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.

Viewed up close, the Canadian historian Frank Underhill said long ago, the most striking thing about the USA is its almost dazzling variety. And along with all the US citizens who still worship the Grand Canyon, there are those alluded to in a November 13, 2007 Reuters article: “Many Americans are opting for French foie gras instead of a traditional Turkey drumstick this Thanksgiving holiday, even if the dollar doesn’t go as far in Europe these days.” As a North American still only recently returned from a mass-market tour of at least southern or Mediterranean Europe, I have also acquired fresh scepticism about all talk of fundamental cleavages between Europe and America. No doubt, America is more Aboriginal (as we say in Canada) and African – and in various senses nowadays more Asian too. But like other parts of the world Europe itself is quite Americanized in the early 21st century. In fact the “European Union is China’s biggest foreign trading partner, ahead of the United States and Japan.” There are indeed American tourists crawling all over the ancient Greek and Roman birthplaces of what we still rather archaically call “the West.” And you do have wonder where it all will end.

According to Amy Ziff, editor at large for No. 2 US travel Web site Travelocity: “The fact that we’re seeing more people going to Europe despite the fact the dollar just isn’t strong there is really amazing.” At the same time, “many of the bookings were made months ago, before the dollar’s most recent swoon … Ziff said travelers booked trips, on average, 85 days in advance for domestic travel and more than 100 days for international trips in order to lock in low prices and secure seats.”

According to Terry Trippler, travel expert for myvacationpassport.com: “People are working hard, and a lot of people don’t like their jobs. So when they get that vacation, they’re taking it.” Chris Reiter, author of the November 13 Reuters article, carries on: “Thanksgiving, which this year is on Thursday, November 22, usually gives Americans a rare four-day weekend, as many businesses are closed the following Friday. By tacking on a few vacation days, they can stretch the holiday into a chance to take a longer trip.”

Similarly, the “Air Transport Association expects international traffic on U.S. airlines to climb 8 percent from a year ago, compared to a 3.5 percent rise in domestic travel, said John Heimlich, the trade group’s chief economist.” Even so, this year’s “heavy Thanksgiving travel could mean lower demand later. ATA’s Heimlich said that many Americans are taking trips during Thanksgiving this year rather than over the Christmas or New Year’s holidays.”

The main point is still that if you are going to be wandering around Europe yourself next week, you can expect to see a lot of American tourists wherever you go. And that is just the way things were a month or so ago too, when my traveling companions and I were on our own low tour of southern or Mediterranean Europe – where the ancient Greek and Roman history all began.

Those who remember the hoopla about how “American” he is on his latest visit to the USA may be surprised to read in the eminent US publication Business Week that: “French president Nicolas Sarkozy has outlined a vision for Europe that would see untramelled’ capitalism pushed far down the political hierarchy to be replaced by a focus on cultural and spiritual issues with more than a hint of European protectionism.”

Business Week carries on: “According to Mr Sarkozy, who has put France firmly back at the centre of the European stage since his May election, Europeans are having a profound identity crisis…linked to globalisation and the commercialisation of the world’ … Noting that economic values seem to win the day over other values,’ Mr Sarkozy said that it is a mistake to overlook culture … Europe can only be Europe in the eyes of all men if she defends spiritual values and civilisational values, if she gathers all her forces, all her energy for defending cultural diversity.’”

On the other hand again, it must be concerns about economic growth that lie at the bottom of President Sarkozy’s plans for pension reform, which have sparked aggressive French labour protests – culminating with an “open-ended strike” this week. According to the Guardian in the UK: “The open-ended strike is a show of strength over the president’s plans to axe special pensions privileges enjoyed by around 500,000, including railway and energy workers and backstage staff at Paris Opera and the Comdie Franaise. Some of the special deals date back to the second world war or centuries earlier and allow certain workers to retire as young as 50 …”

The Guardian carries on: “Sarkozy has staked his reformist credentials on facing down the protests. He is determined to stand firm on the issue which sparked three weeks of strikes in 1995 and led to a U-turn and the collapse of Jacques Chirac’s government.” It is one thing, it seems (on Mr. Sarkozy’s view), to “overlook” cultural values – but quite another to put them altogether above everything else, including economic growth. Mr. Sarkozy is still apparently France’s new “American president” after all. (Allowing at least that the America involved here probably does have a little more in common with Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama than it does with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush?)

3. Europe to press China on trade gap, currency at summit this month

On Monday, November 12 the International Herald Tribune reported that: “The European Union is China’s biggest foreign trading partner, ahead of the United States and Japan.” Europe has also seen its trade deficit with China “swell quickly in recent years … China ran a US$13.9 billion (9.5 billion) surplus with Europe on total two-way trade of US$31.4 billion (21.4 billion) in October, according to Chinese data … That was just behind China’s US$15.7 billion (10.7 billion) surplus with the United States on total two-way trade of US$26.7 billion (18.2 billion).”

