cannuck

More than likely. Over the years, I have worked with a fair number of spooks, but one became a particularly close friend. He was ex MI-6 and in his "retirement" he worked for drug enforcement programmes in both Canada and the USA, with occasional assignments for tax authorities. I knew his Canadian handler, but not his US one. There is not much of a border between the countries when it comes to these guys and gals. and there isn't much patriotism involved in their craft. They live so far outside of the rulebook, the lines are further blurred, so it makes sense to me that they would work for more than one "employer" once they were outside of their original country and agency.

When I walk through the terminal in Riyadh and see the big sign: "the penalty for dealing drugs is death" I get a case of the warm fuzzies. It is also a sharp reminder that 'Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.'

All we can do is speculate, but I believe that ANY excuse at all would have had the Yanks waging this proxy war to strut their stuff before Russia got too deep into the region. Also to support Israel. Invading Kuwait was a pretty good excuse. If memory serves, there was no defense treaty with Kuwait at all. Did not hurt US relations with the rest of the Gulf states, who no doubt realized that So Damn Insane could have turned on any one of them. No time now for details, but there is also a HUGE energy implication for that region (passage of gas pipeline(s) to Europe, which Russia is extremely fearful of happening).

Pretty big talk for someone from a country that murders tens of thousands of babies a year "for the Mother's convenience". Oh, I forgot: they can't vote so their lives don't count.

Again, it was not that simple. No doubt this is but ONE of literally hundreds of reasons (and a convenient excuse) used in coming to the conclusion.

Maybe - maybe not. You will have to wait for the book (and maybe movie/documentary) to come out.

You keep judging KSA by YOUR/our standards and beliefs. I guess you need to spend some time there to learn about the culture and understand its place within MENA and Islam. I can and have spent prolonged periods in cities and in the dessert with Saudis. When you DO, you will learn how very important manners are (and those manners are from THEIR viewpoint - not ours) and how incredibly stupid and insulting what Freeland did is seen to be in KSA. You seem to forget Freeland is not just another Canadian citizen, she is supposed to be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Her total lack of sensitivity and understanding of just about EVERYTHING foreign (and I strongly suspect, everything domestic) is typical of the quality of people chosen to surround the Drama Queen in Charge.

Yes, the GOVERNMENT of the Kingdom, and a significant part of the population consider themselves an ally of the West (now excluding Canada, of course). There are definitely Wahhabist fundamentalists who support terrorism in many forms and ways, but that is NOT the position of the Kingdom as an entity.

The President may have had a political objective, a DoD contractor has only a military and business objective - in that particular case, it requires one to be...well, OBJECTIVE.

We may not agree with how the Saudis do things at home, but by the same token, it is THEIR law and THEIR business. Anyone with a tiny bit of intelligence would know that the Saudis are a hugely important ally to the West in MENA and you simply hold your nose about some of the things they do to keep that relationship open and workable. Anyone who actually KNOWS anything about KSA also knows that some of the most security-critical contracts go to Canadian companies - as the DID trust us...until the advent of the Trudiots. One must also remember that Saudi nationals/citizens are not captives, they live in or leave a KINGDOM (not a democracy) where they get negative taxation and can live a very fine lifestyle by simply following the rules. Pretty much the same deal aboriginals get in Canada. This probably rates as the biggest diplomatic screw-up on the plant this year, maybe this decade.

That may have been an observation by Bush, but hardly revealing the behind-the-scenes conspiracy to define the case for war. I get to discuss this with one of my closest friends, a US DoD Prime Contractor and RMOA member. He is bluntly honest and candid, and has never indicated any such thing at all. One of my close friends is a US DoD Prime Contractor, and now member of RMOA. We have discussed Iraq at great length (as it has considerable implications to his business and some lawsuits filed against DoD). Any nonsense about "stabilizing oil price" has never come up. The Iraqi petro infrastructure was, and still is too disfunctional to have any significant impact on global crude markets.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/potlotek-chief-tired-of-waiting-for-government-to-fix-water-woes-irish-company-brewal-1.4293042 The Irish company that went to Potlek at their own expense demonstrated very simple, inexpensive technology and equipment that could reduce the iron and manganese to well within federal drinking water standards was shuffled aside. I assume that the bottom line is that they weren't using the "appropriate" engineering and consulting companies (i.e. not those who are...let's just say FRIENDLY....to the federal bureaucrats). Chief Marshall is probably going to go it on his own with the Irish guy(s). This is typical of reserves all across the country - and also true of a lot of small communities. While a reserve may SHOW 2 or 3 thousand members on treaty day, reality is that most of them do not actually live on reserve. Most are actually very small communities in very remote places (as with many dying Western farm towns) and the cost of full scale water treatment is way out of proportion to what we see in big cities. Problem is: few engineering companies know how to scale down the facilities - and one of the big roadblocks is they don't have particulate media filter beds that can backwash properly (which the Irish company DOES). We have encountered similar stories of completely ridiculous and seemingly incompetent behaviour by the feds in foreign locations. It's all about the providers being "on the bandwagon" that seems to be steered by government employees that, well, you know - just seem to be living a lot better lifestyle than their pay stubs suggest is possible. The Libs are masters at the scams of public money, but the Trudeau #2 bunch have literally no idea of the politics of the countries outside of Canada, nor for that matter, the politics and realities INSIDE of Canada. Just their own twisted politically correct, mindless agenda.

