Edison Chen, late 2009 ... a young man with an older and wiser face.

“Globalization” is nothing new, in some ways. It used to be called “imperialism.” Its current incarnation began with the “Portuguese Pioneers” — when Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Vasco da Gama made landfall on the coast of India 10 years later.

In between these two seminal maritime adventures Christopher Columbus made landfall in what we now call the Americas, in 1492. And then, for deeper background, as Jorge Nascimento Rodrigues and Tessaleno Devezas have argued, in their pioneering book of 2007: “Globalization is an evolutionary … process, initially conceived in China around the 10th century.”

At the same time, we talk about globalization today because some things are quite different than they used to be, in the last high “Age of Imperialism … 1870–1914.” The big Internet sex tapes scandal of the rising global village in early 2008, eg, turned around the post-modern romances of Edison Chen — who was born in Vancouver, Canada, speaks perfect English, Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin, and started his career in the Hong Kong entertainment industry.

The “naughty pictures” Edison Chen carelessly left on his computer hard drive turned his life upside down. And they sideswiped the careers of such Hong Kong actress and other girlfriends as BoBo Chan, Cecilia Cheung, Gillian Chung, Candice Chan, Vincy Yeung, Rachel Ngan, and Mandy Chen.

1. More popular than President Obama in Indonesia …

Indonesian pop singer Nazril Irham, better known as Ariel — the Edison Chen of 2010 — and his girlfriend Luna Maya.

Now, some two and a half years later, a “successor of Edison Chen” has arisen in the fourth most populous country of the world (after China, India, and the United States).

For its further entertainment the global village in the middle of 2010 has “Indonesia’s versions of the Edison Chen scandal” — involving “pop singer Nazril Irham, better known as Ariel … his girlfriend Luna Maya, a top model,” and his former girlfriend, “actress and presenter Cut Tari.”

Like the Edison Chen scandal, these latest Indonesian sex tape adventures have surfaced on the world wide web. And “Indonesia’s communications minister [has] vowed … to issue a decree by the end of the year to ‘save the young’ from pornography on the Internet.”

Meanwhile, as US tea-party birthers will especially recall, Indonesia is also where President Barack Obama spent some time in his childhood, away from his Hawaiian birthplace. Much more recently the president’s plans to visit the country keep getting postponed by such emergencies as the recent BP oil spill on the US Gulf coast.

Ariel Peterpan’s “equally famous ex-girlfriend Cut Tari” — also alleged to be in sex tape with Indonesian star.

Such clouds nonetheless have their own silver linings … or so some say. Armando Siahaan has just explained in the Jakarta Globe: “if Obama had come according to plan, there would have been a great possibility that his return to his childhood country would have received zero attention from Indonesians … All eyes and minds in Indonesia are currently on a man who in many ways may surpass the popularity and the prowess of the American president … His name is Nazril Irham, better known as Ariel, the lead vocalist of the band Peterpan.”

Armando Siahaan goes on: Ariel is “the rock star who was suddenly thrust into the public spotlight not because of a new smash song, but because of steamy sex tapes allegedly involving him and actresses and presenters Luna Maya and Cut Tari … Entire swaths of Indonesian society — ranging from janitors to housewives to college students — have been tirelessly viewing and discussing the controversial videos.”

2. Meanwhile again … how is Edison Chen’s comeback working out?

Gillian Chung, from Edison Chen Sex Pictures Uploaded By “Kira”.

Armando Siahaan’s comments notwithstanding, Indonesia is “home to the world’s largest Muslim population” and still quite conservative about sex — in public at any rate. But according to Jenny Zhu from Shanghai things are changing in China, in this as in so much else.

She writes that in China today: “Sex no longer comes with the same kind of harsh moral judgment it once did … I tend to think that it’s due to indifference rather than true sexual liberation.” Even so, Ms. Zhu also notes that in 2010 “Edison Chen, the Hong Kong star who took sexually explicit photos of himself and his various girlfriends [and then forgot to take them off his computer when he sent it out for repairs], has staged a successful comeback.”

Back in the movies (and Back in the USA) …

Bobo Chan: Hong Kong actress, former girlfriend of Edison Chen.

When the “naughty pictures of Edison Chen” scandal first broke early in 2008, the young Mr. Chen wisely decided to lay low, and suspend his career for a time. Early in April 2009, however, a movie he had worked on some time before,  “Sun cheung sau” or “The Sniper,” appeared in theatres in various relevant parts of the global village. A reviewer from Singapore pointed out: “If not for the picture scandal, this film would have been released about a year ago, and would likely have solidified Edison Chen’s position as box office draw.”

By the early fall of 2009, the wider reaction to “Sun cheung sau” was apparently good enough for a next comeback step: “The furore around the sex snaps forced Chen to flee Hong Kong and the controversy ended the entertainment careers of most of the girls involved … But studio bosses have decided to give Chen another chance, and have signed him up to appear in new English-language comedy ‘Almost Perfect.’”

Still well received in Taiwan and the Mainland …

Vincy Yeung, apparently still Edison Chen's current girlfriend.

About a month and a half later, another source reported: “Edison Chen is preparing for his full comeback ever since he completed filming his Hollywood movie, ‘Almost Perfect.’ Edison once said that he was leaving the industry. However … Edison said leaving the ‘Hong Kong’ entertainment industry. Edison’s presence is still well received in Taiwan and the Mainland. Hence, these two places would be the main battlefield for his comeback.”

Late in November 2009, Edison was on TV in Taiwan. He revealed “plans to open a store in Taiwan and denied the rumors of his break up with girlfriend Vincy [Yeung — in the naughty pictures too in some degree, and also the still quite young daughter of a wealthy Hong Kong music industry executive, with alleged ‘triad’ or criminal ‘affiliations’]. He expressed that his relationship with his girlfriend is going very well, but the two have no plans for marriage yet.”

The young Mr. Chen had still more to say on Taiwan TV: “after the Photo Scandal, he was in the United States doing everything himself, no assistant or anything. He said that he was able to find his path in life due to the scandal. He said: ‘Everything happens for a reason (in English), I already found my reason and have already forgiven myself.’ … But, when Reporters asked about Cecilia Cheung becoming pregnant again, he only smiled and did not respond. His manager was besides him and stopped the Media from asking again of questions relating to Cecilia.”

In the middle of December 2009 it was reported that: “Ever since Edison Chen’s new clothing boutique opened its shutters to the public in Shanghai last Saturday, the flow of business has been noticeably brisk for the Hong Kong singer-actor. He was previously rumoured to have received a lump sum of S$4 million in financial assistance from a wealthy female tycoon to open this shop in Shanghai.” Mr. Chen “laughed and waved off rumours which stated that his five boutiques in China were opened with the help of a female tycoon, ‘The news on the internet are fake. There is no such thing. This is my own hard work and money.’”

And then back in Hong Kong too … without bodyguards …

Edison Chen with rapping duo FAMA (literally Farmer in Chinese), Causeway Bay’s shopping center, Hong Kong, late January 2010.

Towards the end of January 2010 it was reported that “Edison Chen bravely appeared at FAMA event without bodyguards” — at the Causeway Bay’s shopping center in Hong Kong.  (FAMA, in case you’ve forgotten, “literally meaning farmer in Chinese, is a Hong Kong duo of rapping [Hip-hop] founded by DJ Tommy consisting of members C-Kwan and 6-Wing. They are part of the hip-hop wave in the mainstream cantopop music scene, which was initiated by Edison Chen in the mid-2000s.”)

At Causeway Bay FAMA itself “was shocked to see his presence, C Kwan said: ‘I saw our Boss come out, I felt nervous because we need to have an explanation for our Boss.’ Edison expressed that when he has time he’ll attend events to support FAMA.”

This kind of standing up for your friends (even if he did ruin the careers of half a dozen Hong Kong female entertainers) has presumably been one of the things that prompted Jenny Zhu to conclude, by early June 2010, that “Edison Chen, the Hong Kong star who took sexually explicit photos of himself and his various girlfriends has staged a successful comeback.”

Even now, presumably again, it is somewhat dangerous for Edison Chen to appear in Hong Kong without bodyguards — since there are those in the Hong Kong entertainment industry who would not be unhappy to see him physically harmed (?), in return for the financial and other trouble he caused so many with his naughty pictures of early 2008 (including a young daughter, etc, etc).  And we also know that, only several days ago, on June 16, 2010: “Edison Chen attended FAMA’s 2010 Down to Earth concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum to lend support to his rap duo. He was joined by sister, Tricia and his mother; other guests included Kay Tse, Khalil Fong, and geomancer Mak Ling-Ling. Edison opened the concert by reading the lyrics to ‘Imagine’.”

3. Is it really Ariel, Luna Maya, and Cut Tari in the videos?

Ariel and Maya in happier days.

In some ways the Indonesian pop singer Nazril Irham, aka Ariel Peterpan, does seem to qualify as the Edison Chen of 2010: “Local media said the [alleged] video [of Ariel having sex with current girlfriend Luna Maya] started appearing in early June after Ariel’s laptop was stolen.”

By Saturday, June 12 another video was in circulation, purporting to show Ariel having sex with his former girlfriend, the Indonesian television personality Cut Tari.

But was it really them, part one?

Is this Cut Tari in a sex video with Ariel Peterpan, or not?

As noted, Indonesia is apparently still more conservative about sex than China. As one consequence, all of Ariel, Luna Maya, and Cut Tari have denied that the people in the “sex videos” are actually them. As early as June 6, the Jakarta Post was reporting: “Artist Luna Maya and boyfriend singer Nazriel Irham alias Ariel Peterpan said a sex tape allegedly of the couple was fabricated, and not theirs.”

Less than a week later, the press was reporting: “After Luna Maya, it’s now actress and presenter Cut Tari’s turn to make the headlines over the leaking of a private sex video onto the web, allegedly showing her and pop band Peterpan’s vocalist Ariel partaking in some steamy bedroom exercise … “

The report went on: “The video, which has been circulating on the Internet over the past two days, has shocked Tari, who hasn’t been seen recently on the infotainment show she regularly hosts … ‘Cut Tari denied the woman in the tape was her. She swore to her family it wasn’t her,’ said the actress’ lawyer Malik Bawazier … ‘She’s truly in shock. She can’t believe someone could do this to her,’ he added … “

Moreover: “Tari’s husband Jusuf Subrata said he believed in his wife … ‘I trust her, and I’m highly confident the woman in the video isn’t Tari,’ said Yusuf, who married Tari in 2004 … ‘I know Tari is a very responsible woman.’”

Islamic puritanism in Indonesia, part one?

Indonesian youths browse the Internet at an Internet cafe in Jakarta, June 12, 2010. Many Indonesians don't want them watching sex videos, of anyone.

Being home to the world’s largest Muslim population would seem to have other consequences as well. As early as June 11, Ariel and Luna Maya were interviewed by the Indonesian National Police about their alleged sex video.

For better or worse: “The two arrived for the much-anticipated questioning almost unnoticed as around 200 activists of Islamic groups staged a rally outside the National Police Headquarters and diverted the attention of most journalists.”

As early as Wednesday, June 9 it was being noted that: “Producing or distributing sexually explicit material carries a maximum penalty of 12 years’ jail under the tough anti-pornography law passed in the mainly Muslim country in 2008 … Muslim lawmakers have said the videos underline the need for tighter controls of the Internet … ‘There should be a heavy punishment for this crime,’ Communication and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring said …”

A mere three days later, it was reported that: “The Communications and Information Technology Ministry claims it has identified the computers used to upload sex videos allegedly featuring Peterpan frontman Nazril ‘Ariel’ Ilham and actresses Luna Maya and Cut Tari.”

Was it really them, part two?

Cartoon on "the Peterporn scandal" in The Jakarta Post.

One result of all this, apparently, is that by June 21, 2010, as I write here, the two famous sex videos, of whoever actually appears in them, are not as easy to track down as they were a few weeks ago.  But a June 10 report from something called “Indonesia Matters” still provides access to the “rather graphic Ariel and Luna video, which you can download here.” (Rather complicated, for an older techno-disabled person like me, but I somehow managed it in the end.)

I am in no position to judge whether the two people in this video actually are Ariel and Luna. The images are somewhat blurry, however, and judging from the ordinary photos of the real Ariel and Luna on the world wide web, it seems not unreasonable to raise doubts about just who is appearing in the video.

It has also been reported: “Luna Maya is telling that she is not the person in the Video as in the Video shows that a butterfly Tattoo in the Left Thigh but she is not having that.” I can testify that I did catch a glimpse of a butterfly tattoo in the video.

(Another point that has struck me here, to what serious effect I am not at all sure, is that, without being any kind of experienced videographer, some of the shots in the alleged Ariel/Luna short porno movie would almost seem to have to have been shot by a third person. And this may also imply some kind of conspiracy by a group of individuals, none of whom was or is either Ariel Peterpan or Luna Maya or Cut Tari!)

Indonesian puritanism, part two?

“Balinese beauty Luna Maya” — not someone who ought to be in a sex scandal? SP Photo.

Finally, the Indonesian naughty videos of 2010 may not actually involve the entertainment industry stars they claim to portray. But they have nonetheless caused great controversy in Indonesia — in a way that Edison Chen’s naughty pictures of 2008 did not, in any of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Hollywood, or Vancouver, Canada.

The June 10  “Indonesia Matters” already had a wealth of illustrations: Internet cafes in Solo doing a roaring trade because of Ariel videos ; High schools raided in Bandung, 12 out of 700 student phones have the videos ; Conference of religious leaders in Jakarta deplores the depravity of it all ; Ikatan Pelajar Putri Nahdlatul Ulama (IPPNU) says porn too easy to access ; Lembaga Monitoring Hukum in Bogor calls for raids on schools to check student phones ; Muhammadiyah leader Din Syamsuddin says porn videos are a logical consequence of modernisation ; Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia (KPI) to take action against TV stations showing parts of the videos ; Batam Education Department says school raids to begin shortly ; Concerned parents in Bandarlampung worry about their children’s access to the internet ; Women’s Empowerment minister Linda Gumelar says videos are proof of moral crisis ; Mayor of Makassar H Ilham Arief Sirajuddin says Peterpan to be blacklisted in Makassar.

Beyond Indonesia itself, a June 13 Associated Press story by Niniek Karmini suggested there is always more than one side to any story as well: “Indonesians grappled with their first-ever celebrity sex-tape scandal, casting aside social taboos as they swarmed around office computers and mobile phones to watch clips allegedly showing a much-loved pop star with two girlfriends … The story topped newscasts for a week and dominated chatter on social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But just as controversial was the reaction of officials in the newly democratic nation … Police initially threatened to charge the “stars” under a strict anti-pornography law … Several high schools were raided for mobile phones so the offending clips could be removed. And some ministers said the incident pointed, once again, to moral decay and the need for stricter controls of the Internet.”

The AP article went on: “As the tapes were downloaded onto Facebook and YouTube (they have since been removed by the sites’ administrator) and distributed from mobile phone to mobile phone, the country tottered on the verge of sexual hysteria … Fifteen-year-old Bintang Irvano, a student at a high school in south Jakarta, huddled around a mobile phone with his two friends to look at the video ‘for about the fourth time’ … He said after teachers started launching daily raids, teens started removing the footage from their phones ahead of class only to later upload it … ‘It’s easy to get it back again,’ said Raikhan Daffa, 16. ‘We just pass it to one another by Bluetooth … Hey, it’s one way to learn about sex’ he said, laughing.

4. Is globalization eroding all old values everywhere?

Mandy Chen, another old girlfriend of Edison Chen, apparently now in Australia.

