Gadhafi blames al Qaeda for unrest

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 3 Comments

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi spoke out on Thursday for the second time since the start of a growing uprising against his government. In a speech to Libyans, Gadhafi blamed the violent unrest on al Qaeda and reiterated his claim that the protesters are young thugs under the influence of drugs. “No one above the age of 20 would actually take part in these events,” he said. He went on to say Libyans have “no reason to complain whatsoever,” and argued that his position as leader was purely symbolic, similar to the Queen of England. He spoke of implementing some reforms, such as raising salaries, and encouraged people to form participatory committees, although he was not specific about what role they might play in Libyan governance. The eccentric dictator would only acknowledge the deaths of four security officers, while Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini has estimated nearly 1,000 people have been killed thus far.

Al Jazeera English

Julian Assange to face trial in Sweden

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 107 Comments

Julian Assange, the controversial and enigmatic founder of WikiLeaks, will be extradited to Sweden to face trial for sexual assault and rape charges, a London court has ruled. District Judge Howard Riddle ruled that extradition would not violate Assange’s human rights and dismissed his claim that he would not receive a fair trial in Sweden. Assange face three allegations of sexual assault and one of rape. Assange’s lawyers maintain that if he is moved to Sweden to face trial, he could also be extradited to the U.S. to face terrorism charges for his role in the release of confidential U.S. State Department cables, and could possibly face the death penalty.

BBC News

Symphony orchestras go DIY

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Istock; Tso; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Independent musicians realized a long time ago that they’d have to record and market their own music. Now classical orchestras are doing the same thing. In the 20th century, orchestras used to sign contracts with major music labels, but a combination of higher costs and lower sales have made those contracts unavailable; Mark Volpe, managing director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, says that “occasionally we get a project with Sony, but the days of a 20-record deal are over.” That means the future of recording may be with self-financed labels like Boston’s BSO, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s TSO Live, and even conductor-based labels like “Phi,” for period instrument conductor Philippe Herreweghe. Recording is still about what Andrew Shaw, president of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, calls “having a calling card, having a chance for radio stations to play your disc.” What it’s not about anymore is making money.

It’s hard to believe, but classical recording used to be a way for artists to supplement their income. “In the old days, the Boston Symphony used to make quite a lot of money,” Volpe says. “Contracts covered all the costs and paid a royalty on top of it.” Today, Shaw explains that though orchestras have managed to cut the costs of recording—mostly by recording live instead of going into the studio—there’s no way to make a profit, and no one expects to: a TSO live recording costs $35,000, much less than a big-label recording, and yet, “if we earn back 10 per cent of that $35,000, we’ve got a smash hit.”
But it’s a cost that may be worth writing off, because recording is “promotional. It’s branding,” Volpe says. Shaw says recordings “keep our customers more engaged in our core product offering,” namely live concerts; like pop artists, orchestras use CDs and downloads to entice fans into buying tickets. And Shaw adds that recording can improve orchestras: it gives players “the experience of listening to themselves and thinking about the recording when they’re performing.” Musicians may need the extra pressure of knowing their playing will be preserved forever.

Continue…

The distemper of our times

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 54 Comments

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews goes to Newfoundland and says opposition MPs from the province have said nothing about building a prison there. Liberal MP Scott Simms produces a letter from 2008 to show that this is untrue. Mr. Toews says that letter doesn’t count because it was sent when Stephane Dion was leader of the Liberal party and when Stockwell Day was the public safety minister.

“These letters date back to a previous leader of the Liberal Party of Canada to a previous Public Safety Minister,” Toews said. “If Mr. Simms disagrees with his current Leader’s position on law and order matters he should raise it with his leader.”

This week: Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:57 AM - 1 Comment

Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage/Getty Images

Fatheads resent war on fat

The latest conservative smear campaign against the White House circles around Michelle Obama’s waistline. According to radio host Rush Limbaugh, the first lady could stand to lose a few, particularly since being seen munching on braised short ribs while on vacation in Colorado. Limbaugh, who is no Adonis, suggested Mrs. O is a hypocrite for not following her own dieting advice. “Our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue,” he said. Sarah Palin has ridiculed Obama’s anti-obesity efforts, too, arguing she has no business in America’s kitchens. Meanwhile, Andrew Breitbart’s website ran a cartoon depicting a double-chinned first lady hoarding hamburgers while mouthing pro-health slogans.

