Politics and Press

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

Canada

Global Warming hits home

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The has never been more dramatic proof of the threat of global warming than what  has happened on the west coast of Canada this winter. Here it is February 20 and Vancouverites are faced with all the consequences.  The cheery tree are in full bloom on the streets, and the leaves leaves smudge marks on parked cars.  The sound of lawnmowers has awakened the  hibernating animals, coming two months early out of  their burrows,  to see what’s up this early in the day.  And the gras iss unusually thick due to sudden surge of too warm sun.  After working up a sweat from the hand-mowing  work, it is an old tradition  to take a run down to the beach for a swim, and many are doing that only to find the lifeguards are not on duty. and red warn ing flags are waving.  The water is nevertheless refreshing if dangerous .  The orcas have shown up much  earlier than usual in the bay and we are all delighted  to see more than the usual little ones following Mama around.  And the skiers, bereft of snow in the local mountains, have to drive north for an hour and half before hitting the powdery slopes.  Frustrating it is too for those who like to shovel snow or push a snow blower, as they must seek some other form of exercise.

People who have had to travel east or to the high arctic come back with  a different story.  It’s hard to believe but they say that it hasn’t been nearly as warm and green out east.  No doubt as a piece of satire, the New York Times claimed that the mayor of New York closed the city subway system down one day in advance of  a two-inch snowfall, fearful that  the white stuff would fill the subway tunnels.  The mayor of Winnipeg offered him a week’s vacation there to clear his mind, but he has not had a reply.  And the Peg has always been the place for the true winter fans.

Where Juniors become Seniors

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In the great world of men’s ice hockey, the results in the World Junior (Under 20) Championship that is now going on in Toronto and Montreal both confirm and rattle the previously  understood natural order of things among elite national teams.    While it is true that three of the four teams that will meet in the semifinals  have long belonged to that elite (Sweden, Canada, Russia), it is the surprising rise of new entrants to the quarter finals – Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland –  and  the quick exit  of former occasional pretenders to the throne  that has  hockey fans reflecting on the future.  There seems to be no obvious reason other than ongoing decline for the collapse of last year’s champion, Finland, as well as formerly perennial challengers, the  Czech Republic  and the USA in this tournament that can be used to predict the future of the upcoming men’s national teams..   Suggestions   by veteran US hockey commentators that  the Yanks, who were quite easily knocked out in the quarterfinals for the second straight year by a pretty  unconvincing Russian squad, may have been  because the largely college-based players   felt sorry for their Russians because of the sad state of their country at the moment must be taken with a grain of salt.  The more likely reason is that the attempt to turn hockey in the US into a college-based minor league, much like football, playing out of  hockey-mill colleges, particularly in the Boston area, is a failure for obvious reasons.  Hockey demands well-trained team work and students at Boston College, Boston University, Tuffs, Harvard, etc  (which seem to make up a serious percentage of the US payers), can’t spend all of their time practicing,as football players can .

The Russians traditionally play unpredictably in early relatively unimportant matches (they tied Denmark), but not in the ones that count against Sweden or Canada.  So don’t be surprised if the Russians  look like a different team against Sweden in the semi-final and face a Canadian squad in the final that has been untouchable so far.  Most commentators still believe that Canada has too much depth  to be considered an underdog to Russia this time, but it is a virtual guarantee that this final would be one of the best hockey games played this year.  And don’t put too much  money against Russia.  If Sweden meets Slovakia in the bronze-medal game, don’t be surprised if the totally undervalued Slovaks, who have the best goalie in the tournament and have been playing with great passion, don’t upset the rather  lackadaisical-seeming Swedish squad.

Who would have thunk it?

