There are times when you work in the (counter) terrorism space that you come across a story and say: WTF? This is one of those times. In early January, a Sri Lankan court sentenced a hardline Buddhist monk named Galagodaatte Gnanasara to nine months in prison for insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred. The remarks […]
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Episode 253 – Another bad year for terrorism in Africa? In its 2024 report The Global Terrorism Index, the Institute for Economics and Peace noted that for the first time an African country, Burkina Faso, took top spot in terrorist attacks. This came as a surprise to many who had become accustomed to nations in […]
This piece first appeared in The Epoch Times Canada on December 9, 2024. Assad is gone from Syria. Hip hip hooray. Actually, let’s wait a minute before celebrating. Any time a dictator who has abused his nation’s citizens—jailing them, torturing them, and even using chemical weapons against them—is forced to flee has to be a […]
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At what price freedom of expression?
You do not have to go that far back in human history to have seen people burned at the stake, hung, drawn and quartered and otherwise treated very badly for having ‘blasphemed’ (although my favourite blasphemy scene is still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian where John Cleese plays a rabbi calling for the death […]
Episode 252 – When the soldiers come home from a foreign deployment, what then? After 9/11 Canada was one of the first nations to send its forces to Afghanistan to find Al Qaeda and help Afghanistan oust the Taliban. Thousands of soldiers deployed and over a decade 159 died (in addition to seven civilians). Canada […]
Episode 258 – While every attack is different there are some familiar characteristics here Another vehicular attack, another round of questions on what happened and why. The families of those killed and injured in an ISIS-inspired incident want answers on why this occurred, what was known, and why it was not stopped. Was there anything […]
Episode 256 – Terrorism is with us to stay unfortunately I would imagine most people are sick of hearing about terrorism. We read and view reports on a daily basis where individuals and groups carry out attacks or, more hopefully, are foiled by law enforcement and security intelligence agencies. Enough is enough, right? Alas, likely […]
Episode 251 – What good is intelligence if it is not passed on to decision makers? Those who work in intelligence have a tough job. Whether it is HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT or any other ‘INT’, the data is vast and must be collected, processed, tested for accuracy, corroborated, analysed and put into short product so […]
Episode 255 – Why can’t we all get along in the terrorism studies field? In many areas it is acceptable to put forward a hypothesis, based on what is known, and see where it goes. Honest practitioners will change that idea once new information is made available, and not hold to it in the face […]
Episode 254 – Is the Magdeburg Christmas market attack an other example of ‘cafeteria terrorism’? Another mass gathering, another vehicular attack, this time in Magdeburg, Germany. This is a trend, especially amongst Islamist jihadis (Nice, Barcelona, London, Berlin…) in recent years. This case is different, though, as the alleged motive of the alleged attacker seems, […]