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Si c'était ça la grande série de '72, la génération actuelle ne peut pas très bien saisir pourquoi on en a fait tout un pâté. Les jeunes Canadiens sans pitié n'ont pas fini de blanchir les juniors russes chez eux, 4 matches à 0, qu'ils ont poursuivi le massacre à domicile.

On est loin de la série captivante, en plein coeur du duel des superpuissances nucléaires, qui a violemment foudroyé la conscience collective, plutôt présomptueuse, au Canada, et marqué le réveil d'un géant qui n'allait enregistrer là que les premiers d'une importantes série de grains sur l'aréna internationale et donner un sens sans égal à la formule de "guerre froide".

Un des architectes de ce revirement titanesque, Vladislav Tretiak, avait pourtant plaidé en faveur d'un événement sportif important pour marquer les 35 ans de la série du siècle. Sa proposition fut accueillie avec autant d'enthousiasme, il faut le souligner, que la série originelle, mais cette fois avec raison sans doute.

Les grands ayant déjà assez d'une saison de 82 matches parfois agrémentée d'une coupe du monde irrégulière et d'une participation olympique aux résultats, cette fois, irréguliers, les organisateurs se sont tournés vers les rangs juniors, à quelques semaines du coup d'envoi de leur saison, pour plaire au légendaire gardien. Ce dernier a dû être déçu du résultat. Ou de la relève.

Les premières parties disputées dans les mecques du hockey russe que son Ufa et Omsk se sont soldées par des décisions assez nettes et assez dépourvues de bras d'honneur ou de jets de chaises sur la glace. Certains ont beau dire que le régime actuel du président Vladimir Poutine n'a jamais autant ressemblé à celui de ces prédecesseurs au poste de secrétaire-général du Parti communiste, la rigueur soviétique n'était pas au rendez-vous.

L'inverse peut-être. D'une part l'équipe canadienne a aisément remporté la première manche du tournoi, organisée en Russie plutôt qu'au Canada cette fois, puis les magiciens de la rondelle, battant de leur jeu d'équipe supérieur une troupe d'individus jouant perso d'un bout à l'autre de la glace, arboraient la feuille d'érable.

Les plus âgés de cette foule venue assister aux déconfitures de 4-2, 3-0, 6-2 et 4-2 ne pouvaient que pousser un long soupir légèrement alcoolisé. A la maison, encore une fois dans ces temples du sport national que son Saskatoon et Red Deer, cette même bastonnade sans émotion: 6-1, 4-1.

Exception au septième match où les Canadiens ont dû revenir de l'arrière à deux reprises pour terminer le match à égalité 4-4. Au lieu de balayer la série, les Canadiens allaient devoir se contenter d'un tournoi sans défaite, remportant l'ultime rencontre 6-1 et portant les buts dans la série à 39-13 en faveur du Canada. Dur de se souvenir qu'il s'agissait de l'équipe rencontrée en finale des juniors plus tôt cette année, vers un 3e titre consécutif.

Il y avait de quoi faire soupirer le ministre des sports, l'ancienne étoile Slava Fetisov, qualifiant la prestation russe de "honteuse". Pas plus facile pour les autres? Après le balayage des premiers matches "on sentait que les gens n’étaient pas emballés par cette série, raconte le défenseur Karl Alzner, ça vous déprime un peu, mais on sait que les gens d’ici ne veulent pas nous voir perdre des parties non plus."

On peine à suivre son rythme effréné, ce “super-vitaminé”, cet “hyperactif”, mais alors que les superlatifs collent plutôt à un jeune qu’on verrait vite regagner les bancs d'école en cette rentrée, celui-ci effectue sa rentrée à l’Elysée. En effet, les cent jours du président français Nicolas Sarkozy ont eu de quoi étourdir une troupe d’acrobates du Cirque du Soleil.

Le jeune chef d’Etat, vu il n’y a pas si longtemps passer quelques moments de relaxation aux Etats-Unis, torse nu, a lors de ses premières semaines à la présidence réaffirmé l’importance du projet européen, si indélicatement gifflé par l’électorat en 2005, encouragé une intervention humanitaire au Darfour, assisté à la libération des infirmières bulgares en Libye, tout en chantant les louanges d’une union de la Méditerranée, puis envoyé son ministre des affaires extérieures en Irak et au Liban, tout en proclamant la libération des otages prisonniers des rebelles en Colombie la priorité de son quinquennat.

Attendez up peu qu’il passe à l’Asie. Cet agenda essoufflant a été rappelé lors de son premier discours de politique extérieure à la fin du mois d’août lors de la 15e conférence des ambas- sadeurs de France à Paris. Cette fois Sarkozy affirmait que l’Afrique constituait « une priorité essentielle de notre politique étrangère et un axe central de la politique de coopération de l’Union européenne » en ajoutant que « pour mobiliser davantage encore la communauté internationale face aux défis de la paix et de la sécurité en Afrique, j’ai pris l’initiative d’une réunion de Conseil de sécurité qui se tiendra le 25 septembre à New York, au niveau de chefs d’Etat ou de gouvernement et que je présiderai ». Insatisfait de remplir l'agenda chez lui, il le fait à New York.

De manière générale, l’agenda est sur le continent noir plutôt surchargé. En plus du Darfour, à propos duquel Sarkozy a déjà organisé un sommet, le continent est rongé par les crises du Congo, responsables de milliers de déplacements hors des zones de combat presque éternelles du Kivu, celle qui sévit en Somalie, sans parler de celle que ne risque bientôt plus de pouvoir contenir Robert Mugabe au Zimbabwe.

Mais c'est contre l’Iran que Sarkozy dirigeait ses tirs les plus garnis, avertissant la république islamique des conséquences si elle poursuivait son programme nucléaire. “Un Iran doté de l’arme nucléaire est pour moi inacceptable, et je pèse mes mots”. Cette crise autour du programme nucléaire iranien est “sans doute la plus grave qui pèse aujourd’hui sur l’ordre international”, a-t-il ajouté. “La France n’épargnera aucun effort pour convaincre l’Iran qu’il aurait beaucoup à gagner en s’engageant dans une négociation sérieuse avec les Européens, les Chinois et les Russes, et bien sûr les Américains”.

Ces déclarations semblent plaire aux Français, qui, du moins sur ces sujets internationaux, lui accordent une note positive de l’ordre de 75%. C’est au niveau interne que la situation pourrait avant tout se corser, la croissance économique laissant plutôt à désirer alors que prend les commandes ce champion de la libre entreprise parfois accusé d'être entouré de « copains du CAC 40 ». La rentrée ne sera pas de tout repos dans les rues de la capitale, le président ayant pris l'engagement de sabrer 22,800 emplois dans la fonction publique. Aussi Eric Besson, chargé de la politique publique,  songe-t-il à une réfome "à la canadienne" pour faire du ménage dans les dépenses publiques, donc en ciblant les puissants syndicats nationaux.

Sarkozy est parfois aussi moqueusement baptisé d' «Américain», et sans surprendre il a affirmé qu’il était “de ceux qui pensent que l’amitié entre les Etats-Unis et la France est aussi importante aujourd’hui qu’elle l’a été au cours des deux siècles passés”. Mais en ajoutant: “Alliés ne veut pas dire alignés et je me sens parfaitement libre d’exprimer nos accords comme nos désaccords, sans complaisance ni tabou”.

Notamment sur l'épineuse question de l'Irak, où certains ont été plutôt surpris de voir Bernard Kouchner séjourner si tôt dans son mandat. Tout en appelant à définir “un horizon clair” concernant le retrait des troupes étrangères d’Irak, Sarkozy a laissé savoir que la France pourrait y avoir un rôle à jouer: “C’est alors, et alors seulement, que la communauté internationale, à commencer par les pays de la région, pourra agir le plus utilement. La France, pour sa part, y sera disposée.”

It sounded too good to be true, and probably was, so some people had to check. The sudden possibility North Korea could completely and definitively surrender its nuclear programme, re-establish ties with much of the world and even end its state of war with its southern neighbor seemed almost unreal, so much so that some wanted to hear it said twice and clearly.

Following talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on the margins of an APEC summit in Australia last week, U.S. President George W. Bush spoke of progress on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear programme, adding when pressed by his counterpart, that a peace treaty was in the hands of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, and whether he gave up his nuclear weapons.

For a second time Roh asked the president to be “a little bit clearer in your message” to which the president answered: ”I can’t make it any more clear, Mr President. We look forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will happen when Kim Jong-il verifiably gets rid of his weapons programmes and his weapons."

A rather odd unscripted exchange portraying an odd and unscripted turn of events on the Korean peninsula. The two countries remain technically at war, but commitments by the hermit kingdom to end its nuclear programme, talk of removing the country from America’s list of rogue nations and establishing diplomatic relations with both the U.S. and Japan, a country with which a number of incidents have left ties lukewarm at best, have opened a new era of hope to bring into the fold the world’s most isolated country.

Irritants remain to be worked out, Japan insisting it cannot normalize relations without resolving the abduction issue after North Korea admitted in 2002 to kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to help train its spies, and implementation of the deal is in its early stages. Experts from the US, China and Russia were traveling to North Korea this week to carry out a survey of nuclear facilities to be disabled in an agreement which has already opened the floodgates of international aid and thawed frozen foreign accounts.

The trip comes as a result of Pyongyang’s decision to shut down its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon in July. North Korea has to disable “all existing nuclear facilities,” though weapons are not specifically mentioned, an issue that remains to be resolved after the regime tested its first atomic bomb last October.

The agreement so far accomplishes much more than negotiators trying to get Iran to drop its nuclear programme could ever hope for. Then again Tehran has yet to successfully detonate a nuclear device. The ties between the two countries, as Kim Jong-il prepared to visit Tehran, was of some concern to observers nervous about any talks to "expand bilateral ties between two countries" still technically on America's black list.

In the mean time politics, talks and unusual circumstances have helped make Pyongyang a little bit less of a stranger over the summer. South Korea has continued to engage its impoverished and starving northern neighbour under the so-called “sunshine policy” and possible Japanese aid to victims of recent flooding in North Korea would be the first such friendly gesture since Shinzo Abe became prime minister a year ago.

A US official said Washington's envoy told North Korea a few issues still needed to be worked out before making North Korea the latest to be scratched off America's list of state sponsors of terrorism, adding: “He made it pretty clear to them that the remaining issues — at least on the terrorism list piece of this — are not that extensive.”

Un cortège triste et familier pour la dépouille du 67eme soldat canadien tué en Afghanistan à la base militaire de Trenton, puis une première: le passage du cortège dans les rues de Longueuil. Quelques semaines auparavant le jeune soldat de 23 ans défilait dans les rues de Québec lors du salut officiel des troupes de Valcartier à la veille de leur départ.

Le soldat Simon Longtin était en Afghanistan depuis à peine trois semaines quand le véhicule qui le transportait a frappé une bombe artisanale. Quelques jours plus tard deux autres soldats du Royal 22e Regiment tombaient dans des circonstances similaires, à 50 kilomètres à l’ouest de Kandahar. Un autre soldat et deux journalistes du Québec ont également été blessés.

Ces événements en série n’ont pas manqué de rappeler l’impopularité de la guerre dans la province francophone du pays, qu’elle soit en Irak ou en Afghanistan. Depuis la prise du commandement des troupes basées au Québec ces trois décès font grimper à 69 les victimes militaires canadiennes depuis 2002. Attristé par la nouvelle, le premier ministre de la province où 70 des gens disent ne pas appuyer la guerre en Afghanistan estime néanmoins que «Les Québécois ont le devoir d’appuyer ceux qui font le devoir en notre nom».

Ailleurs, les réactions ont été plus vives, le chef du Bloc Québécois Gilles Duceppe menaçant de faire tomber le gouvernement minoritaire de Stephen Harper si on ne promet pas, lors du prochain discours du Trône, de s’engager rapidement et de façon officielle à retirer les troupes canadiennes d’Afghanistan d’ici à février 2009. Le chef du plus important parti fédéral au Québec estime que l’armée canadienne doit se retirer complètement de l’Afghanistan d’ici là, et que le Canada devrait cesser de se concentrer sur le militaire et faire davantage pour les causes humanitaires.

Il est vrai que de ce côté presque tout reste à faire. Cette semaine encore, un rapport de l’Organisation des Nations unies indique que la production d’opium en Afghanistan devrait atteindre un niveau record. En 2006, l’Afghanistan produisait 92 % de l’opium de la planète, ce chiffre devrait passer à 95 % cette année. Alors que cette production semble stable dans le nord, dans le sud, région à priori contrôlée par les Canadiens, elle a fait un important bond. Dans la zone d’Helmand fortement imprégnée de talibans, la production a grimpé de 45 pourcent depuis l’an dernier, une récolte qui sert à alimenter l’insurrection.

Aujourd’hui, 70 % de l’opium produit en Afghanistan provient du sud du pays. « La situation est très mauvaise et le gouvernement a été incapable d’y faire face de la bonne manière, sinon la production se serait au moins stabilisée », déclare Christina Oguz, chef du bureau des Nations unies sur les drogues et la criminalite en Afghanistan. La production d’opium, et l’héroïne qui en résulte, injecterait directement quelque 3 milliards de dollars dans l’économie afghane, ce qui constitue le tiers du produit intérieur brut de l’Afghanistan. «Le problème est énorme, les progrès sont minuscules. À moins que la communauté internationale et le gouvernement affichent ensemble une grande détermination, nous ne verrons pas de grand changement avant très longtemps », affirme avec pessimisme Mme Oguz.

Mais l’expérience montre que ces missions humanitaires et d’aide à la reconstruction sont souvent ciblées par l’insurrection, ce qui rend la mission militaire essentielle en Afghanistan. Le premier ministre Harper a répété, en présence du président américain, que tout prolongement de la mission canadienne après 2009 devra se faire avec l'aval du parlement. Un changement de ton, au courant de l'année, non sans rapport avec l'importance du Québec dans la création d'un gouvernement majoritaire.

They were perhaps known as “the three amigos” within the confines of their luxury compound in Montebello, Quebec, but North America’s three leaders weren’t counting many friends in the crowd of some 2,000 protesters that greeted them outside Ottawa last week.

U.S. President George Bush, Mexican president Felipe Calderon and Stephen Harper talked about Arctic sovereignty, the war in Afghanistan and a plan to secure their borders in case of a terrorist strike or other emergency, just as an emergency promised to raise havoc on the two-day summit’s agenda.

Calderon shortened his stay to return home where emergency officials expected a major hurricane to make landfall. The Canadian government has offered up to $2 million in immediate relief to countries hit by the hurricane. The serene scene at Chateau Montebello, an aging luxury resort on the banks of the Ottawa River, appeared as far as can be from either gathering storms or angry clashes between protesters and police, resulting in volleys of tear gas and arrests.

If the leaders needed an idea of the turmoil outside they could have turned to live video scenes of the street action playing on two monitors inside the lobby of the chateau, but the shortened agenda meant few leaders would have time to do so.

Just over a day after Canada’s 67th casualty in Afghanistan was reported, the first from a recently dispatched group of Quebec troops, Harper restated his position that the Canadian military mission in the war-ravaged country would not be extended without parliamentary consensus.

Bush praised Canada's military effort in the country, and noted its contribution to the rebuilding effort, indicating the U.S. would respect Canada's decision not to extend its mission. Bush made a point of thanking the Canadian “mothers and fathers of young soldiers” who have died in Afghanistan.

In their private meeting, Harper and Bush also discussed Canada’s efforts to assert its sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, the summer’s unexpected hot topic after Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole and Canada wrapped up a series of announcements intended to flex its muscles on northern sovereignty.

Harper recently announced Canada will build a new patrol fleet a new army training center and a deep-water port within contested Arctic waters just as Canadian soldiers, sailors and other forces wrapped up their largest-ever Arctic Circle exercise, both aimed at asserting sovereignty in the resource-rich area amid competing international claims.

The United States, Denmark and Norway also have competing claims in the vast Arctic region, where a U.S. study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden. Canada believes much of the North American side of the Arctic is Canada's, but the United States says the thawing Northwest Passage which could become a major sea-lane with global warming is part of international waters.

Harper entered the talks bolstered by the recent remarks of Paul Cellucci, Bush's previous U.S. ambassador to Canada, who argued that the U.S. should acknowledge the Northwest Passage as Canadian so that the Canadian navy could patrol the area, monitor shipping and guard against potential terrorism and weapons smuggling. "I think, in the age of terrorism, it's in our security interests that the Northwest Passage be considered part of Canada," Cellucci said a day before the summit.

While listening carefully to his counterpart, Bush made clear he was not persuaded so far by Canada’s claims of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, saying both countries must agree to disagree on the its status. But he suggested the difference of opinion would not get in the way of the two countries’ relationship. “We’ll manage the differences, because there are differences on the Northwest Passage,” Bush said. “We believe it’s an international passage. Having said that, the United States does not question Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic islands.”

Critics have spoken against the three leaders’ plan, conceived in 2005, to try to more closely integrate the security and commerce of the continent, because they say talks are secretive and lack any input from the public. "We’ve been following the Security and Prosperity Partnership since the 2005 when the leaders of all three countries signed it without public discussion or parliamentary debate," said Stewart Trew of the Council of Canadians. "So our position is basically that all talks leading to deeper integration between the three countries should cease until there has been a full public debate on this."

Protesters also decried that corporations and big business had easy access to the leaders. The three met with the North American Competitiveness Council, a collection of 30 CEOs and corporate chairmen, 10 from each country, on the second and final day of their meeting. It was created to advise leaders on integration.

This isn’t the sort of thing China wanted a year away from its big coming out party at the Olympic Games. Since the spring the manufacturing giant has been making North American consumers increasingly concerned about the “made in China” label after reports of tainted products, from pet food to toothpaste and now toys containing lead paint.

Last week New Zealand's government was investigating claims that clothes imported from China contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde after a TV programme claimed that fabrics in children's clothes contained 900 times the UN's safe level of the chemical.

Overseas, all of this has at least momentarily raised questions about the wisdom of outsourcing so many manufacturing jobs to countries with less stringent product checks and standards. In China, coupled with the recent collapse of a newly-constructed bridge on the verge of being inaugurated, the recalls have raised internal concerns about the mad rush to modernization, sometimes accomplished by cutting corners and enriching corrupt officials.

In Canada, the pet food scare which resulted in a number of dog and cat deaths, and the recall of some 19 million toys by major manufacturers such as Fisher Price, have touched a sensitive chord in households across the country. In the mad rush for alternatives North Americans have found how few choices really existed in today’s marketplace. Greater scrutiny by consumers and retailers on a number of products have revealed how few of them are not made in China.

"It's really difficult to find anything," said Keely Dennis, mother of a one-year-old boy in Vancouver. "It's really hard to find toys that aren't made in China that are age-appropriate, and are just cool, that your kid will play with."An estimated 80 per cent of the world's toys in fact are made in China, and even many European or North American companies that appear to offer safer alternatives produce many of their toys in China, retailers have been finding out.

