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Kathleen Wynne - first woman to lead Ontario & Canada's first openly gay provincial premier

In Canada, the Liberal Party elected its new leader on January 26, 2013, replacing Dalton McGuinty--who announced back in October that he would be resigning--with Kathleen Wynne, a Cabinet minister and member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, representing the riding of Don Valley West. 

The Premier-designate of Ontario will be be appointed premier by Lieutenant Governor David Onley on February 11, 2013. She will be both the first woman to lead Ontario and the first openly gay provincial premier in Canada's history.

"On top, for now", The Economist:

When Ms Wynne, a former federal cabinet minister, takes over in Ontario, she will head a minority government at a difficult time. She must grapple with a budget deficit forecast at C$11.9 billion ($11.9 billion) this year, while finding a way to satisfy teachers and civil servants angry at Mr McGuinty’s austerity measures.
.....
Ms Wynne echoed other women premiers when she spoke of finding a new way to do politics, seeking common ground and free from “rancour and viciousness”. But sisterly spirit has not been much in evidence in the spat between Alberta and British Columbia over building the Northern Gateway oil pipeline; nor in the dispute between Ms Marois in Quebec and Kathy Dunderdale of Newfoundland & Labrador over a hydroelectric project on the Churchill River.

Belfast Council's wrong decision about the Union Jack

Violent protests in Northern Ireland continue for the 40th day following Belfast City Council's unbelievably ill-considered decision to not regularly fly the Union Jack (also known as the Union Flag--contrary to popular belief, both terms are acceptable and interchangeable).

Belfast City Council lacks the authority to make such a decision in the first place, and had they kept that in mind, the violence could have been averted. They rushed to the short-term, impulsive view--however arguably well-intentioned it was--instead of beginning their thinking with fundamental concepts: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a nation-state and, as its name denotes, includes North Ireland and, as the name denotes, is a monarchy--in this case, a British-style one, which means bound by constitutional laws and precedents.

The violent consequences of the decision belie the value that presumably the council placed on their own supposed wisdom. They ought to have appealed to the Crown to not fly the flag daily, and permission would almost certainly have been granted because neither the Crown nor Her Majesty's Government want trouble in Northern Ireland, and both respect the fact that uncompromising decisions inflame public opinion there. At that point, Loyalist violent protest almost certainly would have been completely headed off. Yes, there would have been Loyalist grumbling (and I think rightly so), but Loyalists could hardly vociferously protest a decision approved by the Crown itself.

It's called the rule of law, and it's where diplomacy ought to start, and decisions about state and national symbols in conflict-torn areas are matters of diplomacy. If you don't like the law, seek to change it--at least at first--but don't just pretend rule of law doesn't exist. The Belfast council no more had the right to make this decision than the council of New York City has the right to decide how the flag of the United States of America is or is not flown somewhere in New York City.

The council should publicly acknowledge its mistake, appeal to the Crown, and the Crown should grant the request as made.

American's Moral Capital .... BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze

This week's Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 is well worth the listen. It's about the US's moral authority.

The USA has once again emerged from its presidential electoral bout of soul searching. Candidates for the White House don't just have to have a plan for jobs and the economy, they have to have an inspiring vision and purpose for the nation. The grandiloquent rhetoric that candidates employ when they're setting out this message my sound strange on this side of the Atlantic, but it's no accident that presidents as poles apart as John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan describe their country as a "shining city upon a hill". It's taken from Matthew's Gospel and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount where He tells His listeners that they are "the light to the world."

From the founding Pilgrim Fathers to presidents today there's always been a strong sense in American politics that it is different from other countries; that its founding Enlightenment principles of liberty, equality and individual freedom not only make America exceptional, but also embody the nation with a duty of moral leadership to the rest of the world.

The USA is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, but what about its moral capital? There are those who'd argue that America, especially in its foreign policy, has forfeited any claims to moral superiority. Or is this an example of a strong streak of anti-Americanism in the West that's driven by jealousy, prejudice and moral relativism?

Many countries around the world and throughout history, including Great Britain, have seen themselves as exceptional with a unique gift to give to the world. Are nations that believe they are "chosen" and their unique status is the moral justification of their actions always going to be a threat to others? Is America guilty of religious nationalism, or do we need the most powerful country in the world to stand up for Western values?

Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Kenan Malik, Matthew Taylor and Claire Fox.

