Je Suis Charlie

As a writer, it is my duty now to speak for those whose voices have been silenced forever. But there are no words left for what happened in Paris.

All I can do is express my sincere and deepest condolences to the families who have suffered the loss of a loved one. And affirm my support and solidarity to all writers and journalists around the globe who do what they love, what they believe.

Terrorism doesn’t get to win. It doesn’t decide what we write, what we make, who we are.  We won’t let that happen. Today, and always, Je suis Charlie.

The Sony Hack: Where CyberCrime Becomes CyberTerrorism

It is THE biggest news story. Period. And it will be a story that will live on in the telling because it wasn’t just how it happened, it was why.  The hacker attack two weeks ago on Sony was an unprecedented take-down of a global corporate giant by the Guardians of Peace (GOP), a group of cyber-terrorists operating from a small country across the globe. This is more than just the tale of another hack attack, however. It’s where global affairs and technology converge in a dangerous way.  Terrorism is constantly adding to its arsenal, and technology is becoming a weapon of choice. Cyberterrorism isn’t some complex movie plot. Elusive, efficient, it’s a very real threat with the potential for devastating impact.

By now, we all have heard the allegations against North Korea as being the power behind the hackers. I’m inclined to think so. While there is no definitive proof, the code was written in Korean. Email messages have been sent from the GOP, a hacker group based in North (not South) Korea, demanding Sony take down the film ‘The Interview’ about assassinating leader Kim Jong Un. And then there’s the fact that in North Korea, a country known for austerity and deprivation, hackers are state-sponsored and treated as an elite group.

North Korea is highly volatile, an unpredictable player in the current global theatre. That means their actions are more threatening. And with attention focused on current hot-spots like Ukraine, Iraq, Israel, leader Kim Jong Un has more opportunity to make subtle moves with his players. They clearly have no problems developing a very malicious form of malware that disabled or destroyed equipment. This type of malware may have been used before. “Shamoon” as it was known then hit 30000 computers in 2012 in an attack against the oil company Saudi Aramco, and then again in an attack against South Korea in 2013. Moreover, they were able access and operate within Sony’s systems without detection for a considerable length of time.  Sony got hacked on American soil without any agency or organization aware or prepared to take evasive action. The most powerful nation in the world was caught unprepared. Simply put, this was cyber-terrorism.

The economic costs to Sony will be staggering in terms of loss: equipment, intellectual property, confidential and personal data. Never mind the decimation of employee morale and company reputation. The hackers have been contacting families at Sony, telling them they must take their side or else. The GOP got their timing right, striking just before the Christmas release peak season, and they have brought Sony to its knees.

So what do we take away from this? Back in June, North Korea promised to “mercilessly destroy” anyone associated with the film. Did Sony, or the NSA, or the CIA not see this coming? Whatever they suspected, no provisions appear to have been made. Now, it’s damage control. And here’s the first lesson going forward for us all – as details unfold, they further expose the open wound and that can be more painful than the attack itself. In Sony’s case, it’s been revealed that they kept corporate passwords in a file called ‘Passwords’. Yes, I know. While that in itself didn’t facilitate the attack, it implies that Sony was careless, inviting further unwanted speculation.

And here is the second hard lesson: regardless of how good a defense companies put up against outside hacks, they’re only as good as their weakest link in the security chain which more often than not is human error. In Sony’s case, that meant the problem could have come from within, as simple as someone unwittingly opening those carefully constructed security doors to let the attackers in. For all that companies train and advise their staff, they cannot control their every move or decision. Malware has become an art form in deception, reflecting the spectrum of human weakness.

My hard look at the bottom line: Sony didn’t know how the GOP would strike, but they knew they were at risk, and who the threat was. If this was an act of state-sponsored cyber-terrorism against a corporate entity on US soil, then the concerns currently being expressed for the safety of our critical infrastructure need more than words and firewalls. The onus was on Sony to secure their assets, ensuring what measures they had in place were effective. If due diligence is where we can all fall short, we need to close that door or risk more events like this.

It Just Got Personal

Today, everything changed.  A terrorist opened fire in our nation’s capital, killing a Corporal at the National War Memorial where we honour those who fought for and defended our country and the freedoms we cherish. He then took his weapon and his deadly agenda to the halls of our Parliament, where gunfire ensued and he was killed.  Our nation’s capital went into lockdown. We used to say this doesn’t happen in Canada. We cannot say that anymore. There is no going back.

We don’t know yet what motivated the attack, but experts are saying it should be seen as a terrorist attack, and that it may well be the first of more to come.   The world is watching as ISIS continues to develop and gain hold as an extremist force in the Middle East. As dangerous as Al Quaeda is, I believe the greater and more immediate threat is ISIS. Why? Because they radicalize citizens from within populations to turn against their own countries, forsaking families, friends and beliefs. And these people, once turned, commit unthinkable acts of violence and death on innocents. How the hell do we begin to fight that?

