So what do we do now?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:13 PM - 23 Comments

March 31. “If these reports are true, this will create serious problems for Canada,” said International Trade Minister Stockwell Day. ”The onus is on the government of Afghanistan to live up to its responsibilities for human rights, absolutely including rights of women … If there’s any wavering on this point from the government of Afghanistan, this will create serious problems and be a serious disappointment for us.”

April 1. Defence Minister Peter MacKay said he will use this week’s NATO summit to put “direct” pressure on his Afghan counterparts to abandon the legislation. “That’s unacceptable — period,” he said Wednesday. “We’re fighting for values that include equality and women’s rights. This sort of legislation won’t fly.”

April 2. Immigration MInister Jason Kenney reiterated the government’s deep concern about the law, but he did not raise the spectre of holding back aid money. Instead, he said the government plans to use its “significant influence” with the Karzai government. ”Obviously our men and women [of the Canadian Forces] have been in Afghanistan to defend human rights and that includes women’s rights. And we intend to use it in every way possible to ask that the right of women be protected,” Kenney said.

April 2. “We haven’t had a chance yet to talk with the other ministers, so we haven’t made any decisions or had any discussions on next steps,” International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said. “It’s very problematic. It’s a great concern and it is going to be a difficulty for Canada.”

April 4. “The involvement in the international community, and particularly Canada and our NATO allies, is based on the pursuit of very fundamental values in opposition to the kinds of values the Taliban stood for,” Harper told a news conference … ”If we drift from that, there will be a clear diminishment in allied support for this venture,” Harper said.

April 6. Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon says he has been assured by the Afghan government that it will remove “contentious clauses” from a proposed law that critics say legalizes marital rape. Cannon said he spoke to the Afghan foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, on Sunday. ”He reassured me that the law will not be implemented as it stands now, the more contentious parts of the law have been taken out, and the minister of justice in Afghanistan has the obligation to rewrite the law,” Cannon told CTV Newsnet’s Power Play.

Today. Bowing to international pressure and unprecedented protests by hundreds of women on the streets of Kabul, the Afghan government promised in April to review a new law imposing severe restrictions on women in Shiite Muslim families. Last week, though, Human Rights Watch discovered that a revised version of the Shiite Personal Status Law had been quietly put into effect at the end of July — meaning that Shiite men in Afghanistan now have the legal right to starve their wives if their sexual demands are not met and that Shiite women must obtain permission from their husbands to even leave their houses, “except in extreme circumstances.”

This Cartoon Actually Existed, Cont.

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 5:18 PM - 14 Comments

Another cartoon I remember watching as a kid, though I can’t remember why: the Hanna-Barbera “Pac-Man” cartoon. It was arguably, though not necessarily, better than “Rubik, the Amazing Cube.”

Seeing that intro again makes me wonder: if Saturday morning cartoons still existed, what current-day fads would be turned into cartoons? Obviously, there would have been a Jonas Brothers cartoon where they solve mysteries while traveling around in a conveyance of some sort. (When the Jonas Brothers stopped being popular, it would have been re-tooled as the “Jonas Brothers Miley Cyrus Demi-Wizards Ipod Hour.”) But what else? I’m thinking there should definitely be a Lost cartoon on Saturday mornings by now, where instead of an island everybody is on a magical planet where Grogar, head of the goats, is trying to stop them from finding the mystical papaya tree before he does.

Mark Steyn: Once you’re out of diapers it’s smooth sailing

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 5:15 PM - 23 Comments

The fact that life expectancy is lower in the U.S. than in many industrialized countries is among the most often-repeated fallacies in defense of health care-reform, Mark Steyn writes in the Orange County Register. The real reason life expectancy is lower has nothing to do with the care Americans receive, but is rather the result of relatively high infant mortality rates. In fact, Steyn argues, “if you can make it out of diapers, you’ll live longer than you would pretty much anywhere else. By age 40, Americans’ life expectancy has caught up with Britons’. By 60, it equals Germany’s. At the age of 80, Americans have greater life expectancy than Swedes.” Though Steyn doesn’t go into detail about the high number of child deaths—his insights into pediatric care will apparently be featured in a future column—he unequivocally claims Americans’ treatment options once they’ve passed early childhood are “the best in the world.” And that should be reason enough, he concludes, to oppose any project that seeks to “[interject] a bureaucracy between you and your health.”