The simple life of an Amish schemer

Unlike fraudster Bernie Madoff, Monroe L. Beachy lived a simple life among his fellow Amish in the quaint village of Sugarcreek, Ohio. But the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges Monroe, 77, ran a Ponzi-style scheme for 24 years, costing his largely Amish clients millions. It began to unravel after Beachy declared bankruptcy last June. (A horse, buggy and harness are among his personal assets, the Washington Post reports.) By then, less than US$18 million of the original $33 million invested remained. Ironically, some of the loss resulted from the dot-com bust, a shock to his investors, who shun modern technology. Investors don’t want to pursue the claims in court, saying it’s a matter for the church. “Members of the Plain Community love and trust one another in all their relationships,” an Amish creditors group said.

Win McNamee/Getty Images; Paul Chiasson/CP

Where have we heard that before

Maclean’s took a thrashing last fall for calling Quebec “the most corrupt province” in Canada. While we don’t wish to reignite that debate, it’s refreshing to see the announcement last week of a permanent anti-corruption unit in the province. It will have a $30-million budget and 189 investigators and support staff, said Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil. He called it a better anti-corruption strategy than the public inquiry demanded by the opposition. “We want to have these criminals in jail, not on television,” he said. Stéphane Bergeron, public security critic for the Parti Québécois, conceded the unit “wouldn’t hurt” the corruption fight. It’s “also an admission that the problem is bigger than [the government] has been willing to admit,” he told reporters.

Paul Chiasson/CP

What would Jack Bauer say?

Kiefer Sutherland is considering a return to TV after his break from eight seasons playing CTU agent Jack Bauer on the hit series 24. The Hollywood Reporter says he’s in talks for the lead role in Touch, by Heroes creator Tim Kring. He’d play the dad of a mute, autistic son who predicts the future. Meantime, the past of his real-life grand­father Tommy Douglas resurfaced in declassified documents, the Canadian Press reports. In one curious item, the former RCMP security service claimed Douglas, then NDP leader, met with actress Jane Fonda in 1970 about efforts to stop the Vietnam War and to bring Vietnamese to Canada for a public inquiry.

And baby makes four

Little Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen has an impressive parentage. “Katherine” honours her father Rufus Wainright’s late mother, singer Kate McGarrigle, and “Wainright” his father, Loudon Wainwright III. The other “proud parents” are “Deputy Dad” Jorn Weisbrodt (Rufus’s romantic partner), and Lorca Cohen, daughter of Leonard Cohen. No pressure to deliver on a dazzling musical career, kid.

Party for one!

Kim Jong Il usually uses his birthday celebration to instill confidence in the North Korean people by giving them at least a day’s worth of rice and corn. This year, though, the Supreme Leader failed to carry out the ritual, since food shortages are crippling the country, with the UN predicting shortfalls of more than 500,000 tonnes of grain. Even senior officials felt the pinch, reportedly receiving knock-off celebratory Rolex watches and Gucci bags in lieu of real ones. But the day wasn’t all for naught: Jong Il went home with presents including a fleet of Mercedes Benz automobiles and a US$16-million yacht. And heir apparent Kim Jong Un was named vice-chairman of the defence commission on the eve of his proud papa’s birthday.

Tears of a clown

Coming from a world of squirting flowers and joy buzzers, Brazilian clown and newly elected congressman Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva would surely be adept at pushing buttons. But last week Silva, a.k.a. Tiririca, generated more groans than laughs when he blew his first congressional vote. He’d pledged to back the government’s austerity measure for a new minimum wage. But he pressed the wrong button on the computerized system and backed an opposition motion for a much higher wage. Tiririca had outpolled all candidates by admitting he knew nothing about politics. But his slogan, “It can’t get any worse,” apparently underestimated his abilities.

