Defending the royals

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 126 Comments

In 1963, the historian W. L. Morton published a splendid one-volume history of Canada. The title still has the power to thrill, and to shock: The Kingdom of Canada.

At the back there is a list of all the kings and queens “sovereign over Canada.” There are 18 of them, nine French and nine English, from Francis I, who ruled at the time of Jacques Cartier’s first landing in 1534, all the way to Elizabeth II. Prince Charles will one day be the 19th King of Canada, and Prince William the 20th. Continue…

Gawking at cat named Thatcher

By Andrew Potter - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:35 PM - 8 Comments

Oh look — Gawker has picked up on the story of John Baird’s cat.

Omar Khadr is leaving Guantanamo Bay

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 12 Comments

Omar Khadr is one step closer to coming home—though not the step his lawyers were hoping for. At a news conference this morning, the White House announced that the 23-year-old Toronto native will be transferred to an American jail cell, along with nine other high-profile inmates currently locked away at the U.S. prison camp. Exactly when he will be moved is unclear, but the announcement means Khadr’s seven-year stint at the world’s most infamous prison is about to end. His freedom, though, is still far off. Accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. army medic on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Khadr has been ordered to stand trial for war crimes in front of a military commission. A date for the trial has not yet been set. Khadr was just 15 years old when he was shot and captured by U.S. troops in July 2002, and his lawyers have spent years arguing he was a child soldier at the time, and therefore not responsible for his actions. Newly-released photographs also suggest the teenager was badly wounded and buried in rubble when he is alleged to have tossed the fatal grenade—raising doubts about his guilt. Barry Coburn, one of Khadr’s lawyers, says he is “shocked” that Barack Obama remains committed to prosecution. “We thought that the incoming Obama administration signaled a new day with respect to these cases—a new respect for civil liberties, an abhorrence of torture, a respect for the time-honoured legal procedures and protections that are mandated by the constitution and enforced by the federal courts.” The announcement comes on the same day the Supreme Court of Canada is hearing arguments about whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be ordered to ask the U.S. to repatriate Khadr to Canada.

CBC News

Maclean’s

They're watching you!

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:26 PM - 6 Comments

Have you ever had that hair-raising sense that hidden eyes are watching you? Well, it’s probably Google. And the Swiss government is not happy about it. On Friday, Switzerland’s privacy watchdog announced it would ask a national court to force Google to make significant changes to its Street View service, which permits users to view street-level pictures of cities on the Internet. “The height from which the camera on top of the Google vehicle films is … problematic,” says federal data protection commissioner Hanspeter Thuer. “It provides a view over fences, hedges and walls, with the result that people see more on Street View than can be seen by a normal passer-by in the street.” In a statement, Google said it was disappointed by the Swiss agency’s actions and intends to “vigorously contest” the suit. But Switzerland is not alone in its fight. Greek and Japanese officials have also raised objections to Google’s privacy standards.

CBC News

Man allegedly behind Sept 11 to be tried in New York

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

Alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is about to say to goodbye to Guantanamo Bay. Mohammed and four other detainees will be put on trial in a civilian court in New York City, according one anonymous U.S government official. The men will be tried in a federal court rather than a military court, which could make the government’s interrogation techniques an issue during the trial. (Mohammed was allegedly waterboarded 183 times in 2003). Speaking in Japan, Barack Obama said he is “absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subjected to the most exacting demands of justice.”

CBC News

Who's the Right Boss For Joss?

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 9 Comments

No, I haven’t started doing everything in rhyme. (Though I do admire Muffy Mouse for her iconoclasm and courage.)  The cancellation of Dollhouse has made it clear that Fox is not the right place for Joss Whedon. With Firefly there was a credible argument that it might have done better if it had been handled better, but Dollhouse got a consistent — albeit not great — time slot, a second season, and terrible ratings. That network just isn’t the right fit for Whedon’s stuff.

