Libyan rebels loot and attack suspected Gadhafi loyalists

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 3 Comments

Anti-Gadhafi rebels in the mountains of western Libya have reportedly looted houses and abused residents of four towns recently seized from government forces. The violence and damage is against suspected Gadhafi loyalists, according to Human Rights Watch. The organization said the looting in al-Awaniya, Rayaniyah, Qawalish and Zawiyat al-Bagul included many businesses and that homes were burnt. At least two medical centres are also deserted, and suspected loyalists have reportedly been beaten. The findings were released as the French government says Moammar Gadhafi is prepared to step down as the country’s leader.

Sydney Morning Herald

17 killed in Mumbai bombings

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:17 PM - 0 Comments

17 people were killed by 3 separate but nearly simultaneous bomb blasts in Mumbai’s financial district on Wednesday, the Globe and Mail reports. The first bomb decimated the Jhaveri Bazaar, a famous jewelry market, at 6:54 p.m., followed by a second explosion one minute later in the Opera House district, and another at 7:05 p.m. in the central Mumbai neighbourhood of Dadar. Indian Home Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram says the close proximity and timing of the attacks lead the government to believe a terrorist group is responsible. This is the first major attack on Mumbai since November 2008, when 10 militants terrorized the city for 60 hours, killing 166 citizens.

The Globe and Mail

Derailment

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 71 Comments

Stephen Gordon hasn’t forgotten about the census.

The census story is a train wreck in slow motion; the latest car to pile on the flaming ruins is the recent report that Statistics Canada has resigned itself to accepting incomplete responses to the National Household Survey (NHS) … The most recent census was in 2006, and it looks as though the next usable census will take place in 2021 at the earliest. Our understanding of what is going on in the Canadian economy in the next decades will grow steadily weaker as more cars pile on the census train wreck.

The New Internet Meme

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 1 Comment

After this video debuted yesterday, many people are predicting that a new meme has been born: taking these clips from Paul Schrader’s Hardcore and intercutting them with terrible trailers or movie scenes will replace Downfall parodies as the easiest way to criticize something.

Syphilis is on a comeback

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 5 Comments

Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images

Ghosts, the 1881 Henrik Ibsen play in which syphilis signifies “the tragedy of heredity,” was a death knell for the 19th century. The 19th century did not take it well. Ibsen was met with pan-European abuse for his “dirty act,” his “almost putrid indecorum.” The funny thing, to the modern reader, is that Ghosts never explicitly mentions syphilis. In 1881, theatregoers understood doomed Oswald Alving when he described the inherited contagion that surfaced “down there” and spread to his brain. Today’s undergraduates need annotation; they live in a world of high-quality public health care where syphilis, a disease knocked out readily by penicillin, is almost never encountered.

In contemporary Canada it still flares up occasionally among high-risk groups, particularly gay men. But now Alberta, suddenly plagued with the pre-antibiotic horrors of adult neurosyphilis and congenital syphilis among newborns, has had to launch a shock campaign of public awareness. As in Ibsen’s time, so in ours: debate within Alberta has concentrated on the message, with scant attention paid to the crisis itself—a crisis as anachronistic in the 21st century as a cholera epidemic caused by a contaminated water pump.

Alberta made syphilis a reportable disease before the Second World War and introduced mandatory screening for expectant mothers shortly thereafter. But beginning in 2005, with an economic boom creating high mobility, crack cocaine enjoying a renaissance, and strains increasing on Alberta’s health care system, syphilis broke into the heterosexual population, with “street-involved” Aboriginal women hit particularly hard.

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Drinks with the duke and duchess

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments

Paul Darrow/Reuters

The invitation, issued by the press secretary of “TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,” was impossible to decline: a 7:10 p.m. drinks reception with the royal couple immediately after their arrival in Charlottetown on Sunday night. Just 200 or so journalists and provincial organizers for 40 minutes. The setting was shockingly intimate, given that royal tour coverage dictates the royals are always at least a three-metre remove from the ink- and digitally stained wretches. Following the couple around feels like being embedded in a military mission without any proximity: journalists wait hours in a slightly more privileged position than the hoi polloi for a glimpse of the couple, and are forever on the lookout for colourful crumbs with which to pad out reports.

