Egypt's strange brand of liberalism

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 8 Comments

Liberal International (LI), which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties, lists as members nearly 70 such parties including Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Germany’s Free Democrats and the Liberal Party of Canada. Its 56th Congress is now underway in Egypt, hosted by local member Al-Gabha, or the Democratic Front Party (DFP), a political organization both proudly liberal and virulently anti-Semitic. Consider the case of Sekina Fouad, a well-known journalist who also serves as the DFP’s vice president. In an article published earlier this year, Fouad dismissed any distinction between Jews and Israelis, the reason being “the extremity of the doctrine of arrogance, distinctiveness and condescension [the Jews] set out from and seek to achieve by all means, and on top of which blood, killing, terrorizing and frightening.” She corroborates this argument with an alleged statement by “President” Benjamin Franklin, asking Americans to expel Jews since they are “like locusts, never to get on a green land without leaving it deserted and barren.” (Franklin, who never made it to the presidency, never made any such statement.) Fouad is no outlier; that’s all standard rhetoric from Engyptian liberals. The country’s oldest “liberal” party, Al-Wafd, runs an eponymous daily newspaper that is one of Egypt’s most active platforms for anti-Semitism. Following President Barack Obama’s conciliatory Cairo speech to the Muslim world, columnist Ahmed Ezz El-Arab faulted Obama for insisting that the Holocaust was an actual historical event

The Wall Street Journal

Shooting at Los Angeles synagogue injures two men

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 3 Comments

Los Angeles synagogues are on high alert after a shooting this morning at a North Hollywood temple sent two men to hospital with gunshot wounds. The shooting occurred at 6:20 a.m. at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue just as the two men where about to enter for morning prayers and is being investigated as a hate crime. According to the Los Angeles Times, sources say the gunman pulled out the weapon, which jammed at first, and fired. Police have detained one man and increased patrols around Jewish institutions, though they are still trying to determine whether the gunman acted alone. The victims were taken to hospital in stable condition.

Los Angeles Times

Scientists “create” human eggs and sperm

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:33 PM - 4 Comments

Using human embryonic stem cells, U.S. researchers have successfully created the types of cells that make eggs and sperm, which is expected to help us understand some of the more mysterious stages of early human development. “We are really trying to look at the origins of normal and abnormal human development by going to the source,” Dr. Renee Riejo Pera of Stanford University in California told Reuters, which reports that these stages of the human reproductive cycle can’t be studied in animals because the genes involved are found in humans only. Researchers will now be able to study these development phases to learn more about inherited diseases and possibly develop new treatments for infertility. In the study, published in the journal Nature, researchers created germ cells (which give rise to eggs and sperm), then turned on and off genes they thought were crucial to turning stem cells to immature germ cells. Producing too few germ cells, or poor quality ones, is a major cause of infertility in humans. “We think if there’s immature germ cells that are available in a person, we might be able to use this system to mature them and push them forward into development,” said Dr. Kehkooi Kee, one of the researchers involved.

Reuters

Alicia Keys and the barber's daughter

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Gisèle Theriault’s life reads like a fairy tale: a barber’s daughter from Cape Breton takes a talismanic necklace of gold and rubies to a glittering ball attended by superstars and a former U.S. president. There’s even a fairy godmother—Alicia Keys. Theriault was operating a modest solo business out of her Toronto home, handcrafting silver jewellery engraved with inspirational messages, when she met Keys backstage at a concert last year. The pop diva took the jeweller under her wing, and since then Oprah Winfrey has been wearing her work. Theriault now has five employees and shares a New York publicist with Keys and the late Michael Jackson. This month Keys launched an enterprise called AK Worldwide, making her protege’s jewellery line its pilot project. And last week at the Black Ball—a star-studded Manhattan gala to raise money for children with AIDS—Theriault saw a necklace that she created auctioned off for US$40,000. She had hoped it would go for more, but had a big consolation. The buyer was Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry.

