The Silvio Berlusconi Show

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:26 PM - 2 Comments

UPDATE: Yesterday, a jovial Silvio Berlusconi appeared defiantly oblivious of the scandal surrounding him while touring the earthquake-ravaged town of L’Aquila. Noticing that there weren’t any “girls” present, he promised to reward them by shipping some in: “Well boys, if all goes well, I’ll really bring the showgirls,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll all come across as gays.”

(June 25, 2009) While North Americans have to settle for the tawdry staged dramatics of Jon & Kate Plus 8, Italians have the real thing in the ongoing reality show starring Silvio Berlusconi. Few weeks go by that the gaffe-prone Italian prime minister isn’t at the centre of a controversy of his own making.

In the current episode, the 72-year-old business tycoon is battling allegations that prostitutes attended parties he hosted at his official residences. In an interview with Chi magazine, which he owns, Berlusconi denied he ever paid for sex, which technically wasn’t the charge (his friend, businessman Gianpaolo Tarantini, who’s being investigated for allegedly abetting prostitution, admitted to paying for women to attend, if not to entertain; one of these women claims to have video). ”I’ve never paid a woman,” Berlusconi, the country’s richest man worth some $12 billion, told the magazine indignantly. But Berlusconi couldn’t leave it at that: “I’ve never understood what satisfaction there is other than that of conquering [a woman].” Continue…

Defiant Mousavi says protests in Iran are a "constitutional right"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:22 PM - 2 Comments

In a statement posted to his website, defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said those behind the country’s “rigged” election were responsible for the violent protests that followed the vote. Mousavi promised to reveal how officials who corrupted the electoral process “stood beside the main instigators of the recent riots and shed people’s blood on the ground.” The reformist candidate denounced Iranian authorities attempts to stifle the protest movement, insisting Iranians have a “constitutional right to protest against the election and its aftermath.” Meanwhile, the Iranian government has reportedly been trying to mollify the population with movie nights on state television. “In normal times, Iranian television usually treats its viewers to one or two Hollywood or European movie nights a week,” a resident of Tehran wrote in Time. “But these are not normal times, so it’s been two or three such movies a day. It’s part of the push to keep people at home and off the streets, to keep us busy, to get us out of the regime’s hair.”

Reuters

BBC News

TIME

Nice museum, but where are the exhibits?

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:20 PM - 3 Comments

If you build it, maybe they really will come.

The protagonist in W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe constructed a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield to attract the ghosts of his dead heroes to play there. Now Greece, too, has built a home for the icons of its past in the hopes that they will return.

On June 21, the new Acropolis Museum will open in Athens. The visually stunning museum sits at the base of the Acropolis and will house artifacts pertaining to the buildings that represent the pinnacle of classical Greek civilization. The museum’s main gallery is reserved for the sculptures that once adorned the Acropolis’s Parthenon temple.

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Something bad this way comes

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:12 PM - 3 Comments

The Star ends its Shamocracy series with a vague warning of possible doom.

As he did in December when opposition parties threatened to topple the Tory minority, the Prime Minister suggested such a move would be akin to a coup d’état … It’s a refrain that has worked well for Harper. When his government teetered on the brink of defeat last winter, Canadians responded very favourably to his proposition that only the voters can determine which party rules – not the MPs they send to Parliament to represent them.

But it might not be such a good thing for Canada. Harper’s interpretation of the principles of Canadian democracy has set off alarms among many who worry about the potential for abuse of power under this country’s unwritten rules for governing.

Déconfiture? Not yet.

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:02 PM - 7 Comments

You learn something everyday. It seems that before he became a PQ MNA, François Legault co-founded Air Transat, meaning that I have him to blame for the semi-paralysis below the knees following a six-hour flight to Paris a few years ago. Memo to Legault: four inches of legroom isn’t legroom, unless one doesn’t have legs. But thanks for the cheap ticket all the same.

Anyway.

