Category: Perspectives

There is obviously a difference between thought and action.   While it is generally true that most actions are preceded by thought, save I suppose rash emotional or instinctive/involuntary acts, it is also true that many thoughts do not lead to action.   If you think about all the thoughts you have in a given […]

It sometimes seems that we have a love-hate relationship with our law enforcement agencies.  We want to feel safe and we expect our men and women in uniform to protect us from serious crime, save women and children from domestic abuse and be human enough to engage with the homeless and destitute on on streets […]

Bangladesh is a country born in the paroxysms of violence 45 years ago and one that is teetering on the abyss of more bloodshed day by day.  As the country finally deals with the massacre of thousands in the early days of independence through the trials and, in some cases, executions of the perpetrators of […]

Over the past few years we have been informed that a significant number of Canadians – probably close to a 100 according to the latest data (i.e. the CSIS Director) – have decided to travel to Syria/Iraq and join terrorist groups such as Islamic State and, to a lesser extent, the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al […]

Canada is a pretty good place to live.  We constantly rank high on every conceivable list (quality of life, happiness, opportunity, openness…) and it is no secret that millions who live elsewhere would give anything to move here.  Sure, we are not perfect and we have a few skeletons in our closet (first and foremost […]

A truly astonishing statement came out of a recent OSCE conference on countering terrorism hosted by Germany.  Astonishing not for its insight but for the fact that it was made in 2016.  Here is what happened, according to a report in Deutsche Welle: For a long time, there was an assumption that the internet was increasingly […]

The Canadian public were made aware of a serious allegation this week that a Sikh resident in BC was running a “terror camp” near Mission, a town of around 35,000 on the Fraser River east of Vancouver.  The story came from an article in an Indian newspaper and claimed that Hardeep Nijjar was the “operational […]

As I wrote in a blog post yesterday, today marks the 10th anniversary of the arrest of 17 men in the Greater Toronto Area in the culmination of a massive terrorism investigation by Canadian authorities.  In what came to be known as the “Toronto 18” (the last subject was arrested in August 2006) Canadians were […]

It seems that many Canadians, let alone foreigners, have forgotten about the Toronto 18 (I can attest that every time I give a talk on terrorism in Canada and make reference to the 2006 terror cell fewer and fewer people have any real knowledge of what remains the single largest counter terrorism investigation in our […]

If there is one aspect of terrorism that is poorly understood it is the relationship between mental illness and the execution of a terrorist act. All too often the masses agree in the immediate aftermath of an incident that the perpetrator must have been suffering from an undisclosed – or undiagnosed – mental disease.  We […]