Summer house hunting: What $350,000 will get you

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:50 PM - 1 Comment

Click on each photo for details (including the asking price, square footage and more)

Summer house hunting: What $500,000 will get you

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

Click on each photo for details (including the asking price, square footage and more)

Summer house hunting: What $1 million will get you

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

Click on each photo for details (including the asking price, square footage and more)

Noordin still at large after shootout

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 0 Comments

After a 16-hour shootout and siege with Indonesian police in a farmhouse in central Java earlier this month, one man was dead. Many presumed he was the nation’s most wanted terrorist, Noordin Muhammad Top. But DNA tests have just confirmed that the slain man was not Noordin, so the manhunt continues.

Noordin is a suspected organizer of the bombings of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels on July 17 in Jakarta that killed seven and wounded more than 50. He is also thought to be a key strategist for Jemaah Islamiah (JI), an organization that wants to drive out westerners and create a Muslim caliphate in Southeast Asia. The group, linked to al-Qaeda, has been blamed for a series of previous attacks on a Jakarta hotel, the Australian Embassy, and the 2002 and 2005 bombings of tourist areas in Bali. More than 250 people have died, mostly westerners. Continue…

Week in Pictures: August 20th – August 27th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:34 PM - 0 Comments

Smart-car dunking hits Amsterdam

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:20 PM - 1 Comment

How many Dutch revelers does it take to dump a Smart car into a canal? Not many, according to recent reports that pranksters have taken to chucking the itty-bitty vehicles into Amsterdam’s waterways. The hapless owners of the eco-friendly cars aren’t laughing though.

The diminutive Smart Fortwo, weighing in at a mere 725 kg and measuring under 2.7 m long, has been a fixture on the narrow streets of Europe since it appeared more than a decade ago. Its ability to squeeze into tight spaces have made it popular in Amsterdam, where it’s not uncommon to see the lightweight roadsters nestled perilously close to the edge of the city’s many canals. Apparently, the urge to hoist them onto their hind wheels and send them into the murky water is one that drunken young men have been indulging. As victim Casper de Jong, whose Smart was found adrift in the waterway outside his apartment, told De Telegraaf, “The same thing happened to my companion’s Smart. Both cars are a complete write-off.” Continue…

Keeping a lid on fun in Vancouver

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 13 Comments

There’s something decidedly punk rock about being evicted in the middle of a loud, screaming concert. But for the manager of the bar in Vancouver’s Cobalt Motor Hotel, even before her landlord gave her 60 days’ notice during a July 31 performance, the thrill of bucking the establishment had long since worn off. For almost a decade, Wendythirteen has been working with the city and the landlord, trying to turn the venue in one of the Downtown Eastside’s most notorious hovels into a legitimate place to hear punk, metal and hardcore acts. She’s used a good chunk of her own savings and “a volunteer army of people” to do repairs, and has kept out the drugs and violence for which the upstairs rooms are well known. Today, even the “train punks,” who tattoo their faces and travel the country in boxcars, “check their knives at the door,” she says.

To some, the eviction is part of a cyclical rotation: an old venue dies, invariably a new one is born. To others, it’s proof of just how fringe Vancouver’s alternative music scene has become. Wendythirteen started running shows out of the Cobalt in 2000 despite its sordid reputation, because “that’s where our genre of music had been driven,” she says. Since then, the spike in property values, strict new zoning regulations and city hall’s iron grip on liquor licences have made it even tougher for musicians to find a stage. Add a pre-Olympics makeover to the mix, and what you get, according to local filmmakers Melissa James and Kate Kroll, is No Fun City—the title of a documentary they’re preparing, somewhat ironically, just as Vancouver gears up to host the biggest party it has ever seen. Continue…

What happened to Quentin Tarantino?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 11 Comments

