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Canadian Intelligence Eh! Podcast

What now? Road terrorists?

Episode 1 – In this inaugural broadcast, former Canadian intelligence analyst Phil Gurski looks at what we mean by terrorism and sets the stage for future podcasts.

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Perspectives

Yes, minors can be terrorists too

In most Western judicial systems there is a very stark divide between minors and adults. The former are treated differently and, if found guilty of serious offences, are usually kept separate from older criminals. This is probably a good thing as putting kids with adults allows the latter to influence – and not in a […]

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Perspectives

How risk averse are we when it comes to terrorism?

It is no exaggeration to say that we have ‘terrorism on the brain’. Our newspapers, magazines and Web sites are full of stories about terrorist attacks here and terrorist attacks there. Our leaders – well, some of them anyway – see terrorists lurking behind every tree (or every irregular migrant) and want to build walls […]

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Perspectives

No, a dip in terrorism does not mean that we are ‘winning’ or that terrorism will disappear

We live in a win-lose world.  Whether we are referring to sports, politics, game shows or whatever, there is usually a winner and one or more losers.   We may simply be wired for dividing things into two categories, at least after initial analysis: good-bad, black-white, winner-loser.  As I know I have read somewhere, way back […]

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Perspectives

A bold prediction for 2019: more terrorism!

Every end of year we are inundated with two phenomena in our newspapers, TV broadcasts and Web sites. These two are: the year that was and the year that will be. The former recaps the important events of the 12 months drawing to an end and always includes, and I am not sure why, a […]

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Perspectives

Deep fakes and the threat to terrorism prosecutions

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true, how much is a video worth? A million? We are inundated with images, both still and moving, wherever we go. We watch videos on our cellphones all the time, even if most of them are crazy cat ones. And given that anyone […]

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Perspectives

A really daft suggestion: sending IS prisoners to Guantanamo

I recently wrote a blog in which I stated that doing stupid shit in the ill-named ‘war on terror’ is a bad idea that will result in worse problems down the road. The examples I provided on that occasion included the Iraqi Shia-dominant regime campaign of revenge against the Sunni population accused of helping Islamic […]

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Perspectives

Wars are stupidly easy to get into, fiendishly difficult to get out of

I am sure you have all heard the term ‘the folly of war’. There was even a book with that title written years ago by a historian named Donald E. Schmidt: The Folly of War: American Foreign Policy, 1898-2005. With this being 2018 (almost 2019) and all you would think that humans would have realised […]

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Perspectives

US vs. Canadian judicial approaches to terrorism: night and day

In so many ways Canada and the US are very similar.  We are both largely Anglophone, former British colonies, and Western liberal democracies.  On the other hand we are also very different.  Whether we are talking about gun laws, the role of religion in society or baseball vs. hockey there are distinctions that apply at […]

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Perspectives

‘Counter’ terrorism policies that breed more terrorism are not smart

When it comes to terrorism we all have a role to play.  Citizens have a responsibility to call authorities when they see suspicious behaviour (‘See it, Say it’ is one such campaign) or notice those on the possible pathway to violent extremism and get in touch with those who have CVE (countering violent extremism) programs […]