The images are very hard to shake. Cars, scorched to a ghostly greywhite, jumbled on the road. People clutching one another with the news of yet another death.  That little koala, his paws badly burned, sucking water out of a bottle from the fireman’s hand. The photos of the victims in the paper – entire families of moms and dads and their young children, gone.

The risk of fire is something Australians, particularly those living in the “bush” of perfumed Eucalyptus trees in the drought-suffering south and east, is part of life. There are guidelines on building with fire-resistant materials, recommended vegetation for gardens, the options to buy fire hoses and pumps and to dig fire bunkers. People prune their trees and clear their land with the risk of fire in mind.  This video offers guidance, and was made just a couple of weeks before the latest deadly fires. There is a now-criticized fire policy giving people the option to leave, or to stay and defend their properties.

The State of Victoria was incredibly dry and temperatures reached 46 degrees on Saturday the 7th of February, the day of the fires. The winds were blowing the wrong way, and fanned the fires to incredible speeds. Different fires joined into one mammoth inferno. Many people just didn’t have time to save themselves.

At least one fire was set on purpose.  A 39-year old man has been charged with arson for starting a fire that  killed  at least 11 people. He chose not to appear in court today because a lot of people really do want to kill him. Vigilante groups are calling for him to “burn in hell” on a Facebook group, whose membership has grown by 100 people in the time it’s taken me to write this blog.

More than anything, people are pulling together to support one another. Australians have donated well over AUD 50 million to the Australian Red Cross. There are pledges to rebuild the communities. Even insurance companies are promising to work quickly on claims. There is government compensation.  The Prime Minister has called for a National Day of Mourning next Sunday, 22 February. People will gather at the Rod Laver Arena, where just a week before the fires, people  enjoyed the Australian Open, albeit one of the hottest ones on record.

Police continue to sift through the wreckage of towns like Marysville, a well-known weekend getaway with charming inns and restaurants, where the fire leveled almost every building. They have stopped updating the death toll. They say the remaining victims  are now extremely hard to identify, undistinguishable from the tonnes of ash where they lay. It will take many more days to confirm their names.

This is the kind of tragedy where everyone  in the Melbourne area, along with many Australians and people around the world,  will know someone who has died, or been injured, or lost a home, or had a near escape. The Arena will be full, and terribly sad next Sunday.

Giant snowflakes are floating down to Greenwich Street. J is in a taxi on the way to the airport for a Melbourne flight, and today marks the official end of our year of new country adventures.

We arrived in New York on 4 September.  The air was warm and clingy.  We went for a beer at a patio on the corner of Avenue A and E. 5th street, a couple of blocks from our East Village sublet. The waitress was super friendly. The beer was cold. Two small dogs on leashes scampered on the ground below us. The street was alive. We toasted our temporary home, so happy not only to be settled for a few months, but to be settled in New York.

During the time here we have gone to a wonderful wedding, walked up and down as many streets as our legs could carry us, felt the collective joy after the election of America’s new President, seen more art, theatre and music than one might see in a lifetime, eaten restaurant food right up to the last second,  and spent many a day with family and friends who have come for a visit.

Countless people have written about this amazing city. I won’t try to add much. But given my proclivity for “best” lists, I’ll just jot down a few highlights:

1. The Energy: you can walk on the streets of this city at any time of day or night, and feel real life around you everywhere. People dressed to the nines and to the grime, taxis, shops, restaurants of every kind, street vendors, galleries, schoolyards,  musicians, dogs, flyer-passers, deliverymen, movers, workmen, policemen, artists with their supplies, people carrying Christmas trees…The collective energy here makes you feel alive and wanting to be part of it all.
Favourite energetic place: The Shala where you can go for a break and be part of yourself. This yoga studio, with big windows and beautiful hardwood floors, has wonderful teachers – we particularly loved Jeremy, who has a magical way of making yoga and meditation (almost) easy.

2. The public spaces and architecture: From the brownstones to the cobblestones, the one-stories to the 100-stories, the baroque to the broke, the garish to the parish, art deco and art modern, the neoclassical and the Greek revival, late Modern to postmodern- New York has truly got it all.
Favourite - it’s not an original thought, but the Empire State Building is an architectural marvel, and you can rely on a sighting from almost anywhere in the city. You also have to love a building which lights up red for World AIDS Day, and from red and blue, to blue alone when Barack Obama was elected.

