Search: “CSIS”

The title of this blog is biased, of that there is no doubt. This offering is also perhaps not really necessary as Rowman and Littlefield have just published my 4th book, An End to the War on Terrorism, in which I have a much longer discussion on the premise of this much shorter piece.  So […]

For those who do not know this I am a hockey goaltender.  I am not a very good one, mind you, but I love playing ‘net’.  This is of course an absurd attitude as a goalie in hockey has to do everything in his or her power to get the body between a hard, vulcanised […]

If you live in the National Capital Region of Canada and have never been to one of the public talks organised by The Panel or – horror of horrors! – never heard of The Panel you really need to do your homework.  The Panel is an Ottawa-based organisation that hosts two live events each year […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 12, 2018. Australia and Canada are very similar countries in many ways.  Both former British colonies, both (relatively) open to immigration, both members of the 5 eyes intelligence community.  I have visited Australia on many occasions and I must admit that I always feel at home […]

This piece appeared  in The Ottawa Citizen (online) on November 12, 2018. I never knew my maternal grandfather.  He emigrated to Canada in the early part of the 20th century from western Ukraine (or eastern Poland, the details on that are fuzzy) and settled in Montreal where he worked at the CPR’s Angus workshops, along […]

Here we go again.  Another terrorist attack, this time in Melbourne, Australia, another chorus of ‘he was mentally ill’ and, I guess, not responsible.  Last Friday (November 9) an ethnic Somali man drove to that city’s central business district with a bunch of gas cylinders turned to the open position (seeking one surmises to cause […]

I suppose that the literal definition of a ‘moonshot’ is the act of sending a rocket to the moon.  Interestingly, there is another set of metaphorical definitions I found online which include: an ambitious, exploratory and ground-breaking project undertaken without any expectation of near-term profitability or benefit and also, perhaps, without a full investigation of […]

On at least a weekly basis I get an email or a LinkedIn message from someone, usually in Canada, who has an interest in terrorism.  Wait, let me clarify that – an interest in either studying terrorism or working in counter terrorism.  Phew!  If it were another interest I’d have to tell my friends at […]

There is a lot of debate these days about what is more important when it comes to terrorism: Islamist extremism (i.e. jihadis) or right wing extremists.  The truth is that both pose a threat but which one is scarier depends on what part of the world you are talking about.  In the US it is […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 5, 2018. For a country that is thankfully rarely touched by terrorism we in Canada sure seem to talk about it a lot.  I suppose I am partly responsible for this as I tend to write about violent extremism ad nauseum, but given my career in […]