Ukrainian opposition lobs eggs, smoke bombs in Parliament

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 1:29 PM - 2 Comments

The speaker in Ukraine’s parliament had to take cover behind an umbrella while opposition politicians pelted him with eggs and lobbed smoke bombs inside the chamber during a debate over the extension of a lease for a Russian naval base on Ukrainian soil. The government in Kiev eventually ratified the 25-year extension in order to secure discounts on supplies of Russian gas. However, as the brawling in the legislative chamber showed, the deal is meeting fierce opposition from pro-Western politicians in Ukraine. The pro-Russian government says the agreement will help Ukraine secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund, but former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said the day would instead “go down as a black page in the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian parliament.”

BBC News

Who's in charge? Parliament or the PM?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 1:24 PM - 14 Comments

House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken will reportedly deliver a landmark ruling on the powers of Parliament Tuesday afternoon which could establish whether the prime minister has the authority to keep confidential documents on Afghan detainee transfers out of the hands of his fellow parliamentarians. The opposition parties passed a motion requesting unredacted copies of the documents but their request has so far been thwarted by the government, which claims their release could compromise national security. As a result, the opposition has asked Milliken to rule on whether Stephen Harper’s refusal to hand them over amounts to being in contempt of Parliament.

Globe and Mail

By the way

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 1:12 PM - 29 Comments

Glen Pearson writes of Afghanistan.

The effects of Canada’s pull-out on the ground will likely result in other participating nations taking similar steps. Soon enough all the talk about the kids going to school, the highly effective nature of women’s programs supported by Canada, and our commitment to training new leaders for the future will be things of the past. They will surely be replaced by empty school classrooms, murdered women’s leaders who, having sided with the NATO forces to bring about change, will be inevitably targeted by the Taliban for that endorsement.  The dark days are returning, with the politicians more concerned with how it will effect the vote in Canada rather than the lives in Afghanistan. Somebody in Ottawa better start talking about this quick, before the hope of keeping any kind of development and security presence there diminishes altogether.

Au revoir, Judy Wasylycia-Leis

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:47 PM - 15 Comments

The NDP MP is stepping away, maybe to run for mayor of Winnipeg.

Is the Six-Act Structure Destroying Network TV?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:44 PM - 3 Comments

This interview with Vampire Diaries showrunners Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec contains a (to my mind) interesting discussion of the six-act structure that most broadcast network dramas are required to follow.

A brief explanation: traditionally, hour-long broadcast shows had four acts — that is, four full-length segments leading to a commercial break. There might be a pre-credits sequence and/or a tag in addition to that. But as the episodes got shorter and the commercial load got larger, networks wanted to have more act breaks, so that they could have shorter commercial breaks. Because the commercial breaks on the average network show are not that long, it sort of fools us into not realizing just how damned many commercials there are. If they had a four-act structure with almost 20 minutes of commercials, they would have extremely long commercial breaks, and people would change the channel.

But the increased number of acts has not changed the requirement for shows to end each act with a big moment, or something that will make us want to wait for the break to be over. So the writers have to build at least six different segments — the teaser and the first five acts — up to a suspenseful moment. But you can’t do that without getting a certain amount of storytelling done first. So each short act has to burn through a lot of story very rapidly. When we notice that broadcast dramas often feel rushed (especially compared to their leisurely pay-cable counterparts), that could be as big a reason as the short running times themselves.

Here’s the relevant passage from the interview:

JP: Kevin is always making fun of me because I get on my soap box about things, but I think that the six-act structure has made TV storytelling incredibly difficult. I got so annoyed that I got on Facebook and said that I was going to start lobbying for the death of the six-act structure.  I swear to God, within two hours every writer friend of mine who is on Facebook had written some comment about how it’s the worst.

DH: Tell me about that.

KW: Well, it’s a decision that was rooted in money. It’s a business decision. It’s from the advertisers: how you can keep people from changing the channel?  It wasn’t rooted in a creative decision.

JP: And now it’s the industry standard. And the problem is, you make a decision like that for business reasons, but there’s a creative domino effect. It was hard enough to come up with a great end-of-act break four times an episode in traditional television story telling;  soap operas live and die by those moments at the end, right before the commercial break, when something happens, and everyone gasps. That’s the whole point of an act-out, to bring your audience back after the commercial break.

DH: So now you’re actually doing it six times instead of the traditional four?