One hardly surprising result of these statistics is that: “Many complaints by European companies and officials” about current Chinese business practices and public policies “echo those” of “their US counterparts … European companies say Chinese officials appear to be blocking them from expanding in finance and other industries in an attempt to nurture China’s own companies, violating Beijing’s free-trade pledges.”

European leaders “want more attention to our specific needs, our specific concerns, in intellectual property, in product safety, in opening Chinese markets which are still not fully open, in welcoming our investment.”An “EU delegation led by Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, which holds the presidency of the 25-nation group, is due in Beijing on Nov. 28 to [meet with] Chinese leaders. A day earlier, finance officials from the two sides meet to discuss currency concerns.”

There are nonetheless apparently some limits on the congruence of US-EU policy action, despite frequent parallel interests: “Asked whether the EU would coordinate more closely with Washington and imitate the United States in filing more complaints against China in the World Trade Organization,” EU Ambassador to China Serge Abou “said Europe had no fixed group of allies and sometimes was opposed by the United States on trade issues.” (Well, of course. As President Sarkozy of France would say: “Europe can only be Europe in the eyes of all men if she defends spiritual values and civilisational values.” And even George W. Bush would nowadays probably say “men and women” or “people,” instead of just “men.”)

No matter how or how rapidly so-called globalization continues to proceed, over the rather uncertain horizon the global village seems to be facing right now, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that people who live in one chunk of planet earth’s geography are never going to be exactly the same as people who live in other geographies (and other related streams of history, culture, and so forth, on and on). And that is no doubt a very good and welcome truth.

Similarly, what the excellent Canadian historian Harold Innis said back as long ago as 1930 – about how fundamentally the civilization of North America is the civilization of Europe – is no longer as convincing as it may once have been. North America today does have both fresh and in some cases at least freshly perceived and understood Aboriginal, African, and Asian dimensions. (And, by the way, give Innis due credit for also understanding the Aboriginal and even broader “multiracial” side of things in Canada much better in 1930 than many of us still grasp today.)

Yet back as recently as February 2005 Tony Judt wrote a piece for the New York Review of Books, that someone decided to call “Europe vs. America.” And however much sense such thoughts may seem to make in libraries, they finally don’t quite stand up on the streets.

As just one of many such examples on our own recent trip, on the Metro in Athens an ostensibly older Greek gentleman graciously volunteered some directions to the ancient Acropolis – site of so many legendary events in the early history of the so-called West. He happily spoke very good English, with something of an accent. Then he asked which part of the USA we were from, and was only somewhat disappointed to hear we were from Canada, and were not exactly proper Americans ourselves.

He himself, he went on to say, standing in the sunlight on the Metro car, speeding through somewhere, en route from Piraeus to Monastiraki, had spent some 35 years in Houston, Texas. He and his wife had recently returned to Greece for a time. But they still had grown-up children still living in the USA – and he seemed a bit homesick for them. He seemed as well very pleased to be talking with us, and advising us on how not to get into any trouble in Athens, with cab drivers and so forth (and even if we were not exactly proper Americans, but only people who looked and talked as if they were – no doubt much like his children back in Texas).

There were many similar stories in Rome, which had begun to take over the burden of President Sarkozy’s “civilisational values” from Athens, perhaps around 202 BC, when Hannibal was defeated by Rome, in a crass military victory now seen as “essential to secure the survival and expansion of Roman civilisation.” Intriguingly enough, in Rome and other parts of Italy in the fall of 2007 AD we often enough saw Chinese as well as American tourists. And of course we saw McDonald’s restaurants. We even once furtively slipped into a Burger King for ice-cold Cokes on a very hot afternoon, enroute from the Trevi Fountain to the Spanish Steps, accompanied by vast mobs of fellow tourists on some cultural pilgrimage. (And of course again a great many of the tourists were indeed Americans, determined to absorb something of the earlier world that proclaimed it did many of the appalling things it did too, in the name of “Senatus Populusque Romanus” (i.e. the “Senate and People of Rome”) – or S.P.Q.R., as it still says on surviving ancient archways, and even some modern water pipe and manhole covers of today’s Roman municipality.)

On the taxi ride from downtown Rome to the airport – with a friendly well-dressed driver keen to at least briefly point out many key suburban tourist attractions we had not managed to visit (while apologizing for the only rudimentary quality of his spoken English) – I was suddenly struck by just how Americanized the ancient eternal city has become.

