The Commons: Old school

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 10:11 PM - 79 Comments

Observe the Ignatieff in its familiar habitat.

Standing on a square stage in the middle of the room, grey jacket removed and placed on back of chair. He wears black shoes, dark blue slacks, light blue shirt, sleeves rolled up. He holds the microphone in his left hand, gestures with right. Students seated on all sides, he talks broadly of economic restructuring, innovation, energy efficiency, democratic engagement, social security, China, Brazil, Africa, foreign aid, intellectual property, personal responsibility, productivity, internationalism and education. He promises to be concise, he asks everyone else to be civil. After about 15 minutes he calls for questions. A line of about 16 young people forms behind a microphone set up in the audience.

So has the Liberal leader opted to open his year with a nod to both the past and the future—a return to the university halls from which he came, standing amidst the hopeful young minds of this country’s tomorrow, prefacing a restart to his Prime Ministerial ambitions and perhaps even relaunching the Liberal Party of Canada. In the capital a week before Parliament would have opened, he stood this afternoon before a crowd of 250 at the University of Ottawa. A 20-minute walk from the House of Commons, he attempted to make sense of here, there and everywhere else beyond both.

“One of things, I think, that drives all of politics is anybody who’s in politics always asks the question, ‘Who’s not in the room? Who’s not included? Who doesn’t share? Who doesn’t participate? Who doesn’t benefit from what I’ve got?’ ” he asked. “That’s the core political instinct, in my view. ‘Who’s not in the room? Who’s out in the cold?’ ” Continue…

CNN comforts the afflicted

By Andrew Potter - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 7:09 PM - 10 Comments

UPDATE: Good piece from mediaite, chock full o links, about the slippery slope the media are in in Haiti.

***

Look, there’s Anderson Cooper carrying a kid with a bleeding head to safety! Dr. Gupta performs surgery! Say what you want about CNN, but they’re not content to just report the news.

Self-Directed Episodes, From HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Backward

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 7:02 PM - 2 Comments

Tonight’s How I Met Your Mother was directed by Neil Patrick Harris. He won’t get many other opportunities to direct, since virtually every episode is directed by Pamela Fryman. (Similarly, Jason Alexander got to direct one Seinfeld and only one, because that show rarely used “guest” directors.) The self-directed episode is a TV tradition, usually handed out when actors want to stretch themselves, or when they get bored and threaten to leave (not a factor in Harris’s case) or when they are under-utilized.

The classic example of the last-named situation is Peter Bonerz, an extremely talented improv comic who was stuck with the unfunniest role on The Bob Newhart Show, playing the character whose job it was to a) Listen to Bob complain about the week’s problem or b) Star in episodes that no one liked. Realizing that he had very few lines in many of the episodes, he asked to direct an episode, learned on the job (both at his own show and some assignments on other MTM shows), and soon started directing any episode where his character didn’t have much to do. He directed 29 episodes of the series, including the finale. Hugh Beaumont directed 20+ Leave It To Beaver episodes, probably for the same reason: how much did Ward really have to do in front of the camera in any given episode?

The “stretch yourself” scenario happens when the actor starts to become more involved in the production of the show, and turns to directing as a way of exerting authority. Alan Alda was not a director before he started directing (as well as writing) episodes of M*A*S*H. As he became more of a creative force on the show, he directed more and more episodes, handling other people’s scripts as well as his own; he directed 32 episodes in all, or more if you count the series finale as several episodes in one long time slot.

Then there are actors who turn to directing because they’re bored with the show and the producers want to keep them happy. I may be doing Scott Baio an injustice, but I think of this as the likeliest explanation for why he directed 36 — count ‘em, 36 — episodes of Charles in Charge. And he directed those 36 episodes in a span of only four years, and he had a lot of lines in most of them, which is why it doesn’t fit into the “under-utilized” category. It seems more like David Schwimmer directing 10 Friends episodes in the last half of the run: if the show isn’t much of a challenge any more, then the actor turns to directing as a way to keep occupied.

It’s interesting, though, that some actors who have directing ambitions do not carry out those ambitions on the show. George Clooney never directed an ER; Ron Howard was offered the chance to do Happy Days episodes but turned it down. Thomas Carter started his successful TV directing career while he was acting on The White Shadow, but Tim “Salami” Van Patten did not.

None of these guys can compare to the king of the self-directed episode, Ozzie Nelson. But as the director and writer and producer and owner of his show, he’s almost in a different category; he wasn’t an actor hired to appear on the show, he was in control of the whole franchise.

