The pivotal paperwork (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 12:42 PM - 2 Comments

Still pursuing an answer from National Defence for the redacted reference to abuse in that 2006 field report. In the meantime, the Liberals are using that document to question the claim to national security.

“Here we had two versions of the same document written by an unidentified sergeant – but the version redacted by the Conservatives scrubbed out the critical piece of information that Afghan National Police were known to have assaulted detainees ‘in the past,’” said Mr. Dosanjh.

“Stating that the ANP had previously assaulted detainees is not a threat to our national security, so why should we trust the government to redact any documents when it’s clear that what they’re going to delete has nothing to do with national security?”

(Reminder: Tomorrow at 1pm, I’ll be chatting about the year in Parliament.)

Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video named ad of the year

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 4 Comments

Despite being “reluctant to throw nitromethane into the Gaga fire,” the Los Angeles Times has named Lady Gaga’s video for “Bad Romance” the “Advertisement of the Year” for featuring no less than ten products—booze, high-end audio gear and stiletto heels–in five minutes. “No other advert, print or video or Web, no tweet or blog, billboard or word of mouth, has so thoroughly knitted itself into my merchandise-buying neurons,” Dan Neil writes. “Canny and cagey and completely engaged in the business of business, brand Gaga is the first white artist I can think of who has embraced aspirational, label materialism with the kind of gusto shown by hip-hop artists such as Kanye West and Jay Z.” Gaga represents a new frontier in commercialism, Neil concludes: “Lady Gaga is so beyond any kind of embarrassment that she’s made mercantilism its own aesthetic.”

L.A. Times

Berlusconi’s wounds worse than first thought

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 12:15 PM - 0 Comments

Silvio Berlusconi’s doctors have said it will take weeks at least to treat the “physical injuries and mental trauma” suffered by the Italian prime minister after he was attacked by a mentally ill man in Milan on Sunday. Berlusconi’s nose was broken and he lost two teeth and half a litre of blood in the attack at the end of a political rally. He said it was a “miracle” he had not been blinded when a chunky souvenir made of marble and metal was thrown at his face. The politician’s doctor said the injuries were more serious than initially thought, and he was able to eat only with great difficulty. “I found him shaken, embittered, as if he had been woken from a bad dream—really disheartened,” he said. The Prime Minister has been kept in hospital for another day, and will not be attending the Copenhagen climate change summit this week.

Times of London

Anti-depressants may increase risk of stroke in women

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 12:11 PM - 0 Comments

According to a US study that followed 136,293 women aged 50 to 79 for an average of six years, those who used anti-depressants were 45 per cent more likely to have a stroke than those who didn’t. When overall death rates were taken into account, those on anti-depressants had a 32 per cent higher risk of death from all causes during the study than non-users. Still, researchers stressed the overall risk of a stroke was relatively small: even for women on anti-depressants, less than one in 200 chance in a given year. But since so many women are anti-depressants, the effect is likely significant across the entire population. It isn’t clear whether anti-depressants alone up the risk for a stroke, and depression is known to be a risk factor for cardiovascular problems. Researchers said this may have influenced final results. The study found no difference in stroke risk between the two major classes of anti-depressents (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or tricyclic anti-depressants), but did find the SSRIs seemed to convey a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke, which is caused by a bleed in the brain.

BBC News

Grapes flips his lid

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:56 AM - 4 Comments

Don Cherry doesn’t take kindly to criticism his boosterism of tough hockey stands in the way of reducing head injuries in the game. “I don’t give a [expletive] about him,” Cherry told Colin D’Mello of 680 News, who stopped the hockey commentator outside radio studios in Toronto to request a comment on neurologist Charles Tator’s claims. Cherry then declined to grant D’Mello a formal interview and mocked the reporter for asking for one. “Why the [expletive] would I do it on [your radio station]? Now I’m telling you to [expletive] off. How’s that? Can I tell it any more quicker than that?” Cherry’s tirade didn’t make it into a story posted on the 680 News website, but it briefly made its way around the Internet via Twitter and YouTube before it was removed.

