Search: “somalia”

There sure seems to be a lot of hand wringing over travel these days.  We have had two bans imposed by the US, one ridiculous (the generic ban on anyone coming from 6 Muslim countries) and one more realistic, albeit still open to question (the ban on electronic devices for passengers boarding aircraft in 10 […]

Well, if there was any doubt about what a Trump presidency means for the US, and by extension for all of us, over the next four years there is little doubt now.  In the first week alone a flurry of executive orders have been signed on a whole bunch of issues that Mr. Trump promised […]

I am a glass half full kind of guy, someone who seeks to find the positive in life.  I am an optimist tinged with realism.  Three decades in intelligence and 15 years in counter terrorism do tend to give one a good look at the less savoury aspects of life on this planet and as […]

As scarcely a day goes by that we are not accosted with yet another story on a terrorist attack somewhere it is of little surprise that this form of violence has become a topic of conversation everywhere. What was once of interest to a niche market of specialists and confined to articles in little read […]

In June 30, 2009 the bodies of three girls/young women and a middle-aged woman were found in a car that had been submerged in a lock along the Rideau Canal system just north of Kingston, Ontario.  Scarcely a month later, three people from the Shafia family, Afghan immigrants to Canada, were arrested and charged with […]

I have written on many, many occasions that bad data and/or bad analysis usually leads to bad decision making.  Think about it.  If the basic facts are wrong or are misconstrued how can any policy based on those facts be of any value?  Garbage in, garbage out as they say. This axiom was shown to […]

One of the main reasons I like to lecture at universities is that I find young people a breath of fresh air.  They are not as jaded as old farts like me and are not afraid to ask questions and challenge assumptions.  They may not be that knowledgeable on any given topic but they are […]

If there is one thing we know about terrorism it is that what we do – or what we don’t do – has a real chance of effecting what terrorist groups do.  For terrorist groups are really good at telling the world why they use violence and usually place the blame for their carnage on […]

It is obvious that a lot of people are worried about terrorism.  The news is full of stories of attacks, both successful and thwarted, and sometimes really alarming accounts like the news out of France that the government suspects that there are 15,000 French residents radicalising.  More than 70% of Americans think more terrorist attacks […]

If there is one spy agency in Canada that is poorly understood and about which much of little veracity has been published it has to be CSE – Communications Security Establishment. CSE has a number of roles but the one that gets the most public attention is signals intelligence or SIGINT. This method of intelligence […]