Orange County Register

Anti-gay attacks on rise in Iraq

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 5:14 PM - 3 Comments

NGO Human Rights Watch reports homosexual Iraqi men have been murdered in a coordinated campaign of so-called honour killings. Entitled “They want us exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” the report says that while the Mehdi Army militia group are leading the campaign, Iraqi security forces police are also involved. According to witnesses, groups abduct people and interrogate them to discover the identities of others, before murdering them. “Murder and torture are no way to enforce morality,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Rasha Moumneh. “These killings point to the continuing and lethal failure of Iraq’s post-occupation authorities to establish the rule of law and protect their citizens.”

BBC News

'Waiting For Columbus' by Thomas Trofimuk

By Colin Campbell - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 5:11 PM - 1 Comment

Thomas Trofimuk’s novel, Waiting For Columbus, begins with what might seem an outright silly premise for a novel: a man who thinks he is Christopher Columbus is admitted into a mental hospital in Sevilla, Spain. Not 15th-century Spain, mind you. Rather, it is the present day, some months after the Madrid bombings. As the nurse who cares for the mysterious patient wonders, “Why Columbus? Why not Genghis Khan or one of the Roman emperors, or keeping with Spain, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, or Ferdinand of Aragon? Christopher Columbus doesn’t seem like much fun.”

The reader might find themselves asking more or less the same questions. But while momentum builds slowly at first—with only hints of this character’s elusive, messy past—the Columbus that Trofimuk creates is both fascinating and intensely likeable. A wine-loving, womanizing poet and chess master, the Columbus character captures the attention of the nurse, Consuela, and so too the reader. There is real tension and suspense that builds as the novel progresses, as Columbus, his nurse, and an Interpol agent tracking Columbus—a trio of messed up and lonely people— are brought closer together. Continue…

Kids these days

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 4:34 PM - 17 Comments

Lawrence Martin laments that all the kids want to do is laugh at their smut. Alison Loat suggests the kids and their smut are not the source of the problem. David Eaves suspects elderly columnists need to get their bifocal prescriptions adjusted and look harder. Loat wraps the discussion into one smutless blog post and concludes:

If we don’t all do what we can to make politics more inspiring, to treat people who pursue public life or advance public ideas with respect and to strengthen the culture of public service in Canada and beyond, our potential for achieving great things will dimish significantly.

Why Hillary Clinton deserves more respect

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 6 Comments

In some ways, Hillary Rodham Clinton hasn’t changed. When the U.S. secretary of state gears up for her major diplomatic forays, she does it the same way she prepared to run for the Senate seat from New York, and for her presidential bid: with a listening tour. The former senator who used to nod earnestly and have her aides take copious notes at county fairs as farmers in upstate New York waxed on about the complexities of the local apple trade, prefaced her 11-day trip across Africa this month with a similar bout of listening. Shortly before leaving, she brought together some 15 Africa specialists from in and out of Washington to a ceremonial room on the eighth floor of the State Department headquarters. “It was extremely well organized, a very pleasant dinner in which she did most of the listening and had a number of questions,” recalled attendee Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa under presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Lyman said he was surprised by how little Clinton interrupted. “She did not moderate the meeting and that allowed her to be a real listener. She seemed to want to hear what people thought,” he told Maclean’s. “Interestingly, she is not flashy. She is very organized and substantive.”

But that lack of flash has been a big change for a woman who only recently stood on the brink of a historic presidential nomination, and whose every move made news. The focused, nose-to-the-grindstone approach she has brought to the job after the centre-stage political rivalry with Barack Obama caught many observers off guard. Those looking for good political theatre were almost disappointed by the absence of a clash-of-titans power struggle, complete with gender politics, psychodrama and embittered aides leaking stories of backstabbing-on-high. To some, it could only mean one thing: Clinton had been muzzled. No less a student of power and celebrity than former New Yorker editor Tina Brown kicked off rounds of chatter in July, when Clinton was absent from Obama’s meetings at the Kremlin (she cancelled several trips due to a broken elbow) and seemed to be sidelined by a clutch of special presidential envoys assigned to top hot-spots like South Asia and the Middle East. “It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burka,” wrote Brown, in a critique that apparently got under Clinton’s skin. “I broke my elbow, not my larynx,” was Clinton’s tart retort to reporters who asked whether she was lacking a voice in the administration’s foreign policy. “I have been deeply involved in the shaping and implementation of our foreign policy,” she said, defensively. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the discussion as “silly Washington games.” Continue…

H1N1 "could test all of us" this fall

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 3 Comments

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told the Canadian medical community to brace for an expected surge in H1N1 cases this fall. “What may come this fall is something that could test all of us, possibly to a limit we’ve never experienced,” she said at the Canadian Medical Association’s annual meeting in Saskatoon today. She announced that Ottawa will have a vaccine ready for November, but was unclear about an implementation plan. Agluakkq touched upon the medical isotope shortage saying the topic will likely be discussed at the September provincial-territorial meeting of health ministers in Winnipeg. She added that in the meantime, research into alternative medical isotopes and diagnostic techniques are key.