 

Keeping the home fires burning

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In a seemingly desperate attempt to dispel the conventional image of Canada as a splendid place to live, but unfortunately a really boring place unless you are being attacked by a herd of grizzlys or a lone wolf. its self-apponted national newspaper, The Toronto Globe and Mail, affectionally known as the Maple Leaf Rag, brought excitement to its front page on Wednesday, Dec 3 by boldly confronting proposed changes in the national film industry.
Now in film history Canada may be best known for allowing its cities to be dandied up to pose as US cities in schlock films and tv series, or for developing a series of brilliant directors almost all of whom are French-speaking Quebeckers. But during the Christmas holidays its signature brand is such a minimalist idea that much of the world now is threatening to copy it as it reflects a more simple way of life.  In Sweden they spend the holidays looking at Donald Duck films, in Norway at lampposts, in Germany grotesque quizzes, but in Canada they look at logs burning cheerily in a fireplace and have done so for a long time. There they are – a bunch of logs peacefully burning away in a pleasant log cabin room where all the grizzlys are outside longingly staring in through the becurtained windows.

But all things, even the most successful and exciting ones, must come to an end and the producers of this classic show have announced that the fire itself will be updated by being filmed anew in high definition. No major changes in the plot will take place, but the hand that occasionally comes in and pokes at the logs will have to be refilmed  and strife has broken out between the chap who originally provided the hand 20 years ago and  young whippersnappers who feel they should now be given the chance to poke away. And the flannel shirt itself that is visible above the hand will have to be replaced by a new flannel shirt  that  reflects more modern tastes in flannel shirt colours.  It remains to be seen whether these deeply disturbing problems can be resolved peacefully, but there is no doubt that The Toronto Globe and Mail has done the print media a real service by drawing this to the readers’ attention on its front page, thus ensuring an even larger audience in front of the tv fireplace this holiday season.

Canada joins up

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No doubt it was no big story out in the big world when Canada’s ruling conservative government – with both main opposition parties opposing – announced last week that they would seven jets to the Middle East, as well as small number of elite troops as advisors,  to join the US-led t multi-national attempt to stop ISIS from taking control of a large swath of the Middle East, murdering many thousands of civilians on their way. After all a number of other NATO countries had already done so, some middleweights – Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, along with Australia, and a number of smaller Middle East countries,- along with supposed NATO heavyweights like Germany, the UK and France, even Turkey, although its motives seem very complicated and unclear.

A number of these countries, including Canada, refused to join the US campaign in Iraq 15 years ago, and it seems certain that none of them regret that decision. So what has changed , since it’s also clear that, at least in Canada, a majority of the pubic support the decision to send in jets against ISIS in 2014?   It seems certain that the main difference is that, while  for many back then there was wide-spread skepticism (as it turned out completely justified) about US claims that the Iraqui government had devastating weapons that it was ready to employ, while there is no question at all about whether ISIS has tremendous military and monetary resources – much of it stolen from deserting opposition armies – and is capable of using it in the most brutal fashion. There is also a religious element this time – ISIS threatens and kills the remaining Christians and other minority religious and ethnic groups.  This time is also a domestic one – ISIS ha successfully recruited its killers in all the western countries involved in the coalition and has threatened violence against these same countries. Canada is in this one, whether it like it or not.

if you go down to the beach this evening

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If you go down to the beach this evening you will find the antidote to the seemingly never-ending series of miserable stories of life around the globe at this point in history. Here in Vancouver you will find many thousands of people along the 20 kilometers of public shoreline that stretch from Stanley Park through downtown to the University of British Columbia. Hundreds of them will be in the water, kids will be dashing about on the rafts, still after all these decades trying to push other kids over the side, girls screaming unconvincingly, boys responding to the challenge  as they always have, many sailboats, some racing,  are out in the harbour, 15 container ships lay at anchor until a spot opens at the industrial port beyond Stanley Park, other megaships waiting for their turn at the the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool quays, a couple of regal cruise ships will come sailing by at supper time on their way to Alaska, whole fleets of paddle boarders will come floating by, further out there are kayakers and even a few canoeists.

And look at this – fathers are playing with their kids , as they used to do but supposedly don’t do any more, mothers try to keep the kids in acceptable flock formation, life guards  guard life and row rowboats. ice cream trucks are playing their seductive songs as they move about, concession stands deliver hot dogs, there are a couple of dozen different languages in use around barbecues and there are no police in sight anywhere .  The sunset behind the snow-covered mountains is fabulous. Mensch was willst du noch mehr.

Obama: Everyman’s Whipping Boy

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O-Bama, O-Bama, Wherefore Art Thou?

