Politics and Press

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

Sports

In Praise of rugby

By

There is a world championship going on in New Zealand that can recall the golden days of sport when amateurs could play against professionals in team sports and have a chance, when small countries could field teams that could beat meganapoleanic big sports factory countries and where the best national teams in the world would nonetheless end up vying for a cup that promises honour more than money as a reward.

And look at the favourites: New Zealand, the all Blacks who seem likely to win it all at home; Australia, their bitter rivals who lost bitterly to Ireland in the first round games; South Africa, the Springbocks, who could be the All Blacks spoilers but were lucky to beat Wales; England, and France, which had its hands full for most of the match against mainly amateur Canada, also Wales, punching above its weight, Argentina, the Latino outsider, and any one of three small Polynesian islands, where very big men push and push and push. Russia and the US are also there, and try just as hard or harder to hold on to their middle-of-the-pack role than do the professional sports teams running for the cash. As is the case with the world’s second most popular sport, cricket, following soccer, it is mostly a Commonwealth gathering but profits greatly from the fact that it isn’t only that, as is the cricket world championships, but also a gathering of very tough guys, playing a very hard game without protection and doing it mainly for the glory. You won’t be seeing these lads at the Olympics.

Upset in British Journalism Twit of the Year Race

By

In a race completely dominated for almost its entire length by Rupert Murdoch’s journalism cohort, a sudden tremendous sprint by an unexpected rival led to the most exciting finish in the traditional British twit of the year race since John Cleese edged out Michael Palin with a crazy walk stumble over the finish line to take the legendary 1977 championship. As the Murdoch crew staggered along virtually unchallenged for 364 of the 365 days of the marathon challenge, a stunning spurt by the cleverly disguised Economist crew resulted in an unprecedented  upset as the economists surged in front of the twisting and turning creatures wearing the Murdoch colours, just before the finish line .
And what an impeccable strategy the splendid British scribes employed, using their highly dubious annual ranking of the livability of cities to demonstrate the thorough research behind their performance during the year. Vancouver, rated number one for many years in a row, was deemed too have lost .07 points because of an accident on the Malahat Highway that closed the thoroughfare down for a day, thus displaying the formerly most livable city’s inability to deal with modern traffic problems, and pushing Melbourne and Vienna in front of it on the livability front. The researchers of the economist thus tumbled first over the finish  line in the 2011 twit of the year race when it was pointed out that the Malahat Highway is on Vancouver Island, not in Vancouver city, and is 4 hours away from Vancouver, including a 2-hour ferry ride. Similar logic would have led to the conclusion that a traffic jam in Budapest brought down the livability of poor Vienna. Man on the street interviews by Vancouver Sun reporters quickly found that 77.7 per cent of Vancouver residents had never been on that highway and 55.5 per cent had never heard of it. Leading the pack over the finish line, Economist editor of current affairs and such things claimed that the mistake of confusing Vancouver Island with Vancouver, not unheard of in bewildered tourists, had not been the cause of the magazine’s bizarre conclusion, but rather that it was meant to be a subtle reference to the need for better highways in Vancouver. The Murdoch crew breathed a loud sigh of relief as their bitter rival stole a win from the jaws of defeat in the annual Monty Python look-alike derby as well.

a southern and northern intellectual analyze the Stanley Cup

By

#1 – a southerner: Ok i propose 2 loonies pergame and a 5 loonie bonus for winning the series. I understand you might be nervous and not want to bet. That is ok. Let me know.

#2 – a northerner: I doubt that you can afford loonies, so I suspect a trick.  But nevertheless I accept. I’ll be travelling south for a couple of days to see how the other half lives, and spend some toonies in the banana belt.  Will be back on Wednesday in time to see the first loonie go my way.

#1Some trick… The loonie costs me $1.2. Damn. That harper guy must know his stuff.. Playoff hockey is unbelievable.

#2 – after game 1: Why not just pay me now and relax?  Even Obama is refusing to make a bet with  Harper – perhaps he never heard of hockey (or Harper), or perhaps he doesn’t want to fork over anything  to a functioning economy – but you can’t back out now just because this is so one-sided. Estimates here are 7-0 for the first gameif theAmurcan goalie didn’t have a good evening, of course not as good as the Canuck one, one but still.  But can’t you find a power play coach down there? How about double or nothing?  It won’t be a sweep however since we want a couple of more home games and have promised to donate the proceeds to Winnipeg.

#1Between the ref missing the very obvious offside on the goal and the canucks resorting to biting the opponents, it does not look good for the Boston men. I will pass on the double or nothing but note that by betting in loonies I have already given you an extra 2%. Generous to a fault, I am, in despair, almost.
I watched much of the game in a barroom where everyone was asking the same question you ask RE: what is with the power play? Where is it and why is it hiding?
Am i ever glad i cancelled the bet.