It was only after the recent spate of toy recalls that Baby Naturopathics, a Hamilton, Ont.-based online retailer specializing in natural and organic baby products, realized it's also selling products made in China. "The manufacturers do not advertise this. They present themselves as being entirely made in Europe," said Cindy Cho, part-owner of the business. The company is now struggling to figure out what to do and is considering no longer buying products from any manufacturer that produces goods in China.

An indication of how much of the world’s manufacturing is now being done in China can be seen when considering that the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, which has built entire infrastructures in the middle kingdom to be able to fill American homes with bargain-price goods, has seen a growing percentage of its products originate from China in a single decade. While in 1995 over 90% of Wal-mart products were still being produced in U.S., as of 2004 over 70% were being assembled in China.

"Unfortunately, we found out that quite a few European toys are made in China as well," Cho said. "A few years ago that wasn't the case. Increasingly, more companies are making their products in China. We're going to have to re-evaluate." And this is spreading panic across the Pacific, where a few isolated cases of deficient products are giving way to a broader picture of low quality and standards some critics had been warning about for years, decrying the diminished North American manufacturing sector.

China’s safety watchdog deplored that ineffective controls have resulted in poor-quality products and are sapping competitiveness, more importantly, affecting the image of Chinese products. This image problem was immediately recognized by the boss of a major Chinese toy maker involved in the recall, who dramatically took his own life during what has become a major manufacturing scandal.

Zhang Shuhong, a Hong Kong businessman in his 50s and boss of the Lida Toy Company in the southern province of Guangdong, was found dead after hanging himself in his factory workshop shortly after the recall was made. About 1.5 million preschool toys made by Lida Toy, a contract manufacturer for Mattel Inc.'s Fisher-Price unit, were recalled across the globe by the U.S. The recalled toys included popular preschool characters such as Elmo and Big Bird and dozens of other items. China's quality watchdog had just banned Lida from exports, delivering a fatal blow to the company, and its president.

This week two companies were charged in this spring's laced pet food scandal. Concerned about losing major overseas business, China said it would send officials to the United States to assuage worries stemming from the tainted exports and prevent a backlash against their products. U.S. lawmakers had raised the issue, calling for more scrutiny of Chinese products.

Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has stridently criticized Chinese trade practices, called on the State Department to exert pressure on China to open up toy manufacturing plants to U.S. inspections. Recommendations are also due on a new U.S. import safety panel. North America's three leaders meeting in Quebec addressed the issue, promising to try to block imports of unsafe food and products, especially those designed for children.

But critics at home point out that Chinese exports aren’t alone to blame in a crisis which has placed tainted products on store shelves and into North American homes. A growing chorus of experts critical of the Canadian government and industry's lax approach to product safety says Canada must stop blaming China for the flood of dangerous products and start taking responsibility for failing to keep risky goods off store shelves.

"Most of the people point the finger at the wrong party," said Shih-Fen Chen, associate professor of international business at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ont. "The major party that should be responsible for this are the manufacturers in the United States who subcontract some part of their products in China without making sure of the quality."

The scandal also illustrates a failure on the part of product manufacturers, retailers and governments to take product safety seriously and to dedicate the resources necessary to detect potential safety problems before it's too late. "Obviously they don't have all the checks and balances in place," said Leigh Poirier, executive director of the Canadian Toy Testing Council, a non-profit group. "I really feel like parents and consumers have to strongly voice their concerns that they want a commitment for toy companies and the industry to have proper quality controls in place, no matter where they are made."

Besides an economy such as Canada’s, boosted by high energy prices produced by China’s unquenched thirst for resources and a purchasing power increased by the flood of cheap Chinese products, owes much of its current boom to the rising Asian power.

Canada has been benefitting from a so-called “China syndrome” that has sparked a revival of its resources sector, and which has spilled over into gains in employment, wages and spending, and growth in other sectors of the economy, including manufacturing, according to one recent report.

And this has on the balance meant good news for Canada, said Ryan Macdonald, the author of the report. “At first glance, the post-2002 boom in commodity prices and exchange-rate appreciation in Canada does seem to resemble the events that precipitated Dutch Disease, which refers to the combination of a booming resource sector, a rising currency and a resulting decline in output in manufacturing,” claims one analysis. “But the Dutch case involved the discovery of a new resource, while Canada’s recent trend stems from the integration of emerging nations, particularly China, into the global economy.” Perhaps more surprisingly, “overall manufacturing output in Canada expanded by 1.3 per cent between 2003 and 2006,” the study said.

The emergence of the giant low-wage Chinese economy has simultaneously lowered the prices for consumer goods while raising prices for resources, accelerating a widespread restructuring of the Canadian economy that has led to higher employment and wages in resource industries.

That, in turn, along with the appreciating Canadian dollar, meant that Canadians’ international purchasing power has increased. With Canada able to acquire more imports at these cheaper prices, Canadians will probably want to have a closer look at what they’re buying. Not that there’s always a choice about where it will be coming from.

Less than a year after Laval's fatal overpass collapse and days after the conclusion of the public commission investigating the incident, one has to wonder, with the collapse of a bridge on Minnesota's most-travelled highway, whether our infrastructures aren't trying to tell us something. That the revolution of the automobile has to be accompanied by a revolution in roadway maintenance that sometimes means starting from scratch instead of patching up previous wear and tear.

That seemed to be the thinking in Quebec, where the Johnson commission had just been completed and where Montreal's mayor had just announced that in addition to the other Laval overpass torn down because its design resembled that of the ill-fated Concorde structure, a 1938 overpass in that city would be demolished and rebuilt as soon as possible. Like the Laval overpass, the bridge in Minneapolis which collapsed, killing five and injuring around 100, was 40 years old.

The initial death toll, which rose to nine and was expected to rise some more because four others were still missing, was a miracle considering the spectacular collapse of the eight-lane structure during rush hour. There were other similarities with Laval, such as the snow-bound months that contributed to corrosion, and missed opportunities to bring improvements that may have saved lives.

The commission into the Laval tragedy, the city's second overpass collapse in a six-year span, blamed authorities for not intervening after earlier signs that the structure was failing. Similarity Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the ill-fated bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.

The designation means some portions of the bridge needed to be scheduled for repair or replacement. "It didn't mean that the bridge is unsafe," U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters explained soon after the incident. The designation has been used to describe a large amount of structures across the country, 1,160 in Minnesota alone and 77,000 bridges nationwide, including New York’s fabled and much older Brooklyn bridge.

As in the case of the Laval overpass, an immediate inspection of all bridges in the state with similar designs was quickly ordered and a full report on the accident shouldn’t be expected before a year or more. Nearly a year after the Laval collapse, the commission has yet to determine what happened in that tragedy, but did point fingers at corrosion to the internal metal structure producing critical shear cracks.

"I think everybody is looking at fatigue right now, fatigue due to heavy traffic," said of the U.S. incident Kent Harries, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Engineering. "This is an interstate bridge that sees a lot of truck traffic." While the Laval commission was carrying on with its public hearings, oversized trucks allowed to circulate by special heavy load permits were restricted from 135 structures identified as Quebec’s weakest, including two in the Quebec City area.

But comparing the recent U.S. and Canadian incidents is like sizing apples and oranges according to two Laval inspectors who had been on the case of the two overpass collapses. "The extent of the disaster is so enormous you can't compare it to what we saw in Laval," said Inspector Andre Pyton, returning from a fact-finding mission to Minneapolis.

Responses to the crises were similar, but the Laval investigators said U.S. authorities responded in greater number due to the scale of the disaster, and could count on technology unavailable in Quebec such as computer software and high-resolution cameras that will help create three-dimensional models of the collapse. "We thought we had done all we could," state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. "Obviously something went terribly wrong."

Infrastructure such as roads, sewers and bridges is something people pay little attention to until it fails, and according to Canadian statistics here people have every right to worry. Bridges in Canada have reached 49 per cent of their useful life, according to a 2006 Statistics Canada study, and experts warn the country’s roads, wastewater plants and other infrastructure isn’t in any better shape. The study examining the age of infrastructure in Canada cited wastewater treatment facilities as the oldest, with 63 per cent of their useful life behind them in 2003. Roads and highways had reached 59 per cent of their useful life, and sewer systems 52 per cent.

Zoubir Lounis, head of the concrete structure research group for the National Research Council in Ottawa, said Canada has a lot of bridges built between the 1950s and the ‘70s which are now nearing the end of their life. Bridges built during that period were constructed to last 50 years. “We cannot wait until a crisis comes,’’ Lounis said. “We have to invest. Infrastructure is critical to our well-being, our economy. It’s not some luxury thing.”

A Federation of Canadian Municipalities report said most municipalities are reaching an infrastructure “breaking point” and noted that between 1961 and 2002 the amount of infrastructure controlled by the federal government in relation to municipal governments had undergone a striking reversal. The crisis we already knew then is continent-wide.

The Laval commission heard in July that many of North America's bridges and overpasses probably do not meet modern building codes and may be unsafe. Dennis Mitchell of McGill University told the commission that the collapsed overpass did not meet modern code requirements but also could not even support truckload standards in 1969 when the overpass was built. Mitchell noted that two structures similar to the collapsed overpass had to be closed down after he examined them, adding that similar problems with bridges built in the 1960s and 1970s are evident throughout North America.

Ironically the Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of repairs when it buckled during the evening rush hour. Road crews had been working on the bridge's joints, guardrails and lights, with lane closures overnight, when the structure collapsed. "There was a view that the bridge was ultimately and eventually going to need to be replaced," Minnesota's governor said. "But it appears from the information that we have available that a timeline for that was not immediate or imminent, but more in the future." Increasingly the investigation looked at a possible design flaw.

But how much time does the rest of the network here or in the U.S. have? In Montreal officials last week announced that a major bridge would be entirely stripped, reinforced and rebuilt to extend its lifespan by a few more decades. At roughly the same time a small community in the Laurentians learned the only bridge linking both its shores would be torn down to be entirely rebuilt, forcing commuters to make a 20-kilometre detour for four months.

Then this week a Laval bridge was temporarily shut down then partly reopened after a gaping hole was found in one of its reserved bus lanes, sparking more worries but also immediate public intervention.  Expect more announcements of the sort as public authorities, and the general public, show a greater attention to road networks and infrastructures that could be out of sight but are less likely to be out of mind.

La sentence était, comme on pouvait s’y attendre dans un tel cas de « haute trahison » plutôt sévère pour dix hommes trouvés coupables d'avoir dirigé la rébellion sécessionniste contre la Namibie. Sept des hommes ont écopé de 32 ans de prison, les autres de 30, lorsque le juge John Manyarara a rendu sa décision cette semaine.

Les accusés n’étaient alors déjà plus en cour, ayant été éjectés pour avoir prononcé ces terribles mots : « Viva Caprivi ! » Tout Windhoek tremble encore après l’exhibition d’autant d’audace. Ces sentences ne faisaient que poursuivre de bien lentes procédures puisqu’une bonne centaine de personnes en tout attendent toujours de passer devant les tribunaux afin de connaître leur châtiment pour avoir participé aux événements les plus sanglants qu’ait pu connaitre cette jeune nation coupée de l’Afrique du sud en 1990.

Moins d’une décennie après l’indépendance, les accusés, et ceux qui patientent en tôle derrière eux, ont mené une insurrection contre un poste de police, un poste de frontière, une chaine de télévision, une base militaire et une banque à Katima Mulilo, ville principale de cette mince bande de terre au nord du Botswana. Les rébelles se seraient armés en Angola, pays riche en armes de conflits passés, avant de s’attaquer à ce pays dont ils nient l’appartenance. Voilà qui rend toute possibilité d’appel de la sentence plutôt difficile.

Douze personnes sont mortes lors des affrontements, vite mis à terme par une répression sévère de l’armée. « La trahison est un des crimes les plus sérieux que l’on puisse commettre dans le monde actuel », a déclaré le juge Manyarara pour justifier sa sentence exemplaire. Mais la sévérité-même de la justice namibienne, lors de ces procédures tenues sous haute surveillance est en question, la sentence n’incluant pas les nombreuses années passées à attendre ce procès au fond d’une prison.

Alors que la population en général considère Caprivi part du territoire national et ne trouve rien de reprochable au dur jugement, cet excès de lenteur, 119 autres attendant toujours d’être jugés alors que le début des procédures remonte en 2003, exaspère les organisations humanitaires. En mai dernier, 140 habitants de la bande de Caprivi ont pu finalement rendre visite à leurs proches emprisonnés depuis le soulèvement sécessionniste huit ans plus tôt.

Cette journée faisait partie d’une série de visites organisées par le CICR. À la fin de ces trois semaines, l’institution avait donné la possibilité à 385 proches des 131 personnes soupçonnées de haute trahison de leur rendre visite. Le CICR organise et finance deux visites de ce type par an. Il a fallu en plus transporter les proches sur les 1300 km séparant Caprivi de la prison centrale de Windhoek, de les loger dans la capitale et de payer leurs dépenses sur place.

Une fois réunis, les détenus restaient encore séparés de leur famille par une vitre : « Le programme du CICR me permet de communiquer avec mon frère et mes quatre oncles pendant 30 minutes, racontait alors une des visiteuses, mais surtout, c’est la seule occasion où je peux redonner espoir à des personnes qui perdent rapidement patience et espérance ». Celle-ci connait une vie également difficile depuis 1999, devant s’occuper des six enfants de ses oncles en détention. Ce n’est pas un scénario unique, la bande de Caprivi étant la région la plus pauvre de Namibie.

Caprivi résulte d’un échange de territoires effectué entre la Grande-Bretagne et l’Allemagne en 1890. Cette queue de poêle longue de 450 kilomètres et large de 30 kilomètres fut nommée en l’honneur du chancelier allemand Leo von Caprivi. Pendant la guerre du bush rodhésien entre 1970-1979 et les opérations de l’ANC contre le gouvernement de l’apartheid en Afrique du sud, la bande fut utilisée comme lieu de transit pour différents groupes armés.

Depuis l’indépendance, plusieurs membres du parti au pouvoir en Namibie, gardant le souvenir de ce passé tumultueux, remettent en cause la loyauté des habitants de Caprivi. Ceux-ci ont alors l’impression de ne pas avoir grand-chose en commun avec le reste du pays et d’avoir été négligés par le gouvernement central. L’annexion par un pays voisin aurait été plus favorable que la séparation car les ressources y sont aussi maigres que  sa géographie.

These may be the dog days of summer, in this country the canines are also very much a part of the winter-swept scenery. Dogs can pull a sled that's gone through the ice to safety and may bring a young Jamaicans where they've never been before, we're being told these summer months.
 
Canadian natives struggling to keep their traditions alive are being told that the old ways can be life-saving for aboriginals who are on thin ice. A four-year study in six northern Quebec communities into climate change by the Kativik Regional Government is recommending that if people want to avoid falling through thinning ice being blamed on global warming, they should use dog teams instead of snowmobiles.

"The switch from dogsled to snowmobile has had an impact on the security of transport," the report notes. "To minimize the negative impact on travel security of thin and unstable ice due to global warming, the use of sleds pulled by dog teams could be favoured during some periods of winter, such as the beginning."

The report makes plain the impact global warming is having on the traditional trail network of the north. It stresses that dogs represent a "very efficient navigation device," able to sniff around for trails, signal when the ice is thin, and can help pull a sled out of the water should it fall through. The report quotes Inuit elders saying that the number of accidents increased in the north with the introduction of snowmobiles.

"No one is asking hunters to part with snowmobiles and use (just) dog teams," insists Julie Grenier, spokeswoman for the KRG. Besides "there aren't enough dogs for dog teaming in Nunavik," she added.

Martin Tremblay, who is researching infrastructure safety for the KRG in a project that looks at changes along the trail networks, says Inuit elders are pointing out the risks of a winter season starting later and its impact on transport.

"In some areas the ice will be more dangerous than in the past, more unstable," he said. Local experts providing key ice condition data are reporting more areas of risk, he adds.

Risky trails can potentially block access to resources such as hunting grounds.

During the 2005 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Inuit elders, trappers and hunters said weather changes can have significant socio-economic impacts, forcing natives to import more expensive food from the south, which isn't always as suitable to northern diets.

While Tremblay said his study didn't look at the socio-economic ramifications of these changes to infrastructure access - sometimes preventing access to certain areas for weeks -- he conceded they could be far-reaching. "Access to resources depends on access to territory," he noted.

The report says further studies are necessary to determine the impact of global warming on hunted species, hinting their "diversity, distribution and density" may be affected.

Although ice on lakes hasn't been causing problems, coastal areas can remain a risk all winter long due to thin ice, the report notes. Ground trails should be favoured when possible to minimize risks, it adds.

"During the last 10 years we have observed that the ice breakup is earlier than before and this situation can have an impact on security when using snowmobiles to go fishing and hunting," Tremblay said.

Semi-retired Inuit leader Jose Kusugak acknowledged things are changing in the North but he has never heard of recommendations to avoid using snowmobiles. "It's not uncommon that things are changing rapidly," Kusugak said on the phone from Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. "But as far as the trails, I've never heard someone say stop using snowmobiles.' They're just more careful now."

Ironically, snowmobile season was particularly long this year, ending just over a month ago in his part of the North, he pointed out. Kusugak said he has been contacting others by citizen's band to get an idea of trails to avoid late in the season. They would "give a general direction but add don't go by my word'," he said. "But in the end it was safe." 

Experts of the North said this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group reports only confirmed what had been obvious to people in the North: that human activities are the cause of climate change. The IPCC, northern observers say, expanded on the findings of an earlier report by the multi-national Arctic Council entitled "Arctic Climate Impact Assessment" reaching similar stark conclusions three years prior.

"The Arctic is a barometer of global environmental health," commented Mary Simon, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami -- Canada's national inuit organization as she congratulated former Circumpolar Conference president Sheila Watt-Clouthier for being nominated to this year's Nobel Peace Prize for her work on global warming.

Tremblay says his study issues a number of recommendations for the peoples of the North: making information on trail risk areas and shelter locations widely available, using various technology such as GPS for navigation, and spreading the knowledge of experienced hunters and trappers.

A sign snowmobiles aren't about to disappear from the trails of the North: Tremblay's group also recommends using multiple ski-doos on treks, in case of mechanical failure. Even in risk areas, snowmobiles can be used with caution, he said.

One area where snowmobiles aren't allowed is during the annual 1,500 km Yukon Quest race. But the event may be about to see something it's never seen before: a Jamaican musher.

In a project reminiscent of the Jamaican bobsled team’s participation in the 1988 Calgary Olympic Games, immortalized in the 1993 comedy Cool Runnings, the owner of the Jamaica Dogsled Team announced that his lead musher would be training with a former champion to take on one of the most demanding dogsled races in the world.

That’s dogsled, not bobsled. “Ninety percent of the time I have to correct people, it’s not bobsled, it’s dogsled, they always mix it,” explains head musher Devon Anderson in a phone interview from Jamaica.

Anderson will train with three-time race winner Hans Gatt for the 1,500-kilometre 2009 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race that connects Fairbanks, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon. To get there he’ll have to prepare for 300 and 450-kilometre qualifiers, starting this fall either in Canada or Alaska. “It’s in the making!” he said with a thick smiling Jamaican accent.