Witnesses: Mehdi Hasan - political director Huffington Post and writer for New Statesman, Francis Beckett - Writer and historian, Charlie Wolf - Broadcaster, former Communications Director of Republicans Abroad UK, Daniel Hannon - Author "Anglosphere" and MEP for South East England.

via www.bbc.co.uk

British army dog joins list of animal war heroes

British soldiers and military dogs gathered at a British army barracks Thursday to honor a fallen hero with selfless courage, nerves of steel — and four legs.

Theo, a bomb-sniffing springer spaniel who died in Afghanistan on the day his soldier partner was killed, was posthumously honored with the Dickin Medal, Britain's highest award for bravery by animals.

Theo worked alongside Lance Cpl. Liam Tasker, searching for roadside bombs in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold.

Tasker, 26, died in a firefight with insurgents in March 2011, and Theo suffered a fatal seizure hours later. Tasker's mother, Jane Duffy, says the pair were inseparable. She's convinced Theo died of a broken heart.

"They'll be watching us, and they'll be so proud," she said. "I just wish they were here to get it themselves."

Since 1943, the Dickin Medal has recognized gallantry by animals serving with the military, police or rescue services. Some of these animal heroes:

CANINE COMMANDOS

Theo is the 28th dog to receive the medal, awarded by animal charity PDSA and named for its founder, Maria Dickin.

via news.yahoo.com

The PDSA Dickin Medal is often called the animals' Victoria Cross. To date, it has been awarded to 28 dogs (including Theo), 32 messenger pigeons of the Second World War, three horses, and one cat.^Ref

Images: Lance Cpl. Liam Tasker and Theo in Iraq. Sergeant Matthew Jones and Search Dog Grace who accepted the posthumous Dickin Medal on behalf Tasker and Theo.

Why is Gangnam Style such a hit? And should it be performed at the DMZ?

The music video "Gangnam Style" is a global phenomenon and the most popular upload in the history of YouTube--449,015,599 views at the time of this writing.

BBC Radio 4 asks in a 3-minute segment of "Profile": why is "Gangnam Style" such a hit? 

The short answer, provided in part by Dr. Hae-kyung Um of Liverpool University, is that the video and its creator South Korean rapper Psy are both perfect for the online era. They both have cross-over appeal to various groups and do not resist parody; in fact, they seem to invite it. Several parody videos of "Gangnam Style" appear on YouTube daily. This trend in turn heightens awareness of the original. "Gangnam Style" is a participatory artistic and pop culture phenomenon for an age of transparency, collaboration, and global connectivity through technology.

YouTube can be a delivery vehicle for global success but it doesn't guarantee it. Less remarked upon in the BBC segment is that by reflecting the Western, specifically American, influence that for years has strongly influenced South Korea (1 in 5 Koreans are Christian, one Korean Pentecostal mega-church famously has 1 million members), Psy and "Gangnam Style" are familiar enough to Western viewers to be non-threatening while still being distinctly South Korean enough to be safely and entertainingly exotic.

So, questions remain. Why is this Psy video a breakout when earlier ones are extremely similar? Do American viewers in particular perceive a tip of the cowboy hat from Psy in his rodeo-evoking moves? Is "Gangnam Style" more popular than his previous videos in non-Western countries, too? If yes, then would non-Western popularity be as strong if the video had not also caught on in the US? Who is influencing whom and how much? I presume it's not particularly popular in Sana'a and Mexico City...or is it?

I suspect that to younger Westerners the video raises curiosity about South Korea in general and perhaps K-pop music in particular, as the Summer Olympics in Seoul might have done if they had been in 2012, not 1988. The 2012 Summer Olympic games had unprecedented Internet presence--much to the benefit of Britain's brand and London tourism--including through social media engagement by spectators and athletes, whose average age was 26. Psy is a bit like a one-man South Korean Olympics, a second one for 2012: flashy, pop-oriented, and if not athletic or very young, at least slightly baby-faced and surprisingly agile and fun to watch. BBC Radio 4 even gives some understandably tempered play to optimistic speculation about Psy's ability to thaw North and South Korean tensions. What would be more Olympic than that? Global goodwill through dance. I would not, however, expect a performance at the DMZ anytime soon.

