Trying to make a getaway

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Stainforth/Alamy/Getstock

Britain’s largest parking authority is trying to out deadbeat owners of foreign-registered luxury cars.

Westminster Council claims the owners of these vehicles routinely ignore parking restrictions because parking officials cannot access overseas drivers’ personal information to follow up on parking fines. So it is making public the models, licence-plate numbers and country of registration in an attempt to get witnesses to come forward and identify offenders—and recover nearly $6.5 million in unpaid parking fines. At the top of the most-wanted list: the owner of a Rolls-Royce Phantom who failed to pay 18 parking tickets totaling $3,000.

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Terror suspect auditioned for 'Canadian Idol'

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 10:07 AM - 0 Comments

The RCMP have arrested a third suspect in a growing sweep against an alleged terror cell plotting attacks on Canadian soil. Khuram Sher, a Canadian-born physician and graduate of McGill University, was picked up early Thursday as part of “Project Samosa.” Curiously enough, Sher appears to have once auditioned for Canadian Idol, where he performed an off-key rendition of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” The two other suspects, Misbahuddin Ahmed and Hiva Ali Zadeb, were picked up in Ottawa on Wednesday. Security officials say “homegrown Islamist extremism” has become Canada’s primary security concern. “Young Canadians are being radicalized to an extremist ideology and want to support that ideology with violence,” A. Comm. Michaud, the head of National Security Criminal Investigations, told the National Post.

Toronto Star

National Post

Now I’ve got to worry about flies, too

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Shuji Kajiyama/AP

“I was an exile in Manhattan” has an improbable ring, rather like the fifties radio program I Was a Communist for the FBI. All the same, it wasn’t Duluth or Thunder Bay, but glorious, stenchingly hot Manhattan that became my exile during recent court proceedings. All I missed were my panting white dogs whom my husband had never seen, but who are now with us. There’s a bonding thing going on between little Arpad, 90 lb. at eight months, and my husband, undisclosed pounds at 792 months.

Conrad lectures him about the 10th century’s Prince Árpád, who led the Magyars over the Carpathian Mountains to establish Hungary, while Arpad wags his tail with joy and establishes himself on our bed.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of August 23th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

So you want to be a member of Parliament?

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 8:34 AM - 0 Comments

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SHUTE

With a federal election likely to come as early as this fall, a number of Canadians are toying with the idea of running for office. Do you have what it takes to be a member of Parliament? Let’s find out.

Do you like birthdays? Do you like other people’s birthdays? Do you like being obligated to show up at other people’s birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties, book launches, interventions, seances, hoedowns and circumcisions? As an MP, you’ll get invited to everything and be expected to give a speech paying tribute to the individual/group/penis.

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Move over Twilight, the latest Hunger book is here

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 8:33 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

You don’t have to have read or even heard of American author Suzanne Collins’s teen trilogy, The Hunger Games, to recognize a pop-culture phenomenon unfolding. Mockingjay, the final volume, is getting the full J.K. Rowling-Dan Brown treatment. All 1.2 million copies were held under tight wraps, with no advance versions available before its Aug. 24 release, and over 100 bookstores in Canada alone held midnight release parties the night before. While they waited, Collins’s fans—and, with sales of the first two volumes, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, topping four million copies in North America, there are a lot of them—were whiling away the time fantasy-casting for the upcoming movie version. (The current favourite to play the 16-year-old heroine, Katniss Everdeen, is Kick-Ass’s Hit-Girl, Chloe Moretz, 13, who should be able to look the part by the time filming begins.) And then there are the celebrity endorsements: although there isn’t a sexy bloodsucker to be found, vampire queens Stephenie Meyer (Twilight) and True Blood’s Charlaine Harris, not to mention horror master Stephen King, are all serious devotees.