By this point I had managed to procure a copy of the 20 September 2007 issue of the London Review of Books. And as the flight back to North America wore endlessly on an article called “Depicting Europe” by Perry Anderson offered much additional food for thought. It ends with a reference to “Rgis Debray’s plea for a United States of the West that would absorb Europe completely into the American imperium.”

Perry Anderson continues: “Did it have to come to this? The paradox is that when Europe was less united, it was in many ways more independent. The leaders who ruled in the early stages of integration had all been formed in a world before the global hegemony of the United States, when the major European states were themselves imperial powers, whose foreign policies were self-determined. These were people who had lived through the disasters of the Second World War, but were not crushed by them. This was true not just of a figure like De Gaulle, but of Adenauer and Mollet, of Eden and Heath, all of whom were quite prepared to ignore or defy America if their ambitions demanded it. Monnet, who did not accept their national assumptions, and never clashed with the US, still shared their sense of a future in which Europeans could settle their own affairs, in another fashion. Down into the 1970s, something of this spirit lived on even in Giscard and Schmidt, as Carter discovered. But with the neo-liberal turn of the 1980s, and the arrival in power in the 1990s of a postwar generation, it faded. The new economic doctrines cast doubt on the state as a political agent, and the new leaders had never known anything except the Pax Americana. The traditional springs of autonomy were gone.

“By this time, on the other hand, the Community had doubled in size, acquired an international currency, and boasted a GDP exceeding that of the United States itself. Statistically, the conditions for an independent Europe existed as never before. But politically, they had been reversed. With the decay of federalism and the deflation of inter-governmentalism, the Union had weakened national, without creating a supranational, sovereignty, leaving rulers adrift in an ill-defined limbo between the two …

“With the eclipse of significant distinctions between left and right, other motives of an earlier independence have also waned. In the syrup of la pense unique, little separates the market-friendly wisdom of one side of the Atlantic from the other, though as befits the derivative, the recipe is still blander in Europe than America, where political differences are less extinct. In such conditions, an enthusiast can find no higher praise for the Union than to compare it to one of the most successful companies in global history’. Which firm confers this honour on Brussels? Why, the one in your wallet. The EU is already closer to Visa than it is to a state’, declares New Labour’s Mark Leonard, exalting Europe to the rank of a credit card.”

However you look at it, it seems a pretty safe bet that most of the Americans who are flocking to Europe for the most characteristic and important US domestic holiday of Thanksgiving this year will be having a pretty good time. And thanks to all the McDonald’s and Burger King’s and other such institutions that both sides of the Atlantic now share (to say nothing of Chinese textiles), there is very little chance that many of them will be getting seriously homesick at all.

[UPDATED NOVEMBER 25]. John Howard admires Stephen Harper, and Stephen Harper admires John Howard. The love-in between the Australian and Canadian prime ministers has been going on for while now. Mr. Howard loaned Mr. Harper some of his key strategists before the 2006 Canadian federal election. And both leaders have bestowed on the other the rare privilege of addressing their respective parliaments. Mr. Harper sees in Mr. Howard a conservative politician who has been able to reshape his country, and win three successive elections by appealing to lower income conservative voters who normally vote for centre left parties. But now is the time for Mr. Harper and his advisers to take careful note of how even the most canny politicians can come unstuck. Mr. Howard is facing electoral defeat when Australians go to the polls on November 24, despite the fact that the nation’s economy is booming, and that Mr Howard launched his campaign by announcing substantial tax cuts for families. For Stephane Dion and the Liberals the surprising success so far of the man who is challenging Mr. Howard for the prime ministerial mantle, Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader Kevin Rudd, should also offer some clues on how to unseat Mr. Harper, whenever voters next trudge to the polls in Canada.

So why is John Howard on the skids? There are a number of factors at work here. First, there is Mr. Howard’s age. He is 68 and has indicated that if reelected to office he will step down after 18 months to make way for his heir and successor, the Treasurer (Finance Minister) Peter Costello. Coupled with the issue of his own age, his government has been in office now for 11 years. It is third longest serving government in Australian federal history. So there’s a sense of its time for a change’ in the electorate.

Neither of these are factors about which Mr Harper, almost 20 years Mr Howard’s junior, and leading a government that has been in office less than two years, needs to concern himself. But then there is the issue of climate change and here Mr Harper and Mr Dion ought to take careful note of Australian developments and the mood of the electorate.

Like Mr. Harper, Mr. Howard does not like the Kyoto Protocol, which binds countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is fair to say that neither Mr. Harper nor Mr. Howard is a fan of Al Gore’s view of the climate change challenge. And both Mr Harper and Mr Howard have signed up for the Bush Administration’s Kyoto alternative,’ the Asia-Pacific Partnership, which enables countries to meet climate change issues by taking account of their own countries’ requirements. As in Canada, Australia’s resource sector is a major investor and employer, and Mr. Howard has pledged that he will not allow Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol because this would have disastrous consequences for the multi-billion dollar coal industry.