The Vancouver Sun

The Canadian Press

"Astroturf" to crowd out grassroots in U.S. cap-and-trade debate

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 1 Comment

It’s by now widely acknowledged that U.S. President Barack Obama has lost control of the health care debate to Town Hall agitators with thinly veiled financial ties to big business. Obama can expect more of the same this fall when the landmark Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which proposes to establish cap-and-trade in the U.S., reaches the Senate, writes Russell Gold at the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog. “Following on the heels of the so-far successful anti-health-care backlash, advocates and opponents on the climate bill are ‘funneling cash into groups designed to rally at town halls and to “educate” voters,’ ” writes Gold, quoting fellow Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Talley. The phony grassroots groups now have a new and clever name: astroturf. Meanwhile, supporters of the bill, including former VP and climate change guru Al Gore, are engaged in the same sort of conduct.

The Wall Street Journal

It's a Vertically, Vertically, Vertically Integrated World

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 3:33 PM - 0 Comments

Zack Smith found a telling item in the L.A. Times about why Holly Hunter’s vehicle Saving Grace was canceled even though the network wanted to keep it going (emphasis mine):

The cable network will push back the previously announced winter run of the remaining six shows in Season 3 of “Saving Grace” and Fox will film just three more episodes to tie up loose ends. While TNT wanted to continue with “Saving Grace,” Fox decided to end production on the show after disappointing overseas and DVD sales.

While I don’t know if this specific situation happens that often (it requires the show to be on the exact midpoint between success and failure, successful enough that the network can take it back but unsuccessful enough that the studio doesn’t want to pay for it), it’s an illustration of why the old model of network-studio relationships is dying out. Under that model, a studio or independent production company makes a show, sells it to a network, and then gets the windfall when the show is sold into syndication and overseas markets. Today, most networks and studios prefer to have everything under one roof, with the network buying shows primarily from its corporate partner.

A major reason for that, as discussed elsewhere on this blog, was the elimination of the so-called “fin-syn” rules that forbade networks from owning their own shows. But an incident like this one shows why the fin-syn rules couldn’t last (nostalgic though I may be for the independent producers that flourished under those rules). It’s not just that networks prefer to own the shows they air; it’s also that studios have increasing trouble making back their money on a lot of shows. The syndication market isn’t what it was, nor are overseas sales, and while DVD sales can help some shows (like Heroes) they are not good for older-skewing procedural shows like Saving Grace.

Part of the security of the vertical-integration model, making the broadcaster and supplier be part of the same company, is that if one revenue stream is disappointing, the show might still be kept alive by the other one, or there could be added pressure on the studio and/or broadcaster to keep it going for the sake of the corporate partner. (Bill Lawrence has pointed out many times that this is why Scrubs has stayed alive by moving from NBC, which did not own it, to ABC, which does. NBC didn’t have any reason to care about Scrubs‘ good DVD sales and other ancillary benefits because they didn’t stand to benefit from any of that, whereas ABC does.)

An exception, as I’ve also said before, is CBS, which gets most of its hit comedies from outside studios like Warner Brothers and Fox. But most successful multi-cam sitcoms are reliable moneymakers in syndication, so they are the closest thing we have nowadays to the old model, where the studio can look forward to big profits from endless reruns.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May recommends Wayson Choy’s 'Not Yet: A Memoir of Living and Almost Dying'

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:59 PM - 3 Comments

The book deals with two life-threatening events and the author’s struggle to regain his ability to walk and talk, his personality and, even his sanity.  In interviews, Wayson Choy has talked about how deeply grateful he is that when struggling to regain his life through weeks of hospitalization, he did not have to also consider bankruptcy and medical bills. In that sense, Tommy Douglas is infused in its pages.

Despite being non-fiction, the book has a mythic quality. That the bare-bones description sounds grim and depressing makes the fact that the experience of reading this book is inspiring and joyful even more surprising. The narrative moves in and out of dimensions of human existence with an illuminating clarity of vision. It is ultimately a love story. It is the love of friends and the self-assembled family of a life well lived.  It is love of self in the best and highest sense. It is a glorious book.