My own short and succinct answer to this question is simply no, not at all. Think of Cleopatra of Egypt, Theodora of Byzantium, Edward VII in Merrie England, Mae West, Errol Flynn, Mao Zedong, the Song of Solomon, the Kama Sutra, the great American jazz musician Charlie Parker, the harem of the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul, and the fondness for “andacwander” among the ancient noble Huron, north of the North American Great Lakes.

As in the case of Edison Chen and his unfortunate female companions, Ariel and Luna and Cut Tari in Indoensia this year are considerably more interesting than Paris Hilton, or even Lindsay Lohan (to say nothing of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky). And of course, of course, of course, just think of Tiger Woods!

There are just two unanswered last questions that trouble me. There does seem some kind of backlash to Ariel and Luna and Cut Tari in Indonesia, brewing at the edges of a country tottering on the verge of sexual hysteria. Are many different but similar backlashes breeding … and brooding … everywhere again? Somewhere in the depths of Sarah Palin in the USA, eg — or even Stephen Harper in Canada? It will be interesting to follow just what unfolds in Indonesia this summer, with this broader question in mind.

And then I wonder too: Why do smart people even make sex tapes, or videos, or photo collections … and then carelessly leave them on their hard drives, for people of dubious motivations to find? I wish I knew the answer to this question. But I do not.

Edison Chen at June 16, 2010 FAMA concert in Hong Kong, with Media Asia boss Peter Lam (r).

I do find some solace in the prospect that Indonesian pop singer Nazril Irham, aka Ariel Peterpan, did not actually make any of the sex videos attributed to him by some evil forces, lurking enviously at his bedroom door. And I will be watching his case here unfold this summer of 2010 and beyond in the global village too, for just what the final truth about all this proves to be.

Meanwhile, a very final concluding thought comes to mind right now. Ultimately, both Edison Chen’s naughty pictures of 2008, and the alleged naughty videos of Nazril Irham in 2010 somehow seem  to show that globalization (at least a more democratic version of the old imperialism?) is here for good. Whatever backlashes arise, there will be no major return to the old ways that made so much misery for so many people. And, on balance, that is probably a good thing.

This UK Parliamentary Recruiting Committee poster urges men from the Dominions of the British Empire (and the South Asian Raj) to enlist for service in the First World War, 1914–1918.

Now that the final stages of the “Toronto 18” terror case are underway, a  closely related package from down under has arrived in the mail.

It makes clear (yet again) that some striking similarities between the two former senior dominions of the fallen British Empire and Commonwealth remain, even if many early 21st century Australians and Canadians seem almost pathologically resolved to ignore each other.

The package contains a compelling DVD called The Trial, from 360 Degree Films. A website blurb explains how it tells the “inside story of Australia’s biggest terrorism trial … In February 2008 twelve Muslim men went on trial in Melbourne for terrorism offences. The trial ran for nine months, heard 482 secretly taped conversations and presented 66,000 pages of evidence. With unique access to Greg Barns, one of the key defence barristers, and Omar Merhi, the brother of the youngest accused, The Trial takes us inside one of the biggest court cases in Australia’s history. A trial where there is more at stake than just the fate of the accused.”

My first look at The Trial (the Australian product worked fine on my Canadian DVD player btw) prompted me to look into the Toronto 18 in somewhat more depth than I have before. The point of departure in both cases is the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA  — and the unprecedented breadth of the new anti-terror legislation that they stimulated in both Australia and Canada.

Greg Barns, dressed for court in an archaic outfit, he tells viewers of The Trial, that he would prefer not to have to wear.

The case of the “Melbourne 12,” so to speak, began in November 2005. It wound up, with final sentencing of convicted defendants, in February 2009. The Toronto 18 case started in June 2006. The last three defendants have only gone to trial just now, in the early spring of 2010.

As alluded to in the blurb for The Trial, the evidence in both cases is vast. I have now, I think, managed to get the lead characters straight in both the Melbourne 12 and Toronto 18 cases. But there is still much that I do not fully understand. Even so, my last viewing of The Trial (it is good enough for a second look, or more) reminded me that there are also some striking differences between Canada and Australia. And not all the advantages are on the Canadian side.

The “terrible incuriousness” that “infects Canadian public life …”

Saad Khalid, 19, in an undated photo, was one of those arrested June 2, 2006, in what Canadian police and security officials described as a home-grown terrorist ring. (Reuters).

As it happens, I have accidentally stumbled across a phrase that puts a more exact finger on my feelings here. On Friday 16 April 2010 — in a quite different context — Chris Selley at the National Post complained about the “terrible incuriousness” that “infects Canadian public life.”

I am ordinarily not a fan of Mr. Selley’s writing, and even less of the National Post. But his “terrible incuriousness” seems an apt description of my ultimate reaction to The Trial from Australia, and what it says about our parallel Toronto 18 terror case in Canada.

It may be that there is harder evidence of a practically serious and genuinely alarming plot to wreak havoc and death on large numbers of innocent ordinary citizens in the Toronto 18 case than there was in the case of the Melbourne 12. (That is a vague impression I have from the not  entirely casual but still far from seriously in-depth digging I have been able to do in the time available: it may or may not stand up to further investigation.)

But even if this is true, I am finally struck by one key thrust of the message so robustly conveyed by The Trial, and conveniently summarized on the back of the DVD box from 360 Degree Films:

“Perhaps more important than the case itself The Trial explores the threat to our human rights posed by wide-ranging anti-terror laws. The defence team [which includes Greg Barns — a former John Howard government advisor who is far from any loony left, to adopt a locution from the old mother country — and two dozen other lawyers] argue that the threat of terrorism has been used by governments to extend the reach of the law into areas traditionally protected by the principles of freedom of speech and association. They believe that the laws themselves could pose a bigger threat to our democratic values than the threat of terrorism … ”

Whatever else may or may not be true, there has been too little of this kind of argument about the Toronto 18 terror case in Canada. I came away from my last look at The Trial feeling that this was not a good thing.

As the back of the DVD box also acknowledges, there is a “very real threat posed by terrorism” in many parts of the global village today, including Canada and Australia. Yet there are more than a few curious details about the Toronto 18. They deserve some form of fuller debate.

Here as elsewhere we need to do more about the “ terrible incuriousness” in Canadian public life, if we are ever going to live up to the  ideals of the “free and democratic society” so impressively alluded to in our Constitution Act 1982 (which also begins “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”)

The Trial — a somewhat closer comparative look

Artists’s impression of the 12 Melbourne men accused of being members of a terrorist organisation in court, August 2008. Illustration: Anne Spudvilas.

As best as I can make out, “Melbourne 12” is a term I have adopted, as an analogue for “Toronto 18.” The term is not used in The Trial nor in other sources on the Australian case.

Whatever you want to call it, the case of the Melbourne 12 has something behind it that is more or less missing from the case of the Toronto 18. This is the 12 October 2002 bombings in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali — which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

At the same time, it seems a fair guess that both the Australian and Canadian cases have been indirectly influenced, in one subtle way or another, by the 7 July 2005 London transit system bombings, back in the old mother country of the United Kingdom.

There was also a more modest reprise of the Bali bombings in Indonesia on 1 October 2005 — just a month or so before the initial terrorist arrests in Australia. In these 2005 Bali bombings four Australians died and 19 were injured. Three Canadians were injured as well.

Meanwhile, neither the Melbourne 12 nor Toronto 18 cases themselves involved events that have actually taken place. Both have prosecuted individuals for belonging to groups that have merely planned or talked about terrorist attacks, which have been aborted by public authorities before reaching fruition. Authorities have learned about these plans and this talk by listening in on “secretly recorded” conversations, technologically as it were, and, in the Toronto 18 case, via two human informants (or “moles”) as well.

In The Trial one key human rights issue here is summarized by demonstrators’ signs outside the Victoria state courthouse in which the Melbourne 12 case was heard: “TALK IS NOT A CRIME.”  Yet what this DVD does so well is raise the dilemma of anti-terrorism laws that “themselves could pose a bigger threat to our democratic values than the threat of terrorism itself” in an adult way, which does not just evade all the attendant complexities.

“Maverick. Confrontationist. Hostile. Aggressive. And that's just his own description. Peter Faris, QC, delights in his ... political incorrectness” — and he spoke out against the defence team in the trial of the Melbourne 12. Photo: James Boddington.

The Trial does not pretend the kinds of anti-terrorism legislation that arose in places like Australia and Canada after the 9/11 disaster in the United States are just tragic bad jokes. It  balances, eg, its footage of defence-team barrister Greg Barns and Omar Merhi, the brother of the youngest accused, with footage of Peter Faris, who co-hosts a weekly Australian public affairs TV show with Greg Barns, but altogether disagrees with him on the Melbourne 12 trial.

Faris urges that most Australians do not want to wait until 3,000 innocent victims have died in a terrorist attack that has actually happened, before prosecuting the terrorists. He concedes that this means criminalizing conduct which is not normally part of criminal law. But he urges that the Melbourne 12 are nonetheless being given a fair trial, based on a vast array of evidence, before a jury of their peers.

Whatever else, here is one key difference between the Canadian and Australian cases. The  final stages of the “Toronto 18” case, involving the last three men accused, are taking place before a jury. Other defendants in Canada have just been tried before judges.

A few related comparisons are intriguing: in Australia all 12 defendants pleaded not guilty. (Although it also seems that a thirteenth Australian defendant had pleaded guilty in August 2007, and did not go to trial in February 2008.) In Canada six defendants pleaded guilty. The jury in Australia finally cleared four defendants of all charges, and was unable to reach a verdict in the case of a fifth, who was released on bail. In Canada the crown “stayed” or effectively dismissed the charges against seven defendants, who were then released from jail.

Emergency vehicles at Russell Square in London, just after the 7 July 2005 suicide bombings on the public transit system, that killed 52 people and injured about 700 more.

It is part of what The Trial is all about that it ultimately does stress the other side of the argument from Peter Faris — albeit without egregious exaggeration. Twice, near the beginning and then again near the end, Greg Barns urges that because of the “breathtaking scope” of the new anti-terrorism laws Australia enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the USA, it is “inevitable that there will be injustices” at some point in the administration of these laws.

One of Greg Barns’s colleagues on the defence team advances a related classic argument: “the right to say unpopular things is a right that we as Australians cherish.”

Barns also notes, as The Trial follows his work along, that, unlike the typical criminal case, there is virtually no dispute over the facts about the Melbourne 12. The authorities have many volumes of secretly taped conversations. No one is disputing that these conversations took place. The crucial argument is about what they mean.

The prosecutors claimed that the taped conversations mean there was an organized terrorist group to which the defendants belonged. This group planned attacks on such places as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Melbourne rail network, and a local casino. At the same time, Greg Barns’s particular client, Ezzit Raad, 26, an electrician, married with two children, “denied the existence of any group … and described its … [alleged] leader as nothing more than a friend.”

Along with six others Mr. Raad was nonetheless ultimately convicted by a jury of his peers — in his case “of being a member of a terrorist organisation, knowing that it was a terrorist organisation,” and “of intentionally making funds available to a terrorist organisation, knowing that it was a terrorist organisation.”

Greg Barns, hard at work in his office.

At Ezzit Raad’s sentencing hearing Greg Barns “said his client believed he had been convicted for what he thought rather than what he did and he believed the breadth of anti-terror legislation was to blame for his conviction.” Justice Bernard Bongiorno nonetheless “remarked that in one crucial conversation involving Ezzit Raad there was talk of raising money to obtain guns … on one view it revealed what the organisation hoped to become … it might never have achieved its ends but the prospect was ‘pretty frightening’.”  And so Mr. Raad was finally sentenced to five years and nine months in jail.

[In Australia The Trial can be purchased online for AU$29.95.  360 Degree Films apparently also accepts international orders: see 360 Online Store ... Terms and Conditions.]

Canadian footnotes: Michael Ignatieff on Isaiah Berlin … and Ujjal Dosanjh on “distorted multiculturalism” …

Michael Ignatieff (l) and Dr. Lamine Ba, President of the Africa Liberal Network and Vice President of Liberal International, at the 2009 Isaiah Berlin Lecture in London.

The main burden of The Trial’s underlying message from down under, one might say, is summarized in a classic American quotation, variously attributed to Benjamin Franklin and/or Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” (Franklin) ; “Those who prefer security to liberty deserve to lose both” (Roosevelt, who may in fact have just been quoting Franklin?).

Two recent more or less Canadian variations on similar themes are worth noting quickly.

(1) Ignatieff and Berlin. In another universe, the current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff, is probably most celebrated for his biography of the late Isaiah Berlin  — the “pre-eminent philosopher” of the “modern liberalism” that arguably lies at the centre of The Trial’s underlying message from down under. And, as a UK reviewer explained back in the late 1990s: “For Ignatieff, it is Berlin’s acceptance of the conflicting nature of human desire that makes him a truly great and humane thinker. For both men the human condition is tragic in the sense that the achievement of one aim always entails a loss somewhere else.”

From this angle, The Trial finally prompts us to ask ourselves, very seriously: if, in the midst of our tragic human condition, we really can have only one or the other of liberty or security, which are we going to choose? And, no doubt, if we do finally choose security, we are also (on Mr. Ignatieff’s and Mr. Berlin’s assumptions at any rate) effectively giving up on the liberal democratic tradition that has been one of the evolving great glories of the contemporary political culture in the United States, United Kingdom, France, India, Canada, Australia, and so forth. Or, as they say, if this is what we are going to do, the terrorists have already won.

Or, again, as Greg Barns argues in the closing segments of The Trial, the breathtakingly broad definitions of criminality that have been adopted in the anti-terror legislation at the bottom of the case of the Melbourne 12 (or the Toronto 18) could ultimately be applied to individuals who, eg, merely talk about threatening peaceful labour relations, as well as so-called Islamic extremists who merely talk about waging jihad against innocent ordinary citizens of democratic countries.

The Trial does not point out that fewer people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States than die in a single month of automobile accidents on American highways. But this too is a simple truth.  How much real safety or security can any government anywhere ever guarantee its citizens? (Or, how seriously does anyone nowadays take the stunningly brave motto that still haunts New Hampshire licence plates in the USA: “Live free or die”?)

(2) Ujjal Dosanjh: a Canadian liberal Sikh. On the other hand, just because Michael Ignatieff and Isaiah Berlin believe something about liberal democracy does not necessarily make it true for the rest of us, all of the time. Recent Canadian events have made clear that Islamic extremism is not the only contemporary terrorist threat. There is such a thing as “Sikh extremism” or terrorism abroad in the true north, strong and free  (in both suburban/exurban Vancouver on the Pacific Coast and suburban/exurban Toronto on the Great Lakes).

Federal Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh (l), at a meeting on gang violence at South Vancouver Neighbourhood House, March 18, 2009. He is meeting Jodie Emery, wife of Canada’s “Prince of Pot,” Marc Emery. Photo by Sen.

Ujjal Dosanjh, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister and onetime New Democrat premier of British Columbia — and, as it were, a liberal Sikh “who was savagely beaten in Vancouver in 1985 after speaking out against religious violence” —  has lately had some compelling things to say about all this.

I can do no better than quote from a recent article in the Globe and Mail, “‘Distorted’ multiculturalism to blame for rise in Sikh extremism, Dosanjh says … Liberal MP argues militancy is worse now than when bomb destroyed Air India plane, killing all 329 aboard.”  And it is, I think, intriguing — and instructive —  that Mr. Dosanjh is not arguing here that we need more anti-terrorism legislation in Canada.  Instead, as best as I can make out, he is finally arguing that we need more of the liberal democratic values that constitute the main burden of The Trial’s underlying message from down under.