I am angry that this has happened in my country. I am so truly sorry for family of Cpl Nathan Cirillo, especially his six year old son. This was a good man whose life was senselessly taken by another on whom life was wasted. Extremists disavow themselves of the rights and privileges the rest of us respect and enjoy the moment they embrace their new belief of terrorism. I won’t give them the benefit of the doubt or consider them capable of reform. Theirs was a conscious choice to embrace something that they knew was wrong. How, in this day and age, post 9/11, post-genocides and holocaust, can anyone not know that radical extremism utilizing terrorism is evil?

I love my country. Fiercely. Proudly. We welcome the world, embrace diversity, excel at peace and diplomacy and hockey. Acceptance and tolerance are values I want to my kids to live every day. Canadians are known for being accommodating and non-aggressive. We get mad “in a Canadian kind of way”. That does not mean we are push-overs and that should not make us easy targets for any reason. I hate that terrorism isn’t just the physical carnage, but the emotional and spiritual costs paid by those who survive. Now, we don’t get to be so open and friendly with the world, or with each other. We know what’s out there, and how their game is played. There was a heightened state of alert before today’s attacks. We have reason to believe more will come because ISIS has come to roost.

ISIS is a global threat that needs to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. They’ve made it clear that they are intolerant, inhumane and exist to serve only their purpose, utilizing whatever means necessary. The only way to deal with them is to exterminate them, like the deadly infestation they are, anywhere they appear. We cannot afford the mistake of giving them more time to gain a stronger hold. And we are fools to believe nothing else is coming. ISIS has established they have no boundaries, globally or morally. God forbid we let them prove that on our soil.

I keep a mug in my kitchen, filled with pencils, where I see it everyday. It’s part of daily life in our family hub. Nobody important gave it to me; it isn’t an heirloom or expensive. But what it represents is beyond measure. The mug says Cantor Fitzgerald. If you, like me, watched those Towers fall, and lived through the endless days into nights of news coverage during 9/11, you learned this firm suffered the loss of most of their people. They were a family, with families. I can never forget.

The Heart of Darkness

Man’s inhumanity to man – Joseph Conrad literally wrote the book on it, back in 1899.  His travels to the “dark continent” where he witnessed first-hand the negative benefits of imperialism compelled him to write the story. Over one hundred years have passed, but the scars of imperialism have not healed. Instead, greed, hatred and intolerance have spread like an infection to exacerbate the existing tensions between rival tribes, nations, warlords.

The story Conrad penned has evolved into multiple chapters, increasingly horrific. Across the 20th century, every decade had its own African crisis: Eritrea in the sixties; Ethiopia in the seventies; South Africa in the 80s; Rwanda in the 90s; and as the century changed, Sudan. This decade, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have become maelstroms of violence and terror.  What has happened in Africa over the past century is a graphic illustration of how hatred develops and mutates.  In our civilized norm, killing is wrong. To attack women and children is unthinkable. Yet, this has become the legacy of imperialism in Africa.

Case in point: the three hundred school girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria three weeks ago, held by the militant Islamic group Boko Haram. Their name means “Western education is forbidden.” The girls were taken from what was considered an elite private school, where they were encouraged to pursue careers and goals that are disparaged and forbidden by these militant Islamic groups. In pursuit of expressing their hatred of all things Western, the group has staged numerous attacks with impunity. While the group itself is relatively new, founded in 2002, their hatred stems back to events in 1903, when Britain took control over the region that is now southern Cameroon, Niger and the northern part of Nigeria. In an ironic twist, education has become the dividing point, inaccessible to many poor Islamic families, unimportant to wealthier ones, and opportune to Jihadists looking to recruit through their schools. These Islamic schools are now becoming part of the problem while being symptoms of a larger issue.

The legacy of imperialism has spawned successions of governments that collapse from the cancer of corruption and greed.  As decades pass, these countries are left increasingly vulnerable to the ongoing hatreds between tribes, regions and religions. It has reached the point where I think the rest of the world cannot reasonably expect these nations to resolve their issues themselves. In Nigeria, it has taken three weeks and international outcry to make the government there truthfully admit how many girls actually were taken and that they cannot do anything to help them. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathon is going to need more than just good luck to face the challenges ahead for his country. As major powers now step forward to offer their assistance, I would advise they be prepared for more acts like this by Boko Haram, and for more groups like them, because they believe they hold the upper hand.  And for their victims, especially those school girls, they do. Unless we find the way to show them otherwise.

Jihadists don’t play by our rules. Terrorism is how they force us to play by theirs. Verbal condemnation and traditional diplomacy are useless.  What needs to happen is something unprecedented. An internationally-sanctioned alliance that strategically invades the region in Nigeria where Boko Haram’s stronghold is believed to be and removes the militants the way a surgeon cuts out a malignancy. It’s a start, but the problem is that the insurgents will keep coming back, and maintaining that vigilance against them is beyond the ability of many African nations. The result will be the formation of growth of terrorists that spills out into the world. This truly is the heart of darkness. It isn’t just Nigeria’s problem anymore. It’s everyone’s problem, and unless we get involved in helping maintain security there, our own security will not be enough for what is coming.