SPECIAL FROM GREG BARNS. HOBART, AUSTRALIA, 11 MAY 2022. On May 21 Australians go to the polls in a general election. After what will be a dull contest, light on big ideas and competing visions, the choice will be between another term for the conservative Liberal National Party coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison […]

ONTARIO TONITE. RANDALL WHITE, FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO, 10 MARCH 2022. One thing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has done for me personally is increase my heretofore extremely slight interest in the question of just who Vladimir Putin is. As an international politics fan I have vaguely known that Putin was born and raised in what is […]

SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, PANCAKE BAY, ONTARIO. 24TH OF MAY WEEKEND. The May 13, 2021 issue of the New York Review of Books has an essay by Mark Lilla on the German novelist Thomas Mann (1875–1955), and his rather strange 1918 book Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man. (The NYRB Classics series is in fact […]

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA. AUGUST 14, 2019. Yesterday the pro-democracy protests at the Hong Kong Airport (if these are quite the right words) broke through the bubble that usually shields US TV from too much contact with the outside global village. Now we can supplement our troubled research elsewhere with TV coverage on CNN and MSNBC. […]

[SCROLL DOWN FOR MAY 19/20 UPDATE ON ELECTION RESULTS]. With only a few days until voting on Saturday, May 18, the 2019 Australian federal election seems a closer thing than it appeared to be six months ago. (Fellow Commonwealth citizens in northern North America should also note that Australia is considerably further ahead of us […]

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. REPORT FROM GREG BARNS. Australians used to laugh at Latin American nations like Argentina and Ecuador, which in recent decades turned over their leaders with astonishing regularity. But now the boot is well and truly on the other foot. Today saw the demise of Australia’s fifth Prime Minister in 11 years. The Liberal […]

Nowadays not even anglophone Canadian political junkies follow the domestic politics of the United Kingdom with anything like the interest that was common enough 100 years ago (judging from early 20th century newspapers). And the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)’s old role as a distributor of British TV programming to North American audiences, going back only […]

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 […]