That is the question that many of us ask, but when we do we must also ask: what kind of country has the U.S. become and why are we unhinged in so very fundamental ways.  The previous entry on this blog by my pals from the friendly North is representative of what seems to me to be a lack of understanding (or empathy? God help us) of just what it is we are suffering through down here in the arid, thought-deficient South.

But let’s begin with our Northern pals’ comments. Right out of the chute (a Calgary rough rider reference, we should note) they wonder whether Obama is the least trusted president in recent memory. As my old Mom would have said, “are you kidding me? have you gone bonkers?” There was for instance “W” and his merry gang of thieves and eejits, led by the estimable Vice, Cheney. All they did was torture people all over the planet, with the help of countries like Germany – just to name one-  start a war on a lie (aided in a somewhat clumsy perhaps accidental way by German Intel), kill ca. 4500 NATO troops (most American but also Canadians, Germans etc.), kill ca 100,000+++ Iraqis, send 200,000+ Iraqis into refugee status, and empower a Shia dictator-to-be to screw Sunnis and Kurds in  whatever way he can thus producing a seemingly perpetual civil war which we are now – too late again – recognizing as a – well, problem.  I could go back further to Reagan and his criminal work with the Contras and Iran, or even Nixon – remember him? Trustworthy guys, eh?

Then we have the concern that Canada – our best friend to the north of us – supposedly moving away from us with the indisputable fact that our ambassadors are not top drawer. Without making a huge point of it, Bush appointed former Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci as ambassador and frankly his best strength was his wife, a bright, articulate librarian at Boston College before she agreed to sacrifice a life in a real city for duty in Ottawa. Fact is that Canada has not had a real U.S. Ambassador for over thirty years and even then they got a guy with blood on his hands. And I do not here discuss the Keyspan pipeline, aka, the Pipe of American Death and Canadian Profit.

And yes, we are reluctant to build a bridge from Detroit to Windsor – but is Obama to blame? I remind those who live in a Parliamentary political system that we have a system of “checks and balances” which has ensured in this time that nothing can ever happen. We live in a Kafka novel.  It is not fair to blame Obama for the failures of a Republican party that has decided not to participate in governance. I know not whether it is because he is black or a democrat or just whether the republicans have drunk the kool aid — what i know is that nothing happens, nothing can be done, and every bad fking thing that happens in the world is presented as the fault of the black American Democrat – and democratically elected – – president.  When considering anything that involves expenditures of federal money always look at congress and specifically the House of Representatives.. They have broken my country and are traitors to the core interests of our country.

Now, onto the unpleasant fact that we are listening to everyone’s phone calls and reading everyone’s emails, including Frau Merkel’s….On one level it is simple to say that of course we spy on Germany  – they are an important player – and that is what intel services do. Alas there are issues of trust – and issues of competence.. When i read about the spying on Merkel I thought that – well – ok, but why are you listening to MY calls and reading MY emails? Obama has clearly been sucked into the security organizations’ thinking and that is not a good reflection on his judgment. The CIA has – at best – a questionable record and that a President with a background in constitutional law would do what he has done is more than very troubling.

But for we who live in this country the mood of the people is more troubling. There is a strange and nasty beast out there and it is ignorant, stupid, lazy and ugly and it blames Obama for everything wrong in its  world. So more of this in the future. More on President Obama’s failures, Congress’s complicity, and the failure of the American people to grasp and deal with reality. It is, alas, a rich subject.

 