Listen carefully, eg, to this: “Mr. Dosanjh blamed what he described as Canada’s polite brand of multiculturalism for giving extremists the space to nurture old grudges brought from their homelands. At the same time, Canada has failed to instill its own values … ‘I think what we are doing to this country is that this idea of multiculturalism has been completely distorted, turned on its head to essentially claim that anything anyone believes – no matter how ridiculous and outrageous it might be – is okay and acceptable in the name of diversity … Where we have gone wrong in this pursuit of multiculturalism is that there is no adherence to core values, the core Canadian values … That you don’t threaten people who differ with you; you don’t go attack them personally; you don’t terrorize the populace.”

The Globe and Mail article went on: “Mr. Dosanjh urged mainstream Canadians who aren’t part of these ethnic communities to step up and speak against extremism … ‘I think Canadians need to engage in this cultural diversity debate,’ he said … ‘We should stop being politically correct and have a debate.’”

Or, one might say (or so it seems to me), if you finally want security, you have to take up the challenge and discipline of liberty head on. Liberty and security are not always two mutually exclusive achievements. Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Berlin notwithstanding, perhaps in the very end they can only be achieved together.

Or, yet again, in Canada we somehow have to cast aside the “terrible incuriousness” that “infects Canadian public life,” and stand up more boldly for what we really do believe in. It is this kind of more aggressive assertion of our core values — and not more terrorism trials that can only pervert those values, however well-intentioned the motivations behind the trials may be — that will finally save us from all the fearsome terrorist challenges which stalk the global village today. And in this context what The Trial from down under is ultimately reminding us is simple enough: we will finally keep our freedom only by living free.

In Canada today all this assumes some particular interest, in the light of some very recent press reports on how federal “Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced Friday [April 23, 2010] that his party would seek to pass a Combatting Terrorism Act that would revive some urgent powers. In dire cases, police could temporarily hold terrorism suspects without charge, and judges could compel testimony from individuals who may know about attacks, past or planned … These emergency powers existed in Canada for several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, but were never used. Parliament voted to repeal them in 2007, against the minority Conservatives’ wishes … It’s unclear whether the Tories could pass the new act before the next election. Similar attempts at revival have died before … The terrorism law plays to the Conservatives’ law-and-order base and puts the Liberals in a difficult position.”

Critical perspectives on the Toronto 18 terror case

Zakaria Amara, said to be the mastermind of “a bomb plot in downtown Toronto” at the centre of the Toronto 18 case, was finally sentenced to life in prison as a “message of deterence.” He had apologized to Canadian citizens at his sentencing hearing, and while acknowledging that most Canadians would never forgive him, expressed hope that he might one day redeem himself.

Before I end the main body of this already far too long review of an unusually interesting recent Australian DVD, I want to close with a few minor qualifications on my urgings about the unhappy dearth of The Trial’s kind of argument about the Toronto 18 terror case in Canada.

I continue to think my point here is essentially correct. (And if I am essentially wrong, I would be more than happy to hear more about it.) Various groups and individuals in Canada, however, have tried to bring some critical perspective to bear on the trials and tribulations of the Toronto 18. And I want to quickly give some credit where credit is due.

As best as I can make out from my all too hasty adventures on the net, the leading critical analyst of the Toronto 18 has probably been Thomas Walkom at the Toronto Star. His articles include: 25 Sep 2007:  Terror trial proceedings troubling … Bizarre allegations about Toronto 18, unorthodox decisions are raising questions about Crown’s case ; 8 Nov 2007: Confusion, despair from terror suspect isolated in Don Jail ; 26 Sep 2008: Terror verdict bad news for rest of Toronto 18 ; 13 Sep 2009: Opaque verdict on terror laws ; and 27 Jan 2010: Judge ponders police tactics.

Mr. Walkom’s efforts have received some critical attention in their own right, from the other side of some ideological divide See, eg: The Gospel According to Saint Lefty … Toronto 18 …  The Terrorist Comedy Hour With Host, Thomas Walkom.

Beyond Mr. Walkom’s exertions, see as well: Toronto 18 – Petition to end solitary confinement! ; Articles tagged with Toronto 18:  faisal kutty.com ; 25 Nov 2008: Lawyer Faisal Kutty speaks on Civil Liberties in Canada ; and 4 Nov 2009: TORONTO STAR EDITORIAL: Spy chief sings the blues.

Thomas Walkom speaks at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Toronto, May 2007.

Finally, there is “an independent documentary released in 2008 … by Canadian broadcaster David Weingarten.” It is called Unfair Dealing and “was originally marketed to an online audience.” It “alleges that the terrorism charges brought against the ‘Toronto 18′ were largely exaggerated or fabricated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in order to justify the controversial Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act …” Judging from what I have seen of it on YouTube,  Unfair Dealing does not achieve at all the same kind of adult presentation of the issues at stake as The Trial in Australia. It does nonetheless offer some critical perspective on the Toronto 18.

Appendix: The “Toronto 18”

When I first looked at The Trial on my TV set, via my Canadian video player (well, sold in Canada at any rate), I was only vaguely aware of the analogous Toronto 18 case (like many other Canadians no doubt).

I subsequently felt an urge to learn more about the Toronto 18, to better appreciate the case of the Melbourne 12. I am appending the rough and ready results of my rather hasty research here, in case it may somehow be useful to anyone else suddenly seized by similar urges.

To set the stage, in the summer of 2006, police carried out a massive anti-terrorism sweep in southern Ontario. Seventeen people — 13 adults and four youths — were arrested in a series of June raids.

More exactly, on June 2  police arrested 10 men and five youths. Two other suspects were already incarcerated in Kingston, Ontario. An 18th individual was detained two months later.

1. The four youths arrested in June 2006

The four youths could not be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. But their ultimate disposition was as follows:

Charges stayed against three youths

(1) 23 Feb 2007: Charges against the youngest suspect are stayed. The 16-year-old from Mississauga, who cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was originally granted bail in July 2006.

(2), (3) 31 Jul 2007: Charges are stayed against two other youths in connection with the bust. The decision comes after an agreement is reached between the Crown and defence lawyers.

Fourth youth becomes first person found guilty under post 9/11 terrorism laws

(4) 25 Sep 2008: An Ontario Superior Court judge convicts the first of 11 men accused in the alleged plot to bomb several Canadian targets, including Parliament Hill, RCMP headquarters and nuclear power plants … The accused, who is charged as a youth and therefore cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, is found guilty of participating in a terrorist activity. He also becomes the first person in Canada to be convicted under federal anti-terror legislation passed in 2001 … In his ruling, Judge John Sproat says evidence that a terrorist conspiracy existed was “overwhelming” … It subsequently becomes known that this youth’s name is Nishanthan Yogakrishnan. On 22 May 2009 he was sentenced as an adult to two and a half years of time served.  Again, he was the first person to be found guilty under Canada’s 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act, which was passed following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He walks free hours after his sentencing hearing, because the judge ruled he’d already served enough time in custody.

2. The 18th individual detained in August 2006

3 Aug 2006: Police arrest Ibrahim Alkhalel Mohammed Aboud, 19, at his home in Mississauga, Ont., in connection with the alleged bomb plot. Aboud’s arrest is the first in the case since the sweep in early June.

3. Charges stayed against four adults

(5), (6), (7), (8) 15 Apr 2008: In a surprising development, Crown prosecutors ask for a stay of proceedings against four suspects — Ibrahim Aboud [see above], Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, Abdul Qayyum Jamal, and Yasim Mohamed.

Along with the three unnamed youths against whom charges have earlier been stayed, this means  that a total of seven people have had “their charges dropped or stayed.”

4. First adult to plead guilty

(9) 4 May 2009: Saad Khalid, 22, pleads guilty to a charge of intending to cause an explosion … The case is set over to June when the judge will hear evidence on information behind the guilty plea … Khalid is the first adult from the group arrested in the summer of 2006 on suspicion of terrorism to admit to playing a role in the alleged plot.

3 Sep 2009: Saad Khalid, 23, is sentenced to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of intending to cause an explosion. Khalid was credited with seven years for time already served, for the 39 months in pre-trial custody. He had seven more years to serve as of last September, and should be free when he is 30 years old.

5. Three more adults plead guilty

(10) 21 Sep 2009: Ali Mohamed Dirie, 26 pleads guilty to one count of participating in the activities of a terrorist group. Both Crown and defence ask the judge to give Dirie a seven-year sentence, but differ on how much credit he should be granted for time served.

(11) 27 Sep 2009: Saad Gaya, 21, pleads guilty to intentionally trying to cause an explosion for a terrorist group. At the time of his arrest in June 2006, Gaya was a high school honour student.

2 Oct 2009: Ali Dirie, 26, is sentenced to seven years in prison and, after allowances for time already served, will spend two more years in custody. He will have to serve at least one year before he can apply for parole.

(12) 8 Oct 2009: Zakaria Amara pleads guilty to charges of knowingly participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion for the benefit of a terrorist group … Amara, 24, has been accused of being one of the ringleaders in the alleged plot.

18 Jan 2010: Saad Gaya, 22, is sentenced to 12 years in prison. Gaya, described by the judge as a mere “helper” in a plot, has been in custody since his 2006 arrest. With credit for time already served, Gaya is sentenced to another 4½ years, but may be eligible for parole by mid-2011.

18 Jan 2010: Zakaria Amara, described as the main organizer of the plot, is sentenced to life in prison. Judge Bruce Durno calls the sentence a message of deterrence to society and says if the plan had been successful, “it would have terrorized Canadian society and killed many.”

6. First adult charged to stand trial

(13) 11 Jan 2010: Shareef Abdelhaleem, 34, the first adult charged in the plot to stand trial, pleads not guilty to charges of participating in a terrorist group and intending to cause an explosion.

21 January 2010 … Shareef Abdelhaleem found guilty of plotting to bomb financial, intelligence,  and military targets. He also sought to profit financially from his terrorism. He was not convicted right away,  however, as his defence was awarded a stay of proceedings to look into whether or not the case could be considered as entrapment.

16 February 2010 … A judge determines that Shareef Abdelhaleem was not entrapped by authorities, as his counsel had suggested.

7. Two more adults plead guilty

(14) 20 Jan 2010 …  Amin Mohamed Durrani pleads guilty to charges of participating in a terrorist group. Durrani was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, but taking into account time he has already spent in custody, he was expected to be released within days.

(15) 27 Feb 2010 …  Jahmaal James pleads guilty to one count of participating in a terrorist group and is sentenced to seven years. He is released immediately due to time served and put on three years of probation

8. Last three go to trial

(16), (17), (18) 22 Mar 2010 … Last three defendants in Toronto 18 terror case go to trial … one of the largest terrorism trials in Canadian history …  trial … could last up to two months … Fahim Ahmad, Asad Ansari, and Steven Chand have been awaiting trial since June 2, 2006, when they were among 14 adults and four youths charged with belonging to a cell plotting a terror attack on Canada, in retaliation for its military involvement in Afghanistan.

A FEW KEY SOURCES:

2006 Toronto terrorism case … From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [not one of the better Wikipedia products, but of some use if treated with care and caution].

20 Jan 2010 … ‘Toronto 18′ case: Key events [from the CBC — and the single most useful source today?].

27 January 2010 … Judge ponders police tactics … Thomas Walkom.

16 February 2010 … Toronto 18 conspirator Shareef Abdelhaleem not entrapped: judge.

21 Mar 2010 … Last 3 in Toronto 18 terror case go to trial.

12 Apr 2010 … Attacking Parliament, devastating Canada at heart of Toronto 18 plot, jury hears.

Shareef Abdelhaleem … From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jahmaal James … From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cricket legend Brian Lara and former Manchester United star Dwight Yorke — both Trinidad and Tobago nationals — arrive for a Commonwealth summit event hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, November 28, 2009. Kenroy Ambris/Commonwealth Secretariat.

[UPDATED DECEMBER 2, 2009]. How many sovereign people of Canada today are even aware that there was a 60th anniversary summit of the Commonwealth of Nations this past weekend in Trinidad and Tobago?

A poll commissioned by something called the Royal Commonwealth Society this past  summer asked a representative sample of Canadians: “Which one of the following is the MOST important to Canada?” Almost two-thirds (63%) said “America.” Only 15% said “The Commonwealth.” (Another 8% said “Europe,” and 14% said “Don’t know.”)

The Commonwealth, of course (for those who may have forgotten), is what the former British empire — “greatest empire since Rome” on which “the sun never dared to set”, etc, etc  — began to collapse into in 1949.  At that point India, the old Jewel in the Crown, became an independent republic, putting an end to the earlier doctrine of global British subjects united by common allegiance to a single Monarch/Empress [Emperor] of India/Dominions Beyond the Seas/by the Grace of God, etc, etc.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma (left) with Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, at the pre-summit press conference on 26 November 2009. Kenroy Ambris/Commonwealth Secretariat.

This past summer’s survey also suggested that there is a big question mark beside the Commonwealth’s current future, especially among the likes of Canadians, Australians, and the remaining British subjects in the United Kingdom.

To help enhance the relevance of the proceedings, the host Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Patrick Manning and his colleagues arranged to have the 60th anniversary summit focus on the crucial issue of climate change — as a kind of warm-up to the broader international climate change colloquium in Copenhagen, Denmark, this coming December 7–18.

The main accomplishment here was a 14-point Commonwealth text in favour of actually doing something more or less serious about climate change, signed by all 52 countries attending the summit, to help build momentum for “Copenhagen and Beyond.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes part in a special session on climate change at the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago on Nov. 27, 2009. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press.

According to The Age in Australia, the Commonwealth is united behind the cause here. And this is “significant because India’s Prime Minister Manhohan Singh and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper were part of the consensus” — even though “Mr Harper has yet to announce his country’s proposed greenhouse gas cuts, and has also at times been a critic of the Copenhagen process.”

Another issue that was apparently discussed “in the margins” of the more serious work this past weekend involved British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plans to remove the current Church of England religious requirement from the qualifications for British monarchs — which dates from the early 18th century.

This may have been partly inspired by a Canadian Charter of Rights challenge brought by the former Toronto city councillor Tony O’Donahue (even though the challenge itself failed). Change of this sort would have to be approved not just by the government of the United Kingdom, but also by the 15 other Commonwealth countries — or so-called “Commonwealth Realms” — who currently still share the British monarch as alleged official head of state (including Canada, Australia, Jamaica, Barbados, and so forth).

As a sign of other institutional change, the predominantly French-speaking African nation of Rwanda joined the Commonwealth this past weekend as well — becoming the second member country that is not a former British colony. (This gives the Commonwealth 54 current member countries, although two did not send delegates to Trinidad and Tobago — “Fiji, which has been suspended due to a coup, and Nauru, which has been suspended due to fee arrears.”)

Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding (r) and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. Kenroy Ambris/Commonwealth Secretariat.

As another departure from earlier strictly Commonwealth of Nations gatherings, in connection with the broader climate change discussions, the meeting this past weekend was  attended by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen.

In keeping with earlier tradition, on the other hand, Queen Elizabeth II attended with her customary dignity. Though now formal head of state for only 16 of the current 54 member countries, she is still a symbolic Head of the Commonwealth.

Whether Her Majesty’s son and/or grandson will inherit this role remains an open question — as does the future of the Commonwealth itself, of course (to say nothing of the British monarchy itself).