JP: Let’s see… with the teaser, you are actually doing it seven times.  Seven “Wows.” And of course the other thing that has happened is, your screen time has shrunk by a good minute and a half over the last couple of years, so you are looking for seven “Wows” in 41 minutes.  When everything has to be leading to the “Wow,” every five and a half or six minutes, how do you actually let a story unfold naturally from a human place, an emotional place, and give it air and give it room to breathe? So when people say to us: “You’re blowing through so much story,” we’re like: “You gotta. You need the WOW!”

Today's the day (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:15 PM - 5 Comments

While you wait, it is perhaps instructive, or least relevant, to consider the debate on CBC’s The Current yesterday (scroll down) between various experts of this field.

Worst Cliche in Hockey

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:59 AM - 32 Comments

In an otherwise excellent piece criticising the Ottawa Senators for their collapse in game six against the Penguins, Wayne Scanlan remarks that the pressure was building as the Senators “set out to defend what Don Cherry always calls the worst lead in hockey: the two goal advantage.”

Now I know what he’s getting at: With a one-goal lead, a team keeps its focus, and with a three goal lead it would require a serious collapse to lose. But two goals? It’s close enough that you need to stay focused, but big enough to convince you that it is OK to relax. But is there any indication that a two goal lead is, objectively, a worse lead to have than a one- (or three-) goal lead? I find it hard to believe.

First thing to keep in mind is that all failed two-goal leads are also failed one-goal leads. That is, on its way to squandering a two-goal lead, a team must also squander a one-goal lead. So, it is analytically the case that the number of squandered one-goal leads is equal to, and empirically a certainty that it is greater than, the number of squandered two-goal leads.

There is one way the cliche might be true: a team might have a better record of holding the lead when it goes up by only one goal than when it goes up by two goals. In which case, the obvious coaching strategy when up by a goal would be to insist the players try not to score. Has there ever been such a team?

GM to upgrade St. Catharines car plant

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:33 AM - 2 Comments

General Motors Co. has announced a multimillion dollar upgrade to its St. Catharines plant as part of a major plan to refurbish five of its North American factories with technology for building more efficient vehicles. The new spending means another possible 400 jobs and a secure future for the Ontario plant, and gives new hope to 250 workers who are on indefinite layoff following the near collapse of the automaker. In all the refurbishment plan will spend $890 million to upgrade factories in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, and to build a new eight cylinder engine at a plant in New York state.

CBC News

A Bedrock of the vitamin industry

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

AP/ Getty Images

This year, The Flintstones—that venerable cartoon sitcom about a blue-collar, Stone Age family—turns 50 years old. By today’s standards, the show itself is a dinosaur. Even if kids don’t watch it anymore, though, chances are they still know the characters thanks to a hugely successful tie-in product: Flintstones Vitamins.

First introduced as Chocks childrens’ vitamins in 1960 (the Flintstones brand came in 1968), these colourful tablets are now available in eight shapes, including Barney, Dino and the Great Gazoo. The line’s been updated over the years—calcium chews were introduced in 2002, and gummies in 2005—but the basic brand is an “enduring” one, says Kevin Skinner, a vice-president of Bayer Inc., its manufacturer. Despite the show’s waning popularity and new entries into the vitamin market—Centrum sells kids’ vitamins based on the popular Dora the Explorer character—the Flintstones formula remains the industry T. rex. “We outsell the number two brand by five-to-one,” Skinner says.

Continue…

Why didn’t you do something?

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 4 Comments

Peter Andrews/ Reuters

Like most lawyer-authors, Bernhard Schlink, a prominent German jurist, began his writing career with what he knew: crime fiction. Not run-of-the-mill mysteries, mind you. His featured Gerhard Selb, a convinced Nazi prosecutor turned guilt-ridden, seventysomething private eye. And the pun in his protagonist’s name—selb means “self” in English—didn’t refer to Schlink himself, but the entire German nation. Then, in 1995, Schlink broke from type with The Reader, a literary novel that drew both acclaim and scathing criticism, for the same reason—his portrayal of a concentration camp guard with a human face—as well as an Oscar-winning film version in 2008. Now 65, and retired from the law, Schlink is still working through the themes that have dominated his working life—guilt, memory, reconciliation, the burden on succeeding generations—most recently in a series of lectures given at Oxford, now published in Guilt About the Past.

