This early evening in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 5:36 PM - 23 Comments

Ms. Guergis has retained Mr. Jaffer’s lawyer. Mr. Rubel says the Prime Minister’s Office has not informed him or his client about the “serious allegations” in questions. The Prime Minister’s Office says Ms. Guergis was told on Friday. Mr. Rubel maintains he and his client have not been so enlightened. And, finally, the following artist’s interpretation of the alleged private investigator’s alleged involvement in this matter has been released.

The Commons: Made for television

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 5:34 PM - 48 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister must surely appreciate Michael Ignatieff’s concern for the good reputation of this government.

“Mr. Speaker,” Mr. Ignatieff lamented this afternoon, “by letting the rumours swirl the cloud over the government continues.”

Indeed. Though it was quite sunny and warm here today, a metaphorical cloud has descended on the capital—a swirling mess that can now be said to include references to a private investigator, blackmail, drugs and compromising photos taken in strip clubs. All or none of which may ultimately be proved to have anything to do with anything.

Mr. Ignatieff attempted to put this in some kind of context.

“There is a pattern here. When Parliament gets in the Prime Minister’s way, he shuts it down. When MPs ask for documents, he blacks them all out. When ordinary citizens ask for access to information, he turns them down. When Parliament asks a simple question, why did he fire a minister, he will not even deign to answer,” he said. “There is a pattern of arrogance here.”

The government side laughed, as, well, an arrogant bunch might be expected to react.

“When will it stop?” the Liberal leader pleaded. Continue…

Prisoner abuse didn’t stop: official

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:59 PM - 0 Comments

Nicholas Gosselin, a Canadian foreign affairs official, says he continued hearing complaints about prisoner abuse in Afghanistan after Canada stopped transferring detainees to the country’s prisons in 2007. Gosselin, who was instrumental in stopping the transfers after finding weapons used for torture during a prison visit, told the military watchdog overseeing the investigation into the abuse scandal that there were at least 8 more complaints between January and August 2008. His testimony gives even more weight to charges that the government committed war crimes by handing prisoners over to Afghan authorities knowing they’d likely be tortured.

CBC News

Potentially explosive

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:39 PM - 38 Comments

A former translator has just concluded rather dramatic testimony at the special committee on Afghanistan.

An Afghan-Canadian who served as translator to Canada’s military levelled potentially explosive allegations at a Commons committee today, saying Canadian troops transferred “innocent” men to Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service and once shot an unarmed man in the back of the head.

Malgarai Ahmadshah, adviser to the former commander of Canada’s Joint Task Force Afghanistan unit, was speaking to MPs probing the detainee issue and this country’s relationship with the Afghan National Directorate of Security…Mr. Ahmadshah also alleged the Canadian government transferred detainees to the NDS with the understanding they would be abused in order to extract more intelligence information from them. “They were subcontracting torture,” he said.

More from the CBC, Sun and Canadian Press.

SuperTina (Fey)

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:23 PM - 8 Comments

There’s a piece today on the anti-Tina Fey backlash, by Rebecca Traister, that’s getting a lot of attention. Though Traister mostly sticks up for Fey, and is mostly discussing the backlash from a feminist perspective, the trend she identifies is part of a broader anti-30 Rock backlash that’s been going on this season. (It started, you recall, before the season even began, when several commentators — plus me — more or less predicted a backlash in advance.)

A lot of the criticism lobbied at Fey and 30 Rock, as the article notes, is a bit politicized; the question becomes not “is this funny” but “is this good for feminism.” Not that the latter question isn’t worth discussing, but I don’t know how relevant it is to Fey’s work. From a purely socio-political perspective, it would seem unfortunate that she agreed to drop her friend Rachel Dratch and replace her with the more conventionally attractive Jane Krakowski. From the perspective of making a comedy show, there can be little doubt that the decision was the right one: Dratch was hired when the show was going to have more of a sketch element, and was replaced when it became clear that we wouldn’t be seeing much (if any) of the TGS sketches, and the part needed an actor rather than a sketch performer. (Network demands aren’t always wrong; the world would be so much simpler and easier to manage if they were.) And though Fey trying to address political or cultural issues with her show, she’s addressing them in a comic way, and comedy demands stereotypes, broad over-generalizations and caricatures. If you want a balanced picture of women’s place in society, a half-hour comedy or SNL sketch is probably the wrong place to look.