The journalist Raffique Shah, from Trinidad and Tobago, has been notably sceptical, about both the benefits of holding Commonwealth summits for the host country, and the ultimate destiny of this now rather peculiar international organization. The Commonwealth today, Mr. Shah believes, is “nothing more than an ’old boys club’ headed by an old lady …  It is passé, an anomaly in a modern world where alliances have changed, where geopolitics dictate who are your new friends …”

Queen happily receives autographed cricket bat from Brian Lara and autographed football from Dwight Yorke. Commonwealth Secretariat.

That may be. But, whatever else, the Commonwealth today is quite a different institution from what it was 60 years ago.

As Mr. Shah himself has urged, in the early 21st century “India is probably the strongest pillar on which the Commonwealth is built. Have you noted how many Indians occupy the highest positions in its Secretariat and its many off-shoot institutions?” (Or, as a Chinese report has put it: “The organization represents around 2 billion people, although more than a billion are in just one member, India.”)

It may still be an old boys club at heart. But the old boys at least look quite a bit different than they used to. And the way things go nowadays that may count as progress, of a sort.

* * * *

UPDATE: On “British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plans to remove the current Church of England religious requirement from the qualifications for British monarchs,” the December 1 issue of the New Zealand Herald has reported: “Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand will give its support to change royal succession law that …bans Catholics from marrying into the royal family … British Prime Minister Gordon Brown …  said he would raise the issue at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting …  that has just finished … but he did not raise it with either Mr Key or Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, among the 15 other countries he must consult … Mr Key said the meeting’s focus on climate change might have delayed the consultation … But he said New Zealand supported the move and he said he was questioned by British media on it.”

Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow (r) and his wife Kim with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Kenroy Ambris/Commonwealth Secretariat.

The cutest secretary at the counterweights headquarters — impressed that republics which do not recognize Queen Elizabeth II as titular head of state can still be members of the Commonwealth in the early 21st century — has also suggested that it might be interesting to append a list of current Commonwealth member countries to this article, with what the CIA World Factbook calls their “government type” duly noted. I have tried to oblige below.

I would like to thank the Royal Commonwealth Society as well for its informative comment still further below. Those concerned about the future of the Commonwealth should no doubt join in on the Society’s largest ever global public consultation. [RW].

The following list of all 54 current Commonwealth members (including the currently suspended Fiji and Nauru) is ranked from most to least populous (based on 2007 data). It includes the name of the country, the government type, the broad geographic region, and the 2007 population. Government type is divided into four classes: “Parliamentary Republic” — broadly modelled on the United Kingdom (without a monarchy) or India; “Presidential Republic” — broadly modelled on the United States (or at least the current Fifth French Republic); “Realm” or a country that still recognizes the British monarch (i.e. Queen Elizabeth II) as titular head of state; and “Monarchy” or a country that recognizes some other hereditary monarch as head of state (as in the case of King or Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin in Malaysia, or the Sultan of Brunei, Sir Hassanal Bolkiah). This classification is somewhat rough and ready, at the very least, but it seems rigorous enough for the purposes at hand:

India,  Parliamentary Republic, South Asia, 1,169,016,000
Pakistan, Parliamentary Republic,  South Asia, 163,902,000
Bangladesh, Parliamentary Republic, South Asia, 158,665,000
Nigeria, Parliamentary Republic, West Africa, 148,093,000
United Kingdom, Realm, Northern Europe, 60,769,000

South Africa, Parliamentary Republic, South Africa, 48,577,000
United Republic of Tanzania, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 40,454,000
Kenya, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 37,538,000
Canada, Realm, North America, 32,876,000
Uganda, Parliamentary Republic, East Africa, 30,844,000

Malaysia, Monarchy, Southeast Asia, 26,572,000
Ghana, Presidential Republic, West Africa, 23,478,000
Mozambique, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 21,397,000
Australia, Realm, Oceania/Pacific, 20,743,000
Sri Lanka, Parliamentary Republic, South Asia, 19,299,000

Cameroon, Presidential Republic, West Africa, 18,549,000
Malawi, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 13,925,000
Zambia, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 11,922,000
Rwanda, Presidential Republic, East Africa, 10,473,000
Papua New Guinea, Realm, Oceania/Pacific    6,331,000

Sierra Leone, Presidential Republic, West Africa, 5,866,000
Singapore, Parliamentary Republic, Southeast Asia, 4,436,000
New Zealand, Realm, Oceania/Pacific, 4,179,000
Jamaica, Realm, Caribbean,  2,714,000
Namibia, Presidential Republic, Southwest Africa,  2,074,000

Lesotho, Monarchy, South Africa, 2,008,000
Botswana, Presidential Republic, South Africa, 1,882,000
The Gambia, Presidential Republic, West Africa, 1,709,000
Trinidad & Tobago, Parliamentary Republic, Caribbean, 1,333,000
Mauritius, Parliamentary Republic, Indian Ocean, 1,262,000

Swaziland, Monarchy, South Africa, 1,141,000
Cyprus, Presidential Republic, Mediterranean Sea, 855,000
Fiji Islands, Parliamentary Republic, Oceania/Pacific, 839,000 (Fiji is currently suspended due to a coup.)
Guyana, Parliamentary Republic, South America, 738,000
Solomon Islands, Realm, Oceania/Pacific, 496,000

Malta, Parliamentary Republic, Mediterranean Sea,    407,000
Brunei Darussalam, Monarchy, Southeast Asia, 390,000
Maldives, Presidential Republic, Indian Ocean, 337,000
The Bahamas, Realm, Caribbean, 331,000
Barbados, Realm, Caribbean, 294,000

Belize, Realm, Central  America, 288,000
Vanuatu, Parliamentary Republic, Oceania/Pacific, 226,000
Samoa, Parliamentary Republic, Oceania/Pacific, 187,000
St. Lucia, Realm, Caribbean, 165,000
St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Realm, Caribbean, 118,000

Grenada, Realm, Caribbean, 106,000
Tonga, Monarchy, Oceania/Pacific, 100,000
Kiribati, Presidential Republic, Oceania/Pacific, 99,000
Seychelles, Presidential Republic, Indian Ocean, 87,000
Dominica, Parliamentary Republic, Caribbean, 79,000

Antigua and Barbuda, Realm, Caribbean, 77,000
St. Kitts and Nevis, Realm, Caribbean, 46,000
Nauru, Presidential Republic, Oceania/Pacific, 10,000 (Nauru is currently suspended due to fee arrears.)
Tuvalu, Realm, Oceania/Pacific, 10,000

SOURCES: Commonwealth Secretariat; Commonwealth members, The official website of The British Monarchy; Republics in the Commonwealth of Nations: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Commonwealth realm: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; CIA World Factbook.

Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, October 1, 1949.

OLD CHINATOWN, DUNDAS STREET, TORONTO. OCTOBER 1, 2009. Today is of course not the actual birthday of the late Mao Zedong (1893–1976). It is only the 60th anniversary of the official founding of the modern People’s Republic — when Mao made the now historic declaration: “China has stood up!”

The new Chinese role in the world economy, on display at the recent G20 summit in Pittsburgh, is one hard example of where this standing up has led, in a mere two generations. But it is no doubt not easy to imagine what Mao would make of what has happened since his death in 1976.

In the blockbuster movie that the People’s Republic itself has made to celebrate its 60th anniversary, “the actor playing Mao Zedong holds back tears and emotionally proclaims” the official founding in 1949. But the “film then awkwardly hurries forward to December 1978, when Deng Xiaoping heralds the era of ‘opening and reform’ in the Middle Kingdom” — leading to the strange yet in at least some ways impressive blend of Chinese culture, communist state, and capitalist economy in China today.

Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau meets Mao Zedong, China's ultimate leader, in October 1973 during China's historic opening to the West.

It was also Deng Xiaoping who declared in 1981 that Chairman Mao was still “70 per cent right” and only “30 per cent wrong” — and clearly, in effect, still the founding father of the modern People’s Republic of China. (More or less, it almost seems fair enough to say, as the quasi-colonial-aristocrat George Washington is still the founding father of the modern free and democratic republic of the USA?)

In the more recent past books like Li Zhisui’s The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1994) and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story (2005) have reported on “the crumbling of the Mao myth” — and shown how the Chinese themselves “are getting rid of their Mao myth,” as they continue their new long march to the status of the world’s new largest national economy (which does seem almost unstoppable, right now at any rate).

Yet if Mao Zedong in real life was nothing like the socialist saint some still tried to imagine in the 1960s — and if the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were disastrous policies at best — Mao also “united fractured, war-torn China, restoring its pride and self-confidence after two centuries of humiliation.” (Eric Margolis).  He was a dictator and a ruthless, Machiavellian political leader, and no democrat at all. But “the dictator said many beautiful and idealistic things” (Andrew Nathan), which he does seem to have more or less believed, in spite of his cynicism and harsh political realism, steeped in a long and ancient literature of hyper-worldly Chinese statecraft.

Chang and Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story urges that the modern Chinese founding father was no better than those other two commanding dictatorial political leaders of the 20th century, Hitler and Stalin. But unlike the states that they founded, the state Mao Zedong founded is still very much in business — even if not quite the same business that Mao intended, or hoped for.

Mao the writer at work, 1938

Moreover, among his many other triumphs and tragedies, Mao Zedong was a poet of no small accomplishment. And even just in English translation I find it impossible to read his poems, and recognize quite the kind of  inhuman monster that Chang and Halliday have tried to promote (“lazy, uncommitted, driven by lust for power and comfort, lacking in original ideas, tactically smart but strategically stupid, disliked by everyone he works with, selfish and mindlessly cruel”).

There is no point in destroying one set of myths, only to replace them with another. The history that is useful is more than this. So happy 60th anniversary to the Chairman Mao who wrote “To Liu Ya-tzu” in April 1949 (less than half a year before Mao stood in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and declared the official establishment of the People’s Republic of China) :

“I can never forget the tea we took in Canton / And the poem you asked for in Chungking / as the leaves were turning yellow. / Thirty-one years have passed / and I am back in this ancient capital ; / at the season of falling flowers / I am reading your beautiful verses. / Beware of breaking your heart with too much sadness ; / Always take a farsighted view of world events. / Do not say that the waters of Lake K’unming are too shallow ; / For watching fish they are better than Fuch’un River.”

[This poem is taken from the collection “Thirty-seven Poems by Mao Tse-tung,” translated from the Chinese by Michael Bullock and Jerome Ch ên, in Jerome Ch ên, Mao and the Chinese Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, 1967.]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper likes to think of himself as a northern hemisphere variant of former Australian prime minister, John Howard. Harper plays his politics tough, loves nothing better than burying his opponents, and has adopted from Howard the habit of dividing Canadian society into those who are ordinary’ or mainstream’ and those who are members of the elite.’

Mr. Harper has utilized the services of a number of Howard and Australian Liberal Party advisers in the three election campaigns in which he has led the Conservative Party of Canada. (And note that, just to keep things nicely confused, the Australian Liberal Party has an aggressively conservative wing, which John Howard occupied proudly.) But it would appear that Mr. Harper and his advisers have not taken on board, or if they have, have not quite learned, the salutary lesson of how ideological obsession killed Mr. Howard’s political career in November last year

Thus current events in Canada make you wonder. Have Mr. Harper and such advisers as Guy Giorno (from the old Mike Harris regime in Ontario) not understood that one of the major reasons their dear Antipodean friend disappeared from the political scene was his passionate desire to create a pure free-marketeer’s labour market in Australia? This drew on an ideological obsession with industrial relations reform that finally manifested itself in a policy called WorkChoices. And this ensured that the very people who had supported Howard for four elections finally turned on him and voted him out of office in November last year.

Mr. Howard had, since his days as leader of the Australian Liberal Party opposition in the 1980s, sought to destroy the power of unions in Australia by deregulating the labour market. While the Australian workplace had become more flexible in the ensuing years, Mr. Howard decided to land the final blow after he had won the 2004 general election, and gained control for the first time of Australia’s elected upper house, the Senate. (Which, because it is elected, is much more influential than the still unreformed Senate of Canada.)

Despite a booming economy and record low levels of unemployment, Mr. Howard insisted that the workplace laws needed to be liberalized even further for Australia to remain competitive in the global economy. His solution was a package of reforms named “Workchoices.” It dramatically shifted the balance of power in the workplace in favour of the employer. Particularly in small businesses, employers could sack employees with little justification and workers could be signed up to terms and conditions that were below the minimum standards set for their particular industry or job classification. And to many people all this offended the Australian notion of a fair go.’

WorkChoices quickly unraveled for the Howard government. It gave the union movement, which had been struggling for membership and relevance over the past 10 years, a new lease on life. And more significantly, because WorkChoices particularly affected part-time workers and lower-income employees, it became a source of concern for a large group of voters who had voted for Mr. Howard in each election since 1996. when he won office by stealing seats in traditional blue-collar and lower-income white-collar areas.

Mr. Howard’s opponent in the 2007 election, Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, made WorkChoices a central issue in the campaign. He promised that if elected he would abolish WorkChoices. It was a promise that swung votes his way – enough to tip Mr. Howard out of office.

The lesson in John Howard’s WorkChoices misadventure for Stephen Harper and any ideologically driven political leader for that matter is clear. Ideological obsessions are dangerous things. They are best left in the cupboard, only to be brought out for selected friends and soulmates to view. While Mr. Harper has obviously learned much over the years from his fellow conservative Mr. Howard, pursuing ideology in a manner that could only be described as a fit of hubris, is not something he should be emulating. We will now have to wait and see whether Mr. Harper will pay the same price as Mr. Howard, for failing to learn the lesson.

Australian lawyer and policy consultant Greg Barns was a political adviser to the Howard government from 1996 to 1999 and is a regular commentator in Canada on Australian politics. His Canadian appearances include CBC Radio and the Toronto Globe and Mail. He also comments on Australian politics in Australia and other parts of the global village, in such publications as the Melbourne Age and the South China Morning Post.

Headlines from more or less around the world tell the story: From the Globe and Mail in Canada – “Turkey’s governing party narrowly avoids ban … Ruling strikes balance between country’s radical secularists and AKP’s moderate Islamic constituency” ; from The Australian – “Turkey’s ruling party escapes court ban … Turkey stepped back from the brink of political turmoil yesterday when the ruling party narrowly escaped closure over its alleged Islamist tendencies” ; from the Los Angeles Times – “Turkey court decides against ban on ruling AKP party … Turkey’s highest court Wednesday decided against outlawing the ruling party, which had been accused of attempting to advance an Islamist agenda in officially secular Turkey”; and finally from Hurriyet in Turkey itself: “Turkish court’s decision a warning for ruling party, it’s now AKP’s turn … Constitutional Court … verdict is a serious warning that could spark … problem for the ruling party’s image.”

(And if I can be allowed my own brief editorial comment: I’m happy that the good vibes I thought I felt on the streets of Istanbul and Izmir this past fall were not entirely unreal.  Three cheers for Turkish civility and common sense.)

More from the Globe and Mail …

“Turkey’s Constitutional Court fell just one vote shy of outlawing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on charges of anti-secularism. The judgment ends a three-month period of suspense, intrigue and violence, highlighted by an alleged coup plot and a deadly terrorist attack this week in Istanbul that many believe was related to the pending court ruling.

“It marks a turning point in a decade-long showdown that has seen the staunchly secularist army and courts facing off against a new, moderately Islamic middle class that has come to dominate Turkey’s economy and society during that time, ending the country’s nationalist isolationism and pushing Turkey to join Europe, embrace free trade and end its conflicts with ethnic minorities.

