Why did they bury bin Laden at sea?

By Erica Alini - Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 42 Comments

Jason DeCrow/AP

On May 2, shortly after 1 a.m., Osama bin Laden’s body was washed and wrapped in cloth on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. A military officer read out prayers, his voice closely echoed by an Arabic translator. A few moments later, the bundle was eased into the north Arabian Sea. A rather dignified—albeit inglorious—end for the world’s most wanted man.

Judging from Pentagon briefings, the handling of bin Laden’s burial was as smooth an operation as the 40 minutes of action that led to his killing. The decision to dispose of the body at sea, experts say, came out of a concern that a gravesite might become a shrine to the terrorist who masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Besides, U.S. officials said, no country seemed eager to become the final resting place for bin Laden’s remains. Even his native Saudi Arabia is reported to have refused to accept what was left of him.

And though the decision to dispose of him at sea was dictated by pragmatism, according to the official narrative, the burial did not neglect cultural sensitivity. Though Muslims usually lay their dead to rest in the ground with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca, U.S. officials say that bin Laden’s body was washed and shrouded according to the Islamic rite, and the burial occurred less than 24 hours after death, as prescribed by tradition.

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The untold story of the 2011 election: Chapter 4

By Paul Wells - Saturday, May 7, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 25 Comments

Fred Chartrand/CP

Introduction: Politics turned over
How Harper got what he’s always wanted, Layton took centre stage, and Ignatieff and Duceppe were done in

Chapter 1: The first mistake
The seeds of Michael Ignatieff’s troubles were planted last fall, and by the Liberals themselves

Chapter 2: Not feeling the love
Harper was tightly controlled, Ignatieff loose and freewheeling. Layton? Just a guy most Canadians would rather have a beer with

Chapter 3: The velocity of indignation
The PM had problems: the auditor general kerfuffle, Bruce Carson, the folks kicked out of rallies. The Liberals railed, but the NDP stepped up.

Chapter 4: Turning up the heat
The leaders clashed predictably in the TV debates, but the election would soon turn unexpectedly on two key speeches: one by Ignatieff, one by Duceppe

Chapter 5: The orange wave rises
Years of quiet preparation in Quebec begin paying off for the NDP—Layton’s rivals wake up to a new reality

Chapter 6: The morning after, the years ahead
What do Harper and Layton have in common? An understanding of what works in Canadian politics in the Twitter age­—patience and determination.

To read the entire article now, pick up the latest issue of Maclean’s at your favourite newsstand.

*****

Chapter 4: Turning up the heat

The Government Congress Centre across from the Château Laurier used to be the old Ottawa train station. In the 1960s, government planners decided they had a better idea and moved the trains out to a secluded corner of southeastern Ottawa. As is often the case with government planners, this was not, in fact, a better idea. They made taking the train a pain and left one of the grandest buildings in the Parliament Hill precinct nearly derelict. Sometimes men in suits shuffle in for conferences. Once a year, reporters are locked up in the old building for a few hours with sandwiches and copies of the federal budget. And for two nights in April, Stephen Harper faced his tormentors for the nationally televised leaders’ debates.

“There was a sense coming out of the debates last time”—in 2008—“that it was a four-on-one ambush,” a Conservative strategist said later. “Harper was under attack from all sides, and our positioning in the last debates was too defensive and we didn’t look our best. We knew that we would still face that three-on-one or four-on-one dynamic this time.” In the end it was three. Green party Leader Elizabeth May wasn’t invited. “The goal was to try and recast or reframe it so that rather than looking like we were the ones under attack, there would be a pivot away from the others, into the camera, to use the opportunity to drive the ballot question with the viewers at home. Number one, don’t make a mistake. Number two, try and strategically minimize the others by making a more direct connection with the viewer at home.”

And indeed, Harper spent the debate’s first night physically pivoting away from whoever was accusing him of something and staring into the camera. Angry Harper would come out if he fought back at his opponents, so he basically didn’t engage. “That’s simply not true,” he said again and again, before telling the home audience a tale of modest, responsible government that had not very much to do with whatever the other guy had just shouted at him.

