Why the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia are just the beginning

By Michael Petrou - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 9:01 AM - 11 Comments

AP; Khaled Abdullah/REUTERS

An old Syrian joke tells the story of a man who gets in a traffic accident involving his own beat-up car and an immense and shining limousine. The poor man leaps from his vehicle and begins hurling obscene and colourful abuse at the limousine’s driver and its unseen occupant. After several minutes of this, the limousine’s back window slides open a crack and a voice speaks from the darkness inside: “Do you know who I am?”

When the man says he does not, the occupant pushes a card through the window identifying himself as Hafez al-Assad, the late dictator of Syria, who has since been replaced by his son, Bashar.

The man glances at the card for a moment and then replies: “Do you know who I am?”

Puzzled, the dictator admits he does not. “Thank God,” says the man, and flees into the surrounding crowds as fast as he can.

The joke works in societies where citizens are crippled by fear of those who rule them. Egypt, until days ago, was like that. So was most of the Middle East. But this, with the overthrow of two dictators in less than a month, is changing. Fear is ebbing away, and its absence will transform the region.

The old order of authoritarian strongmen suppressing a population that is resentful but too afraid to revolt is over. Some dictators will fall. Others will redouble their repression. And some will scramble to enact enough reforms to placate newly emboldened citizens, likely diluting their power base and weakening their hold on power in the process. The region will not look the same in five years. Egypt and Tunisia are just the beginning.

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Where does Egypt go from here?

By Ruth Sherlock in Cairo - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

Tahrir Square, the stronghold for Cairo’s anti-government protesters, erupted into heady euphoria last Saturday as the 30-second television address brought the news demonstrators had waited years to hear: president Hosni Mubarak had resigned. “My country, I love you, my country!” whispered a man stooped and frail with age, his eyes moist with tears as he stood amid the celebrations. Behind him, two toddlers rested on the shoulders of their fathers, laughing and forming the “V” for victory with their pudgy fingers.

Thoughts of the future were lost to the joy of the moment. “Just now, just this second, we have our freedom,” said Tahril Isarhow, 28. “It was a dream, now it is real. This is the moment to start again, it is real.” He repeated it over and over again, as if unable to believe his own words. “I can’t believe what is happening,” said Amr Salah, a human rights activist who risked his life to help organize the uprising. “It is like I am watching a movie. We are celebrating, singing and dancing in the street—we will stay in Tahrir Square all night, but this time it is for pleasure.”

The following morning, hundreds wandered the square, grubby from 18 nights of sleeping on the sidewalks, exhausted but smiling. Troops of “revolution popcorn” stands, vendors of drinks, flags, top hats emblazoned with Egypt’s colours, poets and musicians, arrived. The area that so recently had been a scene of sniper fire, petrol bombs and violent clashes was transformed into a carnival. Families came, the children’s cheeks painted the Egyptian red, white and black. Youths bought celebration blow horns, fashioned from straws and conical cartons. In a corner of the square, on the walls of a battered KFC fast-food shop, attempts to immortalize the revolution had already begun. Artist Omar Fathi, 25, nicknamed “Picasso,” moved his brush to complete the tip of a Giza pyramid. “This side represents great Egypt,” he says. Mubarak, his face contorted, is shown running away in the direction of a road sign marked “hell.” “If we did something like this in the past, we would be in jail,” said Mohammed Gabri, 23, who organized the “Artist Revolution,” an offshoot of the protests.

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The House of Commons is a sham

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 5:12 AM - 145 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

In the early evening hours of an otherwise unremarkable Thursday in December, as a crowd gathered on Parliament Hill for the official opening of the annual Christmas light show, Jim Maloway was lecturing a nearly empty House of Commons on the history of suicide as a technique of military assault. “We had Dutch soldiers fighting for control of Taiwan in 1661, who used gunpowder to blow themselves and their opponents up rather than being taken prisoner,” he explained.

Maloway, a New Democrat backbencher, is either the last man truly dedicated to Parliament or the greatest symbol of its current neglect. In 2010, he spoke more than three times as many words in the House—309,647 in total—as any other member of Parliament, nine times more than the Prime Minister. In the month of December alone, Maloway contributed to debates on vehicle imports from Mexico, autism, white-collar crime, free trade with the European Union, RCMP reform, the parole system, Canada Post, human rights, a proposed national Holocaust monument, railway safety, the prosecution and registration of sex offenders, immigration reform, the military justice system, the census, oil tanker traffic off the coast of British Columbia and prison farms. All the same, you’ve probably never heard of him.

