Colvin strikes back

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:11 PM - 2 Comments

In a 16-page letter aimed at rebuking detractors who dismissed his testimony about detainee abuse in Afghanistan, Richard Colvin claims Ottawa was given plenty of warning about the likelihood prisoners would be tortured by Afghan authorties. Those who say otherwise, including military officials who contested his testimony before a Parliamentary committee, are providing “inaccurate or incomplete” evidence, he writes. According to Colvin, Ottawa was handed at least six reports on the matter, including one in which torture was described as “rife” within Afghan jails. Colvin also writes he met with 12 to 15 Canadian officials in March 2007, telling them the Afghan intelligence service “tortures people, that’s what they do, and if we don’t want our detainees tortured, we shouldn’t give them to the [Afghans].” He also dismissed government accusations his findings of abuse were based on reports from Taliban prisoners, arguing his information came from “highly credible sources.”

CBC News

Colvin’s letter

But What About Easy Reader?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:55 PM - 1 Comment

This chart explaining the “Morgan Freeman chain of command” is a great resource for someone trying to keep track of which all-wise liberal caricature outranks another. But it does have to lose a few points for not ranking Freeman’s greatest character.

But does he outrank God? Probably. You wouldn’t see Easy Reader hanging out with Jim Carrey.

Appetite hormone linked to Alzheimer’s

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

In a 12-year study of 200 volunteers, U.S. researchers found that those with the lowest levels of leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, were more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The study continues on work that links low leptin levels to brain plaques, which are found in Alzheimer’s patients, and means leptin might be of use both as a marker of the disease one day, and a treatment. Leptin, which is produced by fat cells, tells the brain when the body is full, reducing appetite. It also seems to benefit brain function. Working in mice, researchers found those who received leptin were better able to find their way through a maze. In the latest research from Boston University Medical Center, regular brain scans were performed on elderly volunteers. One quarter of those with lowest leptin levels went on to develop Alzheimer’s, compared to 6 per cent with the highest levels.

BBC News

Women have better sense of touch

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:35 PM - 3 Comments

According to a study out of McMaster University, women have a more sensitive sense of touch than men thanks to their smaller fingers. Smaller digits have greater sweat pore density, researchers found, which means that fingertip touch receptors, which cluster around sweat pore bases, are more tightly packed. This could make women better at embroidery or surgery, they concluded in the Journal of Neuroscience. In the study, researchers pressed pogressively narrower parallel grooves against the stationary fingertips of 100 volunteers. Those with smaller fingers, typically women, could discern higher grooves. The index finger is more sensitive than the little finger, but this might be because sensitivity improves with continued use. Researchers will next study whether children have better hand sensitivity than adults.

BBC News

Seven years left to save the planet

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:31 PM - 25 Comments

Prince Charles opened the ministerial segment of the Copenhagen climate conference with the message the world has seven years before we “lose the levers of control” over “reducing poverty, increasing food production, combating terrorism and sustaining economic development.” Arguing that climate change is a “risk multiplier” that will make managing vital priorities increasingly difficult, the Prince said the very “survival of the species” was in peril, the Telegraph reports. He was particularly keen to encourage world leaders to reach an agreement on forests via a scheme that would pay poor countries not to chop down trees and even establish pension schemes and other financial bonds that invest in rainforests. “The simple truth is that without a solution to tropical deforestation, there is no solution to climate change, said the Prince, who flew to the conference aboard the private Royal jet.

The Telegraph

The Harper test for calling a commission of inquiry

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 2:18 PM - 214 Comments

Prime Minister Harper’s most prominent decision to call a commission of inquiry came in late 2007 when he set about to create a commission to investigate Karlheinz Schreiber’s allegations about Brian Mulroney. Here’s the text of that announcement. I’ve bold-faced the parts that seem germane in regard to Richard Colvin’s new letter.

On Friday I announced that I would be appointing an independent and impartial third party to review what course of actions may be appropriate given Mr. Schreiber’s new sworn allegations. These allegations remain unproven and untested in a court of law and arose in a private lawsuit. There are, however, now issues that go beyond the private interests of the parties in the lawsuit.

Many have called for a public inquiry, including, most recently, Mr. Mulroney.

Given the conflicting information and allegations (including what appears to be some conflicting information under oath) and the extended time period over which the events referred to in various documents and allegations surrounding this matter have occurred, I have decided to ask the third party to advise the government on appropriate terms of reference for a public inquiry.

If in reviewing material, the independent party finds any prima facie evidence of criminal action he or she will identify this and advise how this should be handled and what impact, if any, it should have on the nature and timing of the inquiry.

