Arnold the Terminator was down on the Stanley Park seawall this morning at 7:00 to receive the Olympic torch from Steve Nash, run along the most spectacular urban stretch anywhere and pass it on to Sebastian Coe. By mid-afternoon it will have arrived at the spectacular new aboriginal centre awaiting the final lap to the opening ceremonies of the only world sporting even that will take place in North America in this decade. All over the city the national houses are springing up up and the most popular ones besieged. The Pub of Ireland has already down the ire of neighbours for loudness and lateness, the Swiss have turned one of the most popular restaurants in the city into an alpine retreat, the Russians have the science museum, the Dutch their Heineken House, the Germans their beer hall, the Scandinavians their shared centre to welcome their kings and queens, even the Slovakians and the Saxons have their houses.
Arnold must be representing Austria because there is no US House; the US contribution to the festival (other than the athletes, of course) is that Joe Biden will make a side trip from a fund-raising foray to Washington state, where the Democrats seemed poised to lose another election, and attend the opening ceremonies and that the Homeland Security boss who thought that the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada, will grace the closing ceremonies.
Canada
Snowless in Vancouver
As the world’s winter sport athletes begin to sharpen their skates and wax their snowboards it seems that there is a minor glitch. God forgot to deliver the snow that Canadian Prime Minister Harper ordered for Cypress Mountain, site of the snowboarding, and three of the less prestigious skiing events. God’s lapse was perhaps due to Harper’s over indulgence in proroguing. Or perhaps as punishment for Canada’s acceptance of socialized medicine and same-sex marriage. As any American can tell you, those are serious sins and Pat Robertson, the eminent American theologian, warns of God delivered earthquakes for national sin of that order of magnitude.
The International Olympic Committee chose Vancouver for its fine restaurants, coffee shops and views without adequately considering the implications of awarding the games to a godless society of beer swilling, oil sand drilling, gay supporting, socialist louts. Punishment is likely to be severe with the Russians taking the men’s hockey gold and the U.S., the women’s hockey gold. Bob and Doug will be devastated.
Proroguing – a new Canadian tradition
International reader may have some trouble making sense of the the title of this essay, since prorogue is not a commonly-understood word in normally-functioning democracies. But Steven Harper, the current Prime Minister of Canada, described this week in The Economist as a competent bureaucrat with a vicious streak (faint praise indeed) is doing his best to make it the word of the decade on his own turf. It is a British term which means to tell members of parliament their services are no longer needed until he feels it is safe for him to come out of hiding. It is a procedure not often seen in democracies that actually function with parliaments that actually do something. In a clever response the opposition liberals under Michael Ignatieff announced they would sit in the Parliamentary buildings and work for their money, and a substantial ground-root movement seems to underway to make the government pay for their disdain of Parliament at the polls.
Last year Harper prorogued parliament so that he wouldn’t have to face a vote of no-confidence that might have brought down his government. On New Year’s Eve he did it again, assuming no one would notice, since he was sitting on an increasingly hot seat as parliamentary committees tried to come to the bottom of a macabre cover-up of what Canada allowed to be done to their prisoners in Afghanistan. Journalists speculate he wanted very much to have his picture taken many times at the Olympic Games across the continent in sunny and warm Vancouver rather than sitting on the hot seat in frigid Ottawa. it also seems plausible that he felt Canadians would be in a much better mood after the hockey team wins the Gold Medal in Vancouver. God help him if Sweden – or gasp! – the USA beat the lads in their own rink, as the US Juniors did in overtime on New Year’s Day – in a spectacularly exciting game – in the world championship match in Saskatoon at minus 40 degrees.
Newfoundland geese, Nigerian bombers
Apparently the Canada geese that knocked that plane down into the Hudson river a few months ago were really from Newfoundland. Quick-thinking scientists did DNA tests on them that proved they were invaders from somewhere around l’anse aux meadows on the northern tip of the northern peninsula of the island where the Vikings once began the invasion of the Americas. For some reason this was met with a sigh of relief in certain quarters since it demonstrated that these weren’t American canadian geese. US geese apparently don’t do such things.
And now we have yet another shoe bomber/self immolator who strived mightily and unsuccessfully to commit suicide by killing 300 other folks in the process, and he too came from foreign shores. The result of this misadventure was total chaos in airports servicing the US market as security was tightened to the point of strangulation. The question is: what difference does it make where the wannabee killer came from, the result would be the same. Why have the greatest disruptions occurred at the US customs barriers at major European and Canadian airports, where security is surely better than at many domestic airports? Would the US Homeland security boss’s amazingly nutty statement some months ago that the 9/11 bombers came from Canada have anything to do with it? Canadians are amazed to still hear that urban myth when they visit the US and are even more amazed to discover Mme Napolitoni is still in charge of homeland security, though back then she had no idea how and where the 9/11 killers got on their planes.
