Search: “russia”

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass are two of my favourite books, in large part because of the way in which the author played with language. There is so much of linguistic interest in these (allegedly) children’s novels that one of my textbooks during my undergraduate courses in linguistics at […]

In all the years I have been writing about terrorism I have taken great care to stay in my lane (probably not always successfully but I have tried). I provide a perspective based solely on my work as a counter-terrorism intelligence analyst, not as an academic, a policy maker or any other self-styled ‘expert’. I […]

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 […]

Historical revisionism is inevitable I suppose. There are those who look back at events, both recent and less so, re-interpret them through a new paradigm, lens or self-interested agenda, re-package them, and present them to us in a way that goes against the previous collected wisdom. Sometimes this re-interpretation is necessary in the light of […]

In the classic Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking Glass, Alice in has an interesting exchange with Humpty Dumpty. When she expresses puzzlement over how he is using the word ‘glory’, he replies as follows: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on January 14, 2019 I realize that CSIS is not well understood by most Canadians and this is of course partly by design. It is, after all, an intelligence service and it has secrets it does not want to disclose. What intelligence agency flings its doors open for […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 17, 2018. There has been an awful lot of news lately on privacy in the digital space.  Facebook in particular has been in the hot seat over what it does with our data – data that we willingly provide every time we post a photo or […]

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 […]

Have you been following the tortuous twists and turns surrounding the brutal torture, killing and apparent dismemberment of Saudi journalist and critic Jamal Kashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2?  Can you make sense of all the claims and counterclaims?  Do you know who ‘did’ the deed?  If you answer yes to […]

I am trying very hard not to sound like a broken record (maybe it is time to update that analogy: like a CD that skips – or does no one besides me listen to CDs anymore?) but a recent news item has me very angry and makes me have to talk – once again – […]