'Elements of a war crime seem to be present'

By Michael Byers - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:41 PM - 12 Comments

Canadians should hang their heads in shame. Richard Colvin’s testimony about torture in Afghanistan is a searing indictment of government officials who either knew—or should have known—that Canada was transferring detainees to torture.

Between 2006 and 2007, Colvin, the second-highest-ranking Canadian diplomat in Kabul, sent 17 reports about torture to Ottawa. The reports, which were circulated widely within the departments of Foreign Affairs and National Defence, confirmed public warnings from international officials and journalists.

In March 2006, Louise Arbour, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported that complaints of torture at the hands of Afghan officials were “common.”

In June 2006, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission estimated that “about one in three prisoners handed over by Canadians are beaten or even tortured in local jails.”

In March 2007, the U.S. State Department reported that unconfirmed reports of torture were “numerous” in Afghanistan.

In April 2007, the Globe and Mail reported on “a litany of gruesome stories and a clear pattern of abuse by the Afghan authorities who work closely with Canadian troops.”

Yet the Canadian Government did next to nothing. In April 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that “Canadian military officials don’t send individuals off to be tortured.”

Colvin’s testimony directly contradicts the Prime Minister’s statement. He reports that all the transferred detainees were tortured and that this was widely know in Kandahar, including among Canadian soldiers and diplomats.

Also in April 2007, then Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor told the House of Commons that the Red Cross would inform the Canadian government if it had any concern about the treatment of detainees. O’Connor later apologized, admitting the ICRC had always maintained its policy of reporting only to the Afghanistan government.

Colvin reports that the Red Cross tried unsuccessfully for three months to convey its concerns to the Canadian military about problems in the way Canada was reporting to the Red Cross when it transferred detainees to the Afghan authorities.

Colvin’s allegations have emerged because he was called to testify before the Military Police Complaints Commission, a body—established after the Somalia Inquiry—which has been investigating detainee transfers at the request of Amnesty International and the BC Civil Liberties Association. The government sought to block Colvin’s testimony before the MPCC, citing national security. The obstruction prompted the three opposition parties to call Colvin to testify before a Parliamentary committee, where his voice could finally be heard. Now, the Canadian Government is seeking to shoot the messenger by publicly besmirching one of Canada’s finest diplomats.

Colvin currently serves as an intelligence officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., a post reserved for the very best in the foreign service. And he’s been put in an unenviable position, his career and reputation on the line, and has chosen to tell the truth rather than fall in contempt of Parliament. In addition to slurring Colvin, the Canadian Government is seeking to obfuscate the facts by claiming that it acted decisively to improve the detainee transfer arrangement put in place by the previous, Liberal government. Nothing could be farther from the truth: it took more than a year of complaints, news reports, litigation and political pressure before a new transfer arrangement was finally adopted in May 2007.

The actual facts are still emerging, but all the elements of a war crime seem to be present. The prohibition of torture ranks with the prohibitions of genocide and slavery as one of the most fundamental rules of international law. Torture—and complicity in torture—is a “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. If Canadian officials allowed detainees to be transferred to Afghan custody despite an apparent risk of torture, and chose not to take reasonable steps to protect them, they are as guilty of a war crime as the torturers themselves. They could be prosecuted in Canada under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Or they could be hauled before the International Criminal Court. Canada has ratified the ICC’s statute, giving it jurisdiction over Canadians who commit war crimes anywhere. However, the International Criminal Court will not intervene if Canadian officials are willing and able to investigate and prosecute. We must hope that the will to investigate and prosecute is present. For imagine the damage to Canada’s reputation and influence if a general, ambassador or cabinet minister was prosecuted for war crimes in The Hague.

As Colvin himself explained: “If we disregard our core principles and values, we also lose our moral authority abroad. If we are complicit in the torture of Afghans in Kandahar, how can we credibly promote human rights in Tehran or Beijing?”

Even more seriously, the government’s indifference to torture may have created greater risks for Canadian soldiers. Insurgents who believe they will be tortured will fight to the death rather than surrender, placing Canadian soldiers at increased danger of harm. As a result, it is possible that one or more soldiers might have been killed as a result of the Canadian Government’s actions. Again, as Colvin cogently explained: “In my judgment, some of our actions in Kandahar, including complicity in torture, turned local people against us. Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners. Canada’s detainee practices alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.”

It’s time for Canadians to rally behind this brave and principled diplomat. It’s time to insist that any war criminals be investigated and prosecuted, regardless of who they are.