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Why liberals are suddenly getting a little bit nostalgic for George W. Bush

By Jaime J. Weinman - Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 8:33 AM - 0 Comments

Yuri Gripas/Reuters

There are billboards in the U.S. with George W. Bush’s face and the slogan “Miss me yet?” The people answering “yes” are, unexpectedly, liberals. Since conservative activists have been campaigning against the construction of an Islamic cultural centre and mosque near Ground Zero in New York—egged on by many key Republicans—left-leaning commentators are nostalgically recalling Bush’s more enlightened attitude toward Islam. “For once,” wrote Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, “I really do miss George W. Bush.”

After 9/11, Bush combined his red-meat rhetoric (not to mention the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq) with more conciliatory speeches. He visited an Islamic Centre in Washington, assured U.S. Muslims that “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,” and said that Muslim women who cover their heads “must not be intimidated in America.” When he was criticized for calling the War on Terror a “crusade,” he stopped using the term. Imam Faisal Rauf (who is now in charge of the planned mosque) was chosen by the Bush administration as a goodwill ambassador to the Middle East.

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Still crazy?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 6:04 PM - 0 Comments

As we approach the four-year anniversary of Jack Layton saying that really crazy thing, General David Petraeus speaks with Fox News about the way forward in Afghanistan.

Karzai has offered a list of conditions Taliban fighters must meet to be a part of Afghanistan’s future — accept the constitution, lay down weapons, cut ties to Al Qaeda and become productive or participating members of society. If those “redlines” are met, Petraeus said he doesn’t see “why you would not support reconciliation.”

“We sat down across the table in Iraq from individuals who had our blood on their hands. That’s what was done in northern Ireland. It’s what’s done in just about any insurgency as you get to the end stages of it,” he said. “If there’s a willingness of those at the high-levels to do that, and they do indeed agree to the safeguards. … then certainly you would want to reconcile,” he said.

"Worthless trash. Stop Wasting our time."

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 5:25 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Gordon, a Quebec university professor (“What a surprise. End of comment,” writes one commenter), tries to demonstrate how the mandatory long-form census has often been a tool for demonstrating the futility of large interventionist government schemes. His commentary appears on the National Post website, where it is read by National Post readers, and hijinx ensue in the comment boards.

Hockey Night with Don Cherry and Stephen Harper

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 5:24 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario Conservative MP Patrick Brown’s third annual Hockey Night in Barrie charity game was packed with fans and celebrities. For the first time Stephen Harper (below) attended the event. He coached the blue team with Hockey Night in Canada‘s Don Cherry.

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Patrick Brown and Don Cherry.

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The census: power, knowledge, and role-reversal

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Gordon put up a (deservedly) well-circulated post today in which he debunks the emerging consensus (agreed to by both the left and the right) that sabotaging the LF census is part of a “right wing” strategy at sabotaging the welfare state, and that the LF census is something that the left should naturally support. “This a puzzling argument”, he writes, because “Before the census became an issue, the Left, not the Right, was the more determined opponent of evidence-based policy analysis.” And he goes on to list a number of key policies where this was the case.

The post reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write on since this started, about how the current left wing opposition to the government’s census decision is not just politically tactical (as Gordon argues). It is also marks a bit of an ideological shift , in that it reverses, or at least ignores, the traditional opposition from the left to the state’s power to coerce and control the population through the  development of statistics and the systematic collection of information.

For you theory geeks out there, I’m just talking about the old Foucaultian power/knowledge stuff. Lots of you are probably familiar with his famous discussion of Bentham’s panopticon, but the key for Foucault is that the panopticon was in many ways just a metaphor for the surveillance society, one where the state’s ability to collect and synthesize information about individuals gave rise to what he called the “carceral continuum”: what connects the maximum security prison, the insane asylum, the education system, and our domestic arrangements is that they are all part of a common surveillance society where we are subject to categorization and the application of official norms of behaviour.

One of the most important figures of the last few decades on this stuff is the UofT philosopher Ian Hacking, who has done a tremendous amount of work, inspired by Foucault, on the development of statistics, the classification of people, and the way those classifications are used to sometimes help or change people, but most often to control them.  One of Hacking’s great contributions was his idea of the “looping effect” — where people internalize the norms and values of the categories into which they are slotted, to the extent to which the act of categorization actually creates the very type of person it purports to be “measuring.”

