Magic, and a Happy 2010

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 8:09 PM - 3 Comments

The most beautiful piece of creative work I saw, in any genre or medium, this year was Robert Lepage’s production of The Nightingale and Other Short Fables at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. It brought some beautiful Stravinsky music that had been largely overlooked for a century to new audiences. It stretched the cast, crew and audience to the limits of their imaginations. I’ll never forget it. Here is puppeteer Michael Curry explaining part of it.

Happy 2010.

The story the mainstream media buried! Except… never mind

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 7:23 PM - 72 Comments

From the Inkless emailbox, a blast email from the PMO to Conservative supporters:

Subject: Conservative Party Wins Election Rebate Court Case / Le Parti conservateur gagne une action en justice sur le remboursement des dépenses électorales

Test…

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 4:54 PM - 6 Comments

…trying to see whether the RSS feed for this thing is connected to my Twitter account. Hey look: I’m saying incomprehensible 21st-century things!

Walk, chew gum

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 2:22 PM - 47 Comments

Dec. 30, 2009. More than 30 bills will die on the order paper, with more than half of them part of the government’s tough-on-crime agenda. But the Prime Minister’s Office said the goal is to continue focusing on the economy, with consultations on budgetary matters in the next two months. “This is the time to recalibrate, consult and deliver the next stage of our plan that we outlined last year in Budget 2009,” said spokesman Dimitri Soudas. He said that Canada has done relatively well during the recent global recession, but said “we’re not out of the woods yet.”

Sept. 24, 2008. America this week faces an historic crisis in our financial system. We must pass legislation to address this crisis. If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake. Businesses will not have enough money to pay their employees. If we do not act, ever corner of our country will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen … Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington after speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. I have spoken to Senator Obama and informed him of my decision and have asked him to join me.

Remembering Michelle Lang

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 12:29 PM - 7 Comments

I have interviewed Canadian soldiers just back from Afghanistan about a fallen colleague and they have refused to give their names, so worried are they that their comrades will consider the public display crass self-promotion. I approach the death of Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang in Afghanistan yesterday with the same trepidation because, as the Herald’s Robert Remington puts it in his heartbreaking portrait of Michelle today, “it is what we do.”

Michelle was one of the first colleagues I met after arriving in Calgary from Toronto in February, 2007—a few of us drove up to Lake Louise to ski, Michelle, with her big teeth and round cheeks, in a strange, faux-fur-trimmed one-piece, fearlessly attacking the slopes (when someone said the get-up lent her a Bond girl panache, Lang called herself Natasha for the day). She would prove to be a generous friend.

Her smile could transform her into a beautiful, mischievous kid; yet she was a tough reporter. With no journalism degree, she had worked her way up from a small weekly newspaper, through Regina, and on to the strut of Calgary and a true, big-city daily. In Canada’s newspaper industry, prone to cronyism, it’s a climb few accomplish. Michelle did it through determination, a devotion to the facts and a pronounced distaste for guff (you could hear the edge creep into her voice when she detected it).

But there was something else, too: everyone liked Michelle Lang. Reporters, who spend all day listening carefully to strangers, documenting what they hear all the while, have an unfortunate tendency in their off hours to talk, endlessly. Not Michelle, a talented listener and a generous payer of compliments, who would offer help even to a competitor after the same story as she. Why not help? She already had it all covered; her work earned her a National Newspaper Award for beat reporting (she covered Alberta’s healthcare system) earlier this year. Even those she was toughest on—the flaks at Alberta Health, say—liked and respected her.

As others have noted elsewhere, Michelle had recently become engaged, to Mike, a lovely guy who seemed to match her perfectly. When I first learned yesterday through a mutual friend that Michelle had been killed, by an IED blast along with four soldiers, it was Mike I thought of first. Somehow, their plans together had seemed to me a safeguard against the worst happening in Afghanistan.

Michelle and I weren’t the closest friends, but I’m so glad to have known her. I recall, walking down 8th Ave. in downtown Calgary once a few years ago, coming across Michelle and her parents, in from Vancouver, and how proud she was of them when she introduced them. Above all her other accomplishments, how much fun she was, it’s that moment I remember now.

Shutting down the House: we don't like the place much anyway

By John Geddes - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 40 Comments

The architecture of Parliament Hill suits the traditions of the place perfectly. It’s all shadowy neo-Gothic, niches and eccentric carving. There’s none of the classical balance of Washington, so suggestive of calibrated power and constitutional clarity.