Still, there is clearly some kind of larger backlash going on this season. I think part of it is that other female characters have arrived to point up some of the things that Liz, and 30 Rock, are missing. Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope on Parks & Recreation has been described as the anti-Liz-Lemon: instead of being obsessed with landing a man, she’s obsessed with advancing her career and improving her town. It’s not un-stereotypical (all sitcom characters are built on stereotypes to some extent), it’s just not the exact same stereotype we’ve seen on television and in movies. (Traditionally, career women in comedy are either a. desperate to land a man or b. throwing themselves into their careers when all they really need is a man to make them happy. Or both.) Christine on The New Adventures of Old Christine is a bit like Liz — every time I watch that show I’m reminded how crazy and dumb Christine can be — but she’s a bit more human as played and written. (I’m not sure I would disagree if you wanted to argue that Christine, which has done around the same number of episodes as 30 Rock, is more deserving of another season.) Even the Cougar Town women are marginally less insane than Liz.

And it’s become more noticeable that Fey really, really seems to hate all other women besides Liz; this has been clear since the moment she created the character of Cerie, who frankly could be a lot funnier than she’s written, but exists only as a vehicle for Fey’s jokes about how stupid young people are (or how stupid men go to pieces over stupid young women). This is not a women vs. men thing, because 30 Rock doesn’t like much of anyone except Jack any more. But what once looked like a devastating satire of Cathy-style stereotypes has now more clearly become… a series of Cathy-style stereotypes.

I’ve said in the past that I didn’t think 30 Rock was a great show, but that I always found it enjoyable. This season has produced a batch of episodes that I found too misanthropic to be even enjoyable. Since there hasn’t been any big change in the writing staff, I don’t quite know what to attribute this to; it might just be that the show looks worse because there are more good comedies on the air now, and its flaws matter more now that there are other places to go for good jokes. Maybe its manic style, borrowing in equal measures from Arrested Development and Family Guy, suddenly looks old-fashioned now that most comedies are trying to go for “heart.” (Even 30 Rock has tried to inject more heartfelt moments this season, but haphazardly; I don’t think such moments are really Fey’s thing.) Or maybe it’s just that they’ve done a lot of episodes already, and shows often wear out their welcome as they go along. There’s no reason why the show can’t improve and un-backlash itself next season or even this season. But it has the strange feeling of a show whose moment went without ever (in terms of ratings or broad popularity) ever really coming.

Musical chairs

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:21 PM - 15 Comments

After the Conservative government was reelected in 2008, Lisa Raitt was awarded seat #44 in the House of Commons, the spot immediately visible to TV viewers over the Prime Minister’s left shoulder—a seat previously and ably occupied by Rona Ambrose.

As Question Period began this afternoon though, Ms. Raitt was in a new seat, in the near right corner of the House. That spot, until today, was occupied by Rona Ambrose. And seat #44 was filled, once again, by Ms. Ambrose.

Dial one for ‘I do.’ Two for divorce.

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 5 Comments

On Monday, Pakistani cricket ace Shoaib Malik married Indian tennis star Sania Mirza in the Indian city of Hyderabad, capping off a media firestorm. Young, photogenic, and from two sides of a volatile border, the union was bound to attract attention. But what really grabbed people were revelations that Malik was already married—to an Indian Muslim woman who claimed she’d wed him over the phone.

A resident of Hyderabad, Ayesha Siddiqui told Indian media that she married the cricketer in 2002 after a long-distance courtship, and threatened to sue if Malik didn’t divorce her before remarrying. After initially denying her claims, the cricketer finally admitted he’d signed a wedding agreement, although he said he’d been duped into it: Siddiqui sent him photographs of a younger, more attractive woman, he said. While the situation might sound unusual, phone and Internet marriages have “caught on in many Islamic countries, and India is no exception,” especially with people who live far apart, the Hindu newspaper reported. But the Malik-Siddiqui debacle left many wondering: are these types of unions actually valid?

Religious authorities are divided. According to the Hindu, Hyderabad’s oldest Islamic seminary declared phone marriages were invalid back in 1975; since then, authorities insist that power of attorney be produced. One religious official told the Times of India that if two people marry without seeing each other “believing the person they are marrying to be someone else,” the union is not legitimate. Others say a phone marriage could be valid if key religious requirements—like a formal proposal and having the appropriate witnesses in attendance—are satisfied.