The soiree had rules. It was to be casual, no cameras—which is like asking hunters who’ve been tracking big, exotic game to come face to face with their quarry stripped of their weapons.

The gathering was held on the second-storey deck of a casual restaurant overlooking the harbour. The night was gorgeous. Drinks flowed. Oysters were shucked, lobster rolls served and a fiddle band played. Before the newlyweds arrived, journalists were herded inside and divided by media type—Canadian, print, etc. Then the royals worked the reception line separately, each led by handlers. The prince came through first, shaking hands in a dark suit with a Canada flag pin, carrying a drink that looked like Coke, though he joked about wanting to have a couple of them. He’s an old pro at this—engaged, leaning in, making eye contact, quick to joke in a self-deprecating manner. Yet if you look closely, his jaw clenches; there’s tension there.

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The afterlife of Harry Potter

By Brian Bethune and Patricia Treble - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

IStock; Getty Images;Warner Bros; Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The marketing slogan for the July 15 release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, four years after the last Harry Potter novel was published, was: “It all ends here.” The final film adaptation was set to close the door on perhaps the most far-reaching pop culture phenomenon of all time. After Harry’s 14-year march through worldwide public consciousness, the vast majority of the human race knows who the boy wizard is, not to mention his best friends (Ron and Hermione), arch-enemy (Lord Voldemort), school (Hogwarts) and favourite sport (quidditch), and his creator, British writer J. K. Rowling (who has 400,000 Twitter followers, despite having posted, as of last count, a total of six tweets). Academics have found references to every aspect of Harry’s world in sources as diverse as Turkish editorials and Swedish parliamentary debates.

If Harry has rivals for cultural influence—of the stature of Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and, from the far past, Sherlock Holmes—there is none to match his pure cash-generating power. The seven novels of Harry’s adventures have sold a collective 400 million copies in more than 200 “territories,” as publishers call them (the UN counts only 192 member countries). Author Rowling is a billionaire, the first person to ever reach that level of wealth by writing stories. That’s without counting the value of massive merchandising rights (40 million Harry Potter video games sold for $1 billion, to name a single product) or the film royalties. The first seven movies, having pulled in almost $6.4 billion, already comprise the most successful franchise in cinematic history; each ranks among the top 30 highest-grossing films of all time.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 will surely join them there, and high up that list. Part 1 left Harry, Ron and Hermione almost two-thirds of the way through the 600-page novel, having just escaped Voldemort’s Death Eaters at the cost of the life of Dobby, Harry’s heroic elf friend. Most of the action, though, is yet to come, including far more deaths of familiar characters, good and bad. Cramming most of the set-up to the entire series’ climax into Part 1 has left room—fully utilized, to judge by Part 2’s trailers—to ramp up the action in the series’ most cinematic storyline, including sequences that occur off-stage in the novel. And even though readers already know who lives and who dies, seeing it all come to pass will be a milestone moment for the emotionally invested Potter nation.

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For your own good

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 16 Comments

Transport Minister Denis Lebel explains why the general public is not allowed to see a report on the condition of Montreal’s Champlain Bridge.

“When you release information into the public that is handled by people who are not exactly connaisseurs of the subject matter, that can create worries that I do not want to create,” Lebel said. ”Above all, I do not want people to try politicizing this issue and to work against the public interest. This isn’t the time to be starting something that would create insecurity in the public. And I’m not saying there are things in the report that would create insecurity; I’m simply saying that we treat very thoroughly everything in such reports to allow for smooth and secure transport.”

Review: Miss New India

By Dafna Izenberg - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 0 Comments

In Mukherjee’s eighth novel, a young photographer tells Anjali Bose, “It’s all a matter of light and angles,” after shooting her (much-doctored) portrait for a matchmaking website. Anjali doesn’t quite understand the expression, but she repeats it to impress people in Bangalore, the booming metropolis in southern India where she goes in pursuit of her dreams (and to escape a brutish groom-to-be). In a way, Anjali is the queen of light and angles, always shifting between two personas—one, the faithful daughter of traditional Bengali parents, destined for arranged marriage and a life of subservience; the other—Angie—a free-spirited young woman, entitled to excitement, romance and, of course, money.