No, our Parliament Buildings announce themselves by their design as home to accrued convention, rather than precise rules. Don’t look for clear lines here defining what’s allowed and what’s not. You’ll need to learn where the underground passageways lead, figure out how the place works.

That’s the way it is with British parliamentary practice: centuries of political evolution taught us how to govern ourselves. Our democracy rests at least as much on convention as it does on our Constitution. And that is why the Prime Minister’s resort to shutting down Parliament—proroguing it, to use that nicely mysterious word—is so troubling.
Continue…

AT&T hangs up on Tiger

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 12:01 PM - 3 Comments

U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T is dropping Tiger Woods, becoming the latest company to cancel a sponsorship agreement with the golf superstar in the wake of revelations he cheated on his wife. In doing so, AT&T joins Tag Heuer and Gillette, both of whom have stopped using Woods’s image in their advertisements, as well consulting group Accenture, which cancelled its endorsement deal with Woods, in abandoning the golfer. On the other hand, Nike, which pays Woods an estimated 40 million dollars a year, has issued him unqualified support.

AFP

Everyone take the winter off!

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:55 AM - 97 Comments

I just bought something from an Ottawa merchant and he launched into a chat, of the hey-you-write-for-Maclean’s-and-I-sometimes-see-you-on-TV-so-I-will-now-make-small-talk-about-the-headlines variety. “So, has Harper put you guys out of work for the next two months?” he said.

I always find these questions difficult to answer, because in real life I’m not a witty fellow. “Uh,” I said. “Hmm.” Finally I came up with, “Naw, we’ll just make stuff up instead.”

“I can’t believe he’s doing this,” the Ottawa merchant said. “I mean, a year ago I could sort of see it, but this time there’s no excuse.”

Oh no, I thought. A procedure wonk. He’s going to start citing Cromwell and the Long and Short Parliaments and Chanak and the Pipeline Debate to me. I’m trapped in a store with the dybbuk of Jerry Yanover. “I’m not sure people — ” and here I had to search for the appropriate word, for in real life I’m not a witty fellow — “care.” Continue…

Taliban claims responsibility for attacks

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:52 AM - 2 Comments

Taliban spokesman Qari Mohmmad Yusuf Ahmadi says his group was responsible for Wednesday’s bombing in Kandahar that claimed the lives of four Canadian soldiers and Calgary-based journalist Michelle Lang. Ahmadi told the Associated Press on Thursday the Taliban was also responsible for an attack against a U.S. military base in the eastern part of Afghanistan that killed eight American civilians, some of whom were reportedly working for the C.I.A., along with one Afghan. Retired major general Lewis Mackenzie CTV’s Canada AM the Taliban likely recognized the shock value of pulling off brazen attacks during the holidays. “They know that the centre of gravity of this mission, which is the minds of the Canadian public, is pretty vulnerable at this time of year while we enjoy our holiday season,” he said.

CTV News

NFL Picks Week 17: Feschuk v. Reid – who will be the least most completely incompetent?

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week: 6-10 Season: 119-115-6

Scott Reid Last week: 5-11 Season: 119-115-6

Feschuk: After 240 football games, we are both barely above .500 (not surprising, in that we are not good at this) and we have the exact same record (somewhat surprising, in that you had a 10-game lead on me just a few weeks ago – before you went all “Brad Childress” on us).

Given our records, a wager of some sort is clearly in order. And not one of those wussy political wagers where one mayor pledges to send a crate of locally made jerky to the other mayor. I’m talking about a man’s wager – a wager that would make Tom Selleck’s moustache proud.

Loser buys the crantinis?

Reid: Crantinis are sorta girly, no? For the sake of our masculine image, let’s go with Kir Royale. I have to confess, after a fairly respectable season, I’ve been on a spectacular three-week chokefest. I feel about as confident as a piece of pecan pie sitting out on John Goodman’s counter.

Here’s my challenge. The loser must agree to accompany the other on an “extreme” adventure of the other’s choosing. For example, if I win, we would go Continue…

Security Fiasco

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 3 Comments

The attempted terror attack on Christmas Day has had a significant impact on air travel for Canadians. TakeOffeh.com has compiled a rundown on the current situation along with opinions from airline security experts on how it is being handled.