But what is the right network for Whedon? One reason he’s been making low-budget internet musicals is that there’s really no place that’s quite right for his style of TV. As I’ve said before, he was lucky to come along with the idea for a TV adaptation of Buffy when he did. The WB was new, and needed what all new networks need: something that the established networks are not doing. They had no real “brand” as a network yet, so Whedon basically defined the network’s brand for them: teen shows, shows with humour and soapiness and geek appeal. Any network that already has an established brand will find Whedon’s stuff to be an uncomfortable fit.

One of the reasons Fox is a bad match for Whedon is that its core audience is getting steadily older (except on Sunday nights) and its brand, as a network, is not very closely associated with soapy relationship problems or geeky science fiction/fantasy stuff. (Fox used to be a geek-friendly network in the X-Files days; that’s no longer the case.)  The network that is closest in orientation to Whedon’s type of show is ABC, but as a big-time network, they would expect the kind of big ratings that Whedon’s shows can never deliver. He needs a network like the WB that doesn’t have high viewership expectations; the CW is like that, but they prefer shows that skew female, and most science-fiction/fantasy shows skew male (Whedon’s pick up more female viewers than most, but they’re still in a male-oriented genre).

That leaves cable. The highbrow channels like HBO are out, because they stay away from almost anything with a hint of trashiness about it. (Ron Moore once lamented that Battlestar Galactica should have been watched by the same audience that liked the HBO stuff, but because of the title and the premise, a lot of them wouldn’t check it out.) That makes SyFy the best option, and I’m sure they’re going to be courting him. But his shows may not be an automatic sell to the network’s audience. Even Galactica wasn’t a high-rated show, and that was a much purer science fiction show than anything Whedon is likely to come up with. 

So basically, with a style that’s halfway between lowbrow and highbrow, halfway between geek-friendly and anti-geek, Whedon is a creator without a clear outlet for his shows; now that the WB is gone, there’s no network that really matches up with his style. Oh, well. There’s always the internet, I guess.

The link between sleeping in and staying slim

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM - 0 Comments

Yet another reason to let your teenager sleep in on weekends: it may help them stay slim. New research suggests that allowing kids to laze away the morning enables them to catch up on sleep they missed during the week, and in doing so, wards off obesity. The study, conducted by scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, complements earlier research linking sleep deprivation to obesity in kids. Based on responses from the parents of more than 5,000 schoolchildren regarding diet, lifestyle, weight and sleeping routines, the researchers concluded that those who caught up on missed sleep on the weekends and holidays were slimmer than their most sleep-deprived peers.

London Telegraph

Canadian surgeon fixes patients with glue

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

A cardiac surgeon at the University of Calgary has developed a new surgical technique that speeds up recovery time, using glue to repair breastbones intentionally broken during open-heart surgery. According to Dr. Paul Fedak of Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre, the procedure is “substantially less painful” for patients, who typically require weeks to heal and strong medication to deal with the pain. “We can now heal the breastbone in hours instead of weeks after open-heart surgery,” Fedak, who created the procedure, said in a statement. In a study of over 20 Calgary patients, people whose chests were glued back together could resume full physical activites within days, instead of the months it usually takes with wire stitches. Pain and discomfort were much reduced, and the use of pain-killers was reduced or eliminated. Fedak is now training Canadian and European surgeons on the procedure. The adhesive used is called “Kryptonite,” and is made by Connecticut-based Doctors Research Group Inc.

Reuters

German murderers sue to get removed from Wikipedia

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments

You can look them up on newspaper microfilm any time—if you go to a library. But Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, two Germans who murdered an actor 19 years ago, want their names and images yanked from Wikipedia because they believe they’ve paid their debt to society. Under German law, at least, they’re getting their way. Werlé and Lauber won a ruling in that country forcing Wikipedia to wipe their names and photos off its German-language articles on the killing, citing a 1973 court ruling that allows the suppression of criminals’ identities once they’ve done their time. Now they want the English version of the user-written encyclopedia expurgated—a much taller order because it pits the German law against the American First Amendment right to free expression. It also pits the ’73 ruling against modern reality: a simple Google search produces archived material relating to the slaying of Walter Sedlmayer that was legally produced at the time. Why should Wikipedia have to censor itself if the rest of the Internet doesn’t?