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"That's kind of the sentiment we're getting at"

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 8:48 PM - 308 Comments

When people in politics talk about what they do — when they boast about it, as they do almost compulsively — they really have no idea how loathsome they sound:

Halfway through the 2011 campaign, a Conservative war room operative sat down in an Ottawa pub to discuss the party’s entire strategy against Ignatieff.

“They say that we try to portray Ignatieff in our ads and so on as a weak and flailing professor,” the war room staffer said. “No, that’s how we portrayed Dion. Dion was weak, you know, Dion was ‘not a leader.’ We’ve never said Michael Ignatieff isn’t a leader. We’ve never called him weak. And we’ve never called him a flip-flopper. Even when he changes his mind, we don’t say he’s a flip-flopper. Michael Ignatieff, in our narrative, is a political opportunist who is calculating, who will do and say anything to get elected.

“He’s a schemer. When he says one thing and then he changes his mind the next week, it’s not because he’s indecisive and a flip-flopper. It’s because he’s an opportunist who will say different things to different people. I don’t think we’ve even used the phrase, even internally, ‘He’s a malicious human being.’ But that’s kind of the sentiment we’re getting at. With Dion, we were trying to portray him as weak. You can’t trust him to lead us out of the economic recovery because he’s a weak man. With Ignatieff, it’s ‘He’s a bad man,’ right? He’s someone you don’t want your daughter to marry, right?”

The “strategy” of the Conservative party in this election was to spend millions of dollars — your money and mine, most of it — to portray the leader of the Liberal party as not just an “opportunist” and a “schemer,” but a “malicious human being,” a “bad man”. This is the same man for whom the Prime Minister in his election night victory speech claimed to have only the highest regard.

I don’t want to weep too many tears for the Liberals. They did much the same to Conservative leaders in the past — recall the ridicule of Stockwell Day’s religious beliefs in 2000, the fear campaigns of ’04 and ’06, of which the late campaign’s evocation of Stephen Harper’s desire for “absolute power” was a pale echo. But I can’t recall anything on this scale, or this vicious.

There are things we can do, consistent with freedom of speech, to prevent this in future. We can take away the public funds that subsidize this garbage. And we can require that party leaders voice their own ads, so that they can not pretend to dissociate themselves from the messages their minions spew.

But ultimately it’s not going to change unless we change the culture of politics: the culture that encourages people to believe it is a fine and good thing to devote their talents to destroying other people’s reputations. As Frank Graves, the Ekos pollster Liberal lobbyist Brian Klunder [Graves was retweeting him] put it on Twitter,

I’m sick of frat house nature of war rooms – thinking it fun to try to ruin lives and careers. People need to grow up.

The detained documents

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 5:28 PM - 35 Comments

For 36 hours or so last month there was some interest in the review of documents related to the detention and transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. In short, the judges responsible for determining—after investigation by the MPs on the review committee—what could be publicly released decided nothing would be released while Parliament was dissolved. The Conservative side said it supported the release of documents and Michael Ignatieff called for something to be done to make that possible, but apparently nothing ever came of it.

On that note, I queried the Prime Minister’s Office yesterday. Those questions and a spokesman’s answers were as follows. Continue…

You and what mob?

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 4:57 PM - 7 Comments

Apathy is Boring’s Ilona Dougherty wrote this before election day, so now it seems prescient.

Why are young Canadians today casting ballots at approximately half the rate they did in the 1960s? The answer is surprisingly simple: because we aren’t asking them to vote. There is conclusive evidence showing that nothing is more effective at mobilizing voters than personal contact. Simply knocking on doors increases voter turnout between seven and 10 percentage points, and this is true among youth, as well. This type of on-the-ground, face-to-face mobilization played a decisive role in the victories of U.S. President Barack Obama in 2008 and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi in 2010 … Unfortunately, vote mobs aren’t mobilizing new voters either. Watch a vote mob video, and you’ll see hundreds of politically engaged students putting their activism on display. Meanwhile, thousands of youth are missing from the camera frame – the students who are busy studying in the library, or the young people who don’t attend a college or university. Those are the unengaged youth of my generation. They didn’t take part in vote mobs, and they’re not likely to turn out on May 2.