The money is supplied by Peter Champion, an American expat and high school teacher in Anjali’s hometown in the eastern province of Bihar. Champion also helps Anjali settle in a Raj-era mansion where an elderly widow boards young women from “good families.” The girls, like many young newcomers to Bangalore, work as call-centre agents, handling computer crises in Texas and Alabama while trying to “neutralize” their Punjabi and Gujarati accents. According to a mysterious newspaper columnist named “Dynamo,” they are the new Miss Indias. “They don’t simper, they don’t dance (don’t ask them!), and they don’t wear saris or evening gowns,” he writes, swatting at Bollywood. “They will transform our country.”

Through Anjali, Mukherjee trains her eye on this transformation, and it’s a view that changes by the minute. Dynamo’s alter ego—Bangalore businessman Mr. GG—makes Anjali swoon. But then the light shifts, and suddenly she sees him as a “plump, hairy little man in bulging boxer shorts.” From one angle, Anjali’s roommates seem friendly and generous; from another, not so much. While Anjali abhorred her father’s rules, at least they were clear—in Bangalore, she is never sure who to trust. It seems Mukherjee is similarly uncertain. “Prosperity is a good thing,” says Peter Champion at a dinner party. But, he adds, “I wish the prosperity was rooted to something. I wish it built something beyond glass monuments. It seems as flimsy as a kite or a balloon.”

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Review: The Man in the Rockefeller Suit

By Jason Tushinski - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

People often reinvent themselves. Some get a new haircut, others plastic surgery. But most people don’t change their name, family background and job history repeatedly over a 30-year period. But then Christian Karl Gerharts­reiter doesn’t fit into the category of “most people.” In The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, Mark Seal skilfully dissects this imposter’s lengthy run as Clark Rockefeller, a fictitious scion of the famous family. In Germany, Seal uncovers the roots of a modern-day chameleon. He learns of an eccentric teenager who wore business suits to school, read the classics and drove a hearse around town for fun. Gerhartsreiter had a knack for role-playing and dreamed of escaping to America.

In the U.S., Seal interviews everyone from Gerhartsreiter’s early billets in the 1970s to the wealthy Californians and Wall Street types he later manipulated. Seal listens incredulously as New Englanders recount their shock that Clark Rockefeller wasn’t the inspiration for Frasier’s Niles, amongst other things. Despite Seal’s sometimes overwhelming attention to detail, he keeps the narrative humming with examples of outrageous exploits. In 1992, visitors to Rockefeller’s New York apartment admired his fabulous art collection. That his place was furnished mostly with lawn furniture they chalked up to the old “Rockefeller eccentricity.”

Seal’s talent for dry humour is entertaining, but his take on this anti-hero’s humanity is also evident. After decades of lies, callousness and manipulation, Rockefeller makes a last-gasp effort to hold on to the one real relationship he has had. As it turns out, even an imposter needs a little bit of truth in life. For Clark Rockefeller, his attempt at legitimacy and redemption turned out to be his undoing.

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Access-to-Information: credit where it is due

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 6 Comments

Last month I wrote about the results of an access-to-information request to the Immigration and Refugee Board, which yielded some 4,000 pages on Cindor Reeves. Nothing in those documents changes my conclusion that the board, as well as the federal government, which intervened in the case through the minister of public safety, has shown gross incompetence and perhaps worse in handling this case.

I should point out, however, the the IRB responded to my access-to-information request quickly and thoroughly. This shouldn’t be worth noting, but given the terrible record of virtually every other government department I have dealt with on access-to-information, it is. Indeed access requests on Reeves made to other departments remain in limbo as I write this. Continue…

‘A journey with a clear destination’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 6 Comments

Shawn Atleo, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, says it’s time to move toward scrapping the Indian Act and dumping the recently renamed Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Here is his speech to AFN’s general assembly in Moncton yesterday.

