Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Mackenzie Brothers

Why Europe doesn’t work

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At the very moment while most of the world leaders were in New York to spout wisdom – are some of them for real or was this an audition for a B horror film? – and wax on about climate change,etc – only the Prime Minister of the Maldive Islands was convincing – over in Europe the lackeys of three of the supposed major enlightened states plus a few minnows were busy casting a vote that showed what farcical members of the so-called united nations they are. It was a rather small matter unless you take saving the ecology of the world to be something other than some sort of hippy conspiracy, but it underlined how hopelessly anti-social and greedy some extremely prosperous European powers are.

It only had to do with one of those fish species that are going to disappear in European waters if maritime nations continue to allow their fisherfolk to wipe out every living thing they can get their nets around. But it is a big fish – the bluefin tuna – that is noticeable by its presence as well as its absence. And the bluefins are returning in numbers to the waters of the Canadian maritime provinces where last year only one-fifth of the catch was allowed compared to that taken in European waters. Fish biologists all agree – if the Europeans continue to savage their bluefin population, it will be gone within a decade at the latest, so the European Union had an easy choice in its recent vote on the matter – stop all bluefin tuna fishing immediately. And so the vote went for the great majority of the EU members. But not for all, and the EU constitution demands unanimity.

One could perhaps understand why Cyprus and Malta voted to put the immediate livelihood of their fishermen over that of their future, though their vetoes certainly underline the absurdity of the EU constitution. But the small island nations didn’t have to worry about the reaction of that part of the world that is actually worried about the environment to their nihilistic votes. For in New York, the governments of super-prosperous France, Spain and Italy no doubt spouted on about their dedication to saving the world, but in Brussels they also vetoed the bluefin resolution, thus condemning one of the premier fish just hanging on in European waters. Shameful isn’t the word we’re looking for, but what is?

Tales of the Real Wild West

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Remember the old Monty Python skit where Michael Palin and the boys dressed up in checkered shirts and Mounty uniforms and sang about their desire to be tough British Columbians until Michael began waxing on about his desire to dress up as a girlie while at it. Those were the good old days of satire before Mike started rambling around the world in his career as a travel raconteur. That skit gave British Columbia a kind of pseudo-tough comic veneer where tough guys in a harsh environment turned out to be anything but that.

But there were a series of adventures of young lads and lassies this summer which brought home just how tough this magnificent place can really be. Take the 3-year old kid who was camping with his parents in June near the banks of the mighty Peace River way up in the north and decided to drive his toy truck into the river. His panicked parents had no idea what happened to him but three hours later and 20 kilometers downstream a fisherman saw what he thought was a bald-headed eagle (the kid was a towhead) floating down the river on a log. It turned out to be our lad sitting on his overturned truck, and in good shape, other than a mild case of hypothermia, after the fisherman swam out and got him, .

Next came the 2-year old lad camping with his parents on the Yukon border who wandered away into the bush, causing an all-out search and rescue mission which found nothing for 3 days. On the fourth day a heat-seeking helicopter located him, and searchers found him asleep under a bush, encircled by what turned out to be a stray dog who had found him before the helicopter. He too had only mild hypothermia. The parents adopted the dog.

Then there was the 6-year old girl who was sitting near her fisherman father on a dock in Vancouver when a seal leaped up, grabbed her arm and dragged her under the water. The father managed to beat the seal off in an underwater struggle and the daughter emerged with some bites, scratches and mild hypothermia. Finally there was the 10-year old girl hiking with her mother a couple of hundred meters behind the men in the family when a cougar jumped on her and dragged her off the trail, only to be driven off by an irate Mom. Scratches, puncture wounds, no hypothermia.

It can still be mighty tough out there as today’s papers confirmed with their report of the bow hunter up north who was hoping to bag a black bear with his bow and arrow and instead got jumped from behind by a silently attacking grizzly with three cubs in tow. Pinned under the great beast he did the only thing he could imagine doing. He pulled out an arrow from his quiver, and stabbed the grizzly, who then retreated, in the throat. No word on the state of the bear; the archer suffered puncture wounds, cuts and extreme nervousness, but is back on the trail today.