A few days before the Black Ball, Theriault sat in the sun-splashed kitchen of her home—a three-storey semi that doubles as the headquarters for her company, the Barber’s Daughter—and served a slice of vegan pumpkin pie and flowering tea. As a jasmine bloom opened like a sea anemone in a glass teapot, she confessed that, after working until 4:30 a.m. to finish the necklace for the ball, she had a dream that it sold for $100,000. “I govern myself by dreams,” she says, and her subconscious appraisal wasn’t so far-fetched. For last year’s Black Ball, she made a silver necklace that sold for US$25,000. This one is far more lavish, and made of 18-karat gold. Continue…

Dead celebs "more powerful than ever"

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12:13 PM - 0 Comments

And the world’s most bankable dead celebrity is… Wait, who? According to Forbes magazine, neither Elvis Presley nor Michael Jackson snagged the No. 1 spot this year. Instead, the posthumous honour went to French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, whose estate earned approximately $350 million since his death from brain cancer in June 2008. How does a fashion designer possibly make millions after death? Did he invent pants? Or t-shirts? The truth is St-Laurent will have a hard time repeating the feat. The bulk of his earnings came from the one-time sale of his possessions—art, furniture, antiques. The runners-up were Rodgers and Hammerstein, who earned $235 million for the rights to music they co-wrote, while Jackson and Presley came in third and fourth, respectively. Forbes senior editor Matthew Miller says that dead celebrities—or, “delebs”—are “more powerful than ever.” He adds: “The money may be drying up in Hollywood, but there’s still plenty of cash being made in the graveyard.”

The Telegraph

Another foot found

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:38 AM - 1 Comment

Police are investigating the discovery of a human foot inside a shoe that washed up on the shore in Richmond, just south of Vancouver. Two men walking along a beach found the size eight and a half sneaker, which is the seventh shoe containing human remains found on the southern coast of B.C. since 2007. Police say there is no evidence of foul play in the other cases, and that a natural process separated the remains from the bodies. They’re currently working with coroners, and forensic pathologists and anthropologists to identify the remains.

CBC News

'Learn to Speak Music,' by John Crossingham

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:23 AM - 2 Comments

Rock’n’roll is a young person’s pursuit. While reading John Crossingham’s Learn to Speak Music—published by Owl Kids Press and presumably written for the magazine’s target demographic of 9 to 13—the question is: just how young?

Crossingham has written a children’s book explaining in careful detail everything you need to know about starting a band: rehearsing, songwriting, and putting on your first gig. By the time he starts explaining the difference between a PZM and a Shure SM-57 microphone, you have to wonder exactly how young his audience is—and if they’re at all impressed with Crossingham’s international touring experience as a member of Broken Social Scene, a band that doesn’t exactly command a tween audience. Continue…

Munyaneza gets 25 years

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:19 AM - 0 Comments

A Montreal court sentenced Désiré Munyaneza to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, making him the first person in Canada found guilty of committing war crimes. He was found guilty of seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for leading a murderous group of Hutus during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. An appeal has already been filed, and the case, which began in 2005 after Munyaneza was arrested in Toronto, is expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

The Globe and Mail

Oh, to be a military dentist

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:18 AM - 2 Comments

Who says the army doesn’t pay? Certainly its doctors and dentists make out okay, raking in salaries above $200,000 or more and counting among Canada’s 500 top paid federal employees. Yup, they’re right up there with deputy ministers, who can earn as much as $300,000 a year. The numbers were obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, and if you plan to read the story, get ready for the usual blather about how the feds have to pay more to attract top talent from the private sector. That’s the official explanation for the military doctors, anyway. DND says it has to dangle fat signing bonuses before them to pry them away from that the publicly funded medical system. You know: the one many physicians not long ago were complaining doesn’t pay close to what they could earn south of the border. Thank goodness so many of them are so civic-minded.

Ottawa Citizen

Buried under rubble

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 23 Comments

Michelle Shepherd gets access to new documents and pictures in the Omar Khadr case.

Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr was buried face down under rubble, blinded by shrapnel and crippled, at the time the Pentagon alleges he threw a grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. soldier, according to classified photographs and defence documents obtained by the Star.