The merciless and meticulous Toronto 18 ringleader goes to prison for life

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 5:49 PM - 30 Comments

When he wasn’t plotting mass murder (and sometimes when he was) Zakaria Amara worked behind the cash register at a Canadian Tire gas station. In the spring of 2006—completely unaware that the RCMP had a tiny recording device hidden somewhere inside the kiosk—Amara looked across the counter and confided in one of his fellow terrorists. He told the man he “won’t feel sorry” if the cops throw him in jail before completing his deadly plan. “As long as I’ve tried my best.”

His best, of course, was not good enough. And on Monday afternoon, the radical young ringleader who tried and failed to detonate truck bombs in the name of Islam was handed his punishment: a life sentence.

Siding with prosecutors, Justice Bruce Durno said Amara’s master plan—a trio of massive explosions at the Toronto Stock Exchange, the downtown offices of Canada’s spy agency, and an unnamed military base—was “the most serious kind of terrorism imaginable” and deserves the harshest possible sentence. “It is difficult to put into words Zakaria Amara’s degree of responsibility,” the judge ruled. “He was the leader and directing mind of a plot that would have resulted in the most horrific crime Canada has ever seen. He attended to every detail and gave those under him explicit instructions and encouragement to pursue their objectives. He said going to jail would be alright as long as he tried.”

Jail is exactly where he will stay—indefinitely. The life sentence, the most severe penalty ever issued under Canada’s anti-terrorism provisions, means the 24-year-old Mississauga, Ont., man will remain behind bars until the day he dies, or the day he is granted parole. And even if he is eventually released on good behaviour, today’s ruling ensures that the confessed mastermind of the so-called “Toronto 18” will remain under some sort of state supervision (an electronic ankle bracelet, perhaps) for the rest of his life. (On paper, Amara is eligible to apply for parole in six years and three months, but it’s hard to imagine such a dangerous man being allowed to walk the streets anytime soon.)

Wearing a purple sweater vest and a neatly trimmed beard, Amara sat quietly in a bulletproof prisoner’s box as Justice Durno spent more than an hour reading his 48-page decision to a Brampton, Ont., courtroom packed with family, friends and journalists. Three days earlier, Amara issued a stunning public apology to “fellow Canadians,” insisting that he no longer subscribes to the radical Islamic ideology that drove his terrorist fantasies. He vowed to change his ways, said he was “lucky” to have been caught before his bombs exploded, and promised to emerge from prison “a man of construction,” not “a man of destruction.”

“Your honour,” he said. “I will embrace whatever sentence you give since in reality I deserve much more than a mere sentence.”

On Monday, when Justice Durno finished reading that sentence, Amara stood up and asked to speak again. “Everyone of those promises I made, I will still try my best to do,” he said. Minutes later, as police escorted him out of the courtroom through a side door, he blew a kiss to his wife and placed his hand on his heart.

None of his relatives spoke to reporters after the hearing, but Amara’s lawyer said that although his client is “obviously disappointed” by the decision, he accepts it. “As he said, he deserves everyone’s contempt,” Michael Lacy said. “Rather than trying to fuel and further the ideology—holding himself out as a martyr or a hero to like-minded terrorists—he didn’t do that. He did the opposite. He denounced what he did and he denounced the underlying ideology that fuels all terrorists. To me, that’s significant. That’s what the public should take away.”

Lacy had asked for a sentence between 18 and 20 years, ensuring that his client would have a definite end date to look forward to. Instead, Justice Durno left Amara’s future in the hands of the National Parole Board. “He is a young man with some community support,” Durno said. “That he has that support will no doubt be considered by the Parole Board, as will the fact that he pled guilty, accepting full responsibility for the offences. Should he bring the determination he had in pursuing the terrorist activities and objectives to his rehabilitation, he has the capacity to be rehabilitated. Zakaria Amara asked me not to close the door. While I have concluded that the only fit sentence is one of life imprisonment, I do not regard the door as permanently closed.”

Amara, a native of Jordan who lived in Saudi Arabia and Cyprus before moving to Ontario at the age of 13, was not the only “Toronto 18” suspect sentenced on Monday. In the morning, Justice Durno slapped one of Amara’s obedient underlings, Saad Gaya, with a 12-year prison sentence. An honours student at McMaster University when he was arrested, Gaya was caught unloading what he thought was three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, the same explosive fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombings. Minus credit for time already served, Gaya’s sentence is actually four-and-a-half years, which means he could be paroled as early as 2011.

