Gulliver's Traumas

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

20th Century Fox

The new movie Gulliver’s Travels, opening Dec. 22, is yet another opportunity for Hollywood to ruin a classic book. This time, Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century bestseller has been updated to modern times, with Jack Black playing the title character. Black enthusiastically said that the best idea they had for the production was that instead of Gulliver being a traveller who gets shipwrecked in fantasy lands, “we have him going through an inter-dimensional portal to an alternate, not altogether different place.”

English professors are used to this by now. There have been many film versions of Gulliver’s Travels, but few have much to do with the original book, a satire that Dutton Kearney (a professor at Aquinas College who edited a critical edition of the work) calls a story of “misanthropy and self-hatred.” If Black’s version fails, it might be a slap in the face to Swift, but it’ll be well within the tradition of a beloved book that Kearney calls “difficult to adapt successfully.”

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Flaherty unveils pooled pension plan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:38 PM - 7 Comments

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has pitched a private pension plan that he hopes will encourage more small-business people and self-employed Canadians to save. “This plan would say to an employer, ‘Listen, you can offer this plan but you don’t have to contribute to it.’ Employees would contribute to it, or can opt out,” explained Flaherty. “It would make a nice, easy and relatively painless way for people to contribute to their retirement.” The plan would be built on defined contributions and would be run by private financial institutions. The idea is to keep costs down by pooling money from the large number of small business people and self-employed workers who currently aren’t saving or are using smaller plans. Liberal critic Judy Sgro called the plan “a baby step,” adding “it’s not going to do much for [many] self-employed, for women that are in and out of the work force, for those in rural Canada.”

CBC News

Is Harper’s religion hurting Afghanistan?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:35 PM - 67 Comments

Nipa Bannerjee, the former head of the Canadian International Development Agency in Afghanistan, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is a born-again Christian, is harming relief efforts in the country because of his religious beliefs. Speaking to the Georgia Straight, she criticized the government for intentionally leaving reproductive health out of CIDA’s programs, despite the fact that one in eight women die during childbirth in Afghanistan. “It is important to make contraception available, whereas our government’s policy is not to include reproductive health in any kind of maternal-health program,” she said. “That I consider to be a major drawback.” Other aid workers on the ground have also levied similar complaints. “The leading cause of death in Afghanistan is not bombs; it’s not bullets—it is pregnancy,” says Kieran Green, a spokesperson for CARE Canada, an aid organization that provides condoms and oral contraceptives to Afghans.

Georgia Straight

Canada home to a record number of police officers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:28 PM - 10 Comments

The ranks of Canada’s police forces have grown by 69,000 people since 1981, according to Statistics Canada. Since then, the number of crimes solved is up too. In the first quarter of 2010, Canada added 2,000 police officers. Charles Momy of the Canadian Police Association told Postmedia News that officers have also been taking on new work outside their traditional roles–and that is not necissarily a good thing. “Unfortunately, police [have] become a social support mechanism when everything else is failing,” Momy said

Vancouver Sun

When squirrels drink

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 7 Comments

Russian Government anti-alcohol campaign

The Russian government is using a squirrel in the throes of alcohol withdrawal in an attempt to scare its people into putting down the bottle. The animal was chosen as the star of a new anti-drinking ad because delirium tremens—the period when a withdrawing alcoholic starts to sweat, shake and hallucinate—is known as “belochka” or “little squirrel” in Russian. In the commercial, which has been viewed by more than a million people, the animated animal literally climbs up the walls. At the end, he warns: “Are you a boozer? Then I am coming to your place.”

The ad is part of Russia’s latest campaign to fight alcoholism, and thereby its decreasing population trends. A 2009 study published in The Lancet showed that 52 per cent of all Russian deaths among those aged 15 to 54 were related to alcohol. It was then estimated that more than three million working-aged Russians died as a result of alcohol in the 1990s—the decade during which the country’s population began to fall. And it’s still a problem: Russians drink more than twice what is considered healthy. But if the deranged squirrel doesn’t work, Moscow has another plan. Last January, it set its first minimum price for booze—$5.70 per litre.

