MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS AND ANNA TALBOT. This past Tuesday Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stood in front of world leaders and claimed his government’s refugee policy was the best in the world. But many people in Australia will tell you that Mr Turnbull’s boasting was misplaced. Australia’s policy is based on deterrence, [...]

[UPDATED AUGUST 4]. Does anyone really think the US presidential campaign of Donald Trump is the only weird thing going on in the global village right now ? Whatever else, the start of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this coming Friday will confirm that this is a bizarre year across the planet. See, [...]

As previously noted, the managing editor assigned me the task of reporting on the recent offshore conference, “Northern Europe (and Russia) in the spring of 2016” — from which everyone on the counterweights staff returned safe and sound, late last week. It is a task I have accepted in the past. But this year I [...]

In the 1930s the local historian (and private school Latin teacher) Percy Robinson — author of the still invaluable Toronto during the French Regime, 1615–1793 — called Toronto, Ontario, Canada (all North American indigenous words) “the citadel of British sentiment in America.” On a somewhat earlier and more extreme, possibly even exaggerated variation on the [...]

A few days ago my TV viewing partner and I caught up with the more or less new Grace of Monaco movie (aka Princess Grace on some listings), which in our part of the world apparently debuted on cable at the end of May this year. It’s directed by Olivier Dahan (from France) with a [...]

What if you had already figured out that our earlier post here (“At the Berkeley Square-Bilbao Conference — our staff hard at work in Western Europe, last half of September”) was really just about another sordid case of that early 21st century mass middle-class tourism scourge known as the cruise? Taken by three remarkable senior [...]

[UPDATED JULY 27, 28]. Maybe it’s just the summer heat going to my head (tho it hasn’t been all that hot where I am). But lately I’ve been thinking about how we are now just over a week away from the 100th birthday of The Guns of August that started the First World War. On [...]

It was warmer here yesterday, but now the cold and even some snow have returned. This past week, when records for low temperatures were broken in some places nearby, I  took a certain solace from “Man found ‘frozen solid’ on Highway 401 transported to hospital.” It reminded me of a sentence composed 45 years ago [...]

[UPDATED SEPTEMBER 8]. In some more ideal world Canada would take more of an interest in Australia, and vice-versa. The two places have a lot in common. They are both natural resource-dominated economies in geographically vast territories with modest but increasingly diverse populations. And they are both former self-governing dominions of the now declined and [...]

As I start to write here in northern North America, the headlines from the old heartland of the Ottoman empire far away, between the Mediterranean and Black seas, are not encouraging. (See : “Police lock down Taksim, PM shows off in Istanbul” ; “Turkish PM says it was his ‘duty’ to oust protestors occupying Istanbul [...]