On that Thursday night in December, the House was debating a Senate bill that sought to add suicide bombing to the Criminal Code. A small cluster of four Conservative MPs, chatting with each other in the southwest corner of the room, waited impatiently for Maloway to finish. Irwin Cotler, the Liberal MP, sat listening on the opposition side. The teenage pages assigned to deliver notes and fetch glasses of water for MPs had already begun to clean up. In addition to the 300 or so empty seats around Maloway, the galleries above were empty as well, save for a few police officers.

After he had finished, a series of perfunctory oral votes confirmed that the bill had the unanimous support of the House. And thus did Canada apparently become the first country in the world to explicitly outlaw suicide bombing as a crime unto itself. Save for a short item on the National Post‘s website a week later, not a single major newspaper would carry word of this apparent landmark in international law.

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Free trade with Europe? Never mind

By Paul Wells - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 10:42 PM - 47 Comments

How’s the big trade deal with Europe coming along? Don’t ask.

Study: Canada-EU Trade deal proposals could add $2.8 billion to drug costs

Environmentalists say Canada-EU Trade Pact bad for Climate Change

Ont., Que. concerns holding up EU trade talks, roundtable says

EU nations reluctant to liberalize trade in services

Estimated $12 billion windfall in EU deal dismissed as ‘sales pitch’

Charest defends setting conditions in EU talks

To be sure, much of this choppy weather is coming from the leftish labour-union and economic-nationalist types who announced 10 months ago they were mobilizing to stop the Canada-EU deal. They have been as good as their word. But what’s more striking is that, three months after the negotiations were originally scheduled to be completed, the trade talks drag on — and Canada-EU trade liberalization has no prominent champion. Continue…

The Commons: Ms. Oda has something to say

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 6:20 PM - 55 Comments

The Scene. On the third day, she did stand. Bev Oda did rise up on her own two feet. She did speak publicly in response to a question posed by a Member of Parliament on the opposition side of the House. She did fulfill, in this regard, her responsibility as a minister of the crown in this democracy of ours.

Alas, it was nothing to do with the decision to reject a funding request from a group named KAIROS. It was nothing to do with how that decision was explained. Nothing to do with how a relevant document came to be so sloppily edited. Nothing to do with how Ms. Oda had explained that editing. Indeed, barring a sudden turn tomorrow, it seems Ms. Oda will escape this week without having to answer any of the questions that arose out of her statement to the House on Monday afternoon.

The government swears she has been responsible in this regard, but they won’t let her take responsibility. The government applauds her abilities, but won’t let her stand. The government expounds on her courage, but they won’t let her speak.

“I’ve been very clear to my ministers that they are responsible for the decisions they make,” the Prime Minister apparently said today.

In fairness, he did not say specifically “when” or “how” his ministers are so responsible. And we are clearly now at a point where only by asking with the correct combination of passwords can we expect to get at the truth. Continue…

Meet Michael Scarn

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 5:41 PM - 1 Comment

Tonight’s episode of The Office, as part of the effort to wrap up everything about Michael Scott and still have time to revamp the series before the season is out, pays off the long-term running gag about Michael’s movie, “Threat Level Midnight.” It also provides an excuse to bring back cast members from previous seasons, who — judging from the fake trailer — will appear in the movie. The explanation being that since Michael has been working on the film for most of the series, departed characters like Karen, Roy and Jan can appear in it. On a slightly meta level it could also be read as a commentary on the question people have been asking ever since the U.S. version started: how can someone be shooting a documentary on these characters that still hasn’t been released after seven years? Well, sometimes it just takes a long time to make a film.

If the embed below doesn’t work it can be found at this link.

[vodpod id=Video.5592845&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Where they take the cake

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 4:56 PM - 1 Comment

Photographs by Andrew Tolson

Last December, business partners Alexandria Pellegrino and Jessica Smith flew from Toronto to Los Angeles with carry-on that was as fragile as it was weird: a sugar-modeling-paste sculpture depicting Nicole Richie, the daughter of singer Lionel, and her musician husband-to-be Joel Madden, as Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI—before the royals’ decadent reign came to its bloody, tumultuous end. Richie was decked out in a white wig, black mask and ruffly gown and splayed on a chaise longue; behind her, Madden, in a white wig and mask, presented his bride with arms outstretched; through his jacket, the rocker’s famously inked arms could be seen, each tattoo replicated precisely.