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He has taught the laws of war at UBC, Duke University, Oxford University, the University of Cape Town and the University of Tel Aviv. Byers ran as an NDP candidate in the last federal election.

U.S. foreclosures climb

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Continued job losses in the United States are resulting in more home foreclosures, threatening to stall any economic recovery. The U.S. Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday that a record one in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure at the end of September, the highest quarterly level since the association began reporting the data in 1972. Earlier this year one in 10 loans was past due or foreclosure. The group expects delinquencies to keep rising until the U.S. unemployment rate tops out in the first half of next year.

Los Angeles Times

In-flight Internet

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:39 PM - 1 Comment

Some Air Canada passengers will be able to surf the Web at 30,000 feet as part of a trial program launched Friday. On select flights between Montreal or Toronto and Los Angeles, Air Canada will offer a new in-flight Wi-Fi service for $9.95 for PC users and $7.95 for smartphone users. However, access to the system will only be available while flying over the continental United States. Air Canada is planning a wider rollout once it receives the necessary regulatory approvals from Ottawa and a network of air-to-ground cell sites is built across the country.

Toronto Star

Hollywood North

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:11 PM - 0 Comments

Nunavut is buzzing about news that the inspiring story of Kugluktuk¹s Grizzlies high school sports teams is apparently destined for the big screen. The movie project is still rather generically dubbed “Untitled Teen Film.” However, the other names associated with the project are better: the executive producer is Zanne Devine, whose past motion pictures include Kevin Costner’s “The Guardian, and the director is Graham Yost, the Canadian who broke into the Hollywood big time as screenwriter of “Speed.” The movie is based on the real-life tale, already featured on ESPN, of how Kugluktuk’s teams lifted the spirits of a troubled isolated community. Auditions of young Inuit actors wrapped up last week.

Nunatsiaq News

Broken telephone

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 35 Comments

Speaking about the process of notification around detainee transfers, Richard Colvin testified on Wednesday that “when the Red Cross wanted to engage on detainee issues, for three months the Canadian Forces in Kandahar wouldn’t even take their phone calls.”

This has apparently been misrepresented in subsequent reports, but speaking to Canadian Press a Red Cross official seems to confirm Mr. Colvin’s claim.

Prehistoric crocs offer clues to past

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

What’s now the Sahara desert was once a swampy world rife with prehistoric beasts, including at least half a dozen species of unusual‹and maybe intelligent‹crocodiles, Reuters reports. These crocs, says a report unveiled this week, include the 20-foot-long BoarCroc, with boar-like tusks; RatCroc, which used a buck-toothed lower jaw to grub for food; and PancakeCroc, with a big, flat head. “Each of the crocs apparently had different diets, different behaviors. It appears they had divided up the ecosystem, each species taking advantage of it in its own way,” said McGill University paleontologist Hans Larsson, who worked on the study. “They may have had slightly more sophisticated brain function than living crocs because active hunting on land usually requires more brain power than merely waiting for prey to show up.² The crocs lived during the Cretaceous period (145 to 65 million years ago), when the continents were closer together, and the world was much warmer and wetter. “Their amphibious talents in the past may be the key to understanding how they flourished in, and ultimately survived, the dinosaur era,” The University of Chicago¹s Paul Sereno, who worked with Larsson on the find, wrote in an article for National Geographic.

Reuters

You say erudite, I say pretentious

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:55 PM - 5 Comments

The New York Times ever strike you as an abstruse glut of antediluvian perorations, if the newspaper¹s profligacy of neologisms and shibboleths ever set off apoplectic paroxysms in you, if it all seems a bit recondite, here¹s a reason to be sanguine: The Times has great data on the words that send readers in search of a dictionary. Here¹s a list of the top 50.

Nieman Journalism Lab

New leadership in Europe!

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:53 PM - 1 Comment

If you’re the sort of North American who sometimes feels a bit guilty about not knowing much about politics abroad, the selection of new leaders for the European Union should give you a break from embarrassment. Even most Europeans have no idea about these political nobodies. Britain’s Catherine Ashton is the new EU foreign minister; Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy is EU president. They’re both virtual unknowns beyond their home countries‹actually, Ashton is barely known even in England. Read all about how Europe settled on the ultimate compromise candidates in this Der Spiegel story, bluntly headlined “Europe Chooses Nobodies.”

Der Spiegel

So long, O!