When I was a grad student at UofT (over a decade ago now, yoiks),  many of my fellow students were beavering away under Hacking’s supervision on projects that were a form of philosophical sociology: they were applying Hacking’s analytic schemes to various common social types (one was the “Jamaican criminal”, I think another student was looking at the very idea of “the battered wife”). These projects were invariably a form of advocacy academia, in that they were aimed at promoting a distinctly left-wing political agenda.

For these long-ago colleagues of mine, it was axiomatic that the state was largely in hock to totalitarian corporate interests. The only reason the state would want to gather the sort of information that is collected in the long-form census would be to protect those interests by giving it the tools of power-knowledge that would allow it to categorize and thereby control the population.

So what does this mean? For starters, I think it suggests that the current opposition by the left to the government over the census decision is largely tactical. But this doesn’t mean the left is being hypocritical, not at all: I think it involves a very welcome abandonment by the left its long-standing hostility to the liberal state. Finally, I think it involves a concession that statistical information is not inherently politically biased — that what matters is how it is gathered, under what circumstances, and for what purposes.

Ultimately, the LF census has to be defended on its own merits — what policies or programs will it serve, and do these themselves serve the public interest. Stephen Gordon is right: framing the debate in terms of left versus right only obscures what is really at stake.

Mixed and inconclusive

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 5:08 PM - 0 Comments

So it seems the survey to which Conservative MP Candice Hoepnner referred this week was drawn from responses to a posting on the online forum of Blue Line magazine. And now the editor of Blue Line is quite displeased on a number of fronts (or possibly the caps lock option on his keyboard is stuck).

MEDIA AND POLITICAL HYPE IS BACKWARDS.  THE REGISTRY IS ABOUT RESPONSIBLE FIREARMS OWNERSHIP NOT POLICE USE. POLICE ARE CALLED UPON TO REFER TO IT FOR MANY REASONS BUT JUST LIKE RESPONSIBLE CAR OWNERS, RESPONSIBLE BOAT OWNERS AND RESPONSIBLE HOME OWNERS HAVE A REGISTRY, FIREARMS SHOULD BE NO DIFFERENT.POLICE INTEREST IS REALLY ONLY WHEN THEY ARE STOLEN, STORED, REGISTERED OR USED IMPROPERLY … THE MONEY HAS BEEN BLOWN (RIGHTLY OR WRONGLY) AND IF SO WE MUST SALVAGE WHAT WE CAN. IF WE NEED TO THROW OUT PORTIONS THEN DO SO. BUT NOT THE WHOLE THING. THAT WOULD NOT BE RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT.

Lula’s surprising legacy

By Isabel Vincent - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 0 Comments

Eraldo Peres/AP

Last month, the nonagenarian Brazilian socialite Lily Marinho hosted an extraordinary event at her Rio de Janeiro mansion—a political endorsement for the ruling Workers’ Party presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff. Over champagne, salmon remoulade and passion fruit crepes, Marinho introduced Rousseff as “Lady Democracy” to the 40 powerful women assembled at her grand colonial home. When a reporter asked her if she would be hosting luncheons for the eight other candidates, the bejewelled Marinho shot back from her wheelchair, “No, just for her!”

While Rousseff, the 62-year-old frontrunner in Brazil’s October vote, basked in the adulation, Brazil’s president and Rousseff’s former boss, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, 64, must have been savouring the turn of events. After all, when he first took office in 2003, members of Marinho’s rareified circle worried that he would take Latin America’s biggest economy down the road to ruin, turning the country into a Marxist banana republic.

