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When intelligence agencies get it wrong cut them some slack please

For those who do not know this I am a hockey goaltender.  I am not a very good one, mind you, but I love playing ‘net’.  This is of course an absurd attitude as a goalie in hockey has to do everything in his or her power to get the body between a hard, vulcanised […]

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Getting better at mass transit security

Is there anything more aggravating than meandering slowly through a security line at an airport?  We’ve all been there and we all hate it.  People have missed flights because they were delayed at checkpoints and we have all suffered insults to our ‘dignity’ because of the need to comply with security demands (Who left liquids […]

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Three cheers for Saudi change: hip, hip, hmmm

If there is one country that is garnering the headlines for all the good reasons these days (as opposed to Trump’s US for all the – well you know what I mean) it is Saudi Arabia.  The cradle of Islam has best been known for confirming the maxim “there is no FUN in FUNdamentalism” as […]

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A few thoughts on the US decision to axe the Iranian nuclear deal

This piece was published in The Hill Times on May 14, 2018. I must confess that I hesitated quite a bit before putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) on this topic.  I was sitting in a Maple Leaf lounge at LaGuardia Airport in New York when CNN broadcast its ‘breaking news’ coverage of US […]

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Why can’t Canada get rid of people we don’t want here?

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 2, 2018   Is it just me or is it strange that an independent, secular democracy cannot make simple decisions on whom it wants to allow to stay in the country?  We are speaking here of immigrants, of course, since those lucky enough to have been […]

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Grievances are legitimate, violence is not

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 26 I do not really want to flog the Jagmeet Singh/Sikh extremism story ad nauseum – many others  have done that – but there is one thing that the leader of the NDP does that concerns me and needs to be addressed.  In truth he has […]

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The terrorist apologist crowd needs to ask themselves what they are really doing

I would like to announce the creation of a fund for Canadian pedophiles.  Not those in prison or getting treatment but those languishing in squalid jails pending trial in southeast Asia after they were caught abusing young children, having traveled intentionally to that part of the world with the sole intention of having sex with […]

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There really should be a lot more terrorist attacks in the US, but there aren’t

If you had to come up with a recipe for a terrorist attack or an extremist movement what would you include? To my mind there are a number of ingredients that must be there in order for the finished product to succeed.  These are, among other things, a sense of grievance/anger, an identified target (meaning […]

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Just how widespread is extremism in Canadian schools?

If you want to know what CSIS does and why it does it, a good place to start is the CSIS Act which dates back to the creation of that organisation out of the former RCMP Security Service back in 1984.  The Act has stood up fairly well over its first three decades despite several […]

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Terrorism and the Big Apple

New York and New Yorkers have a reputation of being tough.  Whether it stems from dealing with horrendous traffic jams or the constant crush of people everywhere I am not sure, but they do seem a rather resilient lot. This came out clearly today in the wake of yet another terrorist attack.  I was staying […]