I learned a new word this week: swatting. This phenomenon describes when someone calls in a fake crisis to get local law enforcement involved and often entails sending out the SWAT team (hence the name_ to an address to prevent a murder or resolve a hostage situation. This very thing happened to a Calgary woman […]
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When I was in high school the movie Midnight Express came out (yes, I am THAT old). This was a film adaptation of the true story of Billy Hayes, an American arrested and jailed in the early 1970s for trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. The movie portrayed Mr. Hayes as the poor American […]
Shakespeare must have had a lot against lawyers. It was the great English playwright after all who had a character in Henry IV Part 2 say “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’. There has been a lot of debate over what this quote means – in any event it has stood […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on January 3, 2018 http://www.hilltimes.com/2018/01/03/need-ignore-jihadi-propaganda/129769 In the lead up to New Year’s a lot of people were very nervous that festivities would be interrupted by a terrorist attack. To be fair, the fear was not completely unfounded as at last year’s celebration in Turkey a gunmen opened fire in […]
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 […]
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 […]
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A better way to react to terrorism
On December 12 I went to see Come From Away on Broadway with my wife and friends. For those not familiar with this award-winning musical it is based on what happened in the small Newfoundland city of Gander on 9/11 when almost 40 transAtlantic flights were diverted to the local airport, once a major refuelling […]
As it is wont to do, the federal Department of Public Safety has just issued its annual “Public Report on the Terrorist Threat to Canada”. This year’s edition contains statements such as: The main terrorist threat to Canada continues to stem from violent extremists inspired by terrorist groups, such as Daesh and al-Qaida Daesh, and […]
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 […]