#2 That’s not funny.  A guy sticks a finger in your mouth and then they complain when you bite it!  What else can you do with it? My cat does the same thing and doesn’t get a penalty! And these guys and the coaches are all pure laine and it’s an old tradition in maple syrup country to stick your finger in trees and things without being spied upon.
As for off side, that was only off sides if you think that off sides happens when your skate blade doesn’t quite make it back over the blue line, even though you try your very best!  I don’t think so in this day and age. It’s not winning that counts. It’s giving it the old college try!!

#1 can your cat skate? does it know how to stay onside? is it a Canadian cat or an Amurcan cat? These are the relevant questions to ask.

World Cup – Giving credit where it is due

By

The World Cup deserves its title – unlike the World Series – because every four years populations everywhere in the world watch it carefully and draw perhps dubious conclusions about the state of nations everywhere in the world. This is no doubt a bizarre way of drawing conclusions about international developments, and yet… This World Cup has been even more interesting than usual in this regard. First of all, the beautiful country of South Africa, despite the economic and social problems it still must negotiate, has defied many sceptics, and pulled off this great organizational accomplishment, with virtually none of the feared problems arising. With only the semi-finals and final to go, it is easy to predict that South Africa will have shown that it can produce a world event with quality. Even its soccer team did better than expected.
Europe, on the other hand, presented teams that in a remarkable way tended to reflect the names the teams wore on their shirts. England, Italy and particularly France, looked old and tired and were quickly dispatched. The Netherlands remains well in the mix with a skilled veteran team that is steady as a rock. But it is Germany, of all places, that has come up with a group that almost too easily reflects a young, aggressive, skilled, hard-working multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual society. When you look at the German teams of the past and compare it with this one, you see the difference between a country completely dominated by veteran German-born, German-named Caucasian players, often of the highest level, and a very young team, with a talented group of somewhat older players with names like Lahm, Mertesacker, Schweinsteiger, Friedrichs as well as Klose and Pudolski (both from the old German parts of Poland) and the very youngest named Müller, and a crop of young players in the starting lineup named Ozeil, Khedira, Boetang, Gomez and Cacao (who could have played for Turkey, Tunesia Ghana, Spain and Brazil). It would be too naive to draw too many social and political implications from this. Nevertheless my brother will do that. He thinks that it is a sign of the European times that Germany, 65 years after the end of a war that they started to show their racial superiority should field a team that has the feel of a skilled, hard-working and multicultural unit that reflects the qualities of the new Germany that the rest of Europe has to look to for in leadership if it is going to pull out of its increasingly senile-feeling doldrums.

World Cup, Bring it on – G8 and G20 meetings, Send them to Baffin Island

By

The Canadian government is spending 2,5 billion dollars (yes that is a b), instead of the originally budget 20 million dollars (yes that is an m) to provide security for the upcoming G8 and then G20 conferences, first in backwater Ontario and then in Toronto. Having learned nothing whatsoever from the catastrophic Greek government’s philosophy of living beyond its means, Prime Minister Harper has decided to impress the world by following suit. One of his most creative ventures is to spend who knows how many millions to create an artificial lake with real Muskoka chairs .(i.e. Adirondack chairs in deep south parlance) for the economic wizards of the world to relax in deep in black fly country. Apparently no one told the Alberta-born primo that there are countless lakes up there that you don’t have to build. Then there’s the 8 million dollar fence set up in central Toronto to mimic the Berlin Wall. Nobody told him that Baffin Island is comparatively black-fly free and easily isolated at a thousandth of the price – and it’s certainly also more interesting than Toronto for those sightseeing tours.

The World Cup of Soccer on the other hand is taking place in South Africa, and plenty of those same western experts who will leave Ontario after a week of sound and fury signifying nothing (pace Copenhagen) and had been predicting a disaster in primitive Africa, can settle down before their tv sets and watch a very big public event in which even South and North Korea are both participating . As far as my brother and I can see, the only violence has been in the incessant horn-blowing of the capacity rainbow-coloured crowds. We’re sure there has been some real money spent on security for the month of the tournament in South Africa, but nothing like the absurd amounts being spent for a week in Ontario. So what gives? Can’t we either send those suited economic chaps out onto the soccer pitch in short pants to duke it out for economic bragging rights just like Monty Python sent out the Greek and German philosophers against each other in one of their most compelling skits. In the end they could even exchange shirts and make sweatily embrace the previous enemy. And if they refuse, send em to Baffin Island.

