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    David vs. David

    • For two years, the British Columbia provincial election was the NDP’s to lose with the Liberals viewed as roadkill awaiting the street sweeper. But — amazingly — they mangled, stumbled, misjudged, and miscalculated a 20-point polling lead into defeat. It is hard to rein-in hyperbole when describing the Liberal victory.

      B.C. is Canada’s socio-political equivalent of California. Not in meteorological terms to be sure, where California’s 400 days per year of sunshine is countered by BC’s 400 days of rain. But their politics have characterized each as “left coast” replete with “fruits and nuts.”

      Admittedly, while B.C.’s politics can appear “wacky” (originating with W.A.C. “Wacky” Bennett, premier from 1952-72), it has never elected a movie actor as premier as did California with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But during the extended period prior to the Liberals' victory in 2001, two NDP premiers (Harcourt and Clark) and one Social Credit premier (Vander Zalm) had tenures characterized by dramatic

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    • Following a vigorous election campaign and probably the fastest turnaround in political fortunes in British Columbia’s history, the 50 Liberals, 33 NDP, one Green and single independent MLAs elected on May 14 leave little doubt in anyone’s mind as to whom voters want to govern in Victoria during the next four years.

      While losing her own seat (a minor problem she’ll solve in an early byelection when one of her personally-recruited successful candidates resigns), Christy Clark’s surprise win over Adrian Dix, leader of the official opposition NDP, has evoked much commentary across the province and country.

      Among the more interesting insights:

      • All nine opinion polling firms, most of whom predicted an easy NDP win, simply got it wrong. British Columbians, like many other Canadians, are so weary of being harassed by telephone callers about their political party preferences that it perhaps became a new provincial sport to fool them. Pollsters must in future also better factor in the reality that
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    • Followers of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that preaches tolerance and a search for understanding.

      Terrorism acts occur in many countries and occasionally close to home, such as the recent bombings at the Boston Marathon and the conspiracy to derail a New York-bound VIA Rail passenger train.

      The list of organizations designated as terrorist by various governments is lengthy. In the past, they included the Irish Republican Army, Basque Homeland and Freedom, Brigate Rosse , and the Baader-Meinhof Group. Current banned groups tend to be radical Islamic ones, such as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Al Fatah, Hamas and Boko Haram. Like terrorist groups generally, they use violence against civilians uninvolved in their issues to address perceived wrongs.

      Islam is a religion of peace in many parts of the world. The Qur'an contains extracts of violence — as does the Old Testament, by the way — but does not incite violence as its first or only recourse. Patience, self-discipline, and forgiveness are attributes of the vast majority of the world’s Muslims. The actions of radicals will never symbolize what

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    • Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence a Muslim convert who steered him toward a strict strain of Islam.

      On September 11, 2001, 15 Muslim terrorists hijacked four commercial aircraft crashing three into occupied buildings and killing approximately 3,000 people. But Islam is a religion of peace.

      On July 7, 2005, Muslim terrorists exploded backpack bombs in the London metro system killing 56 and injuring 700. But Islam is a religion of peace.

      On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, a Muslim doctor killed 13 and wounded over 30 while shouting "Allahu Akbar." The Department of Defense termed it an act of workplace violence. But Islam is a religion of peace.

      On separate occasions Muslim males attempted terrorist attacks. These included inter alia: the December 2001 “shoe bomber;” the 2006 Toronto 18; the 2007 Fort Dix Six; the Christmas 2009 “panty bomber”; the 2010 Times Square bomb; and two attempts to send timed explosives by cargo plane.

      Most recently, on April 12, two Muslim brothers planted two bombs, killed three, and injured over 250 at the Boston Marathon. This terrorism was followed

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    • Syrian refugee women wait for medical treatment in front of a women's clinic at the Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria April 15, 2013.
      The aphorism is that “Nobody ever lost money betting against peace in the Middle East.”

      The judgment remains a good gamble; it is both clever and accurate wordsmithery. However, it is not entirely true. There has been negotiated “peace” in the Middle East. The most obvious illustration of such was the President Carter negotiated 1978 Camp David Accords which orchestrated peace between Egypt and Israel. The result undid of parts of the 1967 war with the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt (albeit with a peacekeeper contingent stationed there indefinitely) and the beginning of a “cold peace” between the two nations. Although frequently challenged by various alarms and excursions, such arrangements have endured to the present. While the consequences of the Arab Spring are still playing out, they have not (yet) ruptured the essence of the agreement.

