Episode 223 – Are we seeing a spike in terrorist activity Down Under?
In mid April 2024 Australia witnessed two horrific acts of violence, one in a mall and one in a church. The former resulted in deaths but was not deemed to be terrorist in nature while the latter, in which an Orthodox Bishop was stabbed, was labeled as such. Why the difference and what is the terrorism landscape like in that country? Do we need to reconsider what we see as terrorism? A chat with an Australian specialist in youth radicalisation.
Bondi Junction mall attack: ‘Obvious’ killer targeted women, Sydney police say (bbc.com)
About my guest
Peta Lowe is a Principal Consultant with Phronesis Consulting and Training. She is the former Director, Countering Violent Extremism for Juvenile Justice in the NSW Department of Justice. Peta has over 15 years experience working with young people involved with the justice system and has worked with individuals, families and communities to address offending behaviours and criminogenic risks. She s currently focused on developing and delivering training and education as well as assessment and interventions to; improve social cohesion, divert vulnerable young people from violent extremism, disengage and rehabilitate juvenile terrorism related offenders and reduce the risk violent extremism and terrorism in all forms poses to individuals and community safety.
Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world.
In these half-hour podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world.
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism , When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019) and The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and tweets (@borealissaves) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
He was an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in the Netherlands and is currently a digital fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies at Concordia University. He is also a visiting fellow at the International Security and Risk Management programme at the University of South Wales
Mr. Gurski is a regular commentator on terrorism and intelligence for a wide variety of Canadian and international media.
