Watching the talented, spirited athletes at the FIFA Woman’s World Cup is balm for one’s spirit in a troubled time. They are true exemplars of The Beautiful Game. But off the field, behind the glamour and FIFA’s front-office bravado, there is the stench of corruption.
Corruption is the way of so much of the world. Grease a palm, skim a cut off the top, sell an inside tip, peddle influence… These are reflexes like breathing in most places. Nothing much gets done there without them. From a dictator’s family selling mining concessions down to the traffic cop squeezing a motorist, the privilege of office is a license to extract gain.
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Terry Colfer
A few years ago, following retirement from the Foreign Service, I renewed my pilot’s license after a ‘short’ interruption of a few decades. Since then, I have flown (out of Ottawa/Rockcliffe) mainly in the eastern ON region. However, I have completed a couple of single engine, long haul flights from the nation’s capital (to Victoria/Seattle and to Florida).
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"It felt like the good old days, when Ministers and civil servants trusted one another and worked together with mutual respect. Why, here you had former Foreign Minister Flora MacDonald not only remembering the Sheardowns, but emphasizing the crucial roles John and Zena had played in the rescue. Here you had good will and banter between former PM Joe Clark and those who'd served him - Ken Taylor, Roger Lucy, Michael Shenstone ... the whole team. The evening recalled a different world, a better one, with appreciation for foreign service and diplomatic capacity. Here's hoping such productive relations might before long be restored between our government and its still willing servants at home and abroad."
Don Caldwell
Most of you will be anxious to know how the Mexico-USA grudge match turned out,and too busy to look it up, so here is a report.
After a week of hype, capped off by more than two hours of frenzied pre-game coverage, Mexican fans were pumped by match time yesterday at noon. TVC Mexico – the equivalent of CBC without the subsidies, broadcast the match nationally. In their pre-game show (in classic CBC style) they recalled every humiliation Mexico had suffered at the hands of the Americans, including the 1840 military invasion and the illegal annexation of New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California shortly afterwards.
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Pierre Beemans
My wife, Teresa, and I arrived in sunny 30°C Montevideo on February 18, the weekend that the parliamentarians of the newly elected government of President Tabare Vazquez were sworn in. It was the first avowedly leftist government in South America to have won a clear electoral and parliamentary majority. Twenty-five years ago, many of its members were languishing in political prisons. It is hard to seize the scope of such a historical political change in a week and even harder to cover it in a few paragraphs, but for the benefit of those who had to stay behind in sub-zero Ottawa in February I shall try to set out the context and summarize my impressions.
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Pierre Beemans
My wife and I spent the first two weeks of February in Bolivia, visiting family and friends and taking in the Carnival celebrations that, while less known than those in Rio de Janeiro -- are among the most exuberant expressions of popular culture in Latin America. Our visit also gave us an opportunity to observe at first hand the political effervescence that had led the country to the brink of near-anarchy -- the meltdown of effective national government...
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Michael Hart
Governments have for twenty years tilted at the windmill of climate change. Until last year, these annual extravaganzas in exotic locations could claim some forward movement. At Copenhagen last December, however, reality finally bit, but not after having loosed all kinds of opportunists who have hitched their pet causes to that of climate change, including an increasing number of officials in Canada and elsewhere whose careers are now tied to the vain hope that the earth’s climate is a matter of a government policy. It has become firmly embedded among bureaucrats as the official, perceived, authoritative position. Hubris anyone?
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John Lang and General Rios Montt
Recent reports on the trial in Guatemala City of octogenarian ex-dictator, General Efrain Rios Montt, evoked memories of my posting there which began just as Rios Montt seized power in 1982. My posting lasted only two years, which was about six months longer than the general managed to stay in office. The court found him guilty of genocide against the Ixil Indians and sentenced him to 80 years in prison but an appeal succeeded in mandating a partial retrial on procedural grounds.
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REFLECTIONS OF COMPANERO MAX
by Max Bade
Yesterday, Fidel Castro wrote a column entitled "Reflections of Compañero Fidel" (Newsmax.com of February 22, 2008) and this has made me reflect on Fidel's un-suspected and un-expected influence on my own views and life. I will not bother with well known and documented episodes like the Bay of Pigs, or the Missile Crisis, or even the Iran-Contra affairs, but rather tell about facts and conjectures related to my consultant's life.
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Central American Elections: What’s at stake?
By Roger Noriega ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )
Two Central American nations, El Salvador and Costa Rica , held first-round balloting this Sunday to choose new presidents. The good news is that voters had real choices among candidates offering a variety of visions for their countries, and the electoral machinery appears to have operated transparently. The worrisome news is in El Salvador, where a candidate closely associated with international organized crime has a slight advantage heading into the run-off.
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