demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not look good, but we must wait and see. Even if the details are salacious.
In all the terrorist movements in all the nations over all the years there is usually a debate over just what is terrorism after all. Depending on which side of the fence you happen to be on, terrorists are either ‘freedom fighters’ and heroes or cold-blooded monsters who only understand violence and hence must be […]
Japan is not a nation one normally associates with terrorism. In fact, aside from the Aum Shinrikyo attacks in 1995 in the Tokyo subway, I challenge anyone to come up with a long list of attacks or even attempted attacks in the ‘land of the rising sun’. It just doesn’t seem to be the target […]
A lot of people mock Canadian television. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in southwestern Ontario we all watched American networks and shows, not Canadian ones. The former were exciting and funny and popular while the latter were, well, Canadian. This criticism of mine is probably unfair as there is some […]
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 […]