The Globe and Mail

Somewhere, Mordecai is smiling

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:48 AM - 23 Comments

Jacob, Emma most popular baby names of the decade

(Daniel and Noah are also prominent)

Death by CT scan

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:41 AM - 0 Comments

Two studies published on Tuesday have, for the first time, quantified the risk of America’s overuse of CT scans. The high levels of radiation involved may be responsible for 14,500 deaths a year. While CT scans give amazingly clear views of internal organs, they are far more radioactive than x-rays. The typical CT scan is the equivalent of 100 conventional x-rays, with some as intense as 440 x-rays. The United States overuses the technology on a scale not seen in countries such as Canada. Emergency rooms often ship patients off for a quick scan before even seeing a physician. Today, Americans get more than 70 million scans a year, 23 times the amount three decades ago. “The articles in this issue make clear that there is far more radiation from medical CT scans than has been recognized previously,” says Dr. Rita Redberg, the editor of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

L.A. Times

Tiger’s Canadian doctor focus of a criminal investigation

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:33 AM - 0 Comments

Can things get any worse for Tiger Woods? Apparently, yes. A Canadian doctor who performed a controversial medical procedure on the disgraced golfer is now under criminal investigation for drug violations on both sides of the border. Dr. Tony Galea flew to Tiger’s Florida home earlier this year to treat Woods with his platelet-rich plasma injection therapy, also known as “blood spinning.” Galea, who lives in Toronto, is well-known in the world of sports medicine for advocating the therapy, which involves spinning blood in a centrifuge and reinjecting it into injured joints in the hope of accelerating healing. In October, police arrested Galea and raided his Toronto clinic after his assistant was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border for allegedly possessing illegal drugs, including human growth hormone (HGH) and Actovegin. Galea is expected to be formally charged on Friday. His lawyer says he is innocent.

New York Daily News

Praise be to Canada! Or not.

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 13 Comments

On Monday, world leaders in Copenhagen rallied to congratulate Canada on its about-face: a new pledge to toughen carbon emissions and to commit $13 billion in aid to the developing world. But Environment Minister Jim Prentice was anything but pleased—turns out that the announcement was a fake, part of an elaborate stunt by the Yes Men activist group to shame Canadian leaders into reversing their lax stance on climate change. The high-level stunt involved fake websites of the Wall Street Journal, the United Nations, and Environment Canada. It also involved a fake press conference staged after fake negotiations. At one one of those conferences, Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas was tricked into lashing out at the activists.

Toronto Star

Severe, stupid and spiteful: Or, delivering the Conservative message in Copenhagen

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:26 AM - 87 Comments

We here at DMA spend a lot of time trying to avoid using the various ‘S’ words. When writing an English blog for a primarily non-Quebec audience, it can be like holding your breath: you can write all you want about the quaint intricacies and foibles of this delightful place, but sooner or later you inevitably resort back to the blog equivalent of the dinner party question that your drunk uncle from Halifax asks you every time he graces your table over the holidays: “So, is Quebec gonna separate?”

Yes, you feel like saying. We’re going to separate, you vermin Maritime scum, and we’re going to steal all your power and erect a wall of wind turbines on the friggin’ border and make the Miramachi salmon speak French. Oh, Halifax isn’t in New Brunswick? Whatever. Hands off my eggnog, tubby. PS, Rick Mercer sucks.

Which is why I’m pleased to announce that Stephen Harper’s fine team of upright and smart yes men gave us a fantastic way of venting our collective spleen yesterday in a way that involves none of the dreaded ‘S’ words–unless you count severe, stinking, stupid, spiteful, splenetic, surly and/or savage.

Continue…

Ottawa to go on extended vacation?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 11:13 AM - 10 Comments

According to a report in The Globe and Mail, the Conservative government is considering shutting down Parliament until the end of the Winter Games. The Conservative plan, the rumours suggest, is to have Parliament return in March (rather than late January), when a budget would be presented in a bid to force an election. Not only would a prorogation put an end to the Conservatives’ public grilling over the treatment of Afghan detainees, it would allow Stephen Harper to reshape the Senate. There are five seats that become available on Jan. 2 and ending the Parliamentary session would allow Harper to change the make-up of Senate committees, which would otherwise remain under the Liberals’ control. However, a prorogation would also mean a quick death to cherished Conservative bills on issues like crime and consumer protections.