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David Cronenberg on Freud, Keira and pressing the flesh

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 4:14 PM - 0 Comments

Canadian director David Cronenberg is fresh back from Germany, where he just wrapped his latest feature, A Dangerous Method. Scripted by Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons), it’s a period piece about the fathers of psychoanalysis,  Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Cronenberg steps into the limelight this weekend as a star attraction at FanExpo Canada (Aug. 27-29).  The event, which takes place in his hometown, at Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre, draws fans of comic books, horror, sci-fi, and gaming—all domains that Cronenberg has explored in his movies. I interviewed him by phone last week:

Q. So you’re going to be pressing the flesh at FanExpo. Have you done this kind of thing before?

A. I  did go to ComicCon in San Diego when we released A History of Violence, because it had been a graphic novel. And it was really a lot of fun.

Q. What’s the profile of a typical David Cronenberg fan?

A. Well, it varies. Somebody who’s a fan of Eastern Promises is not going to be the same person, necessarily, as someone who’s a fan of Scanners. Even Guillermo del Toro—he’s a fan of mine in general and we’re friends, but he likes the early stuff, the horror stuff. So Guillermo could be a typical fan, if you like: he’s a large Mexican filmmaker who’s very funny and very smart.

Q. Do you actually enjoy getting out there and signing autographs?

I’m ready. I’ve been in isolation for too long. I’ve spent four months doing a movie in Germany, most of it in a studio, a hermetically sealed environment. I thought it would be fun to connect with my past—not that it’s over for me with gore and sci-fi films, but I haven’t made one since eXistenZ. And this is different from doing heavy-duty interviews when you’re selling a film. It should be looser and more fun.

Q. Tell me about A Dangerous Method. You’ve called it a biopic, which surprises me. I can’t imagine a David Cronenberg film cleaving to such a conventional genre.

A. In a way, I think of Naked Lunch as a biopic, or even M. Butterfly, or Dead Ringers—they were all based on real people.

Q. So much of your work is based on making the unconscious palpable, and here you’ve made a film about Freud and Jung, the two towering thinkers who put the unconscious on the map. Are you a fan of Freud or Jung?

A. I’d hate to choose now. My actors would be upset. [laughs] I certainly tend more to the Freud side than to the Jung side. But I did a lot of research into Jung and his relationship with Freud, and he’s really fascinating—a great, charismatic character. It filled out my understanding of the whole psychoanalytic movement. That’s the great thing about making a movie, it encourages you to do deep, deep research. When I say deep, I’m talking about the physicality, the furniture—I have a chair in my house now that’s a replica of Freud’s chair. Freud actually designed a chair for himself to sit in while he was writing. The producers bought me a replica. It looks like a human being. The back of the chair has a head and the arms are like arms. It’s quite comfortable too; it actually has lumbar support, which I was surprised to find. They presented it too me at the wrap party because they knew I admired to chair. It was made by a furniture maker who made the replica of the chair for the museum in Vienna, because the original is in the museum in London. They got him to make me one.

Q. Your films tend to produce artifacts—the flesh gun from eXistenZ, the gynecological instruments from Dead Ringers.

A. The art form is physical. The acting is physical. You’re putting light on objects and humans. And of course, when you’re doing a period piece, the artifacts are critical because it’s the only way you can take your audience back in time with you. Of course there’s some CG sleight of hand that isn’t physical. But for the actors, to put on those clothes and put on those spectacles and pick up that pen at that desk, it’s important for them.

Q. Do we see dreams being analyzed and taking on sci-fi or surreal form?

A. I would say not. But what is amazing is the way these people spoke and thought in such intellectual, learned, abstract ways, and the dialogue reflects that. It’s based on letters and recollections from the time.

Q. What trademarks of yours does the film have? Is there violence?

A. There’s a little S & M. There definitely is a little S & M [laughs]. But I wouldn’t say that’s my trademark. I would say that intellect is my trademark, and there’s a lot of that. What I loved about Christopher Hampton’s script is that there’s no compromise in terms of delivering the intellect of these characters and the way they fought, and how it flowed, and how everything became referenced to sexuality and psychoanalysis, which they thought of as a medical procedure. They were so enthusiastic about it and so protective of it, and there were such struggles. Then of course there was the great split between Freud and Jung.  I wanted to bring these people back to life. I never got to talk to Freud but I got to talk to Viggo playing Freud.