So take that Michael Palin.

A Tale of Two Immigrants

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As Canada becomes more and more the place where immigrants can make their way financially with little interest paid to their backgrounds, a German and an Austrian have hogged the headlines of late, and for diametrically opposed reasons. It used to be that “the American dream” was an understood concept that suggested that anyone entering US society had the chance to reach any goal, even to become president, and the election of Barack Obama suggested that that dream is still alive. However the way he is being treated by what seems to be a significant (majority?) part of the population as he attempts to make his dreams a reality, suggest that this assumption might be seriously misplaced.
Meanwhile, north of the border, where a health care system is in place that is being attacked in the US parliament in extraordinarily ignorant ways, an Austrian immigrant, who arrived in Canada with $200 in his pocket, has just bought a well-known car brand , Opel, the European version of GM cars, as he tries to fulfill his long dream of manufacturing his own cars in Canada. Frank Stronach, who transformed his tiny savings into a multi-billion dollar car-parts business and whose daughter came close to becoming Prime Minister, is given a good chance of actually doing this by economists, thugh he has been hamstrung by having sales to the US and China blocked. By and large, Canadians wish him well.
The deportation two weeks ago of Karl-Heinz Schreiber, on the other hand, an immigrant from Germany, was met with a collective sigh of relief. He managed to lead Canadian legal experts, law enforcement folks and immigration officials on a decade-long merry chase through the sleaze left by carefully-leaked documents that left a former prime minister as well as an apparently grotesquely incompetent legal system flailing in hopeless panic. He apparently was having a good time for a whole decade as the country squirmed uncomfortably and could not figure out how to get rid of him. His absence is as welcome as is the presence of Frank Stronach.

Is the European Union collapsing?

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There was a time not long ago when optimists mused on the possibility that Europe under the flag of the European Union headquartered in Brussels might soon be a kind of United States of Europe. It would function as a large national unity built out of what once had been independent parts. In short it would become something like the USA or perhaps even more like Canada which likes to admire itself as a successful mosaic rather than as a version of the US melting pot.

In one important way, that has happened. It is now less of a hassle to drive from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea than it is from Detroit to Windsor. The border guards and custom bullies have disappeared and no one will ask you for a passport as you cross borders that once made you think twice before attempting to cross them, as the US border does now.

But in a deeper sense the European Union is proving to be an impossible quagmire of special interest groups and local bureaucracies, especially now that the current economic crisis has made clear which economies were built on a house of cards, really on a kind of pyramid scheme. This applies to almost all the East European countries once strangled by Soviet hegemony – Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania – who all got into the EU on the assumption that their economies would continue to grow, and now are on the edge of bankruptcy, or following the lead of non-EU Iceland, have actually gone bankrupt. But that also applies to former Celtic tiger Ireland, which spent money like a drunken sailor in the supposed good times, and now is in desperate need of help from Mother Brussels which is reluctant to give it. The Irish, showing their independence streak, held a referendum on the proposed new constitution of the EU last year, and turned it down, leaving the ship adrift without a captain, since the constitution must have the unanimous approval of 27 countries. On October 2, they will vote again on the issue, and no one expects them to turn it down again since the EU is now seen as the cow waiting to be milked. Needless to say the East European countries will also approve this constitution in the hope that the have countries like Germany, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark will be forced to give financial support to the have-nots. But it is now a very good question whether such a referendum, if held, would gain approval from the citizens of the economic powers themselves.

Whiting out the USA

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According to last week’s New York Times, the US Homeland Security folks have ordered the guards at their new border station in Massena, New York – across from Cornwall, Ontario – to whitewash – erase -the name United States from the side of their building, as they consider the name itself to make it a security threat. The Montreal Gazette then wrote that the word “paranoid” no longer suffices to describe the US border policy, “surreal” is the right word.