High art with a very low brow

Fallen women tend to figure in opera—think of Violetta in La Traviata. But most divas haven’t fallen this far. The Royal Opera House in London dressed itself in sequins and hot pink this week for the premiere of Anna Nicole, an opera about Anna Nicole Smith. Richard Thomas’s libretto—called “caustically witty”—follows the life of the late Playboy model who married an 89-year-old billionaire, then died of a drug overdose. Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage said people will be “surprised how seriously we’ve taken the subject,” and soprano Eva-Marie Westbroek was hailed as sensational. Not all critics were moved: the Financial Times said the opera “belongs in the same genre as Jerry Springer, strung along a clothesline of lewd ditties and frothy choruses.” But the masses gobbled it up: all six performances sold out.

Ye can’t fight city hall, matey

Rodney McGrath calls his backyard—with its homemade two-storey pirate ship and “Mohawk Mountain,” a sculpture of tires and concrete—an “enchanted kingdom.” But what city inspectors and many of his neighbours on Midwood Avenue see is an unsightly safety hazard. Last week, after a two-year fight, councillors issued a demolition order for both ship and mountain. City engineers say the structures are unstable and aren’t built to code. Pirates, of course, aren’t big on rules and codes. “It’s beautiful,” McGrath says of his land-locked ship. “When the sun comes up in the morning it… reflects on the whole structure,” he told the CBC. “It comes alive.”

The new Wonder Woman

It wasn’t enough to possess superpowers, fight crime and look impossibly good in satin granny underpants; in a TV remake starring Adrianne Palicki of Friday Night Lights, she also has a power career and work-life balance issues. The new show departs from the old, but apparently Lynda Carter approves.

Home, sweet KABOOM!

Steve Jobs ended a decades-long battle to tear down his own house. In 1984, the Apple CEO purchased a Spanish-style mansion in Woodside, near San Francisco, in the hopes of demolishing it and building a new residence. But Jackling House was the 1920s dream abode of copper industrialist Cowan Jackling, and Jobs faced legal challenges and cries for preservation of the manse. When he finally obtained a demolition permit this week, Jobs’s demo team destroyed the house in a single day, prompting Wired magazine to note the move was consistent with Jobs’ career: “He doesn’t have any doubts about deleting the past to create the future.”

Unlikely queen of queens

At age 15, Phiona Mutesi may be Uganda’s best female chess player. She’s certainly the unlikeliest, living in a Kampala slum, and just learning to read. She was attracted to the game at age nine, after her brother learned it from Robert Katende of the U.S. charity Sports Outreach Institute. Soon she was beating Katende. By 2009 she’d won regional tournaments. Last fall she travelled to Siberia for the Chess Olympiad, where she was beaten by Dina Kagramanov, the Canadian champ, who gave her advice and books on advanced chess. Mutesi continues to improve. “In chess, it doesn’t matter where you come from,” she said, “only where you put the pieces.”

AFP/Getty Images

Another day for the Jackal

The French aren’t finished with Carlos the Jackal, one of the world’s most hunted terrorists pre-Osama Bin Laden. The 61-year-old Venezuelan—real name is Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez—goes on trial in Paris in November for a series of bomb attacks that killed 11 people in France from 1982 to 1983. He’s already serving a life sentence for a run of deadly crimes, including an attack and hostage taking at the Vienna headquarters of OPEC in 1975.

It’s all in the mail

A forensic scientist and a student from Simon Fraser University may offer the best hope of solving one of aviation’s great mysteries. Amelia Earhart vanished in 1937 while circumnavigating the world. Donya Yang hopes to collect DNA from the envelope glue of four letters written by Earhart to see if it matches a bone found on the South Pacific island of Nikumaroro. The letters came from a collection held by student Justin Long’s grandfather, Elgen Long, an Earhart scholar. The letters are personal: “One was written by Amelia on airline letterhead while waiting for a flight—so we can be fairly certain that she is the one who sealed the envelopes,” says Long.

Your tax dollars at work

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:57 AM - 55 Comments

The Conservatives embark on a cross-country parade of self promotion.

More than 70 Conservative MPs, ministers, and senators will fan out across the country Thursday to push the virtues of their so-called Economic Action Plan. It’s all part of an unprecedented, highly co-ordinated public relations campaign organized by officials in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government who believe that Canadians don’t give a whit about the latest political scandal in Ottawa but that they do care about job growth and the economy.

