Episode 165 – Is Prevent in the UK succumbing to political correctness?
Countering terrorism has a lot of moving parts. At the pointy end of the stick there are ‘kinetic’ actions to kill terrorists before they can kill us. In security intelligence and law enforcement we try to investigate these actors and bring them to court for sentencing. At a much earlier juncture we have CVE – countering violent extremism – a way to identify those at risk of becoming terrorists. The UK’s Prevent programme is one of the best known of these. But has it gone off the rails in part because of woke culture?
About my guest Ian Acheson
Ian Acheson spent a quarter century in prison security and counter-terrorism. He also ran the UK government’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, in Southwest England. He currently works as a senior adviser to the US-based Counter Extremism Project.
Sack civil servants who gave funding to Islamist extremists, says expert | News | The Times
Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world. In these half-hour podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and Distinguished Fellow in National Security at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI). He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specialising in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. He is the author of six books on terrorism, including the forthcoming second edition of The Peaceable Kingdom: A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present, to be published by Double Dagger in February 2023.