Legault left politics today. Bad news comes in threes, and his announcement this morning comes on the heels of two by-election losses for the party. This late-breaking collection of negative headlines has brought on the usual ‘the PQ is dying’ business–“A major blow to [Pauline] Marois,” as the Gazette put it today; expect a gleeful facewash from the paper’s editorial board tomorrow–and has lurched the party toward yet another existential crisis for which it is famous. Certainly, the loss of Legault is damaging, given his seemingly effortless ability to embarrass the bejesus out of Charest et al. And no offense to Denis Coderre, but I’ve never seen anyone gladhand his way more artfully through acres of strangers than Legault. He is the best ambassador the party has had in a long while, and his departure will no doubt smart.

But no matter how hard you throw it, bash it, strangle it or spit on it, the PQ isn’t going anywhere. Neither is Marois, for now anyway. Here’s why, bullet-pointed for your convenience:

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No more Bavarian separatism

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 1 Comment

The German state of Bavaria (or Bayern) has long seen itself as exceptional. Not only was it an independent kingdom until 1871, when it became part of the newly unified German Reich; this southern state is also home to the Alps, Oktoberfest, and certain cultural peculiarities—like Bavarians’ local dialect, or their penchant for traditional clothing, including lederhosen—that have long set it apart (and formed the butt of jokes in other parts of the country). The daily Der Spiegel goes so far as to call Bavaria “a German version of Texas.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Bavaria has been home to a separatist movement for decades. The Bavaria Party, which advocates for independence, once enjoyed a certain popularity: in 1949, the BP got one-fifth of Bavarian votes in the first West German federal election after the Second World War, says Achim Hurrelmann, an assistant professor of political science at Carleton University. Yet in the recent European parliamentary election, which represented an opportunity of sorts (“since European elections have no direct effect on national politics, voters are [more] likely to experiment,” he says), the separatists won not a single seat.

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The Toughest Canada Day Quizzes Ever

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 3:48 PM - 7 Comments

Check back soon for the full provincial breakdown of all the charts in our Province vs. Province Canada Day survey. In the meantime, test your knowledge with our Canada Day Quiz.

More powerful than a book club

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 1 Comment

When graphic designer Amy Mead dreamed of having a baby, she took an eccentric step. She joined forces with a group of women. It wasn’t a pregnancy group. Each woman had a different goal but all shared the belief that a group’s collective energy has more power than any one individual’s. If anything, it was a support group for desires.

At the time, Mead was 38 and worried she’d blown her chances of getting pregnant by waiting too long. “There’s strength in numbers. I was thinking along those lines,” she said recently from her home in Florida, now that she’s a mom, and now that her group has just published a book. Three years ago, the women hardly knew each other, now all four are the joint authors of The Group: An Amazing Way to Achieve Success, Happiness and Extraordinary Relationships. Tiffany Kaharick is a massage therapist. Rebecca Carswell is a hypnotherapist and professional speaker. Mirja Heide runs a computer training company. They all live in Florida. “We just began with the idea of: how can we achieve more?” says Heide. “We sat around a table discussing very openly what we wanted to get out of the group,” remembers Mead.

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The sad demise of French cooking

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

Just as it has for so many North Americans, Michael Steinberger’s love affair with French cooking began with a childhood trip to France. And equally common, it was a vegetable that did the trick. The English-speaking countries, after all, can grill a hunk of meat as well as anybody, but in the not so distant past, any foodstuff that wasn’t previously ambulatory was in danger of being boiled to mush. But for the American journalist, 13 years old on that 1980 visit, baby peas “drowned in butter” were a life-changing moment, when he realized that food could be a sensory experience, not just a fuel stop in the day’s activities. It’s that devotion, now sorely tested, that adds a certain Proustian douleur to Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the Death of France (Doubleday), Steinberger’s lament to the passing of 250 years of culinary supremacy.