Advancing the First Nation Crown relationship means progress through steps like the First Nation-Crown Gathering, First Ministers meetings with First Nations and a potential First Nation-Crown agreement that advances and affirms our rights. We need new fiscal relationships built on common, mutually acceptable principles that guarantee and deliver sustainable, equitable services based on mutually agreed-to standards. We must implement our governments through building our institutions, planning and accountability mechanisms and finally we must drive structural change.

This is change that must first affirm First Nation jurisdiction, must include careful legal review and analysis and then advance structural changes to the machinery of the federal government. Right now, the bureaucracy and its policies are failing miserably. We need new structures that affirm the relationship and uphold the responsibility.

The AFN report that sets out this vision is here.

Update on Mansoureh Behkish, jailed in Iran

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 10:43 PM - 0 Comments

Mansoureh Behkish, sister of Toronto man Jafar Behkish, was released from Tehran’s Evin Prison on Saturday.

DVD Doorstopper Sets Live On, Thankfully

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 6:40 PM - 8 Comments

Not much posting time today (which saw the death of Sherwood Schwartz, sadly), but I did want to call attention to this good and, to me, unexpected news: Shout! Factory has acquired the rights to Barney Miller and will release the entire series in a boxed set.

The TV on home video business is not what it was, and never will be: as streaming and other ways of watching TV episodes become more common, and as Netflix nudges its U.S. customers toward committing exclusively to streaming, the need to own a TV series in any physical format will sharply decrease. (Also, classic movies are not doing well on Blu-Ray, so there’s not much likelihood of catalogue TV shows finding a home in that format. For now, most TV shows will not be released in any other home video format but DVD.) Still, it’s fun to own a good show, and it’s particularly fun to own one of those boxes that contains the whole series plus extras. Shout! managed to do this with The Larry Sanders Show and – though without a lot of newly-produced extras – Leave It To Beaver. I hope this one sells well enough that they can do a couple of other deserving series.

I’m particularly happy that they got Barney Miller, because there was very little likelihood that the later seasons would ever be released individually (Sony only got up to season 3). Abe Vigoda is probably the best-known member of the cast now, and so the market for the seasons after he left probably is not huge. Yet the show probably got better after he left. I don’t know if Fish was the problem (the writers often couldn’t write for him that well beyond bathroom and wife jokes), or if it’s just that the show improved the more it found its own rhythms. It also helped that season 4 was when they finally gave up trying to shoot with a studio audience, and used a laugh track instead. But losing Fish and adding Dietrich as a regular was probably a net gain too.

The set will also include the original pilot, The Life And Times of Captain Barney Miller, a single-camera comedy shot on film, which ABC turned down but later retooled into the show we know. I’ve never seen it, so I’m looking forward to that.

The lurking, unspecific danger

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 4:31 PM - 78 Comments

While we’re on the subject of vaguely foreboding warnings from our Prime Minister, Mr. Harper’s communications director, Dimitri Soudas, has recently added this bit to his email signature.

“In such a world, strength is not an option; It is a vital necessity. Moral ambiguity, moral equivalence are not options, they are dangerous illusions.”

In context, from the Prime Minister’s speech to the Conservative convention last month, this bit sets up Mr. Harper’s suggestion that Canada might not make it to see 2067. Continue…

How many journalists can you fit into one square metre?

By Claire Ward - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 4:12 PM - 2 Comments

Don’t forget to read the article that inspired the experiment about inflated attendance numbers at Pride parade in Toronto

Chinese toddler wakes from coma after long fall

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 3:18 PM - 0 Comments

A two-year-old Chinese girl awoke from a 10-day coma on Tuesday after surviving a fall from her 10th-floor home in China’s Zhejiang province. A bystander caught the toddler before she hit the ground on July 2, but the impact knocked the little girl unconscious and caused serious internal injuries. The girl, named Zhang Fangyu, nicknamed “Niu Niu,” called out to her parents, opened her eyes and made eye contact with her mother and father during a half-hour meeting. Reports say Niu Niu fell after her grandmother left her alone in the apartment to run an errand.

