Search: “Al Qaeda”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on July 8, 2019 If there is one buzzword that has gained a lot of ground in Canada and elsewhere in the post 9/11 period it is CVE (which stands for Countering Violent Extremism; sometimes it is also called PCVE – Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism). This field […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on June 17, 2019. It might strike the reader as odd that someone with so much invested in counter terrorism is here making the suggestion that we need to worry less about terrorism. After all, if we stopped spending so much time talking about it, wouldn’t that put […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on June 3, 2019 Canada had nothing to do with the US decision to use the anachronistic Guantanamo Bay military camp in Cuba as a highly controversial – if not internationally illegal – detention centre for suspected terrorists. That people alleged to have been linked to terrorist groups […]

Is it just me or is it starting to feel like ‘deja vu all over again’, to quote the great New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra? Did I tumble down a time wormhole only to find myself back in 2003? Are we on the cusp of going to war in the Middle East – again? […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 15, 2019 As all Canadians know, our country has a longstanding relationship with Afghanistan. In the aftermath of 9/11 the government decided to send our military, first special forces, then regular troops, to engage in what began as counter terrorism (CT) and ended as a combination […]

If you are really seized with an issue – and I mean really, really burning with zeal and a desire to right a perceived wrong – would you not want to put your commitment to the test as soon as you could? Would you not want to show the world that what you fervently believe […]

For this blog I had to consult my eldest daughter, who is a Carleton University journalism grad. I wanted to confirm, as I had suspected, that those who write articles are not necessarily the same ones who write headlines. She also added that when it came to online news stories headlines are constructed to garner […]

For those who have been following me over the years you know that the title of this blog is a little facetious. I have been arguing for a long time that the phrase ‘the war on terrorism’ is not helpful and should be dropped. Hell, I even wrote a book about it! Still, even I […]

You know you are getting old when you come across a story about an event you were heavily involved in and realise that it happened so long ago that most of your friends, family and acquaintances really have no idea what you are talking about when you raise it. In my case the story centres […]