      Likewise, other neighbors of Israel have come to more-or-less effective non-war arrangements. Thus there is peace with Jordan (negotiated

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    • Despite obstacles, President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel last month offers real hope for a resuscitated and ultimately successful peace negotiation in the Middle East.

      There has already been a return to normal relations between Turkey and Israel, thanks to effective diplomacy by prime ministers Erdogan of Turkey and Netanyahu of Israel, urged on by Obama. The best reason for optimism about the wider region is that most affected peoples would benefit strongly from a sustainable peace, including victims of increasing lawlessness in Sinai.

      Realism is still needed more than ever, however, and first among the ongoing would-be spoilers of any peace agreement are Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and several aspects of Israel itself.

      Hamas

      When Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas created bases there from which thousands of missiles and rockets have been fired at Israelis. Branded a terrorist organization by the European Union, U.S. and Israel, the Hamas web site remains full of

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    • South Korean soldiers conduct military training near the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.

      The haunting fear for an intelligence analyst of Korea Peninsula politics is missing the indicators for a North Korean attack.

      We missed it in June 1950 — over 60 years ago — and the subsequent effort to restore South Korean independence cost the United States 36,000-plus lives and hundreds of thousands of Korean dead. Even two generations later, it is a never-to-be-forgotten intelligence failure, and thus an intelligence challenge that we examine with painstaking scrutiny.

      The challenge has a personal face. In 1965-66, I was an Army intelligence officer assigned to 8th Army G-2 in Seoul as an “order of battle” analyst. As such, I observed and estimated North Korean military strength, composition, force disposition, and probable courses of action. The North was even more tightly closed in 1965-66 than it is today; attempting to determine what was happening in its armed forces was the proverbial “through a glass darkly.” But the rationale for the scrutiny was obvious: walls of

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    • North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.

      NATO and the world’s democracies must be ready to respond immediately if the North were again to invade the South as it did in 1950. If Kim Jong-un and the small group of cronies in Pyongyang are convinced that outsiders will respond in kind to any large scale violence, they are highly unlikely to risk their survival and privileges in what is essentially a Soviet-style monarchy.

      How should the world respond to recent events on the Korean Peninsula?

      Korea was divided at the 38th parallel at the end of World War II, with the North being administered by Moscow, the South by Washington. Authors Acemoglu and Robinson of Why Nations Fail (2012) note that what two generations of Kim family absolutism did to the so-called People’s Republic of Korea includes:

      • living standards by the late 1990’s are about one-tenth of average ones in the South;
      • life expectancy is ten less years than in the South;
      • there are recurring famines because of a collapse in agricultural production, and
      • an

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    • Any wow factor for the April 14 Liberal Party finale vanished on March 13th with the exit of retired astronaut Marc Garneau, setting the stage for Justin Trudeau to accept the party’s crown.

      The question now, of course, is whether the Liberals will be able to muster even mild interest in the leadership contest through to its inevitable conclusion. Because there isn’t a traditional convention, April 14th is being billed as a “results announcement event.” Don’t be surprised if the streets of Ottawa are empty for the non-event.

      Garneau decided to withdraw his candidacy after an internal poll of 50,000 Liberals — to which just 6,000 had responded — gave Trudeau 72% support, Garneau 15%, Joyce Murray 7.4% and Martha Hall Findlay 5.2%. With Garneau gone, the mantle of challenger now falls to B.C. MP Joyce Murray, whose spirited campaign to unite the centre-left (even though Tom Mulcair is dead-set against electoral co-operation) has made her a sentimental favourite among Harper

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    • With Justin Trudeau’s “coronation” as Liberal Party leader merely a matter of hanging up the banners and inflating the red balloons, the fun is over and the grind begins.

      Is he “sizzle” or “steak”? Is there substance behind the charisma?

      And does it matter?

      There are a variety of political truisms to recall:

      A week is a lifetime in politics: And there are well over a hundred weeks before the next federal election;

      Governments are not defeated; they defeat themselves: But if you have to count on a government defeating itself, you are not starting from a strong position; and

      It’s the economy, stupid: So defeating a government in good times is an uphill struggle, and defeating an incumbent prime minister is even harder.

      Regarding Trudeau, nobody claims him as a public intellectual comparable to his father. Although he appears to have evolved past the dismissive sobriquet that he was “Margaret’s child” (in effect, personally pleasant but not intellectually inspiring), his career

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