Although 18 suspects were rounded up in the sensational raids of June 2, 2006, only four were accused of specifically plotting to bomb targets in southern Ontario (the other 14, though charged with terrorism crimes, were not part of the bombing conspiracy). Amara was the undisputed front man. He built a remote-controlled detonator, became obsessed with acquiring explosive chemicals, and bragged that his plan of attack is “gonna be kicking ass like never before.” Among the piles of evidence seized by police was a video of Amara testing his homemade detonator, the red and black wires just inches from some of his daughter’s baby toys. “What this case revealed was spine-chilling,” Durno said. “The potential for loss of life existed on a scale never before seen in Canada. It was almost unthinkable.”

Amara’s journey to this point—flanked by uniformed police officers, listening to a judge decide his fate—is a cautionary tale for anyone who still believes that Canada is immune to terrorism, or that the case of the so-called “Toronto 18” was nothing more than a few young Muslims talking tough and firing paintball guns. “This was not a spur of the moment plan,” Durno ruled. “Given this offender’s dedication to his cause and diligence at arranging the details, there can be no legitimate suggestion that this was not the real thing. It was not a group of amateurs whose efforts were inevitably doomed to failure.”

It may have seemed that way back in December 2005, when Amara and another suspect organized the now-infamous winter “training camp” in rural Ontario, where a dozen recruits (including an undercover police agent named Mubin Shaikh) marched in the snow and watched jihad videos in between bathroom breaks at a nearby Tim Hortons. There were boastful discussions about storming Parliament Hill and planting bombs, and before the camp finished, Amara’s fellow organizer told the others that “Rome must fall.”

At the time, police considered Amara to be a “trusted lieutenant” of the other organizer, a Scarborough man who cannot be named because he still faces trial. Twice in 2005, CSIS spies showed up at Amara’s house to ask him about his friend; during the second visit, he refused to answer their questions and threatened to phone 911. Then just 20 years old, Amara was so cocky and so naïve that instead of distancing himself from other extremists, he dared CSIS to keep following him—and then videotaped their cars when they did (he also recorded a few confused motorists he mistook for surveillance officers).

But in the weeks after the camp, things began to change. With police watching his every move, Amara would transform from lieutenant to leader—and embark on a plan that, in the words of Justice Durno, “would have changed the lives of many, if not all, Canadians forever.”

His epiphany arrived on a Monday night in January 2006, when the phone rang inside the Canadian Tire kiosk. On the other end of the line was the man from Scarborough, who called to say that he had just sent some video footage of the training camp to a contact “overseas.” Amara was livid.

“My face is on it,” he said, according to police wiretaps.

“You can’t even see it, guy,” his friend answered.

“Screw you and I’m screwed now.”

Convinced that his associate was careless and unreliable (and probably a liar) Amara was determined to branch out on his own. He began using public libraries to research bomb-making chemicals. He built and perfected his detonator, which could be triggered with a simple cell phone call. And he brainstormed ways to break off ties with the Scarborough man—while at the same time making it seem as though he was no longer a threat to national security. His plan? Leave a phone message with the man, and hope the authorities were listening. “Tell him,” he told the man’s wife on March 28, “that Zakaria Amara and everybody in Mississauga, we just quit everything.”

The ruse backfired. Instead of taking Amara at his word, the RCMP ramped up its surveillance. What they saw was an ideological young man who had learned from his mistakes, a man who now realized that the best terrorist is not the one who talks jihad on the telephone and videotapes the car driving behind him. The best terrorist is the one who doesn’t act like a terrorist.

Paranoid about surveillance, Amara quietly recruited his own cell of accomplices, split them into two groups, and made sure one didn’t know what the other was doing. Saad Gaya and Saad Khalid were in charge of securing a warehouse to store the chemicals, and being there to unload the bags when the shipment arrived. They communicated with pagers and USB memory sticks—never by phone. On the other side of the circle were two other conspirators: Shareef Abdelhaleem, the man who allegedly ordered three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on Amara’s behalf, and Shaher Elsohemy, the man who took the order (and who turned out to be another undercover informant, now in the witness protection program).

Amara was merciless and meticulous. He told Gaya and Khalid to “make sure you check if you are being followed or not—all the time,” to shave their beards before the fertilizer delivery, and to seal the warehouse door with candle wax so they will know if someone sneaks inside after they leave. He mused about placing metal chips in each of his three bombs for maximum damage. After the bust, when the RCMP conducted a test run with Amara’s chemical concoction, the ensuing explosion was “equivalent to 768 kilograms of TNT,” and “would have caused catastrophic damage to a multi-story glass and steel frame building 35 metres from the bomb site, as well as killing and causing serious injury to people in the path of the blast waves and force.”