A problem worse than Bonnie Tyler. (You heard me.)

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 23 Comments

I’ve come to you for help before, kind reader.

Some of you will recall – possibly with full-body shudders and theatrical flashbacks – the grim details of my darkest hour, when I confessed to an enraptured blogosphere that I was utterly incapable of getting Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart out of my head.

For days the song lingered there – hounding me, torturing me, reminding me time and again that forever’s gonna start tonight. [Brief pause.] Forevvvvver’s gonna start tonight.

With your help, I tried repeatedly to dislodge the song but it had grabbed onto my subconscious like nothing since that 1979 photo of Kristy McNichol in short shorts. I deployed the usual countermeasures: trying to sing other annoyingly catchy songs; trying to sing other annoyingly catchy songs from the same era (several people overheard me at Loblaws – does this mean I owe royalties to Kim Carnes?); theme songs; jingles; masturbation. Nothing worked. (With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that it was counterproductive to masturbate to the image of Bonnie Tyler.)

Eventually, after almost a week of effort, frustration and my seven-year-old son singing the chorus to Funkytown, I regained power of attorney over my mental synapses. Victory was mine.

But victory, like Bonnie Tyler’s mastery of the pop charts, was short-lived. The menace of Bonnie Tyler had been bested, but now there is a new nemesis – more insidious, more debilitating, more… Italian.

Ladies and gentlemen, as God is my witness it has been four days now and Continue…

Great moments in apology

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:42 AM - 61 Comments

Martha Hall Findlay owns up to an improper birthday invitation. Ujjal Dosanjh admits inappropriate use of “the Twitter.”

Mitchel Raphael on a Rahim Jaffer joke

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

Good sport Maxime Bernier

At the suggestion of Capital Diary, this year’s Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner was a different kind of night. Traditionally, party leaders have given funny speeches, but this dinner became a mock awards ceremony with lots of MPs and journalists taking to the stage (in part because fewer and fewer leaders were offering to speak at the event). Rick Mercer talked about all the gay staffers who work for Tory ministers “except Lisa Raitt. How do I know? Just look at her hair.” Other highlights included former foreign affairs minister and very good sport Maxime Bernier comically looking for his notes on stage. He found them and did not have to call Julie Couillard. Also, Scott Brison had some great lines: “I’ve put a lot of work into my speech,” said the Nova Scotia Liberal MP. “In fact, I even got together with former colleague Rahim Jaffer to do a few lines.”

How to get elected in Nova Scotia without spending a dime

The recent announcement of a by-election in Nova Scotia has all eyes in that province on one man: Bill Casey. Casey was the Tory MP who voted against the Conservative budget over the Atlantic accord and then sat as an Independent. He resigned this year, triggering the by-election in his old riding. He is now a Nova Scotia hero: any candidate that received his blessing would sail to victory. According to NDP MP Megan Leslie, “You wouldn’t have to run a campaign if Bill endorsed you.” Casey now works for the Nova Scotia government representing the province’s interests in Ottawa, so he has to appear neutral, but politicians at all levels of government in the province are keen to score even a photo with him.

Happy Birthday from Justin

During question period Justin Trudeau can often be spotted signing all sorts of things. (Most MPs do this, including the PM, who has been spotted signing photos of himself.) One day Trudeau had a huge stack of cards on his desk. Every Liberal supporter in his Montreal riding, he explains, gets a personalized birthday card. Recently, Trudeau popped by the seventh annual Champions of Mental Health awards at the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. His mother, Margaret Trudeau, got an award for being open about having bipolar disorder. Also on the awards list was Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Gen. Walter Natynczyk, chief of defence staff, for their work launching the Canadian Forces mental health campaign, “Be the Difference.” MacKay noted that the number of health care officials hired under his watch has increased significantly. Meanwhile, on the military mission front, Natynczyk told Capital Diary that he just wrapped up the mission in Bosnia a few weeks ago. He noted that when it comes to wars, politicians like to sprint, while the military run marathons.