“The ruling, which also cut off half of the AKP’s state funding, was seen by Turkish observers to strike a balance between the radical secularism that has governed Turkey for eight decades and the popularity and economic success created by the AKP, allowing both to remain intact. If so, it represents a very new sort of thinking in a country that has usually solved such disputes by having the military seize power.”

More from The Australian …

“After three days of deliberations, six of the 11 judges in the country’s Constitutional Court voted to ban the Justice and Development (AK) party, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Seven votes were needed for a majority verdict.

“Instead, the court decided to cut the party’s Treasury funding for this year by half – amounting to a slap on the wrist for AK, which stirred controversy by promoting Muslim headscarves.

“The court’s chairman insisted the fine was a warning. I hope the party in question will evaluate the outcome very well and get the message it should get,’ said Hasim Kilic, the only judge to vote to reject the case.”

More from the Los Angeles Times …

“The narrow verdict, which came after three days of closed-door hearings, averted what could have been a drawn-out political crisis but did little to address fundamental tensions between religiously observant Turks and their more secular-minded compatriots.

“In its ruling, the Constitutional Court penalized the Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, AKP, with financial sanctions that represent a loss of about half the party’s subsidy from the government treasury. But the penalty was not expected to significantly curtail the AKP’s ability to function because the shortfall can be made up at least in part by private donations.

“The verdict was greeted with evident relief by the AKP. Cabinet minister Faruk Celik called it a victory for Turkish democracy. The party had steadfastly denied the charges and said they were politically motivated.”

More from Hurriyet in Turkey …

“Observers say the ruling represents a third way’ which was signaled by the Court’s Chairman Hasim Kilic two months ago.

“Kilic has told the Referans business daily in May: Believe me whatever the ruling is, you all see that our democracy, secularism and legal institutions would come out of this process stronger. And believe me this is not a wishful thinking!’

“And he said on Wednesday everybody should make necessary efforts to reduce political tension in Turkey from now on and urged political parties to take the legal steps for toughening party closure conditions.

“The message and the details of the ruling of the Constitutional Court should be read carefully.

Six of the 11 members said the AKP had become the focal point of anti-secular activities; one member, the chairman Hasim Kilic, said the case should be rejected and the remaining four members also admitted that the party is focal point of anti-secular activities but not in an extent to deserve to be banned.

“In other words 10 members of the Court said AKP had taken steps that harm the secularism principle in the country. That’s why the ruling is a serious warning’ for the governing party, as Kilic said, and its activities would continue to be monitored by state organs.

“The AKP had been convicted for committing a crime against secularism by the 10 of the 11 members of the Constitutional Court. So that the AKP was not acquitted by the Constitutional Court,’ Murat Yetkin, Radikal‘s Ankara bureau chief said on Thursday.

“He said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP should now think twice before taking any steps, because every action of the ruling party would be assessed under the shadow of the court’s ruling.”

July 29: ISTANBUL BOMBINGS RAISE FEARS FOR AN ISLAMIC DEMOCRACY THAT WORKS?

“Two bombs exploded minutes apart in a packed Istanbul square” on the night of Sunday, July 27, “killing 17, five of them children, and injuring more than 150 in the deadliest attack against civilians in Turkey in almost five years.” What is most alarming about this senseless destruction is the prospect that it somehow signals the end of a brave Turkish experiment in a kinder and gentler Islamic democracy – which as the Middle East journalist Christopher de Bellaigue urged last fall, “holds out the promise of a free public culture, equally open to devout Muslims, secularists, and critics of Turkey’s past politics-something the country has never known.”

The biggest trouble is that the July 27 bombings have come “on the eve of a major court case … that could lead to the closure of the governing Justice and Development, or AK party.” And the “bombings and the legal challenge to the government highlight a growing mood of uncertainty in Turkey, where an Islamic-oriented government that won a strong mandate in elections last year is locked in a power struggle with secular circles in the military and judiciary.” The chances that this struggle will suddenly break wide open now seem disturbingly greater than when six people were gunned down in front of the US Consulate in Istanbul, just this past Wednesday, July 9.

Who did it … the Kurdish separatists in the PKK?

As of July 29 in North America, it remains unclear exactly who is responsible for the July 27 bombings in Istanbul.

From the start government officials have seemed to want to blame Kurdish separatists in Turkey (who also unfortunately live next door, as it were, to the Kurds in northern Iraq). As reported by the Associated Press yesterday: “Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan served as a pallbearer at a funeral Monday for some of the 17 people killed by bombs in Turkey’s biggest city, an attack the government blamed on Kurdish rebels who have targeted civilians in the past.”

At the same time, the “rebel Kurdistan Worker’s Party [PKK] immediately denied responsibility and attributed Sunday’s attack to dark forces’ – hard-line Turkish nationalists who allegedly seek to foment chaos to strengthen the political influence of the military… Turkey is home to a variety of violent groups besides the PKK, including Islamic extremists and alleged coup plotters with ties to the secular establishment.”

Prime Minster Erdogan has nonetheless “said the bombings … appeared to be a reprisal for air raids on PKK positions in northern Iraq, as well as a cross-border ground offensive by the Turkish military in February.” And today Agence France-Presse has reported that: “Police studying surveillance videos identified a possible suspect … as Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq … Officials have accused the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party … The police, who have established a description of the terrorist… are working on the presumption that he came alone from the Qandil mountains … where the PKK has its main stronghold.”

Who did it … the “shadowy Ergenekon’ nationalist group?

The PKK’s own theory that “dark forces” are behind the attack apparently puts a particular finger on the “shadowy Ergenekon’ nationalist group, which is alleged to have organised attacks and plotted assassinations to foment political turmoil and pave the way for a military coup against [Prime Minister] Erdogan’s [current Turkish] government.”

The government has been investigating Ergenekon since last summer, “when it was allegedly discovered that a house in the mraniye district of Istanbul was being used as a storehouse for arms and ammunition.”

The investigation gathered steam late this past January, when 33 of Ergenekon’s ” alleged members were seized in a police raid … The claims [about the organization] widely reported in the Turkish press ever since read like a thriller … They allege the gang was plotting to bring down the government … It is claimed their plan was to assassinate a string of Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, fomenting chaos and provoking a military intervention in 2009.A menu’ of targets had already been drawn up and a hitman hired when the police swooped, according to the daily Hurriyet. Sabah newspaper linked the gang to the … murder of three Protestant Christians and Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Those details – apparently leaked by police – have never been officially confirmed.”

In the immediate wake of the July 27 bombings the Guardian in the UK ran a piece by “Bulent Kenes … the editor in chief of Today’s Zaman, the most circulated English Daily in Turkey.” And this intriguingly pulls together all of Ergenekon, the PKK, and the “court case,” in a way that still manages to be optimistic about Turkey’s future:

“No one is claiming responsibility for the bombs in Istanbul, but the finger of suspicion points at a shady ultra-nationalist group … there are close links between Ergenekon and the closure case at the top court; and between Ergenekon and the PKK … The evidence listed in the Ergenekon indictment, which has been covered enormously in Turkish media in recent days, oblige us to think that the last terrorist attack is linked with Ergenekon irregardless of whether it was perpetrated by the PKK, Hizbullah, the DHKP-C or the IBDA-C. Because I think the attacks aim at deterrence and intimidation of those officials who want to chase the trail of Ergenekon wherever it leads …

“Hopefully, these terrorist acts have no chance at reversing the Turkish people’s eagerness to make Turkey a much more transparent and much more democratic country. Because the overwhelming majority of the Turkish people want a more transparent, more democratic regime, the attacks, fortunately, do not bear the potential to deter the Turkish people from these demands.”

Where is the court case going?

As noted earlier, the biggest trouble in Turkey right now would seem to be that the July 27 bombings have come “on the eve of a major court case … that could lead to the closure of the governing Justice and Development, or AK party.”

As Bulent Kenes urges, “there are close links between Ergenekon and the closure case at the top court.” Or, it would seem, the court case is a kinder and gentler way of trying to do the same thing that Ergenekon wants to do – i.e. get rid of the current AK party government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the grounds that it is what Christopher de Bellaigue last fall called a “Trojan horse for Islamism as severe as one finds in Iran or Saudi Arabia.”

(Though Mr. de Bellaigue, it should be noted, does not agree with this characterization of the Erdogan government himself. Like Mr. Kenes, he sees it as much more in tune with the “Turkish people’s eagerness to make Turkey a much more transparent and much more democratic country.” And, again, the government did win a “strong mandate in elections last year.”)

In this sense both Ergenekon and the court case are inspired by the aggressively secularist ideals of Kemal Ataturk, who founded the modern Turkish republic in the 1920s, with the help of a military elite that still sometimes sees itself as a guardian of these ideals.

(And these ideals, it might be said, have had both positive and negative sides in Turkey’s subsequent development. Ataturk was for science and progress, and he laid some key institutional foundations for Turkish democracy today. He arguably over-relied on military force to help implement his reforms, however, and like Ergenekon in 2008, “Kemalism” in the 1920s and 1930s also had some lamentable fascist overtones.)

The details of the current court case have been briefly explained in the New York Times. A prosecutor of Turkey’s high or constitutional court “has accused … [Prime Minister Erdogan's governing AK] party of bringing Islamic practices into politics to replace the secular regime with a more religious one, in violation of the founding principles of the Turkish republic … If found guilty, 71 senior members of the party, including the current president and the prime minister, could be banned from politics for five years. The court is expected to reach its verdict in a couple of weeks.” (And the great fear is that if the verdict is guilty, who knows what will happen in Turkish politics … to say nothing of the Turkish armed forces, and on and on and on?)

Good news and bad news?

Two pieces of more or less good news have just surfaced in the midst of these current Turkish troubles:

First, from the Telegraph in the UK: “Istanbul bombing does little to deter British holidaymakers … Travel companies and tour operators report no concerns from customers following Sunday’s bomb attack in the Turkish capital [well technically Ankara not Istanbul is Turkey's capital city] … Last week Telegraph Travel reported that Turkey has overtaken Spain as Britons’ most popular tourist destination … Meanwhile, Thomas Cook said that, although it was still early, there had been no worried callers. The tour operator said that it will be offering the same advice as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) … The FCO website makes special mention of Sunday’s attack, which left 17 dead and more than 150 injured, while commenting that the risk of terrorism in Turkey is “high”, with targets including tourist areas. However, its advice is identical to that offered on other popular holiday spots such as Spain and Morocco.”

And second, from Reuters India: “Turkish markets rise on improved political outlook … Turkish equities jumped on Tuesday [July 29] for the second day in a row as investors bet that a top court would not close the ruling AK Party on charges of seeking to introduce Islamic law in Turkey. The bounce was in contrast to emerging equities elsewhere, which hit their lowest since August 2007 on the back of ongoing problems in the Western financial sector … Istanbul’s main stock index .XU100 gained 2.71 percent on Tuesday rising to 39,153.74 points … Turkish stocks were in negative terrain during the exchange’s first trading session before the release of a JP Morgan report upgrading Turkish stocks …in their ideal portfolio and [urging] that the chance for a market-positive outcome to the Constitutional Court closure case was 80 percent.”

At the same time, there still does seem a new note of uncertainty about Turkey in the air. A provocative piece in the Irish Times observes that along with coming on the eve of the Constitutional Court closure case, the July 27 bombings “also came just two days after a criminal court accepted the indictment of … Ergenekon,” whose “aim … is to destabilise society …

“Turkey has long been full of rumours of violent patriotic’ gangs. By offering harder evidence than before of links between violent groups at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, the Ergenekon case has sparked unprecedented soul-searching in a country that once saw the state as a largely benevolent father … In private, everybody talks about alleged links to the PKK.” As one student of the subject has claimed, “Ergenekon and the PKK have different aims, but they’re both terrorist gangs. Of course they could work together …

“A columnist for Turkey’s most influential daily, Cuneyt Ulsever, went a step further. Call me paranoid, but I think Ergenekon did this,’ he said. These are wild times for Turkey, the wildest I have ever seen. God knows where we are going.’”

July 9: GUNFIGHT AT THE  ISTINYE CORRAL .. what are killings at US Consulate in Istanbul telling us?

Probably the first thing to remember about the three gunmen and three police officers who were killed in front of the US Consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 is that violence of this sort is hardly unprecedented in the fabled former Constantinople and before that Byzantium – ancient glittering jewel of the near (or middle?) east, between the Mediterranean and Black seas.

The present fortress-like US Consulate, perched on a hill in the suburban Istanbul neighbourhood of Istinye, was itself constructed “after Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda carried out suicide bombings in [November] 2003 that targeted two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank in Istanbul.” And: “Those attacks killed 58 people.” Similarly, another “four people were killed and 15 wounded in an explosion in Istanbul in June 2004, before President George W. Bush visited the city.” The most remarkable point about the latest July 9, 2008 killings is almost certainly how promptly Turkish authorities contained the violence. And the greatest international grief must be reserved for the three Turkish officers who gave their lives in defence of civil order and the democratic rule of law.

1. The US Consulate in Istinye …

The still rather new US Consulate building in Istanbul itself says some interesting enough things about the state of the global village nowadays. It has been charitably described by a Turkish source as “an imposing structure on a hill in Istinye, a densely residential neighborhood along the Bosporus Strait on the European side of Istanbul.”

Before the 2003 assault on the British Consulate in Istanbul, the US Consulate had a more downtown location. The US State Department hints broadly at the concerns behind the new structure in a more suburban location: it “has fortified walls, security checkpoints and barriers set far from the building.”

At the still rather new facility, this past June 24June 26, the “Turkish Ministry of Justice and the US Department of Justice jointly organized a first-of-its-kind roundtable of practitioners and experts to discuss international terrorist extradition issues …Top prosecutors and judges from Turkey, the United States, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iraq, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland engaged in extensive and open discussion about international requirements, practical considerations and best practices in overcoming legal obstacles inherent in extraditing terrorists.”

Several days later, “Consul General Sharon A. Wiener welcomed 2000 guests to the [US] Consulate in Istinye to celebrate the two hundred thirty-second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Over 2000 mostly Turkish distinguished guests enjoyed American fare donated by local outlets of American restaurants at the Consulate’s largest event of the year.”

A much less official but still instructive view comes from a blog written by a teacher from Seattle, Washington, recounting his “adventures visiting my good friend Ned in Istanbul during July of 2007.” (And Ned, it should be noted, is also a citizen of the USA, about to get married to someone suitable enough, it would seem, while remaining in Istanbul:

“Today, Ned and I took a bus most of the way up the Bosporus to the neighborhood of Istinye in order to visit the American Consulate. Ned had to fill out a piece of paperwork that essentially asserts that he’s not married. This is the first step in getting married in Turkey when you’re an American (whether you’re marrying a Turk or not, it doesn’t matter) … When we arrived in Istinye, we inquired about the location of the US Consulate. A local directed us toward a busy street that led up into the hills. Ned didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he’d heard that the consulate is a very large and brutal looking building. We rounded a corner and, sure enough, on the hillside up ahead was one of the ugliest buildings I’ve ever seen … The consulate is not really designed to be accessible by foot – typically American I suppose.”

