Search: “Terrorists”

I just saw a very interesting, and disturbing, movie at a downtown Ottawa cinema. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” is an account of the famous (infamous?) 1971 psychological study aimed at determining how people act in a particularly brutal setting (i.e. jail). Volunteers (who were paid $15 a day for what was planned as a two-week […]

Another mass shooting in the US.  Another nation in grief.  Another set of questions on Why?  Another series of calls to prevent future incidents.  Why can’t the (fill in the blank – government/academe/science/police) profile people who engage in mass killings and stop them before they shoot?  What is so hard about all this?  After all, […]

The use of child soldiers in conflicts around the world is an indefensible and unspeakable violation of human rights.  Children in a number of countries are sometimes forced to watch their families killed before their eyes (incredibly, in some cases, they are coerced to do the killing themselves), pressed into military service for a ragtag […]

Canada is a great country.  We consistently rank among the best places in the world to live, according to various surveys.   What we offer is clearly attractive if we consider the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, seeking to come here.  And we accept, on average, a quarter million new residents every year.  Many […]

With zombie movies and TV shows all the rage, the “science” and trivia surrounding the undead have gone from a niche cult that started with the George Romero films to almost mainstream pop culture.  Most people know that zombies eat brains, move slowly (except for the ones in World War Z) and are really hard […]

The VIA passenger train trial has been a tortuous one.  The two terrorists, Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier were found guilty on eight of nine charges back in March of this year.  The plot was disrupted two years previously: that is how long it takes terrorist cases to come to trial. Actually, this was very […]

The world of counter terrorism is usually associated with security intelligence agencies and the military.  The former carry out investigations, using human sources and court-approved taps on communications while the latter undertakes “kinetic” action and captures terrorists or kills them through the use of drones/aircraft or special forces (think here of the operation to locate […]

It is comforting and yet humbling to see a news article that conveys information which confirms a lifetime’s work.  I studied radicalisation to violence, as inspired by Al Qaeda (and increasingly nowadays the Islamic State) for 15 years from a privileged position as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS.  I was able to leverage that […]

When a terrorist act occurs there are a number of inevitable events that follow immediately afterwards.  The attackers are called “cowards” (while those who leave IEDs may be described so, can anyone really call a suicide bomber a coward?).  There is a usual demand for vengeance and retaliation. And the head of state promises that […]

The field of psychology has taken quite a hit lately.  Since the true test of scientific veracity is replication (if I make a hypothesis about a phenomenon based on an experiment and no one can get the same results based on the same methodology the hypothesis is weak), a recent report that slightly more than […]