No more the forgotten king

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

George VI gives one of his first broadcasts as king in 1937. Bertie’s childhood was one of neglect and fear. | Courtesy of Quercus Books

King George VI reigned for 15 years, saw his nation and empire through the Second World War, witnessed the end of the imperial might of Britain, and had his face all over one of the world’s pre-eminent currencies. Yet, since his death in 1952, the diffident monarch, made all the more retiring by a debilitating speech impediment, has largely been confined to the footnotes of history. George has been overshadowed by his predecessor and brother, the feckless Edward VIII, and by his daughter and successor Elizabeth II; even his wife’s charm and warmth pushed his shy personality into the background. If that weren’t enough, his prime ministers—Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Atlee—had dominating personalities of their own.

But the forgotten king is emerging from the shadows, thanks in no small part to the film The King’s Speech (opening Dec. 10) and the book of the same name by Peter Conradi and Mark Logue, grandson of the monarch’s speech therapist, Lionel Logue. George VI’s struggle to tame his stammer, and his dutiful acceptance of a throne for which he was woefully unprepared, won him the loyalty of a generation scarred by the Depression and the abdication crisis. He now appeals to their descendants and historians alike.

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U.S. touts 'significant progress' in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:51 PM - 2 Comments

The U.S. government’s annual review of the war in Afghanistan concluded that the military is on track to start withdrawing troops in July 2011, as originally promised by President Barack Obama. The report stroke a note of cautious optimism, talking about “significant progress” in “disrupting, dismantling and defeating” al-Qaeda, but warning that in many places in Afghanistan, “the gains we’ve made are fragile and reversible.” The assessment highlighted terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan as one of the major remaining challenges. The publicly available five-page version of the classified report, however, carried no mention of corruption within the Afghan government, which some of the WikiLeaks cables indicated as another significant stumbling block to progress in the country. Last December, Obama ordered a 30,000 troops increase in Afghanistan in order to stop and reverse the Taliban’s momentum in the country’s southern provinces.

Washington Post

NFL Picks Week 15: Like flipping a quarter, but with words

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:47 PM - 7 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week: 7-9 Season: 103-81-8

Scott Reid Last week: 8-8 Season: 90-94-8

•••

San Francisco (plus 9) at San Diego, Thursday night

Feschuk: Who can think about football at a time like this? SCARLETT JOHANSSON HAS DUMPED RYAN REYNOLDS! Naturally, I assume it’s because she’s been made aware of the things I’ve been writing about her in my Dream Journal. Our romantic strolls. Evenings spent cuddling beside the fire. That incident with the whipped cream and pork chops. Clearly, if Scarlett was interested only in surface beauty, she’d have stayed with the Sexiest Man Alive no matter what. So this must mean she’s looking for someone old, overweight and prone to sudden outbreaks of psoriasis and napping. Goddammit Reid, I don’t stand a chance against you. Pick: San Diego.

Reid: Sound analysis, Padawan. Obviously, she’s looking for a switch from the muscular but grapeless Ryan Reynolds. As the artful self portrait I sent Scar just this moment makes Continue…

Putin opens up during televised interview

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:43 PM - 0 Comments

A four-hour televised Q & A session with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday offered a rare look into the leader’s views, his future plans and his unwavering defense of his authoritarian style of politics. Putin repeatedly rejected criticism of the Russian police forces, saying that powerful law enforcement bodies were essential to guaranteeing public order and safety and protecting the public against nationalist unrest. If the police weren’t there, Putin said in a jab to political opponents, Russia’s “liberal intelligentsia will have to shave off their goatees and put on helmets themselves and go out to the square to fight radicals themselves.” Putin also issued what observers say is a veiled call on the judiciary to keep Russian former oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail, even as he nears the end of his eight-year prison term for tax evasion. Though Putin’s TV marathon suggests he is far from leaving centre stage in Russian politics, he refused to say whether he or his protégé, current Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, will run in the country’s upcoming presidential elections in 2012.

