Angelina Jolie: a biographer’s nightmare

By Kate Fillion - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Bob Scott/Fotos International/ Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times/Contour/ Getty Images/ AP

Angelina Jolie would seem to be a biographer’s nightmare. What else could there possibly be to say about the actress who has, in the tabloid press, played man-eating Veronica to Jennifer Aniston’s jilted Betty for the better part of a decade? To make matters even more daunting for an author looking to tell all, Jolie, apparently, already has.

Over the years, she’s regaled reporters with tales of her drug use, love of knives, sexual exploits with men and women—and even the story of how, feeling suicidal, she hired a hit man who subsequently backed out, counselling her to wait a month or two and see if she still required his services.

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Harper is on to something in cutting aid

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

DADANG TRI/REUTERS

Fresh off defending Canadians from the tyranny of the mandatory long-form census, the Conservative government has set its sights on the gang of internationalist do-gooders that make up Canada’s foreign aid community.

Ottawa recently cut $1.8 million in annual funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), an aid-industry organization that represents as many as 100 NGOs. The money represents more than two-thirds of the CCIC budget, and the organization is now in the process of laying off over half its staff. Its head, Gerry Barr, described the defunding as “partisan brush-clearing.”

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Life after the G20 protests

By Nicholas Köhler and Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Darren Calabrese/CP/ Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Leah Henderson was in bed when she heard the police break down her front door and tell Alex Hundert, her fiancé, and Mandy Hiscocks, the couple’s friend and fellow activist, to hit the floor. It was just after 4 a.m., and Henderson, who is 25, had a second or two to wonder whether she should get her pants on; when she saw the red dot of a gun scope bounce down the hall toward her, she decided against it.

This was in the early morning of June 26, the day that protests against Toronto’s G20 summit would devolve into a chaos of smashed windows and blazing police cruisers, much of it wrought by militant Black Bloc demonstrators. Crown prosecutor Vincent Paris has described Henderson, Hundert and Hiscocks, part of a small group of activists arrested during pre-emptive raids that day and now facing G20-related conspiracy charges, as “executives” of an anarchist group that helped organize the havoc. Their arrests, he added, followed a 14-month police investigation.

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MS liberation: the trial I'd like to see

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 5:38 AM - 0 Comments

Alberta Health Services, the centralized corporate behemoth that runs the province’s healthcare system, disappointed advocates of “liberation therapy” for multiple sclerosis last week by putting out an amazing discussion paper [PDF] surveying the relationship between MS and “chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency”. It summarizes clinical knowledge in an accessible way and raises points that even CCSVI skeptics have overlooked. One simple example: “If proven, the association between MS and CCSVI may actually be explained by MS causing CCSVI.”

Given the logical and empirical problems with Dr. Paolo Zamboni’s theory and the special risks of venous angioplasty and stent insertion, Alberta politicians can feel comfortable in taking a hands-off attitude toward Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s aggressive push for more trials of liberation therapy. If members of the Stelmach cabinet still want to pay for some risk-free research, though, I have a completely serious suggestion: why don’t we test Zamboni himself? We could do it live on cable TV. Actually, since CTV’s flagship W5 program (with synergistic assistance from the Globe & Mail) played such a large role in creating the furore over Dr. Zamboni’s theories, it’s possible the network would like first crack at the broadcast rights.

Zamboni claims to be able to tell MS sufferers apart from healthy individuals with virtually perfect accuracy just by looking at suitable medical images of the neck veins. There is no reason why the world should settle for his mere assurance that he can do so, since this ability ought to be simple to prove. And if he can do it he has no reason to be afraid to demonstrate it. It does not make much sense for the world to perform countless multi-million-dollar trials of his treatment before we check out the most basic, inexpensively verifiable element of his claims. (It certainly does not make sense to let people buy MRIs and other scans for “venous insufficiency” until we know whether that phrase has any practical meaning.)

