There are few people, I imagine, that condone the use of torture. Well, except those countries or governments who engage in it I suppose. The list of those actors is one that most would find obvious: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. And yet Amnesty International finds that torture is practiced in 141 nations, i.e three quarters of […]
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This article appeared in The Hill Times on December 4, 2017 Canada is a nation of immigrants. After all, each and every one of us, with the exception of our First Nations, an immigrant or the offspring of immigrants, whether we can trace our families back to the 16th century or the 21st. Among many […]
Published in the Hill Times December 4, 2017 We in Canada do not have a lot of experience when it comes to terrorism. That is, of course, a good thing as the opposite scenario would be tragic. No, despite the fact that the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) in Ottawa has pegged the threat level […]
Another successful terrorist attack, another inquiry as to why it was not stopped. This is becoming a common occurrence at least in Western societies where the exigencies of liberal democracies demand accountability. There may very well be post facto reviews in non-democracies like Russia and Saudi Arabia as well but we do not tend to […]
And so the debate continues. Arguments range from the alarming view that those who fought with terrorist groups like Islamic State will return to wreak havoc and death on an epic scale to an Alfred E. Newmanesque ‘What me worry?’ response. As with pretty well everything in life reality is somewhere between those two extremes. […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 16, 2017 (http://www.hilltimes.com/2017/11/16/go-mental-health-terrorism/125792) What is it about terrorism that people fail to grasp? I’ll put it as simply as I can: there are individuals (and groups) out there that plan and carry out heinous acts of violence we label as terrorism because they really believe in […]
This piece appeared in the online edition of The Ottawa Citizen on November 27, 2017 (http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/gurksi-why-parliament-needs-a-dose-of-intelligence) At long last Canada is getting some serious oversight for its intelligence agencies. Well behind most of our closest allies, including the US and the UK, the Trudeau government has created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians […]
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did (here is the blog post in case you did not see it first time). Yet another person is planning to sue the Canadian government for its ‘complicity’ in alleged abuse in connection with a counter terrorism investigation. An Algerian citizen, Djamel Ameziane, says that Canadian security […]
A few weeks ago I found myself on a panel at a National Judicial Institute conference at the storied Algonquin resort in picturesque St. Andrews, New Brunswick along with Federal Court judge Richard Mosley and retired Ontario Superior Court judge Douglas Rutherford. The three of us were asked to discuss the challenge of trying terrorism […]
Before I start, let me state this, and state it categorically: torture is unacceptable under any circumstance. While we may disagree on what constitutes torture we can all accept that subjecting anyone to systematic and prolonged severe physical and/or psychological pain in order to extract information (or to fulfill some sadistic sickness) is wrong, immoral, […]