Toronto, Canada, October 30, 2005

The “Globe and Mail” (www.globeandmail.ca) of October 29, 2005 had two excellent articles about the US:

(1) “Bush’s Problems Mean Democracy’s Alive and Kicking” by Rex Murphy who is a commentator with CBC-TV’s The National and host of CBC Radio One’s Cross-Country Checkup, and

(2) “It’s All About The War Over The Iraq War” by Margaret Wente - a columnist (mwente@globeandmail.ca)

The impression here is that George Bush has been - “Seriously weakened, and his credibility is shot. He’s been weakened by three dangerous ladies named Katrina, Harriet, and Valerie”. I liked the inclusion of Katrina — did Ms. Wente hint to the Administration’s attitude versus climate change? Was it simply a recognition of the incompetence in the preparations for a catastrophic event? She did not specify.

The bottom line of these articles - as per Ms. Wente in her last paragraph - is that “the mullahs in Iran are building nukes. North Korea is too, Loose nuclear material has gone missing around the world, and God knows where it’s ending up. Osama’s still out there. The misadventure in Iraq must somehow be resolved as best it can. In the meantime, the people who ought to be paying attention to these things are deeply distracted as everybody endlessly refights the war”.

The most important observation about Canadian papers present concerns was really not their moderate occupation with the US - it was rather their strong interest in China. While the US rates several good articles, China rated nearly half of the remaining space at “The Globe and Mail” and at “The Toronto Star as well. That is something Washington should be quite interested to look at closer - that is if it finds some spare time!

SustainabiliTank.info will have a separate article on the Canadian papers’ look at China.