For Germans of his age, children of the wartime generation, writes Schlink, who was born July 6, 1944, two weeks before Claus von Stauffenberg narrowly missed killing Hitler with a suitcase bomb, the past has always been alive. Sixties rebellion was as rife in West Germany as elsewhere, but reaction to the Third Reich was at the heart of that generation’s rebellion against its parents. As more facts emerged about the war, young people confronted their parents, even those not personally guilty—like Schlink’s own father, removed by the Nazis from his post as a theology professor. Why didn’t you do something? was as potent a question about the war years as, What did you do?

Continue…

Sacha Baron Cohen bought with a goat…and $20m

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:13 AM - 0 Comments

Paramount knows the way to Borat’s heart—$20 million and a goat. That’s what the Hollywood studio is reportedly paying British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen for his next film, the tale of a deposed foreign dictator lost in America and his goat-herder doppelganger. Interest in the script—co-written by Cohen and the writers behind the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm—was high, with several studios bidding and driving the price up to dizzying heights, $20 million plus 20-30 per cent of the gross. Paramount finally triumphed by sending a goat dressed in a studio t-shirt to Cohen’s house.

Chili peppers may lead to new painkiller

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:07 AM - 0 Comments

According to a team at the University of Texas, a substance similar to casaicin—which makes chili peppers hot—is found in the human body where pain occurs, and blocking its production could stop chronic pain. Capsaicin is what causes a burning sensation in peppers; it binds to receptors on the cells inside the body. When the body is hurt, it releases capsaicin-like substances which cause pain via receptors. Lab work on mice showed that when a gene for the receptors was knocked out, there was no sensitivity to capsaicin, which could lead to powerful new pain-blocking drugs.

BBC News

We’re gonna need a bigger bailout

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:58 AM - 0 Comments

Financial giant Goldman Sachs is warning that the original $60bn bailout package offered to Greece by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund will not be enough, and that the country will need closer to $200bn over the next three years to solve its financial crisis. “I suspect that some haggling is now going on between the IMF and the eurozone on the burden sharing of a bigger programme, but I rather doubt that the Europeans can do more than the already announced $40bn for the first year,” wrote Erik Neilson, Goldman’s chief European economist in a note to clients. A surge in the yields charged on Greek debt has analysts warning that it may be about to default on loans and that financial restructuring may be the only option if the country is going to repay it’s $400bn national debt. However, Germany has resisted giving Greece any more money unless it drastically changes its economy and reigns in public spending. Cuts to government funding have been extremely unpopular and resulted in protests, but the Greek prime minister is pressing ahead with a program to shave four per cent off the annual deficit. Still, analysts are afraid that the Greek crisis may have severe ramifications and could spread to other countries in Europe.

The Guardian

Less sleep can lead to weight gain

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:36 AM - 0 Comments

Sleeping less than seven hours a night has been shown to create greater risk of weight gain and obesity, the New York Times reports, with the risk increasing for every lost hour of sleep. A study published this year in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at a small group of men, measuring their food intake across two 48-hour periods, one in which they slept eight hours and another in which they slept only four. After getting less sleep, the men consumed more than 500 calories extra (roughly 22 per cent more) than after eight hours of sleep. A University of Chicago study last year had similar results in men and women, who took in more calories from snacks and carbohydrates.

New York Times

Today's the day

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:35 AM - 23 Comments

The Speaker is expected to deliver a ruling on Afghan detainee documents at 3pm today. Prepare yourself accordingly.

Our Afghan comrades speak out

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 12 Comments

Candian Press

To what extent should questions of honour, duty, and friendship enter into Canada’s foreign policy? It’s the old problem of principle versus realism, and every country needs to find its own balance between the two. It helps, though, if that balance is understood by your international partners, especially the ones you are supposedly trying to help.

The question was raised anew last weekend at the Taj Banquet Hall, a weddings/parties/everything venue attached to a Kia dealership in north Toronto where 250 or so people, most of whom were Afghan Canadians, had gathered to listen to a debate on the future of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan.

Continue…

Battling bullying

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 9:05 AM - 5 Comments

The Jer’s Vision/Day of Pink 5th Anniversary Gala in Ottawa celebrated those who have helped battle bullying and homophobia. Liberal MP Hedy Fry won one of the Youth Role Model of the Year awards.

Another award went to Grandfather William Commanda.