Is Quentin Tarantino old-fashioned? There’s a question you’d never have heard 15 years ago, when Pulp Fiction made him arguably the most famous and influential semi-independent filmmaker in America. But his new movie, the Second World War adventure Inglourious Basterds (opening Aug. 21), has the usually cocky Tarantino sounding insecure. Sebastian Haselbeck, founder of the Quentin Tarantino Archives website, told Maclean’s that an important part of Tarantino’s persona is “enormous self-confidence in what he does,” but far from sounding confident, Tarantino told the New York Times he rushed to get the film cut because he hasn’t yet made a great film in the last 10 years: “I wanted to have a masterpiece before the decade’s out,” he said. Still, he wouldn’t say that Basterds would be it, only that “this was the hardest movie I’ve ever made.” Tarantino has also made some self-promotional comments that sound more like the brilliant, obnoxious media personality from the ’90s, like his statement that he refuses to hire composers because he doesn’t want a musician “coming in here and throwing his s–t over my movie.” But he’s increasingly acting like someone who doesn’t want movie history to pass him by. Others think it already has: Gerald Peary, a critic who edited a book of interviews with Tarantino, now says, “I don’t find him as significant a cultural icon” as he was in the Pulp Fiction days.

Audiences don’t always know what to make of Inglourious Basterds; the film got a mixed reception at the Cannes Festival (where Pulp Fiction took the top prize in 1994), and even favourable reviews warn that it’s not the rollicking action-packed movie we’d expect from the trailers. Inglourious Basterds has all the things we’ve come to expect from Tarantino: horrifying but cartoonish violence, silly comedy in inappropriate places, sexy women out for revenge (Mélanie Laurent as a Jewish woman trying to destroy the Nazis in retaliation for killing her family). But it also has surprisingly little action for a movie about ragtag Nazi-killers who take their victims’ scalps; two key scenes, the opening and a long one in a Paris tavern, consist of 20 minutes of dialogue followed by a few seconds of violence. And top-billed Brad Pitt, who plays the head Nazi-hunter, doesn’t have much screen time in the movie; his character doesn’t really drive the plot compared to the relatively unknown Christoph Waltz, who plays a charming but ruthless Nazi officer. Continue…

The readable Harper

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 37 Comments

Interestingly enough, Stephen Harper’s Parliamentary bio does not list him as minivan-driving middle class hockey dad, but as an “author, economist, lecturer.” Unfortunately, the Prime Minister lacks the easily accessible paper trail of his primary rival. Though there are a few good reads to be found.

Continue…

So What Happened With The Geminis and GAS?

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 4:07 PM - 6 Comments

Why didn’t Corner Gas get nominated for any Gemini Awards at all (which you’ve got to admit is pretty weird, even in the unlikely event that all the shows nominated ahead of it were better)? It seemed so unexpected that I originally figured there must be some kind of eligibility issue or a mistake of some kind, but apparently it wasn’t; it just got left out of every category.

This is a bit different from the way such things usually happen at the Emmys. The Academy may be worried that not enough popular shows are nominated in the big categories, but there are usually plenty of nominations for popular shows, if not necessarily in the main categories, then in the smaller ones. Two and a Half Men is the most popular comedy in the U.S., and while it doesn’t deserve to win much of anything, it’s gotten lots of nominations over the years. Even Three’s Company got a well-deserved Emmy for John Ritter. It just seems implausible that a show could be that popular and important in the industry and not be among the five best at anything, even if it’s not listed among the five best shows of its type. It’s very subjective to say that not recognizing a particular show devalues the awards, and so I’d be very reluctant to make that argument. But it certainly does seem very strange.

- Star/creator Brent Butt is puzzled by the apparent snub, finding it “kinda goofy”:

“I understand not winning any awards. If we went to the Geminis and didn’t win any awards, you’d kind of roll with it and go, ‘Oh, all right, whatever.’ But to not even have a nomination, that is kind of goofy. I’m not angry or outraged, I’m too busy trying to wrap my head around it, you know? To kind of go, ‘Really? Not a nomination? In 99 categories, after 107 episodes? OK.”‘

- Denis McGrath attributes it to the way the juries are set up, and in particular the demographics of the people doing the selecting:

It’s a juried award, which means that a volunteer group screens all the entries and decides on the nominees. That jury has a lot of power, and a lot of sway, and depending how it’s made up, you can favor certain things, favor your friends, or fulfill vendettas, say what you will.