I know what you're saying. You're saying, "There just hasn't been enough about the election in Maclean's. Where can I get some more?"

By Paul Wells - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 4:19 PM - 21 Comments

I feel your pain, Canada. Fortunately we’re here to help. Maclean’s and CPAC had a lunch event in Ottawa on Thursday to peer into the coffee grounds left behind by Campaign 2011. And CPAC, being the public-minded people they are, have archived the whole event on their website. It’s right here. Onstage at the Château Laurier were, in the first segment, Andrew Coyne, John Geddes, Aaron Wherry and me. After a break, Andrew and I chatted with IRPP president Graham Fox; Le Devoir reporter Hélène Buzzetti; and Elly Alboim, who’s had key roles at the CBC and in Paul Martin’s kitchen cabinet. Enjoy.

How do you feel about the U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden?

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 3:54 PM - 40 Comments

Bartender MP in NDP bootcamp

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 3:21 PM - 40 Comments

Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the newly elected NDP candidate who has faced a series of minor scandals, including spending some of her campaign on vacation in Vegas and allegedly fudging some signatures on her candidacy papers, is reportedly in a sort of PR boot camp. NDP officials have said Brosseau, along with other greenhorn candidates, is receiving a crash course on how to be an MP as well as improving her French—an important skill for Brosseau, as her new riding is 95 per cent francophone.

Montreal Gazette

The Twitter effect

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 3:18 PM - 21 Comments

This speech from Hugh Winsor is a few months old, but likely remains relevant, perhaps even as an inadvertent commentary on the election just passed.

University of Guelph historian William Christian once wrote that “Parliamentary democracy is what you can get away with.” In many ways, the media establish the limits of  what the government of the day can ‘get away with” and so there is a direct correlation between the vigour, intellect,  judgement, relevance and financial stability of the media and the quality of our civil society.

My concerns about media’s inadequate scrutiny  of the current government and the current Parliament are inevitably tangled up with  the massive structural changes that are coursing through the media industry … Those structural changes are not my principal thrust, however. Rather, it is  changes in attitude and philosophy that concern me more, regardless of the format. One of the biggest impacts of the new platforms is the massive ramping up of the pressure for immediacy … The emphasis on  immediacy means that coverage is essentially episodic, dealing with the here and now, with little context and almost zero followup.

Morgan Spurlock on making 'POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold'

By Claire Ward - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 3:12 PM - 0 Comments

Shot and edited by Tom Henheffer
Produced by Claire Ward

What the Liberals have in common with the Gap

By Andrew Potter - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 3:06 PM - 34 Comments

Yesterday, struggling clothing retailer the Gap fired its star designer, Patrick Robinson.  In his failure, we might find some sense of just how big a struggle lies ahead for the Liberal Party of Canada.

First, let’s look at the Gap, whose problems don’t seem to have much to do with the talent it is throwing at the problem. Robinson is a huge talent, one of the most respected in the business. But here’s how the Times outlines his challenge:

Beyond the buzz, Mr. Robinson had a difficult job: trying to figure out what Gap should sell. After pretty much defining American basics in the ’80s and ’90s , the chain had floundered. Competitors like Abercrombie & Fitch and J. Crew, and fast-fashion brands like H&M and Zara, were offering sharper takes on trends.

This has been the Gap’s problem for ages: It is caught between higher-end competitors on one side, and fast-fashion or mass-market brands on the other. Nothing more perfectly captures the Gap’s problems than its standing in its own company, where it is being squeezed between the more successful Banana Republic and Old Navy.

