There are few people, I imagine, that condone the use of torture. Well, except those countries or governments who engage in it I suppose. The list of those actors is one that most would find obvious: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. And yet Amnesty International finds that torture is practiced in 141 nations, i.e three quarters of […]
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Having just spent three days in New York I have been thinking a lot about the terrorist threat to the West. The reasons for this are not solely tied to the fact that I was three blocks away from Monday’s mostly unsuccessful attack on the subway near Times Square. It is much more than that. […]
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did (here is the blog post in case you did not see it first time). Yet another person is planning to sue the Canadian government for its ‘complicity’ in alleged abuse in connection with a counter terrorism investigation. An Algerian citizen, Djamel Ameziane, says that Canadian security […]
I suppose that in many ways none of this should be unexpected. Its obviousness does not make it right, however. There are lots of things that we do not question that are nevertheless the wrong way of looking at things. I am referring here to the belief that we are at ‘war with terrorism’. The […]
First and foremost, Canadians and others should be very happy for Joshua Boyle, Caitlin Coleman and their children now that their five-year ordeal is over. The conditions under which the family was held hostage by the Taliban/Haqqani group were truly horrendous and no one should underestimate or dismiss that. I for one feel most for […]
We learned today that a Canadian, Joshua Boyle, has been rescued in Pakistan, together with his American wife and three children born in captivity after having been held for five years by the Taliban. Mr. Boyle and his very pregnant spouse were taken by the terrorist group while ‘backpacking’ through central Asia, including Afghanistan. It […]
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Thank God for incompetent terrorists
Yes, there are some very nasty terrorists who are very good at what they do, but there are also many who are only slightly above incompetent.
Before this piece goes any further I need to spell out that I am not a big fan of the use of force unless absolutely necessary (and when necessary it is best to use it wisely while still protecting the lives of the force wielders). Clearly it is required in some situations but if public […]
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 […]
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 […]