The painstakingly detailed tableau could be seen as a biting social commentary on over-the-top celebrity culture, but wasn’t: it was the topper of the extravagant cake served at Richie’s and Madden’s Dec. 11 “Versailles”-themed nuptials.

Smith and Pellegrino, the pastry chef and designer, respectively, at Toronto’s Cake Opera Co., had transported surreal confectionary before. In February 2010, U.S. customs officials were bemused by a suitcase filled with sugar roses for a cake they’d be making for a Tim Burton-meets-Alice-in-Wonderland-themed sweet 16 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

That party they were invited to. The closest they got to the high-security celebration at Lionel Richie’s Beverly Hills estate was the back entrance, where they delivered their five-tiered cake edged in edible 24-karat gold, created at a West Hollywood bakery taken over for the occasion.

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Barrick Gold and Visa hired former advisers to Harper gov’t

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 4:38 PM - 8 Comments

Corporations like Barrick Gold and Visa Canada both hired former government staffers to act as lobbyists last year, despite a 2006 law that aimed to end such political influence. The New Democrats say that’s because a loophole exists that allows politicians and ministerial staff to advise corporations so long as they spend less than 20 per cent of their time doing so. For example, Alanna Heath, a former adviser to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, was hired to advise Barrick Gold last year but wasn’t required to register as a lobbyist because of the loophole. (Heath was paid to help stop a bill that would have required the government to probe alleged human-rights abuses by Canadian mining companies in other countries.) NDP MP Pat Martin tells Bloomberg News the hirings violate “the spirit of the law.”

Bloomberg

Reporter Cathy Gulli on Sidney Crosby's concussion

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:57 PM - 2 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

Read about Sidney Crosby’s concussion in ‘Hits to the head: Scientists explain Sidney Crosby’s concussion’, in the February 28 issue of Maclean’s

RELATED:
Hit to the head: a similar one to Sidney Crosby’s (reconstruction) (VIDEO)
Reporter Cathy Gulli explains the seriousness of concussions in sports (VIDEO)
The damage done by concussions

Saguenay mayor won't ban prayer from council meeting

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:54 PM - 34 Comments

Saguenay Mayor Jean Tremblay says he has no intention of abiding by a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ruling ordering an end to the city council’s pre-meeting prayer and the removal of a crucifix and a two-foot-high statue of the Sacred Heart from its chambers. “I am the first mayor in the history of the world to be punished for reciting a prayer,” he told The Globe and Mail, adding he would challenge the decision in court. (Tremblay is asking for donations to pay for the appeal rather than using public funds.) Last Friday’s ruling came as a result of a resident’s complaint the prayer violated his freedom of conscience. He awarded him $30,000 in damages.

The Globe and Mail

Week in Pictures: February 14th – 20th 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:46 PM - 0 Comments

'We call on you to uphold the highest standards of discourse'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:43 PM - 23 Comments

Shortly after Question Period, Liberal John McKay rose to raise a question of privilege related to International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda. He concluded as follows.

Privilege as you well know exists for good reason. In this instance as all others it is to compel truthfulness – even when embarrassing – even when it doesn‟t suit the government‟s agenda. Privilege exists so that M.P.s can make decisions based on fact, not on fiction. Privilege exists as a core value of democracy because M.P.s and their constituents, the People of Canada, have every right to expect that public discourse in this Chamber is without artifice. You Mr. Speaker, are the guardian of that core value – the value of truthfulness between and among Members, Ministers, and the Prime Minister. Any ruling other than a prima facie case of breach of privilege in this case will inevitably lead to another even more egregious abuse. Mr. Speaker, I and my colleagues are calling upon you to put a stop to tampered documents, to blaming others, to casual regard for facts before a Committee of the House. We call on you to uphold the highest standards of discourse by Ministers in their communication to the House. Mr. Speaker, with the additional material before you, the case for contempt is even more compelling than it was before. I am prepared to move the motion of contempt upon your direction.

His full statement is here. He was followed by the NDP’s Paul Dewar and the Bloc’s Pierre Paquette.

ATM skimming, and a different kind of high

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:33 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Two Korean foreign exchange students were attacked at a bus stop in North Vancouver by three youths. One victim required seven stitches and 18 staples to close a head wound after being struck in the skull with a machete. Two 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old have been charged with aggravated assault.

