Search: “Islamic State”

I am a parent (and now even a grandparent – how the hell did I get THIS old?).  As a parent I helped to raise three children, all of whom are now young adults. As all parents know, our kids do (or did) things we had a problem with and there were times when we […]

Finding fault with security intelligence and law enforcement agencies and personnel is a bit of a sport, I find.  Second guessing and armchair quarterbacking seem to appeal to many who latch on to any mistake, real or perceived, to case aspersion on the efforts of those who are supposedly there to keep us safe.  “What […]

In January 1842 the British army suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in its history, a defeat memorialised in a painting entitled Remnants of an Army (shown above).  The British were massacred in retreating from Kabul in what is now known as the First Anglo-Afghan War, part of the ‘Great Game’ between Imperial Russia […]

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 […]