Borealis Threat & Risk ConsultingI was saddened to hear recently that a member of one of the funniest group of comedians ever to grace the screen is suffering from dementia. Terry Jones of the irreverent and very clever Monty Python troupe announced that he has the condition and will no longer be able to give interviews. A very dark […]
In the Harry Potter novels the villain is known as Lord Voldemort. He is in many ways a terrorist. He is ideologically driven (he wants to take over the wizarding world and force everyone to conform to his way of doing things) and he uses violence to achieve his goals. He recruits followers and tortures […]
Another set of terrorist attacks in the West, another desperate search for answers or explanations or rationale. A man now in custody, Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalised US citizen of Afghan origin, is charged with planting a variety of bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey. The targets selected and venues chosen to hide the explosives […]
People react in different ways to terrorism. Some panic. Some lash out at what they think are those responsible (Muslims, people with head coverings, places of worship). Some take it all in stride – Keep calm and carry on – aware of the fact that terrorism, irrespective of what media images tell us, remains a […]
The US has suffered through two scary incidents in the past 24 hours. Fortunately, as of the time of writing, no one has died in either event. A man dressed in a security uniform knifed 8 people at a mall in central Minnesota. There are reports he talked of Allah and asked at least one […]
If there is one cardinal rule about the study of terrorism that everyone should commit to memory it is this: do not extrapolate unnecessarily and unadvisedly from one region to the other. While there are certainly some fundamental commonalities to violent extremism and to particular groups or brands of terrorism, it is usually a bad […]
Did you ever have one of those days where in a matter of minutes you were exposed to things that when you compared them turned out to be polar opposites? I had one of those days today. I had traveled from The Hague to Utrecht in the Netherlands to meet with a university professor. I […]
For some it might seem a bit odd that a person who spent three decades in intelligence, and half of that in counter terrorism especially, might think that there is a solution other than investigation and incarceration for terrorists. After all, terrorism is a real threat and we cannot be naive about it. How can […]
If there is one thing I have noticed in my post-intelligence life it is the quality of reporting on terrorism and violent radicalisation. When I worked for CSIS I had access to far more information, not available to the public of course, on these two issues and was thus very well schooled in the who, […]
No, you are not watching the US Republican Party propose measures to stop terrorism that each time are more and more draconian and more and more dismissive of basic human rights. This is the Conservative Party of Canada talking, the holders – until recently – of government in this country. And yet if you didn’t […]