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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 […]
As we continually seek to understand terrorism and what makes a terrorist, we hear many reasons brought forward and defended as THE answer or cause. I have already, on several occasions, discussed and dismissed the perennial disenfranchisement/alienation/poverty…. myth and will not return to it here. Now another “soupe du jour” has arisen, probably not coincidentally […]
The recent stunning election results in Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma) have led to much optimism over the future of the Southeast Asian country. Long led by the military, the majority won by Aung San Suu Kyi – leader of the National League for Democracy and daughter of the man who negotiated Burman independence from the UK […]
I have said it before and I will repeat it here: I am not an expert in military affairs. Hell, I am not even a well-informed John Q Public when it comes to things military. When I talk about the military I am bound to sound dumb. So, here it goes: my take on why […]
I have gone on record several times to state that Islamic State (IS) does not pose an existential threat to anybody. It can certainly cause havoc and mayhem and destruction but there is no way that this motley crew of extremists is ever going to threaten the world. Yes, it has a state – sort […]
As we sift through the carnage and horror of last Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris we are already seeing the ugly underside that humans all too frequently exhibit. Republican candidate Donald Trump calls for American mosques to be closed. Other presidential hopefuls, and several state governors, have stated that will stop Syrian refugees from being […]
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 […]
We make laws to reflect our values and to protect ourselves from those that would undermine them. For instance, we say that murder is a crime because we value life. We have laws against the theft of personal goods because we value our property. In a more controversial vein, we have hate laws because we […]
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 […]
Whenever an act of terrorism occurs in the West there is an immediate flurry of questions and panic. How did this happen? Who was the perpetrator? Why did he (or, more infrequently, she) do it? Where did they get radicalised? Is this another self-radicalised lone wolf (perhaps the most inaccurate label out there)? What do […]