Duceppe to Iggy: You're a wimp

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:31 PM - 13 Comments

Gilles Duceppe double dog dares Michael Ignatieff to bring down the Conservatives in a speech to the BQ’s youth wing in Quebec City:

“We’re going to get this report on employment insurance. If Harper refuses to change his policy and if Ignatieff stops giving in, we’ll be in elections. But these are big ‘ifs’. I’d be surprised if Harper changed his position. I’d be less surprised if Ignatieff gave in once again.”

I’m hoping Ignatieff replies with the always devastating “I know you are but what am I?”

UPDATED: From the ITQ Mailbag: The anti-Ignatieff campaign goes global — or maybe not.

By kadyomalley - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:26 PM - 112 Comments

For a moment or two there, it felt like a scene from His Girl Friday.

There, amidst the stack of mail that had been piling up in her Hot Room cubby, was a genuine brown envelope.  Stamped with a Royal Mail postmark and loaded up with £1 ninepence worth of British stamps, the possibilities seemed endless — at least, before she tore it open. But the enclosed contents, alas, turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax: a copy of “No More Mister Nice Guy”, New Humanist editor Laurie Taylor’s 2005 article on the “acrimonious battle” between Michael Ignatieff — “once … [an] intellectual leader of the global human rights movement” —  and “some of his closest friends” over what Taylor describes as “[his shared] vision of the US government’s vision of  the violent and compulsory promotion of democracy … and the use of instruments, for example torture, which are apparently in need of revisionist treatment.”

Stop the presses? Not quite. Not only had ITQ been tipped off in advance to its imminent arrival by another reporter — the same package had been sent to every member of the press gallery —  but, as indicated by the above link, the article in question is already available online, so it’s not as though her anonymous correspondent was providing her with previously unpublished — or even particularly hard to find — material. At the same time, she couldn’t help wondering  why whoever was behind the mailing would have expended so much time and effort — not to mention money — to print out and send off several hundred full colour copies of a four year old article — complete with helpful yellow highlighting of key passages —  via transatlantic post.

Continue…

The end of TV as we know it

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:18 PM - 1 Comment

If we manage to pull out of the recession, when will the television industry recover? Never, says Bob Garfield, an Advertising Age media critic who has just published a new book called The Doomsday Scenario, about the future of traditional broadcast media. Garfield points out that this year’s advertising market has been “disastrous,” with advertising revenues for the networks dropping by 15 per cent. He argues that this is leading to a vicious cycle, with networks dropping more scripted programming in response to lower ad revenues, which in turn will lead to even lower revenues (because there will be fewer shows worth advertising on). The end result will be “the total collapse of the network television model,” with networks holding down costs and finally moving away from the old model of filling each evening with original programming. NBC’s decision to turn its 10 o’clock hour to Jay Leno is just the first step in a future of cheaper, more disposable programming. In a few years, Garfield predicts there will no longer be four networks. “One of the networks will drop out,” he says, “maybe two.” He’s not saying which network will be the first to go, but put your money on NBC.

The Wrap

Groom's ex-wife set wedding fire

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:16 PM - 0 Comments

The ex-wife of a man getting married in Kuwait has confessed to police that she used gasoline to set a fire at his wedding party that has claimed the lives of 43 women and children, Al-Qabas, a Kuwaiti newspaper, reports. The woman, alleged to have started the fire Saturday night in a female-only tent, is said to have told police that she wished to avenge her ex-husband’s “bad treatment” of her before they were divorced.

The National

This week's travel news

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:15 PM - 0 Comments

O What a Tangled Travel Web
Online travel planning and booking grows more complex by the day. As MSNBC columnist Rob Lovitt reports, there are now destination sites, supplier sites, online travel agencies, meta-search sites, user review sites, deal aggregator sites and ‘opaque’ sites where you don’t find out the price or provider until well into the process. It’s not unusual to get to a point where you’ve seen so many websites and travelled down so many online alleys that you can’t even remember where you found the best deal. Lovitt aptly dubs the resulting stupor as ‘Travel Research Fatigue Syndrome.’ One industry researcher says rich content like virtual tours, improved photography and interactive maps will help travellers come to a decision more quickly, but as long as price remains the most intent focus for online travellers, the search will go on…and on…and on.

Not Easy Being Calin
The hard part is over. Now the hard part begins. The fact is, there’s nothing easy about the airline business and Air CanadaCEO Calin Rovinescu knew that coming into the job. In an interview with the Globe & Mail’s Brent Jang, Rovinescu offered a behind-the-scenes look at the frantic past few months, and the challenge-filled months and years ahead as the airline struggles to slash more costs, win back disgruntled Canadian travellers and try to reinvent a troubled corporate culture. At least the pay is good. Continue…

Should the federal government press U.S. officials for Omar Khadr’s transfer to Canadian custody?

