What should we do with returning “foreign fighters”? A number of recent terrorist attacks were committed by young men and women who had radicalized, went to train with IS in the Middle East, then returned to their home country to commit acts of violence. In this text, Phil Gurski examines why some people decide to […]
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How not to win the “war on terror”
Soon to be former US President Barack Obama once famously said with respect to foreign policy “don’t do stupid shit (or” stuff” depending on your sensitivity to salty language)”. That maxim could just have easily been applied to domestic policy. And it is something that incoming president Donald Trump might want to pay attention to. […]
A very odd thing happened yesterday in Canada. A poll appeared to show that a majority of my fellow citizens support the screening of potential immigrants by giving them some sort of “values test“, in keeping with a suggestion by a wannabe Conservative leadership candidate, Kellie Leitch. Canada thus appears to be following in the […]
If there is one thing that is true about all Islamist extremist groups is that they are full of hate. They hate other Muslims. They hate the Shia. They hate the Sufis. They hate non-Muslims. They hate LGBT. They hate choice. They hate everything in their warped world view. Hate. Hate. Hate. One other thing […]
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Terrorism and terminology
I swore to myself I would never argue with anything that comes out of the mouth of aspiring Clown in Chief Donald Trump for fear of lowering myself to whatever abyss he calls home, but here I am doing exactly that. Thankfully, since I am really only keen to talk about terrorism in this blog, […]
Another terrorist attack, another desperate search for meaning. The bodies were still warm in Orlando when the speculation about the killer and his motive began in earnest. Not surprisingly, the event dominated world news – as it should – and the usual parade of experts and analysts were asked to explain everything immediately despite the […]
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Is there a Sikh “terror camp” in BC?
The Canadian public were made aware of a serious allegation this week that a Sikh resident in BC was running a “terror camp” near Mission, a town of around 35,000 on the Fraser River east of Vancouver. The story came from an article in an Indian newspaper and claimed that Hardeep Nijjar was the “operational […]
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The terrorism-mental illness divide
If there is one aspect of terrorism that is poorly understood it is the relationship between mental illness and the execution of a terrorist act. All too often the masses agree in the immediate aftermath of an incident that the perpetrator must have been suffering from an undisclosed – or undiagnosed – mental disease. We […]
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What to do with terrorist prisoners
When a terrorist cell is disrupted, or an individual is arrested at the airport on his or her way to Turkey to join a group like Islamic State, the media rises to the challenge and splashes the news across all platforms. The public responds in kind and for a short time the blogosphere and news […]
A lot of people and a lot of governments are getting tired of the so-called “War on Terrorism”. More and more attacks seem to be happening all the time. What we used to think was a problem “over there” is now “over here”: Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, Ottawa… We cannot seem to get away from […]