I’ve been on at least a half a dozen Gemini juries over the years, and served as chairman of one. When I was chair, I tried to balance my jury with writers (it was a writing category) of different perspectives, ages, and experience levels, so that we really could give everything a more or less fair shake. I was aware of my own biases, and compensated accordingly.

Comedy is subjective. And Corner Gas comes from a particular school of gentle humor. And it’s not necessarily the kind of humor that, say, a lot of young comics might celebrate.

Torture, rape, and murder in Iranian prisons – a historical perspective

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:56 PM - 5 Comments

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center today published a detailed report on the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran. 

Incidentally, readers who doubted the confession of a Basij member, published in the Jerusalem Post, that he “married” and then raped women prisoners before their executions – Hello, Robert McClelland – should have a look at page 34.

Canada took on Facebook

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 3 Comments

Last month, Facebook was found to be in violation of Canadian law. The problem stemmed from Facebook’s policy of holding on to its user’s personal information indefinitely. Now, after negotiations with Canada’s privacy commissioner, Facebook has promised to change its ways. The repercussions could be significant. Facebook has agreed to change the way it handles information, updating its privacy policy and giving users more control over the information provided to third-party application developers. Most importantly, the changes will require application developers to obtain consent from users before their information is used or shared. “These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected,” said Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart. Adds Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public policy at Facebook, the new policies set “a new standard for the industry.”

BBC News

The cooling cure

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 4 Comments

Medical wisdom has long held that when treating cardiac arrest, speed is of the essence. “The thinking in cardiac arrest was that when blood flow stops, the chances of resuscitation is very low and can only be done if a patient is aggressively treated within several minutes,” explains Dr. Benjamin Abella, clinical research director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Resuscitation Science. But what if what we actually need is to slow things down? Abella’s work shifts from a traditional focus on time toward the less explored terrain of temperature. He and his partners are pioneering the use of “therapeutic hypothermia”: the controlled cooling of cardiac-arrest patients to 32-34° C, to slow hearts and save lives.

Dr. Dan Waters, a cardiovascular surgeon in Des Moines, Iowa, was among the first to witness how useful hypothermia can be. Fifteen years ago, a man who had fallen through the ice was brought into his ER. “He met all the criteria for being dead,” Waters says: no heartbeat, no spontaneous respiration, no blood pressure, and presumably no brain activity. But, although the patient had been without a heartbeat for an hour or two, he wasn’t dead at all. The case was meaningful, says Waters, because it demonstrated, albeit accidentally, “the power of the cold.” Continue…

One minor observation on Jacques Demers' appointment to the Senate

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 3:12 PM - 37 Comments

As a distraction from those other appointments—Hey, look! A hockey coach!—surely Jacques Demers is already justifying that senatorial salary.

Judith Josephine Koritar 1944-2009

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 1 Comment

Judith Josephine Koritar was born in Montreal on April 28, 1944, the second of three children of Mary Hettel, a caterer, and Karoly Koritar, a railway man. She spent her teen years in Ahuntsic, a middle-class neighbourhood on the northern end of Montreal, and spent many summers in the Laurentian village of Chertsey. After high school she went to work as an animator at the National Film Board. She wasn’t interested in a career, however. She turned down a job there to travel extensively through North, Central and South America with her brother Danny and some friends. She visited the Amazon rainforest and lived with the natives in huts.