Last week, with the help of Hyderabad community elders, Malik brokered a divorce from Siddiqui. Now that Malik and Mirza are officially married, public interest in the couple, from both sides of the border, should subside at least a little bit. As for their plans, the newlyweds are moving to Dubai.

Guergis: Drug allegations are “completely ridiculous”

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 3:39 PM - 3 Comments

Helena Guergis told reporters Wednesday that allegations she was booted from the Conservative caucus over a drug-related matter are “completely ridiculous and an example of rumours gone amok.” CTV News reported on Tuesday that Guergis’s ouster was prompted by a private investigator’s sharing of information with a Conservative lawyer about the purchase and use of drugs and the potential threat of blackmail. Guergis has hired a lawyer to deal with controversy swirling around her and has pledged to “defend myself to the fullest extent to ensure that the record is set straight.”

Canadian Press

Crossing the line at the border

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 1:13 PM - 15 Comments

Aaron Harris/CP

Border guards stationed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport had good reason to be suspicious of a certain Nigerian passenger who arrived at the customs counter on March 3, 2002. The man’s ticket, for a one-way trip from Lagos, was purchased the day before—in cash. His lips were dry and pasty, a common trait among drug smugglers who swallow their deliveries. And when asked why he was travelling to Canada, the man, Esemuede Henry Idada, said he was doing research for a new business venture: exporting frozen turkeys to Africa.

To quote Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn, it was an “extremely unusual” explanation.

But eight years later, it is the Canada Border Services Agency that has some explaining to do (and some damages to pay). Even though the judge agreed that Idada was a legitimate target for further investigation—including a strip search and a stool sample, used to detect narcotics—two agents were a tad rough for the court’s liking. They resorted to “intentional infliction of force,” Zinn ruled, and then tried to “minimize” their actions on the witness stand. “It is apparent from the treatment that Mr. Idada received that some officers do think they can act without repercussions,” the judge ruled. “While it should go without saying that the Customs Act does not give them carte blanche, I think a reminder is warranted.”

The first “intentional infliction of force” occurred when Idada, a naturalized U.S. citizen, showed up at the counter. As he flipped through his wallet looking for his passport, an impatient officer, Nick Kostovski, “jerked” it from his hand and said he didn’t have time for this “nonsense.” A few hours later, Idada was pinned to the floor and handcuffed because officer Dan Tangney feared that his briefcase was a potential weapon. “The force used was not justified and not reasonable,” the judge ruled. For the record, Idada’s stool samples came back clean. He was not sneaking drugs into Canada, and he really was dabbling in the frozen turkey business. The feds now have until the end of April to agree on a dollar figure for damages.

Q & A: Daniel Pink

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:51 PM - 0 Comments

Money, says Daniel Pink, can’t buy you happiness. In fact, in the business world, it doesn’t even buy you a solid day’s work anymore. In his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Pink argues we long ago stopped responding to the economic rewards our employers offer us. What we want instead is some control over how we do our work and a good reason to keep at it. Pink recently sat down with Macleans.ca to discuss why the prospect of a bigger paycheque won’t make us work any harder and how companies that don’t notice this will eventually fall by the wayside.

Q: You argue that companies should focus on nurturing purpose by providing intrinsic rewards like freedom and autonomy to employees instead of external ones like money. Isn’t that a bit exploitative?

A: One of the things I try to make clear is that you have pay people more than enough, so you take the issue of money off the table. If you’re running a company and you say, ‘I’m gonna scrimp on salaries and pay people less than they deserve, but I’m going to give them a lot of autonomy,’ that’s not going to work. That’s just another form of control, so it’s not legitimate. People are very exquisitely tuned in to the notion of fairness. If something is seen as exploitative, it might work in the short term, but in the long run, it’s going to be a disaster. It’ll harden cynicism, it’ll de-motivate people.

Q: Your message is primarily addressed at executives or management. Where do employees come into play?