So why not let Dr. Zamboni declare what images he requires, take 50 sets of snapshots of MS patients and 50 sets from healthy controls, and let him have at the pile of 100 file folders? Invite him to Alberta. Pay his expenses. Give him as much time as he needs. Have clinicians (and, preferably, some conjurors) present to establish proper, bulletproof double-blinding. The cost would probably come in at well under $100,000 and we would have our result instantly. Either he identifies the MS patients at a rate much better than chance or he doesn’t. If he scores close to 100%, as he has implied he can, then we would have strong reason to believe that vein structures are associated with MS. And we could justifiably move on toward establishing the proper direction of the causal arrow that those crotchety killjoys at AHS are so concerned with.

And Now For Something Completely Conan

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 8:47 PM - 0 Comments

TBS has released another, very short, promo for The Conan O’Brien Show, done in the style of Terry Gilliam.

What is MacKay saying—precisely—on exiting Afghanistan?

By John Geddes - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 5:59 PM - 0 Comments

Interesting little story from the Owen Sound Sun Times on Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s latest comments on the future of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

The key question is, as it has been for many months now, whether there is any chance of the Canadian army staying on in Afghanistan in some capacity after next year’s planned withdrawal. The Liberals propose ending the Kandahar combat mission as scheduled, but leaving some of our troops to train Afghan forces elsewhere in the country.

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Everything you ever wanted to know about Axor's illegal donations in Quebec (but were afraid to ask)

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 5:34 PM - 0 Comments

Late last week, Quebec’s Directeur général des élections (DGE) announced it had uncovered forty cases of illegal donations to provincial political parties by the engineering firm Axor. (Although the DGE treated the donations as having come from three separate companies—Axor Experts-Conseils inc., Groupe Axor inc. and Axor Construction Canada inc.—for the sake of simplicity, I’ll treat them as one. If their names are any indication, it’s not like much thought went into distinguishing them from each other anyway.)

The actual tickets issued by the DGE are a matter of public record and their office helpfully sent them my way last Friday. (Download them here if you like.)

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The NBC Identity Crisis

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 5:26 PM - 0 Comments

Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Parks and Recreation co-creator Mike Schur is something that can tide us over while we’re waiting for Outsourced to be canceled and P&R to be brought back. I’m concerned, based on the interview and the last couple of episodes of the season, that the show may be moving too heavily toward relationship arcs — the weakest part — instead of concentrating on the Newhart-style small-town comedy it does so well. But I’ve got to remember that this is only an interview, and no Greg Daniels show has ever let me down in its third season.

Schur also talks at length about how much he loves Cheers, which reminds me of something I’ve wanted to mention but isn’t worth a post (unless I’ve already posted about it and forgot): NBC’s Thursday night comedies are obsessed — to a sometimes unhealthy degree — with the show’s big hit comedies of the past. Leslie Knope is constantly talking about Friends. On Community, the Friends and Cheers references are frequent. And then there’s 30 Rock, where even the NBC setting doesn’t fully explain how often the ’80s and ’90s hits are invoked.

I guess it’s just an expression of love for the shows of the past; it’s also, though, an expression of nostalgia for an era when being a comedy on NBC meant being a huge, massive hit rather than a struggling niche show. Sometimes the references — especially on Community and 30 Rock; on P&R it’s more an expression of character — come off as a slightly strident attempt to make us see these shows as part of the long line of NBC hit comedies. When Abed compares his show to Friends and Cheers, he’s telling us that these characters are in the same tradition and if we give them a chance we’ll love them as much. It’s not true, but it’s a sign of NBC’s confusion at the moment: they gave up trying to clone Friends, but now they’re busy trying to convince us that their current shows could be the next Friends if we’d only watch more often.

It’s also a sign of the weird approach of both 30 Rock and Community: shows that are extremely sitcommy and broad in tone and their choice of stories (which tend to be very old sitcom-staple stories), yet constantly aware that their old-fashioned choices are at odds with their new-fashioned look. I’d almost prefer it if they’d approach it like Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show that can also be very sitcommy but doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis; it sort of takes its own edginess and modernity for granted.

The paper trail

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 5:22 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Press has an early dispatch on the census documentation released to the industry committee today. Kady O’Malley posts a few bits of correspondence.

In the mud

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 3:45 PM - 0 Comments

And now, courtesy of Susan Delacourt, there are these videos of Michael Ignatieff and the Comber Fair demolition derby.