It just didn't add up

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:31 AM - 2 Comments

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

A former British MP is the fourth politician in less than three months to be convicted for claiming bogus expenses in a scandal that’s trying Britons’ patience with their parliamentarians. Jim Devine, 57, was found guilty of two counts of false accounting. A London court ruled on Feb. 10 that he’d forged receipts for over $13,000 in printing and cleaning costs he’d never incurred.

In an interview with Channel 4 earlier this month, Devine denied any wrongdoing. He said he’d simply been “moving money from communications to the staffing budget”—a move that, he claimed at his trial, another MP had told him, with a “nod and a wink,” was acceptable. Devine also tried to deflect blame by accusing his former office manager of the duplicity—the same woman to whom a tribunal awarded $55,000 last October after deciding he had harassed her out of a job. Despite Devine’s efforts, prosecutor Peter Wright was able to show he had committed “fraud on the public purse.” He’s now facing up to seven years in prison. Former MPs Eric Illsley and David Chaytor are serving jail time for similar convictions, while lawmaker John Taylor is awaiting sentencing.

Score one for the stars

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:26 AM - 3 Comments

Last week, the high court in Mumbai ruled that astrology is a science. That decision came in a case involving a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking action against astrologers. The PIL, filed by Janhit Manch, a judicial NGO, questioned the validity of predictions by “swamiji, tantrik and mantrik who in the garb of their spiritual robe, claim to cure acute ailments by mantra or by so-called precious stones,” and was designed to “check and curb the widespread superstitions prevailing among the masses.” Included in the PIL’s evidence were astrologers’ wrong predictions for Indian prime ministers, including Indira Gandhi and Charan Singh.

But in dismissing the suit, the judges took on record an affidavit submitted by India’s ruling Union government that said astrology does not fall under the purview of the 1954 Drugs and Magical Remedies (Objectional Advertisements) Act, which would ban any articles, ads, and practices related to the subject. “Astrology is a trusted science and is being practised for over 4,000 years,” says the affidavit filed by the deputy drug contoller in India, reported the Times of India. In fact, the judges recalled a 2004 court directive to consider adding astrology to university syllabi as a subject.

Showdown on the high seas

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 9:17 AM - 0 Comments

Christian Charisius/Reuters

It wasn’t so long ago that owning a luxury yacht with just one helipad was status symbol enough. These days, the truly decadent insist on having two. Over the past 20 years or so, Germany has carved out a niche for itself as the global capital of the luxury yacht-building industry, according to a report in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel. And even after the recent economic downturn, the luxury yacht-building business is cruising along.

Shipbuilders Lürssen and Blohm & Voss have made a name for themselves by catering to their clients’ every demand, from on-board recording studios to showers that spray both water and champagne. In December, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s 536-foot yacht, Eclipse, set sail from Hamburg, where Blohm & Voss is based. Its building costs were pegged at $1.2 billion. The Eclipse is the world’s largest private yacht, but not for long: Lürssen is now working on a 590-foot yacht. “The desire to own the largest yacht will always be a competition among the super-rich,” says designer Joachim Kinder.

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of February 21st, 2011)
Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

In conversation: David Furnish

By Elio Iannacci - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 4:35 AM - 9 Comments

Michael Tran/Film Magic/Getty Images

Producer David Furnish and Elton John became parents of a new baby on Christmas Day. Furnish’s latest movie is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet featuring garden gnomes.

Q: Your producing portfolio is quite diverse. In 1999 you produced Women Talking Dirty, in 2005 you produced the Broadway version of Billy Elliot and, most recently, you produced your first animated feature Gnomeo & Juliet. What common thread runs through all your projects?

A: I hope a thread that promotes inclusiveness. When Elton and I work on things, we want to invest our time, creativity and energy in things that hopefully bring the world closer together, not further apart. If you look at Gnomeo & Juliet, the movie’s message essentially says it doesn’t matter if you’re a “red” or a “blue,” at the end of the day, parents should love their children and want what’s best for them. Elton and I try not to be judgmental people. We are not advocates in the placard-carrying way, we just try to live our life by example.