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

Today’s episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show marks the beginning of the gab guru’s long goodbye. Her show will end in 2011, after a quarter of a century on the air at CBS. “Twenty five years feels right in my bones and right in my spirit,” Winfrey told her audience in Chicago this morning. “It is the exact right time.” But the media maven isn’t retreating from the spotlight – she plans on expanding her empire by creating her own cable channel, The Oprah Winfrey Network. Rumour has it, Winfrey will have a new talk show. Even better, she’ll OWN it.

Chicago Sun Times

Doctors and dirty ties

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:48 PM - 0 Comments

The necktie might seem like a harmless, standard piece of MD apparel. But they may turn out to be germ magnets. Ties are rarely, if ever, washed. They also hang at face level when a doctor examines a patient‹perfect for spreading infections. The British Medical Association recommended in 2006 that doctors get rid of ties “as superbugs can be carried on them.” The American Medical Association is now considering a new, tie-less dress code too, reports the Wall Street Journal. The anti-tie movement has prompted at least one company to start marketing ties with an antimicrobial coating. Meanwhile, some older doctors claim the real issue is a push by younger MD’s for more casual attire. Still, better dressed-down than sorry.

Wall Street Journal

Prize-winning children's book tackles residential schools

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

One of the first picture books to tackle the difficult subject of residential schools has won a major literary prize. Shin-chi’s Canoe, written by Nicola I. Campbell of Vancouver and illustrated by Kim LaFave of Roberts Creek, B.C., has been recognized with the $25,000 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. The book tells the story of a six-year-old boy who leaves home with his older sister for many months, exploring their feelings of loss and homesickness for their family and the natural environment. The jury praised the Shin-chi’s Canoe as “Understated text with emotional truth hovering beneath the lines … The complementary softness of the illustrations seems to make the overwhelming sadness and loss the children experience more poignant.”

CBC

Dept. of Small Corrections

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

In my Finian’s Rainbow piece, I quoted Terry Teachout‘s line “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more musically satisfying Broadway show,” thinking (in the context of the review) that this referred to the combination of the score and the performances. In comments, however, Teachout writes: “Actually, I wasn’t talking about the score–I was talking about the production and performance.” Thanks for the correction.

This, of course, doesn’t change my own thesis that Finian’s Rainbow has the best score ever written for a musical. But  everyone has their own choice for the absolute best score.

'It would seem that some of the key lessons of the Somalia experience … have not been learned'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 5 Comments

Lost somewhat in all the discussion of Richard Colvin’s testimony, is the statement of Peter Tinsley, chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission, that immediately followed Colvin’s appearance.

Here is that statement. Continue…

Oprah Consigns Syndication To Doom. Doom!

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:42 AM - 0 Comments

I don’t really believe, any more than you do, that Oprah Winfrey ending her show means that Oprah is actually ending her show. She may not (according to the linked article) currently intend to move the show to her cable network, but I think most people assume that she will eventually be back with some kind of talk show, maybe even in the same format.

So while this is not really the end of The Oprah Winfrey Show, it may really be the end of syndicated programming. If she in fact does pull her show out of syndication, that’s the latest and greatest blow to syndication as a TV distribution format. Syndication — the shows that are sold directly to TV stations, to fill the time slots that are not programmed by a  network — has become steadily weaker over the last decade or more. Cable killed off the first-run syndicated scripted series. There are fewer hit network comedies, the lifeblood of syndication; things will pick up a little when How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory reach 100 episodes, but it won’t be enough.

Even with the shows that syndicate well, stations have a huge amount of competition from cable. You might have noticed that the producers of NCIS, a very syndication-friendly show, give the credit for the show’s increased popularity to reruns… on the USA network. Because cable networks have marathons and repeat airings, they can sometimes do more to drum a show into the public consciousness than the traditional five-episodes-a-week syndicated airings.

And now the most popular and influential first-run syndicated show is being taken away. Whether it just goes away completely or moves to cable, it’s another sign of the waning power of broadcast syndication. Stations will still need to buy stuff to fill up a few daytime hours, but it won’t be another Oprah or Star Trek: The Next Generation. We may, however, get more and longer infomercials, so that’s something to look forward to.