A public inquiry is a major step and one that should only be taken when it addresses Canadians’ interest, not those of the various parties, whether Mr. Schreiber, Mr. Mulroney or political parties. That is why it is important that we engage the necessary independent expertise and take the time to ensure that the terms of reference meet that test.

This decision set a bar. If the prime minister strikes commissions of inquiry only when Brian Mulroney requests them, he should say so. If resolving Colvin’s allegations is not in the public interest, the prime minister should explain why not. If the proper response to unproven allegations is no longer to seek proof or disproof, the prime minister should tell us why that is no longer his response. If Richard Colvin, who remains a salaried and trusted public servant, is less credible than Karlheinz Schreiber, who was the subject of concerted extradition efforts by the German government at the time he made his allegations, the prime minister should explain why Colvin’s credibility is so limited, and why he continues to be entrusted with serious responsibilities on behalf of the Canadian federal state.

Colvin responds

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 12:31 PM - 24 Comments

Richard Colvin sends his response to the special committee on Afghanistan. More from Canadian Press, Globe and Mail, Star, CTV and Canwest.

From Tiger to Puma?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:49 AM - 5 Comments

In the latest development of a saga that gets weirder by the second, TMZ.com is reporting that Elin Woods is “very close” to signing a deal with Puma, the athletic wear company whose arch rival is Nike, the brand her husband has represented for more than a decade. An official from Puma confirmed to the website that they are in “internal discussions” to sign Elin as a spokesperson for a new Swedish-inspired clothing line called Trentorn.

TMZ

Police stop a would-be intruder outside Berlusconi’s hospital room

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:34 AM - 1 Comment

An intruder who said he simply “wanted to talk to the prime minister” was arrested by police outside Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s hospital room in Milan. “He was coming out of the lift when bodyguards and police immobilised him immediately,” a government spokesperson said. Though the 26-year-old man was neither armed nor aggressive, the man has apparently been treated for mental health issues in the past and police “found hockey sticks in his car.” Berlusconi remains in hospital recovering from a broken nose, facial cuts and two lost teeth after an attacker threw a souvenir model of Milan’s cathedral into his face on Sunday.

AFP

Quebec breast cancer results in

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

The Quebec government is about to release the results of breast cancer pathology retests done for about 3,000 patients who had their original tests mishandled in 2008 and early 2009. But the Liberal government is refusing to disclose results for patients who have since died, a decision that’s being criticized by Quebec’s medical specialists federation, which says the province wants to avoid litigation by keeping the results quiet. At least one lawsuit has already been filed because of the medical screw up.

CBC

Sexual harassment on rise in Arab world

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:24 AM - 6 Comments

According to activists at a Cairo conference on women’s public place in the Arab world—the first-ever regional summit addressing the issue—sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places is driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes. Delegates at the 17-nation gathering concluded that harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, was unchecked across the region because laws don’t punish it, women don’t report it and the authorities ignore it. Conservative religious leaders blame the problem on the women, for being provocative in dress or manner. But even delegates from Yemen, where virtually every female is covered from head to toe, said that as many as 90 per cent of Yemeni women say they have been harassed. Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told The Associated Press that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighborhood. “He hissed at me and kept asking me if I wanted to go with him to a quieter area, and to give him my phone number,” said Madbouli, a mother of two. “This is a national security issue. I am a mother, and I want to be reassured when my daughters go out on the streets.” Abul Komsan described how one of the victims of harassment she interviewed told her she had taken on the full-face veil to stave off the hassle. “She told me ‘I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone,’” she said, quoting the woman. Some even said they were reconsidering going to work or school because of the constant harassment in the streets and on public transportation. In Syria, men from traditional homes go shopping in the market place instead of female family members to spare them harassment, said Sherifa Zuhur, a Lebanese-American academic at the conference. Open discussion of the harassment issue first emerged in Egypt three years ago, after blogs gave broad publicity to amateur videos showing men assaulting women in downtown Cairo during a major Muslim holiday.

The Guardian

See no evil, hear no evil

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 11:04 AM - 7 Comments

Conservative MPs skipped a Parliamentary committee meeting on Wednesday that was supposed to delve further into the simmering controversy over the handling of Afghan detainees. None of the government’s seven representatives on the committee, including committee chair Rick Casson, showed up. Angry opposition MPs denounced the Conservative boycott as indicative of the government’s contempt for Parliament. “This government is actually interfering with the privileges of members of Parliament,” said NDP MP Paul Dewar, “and, in so doing, is making Parliament dysfunctional in being able to go about its job.” For his part, the parliamentary secretary to Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, has dismissed the hearings as “partisan political games,” but if the Tories were hoping to will the Afghan detainee controversy into obscurity, diplomat Richard Colvin could soon make that an increasingly difficult task. On Wednesday, Colvin, whose memos from Afghanistan sparked the debate into the treatment of prisoners, will release a 20-page rebuttal to the government’s claims it received no “credible allegations” of torture in Afghanistan until 2007.

