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Canadian Intelligence Eh! Podcast

Whatever happened to Sikh extremism?

Episode 2 – Here are supplementary notes for podcast #2

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Perspectives

Is Canada really making a difference in Mali?

Photo ops by leaders of states with the military are no-brainers I suppose. The president/prime minister/king/grand poobah gets on plane, flies to Lower Slobovia to meet his/her country’s soldiers serving to maintain a war/keep the peace in a faraway land, thanks them for their service, assures them that what they are doing is right, acknowledges […]

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Perspectives

The ill-named ‘war on terrorism’ is not going well

The title of this blog is biased, of that there is no doubt. This offering is also perhaps not really necessary as Rowman and Littlefield have just published my 4th book, An End to the War on Terrorism, in which I have a much longer discussion on the premise of this much shorter piece.  So […]

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Perspectives

How to determine terrorist threat levels

On November 13, 2015 I was in France, Paris to be precise.  If that date reminds you of something, let me refresh your memory.  That was of course  the day – or more accurately the evening – when a group of Islamist terrorists struck in the core of the country’s capital, attacking the national sports […]

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Perspectives

Terrorism was down in 2017. That’s good. Right? Yes, but…

A very interesting report was just issued by the START center of excellence on terrorism at the University of Maryland on violent extremist trends in 2017.  It is worth a read.  Here are some good news highlights: The total number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2017 decreased by 23 percent and total deaths due to […]

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Perspectives

Terrorism is cheap: get used to it.

How much money do you carry in your wallet?  If you are Canadian not much.  We are apparently the world’s most frequent users of debit, followed by the Swedes.  So I guess not much then. Before the dawn of debit, though, I would wager that most people carried $60-100 on them at any given time. […]

An End to the War on Terrorism

Why are we still at ‘war’ with terror 16 years after 9/11? This book looks at a variety of approaches and responses to international Islamist extremism, ranging from military and security/law enforcement action to government policies, community measures and religious efforts, with a goal to determining what has worked and what has not. The examples […]

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Perspectives

What have we learned from the Aaron Driver case one year later?

A year ago Canada dodged a terrorist bullet when the almost 25-year old Muslim convert Aaron Driver climbed into a cab outside his sister’s home in Strathroy, a small town not quite 40 km from London, Ontario, set off an explosive device that didn’t do a lot of damage to either himself or the taxi, […]

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Perspectives

Preliminary thoughts on the London attacks

Residents of London have undergone yet another terrorist attack.  The nation that survived countless IRA attacks and threats in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and which saw the carnage of July 2005 and the attempted beheading of a military member in Woolwich in 2013 is reeling from yesterday’s events where a man ran over people […]

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Perspectives

Who should do CVE?

The fight against terrorism is multi-faceted.  As we are seeing in Mosul as I write, forces from a number of countries, including Canada, are heavily involved in an effort to take back Iraq’s second largest city from Islamic State.  Security intelligence agencies such as my former employer, CSIS, play a vital role in carrying out […]