Search: “far right”

Knowing that what you are doing is the right thing is important.  There are all kinds of ideas in all kinds of fields of study and practice but they are not all equal.  Some are clearly better than others.  One way of telling which ones are which is to measure what they purport to do. […]

Here we go again, an alleged terrorist plot against planes.  We have been there before – far too often.  There was 9/11 of course, and the 2002 ‘shoebomber’, and the 2006 liquid plot, and the 2009 ‘underwear bomber’, and the 2010 printer cartridge plot – clearly there is a trend here.  As a result of […]

One of the most oft-cited ‘push factors’ for why people become radicalised and join terrorist groups is the nebulous idea of ‘alienation’.  Read any story or academic paper on the subject and you are bound to come across a phrase something like “the most vulnerable to radicalisation are alienated (NB or marginalised) youth”.  Go ahead […]

In a democracy that prides itself on the rule of law, no one in Canada is above the law, even – and especially – those charged with enforcing it, i.e. law enforcement agencies and their members.  Nothing subverts the faith a society has in its legal institutions more than the belief that laws are not […]

There have been many times in history where statements made publicly have turned out to be somewhat less than true.   Remember the famous “Dewey defeats Truman” headline in the 1948 US Presidential election?  What about then CIA Director George Tenet’s claim that intelligence pointing to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam […]

Here we go again. The fact that Alexandre Bissonnette was able to get a gun, walk into a mosque, slaughter innocent people and not be detected is a failure. On whom? On everyone – CSIS, the RCMP, la police de la ville de Quebec, the Surete, the government of Canada, average Canadians for not standing […]

Last week news came out that two grassroots organisations in Minneapolis had received between them over $600,000 to do CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) work in the state of Minnesota, as part of a $10 million disbursement by the US Department of Homeland Security in what has been called an ongoing, but controversial, programme.  Minneapolis is […]

What causes terrorism?  Lots of things, and that is why it is so hard to stop.  We can identify, and have identified, the behaviours and attitudes that terrorists engage in, but we are very far from coming up with a hard and fast list of the why and the who and, frankly speaking, I am […]

There is no doubt that throughout much of the West these days there is considerable angst over immigration and the impacts of new arrivals on Western societies.  Whether it is the real – but largely exaggerated – fear that terrorist groups like Islamic State are seeding refugee flows with operatives ready to unleash carnage on […]

I am a glass half full kind of guy, someone who seeks to find the positive in life.  I am an optimist tinged with realism.  Three decades in intelligence and 15 years in counter terrorism do tend to give one a good look at the less savoury aspects of life on this planet and as […]