3. The restaurants: We ate at a lot of them. The ordinary, the vegetarian, the new vegetarian,  the diners, the Thai, the French, the Italian, the new American, the old American, the central American, the Korean, the Middle Eastern, the Japanese soba house, the Japanese American, the Greek, the Mexican, the Australian/New Zealand… and save for a couple, they were all good to great.
Favourite: Public – epitomizes the perfect New York restaurant experience: original delicious dishes, great wine list, unique modern decor, friendly, knowledgeable service, and of course, the indispensable tiny soaps in the bathroom you can load into your purse.   Close second: Union Square Cafe – and I’m not the only one. It is consistently voted a New York favourite. Close third – Mercadito Cantina on Avenue B. Delicious fresh Mexican salsas, guacamoles and tacos, bright cozy pine room and usually great service.

4. The music, and the music venues:  Any night of the week you can see great music – from bands you’ve never heard of to bands everyone has heard of. We saw Nick Cave and Bad Seeds (a wall of glorious sound), Shelby Lynne, The McGarrigles and family/friends including Lou Reed, Emmylou Harris, Rufus and Martha, Laurie Anderson and Teddy Thompson; the Great Lake Swimmers, Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens, Amy Ray (at her indie best), an epic Damnation of Faust at the Met, gentle strummer Neil Halstead and guitar hero Marnie Stern, to name a few. Sure, you can go to Madison Square Garden and pay $100 plus for tickets, or, you can pay $25 and see Robert Forster at the 100-seat Joe’ Pub. Favourite performances: Martha Wainwright singing Piaf already praised on this blog. Shelby Lynne singing Dusty Springfield and her own righteous roadhouse at the Hiro Ballroom, and the McGarrigle Christmas Hour, small Knitting Factory show (i have to admit I’m in love with our photos from that show). Favourite Venues: There are many great venues here, and we have by no means been to all – but Joe’s Pub and the Hiro Ballroom would be right up there. I love a venue so small and intimate that the artists make eye contact with you.

5. The art: I know, I know, I am not naming things that are surprising. And I know almost nothing about art, except what I like. And I loved Catherine Opie at the the Guggenheim, and Alexander Calder’s show at the Whitney made me smile for hours.

There is so much more to love – the Theatre (and again, we were lucky to see many fantastic shows, among them The Seagull, August: Osage County and Fifty Words); the neighbourhoods all so unique in their character and styles – we lived in both the East and West Village, traveled out to Coney Island, spent time in midtown, the Lower East Side, Tribeca, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Harlem, Park Slope…

6. Some completely random things:
a) Celebrity sightings: I don’t think we hit any heights – but we did dine beside Hulk Hogan at the Stanton Social. Ya know, the guy still looks great if you like that Hulk look. Also – Katie Holmes (sans Suri), Famke Janssen (that girl from X men or something), and Matthew Broderick (where was Sarah Jessica?) I was hoping for Kate Winslet, who apparently lives in our neighbourhood, but non.

b) “You’re welcome“  – it’s the normal thing to say after someone says “Thank you” – but I realise I don’t say it often enough. New Yorkers always do. It sounds sincere and sweetly old-fashioned.

c) Kooky dogs – I have a love-hate relationship. Like, I used to love French bulldogs, but once you’ve seen 10 in one day, they just start to look ugly. And I still love dachsunds, even after seeing 20 in one day. And I just can’t love chihuahuas, ever. Sorry little amigos.

d) Be whoever you want to be. Truly, whoever.

Last night as we walked, hand in hand, from the East Village towards the West, we could see the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building lit bright white through the bare tree branches. Thompkins Square Park, absolutely throbbing with life when we first arrived, was almost completely quiet. The chess players had packed up, the dog park was empty, the bad saxophone player was gone, the homeless guys had (hopefully) found somewhere warmer to sleep.

And on a bench a man and a woman sat beside one another. He played guitar. She sang along beautifully,  her clear voice filling the air. They were both  free to make music, as loudly and as joyfully as they wanted to.