2. Known details of July 9 killings so far …

As of my writing here, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the July 9 attack on the very large and brutal looking US Consulate in Istinye that Ned and his old friend from Seattle visited last summer. A Turkish source offers the following report:

“Three unidentified gunmen and three Turkish policemen were killed Wednesday in an attack on a police guard post at the main entrance of the well-fortified US Consulate in Istanbul that officials labeled a terrorist’ act. One person has been taken into custody …

“The three assailants jumped from a car and opened fire at the police checkpoint around 11 AM (0800 GMT), officials told reporters, adding that they also fired shots at the building. The security forces returned fire, killing all three gunmen …

“There is no doubt that this is a terrorist attack,’ Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler said … Police identified the perpetrators of the armed attack, Guler told reporters after visiting wounded police officers at a local hospital, adding all current evidence indicates that three of the assailants who were killed during the attack were of Turkish origin …

“Yavuz Erkut Yuksel, a bystander, told CNN-Turk television the attackers emerged from a white vehicle and surprised the guard … One of them approached a policeman while hiding his gun and shot him in the head,’ Yuksel said …

“Guler said two of the attackers were Turkish nationals. [This somewhat contradicts three of the assailants who were killed during the attack were of Turkish origin' above, but that is what the source says.] Police were pursuing a fourth attacker who reportedly escaped in a car … A US Embassy spokeswoman said there were no reports of casualties among American consulate employees, but could not confirm Turkish media reports of injuries and deaths.”

According to the Reuters news service, as cited by Yahoo Canada: “Turkish broadcasters CNN Turk and NTV said, without citing sources, that the three gunmen from east Turkey were suspected of being members of al Qaeda.”

Some further details from Reuters and other sources appear in a Times of London report: “Ulus Durgut, 24, who was in the process of entering the [US Consulate] compound, said the gunbattle lasted 15 minutes. The terrorists were bearded men and had long hair,’ Mr Durgut told Reuters. Mutlu Gunes, a 13-year-old eyewitness, said that he was on his way to a mosque when he spotted several men preparing guns and placing them inside a Ford Focus car before driving to the nearby consulate … The three of them got out of the car. One of them shot a policeman in the chest and I saw one terrorist killing himself after being shot by police. Then I hid under a car,’ he said.”

3. Meanwhile, Kurdish radicals kidnap three German climbers on Mount Ararat in “Agri province, which borders Iran”

Especially since the start of the US War in Iraq , the threat of periodic Turkish incursions into the Kurdish-dominated northern regions of Iraq, where Turkish Kurd separatists and terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) are thought to seek haven, has been a source of potential instability in the wider region.

Intriguingly enough, on July 9, 2008 as well: “On a day of instability in Turkey, it emerged that Kurdish guerrillas had kidnapped three German tourists on a climbing expedition in eastern Turkey … The three tourists had established a camp on Mount Ararat in Agri province as part of a 13-member climbing team when they were seized by a group of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported …

“If the PKK is proven to have carried out the kidnapping, it would be a rare tactic for the separatist group whose activities are mainly focused on attacking military targets in southeast Turkey …. [The state-run Anatolian news agency] reported Agri Governor Mehmet Cetin as saying the climbers had arrived in the region three days ago and had established a camp at a height of 3,200 metres (10,500 feet) on the mountain … Five PKK militants approached the camp and chose three people to kidnap, he said. Their identity was not clear. Agri province, which borders Iran, is to the north of the main PKK conflict region and is a popular destination for mountain climbers …

“The terrorists said they carried out this action because of the German government’s recent moves against PKK associations and sympathisers,’ [the state-run Anatolian news agency] reported the governor as saying … Last month Germany banned Kurdish television station Roj TV, which Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble described as being a mouthpiece for the PKK. Germany also extradited two PKK militants to Turkey last year.”

And what about the recent “Arrests in alleged plot to topple Turkish government”?

All news about trouble of any sort in Turkey is bound to distress you somewhat, if, on the basis of a very short visit last fall – just after the Seattle school teacher’s “adventures visiting my good friend Ned in Istanbul during July of 2007” – you have concluded that the Republic of Turkey today is the world’s best hope for some kind of functioning Islamic democracy. (Which even or especially if you have absolutely no faith in the cheerleader political theories of George W. Bush, could still be a very useful thing in the global village today, if you live in and value any other kind of democratic country – Canada, say, or Australia, and India, etc., along with the USA, UK, European Union, and all that.)

As matters stand, modern Turkey has a history of rather aggressive military-backed secularism since the break-up of the old Ottoman empire in the 1920s – onto which an apparently quite mild and more or less rational-seeming Islamic government has most recently been grafted. There is still significant tension between these two secular and religious streams of contemporary Turkish culture. And while walking about in downtown Istanbul can be a quite benign and encouraging experience, there are still those who fear that this tension could get out of hand – again, as it has from time to time in the past.

Thus this past July 6, 2008 the Associated Press told us: “Turkey has reportedly arrested two retired generals as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to topple the Islamic-rooted government…. The state-run Anatolia news agency reports today that Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur were among 21 people rounded up and questioned earlier in the week in a probe into an alleged coup plot by secularists … Turkish authorities arrested the head of the capital’s business chamber late Saturday as part of the same investigation …

“The probe into the alleged pro-secular and nationalist network called Ergenekon’ began last year and dozens, including some of the government’s fiercest critics, have been detained so far…. No indictments have been issued and no trial date has been set … Details of the alleged plot are sketchy but some newspapers close to the government have said the suspects were plotting a series of events such as mass demonstrations and violent clashes with police that would lay the groundwork for an army takeover.”

There as yet seems no suggestion that the somewhat quixotic July 9 attack on the US Consulate in Istanbul by three gun-slinging “bearded men” with “long hair” – who were also “from east Turkey” and “suspected of being members of al Qaeda.” – had anything to do with the reported recent arrests of ” two retired generals as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to topple the Islamic-rooted government.”

But who really knows about such things with any great confidence, of course, of course? And it could even be (maybe?) that, given the alleged vast success of the recent US “surge” in Iraq (just ask John McCain etc), the “bearded men” with “long hair” who nowadays dominate al Qaeda (maybe again?) have thrown over their heretofore extremely successful suicide-bombing tactics in favour of the great American traditions of the Gunfight at the OK Corral. (Which would seem to be just the sort of thing the new very large and brutal looking US Consulate on top of the “hill in Istinye, a densely residential neighborhood along the Bosporus Strait on the European side of Istanbul” is designed to handle. Or something like that … )

Citizen X’s earlier report  “A Day in Istanbul” appeared in counterweights on Thursday, October 25, 2007.

UPDATE JULY 12: According to a report in the New York Times:

“Turkish police have now detained 10 suspects in the armed attack on the United States Consulate on Wednesday that killed six people, the governor of Istanbul said Friday.

“Three policemen and three assailants were killed in a gunfight in front of the consulate. A fourth escaped in car, which the police found abandoned in a remote neighborhood in Istanbul late Thursday. The suspected driver is among those detained.

“Gov. Muammer Guler said the suspected driver had been interrogated at length.

“His interrogation lasted until morning,’ Mr. Guler said in a statement to the semiofficial Anatolian news agency. There may be additional detentions in light of this interrogation. Of course, there is no longer any doubt that it was a suicide type of attack,’ he said.

“Several media outlets have raised the possibility that Al Qaeda was involved, but Mr. Guler declined to comment on any links.

“The utmost attention is being paid, especially to the international links of one of the persons involved in the terror attack,’ Mr. Guler said. In terms of a name of an organization, we cannot say anything since we haven’t confirmed it, but of course there is work to be done on the groups mentioned.’”

UPDATE JULY 10: According to a Reuters report earlier today:

“Police were still looking for the fourth man in the squad, who escaped from the scene in a car during the gunbattle between the gunmen and police.

“The attack coincides with political tension in Turkey. The governing party is fighting to avoid being banned for alleged anti-secular activities and police are probing a shadowy far-right group suspected of plotting a military coup … .

“But there was skepticism among security experts that al Qaeda was behind the assault on the consulate, given the small scale and amateurish nature of the attack … .

“In Turkey’s eastern Igdir province, friends and relatives of one of the dead gunmen, named as Bulent Cinar, expressed shock at his involvement, the state-run Anatolian news agency said.

“Bulent was a good boy. We were shocked when we heard what happened. I can’t understand how he could do such a thing. He was definitely deceived,’ said Erhan Karaboga, a friend of his.”

According to a subsequent Reuters report:

“Turkish police on Thursday detained the suspected driver of the car used in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul this week, in which 6 people were killed, media reports said.

“The car had also been seized and the driver was being questioned at police headquarters, CNN Turk reported.

“Earlier in the day, police detained four other suspects.

“Interior Minister Besir Atalay described the incident on Wednesday, in which three policemen and three gunmen were killed, as a suicide attack.”

Back in February this year the newly elected Prime Minister Rudd delivered an apology similar in sentiment to Mr. Harper’s this week, to indigenous peoples who were similarly removed from their families and communities last century by governments and churches – known as Australia’s “Stolen Generation.” But Mr Rudd ruled out a national monetary compensation scheme. Instead around 100,000 members of Australia ‘s Stolen Generation still have to litigate in the courts to gain compensation, or rely on the generosity of state ( in Canadian parlance provincial) governments to accord them justice.

Kevin Rudd’s strange half-echoes of John Howard on aboriginal policy

Whatever else might be said about its aboriginal policy, Mr Harper’s government has finally been prepared to offer monetary compensation for the sexual, physical, and psychological abuse that members of Canada’s Stolen Generation suffered (albeit as a result of “the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history” – and as part of a long process that began eight years ago).

Mr Rudd argued that his apology to Australia ‘s Stolen Generation was simply a symbolic gesture. “This is about getting the symbolic covenant, if you like, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australia right and then moving on,” Mr Rudd said on January 29, two weeks before the formal apology ceremony.

“When it comes to future funding commitments from the Government that I lead, it will be about fixing health, fixing schools and fixing communities in a very practical way on the ground, in partnership with local aboriginal leadership,” rather than offering compensation, Mr Rudd added.

Australian Labor Party leader Mr Rudd’s position on compensation here is in line with that adopted by his conservative predecessor John Howard..When the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission’s landmark 1997 report on the Stolen Generations was published, Mr. Howard ruled out both an official apology and monetary compensation.

Aboriginal issues in Australian courts and state governments

As a result of Mr Howard’s and now Mr Rudd’s refusal to head down what has become the Canadian compensation path, individual aboriginal Australians still have to launch complex and lengthy litigation in the courts, to be compensated for the hardships they have and still do suffer, as a result of a policy of assimilation which had the same objective in Australia as in Canada – to effectively wipe out the aboriginal cultures and contributions of both places forever.

The first Stolen Generation case to be heard in Australia’s courts was decided in 2000. But the claimants, Lorna Cubillo and Peter Gunner, who were removed from their families in the Northern Territory in the 1940s and the 1950s and placed with church missions, were unsuccessful – for a range of reasons, including the time elapsed since the events took place.

Not until last year did a member of Australia ‘s Stolen Generation win a case in the courts for compensation. 50-year-old South Australian Bruce Trevorrow was awarded over half a million dollars by that State’s courts, because, as a 13-month-old baby suffering from gastric illness, he was taken from his mother to a hospital, and then placed in state care until his mother found him again, when he was 10 years old.

For 100,000 or so other Stolen Generation members there are very limited avenues for compensation available. Only one state government, on the small island of Tasmania, has established a Stolen Generation Compensation fund for 84 individuals – victims of earlier particular Tasmanian assimilation policies. Some churches have also made available limited funds, for those aboriginal people who were removed from their homes by missionaries and church welfare agencies.

A national compensation fund in Australia too?

Calls by aboriginal leaders in Australia for Prime Minister Rudd to establish a national compensation fund of $1 billion have so far fallen on deaf ears. As recently as last month he again refused to acknowledge the need for any such action.

Perhaps the decisions of Canadian Prime Minister Harper, and those aboriginal and other community and government leaders who have helped develop Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, will ultimately make Mr Rudd think again. For the time being however, it is hard to escape the impression that while Canada today is finally giving its former students of Indian residential schools more than rhetoric and a heartfelt apology, Australia is still making its Stolen Generation plead their case for real justice in the courts. Even under the ostensibly rather different governments of Stephen Harper and Kevin Rudd.

Australian lawyer and policy consultant Greg Barns was a political adviser to the Howard government from 1996 to 1999 and is a regular commentator in Canada on Australian politics.

His Canadian appearances include CBC Radio and the Toronto Globe and Mail. He also comments on Australian politics in Australia and other parts of the global village, in such publications as the Melbourne Age and the South China Morning Post.

His main point is: “It’s not that the Canadian voice isn’t valued, it’s that we’re not there, we’re not voicing … You gotta do what you can.” You also have to pay more attention to what the world wide web says about the global village today. Beyond the sadness of Lebanon and Myanmar/Burma, e.g., what about Hu’s recent path-breaking visit with Fukuda in Japan? Or the Hong Kong maid from Indonesia who is in “court after sex with boss’s teenage son“? What about the “violent-and spreading-Maoist insurgency” that threatens India’s “runaway growth“? What’s going on with the euro? Or democracy in Kuwait? And how come Australia has two of the world’s 10 “most stylish cities,” but Canada has none?

1. Sadness of Lebanon and Myanmar/Burma …

Yet another crazy wave of violence in Lebanon “was triggered when the government declared Hezbollah’s military communications network illegal. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday the government decision was a declaration of war.”

Broadly speaking, it seems (and for what such fine points are worth), Hezbollah is Shia, and the government is Sunni (and Christian, etc, no doubt). Iran supports Hezbollah. The US and Israel support the government. Iran is blaming the US and Israel for this latest burst of trouble in a much troubled land. The US and Israel are blaming Iran. What could Canada do here – beyond praying that the Lebanese people find something better to do with their time than murdering each other, over whatever it is they have such violent feelings about? (And in any case the latest word here from Canada’s self-proclaimed national newspaper is “Crisis eases in Lebanon.”)

As far as the recent “devastating cyclone in Myanmar” (aka Burma) goes, Canada actually is already trying to do something there. As we write: “A reconnaissance unit from the Canadian Forces’ Disaster Response Assistance Team is en route to Thailand to pave the way for a deployment to cyclone-stricken Myanmar.

“The country, also known as Burma, has not accepted Canada’s offer to send DART to help the starving survivors of a cyclone that observers have projected could claim as many as 100,000 lives. But the recce’ team is preparing for the possibility Canada’s offer will be accepted and is setting up a site in Thailand, which is adjacent to Myanmar.” Noting such headlines elsewhere as “UN Resuming Aid to Myanmar After Dispute With Junta” (i.e. the military dictatorship currently running Myanmar/Burma), we can only say good luck!

2. “Fukuda, Hu put focus on future … Japan, China bypass history issues, hint at gas-field deal in crucial summit”

In Canada’s wildest Jim Balsillie-type dreams, there could be some very vague analogy between Japan and China on the one hand, and Canada and the United States on the other. (The population ratios, e.g., are similar.) But, as Mr. Balsillie is complaining, for starters no one in Canada – or certainly far too few – is or are taking any such dreams seriously. And if you don’t take yourself seriously, how can you expect anyone else … etc, etc?

On the other hand again, Japan’s historic ambitions vis-a-vis China – even though some say there is no real or even unreal difference between Japanese and Chinese culture, etc, etc, etc – have not led to the kind of more or less friendly relations that Canada enjoys with the United States. (“You’re not from a foreign country,” Chris Matthews on MSNBC TV said with a wide smile to a guest the other night: “You’re just from Canada.”)

Nonetheless, Japanese “Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed Wednesday [May 7] to make 2008 the year for boosting their nations’ mutually beneficial’ relationship, as Tokyo hosted the first Chinese leader to visit in 10 years … The previous visit, made by Jiang Zemin in 1998, saw Japan criticized for its wartime invasion of China.

“In a joint statement issued by Fukuda and Hu, Japan and China agreed simply to squarely face history and move toward the future.’ No specific mention was made of the history issues that have badly strained bilateral ties in recent years … Later, at a joint news conference, Fukuda said the two nations have made major progress’ in their feud over joint development of a gas field straddling their disputed exclusive economic zones in the East China Sea.”

