Do you know the old saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”? It refers to the notion that we may be hoodwinked by an unscrupulous character once for no fault of our own (aside from having a poor judge of character perhaps), but if we have the wool pulled […]
Search: “Iran”
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You gotta hand it to MBS, the power behind the throne in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, son of the current king, has sure made a name for himself of late. Letting women drive. Promising a new future for his country with shiny impressive technological cities and the like. Corruption has been nipped in […]
Pity the poor ex head of state, whether that person is a prime minister, a president, a monarch or a dictator, who settles for retirement, although I’ d wager that many former dictators never get that far. At one time you are cock of the rock. Everyone listens to you. You get really cool perks […]
If there is one country that is garnering the headlines for all the good reasons these days (as opposed to Trump’s US for all the – well you know what I mean) it is Saudi Arabia. The cradle of Islam has best been known for confirming the maxim “there is no FUN in FUNdamentalism” as […]
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When Canada saved American lives
To say that Canada-US relations are going through a rough spot now would be a slight understatement. Trade tariffs. A disastrous Canada-led G7, due mostly to the ?performance? of the US President. Accusations that Canada burned down the White House during the War of 1812: an amazing feat for a country that was not born […]
This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 23, 2018 Way back when I was an analyst at CSE I recall a conversation with an workmate about who was more important to the organisation (we were both young and full of piss and vinegar). He worked on the ‘Soviet problem’: I was assigned along […]
I know I have gone over this material before but there is nothing like an anniversary to occasion yet another look at an incident. The ‘incident’ I am referring to is the 15th anniversary of the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. No matter what side of the political spectrum you belong to I […]
You gotta feel for the Kurds, history’s version of ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’. Oft described as the world’s largest ethnic group without a country to call their own, the Kurds have come ever so close on several occasions. They were kinda promised autonomy following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the post […]
If you want to know what CSIS does and why it does it, a good place to start is the CSIS Act which dates back to the creation of that organisation out of the former RCMP Security Service back in 1984. The Act has stood up fairly well over its first three decades despite several […]
Is there any more annoying phrase than “the world needs more Canada”? There is a book by that name by Heather Reisman, head of Indigo books, and a frequent slogan used by that chain. It refers, I think, to the notion that Canada is such a nice place and that we Canadians are just so […]