No rematch for Ireland

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 3 Comments

There is trouble in Ireland this morning, and not the kind we’re used to. FIFA, the world governing body for soccer, has ruled that France’s decisive goal following a hand-ball by Thierry Henry must stand, which leaves Ireland on the outside looking in at next year’s World Cup in South Africa. Ireland’s football governing body had appealed the call, arguing the qualifier should be replayed. How big a deal is this for the Irish? Their prime minister, Brian Cowen, has said he would raise the issue with French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a meeting of the 27 EU leaders in Brussels. Henry admitted after the game to handling the ball. But exactly what Sarko is supposed to do about it is unclear. Even Henry’s acknowledgement that a rematch is in order appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

AP

More vaccine for provinces

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:37 AM - 1 Comment

Vaccination clinics across Canada are scheduled to receive a shipment of 4.8 million doses of H1N1 vaccine by Sunday, CBC news reports. It’s more than double the largest shipment sent out so far, and will allow clinics to begin serving the general public instead of just high-risk groups. It also brings the total number of doses produced up to 15.2 million, enough to vaccinate about half of Canadians. The new doses are meant to end a shortage that developed when supplier GlaxoSmithKline temporarily halted production of the regular H1N1 vaccine to concentrate on a version for pregnant women, forcing some clinics to shut down.

CBC

Palin’s profits

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:36 AM - 3 Comments

Sarah Palin sold 300,000 copies of Going Rogue on its first day of sale and, the Daily Beast argues, joined the nation’s elite in her earning power. “Sales are phenomenal, and we are convinced that the book will continue to sell phenomenally for some time to come,” says an insider at HarperCollins, Palin’s publisher. The former vice-presidential candidate got a $7 million advance for her book. She’s earning a royalty rate of 15 per cent, which means she makes $4.35 per book sold, and therefore needs to sell 1.6 million books to earn out her advance, which is the total number in print. It’s unlikely she will—an ideal “sell-through” rate is about 75 percent, which means HarperCollins hopes to sell about 1.2 million copies. At that level, Palin will have made $5.2 million, but HarperCollins, which will start entering the black once Palin sells 700,000 copies, $7 million of its own. Any way you carve it, Going Rogue looks to be a $12 million goldmine. When the Daily Beast gets into the more speculative business of estimating what wall-to-wall media coverage—”Fox News was practically slobbering over the woman 24/7”—was worth, it figures the Palin Package provided another $4.55 million to the media alone. Palin’s own payday, the site reckons, should hit the $20-milion mark by July.

The Daily Beast

You'll be seeing Gilles Marini, Eurogod, everywhere you turn

By Heidi Staseson - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:27 AM - 6 Comments

ABC’s Brothers & Sisters’ lacklustre ratings just got a boost. Producers have injected some sizzle into the snooze-worthy story plots in the form of French eye candy Gilles Marini. According to Nielsen Media Research, in the last week of October, the show had the series’ highest ratings since March in the adult 18-49 category, with a total of 9.5 million American viewers, beating out its CBS competition. Marini, who plays Luc Laurent, the European love interest for no-nonsense food executive Sarah (Rachel Griffiths), has so far signed on for nine episodes. It’s the first major role for the 33-year-old L.A.-based actor since his breakout performance in last summer’s Sex and the City movie—his sideways “close-up” in that film became celluloid’s most infamous shower scene since Psycho.

Still revelling in his runner-up spot on last season’s Dancing With the Stars—his moves had even the judges swooning—Marini says he’s humbled by his sudden stardom. On a recent trip to Alberta for an appearance, he thought at first he was being “punked” after obliging a star-struck local woman and agreeing to join her and a throng of equally ebullient friends for dinner at Edmonton’s Japanese Village restaurant. Marini told Maclean’s he was astonished by the fan fervour, even tweeting about the event on his way to Toronto the next day. “Canadians are the nicest people I’ve ever met!” he exclaimed.

So what is it about this man that’s got women mesmerized? For starters, he’s one of the few Eurogods to crack Hollywood since Jean-Claude Van Damme kick-boxed his way into theatres back in the early 1990s, joining French thespians Jean Reno (La Femme Nikita) and Gérard Depardieu (Green Card), who got popular around the same time. Sure there are Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem, but let’s face it, they didn’t doff it all in their breakout big-screen appearances.

These days, it seems, Marini is everywhere. At the 36th Daytime Entertainment Emmys, he and Vanessa Williams wowed the audience with a bang-up sultry dance number. And in mid-October, he wooed The View talk show ladies with accounts of his on-the-home-front chivalry. In the same vein, he described for Maclean’s his recent surprise house-buying birthday excursion for his wife of 11 years, Carole. “I gave her a letter and in it was a little poem with the picture of a house and an inscription saying, ‘It’s yours.’ ”

Marini worked in his father’s bakery in Cannes from the time he was seven until he did his military service as a 20-year-old firefighter. The following year he moved to Miami where he worked as a waiter. One of his customers was lawyer Philip Glatzer. Marini says he presented Glatzer with a piece of paper that read: “Hi. My name is Gilles Marini. I’m from France. I’m sorry I do not speak English. Can you please put your finger to the menu?” Recalls Marini: “He said, ‘Where are you from in France?’ And he spoke French! He thought it was the most beautiful story and he’s helped me since.”