What to do about Kim?

By Michael Petrou with Patricia Treble - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 3:08 PM - 0 Comments

Choi Jae-ku/AP/ KNS/AFP/Getty Images/ Korean News Agency/Reuters

It’s not often that the United States so candidly admits its impotence in the face of aggressive acts by hostile regimes. But there was Robert Gates, the U.S. secretary of defence, discussing options the United States and the rest of the world have to deal with Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, after an international investigation concluded North Korea torpedoed and sunk the Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors on board. “I think there is no good answer,” he told the BBC in June. “You can bring together additional pressure. You can do another resolution in the UN. But as long as the regime doesn’t care what the outside world thinks of it, as long as it doesn’t care about the well-being of its people, there’s not a lot you can do about it, to be quite frank—unless you’re willing at some point to use military force. And nobody wants to do that.”

Instead, the United States and South Korea are going to great lengths to show that they can use force, even if they won’t. The two allies carried out joint naval exercises off the Korean peninsula in July. The exercises were designed to remind North Korea of America’s support for the South. The regime in Pyongyang duly threw a tantrum and threatened a “physical response,” but the fact remains that—with the exception of new American sanctions—North Korea will suffer little as a result of its attack.

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The first signs of a coming health care crisis

By Danielle Bochove - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 3:06 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

Sebastien Trop knew from his second year of medical school that he wanted to be a heart surgeon. A star student, he went through university and medical school on full scholarships, and landed a highly competitive residency spot at McGill University. The one thing he didn’t consider during his 12-hour marathons in the O.R., the 90-hour workweeks, the years of study, was that at the end of it all, he wouldn’t have a job. “It’s a lot to ask your spouse,” says Trop, who finished training to be a cardiac surgeon in 2007. “At the end of all this sacrifice to tell her: ‘You know what? I need to take every little job that comes my way because I don’t know if, in a couple of months time, I’ll have something to put bread on the table.’ ”

Trop has cobbled together a living out of a collection of part-time jobs at three Toronto hospitals. Like most newly trained cardiac surgeons in Canada, his resumé is stacked with additional qualifications; he has a Ph.D. in experimental medicine and immunology, and a specialty in critical care. He currently works as an ICU doctor, does lab research and clinical work, and assists on cardiac surgeries. A father of three, he knows he’s treading water at a huge financial cost. So far, Trop estimates he’s at “over half a million dollars in potential revenues lost from not being able to land the job I was trained for.”

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Ontario to introduce online gambling

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:41 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario will join a growing list of provinces that have adopted online gambling. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) announced Tuesday that it will set-up an online gaming program by early 2012. Finance Minister Dwight Duncan promised the plan will roll-out in a “prudent manner” and said it may become a source of revenue for the province, which is currently running a deficit of $19.7-billion. It’s been estimated online gambling could net the province $100 million or more in annual profits within five years of being set up. According to the OLG, Ontarians spend approximately $400 million each year in unregulated online gambling.

CBC News

The question of civic duty

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

Liberal critic Marc Garneau considers the philosophical question of the census.

The equation in my mind is a simple one, and it has to do with fairness: My country does many things for me and it’s only fair that I reciprocate. I do not start from the premise that the state has no business in my life and that it should get out of my face. That’s a selfish approach.

That might be acceptable if I lived in the woods and never called upon any government services to help me out. But because I do rely on government for a multitude of services, I feel that answering a few questions is not the end of the world. In fact, I insist on it, because I expect my government to make wise decisions based on sound information.

On that note, Gilles Duceppe says perhaps, instead of fine or imprisonment, those who refuse to fill out the census should be threatened with the withholding of government services.

Victims of Charles Smith could get as much as $250,000

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments

Those whose lives were affected by disgraced pathologist Dr. Charles Smith can now expect a payment of up to $250,000 from the provincial government in Ontario. Smith was the chief coroner for the Province of Ontario between 1991 and 2001, but a report released two years ago he’d come to erroneous conclusions in 20 cases, 13 of which led to criminal convictions. Individuals will be eligible to receive up to the full $250,000, while compensation for family members is capped at either $12,500 or $25,000.