The repercussions of the so-called ‘underwear-bomber’ are being felt in Canada more than anywhere else in the world. That’s because more people fly from Canada to the U.S. than from any other country. Although being characterized as “temporary”, the recent security restrictions are having a major impact. Canadian airports are experiencing among the worst delays in the world, especially at Toronto’s Pearson International. Some observers are calling the ban on carry-on and pat-down searches, which take up to five minutes per passenger, “security theatre”.

According the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, the security directive to airlines and airports was set to expire on Tuesday night, December 29^th, but it has been extended as the agency seeks to further refine it. A new directive will be issued by Wednesday midnight, the TSA has said.

Here is the most recent security advisory from Transport Canada:

“Effective immediately, U.S. bound passengers are not allowed to bring carry-on bags into the cabin of the aircraft, with some exceptions. Passengers may carry with them the following items:

• medication or medical devices, crutches, canes, walkers, containers carrying life sustaining items, special needs items and items for care of infants
• small purses, laptop computers, cameras, coats
• musical instruments, diplomatic or consular bags.

Additional searches of passengers and their exempted items will continue. Delays can be expected so passengers are advised to arrive at the airport three hours in advance of their scheduled flight.”

The Transport Canada security advisory does not mention any inflight restrictions, but an advisory from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration describes what passengers may expect:

“During flight, passengers may be asked to follow flight crew instructions, such as stowing personal items, turning off electronic equipment and remaining seated during certain portions of the flight.”

What To Expect When Flying Back From The U.S.

The U.S. is purposely varying security measures by day and by airport, with the assumed goal of keeping potential threats off-balance.

Currently, U.S. officials are telling Canada-bound passengers they don’t need to do anything different to prepare for airport security and carry-on bags are not being restricted. Nonetheless, passengers are being encouraged to arrive earlier than usual for their flight.

Enhanced Protection Or Security Theatre? The Pundits Weigh In

In the nearly 10 years since 9/11, a debate has raged over the most effective methods to deter or intercept would-be airline terrorists. Many have argued that onerous post 9/11 security measures represent nothing more than show and do little to reduce the actual risk. This view suggests that more money should be invested in foreign intelligence in identifying potential threats rather than inconveniencing millions of air travellers.

Aviation consultant, Robert Mann was quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying : “We need to fight them not at the airport, not in an aircraft, but in places where these would-be harm-doers are developing their ideas and fermenting their plans. We’re focused on fighting the last battle, not the next one.”

Security Analyst Bruce Schneier, agrees. In his blog he comments, “I’ve started to call the bizarre new TSA rules “magical thinking”: if we somehow protect against the specific tactic of the previous terrorist, we make ourselves safe from the next terrorist.”

There is no doubt, however, that technology will continue to play an important role in airport security. The Dutch announced today that they will immediately begin using the controversial full body scanners to screen all U.S.-bound passengers. A manufacturer of the backscatter x-ray machines (often dubbed a virtual strip-search) says the machine would have revealed the explosive device hidden in the undergarments of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Needless to say, the process raises many privacy issues.

The Travel Insider’s David Rowell provides an interesting analysis of the overall security and flying predicament: “Let’s put this all into perspective. According to this article, in the last ten years (including 9/11) there have been a mere six notable airborne terror attempts involving flights to, from, or within the US.  This means you have one chance in 16.5 million of being on a problem flight, which also means you’ll encounter one terrorist event per 3,105 years of continual flying. Your next flight will probably be as safe for you as all the flights you’ve flown to date. But it may be a whole lot less pleasant.”

Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to TakeOffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: Terraxplorer, mr_morton

To Stephen, with love

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 5 Comments

From bookends to saki cups, the prime minister received a host of gifts from fellow world leaders over the past year. Not surprisingly, none were more elaborate than the ones Stephen Harper received from his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi. As host of the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Berlusconi treated Harper to a monogrammed bathrobe, towel and slipper set, as well as a fine linen table cloth and napkins, a leather briefcase, and a three-volume red-leather set of Who’s Who in Italy. Harper’s wife Laureen, meanwhile, made out with a black leather jacket as a gift from Berlusconi. The prime minister is obligated by law to declare the gifts he receives and cannot accept anything valued at over $1,000. Some of the other gifts Harper’s office declared for 2009 include four bottles of tequila from governor of Mexico’s state of Jalisco, a leather-bound map from 1783 of the British Territories of Canada and the U.S from President Barack Obama, and two 18-day passes to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.