What do you get when you mix a 70s Canadian iconic folk duo, their extended family, the Godfather of Punk, an avant-garde performance artist, a drag queen, a country/folk legend, with Judy Garland and Edith Piaf  impressionists ?

The McGarrigle family Christmas, of course.

On 10 December, 2008, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Emmylou Harris, Justin Bond,   the extended Wainwright/McGarrigle family, and many more including a fantastic band, performed The McGarrigle Christmas Hour at Carnegie Hall.

“Welcome to our living room!” Rufus told the crowd. And that’s how it felt – with their songbooks in hand, the family treated us all to a  festive night of singing.   But this show, which included some amazing beat-box polyphonics from Bobby McFerrin’s son, Taylor, and a transfixing spoken word piece by Laurie Anderson, was  no ordinary Christmas pageant.

The spirit of rock legends  past was present, with Lou Reed leading the choir in John Lennon’s Merry Xmas (War is Over).  Vinnie Dow, a McGarrigle nephew, movingly took us back to a time of sledding under the stars. Justin Bond powerfully reminded  that “Christian” love is not spread evenly to all.  Emmylou Harris’ Little Town of Bethlehem pressed gently  into the skin. And Good King Wenceslas had a  joyful makeover, with horns and urgent vocals calling you straight to the Feast of Stephen.

I love the McGarrigles’ anglo-franco Canadian soul. “Trois Anges” – Martha singing with Kate and Anna – made me proud once again that this family is so very Canadian. And when Rufus hit  the high G in “Minuit Chretien,” I had shivers up my spine and through my scalp, and the audience jumped to an ovation at its end.

Everyone on stage helped each other out – passing around music, adjusting stands, bringing each other closer to the mics.  Martha in particular was a lovely and loving mother hen, organizing everyone into the next song with a gently firm hand.

These are family and friends who play together, and stay together. And that’s what Christmas is all about.

If I’d only seen this show, I would have been thrilled. But that night I checked the Rufus  Wainwright official site. The entire show was going to be recorded at a “secret location” the next day. There were giving away tickets to the first five people to write an email. I wrote in. I immediately received an automatic  “sorry, no more tickets” message. Oh well.

The next morning I looked at Martha’s site. Same thing – first five people to write in would get tickets. I wrote in and forgot. Forty-five minutes later, I received a response. “Be at the Knitting Factory at 1 pm today.” Ok!

We stood in line in the cold rain in front of the Knitting Factory with about 60 other people for about 45 minutes. And then they let us in. And we managed, somehow, to sit in the very front row.

The photos, in this link, tell the rest.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=74917&l=295b4&id=533957834

Canada, we’ve fallen behind the political curve. We had a chance to lead it just four weeks ago, to elect a government that truly cared about real people, the environment and art.  We could have been a real contender on the global stage, bringing new ideas and approaches on how to unite the world around a common agenda.  We could have decided on change. We could have got a new puppy.

Instead, we are stuck with the old thinking of the old global regime- a regime which will disappear on 20 January in the United States;  one which disappeared last year in Australia, and one which disappeared in the United Kingdom more than a decade ago.

But we didn’t really have a choice for change, did we?

By choosing Stéphane Dion as leader of the Liberal Party, and Paul Martin before him, the Liberal Party has done a disservice to Canadians, giving them  little to get excited about.  Don’t get me wrong – Dion and Martin are both good guys. They have a moral vision and the intelligence to make some things happen. Dion’s environmental policies are exciting and are what the world needs. Paul Martin was one of the creators and defenders of the “G20″ – an enlarged G8 which reflects the imperative for fundamental changes to international relations in the 21st century.

But neither are transformational leaders. And that’s what Canada needs right now.

As Canadians we have had trouble defining ourselves as a nation. We believe that even though we watch or copy all of their television, lead our newscasts and front pages with their news, dress a lot like them and want to have the same stuff as they have, we are not like them.

We have aspired to,  and in many ways,  we have achieved greater things than them in our own quiet way. We have universal health care (and please let’s keep it). We have welcomed more immigration and more refugees, per capita, than any other country. As a nation, we support gay marriage. For these reasons and many more, we are a rich, diverse and exciting nation. We just don’t know how to articulate it anymore.