Relatively new to the sport, Anderson visited Canada last year to follow the Yukon Quest and even mushed on Lake Laberge. He’d seen snow before, but never this much. “It blew me away: the people, the snow, the landscape, it was like living in a storybook,” he said. Anderson said he’ll have to practise being around the dogs and staying extended periods of time in the cold to be ready to tackle the first qualifiers.

“We’re not talking about winning, but competing, it’s an endurance race,” said team owner Danny Melville, a tour adventure company owner on the island nation. “This is not just a promotional move, we take mushing seriously and Gatt agrees otherwise he would not be wasting his time with us.”

What started like a tour company gimmick turned into serious competitive training quite unexpectedly.
In spring 2005, Melville was shopping for dune buggies in Edmonton when he spotted a crazy-looking dog sled and had an “epiphany” about starting a dogsled team.

Initially created from mixed breed dogs found on the street or through the Jamaican Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Animals, The Ocho Rios-based team is now big business with sponsors that include singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett.
“We’re talking about a Jamaican entering the Yukon Quest and hopefully completing it,” Melville said. “That in itself is an achievement.”

There’ll be no need to wait for the movie, Palm Pictures’ documentary feature “Sun Dogs,” chronicling the struggle to make contenders out of Jamaica-bred street dogs in time for the 2006 Dogsled Championships in Scotland, already premiered at Toronto’s ReelWorld Film Festival in April.

Look out! The Canadians are coming! In the thick of the summer travel season the snowbirds are returning south early in record numbers to cash in on a loonie that’s hit a thirty-year high. That’s back to an era when the Trudeau in politics was Pierre E., Russia had yet to enter Afghanistan, the Shah had yet to be ousted and oil was at around $10 a barrel (versus $73 today). Which should be a reminder for the returning vacationers to fill their gas tank before crossing the border.

While skeptics were looking quizzically as the CIBC predicted the $100 barrel by the end of the year, few doubt the loonie is about to reach parity with the U.S. dollar, which has been slipping against other major currencies. While parity was short-lived the last time around, few can predict the impact of parity for an extended period if that’s what the future holds in store.

The dollar was pegged at 92.5 cents US from 1962 until 1970, when Trudeau decided to allow it to "float" among international currencies as dictated by supply and demand. The currency then climbed, but its rise was nothing like the meteoric one of the last few years. Just a few years ago, the loonie was dabbling in the lower 60s before starting its steady climb.

"In terms of what it was doing to the Canadian economy, the currency hadn't had a big 50 per cent run-up such as it's had in the last five years," said Doug Porter, senior economist with BMO Nesbitt Burns. "It was strong, but it hadn't had this enormous run-up, so it wasn't a shock to the economy like it potentially could be this time." F

ive years ago, the dollar bottomed at 61.79 cents US. Canadian travel to the U.S. has grown 23 percent since then, according to data published by the Commerce Department. "These are some of the best days for Canadian tourists who wish to travel south of the border for their summer vacation since bellbottom jeans and disco balls were all the rage," said Michael Woolfolk of the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

In January, the number of overnight trips from Canada to the United States was the highest in more than 13 years. New York is the most popular destination for Canadian visitors, followed by Florida and Washington state; Maine is seventh after Michigan, California and Nevada.

But drawbacks have also been felt domestically. In June a majority of provinces presented a strong case for keeping the dollar from rising further, telling Bank of Canada governor David Dodge that this is not the time to raise interest rates. The issue of the high dollar was raised by Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara, but Alberta and several other provinces joined in to support the Ontario minister.

"For every cent the dollar rises, it costs Alberta $123 million," in reduced revenues from oil and gas exports, said Alberta Finance Minister Lyle Oberg. "The Canadian economy cannot be described as truly healthy as long as we are seeing job losses in that important sector," Sorbara said.

He said Ontario alone had lost 140,000 manufacturing jobs in the past four years. Even Dodge appeared "confounded" by the rapid rise of the dollar. The loonie has kept rising since, adding nearly three more cents, and surged 0.85 cents Tuesday to close at 96.36 cents US, its highest point since February 1977, before dropping back somewhat.

Back then as today skyrocketing oil and commodity prices lead the way, combined with strong global economic growth. But Canada is now home to much of this commodity and oil production, making the high dollar more soundly anchored in strong economic fundamentals, rather than fleeting speculation. "We've gotten our trade act together, oil prices have gone up, gas prices, clearly we're exporting stuff that the world really wants and is valued highly," said Toronto economics professor Peter Duncan.

Of course the period was also best remembered domestically by a threat of separatism which, on this 40th anniversary of De Gaulle’s “Vive le Quebec libre” speech, could not more belong to the past. Not only is the Parti Quebecois not in power in La belle province as it then was, it’s at its lowest level since, not to mention the cause of sovereignty.

In addition to general fundamentals, noticeably resilient cyclical patterns are also influencing the mighty loon. Retail sales unexpectedly shot up 2.8% in May from April, the biggest monthly gain in almost a decade, thanks to robust vehicle and other sales, Statistics Canada said. "It certainly does play into the idea that there is an underlying strength in domestic demand in Canada, and it sort of puts the Bank of Canada on watch to raise interest rates again in September," said David Watt, senior currency strategist at RBC Capital Markets.

This as Canadians were fearing a slower U.S. economy would drag them down. It's all keeping another trend going: the further slipping of the greenback against major currencies, tripped by slipping U.S. economic data. The U.S. dollar fell Tuesday to its lowest level ever against the euro, and weakened to a 26-year low versus the pound, not to mention the Yen, on worries that trouble linked to mortgage lending was spreading and would threaten U.S. growth.

The decline in the dollar accelerated after Countrywide Financial, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, reported its third consecutive drop in quarterly earnings as more consumers fell behind on payments for their home equity loans. A reminder recent U.S. growth, also apparently resilient, was notably doped by high levels of debt.

The strong Canadian numbers in contrast, well above expectations, boosted the likelihood of an interest rate hike in September, perhaps by then closing the remaining gap with the greenback. Perhaps Canada’s cash-rich visitors to the U.S. could consider a labour day visit as well.

Alors que le Kosovo guettait avec beaucoup d'intérêt les ambitions indépendantistes du Monténégro ces dernières années, le Karabakh était tout aussi curieux du sort des Albanais de l'ancienne-Yougoslavie, et bien que le statut des Kosovars est loin d'être réglé, et même matière à controverse, les habitants de l'enclave arménienne d'Azerbaïjan ont été encouragés par l'élection facile d'un ancien chef de la sécurité, un séparatiste, la semaine dernière.

Bako Sahakyan aurait remporté 85% des suffrages dans le Nagorno-Karabakh, sujet d'une dispute sanglante entre l'Arménie et l'Azerbaïjan à la fin des années 1980, soit durant la séparation de l'empire soviétique. Mais Sahakyan a beau espérer que l'élection mette le Karabakh sur la voie de l'indépendance, personne ne reconnait politiquement la petite enclave d'à peine plus de 150,000 habitants.

Il s'agissait de la quatrième élection présidentielle depuis l'organisation des premières élections dans le territoire en 1995, et les deux candidats principaux ainsi que le président sortant, Arkady Gukasyan, prétendent que le Karabakh a autant droit à l'indépendance que l'ancienne province majoritairement albanaise de la Yougoslavie.

Coincée entre Arménie et Azerbaïdjan, dépendant d'Erevan pour sa survie, le Haut Karabakh fut, de 1988 à 1994, le théâtre d'une guerre ethnique qui a fait environ 30 000 morts. Deux millions d'Azerbaïdjanais ont été chassés de l'enclave et des sept régions d'Azerbaïdjan attenantes, prises par les séparatistes arméniens.

L'Azerbaïdjan a dénoncé le scrutin, l'estimant illégitime tout en indiquant que l'indépendance ne ferait que consolider le "nettoyage ethnique de la région".

A la veille du scrutin le ministre espagnol des affaires étrangères, Miguel Angel Moratinos, a estimé que le vote serait sans impact sur le règlement du conflit, qui perdure malgré les efforts du groupe de Minsk réunissant les Etats-Unis, la Russie et la France.

D'ailleurs le groupe venait de critiquer la tenue d'un plebiscite organisé pour le 15e anniversaire d'un autre référendum par lequel la région s'était proclamée indépendante. "Organiser ce référendum actuellement (...) est particulièrement contre- productif à un moment où des pourparlers de paix entre l'Arménie et l'Azerbaïdjan sous les auspices du Groupe de Minsk de l'OSCE semblent être dans une période constructive", a indiqué à ce sujet un responsable de l'organisation.

Le taux de participation était de  87,2% et a été considéré comme la marque de l'engagement de la population en faveur de l'indépendance de la région. Comme pour l'élection, l'Azerbaïdjan a jugé le référendum illégitime, restant résolue à rétablir son autorité sur le Haut-Karabakh.

De son côté l'Union européenne a souligné qu'"elle ne soutient ni le référendum, ni son résultat"  et a rappelé qu'elle ne reconnaissait pas non plus l'indépendance de cette enclave.  L'UE "invite toutes les parties au conflit à redoubler d'efforts pour trouver une solution négociée à celui-ci".

Mais en donnant au Kosovo son indépendance, ces mêmes Européens risquent d'ouvrir la boîte de Pandore du séparatisme ailleurs, de la Corse à la Catalogne ou encore à la Wallonie. Plus à l’Est, la Transnistrie, le Kurdistan, la Tchétchénie, l’Abkhazie, rêvent aussi d'indépendance.

En attendant l’Arménie a riposté à la critique internationale sur l’élection présidentielle et a considéré le vote comme une preuve sur l’engagement des Arméniens du Karabakh «au respect de la démocratie et des lois ». 

«Divers documents, de l’OSCE ou d'autres, indiquent clairement que non seulement le Haut-Karabakh fait partie des négociations de règlement, mais que des autorités élues devraient le représenter», a indiqué le ministère des affaires étrangères arménien.

«Écarter ces dernières ou toute élection n’est pas correct voire simplement contraire aux valeurs politiques modernes. De plus, le rejet ne peut pas être compris, étant donné que dans d’autres parties du monde, dans des endroits où des statuts et des lois sont également absents, de telles élections sont non seulement soutenues mais, favorisées, observées et encouragées ».

Facing accusations of threatening the country’s secular institutions, Turkey’s Islamic-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party organized and won elections by a margin unseen since the 1960s which frees its hands to run the country, and prepare deep reforms aimed at EU membership.

It was pure vindication for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who called the snap election after the secularist opposition blocked his party from electing one of its own as president. After his party collected 46.4 percent of the vote, more than double that of its nearest rival, Erdogan drove home the message that Islam and Turkish Kemalist tradition could co-exist peacefully by appearing at a victory rally next to his veil-wearing wife.

“Our democracy has successfully passed a test,” he told supporters. “Our unity, democracy and the republic have emerged stronger from the ballot box.” Erdogan promised to “pursue economic and democracy reforms with determination," in the aftermath of the victory which gave his AK party a share of the vote unseen for a single party since 1969, translating into roughly 340 seats in Turkey’s 550-member parliament.

The result, a dramatic 13-point rise from the 34% that got him to office in 2002, gives him a new mandate exceeding even the expectations of his party, even if it failed to secure the two-thirds majority needed to amend the country’s constitution. There must have been genuine fright among the military brass since the authoritarian nature of the constitution was drawn up by the armed forces when they last seized power in 1980.

Washington, which had previously signaled the military not to intervene in the country’s polity, welcomed the election with enthusiasm. “It is a victory for Turkish democracy” says Matt Bryza, a State Department official.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has vocally opposed Turkey joining the EU, was perhaps less enthused, but showed no indication of this as he telephoned Erdogan to welcome “his remarkable victory” expressing the wish “our relations of trust will continue despite the divergences France and Turkey may have.”

Internal divergences also remain, such as Erdogan’s lack of popularity among the generals who had warned about impending religious rule when Erdogan chose his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to succeed outgoing president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer. Gul says he's still interested.

Ironically, Erdogan and his party are now more powerful than ever, even if the Prime minister will still need a certain non-alarming consensus when nominating a candidate for the presidency.

Other internal matters include the Kurdish separatist violence in the south-eastern provinces bordering Iran and Iraq, threatening to spill over into neighbour countries, along with Turkey's military presence. Some 27 independents, most of them Kurds, were elected into parliament, but even Erdogan seemed momentarily swept by the idea of sending the campaign against the Kurds in full swing after terror attacks in Turkish cities earlier this year.

This could damage the country's foreign investment-fed economy and its close ties to the U.S. Both are important, Erdogan having extolled his party’s impressive economic achievements since he swept to power five years ago, such as slashing chronic inflation, sustaining high growth and attracting record investment.

“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s planned visit to Turkey will be a visible sign in the direction of the government’s willingness to eradicate terrorism through dialogue and without harming bilateral ties with both the Iraqi government and its NATO ally, the United States,” Sedat Laçiner, an eminent Turkish expert on terrorism, told the Turkish Daily News.

The Armenian genocide will be another sore point for the Turkish government, an issue transcending borders considering the number of countries passing resolutions on the matter, souring relations with Ankara.    

Canadians were mourning the loss of their latest fallen soldiers this week when six caskets returned to face a now painfully familiar ramp ceremony. The troops died when their armoured vehicle was demolished by an improvised explosive device planted in a gravel road, bringing Canada's death toll to 66 in Afghanistan.

The soldiers, who were returning to base and would have finished their deployment in Afghanistan at the end of the month, were travelling in an RG-31 Nyala armoured vehicle. “Clearly they have managed to kill six great young Canadians today and that is a tragedy. These are not the tactics of anything other than terrorists," said Brig. Gen. Tim Grant, describing the terrain as friendly territory.

“This part of Afghanistan, the Panjwai area, is one of the safer areas in the province. It is an area we are comfortable in travelling in. We have great relationships with the local elders and the leadership and with the people on the ground,”  he added.  The statement was hardly reassuring.

The incident followed the completion of a joint operation dubbed Operation Luger, a Defence statement said, one which “was completed without incident.” But questions were quickly raised about how so many young Canadian men driving in one of the Force's safest vehicles came to die in an area considered friendly territory.

The Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest since Easter Sunday when six Canadian soldiers were killed in a similar incident. The last three months have been particularly deadly for Canada's soldiers, with five explosions killing a total of 19 soldiers.

This particular rotation of soldiers suffered a third of Canada's total losses, with weeks to go before returning home and being replaced by Quebec's VanDoos.  Improvised explosive devices or homemade roadside bombs continue to inflict casualties on the NATO mission in Afghanistan. To date, IEDs have been responsible for 27 of the 66 Canadian military fatalities in Afghanistan since 2002, including 19 of the 22 who have died this year.

Reeling from the latest attack, Canada said it would pour millions into IED detection, while one of the inventors of the BlackBerry said he and U.S. colleagues developed a biological sensing device that could sniff out the IEDs. He claimed however the Canadian government has shown little interest in the novel system which uses tiny sensors affixed with mouse antibodies that can detect TNT and other explosives. The sensors then send out signals to approaching convoys or foot soldiers.

Peter Edmonson, former research director at Research in Motion, the BlackBerry inventor, said that he and scientists at Georgia Tech university were in talks with the U.S. Marines and about to manufacture the hardware in the U.S. A spokeswoman for Defence Research and Development Canada, one government branch working on the IED (improvised explosive device) problem, said the organization was “open to new ideas” and urged the engineer to submit a proposal.

Researchers are also studying radio-jamming devices that thwart remote-controlled bombs; a robot-mounted explosive sensor called FIDO; and a gadget that is supposed to detonate IEDs before the vehicle hits them. Much of the work is funded by the Joint IED Defeat Organization, a U.S. military agency that has a budget of $4.4-billion this year and includes some Canadian officers on its staff. At Defence Research and Development Canada in Ottawa, meanwhile, $72-million has been redirected over the past year to work on combatting IEDs.

The main problem with IEDs, which are deadly but also low-tech, is that they are difficult to detect once covered with dirt and rock and spotting them has been a difficult task for even the experienced Israeli military, notes a former Canadian member of Mossad, in a recent book. IEDs are thought to have been mostly developped through the Hezbollah with Iranian backing in the Arab-Israeli conflict, before its know-how was spread to other areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The explosives can be detonated by remote control using an infrared beam, much like the kind emitted by television remote controls," writes Michael Ross in his book "The volunteer". "But the explosive device itself is electronically passive: it does not send out any tell-tale radio wave, signal or heat signature. Couple that with sophisticated camouflage diguising the dug-up IED pit and detection is almost impossible."

"Israel tried everything to detect the explosives: sniffer dogs, increased road patrols, chemical detection equipment, thermal vision cameras, drone aircraft outfitted with high-tech imaging systems, but nothing worked with much success." Maybe Canada's wiz at RIM can score a few much-needed hi-tech points.

IEDs have been responsible for about 80 per cent of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and techniques are thought of being perfected there before being exported to Afghanistan. The Afghan countryside is littered with unexploded devices from former wars, making it an open-air supermarket for bomb-makers of the crude but effective devices.

In a violent cycle of death, again the last Canadian casualties came within days of laying to rest three Canadians previously killed in similar attacks. Funerals had just been held for Sgt. Christos Karigiannis, Cpl. Stephen Bouzane and Pte. Joel Wiebe, who died June 20 when their unarmoured Gator transport vehicle struck a roadside bomb in Kandahar.

A recent poll shows that whether they are for or against Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan, Canadians are highly skeptical about its chances for success. In a national survey conducted for Policy Options magazine, the company found that only about one in four Canadians believes that either the military mission or the efforts to promote the rule of law and human rights in the troubled Asian country have a strong probability of success.

This is reflected in the Conservatives' increasing reluctance to extend the current mission. Prime Minister Harper says he will put the matter to parliament, but added his government would not seek to extend the current mission beyond 2009.

Gordon Brown's prime ministership is being tested early as the man who took over Tony Blair's former role just as soon was confronted with a series of incidents tied to terrorism. The UK national terrorism threat level was raised to "critical" for a few days after planned attacks in two British cities.

Eight arrests were made after two individuals rammed a car filled with gas canisters in Glasgow airport on June 30, an attack linked to two London bomb scares 36 hours before. Six of the suspects were doctors, which would point to very different types of individuals than the disgruntled home-grown lot arrested after the 2005 transit bombings. The arrests later lowered the threat level to "severe" but Britons were only too aware of the bloodshed they came close to experiencing.

The Glasgow airport attack of a burning car set part of the structure ablaze and forced the evacuation of the terminal. Like the second plane crash in the 9-11 attacks, the event was quickly tied to bomb scares the day before in London, giving authorities a broader picture of planned attacks made to inflict large-scale casualties in the UK. A witness said a man who had fled from the SUV as it struck the building had been immediately wrestled to the ground by police. One of the two individuals arrested on site was wearing a "suspect device" some described as a suicide belt. "This is being treated as a terrorist incident," police later said.

The incident occurred as the country was already in a state of alert after the eve's dismantling of two car bombs in the capital. Two Mercedes loaded with explosive material and nails were discovered and police did not delay before establishing a link between the two vehicles and later the Scotland attack. Police examined the two cars and studied CCTV footage for clues about the identities of those behind the terrorist plots that could have killed hundreds.