Can it really be that such a great and powerful country whose own border it is supposedly defending is afraid to name itself? Can anyone imagine Romania or Bulgaria, both of which are now easier for Canadians to enter than the USA is, giving out such an order to their border guards? Is the lady who not long ago announced that the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada still in charge of Homeland Security?
Please, Barack, put some people who live on this planet in charge of your borders before it is too late.

Speedo’s the name, Mr. Speedo

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Okay, hands up – How many of you were mortified by the first appearance of Sean Connery as James Bond, when, dressed in natty boxer bathing trunks, he saved the even nattier (un)dressed Ursula Andress from the clutches of Dr. No. No hands? I thought so. But how many of you caught the unwholesome sight of James’ unhappy successor, Sir John Sawers, Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, as he exited the sea on his wife’s Facebook page in his tiny Mr. Speedo bathing suit, a fashion item that has broken up many a transatlantic romance. Of course, James Bond didn’t have to contend with dangerous females who would expose him to such ridicule, only those who would cut him in two with golden laser beams.

In poor Lord Sawer’s case, however, the threat came from within as Lady Sawer, perhaps on the advice of her half-brother Lord Hugo Haig-Thomas, felt compelled to present her husband to the Facebook world in his Mr Speedo suit, in honour of the supposedly secret naming of him to be Head of the British spy agency that was run by men called m or zed in Bond’s day. We know that Sawer’s new name will be “C” because Lady Sawer’s wall also included messages like: “Congrats on the new job, already dubbed Sir Uncle “C” by nephews in the know.” It also included names and addresses of all family members and their favourite vacation spots, in case potential kidnappers had trouble finding them at home.

The British Foreign Secretary, ever alert, explained to the BBC that “It’s not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks, for goodness sake”, and promised to close the Lady’s facebook site as soon as his vast technical staff could figure out how to do it. Unfortunately those chaps did finally succeed in shutting down his wife, and you will have to click on You Tube to see the current Mr. Bond in his (almost) full splendour. Where oh where are Lords Gilbert, Sullivan and Python when you really need them?

World Economics 101

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It is time to give a surprise quiz about the state of the national economies of the world. There may still be a general understanding that, despite all negative developments of the last decade, the US still packs a powerful economic punch. But President Obama has displayed a surprising and very disappointing isolationist, fortress-America position on economics. The front page of last week’s edition of the Canadian national news magazine MacLean’s dealt with a topic that is being considered in many countries: “Obama, Why He’s bad for Canada – His ambitions could cripple our economy”. US Buy America policies have been put through by his regime, with the predictable Canadian retaliation, despite long-standing Free Trade agreements. The very big question of the future markets of Canada’s immense energy reserves is now being discussed with regard to European and especially Asian markets, with far less dependence on US markets. The result could be a blow to the economies of both the increasingly antagonistic neighbours. Last week the US Homeland Security lads forced an Air Canada plane flying from Fredericton, New Brunswick to Montréal, Quebec to turn around in mid-flight, somewhere over Maine, because a Canadian citizen was on board whom they didn’t like crossing US air space. You can’t get much less neighbourly than that.

Perhaps these are problems that can be addressed, however, and the US still produces over 30% of the world’s economy. But what about China, which garners much of the journalistic interest in trade and economy these days? How dominant has it become in that sphere? Do you think that China will soon replace the US as leading economic power? Well, think again. The fact is that China’s economy is still only one tenth the size of Japan’s, and produces less than 10% of the world’s economy. Many economists feel that India, not China, is the real rising economic power in Asia, as it reacts more flexibly to the current economic crisis and deals with it through a banking system that is much more reliable.

where you want to live

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The Economist has just published its annual ranking of 140 major cities for their livability. It’s no surprise that Vancouver, Canada’s urban showpiece on the Pacific with a matchless setting, is once again ranked first as a place to live, but it is the absence of cities – and countries – that would have been favourites not long ago which says something about how the judgment of quality of urban life has changed. Three of the first six cities are in Canada (#1 Vancouver, #4 Toronto, #6 Calgary) and 6 of the first ten are in Australia (Sidney, Melbourne and Perth) and Canada. The other four in the first ten are capital cities of middle-size European powers (#2 Vienna, Zurich, Helsinki) plus UN-centre Geneva.