Khalid was the first of the four bomb plotters to plead guilty; he received a 14-year sentence, minus credit for time served. Gaya followed suit, and as Durno made clear in his judgment Monday morning, the Oakville, Ont., man was the lowest on the totem pole. Amara assured him “that no one would get hurt,” and that his efforts would make him a “hero in God’s eyes” while forcing the government to pull Canadian troops out of Afghanistan. Now 21, Gaya had no idea Amara was planning to bomb targets in downtown Toronto until after he was arrested. “Saad Gaya was not the prime mover in the plot,” Durno said. “He did not know all the details of the plan. He took detailed orders. He did not give them.”

It was Khalid, during a court appearance last fall, who first told Amara that “what we did was wrong.” At the same time, after three years in solitary confinement, Amara had recently been released into the general population at Toronto’s Don Jail, where he says fellow inmates—including a Canadian soldier who served in Afghanistan and sympathized with the suffering of Muslims in the war-torn country—challenged his extremist beliefs. “Everyone found it difficult to reconcile between my charges and my humble and kind personality, thus leading the way to many discussions about the justification of terrorist acts,” he told the judge on Friday. “At first I vigorously defended my positions, but every time I walked away I walked away with a doubt in my heart. Despite their lack of education and ‘expertise,’ their moral and logical arguments were like pick axes that chiseled away at my ideological walls.”

In October, during two meetings with a psychiatrist, Amara opened up about his mistakes. “I feel like I’ve wasted my life,” he said. “My whole life I’ve messed up.”

For Canada’s law enforcement agencies, this case was anything but messed up. Members of CSIS and the RCMP were in the courtroom to witness, first-hand, the climactic moment of what was an unprecedented investigation. So was Mubin Shaikh, one of the two paid informants who gained Amara’s trust, and was later branded a traitor by many in the Muslim community. In yet another twist, Shaher Elsohemy—the man Amara thought was his trusted fertilizer supplier—was also somewhere in the Brampton courthouse, testifying at the trial of Shareef Abdelhaleem, the fourth and only bombing suspect who is fighting the charges. Amara has not laid eyes on Elsohemy since the day he was arrested, and his guilty plea and life sentence ensures that he never will.

“In Canada, we believe we’re not immune to terrorism, and I think this case points to that,” said Superintendent Jamie Jagoe, who is in charge of the Mounties’ national security unit in Ontario. “The evidence speaks for itself. The judge’s decision will become part of the public record, and his comments are taken with the seriousness that they deserve. These were serious offences.” When asked if there are other Zakaria Amaras lurking in the shadows, Jagoe answered this way: “[We] investigate all of these threats that are out there. It is a very busy job and we take all these threats seriously and we are fortunate in Canada that not everyone of these threats are as serious as this one.”

Amara sentenced to life in prison

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:41 PM - 4 Comments

Zakaria Amara, who confessed last fall to playing a leading role in the Toronto 18 terror plot, was sentenced to life in prison by an Ontario Superior Court judge on Monday. Justice Bruce Durno described the conspiracy to set off fertilizer bombs outside the CSIS and Toronto Stock Exchange buildings in downtown Toronto and at a military base in Ontario as “spine-chilling,” adding that, had Amara and his co-conspirators proved successful, they would have perpertrated “the most horrific crime Canada has ever seen.” Amara, whom the judge said was the “directing mind” behind the bomb plot, was also chastised for his role as “an active recruiter who influenced young men” and, in some cases, “led some to jail terms.” In an open-letter to the court, Amara confessed last Thursday to have gone down “the road of extremism,” but claimed to have since abandoned his belief in the radical ideology. He will be eligible for parole in 2016.

Canadian Press

Let's consider the prorogue from Stephen Harper's side

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 112 Comments

Canadians have been hard on the PM since he made the decision to “prorogue,” and not just because doing so forced some of us to learn a new word. We don’t like that he’s treating parliamentarians with contempt and disdain. After all, that’s our job.