Reports said officers obtained a "crystal clear" CCTV image of a man "staggering" from the first car after parking it outside a West End nightclub. The first car was discovered parked near Piccadilly Circus; the second was found about an hour later, less than a kilometer away near Trafalgar Square, two high-volume traffic areas. A "considerable" amount of fuel and gas canisters, along with a "substantial quantity of nails," was found in one car, said Peter Clarke, Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner. The cars were illegally parked, leading them to arouse suspicion.

Not unfamiliar with terror threats, this is the third consecutive summer London has had to deal with terrorism. Last year London and U.S. destinations were targeted by a complex scheme involving airliners crashing into buildings. The incidents also came days before the second anniversary of July 7, 2005, when four Islamic extremist suicide bombers killed 52 people on London's transport system in the deadliest strike on the city since World War II. This week four men were found guilty of plotting to carry out similar suicide bombings on 21 July 2005.

After the latest incidents security was beefed up at North American airports. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day condemned the attacks while reminding that Canada could also be a target. According to a new U.S. security analysis made for the Department of Homeland Security, the risk of attacks in Canada and other countries had also been elevated in recent months. While the U.S. also beefed up airport security measures, Homeland Security did not raise the national terror threat level.

Also recently taking up her post, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "We're currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism." The London bombs were found just two days after Brown took office, and one day after he appointed members of his Cabinet. Some have said Britain's foreign policy of taking part in the Iraq and Afghan campaigns have made it a prized target by Muslim extremists.

"Irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, irrespective of what is happening in different parts of the world, we have an international organization trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to most people," Brown told BBC television. "Terrorism can never be justified as an act of faith. It is an act of evil in all circumstances," he said.

Some suspect the attack may have been timed with the transition of power in Britain to force London's hand out of Iraq and Afghanistan the way Spain's 2004 election was influenced by the Madrid train attacks. This week Britain’s new security chief warned the country’s battle against terrorism was far from over and could take up to 15 years, while Brown said he wanted an expanded European system to share information on potential threats. “I want a system whereby we know who are potential terrorist suspects,” Brown said.  “It is very important that we tighten this up and it is something we are looking at as a matter of urgency.

Downing Street insisted terrorists would not alter Britain's way of life after Al-Qaida issued new threats this week following London's decision to grant knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, author of the Satanic Verses.

As some 2,000 Quebec-based troops were preparing to replace those currently serving in Afghanistan, Canada was being reminded both of the dangers it faced abroad, and at home, in the war on terror. Last week three more Canadians, soldiers, all from the Edmonton-based Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, died when their unprotected all-terrain vehicle was hit by an  improvised explosive device on a re-supply mission, travelling between two checkpoints.

This brought to 60 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in the Afghan campaign. It occurred days after the deadliest suicide bombing so far in Kabul, less than 100 metres from a major police station downtown, adding to the growing signs of a resurgent insurgency fighting to restore terror wherever there was a danger of stability.

It also occurred as troops from Quebec's Valcartier-based Vandoos were to start preparing for their mission to rotate the Princess Patricias in the south of Afghanistan. The war is deeply unpopular in the province with 70% Quebecers expressing a disfavourable opinion of it.

Quebec has been notoriously less willing to support foreign wars either in Iraq or Afghanistan, and last week a controversy erupted in the National Assembly when a Quebec cabinet minister charged separatist Parti Quebecois members of assembly for not joining others saluting members of the Vandoos in the chamber during an ovation. The assembly did salute the soldiers by passing a motion praising their "courage".

The controversy erupted as Quebec City was to mark the departure of Quebec-based troops with a parade in the streets of the old town. Protest groups were also in attendance to remind them of the controversy surrounding the issue. Some of them had been appealing directly to the soldiers in the last weeks, sending an open letter to people living around Valcartier urging them to reconsider their mission overseas.

The soldiers in Quebec have been making appearances in various public arenas, including a Montreal-Toronto football game which saluted their upcoming mission. The latest Canadian casualties came on the day hundreds of people with Canadian flags and yellow ribbons pinned to their chests gathered in Bowmanville, Ont. to pay their respects to a previously fallen soldier, Trooper Darryl Caswell.

The mounting casualties are taking their toll in small communities such as Oromocto, New Brunswick, just south of Fredericton, home to the Gagetown military base, where the families of soldiers continued to show support, while civilians expressed concerns Canada was fighting an unwinnable war.

One that at least is increasingly unpopular. “It seems the people over there don’t want them and they’re killing them, and they’re our people” lamented Alice Mersereau. “I’d like to see them come home because they don’t want them.” Thirty-year military veteran Henry Burns said he fails to see the logic behind the war. “They are fighting a losing battle regardless of how they look at it. You can’t win.”

The message may be making its way to Ottawa. Once supporting the idea Canada should stay in Afghanistan "until the job is done" Prime Minister Stephen Harper now says Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan will not be extended beyond February 2009 unless there is a consensus in Parliament. At least two parties there, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, are opposed to the war.

As Canada faced perils overseas, intelligence services were analyzing the latest indications Canada's role in Afghanistan could bring acts of terrorism back home. As the Canadian and U.S. governments publicly downplayed a threat related to new video purportedly showing hundreds of member of the Taleban celebrating trainees “graduating” for suicide bombing missions in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, intelligence agencies were trying to authenticate it.

If confirmed, the video would reinforce the notion that the Taleban have effectively merged propaganda and field operations with al-Qaida and are moving their war outside the boundaries of Afghanistan and onto a global scale. “That’s worrisome because we know they’re sharing tradecraft. We know they’re sharing networking,” said Martin Rudner, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University, stressing the video should, “be taken very seriously.”

Shot by an invited Pakistani journalist June 9 somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, the footage shows a large group of about 300 masked men — including some boys appearing as young as 12 — attending a “graduation ceremony” before apparently being dispatched by al-Qaida and Afghanistan’s Taliban movement on suicide missions overseas.

“These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places. Why shouldn’t we go after them?” is showed as saying Mansoor Dadullah, brother of the former Taleban commander Mullah Dadullah, who was killed last month. “Praise be to God that the enthusiasm of these people is so strong that the people are going by crowds to martyrdom and to sacrifice themselves.”

Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day characterized the video as a, “PR move on behalf of a terror organization." “While we’re not immune from threats and no system is 100 per cent perfect, we feel confident that people coming from a group like that would be detected,” he said. “Their capability, personally, is limited, because there is a lot of internal intelligence that points out who certain individuals are and they do have a limited ability to travel and get through our border systems.”

U.S. officials said there was no credible threat to the continent as this time. But security analysts were warning that without more overseas spying capabilities Canada will remain dangerously unaware and vulnerable to terrorist threats such as this Taleban video.  The video, after all, had been unknown to Canadian intelligence until it was broadcast by ABC, highlighting Canada’s failure to properly collect and analyze foreign information vital to Canadian national interests, says Thomas Quiggan, formerly of the RCMP.

Canada’s heavy reliance on intelligence gathered and shared by allied nations leaves the country in an extremely doubtful situation, he says, “especially when some of our current allies hold widely divergent views on major issues such as counterterrorism. This lack of a collection capability makes us less sovereign and more dependent.” Day previously discussed expanding the mandate of CSIS to included covert, foreign intelligence-gathering.

Canada's “state of denial,” leaves it increasingly blind to growing and globalized problems, from organized crime and transnational terrorism to pandemics, Quiggan says.

Un régime qui n’obéit pas aux instances internationales en matière de non-prolifération nucléaire obéira-t-il à la voix d’un peuple déchaîné ?

Ironie de l’affaire: c’est en prévision de possibles sanctions internationales que l’Iran a élargi son plan de rationnement d’essence, révoltant les consommateurs que Téhéran aurait pu croire solidaires afin de mettre au défi la communauté internationale. Jusqu’à maintenant la menace de sanctions de l’Occident contre le régime d’Ahmedinejad avait eu l’effet de galvaniser le nationalisme et de souder l’appui d’un peuple derrière un président généralement jugé un brin trop conservateur dans ce pays déjà dirigé par les omnipuissants mollahs.

Mais celui qui a fait appel à l’annihilation de l’état d’Israel semble avoir mis le feu aux pétrolières en annonçant un rationnement qui limitera à 100 litres par mois la ration mensuelle des automobilistes. Sans parler du fait que le prix (fort subventionné) de l’essence avait fait un bond de 25 pourcent, soit de 8 à 10 cents le litre, dans un pays qui regorge d’or noir.

Pourtant, l’Iran, qui affirmait récemment pouvoir pomper 4,2 millions de barils par jour, n’a pas une bien grande capacité de raffinerie, les centrales iraniennes ne pouvant alimenter qu’un peu plus de la moitié des 79 millions de litres qu’exige la consommation quotidienne.

C’est en prévision de coûts d’importation d’essence pouvant aller au-delà des 10 milliards de dollars par an que Téhéran a imposé des mesures jusqu’ici seulement en vigueur sur les voitures des services gouvernementaux. Pourtant c'est une petite partie des $45 milliards de dollars que tire le second producteur de l'OPEP de l'exportation de son brut chaque année (le baril lui-même maintenant des niveaux élevés) soit finançant la moitié de son budget.

Téhéran justifie par ce manque de capacité de raffinage, lui-même attribuable à divers sanctions contre le régime, le besoin de poursuivre une politique énergétique axée sur le nucléaire, se défendant de vouloir en faire un programme militaire. Téhéran a d'ailleurs invité des inspecteurs de l'Agence de l'énergie atomique internationale pour tenter de débloquer l'impasse à ce niveau.

Mais entre temps le rationnement a eu l'effet d'une bombe au sein d'un peuple généralement étranger aux manifestations, des jeunes ayant brûlé voitures et pompes à essence dans un quartier au nord-ouest de la capitale, lançant des pierres et scandant des slogans contre le président iranien Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Des morts ont même été rapportés.

Il faut dire qu'étant donné l'état actuel de la répression, l'occasion était bonne de s'en prendre aux instances politiques. Autre ironie, une manifestation des travailleurs de l'industrie du pétrole avait donné de l'entrain aux manifestations qui avaient évincé le Shah en 1979.

Bien que les gestes des jeunes soient plutôt extrêmes, le mécontentement se fait sentir dans les énormes files d’attente qui se sont formées devant les stations-service à Téhéran et dans plusieurs autres villes du pays. Les jeunes, qui ont bloqué des autoroutes, ont fait intervenir des unités anti-émeute dans certains quartiers.

Le rationnement ne baissera en rien une inflation galopante et la hausse de prix n'est pas assez importante pour ralentir le passage clandestin de grandes quantités de pétrole vers des pays voisins où le pétrole se vend encore plus cher.

L'Occident suit la crise de près et se retient bien de penser qu'elle pourrait boulverser le régime actuel. Mais les Etats-Unis sont bien conscients que les sanctions visant l'industrie pétrolière iranienne constituent un atout important en leur faveur.

The creation of a new Palestinian government without Hamas was praised by the U.S. and Israel but effectively deepened the divide between a people geographically separated. There was no stronger symbol of this than when a crowd looted the home of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip, he who had led the struggle of the Palestinian people for four decades.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sacked the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, after factional fighting left more than 100 people dead in Gaza, bringing and end to a fragile coalition formed after Hamas won a landslide victory in elections in January 2006. Hamas had a majority in parliament, but the legislature stopped operating months ago, after Israel arrested most of the Hamas members.

Abbas signed a decree enabling him to by-pass parliamentary approval and appoint a new cabinet last week, with Finance Minister Salam Fayyad becoming the new prime minister. Hamas considered the emergency nomination illegal and resumed taking full control of Gaza, as its gunmen  ransacked Fatah offices and arrested or executed its fighters.

In turn Fatah supporters consolidated their control of the West Bank, just 45 km away, parading around Ramallah, firing weapons into the air and chanting "Hamas out". Almost all Hamas politicians and prominent supporters in Ramallah have either fled or gone into hiding. A future Palestinian state has long been envisioned as encompassing both the West Bank and Gaza, something both Abbas and his U.S. backers insist remains the goal.

But the divisions remained real a week later as Abbas condemned Hamas as "murderous terrorists" and "coup plotters", over the group's takeover of Gaza, which he charged was backed by foreign supporters. This week Haniya said his group was ready for talks with Fatah again. He was reacting to a call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for a resumption of dialogue between the two Palestinian factions at a summit in Egypt of four Middle Eastern leaders.

At the summit aimed at boosting Abbas and isolating his rivals, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would ask his cabinet to release 250 jailed member of the Fatah movement.

For its part the Bush administration lifted its economic and diplomatic embargo on the Palestinian government, moving to resume direct aid payments to the cash-strapped Palestinian government in the West Bank. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she will ask Congress to rework an existing $86 million aid request for the Abbas-led government and announced a separate $40 million contribution to United Nations relief for Palestinian refugees, a gesture to the 1.5 million Palestinians living in increasingly desperate conditions in Gaza.

Some of them suffered from temporary utility cuts when Israeli and other outside providers severed their feed of the tiny enclave on the Mediterranean.

News of the new government was also well-received in Israel, where Olmert said prospects for peace could be boosted by the creation of a new Palestinian government without the Hamas party. Israel would regard such a cabinet as a partner, he said, adding that Hamas' exclusion "creates opportunities".

Israel was to free millions in tax revenue it collects on behalf of the Palestinians. Israel has refused to release most of the money for fear it would benefit Hamas, which a number of countries including Canada call a terrorist organization. Israel soon allowed humanitarian aid to reach Gaza for the first time since the battle between Hamas and Fatah began June 10. UN trucks carrying sugar, cooking oil and medical supplies initially made the short journey as Israeli Defence Forces kept a close watch.

But Israel was soon reminded of the threats it continues to face when Katyusha rockets were sent into its territory from nearby Lebanon, breaking a ceasefire which had been implemented since last year's bloody clash between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied responsibility and Israel intelligence considered Palestinian radicals based in Lebanon as the culprit. The rockets exploded near the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona and produced no casualties.

Alliés militaires de la Turquie remontant à plusieurs décennies, les Etats-Unis ne peuvent pas s’empêcher de redouter le penchant militaire de ce grand partenaire stratégique de l’Otan.

Plus tôt ce printemps, Washington émettait des réserves quant aux déclarations des forces armées sur le scrutin présidentiel qui doit avoir lieu aux portes de l'Europe. Des généraux turcs venaient de court-circuiter le processus électoral après la nomination d'un candidat musulman, Abdullah Gul, par le parti qui contrôle la majorité au parlement d'Ankara.

Pays à majorité musulmane, la Turquie a préservé sa sécularité notamment en raison de l'armée, qui se considère gardienne des valeurs de Kemal Ataturk. L'armée était également intervenue il y a dix ans pour éviter l'élection d'un parti musulman.

En 2002 elle a permis à la présente majorité musulmane de se constituer en partie parce qu'elle a voulu bien paraître devant les instances européennes, mais surtout parce que le parti s'engageait à préserver les valeurs laïques vieilles de 70 ans. Le geste récent des généraux a alarmé l'Union Européenne.

Washington a gardé son sans froid mais son ambassadeur a rappelé que les mots moins durs du Département d'Etat ne signifiaient en rien une approbation de la ligne dure militaire sur le processus électoral.

Gul a depuis été remis au placard, mais les parlementaires font flotter l'idée de nouvelles élections parlementaires, où la majorité musulmane augmen- terait sans doute, et même celle d'un référendum ouvrant la voie à un scrutin présidentiel direct.

La crise politique, qui a créé des craintes de putsch militaire, à peine achevée, une polémique proprement militaire et territoriale n'a pas tardé à voir le jour concernant la minorité qu'Ankara a souvent été critiquée de malmener: les Kurdes.

L'attaque kurde qui a fait sept militaires morts au début du mois est venue mettre le feu aux poudres après l'attaque suicide d'un militant kurde qui a fait six morts à Ankara en mai.

Tanks et troupes turques n'ont pas tardé à se masser sur la frontière entre la Turquie et l'Irak, laissant supposer une offensive militaire de grande envergure pour combattre les militants du PKK qui y sont réfugiés.

Un tel événement serait catastrophique dans la seule zone irakienne qui semble connaitre une certaine stabilité depuis la chute de Saddam Hussein. Le nord kurde est en effet considéré un modèle de développement dans ce pays ravagé par la guerre depuis 2003.

Le premier ministre Recep Tayyip Erdogan retient à présent très mal son général, Yasar Buyukanit, qui a ouvertement fait appel à une "nécessaire" incursion trans-frontalière. Il peut compter sur le soutien du dirigeant de l'opposition principal Deniz Baykal sur la question.

Le Secrétaire de la défense américain, Robert Gates, s'est catégoriquement opposé à une telle offensive, et le survol "accidentel" de deux chasseurs américains au-dessus du territoire turc, qui comprend d'ailleurs l'imposante base d'Incirlik, n'a pas tardé à être interprété comme un avertissement américain.

Les Etats-Unis préféreraient qu'Ankara négocie une entente avec les Kurdes non militants d'Irak, plutôt que de s'en remettre à une intervention militaire, mais ces derniers sont soupçonnés par Ankara de camoufler des ambitions autonomistes. Le PKK, quant à lui, n'aimerait rien de mieux qu'attiquer des troupes turques en Irak pour mettre les deux alliés sur le chemin de la confrontation.

L'armée turque quant à elle a annoncé l'implantation de “zones de sécurité”, un geste qui rappelle l'état d'urgence qui avait été imposé dans le sud du pays jusqu'en 2002, lorsque l'armée tentait d'éliminer les séparatistes kurdes de la région. En lutte contre le PKK depuis 1980, la Turquie ne s'est pas retenue d'intervenir en Irak trois fois dans le passé. Washington redoute qu'elle ne prépare une nouvelle incursion.

Maybe it's about time school was out, because in the East, it seems to be out of control. A school year that opened with a mass shooting in Montreal, ended with extra police presence in a North York high-school prom, soon after the killing of 15-year-old Jordan Manners on May 23, and bomb threats cancelling year-end dances and proms in the Maritimes.

In between the two fatal city shooting incidents, the Atlantic provinces reported at least half a dozen investigations into bomb scares while a police gun went missing in a Kitchener school, leaving some to fear for the worst.

Down south events were hardly encouraging after the bloodliest mass shooting in American history and separate incidents which did not even spare the notoriously discrete and reclusive Amish community.Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year- old senior majoring in English has since then made the pristine and sleepy campus of Virginia Tech university and the community of Blacksburgh, Va synonymous with nightmare after he mowed down 32 students.

The scenario was averted by a combination of luck and quick action in Montreal in September, when Kimveer Gill set out to cause carnage at Dawson college. A girl was killed and scores injured before he took his own life once cornered.

The May shooting in Toronto left a popular boy dead but led to the arrest of two 17-years-old boys, who are facing first-degree murder charges. Their identities are shielded by the Youth Criminal Justice Act. It is still undetermined if they will be tried as adults. Some critics say such protection may only be encouraging kids to be less accountable for their actions.

