Foreign fighters are all the rage these days in Canada (hmm, ‘all the rage’ – kinda describes jihadis to a T doesn’t it?). Many, many Canadians are going ballistic over reports that some of our citizens who left our land to join Islamic State or other terrorist groups abroad have had a change of heart and […]
Canadians are justifiably angry at those among us who spat on our flag, burned their passports and left one of the world’s finest countries to join terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS). Not that the numbers are that high – a few hundred maybe compared with thousands from several European, African and Asian nations – but […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 15, 2018. There is no question that when the topic around the water cooler turns to terrorism – not that I hope or think that it often does – as far as the average citizen is concerned the particular brand of terrorism that garners the most attention […]
I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before but here it is again. When I worked for CSIS and my colleagues and I had occasion to talk to Canadians who had traveled to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda we would often hear some lame excuse from the returnees as to what they did while in […]
It is pretty tough, and rightfully so, to feel sorry for those who think becoming a terrorist is a good idea. These are choices made and bad choices sometimes have bad consequences. Those who recognise this realise that there is a price to pay for making a stupid decision. Then again there are those who say ‘hate […]
As the nation that suffered the catastrophic terrorist attacks on 9/11 it is of surprise to no one that the US has had ‘terrorism on the brain’ since that time. Any country that had so many of its citizens brazenly killed by a terrorist group would want to see the perpetrators – or rather in this […]
I have spent much of today on my cellphone taking interview requests from a variety of Canadian media outlets. The current interest is what has happened in New York and elsewhere in the US over the past few days when several very public personalities – former presidents Obama and Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, philanthropist […]
In the 1991 film The Fisher King, Jeff Bridges plays a shock jock named Jack who rails against yuppies and cajoles a listener to lash out, leading him to carry out a massacre in a popular New York bar (killing the wife of Parry, played by Robin Williams, who later loses his mind and becomes homeless, […]
As the entire world continues to follow the media frenzy over a bunch of probably ineffective pipe bombs sent to a couple of high-profile people – former President Obama, philanthropist George Soros, actor Robert DeNiro and a few more – this may be the perfect time to talk about the nature and frequency of terrorism […]
With all the talk lately about bringing terrorists who fought for Islamic State (IS) and other groups abroad back to Canada to face charges here one glaring omission is often made: just how hard it is to prosecute people under sections 83.01ff of the Canadian Criminal Code (the sections that deal with terrorist activity). Cases are tough to […]