NWT jails one-armed bandit

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 2:34 PM - 0 Comments

This is one of those cases where a headline tells the whole story. Bobby Kaotalok, a 24-year-old Yellowknife man, received a year in jail this week for a July incident at Stanton Territorial Hospital in which he attacked an RCMP officer with his prosthetic arm. Alcohol was a factor. According to Const. Todd Scaplin, Kaotalok “became combative, started clenching his fists… er, fist, at the member, and was swearing, just being belligerent.” When the officer in question asked him what his next move might be, Kaotalok removed his prosthetic arm and swung it at the Mountie, who was not injured in the assault.

CBC News

Behold the awesome supergenius of the PMO strategy box… uh, never mind

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:47 PM - 64 Comments

Bloc “likely” to support HST bill

In other news

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:37 PM - 8 Comments

Michael Ignatieff gave a speech about the environment yesterday, the prepared text of which is here. The Gargoyle points to Stephen Gordon’s analysis here.

Notes on the coming "historic deficit"

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:36 PM - 43 Comments

1. As a fraction of the economy, in constant dollars, it is risibly far from being a historic deficit.

2. See (1.)

The fine art of paramilitary euphemism

By Colby Cosh - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:17 PM - 2 Comments

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is to be applauded for a marginal victory in the seemingly endless fight against homegrown Winter Olympics totalitarianism. But make no mistake: it is a very marginal win, at best. The Vancouver police purchased the American Technology Corp.’s LRAD-500X acoustic beam generator, supposedly for use as a loudhailer at public gatherings and protests. Both the police and American Technology object to media references to the device as a “sound gun”, a “sonic cannon”, or a non-lethal weapon. But it has been used that way in the field, and the VPD has effectively conceded the point by agreeing, under BCCLA pressure, to disable a device setting that allows the LRAD to generate “powerful deterrent tones… to influence behaviour.”

That quoted description, mind you, doesn’t come from critics of the device: it comes from the vendor’s own data sheet. In other words, the LRAD’s ability to cause pain and temporary deafness is a selling point. Devices in this class were developed after the attack on the USS Cole, which should really settle the question whether their essential purpose is to communicate with crowds or to cause intolerable agony to human targets. American Technology offers an attached “laser dazzler” as an option with the LRAD, and the data sheet specifies that it “enhances public safety measures without exposing nearby personnel or peripheral bystanders to excessive audio levels,” suggesting that the whole idea is to expose only the people you’re aiming at to excessive audio levels.

And the LRAD’s staggering acoustic power can surely still be used to inflict pain even with the automatic “deterrent tones” feature switched off. Indeed, you could just plug in an MP3 player (a ruggedized media player is another one of those fancy options buyers can splash out on) and play high-pitched, piercing tweets through the speaker that way. If you’ve got an Olympics protest planned, don’t, do not, leave the earplugs at home.

The world's fastest inmate

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:16 PM - 1 Comment

Tim Montgomery was once the world’s fastest man—running the 100m in 9.78 seconds. Now he sits in an Alabama prison cell, serving six years for writing bad cheques, and awaiting sentencing on heroin-dealing charges. Of all the big-time athletes implicated in the BALCO steroid scandal, Montgomery has fallen the hardest. Marion Jones, his partner, is out of jail and putting her life back together. Maurice Greene, his rival, still has his Olympic medals. In an extraordinary interview in today’s Times of London, the disgraced sprinter comes clean on his drug use, his drug-dealing, life in jail, and the reasons why he embraced performance enhancing drugs. “All I wanted was the big Nike contract, the commercials, I wanted to be the star.”

Times of London

This one's for the guy who didn't like my "rant" about torture on the teevee

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 1:02 PM - 13 Comments

A lobbyist wrote me the other day to say some comments I made on the CBC after Richard Colvin’s committee testimony were “outrageous.” I told him to expect some more. Here, in my column from the magazine’s latest print edition, is some more.

Right and wrong. Such a novel concept.

'The issue will not go away'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 12:48 PM - 15 Comments

Three important dispatches from Embassy magazine this week. Laura Payton on the plight of the whistleblower. Lee Berthiaume talks to the Information Commissioner about the paper trail, or lack thereof. And retired colonel Michel Drapeau argues passionately for a public inquiry.