As James Twitchell argued in his book Branded Nation, this dynamic is at work in a number of industries and disciplines, including religion (niche worship versus megachurch) and higher education (mass state schools versus high end private colleges). In each case, one might well assume that “most customers are in the middle”, and that there is room for a big-tent centrist retailer or service provider that gives a bit of class and a bit of mass. But that’s a mistake. Ultimately, customers are pushed in one direction or the other, while those trying to work the middle are left without any firm identity or direction. Here’s more from the Times:

Introducing one of his first Gap collections, Mr. Robinson said he wanted to “take the classic, iconic heritage of the company and make it relevant.” His Gap designs produced some popular items, particularly skinny cargo pants and a revamp of denim. But tops never seemed to go with bottoms, and dresses and outerwear were puzzling, too. Gap’s merchandise today is an unlikely mix of pants in khaki and olive green, and floaty, ruffly tops in peach and beige.

Does this sound familiar? It’s pretty much the conundrum of the Liberal Party of Canada. Once upon a time, it was classic and iconic, but lately nothing seems to fit properly. Its policies are an unlikely mix, the top never seems to go with the bottom. The problem isn’t with leadership or talent, it’s with positioning.

In a related post, colleague Geddes wonders if the new parliament means that Canadian politics is about to become more polarized. John notes that the NDP and Conservatives each succeeded by largely tempering its ideology. But if that is right, it means that there is no middle of the road for the party to occupy. Like the Gap’s ongoing failures, the noises the Liberals are making about attempting to recapture the middle might be totally misguided. The party tried to win the last election by making itself look like the NDP. Perhaps it should have instead tried to discredit it.

CBC: want to email our articles? Pay us!

By Jesse Brown - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 2:49 PM - 27 Comments

If you’d like to send some friends an article from the CBC’s website, then the CBC would like $20. If you want to print six copies of an article, the CBC wants $10. And if you’re interested in posting an excerpt of an article to your blog, then the CBC is interested in charging $500 to your credit card for each year your post is online.

Of course, you don’t need to pay the CBC anything. You could just copy and paste a CBC article into an email and pay nothing. You could hit Ctrl-P and print as many copies as you like. You could drag and drop a chunk of text from a CBC webpage to your blog post without reaching for your Visa. And you could do any of these commonly done things without even knowing that the CBC wants to charge you to do them. Unless you share CBC content in a very specific and somewhat obscure way—by clicking the little icons at the end of each article or a button labeled “Republish,” you can freely share their stuff the way people share everything else on the Internet—copy and paste.

But if you do, it might interest you to know that the CBC is encouraging the friends you share their content with to rat you out in the hopes of scoring a $1,000,000 reward. Continue…

How Osama bin Laden was hidden in plain sight

By Adnan R. Khan - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 20 Comments

DigitalGlobe/Getty Images

It was around midnight on Sunday night when Naveed’s house suddenly went black. The 24-year-old student thought little of it—Pakistanis have gotten used to power cuts over the past few years as the country struggles with an energy crisis—but it was an odd time for it. Load shedding, as it’s commonly called here, happens on a schedule, and this blackout was not on schedule.

Out on the quiet streets of the Kakul neighbourhood in Abbottabad, nothing seemed amiss. Nothing ever happened in Kakul, which was part of the reason Naveed had gone to Britain to study: he needed to get away from the boredom of living in a part of the city officially under military control—a cantonment zone—where residents were required to report regularly to the army about who lives where, and intelligence officers regularly harassed people they deemed suspicious. He felt suffocated.

Being back at home, he was again feeling the walls closing in on him, and the darkness only made it worse. Stepping onto the roof of his family home, he breathed in the cool mountain air. The smooth, rolling silhouette of the Himalayan foothills to the east had a calming effect, as it always had, so when he heard the dull thump of helicopter blades, he was taken a little by surprise.