CBC News

Duceppe suggests withholding passport of census recalcitrants

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:26 PM - 0 Comments

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe hopes to convince Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reconsider his plan to do away with the mandatory long-form census form. Duceppe suggests Ottawa should look at keeping the form and replacing jail time with lesser penalties. The government could withhold services—a passport or Employment Insurance—until people submit a completed census form. “There are rights—and there are also responsibilities—for citizens,” Duceppe said. “We can tell people, ‘Well, if you refuse, certain government services won’t be provided to you for as long as you refuse.’” This compromise appears unlikely as, despite a number of criticisms about scrapping the mandatory long-form census, the prime minister has given no indication that he will change his mind.

CTV

Afghan mission could be extended past 2011

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:13 PM - 0 Comments

The federal government hasn’t yet ruled out the possibility Canada might stay in Afghanistan past its self-imposed July 2011 deadline, according to Defence Minister Peter MacKay. That is, provided the opposition agrees to an extension. “I know that Ignatieff and Rae have made comments recently about training, and extending the mission,” MacKay said while on a tour of CFB Meaford. “That’s all very interesting.” As it stands, though, MacKay notes there’s little flexibility in the current plan to end the mission in July 2011, with all troops withdrawn by December of the same year. MacKay acknowledged what he termed as “a strong desire to have Canadians continue” among the country’s NATO allies in Afghanistan and said the government is currently “examining all the options.”

Owen Sound Sun Times

More on Tony Judt

By John Geddes - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 0 Comments

On his “Letter from Paris” blog, Postmedia’s Peter O’Neil offers a fascinating posting on Tony Judt, including the full text of an email Judt sent responding to his questions last spring about the attitude of Europeans toward war. The timing of the exchange early last March is poignant: only a few days later, news came out that Judt was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,  or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

What options?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 1:59 PM - 0 Comments

Whatever the Foreign Affairs Minister said a month and a half ago in response to what the Defence Minister said then, here is what Defence Minister says now.

Yesterday, MacKay acknowledged that Canada is under pressure to extend. “There’s no question there’s a strong desire to have Canadians continue,” he said. “It’s something we’ve done extremely well. It’s appreciated and noticed by our allies.”

In terms of any extension, he said, “we’re examining all the options.”

The Republicans' edge in November

By John Parisella - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

With the American economy showing definite signs of recovery despite slow job growth—unemployment remains at 9.5 per cent—the Obama Administration and the Democrats will clearly be on the defensive come the fall campaign. While Democrats can justifiably argue in favour of an achievement-oriented Congress, the jobs picture is what really hits home. Neither the rebound on Wall Street, the success of the bailouts, nor the resurgence of the U.S. auto industry is enough to counter a sense of pessimism among voters in the short term.

The rise in the deficit and the impact on the debt also adds to the Republican narrative that the Obama Administration has mortgaged future generations for ideologically driven projects like healthcare reform. The public’s growing discontent with the war in Afghanistan only adds to the gloom and doom picture drawn by the GOP leadership and Tea Party advocates. Never mind that the Republicans wish to continue the involvement in Afghanistan, it is now Obama’s war.

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Emma Thompson Hates Audrey Hepburn

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Emma Thompson, who’s writing the script for a remake of My Fair Lady, gave an interview to the Telegraph about the project. The link seems to be down at the moment, but the only thing anyone seems to be talking about is what she said about Audrey Hepburn:

I find Audrey Hepburn fantastically twee. Twee is whimsy without wit. It’s mimsy-mumsy sweetness without any kind of bite. And that’s not for me. She can’t sing and she can’t really act, I’m afraid. I’m sure she was a delightful woman – and perhaps if I had known her I would have enjoyed her acting more, but I don’t and I didn’t, so that’s all there is to it, really.

Eeyowitch. The first thing that I thought when reading that was that many of the girls I knew in college will now hate Emma Thompson. (I don’t know if Audrey Hepburn posters are as popular in dorms as they used to be; but in My Day, you could see her staring at you from a number of walls.) As Peter Bradshaw argues in The Guardian, Thompson is entitled to her opinion and isn’t necessarily wrong. But it’s certainly the worst possible way to get attention for the project.

