The other day I had lunch with an old friend who, like me, worked in the Canadian intelligence community. We had a wide-ranging chat over a number of issues – Donald Trump, what each of us was up to these days – but as inevitably happens when two people with our backgrounds get together the […]
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The carnage unfolding in Barcelona as I type is getting to be depressingly familiar. An individual drives a vehicle (car, van, 18-wheeler) into an unsuspecting crowd of people, strewing them like bowling pins. Innocent people are injured, some horribly, and some die (maybe mercifully quickly or agonisingly slowly). While no group has yet to claim […]
One country that remains a mystery to many is Saudi Arabia. A relatively new state – it really only dates from 1930 – this desert land sprang from an odd mid 18th century agreement between a very conservative religious tradition, Wahhabism, and the rule of a single family, the Al Sauds. The Wahhabis care for […]
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Suffer the children of IS
If there is one searing image of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe it is that of the orphanages of Romania. The regime of President Nicolae Ceausescu outlawed both contraception and abortion. As a consequence, thousands of women left babies that were either unwanted or for which they could not care at state institutions. […]
I am currently attending a very interesting conference in Tunisia entitled ‘International Panel on Exiting Violence’ as part of a multinational group looking at all kinds of issues surrounding terrorism and violent radicalisation. Among the presentations I listened to was one in which the speaker talked about conflicts and how to ensure, to the extent […]
There is indeed good news coming out of western Iraq and eastern Syria these days. When is the last time anyone said that? Islamic State (IS), a truly barbaric terrorist group if there ever was one, is on the outs. It is about to lose Mosul and maybe even Raqqa and, according to recent reports, […]
Well, the inevitable has happened. We all knew it was coming. Canada’s most famous ‘child soldier’, Omar Khadr , is about to receive an apology and a compensation package from the Canadian government – i.e. the Canadian tax payer – ” for abuses he suffered while detained in the U.S. military prison for captured and suspected […]
One thing we have all gotten used to in the post 9/11 era is the question: at any given time how at risk are we from terrorism? In an effort to answer this query for a nation’s citizenry a number of methods have been proposed. One of the more famous ones was the US Department […]
Parliament Hill in Ottawa is one of those treasures found only in liberal democracies. Anyone can show up and lobby, protest, shout his lungs out or carry a placard peacefully and silently, no matter what the cause. It is also a great place to watch the fireworks on Canada Day as long as enjoying the […]
Well, we are coming up to the six-month mark of the Donald Trump era and it is time for a reckoning. So much print and coverage has been devoted to the Donald that I hesitate to add to this amount. And yet there is quite a bit that bears on counter terrorism policy and strategy […]