But let’s try to see things from Stephen Harper’s perspective. Yes, he abruptly shut down the institutions of our democracy over the holidays for a second straight year. (Once more and it will become a Christmas tradition on par with watching It’s a Wonderful Life and trimming Mike Duffy.) And yes, he didn’t even bother to cross the street to visit the Governor General—he just picked up the phone and ordered the No. 2 from Rideau Hall: prorogation with a side of crazy bread.
Continue…

Some Pop Music Survives on DVD For a Change

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:23 PM - 1 Comment

The fifth and final season of Taxi came out on DVD a couple of weeks ago, and the good news is that although the fourth season DVD was brutally cut (completely ruining an episode based around Billy Joel’s song “Vienna Waits”), the new set eases up a bit. One musical sequence appears to have been cut, but two important musical scenes are intact: a musical number to Irving Berlin’s “Cheek To Cheek” from an episode called “Elaine and the Monk” (where Elaine… falls in love with a monk. It’s a good episode, but they were really stretching for ideas by this time), and a Stevie Wonder sequence at the end of the episode “Jim’s Inheritance.” The latter scene, where Jim gets a tape as the last gift from his dead father — along with several million dollars — is a good example of how to use pop music in a TV episode: the choice of music says something about the character, something unexpected about his father, provides a sense of resolution to their relationship, and allows another downbeat episode to have a moderately hopeful ending.

It’s also fun to look through the final two seasons of Taxi and see how much other shows have borrowed from it; because creator James L. Brooks and writer-producer Sam Simon went on to do The Simpsons, while Cheers was created by producers Glen and Les Charles and director James Burrows (their absence was a reason why the fifth season of Taxi is a little weak overall), the show’s DNA is all over almost every “smart” comedy produced from the mid-’80s onward.

The other interesting thing about the ’70s/’80s type of sitcom is how many bittersweet or outright sad moments there were. (One late episode of Taxi ends with Alex crying; no jokes, no message, just tears.) I’ve gone over this before, but because most TV drama wasn’t very serious or character-based up through the early ’80s, the genuinely dramatic moments tended to occur on half-hour comedies. As one-hour drama has become more dramatic, the pressure has increased on comedies to provide a contrast by being funny all the way through, but that’s one reason why you don’t always get the wild mix of styles and shifts of mood that you might get on even a lesser ’80s sitcom.

Tories to propose an elected Upper Chamber, with term limits

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 3:24 PM - 49 Comments

Senate reform is teetering on the horizon as Harper inches toward a Tory majority in the Senate. The Hill Times reports that Harper is expected to fill five vacancies before Parliament reconvenes on March 3, achieving plurality with the Liberals. However, with the absence of two opposition votes—Quebec Liberal Senator Raymond Lavigne, charged with misusing Senate funds, and Independent Senator Michael Pitfield, who’s been ill—the Tories stand to overthrow the Liberal majority. The proposed reform is comprised of two bills, one imposing term limits, the other initiating a process whereby Senators would be elected at the provincial level. Several provinces say that any change to the Senate is unconstitutional without consent from the provinces, while critics say that an elected Upper Chamber would throw off the balance of power between it and the House of Commons. Liberal MP Marlene Jennings notes that her party may support 12-year term limits instead of eight-year, as the shorter term could potentially allow a Prime Minister who serves two full terms to appoint every Senator.

The Hill Times

Stephen Harper defended his decision to prorogue Parliament by citing a need to "recalibrate" and focus on the economy. After the economy, what issue should come next on the Conservatives' priority list?

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 3:19 PM - 86 Comments

Get 'em while they're hot

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 2:55 PM - 4 Comments

Ever since televangelist Pat Robertson told viewers the earthquake in Haiti was the indirect result of the country’s 18th century slave rebellion—what he called a “pact with the devil” to free them from French rule—he has been lambasted by every side of the political spectrum. Even the White House singled out his comments as being “utterly stupid.” But one crafty critic opted to give Robertson a taste of his own medicine. Three days after Robertson’s statement, a listing went up on eBay for a Pat Robertson voodoo doll. The object’s blurb reads: “After an exclusive deal with devil, we are finally able to bring black magic into your very own home! The lucky winner of this auction will attain the soul of televangelist Pat Robertson in a handheld figurine … Accessories included with the doll are Pat’s very own ‘HOLY’ BIBLE and BAG OF MONEY taken from real Americans! WOW!” The doll’s creator promises to donate the proceeds of the sale to the relief effort in Haiti.

As of Monday afternoon, the bidding had climbed to $910.

Ebay

Republicans to paint Massachussetts red?