A: You already have more people that are making these sorts of requests, certainly over time. People are making decisions on where to go based on how much flexibility they have at their workplace. I’ve gotten a huge amount of email from people with a version of this question: ‘This is interesting. I think this is right. How do I convince my boss?’ The way you convince the boss is to show, not that this is kinder or gentler, but that this is effective.

Q: Have you been able to measure how much effectiveness or productivity is being lost right now?

A: It’s a good question, but I haven’t. It’d be really interesting to find out. I share an instinct that the amount of talent, brainpower, energy, commitment that is possible is far in excess of the amount of talent, brainpower and capacity that’s being delivered. A lot of it has to do with context. An analogy would be long-distance running: If you’re a long-distance runner and you’re training at very high altitude, where there’s less oxygen, you’re not going to go as far or as fast. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad runner. It means you’re in a place without enough oxygen. But if you go to sea level, where there’s more oxygen, you go a lot faster, because the context has changed. I think a lot of companies are depriving people of the oxygen they need to do great work.

Q: Are we on the cusp of major changes?

A: Ten years from now, there’ll be a very big change. Right now, because the labour markets are weak, employees have less bargaining power. But when the labour markets tighten up, employees will have more bargaining power and the resentment and cynicism that are hardening in people because of these negative practices are going to be costly for some companies.

Q: Is there a way for governments to nurture more purpose-driven, rather than profit-driven, companies?

A: I think what government can do is create a floor through which people won’t fall. That reduces anxiety and frees up the ability of individuals to do more creative, more interesting, more autonomous work. In the U.S., for the past fifty years, we’ve had big corporations in quasi-government roles. They provided health insurance; they provided pensions; they provided education and training. At a certain point, these companies said, ‘Other countries have systems where their companies don’t have to do this. We’re at a huge competitive disadvantage.’ The public policy is to offer some form of social insurance so that people aren’t terrified and also so that U.S. companies aren’t disadvantaged against Canadian companies or Japanese companies.

Q: To a certain extent, the American Dream has long been a reflection of that relationship with big companies—work was about securing a house, a car, a good vacation. It wasn’t about enjoyment.

A: Part of that is also the nature of the work that was done during those times. For instance, if you were working on an assembly line in Detroit at General Motors, the work itself wasn’t that interesting. Often times, you were turning the same screw the same way over and over again eight hours a day. People were willing to endure that because it provided a sense of security for their family and they could enjoy themselves on the weekend. Now, those kinds of jobs are disappearing.

Q: When did enjoying your work start to factor in?

A: I think that’s the part of the conversation that puzzles people even older than the baby boomer generation. If you’re in the U.S. and you’re coming out of the Great Depression, you have in your head this very salient memory of widespread middle-class deprivation. You’re seeking security and don’t care if it’s not interesting. That makes perfect sense. But then you have generations that came of age in periods of pretty robust affluence. The middle class’s life today, in material terms, would be almost unrecognizable to my grandparents. So there’s an expectation now that if the backdrop of your life includes some measure of comfort, why should you do something terrible when you can do something interesting?

Q: So boredom, rather than deprivation, is the biggest worry today?

A: If you work really hard and you go from $70,000 a year to $77,000 a year, that feels great the first week. But then you metabolize it very quickly. And if you’re still doing something that’s mind numbing, it doesn’t make your work any better. What’s interesting is you see other mechanisms by which people are seeking engagement. For instance, while engagement in the workplace is going down, volunteer work is going up.

Q: Are irrational motivations a threat to purpose-driven companies—things like dogmatic religion or fiercely ideological politics?

A: You’re describing a different form of purpose. You see this with some of the research on terrorists. People’s suspicion was that terrorists were these economically aggrieved folks taking out their grievances for the unfairness of the global economy. In fact, all these terrorists are middle/upper-middle class people who have a kind of higher purpose as it is.

Q: But can’t every purpose be corrupted?

A: I think that’s a problem in political movements, perhaps, or social movements. But you very rarely see a company captured by the pursuit of some anti-economic sinister purpose, except in Marvel Comics maybe. The bigger problem inside companies isn’t the pursuit of a sinister purpose, but the rather stunning amount of purposelessness. The rallying cry of ‘let’s raise earnings per share by two cents this quarter’ is not the kind of thing that’s going to get really talented people to leap out of bed in the morning and race to work. If you look at a high-performing company like Apple, it says ‘let’s put a dent in the universe; let’s do something insanely great.’ I think that kind of broader purpose can be very rallying for talented people.