Toronto Star

The city of gold turns to dust

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 15 Comments

Only yesterday, it seems, Dubai was the glittering jewel of the United Arab Emirates, heralded as the first modern Arabian metropolis, a 21st-century socio-political model, globalization in action. Now the autocratic fiefdom that counts Barneys New York, the Travelodge chain, and a 20 per cent stake in Cirque du Soleil among its holdings boasts a new claim to fame: the most over-hyped, over-the-top asset bubble in history. This week, worldwide markets tumbled amid fresh fears of the global economic fallout from Dubai’s financial mess and the dawning realization that its finances are far more shadowy than ever imagined.

Certainly the government’s annoucement two weeks ago that it couldn’t meet its debt repayments was carefully calculated: it chose the eve of the market-closing U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and the four-day holiday marking Islam’s Eid al-Adha feast to report it had asked creditors for a six-month standstill, and was scrambling to restructure US$26 billion of its total debt of US$59 billion. Then, it announced that debts carried by its tangled web of state-owned companies, among them holding company Dubai World and property developer Nakheel, might not have government backing. Global markets panicked when the UAE, a federation of seven emirates led by oil-rich Abu Dhabi, didn’t rush to bail out its second largest member. Some equilibrium was restored when the UAE set up a lending facility to ensure Dubai’s banks had sufficient capital, and after Abu Dhabi announced it will selectively “pick and choose when and where” to alleviate Dubai’s financial woes.

Those woes should come as a surprise to no one. Christopher Davidson, a fellow of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Britain’s Durham University, predicted Dubai’s crash in his 2008 book Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success. “It’s amazing, really, the lack of due diligence done on Dubai in the last several years,” he says. Part of the problem, he notes, was Dubai’s confusing operating structure, which he says was deliberate. “The grey area between what belonged to the ruler, what belonged to government and what belongs to commercial entities served the ruling family extremely well: they could just cream off unknown amounts. Now the going gets tough and we have the ruling family and government washing their hands of these companies, making ludicrous statements that Dubai World is government-owned but doesn’t enjoy government guarantees.” Continue…

Not tortured, merely insulted

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 9:48 AM - 66 Comments

Laurie Hawn, amateur anthropologist, talking last night on CTV’s Power Play about the abuse of a detainee in 2006.

We’re talking about an issue of somebody being hit with a shoe, which is, frankly, in Islam, is an insult. If they wanted to torture the guy and beat the guy, they’d have beat him with the stocks of their AK-47s, they wouldn’t have been hitting him with shoes.

This sort of thing came up a year ago when an Iraqi journalist removed one of his shoes and proceeded to throw it in the direction of George W. Bush’s head. A reporter with U.S. News & World Report went to the trouble of trying to sort out the actual significance of the shoe. Continue…

When the going gets tough (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 9:36 AM - 27 Comments

Talk of proroguing Parliament may not be grounded in fact, but it is apparently grounded in the advice the Prime Minister is receiving from his advisors.

MPs are not due to come back to Parliament until Jan. 25. One scenario under consideration by Harper’s inner circle would be for the prime minister to prorogue Parliament a few days before that, have MPs return to Ottawa as planned on Jan. 25, and then quickly roll out a speech from the throne followed by the presentation of the 2010 federal budget — all before the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver on Feb. 12.

Still, if he does choose to prorogue, Harper would open up himself to some other potential political problems, primarily because prorogation has some similar effects to a general election: it would kill 40 pieces of government legislation — including the government’s own tough new bills on consumer product safety and on harsher sentences for drug traffickers — and it would disband parliamentary committees.

The Mailbag: Tiger Woods, Rihanna, The Rapture, the square root of Kirstie Alley

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 8:51 AM - 15 Comments

Welcome to the Tuesday Mailbag on Wednesday, where approximately everyone is sick and tired of the media’s obsession with the Tiger Woods story, except for those who keep reading and asking about Tiger Woods, which is approximately everyone.

Remember – there are no stupid questions, except for asking Kelly Clarkson if she’s going to finish that hoagie.

•

Dear Scott:

First, I crash my car while being chased by my enraged, golf-club-wielding wife (possibly). Then I endure two solid weeks of revelations about the misadventures of my penis (definitely). And now, vague insinuations about HGH use. My question has two parts: What did I do to piss off God, and what’s coming next? – T. Woods, Florida (via Dan222)

T. Woods –

It’s an established fact that God does not interfere in the lives of professional athletes – not because He doesn’t want to, but because these days He’s focused on making sure Lindsay Lohan doesn’t procreate. Even for the omnipotent, that’s a 24/7 kind of deal.

