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Wednesday, December 29, 2004
NORMAN'S SPECTATOR
From today's edition of: NORMAN'S SPECTATOR, where the articles are hotlinked.
With the death toll rising and disease looming, papers around the world lead with the Asian tsunamis. A report from Indonesia indicates the eventual toll could reach 100,000 deaths.
A senior UN official has criticized “stingy” wealthy countries and wealthy governments are scrambling.
The UN is said to be preparing the “largest-ever” disaster relief appeal. President Bush’s vacation is noted in a Washington Post front-page story.
At home, too, the adequacy of relief efforts is being questioned, though not Prime Minister Martin’s absence.
Across the country, local survivors figure prominently in the coverage (here, here and here), as do new Canadians who lost relatives and the missing.
However, life goes on: Le Monde fronts the Egyptian fashion industry and editorializes on new international textile rules. The Wall Street Journal fronts an obesity boom, thanks to Arabs' preference for zaftig women.
The Los Angeles Times’ Column One follows a Lebanese jihadi to Iraq and back. The Viktor who won the Ukrainian election is reaching out to Russia.
In the UK, senior public servants are criticizing Tony Blair—no, he's not a ditherer, it's just that he spends too much time on the sofa. In-fighting within his Labour Party is also a worry.
Overseas investors are being warned away for tax reasons. Sikh violence that closed down a stage play continues to receive attention.
In France, 2004 was the year of Sarko, the man many believe will be the next President and who happens to be in Canada visiting you know whom.
The freelancers who nearly screwed up the release of the two French hostages in Iraq are being investigated.
In the US, The New York Times fronts below the fold, the latest shake-up at the CIA and, as does The Washington Post, the death of Susan Sontag.
(Here’s the Guardian’s obit, and here’s an appreciation in Le Devoir.)
The Post also fronts nuclear proliferation, and stuffs some scary stuff on the dirty bomb threat.
The New York Times’ editorial board weighs in on immigration reform.
Bill Safire serves up his 2005 predictions. Simon Winchester connects the dots of seismic events.
The Washington Post’s editorial board comments on international relief efforts. Robert J. Samuelson is onto the next economy.
In The Wall Street Journal, Claudia Rosett says forget about reform, the UN needs regime change. Nat Hentoff looks at Bob Dylan.
The Journal’s editorial board looks at another UN scandal—sex-for-food:
“Two years after the charges first surfaced, Kofi Annan has finally admitted that U.N. peacekeeping troops sexually abused war refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "I am really shocked by these accusations," the United Nations Secretary-General told reporters last week.
He shouldn't be. Allegations of sex crimes committed by U.N. staff and troops date back at least a decade and span operations on three continents, in places like Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cambodia. But rather than showing the kind of "zero tolerance" toward sexual crimes that Mr. Annan now promises, the U.N. has treated such instances with cavalier nonchalance. In Congo, some 150 cases are under investigation.”
A Globe and Mail reporter has arrived in Thailand, and the paper also fronts a round-up of wire service copy on the disaster.
Inside, Roy MacGregor is still in Saskatchewan, where aboriginals are staying and non-aboriginals aren’t. From Kyiv, Mark MacKinnon reports that Belarus is next.
Inside, too, the Globe chases a National Post story on three illegal immigrants who escaped from a detention centre and the grounding of Canada’s disaster relief team,
Globe reporters also catch up today with yesterday’s New York Times story on blogs and the Asian disaster, and the dog attack in BC that was front-page news in the Vancouver Sun.
The editorial board is enthusiastic about the Ukraine election, and says Canada needs a single securities regulator--presumably a few blocks away from its offices.
In commentary, General Lewis Mackenzie makes the case for missile defence; in the circumstances, he should have written his piece in Morocco or, failing that, in La Presse.
Marcus Gee weighs in on foreign aid:
“It has been 34 years since the United Nations urged its wealthiest members to devote the equivalent of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product to foreign aid every year. Except for a small handful of generous countries ( Denmark , Norway , Sweden , the Netherlands and Luxembourg ), none has come close. In fact, many have gone backward. Canada , for one, spends 0.28 per cent of GDP, way down from its peak of 0.53 per cent in 1975-76. As Mr. Egeland had the temerity to note, “There are several donors who are less generous than before in a growing world economy.”
