Search: “Al Qaeda”

Breaking news out of Afghanistan is that the Taliban and US have reached a tentative deal in which the former agrees not to allow Afghanistan to be used by terrorist groups (wait! Aren’t the Taliban themselves terrorists? Read on….) and the latter would agree to pull its forces out, in the country since 2002, in […]

According to breaking news a Canadian, Guleid Abdihakim, has been arrested by Kenyan police in connection with the attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi that killed at least 21 people and was claimed by the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab. It is vitally important to stress that Mr. Abdihakim has been arrested and is […]

The attack still unfolding as I type in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi has been claimed by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab terrorist group. At around 3 PM local time an explosion, apparently caused by a suicide bomber, went off outside an office/hotel complex followed by the incursion of armed men into the building. Casualty […]

I am the grandson of eastern European migrants and am very open to further, if not increased, immigration. We Canadians rightfully see ourselves as a nation generally tolerant of immigration. Yes, there are exceptions as we are seeing now with a certain percentage of us expressing concerns over the links between immigration and terrorism (which […]

Photo ops by leaders of states with the military are no-brainers I suppose. The president/prime minister/king/grand poobah gets on plane, flies to Lower Slobovia to meet his/her country’s soldiers serving to maintain a war/keep the peace in a faraway land, thanks them for their service, assures them that what they are doing is right, acknowledges […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018. Way back in medieval times there was a concept known as sanctuary.  Under this notion, those who had committed crimes could place themselves beyond the long arm of the law by hightailing it to a church or monastery, where supposedly divine law trumped the […]

Here we go again.  Another terrorist attack, this time in Melbourne, Australia, another chorus of ‘he was mentally ill’ and, I guess, not responsible.  Last Friday (November 9) an ethnic Somali man drove to that city’s central business district with a bunch of gas cylinders turned to the open position (seeking one surmises to cause […]

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 […]

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 […]

Shortly after I joined CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) in January 2001 I attended a presentation by a friend who was working at the Canadian embassy in Kenya in the late 1990s.  He related that he was at home on August 7, 1998 when a massive blast took him and a colleague off their feet […]