It’s a sweeping claim, of course, a sitting duck ripe for the plucking by dissenters: no one, least of all Steinberger, denies the viability of French cooking in the world’s great cities. And, even if his assertion about the situation within France were to be accepted, it would mean the death, not of the country itself, but of a certain foreign francophile idea of France. But that would still be a loss to a nation whose culinary reputation has always been a diplomatic plus, and Steinberger’s eye for the telling detail goes far to build his case. When New York’s French Culinary Institute—a key driver of Gallic cultural influence in the U.S.—threw itself a gala in 2006, it couldn’t find a single Frenchman to include among the 10 top foreign chefs invited.

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Peak water, peak fish and the end of everything

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 31 Comments

What do salmon dinners, SUVs, and subprime mortgages have in common? They all depend on cheap oil, at least according to the book jacket of Jeff Rubin’s bestselling new book, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller.

Rubin is a former chief economist for CIBC World Markets, and a recent convert to the economics of peak oil—the supposed point at which global oil production reaches its maximum level, after which it enters a long, slow decline. The result, Rubin argues, will be a world where demand increasingly outstrips supply—and the end of the entire global economic order.

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Ralph Benmergui is the new Ari Fleischer

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 2:22 PM - 5 Comments

Susan Delacourt reports on the man whose job it will be to get you to take the Green party seriously. In hindsight, this move was perhaps foreshadowed by the jacket Mr. Benmergui wore in this early 90s TV bit.

Later, Ralph, Sheila and Audrey discuss the sad state of Canadian political discourse.

Nora Ulrike Perra Booth 1941-2009

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment

Nora Ulrike Perra Booth was born on Nov. 13, 1941, in then-German-occupied Gleiwitz, now Gliwice, Poland. The second daughter of Martha and Victor Bruchmann, Nora narrowly escaped death at the age of three when her family was being evacuated by the Nazi army. The train had been moving at a snail’s pace, and she had to relieve herself. A soldier offered to take her, then catch up with the train. Just as they got off, gunfire erupted. The train sped up, leaving the soldier and Nora in the fight against the Allies, and her mother believed she was gone. But two hours later the soldier miraculously reappeared, with Nora in his arms.

The family immigrated to Canada in 1951 and settled in Batawa, Ont., where her father became an executive of the Bata Shoe Company. When she was 16, Nora’s older sister Monica was killed on Labour Day weekend by a drunk driver. Monica’s death would remain an agonizing memory in Nora’s life. Shortly after, the family relocated to Hamilton, where Nora finished her high school degree. She graduated from McMaster University in 1965 and became a high school teacher with the Scarborough school board.

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Fluoride safety fears rock Sarnia

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 12 Comments

For 40 years, the six Ontario municipalities that share the Lambton Area Water Supply System have been debating whether it’s safe to add fluoride to their drinking water. This November, the issue may finally be put to rest.

Like many Canadian water supplies, Lambton began adding fluoride to its water four decades ago as an inexpensive way to ward off tooth decay. But for just as long, some have opposed the practice as unnecessary—and possibly dangerous. “It’s been an issue every year since fluoride was put in in the ’60s,” says Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ont., which shares the water supply. Then, last year, Health Canada poured fuel on the fire with a report saying that adding too much fluoride did have adverse effects, and recommended a decrease in allowed levels.

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Praise the Lord and pass the ammo