His daughter and Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, will be out soon. So which NDP MP has a photo homage of Palin in his office? Peter Stoffer’s daughter, Amber Ocean Stoffer, once dressed up as the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, and the Nova Scotia MP keeps the snap in a prominent frame in his Hill office. She is called Amber Ocean, says Stoffer, because she was conceived on a cruise ship and the sunsets were a stunning amber colour. Stoffer has another daughter named Jasmin Aurora Stoffer; she was born in the Yukon during an aurora borealis.

What the Senator wore

Sen. Nancy Ruth showed up to the weekly Conservative caucus meeting with a T-shirt under her blazer that read: “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.” She showed it to a few MPs, but made sure not to flash the Prime Minister.

Fixes for some common problems

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Most of the time this column pokes fun, usually while finding a way to reference Charlie Sheen. But this week I’m here to help. There are problems in the world and I aim to solve them—much in the way the presence of Charlie Sheen “solved” my desire to ever watch Two and a Half Men.

Problem: A poll indicates that Canadian parents are more comfortable talking to their children about sex than discussing the ins and outs of money and personal finance.

Solution: Son, have a seat. Comfortable? Good, that’s good. Look—it’s time we had a talk. [Deep breath.] When a man loves a woman, and also a motorboat, he may feel the urge to engage in the act of “earning.” Continue…

Why Balloon Boy's dad deserves a break

By The Editors - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 7 Comments

Eccentric inventors were once the stuff of romantic comedy. Today they’re the object of derision, anger and possible six-year jail sentences. Does this say something about eccentrics? Or the rest of us?

Richard Heene, father of six-year-old Falcon, the famous Balloon Boy, has been called many things over the past week, the most charitable of which may be “candidate for world’s worst dad.” Yet in many ways he seems the spitting image of Dick Van Dyke’s endearing and fatherly Caractacus Potts character from the 1968 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Continue…

You thought your divorce was bad!

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 10 Comments

If anyone has been goaded into writing a balls-to-the-wall avenging divorce memoir, it’s Mary Jo Eustace, who was tossed over in 2005 by her husband of 12 years, Dean McDermott, for Hollywood princess Tori Spelling. The skeezy details alchemized into tabloid gold: McDermott met TV mogul Aaron Spelling’s daughter on the set of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie. Three weeks later, Eustace, a former co-star of the TV cooking show What’s for Dinner, was blindsided by McDermott leaving her: they had just moved to Los Angeles from Toronto for his acting career and were adopting a seven-month-old baby girl, a little sister for their eight-year-old son Jack.

It gets worse. Unlike other women who have to ferret out information about their ex, Eustace only had to turn on Entertainment Tonightto view his “truly, madly, deeply, Tori” tattoo or pick up People, which devoted six pages to the couple’s “magical” 2006 wedding in Fiji, to read her ex say of Spelling: “I’ve never had as much of a desire to get married and make a woman my wife as I’ve had with her.” Since then, there has been the Tori & Dean reality-show domestic lovefest with their two children on which to gag. Continue…

Why Jews keep voting against themselves

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 46 Comments

Remember when there were seats to lie down on in airports? Now everything has fixed arms, a barrier to anything but stern upright positions. A 10-hour delay last Saturday in Fort Lauderdale airport was quite a stretch with naught to stretch on except two tiny units of armless seats coveted by 154 stranded passengers.

Happily, I had just purchased a jolly good book. Less fortunately, it had a flypaper title: in bold large letters on a white background it read Why Are Jews Liberals? Continue…

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of October 27th, 2009)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

The Commons: Our house of glass

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 7:33 PM - 113 Comments

The Scene. Shortly before Question Period began this afternoon, Jack Layton stood with something to say.

“Mr. Speaker, citizens appoint a member of this House to represent their values of cooperation and mutual respect,” he posited. “During Question Period we have been witnessing undeniably sexist heckling from members of the government side. This abuse is growing hotter, it is growing more frequent, and there is more bullying.”

For this, he was, of course, heckled and jeered.