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 2:47 PM - 4 Comments

In the eleventh hour of the Massachusetts senate race, polls are forecasting the unthinkable: Ted Kennedy’s seat could very well be filled by a Republican. According to Public Policy Polling, one day before the vote, Republican candidate Scott Brown leads Democratic hopeful Martha Coakley by a margin of 51 to 46. A Republican win would be a significant upset. On top of the fact that Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat, was elected by voters in Massachusetts nine times, a Brown victory would spell trouble for health care reform. The Massachusetts seat is crucial to both sides: it’s either the 60th vote the Democrats need to pass the bill, or the single vote the Republicans need to stop it.

Public Policy Polling

Stephen for Seborga

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 2:10 PM - 19 Comments

Bit late to this, but Progressive Conservative Senator Elaine McCoy has some offered some free counsel to the Prime Minister.

As Prime Minister Harper continues to flog his canard * about the Senate blocking his legislation, one wonders what his true aspirations might be.  Zero opposition?  Leader for life, even?  Perhaps he’s been studying the life and times of Prince Giorgio I, elected prince of Seborga, who recently passed away.  Known as ‘His Tremendousness’, Prince Georgio reigned supreme for 46 years.  Quite an attractive role model, for those inclined to complain about dissenting opinions…

But now there’s a vacancy.  Who will start the newest Facebook campaign – Stephen for Seborga?  It certainly has a satisfying ring to it, I’m sure you’ll agree.

It behooves us to note that according to leading constitutional scholars, Mr. Harper is not in fact a dictator or royal ruler.

Be careful what you tweet

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

We’ve all heard those legends about travellers who crack bomb jokes in the security check line-up, and then find themselves face-down on the floor with a metal detector between their thighs. Paul Chambers, a 26-year-old Brit who was worried about snow storms delaying his flight to Ireland out of Doncaster, England, has a digital twist on the same story. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote last week in a tweet meant to tickle his friends. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your sh– together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” A week later, the cops arrested him and charged him under the Terrorism Act, after questioning him for seven hours. Apparently, he had to explain the concept of Twitter to them.

The Independent

Montreal's Haitians: so polite!

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 1:02 PM - 27 Comments

Lysiane Gagnon gets warm and fuzzy over Montreal’s Haitian community in today’s Globe:

The less educated [Haitian] immigrants are concentrated in the taxi business, where they thrive. They know the city by heart. They buy their own taxi licences as soon as they can, and they keep their cars meticulously clean. And they’re nice, smiling and polite. The mother of a friend used to ask for a Haitian driver whenever she needed a taxi; she was old and frail, and the Haitians, with their traditional respect for the elderly, would always help her in and out of the car.

And, by way of dictionary.com, a helpful definition:

pa•tron•niz•ing –adjective

displaying or indicative of an offensively condescending manner: a patronizing greeting, accompanied by a gentle pat on the pack.

Hey look: Youngish men, going West

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 12:30 PM - 53 Comments

Colleague Coyne and I launch the discussion that will lead to Wednesday’s town-hall style Maclean’s/CPAC event in Calgary. The West is in: now what?

In-and-Out is in?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 12:28 PM - 129 Comments

A Federal Court judge rules in favour of the Conservative side, with a caveat of sorts.

Elections Canada had contended that the Conservatives effectively skated around the party’s $18.3 million spending limit by channeling the cost of the ads through its candidates’ campaigns, which have their own spending limits. There was no evidence, the electoral agency argued, that the expenses were legitimately incurred by the candidates.

In a ruling released Monday, Justice Luc Martineau disagreed, saying the two candidates did incur the expenses. He ordered Mayrand to approve the claims. Martineau said, however, that the decision does not necessarily bear on an investigation of the ad buying program currently being conducted by the Commissioner of Canada Elections, William Corbett.

“There is a fundamental distinction between legality and legitimacy,” Martineau wrote. “As far as the overall legitimacy of the (regional-media buy) program is concerned, this is a debatable issue, which is better left for public commentary and debate by all interested persons outside the courts.”

Aid slow to arrive in Haiti

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

The world foreign ministers are planning to hold a meeting in Montreal next Monday to assess the situation in Haiti and shore up the UN’s long- and short-term relief efforts in the devastated country. Aid has been slow to arrive in the Caribbean nation due to what aid  groups describe as a “bottleneck” at the U.S.-controlled airport in Port-au-Prince. According to a World Food Program official, the Americans’ have so far prioritized military flights rather than aid deliveries, delaying planes carrying supplies. Both U.S. military officials and UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon have pledged to accelerate the pace of aid deliveries. Meanwhile, the security situation in Port-au-Prince continues to deteriorate, prompting thousands to flee the city. With little to no security on the ground, shops, pharmacies, and even aid groups, have been reluctant to distribute materials to residents of the quake-ravaged city. So far, eleven Canadians have been confirmed dead in Haiti and 859 are still missing.