Instead of being concerned with Canada’s reputation among the community of nations, the government appears to be more interested in displaying unbridled partisanship than statesmanship. However, whether a public inquiry is called by government over the next weeks or so, one thing is certain: This issue will not go away.

What is also certain is that both the parliamentary committee and the media will chip away at the story, a story which ministers of the Crown seem to be attempting to paper over. However, I am a believer in the inevitability of the truth surfacing sooner or later and in the rule of law.

The whole kernel might as well come out in a judicial manner, where partisanship will recede to the world of twitters. That would be best for Canada and its government, our armed forces and, of course, our gallant, valiant and brave men and women serving in the military. This is crucial so that they may complete their difficult and perilous mission in peace, honour, respect and affection of the nation, for they and their families, having served through blood, sweat and tears, have made enough sacrifices for the good of the nation.

Week in Pictures: November 21th – November 27th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 1 Comment

A year ago

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 12:09 PM - 6 Comments

The sketch for November 27, 2008.

“The greatest histories,” Jim Flaherty mused about a half hour into explaining the state of the national economy, “are written in the toughest times.”

Shortly thereafter, he was finished. And shortly after his final words, he and the Prime Minister took their leave, long gone by the time Scott Brison, Gilles Duceppe, Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair got round to blistering the Commons paint with indictments of the story just told.

In the thirty minutes preceding, Flaherty had explained, in the most ominous of adjectives, the depth and breadth of the crisis that now faces us. Unprecedented. Sudden. Devastating. Historic. “Canada,” he said, “has not faced such severe challenges in a generation.”

Perhaps hoping to assist those of us who traffic in symbolism, an infant wailed from the gallery.

Surgery used to treat mental illness

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:51 AM - 2 Comments

Leonard, a writer living near Chicago, was unable to get in the shower; meanwhile, Ross, a teenager, was so terrified of germs he’d shower for seven hours a day. Both suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and travelled to a Rhode Island hospital to get an experimental brain operation, in which four small holes were burned into their brains. Two years later, Ross is in college, and says the surgery “saved his life.” Leonard saw no change. In the last decade, over 500 people have undergone brain surgery for everything from depression to obesity, the New York Times reports. This year, for the first time since frontal lobotomy fell out of favour over 50 years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved one type of surgery for some kinds of OCD. But there are risks: some psychiatrists and medical ethicists say doctors still don’t know enough about it, and results can be unpredictable, with a few people even getting worse. With demand for these operations so high, some less experienced surgeons could begin offering them without oversight or support. In one procedure, called cingulotomy, doctors drill into the skull and thread wires into the brain, destroying pinches of tissue along a circuit in each hemisphere that connects emotional centres of the brain to the frontal cortex, where conscious planning happens. This circuit seems to be hyperactive in people with severe OCD.

New York Times

International pressure mounting on Iran

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 6 Comments

In a rare demonstration of global unity, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has passed a resolution demanding that Iran halt development on a secret uranium enrichment plant. The vote was supported by Russia, China, the U.S., Britain, France and Germany. The resolution is the first to be passed against Iran in almost four years and could set the stage for the passing of a binding resolution from the UN Security Council that imposes sanctions on the country. In the lead-up to the vote, Iran reportedly rejected an agreement to send 75 per cent of its uranium abroad for enrichment, a deal that would have prevented the country from weaponizing the material. Both British and U.S. officials still say they want to engage Iran diplomatically, but warn that punitive measures will be forthcoming if negotiations do not progress. The Iranian government says it will not respond to international pressure, and that the IAEA resolution will only make it more difficult to reach an agreement

Guardian

I'm guessing "Non"

By Andrew Potter - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:39 AM - 13 Comments

We get press releases from the Bloc:

Conférence de Gilles Duceppe devant les Intellectuels pour la souveraineté

Ottawa, vendredi 27 novembre 2009 – Le chef du Bloc Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, donnera une conférence intitulée « Le Québec a-t-il un avenir dans le Canada? », dans le cadre d’un dîner-conférence organisé par les Intellectuels pour la souveraineté (IPSO), qui aura lieu le dimanche 29 novembre 2009. Les représentantes et les représentants des médias sont invités à assister à cet événement.

