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What role, if any, will security issues play in the 2019 election campaign?

I constantly hear the accusation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is ‘soft on terrorism’. Where are people getting this idea? How many examples do you want?

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An all-around, all cause violent radical

If you think about it, there are a lot of things to be angry about today. Whether it is social inequality, racism, the inadequate response to global climate change, ‘collateral damage’ or just your everyday unfairness there are more than enough causes to get behind.  For those who go beyond talk, i.e. activists, most  are […]

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September 16, 1920: Wall Street bombing

On this day in 1920 a horse-drawn wagon passed by lunchtime crowds on New York’s iconic Wall Street, stopped near the JP Morgan bank headquarters and went boom.

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Once more into the breach

I remember my very first day as an ‘insider’ in the Canadian intelligence community as if it were yesterday.  It was July 13,1983.  I had moved to Ottawa from my hometown of London (Ontario) to accept a job at CSE – Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s signals intelligence agency.  I had already been accorded a top […]

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September 13, 2006: Gunmen hit U.S. embassy, 3 attackers die

On this day in 2006, four gunmen attacked the US Embassy in Damascus, storming the compound with grenades and automatic weapons before being repelled by Syrian security forces.

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Has CSIS been getting counter terrorism wrong all these years? Nope.

OK, OK, I am a little sensitive when it comes to articles on CSIS. I did work there for 15 years after all and was (and still am) very proud of what I and my colleagues did to help keep Canadians safe. No, we were not perfect but I think we did our best. So […]

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State terrorism is making a comeback – of sorts

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on August 26, 2019. These days when we read or think about terrorism we tend to go in two directions. Either we think about terrorist groups: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, etc. Or we talk about ‘lone wolves’ even if that term is […]

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Another questionable act in the ‘war on terrorism’

There is so much that has gone awry in the so-called war on terrorism that a complete list is probably uncompilable – and certainly too much for a blog piece. I have already made many arguments as to why this is not a good way to view or frame our efforts at preventing or thwarting […]

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Terrorism: plus ca change (part 1)

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9) For many in the post 9/11 world it may seem as if terrorism is something new – and terrible. We are constantly inundated with news about attacks here and attacks there, sometimes […]

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Why terrorists’ use of CBRN is less frequent than you would think

FaceBook has pissed a lot of people off lately. If it is not their use of your data (which, by the way, you gave freely to the company) it is their inability to prevent or take down extremist material from their platform in a timely fashion or sanction those seeking to circumvent the democratic process […]