Category: Perspectives

As we near the end of a very long federal election campaign, I’d like to review what, if anything, has been said that touches on terrorism and national security  Spoiler alert: not much.  But a lot that has nothing to do with terrorism may actually have a significant impact on how safe we will be […]

I just saw a very interesting, and disturbing, movie at a downtown Ottawa cinema. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is an account of the famous (infamous?) 1971 psychological study aimed at determining how people act in a particularly brutal setting (i.e. jail). Volunteers (who were paid $15 a day for what was planned as a two-week […]

Another mass shooting in the US.  Another nation in grief.  Another set of questions on Why?  Another series of calls to prevent future incidents.  Why can’t the (fill in the blank – government/academe/science/police) profile people who engage in mass killings and stop them before they shoot?  What is so hard about all this?  After all, […]

The use of child soldiers in conflicts around the world is an indefensible and unspeakable violation of human rights.  Children in a number of countries are sometimes forced to watch their families killed before their eyes (incredibly, in some cases, they are coerced to do the killing themselves), pressed into military service for a ragtag […]

Canada is a great country.  We consistently rank among the best places in the world to live, according to various surveys.   What we offer is clearly attractive if we consider the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, seeking to come here.  And we accept, on average, a quarter million new residents every year.  Many […]

With zombie movies and TV shows all the rage, the “science” and trivia surrounding the undead have gone from a niche cult that started with the George Romero films to almost mainstream pop culture.  Most people know that zombies eat brains, move slowly (except for the ones in World War Z) and are really hard […]

What should we do about good intentions?  By this I mean people who mean well but who end up doing things that are, to put it mildly, counterproductive. A few things have happened over the past week in the world of “terrorism” that put this issue at the forefront.  For the sake of this post, […]

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” When President Roosevelt uttered these words in his 1933 inaugural address, the US was in the depths of the Great Depression.  Millions […]

The VIA passenger train trial has been a tortuous one.  The two terrorists, Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier were found guilty on eight of nine charges back in March of this year.  The plot was disrupted two years previously: that is how long it takes terrorist cases to come to trial. Actually, this was very […]

When we studied radicalisation to violence at CSIS in the 2000s, we found out that while anyone could engage in violent ideologies, the vast majority were young – ish.  The age range tended to be 18-28.  This is not to say that older, or on rare occasions younger, people did not get involved.  This finding […]