Alberta: Police are searching for two men who committed armed robbery at a Calgary drugstore. The thieves were demanding OxyContin, though when told by the pharmacist the painkiller wasn’t stocked at that particular location, the men settled for erectile dysfunction drugs instead.

Manitoba: A Swan River man facing 47 counts of animal abuse was arrested after showing up at an auction where his family and friends were bidding on some of the horses he is alleged to have mistreated. The RCMP escorted the man from the auction and have charged him with breaching a court order. In December, 15 horses, 27 dogs and two donkeys were seized from his farm. Police allege that at the time of the seizure, some of the dogs had rotted flesh around their necks from chain collars, and that piles of animal feces reached one metre high.

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In Her Satin Tights, Fighting For Her Rights

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:18 PM - 17 Comments

So, Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) has been cast in NBC’s Wonder Woman pilot, putting us in an awkward position. Palicki is good casting: not only tall and attractive enough, but also someone who has proven that she can act, on a critically-beloved show yet. It’s hard not to root for such a project, whether you’re an FNL fan, a comics fan or a fan of Palicki in the costume. And then there’s the fact that the show itself is still, last we heard, working from a truly absurd script by David E. Kelley. How can anyone root for that, no matter how good the star is?

Now, there’s no guarantee that if the show makes it to air it’ll still be using that script, or even that producer. Kelley was also hired to write and produce the U.S. remake of Life On Mars and was fired before the show aired. How much this show changes before it airs (if it does) depends on what NBC’s new boss, Robert Greenblatt, wants from the project — which was turned down by everybody before he decided to pick it up at the last minute. Does he want Kelley’s idea of Wonder Woman? Or does Greenblatt just want a Wonder Woman show, because it’s one of the most venerable combinations of guy appeal with girl power? The answer to that question may determine how much the show gets retooled from Kelley’s script.

Wonder Woman is a tough property to adapt, anyway. Maybe she shouldn’t be — on paper she hardly seems more problematic for adaptation than Superman, who is even more ridiculously invincible and requires more complicated special effects — but she is. Joss Whedon’s attempt to do a Wonder Woman feature fell apart, and she’s been absent from the superhero movie revival of the last few years. Warner Brothers could never launch a Wonder Woman animated series to go with their Batman and Superman ones, though the idea was in the planning stages a couple of times. The Lynda Carter version is probably the most successful, and it only made it to air after a completely different pilot (starring Cathy Lee Crosby) was rejected by the network.

Why Wonder Woman is so hard to adapt successfully, I can’t quite say, but I think there’s something about her that doesn’t quite mesh well with the modern era, whatever “modern” happens to be. The best-liked version is the one from the first season of the Carter series, which simply dropped the idea of trying to modernize her and set the show in the time when she was created, the 1940s. Her innocence and occasional cluelessness somehow worked better in a period-piece context, and the need for her to maintain a secret identity — a secret identity non-threatening to men — became clearer. Once they retooled it for CBS and set it in the ’70s, the point of the character seemed lost.

Then you have the various attempts to make her relevant, which usually turn out horribly. My favourite example is how in the late ’60s, DC decided the way to make her appealing to a groovy, hip audience was to have her give up the super powers and the costume, dress in mod fashions, take on a magical Chinese mentor, and fight crime in go-go miniskirts or Emma Peel pantsuits. The decision to strip her of her powers just as women in real life were starting to become more empowered was a famously boneheaded move, the subject of a famous campaign by Gloria Steinem to bring back the powerful Wonder Woman who had inspired little girls. (Yes, the original Wonder Woman also got captured and tied up a lot, but so did the de-powered version.) The TV series’ decision to go back to the original time period may have been a way of throwing up hands, saying that there’s just no way to put this character into a contemporary setting. We’ll see what happens when/if this version finally hits the airwaves. The choice of costume, if nothing else, will be interesting, since there are several different versions to choose from and each choice says something different about the approach to the character — how contemporary she’s supposed to be, how much of a sex object she is, and so on.

Again, I don’t think she’s any more of a problem in this regard than Superman is, except for the costume issues. But writers, particularly writers of adaptations, do seem to have tremendous trouble with her. That’s how you get crazy stuff like the Kelley script.

Blonds only, please

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:14 PM - 0 Comments

Olialia/AP; Yuri Gripas/Reuters

What do you call a resort staffed exclusively by blonds on an island shaped like a pair of high heels? A killer business model, according to Olialia (pronounced ooh la la), a Lithuanian company with diverse interests. But in the Maldives, the chain of islands in the Indian Ocean where this “fantasy resort” is to be built, locals say it is just that—a fantasy.