It’ll also provide an extra bit of trouble for whoever winds up playing Eliza Doolittle in the remake, with Carey Mulligan currently favoured (Keira Knightley was originally talked about) The reason Hepburn wasn’t really right in the original film is that hardly anybody is quite right for the musical version of Eliza Doolittle: it has to be one of the most difficult parts in the modern theatre. The non-musical version is already exceptionally hard: the actress has to do not only Cockney Eliza and “lady” Eliza, but the in-between version seen when Higgins introduces her to his mother’s society friends. The musical has all that, plus it requires her to handle most of the really difficult singing in the show (Higgins is written for a non-singer, so Eliza has almost all the genuine “legit” vocalism loaded onto her). Plus in order to be convincing, she should be played by a young actress. Oh, and she must hold her own with a Higgins who is usually played by a very experienced actor who doesn’t need to be able to sing.

The original play was lucky enough to find the only person in the world who fit all these requirements, the young Julie Andrews, and even she — according to her memoirs — was originally not up to the acting demands, and only got there with a lot of help from the director of the play, Moss Hart. Almost every Eliza since then has been a compromise of one kind or another: usually someone who can act the part but isn’t vocally right for the part (which may apply to Carey Mulligan as well). As theatre historian Ethan Mordden noted, there are a number of people who can play Higgins, but it’s almost impossible to find a really good Eliza. Once the movie production decided Andrews didn’t have enough film experience to do it (Disney proved them wrong, of course, by snapping her up for Mary Poppins) there was really nobody they could get who was quite right, and this will probably still hold true.

Also, since Thompson wants to do a more modern, feminist take on the story I assume she’s planning to change the ending; as you probably know, My Fair Lady uses the ending that was created for the 1938 film version of Pygmalion (Shaw didn’t like the ending but said it was too inconclusive to really be objectionable). I could see someone creating a new ending that preserves a happy feeling while staying closer to Shaw’s more feminist message — that society limits the choices women can make whether she’s a “flower girl” or a “lady,” and that Eliza’s only hope is to break out of both those pigeonholes — but I don’t know if Thompson’s the person to write it.

The health care debate we're not having

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 1:07 PM - 0 Comments

In his stump speeches, Mr. Ignatieff has periodically cast forward to the negotiation of federal-provincial health accords that expire in 2014 and he touched on the subject yesterday during a chat with The Mark.

20 cents of every dollar spent on health care in Canada comes from the federal government so we`re involved. Well be renegotiating the health care accord with the provinces in 2014 and we’re going to need a government that actually believes in universally accessible publicly funded health care and is prepared to work with provinces to reduce inequalities in access to care and treatment.

Dr. Michael Rachlis touched on this in an op-ed for the Star last month. Our John Geddes setup the debate last April in a magazine piece, which touched on David Dodge’s rather urgent pleadings at the Liberal policy conference in Montreal.

"They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare"

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

The Obama administration is under fire from the right, but it’s the left that really gets it upset. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal critics of the president, who have bashed his conservative stance on issues like civil liberties and gay rights, and compare him to George W. Bush: “Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. He added that the “professional left” will only be satisfied “when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” Gibbs did not name any specific critics, though that may be because virtually every liberal pundit has been critical of Obama and there are too many criticisms to choose from.

The Hill

Montreal police accused of racial profiling

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments

An internal study by the Montreal Police Service has concluded its officers are engaging in racial profiling. Between 2001 and 2007, police identification checks on individuals increased by 126 per cent in the borough of Montreal North borough and by 91 per cent in St-Michel. The report says racial profiling in the neighborhoods is “much too high” and constitutes “fishing expeditions.” Thirty to 40 per cent of young black men in the areas faced police identity checks, compared to 5 to 6 per cent of whites. Michel Charest, the study’s author, says that because only five per cent of the checks resulted in an arrest or infraction, the checks can be “judged as arbitrary or malicious.” Montreal Police Service commander, Eric La Penna, dismissed the report, saying its evidence is biased and the police doesn’t have a systemic problem.

Toronto Star