Global National anchor Kevin Newman and his son, Alex.

Continue…

Is Gordon Brown going down?

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Stefan Wermuth/ Reuters

“Whatever else you think of Gordon Brown, his personal history in politics is one of the most fantastic resilience,” says Andrew Rawnsley, a British author and political journalist.

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister now fighting for his political life in a bitter and stormy election campaign, is a man who was rejected as a potential leader by the Labour Party establishment 15 years ago. That favour went to his friend and rival, Tony Blair, who most observers didn’t think was as skilled or experienced but who performed better on television. Brown then spent a decade as Blair’s chancellor of the exchequer, or finance minister, plotting and waiting for Blair to step aside and make way. When Blair finally did, after winning three majorities, Brown faced both an electorate that was tired of the Labour Party, and a vigorous opponent in the younger and flashier Conservative Party leader, David Cameron. The Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third-largest party, were weak and riven with infighting. It appeared, at the time, that they could be safely ignored.

Continue…

Annoyed before breakfast

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 8:13 AM - 35 Comments

Each year, traffic collisions cost about $25 billion in direct and indirect costs across the country, including some $4 billion in Alberta, said [University of Alberta injury researcher Dr. Louis] Francescutti. Reducing speeding—and the number of crashes and severity of injuries as a result—would translate into saved money and a 20 per cent increase in capacity in the health-care system because there would be no more trauma patients, he said.

Grumpy newspaper hyperbole from Lou Francescutti is as distinctive and reliable a feature of Alberta life as the chinook and the pumpjack. Nearly every time he pops up in one of the dailies, the intelligent reader is obliged to conclude, as the passage cited supra forces him to, that the doctor has either been badly misinterpreted or is a nitwit. After a few years of this you lose interest in trying to figure out which.

Motor vehicle accidents are, in fact, responsible for about 20% of trauma-related hospital expenditures. (CIHI’s best, most recent guess is about 17%. Accidental falls are responsible for three or four times as much of the burden of trauma care as car crashes; indeed, wait a few weeks and you will probably find Dr. Francescutti back in the same paper, saying so.) This suggests that if we banned terrestrial motor transport outright, as opposed to making it fractionally safer, we could achieve “a 20% increase in capacity” in some parts of our healthcare system. The enormously overwhelming majority of Canadian healthcare that is permanently devoted to addressing old age, lifestyle-related conditions, childbirth, and the simple consequences of genetics would remain blissfully untouched. I’m sure these are facts of life you all understand instinctively, but I guess not everyone does.

Upcoming Rahim Jaffer revelations

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 6:15 AM - 8 Comments

• In his role as an executive with Green Power Generation, he once shot a man in Texas just to watch him biodegrade.

• Borrowed Jason Kenney’s pen – never returned it.

• Also made improper use of Stockwell Day’s Parliamentary office, but only by having sex in it.

• Grasped the theoretical concept of using one’s connections with officials in positions of authority to obtain preferential treatment, but evidently wasn’t any good at actually getting the preferential treatment.

• Only lasting legacy as a member of the Conservative caucus was Continue…

Monday in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:16 AM - 7 Comments

Canadian Press tells the tale of the BioDryer. Liberal MP Judy Sgro empathizes with Ms. Guergis. The Hill Times explores the complicated world of lobbying. Lobbyists are unimpressed with Mr. Jaffer. The Prime Minister’s Office has asked that all Conservative MPs come forward about any interactions with Mr. Jaffer. The Environment Minister reveals that the meeting between a member of his staff and Mr. Jaffer took place in Ms. Guergis’ Parliament Hill office. The Chronicle-Herald delves into Ms. Guergis and Mr. Jaffer’s trip to Belize, including insight into how Ms. Guergis’ skin was handling the sun. And sportswriters are now officially employing Mr. Jaffer’s name as a witty pop-cuture reference.

Viewing a “murdered” Taliban fighter

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, April 26, 2010 at 11:13 PM - 26 Comments

Capt. Robert Semrau is accused of executing a severely wounded Taliban fighter who, eighteen months later, remains anonymous. Military investigators never found the man’s corpse (they tried) and his name is still a mystery. One of the only pieces of evidence that proves this person actually existed is a nine-minute cell phone video shot by an Afghan soldier. On Monday afternoon, that grainy footage was played at Semrau’s court martial for the first time.

Exactly what it reveals is equally grainy.