3. But did the Indonesian maid in Hong Kong make her employer’s teenage son happy?

The global village is a more mysterious place than you might think – as this recent Reuters’ report illustrates: “A 45-year-old Indonesian maid admitted having sex with her Hong Kong employer’s 14-year-old son after watching Internet porn together, a newspaper reported on Tuesday [May 6] … A court heard how the maid, a divorcee and mother of two, had sex with the boy in a relationship that lasted five months …

“The boy tried to end the affair, but she refused … The teenager eventually confessed to the relationship to the leader of a Christian group he belonged to and the maid was arrested … The maid, Suwartin, had worked with the boy’s extended family for 11 years and pleaded guilty to five charges of committing an indecent act with an under-age partner … She later apologised and said she would live with the shame of what she had done for the rest of her life’ … She will be sentenced in two weeks’ time … Maids from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka are often the subject of court cases in richer neighbours such as Hong Kong and Singapore, but usually as victims of abuse rather than offenders.”

4. The Wonder That Is India Today …

Like China, and other richer neighbours such as Hong Kong and Singapore, India has a bold new economic future in the global village.

Business Week in the United States, however, has lately been investigating “Naxalites-Maoist insurgents who seek the violent overthrow of the state and who despise India’s landowning and business classes. The Naxalites have been slowly but steadily spreading through the countryside for decades. Few outside India have heard of these rebels, named after the Bengal village of Naxalbari, where their movement started in 1967. Not many Indians have thought much about the Naxalites, either. The Naxalites mostly operate in the remote forests of eastern and central India, still a comfortable remove from the bustle of Mumbai and the thriving outsourcing centers of Gurgaon, New Delhi, and Bangalore …

“Yet the Naxalites may be the sleeper threat to India’s economic power, potentially more damaging to Indian companies, foreign investors, and the state than pollution, crumbling infrastructure, or political gridlock. Just when India needs to ramp up its industrial machine to lock in growth-and just when foreign companies are joining the party-the Naxalites are clashing with the mining and steel companies essential to India’s long-term success. The threat doesn’t stop there. The Naxalites may move next on India’s cities, where outsourcing, finance, and retailing are thriving.”

Most recently, Naxalities have been especially strong in the mining regions of eastern and central India, traditionally inhabited by so-called “tribals” or indigenous peoples – “who descend from India’s original inhabitants and are largely nature worshippers.” There are some parallels with the recent activities of Canadian mining companies at the edge of aboriginal lands in Northern Ontario, e.g. And some Canadian mining companies have been involved in eastern India as well.

Alcan Inc, still headquartered in Montreal (and now part of something called Rio Tinto Alcan – also alluded to in the Business Week article) has been a case in point. According to another recent report: “Thousands of tribal and low-caste people living in Kashipur, India prefer to die rather than abandon their lands to make way for Alcan’s proposed mine and refinery. Local residents have organized massive mobilizations against the project …

“In 2000, three protesters were killed and several others injured. Alcan suspended operations after the incident until it was satisfied that local authorities would responsibly enforce the law and keep order. The villagers have found an important ally in Canada. Alcan workers in British Columbia, represented by the Canadian Auto Workers union, have vowed that they will not smelt any alumina originating from Kashipur … On April 12, 2007, Alcan announced its intention to sell its 45% interest in India’s Utkal Alumina International.”

5. A Euro milestone … and Democracy in Kuwait …

The rise of a common (continental) European currency has been just one of many globalizing signs over the past number of years. It is also proof that “globalization” and “Americanization” are not one and the same thing – or even that China and India are not the only alternatives to Americanization, and so forth, on and on …

According to a May 1 article in the International Herald Tribune: “The euro turns 10 next January, a milestone that will be marked with celebratory speeches, inch-thick scholarly papers and a commemorative two-euro coin, designed by a Greek sculptor … By most yardsticks, Europe’s common currency has been a success, emerging as an alternative to the fading dollar for bond dealers, central bankers, Chinese exporters, even Jay-Z, the American rapper, who put a pop-cultural imprimatur on the currency by flashing a wad of 500-euro notes in a music video …

“Yet fissures are forming in the European monetary union that threaten to widen in coming months … Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain – the sun-drenched fraternity sometimes called Club Med – are struggling with eroding competitiveness, rising prices and bloated debts. Meanwhile, Germany, the sick man of Europe for most of the euro era, is suddenly vigorous again. Economically fit after years of reforms and fortified by brisk global demand for its machinery and other goods, it has fended off China to retain its status as the world’s export champion … Germany’s northern neighbors are generally doing well, too, which has rekindled talk of a north-south divide.”

Meanwhile, those who think that Turkey, where tourists can often at least get away with using euros instead of the as yet still prevailing local currency, is the only remotely serious “Islamic democracy” in the global village today might at least briefly consider the case of Kuwait. This “tiny, oil-rich nation of 2.6 million people” is approaching “its latest round of elections.” And “both here and in neighboring countries on the Persian Gulf” there are those who wonder if it isn’t suffering at the moment from “too much democracy.” Check out “In Democracy Kuwait Trusts, but Not Much,” in the May 6 New York Times, if you want to explore at somewhat greater length what is an interesting enough subject, for outward-looking Canadians and others too.

6. The world’s 10 “most stylish cities”?

Of course no list of anything in the world today should be taken all that seriously. But some are a bit more interesting than others. And a list of the “world’s most stylish cities” recently compiled by Simon Anholt, editor of the journal Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, is a case in point.

As this list sees the contemporary earthly universe: “Paris has La Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor. New York is home to Fifth and Madison avenues … But none can match London’s cosmopolitan vibe. One third of the city’s population was born outside Britain … that’s 2.3 million Londoners sharing their cultural style, fashion and cuisine. This mix gives tremendous vibrancy to the city, the world’s most stylish … Sydney, Australia; Rome; Barcelona, Spain; Melbourne, Australia; Berlin; Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Madrid, Spain, round out the top 10.”

Just to start with, no doubt, this is all too Eurocentric. It leaves out not just Asia and Africa, but most of the Western Hemisphere too. And here a Canadian in particular is bound to ask: How come Australia has two cities in the top 10, while Canada gets none – in English or French?

There is at least an official explanation: “Everyone loves Australia,’ says Anholt. It’s a fantastic brand, and it basically all comes down to Crocodile Dundee. That film did wonders for the image of Australian cities. It’s had so much airtime all over the world and Australia is now perceived as the perfect country: warm, rich, welcoming and civilized.’”

Maybe what Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion should really be doing with his extra money is helping to bankroll some kind of similar movie about Canada? (Polar-Bear Harper? Or Deer-in-the-Headlights Dion? Or even Beaver Balsillie?)

Until then, at any rate, Mr. Balsillie has at least “spent $1 million to kick off the creation of the Canadian International Council, a public policy think-tank.” And, according to Stephen Brunt in the Globe and Mail: “With the US economy tanking, things looking up for Balsillie’s dream of owning NHL team.” Finally, we should all no doubt take the ultimate message to heart, again, again, and again: “It’s not that the Canadian voice isn’t valued, it’s that we’re not there, we’re not voicing … You gotta do what you can.”

Someone at the office here just told about how his psychic political wife was a big Stephane Dion supporter back at the Liberal Party of Canada’s Montreal leadership convention, late in 2005. But now in early 2008 she has definitively concluded she made a big mistake. Dion’s latest crying wolf on a fresh election, she thinks, has finished him as any kind of credible leader. I don’t know that I quite believe this yet myself. A week can be a long time in politics, etc, etc. (Just ask Dona Cadman, whose story about how the Harper Conservatives tried to “entice” her late great husband may yet save the Dion Liberals?) Dion’s troubles have nonetheless helped push me towards the very vaguely related problems of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in Canada’s other European mother country across the seas. My side trip here has also shed slight further light on Canadian billionaire Paul Desmarais, and “France’s favourite Englishman,” Theodore Zeldin. And don’t ask how Mariah Carey’s new video “Touch My Body finally completes the picture. But trust me: you’ll be glad it does.

In some ways of course the more obvious Canadian-politician analogue for Nicolas Sarkozy is Stephen Harper, not Stephane Dion. Both Harper and “Sarko” are figures of the right, bent on reforming what they see as excessively statist left-wing regimes headed for big trouble. Except that in Canada’s case the traditionally Liberal centrist federal governments in Ottawa have been “excessively statist left-wing” only in the bedtime delusions of neo-con juvenilles …

What gives the analogy between Sarko and Dion some secondary weight is that both of them are more obvious creations of contemporary francophone culture than Harper – and are currently suffering from bouts of political unpopularity in a way that continues to elude Mr. Harper (whose main problem with the big public still seems to be that most of his fellow Canadians have no feelings about him at all?) …

Why is Sarko in so much trouble? In an article headlined “Sarkozy sorry for trading insults. Or is he?,” the February 27 edition of The Independent in the UK explained that “President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted publicly yesterday that he was wrong to trade insults with a bystander at an agricultural show at the weekend. Or rather, he did not.” The article went on to clarify how: “In the past four months, M. Sarkozy has slid from a poll rating in the mid 60s to only 37 per cent. In another part of yesterday’s interview, the President said that he intended to ignore the polls and continue his hyperactive’ approach to his job … Without a hyperactive President, France will never change,’ he said. I don’t care about the next opinion poll… I just want people to be able to say at the end of my five years, that he prepared France to face the challenges of the world.’”

No one would accuse any Canadian politician of being “hyperactive” right now. But for a very brief moment this week it did seem that President Sarkozy’s France might be about to help Canada out with more troops in Afghanistan. On February 26 the Globe and Mail in Toronto reported with some excitement: “France to send troops into Afghan combat: Le Monde.” But the excitement did not last long. Early on the morning of February 27 the same Canadian newspaper was reporting: “Sarkozy wants troops deployed with U.S. in Afghanistan … France suggests sending forces to the east, not the south with Canadians.”

(O well. France never has paid much attention to the “few acres of snow” that Voltaire once dismissed Canada as – even when it was a French colony. Understandably, it is America that M. Sarkozy finally wants to serve beside! But don’t give up altogether yet. The Globe and Mail reports as well that: “However, the eastern plan, if adopted by Mr. Sarkozy, could still aid the Canadians. According to French reports, his staff is discussing a plan whereby perhaps 1,000 French troops would go to eastern Afghanistan to replace U.S. forces there, who in turn would be moved to Kandahar to fight alongside the Canadians, thus fulfilling Prime Minster Stephen Harper’s demand for more NATO forces there. [And if you believe all this actually means anything real, you probably think Canada does have a sensible Afghanistan policy too ... ])

Finally here, for a further taste of Sarko’s hyperactivity lately, consider these recent headlines: “French President Visits Chad as Rights Groups Urge Pressure on Chadian Leader“; “Sarkozy pressures SocGen chief to quit” ; “Sarkozy cuts short his stay with Queen” ; and “US Jewish group praises Sarkozy’s innovative’ Holocaust education proposal.”

You can only learn so much from newspaper articles. In searching for deeper intelligence on just what M. Sarkozy is up to in France today, I stumbled across the Englishman Tim King’s France Profonde column/blog in something called Prospect magazine: “The France Profonde column in Prospect Magazine was born four years ago, but I’d wanted to write about France ever since I moved here many years before that – to show France from another angle, through English eyes, unavoidably, but if I could, and with my French family, closer to the French.”

This did shed some further light on Sarkozy’s current troubles. On February 8, e.g., M. King was writing: “Christine Lagarde, the Minister of the Economy, apparently handed in her resignation on Wednesday, but Nicolas Sarkozy refused it … Mme Lagarde is said to be utterly fed-up with the President’s contradictions’ … There is a growing feeling, reflected on the radio this morning, that things are falling apart. I think most of that is press hype, but it is feeding off a real feeling of disillusion amongst a growing number of people. Yesterday a woman interviewed said We didn’t elect him so he could enjoy himself, but to get France back on its feet.’”

On February 12 M. King reported on some minor political blood-letting in a place called Neuilly – “a well-heeled suburb of Paris” where “Nicolas Sarkozy began his extraordinary, ambition-driven career” a few decades ago now, when he “was elected mayor.” The current blood-letting involves conflict over who will dominate Neuilly today. To start with, there is “the dashingly handsome David Martinon,” who “rocketed into public view as Sarkozy’s campaign director during the presidential election campaign last year,” but is said to be “close to Sarkozy’s second wife Cecilia” (from whom Sarkozy recently parted in an apparently bitter divorce). Then there is “Jean Sarkozy, the ruler’s 21 year old son by a first marriage. Although brought up largely in Corsica, he could be seen as Neuilly natural. His father put him to work alongside David Martinon in the Neuilly campaign. Right from the start it went wrong.” Soon enough: “The son of the first wife was putting spokes in the wheel of the second wife’s favourite.”

Tim King goes on to explain that: “One can of course pooh-pooh the whole thing as a piece of ephemeral theatre. But like any good sub-plot it echoes in a minor-key all the elements of the main story: the ruler’s attempt to control everything, even who is to be mayor of a Paris suburb. The anger that control engenders in people, and when things unravel Sarkozy is fast-vanishing dust in the middle-distance (a family trait: his son Jean allegedly has the same tendency on his motor-bike). The influence of his court, of his three wives to whom, paradoxically for a control-freak, he seems to capitulate easily. And finally the bloody despatch of a key member of the ruler’s team – for David Martinon will, I fear, be swiftly followed by others and, as in any good Jacobean drama, we will soon see a stage littered with corpses.”

You might say, again, back in Canada all this is almost certainly more reminiscent of Prime Minister Stephen Harper than of current Official Opposition Leader Stephane Dion. (Well, not the part about the three wives, certainly – but “the ruler’s attempt to control everything,” etc.)

Reading on, I discovered some further revelations more directly related to our Canadian home and native land, in Tim King’s report for February 18: “Sarkozy is clearly influenced by foreigners’ to a far greater degree than his predecessors: as well as the rag-bag of American influences, Rue 89 yesterday gave a fascinating insight into the close links with Canadian billionaire Paul Desmarais, and not just financial: in 1995 when Sarkozy was rejected and reviled by mainstream French politicians, traversing what he likes to call the desert, a man invited me into his family in Quebec. We spent hours walking through the woods and he told me: “You’ve got to stick in there, you will get there, we must build a strategy for you.”‘ On Sunday [February 17] Sarkozy rewarded Desmarais with France’s highest honour, the Legion d’honneur, saying: If I am president today it is partly thanks to the advice of Paul Desmarais.’”

All too many years ago now I bumped into the literally beautiful writing of Theodore Zeldin – who was then the most interesting English (or UK) historian of modern France. In the midst of my current probe of President Sarkozy and his troubles, I suddenly wondered what had happened to Mr. Zeldin. And this was heightened by some further remarks in Tim King’s France Profonde column/blog (again for February 12):

But tragically such fresh ideas are shoved aside in what is fast becoming a tale of unbridled personal ambition and bloody revenge.

This item in fact quotes from “Lunch with the FT: Theodore Zeldin,” by John Thornhill, and published in the February 9 Financial Times out of London, as part of a regular series of “Lunch with” columns by the same author (or so it seems). And for a capsule summary of just who the (now 75-year-old) Theodore Zeldin is, I can do no better than quote Mr. Thornhill: “Few people are better qualified to interpret France than my guest, Theodore Zeldin, the British historian, philosopher and business lecturer, who has spent his life marinating in French history and culture … Zeldin is widely regarded as France’s favourite Englishman. He knows us better than we know ourselves,’ gushed one reviewer of The French, his quirky biography of a nation.”