Continue…

Hackers plan to take down Sony websites this weekend

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 1:21 PM - 3 Comments

Hackers say they’re planning a third “major” attack against Sony websites, according to tech news site CNET report. The allegation comes from an observer of a chat channel used by hackers, who noticed discussion of a plan to break into Sony’s website for a third time this weekend. The alleged plan involves publicizing some or all of the user information hackers will manage to steal, which could include customers’ names, addresses and credit card numbers. Sony has already suffered two successful breaches in mid April that compromised data for more than 100 million accounts, and forced it to temporarily shut down PSN, Qriocity, and Sony Online. The attacks triggered investigations by the FBI and Congress, among others, and authorities in the U.K., Canada, and Taiwan. The latest revelation from CNET seems to suggest the hacker group Anonymous, initially indicated by Sony as the most likely culprit, might not be behind the cyber war against the company. Anonymous has denied any involvement.

CNET

How Justin Trudeau could have changed electoral history

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 5 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters; Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

Victory moustaches!

At the Toronto NDP victory celebration, which was filled with people sporting fake Jack Layton moustaches, the partiers kept the music playing over Michael Ignatieff’s concession speech as it was broadcast on giant screens. They turned the music down for all of Gilles Duceppe’s, and for half of Green Leader Elizabeth May’s. When Layton acknowledged the campaigns of the other leaders, May got the most applause. Layton was happy about the re-election of his wife, Olivia Chow. There had been a huge battle to keep her riding safe. The week before the vote, Liberals Bob Rae (who won) and Gerard Kennedy (who lost) went to Chow’s riding to support the Liberal candidate there. The NDP claimed it was an attempt to get at Layton by doing everything they could to take down his wife. Chow had her stepson, Toronto city councillor Mike Layton, helping her with door knocking, since the area he represents overlaps with hers. For his efforts, he ended up with a pile of complaints from constituents about local problems, mostly broken sidewalks and potholes.

Mulcair’s strategy

Each day during the election campaign, Thomas Mulcair would have a conference call with all the other Quebec NDP candidates. There were ridings they knew they could win, ridings in which they thought they had a chance, and ridings where the odds were against them. When candidates would report suspicious things like a large number of their signs being removed, Mulcair said that was their way of knowing the competition must be worried and they took it as a signal they should up their game in those areas.

Continue…

Syrian government cracks down on pro-democracy protesters

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 1:05 PM - 1 Comment

Another ‘day of defiance’ in Syria has brought thousands of protesters into the country’s streets for anti-governments demonstrations. According to a human rights group, at least 16 protesters have been killed in the ensuing crackdown by Syrian authorities. A report by Al Jazeera claims the “sound of continuous gunfire was audible over the phone, as well as people shouting ‘There are snipers on the rooftops’.” The EU agreed Friday to impose sanctions on 14 of the officials involved in the crackdown and the UN has announced Syria is prepared to let the organization into the country to investigate the humanitarian situation there. Human rights groups claim the Assad government has killed at least 560 civilians in its crackdown on the pro-democracy protests that have been taking place for seven weeks.

Al Jazeera English

Democrats Love Two and a Half Men

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

That’s one of the takeaways from this Harris Interactive Poll of Americans’ favourite all-time TV series. (Harris is a reputable market research firm and though this is only a poll, it’s a more scientific survey than your average online poll.) The incredible rise in popularity of NCIS is the big news in this poll: because the show has become the most-watched scripted show on broadcast networks and is in syndication everywhere, it seems to have become almost the first show people think of when they think of scripted TV.

But the news that Two and a Half Men is the most popular show among Democrats – NCIS dominates among Republicans, not unexpectedly – is a real thinker. I guess it sort of makes sense: it is the most popular comedy in the world, and there are probably more Republicans who dislike it for being dirty than Democrats who dislike it for being lowbrow. (Not to stereotype: dislikers of lowbrow TV are probably evenly divided between political affiliations and parties.) Also note that NCIS is the most popular show with every income group except those making $75-100k, which still picks M*A*S*H. No idea what that means. But it does mean that every income group picks a show that is “military but not too military” in its orientation.

