Search: “Syria”

According to the standards of witches and warlocks in the Harry Potter series there were three curses or spells that were ‘unforgivable ‘.  These three are the Imperius curse (it forces one to do the bidding of the caster), the Cruciatus curse (it subjects the victim to excruciating pain) and the Killing curse (which does […]

I have just had the pleasure of seeing Steven Pinker give a talk at the Ottawa Writers’ Festival about his new book Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism and progress.  Picking up where he left off in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why violence has declined, Mr. Pinker makes a compelling case […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 9, 2018   In the 1997 movie Rocket Man (starring Canadian actor Harland Williams), a comedy about the first manned mission to Mars, there is a scene where a senior NASA manager, played by Jeffery DeMunn, is trying to justify why he did not predict and […]

Well, the knives are out already.  As we learn more and more about the harrowing history of murders in Toronto’s LGBT community over a number of years, but before all the facts are in, many people are already convinced that the local police screwed up.  There are even calls for a public inquiry or even […]

There are a few things that hold a place of note in my memory whenever I think back to the start of my career in intelligence in 1983. As a wet-behind-the-ears multilingual analyst fresh out of university I had joined CSE – Canada’s SIGINT agency – with little to no clue as to what intelligence […]

I would like to announce the creation of a fund for Canadian pedophiles.  Not those in prison or getting treatment but those languishing in squalid jails pending trial in southeast Asia after they were caught abusing young children, having traveled intentionally to that part of the world with the sole intention of having sex with […]

Every year many Canadians flock to Trinidad and Tobago to escape the harsh winter climate.  In addition, there are some 70,000 Canadians of Trinidadian stock, including one of the hosts of CBC’s The National, Ian Hanomansing, and pop singer Amanda Marshall.  The ties between the two nations run deep. Alas, these ties also extend to […]

I am a parent (and now even a grandparent – how the hell did I get THIS old?).  As a parent I helped to raise three children, all of whom are now young adults. As all parents know, our kids do (or did) things we had a problem with and there were times when we […]

I am a parent and that means I worry about my kids.  Not that I have any real reason to do so since my three are all grown up, on their own, doing well and appear for all intents and purposes to be well-adjusted, functioning human beings (thanks in no small part to their mother!).  […]

When I was in high school the movie Midnight Express came out (yes, I am THAT old).  This was a film adaptation of the true story of Billy Hayes, an American arrested and jailed in the early 1970s for trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey.  The movie portrayed Mr. Hayes as the poor American […]