Marini soon started a successful modelling career. For a while, he felt guilty raking in the catwalk dough for such scanty hours of work. His late father, who died when Marini was 19, had instilled in him a strict work ethic—“I was always thinking, ‘Oh my God, if my father saw me in that lifestyle he would kick my ass!’ ” The industry kept him flush for eight years until he was cast in the role of the aptly named Dante in the Sex and the City movie.

As for the Brothers & Sisters role, he says executive producer Ken Olin (Thirtysomething) took a big risk hiring him. “He had never really seen me act; he saw me perform on Dancing With the Stars and he took a chance. Some people like that in Hollywood still exist; they will look you in the eyes and say, ‘I’m going to give [you] a shot.’ ”
In his second episode on the show, Marini reprised his Dancing role and performed a heartwarming poolside waltz with a blushing Sally Field, the matriarch of Brothers & Sisters. “We had this very emotional scene where she explained to me she was very scared about her daughter’s health, about losing her. She’s a mom and I’m a father—how utterly natural the emotion would come to us.”

Currently donning suits in the November issue of Playboy and doing a two-spot guest appearance beginning Nov. 18 on Nip/Tuck, Marini also has a CD coming out. He eschews the notion that he’s maybe taking the Renaissance man shtick too far: “I never leave anything to the unknown and when I do something with my heart, with passion, trust me, it’s going to be unbelievable.”

'The guy said some things'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 10 Comments

More of General Rick Hillier’s comments. From the Toronto Star’s disptach:

“We always had concerns with those handovers,” retired general Rick Hillier said, but “no smoking gun ever caught my attention.”

And from the CBC:

“The guy said some things and, really, nothing ever caught my attention based on what he perceived he said or perceived he sent,” Hillier said Thursday.

Hey look: on the insistent demands of memory

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 11:05 AM - 1 Comment

From the print edition, my column on the rather extraordinary efforts of Poland’s government, around the world, to make sure people know the death camps were the Nazis’ idea.

'Nobody quite knew what to do'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 11 Comments

Canadian Press reports evidence of a December 2006 meeting in Ottawa to discuss Asadullah Khalid, a notorious Afghan governor known to have participated in torture.

The meeting in December of that year – months before torture claims became public – was the culmination of months of pressure from foreign affairs officials on the ground who wanted to see Asadullah Khalid shifted elsewhere, defence and foreign affairs sources said. One source said the meeting was at the Privy Council Office and involved Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s then-national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth…

Both foreign affairs and defence sources said no notes were kept of the Khalid meeting. ”There was no policy for dealing with something like this, something so sensitive,” said one source. “Nobody quite knew what to do.”

Sorry, Poland

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 48 Comments

And suddenly there we were in the midst of another international controversy. We have grown used to this sort of thing here at Maclean’s, whose editor once said, “If you don’t think you’ve gone too far, you haven’t gone far enough.” This can be a pretty rock ’n’ roll place to work. But just this once, the uproar wasn’t one we meant to cause. It’s worth the tale. Here’s the tale.

In our issue of Nov. 16, “Our Biggest Ever” university issue, we carried a long, thoughtful feature by Katie Engelhart about the imminent trial in Munich of John Demjanjuk, who is “charged with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder for his role as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.” Without in any way making excuses for atrocity, Katie’s four-page article managed to air some of the discomfort with trying Demjanjuk, who is 89, visibly feeble, and was not a senior figure in the Nazi mass-murder apparatus in the first place. Sensitive stuff, but Katie is a very good young reporter and that’s not where the trouble lay.

No, the trouble was in three phrases I didn’t even notice when I read the article. Engelhart wrote that Demjanjuk had been mistaken for “a notorious sadist at Poland’s Treblinka death camp.” She refers again to “Poland’s Treblinka death camp,” and notes that Demjanjuk, who was Ukrainian, “served at three Polish camps.” Well, did we ever hear from the Polish Embassy and Polish Canadians after that. The comments under the story when we published it online were furious. The letters were angrier. “This is not acceptable that you spread absurdity that slanders Poland and Polish citizens!!!!” one letter began, under the subject line PROTEST AGAINST YOUR LIE. Almost simultaneously I received a plaintive email from my friend Sylwia Domisiewicz, the press and protocol officer at the Polish Embassy in Ottawa. “I just got bombarded by emails and phone calls from the Polish-Canadian community,” she wrote. We would be getting a letter from the ambassador, she said. To whom should they send it?

