Category: Perspectives

On rare occasions I pick up a copy of the National Enquirer or World Weekly News when I shop for groceries.  It’s not that I am particularly a fan, but they are strategically located at the checkout counter with their flashy, outrageous headlines.  Some are truly unbelievable – I think my all-time favourite was ‘Titanic […]

In a democracy that prides itself on the rule of law, no one in Canada is above the law, even – and especially – those charged with enforcing it, i.e. law enforcement agencies and their members.  Nothing subverts the faith a society has in its legal institutions more than the belief that laws are not […]

If there is one myth in the ever increasing world of ‘alternative facts’ (i.e. lies) that has otherworldly strength and perseverance it is the whopper that some of the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada.  This inaccurate account of recent history has been repeated by people who should have known better – e.g. former Democratic presidential […]

There have been many times in history where statements made publicly have turned out to be somewhat less than true.   Remember the famous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline in the 1948 US Presidential election?  What about then CIA Director George Tenet’s claim that intelligence pointing to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam […]

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice through the looking glass Humpty-Dumpty delivers this famous line: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Alice replied: “he question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” I think this notion that anyone can say anything they like […]

I think we can all agree – well except maybe some in the new Trump administration – that the US decision to use the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba to hold terrorist suspects extra-judicially was a particularly bad idea.  Not only did the practice sully the US image as the protector of democratic values, it […]

Canada has been in the news a lot lately for things it is not normally associated with.  Things like mass shootings, online hate and an overall atmosphere of intolerance.  We here used to pride ourselves on openness, the embrace of difference and acceptance and like to highlight how we have built a social model that […]

After Lord knows how many attempts to come up with what causes terrorism, and just as many inadequate theories, models, paradigms, and frameworks, you would think that serious scholars would realise that this quest is a fool’s errand.  The simple – and correct as far as I am concerned – answer to the question ‘why?’ […]

CVE – short for Countering Violent Extremism – gets a bad rap sometimes, and the criticism is not always unwarranted.  The term has come to mean whatever people want it to mean as its remit expands into all kinds of areas of social engineering and capacity building.  Many movements have received funding from governments by […]