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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There are a few things that hold a place of note in my memory whenever I think back to the start of my career in intelligence in 1983. As a wet-behind-the-ears multilingual analyst fresh out of university I had joined CSE – Canada’s SIGINT agency – with little to no clue as to what intelligence […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on February 12, 2017 http://www.hilltimes.com/2018/02/05/fine-line-hate-terrorism-murder-murder/132949 We in Canada have, thankfully, few dates that will ‘live in infamy’ to cite former US President Roosevelt in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor (9/11 would fit into this category as well). When it comes to Canada I suppose many […]
When I was growing up in London (Ontario) there was a famous quasi-mythical family that lived near the town of Lucan, about a half-hour away, in the 19th century. The Donnellys, or the ‘Black Donnellys’ as we were taught about them, were Irish immigrants who were killed by a mob in 1880 in a feud […]
How one boy became a terrorist
Terrorism is very simple and very complicated at the same time. Its simplicity comes from the set of axioms that underlie every terrorist and every terrorist group. We can summarise terrorism in three compact phrases: My people are suffering. I/we know who is responsible for the suffering. I/we need to use violence to stop the […]
We in Canada have longstanding ties to the UK. We were, after all, part of the British Empire for a over a century and by Confederation a sizeable part of our population had come from the British Isles. Even well after 1867 immigration was dominated by Irish, Welsh, Scots and English families seeking a new […]
Parliament Hill in Ottawa is one of those treasures found only in liberal democracies. Anyone can show up and lobby, protest, shout his lungs out or carry a placard peacefully and silently, no matter what the cause. It is also a great place to watch the fireworks on Canada Day as long as enjoying the […]
When terrorists become statesmen
I see that Martin McGuinness died the other day. Mr. McGuinness was an Irish republican, a member of the Sinn Fein political party and, until he left politics in part because he was stricken with cancer, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 to early 2017. He was also, according to some, a […]
Can terrorism be forgiven?
Imagine that you are the parent of Steven Sotloff, or Alan Henning, or Moaz al-Kasasbeh, all of whom were assassinated brutally by Islamic State. The first two were beheaded while the third, a Jordanian pilot, was burned alive. Your children were taken from you and died in some of the most horrific ways possible. Now […]
It is often a difficult question for governments to decide which activities to allow and which to ban. There are clear cases where certain actions should not be tolerated, like murder for instance, and we have laws to take care of those. Some argue, however, that governments should just stay out of our lives, that […]