That is what makes the proportionate drop in aid so deplorable. It has happened against a background of ever-increasing wealth in the developed world. Overall, the world's rich donor countries are two and a half times more wealthy than they were in 1960. Yet their average aid donation per capita has barely budged, rising from $61 to $67 in inflation-adjusted terms.”
Trudeau-acolyte Martin Goldfarb poops on the current Prime Minister:
“After one year, Paul Martin's government seems to be floundering. It lacks clear direction. It has moved on health care with an approach akin to asymmetrical federalism — the same approach Canadians turned down with Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord. The Liberal Party has not endorsed such an approach. The government's strategy on health care is just one example of how it has moved forward without the consent of its grass roots. The question is: Who speaks for the Liberal Party?”
Konrad Yakabuski reports on an important visitor who's visit you’ve haven’t read much about elsewhere:
“Mr. Sarkozy's stay at Mr. Desmarais' massive Sagard estate — so big it's considered a pillar of the local economy — has the power elite in Montreal and Paris alike evergreen with envy. But it only confirms a universal truth: Whether your goal is 24 Sussex Dr. or the Élysée, you need to know Paul Desmarais.
This isn't news to Canadians. Prime Minister Paul Martin used to work for him. Mr. Desmarais and Jean Chrétien have grandkids in common. Brian Mulroney entered Mr. Desmarais' inner circle in the 1960s and remains a close friend.”
The Toronto Star fronts its reporter in Sri Lanka, and the paper has another in Thailand who reports on the fate of Canadian vacationers.
The paper puts a positive spin on our disaster relief team's efforts, or lack thereof. Leaders of Greater Toronto's East Indian community are unhappy with Canada ’s aid effort.
The editorial board says more disaster aid is required, and that Paul Martin needs to focus—presumably, after he returns from vacation.
The National Post fronts the tsunami and Chinese espionage in Canada .
In commentary, Peter Foster is onto Adam Smith. Laval economist Gérard Bélanger asks why Québec receives equalization:
“When used to measure poverty, the low revenue cut-offs indicate that in 1996, the poverty rate was 5.1 percentage points higher in Quebec than in Ontario ; when the market basket measure is used, however, the poverty rate is 1.7 percentage points higher in Ontario than in Quebec . For the year 2000, both measures indicate the rate of poverty is higher in Quebec than it is in Ontario : the low income cut-offs measure yields a difference of 4.6 percentage points, while the market basket measure shows a difference of 0.9 percentage point. Looked at this way, Quebec 's rate of low-income households is quite similar to that in Ontario.”
Robert Fulford remembers Susan Sontag:
“In 1982, she infuriated many fellow intellectuals with an abrupt about-face. After General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in Poland in December, 1981, Sontag suddenly turned violently against communism. At a rally in New York , she announced: "Communism is fascism -- successful fascism, if you will." She denounced American intellectuals for their genial tolerance of Soviet crimes and went so far as to say that in the previous three decades the Reader's Digest had published a more honest account of world affairs than The Nation, one of the leading American liberal magazines.
Having stepped out of line, she was excoriated by her traditional allies, who claimed her angry critique was simple-minded, a charge otherwise never made against her. A year or so later she told me she was planning a book on this incident, but the book never appeared. On the subject of totalitarianism that is ignored by liberals, Sontag fell silent.
The anger of her friends had put her in her place. She had learned that some opinions are too intolerable to be expressed, even by one of the great intellectual stars of her time.”
Posted by Norman Spector on December 29, 2004 | Permalink
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Paul Martin is cutting short (by a day) his vacation in Morocco. Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew was in Paris, and International Development Minister Aileen Carroll is returning from South America. Deputy PM Anne McLellan is in contact "by ph... [Read More]
Tracked on 2004-12-30 8:41:57 AM
Comments
"Gérard Bélanger asks why Québec receives equalization"
The formula is very simple:
swing voters
+ world-class inferiority complex
+ perenniel chip on shoulder
= $$$$$
Remember the scandal in which Duplessis classified orphans as mental incompetents, in order to get more federal money? The entire equalization program is the same scam, operating on a nationwide scale. The effects are just as corrosive.
Posted by: Justzumgai | 2004-12-29 9:31:39 AM
The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f*cking with you. F*ck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.
73e5a1345729f502c022ff8c8030afb6
Posted by: Darrin | 2009-04-02 3:25:59 AM
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