She met Christian Pederson on a sojourn through Peru in 1975. He was so taken by her that he left his native country to settle down with her, first in southern Manitoba and then in Montreal. He had difficulty finding work, and her parents never approved of the relationship. Nevertheless, the pair married in 1976. Judith found out she was pregnant with their first child, Oliver, on her wedding day. A daughter, Christina, followed in 1981 and, 15 months later, April. Judith and Christian separated soon after, and he moved to the West Coast. Continue…

UPDATED: GiornoWatch: Just when you thought it was safe to stop checking GEDS daily

By kadyomalley - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:22 PM - 10 Comments

(Note: This was originally written as an update to the ongoing Senate speculation liveblog, but I figured it really deserved its own post.)

David Akin is twittering the highlights of the much anticipated and then totally forgotten about PMO shuffle. The biggest news, as far as ITQ can tell, is that Jenni Byrne is leaving Langevin for party headquarters, where she’ll be director of political operations. Jasmine Igneski will take over as head of Issues Management, and Darrell Reid – previously director of research deputy chief of staff –  will look after Regional Affairs, which used to be a subsidiary of Issues Management, so I guess they’re splitting it up.

Meanwhile, Andrew Wallace becomes Director of Stakeholder Management, replacing Mark Cameron, who leaves PMO for parts as yet unknown. Oh, and Dimitri Soudas becomes chief spokesperson, and John Williamson will play more of a “background role”.  (Dare we say … ‘strategic communications’? In other words, he’ll be the CSO to Dimitri’s Kory?)

UPDATE: Alright, so it seems that ‘background’ may not have been the best choice of words to describe John Williamson’s new role at Langevin, since he’s actually going to be taking over two different offices,  Communication, and Strategic Communication, each of which used to have its own director, and yes, ITQ hopes the first thing he does is restore at least one of the jettisoned Ses.

Basically, he’s going to be sort of a Teneycke/Stewart Olsen hybrid, with Dimitri becoming the official PMO spokesperson. ITQ suspects that he may also end up taking on some of the tasks previously handled by the outgoing Jenni Byrne — who becomes the new Doug Finley, y’all, which has to be a promotion, right?

Other than that, it’s still not clear what happened to the research office — I swear, it used to exist — or whether Reid will keep his deputy chief of staff title as well as taking the helm over at Regional Affairs.  We’ll just have to wait for GEDS to update before we can really figure out what’s going on, I suspect.

We’ll build half and hope for the best

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:20 PM - 2 Comments

Do we need a second bridge linking Windsor and Detroit? The Canadian government says yes, and has already spent $34 million on the project, but politicians on the U.S. side are calling it a bridge to nowhere.

Mark Butler, a spokesperson for Transport Canada, says a new bridge is needed, and a private-public partnership is being explored to build it. The government would own the bridge, while a private company pays for its construction and collects tolls. Ottawa has already spent $34 million on 94 acres of land in Windsor, Ont., for the project, and it plans to buy another 202 acres for construction, which has an estimated cost of $1 billion. Continue…

Forgiveness

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:18 PM - 8 Comments

Glen Pearson reflects on Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s appearance at the foreign affairs committee yesterday.

Key people investigating the incident have determined that Ms. Mohamud did absolutely nothing wrong. It was, in fact, her government that had failed her … miserably. There is an investigation under way, yet it is happening specifically because she was innocent. Guilt on her part is not an issue here, but even with that the Government cannot bring itself to apologize. All three opposition parties offered heartfelt apologies. And some of the Government members expressed sorrow at what had happened to her.  But clearly they had been given direction to not apologize for the incident. You could see the struggle in their own eyes and I could tell easily that a couple of them wanted to offer their apologies. But they didn’t and that is just a symbol of much that is wrong at the moment.

A lone woman, a citizen of Canada, telling her story as only she could. It was drama in every sense of the word. In the end, however, the drama was eclipsed by the sobering reality that this could happen to any of us, or our children. There have been too many such incidents of late and people are having trouble believing us when we say we will protect their rights overseas. Something’s not right and the system needs to be fixed. I just don’t know how we can take the next step when a government cannot bring itself to admit its own series of blunders. Ms. Mohamud needs and deserves an apology. We in Parliament need to ask for forgiveness.