 

Photo: U.S. Army, Installation Management Command, Korea Region, Public Affairs Office (2008) via Wikipedia

China: What Kind of Superpower? - Businessweek

Bloomberg Businessweek tries a perspective on China that you probably won't hear on the campaign trail from Gov. Romney or President Obama. In short: "there’s little reason to believe that China will be a destabilizing force in the world."

The short 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war was the last international armed conflict entered into by China—and it didn’t even end with a border change. Compare that to the long list of American interventions prior to 1918; it’s hard to argue that young superpowers are any more inclined to be pacific simply because they’re democracies, or more likely to start wars if they’re not.

Today’s China is more woven into the international system than any previous superpower, including the U.S. In 1918, U.S. merchandise exports accounted for 8 percent of gross domestic product. For China in 2010, the same number was 26 percent—more than three times as high. As a sign of how completely integrated the country is in the global trading system, 50 percent of those exports were produced by foreign enterprises. And when it comes to its own investments overseas, China has more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves alone, most held in securities (and a good chunk in the U.S. and Europe).
.....
China today accounts for only about 8 percent of the world’s military expenditure—less than half the U.S.’s level in 1929 and one-fifth of America’s share today. China is a country that appears to have no pretensions to global military dominance. At the same time, the Chinese are at least as educated and prosperous as Americans were at a comparable stage of global influence—factors that should also help to moderate Chinese behavior in the long run.

via www.businessweek.com

Britishisms in American English? Brilliant! | DD Guttenplan | Comment is free

in a recent report by the magnificently monikered Cordelia Hebblethwaite. It seems that more and more British words are entering the American language. Now of course some Americans have always favoured a bit of British to try and raise the tone of their discourse. We call such people "stuffed shirts", though "toffs" is close enough. Indeed the shame of being seen as a linguistic striver is strong enough that despite 17 years in London, I still cringe at the memory of being caught offering to "hold the lift" for my sister last year.

via www.guardian.co.uk

As the Churchill insurance dog would say, "Oooooh, yes!" This may be the only trend I was ever ahead of. Thanks to Iowa PTV's broadcasts of Doctor Who in the 1970s and 1980s, living in London 1993-4, several visits back, Brit friends both Over There and stateside, a Radio 4 habit, and VPN access to a UK/domestic BBC iPlayer, I was "sat" instead of "sitting", whinge instead of complain, "agree" instead of "agreeing to", gingers instead of red-heads, trousers instead of pants, and crikey instead of....instead of I'm-not-sure-what for nearly the last twenty years, albeit not consistently, and mostly in the last nine or ten years.

No, not affectation, just weird imprinting on someone weirdly impressionable. Okay, I confess "trousers" is a bit of an affectation, or at least it's an Isebrand Britishism born not entirely of repeated exposure but helped a bit by me along the way. I think it's in part because "pants" in the UK was also slang for unfashionable, undesirable, and sometimes I'd hear fellow countrymen say pants or I see it in print and for an instant feel like giggling. I admit that this may be a treasonous reaction. But there it is. For me, pants has become a funny word, and I frequently have to actually stop myself from saying trousers when I mean...pants. (Tee-hee.)

The absences are just as odd, I suppose. I don't think I have uttered "blimey" once, though a Brit friend of mine says it often. I've been known to say the occasional "washing-up" though. And once--once--I actually said "ta-ra" instead of goodbye, not only a Britishism but a somewhat regional one. You'll rarely if ever hear a native Londoner say "ta-ra"!

Guttenplan's correct. Especially since the Second World War especially, American English influences British English more than the other way around--though the influence really began with the talkies, I assume. America's greatest weapon: Hollywood. You don't have to look too long online to find Brits complaining about instances of Americanisms creeping into British news broadcast or anachronistic ones in UK television programs set in Britain before the middle of the 20th century.... And disproportionate number of British television programs seem to be set before the middle of the 20th century!

My own early-ish anecdotal evidence that Ben Yagoda of Not One-Off Britishisms might be right was noted in this 2010 Isebrand.com post on "bespoke" and "agreed," though I'm not sure if "bespoke" is purely a Britishism or is also found regionally in American English; I certainly never heard the word while growing up in the Midwest.

A couple of weeks ago, I was with friends in NYC from the UK when one got a "Cheers!"--in an American accent--from someone he'd held the door open for at a Chelsea restaurant. My friend asked, "How'd he know I was British?" My answer: "He didn't." Since then, I've heard a "Cheers!" exit an American mouth instead of "Thank you!" at least once more. And so it goes . . . . linguistic trans-Pond cross-pollination.

