6.17.2005
6.14.2005
The Beautiful Game?
One day of extraordinarily poor headlines from European football:
Arsenal Striker Arrested For Rape
Man United Legend Arrested For Sexual Molestation
Liverpool Defender Arrested For Reckless Driving Causing Death
1998 World Cup Golden Boot Winner Questioned Over Murder of Business Partner
Arsenal Striker Arrested For Rape
Man United Legend Arrested For Sexual Molestation
Liverpool Defender Arrested For Reckless Driving Causing Death
1998 World Cup Golden Boot Winner Questioned Over Murder of Business Partner
6.08.2005
Euro Dizzy?
Interesting, and somewhat divergent views on the health of the eurozone.
Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (sub req'd)
"Economists argue about the necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful single currency. But the majority would agree that it helps if the area in question is subject to common shocks, markets for goods, services, capital and labour are flexible, the overall economy is dynamic and, not least, there is a shared identity embedded in common political institutions. Not one of these conditions is either necessary or sufficient. But the absence of all four creates a huge challenge. Yet this is precisely where the eurozone now finds itself: economies have diverged; growth is disappointing; markets are proving dysfunctional; and the movement towards further political integration is now in peril."
Eric Stanley of Morgan Stanley
"Leaving the euro is not an option, not for Rome, Berlin or for any other capital in the euro area, in my view. "
Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (sub req'd)
"Economists argue about the necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful single currency. But the majority would agree that it helps if the area in question is subject to common shocks, markets for goods, services, capital and labour are flexible, the overall economy is dynamic and, not least, there is a shared identity embedded in common political institutions. Not one of these conditions is either necessary or sufficient. But the absence of all four creates a huge challenge. Yet this is precisely where the eurozone now finds itself: economies have diverged; growth is disappointing; markets are proving dysfunctional; and the movement towards further political integration is now in peril."
Eric Stanley of Morgan Stanley
"Leaving the euro is not an option, not for Rome, Berlin or for any other capital in the euro area, in my view. "
5.26.2005
Breaking News IIa.
Murray Campbell in yesterday's Globe (subscription required) threw his pitch for nuclear power in the ring, noting that the debate within Ontario about the resurgence of nuclear power was gathering momentum as alternatives are proven to be equally unviable and untenable.
"Coal is ruled out. Hydroelectric is nearly tapped out. Natural gas is becoming more scarce and more expensive. Renewable energy and demand-reduction measures will have an impact but few see them as the answer. That leaves the nuclear option standing there like the last kid picked for the sandlot baseball game. It has been shunned for a couple of decades as a tremendously expensive, problematic failure, but it doesn't emit greenhouse gases, and it is, with some monumental exceptions, fairly reliable. It can't be counted out of the game."
Still, waste disposal methods, and the need for the animated/hyperbolized threat of deformed grandchildren and glow-in-the-dark retirement homes to be quelled, mean that discussions are treading forward deliberately. You can't erase memories of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island too easily, and 19 years later, horror stories are still newsworthy.
"Coal is ruled out. Hydroelectric is nearly tapped out. Natural gas is becoming more scarce and more expensive. Renewable energy and demand-reduction measures will have an impact but few see them as the answer. That leaves the nuclear option standing there like the last kid picked for the sandlot baseball game. It has been shunned for a couple of decades as a tremendously expensive, problematic failure, but it doesn't emit greenhouse gases, and it is, with some monumental exceptions, fairly reliable. It can't be counted out of the game."
Still, waste disposal methods, and the need for the animated/hyperbolized threat of deformed grandchildren and glow-in-the-dark retirement homes to be quelled, mean that discussions are treading forward deliberately. You can't erase memories of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island too easily, and 19 years later, horror stories are still newsworthy.
Prime Minister Martin golfs a yellow ball.......
Confirmed Saturday morning in the Eastern Townships, when the PM closed out a casual morning round with his son and a downy security detail in tow, after a week of conspicuous manuveuring in Ottawa.
