Search: “9/11”

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 […]

In so many ways Canada and the US are very similar.  We are both largely Anglophone, former British colonies, and Western liberal democracies.  On the other hand we are also very different.  Whether we are talking about gun laws, the role of religion in society or baseball vs. hockey there are distinctions that apply at […]

Once a month or so I get an email entitled “Updates on Radicalisation Research” from something called ‘Radicalisationresearch.org’ ( I assume it is from the UK because of the way ‘radicalisation’ is spelled – either that or Canadian although I doubt that).  This newsletter usually lists a dozen or so papers written in a number […]

I have just returned from a CVE (countering violent extremism) conference in Edmonton organised by the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), the Canadian Practitioners’ Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence, and the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS) where I gave a presentation on what we know about the extremist […]

If there is one story that has grabbed worldwide attention lately it has to be the American Christian missionary who died trying to bring the Gospel to a people off the coast of India who have made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with the outside world, let alone be converted to […]

The title of this blog is biased, of that there is no doubt. This offering is also perhaps not really necessary as Rowman and Littlefield have just published my 4th book, An End to the War on Terrorism, in which I have a much longer discussion on the premise of this much shorter piece.  So […]

As we continue to freak out about what to do with those of our citizens who stupidly chose to leave the comforts of our lands to join terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS), Al Qaeda (AQ), Al Shabaab and others, or planned terrorist acts in our backyards, we still need to follow our laws and […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 5, 2018. For a country that is thankfully rarely touched by terrorism we in Canada sure seem to talk about it a lot.  I suppose I am partly responsible for this as I tend to write about violent extremism ad nauseum, but given my career in […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 15, 2018. There is no question that when the topic around the water cooler turns to terrorism – not that I hope or think that it often does – as far as the average citizen is concerned the particular brand of terrorism that garners the most attention […]

As the nation that suffered the catastrophic terrorist attacks on 9/11 it is of surprise to no one that the US has had ‘terrorism on the brain’ since that time. Any country that had so many of its citizens brazenly killed by a terrorist group would want to see the perpetrators – or rather in this […]