Double Take
As Liebnitz disappeared under the credenza, Chief MacBannock asked, “What are you doing, Ludwig?” The ace logician replied indistinctly, “Looking for my jaw. After it dropped, it rolled off here somewhere.” “Don’t be so melodramatic,” said the Chief. “It’s not the first…
Sovereignty in the Age of Cholera
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of Yugoslavıa and Kosovo have long since ceased. But the concerns about the legality and morality of attacking a sovereign state which, when the attacks were launched, wasn’t threatening its neighbors, remain. But what is…
Of General Interest — for a Change
A perpetual lament of Canadians — and especially of our diplomats – is that Americans (and sometimes their government) tend either to ignore us or to take us for granted. For the most part, observations by Canadian statesmen and others about Canadian-…
Estrada and La Strada
t was part EDSA (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue) 1986, part Woodstock. Most of the hundreds of thousands at the EDSA Shrine were too young to have taken part in the toppling of Marcos, but they knew its songs. None of them…
Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets
David Stafford has written a well-researched, captivating book about Roosevelt and Churchill and their deep personal interest and involvement in the conduct of the multifarious secret intelligence activities of the British, the Americans and their allies, which contributed so much to the…
MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service
At 800 pages of text, this is a heavy tome. However, well-written, interesting and thought-provoking, this is a book which almost ‘reads’ itself. Too informative and serious to be called a page-turner it, nevertheless, makes for an enjoyable, albeit long, read.
Blazes Along A Diplomatic Trail: A Memoir Of Four Posts In The Canadian Foreign Service
One of the most persistent and disagreeable of the myths relating to the foreign service has it that “diplomats” spend most of their time in various forms of fancy dress at vacuous parties and pointless ceremonies. That the myth is based on…
Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism
Professor Granatstein tells us this is not the book he intended to write. “As a devout anti-American for as long as I can remember,” he says he anticipated producing a “justification that would be a rationale for what I believed and knew…
The Art of the Possible
One of the rewards of traveling and living abroad is being able afterwards to picture far-off places and events. It gives them relevance wherever one is and whatever the time. When I see a TV image of peasants in loin-cloths gathered around…
Passage to Peace
Few could have predicted the longevity of the peacekeeper when Canadian politician Lester B. Pearson conceived of the role — perhaps not even Pearson himself. Then secretary of state for external affairs and, as such, Canada’s representative to the United Nations, he…