And as of this week, we are behind the curve.

Globally, people are noticing.  With our government’s sole foreign policy focus being Afghanistan, we are losing the humanitarian and peacebuilding moralsuasion we once had.  For example,  Canada currently contributes a total of 160 police and military officers to Peacekeeping operations. We rank 54th in the world. (Pakistan ranks number 1, with more than 10,500).  Lester B. Pearson’s stamp on the world stage is becoming a 20th century historical footnote.

On 4 November, we saw, no,  we felt, the way a transformational leader like Barack Obama can change the world. When he won, there was a global collective sigh, followed by a deafening woop. It was like each of us had suddenly been set free. And while the same difficult problems remained, people felt they were waking up to a better world on Wednesday morning.

How did Canadians feel on 15 October?

In fact, who was the last Canadian leader who made us feel truly uplifted? Who has made us want to roll up our sleeves, with the overwhelming desire to get out and DO something. Who has brought tears to our eyes?  ( Watch any Tommy Douglas speech to see what I mean.)

Liberals, Canadians, please take a page from the US on this one. Find a leader who will get us excited. Find a leader who makes us feel that the power to change our country is truly in our hands. Find someone who will pack a gym, or a convention centre, or a stadium, with people pressing forward to catch every single word, no matter their traditional political affiliation. Find someone who can can define our great country in a way that resonates with Canadians and in a way that makes other countries look to ours with admiration and respect.

Please, find someone new.

I usually hate the sound “woo hoo.” It’s often so lame.

As in “Hey everybody, it’s Britney Spears!”  “Woooo hooooo!”; “It’s XXXXX sports team” “Wooo hoooo!” ; “Beeeeeerrrr!!!!” “Wooooo hooooo”.

But tonight, that sound lifted my soul. As in “CNN is making a prediction… Barack Obama is going to be the next President of the United States.”

A collective “Woooo hoooo” rang across New York City. People shouted it from their apartment windows. The black transexual sex workers on our street shouted it. People driving by in cabs shouted it. And about 1,000,000 people gathered on an unusually warm autumn night in Chicago shouted it. “Woooooo hooooooo!!!” It sounded across America and resonated around the globe.

That sound has rung in a new chapter in the history of the world, and nothing less. The first African American President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. These pictures, even these pictures taken from television, to me, speak woooo hooooo words.

And after looking at those, let’s go back to New Hampshire all of those months ago.

“It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes, we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes, we can.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

Yes, we can, to opportunity and prosperity. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.”

United States of America President-elect Barack Obama.

Well CNN so far has used its weird hologram only once. And it had a little trouble hearing their reporter in Chicago, surrounded by 1000s of cheering Obama fans. Obama is looking extemely strong- even amongst voters who have very small dogs, and very large hairdos.

With about 0.001% of votes in, CNN is projecting Obama in many many places. Enough places, so far, to make me think “yes america did.”

Here are some photos from  New York election action today. 

Tomorrow, I predict the world will be a much more optimistic place.

I love the city we’re living in. I loved it last night, when I went for a run on the Hudson river and had the  Empire State Building, bejeweled in lights of red, white and blue, in my sights. This beautiful 102-story tower, built in just 410 days in 1930,  is a true symbol of what made this the original great country. And when I turned to run the other way there was Lady Liberty – an overused icon to be sure, but when you see her for real, arm outstretched and alone in the harbour beside Ellis Island, she delivers.  She makes me teary.

But today, I’d rather be in Cleveland, Ohio. I want to feel the electric tug of this historic election. I want to visit polling stations and see people who know they are casting a ballot that could change the direction of our world.

Today, New Yorkers are too liberal and too cool to make this day feel as important as it is. This clear autumn morning they are ambling with their dogs like they do every day. They are buying coffees and catching the bus.  They will definitely go to the polling stations and they will vote the right way.

Here there are no campaign posters. There are none of those awful attack ads. Everyone is talking and writing about the liberal pundits – Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman, Campbell Brown – I don’t even know who the Fox news guys are.

