Search: “nigeria”

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 […]

I have just returned from spending three wonderful days in New York City.  Broadway.  Central Park.  American Museum of Natural History.  Bryant Park.  The city that never sleeps.  And the city that is never far from the attention and aspiration of terrorists. When I used to work in security intelligence it always struck me that […]

All too often the word terrorism is associated with a Muslim, or a group of Muslims, or even a whole organisation of Muslims, who carry out acts of despicable violence against civilians.  Paris.  Nigeria.  Sinai.  Pakistan.  Somalia.  Beirut.  The list goes on and on. It is important to note that there are a great many […]

In the wake of the attacks in Paris on November 13, we have already seen a wide variety of responses on what this all means and what do we do now.  French President Hollande has called the barbarity an act of war and vowed a crushing reply to the Islamic State.  We shall see what […]

The field of psychology has taken quite a hit lately.  Since the true test of scientific veracity is replication (if I make a hypothesis about a phenomenon based on an experiment and no one can get the same results based on the same methodology the hypothesis is weak), a recent report that slightly more than […]

In an earlier blog post I spoke of the dangers of allowing intelligence analysis to be driven by politics (Not Very Intelligent – July 22).  Now the US assessments on its campaign against the Islamic State (IS) may have been subject to the same scourge. In a front-page piece in the New York Times (see […]

Our prime minister is quoted as saying that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced” (see article here). Really? Bigger than the threat of MAD during the Cold War? Bigger than the Nazi onslaught of the 1930s and 1940s? More dangerous than climate change or run-of-the-mill violence?  (homework […]