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Perspectives

What to do with violent extremist content online?

One thing that terrorists have been doing very well is getting their messages out to audiences, both willing and unwilling.  Groups such as Islamic State (IS), Al Qaeda (AQ) and many others use a panoply of social media apps to draft, disseminate and promote material that extols their achievements and threatens more carnage, all with […]

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Perspectives

When religious leaders tell their flock to kill

I have been looking at Islamist extremism as a form of terrorism for a very long time – more than two decades. When we delve into this topic we have to broach the very sensitive topic of religion and one religion in particular – Islam. Many are uncomfortable with this and many have tried to […]

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Perspectives

Al Shabaab shows – again – that it is still a terrorist force to be reckoned with

The attack still unfolding as I type in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi has been claimed by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab terrorist group. At around 3 PM local time an explosion, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, went off outside an office/hotel complex followed by the incursion of armed men into the building. Casualty […]

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Perspectives

A provisional mea culpa on incels

If there is one thing I take pride in it is my commitment to speaking and writing only on matters on which I think I have something meaningful or useful to say. Our world is all too crammed with ‘instant experts’ willing to weigh in on just about anything, although more often than not they […]

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Video

What to do with Canadian Foreign Terrorist Fighters?

What should Canada do about foreign fighters? What obligations do we have to those incarcerated abroad? What threat do these terrorists pose to our society?

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Perspectives

How risk averse are we when it comes to terrorism?

It is no exaggeration to say that we have ‘terrorism on the brain’. Our newspapers, magazines and Web sites are full of stories about terrorist attacks here and terrorist attacks there. Our leaders – well, some of them anyway – see terrorists lurking behind every tree (or every irregular migrant) and want to build walls […]

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Perspectives

If you have nothing helpful to say about terrorism do us a favour and be quiet

I am pretty sure that each and every one of us were taught as kids the following phrase/advice by our parents/teachers/elders: “If you can’t find anything nice to say best say nothing at all”. This is a good adage in that it should make us think twice before we open our pie holes, especially if […]

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Perspectives

No, a dip in terrorism does not mean that we are ‘winning’ or that terrorism will disappear

We live in a win-lose world.  Whether we are referring to sports, politics, game shows or whatever, there is usually a winner and one or more losers.   We may simply be wired for dividing things into two categories, at least after initial analysis: good-bad, black-white, winner-loser.  As I know I have read somewhere, way back […]

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Perspectives

A bold prediction for 2019: more terrorism!

Every end of year we are inundated with two phenomena in our newspapers, TV broadcasts and Web sites. These two are: the year that was and the year that will be. The former recaps the important events of the 12 months drawing to an end and always includes, and I am not sure why, a […]

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Perspectives

Deep fakes and the threat to terrorism prosecutions

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, how much is a video worth? A million? We are inundated with images, both still and moving, wherever we go. We watch videos on our cellphones all the time, even if most of them are crazy cat ones. And given that anyone […]