New York Times

More Popular In Canada Than In the States

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:22 PM - 19 Comments

It’s admittedly sad that the biggest decisions Canadian TV networks have to make are not about their own programming, but which of their affiliated channels will get to simulcast the U.S. shows that we’d mostly find a way to watch anyway. But since I commented before on how CTV would have a problem once American Idol moved to Thursdays (against Big Bang Theory), I should comment on the decision the network has made: according to their new schedule, they will show American Idol on Wednesday, but the Thursday results show will be moved to their sister channel A!, so CTV can continue showing The Big Bang Theory at 8.

This is a reminder of how much more popular Big Bang Theory is in Canada than in the U.S. In the U.S., it’s a very popular comedy but somewhere between second and fourth among comedies, depending on what metric you use. (Among half-hour comedies, it’s behind Two and a Half Men and Modern Family in 18-49, and also Glee if you count that as a comedy. Among total viewers it’s usually behind Two and a Half Men.) In Canada, though, it appears to be the most popular comedy — remember CTV’s claim that its Thursday premiere was the biggest thing since the Friends finale — to the point that CTV chose it over American Idol and probably doesn’t regret the choice.

I have no particular insight into why Big Bang Theory is bigger here than in the States (particularly since it doesn’t seem to be as much of an international sensation as some other hit U.S. sitcoms). Maybe its combination of sweetness and meanness hits our national comedic sweet spot somehow; Corner Gas was by no means the same kind of show, but it did combine an overall charm and friendliness with a lot of behaviour that bordered on sociopathic. Apart from that, I don’t have explanations to offer, but I find it interesting when a U.S. show becomes disproportionately popular here.

I don’t have many other examples of this, though one thing I’ve heard is that WKRP in Cincinnati was always a huge hit in Canada, even as it often struggled in the States. That’s why Canadians of my generation are more likely to consider it a cultural touchstone than Americans are. If there are other U.S. shows you can think of that somehow exploded when imported to Canada, by all means list them in comments.

Speaking of Canada, the CTV mid-season lineup doesn’t mention a return date for Dan For Mayor and Hiccups (if indeed there is one), and Flashpoint and The Listener appear to be the only home-grown shows on this lineup. Virtually everything else has “simulcast” after its name.

A wider Web

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

In early 2013, a small company called O3b Networks plans to launch eight satellites capable of offering low-cost Internet and cellphone service to much of the developing world. O3b, which refers to the “other three billion” people in the world without reliable broadband access, said last week that it has raised US$1.2 billion, enough to put its first satellites into orbit. Google is one of the firm’s chief backers, along with several investment firms and banks.

The satellites, which will orbit four times closer to Earth than traditional satellites, will be able to quickly transmit data to local Internet service providers and telecom companies in as many as 150 countries (or 70 per cent of the world’s population), says O3b. While the company maintains it will turn a profit, it has more virtuous aims too: by connecting developing countries to telecom systems in the rest of the world, it hopes to provide a big boost to business and investment in emerging markets.

In Afghanistan, all roads lead to Pakistan

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 1:15 PM - 14 Comments

Today’s summary of the president’s report on the war strategy is getting tons of press, and while the picture being shown is positive, the truth is that on virtually every measure, the overall situation is very complicated. For every story you read about things getting better, there is one about how they are getting worse somewhere else.

And so even as the coalition is claiming some sort of tactical victory in the South and talking about it turning into permanent gains, a large group of Afghan analysts and observers are arguing that the security situation is worse than ever, and that it is time to sit down and negotiate with the Taliban leadership. This “open letter to Obama” came out last week, and while it hasn’t received a lot of attention, I think it does a useful job of highlighting just why the situation in Afghanistan is so frustrating. Continue…

Rights and Democracy: Scooped!

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:58 PM - 69 Comments

Daniel Leblanc at the Globe and Mail has posted the entire Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy on the newspaper’s website, “in the spirit of transparency.” Off I go to read it now. You can too. Let’s check back in with one another later, shall we?

A built-in advantage

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 11 Comments

Tim Smith/Rogue Collective

Competitive spirit might run through the veins of any good businessman, but a handful of Prairie companies say they can’t win the war against some unlikely rivals in the building supply trade—Hutterite colonists. Frustrated by a steady drift of metal roof and siding orders to Hutterite-owned competitors, building supply companies are pressuring the Manitoba government to take action, arguing the market is tilted in favour of Hutterite enterprises because colony members work for free, and because their firms are exempt from certain taxes.