Olialia’s blond ambition has already translated into a successful brand in Lithuania, where its fair-haired models are shills for everything from cola to computers. When news of its latest plan broke in the Maldives, a Muslim country, comments on a news website called the idea “racist,” “sexist,” even “illegal.” Maldivian law states that foreign developers must hire at least 50 per cent locals—a challenge considering the islands’ darker-haired inhabitants. Olialia’s solution? Wigs.

For now, the resort’s opening is planned for 2015. Olialia says it has secured funding, though Maldivian tourism officials say they haven’t had details. “We welcome any investment for discussions so long as it is backed by serious finance with a realistic business plan,” wrote one in an email to the Guardian, underlining “realistic.”

Not welcome in the EU

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 0 Comments

Sergei Grits/AFP/Getty Images

The European Union has news for Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko: you’re grounded. The long-time president and 156 of his close associates (including his two sons) are banned from travelling to EU countries as punishment for the imprisonment of political opponents who protested the Dec. 19 election. Lukashenko claims to have garnered 80 per cent of the vote that saw him win a fourth presidential term, but international monitors say the election was fraudulent.

The ban is the latest in a raft of sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime, dubbed “the last remaining true dictatorship in the heart of Europe” by former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice (the U.S. has also imposed new travel sanctions, in addition to upholding its existing ban on deals with Belarus’s state-controlled oil monopoly). The EU first imposed a travel ban on Lukashenko in 2006, but lifted it two years later in a bid to encourage reform. Siarhey Kastsian, head of the Belarusian parliament’s committee on international affairs, said the bans don’t mean much: “These visa bans are political barbarism from the Middle Ages,” he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “Will they affect Lukashenko? Not at all.”

The spring water murder

By Jane Switzer - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 0 Comments

A French woman is prison-bound after a poisonous battle between neighbours in the idyllic Quercy valley turned deadly over a pure source: a mountain spring splitting their properties. Hélène Issakhanian began her 12-year jail sentence last week for shooting her neighbour’s house guest at the height of the long-time feud. According to The Guardian, Issakhanian and her American husband, Robert, were attracted by the spring water river that flowed into a pond when they purchased their home in 1995. But when Thomas Nieste and his wife moved in next door in 2001, relations between the two couples quickly deteriorated, especially over the spring water that flowed between their properties.

Escalating physical aggression and death threats came to a head in August 2008 when Issakhanian knocked on the Niestes’ door after the water supply to her house was interrupted. After arguing with Johannes Van den Oudenhoven, a guest of the Niestes who had nothing to do with the feud, Issakhanian retrieved a pistol from her home and shot him in the head. After years of failed mediation, Didier Doriac, mayor of nearby Montcabrier, told reporters the crime was inevitable: “Everyone in the village knew it was going to come to this. There was nothing we could do.”

The formula for who should do the dishes

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:53 PM - 4 Comments

Photographs by Jessica Darmanin; Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt

What happens when you apply cold economic principles to heated marital problems? According to the authors of Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes, you get logical solutions that work for everything from resolving quarrels in the kitchen to a lack of activity in the bedroom. “Spousonomics doesn’t require you to keep an anger log, a courage journal, or a feelings calendar,” write the authors, Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, who have covered financial meltdowns and interviewed economic heavyweights like Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Spousonomics, they say, is about using time-tested theories like Adam Smith’s idea that businesses thrive when employees have specialized tasks, and then applying that to fight-prone areas of marriage such as housekeeping and tending to the kids. But how should a couple decide who is best suited to the tasks of laundry and vacuuming? For answers on that, the authors turned to British economist David Ricardo’s theory of “comparative advantage,” which, as the authors explain it, suggests “it’s not efficient for you to take on every single task you’re good at, only those tasks you’re relatively better at compared to other tasks.”

To show how it works at home, the authors present Eric and Nancy, “a case study in how a bad division of labour can harm an otherwise well-matched couple.” It used to be that Eric and Nancy split household chores strictly 50-50, and not according to who did which job best. If Eric cooked dinner one night, Nancy cooked the next night. The trouble was, “everything was a debate,” says Nancy. If Eric was chopping onions for the lamb tajine, for instance, he’d boil over at seeing Nancy sitting watching Law & Order. “Wait a minute,” he’d think, “why am I spending all this time on a fancy meal when all she ever makes is mac and cheese?”