Not too stupid, too Liberal/liberal. Yeah, I guess you are right, same - same.

South Africa is simply reverting to being the same kind of country that is typical of almost ALL of sub-Saharan Africa. Tribalism, corruption and a flagrant disregard for property, life and liberty. Apartheid was one of the best things to ever happen to that place. The leftover whites are those whose families have been there for many generations and can't "go back" anywhere. They can seldom sell their land, and now may not be able to sell ANYTHING at all! https://qz.com/africa/1218309/south-africa-to-take-land-without-compensation-as-zimbabwe-backtracks-on-seizing-white-farms/ When the first whites got to Africa, they did not find any advanced culture with science, libraries, universities, representative government - just a bunch of savages killing each other off and taking each other's property. I am not being racist, I am being realist.

That is pretty much rhetorical. Obviously, Canadians ARE stupid - we elected Trudeau and his band of politically correct morons.

I think your tinfoil hat is a little tight today.

Uh....this is an internet political forum. It is all nothing but noise.

The one who in one of his few moments of clarity declined to send troops to Iraq. Same one who campaigned against free trade, then signed off on NAFTA once he got into office (his other brief moment of clarity and good governance).

I seem to remember an excellent decision by YOUR PM NOT to send troops to Iraq. Let's not confuse the politics North of 49 with those on the other side of the border. The politics of Iraq - and the whole of the Middle East are a lot more complicated than which tin pot dictator did the Yanks support. But, due to rabid sectarianism, to some extent Iraq DID bring So Damn Insain on themselves. On the "refugee" topic: I still think the drama queen in charge missed the ultimate opportunity by not housing all of them on reserves. After all, the crown already owns the land and it would give the "refugees" (actually "invitees" if we want to be precise) a true taste of what it means to be Canadian. It would also give our aboriginal population a true taste of what it means to be Liberal. BTW: I seem to remember somone's perfect definition of a socialist: someone who is glad to give you the shirt of his back - as long as it is not HIS shirt.

Let's get one thing perfectly straight: NO "sane" person intentionally kills another human being (with the exception of assisted suicide). The problem is trying to predict WHICH mentally ill person will do what things outside of our frame of ethical and moral standards. What is troubling is when any particular group, religion, organization, movement, government, etc. champions the cause of murder for their purposes. THIS is why people from the "right" point out the very open proclamations of fundamentalist Islam to kill infidels. I can not say whether exposure of the Danforth killer to radical Islam (which it seems he DID have) was "the" trigger that allowed his mental illness to express itself by murdering innocent strangers, but it is equally wrong to dismiss that as one possible contributing factor. One could follow this line of reasoning to understand how the greater the exposure to immoral behaviour, the more the bar of what is acceptable can be lowered. Honour killings in many cultures, and of course the Holocaust are perfectly good examples of WHY it is appropriate to call into question anyone or anything that promotes and gives credence to murder. The more it is expressed, the more it becomes a credible alternative to achieve some stated goal.

Our sick care system is not that far from workable. The idea of universal insurance is fine, but problem is too much of the population doesn't pay ANYTHING for tax to support sick care. In the rest of the old G7 nations, except the US, private delivery lives side by side with public delivery, as does public payment for private service alongside of unrestricted access to private service on your own nickel. Even in the US, something over half of the total population is covered by medicare, medicaid, VA or government employment sick care benefits. Where the problem comes is how practice medicine. It is for the most part a rather ignorant practice of trying to drug everyone to death. I refer to it as sick care, since there is little money there for anyone until you are ill or injured, at which time everyone conspires to drug the shit out of you. The other thing they are busy doing (especially in the US) is administering piles of excessive testing and treatment as a prophylactic to potential liability. I estimate over half of US medical costs are due to lawyers and insurance companies milking the system for hundreds of billions a year. We do some of that, because we are too close to them. What we do a little bit is health care. There is little better than the Canada Food Guide at providing a trusted and accurate source of basic nutritional information. We need to do a lot more nutritional and lifestyle education. I would like to see some of this funded by fat tax - let's put the costs directly on those foods and people who create much of the cost. Most of all, spend the effort and bux to keep people OUT of the sick care system - where they become REALLY expensive. Realistically, all Ford can do is help to steer the whole boat in a smarter direction by at best a few degrees.

It is one thing to make a fuss over funding Catholic schools, but it really makes me think of the whole business of funding unionized monopolies on education. THAT is really far more offensive to me, and far more dangerous at giving children an extremely biased view of the world. Most kids can figure out that the religion stuff is total BS, but the left-leaning version and agenda of education-by-trade-union is a bit more subtle.

Thanks for an informative post. I salute your choice.

We DO "take care of the domestic market". At least in some regions, Canadian refineries are a major source for US as well as domestic markets (for instance, Irving is HUGE exporter to New England areas). Ontario has Sarnia with no US equivalent just across the border (yet, one being built in Michigan - first in US since 1976). If government of any kind want to do something positive, it would be to block shipments of dilbit and require that only synthetic crude be exported. But, Ottawa is too busy looking for more terrorists to immigrate to bother with energy issues and our future.