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:21 PM - 3 Comments

The Rev. Ken Pagano, pastor of New Bethel Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in Louisville, Kentucky, hopes to carry on with his long-announced “Open Carry Church Service” on June 27. That’s when he expects Christians who are both pious and the gun-loving to heed his invitation to bring their weapons to church to give thanks for the right to bear arms. Pagano, a former Marine and currently a volunteer chaplain for the Louisville Metro Police Department (where he does not carry a weapon), also works one day a week at an indoor gun range. He believes that Christians are called on to be prepared to defend themselves and their families. “Pacifism is optional for Christians,” says Pagano. “It’s not a requirement.” His main problem right now is that the church’s insurance carrier, after giving an initial go-ahead, has told him it cannot insure the event. Pagano expects to find coverage before the end of the week and says the event won’t be open-carry without it. Without insurance, he explains, “We’d just ask the open-carry folks to leave their guns in their vehicles,” adding that people with concealed carry permits could still bring loaded guns into the sanctuary. Some local churchgoers are mounting an alternative service for the same day, “Bring Your Peaceful Heart … Leave Your Gun at Home.” Terry Taylor, executive director of Interfaith Paths to Peace, which organized that rally, says he is particularly troubled by the open-carry service because it gives the wrong impression of Louisville, which he believes is the “spiritual centre of the United States” because of its mass of interfaith work, connection to the late monk Thomas Merton, and the presence of the Southern Baptist and Presbyterian seminaries and the Presbyterian Church USA’s national headquarters.

TIME

School fights to promote Jesuit values

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 105 Comments

Can a Catholic high school teach its students that all religions are equal? Paul Donovan, the principal of Montreal’s Loyola High School, says it can’t be done. So the boys-only Jesuit school is taking the province to court over its new ethics and religious culture program.

The new course was introduced by the Ministry of Education to teach about various religious traditions in Quebec society, with the goal of increasing tolerance among students. It teaches about Protestantism and Catholicism, as well as Judaism, native spiritualities and other religions.

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Governor’s affair goes public

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments

E-mails obtained by The State show correspondence between South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who admitted on Wednesday to an affair, and a woman in Buenos Aires. The newspaper reports that it obtained the e-mails between Sanford and “Maria” in December, but was only able to authenticate them on Wednesday. The newspaper also announced that it had removed the woman’s full name, as well as the names of her children. The correspondence shines light on a long-hidden, but intimate, relationship. An email from Sanford dated July 4, 2008 is addressed “Dearest” and signed “Hugs and much love.” In it, Sanford proclaims, “You are glorious and I hope you know that.” But a later email reveals the governor’s anxiety about the future: “Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before – so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know. In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

The State

Farrah Fawcett and the Road To TV Stardom

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:11 PM - 2 Comments

RIP Farrah Fawcett. She will always be most associated with Charlie’s Angels, of course, even though she left the show after the first season (in the most famous and controversial early departure until David Caruso). But one thing you can see even from a casual look at her filmography is how long it takes for an actor to get his or her Big Break in TV, assuming that Big Break ever comes. Fawcett had been doing TV since 1969, mostly in small parts; you can see her in one-scene roles in many sitcoms and dramas. She even appeared on The Dating Game where, like many aspiring actors appearing on game shows to boost their careers, she was not identified as an actor (same with Kirstie Alley’s appearance on Match Game a decade or so later).

If there was a scene that called for a pretty blonde woman, she might audition, and sometimes she’d get the part, as she did in this early episode of The Partridge Family where Danny and Reuben understandably seem in awe of her:

The smaller parts eventually led to bigger guest parts (most notably on her then-husband’s show The Six Million Dollar Man) parts in TV movies, unsold pilots, and a recurring role on a series that actually did get picked up, the underrated David Janssen private-eye series Harry O. (She wasn’t in it originally, but the network re-tooled it to include more hot women.) Here’s a promo from a rerun of the show years after it was canceled (for some reason CBS, a network that didn’t even run it, showed episodes as their “late night movie”).

Then came 1976, when it all came together: another high-profile appearance on Six Million Dollar Man, the Logan’s Run part, the famous poster, and finally Charlie’s Angels. One of the things about TV is that there is no such thing, or almost no such thing, as overnight stardom (maybe there’s almost no such thing anywhere, but movies and theatre more frequently try to give the impression of creating instant stars). Behind most overnight success stories is a long list of credits as a working actor.

