Search: “Terrorists”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on February 11, 2019. We in Canada have terrorism on the brain.  On any given day there is at least one, and unfortunately usually far more than one, terrorist act somewhere  on this planet.  Death and destruction executed by idiots who see the use of violence as God’s […]

Recent weeks have borne witness to many stories and analyses about the problem of ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ and what to do about them. Those who are holding these terrorists are asking host nations to repatriate them and prosecute them at home.  The responses to these requests vary from ‘hell no, we don’t want them back’ to […]

A couple of years ago I went out to my car, which I had left on the street in front of my house and found a ticket on the windshield. For the record, overnight parking is allowed on my street, which is located in a subdivision of Ottawa. I could not understand why I had […]

I am always tickled pink when I see what I think are fascinating parallels between (or among) phenomena. As someone who worked in, and now writes about, terrorism and counter-terrorism, I try to find new ways to describe and, if I may be so bold, to explain why people opt for violent extremism as a […]

A Canadian judge’s job cannot be easy. You are expected to listen to a whole bunch of information, often contradictory in nature, from diametrically opposed sides (Crown and defence), and determine which side has made the better argument, all while keeping your knowledge and understanding of Canadian law in mind. Then you have to make […]

Of all the cases of ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ that has cropped up of late, and there have been many, many such instances, the story of a British ‘schoolgirl’ is one of the most interesting. Shamima Begum left the UK in 2015 as part of the ‘Bethnal Green’ trio of females who joined Islamic State (IS). […]

There have been a lot of very good analytic pieces on Islamic State of late, especially in the wake of US President Trump’s Tweet “we have won against ISIS; we’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly”.  Here are links to  a few: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/17/its-not-just-isis-many-terrorist-groups-have-been-declared-dead-only-rise-again/?utm_term=.dab4f12cf0b8 https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/tracking-jihadist-movements-2019-islamic-state https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/islamic-state-terrorism-extremism-eyes-southeast-asia-11199586 https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1577356/pentagon-isis-syria-could-regroup-6-months https://www.thedailybeast.com/isis-smuggler-sleeper-cells-and-undead-suicide-bombers-have-infiltrated-europe?ref=home The US office of the Director of […]

This post appeared in The Hill Times on February 4, 2019 When we think of the major terrorist threats facing us today we tend to think of phenomena like Islamist extremism (Islamic State, Al Qaeda and the like). If we want to sound more avant garde we might say far right extremism (neo-Nazis, white supremacists, […]

Is it just me or is this issue never going to go away? I am referring of course to what to do with those Canadians – and by extension Westerners and others – who made the conscious, deliberate, enthusiastic, but stupid, decision to leave our (their) country to join terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS) […]

We have a definite bias when we think of terrorism. First and foremost, and for justifiable reasons, we focus on Islamist extremism (some focus erroneously on Muslims and Islam writ large, but I hope I don’t need to deconstruct that myth again). More and more recently it seems we are concerned about terrorism and violence […]