Q. Speaking of Viggo, you’ve now made three movies with him, and there may be a sequel to Eastern Promises. He’s become what the French call your acteur de fetiche. Why Viggo?

A. He wasn’t our first choice for Freud. It’s not the lead role in the movie, for example. We had gone to Christoph Waltz. In fact, Christoph pursued us—because his grandfather was a student of Freud apparently, and he really wanted to play that role. Since the movie was a co-production with Germany, his name meant a lot in terms of raising money—these are really perilous days for independent film—and he copped out basically to do a Hollywood movie [Water For Elephants]. So I phoned Viggo. I said, “I know that you weren’t interested in playing Freud but it’s come up for grabs again and I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you if you wanted to do it.” He said, “Let me look at the script,” and in two days he was doing it.

Q. So who is the lead?

Michael Fassbender [Hunger] plays Jung. He’s about to do X-Men, so he will soon have genre cred. He’s a terrific actor and he and Viggo got along absolutely great. Very light, terrific tone on the set. Keira [Knightley] is a brilliant actress. She blew everyone away. I’m telling you, she’s as good as anyone I’ve worked with, including Miranda Richardson and Lynn Redgrave and Judy Davis. You don’t realize it until you start to work with somebody. It was the same with Viggo when I first worked with him.

Q. She’s got a pretty lightweight reputation.

A. She’s a heavy dude.

Q. So will there be a sequel to Eastern Promises?

A. It’s hard to say. There is a script, a really good script that Steve Knight wrote. It’s the best first draft I’ve ever read of anything. But there are financing issues, issues of Focus [Pictures] survival and Comcast buying Universal and God knows what else. So I’m not sure yet how real it can be. It’s alive as a possibility.

Q. As for FanExpo, which celebrates horror, sci fi, comic books and so on—now that comic books are Hollywood’s blockbuster staple, what does that do to an art form that draws its cachet from being outside the mainstream?

A. It depends what art form you’re talking about. It’s obvious that comics have gotten more sophisticated, more politically aware, more technically sophisticated, and the fact they they’re more attractive to movie makers has helped them become that. I can see that the comic books have gotten better. Whether the comics have made the movies better is a whole other thing. It depends whether you think Iron Man I is fabulous filmmaking, or not.

Q. You must have your own opinion.

A. I have many opinions that I don’t express. Is it top-level filmmaking, is it top-level art? My answer to that is no, it’s not. On the other hand it’s really good mainstream entertainment and it’s pretty clever and intelligent, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not the art films of the 60s, but I don’t know if we’re going to see that any more.

Q. For someone who enjoys intellect, I imagine Robert Downey Jr. would be on your wish list of actors to work with, no?

A. He has been. But I think he’s probably out of reach now. He’s got three or four franchises going for himself. And I’m not sure that’s been good for him as an actor. I don’t know why I say that because I don’t know him. But you can become glib and you can fall back on some tics, and I’m starting to see a few of those in what he’s doing. Is that because he’s encouraged to do that by his directors, or not? I don’t know.

Q. Do you covet a franchise?

A. I wouldn’t mind doing the first of a franchise that happened to turn into one by accident. The second or third wouldn’t be that interesting.

Q. Are you a Girl With The Dragon Tattoo fan?

A. I was asked about doing that. Then I went to see the movie, the Swedish movie, and I thought, “No, it really should be called Men Who Hate Women,” which was the title of the book in Swedish. Because that’s what it’s about. It wasn’t an approach that appealed to me. Every man in that movie except the lead guy is a rapist and a misogynist, if not a murderer of women. And there’s something that’s not really being dealt with. I don’t know if the novels opened that out but there was something that really didn’t appeal to me. Once David Fincher got interested, they would have gone with him anyway. But there was a time when it was an open assignment and I turned it down.