 

Diabetes to double, spending to triple by 2034

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:35 AM - 1 Comment

Nearly twice as many Americans will have diabetes by the year 2034, just as spending on the disease will triple, according to US researchers. “We forecast that in the next 25 years, the population size of people with diabetes—both diagnosed and undiagnosed—will rise from approximately 24 million people to 44 million people by the year 2034,” said the University of Chicago’s Dr. Elbert Huang, whose study appears in the journal Diabetes Care. “We anticipate that the cost of taking care of those people — and these are direct medical costs — will triple over the same period of time, going from $113 billion today to $336 billion (per year),” he told Reuters. This is expected to strain Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program that helps the elderly and disabled: the number of people covered is expected to rise from 8.2 million to 14.6 million, just as annual Medicare spending on diabetes jumps from $45 billion to $171 billion. In the study, researchers built a forecasting model of diabetes population costs to track how many people will develop it over the next decades. The study assumes no progress is made in terms of obesity, diabetes prevention, and diabetes care.

Reuters

Lights out

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:28 AM - 1 Comment

It’s a commonly held belief that street lighting, which has illuminated urban centres and motorways since the Second World War, increases road safety and deters criminals. But according to Britain’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, street lighting may be doing more harm than good. Too often, the commission found, authorities blast light at the “wrong place at the wrong time,” creating wasted light or “sky glow,” as well as dark shadows that provide cover to criminals. And all that fake light can impact the biology of many plants and animals. The commission suggests removing artificial lights from motorways (except at junctions), and dimming the lights in city centres.

Telegraph

Wal-Mart wins war against union

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 11:19 AM - 51 Comments

It might be hard ball. It might even be, to use the judges’ own words, “socially reprehensible.” But Wal-Mart has every right to close stores in the face of unionization drives, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled today. The decision follows the closure of two stores in Quebec in which employees had been organizing to form a union local, and represents a blow for labour groups who had hoped to crack the U.S.-based chain’s no-union policy. But the decision was a foregone conclusion: the unions were asking the courts to set an extraordinary precedent by forcing a business operator to keep its doors open—an incursion on basic freedoms one would think would be reserved only for the greatest emergencies.

Ottawa Citizen

'Can you drive stick?'

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:56 AM - 6 Comments

So a 39-year-old mom is parking her car after driving her two daughters home from a Girl Guides meeting. Out of the shadows steps a man who points a shotgun at her chest and tells her to hand over the keys. She complies, but also calmly asks if he can drive standard. Apparently not. He tosses back the keys. More insights into the coolest mom under pressure, and perhaps coolest mom period, in this story from Winnipeg.

Winnipeg Free Press

It’s the multiculturalism, stupid

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:49 AM - 12 Comments

Canada scored the top ranking in the HSBC Bank’s second survey of expatriate workers as the best place to land a job and make a life for those seeking employment abroad. Australia also ranked high, but Britain was considered a tough place to fit in. And money isn’t the big factor in expat happiness. “What is clear,” said an HSBC spokeswoman, “is that the locations where salaries may not be as high, such as Canada and Australia, are where expats are really enjoying not only an increased quality of life but are also finding it easy to fit in to their new communities.”

Reuters

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:45 AM - 3 Comments

A week in the life of twilight
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new box-office champion. The Twilight Saga: New Moon grossed $72.7 million on its first day in theatres last Friday—the previous best was The Dark Knight’s $67.2 million. Screaming teenagers lined up for midnight screenings to find out what would happen to vampire Edward and vampire-lover Bella (though most already knew the outcome from reading and rereading the novel). Said teens then proceeded to scream throughout the movie.

GOOD NEWS

Tough on child porn
The Harper government introduced a smart new bill aimed at curtailing child pornography on the Internet. Under the tough legislation, Web-hosting companies and Internet service providers that fail to report pornographic content on their servers would be punished. This is the most logical way to get to those vile people who post child porn online: service providers are the closest link to unmasking this underground scourge, because they, in effect, carry the content (even if they don’t know it). If ISPs are scared into cracking down on what appears on their servers, the battle against child porn will be half-won already.

Bittersweet swap
Israel and Hamas appear to be closing in on a deal that would see the Palestinian terrorist group release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Palestinians in June 2006. Israel would offer 1,000 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli jails in return, including alleged murderer Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life terms in an Israeli prison. The swap, should it happen, would be bittersweet for Israel: while Shalit’s return would be cause for celebration, Barghouti would likely assume a top leadership role in Fatah, and perhaps replace the moderate Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian leader, a move that could bring Fatah and Hamas together. In the long run, then, this deal could actually hamper Middle East peace.