In the Maritimes the countless bomb threats, the most recent leading to investigations in other parts of the country, are leaving authorities in small communities scrambling, while principals ponder whether or not to cancel proms. Police arrested a second 14-year-old suspect related to an explosive device removed from a Fredericton school last month.

On May 14 the device, which was removed and detonated, forced the evacuation of Leo Hayes High School. No one was hurt. Both are due to appear in youth court in July. Copy cats are being blamed for a string of bomb threats made in the Maritimes, many in the Halifax area. Amherst high school in Nova Scotia was evacuated and searched when students were overheard saying they were going to set off a bomb there.

In what is becoming a sadly familiar scene, an RCMP canine unit searched the premises, revealing no explosives, but classes resumed under tightened security. It was just the latest Nova Scotia high school to be searched for explosives after two other Halifax-area schools were closed the previous week following similar threats.

A more recent "specific" threat on Cape Breton's Memorial high school caused the principal there to consider cancelling a June 23 prom, as police launched an investigation stretching to Halifax and even Toronto, after a threatening email was received by the principal.

Following the tragedies in the U.S. and Montreal, school officials and education boards are taking all such threats seriously. At the same time the popularity of day-to-day life reality shows and immediate access to portable recording tools giving the public unprecedented access behind the scenes in schools.

Some blame the popularity of internet sites such as Youtube which have made it easy to broadcast for all to see events captured on cellphone cameras that can put local schools on the map.

Acts of school ground bullying and spectacular cafeteria food fights can no longer only be seen by immediate witnesses but all who log on wherever they may be. One spectacular food fight in a Magog high school involving dozens of students and resulting in thousands of dollars in damages was all the rage on Youtube last week. Some 35 students were punished as a result.

Coupled with a greater concern for safety issues on campus, the two have put schools and the pranks that are played between their walls, increasingly in the news. Last week a Montreal-area school was evacuated after simple rumors of an attack at the school. But real school tragedies have made the entire country, not just internet surfers, stand still in shock.

Meanwhile the school that was the latest site of a school shooting in Canada carried on with its prom with a moment to pause and remember the victim. Senior students at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute remembered 15-year-old Manners after officials decided to go forward with the prom despite the fact it was so soon after the fatal shooting.

The incident was quickly followed by calls to Ottawa from Toronto Mayor David Miller and Premier Dalton McGuinty to ban handguns in Canada. The issue resurfaces every time there is a shooting in a Canadian school. Canada already places severe restrictions on handgun ownership, a legacy of the 1989 Polytechnique shooting. All gun owners are required to have a background check. All guns are registered and can be used only as part of a collection or for target shooting. Despite this, gun crime remains a concern.

At the prom there was a moment of silence and students wore arm bands in memory of Manners, all under increased security. Sadly there is a tragic familiarity to both the mourning and the security measures. The school held a formal memorial service to honour the boy after his funeral. Something that doesn't belong in the curriculum.

With a trip to the G8 meant to calm fears of a new Cold war with Russia and a hero’s welcome for Bush in Albania, where he called for the independence of Kosovo, it’s been anything but an uneventful trip to Europe for the US president.

The war of words that preceded the G8 meeting and culminated with Moscow’s threat it would retarget its missiles on Europe if the U.S. went ahead with a ballistic missile system there, cooled down when Russian president Vladimir Putin presented Bush with a rather odd counter- proposal.

Putin suggested the missile system be built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than new defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said he would consider the unexpected proposal in his plans for defending Europe against attack from hostile regimes such as Iran or North Korea.

Almost on queue the hermit kingdom fired short-range missiles off its western coast in an apparent test, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry. The U.S. immediately denounced the  launch, saying such activity was “not constructive” in the midst of a deadlock in international negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

It seemed to take the mini Russia-US summit out of mind at a time fierce rhetoric carried the echoes of a bygone era. Some are in fact referring to the sad state of relations between the two countries as a post-Cold War low, following tensions raised by Bush’s accusations that Putin was backsliding on democracy, and Putin’s charges that Bush was starting a new arms race with missile defenses.

At issue is a system with a radar screen in the Czech Republic to detect incoming rockets and 10 interceptors based in Poland to shoot them down. But the presence of such a system so close to the Russian border is also sparking divisions among former East bloc allies, now almost all sympathetically turned to Washington.

Bulgaria, a staunch US ally, is concerned it may be left out of the missile plan. Bush visited Sofia as part of a sweeping European tour that included Italy, Germany and Eastern European countries. Bush thanked Bulgaria for its support in Iraq and Afghanistan but got his greatest welcome in tiny Albania, which has renamed streets and even unveiled a national stamp in his honour.

Albania especially welcomed Bush’s support for an independent Kosovo, which was however decried in Serbia. Earlier the G8 had failed to reach a consensus on the Kosovo issue. America’s stance on Kosovo is another point of contention with Moscow, a staunch ally of the Serbs. The latter see Kosovo as the heart of its historic homeland while Russia contends independence would set a dangerous precedent for other breakaway regions.

Any way you sliced it tensions between the two former Cold war rivals seemed palpable, especially with so many questions remaining unclear in the Alexander Litvinenko spy file. But Bush and Putin did join other world leaders in a compromise on a plan to attack global warming and agreed to seek substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, however stopping short of committing themselves to specific targets.

The G8 said it would negotiate within a UN framework to seek a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2009 and while no mandatory target was set for the cuts, a preference for a 50% emissions cut by the year 2050 was included in the agreed statement. Both the US and Russia agreed to disagree on the figure, backed by the EU, Canada and Japan.

It's a start. Bush and Putin even plan to meet again in early July at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. That should leave the two as far figuratively as they will be geographically far from Cuba.

Bon sang elle n'était pas volée cette présence en finale de Coupe Stanley. Après des années de déception dans l'après-saison, la perte de son club de football et bientôt celui de son équipe de baseball AAA, Ottawa peut se féliciter d'avoir franchi une étape sportive  importante en disputant sa première finale de hockey professionnel depuis 1927! En effet 80 ans et une résurrection plus tard, les Sénateurs, version moderne, vont disputer la grande classique du sport d'hiver.

La finale commence le lundi 28 mai, et opposera Ottawa aux Ducks d'Anaheim, vainqueurs 4-3 lors du 6e match contre les Red Wings. (4-2)

Ottawa a défait Pittsburgh, l'équipe du joueur par excellence de la ligue, puis New Jersey, avec un des meilleurs gardiens, avant d'évincer les Sabres, équipe avec la meilleure fiche, en laissant filer un seul gain chaque fois. Le gardien Ray Emery, qui n'avait même pas le poste de partant en début de saison, a enregistré trois jeux blancs.

Mais la tâche ne fut pas toujours toute simple. Un seul but a séparé les gagnants des perdants lors de quatre des cinq parties de la dernière série. Celle-ci a d'ailleurs été décidée en surtemps. A 9:32 du quatrième engagement le capitaine Daniel Alfredsson, le héros des séries, a inscrit le but qui allait faire d'Ottawa des finalistes.

Il s'agit de la troisième finale consécutive qui compte un club canadien, mais la tâche est lourde pour les Sénateurs qui tenteront de devenir le premier club d'ici à remporter le prestigieux trophée depuis les Canadiens de Montréal en 1993.

Le gérant général du club, John Muckler, qui est à sa septième présence en finale, sait que la partie est loin d'être gagnée: "il reste du travail à faire" disait-il le lendemain de la victoire, gardant les yeux rivés sur l'objectif qui et celui d'Alfredsson et sa bande depuis presque une décennie.

Le numéro 11, qui a d'ailleurs saisi les rennes du club après la mésaventure des premières années et les fiascos Daigle et Yashin, a joué dans tous les matchs éliminatoires de la concession, pendant 10 ans de suite, sans avoir l'occasion de participer à la grande finale.

Le meneur des Sénateurs, avec 10 buts en série, a qualifié son dernier but de  "plus gros" de sa carrière: "J’ai regardé une période du match (Ducks-Red Wings) et savoir que nous étions déjà rendus là a rendu les choses vraiment intéressantes." En effet, une troisième série limitée à cinq rencontres sur un maximum de sept signifie qu'Ottawa sera l'équipe la plus reposée des deux qui s'affronteront en finale.

Etonnant qu'Ottawa se soit autant sorti d'affaire après un début de saison si désolant. En effet après l'élimination en seconde ronde des séries l'an dernier, après avoir remporté le trophée du président, les Sénateurs ne semblaient plus très inspirés en début de saison, leur capitaine recevant de plein fouet toutes les critiques.

Le club languissait sous la barre des 500 et on se demandait si on avait bien fait de remplacer l'entraîneur par Bryan Murray. Puis la ligne Alfredsson-Spezza-Heatley a commencé à faire ses ravages en devenant la plus redoutée de la ligue. Elle a poursuivi ses exploits dans l'après-saison, au courant de laquelle il devenait évident que le "vieux" capitaine et sa toute nouvelle coupe de cheveux était parti en véritable mission, comme ses ancètres vikings.

“C’était approprié que ce soit lui qui marque ce but”, a constaté Heatley deux jours après le sacre, une fois de retour à l’entraînement. “Alfie est notre meneur. Après toutes les critiques qu’il a essuyées par le passé, c’était beau à voir, a renchéri l’autre membre du trio, Jason Spezza. Espérons qu’il lui reste encore de la magie.”

Cette magie était descendue dans les rues de la capitale comme un premier juillet, les bars se vidant sur la rue Elgin, fermée pour laisser la place aux célébrations. Des centaines de partisans sont ensuite venus félicier les héros du samedi à leur descente d'avion en soirée. Certes il y avait de la joie, mais pour reprendre les dires de Chris Phillips, beaucoup de "soulagement" également.

"C'est excitant, et puis sa nous ôte tout un poids sur le dos," disait-il le lendemain de la victoire. Le flambeau semble avoir été passé aux successeurs des Cy Denneny, King Clancy et Frank Finnigan qui ont fait des Sénateurs un des clubs les plus couronnés du sport à l'époque. Et cette époque, c'est celle que nous vivons, enfin!

Après la destruction apportée par les tirs nourris de l’aviation israélienne puis l’assassinat du président Hariri par des agents du régime syrien, le Liban doit composer avec sa toute dernière crise, qui l’oppose aux islamistes retranchés dans des camps de réfugiés, dont le compte des victimes dresse le plus sombre bilan depuis la guerre civile.

La crise qui oppose l’armée au Fatah al-Islam, un groupuscule dont on soupçonne les liens avec le réseau Al-Qaida et les services de renseignement syriens, principalement dans le nord du pays, a fait 46 morts dont 27 militaires la première journée des hostilités, avant de se répandre sur deux autres journées d’échanges de tirs à l’artillerie lourde et à l’arme légère.

Le Premier ministre Fouad Siniora avait donné dimanche soir le feu vert à l’armée afin qu’elle prenne les mesures nécessaires pour neutraliser les islamistes. Le tout se joue sur un fond de crise politique, incessante depuis la mort d’Hariri en 2005. Si le manque d’ordre parait parfois évident aux plus hauts niveaux du pays de cèdre, c’est sans parler des camps de réfugiés palestiniens du Liban, qui échappent purement et simplement à l’autorité de l’armée libanaise depuis des décennies.

Presque 350,000 Palestiniens vivent dans les camps à travers le pays depuis la création de l’Etat d’Israël en 1948. Selon une des têtes religieuses musulmanes du camp principal, Nahr el-Bared, les 30 000 habitants qui y sont regroupés se sont retrouvés à la croisée des tirs et font les frais de l’affrontement : « Vous pouvez dire qu’un massacre d’enfants et de femmes qui n’ont rien à voir avec Fatah Islam a lieu a sein du camp » estimait Ahmed Methqal.

Les autorités libanaises sont d’ailleurs interdites d’accès au camp selon une entente vieille de presque quatre décennies. Une descente policière sur plusieurs planques du groupe, en rapport avec un braquage de banque récent, serait à l’origine des éclats, qui se seraient aggravés lorsque les militants issus du camp s’en sont pris à des postes militaires.

Selon la police une des victimes serait un suspect dans une affaire d’attentat raté des chemins de fer allemands, confirmant des dires qui voudraient que le camp serait à l'origine d’opérations de terrorisme à l’étranger. Mais le commandant de la police nationale associe plutôt certains ressortissants du camp avec la Syrie qu’Al-Qaida. Selon la télévision libanaise, des hommes du Bengladesh, du Yémen et de plusieurs pays arabes étaient au compte des victimes, certains portant même des ceintures d’explosifs.

Environ 150 membres de Fatah Islam seraient installés dans le camp. Alors que le groupe nie une association directe avec Al-Qaida, il s’identifie beaucoup avec les objectifs de la mouvance terroriste internationale d’Oussama ben Laden. Le camp fait l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis deux attentats contre des bus dans la zone chrétienne de Beyrouth en février. Des milliers de réfugiés ont profité de la crise pour fuir le camp, sans trop savoir ce que l'avenir leur réserve. Il ne s'agit que du plus récent exode du pays de cèdre.

Every twenty years since independence, Pakistan's strongmen have been forced from office one way or another. For Ayub Khan it was in 1969, for Zia, an assassination in 1989. By this account present strongman Pervez Musharraf should be good for a few more months but you'd be fooled by looking at the outcry in Pakistani cities since the general suspended the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, dividing the country between supporters of the executive and the judiciary.

Judge Iftikhar Chowdhry, who had stayed put after the military coup that put Musharraf in place, had recently passed a number of judgments going against the government, a "worrying trend" that no doubt precipitated his ouster. A grassroots movement started among the country's 80,000 lawyers spread among other professionnal and popular ranks.

In a country where the "strongman" looked increasingly weakened by his inability to reign in the Taleban on the Western front, it suddenly seemed that chaos was running rampant in Pakistani towns. The situation suddenly seemed to careen out of control when Chowdhry was prevented from addressing a meeting in Karachi, leading to violent clashes that killed nearly fifty people.

Ensuing crackdowns on television stations showing footage of the events prompted nationwide strikes that seemed to bring the country down a now familiar and even cyclical path. Musharraf does have proven survival skills however, having dodged a number of assassination attempts during his highly contested eight year rule. But he would lose to the judge in a landslide if elections scheduled for later this year were held now, and Musharraf seems to dread the competition.

He has indicated former prime ministers, now in exile, such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, would not be allowed to return to compete for the polls. That would be a step back from previous indications Musharraf was willing to consider an alliance with Bhutto. Any change would be carefully monitored in Washington, which has been a  staunch supporter of the general because of his anti-terrorism efforts despite his limitations on the matter.

Areas of West Pakistan such as Baluchistan are notoriously overrun by Taleban supporters, with some religious schools openly supporting the war against Nato soldiers, including Canadians, across the border in southern Afghanistan, but mindful not to draw attention to their presence in Pakistan, by fear of drawing US troops there.

Musharraf accused opponents of using his ouster of Pakistan's chief justice to conspire against him and said it would be a sad day if "lies and deception" prevail in the crisis threatening his grip on power. In a defiant speech Monday, he defended his government's record and accused unidentified opponents of hijacking a purely legal issue -- allegations that Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry abused his office -- for political ends. "They are conspiring against me and want to incite the people," Musharraf told hundreds of supporters at a rally of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

He insisted the party could still win year-end parliamentary elections. But critics accuse him of cracking down on the judiciary ahead of a flurry of expected legal challenges to Musharraf's planned bid for a new five-year presidential term. The Supreme Court meanwhile resumed hearing a petition brought by Chaudhry challenging his suspension. This has halted investigations on Chaudhry's alleged abuse of position. Also Pakistan summoned a British diplomat following comments that indicated a preference for Musharraf to separate the offices of president and army chief by the end of this year, calling it interference in Pakistan's internal affairs.

It was more than justifying traditional conservative policies, Stephen Harper was trying to reassure Canadians that their economy wasn't being gobbled up by international investors, and especially the behemoths down south. Recently the Prime minister had to convince critics, especially in the House of Commons, that his government wasn't encouraging the sell-off of corporate Canada, following a string of announcements of corporate take-overs.

The outcry became particularly loud when Alcoa announced it was launching a hostile bid for Montreal-based Alcan. The news came in the wake of a report which revealed that foreign direct investment in Canada, fuelled by takeovers of domestic firms, surged 10.1 per cent last year to reach $448.9 billion. The news was doubly surprising consider- ing a strong Canadian dollar, over 90 cents US, making these purchases a bit pricier. But the high dollar may only be a reflection of the growing interest in the Canadian economy and domestic companies, analysts say, especially with the boom taking hold out West.

Of course Canadian companies had deep enough pockets to reciprocate, with their own wave of take-overs. “Both Canadian direct investment abroad and foreign direct investment in Canada recorded the highest percentage increase in six years,” Statistics Canada said. In fact, according to KPMG, there were more Canadian takeovers of foreign firms than vice-versa, they just involved less money.

The take-overs of Falconbridge and Inco alone accounted for $38 billion US. Opposition parliamenarians blamed conservative tax policies for the rise in foreign mergers and acquisitions. But according to SEC filings, merger discussions between the aluminum giants began as far back as June 2005. Still the timing of it all had some concerned about a developing trend.

Just days before the formal bid announcement, Quebec-based Van Houtte was sold to U.S. private equity firm Littlejohn, signs for some of yet another Canadian company unable to expand into the U.S. Clothing retailer La Senza's similar failure had caused it to be gobbled up for $710 million last November. Other notables of the last few years include Molson's "merger of equals" which much larger Coors of Colorado, which had kicked things off well before the change in government, then the take-over of the venerable Hudson's Bay, followed by the more recent mergers and acquisitions of Algoma, Sleemans breweries and paper maker Domtar.

Recently even Montreal-based BCE, parent company of the telephone giant Bell Canada, was said to be contemplating take-over offers. All in all it seemed Quebec companies, at least those that hadn't moved to Ontario in the 1970s, looked particularly targeted, at a time of debate over the future of Quebec Inc.

Close ties between industry players and the government were a key point of contention on the Alcan bid. According to the fine print of the 10-page Alcan-Quebec pact, Alcan’s board could push back considering the bid until the requirements of all regulatory bodies and authorities examining an Alcan takeover or acquisition were met.That would include requirements made by antitrust authorities in Canada, the U.S., the European Union and elsewhere Alcan conducts business.

On the day of the initial announcement of intent, the Quebec government however quickly indicated it wasn't about to intervene on the markets and felt confident Alcoa would respect Alcan's arrangements with the province, and beyond, by making added investments. Once called Alcan's "poison pill" against takeovers, the Montreal company said that Quebec had "retained various rights that allow it to cancel some or all of the new entitlements and benefits relating to water and power, including financial support," should there be an acquisition or a change in its headquarters. Alcoa, which said Montreal would retain its headquarters, stressed that a successful bid would create the world's largest aluminum producer with dual head offices in Montreal and New York. More significantly, such a deal would represent the largest takeover in Canadian history.