I forwarded Sylwia’s email to our senior executive editor, Peeter Kopvillem, who knows a thing or two about murderous foreign occupations, being Estonian. This kicked off a correspondence between Maclean’s and the embassy, and the letter from the ambassador appears elsewhere in these pages. But I’m spending more time on this issue because it is an example of the insistent demands of horrible memory.

Continue…

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

A week in the life of Aerosmith
Rock stars can be an indecisive bunch. Last week, rumours swirled that lead singer Steven Tyler had quit his band, Aerosmith, after more than 30 years together and countless hits, and Joe Perry, the band’s guitarist, said he and the rest of the group would be looking for a singer to replace Tyler. Happily, the boys managed to overcome their differences—Tyler and Perry appeared onstage together in New York City and Aerosmith is reportedly back together.

Good News

Best foot forward
The Canadian ski team revealed this week it has been using a top-secret high-tech gadget called “Stealth” in training for the Vancouver Games. The device allows the latest edition of the Crazy Canucks to track their every move down the slopes—and then evaluate where to find more speed on course. Stealth was developed at the University of Calgary three years ago, but our skiers were sworn to secrecy so that other teams wouldn’t get their hands on it. Hey, all’s fair when it comes to the Olympics (except, ahem, certain illegal things). Too bad women ski jumpers won’t be finding their way downslope as well­—the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected female jumpers’ claim of discrimination last week.

GM gives back
When the Canadian and Ontario governments handed General Motors Canada a $10.6-billion loan in June, many cynically suggested we’d never see the money again. They were wrong: on Monday, GM announced it would begin to pay back the loans earlier than expected—an initial $200 million will be returned to Canada in December, and the company expects to repay the rest ahead of the July 2015 maturity date. GM is also considering an IPO in 2010—which could actually make money for Canada and Ontario.

Befriending China
China isn’t so bad after all—that’s the message Barack Obama is trying to impress on his first visit to China as U.S. President. Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Beijing on Tuesday to discuss climate change and economic policy; the two later released a joint statement to the press, the first time the leaders of the U.S. and China have done so in more than a decade. Obama also held a town hall-style meeting with Chinese university students (though some reports suggested Chinese authorities meticulously chose participants from the ranks of the Communist Youth League). The next step is engaging Beijing on its less-than-stellar human rights record, something Obama has thus far proven reluctant to do.

Ready to e-read
The Kindle is finally coming to Canada. After years of waiting patiently, Canadians will be able to get their hands on Amazon.com’s e-book reader, which has been a big hit in the United States. There is a catch—you’ll have to buy the device through the U.S. online Kindle store (for US$259) and pay extra for shipping and duties. But the good news is that the Kindle will be here in time for Christmas. Now, if only we could get the online TV service Hulu.com and the Google Voice phone service, we’d be a truly high-tech nation.

Bad News

We’re giving less
After giving a record $8.6 billion to charities in 2007, Canadians scaled back their generosity in 2008. Job losses and a global recession contributed to a five per cent drop in charitable donations—to $8.2 billion—according to figures released this week by Statistics Canada. Despite the tough times, however, relative generosity hasn’t changed much across the country. As was the case in 2007, Prince Edward Island and Alberta are still the most big-hearted provinces, with median annual donations of $370 and $360 respectively. And Quebec is still the stingiest, with a median annual donation of $130.

Parizeau speaks
He’s back! In a new book, La souveraineté du Québec hier, aujourd’hui et demain (Quebec Sovereignty Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), former Quebec premier and separatist movement champion Jacques Parizeau argues that Quebecers would be better able to fight the global recession on their own—that is, without the rest of Canada—and suggests that a third referendum will occur in the not-too-distant future. With separatism at an all-time low in Quebec, we wish Parizeau would fade away. He brought us to the brink once before—and that’s once too often.

Don’t trust Iran
“Boring”—that’s how an Iranian official described the International Atomic Energy Agency’s new report, which chastised Iran for being uncommunicative about its nuclear ambitions. After Barack Obama revealed in September knowledge of a second hidden nuclear plant, the Iranians went into defence mode, claiming the site was simply a “backup” if the larger, previously acknowledged, site were to go down. Call us crazy, but we don’t trust the Iranians when it comes to their nuclear ambitions—why all of the secrecy and posturing if this is really about providing power to the country?

