Search: “islamic state”

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 hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.  Almost a year ago I wrote that the Canadian government would be placed in a difficult position should one of our citizens who chose to travel to Iraq to fight the terrorist group Islamic State alongside Kurdish forces was caught by the […]

Whenever a new year kicks in we always cast a Janus-like glance back to the previous one to get an idea of what we just went through and, hopefully, gain some insight into what we are in for in the coming 12 months.  By all accounts 2016 was not a great year on several fronts, […]

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 […]

Years ago when I first joined CSIS there was a veteran CT (counter terrorism) guy whom I’ll call Mike.  He had been around a fair bit and I had a great deal of respect both for his experience and his insight into Islamist extremism.  In all his time in the trenches he had seen a […]

It  makes sense to adapt existing models to handle new phenomena where there are enough commonalities between the existing and emerging issues.  I am not so sure it is easy to make that determination but if the costs and downsides of modifying approaches we already know well are low then I suppose no harm is […]

Religion is getting a bad rap these days and it is not that hard to see why.  Self-styled protectors or controllers of the faith – i.e. religious extremists – continue to push their narrow views on truth and praxis on everyone else, whether they are co-religionists or not.   These arbiters of religion cannot see […]

Earlier this morning the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack that killed 12 and wounded dozens more was shot to death by Italian police in Milan.  An international manhunt ended successfully with the killing of Anis Amri, a Tunisian refugee who had spent time in Italy before moving on to Germany. He was known to […]

When my kids were young they liked to engage in an activity called “Mad-Lib”.  What is a “mad-lib”?  Thanks to the ever useful Wikipedia I learned that this “phrasal template word game” (!) was invented in 1953.  It is nothing more than a story or narrative in which several key words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) […]

It has been yet another difficult day on the terrorism front.  A truck plowed into a crowd of Christmas shoppers in Berlin, killing at least nine.  The Russian Ambassador to Turkey was killed by an off-duty police officer at an art gallery in Ankara.  And three people were shot outside an Islamic Centre in the Swiss […]