As we continue to deal with the very real – albeit not existential – threat from Islamist extremism and terrorism we are inundated with analyses and reporting from a variety of institutes, scholars and journalists all extolling on some aspect of the problem. I have worked in this field for the past 15 years as […]
Category: Perspectives
Categories
Terrorism by the numbers
I have decided to reread the Sherlock Holmes collection of stories (you can randomly make those kinds of decisions once you have retired). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books and some of the series/movies based (sometimes loosely) on them have always appealed to me (NB I do prefer the Jeremy Brett interpretation over all others) and […]
Last week saw the emergence of a very interesting report by the Montreal-based Centre for the Prevention of Radicalisation Leading to Violence (known by its French acronym CPRMV) on the situation at the College de Maisonneuve, from where several young people had left to engage in jihad in Syria. The centre, which was stood up […]
The public has a complicated relationship with intelligence agencies. On the one hand we love to watch James Bond and Jason Bourne films, despite the fact that the ways these spies work has very little if anything to do with how things really happen. On the other we get frustrated because these agencies tell us […]
The renowned US journal Scientific American put out a fascinating article today in which leading scholars were asked what the top 20 “big questions” facing humanity in the future. The questions posed ranged from space exploration to medicine, but it was the following that caught my eye (reproduced in its entirety: for the complete list […]
Categories
Neutralising the radicalisers
If there is one thing that any serious researcher or professional who has studied radicalisation to violence knows all too well is that the process or path from normalcy to extremism does not happen in a vacuum. And it certainly does not take place on one’s own. The term “self-radicalisation”, all too frequently uttered by […]
One thing I find fascinating is the science of lie detection. There is a lot of research out there about which tools can pick up on an attempt to avoid the truth, ranging from eye movement (saccades) to vocabulary use. As a former intelligence analyst I had to undergo periodic lie detector tests. They were […]
As we still reel from the foiled terrorist attack last week in Strathroy, Ontario, we can still rest assured that attacks, successful or not, remain a rarity in Canada. In the period since 9/11 we have had no more than 8 such incidents: on average one every two years. When we compare our experiences […]
The Canadian Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, will make some comments later today on the Liberal government’s plans on counter radicalisation. The Liberals have promised to create a centre of excellence, to be known as the Office of the Coordinator for Counter Radicalisation and Community Engagement, to be housed within his department. The Minister […]
Categories
How should we respond to terrorism?
I apologise for leading off with a statement of the obvious, but terrorism is real. We in Canada were reminded of that this week when the RCMP and its partners thwarted an attack by Aaron Driver in Strathroy. Regardless of whether Mr. Driver’s attempt was amateurish or not, whether he was an “A”-team member or […]