Q: What you’re arguing recalls Marx’s theory of alienation. Is it ever weird to be pitching Marxism to the business world?

A: Maybe it’s closer to Groucho Marx than to Karl Marx, though I think disengagement and the alienation Marx wrote about are first cousins once-removed. But forget about the politics of it. Human beings want to be engaged. Human beings want to do things that are interesting. They feel most alive when they’re doing something challenging, when they’re doing something that matters to them. And human beings, unlike horses, do sit around and wonder what the point is, what’s the purpose—why are we here? And to neglect those questions in a realm like work where people spend more than half their waking hours seems foolish, on a human level but also on an organizational level.

'Just a real silly question then: any reason why we don’t have it?'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 98 Comments

The Globe’s Steve Chase nicely captures an absurdist moment at the MPCC hearings yesterday.

The full transcript of Richard Colvin’s testimony yesterday can be downloaded here.

Outremont’s unholy mess

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 61 Comments

Photograph by Benoit Aquin

Pierre Lacerte rarely leaves his house without a sense of righteous indignation, and never without his point-and-shoot camera holstered on his belt. When he walks through his neighbourhood of Outremont in Montreal, he may take a picture, or seven, of garbage-strewn yards, illegal construction, parking infractions, oversized buses, unlicensed gatherings and any other infraction allegedly committed by the area’s Hasidic Jewish community.

The pictures are fodder for his blog, a mean-spirited take on his Hasidic neighbours and the politicians he says “are on all fours in front of the Hasidim.” Liberal politician Martin Cauchon becomes “Martin Kosher”; Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay is blasted for courting the Hasidic vote during the last election, or “electorah.” Lacerte also attends municipal council meetings with near-religious fervour out of a sense of “exasperation” with the Hasidim, who he believes are making Outremont unbearable for the goyim. “I’m determined, not obsessed,” he said recently from a croissanterie near his home. “They’re a small minority, and already it’s a mess. What’s it going to be like in 15 years when they have doubled in size?”

Lacerte’s diatribes are indicative of the mood in Outremont. The arrondissement of choice for Quebec’s cultural and political elite is synonymous with sidewalk cafés and quiet power. Yet it has in recent years been the scene of a debate over how much leeway should be given to its religious minorities. Many residents think they know the answer: not much. Not any, actually. “Some people just want to make life miserable for the Jews,” says Alex Werzberger, the Hasidic leader frequently parodied on Lacerte’s site.

Continue…

"Pro-life" pharmacy goes under

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 31 Comments

Just two years after it celebrated its opening with the blessing of a Catholic priest, a “pro-life” pharmacy in Virginia has gone belly up. The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly was one of a few in the United States to peg its business model to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, its shelves were free of condoms, porn, cigarettes, and even make-up. Turns out, though, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of stuff people actually want to buy.

Washington Post

'Completely ridiculous'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:18 PM - 7 Comments

Ms. Guergis dismisses last night’s CTV report in an e-mail to the Canadian Press. In a longer statement, she laments that it is difficult to respond to innuendo.

Who Else Loves the GLEE Cheerleaders?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 7 Comments

So I was discussing Glee with someone, and got into a minor difference of opinion over those cheerleader characters. My conversationalist (if that’s the word I want, and it isn’t) thought Brittany and Santana are weak links, while last night’s episode confirmed them as my favourite part of the show.

This despite the fact that I’m not a huge fan of “dumb” characters. But Brittany’s not “dumb” in the sense of just being not very smart. She’s dumb in the sense of being completely insane — every word that comes out of her mouth implies that she is kind of psychotic in a chirpy way. It’s like instead of being stupid in our world, she’s living in another world where she is the smartest person alive. And the lines she gets are kind of like Ralph Wiggum lines from the golden age of The Simpsons, except aged up a few years:

Dolphins are just gay sharks.

Sometimes I forget my middle name.

She’s the one they made me talk to when they found out I was keeping that bird in my locker.

“‘Ballad.’ Who knows what this word means?”
“It’s a male duck.”

I find recipes confusing.