One million people at London's Team GB parade

One million people turned out in London today for the 3-mile long parade celebrating Team GB's 800-some 2012 Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

(Photo: the crowd in front of the Bank of England.)

The Special Missed Opportunity

The kerfuffle lingers in the UK where presumed Republican presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney made several gaffes shortly after arriving ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. He questioned London's Olympic preparedness, to which Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron responded,

We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world.... Of course it's easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.

It was a thinly-veiled contrast between London's games (10,500 athletes in a city of 8.2 million) and the 2002 winter games Romney successfully oversaw in Salt Lake City (2,399 participants in a city of 1.1 million). Romney then appeared to forget the name of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who's basically as close to the British premiership as Romney is to the presidency. Finally, Romney broke security practice by disclosing he'd had an undisclosed meeting with the head of MI-6.

The Obama campaign jumped on these gaffes. However, the Obama administration's record on Britain, while on balance strong, has had problems. President Obama's administration “secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent.” Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown an almost insultingly unconsidered gift. Brown may not have been a head of state, but a box set of DVD's and a coupon to McDonald's? The administration also continues to side with Argentina's Peronist government against Britain's legitimate and long-held interest in its Overseas Territory, the Falkland Islands. The overwhelming majority of Falklanders are British, see themselves as such, and wish to remain that way. In 1982, an unelected military junta in Argentina launched an undeclared war and invaded the democratic and nearly defenseless islands, and 255 British soldiers lost their lives liberating them. But, showing less than a full commitment to the principle of self-determination, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed the Organization of American States (OAS) resolution calling for negotiations over Falkland sovereignty, something even the Falklanders don't want. Insult to injury: the administration insists on using the Argentine term “Malvinas” for the Islands.

But, Obama's May 2011 state visit to the UK was very successful. He was extremely well received. While anticipating the President's historic address to both houses of Parliament, Tessa Jowell MP tweeted that "the atmosphere was like 'political Beatlemania.'" At the state dinner with Queen Elizabeth II, the mood was upbeat despite the President having to navigate through a tricky moment when musicians mistakenly started to play "God Save the Queen" while he was attempting to raise a toast to her. He took time to visit the Globe Academy in Southwark with Prime Minister Cameron--a fantastic opportunity to inspire young students and demonstrate cordiality properly reflecting the US-British relationship. And in a joint article, Obama and Cameron declared: "Ours is not just a special relationship, it is an essential relationship — for us and for the world." When Prime Minister Cameron visited the US in March 2012, President and First Lady Obama were superb hosts. The highlight of the visit, at least for the media, was when President and Prime Minister took in a college basketball game. And for the record, the tale that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the White House or relocated it based on anti-British sentiment is a complete myth.

However, Romney's gaffes are especially a missed opportunity for both US political parties to affirm the special relationship itself, the commonalities and ties that bind through the centuries. It particular, when an adviser to Romney's campaign cited Romney's "Anglo-Saxon heritage" as a qualification for the presidency, both Democrats and Republicans could have gone a step beyond rightly condemning the racially-charged and factually ill-informed comment and reminded the world that today more than ever US and UK successes rest on citizens more racially and ethnically diverse that seen in other Western democracies like Germany or emerging ones like China or Brazil. It's part of both nations' strengths. It was more part of our pasts, too, than the Romney adviser appreciates, given that our two nations' earliest shared heritage of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--when we were all British--rests quite firmly on the writings and laws born of Scots and Irish, too--not Anglo-Saxons alone but Celts. Is there a Western concept more profoundly shared by the US and UK than capitalism? Its father Adam Smith was Scottish, not English.

There is a special relationship between the US and UK, however imperfect it is. A shared heritage is no small thing--it's an intellectual force combining language, laws, and values that helps shape national institutions and systems. And this relationship has included US-British alliances in World War I and World War II and Britain's shoulder-to-shoulder stance with America throughout the Cold War. Not to mention Britain's willingness to stand by American in bad times, too. The UK's level of commitment to the profoundly expensive and morally and militarily controversial--some would say epically disastrous--invasion and occupation of Iraq is singular among all nations, which is why Britian was targeted by extremists on 7/7--the July 7, 2005 London terrorist bombings.