I see from my wristwatch that I don’t have much more time for Zeldin here. I should perhaps quickly clarify his relationship to Sarkozy these days. Most exactly, he is the only British subject appointed to President Sarkozy’s “Attali commission, chaired by Jacques Attali, the socialist intellectual and former head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which last month submitted 316 recommendations to reform France … Zeldin had particular responsibility for changing mentalities, which he says will be vital in pursuing fundamental reform.” (As far as exactly what “changing mentalities” means, your guess is as good as mine!)

Two more quick points. First, back last May, when Sarkozy was still campaigning against the quite attractive lady Socialist Segolene Royal for the job of President of France, Robert Marquand of the Christian Science Monitor quoted Zeldin on the nature of the contest: “What is France?’ is the main question in this election. It brings two profound political strains to a head, says … historian Theodore Zeldin – two different ideas about what politics is about. [Ms.] Royal sees it as about empathy, relationships, compassion. [Mr.] Sarkozy represents authority, competition, and hard work.’”

Second, at the end of his recent Financial Times lunch, John Thornhill asked Zeldin what he thinks of President Sarkozy now: “Zeldin says he cannot claim to understand the man having met him only twice, but sees him very much in the tradition of de Gaulle. Reading Sarkozy’s writings, Zeldin is struck by the importance the president attaches to his formative years, growing up in an immigrant family, being deserted by his [Hungarian] father, being desperate for friendship and affection. He is very devoted to France but he also says that the mission of France is to be a reconciler of cultures. Abroad, he wants to make France the kind of country it was in the 18th century, when its originality was that it made a declaration of rights for all humanity,’ he says … That, I think, is the strong point of France, which makes it an important country. France is an idea. It is not a territory. It is offering a dream that is different from the American dream. There is no harm in having several different dreams in the world.’”

Strangely enough (or perhaps even quite logically?) Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who has now become President of the Fifth French Republic, has also confessed his fondness for the culture back in the homeland of the American dream itself. (“Sarkozy is said to love’ American culture, and even met with Tom Cruise [whom he regards as a great actor'] during the American’s recent trip to Paris.”)

You might agree that Sarkozy has a point, if you take just a moment to listen to Mariah Carey’s new video “Touch My Body” – in which this melodious icon of contemporary American culture “cavorts with an unlikely suitor: Jack McBrayer – also known as 30 Rock‘s gloriously naive Kenneth the Page. He plays off that character in this clip, where he’s cast as a computer-nerd-turned-love-god who visits Carey’s mansion for a hardware emergency … The pair have a pillow fight, shoot laser guns, race toy cars and stroll alongside a unicorn.” (At one point Ms. Carey also sings “Let me rub my face around your waist.” And you might guess that even President Sarkozy could not deny her that – even allowing for his own new third wife, the 40-year-old Italian-born “Carla Bruni, a model-turned-singer.”)

Not everyone who marvels at her blond goddess physique is aware that Ms. Carey has a “multiracial” background, as “the third child of black/Hispanic aeronautical engineer Alfred Carey and Irish opera singer/voice coach Patricia Hickey.” This gives her things in common with Barack Obama, who currently aspires to be President of the United States of America, whose dream is of course the real American dream. And it was unhappily sobering to read in the Los Angeles Times on February 27 that: “As he emerges from a sometimes-bitter primary campaign, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain poses a stiff challenge to either of his potential Democratic opponents in the general election, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found … The findings underscore the difficulties ahead for Democrats as they hope to retake the White House during a time of war, with voters giving McCain far higher marks when it comes to experience, fighting terrorism and dealing with the situation in Iraq.”

Finally, however, there may be some signs of light at the end of the tunnel for Stephane Dion, back in the few acres of snow on the northern border of the American dream. On this very morning of Friday, February 29 (and good riddance to a very cold month up here), the usually circumspect Globe and Mail of Toronto reports: “The voice on the scratchy tape is unmistakably Stephen Harper’s … It was as unmistakable as his concern that the tape’s contents might one day be made public. Mr. Harper interrupted a B.C. reporter in 2005 when asked about allegations his party had offered financial enticements to a dying MP to win his support on a critical vote … This is not for publication?’ Mr. Harper asked Tom Zytaruk … He was told that the interview was intended as fodder for a biography of Chuck Cadman, the late MP from Surrey, B.C. … But the ensuing two minutes, 21 seconds of audio raise questions about apparent discrepancies between what the Prime Minister said Thursday [February 28, in the Canadian House of Commons] and what Mr. Harper himself said on the tinny tape more than two years ago.”

It may all finally prove just another tempest in an etc, etc for Prime Minister Harper. He is a clever man. And he may well be able to come up with some explanation for the “apparent discrepancies” that will satisfy we the Canadian people. (Or at least enough of us to keep him in office in our rather crazy current democratic federal political system: remember he is prime minister now because only just over 36% of us voted for him in the last election.)

On the other hand, those who live by the sword, etc, etc. It was a to no small extent phony scandal that finally gave the Harper Conservatives their current minority government in Ottawa. It would at least be a kind of poetic justice if they finally lost it to another to no small extent phony scandal. Though it certainly would be nice if our politicians started to debate some of Canada’s real problems. And it might make our politics almost as interesting as President Sarkozy in France.

AND HAPPY EIGHTH LEAP YEAR BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2008, TO KRISTA WOOD, WHO WORKS FOR THE LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY IN TRURO, NS, IN THE LAND OF ICE AND SNOW:

On the Friendster website his “Hometown” is still “Canada, Vancouver.” Much more urgently, the now 27-year-old Mr. Chen, a star in the Hong Kong entertainment industry who can also claim Hollywood experience, and speaks perfect English along with Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin, has suddenly become the leading man in a “Hong Kong sex photos scandal.” It may or may not have ruined his career – and the lives of such female performer friends as Gillian Chung, BoBo Chan, and Cecilia Cheung. But this scandal is at least more interesting than Paris Hilton. And it hints at intriguing vistas of the new Chinese version of the global village that apparently lies ahead.

The scandal in a nutshell …

Edison Chen was born in Vancouver on October 7, 1980. According to his Wikipedia biography: “In 1999, a talent scout approached Chen while he was clubbing with friends in Hong Kong and asked him to film a commercial at the age of 19.”

Over the past eight years this led to roles in more than two dozen movies – mostly Cantonese language films made in Hong Kong, but also some Mandarin Chinese and Japanese projects, as well as the 2006 Hollywood-Tokyo horror flick The Grudge 2, along with Jennifer Beals and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Mr. Chen has appeared as a pop singer on more than a dozen albums too. Most of these have been in Cantonese, with a few Mandarin exceptions. But on a recent musical project for the Chinese market he sought the help of Kanye West from the USA.

As both an actor and a singer Edison Chen was in short order “winning the hearts of many screaming teenage girls” in Chinese and Japanese audiences. At the same time, he became more personally and directly involved with various female stars in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. His NNDB online biography, e.g., lists: “Girlfriend: BoBo Chan (ex-) ; Girlfriend: Gillian Chung (ex-) ; Girlfriend: Vincy Yeung.”

It turns out that Mr. Chen liked to take photos of his intimacies with his girlfriends, strictly for his private use (he has subsequently stressed). But these photos have led to his current undoing. As explained on the CBC website in Canada, the scandal that has now broken wide open “began when the 27-year-old performer sent his laptop computer to a shop for repair. The computer contained approximately 1,300 photos of Chen and a bevy of female Chinese celebrities either posed suggestively or engaged in sex acts, according to police … Suspects stole and subsequently published the images on the internet, where they have been widely circulated.”

The wide circulation of these “naughty pictures” on the net over the past several weeks has upset and even damaged the careers of a number of the young ladies depicted (to say nothing of their families, in what is apparently still a rather traditional Chinese social universe). Finally, on February 21, 2008, Edison Chen “held a press conference in Hong Kong to publicly address for the first time the ongoing controversy, which has shocked the Chinese-speaking world for weeks.”

As further explained on the CBC website: “These photos were very private and were never intended to be shown to anyone,’ Chen said … I would like to apologize to all the ladies and to all their families for any harm or hurt they have been feeling. I’m sorry … I know young people in Hong Kong look up to many figures in our society and, in this regard, I have failed as a role model’ … Chen also said he has decided to break from the Hong Kong industry indefinitely … I will wholeheartedly fulfill all commitments I have to date but after that I have decided to step away from the Hong Kong entertainment industry … I have decided to do this to give myself an opportunity to heal myself and to search my soul. I will dedicate my time to charity and community work within the next few months.’”

Are there deeper meanings for the new global village?

Jaded North Americans accustomed to reading about “Paris Hilton … working her way back into the whore hall of fame” for her 27th birthday this year may wonder what all the fuss is about. (Ms. Hilton, the story goes, deliberately if nonetheless surreptitiously circulated some scandalous photos of herself and a sex partner to help establish her reputation.)

Once again, the CBC website has tried to explain what is going on to confused Canadians: “Hong Kong police have made several arrests amid their ongoing investigation into the case, which has also spread to mainland China and Taiwan … Local officers in the southern Chinese city of Shenzen and in Taipei have arrested suspects for allegedly distributing the photos … As a film and music industry hub, Hong Kong has a high-profile culture of celebrity akin to a Chinese version of Hollywood, London or Mumbai … However, unlike the Western world, media coverage of local stars is generally more prim, with reportage that includes sex or nudity often harshly criticized by the industry … In 2006, for example, an illicitly photographed image of Canto-pop singer Gillian Chung (reportedly one of the women in Chen’s photos) changing clothes backstage during a concert sparked a major backlash against the outlets that published it.”

You can catch something of this “generally more prim” rising Chinese pop culture in some Edison Chen videos currently available on You Tube : “Love Triangle – Edison Chen, Gillian Chung, Charlene Choi,” e.g., or “Edison Chen and Gillian Chung – You & I’.” And, you might almost say, Edison Chen’s private “naughty pictures” themselves often have a gentle and delicate quality, even when they are quite explicit sexually.

[In his recent apology for the naughty pictures as captured on You Tube, Mr. Chen asks: "if you have ever downloaded any of these images, please do not send them to anyone." But this is rather disingenuous, certainly in a North American context. And to write a web piece like this one without at least pointing interested readers in the right if also wrong direction would be intellectually dishonest. So I can at least report that at the time of writing this "Edison Chen and Gillian Chung Naughty Pic Scandal" item on the Hollywood Grind site offered as complete a selection of the sex photos involved in the scandal as any sensible person might want to study first hand, all for free. Unfortunately, no sooner had the counterweights editors posted this article on the net than someone involved with Hollywood Grind had started charging money for viewing the most salacious images here. Pay if you like, but understand that you won't be paying us anything. I'll be checking around on the www to see if I can't find at least something that survives the sudden bursting of the scandal for free! Meanwhile, although not at all as good as the Hollywood Grind site when it was still free, "Edison Chen, Bobo Chan, Gillian Chung and Cecilia Cheung embroiled in Hong Kong's biggest sex photo scandal ever" from the Shanghaiist site gives some sense of what is or was in the approximately 1,300 photos in question. And someone expecially keen could also look at "Edison Chen Sex Pictures Uploaded By 'Kira'" on Japan Probe. Otherwise, I have studied many of the photos while they were still free at Hollywood Grind, and take my word for it: some of the images certainly are explicit and quite raunchy - even if many do retain a certain gentle and delicate quality as well.]

Our human interest in sexuality does (understandably) seem as close as we get to a cultural universal, shared throughout the global village. But different cultures clearly do have different approaches to expressing sexuality. Ian Buruma has reported in his book A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture on how, in such metropoli as Tokyo: “Photographs of nude women trussed up in ropes appear regularly in mass circulation newspapers; torture scenes are common on television, even in children’s programmes; glossy, poster-sized pictures of pre-pubescent girls are on display in the main shopping streets; sado-masochistic pornography is perused quite openly by a large number of men on their way to work on the subway.”

Edison Chen’s cultural range includes Japanese as well as Cantonese, Mandarin, and English language milieux. (And as assorted videos on the net make clear, btw, he does speak English as well and idiomatically as you might expect from someone who spent much time growing up in Vancouver, or New York City. In alluding to the latest apology video, the Shanghaiist site noted above also remarked: “And if you’re wondering why Edison’s speaking in English, he’s Canadian.”) There is virtually nothing in Mr. Chen’s Hong Kong sex photos that matches Buruma’s account of nude women trussed up in ropes, and so forth. But there is something about many of Mr. Chen’s intimate private photos of his girlfriends (and himself of course) that seems to echo another sentence in Buruma’s book: “It is often said that one can get away with almost anything in Japan as long as one is not caught.”

The great mistake that Edison Chen and his girlfriends have made in this context is that they did get caught. And I finally find it impossible myself to disagree with the American male blogger who has urged that they have only themselves to blame: “Really, how dumb do you need to be? On all sides? Girls, here’s a free piece of advice for you from your friendly neighborhood PR man: If you let a guy take digital nudie pix of you, sooner or later those pix are going to end up on the Internet. Not maybe. Not could be. Inevitably. The Internet is like a gravity well for nudity, and there is a 100 percent chance those pictures will end up there someday. Probably the week of your wedding.” And so it is sad to hear as well that “BoBo Chan was engaged to marry stock market genius, Philip Jin Zi Yao[;] however, after the scandal hit the news Phillip’s mother ordered him to end his relationship with BoBo. Reports say BoBo cried for many days.” But again, BoBo: “Really, how dumb do you need to be?”

And then yet again, there are aspects of it all that make you wonder if BoBo really did cry for many days? This brings to mind further reports from Ian Buruma – about how the “Japanese are … gentle, tender, soft and meek people with hardcore fantasies of death and bondage,” and how in Japan “conflict is hidden behind a bland veil of politeness.” The “Naughty Pic Scandal” article on the Hollywood Grind site points to a photo called “Gillian Chung Returns To Work,” and notes sarcastically: “Gillian is still trying to look like an innocent school girl.” Then it points to an article called “Nicolas Tse and Cecilia Cheung Separate Over Scandal,” and explains that the “article includes a messy history of Cecilia’s cheating, and details how she was seeing many men at the same time.” It is also noted that Gillian Chung had earlier had some problems with “naughty pictures from a previous scandal. Chung should have learned the first time.”

The most honest thing that can be said by a person like me, who has never been to any of Hong Kong, mainland China, or Japan, is no doubt just who really knows what it all means for the future of the wider global village? I certainly don’t. And it is no doubt true as well that I find reading about Edison Chen, and Gillian Chung, and Cecilia Cheung, and BoBo Chan more interesting than reading about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears these days, because I still just don’t know all that much about them. Their adventures are still fresh to me – in something of the way younger women can seem fresh to older men, who have grown too jaded by too much experience with older women.

At the same time, you can’t have grown up in big-city Canada as I have over the past half-century of the rising global village, without bumping into more than a few people who at least look and sound quite a lot like Edison Chen, and Gillian Chung, and Cecilia Cheung, and BoBo Chan. They have always struck me as quite fascinating individuals with some potentially very intriguing contributions to make for the future not just of East Asia, but for all of us who see ourselves in one way or another as new citizens of the world, as well as citizens of the particular old and new countries we still inevitably call our own. Something a little more exact about just what these contributions might be somehow seems to have surfaced along with Edison Chen’s “Hong Kong sex photos scandal.” And it struck me late last night that I am probably going to be spending a bit more time over the next several months trying to figure out just what it is.