Sue is funny, but you kind of know what she’s going to say in a given situation, and like most of the characters on Glee, she talks in what Jeremy Mongeau compared to Futurama-speak — dialogue that is very arch and “writerly” and doesn’t sound like human beings communicating. The cheerleader non-sequiturs, on the other hand, sound like they weren’t so much written as transcribed from the consciousness of a very weird person. And that makes Brittany, strangely enough, more of a plausible human being than some of the other characters. Anyway, I definitely think Heather Morris is one of the best TV airheads since the days when Michele Matheson was by far the best thing about Mr. Belvedere.

Poland sets election date amidst unrest over burial decision

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 5 Comments

As Poland’s ruling party announces it will likely hold elections June 20, there is growing unrest among the grief-stricken population about the burial plans for the late president. There were protests in Krakow after a senior cardinal decided that Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria will be buried at Wawel Cathedral—a site occupied by kings and national heroes. In a front-page editorial, the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza derided the move as “hasty and emotional.” Others argued that if Kaczynski, who was among 96 people killed in a weekend plane crash over Russia, had died by natural causes, Wawel would never have been considered as a possible burial site. Before his death, support for Kaczynski had dropped to 20 per cent.

Reuters

Canada: where are our iPads?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

The Americans have stolen our iPads! Well, not exactly. But Apple announced on Wednesday that it would delay the launch of its iPad tablet outside the U.S until the end of May. The reason: strong demand in the U.S, where more than 500,000 iPads (at $499 US each) have been sold since Apple’s early-April launch of the product. Tech-savvy Canadians might be peeved, but Apple hopes they can turn their frowns upside down. “We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news,” said an Apple statement. “But we hope that they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the U.S thus far.” Rogers Communications (which owns Maclean’s) will run the iPad on its network.

CBC News

Drinking benefits non-smokers only: study

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:47 AM - 0 Comments

A study of over 20,000 people in the UK found that non-smokers who drank moderate amounts were nearly 40 per cent less likely to have a stroke than non-drinkers, but once they started smoking, the protective effect was gone. Led by Cambridge University, the study looked at 22,254 people over 12 years, who suffered nearly 900 strokes. People who drank moderately (one or two small glasses of wine a day) saw a 37 per cent decrease in the risk of stroke, but only if they didn’t smoke. Smoking drinkers and smoking non-drinkers saw a similar level of risks. Ten per cent of stroke deaths, and one-quarter of all strokes, are linked to smoking, but alcohol thins the blood, which can prevent clots from forming.

BBC News

'Climategate' scientists cleared

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:42 AM - 33 Comments

The second of three probes into the ‘climategate’ controversy has vindicated the Climatic Research Unit scientists implicated in the email scandal. The panel was lead by Lord Oxburgh, former chair of the U.K.’s House of Lords science and technology select committee, and commissioned by the University of East Anglia (UAE). They found that although the researchers may have been a bit disorganized, unprepared to deal with the public and extremely informal in their day-to-day interactions, their research was solid and free from malpractice. However, the panel also criticized the government for charging for access to the unit’s findings and wondered why more statisticians weren’t involved in collecting data for the research. The UAE responded to the report by saying, “It is gratifying to us that the Oxburgh report points out that CRU has done a public service of great value by carrying out meticulous work on temperature records when it was unfashionable and attracted little scientific interest.” The third report, also commissioned by the UAE, is expected to be released shortly and will go beyond examining research to investigate allegations arising from statements made in the emails themselves.

Guardian

Switching bad fat for bad carbs ups heart risk: study

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:36 AM - 1 Comment

Cutting saturated fats while increasing intake of refined carbohydrates like white bread and pasta can be dangerous for heart health, according to new research from Denmark. Even so, reducing fatty acid intake while eating more whole grains, vegetables (other than potatoes), and other carbs that have a less dramatic effect on blood sugar can make for better heart health, Reuters reports. In an analysis of 21 studies involving 350,000 people, experts found “no significant evidence” that saturated fat alone increased heart disease risk, but authors of the analysis suggested that what people replaced fat calories with could be more important.

Reuters

When friends fall out

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 19 Comments

Umit Bektas/Reuters

Modern Turkey was born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, which was defeated during the First World War and then dismembered. Turkish nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, rebelled, forcing the withdrawal of the occupying Allied armies, and establishing the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Immediately, Ataturk sought to erase Turkey’s religious and imperial heritage and make it a secular republic. He adopted European laws and jurisprudence, he expanded the rights of women, and he reformed the education system. He shut down religious orders and scrapped Islamic courts. It was a radical transformation, but this new secularism became the basis of modern Turkish identity.