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Sounds like a hot investment

By Michelle Magnan - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

David Becker/Getty Images;

In case you haven’t heard, headphones are hot right now. Skullcandy, the U.S. headphone maker with a posse of musician, athlete and DJ endorsers, has kick-started the process to go public. Rapper 50 Cent recently used Twitter to pump penny stocks for H&H Imports, a company in which he’s not only invested, but has partnered with to create his own line of headphones, called Sleek by 50 Cent. Can’t wait till 50′s headphones hit store shelves? Then consider throwing on a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones from Monster Cable, a company that’s created headphones bearing the names of rapper Dr. Dre, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and NBA star LeBron James. Big names, for sure. Big business? Time will tell.

Skullcandy’s prospectus, filed on Jan. 28, argues that the growing demand for portable media and music devices, like smartphones and Apple’s iPod, is driving a massive demand for accessories such as headphones. The document points to IDC Research, which estimates that, from 2010 through 2014, the number of smartphones available worldwide will grow at an annual rate of 24 per cent. Not everyone sees the connection being quite as clear. Or as guaranteed. “The market for consumer electronics is massive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the market for rapper-branded headphones is hot,” says Jack Plunkett, CEO of Houston-based Plunkett Research, Ltd. and author of the new book The Next Boom. “The question is: how long will revenues hold up until demand from fans has been filled?”

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Are you satisfied with the government's decision to stand by Bev Oda?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:28 PM - 61 Comments

Stephen Harper still great, Stephen Harper says

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 58 Comments

The Globe and Mail’s web coverage of the Prime Minister’s remarks this morning is a mesmerizing bit of toadying. It’s a can’t-miss teachable moment for future generations of reporters keen to learn the ancient trade secrets of how best to carry water for one’s party of choice.

Here it is in its entirety – read it and I’ll meet you at the bottom.

Headline: Bev Oda had ‘responsibility’ to overrule CIDA, PM says

Stephen Harper pushed back again Thursday, defending his beleaguered International Co-operation Minister over her decision to deny funding to a faith-based aid group.

The Prime Minister said he supports Bev Oda’s decision to Continue…

The meaning of is

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 23 Comments

From the Conservative dissent attached to the Foreign Affairs committee’s report.

When the Minister of International Cooperation was asked a direct question about who wrote the word “NOT” in the Kairos memo she refused to mislead this Committee.  The Minister did not know who in her office had actually written the word on the document, as accurately reflected in her answer, “I do not know.”

… It must and does follow that the Minister’s answer did not in any way mislead this Committee or the House of Commons.  In fact it is the Opposition that has attempted to mislead this Committee and the House both by mischaracterizing the Minister’s communication of her own decision in a way that suggests a breach of privilege.

Radio-Canada lies "all the time", says Kenney

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 12:59 PM - 40 Comments

In the wake of the scandal surrounding Bev Oda’s apparent doctoring of a government document denying Kairos CIDA funding, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has landed himself in hot water with a controversial comment about the French language CBC. When asked by a Canadian Press reporter whether it was acceptable for Bev Oda to have doctored a document and lied to Parliament, Kenney responded “Radio-Canada, they lie all the time. Which media are you with?” He later said he was being sarcastic. Nonetheless, the comment was raised at a Commons committee meeting where Heritage Minister James Moore was present. When asked about Kenney’s comment, Moore responded, “It hasn’t been my experience with the CBC.” Moore noted that the government has never cut funding and has upheld commitments to support the CBC.

Canadian Press

Military seizes control in Bahrain

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 12:49 PM - 8 Comments

After days of protests following the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrain’s military has carried out a definitive and brutal crackdown by banning protests and swarming the capital Manama’s Pearl Square on Thursday. Four people were killed, according to medical officials, who also reported that the wounded were streaming into hospitals with serious wounds. The Interior Ministry sent text messages to Bahrainis warning them to stay indoors, while the army deployed tanks and military checkpoints at key points throughout Manama. Unlike the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, which were unanimous calls from a people’s majority for the end of corrupt and authoritarian governments, the protests in Bahrain seem to be based on religious divisions in the tiny Gulf island nation. Anti-government protesters have demanded that the ruling Sunni monarchy surrender its control over top government posts and address the grievances of the Shia majority, who claim systematic discrimination and exclusion from the public service and military.

CBC