Obama’s Stunde Null

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Is Obama trying to become the least trusted president of the US in recent memory? If he is, he doing a very good job of it. Just in the last couple of months he has managed to alienate many of his formerly most reliable friends, none worse than Germany, although Canada would also have a good case of feeling most offended. Perhaps the Canadian irritations seem to be small matters, but they have certainly added up, and do nothing to bring about any sense of harmony among the second and third largest countries on earth, not to mention a feeling of solidarity in North America. There is no doubt that Canada is quickly drawing away from its long-standing position of being a close ally of its smaller southern neighbour, whose arrogance in such matters as the naming of ambassadors, the paying of obviously-due bills, the willingness to co-operate on border issues, and the inability of Washington to understand that spying on your friends and neighbours is considered unacceptable by respected governments, and the simple absence of courtesy visits is simply rude by Canadian standards. The two US ambassadors to Canada appointed by Obama have both been non-diplomat bagmen for Democrats with no experience in foreign affairs or for that matter in Canada. The US seems to be unwilling to pay for the building and maintenance of a new border crossing on the desperately needed new bridge to Canada near Detroit, but has plenty of money for drones cruising along the once so-called longest unarmed border in the world. The almost total absence of visits by the Candian Prime Minister to Washington and the US president to ottawa does nothing to dispel the feeling that these two countries are not getting along well.
But the situation with regard to Germany has deteriorated even more rapidly. Any North American liviing in Germany has long had the feeling that the Germans basically ten d to look at eh US through rose-oloured glasses, no doubt because of the US eole in t he Second World War and its aftermateh. (These same German almost never know anything about the role of Canada , whose army played a major part in the D-Day invasion and fought its way on its own through northern France and the Netherlands.) But that good will has almost been destroyed by the revelations about Washington’s tapping of phones of the leaders of government there, including the private cell phone of Prime Minister Merkel, who seemed honestly taken aback by this revelation . As she was brought up in the DDR, she is more or less the last person on earth who has to be reminded of the awful reaction of citizens who hear that their private communications have been listened to by threatening governments, in this case a foreign one. And now the head of the CIA in Berlin has been kicked out of Germany as the proof of illegal spying that came out of his office continues to widen . What birdbrains allowed this to happen? did they really think the Germans, by far the central power of Europe. would take this affront without acting? And there we can see it: Merkel talking with Putin in Rio about the Ukrainian situation, which has left the US once again all at sea, German Foreign Minister Steinmeyer icily confronting an outmatched US Foreign Minister Kerry in Vienna. It’s all unnecessary, if there were only some sense of diplomatic skill coming out of Washington . But there isn’t and we shall see what the consequences are of such amateur behaviour.

 

On a winter day in Hogtown

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A sort time ago, during the first week of January , and in the midst of the peak travel time of the New Year, Canada’s largest city, Toronto, got a bit of a wintry blast,  nothing out of the ordinary in northern climes. All airports from Yellowknife to Murmansk stayed open and were not severely affected by this rather normal winter weather up here in the north. Except one – Pearson International in Toronto, by far the largest one in Canada, the fourth largest in North America and a  crucial one for flights going in and out for much of North America.  Now the powers that be at Pearson – and the CEO of the now semi-privatized airport was in Edmonton at the time and made his decisions on the basis of phone calls  (Edmonton Airport of course remained open)  decided  that Pearson Toronto could handle international flights but not domestic ones.  His subsequent explanation was that it was slippery and cold out there for his workers and the pilots  had to drive their planes carefully into loading docks, causing delays.  The result, of course, was chaos.  Canadians could indeed arrive at Pearson Airport from far-off places but then could not travel on to Canadian destinations, in some cases for 3 or 4 days as traffic backed up.  Montreal’s Trudeau  airport remained open of course but could not send its scheduled flights on to Toronto, causing chaos in Montreal, which made for good business for trains and busses, which of course travelled normally, but there weren’t enough of them to handle the increasingly restless crowds.   Officials at Vancouver Airport could only look on in astonishment as planes failed to arrive from the east, and sent many of its thousands of daily international travellers off to Asia without their luggage,  as chaos ruled the  luggage routes to Asia.

Finally on Saturday, 10 days after these exciting events, the most Canadian of all explanations came in.  Mr. Vijay Kanwar, the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority apologized in a full-page ad in the Globe that probably cost as much as the wages of the workers who were ready to take on the cold and ice  for “the  inconvenience  that passengers and their families  experienced during last week’s extreme weather conditions” .  And he also announced  the most Canadian solution to such a problem  – “the board of Directors has established anad hoc committee to review last week’s events, which will “conclude its work within 90 days and share it findings with the public”.  And these guys speak  of my brother and me as hosers.  They are still laughing in Inuvik about “the extreme weather conditions” that Hogtown couldn’t deal with.  Why even the Maple Leafs made it to the rink and played under such conditions.  Don’t ask about the result.

