Search: “Al Qaeda”

Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said it best in referring to the Canadian-US relationship: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt”.  We Canadians do spend a […]

As a former intelligence analyst with more than three decades in national security and someone who has chosen to go public with my knowledge, perspective and experience I have attracted a lot of attention.  Some of it is praiseworthy (“Thanks for your service”), some appreciative (“I like what you wrote”) and some not so good […]

This piece appeared in the April 23 edition of The Hill Times In a very funny Monty Python skit John Cleese plays a drill sergeant who is trying to teach a bunch of skinny recruits to defend themselves against foes wielding fresh fruit (oranges, apples, grapefruit, pomegranates….)  with typical hilarious results.  Cleese gets the underwear-clad […]

OK, OK, I know I really should lay off the Monty Python analogies.  I imagine you are getting sick of them.  But can anyone REALLY get tired of the greatest comic group in history?  Come on, admit it, you love them as much as I do. Staying with this obsession of mine, then, I want […]

There is an old saying that goes “If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a bus (or a bike, apparently. in the original Spanish)”.  This very silly sentence means that there are things that are unlikely to happen and therefore are not worth mentioning. This phrase was the very first thing that came to my […]

Have you ever been to a baseball game or a hockey game?  If so, then you know that there are risks at both from flying balls or pucks.  Some people get hurt, sometimes seriously, when they are struck by a horsehide ball or a vulcanised rubber puck traveling at very high speeds.  Hockey made changes […]

I know I have gone over this material before but there is nothing like an anniversary to occasion yet another look at an incident.  The ‘incident’ I am referring to is the 15th anniversary of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003.  No matter what side of the political spectrum you belong to I […]

Canada was long known as a nation of peacekeepers, of the multinational kind.  We used to send lots of our men and women to conflict zones around the world to do our part in keeping warring parties from slaughtering each other in the hopes that the UN, under which we served, could cobble together some […]

There is an interesting debate in Canada over what are called ‘mandatory minimums’, i.e. a government/court-imposed set of rules on how crimes are to be treated.  This is an attempt to establish minimum sentences for certain offences, supposedly tied to how society views certain criminal acts.  In jurisdictions that have such strictures judges are bound […]

Quick, what is the first thing that comes to mind when I say the word ‘Buddhist”?  The Dalaï Lama?  Saffron robes?  One hand clapping?  I would wager though that the last thing that comes to you is violent extremism.  Maybe it should. I cannot claim to know a lot about Buddhism (a gap I intend […]