Search: “Islamic State”

It was the US artist Andy Warhol who once said “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”, a phrase that seems to have underscored a universal desire to get noticed.  There is no question that it is much easier in a world of 24/7 news to have one’s story told: recall the […]

It is really hard to come up with a definition of terrorism that all agree on.  Every country seems to have its own version and while there are of course similarities there are also differences and some of these may have legal ramifications.  Then there is the non-legal definition: i.e. what the average person thinks […]

The RCMP announced yesterday that they have arrested Pamir Hakimzadah and charged him with leaving Canada to join Islamic State, meaning that he is charged with terrorism. This is a big deal.  It represents, to my knowledge, the first returning foreign fighter to be charged under the provisions of section 83.01 of the Canadian Criminal […]

Terrorism is sure getting complicated.  The good old days, if I may call them that, were easy by comparison. Terrorists were easy to spot because they tended to chuck bombs or fire weapons at people, the larger the crowd the better.  Then we got to the airline hijacking phase in which most incidents ended relatively […]

Some potentially disturbing news on the terrorism front came out the other day in Canada. According to reports, four employees at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal (it used to be called Dorval) had their security clearances revoked over concerns that they had become ‘radicalised’.  The men had access to restricted areas, one had talked […]

It should come as a surprise to no one that in a world apparently awash in terrorist groups and terrorist attacks that any glimpse of success is paraded loudly and widely.  We are desperate for a victory in this ill-named ‘war on terror’ and so we celebrate every drone strike that takes out a leader […]

Residents of London have undergone yet another terrorist attack.  The nation that survived countless IRA attacks and threats in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and which saw the carnage of July 2005 and the attempted beheading of a military member in Woolwich in 2013 is reeling from yesterday’s events where a man ran over people […]

I can’t imagine what it feels like to see your child arrested.  My children were no different than most I suppose, occasionally doing things they should not have, but nothing too serious, nothing that warranted police attention.  Thankfully, I was never placed in that position. Now imagine that authorities arrest your child after you called […]

We seem to be having a hard time figuring out what to call our struggle with terrorism.   Leaving aside the belief, held by me and others, that framing counter terrorism in terms of war is a bad idea, it is clear that we keep changing our minds about what we are really involved in. […]

If there is one myth in the ever increasing world of ‘alternative facts’ (i.e. lies) that has otherworldly strength and perseverance it is the whopper that some of the 9/11 hijackers came through Canada.  This inaccurate account of recent history has been repeated by people who should have known better – e.g. former Democratic presidential […]