Bob and Doug and Uncle Rob and Doug and what it means to be a real hoser

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Ace foreign correspondent of  the Mackenzie Brothers Network Wally Balloo, or possibly Artie Schermarhorn – it was impossible to determine precisely who was reporting, as both had called in simultaneously though they were both inexcusably behind schedule – reports from Toronto, Canada, that Bob and Doug McKenzie’s uncles Rob and Doug, bigger than life mayor and largest city councilor of Canada’s  largest city, have been dramatically displaying why  its previous name, Hogtown, was indeed well-considered.

My brother and I find outrageous Big Uncle Rob’s defence of smoking crack, drinking to oblivion and then driving home, knocking over a fellow female councilor while exiting the chambers in a huff and, worst of all, using a word on live tv  – for God’s sake  he spake that on the CBC  from the chambers of office – which shocked and stunned all those daytime voyeurs who would otherwise be watching Coronation Street  – that dare not be spoken – think of a little kitty cat – unless it is the name of a trio of Russian girls desecrating a church in Moscow, in which  case it is excellent , or one of those cutesy Bond girls with lots of hair, in which  case it’s funny and fabulous, and shows how nasty the Russkies are.  In some quarters he has even allowed himself to be called the biggest hoser of them all, a title that my brother and I have shared without interruption since those legendary  good old days of yore when we sat in front of cases of  Molson Canadian and waxed on about the state of Canuck culture.

Meanwhile our Central European correspondent Word Carr, winner of 16 diction prizes  just reported that Uncle Rob and his pals, after creating such mayhem that Toronto suddenly found itself in the centre of international interest, finally proved to be died-in-the-wool Canadians by ordering takeaay poutine (not Putin as most Amurcan listeners thought they had heard) for a final meal My brother and I have decided that such  unverified rumour-mongering reportage is unworthy of a veteran  reporter and Mr. Carr has been assigned to our Guam bureau.

 

 

Canucks cruise into offshore power

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September was one of the finest months for Canadians to demonstrate their rising power in the arena of foreign politics. The US government has shut down through the monty pythonish behaviour of  the so-callled pillars of democracy. John Cleese, where are you when the Ministry of Silly Walks would represent a  a crucial place  of stability and order in the otherwise dysfunctional pecking order of Washington D.C.?  I’ll tell you where you could ussefully demonstrate your walks.   Take a stroll  on the floor of the US Senate for 25 hours with Canadian-born Senator Tom Cruz, an expat Canadian currently living in Texas.   You could follow him as he paced about telling  you everything he knows about the awful socialist, maybe even Commie health care system in his northern  homeland, where every citizen – even Cruz, should he ever visit his homeland  – has the absolute right to free medical care, no matter who they are and what they earn.  And amazingly, he seems to know absolutely  nothing and says he didn’t even realize he was a citizen of another country, which disqualifies him from becoming US president.  He also says that he is ready  to replace President Obama, but looks like foreign affairs won’t be his strong suit.  Instead he rambled on about everything under  the sun except the tiny little step towards some sort of sanity that Obamacare would bring to the  the US medical system, which  as it is is adequate  for most of the middle and great for the upper class and non-existent for something like 45 million US citizens, who have no insurance at all if  they have any medical problem.

Meanwhile in another election in a far-off universe, the people of the Republic of Austria went to the polls, and gave a new party named after and led by Canadian auto-parts magnate Frank Stronach almost 10% of the vote.  His main strength  seemed to lie in the feeling that anybody from  a place like Canada would have to be a better leader than anyone currently involved in the chaotic dysfunctional political climate of the splendid imperial city of Vienna.   As if to prove the point, the major  right wing party received 21 % of the vote in Austria while the one with similar views on immigration and the European Union in Germany   received an almost invisible  percentage of the votes in last month’s German election, coming nowhere near the 5%  needed for entering parliament. So what do we make of it.  In a single month  a Canadian wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, another one  becomes a political force to be reckoned with in Austria, and a third one is a major mover and shaker  in the self-inflicted shutdown of the US government and considers himself to be a dark horse shot for President.  Watch out!   From Vienna to Stockholm to Washington D.C.  The Canuck are coming, the Canucks are coming!  If only they would take on Ottawa next.