Search: “Terrorists”

When my kids were young they liked to engage in an activity called “Mad-Lib”.  What is a “mad-lib”?  Thanks to the ever useful Wikipedia I learned that this “phrasal template word game” (!) was invented in 1953.  It is nothing more than a story or narrative in which several key words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) […]

It has been yet another difficult day on the terrorism front.  A truck plowed into a crowd of Christmas shoppers in Berlin, killing at least nine.  The Russian Ambassador to Turkey was killed by an off-duty police officer at an art gallery in Ankara.  And three people were shot outside an Islamic Centre in the Swiss […]

You  would have thought that after decades of study, dozens of books (including my own The Threat from Within) and hundreds of papers that we collectively would have a better grasp of violent radicalisation.  Countless individuals belonging to movements across the ideological spectrum have been adopting violent extremism for centuries.  This is not a new […]

I have just returned from Oslo where I was thrilled to catch up with one of my favourite terrorist experts, Thomas Hegghammer.  Thomas and his colleagues at the FFI – Norway’s Defence Research Establishment – have published some amazing work over the last decade or so and I have personally learned much from them. When […]

I know for sure that this blog is going to raise some hackles, especially among my US friends and colleagues.  Why?  Because I am going to argue that the current US counter terrorism architecture is inadequate to deal with the threat and needs a serious overhaul.  The solution I am proposing, however, will go against […]

In June 30, 2009 the bodies of three girls/young women and a middle-aged woman were found in a car that had been submerged in a lock along the Rideau Canal system just north of Kingston, Ontario.  Scarcely a month later, three people from the Shafia family, Afghan immigrants to Canada, were arrested and charged with […]

Living in a liberal democracy is generally a good thing.  Not that there are no problems that arise from time to time, but those who abide by liberal (in the classic sense of the word) values tend to be open to a lot of diversity.  They generally are okay with most things as long as […]

I have written on many, many occasions that bad data and/or bad analysis usually leads to bad decision making.  Think about it.  If the basic facts are wrong or are misconstrued how can any policy based on those facts be of any value?  Garbage in, garbage out as they say. This axiom was shown to […]

OK, it’s done.  Donald Trump has become the US’ 45th President, markets have swung wildly, people are panicking, some fear the Apocalypse.  Take a deep breath and calm down.  As the 44th President, Barack Obama, predicted last night, the sun did indeed rise this morning (even if I cannot see it in cloudy Ottawa). A […]

A lot of people are fascinated with technology. Maybe a little too fascinated.  I am not suggesting that the use of technology is bad: after all, I am writing this blog on my Dell laptop and not the manual Smith-Corona typewriter (if you are under 30 look up the word “typewriter” in a dictionary) that […]