GST, American-style
Does America need a GST? Some economists are now arguing that instituting a federal value-added tax could be the answer to bringing down America’s huge deficit. This won’t sound like good news to consumers—Americans will certainly find a VAT-style tax just as annoying as Canadians find the GST—but it makes good economic sense, and deserves to be given due consideration. Let’s hope that aggressive provincial politicians from our side of the border don’t turn Washington off the idea.

Jon & Kate abate
The saga of Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight young children is, thankfully, over—their TV show, Jon & Kate Plus 8, aired for the last time on Tuesday night after three seasons. We were never fans of the older Gosselins—though the kids are inarguably cute to watch—but the public squabbling after their marriage ended earlier this year was too much to take. The parents ended up looking like selfish brats—their kids were the real heroes. Jon and Kate’s messy divorce will surely continue, but at least not in prime time. We expect Oprah Winfrey will find a much classier way to sign off when her show ends in 2011.

BAD NEWS

Vexing vaccine
Swine flu confusion continues. While some experts have opined that the worst of the H1N1 pandemic is now behind us, others are warning against over-prescribing the vaccine. The World Health Organization also seems utterly confused: it’s recommending that doctors give out the vaccine to anyone showing symptoms of swine flu, and at the same time recommends that healthy people with mild symptoms not be given the vaccine. As if that weren’t enough, the WHO also announced on Tuesday that it has seen an unusually high number of severe allergic reactions to the vaccine in Canada.

Election problems
Iraqis were preparing to go to the polls in January, but now it looks like they will have to wait to cast their votes. Parliament has been unable to pass an election law, because of objections from Sunnis that they will be under-represented—and Sunni Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi has threatened to veto the law. (Iraq’s Kurds have also protested the election on the same basis, though a recent amendment to the election law seems to have satisfied them.) With the United States set to begin withdrawing troops next year, a constitutional crisis is the last thing that the war-torn country can handle. If there is to be success in Iraq, this election must occur on time, and it must be free of corruption. There is no alternative.

Gore vs. Alberta
Al Gore is at it again, and this time he’s inconveniencing Albertans. In a speech on Tuesday, the former vice-president (and almost-president) opined that oil extraction from Alberta’s tar sands presents a serious environmental problem. This after he pasted the sands project in Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, saying, “They have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But, you know, junkies find veins in their toes.” We don’t buy Gore’s doom-and-gloom scenario (odd, isn’t it, that his latest funereal pronouncements come right after he released a new climate book), and we hope Alberta’s hard-working population won’t suffer because of his reckless speechifying.

Idol no more
Former American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert embarrassed himself—and offended a whole lot of others—on Sunday night at the American Music Awards.His raunchy performance included pantomimed fellatio and a make-out session with a keyboard player. If you weren’t already convinced that pop music has become more about selling sex and less about actual talent, we now rest our case.

FACE OF THE WEEK

"Equally unhelpful would be to repeat the lines in today's Globe and Mail"

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:27 AM - 67 Comments

That thing about boxing the Liberals in by making them decide federal tax policy? Never mind. Here, via the Inkless emailbox, are today’s Conservative talking points, which repeal yesterday’s Conservative talking points. So it’s flip-flop week for the government! I greatly fear Stephen Harper will cancel his Copenhagen trip, hike the GST, declare the Québécois an “un-nation” and introduce a carbon tax before sundown.

Subject: Provincial tax-choice and the Liberals / Le choix fiscal des provinces et les libéraux

Dear Caucus Members:

A front-page story in the Globe and Mail gives an unfortunate and inaccurate impression of our tax-harmonization framework policy.

The Government will introduce a tax-harmonization framework in order to respect provincial decision-making and to honour commitments made to Premiers McGuinty and Campbell.