National Post

CBC News

Washington Post

The Telegraph

Spinning global guilt from the Golden Globes

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:58 AM - 21 Comments

This is a live-to-tape blog. Written in real time offline while watching the Golden Globe Awards and cleaned up (and tarted up) the morning-after so it’s less boring and at least semi-coherent. Gotta love the Globes. Acceptance speeches keep getting undercut by dark hints that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is one of the more corrupt awards outfits on the planet, a cabal of obscure junketeers who are (ahem) prone to influence, even if it’s just face time with a superstar. But Hollywood has appropriated the HFPA’s event as a party and a publicity orgy. And for the stars, this dress rehearsal for the Academy Awards is way more fun and less formal than Oscar night. They can get loaded on champagne then let the emotions fly on the podium. Plus it brings together film and TV, even though the TV folk get treated like minor league players.

Our host, a TV genius who has made the jump to the big screen with a movie unrecognized by the Globes (The Invention of Lying), is Ricky Gervais. He comes out swinging. Takes repeated shots at Steve Carell, then plugs a boxed DVD set of The Office, his breakout BBC series, which he says is better than Carell’s U.S. spin-off. Carrel mouths “I’m going to kill you,” making a joke of it, but frankly, he looks unamused.

“I will be making the most of this opportunity,” says Gervais. “I’m not used to these viewing figures. Another is NBC.” [This will be the first of many swipes at the train-wreck network. The other constant reference to NBC is in the frequent pleas to donate to the Haiti relief effort. Presenters ritually ask viewers to go to NBC.com. So this morning I did go to NBC.com, expecting some serious hype for charity. What do you know, amid all the glitz ads promoting Jay Leno and various NBC programming triumphs, I found a tiny, unadorned "Donate to Haiti Relief" box , which takes up maybe two percent of the NBC home page.]

Gervais’s nothing-to-lose monologue veers into blue territory as he praises the great work done this year . . . by cosmetic surgeons, then talks about his penis reduction surgery. “Just got the one now. And it is very tiny.  But so are my hands. So when I’m holding it, it looks pretty big. And let’s face it I usually am holding it. I wish I was doing that now, instead of this, to be honest.” Continue…

Revenge of the digerati

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:54 AM - 2 Comments

Amazon.com is a vital sales channel for publishers, and its customer reviews are a key aspect of that. So when prospective buyers—upset that they cannot buy e-book versions of a new release as quickly as hardcover versions are offered—pepper the site with negative reviews, publishers take notice. Case in point: the much buzzed-about new book Game Change, which spills secrets about the 2008 presidential election. The book has been deluged with one-star, negative reviews from people who are protesting HarperCollins’ decision to delay the Kindle version to Feb. 23. Those one-star reviews have contributed to a ho-hum average customer review rating of 2.5 stars (out of 5). “This is time-sensitive material. No one is going to care in 6 weeks when it is released for the Kindle. People want it now. The publisher is shooting themselves in the foot,” runs one review. “ I’m flying in two weeks and would have liked to have read the book, but I’m not going to lug a massive hardcover. You lost a sale,” added another. Some in the publishing industry fear that Amazon’s standard $9.99 (or lower) for new release books on Kindle will create a “sticky” price in consumers’ minds, dragging down the overall perceived value of books. Considering how popular customer reviews are as a guide when consumers are looking for things on Amazon, publishers may be facing yet another new problem: prospective buyers who may not notice that it’s a Kindle protest, not a title’s contents, that is dragging down its ratings.

TechFlash

Do we need referees?

By Yoni Goldstein - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:52 AM - 24 Comments

The idea of alternative sports officiating began to seem appealing during the 2007 Tim Donaghy scandal—the NBA ref who was found to be fixing games as part of a deal with the Mob. And now, the recent Alex Burrows affair has brought the idea round again.

Burrows was fined by the NHL the other day for speaking out against NHL referee Stéphane Auger. Auger, as the story goes, allegedly penalized the Canucks winger late in the third period of a tight, tied game with the Predators last Monday as retribution for an incident earlier in the season in which Burrows took a dive (that was mistakenly called a penalty by Auger, who was also refing that game).