For decades, the Turkish armed forces were the guardians of this secularism, and functioned as a powerful check on Turkey’s political institutions. Three times they deposed elected governments, not to mention executing a prime minister, Adnan Menderes, in 1961. Their power began slipping away in 2002 with the election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has Islamist roots. But it wasn’t until this February that the extent of the military’s new impotence was revealed. Dozens of senior military officers have been arrested over allegations that they plotted a coup against the AKP in 2003. The arrests have hamstrung the army. For arguably the first time in its history, Turkey’s elected government is in undisputed control of the country.

The apparent triumph of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party over the army is also a victory for the rule of law. Military coups have no place in functioning democracies. But the crippling of what was once Turkey’s strongest secular institution raises questions about its future. What sort of country will Turkey become? Will it hold on to its republican identity with a strict separation between mosque and state? Or will the influence of political Islam grow and ultimately change what until now has been Turkey’s political foundation?

Continue…

Realer than you

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 26 Comments

Photograph by John Elk III/Loney Planet Images

In the summer of 2008, a 28-year-old French engineer named Florent Lemaçon, his wife, Chloé, and their three-year-old son, Colin, embarked on what looked to be the trip of a lifetime. After quitting their jobs, the Lemaçons set sail from France in a boat into which they had poured their life savings, a restored yacht named the Tanit. Their destination was Zanzibar, an archipelago off the coast of Tanzania, and to help them sail around the clock, the Lemaçons had picked up another couple. As the Tanit left Egypt and headed down into the Indian Ocean, they spoke to a French frigate that strongly advised them to turn back from a journey that would take them into some of the most lawless, pirate-infested waters in the world.

The undaunted adventurers continued on their way, and over the weekend of April 4, 2009, they were seized by Somali pirates intent on taking their five hostages back to the mainland, where they would be harder to find and, hence, easier to ransom. After negotiations with the pirates broke down, French commandos launched a rescue operation during which four of the Tanit crew were rescued. Mr. Lemaçon was killed during the ensuing gunfight, perhaps by friendly fire as he tried to duck down into the yacht’s cabin.

On a blog the couple kept of their trip, the Lemaçons wrote: “The danger is there and has indeed become greater over the past months, but the ocean is vast . . . the pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream.” And their dream, as they told everyone who would listen, was to protect their son, Colin, from the depraved elements of the modern world, especially the sterile government and its officious bureaucracy, the shallowness of the mass media, and the meaninglessness of consumer society and its destructive environmental impact. “We don’t want our child to receive the sort of education that the government is concocting for us,” Florent told a French newspaper. “We have got rid of the television and everything that seemed superfluous to concentrate on what is essential.”

Continue…

Tehran's Toronto franchise (updated)

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 10:37 PM - 11 Comments

A Toronto-based organization that bills itself as a non-partisan NGO dedicated to Iranian scholarship and culture is non-governmental only in the sense that it has no ties to Ottawa. Tehran is a different story. The Center for Iranian Studies was founded two years ago Fazel Larijani, who was then Iran’s cultural attaché in Ottawa and is the brother of Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, head of Iran’s judiciary. The centre  is still funded by the Iranian embassy here. Continue…

Tonight in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 10:25 PM - 81 Comments

Ms. Guergis says Mr. Jaffer didn’t use her office for personal business. The Liberals allege Mr. Jaffer may have violated the Lobbying Act. Ms. Guergis says Mr. Jaffer isn’t a lobbyist. Mr. Jaffer’s business partner says the business is in shambles. Sources tell CBC that police mistakes led to Mr. Jaffer’s plea deal. And now there is this from CTV.

The mysterious third party who uncovered serious allegations that led Prime Minister Stephen Harper to toss MP Helena Guergis out of caucus is a private investigator, CTV News has learned.

Police sources say the licensed private eye contacted a Conservative Party lawyer in Toronto, and expressed concern about a potential threat of blackmail arising from allegations about the purchase and use of drugs. It has not been confirmed who may have purchased or used the drugs in question, or who may have been prone to blackmail.