The Globe and Mail

From Gitmo to Illinois

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments

The White House has directed officials to purchase a newly-built state prison in Illinois, where it will house up to 100 of the inmates currently held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Thomson Correction Center was finished in 2001—the year of the Sept. 11 attacks—but stands nearly empty today (apparently, crime is down in Illinois). Located near the Iowa state line, the prison would be declared surplus to Illinois’s needs, at which point it could be transferred to the feds. Evidently, Washington foresees it holding nearly half the 210 detainees currently at Guantanamo, which would be a big step toward realizing Obama’s election promise to shut the facility down.

Chicago Tribune

Courtney Love loses custody of daughter

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:44 AM - 0 Comments

Courtney Love has lost custody of her only child with former Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, daughter Frances Bean Cobain. Court documents show Frances Bean has been placed under temporary guardianship with the late singer’s mother, Wendy O’Connor, and his sister, Kimberly Dawn Cobain. The documents didn’t include a reason for placing the 17-year-old with Love’s in-laws.

Nominations From the Organization That Honoured Pia Zadora

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:39 AM - 0 Comments

Golden Globe TV nominations are here.

Nothing very interesting there, though there’s plenty to get you annoyed if you take these nominations seriously (nominations for Dexter, Entourage and Anna Paquin, nothing for Jim Parsons).

I find it mildly odd that Curb Your Enthusiasm, which actually won a Golden Globe for best comedy, was left out, since you’d have thought that the strong season combined with the mega-popular Seinfeld reunion gimmick would have guaranteed it a nomination. But, again, this is maybe taking these awards more seriously than they deserve; the TV division of the Golden Globes is like an afterthought of an afterthought, and they seem largely based on which nominees will look best at the awards show.

The Theme Song of Tiger Woods Coverage?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:29 AM - 0 Comments

Further proof, as I’ve said in the past, that all of the news can be summed up by JEM videos.

And as they pointed out themselves, their songs really were better than those sappy Hologram tunes.

'Why do you want to know?'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:18 AM - 28 Comments

More memos from 2006, more concerns about Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees.

One of the complainants was British Colonel Dudley Giles, a senior military police officer with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force the 40-plus nation coalition fighting insurgents in Afghanistan. In August of 2006 he brought his concerns to the Canadian embassy in Kabul, saying Canada was stonewalling on providing basic information on the Afghans it was capturing.

“Col. Giles made what can only be described as strong criticisms of the Canadian approach on detainee issues,” Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin wrote in a Sept. 28, 2006, memo that was sent to more than 30 Canadian government e-mail addresses – most of them in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“There are ‘issues of trust and openness,’ ” Mr. Colvin quoted Col. Giles as saying. “According to Giles, when he contacts Canadian [officials] in Kandahar, ‘their first response to requests is ‘Why do you want to know?’ followed by ‘We know what you want, but we won’t give it to you.’ ” The memos add to the weight of concerns already raised by Mr. Colvin, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human-rights groups about Canada’s practices in transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities.

(Reminder: Tomorrow at 1pm, I’ll be chatting about the year in Parliament.)

Canada climate-change hoax of the week

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:43 AM - 74 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the one by the Yes Men.

Copenhagen and the Last Men

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:43 AM - 4 Comments

George Monbiot has been overdosing on Nietzsche. Either that or he just finished a Fight Club marathon. At any rate:

We are the universal ape, equipped with the ingenuity and aggression to bring down prey much larger than itself, break into new lands, roar its defiance of natural constraints. Now we find ourselves hedged in by the consequences of our nature, living meekly on this crowded planet for fear of provoking or damaging others. We have the hearts of lions and live the lives of clerks.

…

I fear this chorus of bullies, but I also sympathise. I lead a mostly peaceful life, but my dreams are haunted by giant aurochs. All those of us whose blood still races are forced to sublimate, to fantasise. In daydreams and video games we find the lives that ecological limits and other people’s interests forbid us to live.