Q: Do you think Gnomeo & Juliet‘s anti-war message is something children should learn about at an early age?

A: I do. We live in a confused world at the moment. It’s a world that seems to be less about tolerance and less about togetherness. People seem to be more and more divided. There is such [debate] over civil rights for all couples and [laws surrounding] people just wanting to have marriage or some form of civil union to ratify their relationship. Many seem to be tarring a lot of Muslims with the same brush. What’s happening in terms of terrorism has been such a tiny sect of extreme people within a religion. I think people get fearful of things they don’t know or understand. Out of ignorance and fear comes judgment and division.

Continue…

Mr. Chartwell

By Dafna Izenberg - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:41 AM - 0 Comments

Perhaps it is because depression makes a person feel so impenetrable that the illness has inspired so many metaphors. Sylvia Plath described it as a bell jar; William Styron called it a howling tempest. Winston Churchill is credited with depression’s most familiar characterization: the black dog. In her first novel, Hunt brings this beast to life—a walking, talking canine that stands six foot seven on his hind legs, resembles a “strikingly hideous” Labrador, and reeks of menace.

A young parliamentary secretary named Esther is strangely drawn to “Black Pat,” as the animal calls himself. She meets him one morning at her doorstep, come to see about a room she is renting out. Esther is afraid of the dog, but as she reflects on her single life, the sad film of herself “enduring the dregs of the day,” eating a “talentless meal” and washing up in socked feet, she agrees to let Black Pat move in. Somehow, the notion of a flatmate who will torture her makes Esther feel less lonely.

Hunt’s project is bold—Winston Churchill’s retirement, magical realism and the essence of depression all in a debut novel—and her prose is, at times, affected. But there is a gem of sorts in this story, and it lies in the author’s determination to understand how misery messes with a healthy mind. When Churchill cryptically warns her (the two happen to meet, of course) not to “consent to the descent,” Esther hedges—”I feel that I’m the instigator,” she confesses, which is exactly how depression loops back on itself, making the sufferer blame herself for suffering. When Black Pat tells Esther that surrendering to him is the “easiest thing in the world,” the point is not that depression is an indulgence, but that it is so very tough to beat.

Churchill, at age 89, with a world war and the deaths of two of his children behind him, knows this well. “Your must hurl yourself into opposition,” he beseeches Esther. “The battle is not with fighting to accept, but with accepting to fight.”

Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, And The Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:41 AM - 0 Comments

Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum is one odd place, home to, among other things, the conjoined liver from the famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, and president Grover Cleveland’s jaw tumour. But its greatest oddity might be the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection. Pioneering laryngologist Jackson (1865-1958) virtually invented the science of endoscopy, using illuminated hollow tubes and tiny forceps ingeniously wielded to remove potentially fatal objects inhaled or ingested by patients. And Jackson put all the objects he and his trained assistants removed, more than 2,000 of them, into his collection.

Their range is huge (from a two-inch nail to a half-dollar coin to a miniature pair of binoculars to hundreds of pins). The names of the patients are beyond Dickensian, including Rat Crancer (a gumshoe, Cappello speculates) and the almost unbelievable Sister Mary Pica (Pica being the medical name for the psychiatric disorder of eating non-nutritive substances, such as clay or pencils). The precipitating reasons for the trouble, laconically noted by Jackson, are often as comic: “safety pin in mouth, suddenly stepped on dog’s foot.”

Taken together, the collection has also inspired one odd, and oddly haunting, book. For Cappello, a professor of creative writing at the University of Rhode Island, Jackson’s work is the starting point in a poetic investigation of the things we put in our mouths (and why). The laryngologist was resolutely scientific in his outlook—”I don’t read fiction,” he notes in his bestselling 1938 autobiography—and he never speculated about the “why” of his patients. “Carelessness,” was his universal verdict. Cappello refuses to believe that was the entire story, not when the medical literature includes such cases as New Yorker Mabel Wolf, whose stomach yielded an astonishing 1,203 pieces of hardware. We all want to taste the world as well as see and touch it, the author notes, and some of us are more willing than others to ignore Jackson’s guiding maxim: “A button box is a dangerous plaything.”

