Borealis Threat & Risk ConsultingI must admit I am getting tired of seeing nation states repeat the same mistakes they made previously in counter terrorism policy. I suppose the only saving grace is that the officials making these errors are sometimes not the same ones who made the errors initially, but can’t they learn from previous ill-considered policies? […]
As the numbers of those with an interest in terrorism increase – could we say there is a boom in the field? – the number of novel approaches also increases. We have seen studies done on social media postings, attempts at understanding the psychology of extremism and myriad tries at detecting inputs (i.e. aspects of […]
I have stated this on several occasions and I will repeat it here: I am not an expert on the use of military force. Hell, I’m not even slightly knowledgeable about all things military So I write this blog carefully and hope I do not sound completely out of my depth by the end. Airstrikes […]
Whenever a terrorist attack happens and innocent lives are lost we get a typical litany of accusations. The attackers were evil. Their act was heinous. They are inhuman. Sometimes the terrorists are called cowards. Contrast this with how the terrorists refer to themselves. Mujahideen. Jaysh al Islam (Army of Islam). Ansar Muhammad (companions of the […]
Months ago I wrote a blog piece (No way to run a railroad – June 1) about the shameful decision by the former federal government to remove Hamilton lawyer, Muslim leader, and all-around-good-guy Hussein Hamdani from the Canadian Department of Public Safety-led Cross Cultural Roundtable on National Security over scurrilous allegations in a Quebec muckraker […]
Like in most fields of study, terrorism analysis has made great contributions to our understanding of this violent phenomenon. Whether it is in-depth examinations of the ideology or longitudinal data on whether or not de-radicalisation programmes work, we are better off than we would be in the absence of this knowledge. Unfortunately, however, terrorism analysis […]
There is no question that in the war of ideas between us and the terrorists we are not winning, despite the fact that the odds are so much in our favour. Our way of life is so superior to that of the terrorists that this should not really be a contest and I shouldn’t have […]
Terrorism is the use of violence or the threat of violence to cause and spread fear in an effort to get us to do things we might not want to do. For example, planting a car bomb outside a family planning clinic is an attempt to force change in the state’s policies on abortion or […]
Most Canadians have heard of the “Toronto 18”, a group of homegrown extremists who were arrested in the summer of 2006 before they could detonate truck bombs, an act that could have killed and maimed thousands. At the time, and probably to this day for that matter, it was the largest and most complicated terrorism […]
It is natural in a court case in Canada and the US for the defence to use all possible means to ensure a not guilty verdict for its client. The arguments used do not have to be true or even plausible: they just have to introduce a level of reasonable doubt in the minds of […]