“I can hear some of it now, except in this case it is not targeting women as it does all too often in this chamber. It targets women representing opposition parties, all the opposition parties in the House,” Mr. Layton continued. “Sexist bullying cannot be justified in Canada and can never be tolerated in our Parliament. As a parliamentarian, as a man, a father, a grandfather, I call on the government’s leadership to really get a grip on its members and set a higher standard.”

Members of all three opposition parties stood to applaud the NDP leader’s call. Government members sat impassively. Asked afterwards, Mr. Layton declined to specify any particular taunts of a particularly sexist nature. Continue…

Ian Rankin on his new book 'The Complaints'

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 5:29 PM - 10 Comments

Two years after Ian Rankin retired his curmudgeonly Edinburgh detective John Rebus, the Scottish author is back with a new book, The Complaints, and a new detective, Malcolm Fox, who investigates fellow cops for the Edinburgh police’s complaints department. Rankin recently spoke to Macleans.ca about Rebus’s retirement, getting off the “velvet-lined treadmill” and the best in new Scottish music.

Q: What was the reaction when The Complaints was released?
A: I was waiting for the backlash, especially in the U.K. I was waiting for the critics to go, “Well, it’s OK but it ain’t Rebus” and the readers to say, “We want Rebus, we don’t want this guy.” Neither has happened yet. I did a U.K. tour in September and at almost every event there was someone from a complaints department from a British police force saying, “I’ve read it, I don’t know how you know about all this stuff but you’re spot on.” No one’s noticed any big howlers.

Q: What was the most common question from readers or reporters?
A: “Is Rebus coming back? Have we seen the last of him?” I don’t know. I felt his presence throughout this book. He’s retired but he’s not stopped working.

Q: How did Malcolm Fox come into existence?
A: I read a newspaper article about an internal affairs inquiry and I thought, “I’ve never met someone from the complaints department. I wonder what kind of cops they are.” So I asked a police contact in Edinburgh if he could put me in touch with anybody. As they spoke about the job and the kind of cop you have to be or become, I could actually visualize Malcolm Fox as a very different type of cop from Rebus with a different philosophy. He has to be a team player—above reproach. He can’t do the short cuts; he’s got to be slow and methodical. He’s the antithesis of Rebus.

Continue…

Who's not getting the shot

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 5:05 PM - 24 Comments

I’ve been thinking about what additional piece of information it would take to jolt all those people who are still saying they don’t want to get the H1N1 vaccine into seeing reason. I think I’ve hit on it: Maxime Bernier says he’s doesn’t plan to be vaccinated. I apologize in advance to health officials for any sudden surge of demand for shots caused by this posting.

Frustration in the gallery

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 3:59 PM - 80 Comments

Glen Pearson considers Monday’s unpleasantness.

What transpired yesterday is something of an indicator as to what Parliament and the country itself has come to.  Protestors felt the need to invade a sacred place; parliamentarians looked uncomfortable and somewhat unmoved; and the media raced out into the halls to grab their pictures and stories of young people being muscled out of the Parliament buildings.

We’re better than this – all of us.  The bill itself was asking us to treat climate change seriously.  We haven’t and we’ll pay for it in world opinion at Copenhagen, not to mention global devastation.  The difficult things we will face in our future – environmental degradation, terrorism, starvation, poverty – demand outrage, attention and a sense of urgency.  Parliament can’t muster up that kind of anger, except to lob our partisan attacks.  So, these young people brought it into our own ballpark, trying to give us a wake-up call.

Separated at Birth?

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 3:05 PM - 6 Comments

Linda Duncan                                     Sammy Hagar

Budding Toronto folk singer dies after coyote attack

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 2:43 PM - 0 Comments

Singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell was only 19 and had just released her first CD, a collection of tunes showcasing a precocious voice and, in the juxtaposition of folk genres, a youthful search for her own sound. On Tuesday, while taking a break from her first tour of the Maritimes, Mitchell, a lover of the outdoors, took a hike alone on the Skyline Trail, in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, where she encountered two coyotes. Mitchell lost so much blood as a result of the attack that she died the following day.

Toronto Star

Taylor’s Myspace page