So as this day goes on, I’ll watch the polls everywhere else, on tv and on the internet.

But because this is New York where people know how to celebrate, tonight is going to be just great.

Opie Ice Houses

In New York, art is everywhere. There are so many aural and visual stimuli that one can at once be engulfed in the detail of a particularly moving wall mural (I like this one of Joe Strummer a couple of blocks from our apartment in the East Village), and then immediately forget it as you stumble into the middle of an impromptu drumming circle. 

We have seen two notable shows here in the last couple of days. Two women artists, both portraitists using  different media- painter Elizabeth Peyton and photographer Catherine Opie.  

At first, I loved Elizabeth Peyton’s show at the New Museum on the Bowery . Her confident brush strokes and rich jewel tones on small tableaux had me straining to take in every detail. Almost all portraits, I loved the intensity of her lone subjects, the perfect rendering of tossled hair, fine red lips, and the recognition of many of the subjects at first look (Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty, the Gallagher brothers…). 

But then those very details became annoying. I didn’t need to see anymore portraits of pouting,  gaunt, slightly vampiric young men staring out in the distance at nothing in particular. No doubt many of these subjects, including Peyton’s friends and former lovers, are interesting, thoughtful and articulate human beings, but in her portraits too many of them look like they spend their days half-sleeping in scroungy bedsheets, and evenings waiting for their next overpriced drink at the newest hipster watering hole.

Peyton’s best work in my view is her most recent – where she focusses on more current friends and family and their pets. These are much less studied Brit, and much more real Americana – scenes from everyday life.

Her modern portraits of the famous are also improvements over earlier work.  I loved the depth of her portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe - full of confident defiance. I was moved by the drawing of a young Prince Harry being trundled off to school. And her study of the film The Age of Innocence captured true passion. 

I left this show hugely admiring Peyton’s technique, and hope that as she gets older, she applies her talent to more mature and moving subjects.

Catherine Opie, an American photographer from California, is also a master technician. Or should I say Mistress Technician.  Like Peyton, Opie too rose to fame through portraiture. But instead of photographing the famous, Opie’s photographed her non-famous friends in classic style. They pose, bodies adorned with tattoos and piercings, against rich coloured backdrops – royal reds, oranges, purples and blues. These famous portraits taken in the late 1990s were a brave claiming of different gender identities. 

Watching others look at the exhibit was almost as captivating as the exhibit itself. I loved the  mom taking notes about all things Opie for her son,  who she said was doing a university paper on Opie’s work. “You could help me!,” she commanded her husband, as she wrote down the display explanations in a room featuring a giant polaroid of a heavily tatooed man dressed in a heavy velvet gown, with long string of pearls draping out of his, well, ass.

When confronted with Opie’s most chilling work -a self-portrait in a leather mask, arms pricked with dozens of hypodermic needles and the word “pervert” lavishly carved into her chest – the mom earnestly asked the tour guide how her son could explain the meaning of this particular piece at his Christian university. 

A blond German family with three small kids, led by the mother wearing pearls around her neck, ran-walked through every room. While an elderly woman in a wheelchair, pushed by a younger relative,  craned her neck to delight in each and every photograph properly. And one man couldn’t contain himself. “Freaks!” he said far too loudly as he sidestepped the collection of drag kings bejewelled with pasted-on facial hair. 

A masterpiece placement in the Opie show is the twinning of the her Ice Houses and Surfers series in a long narrow room. It’s like walking into a beautiful alternate reality of cool water and white light , created by Opie’s artistic vision and the technical mastery of her craft. (Apparently some of the Ice House series took hours and hours of setting up and standing on frozen lakes in the dead of winter).

The show also includes a newer series of empty cityscapes, and her older series of freeways. And this is one of the best things about Opie’s work - you cannot fit her into a photographic box. This fact particularly comes to the forefront on the top floor of the exhibit, where Opie focusses her lens on her home and community. Living in an ordinary lower middle-class LA neighbourhood, this collection is community and political commentary wrapped together. 

For all of its diversity and the fact it is about community, in the end, Opie’s work still left me a bit cold. Her landscapes famously contain no people, and her portraits contain little passion. Her subjects, while almost all named, too often stare beyond the lens, their faces too mask-like. Even her “Domestic” series portrays couples who exhibit very little tenderness for one another.   