The Right Balance

By John Geddes - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 12:41 AM - 1 Comment

Ever since Stephen Harper merged his Canadian Alliance with Peter MacKay’s Progressive Conservatives in 2003, there’s been some confusion about the true identity of the reunited right. Are the new Conservatives, at heart, the continuation of Alliance-style western populism, or the rebirth of eastern Tory pragmatism? Sen. Hugh Segal bids to sort it all out with his brisk account of the Canadian conservative tradition, stretching unbroken, as he sees it, from New France to today’s Harper government. Segal invents a catchphrase for the Tory way—”nation and enterprise”—that’s expansive enough to include all comers. “It is a clear Canadian rebalancing,” he writes, “of the traditional relationship between free enterprise and private capital on one side versus public interest and social responsibility on the other.”

Segal sets out less to define an ideology than to link up Tory history, always contrasted against Liberalism. He emphasizes the 19th century’s “Durham-Elgin divide.” Liberals descend, he argues, from Lord Durham, the governor general who advocated centralized government and assimilation of French Canadians; Conservatives uphold the more enlightened view of Lord Elgin, the later GG who argued for accommodating the French. Segal draws a straight line from Elgin through Brian Mulroney’s Meech Lake accord to Harper’s recognition of the Québécois as a nation.

He’s strongest, though, on undervalued Conservative contributions, like R.B. Bennett’s Depression-era reforms and the policies of provincial Tory regimes during long stretches of Liberal rule in Ottawa. When it comes to those Liberals, Segal, a stalwart Tory, is weaker. Having dismissed them as congenitally insensitive toward French Canadians, for instance, he glosses over the triumphs in Quebec of Laurier and Trudeau. But this book isn’t about that rival tradition. On his own party and its deep roots, Segal offers a warm and timely family history.

No One Watches TV at 10, Except Those Who Do

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 9:16 PM - 6 Comments

Bill Carter of the New York Times recently had an article on something I’ve been interested in: 10 o’clock shows, once the crown jewel of major broadcast networks in both ratings and awards, are an endangered species. Sort of.

The article lays out the problems the networks are having with the hour, the ones that caused NBC to dump it in Jay Continue…

Gadhafi's son: then and now

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 5:04 PM - 9 Comments

Below is audio of a speech by Moammar Gadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Alqadhafi, delivered at the London School of Economics on May 25, 2010. (A video of the speech is available here.) Alqadhafi’s speech was titled Libya: Past, Present, and Future, and he was described as “Chairman of the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity and Development based in Tripoli, Libya.”

The Libyan leader’s son received a Ph.D. from the LSE in 2009 after writing a thesis on The Role of Civil Society in the Democratization of Global Governance Institutions: From ‘Soft Power’ to Collective Decision-Making?

Here, for the sake of contrast, is the younger Gadhafi’s televised response to the ongoing protests, in which he threatened opponents of his father’s regime with “civil war”:

Don't seniors deserve better?

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 4:59 PM - 51 Comments

Dr. Mark Nowaczynski

On March 1, Maclean’s is hosting “Health Care in Canada: Time to Rebuild Medicare,” a town hall discussion at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto. The event, in conjunction with the Canadian Medical Association, will be broadcast by CPAC. The conversation on health care reform continues in the coming months in Maclean’s and at town halls in Edmonton, Vancouver and Ottawa.

He was a frail old man living in Vancouver. Call him Mr. B. One night he developed excruciating back pain, and his doctor was summoned. Mr. B was a lucky man in that his doctor was John Sloan, a general practitioner whose practice consisted of treating the frail elderly in their homes. Sloan’s diagnosis was a compression fracture of the vertebrae due to osteoporosis. He prescribed pain medication, and recommended keeping him at home. “It hurts like hell for six weeks,” Sloan said, “and then it gets better.”

His family was skeptical. Aren’t hospitals where you go when you’re sick? But Sloan was a trusted doctor and diligent with his  follow-up visits. One day, Mr. B had a setback, and the hired caregiver dialled 911. Three days later, Sloan received hospital reports, the first he knew his patient was admitted. Not good, he thought. He tried to convince the family to continue treatment at home, but they were awed by the medical resources deployed in aid of Mr. B. “He saw a psychiatrist. He saw a heart specialist. He saw a respiratory specialist. He saw an orthopaedic surgeon,” says Sloan. “The inevitable happened. He lost strength. He became confused.” He was put on antibiotics. He developed a C. difficile infection. Mr. B died in hospital.

