Search: “ISIS”

Canadians seem to have a love-hate relationship with their security and law enforcement agencies.  They rightfully demand to be kept safe and want their spies and cops to stop terrorism and serious crime before it happens.  At the same time they sometimes express horror at the methods used to guarantee that safety.  I am fully […]

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 […]

Are we in the West suffering from collective naivete?  Are we ignoring an obvious threat to public safety?  Are we failing to understand that there are citizens among us who can do real harm? I am referring of course to the phenomenon of ‘foreign fighters’, Westerners who left of their own free will to join […]

This blog appeared in The Hill Times on November 20, 2017 (http://www.hilltimes.com/2017/11/20/can-canadians-trust-csis-help-keep-us-safe/125620) This piece was never going to be an easy one to write.  The organisation where I proudly worked for over 15 years – CSIS – is now the subject of a $35 million lawsuit by five employees alleging racism, Islamophobia and homophobia. Canadians […]

This week I was very fortunate to be on a panel this week sponsored by the National Capital (Ottawa) branch of the Canadian International Council (CIC) with Ben Rowswell and Dr. Stephanie Carvin of Carleton University entitled ‘From Blogs to Books to Software’.  Mr. Rowswell gave an outstanding talk on how social media is changing […]

Three cheers for Saudi Arabia!  The conservative Kingdom has ruled that women can now drive and no longer need to be accompanied by a mahram (essentially a male guardian) when they are in a car.  Many are celebrating this decision although some conservative killjoys have accused the government of ‘bending the rules of Sharia’.  Some […]

Remember the ‘refugee crisis’ of  a few summers ago?  We all were riveted by the pictures of hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrians, Iraqis and many others, risking their lives in overland journeys or even more perilous sea voyages, fleeing danger and violence in their homelands to start a new life in Europe.  Some countries […]

We in Canada have longstanding ties to the UK.  We were, after all, part of the British Empire for a over a century and by Confederation a sizeable part of our population had come from the British Isles.  Even well after 1867 immigration was dominated by Irish, Welsh, Scots and English families seeking a new […]

I don’t get it.  We make a big deal of terrorism these days, too big in my opinion, but we have collectively decided that terrorism is a serious threat (which it is) and that we need to deal with it. Part of our response is making sure organisations like CSIS and the RCMP have enough […]

There is a theory out there that killing terrorists, especially those in leadership positions, acts to put a damper on violent extremism, especially for those not quite committed to the cause.  The idea is that if wannabes see that joining a group leads to being targeted by an airstrike or a drone or special forces […]