The Anglo-Saxon remark in particular was a missed political opportunity for both parties. As candidate Obama faces attack ads questioning his commitment to business and Romney faces attack ads questioning his experience as a businessman, both candidates might have highlighted critical elements of Western economic success that the US and Britain have hugely helped shape, and which in turn has helped bind them together.

Western power may have been born among Dutch and English banks and shipping vessels and US devolved property ownership--some historians would look back as far as the Italian Renaissance banks or even earlier events--but Britain and America in the 1800s and 1900s expanded and strengthened it like no other nations. Think of the Industrial Revolution, Europe's liberation from the Nazis, and the near ubiquity of British-American and, in the 20th century especially, purely American cultural icons, corporate brands, technology and--well--denim. This is a point made by the eminent Harvard historian (and Scot) Niall Ferguson in his book and documentary Civilization, in which he terms these elements of shared success the "killer apps" of Western power and numbers them exactly six: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic.

You may disagree with some of the list, but there's no denying that Britain and America played special roles in creating, preserving, and strengthening Ferguson's apps as well as values most of us hold dear and most of the rest of the world wants if they don't have, and that those values include the ones that bring about business innovation and invention from which stream many benefits. In these last two days, both President Obama and Gov. Romney could have articulated their understanding of those values, and done so especially effectively in the context of the US-UK special relationship--and to the benefit of each candidate's campaign and to the special relationship itself.

(Image UR: Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain, 1918, by Childe Hassam, American, 1859–1935. Oil on canvas: 36 x 28 3/8 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Image R: President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron play table tennis against students at the Globe Academy in London, 2011. Image LR: President Obama and the first lady welcome Queen Elizabeth II for a reciprocal dinner at Winfield House in London, May 2011; photo by Charles Dharapak l Associated Press.)

Reality slaps around the Loony Left....

Meet "Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old radical leftist who has campaigned on renegotiating Greece’s debt deal." His political party: Syriza—The Coalition of the Radical Left.

Just outside Tsipras’s office hangs a photograph of a crowd celebrating the 1959 Cuban revolution; elsewhere, the hammer and sickle is a common sight."

Good Lord.

But, maybe he's less an ideologue than I fear he is (albeit an ideologue nonetheless, I'd wager).... 

Tsipras entered politics at the age of 15, when a group of older students...recruited him into the pro-Soviet communist party. “Greek politicians very often shout, scream, but he was never like that,” recalls Panos Papadopoulos, one of his recruiters. “He was always very calm, making his arguments, without being an exhibitionist.” [S]ays Matthaios Tsimitakis, another student.... “But he had this realism, that politics is among other things negotiation and finding the best compromise.”
.....
Those who remember him from this time recall an able speaker, but one more interested in tactics than ideology. 

via www.businessweek.com

Then there's Peru's president, Humala.

On June 6, 2011, the Lima Stock Exchange fell 12 percent, its biggest drop ever, as investors reacted to the election of Ollanta Humala as president the day before. Affluent Peruvians feared the ex-officer and one-time ally of Hugo Chávez would take Peru down the same path of nationalizations as practiced in Venezuela. A year has passed. Peru has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. The stock market is up almost 8 percent. Foreign investment is pouring in. What happened to the next Chávez? Even before his election, Humala had shelved his most radical proposals, such as obliging private pension holders to pay into a state retirement plan or rewriting the constitution to boost the role of the state in the economy. Humala has dispelled most investors’ doubts about his pragmatism.

But.... "Humala’s toughest tests lie before him. Peru’s 61 percent rural poverty rate may lead to increased calls for redistribution of wealth, Bank of America (BAC) said in a May 4 report."

Then there's the best news yet, about the undoubtedly clever, but nonetheless bloviating, bully Hugo Chavez:

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "days are numbered" economically and politically and that the region should prepare to move into a new era of democracy on his eventual exit.

By the way, Zoellick had some good advice in general, too: 

"Many developing economies make early rapid gains. But then productivity and growth tend to slow. Many Latin American countries will need to translate the commodity boom into broader, more diversified economies. This region has lived through roller-coaster booms and busts before."

But then there's France:

France intends to lower the legal retirement age from 62 to 60 for a small class of workers, the government announced Wednesday, maintaining a campaign pledge by the newly elected president, the Socialist François Hollande, and partly undoing a major change by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.