Former stars like Paris (#17), Berlin (#22) or Rome (#51) no longer cut the mustard for quality of life. Countries without a history of military colonialization trump countries who came to prominence by invading neighbours and even far-off lands, and now have to live with the consequences. Countries with a current atmosphere of tolerance and with middle-power armed forces run a steadier, friendlier ship in the modern world than those with atomic weapons and nervously-guarded borders.

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The End of a German Legend

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Remember that old joke about the poor woman who got involved four times in search of Mr Right and always came away disappointed after she took up with an English cook, an Italian politician, a French engineer, and a German lover. Well the English can still eat toad in a hole and spotted dick, the Italians are on their 52nd post-war government, the French can still design subs that run into other subs in the open ocean, and the (north) Germans still get low marks as romantic types. But on March 4, 2009 the Germans lost their right to make fun of anybody else’s engineering skills. For on that day the 8-story building housing the entire archive of the historic city of Köln collapsed into a devastated pancake as if it had been blown up by explosive experts.

But it hadn’t been. It had been undermined by the construction of a new subway line, despite numerous warnings from the building’s occupants that the building was being shaken into fundamental danger by the nearby construction. The warnings were ignored and the building collapsed so quickly that it was a miracle that all the occupants of the building managed to rush out before it pancaked. It turned out that the mayor was incompetent, the engineers were hopeless, the bureaucracy had not functioned and there’s nothing more to be said about the lovers. That leaves only the archivists and the restorers to pick up the pieces, and they still seem to be competent. But those pieces are proving very difficult to find in the crushed rubble that must be bottoming out in ground water that will not even be reached for many months. Experts are now predicting that this engineering fiasco has already resulted in the destruction of many irreplaceable pieces of history going back almost 2000 years and ultimately it will prove to be the biggest disaster for German history since the bombings of World War 2.

The Coronation of Csar Michael

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As predicted two years ago by my brother, Canada’s prodigal son, Michael Ignatieff, has returned from half a lifetime of exile in London (where he taught at Cambridge and Oxford) and Boston (where he headed an institute at Harvard) to become a politician in Toronto (where he taught at the University of Toronto) and is about to be crowned leader of the Liberal Party of Canada this weekend in Vancouver, (where he taught at the University of British Columbia).

The location of the coronation is yet another stroke of luck for the neophyte politician, as he will be far from his centre of power in still wintry Ontario, where he is already showing he can win back voters lost to Conservatives in the last election – a miserable loss for the Liberals – and instead can bask in the splendid atmosphere of the world’s most beautiful city, particularly in May as it suns itself before splendid deeply snow-covered mountains and ignores its social problems of homelessness and drug-addiction as its hockey team continues its march towards a potential Stanley Cup. My brother and I, driving home from Leonard Cohen’s recent towering performance at the hockey stadium, were stopped by a chap pushing a shopping cart full of assembled collected goods, who had no intention of drawing attention to his sad economic state compared to ours, as we assumed he had, but rather just wanted to give us the thumbs up sign as he noted the same Canuck flag hanging from our window as he had flapping from his cart. Here in Vancouver hockey is the great equalizer and when that’s going well and the weather has lost its winter bluster, then everything seems better.

And so it will be with the man who will be Prime Minister within a year. Many Canadians hope he will have the international clout to finally allow Canada to punch at or above its weight in crucial global matters, like water, energy, economics and also military interventions, where it has played a far bigger role than has been demonstrated under its long string of boring, anti-charismatic prime ministers since Pierre Trudeau. Armed with his 17 books – one deals with his father’s line, that included the last minister of education of csarist Russia, and the most recent with his mother’s, that included the man who plotted the trans-Canada railway – and with extensive experience and publications (and films) on conflicts like the war in ex-Yugoslavia, Ignatieff cannot be dismissed as yet another career politician of no particular note. He has strong opinions that even turn off some of his admirers, but there is no question that figures like Presidents Obama and Medvedev will have a different reaction when they meet the next Prime Minister of Canada than they did when they met any other since Trudeau.