Search: “CSIS”

The announcement that Canada has reached a settlement with three citizens who claim that information shared by CSIS with Syria led to their arrest and torture is big news.  We don’t know, at least not yet, what this compensation amounts to but we do know that the Trudeau government  has apologised for “the role Canadian officials […]

One of the most oft-cited ‘push factors’ for why people become radicalised and join terrorist groups is the nebulous idea of ‘alienation’.  Read any story or academic paper on the subject and you are bound to come across a phrase something like “the most vulnerable to radicalisation are alienated (NB or marginalised) youth”.  Go ahead […]

I know that I need to stop carping about the proliferation of ‘alternative facts’, otherwise known as lies.  I am obsessing about pointing them out all with the full knowledge that there are far too many and they are coming in too fast and furious to keep up.  I suppose I want to provide an […]

If there is one myth in the ever increasing world of ‘alternative facts’ (i.e. lies) that has otherworldly strength and perseverance it is the whopper that some of the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada.  This inaccurate account of recent history has been repeated by people who should have known better – e.g. former Democratic presidential […]

I think we can all agree – well except maybe some in the new Trump administration – that the US decision to use the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba to hold terrorist suspects extra-judicially was a particularly bad idea.  Not only did the practice sully the US image as the protector of democratic values, it […]

A lot of people  in Canada, particularly Muslims and even more narrowly Muslims in Quebec, are frightened today.  The massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre in the provincial capital of la belle province has many worried about their safety and mosques across the country are upping security and receiving special attention from local law enforcement. […]

Here we go again. The fact that Alexandre Bissonnette was able to get a gun, walk into a mosque, slaughter innocent people and not be detected is a failure. On whom? On everyone – CSIS, the RCMP, la police de la ville de Quebec, the Surete, the government of Canada, average Canadians for not standing […]

In the wake of the tragic events in Quebec City Sunday evening there is much more that we don’t know than what we do know. We now know the identity of the one suspect as well as those who lost their lives.  We have some idea of what transpired and when.  But we have nothing […]