Search: “Al Qaeda”

One thing I have learned over three decades of working in intelligence and counter terrorism is that perspective matters.  As an analyst one of the gravest sins you can commit is to give in to what is called “mirror imaging”, the erroneous belief that everyone thinks like you do.  When you do that, you are […]

In the ill-named “war on terror” small victories, let alone crushing ones, are hard to find.  It seems that no matter how many terrorists we kill more rise up like the warriors that sprang from dragon’s teeth in Greek mythology and we see more attacks (one more today in Jerusalem).  So it is little wonder […]

In the Harry Potter novels the villain is known as Lord Voldemort.  He is in many ways a terrorist.  He is ideologically driven (he wants to take over the wizarding world and force everyone to conform to his way of doing things) and he uses violence to achieve his goals.  He recruits followers and tortures […]

Last week the Canadian Department of Public Safety issued its annual terrorist threat report.  You can read the whole thing here but I would like to comment on some of it in the paragraphs to follow.  The paper is unclassified and is intended to inform Canadians in a general way what the threat level is […]

As we still reel from the foiled terrorist attack  last week in Strathroy, Ontario, we can still rest assured that attacks, successful or not, remain a rarity in Canada.  In the period since 9/11 we have had no more than 8 such incidents: on average one every two years.   When we compare our experiences […]

Media have one important job to do: report the news.  Sometimes they also bring in people to help us understand the news and speculate on what it means.  At times outside experts contribute much needed analysis and insight and at others provide little of value to the issue at hand. In reporting the news there […]

Although most countries cannot agree on what constitutes terrorism, if we judge by the number of definitions that are out there, they do seem to do a better job at determining what a terrorist group is.  There are so-called terrorist listings in the US, the UN, the EU, and the UK among other jurisdictions.  We […]

Like a lot of people I enjoy traveling.   I had some amazing opportunities to see the world while I worked in intelligence and I have continued to voyage abroad in retirement.  There is so much that our planet has to offer and it is indeed a privilege to see it close up. When I […]

Every day we seem to read about yet another terrorist attack attributed to Islamic State.  Whether or not the group claims the event – and there is a lot of analysis over when it does and when it doesn’t – there is no question that in the minds of most people IS is the world’s […]

I swore to myself I would never argue with anything that comes out of the mouth of aspiring Clown in Chief Donald Trump for fear of lowering myself to whatever abyss he calls home, but here I am doing exactly that.  Thankfully, since I am really only keen to talk about terrorism in this blog, […]