If there is one thing that frustrates me most it is the tendency of a lot of people, well-intentioned or otherwise, to make sweeping statements about terrorism – what it is, what causes it, etc.- without doing the minimum amount of real research to back up their claims. I am sure you have read much […]
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The 2002 movie Minority Report, based on a short story by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, takes place in 2054 Washington D.C. where crime has been all but eliminated. This happy result is due to the work of the ‘Pre-Crime’ unit which relies on the foreshadowing of ‘Pre-cogs’, people floating in shallow pools who see […]
A common refrain to many issues is ‘follow the money’. Whether we are talking about organised crime or campaign irregularities or other social ills it is believed that if you can establish who is paying who you can devise ways to interdict that cash flow and hamper the activities that it is supporting. If successful, […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 29, 2018 As Canadians we expect the authorities tasked with keeping us safe to do as they are mandated. We spend a lot of taxpayers’ hard-earned money on law enforcement and national security agencies and we demand an efficient use of those dollars. We want results, […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 21, 2018 It would be hard to forget the G8/G20 riots in Toronto in 2010. Or similar mass violence at the WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999. Commercial properties smashed and vandalised. Police cars destroyed. The arrests of hundreds. People kept in cages by the authorities. […]
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Sometimes a bomb is just a bomb
OK, so what were YOU doing at 545 Friday morning? Sleeping soundly I sincerely hope. As for me, I was getting ready to go on a Toronto talk radio programme to weigh in on an incident at an Indian restaurant in Mississauga Thursday evening when two men wearing disguises left a bomb that exploded, wounding […]
This piece was published in The Hill Times on May 14, 2018. I must confess that I hesitated quite a bit before putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) on this topic. I was sitting in a Maple Leaf lounge at LaGuardia Airport in New York when CNN broadcast its ‘breaking news’ coverage of US […]
For many people the solution to terrorism is quite simple. Those who are fighting with groups like Al Qaeda and Islamic State and others can be killed in airstrikes, drone strikes or armed combat. Those who are captured alive can be turned over to local officials or brought home for trial where they can be […]
When I was at Public Saftey Canada I had the opportunity to work in outreach with some outstanding civil servants. They would organise sessions across the country with a variety of communities to engage on a wide range of topics all related in some way to public safety. I was invited on some of them […]
The news is full, every single day, of reports of violence from a number of actors: murders, sexual assaults, shootings, etc. Occasionally we read of a terrorist attack somewhere in the world – depending on where you live the frequency of this particular form of violence will vary. Not surprisingly, if you live in Somalia […]