TORONTO — As you can see from the dateline, I did make it back to Toronto after a long and reasonably eventful trip from Dushanbe. I’ll write about that later, but for now let me just wish everyone a Merry Christmas!
DUSHANBE — It’s 5:45 AM local time in Dushanbe and it’s quiet and cold in the lobby of the Hotel Tajikistan. I’ve come full circle since arriving here in October 2007 — I stayed in this very hotel (pre-renovation) after arriving on the Turkish Air flight from Istanbul. This morning, I tried to leave Dushanbe […]
Facebook is truly a “killer app” … at least when it comes to political careers.
DUSHANBE — A story in PR Junkie, a Ragan Communications blog, is a perfect illustration of the generational storm-front that social networking sites are creating in modern-day western politics.
The story by Michael Sebastian relates a tempest-in-a-teapot over a Facebook photo (see […]
DUSHANBE — Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is in full backpedal mode, having withdrawn part of a stupid new bill that earned Coffee’s fourth Stupid Law of the Week Award.
As reported in the Globe and Mail newspaper, McGuinty will excise part of the legislation which banned more than one teenager in a car driven by a […]
DUSHANBE – Two stories in today’s press provide perspective on what’s going awry in Afghanistan. Reuters reports that additional U.S. troops will be deployed in Afghanistan not to help secure the porous border with Pakistan, but to shore up NATO defenses close to Kabul, in response to an increase in insurgent attacks in nearby provinces […]
DUSHANBE — As a Canadian Conservative in a foreign land, it is hard to boot up the old laptop in the morning, find an Internet source and download (2Kb/s — don’t let the breeze knock you over) the latest headlines from Canada without wincing at what’s going on in Ottawa.
I confess to a healthy measure […]
A serviceable Soviet-era tank on a transporter outside Kabul.
KABUL — I started this post in Kabul a week ago and am just finishing it today, in Dushanbe.
An article in today’s New York Times by Michael R. Gordon outlines some of the challenges facing U.S. president-elect Barack Obama as he manouevres to live up to his promise […]
DUSHANBE — Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty earns Coffee’s 4th Stupid Law of the Week award with his government’s proposal to defy Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms by banning legal behaviour by young adults.
McGuinty’s Law is, ostensibly, about minimizing deaths caused by drinking and driving. In order to do this, he proposes to make it […]