Category: Perspectives

I know for sure that this blog is going to raise some hackles, especially among my US friends and colleagues.  Why?  Because I am going to argue that the current US counter terrorism architecture is inadequate to deal with the threat and needs a serious overhaul.  The solution I am proposing, however, will go against […]

In June 30, 2009 the bodies of three girls/young women and a middle-aged woman were found in a car that had been submerged in a lock along the Rideau Canal system just north of Kingston, Ontario.  Scarcely a month later, three people from the Shafia family, Afghan immigrants to Canada, were arrested and charged with […]

As I have noted in an earlier blog,  I am a Sherlock Holmes fan.  The first story published in The Strand magazine under the “Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” beginning in December 1892 was  ‘Silver Blaze’, in which  Holmes has to solve the disappearance of a famous race horse 0n the eve of a big race […]

I have just returned from the 2016 Anti-Terrorism and Active Shooter conference in Niagara Falls where I was honoured to have been asked to open the 2-day event with a talk on Western foreign fighters.  The conference, now in its fourth or fifth year, has rapidly become a go-to event and one of the premier […]

In the wake of news out of Quebec that police in that province were given court warrants to intercept the communications of journalists, it turns out that CSIS cannot rule out the possibility that sometime over its 30+ year history that it too listened in on some members of the fifth estate.  In a session […]

I have just finished watching ‘Eye in the Sky’, a recent film about the use of drones as a counter terrorism tool.  The movie shows an operation where an Al Shabaab cell in Nairobi is located and targeted for killing, before it can carry out suicide attacks, all while shedding some light on the decision-making […]

Living in a liberal democracy is generally a good thing.  Not that there are no problems that arise from time to time, but those who abide by liberal (in the classic sense of the word) values tend to be open to a lot of diversity.  They generally are okay with most things as long as […]

Luc Opdebeeck is a man with boundless energy.  He is the leader and artistic director of Formaat, a participatory theatre group in Rotterdam, an initiative I have had the honour of working alongside a bit over the past few months.  I attended a typical ‘evening’ last night and witnessed the important and groundbreaking work Formaat […]

I have written on many, many occasions that bad data and/or bad analysis usually leads to bad decision making.  Think about it.  If the basic facts are wrong or are misconstrued how can any policy based on those facts be of any value?  Garbage in, garbage out as they say. This axiom was shown to […]

Soon to be former US President Barack Obama once famously said with respect to foreign policy “don’t do stupid shit (or” stuff” depending on your sensitivity to salty language)”.  That maxim could just have easily been applied to domestic policy.  And it is something that incoming president Donald Trump might want to pay attention to. […]