The New York Times

Bring it on

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 115 Comments

National Post, November 5. Mild-mannered, absolutely. But Environment Minister Jim Prentice wants the world to know he’ll be no boy scout when crucial climate change talks convene in Copenhagen a month from today … In the end, it’s almost a guarantee that no matter what happens, Canada will be vilified on the world stage as an energy superpower that abandoned the Kyoto Accord and isn’t shouldering its share of carbon reductions. ”Well, if the price of having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out and given ‘fossil of the year’ awards, then so be it. Bring it on,”  Mr. Prentice told me, doing his best impression of not being a boy scout.

National Post, November 12. As the most middle-of-the-road federal cabinet minister, Jim Prentice was never apprehensive about appearing on CBC. But the environment minister turned down an invitation to appear Friday morning on CBC radio’s flagship show The Current for a very good reason: a hostile host. That would be David Suzuki, the wildly successful environmental crusader and perennial alarm-ringer, who has seen the end of the world coming under a variety of climate change scenarios … What bothers Minister Prentice’s people is how they’re being asked to appear on a national current affairs show where the host would be an obvious antagonist.

The Question Concerning Heidegger

By Andrew Potter - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:28 AM - 31 Comments

Here are two truths about Martin Heidegger:

1. He is one of the most revered figures in the 20th century philosophical canon

2. He was a committed Nazi.

At issue, then, is whether there is a connection between his political beliefs and activities under the Third Reich on the one hand, and his philosophical thought on the other. And further, whether he ought to be excommunicated from the philosophical ranks.

Continue…

MPs at the movies. Smores served!

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 13 Comments

Heritage Minister James Moore held a special screening of the Quebec film De Père en Flic at the National Gallery of Canada. Moore (right) is below with the film’s star, Michel Côté.

Seated together in the theatre were Denis Coderre (right), who resigned in a huff as the Liberals’ Quebec Lieutenant, and Pablo Rodriguez, who was named president of the federal Liberal Quebec caucus after Montreal MP Marc Garneau replaced Coderre.

Continue…

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Royal furrow: Britain’s Prince Harry and girlfriend Chelsy Davy attend a rugby match between England and Australia in London

A week in the life of Hugo Chávez
“Let’s not lose a day in fulfilling our main mission: to prepare for war”: thus spake the Venezuelan president on Sunday. Chávez is upset over neighbouring Colombia’s decision to grant the U.S. Army access to its military bases. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe claims the agreement with the U.S. is part of a joint effort to clamp down on drug traffickers and guerrillas, but Chávez is convinced Uribe is helping America gain a secure position in South America. Continue…

Who we are (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 9:01 AM - 49 Comments

The word ‘multiculturalism’—perhaps the most coveted and controversial word in the Canadian lexicon—appears twice in the new guide to citizenship. It fares better than the word ‘lumberjack,’ which does not appear at all.

After the jump, an entirely unscientific index of words and how often each is mentioned. Continue…

Maybe we'll have have an election in… 2011

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 71 Comments

“I don’t think 2011 should be out of the question,” a Liberal MP told me, leaning in conspiratorially.

For what? A summer full of sunshine? A return to three-button jackets? “For an election,” the MP said.

This guy’s thinking, which I’ve since learned is shared by at least a few other veteran Liberals in Ottawa, is as follows. The polls don’t favour Michael Ignatieff right now, and haven’t since he announced in September he would work to bring down the Harper government at the first chance. Indeed the polls have been so stinkeroo for the Liberals that Ignatieff has had to un-announce his September announcement. Now he’s in no hurry to replace the Harper government. Some Liberals suspect Ignatieff replaced his inexperienced, poorly connected chief of staff, Ian Davey, with the wily Chrétien-era fixer Peter Donolo because Davey didn’t foresee the popular backlash against Ignatieff’s “Mr. Harper, your time is up” announcement. Continue…

Econowatch

By Jason Kirby - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 4 Comments

If predicting an economic recovery were as simple as 2+2= 4, it would be a cinch to pinpoint exactly where we are on the arc from recession to growth. Simply take the barrage of economic data bombarding us every day, punch it into a spreadsheet, and voila! In six months you’ll have your job back and your house will be worth 20 per cent more than it was last year. Congratulations.