CBC News

What's at stake

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, December 31, 2009 at 1:41 AM - 222 Comments

Just to reassure anyone who might be in any doubt: I am not actually calling for civil war. What the government has done is not illegal. It is merely wrong: an abuse of process, an insult to Parliament, another step on Parliament’s long slide into irrelevance. Those of us who worried about the precedent set by the last prorogation of convenience, during the coalition crisis a year ago, must now worry about the even worse precedent this sets.

Prorogation the last time sailed close to the wind of unconstitutionality — the government had not actually lost the confidence of the House (as it had in May 2005, when Paul Martin’s government barricaded itself in office for nine days), but was almost certainly about to — but could be justified, perhaps, by reasons of state: namely, to avert the far more destabilizing consequences if the coalition, Bloc and all, had been allowed to seize power. I rather think that’s why the Governor General acceded to it, as the least bad option. I said at the time that she gave the right answer to a question that should never have been asked.

But no such crisis attends the current exercise. The government’s professed rationale, that this is all about economic planning, is obvious bilge: nothing prevents a government from planning and meeting Parliament at the same time, or certainly shouldn’t. The informal justification its supporters are putting about is scarcely better: it may be inconvenient to the government that its appointees do not yet control all Senate committees, but that is no reason to shutter Parliament. It is a motive, not a defense.

So that leaves the obvious. As KDO has explained, the fact that the government is proroguing in December, rather than in late January, suggest this had more to do with shutting down inquiries into the Afghanistan detainee affair than anything else. Is this what we should now expect: governments shutting down Parliament whenever the questioning gets too intense? What will remain of Parliament’s ability, already greatly weakened, to hold governments to account then?

Each time Parliament allows one of these abuses to pass, its power is reduced a little more. Indeed, so diminished has it become that it is hard for some observers to muster much indignation at this latest assault: it’s only Parliament, after all. It’s exactly this sort of whittling away by degrees that has allowed closure, for example, to be invoked more or less routinely to cut of Parliamentary debates, where once it was to be used only in the most extreme circumstances. It was the improper use of closure, recall, that set off the wild, four-week brawl known as the Pipeline Debate. Now, nobody can be bothered.

The time has long since passed for Parliament to take a stand against its own evisceration. The really substantive issue is whether the government will yield to the Commons demand that it produce the Colvin documents, and perhaps that fight can be resumed in March. But proroguing to delay that day of reckoning, possibly in hopes of sneaking through another snap election in the interval, is worthy of some sort of Parliamentary rebuke, which is why the symbolic measure (and it could only be that) of MPs meeting in another place came to mind.

I recognize that Parliament always retains the ultimate sanction of voting no confidence in the government — or at least, on those days that the government will allow it to do so, or deigns to bring forward legislation, or recognizes confidence votes when they occur (see Paul Martin, above). But this is a very blunt instrument. It shouldn’t have to take a vote of non-confidence to get the government to obey basic norms of accountability. I don’t mean only that the government should observe conventions of respect for Parliament, regardless of whether it is conforming to the strict letter of the law. I also mean there should be mechanisms for curbing such abuses, short of dissolving Parliament.

For example, should the power to prorogue rest solely with the Prime Minister (I know, I know: the Governor General, acting on his advice)? Should it not require a vote of Parliament? Might the same rule not also apply to dissolutions?

Michelle Lang's Afghanistan dispatches

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 10:08 PM - 0 Comments

CanWest journalist Michelle Lang, who died in Afghanistan Wednesday, was keeping an up-to-date blog on the Calgary Herald‘s website.  Recently, she’d posted about the death of Lieut. Andrew Nuttall. As well, she blogged about travelling to the Panjwaii distract, where she took some photos of the scenery, which moved her. She wrote about dogs that had adopted the Canadian soldiers and about Christmas in Afghanistan. Lang travelled with Gen. Walter Natynczyk and some Canadian entertainers who were visiting the soldiers over the holidays. Lang commented on how Vancouver musician Melanie Dekker’s family wasn’t thrilled about her spending Christmas in a war zone. But the reporter, who was due home on Jan. 22, never mentioned how her own family was coping with her six-week secondment.