As this was dragging on some Canadian corporate moves held their own and were not to be poo-poohed, notably the combined bid by car parts maker Magna International and Toronto-based Onex Corp. for 80 percent of America's third-largest auto maker, the Chrysler Group, eventually picked up by New York-based buyout-firm Cerberus. (Soon after the $7 billion auto deal, Cerberus set its sights on BCE, encouraging CanWest and Shaw Communications of entering a bid that could fetch over $30 billion, or about the same as Alcan) Canadian publisher Thomson Corp. however took no prisoners when it bought London-based Reuters, the business news leader, for $17.2 billion US, creating  the world’s leading provider of news and data for professional markets.

Just when you thought the days of the great Canadian barons, such as the legally-challenged Conrad Black, were over. Foreign investments made by Canadians reached over $523 billion, or $75 billion more than foreign investment made in Canada. And the Alcan saga may not yet be entirely over. In Mid-May the Montreal-based alumimum makers pondered a Pac-Man type attack that, like the video game, could see it turn around and swallow it's larger American rival.

The friendly merger of two aluminum giants suddenly became plainly hostile. Alcoa.'s hostile takeover bid for Alcan was "hugely inadequate" and should be refused, Alcan's chief executive officer Dick Evans said as he notified shareholders that the Montreal-based aluminum producer was talking with other potential suitors. "We are convinced that the proposed Alcoa-led acquisition of Alcan is not the right choice for our shareholders," he said. As the dog days of Summer approach, the markets are increasingly becoming a dog eat dog affair.

Ce n’était pas la drogue, ni son homosexualité. C’était sans doute l’échec cuisant du Parti Québécois aux dernières élections. Mais c’était surtout quarante ans de crucifixion des chefs dans la poursuite d’un idéal intéresse de moins en moins de Québécois.

Une journée déjà chargée historiquement, en raison du début de la première session législative d’un gouvernement minoritaire à Québec depuis 1878, a été presque totalement éclipsée par la démission-choc d’André Boisclair au poste de chef du PQ.

C’était en effet le seul titre qui lui revenait, n’ayant pas obtenu celui de premier ministre, ou de chef de l’opposition, le 26 mars dernier. Quarante ans après la création du Mouvement pour la souverainté-association de René Lévesque, Boisclair était le sixième chef depuis la création du PQ, et le cinquième à démissionner à cause de la question nationale.

Même le père du mouvement souverainiste, Lévesque, avait dû rompre en 1984 lorsque cinq ministres de son cabinet ont suivi le geste du député Pierre De Bellefeuille et ont démissionné du caucus des députés, en réaction au refus de leur chef de faire de la souveraineté l’enjeu de la prochaine élection.

Boisclair avait bien promis un référendum à la première chance, mais on le sentait bien hésitant sur la question. Puis avec 36 sièges, le pire score du PQ depuis 1970, son avenir semblait tout décidé. Comme Landry et même le populaire Bouchard lui, Boisclair s’est vu montrer la porte par les purs et durs d’un parti qui tient presque autant à s’entre-déchirer qu’à l’indépendance.

Le plus jeune chef aura été moins de deux ans au plus haut poste, surclassé il y a à peine plus d’un mois par un jeune chef adéquiste encore plus jeune, et de loin le plus populaire chef de parti au Québec. C’est ce qui ressortait d’un sondage un mois à peine après l’élection provinciale, qui avait placé Boisclair au plus bas des intentions de vote, plus de la moitié des répondants préférant qu’il soit remplacé.

Ont suivi en rapide succession des sorties, les unes les plus virulentes que les autres, de souverainistes pour qui la chefferie devait changer immédiatement. La semaine dernière c’était à l’ancien ministre Denis Lazure de faire appel à la démission du chef « pour le bien du parti et de la souveraineté » dans une lettre au Devoir.

Puis il y a eu cette sortie inattendue du chef, lors d’une entre-vue pour Radio-Canada, où il s’en prenait au chef du Bloc Gilles Duceppe, pourtant son allié, qu’il accusait de manigancer pour le renverser. « Il y a des gens qui ont des doubles agendas, malgré les déclarations publiques qu’ils font » avait déclaré Boisclair. A partir de ce moment, la chute devenait irréversible.

Le lendemain le président du Conseil de la souveraineté, Gérald Larose, déclarait que Boisclair devait parti s’il ne parvenait pas à démontrer rapidement qu’il avait le contrôle sur son parti. De toute évidence, c’est un combat que n’a pas tenté de mener Boisclair.

Le matin de la nouvelle session de l’Assemblée Nationale, l’agenda avait complètement été chamboulé. «L’intensité de la remise en question du leadership ne me permet pas de procéder à l’essentielle réflexion que doit faire le parti sur le fond des choses dans la sérénité nécessaire pour conduire un tel exercice, » dit-il après avoir rencontré son caucus parlementaire réduit.

Pour certains, comme l'ancien ministre Claude Charron, cette réflexion d'habitude évitée au sein de ce parti "aux soins intensifs" doit avoir lieu, sinon tout prochain chef risque de "vivre le même calvaire".

Cette tâche pourrait revenir au favori de l'heure, le populaire chef du Bloc Québécois, qui niait il y avait quelques jours à peine quelque projet de passer en politique provinciale, comme tant d'autres avant lui, comme Charest et Bouchard.

"C'est un homme qui a consacré toute sa vie au mouvement souverainiste. Partout où il est passé il a donné le meilleur de lui-même", a déclaré Duceppe, comme lors d'un enterrement, dans une journée pleines de louanges pour un chef si conspué la veille. Le chef du PQ le plus récent à voir son chemin de croix terminer sur la colline parlementaire.

La droite conserve la présidence française, comme elle le fait depuis 1995, mais le chef d’Etat qui succède à Jacques Chirac promet d’incarner le changement “dont la France a besoin”. A première vue c'est presque de la démagogie, mais quand on connait la profondeur du malaise économique et social en France, cette déclaration prend tout son sens.

Car la droite qui prend le pouvoir apporte avec elle des valeurs d'après-guerre et des projets de réforme qui enchantent les partisans mais fait frémir les opposants. L'élection du candidat de l’UMP Nicolas Sarkozy avec 53% des intentions de vote, a mis un terme à une élection presque sans surprise. Favori des sondages depuis quelques temps, le fils de parents immigrés hongrois s'est voulu rassurant, mais sans hésiter à afficher ses couleurs.

“Par-delà le combat politique et des idées il n’y a là qu’une seule France. Je serais le président de tout les Français,” dit-il le soir de son triomphe. Il a enchaîné avec des promesses d’importantes réformes, l'obligation d'un mandat qui lui avait été confié par les Français.

“Le peuple français a décidé de rompre avec les  idées, les habitudes et les comportements du passé. Je vais donc réhabiliter le travail, l’autorité, la morale, le respect, le mérite, a-t-il lancé. Ce changement je le mettrai en oeuvre parce que la France en a besoin. Mais je le ferai dans un esprit d’union et de fraternité. J’appelle à tous les Français à s’unir à moi pour que la France se remette en mouvement.”

Son premier discours en tant que président-élu a vite pris une saveur très internationale. “Je crois profondément, sincèrement en la construction européenne, et ce soir la France est de retour en Europe. Mais je conjure aux partenaires européens d’entendre la voix de ceux qui veulent être protégés.” Voyant au-delà de l'Atlantique, celui que certains surnommaient moqueusement "l'Américain" s'est vite tourné vers l'autre rive.

“Nos amis Américains peuvent compter sur notre amitié”, dit-il, mais une amitié où les amis peuvent “penser différemment”. Les Etats-Unis ne devaient pas faire obstacle à la lutte contre le changement climatique, selon lui, un sujet qu'il veut faire son premier combat. “Ce qui est en jeu est le sort de l’humanité toute entière.”

Il fait appel à une union de la Méditerranée (où “tout va se jouer”) “pour surmonter toutes les haines” et lance vers l’Afrique un appel fraternel “pour lui dire que nous voulons l’aider.” Mais la mission internationale du nouveau président de la cinquième république ne s'arrête pas là: “La France sera du côté des opprimés du monde, c’est le message de la France, c’est l’identité de la France, c’est l’histoire de la France.”

Plus tôt au courant de la semaine il avait critiqué les commentaires de Royal qui laissaient croire que son élection serait suivie d’actes de violence. Des commentaires controversés de l’ancien ministre de l’intérieur avaient mal été reçus dans les quartiers défavorisés de France. Dans les jours qui ont suivi son élection, certains incidents entre forces de l’ordre et manifestants anti-Sarkozy ont désavoué les appels à l'unité de Sarkozy. Ses quartiers généraux avaient d'ailleurs été partiellement saccagés à Montréal quelques jours avant le second tour.

Pour Ségolène Royal, qui paraissait plus à l'aise, étrangement, après la défaite, que lors de son discours de premier tour, l'échec n'était pas total. “Quelquechose s’est levé qui ne s’arrêtera pas,” a-t-elle déclaré sous des cris de "merci!" “Vous pouvez compter sur moi pour approfondir la rénovation de la gauche.”

Mais déjà en coulisse, certains socialistes laissaient croire que la socialiste ne serait pas au centre des prochaines réformes internes. “C’est une très grave défaite, c’est la troisième consécutive, a pour sa part commenté le socialiste Dominique Strauss-Kahn, ancien candidat présidentiel du PS. Nous ne nous sommes pas renouvelés. La gauche doit apporter quelquechose.”

Selon les instituts de statistique 40% des partisans du candidat de troisième place au premier tour, François Bayrou, ont voté pour Sarkozy contre 38% pour Royal. Pourtant Bayrou avait indiqué qu’il ne voterait pas pour Sarkozy au second tour. De leur côté 63% des électeurs d’extrême-droite appuyant Jean-Marie Le Pen, celui qui avait causé la consternation cinq ans plus tôt, auraient voté pour Sarkozy.

Le taux de participation est resté élevé, avec près de 85% des électeurs éligibles. Les Français ont décidé qu'ils ne se feraient plus surprendre comme en 2002.

At first glance the comparison seemed obvious. While the Parti Quebecois’ worst showing since its inception, followed by the stepping down of its leader, has given the nationalist cause a breather in Canada, separatism seems alive and well in Scotland after voters ended Labour’s fifty-year reign by voting in nationalists, something that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called “a decision which will define the future of Scotland”.

In the end however the nationalists of the SNP won 47 seats, just one more than Labour, forcing the next rulers of Edinburgh into a coalition government. Certainly this is a moment to rejoice for proud Scotsmen ambivalent about marking the 300th anniversary of their union with England that created Great Britain.

But amid the rolling green hills, as under the sea of multi-colour maple leaf trees, there remains the same ambivalence and hesitation about a clean break-up from the union. Only one-third, at best, are considered hard-core supporters of Scottish independence, a number comparable to Quebec’s. Especially in the context of the anti-Labour environment which made winners out of the conservatives as Blair was stepping down to make way for Treasury Chief Gordon Brown.

The Scottish elections were being held on the same day as local council ballots in England and Scotland, as well as voting for the Welsh Assembly. Like Paul Martin after Chretien, Brown must have thought the last years of waiting in the wings felt like an eternity, but also takes the helm of a party which is past its prime and perhaps due for a replacement. Unlike Canadian politics however, Britain’s rarely see the representative of a regional minority take the helm. The irony being that Brown is a proud Scotsman.

He will be the first prime minister from a Scottish constituency since 1964. After having watched Blair try to quell nationalist sentiment with a dose of devolution over the years, Brown takes the helm as his homeland may be slipping from his grasp. Truth be told, the St Andrews cross may not be about to be ripped from the purposely-named Union Jack.

First, a minority government, and the argument was made in Quebec, hardly gives a separatist party the mandate to poll its citizens about the breakup of a country. And Scotland, like Quebec, would rather like to get more from the union, than out of it. The Scottish Parliament could eventually gain more control over taxation, welfare benefits and cultural matters like as broadcasting, leaving foreign affairs and defense, rather expensive areas, for London to handle.

As the coalition-building gets under way, Scottish Liberal Democrats and Greens are considering whether or not to enter into discussions with the SNP. Combined they would hold some 65 seats, barely a majority but enough to rule Scotland’s eight-year young 129-member parliament. ”We’ve had conversations informally, but there’s been no formal negotiations as yet," said SNP leader Alex Salmond. “During the election we expressed a preference for a coalition and that’s certainly my preference.”

A coalition would mean give and take from all sides, especially on the issue of independence, something Labour MPs agreed, was an issue a large majority of Scotts were against. “Scottish Labour stands ready to work with others who want to make devolution work,” they said in a statement. “We recognise our responsibilities to the people of Scotland and to those who voted Labour. This election result demonstrates that the people of Scotland do not want separation to be Scotland’s national priority.”

The sentiment was shared by Liberal Democrat leader, Nicol Stephen, who said that there was no way his party would support a referendum on independence. “In terms of a potential coalition relationship with the Liberal Democrats, we’ve been very clear about this. We don’t support independence. We don’t support a referendum on independence. We support more powers for the Scottish parliament.”

Unionists have been using arguments federalists have traditionally brandished in Quebec, especially as Britain’s equivalent of finance minister is about to take 10 Downing Street. Brown stressed independence would cost every Scottish taxpayer an extra $11,000 each year. Independence or not, Scottish politicians are certainly looking for a bigger piece of the North Sea pie. Oil revenues from the region, 90 per cent of which move through Scotland, are expected to top some $18 billion this year. Not bad for start-up money for some nationalists.

Like Quebec nationalists, the SNP wants Scotland to have “a voice on the world stage and a say in international bodies like the UN and the EU” and the “freedom to decide what kind of society we want to live in - in other words, normality.” But political scientists draw a clear distinction between Quebec and Scottish nationalists. “A lot of the English simply don’t have much connection with Scotland - it’s that place up north that doesn’t impinge on their lives,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. ”Scotland is on the periphery, while Quebec sits in the heart of Canada. And Scotland has only one-10th of the U.K.’s population, while Quebec has a full quarter of yours."

Like the PQ, the SNP had promised a quick referendum, by 2010, eyeing the success of Ireland, one of the most dynamic areas of the new EU, which it would have no trouble joining. The SNP promised to publish plans for a referendum on independence within 100 days of coming to power. But more immediate issues have given nationalists their greatest success in over half a century, especially dissent over the unpopular Iraq war, where a number of Scottish troops have been shipped.

But the dream of independence is not one a famous movie actor would easily have you forget. Actor Sean Connery, the Scottish National Party’s leading celebrity, claimed “there will never be a better opportunity than now,” to move toward independence, in his distinctly Scottish accent. Perhaps the dream of Scottish independence is still, after all, at best a Hollywood script.

Geography perhaps describes it best. There’s so little that separates them, and yet what does is enough to at times appear to be a deep canyon indeed. One minute they are planning undersea tunnels to link the two continents under the strait that separates them. The next they are sparring over small islets in the waters above, or enclaves that one of them considers historic injustice.

Spain and Morocco are at it again this month after a rare visit by Spain’s king and queen to a Spanish enclave in North Africa sparked a diplomatic spat between the two countries. Thousands waving Spain’s flag welcomed King Juan Carlos’ during his two-day visit to Ceuta and Melilla, his first in his 32 years as head of state. The two cities on Morocco’s northern coast are remnants of Spain’s colonial empire but Rabat vehemently protested the visit by calling back its ambassador and stressing, as the royals were completing their visit, it would get the enclaves back.

Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi said will work “to recover the two occupied cities and the neighboring islands,” the official MAP news agency said. The kingdom has “inalienable, legitimate” rights to the land, the prime minister told the House of Representatives, and the royals’ visit was “inopportune.” But for the Spanish king, it was a matter of correcting what he said had been something missing from his many travels.

Moroccans meanwhile were protesting inside the enclave of Melilla, where they make up a sizeable share of the population, and in the Moroccan capital. Among those in Mellila was a Moroccan senator who was briefly held by Spanish police before he was released.

These aren’t the only territorial disputes between the two countries separated by the strait of Gibraltar, the rock itself being a matter of dispute between Spain and the U.K. Spain in Morocco clashed fire years ago on the small symbolic Parsley island, where Spanish marines forcibly removed Moroccan soldiers and their flag. In a secret sea operation considered the first military invasion of western European soil since the Second World War, the Moroccan soldiers had seized the island in 2002.

The two countries also disagree on Western Sahara, where Morocco is suspecting Spain of favouring the separatist Polisario Front. Oddly enough, the year following the clash over Parsley, the two countries agreed to build a 39-kilometre rail tunnel beneath the Mediterranean sea, linking Europe with Africa, a project which had been striking the imagination for two decades.

Again as Spain and Morocco clash over territory, Spain defends its sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla by noting that the cities have been Spanish for more than 400 years, longer than Morocco has been a sovereign state, the two countries have pushed further plans to create their own version of the Channel tunnel. Works could start as early as next year on the project which consists of a railway carrying freight, passengers and cars.

The tunnel would not only symbolically unite Europe and Africa, but would undo a geological split which millions of years ago separated the two continents. Swiss engineer Giovanni Lombardi, the man entrusted with the complex project, says nothing in the world is quite like it. “There are a lot of challenges. First of all the sea at this point is 300m (1,000ft) deep - about five to six times deeper than the Channel Tunnel," he told the BBC. “Then there is the geological conditions. There are quite a lot of tectonic movements between the African and the European plates. So there would be quite a lot of movements in the earth, of stresses and so on.”

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero visited Morocco earlier this year and said that Spain was fully committed to the project. “It will change the face of Europe and Africa. With support from members of the European Union, we can build this historic connection between the two continents,” he said. His visit last year was the first by a Spanish head of government since 1981. But the more recent visits have served as a reminder of the differences that persist.

Iraq’s Kurdish North is what U.S. military planners wanted the rest of the country to look like, relatively peaceful and untarnished by the car bombs and bloodshed of the capital, or the Sunni triangle. But what is seen as the only part of the country that actually works to most of the world is in Turkey’s eyes the home base of some 3,000 rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who use northern Iraq to prepare deadly attacks.

On Oct. 17 Turkey’s legislators gave the military authorization to intervene in Iraq to bring to a halt a series of attacks targeting soldiers in Turkey. Concerned allies, as well as the Iraqi government have urged Turkey not to invade, but pressure is increasing on Ankara to crack down on the renewed Kurdish offensives since Oct. 21 when 12 Turkish soldiers died during a PKK attack, bringing to about twice as many the number of soldiers who have died in clashes with the rebels in the last weeks. The group ended in 2004 a ceasefire which had been holding since leader Abdullah Ocalan was arrested in 1999.

In the last weeks Turkish troops have been massing against the Iraqi border, occasionally shelling areas of northern Iraq but still holding back from a major incursion to give diplomacy a chance through talks with Iraqi officials already overwhelmed by the security situation in other parts of their country. On Wednesday an Iraqi official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said a Kurdish village in mountainous country near Shiranish Islam, 25 km northeast of the northern town of Dahuk, had been heavily bombed at midday but gave no details of damage.

Turkey’s semi-official news agency said the country’s military had been busy targeting the border area with Iraq and routes often used by the PKK to enter Turkey, but Turkish security sources also said earlier that Turkish warplanes had flown a series of sorties 20 km into Iraq in previous days, while some 300 troops would have advanced about 10 km into northern Iraq, in what could be the first salvo of a much larger ground war. Causing great concern amid the allied U.S. command trying to contain the violence in Iraq, a Turkish military official said further “hot pursuit raids” could be expected if problems with the separatist Kurdish guerilla persisted, as they stepped up attacks on Turkish soldiers this year.