It’s nothing like that, of course. The economy is a messy amalgam of contradicting inputs and outputs, raw human emotion and a whack of wild guesswork and flawed data. Continue…

Buffet buys a railroad, Rupert Murdoch's problem with Google, and the beauty queen's sex tape

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

BT—oh no, you don’t

Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, the songwriters behind Bachman Turner Overdrive, are being dragged into court by Bachman’s brother Robbie, the group’s drummer, and guitarist Blair Thornton, over claims that Randy and Turner continue to use the BTO name despite earlier agreements that they wouldn’t. Randy left the band in 1977, Turner a few years later. The plaintiffs continued to tour as BTO until 2004. Now, though, Bachman and Turner are reuniting for the first time in 18 years for a series of European dates, and a 2010 show in their native Winnipeg. It isn’t the first time the brothers Bachman have feuded: in 2003, the Randy-less band refused to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame because of conflicts with Randy. To settle this dispute, Bachman and Turner will likely tour under their own names, sans Overdrive.

Now, that hurts

He is best known as the man who repeatedly Tasered an unarmed Polish immigrant and provided contradictory testimony in the ensuing inquiry, but RCMP Const. Kwesi Millington is angry that the CBC has besmirched his good name. Millington, who used his Taser weapon five times against Robert Dziekanski in a 2007 altercation at Vancouver’s airport, filed a libel suit against the CBC; he was apparently put off by reports that aired in the weeks after Dziekanski died. Millington has admitted that his statements of why, when and how many times he Tasered Dziekanski are at odds with a video shot by a witness. Still, he’s charging that the CBC reports caused “serious embarrassment and distress” and “seriously injured . . . his reputation and profession.” Continue…

Nanos, nit-picked (UPDATED)

By Andrew Potter - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 7:39 AM - 10 Comments

UPDATE: The tables are now up at the IRPP

***
Free-agent pollster Nik Nanos has a new study out with the IRPP, looking at attitudes toward H1N1. According to the polling analysis, “Seven Canadians in ten aren’t at all worried or are not very worried about H1N1, despite saturation coverage in the media about Ottawa’s ability to provide an adequate supply of vaccine and the provinces’ capacity to meet the demand.”

I’ll take his word for it — I have not yet been able to find the complete tables on the site. (Can you? I must be looking in the wrong place).

There is one weird passage in the analysis. Nanos writes:

Although a pandemic in name, public opinion at the time of the Nanos-Policy Options survey indicates that with a strong majority of Canadians not worried about H1N1, this may be perceived as more of a nasty flu than a pandemic.

The contrast between “nasty flu” and “pandemic” seems to be a category mistake. “Pandemic” is not a measure of the severity of the illness or of how sick it makes you, it is a combined measure of the novelty of the illness in the population, its global distribution, and its infectiousness. The seasonal flu is a pandemic, regardless of how nasty or nice it is. Here’s the wikipedia def of pandemic.

This is a common mistake. I suspect it comes from a false assumption that the word “pandemic” is a combination of “panic” and “epidemic” — an epidemic so nasty we should panic!

Anyhoo, here’s the Nanos press release:

Continue…

The Prime Minister of Canada v. Omar Khadr

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 11:35 PM - 27 Comments

Our Michael Friscolanti previews Friday morning’s Supreme Court hearing.

“All it takes is a phone call—a call between the prime minister and the president,” says Dennis Edney, Khadr’s ever-relentless lawyer. “I’m told that the Americans don’t have any concerns about sending Omar back to Canada. All the pressure is coming from Stephen Harper.”

… If the judges side against Ottawa, Stephen Harper will have no choice but to ask the Americans to return Khadr. Such a request won’t guarantee his release—the U.S. is under no obligation to agree—but it will certainly alter the playing field. “If we are successful, then Obama has something to hang his hat on,” Edney says. “And Harper just washes his hands. He can say: ‘I’ll ask—I can’t tell you how nicely I’m going to ask—but I’ll ask.’”

