Sophie’s Choice is a 1982 film (starring Meryl Streep in the title role) of a woman sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz who is forced by a sadistic doctor to make a terrible choice: she can save only one of her two children and must choose. One will live and the other will die, […]
Category: Perspectives
Have you ever been to Singapore? I have, several times. Nice city, clean, ordered, not really a lot to do there though. Capable intelligence services from my perspective. What has always struck me on arrival at Changi Airport is the location of very, very big signs in English that tell you in bold letters what the Singaporeans […]
While this may strike some people as arrogant and dismissive I have to confess that when I listen to ‘experts’ talk about national security issues in the media I first look at who is speaking. Some of those who offer opinions are journalists, others are politicians or political junkies, still others are academics. All have interesting perspectives […]
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 […]