I saw people on TV By the Numbers getting really furious about the list, since it one again demonstrates that the masses have not ascended to a higher plane of consciousness and still like to see mysteries solved every week and hear laughter on the soundtrack. Me, I’m actually kind of pleasantly surprised in one way: although most of the “all-time favourites” are simply whatever happens to be on currently (that’s to be expected), a black-and-white-show, I Love Lucy, managed to place #10 this time when it didn’t make the list the last time the poll was taken. The idea that an old show, even the most popular old show of all time, has gone up in the public consciousness is a nice jolt to my own stereotype of a world where old stuff is increasingly less known.

Again, syndication probably still has a lot to do with what places on the list: daily syndication drums a show into our collective consciousness in a way that weekly broadcasts don’t. This probably explains why The Simpsons dropped off the list: the show isn’t as heavily syndicated as it used to be. Also, having some big event probably helps: look at how Star Trek has jumped from # 13 to # 7, likely because the 2009 poll was conducted before the movie came out. 24‘s huge drop from 5 to nowhere derives from the fact that it had no syndication life and nothing to keep it alive after it went off the air, though Lost, as so often, is an exception to all the rules: it’s a heavily serialized show that isn’t syndicatable, but people still remember it even though it’s gone. Another reminder that Lost‘s success is amazing but it’s hard to replicate – it made its own rules.

And M*A*S*H may have dropped from #2 to #3, but its continued popularity is quite astonishing: it’s one of the few shows that never leaves syndication, never loses its popularity, sells great in every format. The fact that it’s technically a period piece and therefore doesn’t belong to its era quite as much as other shows (I said quite as much; there’s still all that ’70s hair to deal with) may help it. Maybe more shows should take the cue from M*A*S*H and Happy Days and realize that a period setting can do wonders for longevity.

Opening Weekend: The Beaver and The Bang Bang Club

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:54 PM - 5 Comments

Ryan Phillippe as Greg Marinovich in 'The Bang Bang Club'

Somehow I’ve managed to escape the blockbuster wrath of Thor.  Sorry, but I wasn’table to attend the one preview screening. So you’re on your own with that one. But I’m counting myself lucky. Although I’m not in the habit of checking out the competition, I couldn’t resist looking up some of my colleagues’ dispatches. They’ve been talking about the Thor experience like groggy war correspondents crawling from the rubble of a carpet-bomb raid. Gotta love A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times, which starts like this: “As I stumbled out of the Imax multiplex all-media advance screening of “Thor,” depositing my 3-D glasses in the appropriate bin, I thought of seeking shelter: in a nearby bar; under a passing bus; in the velvet shadows of an art house playing the longest, slowest, most obscure movie imaginable. But when something like “Thor” comes to town, there is really no refuge to be found in drink, death or subtitles . . . ”

I have, however, seen The Beaver and The Bang Bang Club, two titles that could compete for the Best Unintended Double Entendre Award. The Beaver, which could be called The Penance of Mel Gibson, is an earnest drama that stands as a monument the undying loyalty of Gibson’s friend Jodie Foster, who directs the film, co-stars as his wife, and has been burning up the promo circuit defending the disgraced actor. (There must be a special VIP room in heaven for this kind of extreme self-sacrifice). The Bang Bang Club is a Canadian co-production based on the true story of four fearless combat photographers who documented a hidden civil war in South Africa during the early 1990s. Believe it or not, watching Mel Gibson’s powerful yet cringe-worthy performance as a toy executive trying to bluff his way out of depression with a hand-puppet is  more painful than seeing a man set ablaze with gasoline and attacked with a machete in The Bang Bang Club. Unless you’re the kind of person who likes to slow down and gawk at a grisly accident site, I suggest you take a pass on The Beaver.  The Bang Bang Club has bracing scenes of graphic violence, but it’s a highly watchable, entertaining story of old-school combat photography, with an eye to authenticity, even if the story’s political context gets lost in the dust. I like films about photographers; they make more visual sense than films about writers. And this one is beautifully shot and well acted—rising start Canadian Taylor Kitsch gives an especially strong performance. For more a more detailed look at The Bang Bang Club, go to my piece in this week’s magazine: Sex, drugs and combat photography. For my interview with Beaver director Jodie Foster, go to: Jodie Foster on the ‘broken’ Mel Gibson. And for the full transcript of that interview, click on: Foster transcript.