As for what’s coming next, the good news is that Continue…

Sausage-factory revelation of the week

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 4:47 AM - 23 Comments

Fraction of material on Andrew Sullivan’s “one-man blog” actually generated by the person named Andrew Sullivan: maybe about half, when he’s not on vacation. Reasons presented by one of Andrew Sullivan’s stand-ins for concealing this fact: 1) don’t worry, we’re “marinated in Sullivan’s cerebral juices” (ew); 2) “Bylines would fracture the solitary voice of the blog,” i.e., give readers the wholly correct impression that the editorial enterprise known as “Andrew Sullivan” actually has many employees.

A topic close to my heart. Or my corpus callosum

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 3:16 AM - 22 Comments

With the radiation hazards of CT scans under sudden scrutiny, readers may like to peek at the sparse data that CIHI has on their usage in Canada and other countries:

Column two provides a pretty clear picture of a medical technology being used according to the available supply, not according to evidence-based clinical criteria. Canada is in no position to pat itself on the back for performing half as many CT scans as American physicians do, unless it’s also prepared to give itself a sharp rap on the skull for performing twice as many as English ones. Then again, maybe we’re in the Goldilocks Zone and we’ve gotten things juuust riiight. Of possible concern: we have the highest ratio of CT procedures to MRIs that the OECD knows of.

Oral Roberts, dead at 91

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 10 Comments

Oral Roberts, one of the biggest names in U.S. televangelism, has died at 91 of complications from pneumonia. Roberts embraced television early in its history, beginning in 1954, when he filmed worship services conducted under a traveling tent that held up to 10,000 people. By the 1970s, “Oral Roberts and You” was the leading religious telecast in the nation and, by 1985, Roberts stood at the head of an empire that employed more than 2,300 people and earned $110 million in revenue. He is survived by a daughter, Roberta Potts, and a son, Richard Roberts, who succeeded him as president of Oral Roberts University and resigned in 2007.

No show

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 154 Comments

It would seem that Conservative members of the special committee on Afghanistan failed to show up for today’s 4pm meeting.

Here is the official notice of today’s session. For the record, the government members of the committee are Jim Abbott, Laurie Hawn, Dave McKenzie, Greg Kerr and committee chair Rick Casson.

More from the Globe, Canadian Press, Canwest and the Star. Mr. Hawn explains himself to CTV.

“It’s not the time to be having meetings that are implying, intentioned or not, that Canadians are somehow guilty of war crimes,” Laurie Hawn, the parliamentary secretary for the Defence Minister, said on CTV’s Power Play after the aborted meeting.

Susan Delacourt has the Conservative talking points. Full video of Laurie Hawn repeating those talking points on Power Play is here.

Oral Roberts Has Been Called Home

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 4:04 PM - 9 Comments

Yes, everyone’s using that subject heading now that televangelist Oral Roberts is dead at age 91, but this is no time for originality.

There are surprisingly few YouTube clips of the guy; even the infamous “God will call me home if you don’t give me money” moment isn’t there. But here’s a typical moment (from 1959) in the career of Oral Roberts and the history of televangelism:

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.4211292&w=425&h=350&fv=]

When the going gets tough (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 3:41 PM - 40 Comments

The Prime Minister’s Office reports that rumours of Parliament’s demise are “not grounded in any fact.”

Andrew MacDougall, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, brushed it off as the rumor mill at work, saying “we don’t speculate on that stuff, on what the government might or might not do.” ”It’s just a rumor, it’s not grounded in any fact,” MacDougall told Dow Jones. “The government has work to do, it has work to do in Parliament.”

Alberta smashes week-old energy use record

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 3:34 PM - 4 Comments

Alberta topped its energy use record for the second time in a week thanks to blisteringly cold temperatures across the province. With Edmonton experiencing -41C temperatures and Calgary at -32C, Monday night saw Albertans use 10,236 megawatts of power, 193 more megawatts then the previous record set on December 7. The government is asking Albertans to start conserving energy by turning off unnecessary lights and appliances, hooking block heaters up to timers and restricting the use of major appliances to after 7 p.m.

CBC News

Q: Tiger, what club should I use off the 7th at Pinecrest? A: I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 2:14 PM - 25 Comments

A reminder that there’s still time to ask a question for this week’s Mailbag, which appears tomorrow. I’m toying with the idea of answering all the questions as though I were Tiger Woods, but I’m not sure I can type that much scripted remorse.

Submit your queries below or send them to me at scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com.