Corruption champs
For the second year in a row, Afghanistan and Iraq are at the top of Transparency International’s annual survey of the world’s most corrupt countries (Somalia rounds out the top three). This is sobering news for those who support the West’s efforts to end the rule of terrorists and tyrants. There is no doubt of the widespread corruption in both Afghanistan and Iraq—the former’s recent election embarrassment was a major failure on the road to democracy. Still, we cannot lose our resolve to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who want to install sharia law, strip women of all rights and wage a holy war against our freedoms. This survey should only strengthen our commitment.

FACE OF THE WEEK

AWARD EATING: Christine Ghawi, who played Céline Dion in a CBC biopic, poses with her Gemini award for Best Actress

One ticket to paradise, This story has legs, and Daughter knew best

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

One ticket to paradise
The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks will soon have his day in court. But much to the chagrin of some relatives of the 2,751 who died in the World Trade Center attack, the fate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be decided in a civilian trial on U.S. soil, not far from Ground Zero. Mohammed, who has been dubbed “one of history’s most infamous terrorists,” is one of five suspects who will be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to New York. His chances of acquittal may be slim, but the jury will also hear of the waterboarding and other measures used in his interrogation. After admitting his guilt to an Al Jazeera reporter in 2002, Mohammed confessed at a closed-door review at Guantánamo Bay: “I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation from A to Z.” Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. A conviction could speed Mohammed along on his self-proclaimed path toward martyrdom.

This story has legs
Any doubt Sarah Palin is overexposed was put to rest this week when the latest Newsweek hit the stands. There, in full, fetching colour, is a leggy portrait of the ex-beauty queen, ex-vice-presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska. The very ex-y Palin has one arm resting on an American flag and the other on a cocked hip. Less flattering is the headline: “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” Palin is everywhere now, flogging her bestseller, Going Rogue, in which she dishes about the media, being “bottled up” by Republican strategists, and her abiding faith in “God and Todd” (her husband). As for the come-hither photo, she complains on Facebook, “The out-of-context Newsweek approach [is] sexist, and oh-so-expected by now.” True, she posed for the picture, but it was intended for Runner’s World, where legs are just things you run with.

Daughter knew best
Carter Spencer, 39, was drunk and high on cocaine last October when he plowed his truck into Christopher Raymond Kniffen, a 19-year-old skateboarder, at a Regina intersection, leaving Kniffen to die in the street while he drove on to his cousin’s and had a couple of more drinks. The next day, Spencer washed his car. Nothing would have connected him to the fatal hit-and-run had Spencer’s own 13-year-old daughter not contacted police and given a statement 2½ weeks later. “His 13-year-old daughter demonstrated more responsibility than he did,” Crown prosecutor Sonya Guiboche told the court. Last week, Spencer pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and to leaving the accident scene knowing someone was injured. He has 32 criminal convictions, seven of them for driving offences, and had been stripped of his licence after failing to pursue a substance-abuse program. Sentencing is scheduled for later this month.

Hush-up money
Lou Dobbs has used his bully pulpit at CNN for increasingly oddball debates surrounding illegal immigrants and the “birther” movement, which claims U.S. President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and is ineligible for office. How does one top that? It’s a question Dobbs is trying to suss out now that he’s left CNN, the news network that was his home for almost 30 years. Rumours have him heading over to rival Fox News or even running for president. The gossip also has him getting dropped rather than quitting the CNN punditocracy. The New York Post reports the network was so maddened by his move to the right and so worried it would tarnish the network’s reputation that it agreed to grease his departure with $8 million.

The fight of his life
When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar started having hot flashes last year, the NBA Hall of Famer says, “I knew something was up. But I didn’t think it was going to be something as serious as leukemia.” As the 62-year-old recently revealed, he was diagnosed last December with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia, a rare form of cancer of the blood and bone marrow. But despite the frightening moniker, the disease can be controlled with medication and regular checkups. So far, says Abdul-Jabbar, so good: “I responded well to the treatment. I just want that to continue.”