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 24 Comments

Cocaine in your wallet?

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 1:59 PM - 7 Comments

In the largest study of its kind, researchers analyzed bank notes from countries around the world and reported that cocaine is present in up to 85 per cent of Canadian notes, and 90 per cent of notes from the United States. Of the samples taken from 30 cities in five countries—Brazil, Canada, China, Japan and the United States—the U.S. and Canada had the highest rate of contamination. Contaminated notes from Canada had a range of 2.4 micrograms to over 2,530 micrograms of coke per bank note. China and Japan had the lowest levels of contamination, between 12 and 20 per cent. The authors say the study suggests that cocaine abuse is still rampant and may even be on the rise in some cities.

Science Daily

Feel like a swim? New U.K. rules require women to cover up from neck to ankles

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 1:51 PM - 18 Comments

New rules that ban even non-Muslims from wearing non-modest attire at public pools during special swim sessions for Muslims has sparked controversy in Britain, the Telegraph reports. Bathers at municipal pools have been told that they must comply with the “modest” code of dress required by Islamic custom, with women covered from the neck to the ankles and men, who swim separately, covered from the navel to the knees. The segregated swim sessions have elicited anger from critics and politicians who say they are divisive and put a strain on relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, the paper reports, though one British lawmaker defended them on the grounds they show respect for religious groups that impose strict rules on segregation. In a related—albeit it counter development—in France, a woman is threatening to sue after being thrown out of a public pool for wearing a burkini. The headscarf, tunic and trouser outfit believed to allow Muslim women to preserve their modesty in the water was deemed “unhygienic.”

The Telegraph

Obama’s about-face

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 1:15 PM - 14 Comments

After months of quarreling with Republicans over health care reform, White House Democrats may be ready to compromise. This weekend, President Barack Obama suggested that he would consider a proposal for reform that did not involve a public plan. “The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama explained at a Saturday town-hall meeting. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.” Given President Obama’s aggressive advocacy of a public option, the change is striking. But even Senate Democrats recognize that the choice is to budge now—or risk losing even more support. “The fact of the matter is, there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” said Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, of North Dakota. “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.” The Senate is now considering a private alternative to a government-run program: a non-profit co-op that would compete with existing insurers.

The New York Times

North Korea opens up

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 1 Comment

North Korea has agreed to lift some border restrictions with its Southern neighbour in what is believed to be an attempt to reestablish diplomatic relations. The government announced that it will begin to reunite separated families again and allow tourism to the Diamond Mountain resort in Kaesong, ending a blockade that was imposed after South Korean president Lee Myung-bak halted a free flowing aid policy last year. This comes after a tense period where the North restarted nuclear and missile tests earlier this year. And messages remain mixed. While these changes may signal a willingness on North Korean’s part to reengage in the six-nations talks aimed at denuclearization, the government has also placed its army on “special alert” in response to joint U.S. and South Korean military drills, which the country says are a “blatant challenge” to peace.

The Guardian

Even their energies lie?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:28 AM - 22 Comments

Psychics assess the political landscape.

“The way things are going right now, it is going to happen and it will probably be in November,” said Debbie Cameron, an empathic psychic from Ontario. ”I pick up on energies, and when you are dealing with politicians, I get half truths and it makes it really hard to pinpoint. But when I put all those half truths together that’s when I find the truth, and that’s why I say November.”

'God knows where the money is, and He knows how to get the money to you'

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 2 Comments

Despite recession and a government investigation, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted a multiracial crowd of 9,000 in Fort Worth, Texas, with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God. Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds. “God knows where the money is, and He knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland. Preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message-that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold-is reassuring to many in hard times. The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day. They are among 386,000 people worldwide whom the Copelands call their “partners,” most of whom send regular contributions to the Copelands, whose broadcast reaches 134 countries, and whose income is about $100 million annually. At the convention, the preachers worked mightily to remind the crowd that they are God’s elect. “While everybody else is having a famine,” said Jerry Savelle, a Texas televangelist, “his covenant people will be having the best of times. Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind, the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.” At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.

The New York Times

Harper in the Arctic

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 11:09 AM - 2 Comments

Stephen Harper is heading north to observe a military exercise meant to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the Arctic region. He’ll be boarding the HMCS Toronto on Wednesday to observe Operation Nanook, an anti-submarine and emergency response exercise that takes place in a region frequented by Russian and American subs. The operation, which will involve more than 700 troops, comes as part of the Conservative government’s pledge to increase the Canadian military’s presence in the area.

CBC News