Calgary Herald

Carnage in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 8:16 PM - 8 Comments

Four Canadian soldiers, along with Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang, were killed in an IED attack in Kandahar on Wednesday. The recently-engaged Lang, 34, was nearly three weeks into a six-week stay in Afghanistan when she was killed while traveling with a provincial reconstruction team. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to Michelle’s fiance Michael and her beloved parents,” said Dennis Skulsky, the president and CEO of Canwest Publishing. “Michelle, along with being an award winning journalist was also much beloved by her colleagues at the Calgary Herald, Canwest News Service and across our organization. This loss is immeasurable.” Eight American civilians also died in Afghanistan on Wednesday after a separate attack on a U.S. military base near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. Canadian military authorities have yet to release the names of the Canadian soldiers who died along with Lang. Their deaths bring the total number of Canadians killed in Afghanistan to 138.

National Post

The shorter and shorter Parliament

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 5:57 PM - 48 Comments

Taking a moment from an otherwise pleasant vacation to do some math…

Here is a quickly put-together line graph of sitting days per year for Parliament—as tabulated by the House of Commons website—over the last forty years or so. In case the trend isn’t clear enough, here are the average number of sitting days by decade.

1970s. 142.7
1980s. 153.2
1990s. 119.6
2000s. 111.1

There were three elections in the 70s, three in the 80s, two in the 90s and four in the 00s.

By the previously established schedule for 2010, Parliament will be skipping a total of 22 sitting days as a result of prorogation. If it sticks to the rest of the schedule, Parliament will sit for a total of 114 days in the next year.

The Russian MAD MEN era

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 5:39 PM - 5 Comments

I was looking for some New Year’s special clips that don’t feature “Dick Clark” or “Rockin’” anywhere in the title. I didn’t find much yet in the way of North American clips, but I did find this song from a 1963 New Year’s special in the Soviet Union (which at that time was not yet the “former Soviet Union”). It’s by the Akkord Quartet, a singing group about which I can’t find much information; this site says that they used to sing with one of the most popular Soviet big band leaders (and since jazz was officially frowned upon, there weren’t many), Oleg Lundstrem.

Anyway, what we have here is a show that the Russian Betty Draper was probably watching on January 1, 1963. And I have to say, the camerawork is more creative than in the U.S. variety-show specials of the era.

Do we have a responsible opposition?

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 5:38 PM - 47 Comments

Set aside the decoys and false trails about the government needing to consult with Canadians on its economic action plan, or the idea that the government wants to reboot the Senate to take control of its committees. There is really only one reason why Parliament has been prorogued, and it is the vote, taken by the Commons on the last day before the Christmas break, to demand the Tories produce the unredacted documents relevant to the Colvin allegations. Harper has made it clear he does not want to produce the documents, and the Commons made it clear they want them. Parliament was set for a showdown. Continue…

Week in Pictures: December 18th – December 31st, 2009

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 3:08 PM - 0 Comments

Too many camels in Australia

By Jen Cutts - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 3:04 PM - 4 Comments

Thirsty camels are causing chaos in Docker River, Australia. Years of drought are driving the wild animals into town, where they are knocking over fire hydrants and busting into homes looking for water. Local authorities say the unfortunate solution is a massive cull of the animals.

The 350 residents of the remote Northern Territory community have been living in fear since up to 6,000 feral camels starting moving in about two months ago. “They more or less come into houses and go right through,” one local told Australian public radio. To end the siege, the region’s Central Land Council has spent $47,000 organizing an aerial cull: last week, helicopters began herding the animals outside of town, and marksmen are aiming to kill some 3,000 from the air.

The cull, seen as a last resort by the local government and the mainly indigenous residents of Docker River, has drawn criticism from around the world. Authorities have received scores of letters calling the plan inhumane and demanding it be called off; one from Tokyo asked, “Why can’t the children lead the camels out of the community?” “That’s a bit on the bizarre side,” says Des Rogers, an executive on the local council, “but it reinforces the fact that people don’t really understand the circumstances.”

Locally, criticism has come from camel-meat processors. Authorities have turned down their requests to move the animals to their facilities or to make use of mobile abattoirs, saying there wasn’t time to organize such a coordinated program. There’s also concern that as the carcasses degrade in the desert, they will become a food source for scavengers such as foxes and wild dogs, possibly leading to a population explosion.

The cull will only temporarily relieve Docker River’s camel problem: over a million of the animals, introduced to Australia in the 1840s for use as pack animals, are thought to be roaming the outback. With their ability to survive for long periods without water, and few predators in the vicinity, populations continue to soar across central Australia. In July, the country’s federal government set aside $18 million to control the camels.