Who is Jim Hillyer?

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 20 Comments

It remains unclear who the people of Lethbridge just elected.

He was dubbed The Man Who Wasn’t There – Jim Hillyer, a first-time Conservative candidate in the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge … He earned his moniker from a local newspaper after failing to show up at a pair of debates, repeatedly refusing interview requests and declining to speak to a local blogger who used Twitter to track him down while he was door knocking, an activity he said was more important. (In a video of the encounter posted online, Mr. Hillyer said he couldn’t talk because he had to use the bathroom.)

If nothing else, this election may be moving us closer to confronting some of the questions about the role and relevance of our MPs that are central to the current state of the House of Commons.

Al-Qaeda confirms bin Laden death

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 5 Comments

Al-Qaeda released a statement Friday confirming the death of Osama bin Laden, five days after U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Navy SEAL commandos had found and shot bin Laden in a raid on his Abbottabad compound. The Islamist militant group referred to their former leader as a martyr and vowed revenge on the U.S. and its allies, including Pakistan.

Montreal Gazette

Coffee, sex and blowing your nose may increase stroke risk

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:11 PM - 9 Comments

According to a new study of 250 patients from researchers in the Netherlands, coffee, sex and blowing your nose are among eight risk factors that could boost the risk of having a certain type of stroke. All of these actions increase blood pressure, and could result in blood vessels bursting, which can lead to brain damage or death, the BBC reports. Researchers looked at 250 patients for three years to find out what triggers these ruptures, and found that coffee was responsible for more than one in 10 brain aneurysms (when a weakened blood vessel bursts). Coffee increased the risk only 1.7 times, but it’s more common than the other risk factors. Being startled increased the risk by over 23 times, but it was responsible for less than 3 per cent of cases. One in 50 people have a brain aneurysm, they said, but only a few rupture.

BBC News

No leukemia link to nuclear power plants, UK study finds

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:07 PM - 1 Comment

A 35-year study has found no evidence that young children living near nuclear power plants are at an increased risk of developing leukemia, the BBC reports. Scientists from the UK Committee of the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment looked at populations within 5 km of nuclear power stations from 1969 to 2004, and found only 20 cases of childhood leukemia. Looking within a 25-km radius, they found only 430 cases in 35 years, both rates virtually the same as where there are no nuclear power plants. They called the risk “extremely small, if not zero.” Another study in Germany, published in 2007, did find a significantly increased risk, but the team said this may have been influenced by one unexplained leukemia cluster near one plant in northern Germany that lasted from 1990 to 2005.

Reuters

The murky world of academic ghostwriting

By Julia Belluz - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 12:05 PM - 8 Comments

Photograph by Flickr user striatic

When Barbara Sherwin, a McGill University psychology professor, became embroiled in a ghostwriting case in 2009, many wondered how an esteemed academic—one who dedicated her life to researching the relationship between hormones and cognition—could be accused of attaching her name to an article she didn’t write.

Her alleged transgression came to light in a class-action suit involving 8,400 women against the drug company Wyeth (now part of Pfizer). Lawyers representing the women, who claim they were harmed by their hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs, discovered that scientific research papers extolling the virtues of the treatment while downplaying potential harm appeared to have been written, not by the academics who signed their name to the papers, but by writers hired by the pharmaceutical company. Continue…

Alternate realities

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, May 6, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 81 Comments

Here is what the new House of Commons would look like with proportional representation.

Conservatives 122, NDP 94, Liberals 58, Bloc Quebecois 19, Greens 12

And here is an attempt to sort out what the House might look like if the election had been conducted with the alternative vote system.

Conservatives 148, NDP 122, Liberals 48, Bloc Quebecois 1, Greens 1