Police arrest two men in Ottawa in connection with bomb plot

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 4:08 PM - 0 Comments

Police have arrested two men in Ottawa in connection with an alleged al Qaeda terror plot. The RCMP says its sweep of suspects is ongoing and more searches and arrests are expected. The suspected ringleader behind the bomb plot, which had a Canadian target, allegedly attended training camps in the Pakistan and Afghanistan region. Police have yet to release the names of either suspect.

National Post

Bellemare admits no independent proof of corruption

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

On Monday, former Quebec justice minister Marc Bellemare told a commission looking into government corruption regarding judicial nominations that premier Jean Charest told him to appoint three specific people to the bench. Bellemare says Charest told him that “If [Liberal fundraiser Franco Fava] tells you to name [Michel] Simard and [Marc] Bisson, then name them.” On Tuesday Bellemare admitted to the commission he has no independent proof and no notes. “Maybe there are people who at the time were aware of this and could confirm it to you,” he said, referring to his former deputy minister Michel Lalande, among others. “But I don’t have documents, or audio or video of that.” Bellemare said at one point that he took notes, but destroyed them in March. In an apparent contradiction, he later said he doesn’t take notes because he “has a good memory.” Yesterday, Bellemare retracted his accusations that former MNA Norman MacMillan and former labour minister Michel Despres pressured him to name certain people to the bench. Charest has dismissed Bellemare’s allegations.

Montreal Gazette

CMA takes a shot at mixed martial arts in Canada

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 0 Comments

Delegates at the Canadian Medical Association’s annual meeting voted Wednesday to seek a government ban on mixed martial arts in Canada. Though seven provinces have now legalized mixed martial arts, the CMA is calling for a ban on the rough combat sport, saying it puts fighters at risk of serious head trauma and injuries that could have lasting effects. They also argue that unlike hockey and skiing, the intent of mixed martial arts is to incapacitate one’s opponent.

Toronto Star

AG says better health data is key to transforming system

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 0 Comments

Auditor General Sheila Fraser said at an annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association that Canadians have no way of judging whether the health-care system is providing good value for their tax dollars due to a dearth of information about its performance. Fraser said Ottawa and the provincial and territorial governments need better reporting of health-related data if the system is to meet the future needs of Canadians. One way to assess how well the system is doing would be to ensure the full implementation of electronic health records by doctors and hospitals. “This information will help government, at all levels, improve health-care planning as well as increase accountability for the use of health-care dollars,” she told about 250 delegates attending the CMA meeting in Niagara Falls, Ont. “There’s certainly improvement that is needed in reporting to Canadians on how effective their health-care systems are.”

CTV

Marc Bellemare remembers the sponsorship scandal (or does he?)

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 3:14 PM - 0 Comments

Perhaps the most impressive part of Marc Bellemare’s testimony at the Bastarache commission is the former Justice Minister’s seemingly infallible memory. Bellemare has been able to recall specific conversations on specific dates, not to mention many other innocuous details about his time in government—the brand of sparkling water he was served by Charest, the outcome of Montreal Canadiens’ hockey games, etc.

All of which makes it difficult to make sense of this exchange between Bellemare and the commission’s chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Battista, concerning Marc Bisson’s nomination as a judge for the Court of Quebec (see pp. 93-95 of the transcript):

Bellemare: [...] and [Liberal MNA] Norm MacMillan had also told me in August 2003 that Bisson the father was a delicate subject. The Auditor General’s report into the Gomery affair had been produced—I think it was in mid-February 2003, just before the election—and Mr. Guy Bisson, the father, was, apparently involved in that story, so we had to be careful. The father…

Battista: Who told you that?

Bellemare: Norm MacMillan and Franco Fava

Battista: Okay.

Bellemare: But not at the same time.

Battista: What did you have to be careful about?

Bellemare: Because Guy Bisson was involved in… with the sponsorship scandal.

Battista: And? What does…

Bellemare: Well, that he… that it was delicate because… for him and for the father, because he might be investigated and he might eventually have to testify before Gomery. Because Judge Gomery’s mandate had been confirmed, but the hearings hadn’t happened yet. I was being told to be careful because the father…. but with the son, there was no problem.