Contrary to what the story implies, we are not proceeding in this manner to embarrass, box in or gain an advantage over the federal Liberals. Continue…

Prime-time blackout

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 17 Comments

“The only other black comedic character on TV is Cleveland,” veteran TV producer Don Reo told the Kansas City Star, “and he’s a cartoon who’s voiced by a white guy.” Reo was trying to explain why his new show, Brothers, deserved to succeed: because of all the comedies premiered on the major U.S. networks this season, it was one of only two about an African-American family; the other one, The Cleveland Show, is a Family Guy spinoff about the show’s token black character (voiced, as Reo notes, by a white writer-actor, Mike Henry). And since Brothers opened to terrible reviews and worse ratings, Cleveland will soon be the only major network show about a black family. Richard Dubin, a professor at Syracuse University who wrote for many such shows in the ’80s and ’90s, puts it bluntly: “There are no more black shows.”

This is happening, strangely enough, at a time when things are better than usual for African-American actors and characters in the movies: there’s Oscar buzz for Precious (which may make a star out of actress Gabourey Sidibe), the Jamie Foxx vehicle The Soloist, and Clint Eastwood’s Nelson Mandela biopic Invictus, while Tyler Perry has become one of America’s most successful film producers with hit movies like Diary of a Mad Black Woman. But even as the overwhelming majority of television people were voting for Barack Obama, they were making fewer TV shows with African-American leads.

That’s not something anyone would have predicted 25 years ago, when The Cosby Show premiered. That show not only saved the sitcom, it became the most popular television program in the world, demolishing the idea that African-American TV families were only for a niche audience; Dubin says that its success “opened up a greater sense of possibility for black shows.” Cosby paved the way for other successful star vehicles, from Fresh Prince of Bel Air (for Will Smith) to Family Matters (which turned the character of Urkel into the most beloved TV nerd of the ’90s) to the late Bernie Mac’s self-titled sitcom.

Continue…

Liberals play the victim on Israel

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:15 AM - 93 Comments

There are many diversions in this carnival world—canasta, bubble wrap, Donald Trump’s hair—but none so entertaining as a politician trying to persuade us the emotions he puts on for a living are real. Michael Ignatieff may profess bemusement, in interviews with the foreign press, at the “theatricality” of it all, but your average pol would never concede the point. They are like those movie co-stars who must pretend to be dating in real life.

Mind you, it doesn’t take much to persuade us in the media. We are as invested as they in the pretense that, when the Member for Diddly-squat is observed to be “shaking with rage” or “visibly distraught,” he is actually experiencing something like the named emotion. Hence the readiness of so many media outlets to advertise the Liberals’ hurt feelings at those Tory pamphlets accusing them of anti-Semitism.

They don’t actually accuse them of anything of the kind, you understand. But, next to being the subject of a vicious personal attack (“you can say what you want about me, but leave my family out of it”), there is nothing a politician lives for more than to be unjustly accused of something—even if he has to levy the charge himself. The opportunities to play the victim are too tempting. Continue…

Torture: all about scoring points

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 160 Comments

What we do these days in Ottawa is keep score. Everyone does it. Nobody seems able to stop. The first question, in the overheated office buildings around Parliament Hill, isn’t whether something is true or false, a good idea or bad: it’s whether it will help the Conservatives or the opposition. And if this week’s problem isn’t enough to knock the Harper Conservatives off their pedestal, then everyone—the entire capital hive-mind, Conservatives, Liberals, on-air analysts, swiftly scribbling scribes—moves on.

I prefer to believe there are a lot of Canadians who care more whether they’re governed well or poorly than whether by Conservatives or Liberals. The incessant scorekeeping of Hill denizens is profoundly off topic. And never more so than when Richard Colvin testified about his attempts in 2006 and 2007 to alert the government about allegations that Afghan prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces had been tortured.

Colvin is a career diplomat who is trusted enough, today, by this Conservative government to serve as head of intelligence at the Canadian Embassy in Washington. When Glyn Berry, a Canadian diplomat assigned to the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, was killed by a car bomb in 2006, it was Colvin who volunteered to replace him. This guy has literally risked his life for his country. Of course he’s fallible like any of us. But I think he has earned a certain amount of respect.

Continue…

Handballs are only the beginning: fraud in international football

By Michael Petrou - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 3 Comments

German prosecutors are investigating almost 200 high-level soccer games in a match-fixing inquiry that is shaking European football.

My friend Declan Hill deserves some credit for getting the investigation rolling with his book, The Fix: Soccer and Organized Crime. He explains in his blog.

UPDATE: Colleague Charlie Gillis covers the story in detail in the print edition of this week’s mag.