One criticism that has been leveled a lot in the post 9/11 period is that governments, through their security intelligence and law enforcement agencies, has run roughshod over civil rights and what should be seen as legitimate political activity, and criminalised some behaviours all in an effort to prevent terrorism from occurring. The timeline on […]
Most people in Canada have a good impression of Sweden I would think. Whether it focuses on tall, blonde attractive men and women or the increasing number of star hockey players – the Ottawa Senators have been blessed with both Daniel Alfredsson and Erik Karlsson – the images are positive ones. And if you have […]
I am a big Isaac Asimov fan (and a big science fiction fan in general, although I don’t get to read as much as I’d like what with all this terrorism to look at). In his classic Foundation series we are introduced to a character right at the outset named Hari Seldon, a mathematics professor […]
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When hate speech leads to violence
The Fisher King is a 1991 film starring the late Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in which the latter plays a shock jock radio host who spurs a caller into massacring people at random at a restaurant in which the former’s wife dies. The character played by Williams loses his sanity and becomes a street […]
I suppose it was inevitable. An armed attack on Republicans at a baseball practice in Virginia wounded the House majority whip and several others appears to have been carried out by a leftist terrorist. 66-year old James Thomas Hodgkinson, a former house inspector from Illinois, was apparently distraught at the election of Donald Trump as […]
I have learned a few things over the years in dealing with both counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE). First is that both fields have attracted a lot of interest from a variety of actors: politicians, academics, and self-styled experts. Secondly is that everyone thinks he or she has THE answer to either preventing terrorism […]
We in Canada are, disturbingly to some, becoming used to this story. A Canadian travels abroad, to a native land or elsewhere, is picked up by local authorities, placed in jail (often in appalling conditions and sometimes allegedly tortured) and eventually released when the foreign government decides there is no case against him. He returns […]
A few months ago an Austrian town put out a ‘help wanted’ sign – for a hermit. I am not making this up. The town has apparently had a hermit since the 17th century and the last one ‘retired’ in the fall of 2016 (how do you retire from being a hermit? I wonder how […]
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What to do about Afghanistan?
I have come to know the journalist Michael Petrou over the past few years. He would sometimes call me to seek my views on terrorism when he was with Macleans magazine and I relied heavily on his book ‘Renegades’ – the story of Canadians in the Spanish Civil War – for a section of my […]
A pattern is emerging when it comes to the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the West. People of all faiths and backgrounds denounce the attack, politicians swear that their nations will not be cowed by fear, candles and late-night vigils abound, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris is lit with the colours of the […]