But, and here’s where it gets interesting from Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion’s perspective, climate change really is no longer an environmental side issue in Australian politics. To borrow and update a memorable phrase from former Australian Prime Minister and Treasurer, Paul Keating, “Walk into any pet shop around Australia and the resident Galah [a native Australian bird] will be talking about climate change.” A severe drought in south-eastern Australia – the worst in a thousand years – and the prospect of diminishing water supplies as temperatures rise over the course of the next fifty years has focused the average Australian on climate change, and the need for government to show leadership in tackling it.

Mr. Howard has been caught napping on the issue. He should have, as his Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged him to do as recently as three weeks ago, done a u-turn and signed Australia up to Kyoto. By doing that he could have taken the issue off the table. But instead Mr. Howard’s stubbornness has allowed Mr Rudd and the ALP to position themselves as being more in touch with the community in understanding the urgency of tackling climate change.

In short, take note Stephen Harper. As the consequences of climate change begin to manifest themselves in Canada too, the community may well demand that their federal government distance itself from people like Mr. Howard and President Bush, and put Canada at the international forefront on this issue. Mr. Dion, who has already painted himself very green, should take some heart from Mr. Rudd’s success on climate change – which can be packaged easily for the average voter to digest and understand.

Then there is the issue of economic management – and the fact that the electorate now takes it for granted that either side of the political spectrum is competent in this regard. Mr. Harper, when he addressed the Australian Parliament last month, urged Australian voters not take good economic management for granted. In other words, don’t throw out Mr. Howard because you might regret it if there is an economic downturn under Mr. Rudd and an ALP government. That was the gist of Mr Harper’s undiplomatic gesture to help out his friend.

But what Mr Harper is forgetting is that voters in both Australia and Canada don’t believe there is much difference between at least their major political parties and their leaders these days on economic management. As in Canada, there is now a generation of voters in Australia who have known nothing else except strong economic growth. Australia emerged from a vicious recession in 1993 and has never looked back. Canada has had a similar experience, with its economic recovery dating from 1995.

The average voter is also economically literate enough these days to understand that the driving forces for economies such as Canada’s and Australia’s are the US, China, India, and to a lesser extent these days Japan. Canadians and Australians understand that national governments in their countries can only do so much to control economic life in the 21st century.

In fact, there a consensus on economic matters between the main conservative and progressive parties in both Australia and Canada. The Conservatives and the Liberals in Canada, and the ALP and the Liberal-National coalition in Australia are fully signed up members of the economic liberalism and open-market economies club. The differences between Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion or Mr. Howard and Mr. Rudd on economic management are more about style than substance.

In short, there is little risk to the voters’ hip pocket in changing horses. That’s why Mr Howard’s daily claim in this election campaign to be the architect of Australia’s economic prosperity is falling on deaf ears. Voters don’t fear Mr Rudd and the ALP. There’s an instructive lesson for Stephen Harper here – banging on about good economic management is just not as potent an electoral weapon as it was say 20 years ago. (And which party started Canada’s current burst of prosperity back in 1995 anyway?)

On this coming Saturday, November 24 Mr. Howard might be returned to office in Australia, despite the god-awful opinion polls which have his government trailing the ALP by between 10 and 12 points. He is a canny politician and there are still three weeks to go in this election campaign. But so far it is not looking promising. And if Mr Howard does lose in many respects he will only have himself to blame. Take note Stephen Harper – the man down under upon whom you have bestowed hero status may have feet of clay after all.

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 recent 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, most recently in the Melbourne Age and the South China Morning Post.

CW EDITORS’ UPDATE: Just before the November 24 election, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating (who Greg Barns particularly admires) advised his fellow citizens: “When things become errant, a wise country … understands that it is being granted an appointment with history …this coming Saturday, this country should take that opportunity by driving a stake through the dark heart of Howard’s reactionary Government.” As it happened, the country took his advice, and Kevin Rudd’s Labour Party won handily.

For further details see a report from The Age from Melbourne, and an Associated Press report from the SFGate website in the San Francisco Bay Area. The first few sentences of the AP report do a tidy job of summarizing what happened from the standpoint of the USA: “Conservative Prime Minister John Howard, one of the Bush administration’s staunchest allies, suffered a humiliating election defeat Saturday at the hands of an opposition leader who has vowed to pull troops out of Iraq … Labor leader Kevin Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, has also promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming …” Canadian readers will no doubt still find Mr. Barns’s reporting before the fact above quite helpful in assessing the implications for Canada today.