There’s a serious problem with the timeline here. The Auditor General’s report wasn’t released in February 2003, but on February 10, 2004—nearly three months after Bisson’s nomination was confirmed by the Charest government on November 26, 2003. (The Gomery inquiry was announced February 11, 2004.)

While it’s true the A-G’s investigation was well underway by then—a spokesperson for the A-G’s office confirmed to Maclean’s the investigation took about 18 months—there isn’t a single mention of Guy Bisson in Sheila Fraser’s report. In fact, Bisson’s name didn’t come up in connection with the sponsorship scandal until March 2005. By then, Bellemare had been out of government for nearly a year and was meeting with… the very same Franco Fava mentioned above to see if the Liberal organizer would help him raise money for his run for mayor of Quebec City.

[Hat tip to The Globe's Daniel Leblanc for hinting at the inconsistencies early Tuesday. Read his take on it here.]

And now a word from Pat Martin

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 3:12 PM - 0 Comments

It’s been two months now since the House was in session and the NDP’s explicitly quotable Pat Martin had daily access to an array of television cameras and boom mics. No doubt then it was with some degree of pent up energy that Mr. Martin spoke with reporters yesterday on the subject of government patronage and managed the following.

“Stephen Harper learned early in his career that patronage is the K-Y Jelly of politics,” Martin said.

Speaking with the Sun, he expanded on this slightly to note that “you can’t run a country without it.”

The other list

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:27 PM - 0 Comments

Last week there appeared here an unofficial tally of those organizations and officials who oppose the government’s decision to do away with the mandatory long-form census. Several more expressions of concern have since been noted.

Here then, in the interests of fairness, is the list of organizations and officials who have expressed support for the government’s decision. Continue…

Three Columbian teenagers named on Facebook hit list killed in last 10 days

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:11 PM - 0 Comments

Three teenagers whose names appeared on a 69-name hit list posted to Facebook have been killed in a southwestern Columbian town in the past 10 days. The hit list, posted on August 17, gave the people named three days to leave the town of Puerto Asis or be executed. Police say they do not know who posted the list or why the names are on it, but noted that a criminal gang known as Los Rastrojos and a Marxist guerrilla group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia operate in the area. The posting of the list occurred after the first two killings, which took place August 15. A third person was killed on August 20. Authorities are offering a reward of 5 million pesos for information on the killings.

CNN

Schoolgirls, teachers poisoned at Afghanistan high school

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:09 PM - 0 Comments

Medical and government officials in Afghanistan are reporting that dozens of teachers and girls were sickened by poison gas at a high school. The latest incident, which hospitalized 59 students and 14 teachers, is the ninth such case involving the poisoning of schoolgirls, said a spokesperson for the nation’s education ministry. Many Afghan girls were not allowed to attend school during the Taliban’s rule from 1996 to 2001. Girls’ schools began reopening after the Islamist regime was toppled, but a report compiled last year by the humanitarian agency CARE documented an “alarming trend” of 670 education-related attacks in 2008, including murder and arson.

CNN

Report claims Catholic priest was involved in 1972 IRA bombing

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 25, 2010 at 2:06 PM - 0 Comments

Nine people died and 30 others were wounded when car bombs rocked the village of Claudy in Northern Ireland on July 31, 1972. No one was ever charged for the the attacks, which occurred on the same day 12,000 British troops entered Belfast and Londonderry in a bid to gain control during the Troubles. On Tuesday, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, an independent body, released a report saying police compromised their investigation into the bombings by consulting government on how to manage the Catholic Church. Though the police were aware of information tying Father James Chesney, who died in 1980, to the incident, the government discouraged the investigation and instead moved Chesney to another parish. Al Hutchinson, the police ombudsman, says that the event must be understood in context of its time: it was thought that the arrest of the priest would aggravate violence and precipitate attacks on the clergy. That said, Hutchinson added that “the decision failed those who were murdered, injured, and bereaved in the bombing.”

CNN

Belfast Telegraph