The Hutterites are an Anabaptist sect whose adherents live communally, sharing resources and property on farming colonies that speckle the southern Prairies and parts of the U.S. plains. For the most part, they’ve coexisted peacefully with neighbours, but tensions began rising in the 1990s, when some colonies turned to commercial enterprises to help support their way of life, raising the unexpected question of whether communal living constitutes an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Continue…

How to never lose the confidence of the House of Commons

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:19 PM - 43 Comments

A boast from John Baird after QP yesterday.

We’ve had five years and no-one has yet to pull a motion of non-confidence against the government.

It is apparently true that Mr. Harper is now the longest serving minority government prime minister to never lose a confidence vote. In this regard Mr. Harper’s successors will understand that to avoid losing the confidence of the House it is best to be conciliatory, open, cooperative and patient. Or, in lieu of all that, to have Parliament either dissolved or prorogued before it can officially register any such feelings of dissent.

Rights and Democracy: Tickety-boo, Ladies and Gents! Tickety Freaking Boo!

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:18 PM - 20 Comments

From a news release, Oct. 18, 2010 [emphasis added for what I believe you will soon agree are essentially comedic purposes]:

Rights & Democracy overhauls its management team and announces new directions

MONTREAL – October 18, 2010 – Gérard Latulippe, President of Rights & Democracy, today announced that Stéphane Bourgon, Maxime Poulin and Martin Fortier are joining the organization’s management team: Mr. Bourgon as Senior Director, Communications, Government Affairs and Strategic Planning… These new members of the management team assume their duties today. “There is no doubt that these three new directors will breathe new life into our organization, with their extensive experience and skills in several different areas,” said Mr. Latulippe. …

“I am counting on the people whose appointments I am announcing today and on the vast experience each one has developed throughout his career to implement our new guidelines and strategic choices and to oversee our recovery. I’m also convinced that all of our dedicated staff and professionals will give this new team their full cooperation,” added Mr. Latulippe…

Stéphane Bourgon, Ad.E, CD, B.Adm, LL.B, LL.M, completed a Master’s Degree in International Law at the Université de Montréal, a Bachelor of Law at Université Laval and a Bachelor of Business Administration at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean/Université de Sherbrooke. Formerly a logistics officer and legal advisor with the Canadian Forces, Mr. Bourgon began his legal career with the office of the Judge-Advocate General, where he was responsible for coordination and training senior officers in international humanitarian law.

Mr. Bourgon went on to serve as advisor in international law to the office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague and chef de cabinet for the office of the President-Chief Justice. He was then asked by the clerk of the Tribunal to represent accused persons unable to pay their legal costs. In the two years leading up to his appointment at Rights & Democracy, Mr. Bourgon also practiced law in Rwanda and the Central African Republic. A recognized specialist in international humanitarian and criminal law, he has also taught at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at the Académie des droits de l’homme et du droit humanitaire in Geneva. He has taken part in numerous conferences as an expert and published many specialized articles. In 2009, he was awarded the title of avocat émérite by the Quebec Bar.

I contest none of this description. I’m just wondering why yesterday, as Rights and Democracy threatened to come teetering back into the news, I began receiving emails on today’s testimony from Sebastien Théberge. Continue…

Testify, Mr. Harper

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:01 PM - 19 Comments

This is the cover of our Year In Pictures edition. I love it, and not only because mauve is my favourite colour. Like you, I had no idea that our fair Prime Minister moonlighted as a televangelist.

“I will smite those Liberal heathens, ladies and gentlemen. I will confine them to the pits of hell, which you and I both know is the island of Montreal, and rain a glorious Conservative majority down on this beautiful land. I cast ye out, damn pinkos! Testify!”

Running interference

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Steve Dykes/Getty Images

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff took one of his state’s most painful un-redressed grievances to the Department of Justice in Washington last month. Shurtleff wants the DOJ to launch an antitrust suit against the Bowl Championship Series—the partnership of 66 universities that controls the allocation of spaces in the NCAA Division I football’s season-ending bowl games.