Continue…

The enduring riddle of national security

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 4:48 PM - 21 Comments

Carl Meyer questions the latest claim of classified information.

… the department has continued to hide the document from public view, saying in an email that “an Air Force project’s Statement of Operational Requirements is an internal Department of National Defence document.” ”SORs are classified documents” that are “not disclosed publicly,” added spokesperson Evan Koronewski.

However, those claims don’t appear to hold water as the government’s own publicly accessible website currently hosts at least four of these types of documents, three of which explicitly state that they are unclassified. One such document even concerns another recent Air Force equipment purchase.

Aaron Wherry on why the House of Commons is a sham

By Claire Ward - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 4:39 PM - 8 Comments

Shot and produced by Claire Ward
Edited by Tom Henheffer

Read Aaron’s article ‘The House of Commons is a sham’ in the February 28 issue of Maclean’s

Who does James Franco think he is?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 4:22 PM - 2 Comments

Yu Tsai/CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGES

Will James Franco be a good Academy Awards host? Will he even have time to read the teleprompter? The actor, who is co-hosting the Oscars with Anne Hathaway on Feb. 27, is the first person since the ’70s to host while being nominated (he has a Best Actor nod for getting his arm cut off in 127 Hours). But Franco may be best known not for his acting (even as the sidekick in the Spider-Man movies) but as the guy who has an infinite number of projects going. While preparing to host, he’s continued his role on General Hospital as a character named “Franco,” and signed on for a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’s Sweet Bird of Youth. He’s also improving his mind by taking courses at several different colleges, telling Jon Stewart that after he was nominated for the Oscar, he went to his poetry class at Yale.

All these projects have made him a ripe subject for parody. Saturday Night Live did a sketch portraying Franco as having gone off the deep end from all this work. Franco himself may enjoy having us think the same thing. He jokingly said that at the Oscars, he’ll be “basically depending on” Hathaway to do most of the work. Jill Farren Phelps, executive producer of General Hospital, told Maclean’s that when Franco asked to be on the show, he made only two demands: “He would like to play an artist, and he would like for him to be crazy.”

Continue…

Week in Pictures: February 21st – 27th 2010

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 3:54 PM - 0 Comments

First, Joe Fresh takes Manhattan

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 4 Comments

The overwhelmingly successful “cheap chic” clothing line Joe Fresh will open its first American store in Manhattan this fall. The brand, conceived by Club Monaco founder Joe Mimran, has been the darling of the Canadian fashion media since it launched in 2006. It is currently sold only in Loblaw’s stores, but three stand-alone locations in the Toronto area are being built as well as another in Rocky View, Alta. Allan Leighton, Loblaw’s president, told a CIBC World Markets conference today that the New York store “will be very much a pilot project.”

Financial Post

Italy estimates more than 1,000 dead in Libya

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 2:53 PM - 2 Comments

Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters Wednesday that credible reports he’s seen suggest more than 1,000 Libyans have already been killed in the government’s crackdown on protesters. There are also reports that protesters have gained control of the eastern cities of Bayda and Benghazi, he said. Other reports suggest the death toll is at least 300.

New York Times

Greece crippled by general strike

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 2:52 PM - 22 Comments

More than 30,000 angry Greeks demonstrated today near the country’s parliament to object to continuing austerity measures. Schools, public transportation, hospitals and airports were either shut down entirely or operating on reduced service as part of a general strike. It’s the first major strike in Greece since the New Year. Greece secured a $150-billion bailout from the EU and the IMF last May when its public debt rendered it nearly insolvent in return for cutting budgets. That has hurt many Greek workers. “We are facing long-term austerity, with high unemployment and destabilizing our social structure,” Stathis Anestis, the deputy leader of Greece’s big GSEE union, told Associated Press. At least one policeman was lit on fire by a Molotov cocktail hurled by a protester. Police used tear gas to control the crowds.

The Telegraph