According to the prosecution’s version of events, Semrau decided that the insurgent was too injured to save, and—after the camera stopped rolling—pumped two bullets into his chest as an act of “mercy.” The video, however, is hardly a smoking gun. It does depict a bearded man lying on a dirt path, a chunk of his left leg severed and bloody. But the person on the screen does not look wounded. He looks dead. Someone had the decency to cover him with a light blue blanket, and another man can be seen lifting his limp right arm off his face. But not once does he moan or groan or even open his eyes. And as any good lawyer will attest, a person who is already dead can’t be murdered.

On the opening day of Semrau’s trial, the lead prosecutor, Capt. Tom Fitzgerald, also promised jurors that the video would show Afghan National Army soldiers spitting and kicking sand on the “wounded” Talib—all while the captain lingered in the background. Yet the clip reveals no sign of such abuse.

Of course, something else is missing from the footage: First Aid. The Crown claims Semrau violated both the Geneva Conventions and the Canadian Forces Code of Conduct, which compel troops to provide medical care to every battlefield casualty—friend or foe. Fitzgerald will certainly suggest that the video proves his suspicion.

But the central accusation—that Semrau took it upon himself to put a dying man out of his agony—will not be settled by video replay. It will come down to the testimony of two supposed eyewitnesses, including Cpl. Steven Fournier, a fellow Canadian soldier who was with Semrau on the morning of Oct. 19, 2008 and—like the cell phone recording—made his courtroom debut on Monday.

Fournier has already told investigators that the mystery man was indeed alive, and that he photographed his face for intelligence purposes. Moments later, he said, Semrau told him to “turn around” because “you should not have to see this.” Fournier then heard two gunshots, wheeling back around just in time to see Semrau closing the ejection port of his C-8 rifle. (The other eyewitness, an Afghan interpreter nicknamed “Max,” is expected to testify that he saw the second bullet pierce the unarmed man.)

Most of Monday’s testimony was spent discussing Fournier’s career, his training—and a suggestion from previous witnesses that he is an unmotivated, out-of-shape “loner” who preferred video games and junk food over his mandatory morning jog. Fournier admitted that he “struggled with” running, and that Semrau, a former personal trainer, offered to help him improve his diet and shed some pounds.

“Did you follow through on this dietary regime?” Fitzgerald asked.

“Yes I did, sir,” Fournier answered.

Like Semrau, Fournier was part of a four-man Operational Mentor Liaison Team (OMLT) attached to a company of Afghan National Army troops. The team’s job was to “advise” the Afghans on basic soldiering skills, but they had no authority to give orders. “Not once would you ever give the ANA an order,” Fournier said. “If you ever gave the ANA an order they would shut you out and ignore you.” The morning that body was found, their OMLT team was among hundreds of ANA troops trolling for Taliban in Helmand Province. The court has already heard that the Afghan commander saw the body, declared his fate to be “in Allah’s hands,” and told his men to move on. Whether Semrau had the authority to ignore that order is expected to be a key question as the trial unfolds.

As for medical care, Fournier testified that Canadian soldiers are trained not to distinguish between casualties. “If you have a wounded Canadian and a wounded Afghan, the worst gets treatment first,” he said. Fitzgerald then asked him to clarify the protocol if one person—an enemy—is wounded. “You treat them as you would treat anyone else, sir,” Fournier answered.

Semrau, a father of two young daughters, has pleaded not guilty to all four charges, including second-degree murder. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for ten years.

The trial continues Tuesday.

That's a no (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 26, 2010 at 4:49 PM - 82 Comments

Bev Oda states the government’s case.

Oda said the internationally accepted definition of family planning includes contraception but not abortion. “We’re not debating abortion, we’re clarifying family planning,” she said over her shoulder as she left a press conference in Halifax. The hastily-convened media availability happened minutes before she was due to arrive at a private dinner for the heads of delegation at Government House, the home of Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governor.

After the jump, the statement released by Ms. Oda’s office. Continue…

Don’t contact aliens: Stephen Hawking

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 26, 2010 at 4:05 PM - 23 Comments

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking believes that aliens do exist, and also that we should leave him alone. In a new series on the Discovery Channel called “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking,” he said “we only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.” What’s more, they might come from stars with depleted resources, and be far more advanced than us, “looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said. The series will look at space exploration, alien life and time travel, the New York Daily News reports.

New York Daily News