Lost and found, 18 years later

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Police are expected to confirm that the 29-year-old who went into a California station to report that she had been taken 18 years ago really is the missing Jaycee Lee Dugard. In 1991, the then-11 year old was taken on her way to school, while her horrified stepfather tried to chase after the kidnappers’ car on a bicycle. Carl Probyn said “I had personally given up hope.” He reported that the woman, who has spoken to his wife, Jaycee Lee’s mother, remembers parts of her past. Two men have been taken into custody.

BBC News

Reeves claim now cleared to proceed

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Last month, Maclean’s wrote about Cindor Reeves, the brother-in-law of former Liberian warlord and president Charles Taylor. Taylor was forced into exile in 2003 and is now on trial in The Hague on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Reeves is now a refugee claimant in Canada.

Originally, Reeves was Taylor’s ally—he helped him smuggle diamonds and weapons between Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s. But later he turned against Taylor and risked his life to bring him to justice, first by spying for MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, then by working with the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which eventually indicted Taylor. Continue…

Student cash to fund legal fees for staff

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 11 Comments

If a university staff member is arrested at a protest, should students be expected to pay for her defence? That question is being hotly debated at the University of Toronto, where students are being asked to contribute to a legal defence fund for Angela Regnier, the executive director of the U of T Students’ Union (UTSU).

Regnier was arrested while participating in a Tamil demonstration in Toronto in May. She was released on bail and after appearing in court three times, the charges were withdrawn. Now she’s trying to cover her legal bills, and UTSU president Sandy Hudson has been appealing to local student unions for donations. Hudson says the money will “support the constitutional rights of individuals to demonstrate peacefully and participate in civil disobedience.” Continue…

Doer steps down

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 1:36 PM - 1 Comment

Gary Doer, the longest-serving of Canada’s current premiers, is stepping down as Manitoba’s 20th premier. Doer made the announcement at a news conference today saying, “As we mark the 10-year anniversary of our government, this is the appropriate time to pass the baton to a new leader who can carry on that important work.” The 61-year-old first ran for political office for the NDP in 1986, has held his seat since, and has been Manitoba’s premier since 1999. In March 2008, his approval rating of 81 per cent made him the second most popular Canadian premier after Danny Williams of Newfoundland and Labrador. Doer has not revealed any future plans.

CBC News

Transport Canada manual used by CIA

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 3 Comments

A Transport Canada manual, “Survival in Cold Waters: Staying Alive,” was used by the CIA to create cold water interrogation techniques, according to documents recently released by the U.S. government. Water dousing the fifth most severe method of interrogation, according to a CIA manual, and involves immersing detainees in cold water at 5 to 15 C for up to an hour—about two-thirds of the time it takes to develop hypothermia in healthy adults. Christine Collins, president of the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, called the CIA’s use of the manual “appalling.”

CBC News

Is this the time you should call 911?

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

Are you afraid that if your child’s fever goes through the roof, her brain might boil? “Fever phobia” is a common parental fear, writes Dr. Lara Zibners in a new book called If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know If Your Child’s Injury is Really an Emergency. Zibners is an emergency room pediatrician who says that half the kids she sees for high fever, bleeding or excessive vomiting are unnecessarily brought to hospital.

With fever, “parents focus a lot on the specific height of the fever. Everyone is worried that if the fever creeps up to a terribly ‘dangerous’ height, the baby’s brain is going to boil and he’ll die. He won’t boil his brain. I promise.” The highest a fever can ever go is 106 or 107, she writes, unless the thermometer is broken or the kid’s been left “inside a very hot car on a summer day and has been cooked from the outside.” The rules, she says, are straightforward: “An infant under one month with a fever of 100.4 or higher sees a doctor. Period. No discussion.” Continue…