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I’ve learned so much from your writings over the years & greatly appreciate your deep knowledge of history always shared with such interesting perspectives including a touch of humor or incongruity. This is a fascinating account. King Darius was quite the innovator & not at all immodest! I wonder how De Lesseps may have interpreted Lady Liberty, possibly quite differently.

Unsurprisingly, you found a way to slip in a nod to art in this edition via Monet & Caillebotte. ;)

I really appreciated your reply to the remarks of Doug DeLaMatter wherein you discuss you work to rid the world of land mines.

And the memes were fun, especially Bernie! Thanks for another great newsletter!

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The Suez Canal plays a surprising role in Canadian political history. In 1956, a diplomat, Lester B. Pearson was central in defusing an international conflict by convincing the UN to establish their first "Peacekeeping Force". Eventually this led to his Nobel Peace Prize and to the job of Prime Minister of Canada. Of course the details are a lot messier than our national memory of the events. A good summary (and much more detail) is available here: http://www.suezcrisis.ca/summary.html

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Thank you, Doug. The Suez crisis is always fascinating reading and not to be missed by anyone interested in international relations. This is an interesting article, and I hope many will read it. Lester Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Many years later, in the late 1990s, I have worked intensively with many Canadians that were leading the worldwide efforts to rid the world of Landmines. I have always been impressed how Canadian diplomacy, in very close cooperation with the NGOs of the ICBL, was so effective that it led to the Ottawa Convention to ban landmines. As you know, the ICBL and Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work. Now that I moved to Canada some 20 years later, I loved it that I immediately received invitations to meet my Canadian (NGO and government) friends from those days.

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Good morning Alexander it's a sunny day today. I enjoyed stepping into your Suez Canal time capsule this morning and learning how the canal came into existence. Ismael Pasha stands out for me because he ended the forced labor, by changing to better technics; The Steam Engines that already had been in use. Technology came to the rescue in earlier days. Now lets see (and wait) how the Suez Canal's sticky problem is going to be solved. It's a inconvenience of truly global proportion. Bravo, a wonderful read.

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Thank you, Marian, glad that you enjoyed it. There is a lot of hopeful news from the Boskalis team in Egypt this morning

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I just now saw the live video on AP: The container ship in the Suez Canal is now freed and moving after six days (-:

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