Still, if you’re in New York and you want to see a photographic genius and may I even say, true maverick, see Catherine Opie’s show at the Guggenheim.

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to name a Canadian artist I really admire.  Jane Isakson is a Whitehorse-based artist, Olympic athlete, outdoor enthusiast and lovely person. She draws inspiration for her landscapes from her life in the north. She has been to remote and rugged places very few people have seen, and through her talent for shapes, perspective and light, brings you with her. I personally wanted to shrink to minature and jump into Jane’s paintings, to scurry over the hills and jump into the luminous waters. If I had a huge wall I would buy this one of migrating caribou, and imagine I could hear their feet sinking and pulling out of the deep snow.  If you are considering a landscape of the north, truly look no further and get in touch with Jane.

During our travels in western Canada this summer I was shocked to see the endless palettes of bottled water for sale at every gas station. I cringed when I saw people buying these flats of 24 little plastic bottles. 

In south-east Asia we bought bottled water every day because piped water might have made us sick. But in Canada?  We were relieved in Canada to be able to drink the water and like good girls, filled four reusable containers every day with the stuff from the taps. 

This bottled water frenzy irked me all summer. All of that plastic flying through the cash til and into landfills or the roadside, despite what I thought was a significant backlash against the trend.  Mayors and school boards were banning bottled water. Maclean’s published a long article about the issue last year.  

Here in New York, a city considered to have some of the best tap water in the world,  bottled water continues to be the rage. One problem is a lack of public drinking water – fountains for example.  And companies, always a half step ahead,  have flooded the market with alternative bottled waters, like “vitamin” and flavoured waters. 

With my reusable metal SIGG bottle in hand, I was happy to go see Elizabeth Royte, a writer and journalist with a keen nose for stinky environmental trends, at the famous Strand bookstore. Royte has recently published the very favourably reviewed Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and why we Bought It. She epitomizes no-nonsense and knows her facts. You intrinsically trust her to tell you the truth.

And she does. The links I’ve already posted here tell you more about her well researched arguments, so I won’t repeat them.  And her book takes the reader deep into the political, social and economic aspects of bottled water – like the fact that some small, poorer communities are relying on bottled water plants for jobs and that arguments about whether to let Nestle in or not, can polarize places.

A few facts highlighted last night  by Royte and a guy called Al Appleton, a former commissioner of NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection.   

•  Americans go through 50 BILLLION plastic water bottles annually  (look at MacLean’s for Canada)
• Producing these bottles requires  17 million barrels of oil
• Less than 15% of those bottles end up being recycled. No one knows how long it takes for PET plastic to break down, but it’s at least five hundred years. 
• It takes three times as much water to produce the bottle, than what the bottle holds 
• People spend $1400.00  per year on bottled water. The same amount of tap water costs 49 cents.
• NY city water is tested about 100,000 times per year and tests are made public. Bottled water manufacturers test their water a few times a week. And they don’t have to tell you what they found.
• 99 per cent of water problems in NYC  are a result of problems in the building (old pipes for eg)

But Royte is not an unequivocal supporter of tap water either. She underscores the point that chemicals leached from industrial sites and agricultural land are obviously not good for the water supply. Many rural communities – about 30 million people- cannot afford to maintain drinking water standards in the US. (The same goes for Canada, where First Nations people particularly suffer).   And Royte notes that some doctors believe the elderly, pregnant and autoimmune should not drink tap water. 

What to do? She does recommend that people use tap filters – the kind you attach directly to your faucet or under the sink. She suggests these be publicly subsidized. And she personally uses a Brita, though she says you can only rely on it to remove chlorine.

So maybe the biggest reason NOT to drink bottled water is to ensure what Al Appleton called “a triumph of successful civic vision,” – the  advent of safe public drinking water.  People in developed countries are fortunate to have it. Remember about 1 billion people in the world do not. And if we continue to lap up bottled water there will be less pressure on public officials to invest in safe tap water – to continue to improve our water, and help poorer countries with the technology they need to provide it.  

