Search: “islamic state”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 19, 2018. July 1 is, of course, our national day.  Whether you celebrate it like we do here in Ottawa with a series of events centred on Parliament Hill capped by the awesome fireworks display or in your own local way (at the cottage, in your […]

I guess it is that time of year.  No, not the holiday season – the appearance of the annual Public Safety Canada terrorist threat overview!  As the Minister of Public Safety himself – Ralph Goodale – wrote, this is “part of our commitment to being open and transparent through a balanced and frank assessment of […]

So the Trudeau government has responded to a Parliamentary “Supply Day Motion” (NB I have NO idea what that means) dated October 23 that called on the Government of Canada to “immediately bring to justice anyone who has fought as an ISIS terrorist or participated in any terrorist activity, including those who are in Canada […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018. Way back in medieval times there was a concept known as sanctuary.  Under this notion, those who had committed crimes could place themselves beyond the long arm of the law by hightailing it to a church or monastery, where supposedly divine law trumped the […]

Today marks a very solemn occasion in Canadian – and world – history.  29 years ago, on December 6, 1989, misogynist Marc Lepine  went into a classroom at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique and, after separating the men from the women, killed 14 of the latter before cowardly taking his own life.  His excuse?  Lépine’s suicide note blamed […]

A little less than a month ago we marked (‘celebrated’ is definitely the wrong word) the centenary of the end of the First World War.  This was a solemn occasion on which we recalled the deaths, injuries and destruction in not only the ‘Great War’ but also in WWII, the Korean War and others.  It […]

I have just returned from a CVE (countering violent extremism) conference in Edmonton organised by the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), the Canadian Practitioners’ Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence, and the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS) where I gave a presentation on what we know about the extremist […]

So the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a Vice News reporter has to hand over to the RCMP records of his conversation with a terrorist and this is a ‘dark day for press freedom‘??  In fairness, the ones who think that are from Vice News and as they fought the original order to […]

At the risk of seeming insensitive, here is an extract from today’s offerings from the satirical Web site The Onion (if you don’t know what The Onion and its Canadian counterpart The Beaverton are you really should fix that).  Don’t be put off by the apparent dismissal of the Holocaust: there is a bigger message […]

If there is one story that has grabbed worldwide attention lately it has to be the American Christian missionary who died trying to bring the Gospel to a people off the coast of India who have made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with the outside world, let alone be converted to […]