Search: “national security”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on June 3, 2019 Canada had nothing to do with the US decision to use the anachronistic Guantanamo Bay military camp in Cuba as a highly controversial – if not internationally illegal – detention centre for suspected terrorists. That people alleged to have been linked to terrorist groups […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 13, 2019. If there are any people at Public Safety Canada (PSC) who do not already dislike me, perhaps intensely, I am confident that this column will quickly lead them to the vast majority who have already PNGed me from the department (full disclosure: I worked […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 6, 2019. I do not normally read the obituaries. It is not that I have no respect for the dead: it is just that I don’t take the time to see who has passed on. This non-practice is bound to change as I get older and […]

Has something happened to Rudy Giuliani? The iconic former mayor of New York – remember the important role he played in the aftermath of 9/11, rallying Americans? – seems, to me at least, to have ‘lost it’. And I am not referring to his obsequious ass-kissing of boy President Trump, for whom he acts as […]

For those who have been following me over the years you know that the title of this blog is a little facetious. I have been arguing for a long time that the phrase ‘the war on terrorism’ is not helpful and should be dropped. Hell, I even wrote a book about it! Still, even I […]

Here is a link to the YouTube version of podcast (it is also available on iTunes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uy_S0Inojk Here are some informative links about China’s campaign against the Uyghurs https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/are-indonesia-and-malaysia-ready-to-stand-up-for-chinas-muslims/ https://www.rfa.org/english/women/suffering-01302019152956.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/02/07/uighurs-australia/?utm_term=.59e0784d5aea https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2186446/beijing-backs-patriotic-actions-chinese-students-who-reported https://ent.siteintelgroup.com/Chatter/is-supporter-calls-to-kill-chinese-in-defense-of-islam-and-uyghurs.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/21/how-china-tried-stop-my-freedom-speech-canada/?utm_term=.214ddb57f282&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-has-put-1-million-muslims-in-concentration-camps-mbs-had-nothing-to-say/2019/02/24/370be676-36e4-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html?utm_term=.84e60354c337&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/chinas-expanding-war-on-islam-now-theyre-coming-for-the-kazakhs/2019/03/01/16ebbe76-38ff-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html?utm_term=.0e75941659e5&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1 Featured terrorist attack – Kashmir https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/02/15/a-deadly-bombing-provokes-a-crisis-between-india-and-pakistan Terrorism this fortnight (Feb 12-25) Afghanistan Afghan Intelligence forces arrested two members of […]

I am fairly certain that the average citizen sees terrorists as ‘not normal’. In a strict linguistic sense this is of course true as terrorists do not hew to the ‘norm’: hence they are not ‘normal’. In a larger sense, however, it is far from clear what ‘normal’ means. Are we talking about their backgrounds […]

I am fairly certain that a lot of what I have elected to write about today will come as a shock to no one, but here it is anyway. There is a lot of nastiness online. Yes, yes, I realise that this is not an earth-shattering revelation but I feel a need to weigh in […]

In light of the announcement by the UK government that it is considering revoking the citizenship of clearly unrepentant jihadi Shamima Begum, claiming that she is “eligible for that of another country” (Bangladeshi apparently although she has never been there), I thought I would reproduce what I wrote about citizenship revocation in my second book […]