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The cutting edge of terrorism

When most people think about terrorism and terrorists they probably go immediately to explosives, suicide vests, firearms and,  increasingly, the use of cars and vans.  Attacks in which these ‘tools’ are used are ubiquitous and have become a scourge in far too many countries.  Nary a day goes by without news about an incident somewhere […]

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The ghost of jihadis past

There is a theory out there that killing terrorists, especially those in leadership positions, acts to put a damper on violent extremism, especially for those not quite committed to the cause.  The idea is that if wannabes see that joining a group leads to being targeted by an airstrike or a drone or special forces […]

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The difference between mental illness and radicalisation

When we come across a phenomenon that is new and strange to us we often struggle to gain an understanding.  What we are seeing or hearing is beyond our realm of experience and hence our ‘comfort zone’, and we don’t have a readily available framework to make sense of it.  As a result we have […]

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The Barcelona attacks fit a pattern – there is no pattern

What happened in Barcelona last week has taken some  interesting twists and turns.  A heinous act that we all thought was yet another quasi-random example of ‘vehicular terrorism’ (Nice, Berlin, Stockholm, London, Charlottesville…) has become a carefully planned albeit badly executed plot.  We thought that the use of a van was the original intent but […]

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Is terrorism in Canada really a national security threat?

The other day I had lunch with an old friend who, like me, worked in the Canadian intelligence community.  We had  a wide-ranging chat over a number of issues – Donald Trump, what each of us was up to these days – but as inevitably happens when two people with our backgrounds get together the […]

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When it comes to radicalisation it is all about people

There is an interesting piece in today’s Ottawa Citizen about a woman who was once the ‘pretty public face‘ of one of Canada’s nastier white supremacist organisations, Heritage Front.  Elizabeth Moore joined the group in high school and even became a spokesperson, a role she embraced, before doubts started to set in and she left […]

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Why Spain, why now?

Now that Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the horror in Barcelona many people are asking ‘Why Spain?’  France, the UK and Belgium they understand since there has been a spate of attacks in recent years.  Perhaps even Sweden and Germany are on some peoples’ list even if these nations have suffered comparatively less. In […]

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Are we entering the time of unpreventable terrorist attacks?

The carnage unfolding in Barcelona as I type is getting to be depressingly familiar.  An individual drives a vehicle (car, van, 18-wheeler) into an unsuspecting crowd of people, strewing them like bowling pins.  Innocent people are injured, some horribly, and some die (maybe mercifully quickly or agonisingly slowly).  While no group has yet to claim […]

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Just how high is the threat from RW terrorism in Canada?

A lot of people are very worried about the rise of the far right these days in light of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia on the weekend, at least based on the number of articles and op-ed pieces that I have come across in my news scanning as well as the number of media interviews […]

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Yet another unhelpful stab at why people become terrorists

When I was in grade 13 – which in my day was the last year of high school in the province of Ontario, which I suppose just underscores how old I really am – I remember taking an exam in functions and relations, one of three mathematics options at the time ((calculus and algebra were […]