Gossip of the highest order, and a sportive quirk appropriate for someone who is driven to results, with little regard for image. It's an old adage cum double entendre -- "not how, but how many."
Gossip of the highest order, and a sportive quirk appropriate for someone who is driven to results, with little regard for image. It's an old adage cum double entendre -- "not how, but how many."
5.25.2005
Breaking News III
LDH May 4 2005: Realism/Isolationism on upswing
Guardian May 25 : Realism/Isolationism on upswing
"The Labour party's division was once between multilateralists and unilateralists. Now it is now between interventionists and isolationists, and the isolationists seem to be winning in the third term."
Guardian May 25 : Realism/Isolationism on upswing
"The Labour party's division was once between multilateralists and unilateralists. Now it is now between interventionists and isolationists, and the isolationists seem to be winning in the third term."
5.18.2005
The (semi) Daily Round-Up:
1. Enjoy him while you can : Tom Friedman is not a personal favourite. Nonetheless, he raises an interesting analogy, here.
"It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet...That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers."
But in the latter half he reverts to classic Friedmanism, creating a potemkin 'Sunni Arab Village' that holds the key to halting suicide bombings.
2. Crosby All But Delivered to MSG - Not really, but I'll be of mixed feelings if Sidney Crosby ends up in New York should the mooted entry draft system be implemented. The NHL was indeed better, perhaps coincidentally, when the Rangers were successful. The league may as well fold if he joins Lecavalier, Heatley, Luongo, Kovalchuk et al on a shitty sun belt team. But Crosby may represent a last gasp for my beloved Maple Leafs, who will be shorn of any chance to compete if/when the lockout ends.
3. Is This Irony? Bourque is suggesting David Peterson (Update: headline removed) could be the next governor general. LDH is suggesting the next GG should not be a partisan Liberal politician. Just a hunch, given the cynicsm engendered by the current crop of post-Trudeau Liberals. Relatedly, US Weekly writers Robert Benzie and Sean Gordon -appearing in the Toronto Star - wrote a nice puff piece on Belinda and the caring hand of David Peterson.
"She was vulnerable and Peterson was skilful in recognizing that and he moved swiftly," says a Stronach friend who was at the dinner...She's a friend of Shelley and mine, I know her kids, she knows my kids, she's been at our place, I've gone skiing with her, we're friends. I'm very fond of her," the former premier said."
And the kicker: They dined on venison medallions, toasted pecans and partridgeberry compote, tiède salad of spring turbot composed of local greens, persimmon, grapefruit and home-pickled onions, young cucumbers with coriander, followed by chocolate semi-freddo, mango terrine, Valhrona chocolate mousse and brandy snap. "It was a lovely dinner," remembered Peterson.
4. Was the Star always like this? Did I miss the editorial decision to make the news accessible to Cosmo Girl and Maxim readers? In the middle of a quais-satirical set of political circumstances would Paul Martin, or his putative successor, really appoint David Peterson to Rideau Hall?
"It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet...That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers."
But in the latter half he reverts to classic Friedmanism, creating a potemkin 'Sunni Arab Village' that holds the key to halting suicide bombings.
2. Crosby All But Delivered to MSG - Not really, but I'll be of mixed feelings if Sidney Crosby ends up in New York should the mooted entry draft system be implemented. The NHL was indeed better, perhaps coincidentally, when the Rangers were successful. The league may as well fold if he joins Lecavalier, Heatley, Luongo, Kovalchuk et al on a shitty sun belt team. But Crosby may represent a last gasp for my beloved Maple Leafs, who will be shorn of any chance to compete if/when the lockout ends.
3. Is This Irony? Bourque is suggesting David Peterson (Update: headline removed) could be the next governor general. LDH is suggesting the next GG should not be a partisan Liberal politician. Just a hunch, given the cynicsm engendered by the current crop of post-Trudeau Liberals. Relatedly, US Weekly writers Robert Benzie and Sean Gordon -appearing in the Toronto Star - wrote a nice puff piece on Belinda and the caring hand of David Peterson.