Ankara is pressuring Baghdad to honour promises to crack down on the rebels. Getting perhaps ahead of himself, a Turkish official quoted Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying Iraq might hand over PKK militants to Turkey, but Talabani denied this. “We have said many times that the PKK leadership does not exist in Kurdish cities but are living with thousands of their fighters in the Qandil mountains, so it is not possible for us to arrest and hand them over to Turkey,” he said in a statement.

Turkish officials were describing a visit by an Iraqi delegation to Ankara this week as a “final chance” for diplomacy, perhaps before a massive influx of Turkish forces into Northern Iraq. They made it clear their patience was reaching its limits and gave their guests a list of Kurdish rebels, demanding their extradition. Previously Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he would work to limit the PKK’s activities, adding that the group’s offices in Iraq would be closed. But Ankara is having a hard time believing that a country which still cannot control its rampant insurgency will be able to act sufficiently in Kurdish areas.

Baghdad’s clout in the North, a semi-autonomous area, is particularly weak. The real authority in the region, Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, infuriated Turkey by refusing to act directly against the PKK, saying his peshmerga fighters would resist any Turkish incursion. He did however urge the rebels to abandon their campaign of violence. “We do not accept in any way... the use of Iraqi territories, including the territories of the Kurdistan region, as a base to threaten the security of neighbouring countries,” Barzani said.

Concerned NATO allies meanwhile say they realize the tough situation the Turkish government is facing. “If I look at the Turkish government as it has acted up till now I think the Turkish government is showing restraint — remarkable restraint under present circumstances,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters at a meeting of the alliance’s defence ministers.

The U.S. said it was taking the situation “extremely seriously.” “Iraq should not be a place where terrorism can hurt Turkey,” said Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice. “We have a list of things that we believe, if they are undertaken, will help to deal with this situation,” she added, citing Iraq’s pledge to close PKK offices there. The U.S. president made it clear he thought a move into Iraq "wasn't in Turkey's best interests.” Ankara has served notice little the U.S. can say will stop it from acting if it must.

But there is a feeling in Turkey that the U.S. presence in Iraq, which allowed the Kurds to develop their autonomy, has emboldened the PKK. Washington’s reluctance to send its own troops to the area to tackle the rebel problem has done nothing to smoothen relations already chilled by the passing of a bill by the U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee stating that “the Armenian genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman empire from 1915 to 1923.”

Turkey is a key ally in a region where America has too few. Three-quarters of the air cargo heading into Iraq passes through a Turkish air base and U.S. planes fly freely through Turkish air space en route to Iraq and Afghanistan while the U.S. navy relies on Turkish ports. So nobody, least of all the U.S., is taking Turkey’s threat to launch a full-scale invasion lightly as the country with NATO’s second biggest army has deployed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, heavy artillery, F-16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships, along the mountainous border with Iraq in preparation for a possible large-scale strike.

Turkey was in the mean time looking to squeeze any groups aiding the PKK, which Ankara blames for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. Northern Iraq, where the U.S. is noticeably absent, depends heavily on Turkey for power, water and food supplies. Turkey could eventually launch a full-scale attack, but as it own prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself acknowledged in a recent TV interview: “We staged 24 such operations in the past and can we say we achieved anything? Not really.” 

Comme tout débat sur l'immigration, qui peut parfois devenir houleux en Europe comme au Québec, où il fait l'objet d'une analyse ambulante prenant la forme de la commission sur les accommodements raisonnables, celui qui s'empare de Bruxelles, en quête de main d'oeuvre qualifiée, ne manque pas de provoquer de vives réactions de toutes parts.

Les réalités démographiques et les déséquilibres au niveau de l'offre et de la demande d'emploi sont à l'origine de la poussée communautaire en faveur d'une immigration et d'une "main-d’oeuvre très qualifiée" selon la Commission européenne, qui présentait récemment son projet de "carte bleue", inspirée du modèle américain.

Car alors que le monde ne manque pas de personnes cherchant à immigrer vers des pays occidentaux, les qualifications de ceux qui arrivent en Europe sont différentes de celles des personnes qui débarquent en Amérique du nord ou en Australie. Selon Bruxelles, siège de la Commission, la moitié des immigrés d’Afrique du Nord qui détiennent un diplôme universitaire résident au Canada et aux É-Us, alors que l’U.E. accueille 85% de ceux qui n’ont pas fait d’études supérieures.

Pour remédier à ce déséquilibre apparent, Bruxelles prévoit un projet de "carte bleue" cherchant à attirer vers le vieux continent ces hordes parfois si déterminées à aller plus loin pour dénicher un emploi. Ce projet, qui doit être adopté à l’unanimité par les 27 pays membres de l’UE, permettrait à un immigrant d’avoir un permis de travail de deux ans renouvelable, et il pourrait faire venir sa famille plus rapidement. Il aurait aussi les mêmes droits que les citoyens de l’UE, au niveau de la sécurité sociale ou des conditions de travail.

Le projet cherche à favoriser l’accueil en Europe d’ingénieurs, d’informaticiens, de médecins... et autres jouissant d’une haute qualification professionnelle. Pour obtenir ce laisser-passer accélérée dans un état membre de l’UE, les conditions seront plutôt strictes: un diplôme reconnu, au moins trois ans d’expérience professionnelle et une offre d’emploi qui n’a pu être pourvue par un travailleur européen. Puis la Commission propose que le salaire soit supérieur à trois fois celui du salaire minimum du pays où il travaillera.

Mais cette solution visant à cibler des carences de main-d'oeuvre dont les projections sont de 20 millions d’immigrés au cours des vingt prochaines années, est bien loin de faire, comme lors de la plupart des discussions en Europe, l'unanimité. Un des commissaires, notamment le Belge Louis Michel, en charge du Développement, craint que cette procédure ne parvienne à siphonner les élites des pays du tiers-monde. Pour d'autres une telle carte aurait pour effet d’engendrer l’exclusion des personnes non qualifiées du droit à l’immigration légale.

La France, dont la stratégie n'est pas sans rappeler celle proposée à Bruxelles, et dont les représentants doivent assurer la présidence tournante de l’UE au cours du second semestre 2008, est prête à s’employer à convaincre ses partenaires de son bien fondé. “Nous sommes favorables au concept d’immigration choisie et, au niveau national, le Parlement a déjà adopté en juin 2006 une carte similaire, baptisée compétences et talents”, selon un diplomate.

Dans l'Hexagone le moment n'était pas mal choisi de parler d'immigration puisque le Parlement français adoptait en même temps un autre projet de loi que tenait à coeur le président: celui qui prévoyait, entre autres, le recours aux tests ADN dans le cadre du regroupement familial - une mesure contestée par l’opposition. Mais outre-Rhin, la proposition de carte bleue est moins bien reçue puisqu'on préfère y privilégier le réservoir national de l’emploi. Puis certains pays comme l'Autriche ont une politique migratoire plutôt restrictive, et certains n'ont pas tardé à faire connaitre leur désaccord: “Nous n’avons pas besoin de cette carte bleue. Je ne veux pas que notre politique du marché du travail soit sapée par des réglementations euro- péennes”, a déclaré le chancelier autrichien Alfred Gusenbauer.

Ceci dit ces immigrés très qualifiés ne retrouvent pas toujours au Canada la carrière rêvée qu'ils espéraient. La Nouvelle-Ecosse tente en effet de réparer les dommages d'un programme de candidat-investisseur où plusieurs n’avaient pas reçu les services, ou emplois, qu’on leur avait promis, souvent à fort prix

News Britain was looking to claim sovereignty over a large area of the remote seabed off Antarctica this month was a reminder that while a number of countries are positioning themselves to claim resource-rich areas of the Arctic ahead of a claims application deadline, a similar rush is under way at the opposite end of the Earth involving even more countries.

The claim for an area around British Antarctica is one of a number being prepared by the Foreign Office which seeks to extend its territory by thousands of square miles, and Britain is but one of more than half a dozen countries making claims in what is considered one of the last big carve-ups of maritime territory in history. The rush is being made ahead of a May 13, 2009, deadline for countries which include Australia, Argentina, Chile, France, Norway and New Zealand to stake their claims.

Five countries are similarly engaged in furious charting of the North Pole, ahead of what for Canada is a 2013 deadline to lay claims. Russia, the U.S., Denmark and Norway are also looking for a piece of the Arctic pie that is becoming more and more interesting and accessible with global warming and is in some cases leading to plans of a militarization of the area. As in the North, mineral are also of great interest in the South, though even if granted what it is seeking, Britain would not be allowed to contravene the treaty that prohibits oil and gas tapping under the seabed.

The rush for the deadline may however not be giving the full picture since countries not necessarily taking part in the claims process, such as the U.S., nevertheless recognize the area as being of significant interest to their foreign policy. “The United States, along with Russia and others active in Antarctica, reject claims and assert the right of access to all areas of Antarctica for peaceful purposes. At the same time, the United States has a solid basis of claim in Antarctica, resulting from its activities there prior to 1959,” stated a 1996 National Security Council memorandum pleading for more funding to preserve the U.S. Antarctic Program, a program of scientific research in the South Pole.

As in the North where Canada’s claims to the Northwest Passage aren’t recognized by a number of other countries, especially the U.S., the claims process in the South has a potential for territorial dispute. The claims of Argentina, Chile and the U.K. overlap and Australia’s claims are not supported by most of the other Antarctic Treaty countries, to name but a few examples of disagreement. The reasons for the claims vary, from cases of geographical proximity (Australia and New Zealand) and geographical extension of the countries (Argentina and Chile) to having had a significant role in Antarctic exploration (Australia, France, New Zealand, Norway, United Kingdom).

But countries may yet, as Canada and Denmark have shown in the North, be able to avoid an overt clash on the claims issue, if past bilateral disputes are any indication. The regular meetings of the Antarctica Treaty Parties, which have grown to 46 from the original 12 and include all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as Canada, Japan, India and Brazil, have after all provided a forum for peaceful cooperation even when bilateral relations were strained or hostile. For example, Argentina and the U.K. continued to interact peacefully within this forum during the Falklands War and the United States and Soviet Union were able to cooperate on Antarctic matters even when relations were at their worst.

In some cases one wonders what the rush is all about as the claims seem more symbolic than anything else. “It would be a claim in name only, we wouldn’t act because doing any mineral exploitation contravenes the treaty,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman told the BBC. But the move does signal Britain’s willingness to join the current rush by countries to try to secure their potential oil and gas rights to seabeds should circumstances change, and Russia’s claims over parts of the Arctic over the summer have in this respect struck a chord at the other end of the planet. “It is essentially to safeguard for the future and if (the treaty) is abolished in the future we will have safeguarded our claim to that area," the FO spokeswoman said, while adding that any change to the ban on mineral exploitation in the Antarctic is “highly improbable.”

Environmentalists called the move “colossally irresponsible” and accused Britain of putting more effort into securing future oil rights than battling climate change. Climate change of course, is what is fueling renewed interests on both poles.

Scholars and United Nations officials assembled at a New York conference this week sounded quite optimistic that any future genocide could be averted as it became more and more acceptable to intervene on behalf of vulnerable populations, even internally.

But thousands of kilometers away, these words could have seemed almost cruel to the inhabitants of the Sudanese village of Muhajiriya, in Darfur, the latest scene of mass-bombing in the conflict, which African Union troops blamed on government planes. The evidence wasn’t difficult to gather according to General Martin Luther Agwai in an interview with the BBC. “The town was bombed,” he said, “and only the Sudanese government forces have aircraft”.

Perhaps more surprisingly the town is controlled by a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army run by the only rebel leader to back the failed Darfur peace agreement in Abuja last year. Minni Minnawi is now part of the government as special assistant to the president. The attack,which killed 45 people, will not encourage other rebel groups to sign on, most preferring to wait for the deployment of a promised U.N. peacekeeping force. Khartoum's red tape has largely been blamed for postponing their arrival.

Better-equipped blue-helmets would also be welcome by the wary A.U. peacekeepers, ten of whom were killed a few weeks ago in an attack on their base in Haskanita in a raid by armed men, presumed at the time to be rebels. But if a solution is to end the four-year conflict which killed over 200,000 people, it will have to be political, something not likely to happen if most rebel factions refuse to attend peace talks due to start in Libya on 27 October.

This week Britain warned the rebel groups that they could be excluded from the peace process if they didn’t attend the talks. But the rebels say Darfur needs the international community to live up to its responsibilities to stop the killing.

Back in New York, the touchy issue of internal interventions is becoming less and less taboo, and tipping scales once in favour of the sacrosanct notion of national sovereignty. The idea that internal affairs were outside the scope of international involvement had been a “crucial inhibitor to effective responses over a generation,” Gareth Evans, president of the International Crisis Group, told the U.N. conference.

This started to change in Darfur where some 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes since 2003, sometimes to neighboring countries such as Chad, effectively bringing the conflict beyond borders. “There now really is a feeling that the international community as a whole has the responsibility to help states meet their responsibility, and that’s a very big change historically,” said Edward Luck, a U.S. academic who has been named as the U.N. Secretary General’s adviser on the responsibility to protect.

Ban Ki-moon, who was in Sudan just weeks ago to bolster the peace talks, has steadily increased the mandate of his Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities and all the while the U.N. is preparing to establish a Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect. Would U.N. forces be up to the challenge to serve and protect in the future?

Not if one has been closely following the landmark genocide trial of Desire Munyaneza in Montreal. Last week after months of hearing from victims of the genocide, police and other witnesses, Quebec Superior Court heard retired General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the ill-equipped United Nations peacekeeping force at the time, say that he was ill-equipped to prevent the attack of Hutus on Tutsis in 1994 because his poorly-trained troops were from poor countries and sometimes more concerned about their next meal than preventing slaughter.

This week the Crown wrapped up its evidence in the first trial under Canada’s war crimes and crimes against humanity act, passed in 2000, with a witness explaining why Rwandans massacred hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens, some 800,000 is all in a 100-day bloodbath. “Rwandans weren’t robots, they didn’t just pick up their machetes and head out of the house,” said Alison Des Forges, an expert on Rwanda with Human Rights Watch. “This was a process of continuous mobilization and a system of reward and punishment.” “There was a general pattern of rewarding those who killed and removing and punishing those who didn’t,” she added.

But all the goodwill in the world won’t mean an overnight change to how the international community deals which such crises, U.N. undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations Jean-Marie Guehenno said, sounding a note of caution. “We’ve been haunted in the last 15 years by what happened in Yugoslavia and what happened in Rwanda. And none of us can avoid the question, would that happen again?” he said. “And I think we have to be honest. There has been some progress in the international discussion. But does that mean that it will be fundamentally different tomorrow? Not necessarily.”

Especially when the failure to intervene is tied to the words used to describe the nature of the conflict. The U.S. and other countries have openly described the conflict in Darfur as “genocide,” but the use of the term is enough to cause diplomatic tensions even decades after the events it relates to, causing some to hesitate.

Only this week, nearly a century after the tragedy they are describing, did U.S. lawmakers defy strident warnings by their president and Turkey and voted to label the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre of Armenians as “genocide.” The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted for the non-binding resolution 27 votes to 21 on Wednesday to cheers and applause from emotional Armenians, including elderly wheelchair-bound survivors.

This prompted a blunt reaction from President George W. Bush, warning that it could trigger Turkish reprisals and undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. The vote “may do grave harm to U.S.-Turkish relations and to U.S. interests in Europe and the Middle East,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. “Nor will it improve Turkish-Armenian relations or advance reconciliation among Turks and Armenians over the terrible events of 1915,” he said.

The timing was particularly delicate as Turkey was giving increasingly strong signs of wanting to intervene in northern Iraq to stop incursions by Kurdish rebels sheltered there who recently killed 10 Turkish troops over the border. Turkey is a key NATO ally whose territory is a crucial transit point for U.S. supplies bound for Iraq and Afghanistan and its ambassador to Washington described the vote as “very disappointing,” adding that “those who said it won’t do any harm, we will have to wait and see.” He was promptly recalled after the Turkish leadership strongly denounced the vote.

Turkey denies Armenian assertions that 1.5 million of their kinsmen were killed from 1915 to 1923 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and murder, arguing that 250,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia during the war. As the wrangling continues on a still delicate 92-year-old topic, there is no denying the very word “genocide” is enough to foster much more debate over the next years.

Une chose commençait à devenir plutôt évidente après le troisième scrutin national en autant d'années en Ukraine: seul l'unité du camp pro-occidental ou "orange" pouvait empêcher l'ancienne république du bloc de l'Est de tomber dans les mains des communistes à nouveau.

Les deux chefs du camp orange, architectes de la révolution inachevée, le président Viktor Iouchtchenko et  Ioulia Timochenko, devaient de toute évidence se réconcilier et enterrer la hache de guerre s'ils espéraient former une coalition qui pourrait tenir face au Premier ministre pro-russe Viktor Ianoukovitch, qui avec 34,24% des voix finissait premier dans les intentions de vote.

Le bloc Timochenko et le parti présidentiel Notre Ukraine- Autodéfense populaire ont obtenu 45,03% des voix. En comptant sur l'appui d'autres groupes, le bloc pro-russe se rapprochait nettement du groupe occidental, mais sans le dépasser. Puis alors que ce dernier semblait assuré de former une majorité, un nouvel élément et venu compliquer le calcul post-électoral. Le président ukrainien a soudainement demandé aux deux formations-clé du bloc orange de lancer les pourparlers avec le Parti des régions, la formation de son rival Ianoukovitch avec lequel il cohabite depuis août 2006.

La raison de son changement d'orientation semblait à première vue plutôt noble, soit former une "grande coalition" pour réunir les camps polarisés, soit les régions occidentales, nationalistes, et orientales, russophones. "Nous proposons une large coalition pour stabiliser la situation et éviter que le pays ne se divise en deux", a déclaré Iouchtchenko.

Les véritables enjeux étaient peut-être à la fois internes et transfrontaliers. A nouveau l'élection a eu lieu à l'ombre du puissant voisin russe, dont le géant énergétique Gazprom a menacé de réduire ses livraisons de gaz naturel à l'Ukraine si Kiev n'honorait pas avant fin octobre une dette de 1,3 milliard de dollars.

La réaction de la Commission européenne n'a pas tardé, appelant à la recherche d'"un règlement rapide" à la nouvelle crise gazière. Les intérêts gaziers vont au-delà du bloc Est en fait puique quelque 80% du gaz russe exporté en direction de l'Union européenne transite par l'Ukraine. Un conflit gazier russo-ukrainien en janvier 2006 avait déjà perturbé l'approvisionnement de plusieurs pays de l'UE.

La menace, d'autant plus prise au sérieux que Moscou a déjà serré la vis à son voisin géorgien dans le passé (notamment pour ses propres convictions occidentales), a aussitôt été interprétée à titre d'"avertissement envers Timochenko", qui peut très bien remplacer Ianoukovitch au poste de Premier ministre.