The New York Times

Apple takes aim at beleaguered RIM

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 3:11 PM - 6 Comments

As Research in Motion executives prepare to face nervous investors at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday, Apple has launched a campaign to steal BlackBerry’s enterprise client base. The iPhone maker bought a back cover ad in a recent issue of The Economist that hypes its business apps, targeting a section of the smartphone market that has been traditionally loyal to RIM. Apple has also launched a website advertising the iPhone’s business features. The move comes at a difficult time for RIM, which has seen its stock price sink 50 per cent this year. Some shareholders have called for a management shuffle.

The Toronto Star

Has the News of the World scandal changed your impression of the media?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 2:45 PM - 14 Comments

Different system, same problems

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 12 Comments

This lament for their current situation and call for congressional reform in the United States, written by former congressman Mickey Edwards, reads a lot like many of the laments for our current situation and calls for parliamentary reform here.

If we really want change—change that will yield a Congress that is more representative and more functional, change that can be replicated in state and local governments—we need to rethink the party-driven structures we have so casually accepted for decades. This change would produce another important effect: it would strengthen Congress’s ability to discharge its constitutional role … In a democracy that is open to intelligent and civil debate about competing ideas rather than programmed for automatic opposition to another party’s proposals, we might yet find ourselves able to manage the task of self-government. Our current political dysfunction is not inevitable; it results from deliberate decisions that have backfired and left us mired in the trenches of hyper-partisan warfare. Political parties will not disappear; as a free people, we will continue to honor freedom of association. The goal is not to destroy parties but to transcend them; to welcome their contributions but end their dominance; and to take back from these private clubs control of our own elections and our own Congress.

Former British PM says newspaper hired “known criminals”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 0 Comments

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused a prominent News Corp. newspaper on Tuesday of employing “known criminals” to gather personal information on his finances, family and legal affairs, the latest blow to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain. Brown’s allegations broaden the scandal beyond The News of the World, the newspaper at the centre of the scandal, to include News Corp.’s most prestigious publication in its U.K. newspaper unit, the Sunday Times. Brown told the BBC in an interview, “The people that they work with are criminals. Known criminals. Criminals with records.” News Corp. says it is investigating Brown’s accusations.

Wall Street Journal

Only strip club in Fredericton set to close

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 1:15 PM - 1 Comment

Fredericton city council has voted to buy out the New Brunswick capital’s only strip club and shut it down. It’s still unclear what the city plans to do with the North Star Sports Bar, however councillors are adamant they can find a better use for the pub, whose neighbours include a gas station, church, liquor store, shopping plaza and new high-end condominium developments. The purchase is expected to cost the city $500,000.

CBC News

A Senate if we must, but must we have a Senate?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 12:37 PM - 6 Comments

It is obviously noteworthy that the Canadian public largely supports Stephen Harper’s proposed reforms to the Senate, but when the options are put side-by-side, the Canadian public is still relatively split.

Which of these statements comes closest to your own point of view?

Canada does not need a Senate, all legislation should be reviewed and authorized by the House of Commons 36%
Canada needs a Senate, but Canadians should be allowed to take part in the process to choose senators 40%
Canada needs a Senate, and the current guidelines that call for appointed senators should not be modified 5%
Not sure 19%

For that matter, as many Canadians support Stephen Harper’s calls for term limits and elections (70% and 72%) as support Jack Layton’s call for a national referendum (71%).

Vancouver rioters accidentally identify themselves

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 15 Comments

Here’s a copyright story that has nothing to do with music downloads or movie piracy.

As was widely reported following the Vancouver hockey riots, social media was used to crowdsource a vigilante effort to identify the jerks who tore up their own city. Sites like Identifyrioters.com were launched to post pictures of the mayhem. They encourage users to click an “I know who this is!” button to link a pic to a person. Allegations are not posted publicly. They’re forwarded to the cops, who can follow up and see if the names fit the pics. Facebook also hosted similar armchair vigilante efforts, and video of the carnage was posted and scrutinized several sites. The online exposure was such that some rioters turned themselves in after finding their douchebaggery digitally documented. Continue…