His state’s University of Utah, a non-BCS school that will join the BCS by switching to a new conference next year, is seen as one of the main historic victims of the BCS’s cartel-like behaviour. Instead of holding a large, inclusive playoff tournament like those conducted for other NCAA-regulated sports—including the lower divisions of NCAA football itself—the BCS uses a combination of polls and computer ranking algorithms to choose two teams for a single early January game to decide a national champion.

Continue…

Being gay in Iran

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 2 Comments

Human Rights Watch has a report on sexual minorities in Iran.

Solitary confinement for Wikileaks source

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 33 Comments

For 23 out of 24 hours a day, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning sits imprisoned in isolation, barred from contact with the outside world. Manning is the soldier accused of leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks—a crime for which he has yet to be convicted. After a series of interviews with people directly familiar with Manning’s imprisonment in U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, Salon.com deems the conditions of his imprisonment cruel and inhumane, and likely to cause long-term psychological injuries. By some nations’ standards, writes author Glenn Greenwald, those conditions may even be seen as torture. For five months in Quantico, and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait, Manning has been kept in solitary confinement, and deprived of basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, such as a pillow and sheets. Barred even from exercising to pass the time, he is under constant surveillance to enforce the restrictions imposed on him. Solitary confinement, Greenwald writes, has been widely argued to be as psychologically distressing as physical torture, and for that reason many Western nations refuse to employ it except in the most extreme cases of prisoner instability or violence.

Salon.com

Last night in Liberal land

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 11 Comments

Demonstrating that no one should have to be anywhere near Ottawa between the months of September and April, Bob Rae slipped and fell last night. He updates his Facebook friends as follows.

Fell on icy Ottawa sidewalk, dislocated shoulder and cracked upper arm but great care and good spirits thanks to good samaritans, oc transpo, paramedics nurses and docs, who put up with my expletives

Meanwhile, Michael Ignatieff led the Liberal Christmas party in a rousing Christmas carol. He also sang.

U.S. files suit against BP

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 3 Comments

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a lawsuit against BP and eight other companies over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not yet clear how much money is at stake in the suit, but the potential fines and penalties could reach into the tens of billions of dollars. To go along with its civil suit, Attorney General Eric Holder also said the department was “making progress” on its criminal investigation of the spill. The suit hinges on the government’s allegations companies working on the Deepwater Horizon rig violated federal regulations, including the failure to take necessary precautions in securing the rig before the explosion and the failure to use the safest drilling technology.

New York Times

Keep a close eye out for the signs

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Nov. 12, 2005, remains the darkest day in the history of Windsor’s Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital. That’s when staff anesthesiologist Marc Daniel ambushed and stabbed his ex-girlfriend, nurse Lori Dupont, in a second-floor recovery room. Their colleagues worked desperately, but unsuccessfully, to save Dupont. Later, when the escaped Daniel was brought in with no vital signs after an overdose, they put aside personal feelings and almost saved him too.

In 2007, a coroner’s jury studying the incident made a recommendation to the Ontario Ministry of Labour: noting that literally dozens of Hôtel-Dieu employees had been aware of the danger Daniel presented, they requested “a review of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) to examine the feasibility of including domestic violence (from someone in the workplace).” Domestic violence was added to the act in June, under provincial Bill 168. But the words in parentheses mysteriously disappeared along the way, which has left Ontario employers with awkward new responsibilities and its workers with diminished personal privacy.

Continue…

Assange freed on bail

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:14 AM - 3 Comments

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a (sort of) free man. An appeals court judge in London upheld a lower court’s decision to grant Assange bail despite the protests of Swedish prosecutors who want the hacker extradited to face questioning over allegations of rape made by two former WikiLeaks volunteers. Assange is expected to be released within a day or two under strict conditions. Not only must he put up a £200,000 cash deposit, with a further £40,000 guaranteed in two sureties of £20,000, Assange must also stay at a country house in Suffolk, report to police daily, and wear an electronic tag.

The Guardian