Minister of rock

By Anna Porter - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:18 AM - 1 Comment

1989's Velvet Revolution

Michael Kocab, the Czech Republic’s minister for minorities and human rights, has not enjoyed a good year. It should have been: 2009, after all, has been a time of celebration, marking the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist regime—a revolution in which Kocab, as a dissident and famous rock musician, played a leading role. Instead, he has been dealing with some of his country’s uglier elements. Far-right extremists have been parading through towns with significant Roma populations; someone threw Molotov cocktails through the windows of a Roma family home in Vitkov, near the Moravian-Silesian border, injuring three people. David Duke, the infamous former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, was invited to give a speech in the Czech Republic in April about the superiority of whites over all others (he was arrested and expelled). The Czech translation of his dreadful book, My Awakening, was published by Prague’s Kontingent Press.

There have been neo-Nazi gatherings, including one where participants marched through the small town of Usti nad Labem to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth. As the financial crisis has deepened, the ultra-nationalists have attracted more of the young, who share a sense of frustration and anger. And even as Czechs celebrate 20 years of democracy, the times are reminiscent of a darker side two decades ago, when discontent followed the new government’s stiff economic measures and the Roma became the scapegoats, with one 17-year-old Roma boy killed in the town of Pisek, and Usti nad Labem eventually erecting a wall between its Roma and non-Roma populations.

Even the Czech liberal press has become critical of the Roma, who receive taxpayer-funded benefits, blaming them for using their “excessive free time,” in the words of one commentator, to commit petty crimes and irritate their neighbours. Emigrating to Canada may have seemed like a happy solution to some Roma, but earlier this year a sharp rise in the number of Roma seeking asylum prompted the Canadian government to impose visa requirements on Czech citizens. Kocab, meanwhile, has blamed local governments for failing to support their Roma, but has also accused his fellow federal politicians of marginalizing the minority. In parliament in June, he presented a declaration against all forms of extremism, signed by the leaders of all parties, the chairs of both the lower and upper houses, and ex-president Vaclav Havel.

Continue…

Suddenly the world hates canada

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 231 Comments

A Greenpeace billboard; the issue for the summit, says Jim Prentice, is getting to a treaty the U.S. and China will sign

For decades, Canada has taken pride in punching above its weight on the international stage. Now it appears we’re the ones absorbing the body blows. As scientists, activists, diplomats, and political leaders gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations’ 15th convention on climate change, Dec. 7 to Dec. 18, the northern hemisphere’s “helpful fixer” is undergoing a radical—and unrelentingly negative—image makeover. Canada “is now to climate what Japan is to whaling,” George Monbiot, a columnist for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, thundered late last month, citing the Harper government’s go-slow negotiating stance as “the major” obstacle to a new global agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. “Until now I believed that the nation that has done the most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States,” wrote Monbiot, a green campaigner and bestselling author. “I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.”

And he is not alone in that opinion. At a UN climate conference in Bangkok in October, delegates from developing countries walked out of a negotiating session (en masse, say environmental groups who were at the meeting; just five or six countries, counters Michael Martin, our ambassador for climate change) to protest Canada’s suggestion that the Kyoto Protocol—the basis for the Copenhagen negotiations—be replaced with an entirely new anti-warming pact. In early November, at another UN meeting in Barcelona, Canada was named “Fossil of the Week” by the 450 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in attendance for its efforts to “block or stall” climate negotiations. (“If the price for having strong, capable, tough negotiators at the table is being singled out,” Environment Minister Jim Prentice said at the time, “then so be it. Bring it on.”)

During the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad and Tobago at the end of November, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon pointedly called for Canada to pick up the pace of negotiations and adopt “ambitious” greenhouse gas reduction targets. And a coalition of scientists and NGOs asked the 53-nation body to suspend Canada’s membership—a punishment that in the past has been meted out to such rogue states as Zimbabwe and apartheid-era South Africa—for “threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries” through its inaction on climate change.

