We humans are a curious species (in both senses of the word ‘curious’). The foremost question on our minds is always Why? Why is the sky blue? Why do the seasons change? Why can’t a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup? Why? Why? WHY? Our insatiable need to know extends to tragic events, such as […]
It is a little past 7 PM on Monday, April 23 as I pen this op-ed in Ottawa. A little more than 5 hours ago a rented van appeared to jump a curb and run down pedestrians near the corner of Finch and Yonge streets in North Toronto. A man is in custody following an […]
This piece appeared in the April 23 edition of The Hill Times In a very funny Monty Python skit John Cleese plays a drill sergeant who is trying to teach a bunch of skinny recruits to defend themselves against foes wielding fresh fruit (oranges, apples, grapefruit, pomegranates….) with typical hilarious results. Cleese gets the underwear-clad […]
I have a confession to make. I am a huge New York Times fan. I have read it religiously for decades and even in my retirement I buy a copy that a downtown Ottawa news seller sets aside for me on a daily basis (thanks Comerford Cigar Store!). No one source is exhaustive or 100% […]
OK, OK, I know I really should lay off the Monty Python analogies. I imagine you are getting sick of them. But can anyone REALLY get tired of the greatest comic group in history? Come on, admit it, you love them as much as I do. Staying with this obsession of mine, then, I want […]
There is an old saying that goes “If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bus (or a bike, apparently. in the original Spanish)”. This very silly sentence means that there are things that are unlikely to happen and therefore are not worth mentioning. This phrase was the very first thing that came to my […]
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The white face of violent extremism
As readers of my blog and books will well know I consider myself, and am considered by some, an expert (I prefer specialist) in terrorism. More specifically Islamist extremism as that scourge was the topic of my four books thus far as well as my career at CSIS. Indeed, I have studied many aspects of […]
One of the most difficult challenges for governments around the world is what to do with their citizens who left to join Islamic State (IS) or other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq from 2013ish to 2017. As we all know, IS is a shadow of its former self. It has lost swaths of territory. […]
Way back in 1929, in the depths of the Great Depression, seven members of a Chicago gang were lined up and shot to death by members of another gang, probably tied to the infamous Al Capone. The incident, now known as the Valentines Day Massacre, was probably part of Capone’s attempt to control organised crime […]
Now that Alexandre Bissonnette has pleaded guilty to killing six people (and wounding 19 others) at a Quebec City mosque in January 2017 and we are seeing at last some of the evidence mounted against him (largely his 911 call and his jail cell ‘confession’), we are getting a much clearer picture of why he […]