If you live in Walkerton, Ontario, I understand if you’ll never drink tap water again. But if you live somewhere where there are no problems, buy a Brita, buy a SIGG, and turn on your faucet.

Barack Obama and John McCain have duked it out publicly on foreign policy twice. During both debates, McCain and Obama  talked about the same foreign policy issues: Iraq, Iran, Israel, Russia, Georgia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan,  with a couple of sentences on  China, North Korea and Cuba thrown in for good measure.  They predictably hold different views. Obama, broadly speaking, embraces diplomatic engagement and fundamentally believes that every human should enjoy dignity.   McCain, broadly speaking, embraces punishment, and doesn’t trust foreigners. 

But on foreign policy,  both candidates, during both debates, spent a lot of time speaking about military solutions, and not enough about the other ways the world’s (still) most powerful nation can work to influence the globe for good.   

What do the candidates think of the United Nations, for example? It’s an imperfect institution and is often (rightfully) criticised for its incredible impenetrable bureaucracy, its neverending meetings, its committees and sub-committees, and sub-sub committees… It also fails to achieve consensus at critical moments in history. That’s politics.  But the UN and its specialised agencies also work, effectively, to find and stop infectious diseases before they spread, to fight polio and measles, to advocate for the rights of refugees and to educate children.  

Last night, one questioner came close to squeezing out the candidates’ views about the UN  when he asked whether the US would wait for UN Security Council approval to defend Israel, if Iran attacked it.  John McCain did not hesitate: “..we would obviously not wait for the United Nations Security Council.”   But that’s all he said about the UN. McCain went on to talk about a “league of democracies” that would try to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  Was that supposed to be a capital L and capital D? 

Barack Obama was not  so quick to the knockout punch, but said it was important that the US does “not give veto power to the United Nations or anyone else” when American interests were at stake.  He went on to talk in much more detail about conducting effective diplomacy with Iran to ensure it was never in a position to attack Israel.

And what about international development assistance? Just two years ago was the “year of Africa.” The G8, under Tony Blair’s leadership, made African development the central issue for the G8. No one asks the US Presidential candidates about this. At a time when US national security is a top issue for Americans and people on main street are suffering due to Wall Street’s follies,  most Americans aren’t asking about the ways their country can help others.  

The candidates certainly don’t bring it up as a priority area.  But scratch deeper and it is clear that Obama has given issues of international development and of the United Nations a lot of thought.

His website includes detail on all of the issues he cares about. This includes a lengthy and substantive explanation on foreign policy including the need to alleviate poverty in Africa, and a link to his strategy to Promote Global Development and Diplomacy. This includes more detail, with a pledge to double international development assistance, support debt cancellation for the most heavily indebted countries,  to increasing funding to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, and to ensure  that “best practices – not ideology” drive US funding of HIV/AIDS programming.  That means, for example, that women and men who need access to condoms can get condoms – not a Christian sermon about abstinence being the best option.

As for the UN, Obama talks about the need to strengthen the capacity of the UN “..to prevent and respond to deadly violence.” That is a start. Obama also wants to see the US provide “the political leadership required so that UN missions are backed by workable political strategies” and that the US “pays it peacekeeping assessments on time.” He also calls for more UN reform – so with Obama, the UN is by no means out of the woods.

But at least Obama has THOUGHT about the UN and his written these thoughts down and made them easy to find on his website.

Look at John McCain’s website. He doesn’t even have an “issue” called foreign policy. There are many many domestic issues including his call to have Roe v. Wade overturned, and for law-abidin’ Americans to carry guns. But the only foreign policy area he touches is “Iraq,” where he says the troops will stay as long as the Iraqis need them.

Even dyed-in-the-wool Republicans care about the welfare of Africans, and they might not like the UN, but they’ll have a view on it.  John McCain doesn’t even think it’s worth publishing a few lines about them on his website.

At the next debate, I’d like to see the two candidates asked specifically about these issues. Let’s hear how they really feel. This would be more informative than another rehash of the “bomb bomb bomb Iran” song, or the tired “naive and dangerous” line. And it might show the people of the world which Presidential candidate has thought about them in human, and not just military terms.