Plus you can’t even get HBO
Accused murderer and gang leader Jamie Bacon of Abbotsford, B.C., has a new cell outfitted with a fridge, toaster and microwave, but it hasn’t stopped a litany of complaints over his treatment at the Surrey Pretrial Centre. Bacon’s lawyer, Kimberly Eldred, is seeking to have him moved out of isolation and into the general prison population as he awaits trial in connection with the murder of six men in a Surrey, B.C., apartment. Eldred told a B.C. Supreme Court judge that Bacon’s six months in isolation constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Although he was moved to a refurbished cell after previous complaints, she says Bacon can’t see his TV from his bed. As well, the cell, unlike the previous one, lacks a shower, “the one thing in life he could control.” Lawyers for the prison told the hearing he remains in isolation to keep him safe and to prevent him from conducting gang business. There were attempts on his life before his arrest.

Lady Love keeps her day job
By day she is Brooke Magnanti, a researcher in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in Bristol, U.K. But online, in British bookshops and on the telly she’s the previously anonymous Belle de Jour—a semi-fictional London call girl. Magnanti outed herself this week because of concerns a former boyfriend would reveal her secret. She admits she bases her writing on her experience working as a $530-an-hour escort in 2003 as she struggled to finance her Ph.D. Her body of work spawned the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, broadcast on Showcase in Canada. Reaction from her scientific colleagues, she says, has been “amazingly kind and supportive.”

Rocking the boat
Gordon Cruse, a 67-year-old retired corrections worker at Victoria’s Youth Custody Centre, used to be a pirate, but not the bad kind. Calgary-born Cruse was one of the original outlaws beaming taboo rock ’n’ roll into British homes from Radio Caroline, a ship broadcasting offshore to thwart staid 1960s-era radio regulations. His primary job was reading the news, but he also spun rock records, the kind the BBC was still too stuffy to play (the Beatles, the Stones). Authorities shut down the outlaw stations in 1967, but their antics are now immortalized in the hit comedy Pirate Radio, a film Cruse has already seen five times. “Changing British radio as the pirates did was a once in a lifetime excitement immeasurable in its scope,” he once told the BBC. “To be part of that—me, a humble Canadian flatlander—is a unique and exceptional experience.”

Yes, he went to the Wall—but when?
A host of world leaders and everyday East Germans claim credit for tearing down the Berlin Wall; last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy chipped in with his own version of events. His Facebook posting had him rushing to the Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, as giddy crowds of Berliners bashed away at the concrete monstrosity. He posted a photo of his 34-year-old self wielding a hammer against a graffiti-covered part of the structure. But critics are skeptical Sarkozy was that fleet of foot, considering news reports have him in France that day in 1989. While he was clearly there in the early days of the Wall’s demise, even former prime minister Alain Juppé, who accompanied Sarkozy, says he is unsure about the date. Sarkozy is sticking to his story, but former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal isn’t buying it. She jokes it is equally likely he was at the Bastille in 1789.

Worth a thousand words? Try $100,000.
It was a shocking offer for former supermodel Cindy Crawford. Last summer, a man allegedly contacted Crawford and her entrepreneur husband, Rande Gerber, threatening to go public unless they bought a photograph of their seven-year-old daughter, gagged and tied to a chair. The couple instead brought the matter to authorities, who deported 26-year-old Edis Kayalar, of Germany, for being in the U.S. illegally. Refusing to take no for an answer, Kayalar is said to have called the family again, this time demanding $100,000 for the photo. Kayalar, reportedly on vacation in Turkey, has been charged with extortion in the U.S. and is under investigation in Germany. As for the photo, it was taken without Crawford’s knowledge by a former nanny during a game of cops and robbers. The picture was allegedly stolen from the nanny.

Mama was a dealer at MotorCity
Joe Cada knew the odds weren’t in his favour when he dropped out of community college to commit to poker full-time. “You have to be very careful when you decide to make it a living. More people lose than win.” So far, the gamble has paid off. In November, the 21-year-old Michigan resident became the youngest person in the history of the World Series of Poker to take home the jackpot. Cada, who will be sharing the US$8.55-million prize with the backers who helped pay his entry fee, comes by his card-playing prowess honestly. His mom is a dealer at Detroit’s MotorCity Casino, and family gatherings, says his uncle, “always seemed to end up in a card game.”

Another Obama speaks
This Obama lives far from the White House, in a rented flat in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo shares a father with his half-brother, the U.S. President. Barack Obama Sr. affected the two men in different ways. The President has written of the abandonment he felt when his father left when he was two. His half-brother’s autobiographical novel portrays their father as an abusive alcoholic. “His mother was being attacked and he couldn’t protect her,” he writes of one assault. “And that was just one night. There were many more.” Mark was born in Kenya to his father’s third wife. The two half-brothers have had little contact. Barack Sr. died in a car crash in Kenya in 1982.