Some potentially disturbing news on the terrorism front came out the other day in Canada. According to reports, four employees at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal (it used to be called Dorval) had their security clearances revoked over concerns that they had become ‘radicalised’. The men had access to restricted areas, one had talked […]
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I am sure you have all read the stories. In the aftermath of an arrest of a mass murderer (or a terrorist), neighbours, friends and colleagues are interviewed about what they knew about the suspect. Here is what they tend to say: I never saw it coming! He was the nicest guy! I can’t believe […]
This is a big year for us in Canada. Sure, we are a youngish nation and celebrating 150 years may sound quaint to our older international cousins, but it is a cause for celebration nonetheless. I am looking forward to the commemoration as I was six when we marked our centennial in 1967 and don’t […]
Residents of London have undergone yet another terrorist attack. The nation that survived countless IRA attacks and threats in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and which saw the carnage of July 2005 and the attempted beheading of a military member in Woolwich in 2013 is reeling from yesterday’s events where a man ran over people […]
The announcement that Canada has reached a settlement with three citizens who claim that information shared by CSIS with Syria led to their arrest and torture is big news. We don’t know, at least not yet, what this compensation amounts to but we do know that the Trudeau government has apologised for “the role Canadian officials […]
One of the most oft-cited ‘push factors’ for why people become radicalised and join terrorist groups is the nebulous idea of ‘alienation’. Read any story or academic paper on the subject and you are bound to come across a phrase something like “the most vulnerable to radicalisation are alienated (NB or marginalised) youth”. Go ahead […]
I know that I need to stop carping about the proliferation of ‘alternative facts’, otherwise known as lies. I am obsessing about pointing them out all with the full knowledge that there are far too many and they are coming in too fast and furious to keep up. I suppose I want to provide an […]
Edward Snowden is painted as a courageous whistleblower and maybe hr are. Yet there is little in life that is uniquely positive and this goes as well for the smashers of secrets.
Is Canada soft on terrorism? No!
If there is one myth in the ever increasing world of ‘alternative facts’ (i.e. lies) that has otherworldly strength and perseverance it is the whopper that some of the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada. This inaccurate account of recent history has been repeated by people who should have known better – e.g. former Democratic presidential […]
How Guantanamo keeps giving back
I think we can all agree – well except maybe some in the new Trump administration – that the US decision to use the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba to hold terrorist suspects extra-judicially was a particularly bad idea. Not only did the practice sully the US image as the protector of democratic values, it […]