The “Khadr effect”

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 8:17 PM - 45 Comments

Among the bureaucrats at Foreign Affairs, it’s known as the “Khadr effect”—the fear that sticking up for a Canadian citizen arrested in another country may come back to haunt the government. The cautionary phrase dates back to 1995, when the World Trade Center was still standing and the Khadr name meant something only to a handful of spies at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

In those days, Toronto’s Khadr clan was shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan, mingling with al-Qaeda elites and dabbling in “charity” work. In November of that year, when a bomb leveled the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad and killed 16 people, the family patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, was among the suspects rounded up by Pakistani authorities. Ottawa has never forgotten what happened next.

Khadr proclaimed his innocence, embarked on a hunger strike, and ended up in a hospital. His case became front-page news in Canada—just as Jean Chrétien was flying to the region for a trade mission. Under pressure from the press, the prime minister took time out of his busy schedule to meet the suspect’s wife and children, and made sure to broach the case with Pakistan’s late leader, Benazir Bhutto. A few months later, Ahmed Khadr was a free man—kissing the ground when his plane landed in Canada.

Continue…

The Catholic Church's war on nuns

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 47 Comments

Nuns are struggling to find a meaningful role in Catholicism, but with Pope Benedict at the helm, the Church is doing everything it can to become more conservative—and force sisters back into lives of quiet obedience.

Since the reforms of Vatican II, and the dawn of mainstream feminism in the 1960s, many nuns have been trying to gain authority and redefine their position within the Church. Now, Rome is launching an investigation into liberal American nuns. The goal: to find out whether nuns’ movement into untraditional ministries (such as social justice work) and refusal to live in convents or wear religious robes is leading them astray. Continue…

Hawaii starts 'Furlough Fridays'

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 4 Comments

School’s out for Fridays. Hawaii’s 256 public schools have switched to a four-day school week as part of statewide cost cuts. Hawaii now has the shortest academic calender in the country, with only 163 school days each year. Parents and politicians are protesting against the new “Furlough Fridays” program. “We are about to rob 17 days from our children’s school year,” lamented Democratic representative Neil Abercrombie. “Days they will never get back.”

The policy has left parents scrambling to find adequate supervision for their liberated little ones—and local news agencies fearing the worst. The Honolulu Advertiser predicted that students would “wind up at grandma’s house or . . . simply be unsupervised at Hawaii’s beaches and malls.” But in the face of a projected $1-billion state deficit, schools superintendent Patricia Hamanoto insists there is no choice: “During this difficult economic period the department is utilizing the resources it has.” Continue…

Autumn house hunting

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 4:39 PM - 24 Comments

By the end of the summer, it became clear Canada’s housing market is in the best shape it’s been since cratering last winter. In Vancouver, for instance, the number of sales in September was up 124 per cent over the previous year; in Toronto, sales were up 24 per cent. But as economists love to remind us, when demand goes up, so too do prices. Combined with an already short supply of houses on the market, this helped raise the average selling price by 11 per cent from the same quarter last year.

So, how far will your hard-earned cash take you in today’s market? Click below to find out.

'Politics is fun'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 4:22 PM - 10 Comments

In the process of assessing George Smitherman, Jim Coyle considers the nature of politics.

It is a forum in which the artful insult of foes is esteemed, an arena in which even – sometimes especially – misfits and nerds can thrive. For those not gifted athletically, it’s the next best way to experience the intense camaraderie of a team, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the Rudy-like triumph against long odds, the Paul Martin-like frittering away of championships that should have been.

At times, political life can be positively Shakespearean in the playing out of human goodness and foible – the intrigues, treacheries, plots and schemes, the falling on swords for the greater good. Beyond question, the attendant media spotlight – the notepads and cameras constantly seeking opinion – is ego-boosting. In most cases, propinquity to power and the powerful is seductive. Reaching the exalted rank at which one gets to wield power is more than a little gratifying and, as Smitherman has been wont to say, cool.

As William Davis once famously observed, his dullest day as premier was more exciting than his best day doing anything else.