Continue…

Maclean's Interview: Justin Bieber

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 26 Comments

At just 15, R & B singer and Stratford, Ont., native Justin Bieber has seen his debut CD, My World, enter the Nielsen Soundscan Album Chart at No. 1 in Canada, and crack the Billboard Top 10 in the U.S. An only child raised by a single mother, Bieber has seen his life change dramatically over the past year. Once the class clown, he now travels with a tutor and hopes to graduate from the School Of Young Performers in New York. With the European leg of a tour opening for Taylor Swift just completed, Bieber spoke to Maclean’s from on the road in the U.S.

Q: You first started getting attention after you posted clips of yourself singing on YouTube. Why did you do that?
A: I was in a singing competition and my friends and family that couldn’t see the competition wanted to be there, so I posted videos on YouTube and sent all my family the links. I really just did it for friends and family. Then other people started watching it.

Q: Had you ever thought the clips might lead to a record deal?
A: Not at all. I wasn’t putting it up for that reason, so it wasn’t something I was really interested in. I never thought that it could even happen. I was from Stratford, a town of 30,000; it was something that you just didn’t think of, you know what I mean?

Continue…

Tripadvisor.com Hotel Reviews: Bethlehem: The Manger

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 6:30 AM - 2 Comments

User: Joseph

Rating: Two stars

Good for families: Yes

Romantic weekends: No

Quiet: NO!

We decided to stay at The Manger while returning from Nazareth for the census ordered by Caesar Augustus.

I’ll be honest with you: It wasn’t our first choice. My fiancé really wanted to get a room at The Inn, but there was no room at The Inn. Frankly, that was fine by me: I stayed there once while visiting family and they billed me three shekels for some figs from the minibar. Who am I, King Herod?

The Manger wasn’t much to look at, even for a place named after a feeding trough. And the service wasn’t any better. We arrived after a 70-mile journey over harsh terrain and frankly Continue…

Caption Challenge No. 3: Your move, democracy

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 5:13 AM - 27 Comments

WINNER DECLARED: At 2 p.m. ET, madeyoulook held the slightest of leads over e_ron in what is surely – and I’m going from memory here, so forgive me if I’m making a mistake – the closest finish in the three-week history of the Caption Challenge. I for one am spent.

Congratulations, myl. Please flip me an email at scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com for prize-based reasons.

Coming Thursday: A special year-end-themed non-caption caption challenge. Whaa? Alert your friends, neighbours and the smarter of your domestic pets.

•

Yes, yes: For some reason it has been – and may still be – impossible for you, the home reader, to peruse all the witticisms vying for lexical glory in Caption Challenge No. 3. For some reason, the second and third pages of comments were as cloistered yesterday as Tiger Woods’ naughty bits. But through the magic of the Internet and, more important, the magic of magic, I have been able to gain full access to the slate of entries. It cost me the eyes of my last newt, but I did it. (And now I’m out of newt eye – right at the holidays.)

Anyhoo, I’ve narrowed Caption Challenge No. 3 to five finalists. Read the entries, consider the entries, sniff, sip, swish and expel the entries (with your mind) – and then vote below* for your favourite. The prize – a $30 gift certificate to famed and very sexy bookseller Amazon.ca, who appears to have lost weight (have you lost weight, Amazon.ca?) – goes to the finalist who’s Continue…

When the going gets tough

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 14, 2009 at 10:12 PM - 133 Comments

The Prime Minister is rumoured to be considering the reset button.

Rumours swirling around Ottawa suggest the Conservative government is thinking of shutting down Parliament until after the Olympics, killing some of its own bills but also ending the discussion of Afghan detainees that is nibbling away at Tory popularity.

“I have heard that from some of the public servants,” Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said Monday of a potential prorogation. “The word they are getting is ‘get ready to clear the decks. Anything that needs to get done before a parliamentary session ends, get it done.’ ”

Conservative staff members said they also have received hints that a prorogation may be in the offing. But a spokeswoman for Government House Leader Jay Hill said his office “won’t indulge the Hill rumour mill.” The rumours suggest that Parliament would return in March, when the Games are over, with a new budget that could be used to provoke an election.