In any case it is already clear that the only success that failed assassin will enjoy will involve the further isolation of the US because of border controls that are as useless as they are disheartening and ultimately counterproductive. Travellers are already looking around for some other place to visit and spend their money than in a place where a star-wars strip-search at the border has become a routine and legal procedure. Maybe the beaches of Cuba?
Oh Canada, where did you dig up these leaders?
It used to be that Canada punched above its weight in foreign affairs, an honest broker that could be counted on to consider options carefully before dedicating itself to finding a just solution to a difficult situation, even if it meant sending in its troops. Thus Canada entered the Second World War within a week of the Nazi invasion of Poland, more than two years before the United States did and had already suffered many thousand casualties in places like Hong Kong, Singapore and the skies over Europe by the time the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour forced the US hand. After that awful war, nowhere captured more dramatically than in the on-the-spot sketches by Canuck war artists A.Y. Jackson and Alex Colville, Canadian Prime Minister Mike Pearson got a Nobel Peace Prize that was actually deserved, for his tenacious negotiations leading to an end to the Suez crisis.
Now that hard-earned reputation risks being eradicated by a government intent on doing nothing contrary to its economic interests which is more than satisfied to follow the dictates of the super heavyweights on matters like climate change, border controls and diplomatic independence. At the Copenhagen climate change conference Canada has received the fossil of the year award, on the Afghan file, it has received a letter signed by almost 100 of its former ambassadors protesting the treatment of one of its middle-level diplomats in Kabul, who was called before parliament and publicly demeaned by the Minister of Defence for having sent a number of reports to Ottawa warning them of something that was public knowledge – that prisoners passed on to the Afghan army by Canada and other western powers were routinely tortured by the Afghans – and which Canada for a lengthy period denied before its memory improved. In China Prime Minister Harper was publicly rebuked by the Chinese president for insulting Chinese sensibilities by taking too long to come and visit, for hosting the Dalai Lama and for not having attended the Beijing Olympics. Harper also had no plans to attend the Copenhagen Climate Conference until President Obama said he would be there. It is a long way from Pearson to Harper, and it seems safe to predict that it will take a long time for Canada to repair its international image so that it can begin punching, if not as a heavyweight, at least above the flyweight class it now occupies.
Lament for a great university
Though it has not gone unnoticed, there has been too little written about the disastrous decline that must inevitably occur in one of the world’s great universities, arguably the finest state university in existence, the University of California at Berkeley. Compared to the cultivated mustiness of the elite UK universities, or the inborn snootiness of the French écoles superieurs, not to mention the artificiality and class structure of such ridiculously rich private US outposts such as “America’s McGill”, Harvard, or the somewhat seedy centres of German knowledge such as LMU München, Berkeley has long offered an almost unique mixture of intellectual intercourse and natural beauty mixed in with a splendid library and a revolutionary streak that keeps the place jumping. And that at a price normal people can afford with some belt-tightening, unlike those with tuitions of $50,00 a year, who have also coincidentally come under great financial pressure as their hedge-funded endowments have collapsed in the last year. Poor Harvard has seen its endowment sink from 40 billion Dollars to either 30 or 22 billion, depending on who you believe, a sum that does not lead to displays of sympathy at working-class Berkeley
But unless something completely unexpected happens, the budget of the University of California system will face a shortfall of 600 million dollars next year, an 8% cut from last year’s budget and by law the system cannot run in a deficit. So this staggering sum of money must be taken out of the hide of the universities themselves, and it seems that the board of Governors has decided to simply pass the pain on to everyone equally. Chico State University and many others like it will thus have the same problem as Berkeley, to somehow cut 8% of the budget. The disaster at Berkeley can only lead to a sudden serious decline in the quality of the library, the closing of small non-profitable departments, the loss of elite faculty members as they search for greener pastures at expanding Canadian universities, which are largely unaffected by the economic crisis since hedge fund betting is illegal there, as well as the loss of the youngest and the brightest since there will be a hiring freeze. The only hope is that the injury time will be relatively short and the recovery from a potentially debilitating attack can still be attained.
Why Europe doesn’t work
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
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
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.
Whiting out the USA
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.