Un tel dénouement aurait l'effet d'inverser, en fait, le classement de la troika politique ukrainienne, laissant à la présidence celui qui n'a obtenu que 13.5% des voix, et évinçant celui qui aura dominé les sondages. De quoi faire sursauter Moscou, sans parler de l'opposition russophone. Peu surprenant que le dirigeant communiste Petro Simonenko estime que ces élections étaient les "plus sales de l'histoire" et exige que l'on recompte les voix.

Alors que Moscou ne cache pas sa préférence envers le Premier ministre, qui devait y être accueilli cette semaine, nul ne doute non plus son rejet des politiques de Timochenko, qui avait entre autre fait campagne en promettant d'annuler le contrat actuel avec Gazprom. Aussi, en tendant une main vers son rival, le président a-t-il tenté de garder à l'oeil celle dont les progrès électoraux ont été les plus importants ces dernières années.

Il faut dire que Timochenko peut, des trois candidats principaux, sans doute le mieux dialoguer avec les deux antipodes électoraux et idéologiques, ayant enregistré des gains des deux côtés de la Dniepr. Après quelques moments d'hésitation, Timo- chenko a accepté d'élargir les pourparlers qui doivent former le prochain gouvenement au camp Ianoukovitch en leur proposant une représentation dans chaque ministère ainsi que le poste de vice-premier ministre.

"A notre façon, Ianoukovitch et son parti doivent trouver la force de passer dans le camp de l'opposition sans menacer l'image et la stabilité du pays", a lancé Timochenko. Peut-être a-t-on trouvé le compromis qui éviterait de forcer un nouveau scrutin l'an prochain.  

They rose to power at the turn of the millennia and intend to stay there in some form or another well into a second decade. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter as much if these autocrats didn’t head a country with nuclear weapons. Over the next months Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Pakistan’s General Pervez Musharraf, one a former spy who’s crackdown on civil liberties and free expression has often been a reminder of the old ways behind the Iron curtain and the other who rose to power following a 1999 coup, know they have to let go some of the powers they have accumulated in time, but only some.

And even then they are doing what they can to ensure that whatever power they lose, remains in the hands of loyal friends. The only risks they run are if these loyalties are at one stage rather unexpectedly violated, as they have often been in their country’s history.

Still this would seem unlikely for Putin, whose second presidential term runs out next March and is prevented from running right away by Russia’s constitution. At least until he’s taken a break from the Kremlin. In the mean time he has raised the possibility of becoming a future prime minister, one no doubt with a rather hands-on approach, by agreeing to enter the December parliamentary polls.

The Constitution does enable him to return (if elected) to the presidency following someone else’s mandate, say that of a rather older fiercely loyal technocrat. Putin’s appointment of Viktor Zubkov as prime minister, his deputy from his days as mayor of St Petersburg, no doubt intended to place someone who would keep the seat warm for the 54-year-old whose popularity ratings consistently stay above 70 per cent. Of course nothing guarantees such loyalty, and a presidential term can prove to be a long stretch of time.

Similarly, as Musharraf waits for Pakistan’s Supreme Court to rule whether his recent re-election was legitimate, he may be concerned that the loyalist he unofficially designated to succeed him at the head of the military, after promoting the head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), General Ashfaq Kayani, as deputy as army chief, could one day topple him in what has become a common way to seize power in the country: through a coup.

Again the Constitution, which normally forbids the election of a general as president, has forced the strongman to skip around the law, hence upsetting the legions of lawyers who have taken to the streets, often burning his effigy. Musharraf would not be able to hold both jobs as he is doing now without a constitutional amendment passed in 2003 with the help of an alliance of religious parties, which has since turned against him for backing the war on terror.

Musharraf then thought he could dispense of the judiciary altogether by sacking its chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, but this failed after triggering massive protests across the country. As a last resort, he turned to an old foe, exiled party leader Benazir Bhutto, looking to forgive the rather doubtful corruption charges laid against her to win her support for a constitutional amendment that would enable him to keep both jobs.

But it's all in the court’s corner now. Musharraf promised to step down from his post as general only if he won the election, which he did hands down, while the Supreme Court will only decide now that the ballots have been cast whether his candidacy was indeed legitimate.

This semblance of democratic process is taking place as the country seems to be further embroiled in its fight against Islamic extremists in the border areas with Afghanistan. While Musharraf awaited the high court’s verdict and the military faced a possible change of command, over 200 people on both sides were killed in fierce battles between militants and soldiers in a suspected al-Qaida stronghold of the northwest, Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.

Perhaps there is merit in that the election wasn’t called off for reasons of national security, but Musharraf’s reluctance to run the risk of competing in elections as a civilian has turned the situation into a catch-22 of the oddest nature. There’s a reason why he refused this: if he lost he could always declare martial law and keep power the way he earned it in the first place, a risk that remains very real.

Avec un futur premier ministre qui estime que les Belges ont peu en commun sinon «le roi, l’équipe de football et quelques bières » et qui a déjà désigné le pays à titre d’«accident de l’histoire », quel avenir pour ce petit pays de dix millions d’habitants ?

C’est à se le demander depuis les législatives du 10 juin qui ont de toute évidence tellement inspiré électeurs comme élus que ces derniers n’ont pas encore daigné se pointer le bout du nez. Pire encore, alors que la Belgique est privée de gouvernement depuis 100 jours, il y a peu de personnes que ceci semble gêner.

Pourtant des analystes surveillent avec attention cette «crise institutionnelle» de manière même à parler d’y voir les prémices d’une dislocation «de praline», termes de l’Economist qui compare la situation actuelle à celle de la dislocation « de velours » qui a mis un terme à la Tchécoslovaquie.

En est-on réellement là ? Certes les «solitudes», pour employer un terme de chez nous, se parlent peu. Le vote de juin a confirmé cette tendance de voter sur une base linguistique. Si bien que dans certains sondages, les Belges sont majoritaires à penser que la séparation est devenue probable tout en disant ne pas la souhaiter: «Quand je vais en Flandre, je me sens beaucoup plus étranger que quand je me promène à Lille ou à Metz... », confiait au Figaro Manuel, Wallon de 39 ans, cuisinier à Namur. Sentimentalement attaché à la monarchie, Manuel est pourtant très pessimiste quant à l’avenir de son pays : «Honnêtement, je pense que la Belgique n’existera plus dans vingt ans. S’il n’y avait pas eu Bruxelles, qui rend tout partage très difficile, le divorce aurait déjà été consommé ! »

Pourtant Bruxelles se veut l’exemple à suivre: majoritairement francophone, elle constitue à la fois le siège de Flandre, du pays et de l’Union européenne; en fait la capitale est la seule région véritablement bilingue. Pour certains la problématique réside d’ailleurs là, ou du moins dans la petite région de Rhode-Saint-Genèse à une quizaine de kilomètres au sud.

Cette autre région majoritairement francophone mais partie de la Flandre est une de six communes « à facilités » où les citoyens ont le droit d’utiliser le français dans leurs courriers administratifs. Or le désir de la part de certains hommes politiques flammands de réduire ces «facilités », estimant que toute personne installée en Flandre devrait faire l’effort d’apprendre le néerlandais, ont soulevé un tollé important au sein de la communauté francophone.

Ce genre de tension est au cœur même de la problématique de gouvernance actuelle et l'échec dans les tentatives de créer une coalition. Bien que des fois elle puisse prendre une apparence plutôt hilarante. Lorsqu’en décembre dernier une émission de télévision francophone a été interrompue par un canular annonçant que le parlement flammand avait déclaré l’indépendance, que le roi avait fui et le pays s’était disloqué, plusieurs y ont cru!

Plus drôle encore, le pays de Tintin et du chocolat constituait aux yeux du premier ministre Harper, il n’y a pourtant pas si longtemps, un exemple de «fédéralisme d’ouverture» à suivre. Il avait peut-être raison de s'y retrouver un peu: autre pays avec une dualité linguistique et une présence séparatiste, la Belgique doit aussi composer avec un problème de redistribution des richesses qui fait des malheureux dans la partie prospère, soit le nord flammand. Encore une fois les francophones se retrouvaient dans le camp des moins bien nantis.

Mais à l’époque où Harper chantait les louanges du fédéralisme flexible à la belge, déjà le bras droit du premier ministre belge, Johan Vande Lanotte, trouvait plutôt curieux tant d’éloges, alors qu’il estimait que les chances de dislocation du pays étaient plus probables que jamais.

Trois ans plus tard y est-on ? Le gouvernement a-t-il pris des vacances permanentes à Bruxelles ? Pourtant les Belges eux-mêmes hésitent de penser que la problématique actuelle dépasse l’arène politique. On ne sait plus trop si on inventerait la Belgique si elle n’existait pas, mais tant qu’on y est, les plus sérieux penseront peut-être à préserver ce pays envahi par deux fois mais à présent au cœur de l’institution politique la plus importante au monde.

On ne s'y est, en fin de compte, pas si mal débrouillé depuis 1830. Et puis les diables rouges finiront bien par gagner quelquechose.

History has a way of repeating itself in Burma, incidents that usually end in blood. For days the crimson colours running through the cities of the land home to one of the world's most criticized regimes were the robes of protesting monks who once more joined students demonstrating against the military junta.

On Wednesday however, after days of warnings by the military, soldiers fired on protesters which they say had illegally assembled. Three people were reportedly killed but others vowed to keep protesting against the violent military regime. The next day soldiers raided monasteries and another nine were killed in the streets.

The use of force ended weeks of military restraint as countries around the world, including leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York, warned the regime against using force. In front of the UN General Assembly US President George W. Bush said Americans were “outraged” by the military junta’s “19 year reign of fear” and added that the US would tighten economic sanctions on leaders of Burma’s military junta and its financial backers.

Nations lead by China however vetoed a formal condemnation of the country.The assembly urged Burma to use utmost restraint and allow in a special envoy. Unfazed, Burma continued its crackdown, entering monasteries and arresting dozens of monks.

For weeks the country had been the scene of unprecedented protest as thousands of demontrators had gathered in the main city of Rangoon, joined by others in some 25 cities across Burma. As observers wondered whether they would witness the toppling of a regime or another crackdown, signs became threateningly clear as trucks carrying soldiers in riot gear positioned themselves across Rangoon and a curfew was ordered.

Previous protests triggered when fuel prices went up last month, and which were promptly quelled with the usual repression and arrests, started involving the highly respected Buddhist clergy when monks were threatened, beaten and arrested in the streets of Pakkoku.

It wasn't long before the crimson robes took to the streets in large numbers. Thousands soon staged days of protests throughout the country. The Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks branded Burma's military rulers "the enemy of the people" and pledged to continue their peaceful demonstrations until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land".

The events were nothing short of the most serious challenge to the military regime since the 1988 uprising which toppled the Ne Win government lead to martial law. These other bloody events, also triggered by protest of economic nature, resulted in the death of some 3,000 people, including students and monks.

Unfazed by the possibility of further violence, the monks have not only been denying soldiers or members of their family religious services, sometimes a key element of advancement, but issued a clear statement in favour of toppling the regime and made their way to the house of Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, where she has been under house arrest since 2003. More remarkably, the military allowed them to pass in the usually blockaded street on one occasion.

Witnesses said Suu Kyi walked out with two other women and cried as she watched the monks and prayed with them but did not speak. Suu Kyi, whose party won national elections in 1990 which were later annulled by the army, has spent 11 of the last 18 years in detention. In a move which had also previously been off-limits, the monks then converged on Burma's most revered temple, the Shwedagon Pagoda, watched by plain clothes security officials.

The remaining leaders of the demonstrations meanwhile have vowed to continue until the collapse of the military government and, clearly marrying the concept of democratic protest with religious ceremony, asked the Burmese people to pray in their doorways for 15 minutes at 8 pm this week.

Developments in Burma had "raised serious concerns in the international community and once again underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country", UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, now urged to return to Burma,  told the Security Council.

This week some of the protesters on the run from the secret police, including veterans of the "1988 generation," told the London Telegraph they had been secretly liaising with the Buddhist monks who took to the streets. They expressed their hopes that this time the country's generals might lose their nerve rather than respond with force.

Hundreds died in the crackdown of the 1988 uprising, but protesters said the country was in such dire state that many of its 53 million people felt they had little left to lose. "There was a time when Burma was known as Asia's rice bowl, yet today nearly a third of Burmese are malnourished or physically underdeveloped," protesters told the paper. "People might be encouraged to shed their fears if the monks take to the streets," protesters hoped."

The senior clergy close to the regime were reluctant to take part, but the younger monks are showing a keen interest." But ordinary Burmese still feared brutal punishment, and the prospect of another failed mass protest: "This time, people are watching cautiously. There's a lot of risk involved. There's fear: they're thinking, 'Will our sacrifices go to waste this time as well?'"

This seemed to be a concern for Soe Soe, in Mandalay, who posted the following on the BBC's web site: "We are very insecure because we don't know what the government is planning to do. There are some news in the government - controlled newspapers that the monks are trying to agitate the public. This can be a big excuse for them to start attacking the monks. I really want some changes in Burma but I am not sure where the change is going to lead us to. I hope there won't be any blood-bath this time like there was in 1988."

But Kyaw in Rangoon said it wasn't the time to let these unique events pass by: "If we are just bystanders, today's rare and momentous events might not lead to the fall of the regime." The military, which has ruled the country now more formally known as Myanmar in some form since 1962, faced a quandary, analysts say. "If they crack down seriously on the monks it means it would also seriously inflame the rest of the population," said Debbie Stothard, of Thailand-based democracy pressure group Altsean Burma. "So the military regime is really in a lose-lose situation."

In the end they chose to gamble upsetting the entire world, to keep their grips on their impoverished people.

On one of the last days of summer and with cooler climes on the horizon, it was doubly easy for snowbirds looking down a few months ahead to be enticed by the siren song of sandy beaches. That's the day, Sept. 20, when the Canadian dollar broke a 31-year-old mark and slipped past the greenback. The loony reached  $1.0001 cents US just before 11 a.m., something unseen for a generation, since Nov. 25, 1976.

The colourful currency that was the butt-end of many yankee jokes over the years was no longer a laughingstock, especially with the dip of the American dollar being responsible for its spectacular rise over the last years. The dollar closed the day slightly lower, at 99.87 cents US, but for many the outlook is for a loon that will gain in strength for some time ahead before it starts moving back down again.

Investor Frank Mersch, co-owner of hedge fund firm Front Street Capital, told the Financial Post he saw the dollar rising to US$1.05 in the following weeks, creating a reversal of fortune unseen since the 1970s. He says if the loon keeps rising, everything will depend how oil prices are faring. "Really the Canadian economy is still strong. We have a lot of engines here," he said.

But don't just credit the rise to a weak greenback falling against most world currencies, he insists. "As Canadians we don't recognize the fact that fiscally we're responsible. We're running budget surpluses. If you look at the deficit position in this country it's ten times better than the United States," he says. "Fundamentally this country is head and shoulders above the United States on an economic basis." Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets agreed something fundamental has happened: The dollar's strong gains prove "Canada snipped its ombilical cord with the U.S.," he said.

Think they're over-reacting? If so then it's in season like fall colours. Sherry Cooper, chief economist of BMO Financial Group, says  a common Canadian-American currency makes more sense now than ever. "Now that the Canadian dollar is near par, a buck for a buck makes sense to me," Cooper said, adding that politically doing so would be much more difficult.

Politically unfeasible perhaps, but a common currency would certainly reduce currency risks for companies that operate across the Canadian-American border, and some of them on this side of the border are paying dearly for the rising loon. From the tiny Laurentide town of St-Lin, forced to close its Entreprises Michel Corbeil school-bus assembly business, the town's only major industry, to nationwide cuts in the forestry, pulp and paper industry, due to a combination of high dollar and plummeting construction market south of the border, the might of the Canadian dollar has been anything but a blessing for a large segment of business, with over 90 per cent of Canada's exports going south of the border, where its goods are now more expensive.

For the first time in decades, Canada has to compete with the U.S. on a level field, something it hasn't done since a time when most U.S. goods were produced in the country and not overseas and outsourcing was yet to enter the vocabulary. With a multitude of choices now possible from around the world, especially China, it's no surprise the Asian giant has replaced Canada as the largest exporter to the U.S.

While taking the Canadian dollar's rise to parity as a sign of this country's fiscal strength, Jim Flaherty, the Minister of Finance, warned he remains worried about U.S. economic weakness -- a key factor in pushing the currency to a one-for-one basis with the U.S. greenback. He said continued weakness in the U.S. housing sector, as well as soft demand for cars, remains a "significant concern" for the Canadian economy, and he is watching the U.S. economy closely.

"Our forestry industry and many of our manufacturers supply the [housing] market in the United States, and [they are] going through a difficult time," a subdued Flaherty told reporters, adding most of the cars built in Canada are sold in the United States.

On the flip side, the combination of a U.S. in a housing slump and strong Canadian dollar has meant golden opportunities for snowbirds looking for their plot by the beach. "The Canadian dollar's strength seems to have really created a buying frenzy down here in Arizona," says Brian Culhane, a Scottsdale realtor who specializes in out-of-state and international buyers. "My team is actively working with around 45 to 50 Canadian clients right now. Since it is still a buyers market, we are finding deals for our clients sometimes as much as 20 per cent under asking price."

For all the excitement the soaring loonie, which gained 62 per cent in five years, is generating, it isn't expected to reach its historic record any time soon. So historic in fact, that the nation wasn't even born then. Canada's dollar peaked at $2.78 US. The date was July 11, 1864 and it appeared Union forces were losing the U.S. Civil War.

A fixed exchange rate kept the loonie relatively stable until it underwent a big shakeup in 1950 when they were abandoned. The government announced that the Canadian dollar would "float" according to the laws of supply and demand and the Canadian dollar quickly appreciated from its level at the time, rising five cents to roughly 95 cents US. It continued to rise less rapidly until the end of 1960, trading in a relatively narrow range between $1.02 US and $1.06 US. The peak for the Canadian dollar during this period was $1.0614 US, reached on August 20, 1957.

The government returned to a fixed rate system from 1962 to 1970. Canada went back to a floating rate in the 1970s, and it has stayed that way ever since. It remained close to the US dollar until April 25, 1974 when it reached a high of $1.0443 US against a weakening US currency.

But the nouveau dollar doesn't mean Canadians are close to being as rich as their southern neighbours. "We're miles away from them," TD bank chief economist Don Drummond tells the Globe & Mail. "A Canadian can go into a U.S. store and buy goods with the same power as an American, but the fact is their counterparts in the U.S. still earns about 20 per cent more." Not to mention pay less taxes.

In additions Canadian consumers aren't seeing much of a difference in domestic prices, which for similar items are usually still higher here than in the U.S. because retailers, who are used to higher profit margins in this smaller market, are slower to react. The loonie's rise has however boosted online sales as Canadians pursued their bargains hunt over the internet. But some economists wonder whether current levels aren't, for once, over-estimating the loonie's value.

Some say the loonie's fundamentals lie somewhere in the mid-90s range. But as long as the U.S. dollar falls like leaves in autumn, Canadians are likely to see their loon claim the skies.