The ABC’s of the World Cup

BERLIN—Yesterday, I had to cash a traveller’s cheque at American Express, whose west Berlin offices are located in Wittenberg Square (or Wittenbergplatz, as it’s known in localspeak). The underground train was filled with people in yellow T-shirts and blond hair. They were all getting off at Wittenbergplatz, too. Turns out they were Swedes, or pro-Swedes, and they were holding a pep rally in the square in order to get properly revved up for that night’s game in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium against Paraguay.... 
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Everytime Stephen Harper Says the Word “Change” . . .

Canadians can be forgiven for thinking that the forthcoming January 23, 2006 federal election is an unnecessary exercise in snow and slush, totally devoid of issues, and featuring political leaders that no one really wants to vote for. That formulation is more or less true, with one small exception, namely, that the election, wanted or not, will actually happen and therefore will have consequences for the country. Alas, it matters. Now that we’ve had more than a week of the snoringly-long, two-part (pre-... 
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No Landslide in Germany

If ever an election was designed to produce a landslide, it was Germany’s national contest last week. Didn’t happen. Why not? Glad you asked. All will be explained bye and bye, but first a little background music (maestro, some Nachtmusik, please): Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic (SPD)-Green Party governing coalition, in office since 1998 and seeking a third mandate in the beleagured and bogged-down economic engine in the heart of Europe, entered the race some 20 points behind their... 
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Teaching the Controversy

I was watching the ballgame on TV the other night — the Blue Jays were being clobbered by the Yankees — and between innings, to avoid the car-beer-investment-cellphone ads I’d already seen more than once, I switched over to Larry King Live on CNN and ran straight into the Number One theological-cultural-scientific pennant race raging in America: the so-called “evolution vs. intelligent design controversy.” Broadcaster and home plate umpire King had lined up an all-star panel to play this... 
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The Week That Wasn’t

FRIDAY, MAY 20, SOMEWHERE OVER TORONTO –- Okay, you’ve read your Globe and Rick Salutin, Jeff Simpson, and shrewd old Meg Wente, and your Star, with cynical Richard Gwyn and hopeless Chantal Hebert (and you don’t read the Post because you aren’t a masochist, yet) and you still hope that Dooney’s will explain what the hell The Week That Wasn’t was all about. With pleasure. It was supposed to be the week horribilis in which Stephen Harper’s snarling Reform-Alliance-Neo-Conservative Party, in cahoots... 
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Deathwatch

Even for those of us who cast a cold eye on the passing media, Easter 2005 turned into a grotesque Deathwatch. Not only was there the usual commemoration of the crucifixion and alleged resurrection of a Christian divinity. There was also a dying Pope, an ailing prince of Monaco, and strangest of all, the case of a severely brain-damaged woman in Florida. Terri Schiavo, 41, as almost everyone who glances at a TV tube or newspaper now knows, has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and, more recently,... 
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Letter from Berlin: The Sane in Spain

BERLIN – U.S. President George W. Bush is in Europe during the snow-powdered last week of February, and naturally he’s chewing up the photo-op scenery. The President and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder huddled in their topcoats on the tarmac at Frankfurt Mainz the other day as the cameras clicked away. But some far-less-noted events that unfolded in Europe in the last week are probably more substantial than the flimsy rhetorical efforts to pretend the frost isn’t on the ground in U.S.-European... 
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The Marrying Kind

Personally, I’m not the marrying kind, so this really doesn’t concern me all that much. But I’ve got a question about the same sex marriage debate currently exercising the snow-bound, rain-washed nation located slightly north of Jesusland. My question is: Does the opposition to gay marriage by the neo-Conservative Party of Canada, the Catholic Church of the True North Strong and Free, various Focus on the Family fanatics, and sundry other mostly religious groups (Christian Evangelicals, Muslims, Sikhs,... 
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Faith-based Voting

This just in from Our Man in Dayton, Tennessee covering the big American events of recent days: “Life down here in the Cumberland mountains realizes almost perfectly the ideal of righteous and devoted men. That is to say, evangelical Christianity is one hundred per cent triumphant. It may seem fabulous, but it is a sober fact that a sound Episcopalian or even a northern Methodist would be regarded as virtually an atheist in Dayton. Here the only genuine conflict is among true believers. Of a given text... 
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Letter from Berlin: Seeing Nazis Everywhere

BERLIN–Doug Saunders is the brightest guy o­n The Globe and Mail staff. His photograph in the paper shows a 30-something, casually dressed guy with just the right amount of wary skepticism o­n his mug. He’s a post-Gen Xer with a brain, and you can rely o­n him to dissect the complicated politics of whatever crisis he’s examining, and to have read some relevant book which he actually understands. But even the best and the brightest can get it all wrong. Case in point: this weekend’s... 
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