Burrows is right: Auger made the wrong call against him, at a critical moment in the game. And the two were seen chatting before the game (wherein Burrows claims Auger promised to “get him back” for embarrassing him earlier in the season).

No doubt this happens regularly—and not just in the NHL, but all professional sports. Refs hate having their authority questioned—and you have to sympathize to a certain extant with their soft-shelliness, they have the most thankless job in sports—and so they tend to bite back at anyone who challenges them. But refs aren’t dictators and this behaviour seriously threatens sports, for both athletes and fans.

Simple solution: get rid of them.

Tennis has already eliminated the potential biases and mistakes of referees, to a certain extent, by installing a computer system that players can use, during the course of a match, to challenge a human-made call. The machines are right all the time; humans not so much—in every match I’ve seen since the system was installed, at least one ref’s (sorry, umpire’s) call has been overruled by a computer that sees the lines of the court—and whether the ball fell within or without them—far clearer.

So it can be done. Though it’ll be harder in team sports. Computers would have a harder time discerning real infractions of holding and tripping rules than an actual human on the field of play.

So how about a counter-solution? Keep the refs, but take them off the field/rink/court. The NHL already employs officials who sit up in a booth high above the ice—they’re there to review disputed goals, but surely also know the outside-the-crease rules of the game. And they have a better view of the ice surface than the four refs who actually skate on it with the players—plus the benefit of slow-motion TV sets to review the game. Why not officiate the entire game from up there?

This works for at least two reasons: first, it gets rid of the bias problem—the players don’t need to know who’s making the call from the booth, and any potential for Burrows-Auger-style personal wars could be quelled. As an added bonus, eliminating four extra skaters from the surface would open up the game – something fans have been calling for forever.

If you can’t get rid of refs, they ought to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Canadian consortium bidding on three Canwest papers

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 0 Comments

Three Canadian media moguls have joined forces in a bid for three of Canwest’s daily newspapers. Jerry Grafstein, Raymond Heard, and Beryl Wajsman announced today that they are leading a consortium of local investors to acquire Montreal’s The Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen, and the National Post. The bidders say they have received strong financial commitments from unspecified sources, and promise additional members of the group will be revealed shortly. However, the three papers are currently part of a larger group of 11 publications which are operating under bankruptcy protection and the chain is for sale as a whole. The consortium said it believes the newspapers would benefit from more local involvement to produce timely, informative, and grassroots journalism to reflect upon the diverse communities that they serve.

Toronto Star

Johnson & Johnson’s recall response criticized

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:38 AM - 1 Comment

In 1982, several people died after taking tainted Tylenol pills, and Johnson & Johnson’s swift reaction was exemplary. But last week, the company “appeared to abandon its own template,” the New York Times reports, drawing criticism from federal officials. On Friday, the company’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare division announced a recall of several hundred batches of medicine like Benadryl, Rolaids and Tylenol. According to a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration, the recall came 20 months after McNeil started getting consumer complaints about mouldy-smelling bottles of Tylenol Arthritis Relief Caplets; a few people also reported temporary digestive problems like nausea and vomiting. “The F.D.A. comments on Friday were devastating because they make the company seem to be complacent and sloppy,” Timothy Calkins, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, told the newspaper. Deborah M. Autor, the director of the Office of Compliance at the F.D.A.’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told reporters the company should have acted faster. The company said in an email it was working with the FDA to resolve their concerns, pointing to a breakdown of a chemical used to treat wood pallets that transport and store product packaging as the source of the smell. The company has also set up a website, McNeilProductRecall.com, which provides the list of recalled batches.

New York Times

College days (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:37 AM - 16 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s tour stop at the University of British Columbia apparently got a bit shouty on Friday. You can read the accounts of Canwest and the Ubyssey or, if you prefer, you can see and hear for yourself.

Britain bails on Obama tax plan

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:35 AM - 3 Comments

Don’t expect Britain to duplicate U.S. President Barack Obama’s new tax on banks that were bailed out by the government. Instead, Britain has decided to implement a one-time 50 per cent levy on all bank bonuses above $40,700, and has also introduced a new 50 per cent tax rate for top earners. Obama plans to impose a tax of 0.15 per cent on the liabilities of large financial institutions in an attempt to recoup at least $90 billion of taxpayer money. London Mayor Boris Johnson expressed fears that thousands of high-earning bankers would flee London because of the taxes on bonuses, a threat which New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said could occur on Wall Street as well. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on other countries to develop similar bonus taxes to make the policy more effective.

CBC News