Search: “Islamic State”

You gotta feel for the Kurds, history’s version of ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’.  Oft described as the world’s largest ethnic group without a country to call their own, the Kurds have come ever so close on several occasions.  They were kinda promised autonomy following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the post […]

On my first trip to Singapore many years ago I was struck by signs placed throughout the airport that warned of severe penalties for drug trafficking.  If my memory isn’t failing me, I seem to recall that those signs didn’t mince words.  They made it quite clear that the penalty for peddling in illegal drugs […]

I am a parent and that means I worry about my kids.  Not that I have any real reason to do so since my three are all grown up, on their own, doing well and appear for all intents and purposes to be well-adjusted, functioning human beings (thanks in no small part to their mother!).  […]

It stands to reason that senior officials, be they civilian leaders or military officers, want to provide the public with good news.  Whether it is to gain votes or to instill pride in a country’s armed forces, these individuals see the benefit of telling the (voting) population that success is at hand or that whatever […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 21, 2017 http://www.hilltimes.com/2017/12/20/australia-belgium-lead-example-returning-foreign-fighters-canada/129572 Canadians are nice people, or so we think of ourselves that way.  There is not much doubt that many see Canadians as ‘nice’ and even harmless: I recently read a Doonesbury comic in which one of the characters comments that there are few things […]

I read the other day that the widely-held belief that we lose 70% of our body’s heat through our head on a cold day is a myth.  I am probably not the only one who was long assured that this maxim was true and hence wore a toque (that is Canadian for a knitted hat […]

I must confess that I despair at times about the average person’s knowledge about and reaction to terrorism.  On occasions some people panic and build the threat out of all proportion, cancelling their travel plans, calling for bans on immigration and ranting about the presence of ‘undesirables’ (i.e. Muslims) in our societies whom they view […]

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 […]

We have had a couple of very good successes in terrorism trials in Canada.  The Toronto 18 back in 2006.  Operation Samossa in Ottawa in 2010.  The VIA train plot in 2013.  The Victoria legislature Canada Day plot also in 2013 (before a judge erroneously – in my opinion – dismissed the jury verdict on […]

This piece originally appeared in The Hill Times on December 11 (http://www.hilltimes.com/2017/12/11/death-terrorists-necessary-not-necessarily-death/127716) All is fair in love and war, or so the saying goes.  Except that nothing is usually fair in either, especially when it comes to war.  We ought to have learned over the several millennia that we have been killing each other on […]