Iggy and the big band

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:09 PM - 10 Comments

Michael Ignatieff held his first media garden party at Stornoway since becoming Liberal leader. The Etobicoke Youth Jazz Orchestra from his Toronto riding provided the music.

Iggy’s wife Zsuzsanna Zsohar with Mimi.

Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau.

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Farrah Fawcett has died

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM - 0 Comments

Farrah Fawcett, the beautiful blonde actress who became one of the greatest pop-culture icons of the ’70s, has died of cancer at the age of 62. After many years playing small parts, Fawcett became a star as one of the original Charlie’s Angels; her famous hairstyle and smile, along with a best-selling pinup poster, made her the most popular member of the cast, and she’s still identified with the show even though she left after the first season. Fawcett had been battling cancer for the last three years; actor Ryan O’Neal, with whom she had a long-term relationship, was with her in her final days.

People

Why the poor aren’t poorer after all

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 2 Comments

Many studies have come to the depressing conclusion that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer—but according to a new report from the Fraser Institute, it’s not happening here.

In The Economic Well-Being of Canadians: Is There a Growing Gap?, Chris Sarlo, an economist at Nipissing University, argues that most studies of the issue so far have been too narrow. The accepted figures show that the income gap between rich and poor has grown by nine per cent since 1969. But Sarlo says those reports don’t take into account the “underground economy” of unreported incomes common in the repair, renovation and hospitality industries. Sarlo values this economy at up to $50 billion a year, enough to seriously skew the statistics on incomes.

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Read a book with Jim Flaherty

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:53 PM - 2 Comments

The Princeton-educated Finance Minister enjoys fancy book-learning. Seems possibly to be projecting. 

It is the fascinating story of a young barrister who chose the arena of public service at an historic moment. He is matched by a sage, literate wife.

More at our new books page.

Win a date with Michael Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

Unclear which of you picks up the tab.

The péquiste pick

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

For most Montrealers, the reach of municipal politics extends only as far as the trash can and the snowplow. As long as both are taken care of, the people don’t much care who’s in charge: in 2005, barely a third of eligible voters bothered casting a municipal ballot. This November’s election was going to be a variation on the theme, pitting Montreal’s charisma-free mayor Gérald Tremblay against fussy upstart Benoît Labonté. Early polling suggested Tremblay would ride into a third term on a wave of indifference.

Not anymore. Labonté recently ceded his spot as leader of Vision Montreal to Louise Harel, a former Parti Québécois minister with a well-known taste for the jugular. Much to the chagrin of Mayor Tremblay, Montreal’s politics are suddenly dominated by a familiar Quebec staple: language politics.

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Inside the Brangelina industry

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

Have you ever wondered how the same week that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolis are “finally over!” on one tabloid cover, they’re “getting hitched” on another? The Guardian examines the workings of the Brangelina industry, headquartered, as writer Oliver Burkeman puts it, “at the unpoliced border of truth and invention.” He discovers only seven Brad/Jen/Angelina narratives exist, which are endlessly recycled: “Brad and Angelina in love; Brad and Angelina obtaining more children; Brad secretly meeting or texting Jen; Angelina’s fury at Brad for meeting or texting Jen; Angelina looking dangerously thin (‘scary skinny’); Jen in love; Jen alone again.” The challenge for tabloids, one editor explains, is always coming up with the next chapter. The resulting stories stick to a narrow range: “Aniston must emerge with hope: despondency must be short-lived, because it’s depressing – and, just as importantly, dull.” Jolie emerges a mastermind of tabloid manipulation; she personally orchestrated the bidding war for the first pictures of her twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline which raised $14m for the Pitt-Jolie Foundation, allegedly dictated that the coverage not reflect negatively on her or her family. The fact these stories rarely end up to be true doesn’t seem to diminish sales. “A tabloid version of a fact isn’t exactly a lie,” is how one editor at a prominent celebrity weekly puts it. “But it isn’t the truth. You know what I mean?”

The Guardian