2004

Merry Christmas, don't get too busy, and remember: don't eat too many cookies, because you still have to get around next year.

I hate politics. You can't trust anyone. I mean, if I was Maqtada Al-Sadr, the dangerously political Shiite cleric who's jostling for position in Iraq now, I wouldn't trust my grandmother.

Thanks for that gift from last year, the Gulliver's Travels book. Very nice choice. The Houyhnhnms, those horse-like characters, were so bright, so noble. And those savage Yahoos: so dim, so lost. Poor Gulliver couldn't see himself in them.

If we are in a so-called war of civilizations, the biggest battlefields may not be in places like Iraq but in the classroom.

Ever wonder why you don't live in a George Orwell novel, a place where up is down if the right person says it's so; a place that sooner or later, like a rotten empire, will always implode under the weight of its own self-deceit?

George Bush and rival John Kerry could both have picked up a few good tips from the wild-haired genius.

but like Western liberties we now take for granted, they won't come overnight.

It's no wonder that so many folks from Muslim nations want to emigrate to western nations.

Yemen is the cradle of Islam. But it’s not Iraq. Bullets aren’t falling like rain. Nobody is getting beheaded. It’s no Disneyland, but, besides the white-knuckle driving, most days pass without terror.

ST. GILDEN, AUSTRIA ✦ OK, for the record, nobody rocks like Mozart. But Julie Andrews made plenty of Austrian stores come alive with the sound of ka-ching, after her famous opening to the Sound of Music, filmed 40 years ago on a mountain near this lake-district resort town. The movie initially raked in a cool $165 million, about $800 million in today's dollars. Now tourism cash still flows from it like a river, especially an hour from here in Salzburg, Mozart's hometown, where the visitors never really leave.

We're finishing another back-to-school month, as good a time as any to ask why so many Canadians are underwhelmed at how our education system is preparing their children for the 21st century.

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA ✦ I love my daughter, all 15 months of her, for many reasons. One is that she’s more like her mother than me. Especially while flying. My wife Jean and I continue to be aid workers in the Middle East and Africa, so this is often. In fact, diaper-clad Elizabeth Katherine has already been on more than dozen flights and four continents. The Squirt knows one word. Just one. It’s “hello.” But words can be powerful things.

A handful of lessons are buried in the sorry state of Iran's recent investigation and trial involving the death of Canadian photo- journalist Zahra Kazemi. They're buried in the pile of lies and nonsense that's often engrained in the not-so-free world, where, in my experience, up is certainly down if the right person says it's so.

I don't generally get reverse-culture shock. That's the phenomenon where, after spending time in the developing world, some people return to their rich homelands to scream and pull their hair out while walking in long supermarket aisles filled with every pet food imaginable.

(The Hamilton Spectator - June 12, 2004) HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ Back in Hamilton from our most recent work stint in Yemen, I see a litre of Coke is now cheaper than a litre of unleaded. In fact, since Jean likes to shop around for gas prices she can live with, sometimes on empty, I’m worried I might soon have to push the car. It seems that Saudi Arabia, old and shaky as the kingdom is, has us all by the family jewels. It knows that North Americans are addicted to their oil like a drunk to his bottle. Yes, the oil gods have granted two-thirds of the world’s proven reserves to Saudi and a few neighbours. Hardly seems fair.