Post Olympic News Blues

By

The Vancouver Olympics were many things to many people – but for some they were a terrific diversion from the world of American politics. What follows is a quick and by-no-means inclusive review of some of the events driving us to the Olympics coverage:

  • Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz joined with former NY Times Columnist and Palin voyeur Bill Kristol in supporting and ad branding the Department of Justice the “Department of Jihad” and labeling 7 lawyers who had represented Gitmo detainees “The Al Queda 7”.  McCarthyism lives.
  • The South Dakota state legislature passed a bill which would require high school science courses to teach that world weather phenomena (e.g. climate change) are affected by a variety of dynamics including “astrological” dynamics.
  • Thomas Friedman reported in his NY Times column that the town of Tracy, California plans to charge residents $300 and non-residents $400 per 911 call unless they have paid a $40 annual fee. In case of severe chest pains, drive to the next town.
  • Several reports describe Wall Street investment banks’ political donations moving strongly toward Republicans. This is strange punishment of the Democrats for bailing them out of their self-induced collapse but understandable as Republicans circle their wagons to protect the same banks from virtually any serious regulations.
  • In his imitation of Fidel Castro, Glen Beck spoke for nearly an hour at the CPAC 2010 Conference, or Coven, or whatever it was called.  There are hundreds of hilarious quotes in the ramble but one sample is as much as we can stand:  “He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?
  • One U.S. Senator – Shelby of Alabama – tied up 70 of President Obama’s nominations for important federal positions because he wants a defense project built in his state.
  • OJ Simpson offered to donate to the Smithsonian the suit he wore when he was acquitted of two murder charges. In one of the few good news stories of recent weeks the Smithsonian turned him down.
  • Tea Party leader Mark Williams went on CNN and during his meltdown, said that President Obama was “an Indonesian Muslim and a welfare thug”.

BRING BACK THE OLYMPIC GAMES!

les jeux sont finis

By

Who would have guessed that the Vancouver Winter Olympics would turn into an event of great national unity, and become what many felt was the best of all Olympic Games. After all it had begun with some glitches and lousy weather? John Furlong, the decent, tenacious and ultimately triumphant organizer of it all said he felt that the turning point came when the obnoxious and snobbish British press, representing a country which managed a total of one medal at the games, printed a series of unfair and untruthful articles that only demonstrated their jealousy at the success of their long-ago colony. These unprovoked attacks managed to unite English, French and allophones and, with some reservations, even First Nations, in a public display of defiance of such attiudes by a former colonial occupier. In any case at some point the pent-up pride, even anger, seemed to transfer itself onto the athletes, who quite suddenly began winning so many events that with their 14 gold medals they not only set an Olympic record but easily relegated Germany with 10 and the US with 9 gold medals to the runner-up positions.

This was an extraordinary example of the configuration of politics and sport, and analysts are beavering away on the question of whether it will have lasting consequences in the forming of a national identity. Certainly the culminating sporting event, the gold-medal men’s hockey final between the US and Canada, which apparently was viewed by 85% of the Canadian population, has already achieved something along that line. All you had to do was observe the behaviour of the 150,00 people who poured out onto the streets of Vancouver after Sidney Crosby scored the winning overtime goal. It was the most dramatic example of two weeks of surging crowds that may have displayed too high spirits at times but streamed through the streets of a major city for 17 days without a single serious incident. The next Olympics will be in London. May the power be with them, but don’t count on it.

Lunching at Sachsen Haus

By

Die Sachsen are the only people to have so far outmaneuvered the Olympic bureaucrats that have turned Vancouver into a security training ground for the next potential terrorist attack at a major world event. The security chiefs of the next Olympics in very vulnerable London must be shaking their heads wondering how they can possible protect a very large city with many unhappy people and a complex subway system to the level that the combined police forces of Canada have managed in a large city with a largely contented population and its mountain resort two hours away. The answer is – not easily and certainly not without considerable disruption of the normal affairs of the city.
The German province of Saxony is not a recognized national national concept to the Olympic bureaucrats and therefore should not exist. But the clever Dresdeners rented the Vancouver Rowing Club in gorgeous Stanley Park and are doing a roaring business since no seat is more comfortable than one on the patio of a cafe on the waterfront of Stanley Park on a warm sunny day in British Columbia with a Sächsisch beer and Wurst in hand.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors have come to see the spectacular sports events and cruise the city streets on the lookout for the best entertainment spots in the evening. And lots of them go to the Saxons for both lunch, dinner and entertainment, as the much larger and authorized Dutch, Russian and Swiss houses are jammed to overflowing in the city centre. As for the sports events, it’s been a very good Olympics so far for the Amurcans, Swedes and Swiss, leaving lots of smiling Uncle Sams, Vikings and cowbell ringers wandering about. For the Canajuns it’s been somewhat lala, but the big event has just started, and this promises to be the best hockey tournament ever. Once you’ve seen the Russian, Canadian and Swedish teams in action (the great Peter Forsberg has reappeared out of nowhere for the Swedes and looks fit as a fiddle). you can’t imagine betting against any one of them. If you’ve got a spare $4000 around you can pick up a ticket to the final, and one of those teams will be missing. Don’t miss it.

Snowless in Vancouver

By

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

By

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.