"She was vulnerable and Peterson was skilful in recognizing that and he moved swiftly," says a Stronach friend who was at the dinner...She's a friend of Shelley and mine, I know her kids, she knows my kids, she's been at our place, I've gone skiing with her, we're friends. I'm very fond of her," the former premier said."
And the kicker: They dined on venison medallions, toasted pecans and partridgeberry compote, tiède salad of spring turbot composed of local greens, persimmon, grapefruit and home-pickled onions, young cucumbers with coriander, followed by chocolate semi-freddo, mango terrine, Valhrona chocolate mousse and brandy snap. "It was a lovely dinner," remembered Peterson.
4. Was the Star always like this? Did I miss the editorial decision to make the news accessible to Cosmo Girl and Maxim readers? In the middle of a quais-satirical set of political circumstances would Paul Martin, or his putative successor, really appoint David Peterson to Rideau Hall?
5.17.2005
It feels so dirty...
I guess I sort of feel of Stronach's defection in much the same way, but with just an iota of the passion, as the diatribe found here.
Why do Canadians tolerate this kind of behaviour? Have our democratic institutions devolved into such a state that any pretence of honour and personal integrity is just for show? Are elections just a sham – because if everybody’s lying, why even vote? Do we not care that individuals, elected under one affiliation, switch to another – or change from one policy to another – and no one bats an eyelash at this staggering affront to democracy? And are we not concerned that a government, on the brink of collapse, employs the public purse to nakedly, blatantly, shamelessly shower the country in its own money, in the interests of consolidating power?
We may now be faced with a situation where a government will only stay in power – that is, pass the budget - because it has effectively bribed an opposition member into jumping ship. Again: if this had happened in a third world country, we would be appalled. But because it happens here, no one even blinks.
So dirty and so, well... slutty, if the word can be considered in a degendered and professional context, or just call it corporate nepotism. The sad irony in it all, though -- worse than the apathy at the crisis, is partisan passion. There is little overt concern for the state of democracy in Canada, and a far greater attention being paid to who will deal the next blunt force attack, who will spread the next bout of slander, or, as today, who will slip off in the night when an unmarked envelope is passed through the mail slot.
Why do Canadians tolerate this kind of behaviour? Have our democratic institutions devolved into such a state that any pretence of honour and personal integrity is just for show? Are elections just a sham – because if everybody’s lying, why even vote? Do we not care that individuals, elected under one affiliation, switch to another – or change from one policy to another – and no one bats an eyelash at this staggering affront to democracy? And are we not concerned that a government, on the brink of collapse, employs the public purse to nakedly, blatantly, shamelessly shower the country in its own money, in the interests of consolidating power?
We may now be faced with a situation where a government will only stay in power – that is, pass the budget - because it has effectively bribed an opposition member into jumping ship. Again: if this had happened in a third world country, we would be appalled. But because it happens here, no one even blinks.
So dirty and so, well... slutty, if the word can be considered in a degendered and professional context, or just call it corporate nepotism. The sad irony in it all, though -- worse than the apathy at the crisis, is partisan passion. There is little overt concern for the state of democracy in Canada, and a far greater attention being paid to who will deal the next blunt force attack, who will spread the next bout of slander, or, as today, who will slip off in the night when an unmarked envelope is passed through the mail slot.
Breaking News II
LDH March 13 - Nuclear energy is the only viable and environmentally sound alternative energy source.
NY Times May 17 - Nuclear energy is the only viable and environmentally sound alternative energy source.
Financial Times May 16 - Nuclear energy is the only viable and environmentally sound alternative energy source.
NY Times May 17 - Nuclear energy is the only viable and environmentally sound alternative energy source.
Financial Times May 16 - Nuclear energy is the only viable and environmentally sound alternative energy source.
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