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Canadian Intelligence Eh! Podcast

Whatever happened to Sikh extremism?

Episode 2 – Here are supplementary notes for podcast #2

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Perspectives

When terrorist warnings are not helpful

All the jokes about civil servants aside, governments around the world do have some useful functions. Governments have the bodies and funds to look into important matters and provide advice to their citizenry on a whole host of things. Whether we are talking about food safety (the recent romaine lettuce scare in North America is […]

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Canadian Intelligence Eh! Podcast

What now? Road terrorists?

Episode 1 – In this inaugural broadcast, former Canadian intelligence analyst Phil Gurski looks at what we mean by terrorism and sets the stage for future podcasts.

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Perspectives

A bold prediction for 2019: more terrorism!

Every end of year we are inundated with two phenomena in our newspapers, TV broadcasts and Web sites. These two are: the year that was and the year that will be. The former recaps the important events of the 12 months drawing to an end and always includes, and I am not sure why, a […]

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Perspectives

The US warns Spain of a terrorist attack in Barcelona?? That is how intelligence sharing is supposed to work

Spain has been the target of two significant jihadi attacks in the post 9/11 period. In what has become known as 4-11, four bombs went off on the Madrid transit system in 2004, killing 191 and injuring more than 1,800. Al Qaeda (AQ) was responsible for that act, despite initial the Spanish government’s initial awkward […]

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Perspectives

Is Tunisia turning a corner on terrorism?

Tunisia presents an interesting case study when it comes to terrorism.  The North African country was, of course, where the ‘Arab Spring’ began on December 18, 2010 (coincidentally my birthday!) when a crowd protested the self immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi who killed himself the day before when police had confiscated his wares and a female […]

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Perspectives

A worrisome rise in intolerant Islam in Indonesia

As I -and many others – have mentioned before, Indonesia is by far the largest Muslim nation on Earth.  This often comes to a surprise to many as the southeast Asian country is not located within the ‘normal’ region we associate with Islam (i.e. the Middle East) and is surrounded by nations that are most […]

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Perspectives

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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Perspectives

No, Prime Minister, we do not have an obligation to repatriate terrorists

I am a parent (and now even a grandparent – how the hell did I get THIS old?).  As a parent I helped to raise three children, all of whom are now young adults. As all parents know, our kids do (or did) things we had a problem with and there were times when we […]

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Perspectives

Why terrorism is not winning and what we need to do to ensure it doesn’t

Having just spent three days in New York I have been thinking a lot about the terrorist threat to the West.  The reasons for this are not solely tied to the fact that I was three blocks away from Monday’s mostly unsuccessful attack on the subway near Times Square.  It is much more than that. […]