Egyptian women like their niqabs

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 2:31 PM - 9 Comments

Egypt has long championed a moderate interpretation of Islam, but some Egyptian women are rebelling against government-promoted secularism. More and more of them are choosing to wear the niqab—a veil that covers the face—in addition to the traditional hijab, which only covers the hair, spreading fear among government officials that some Egyptians are embracing hardline Islamic values.

The controversy surrounding the niqab boiled over in October when Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt’s top cleric and head of the Islamic Al-Azhar University, walked into a high school classroom in Cairo and told a female student to remove her veil. Soon after, Tantawi banned niqabs in classrooms and dorms at his campus, on the grounds that it “has nothing to do with Islam” and that it was unnecessary since the university is gender-segregated.

Egypt’s state-run media have backed Tantawi’s ban by encouraging females to show their faces, citing the “damaging” effects of the niqab on society, while the ministry of religious endowments has gone so far as to distribute booklets that suggest the niqab is un-Islamic. But despite the government campaign, analysts say increasing numbers of women have taken to wearing the niqab, which was almost never seen in Egypt just a decade ago.

Some women are wearing the niqab as a form of rebellion against a government that is widely viewed by the masses to be autocratic, corrupt and uncaring—they feel they should be able to choose their own dress. For others, the decision is based on the belief that wearing the niqab will bring them closer to God, a notion inspired by Salafism, an ultra-conservative school of thought practised in Saudi Arabia that places an emphasis on orthodox Muslim doctrines.
Although most followers of Salafism shun politics, the movement has much in common with the ideology of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, giving the government even more ammunition in its quest to quell the movement.

In Greece, an economic disaster

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 2:28 PM - 1 Comment

It has been an awful December for Greece. First, anarchists rioted to mark the first anniversary of the killing of 15-year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos by the police. Then, the violence was overshadowed by an even more dangerous situation: a deepening fiscal crisis.

After years of ignoring its red-ink-drenched balance sheets, the country is being crushed by a mountain of unpaid bills. Its debt, now at US$440 billion, is expected to reach 124.9 per cent of GDP in 2010, the highest in the eurozone. And the deficit, at 12.7 per cent of GDP, is well above the EU cap of three per cent. On Dec. 8, Fitch rating agency cut Greece’s long-term debt rating from A- to BBB+, just above Iceland, which is in economic meltdown. Fitch analyst Christopher Pryce told Bloom­berg that he’s “not convinced that the cabinet, even the prime minister, understands just how severe the situation is.”

Clearly worried about how Greece’s crisis will affect the rest of the continent, European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet told Prime Minister George Papandreou to undertake “very difficult, very courageous but absolutely necessary measures.” Because Greece uses the euro, it can’t employ the usual debt-crisis tools of devaluing its currency or printing more money. The only options are to take a machete to its spending and to hike taxes. Financial markets are so unsure about the government’s resolve that default insurance on Greek debt has skyrocketed in price.

Willem Buiter, Citigroup’s incoming chief economist, believes that without radical austerity measures, Greece may indeed default on its debt. In turn, that could get Greece bounced from the eurozone. Perhaps a fitting result, considering Athens lied about its finances to get accepted into the club. “It’s five minutes to midnight for Greece,” Buiter says.

Shutting down Parliament: on the economy, detainees, and senators

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 2:26 PM - 189 Comments

I took three main points from the media briefing offered earlier this afternoon by Dimitri Soudas, the Prime Minister’s press secretary, on shutting down Parliament until March 3. MPs had been scheduled to return from their year-end break on Jan. 25.

Continue…

Aniston 1 Paparazzi 0

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 2:17 PM - 1 Comment

Paparazzi are known to go to extreme lengths for the “big shot.” But after hearing of celebrity horror stories from Jennifer Aniston and others, California politicians created a new law to crack down on the photographers. And Aniston is getting all the credit. The new legislation allows for penalties of up to $50,000 against photographers and media outlets that buy “unlawfully obtained” photos and video that violates privacy laws by showing people “engaging in a personal or familial activity” where they have “a reasonable expectation of privacy” such as private property. As for Aniston, she calls it a public safety issue: “When you have children in the car and the photographers are rushing you, it’s just absolutely out of control. Somebody’s going to die if we don’t do something.”

Los Angeles Times