Down and out in London

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

When the European Union expanded its borders eastward in 2004, more than half a million Poles took advantage of the newly opened border to pack up and move to Britain. They were joined by thousands more Czechs and Slovenians, and after the EU expanded again in 2007, migrants from Bulgaria and Romania.

Many thrived. Suddenly traditional English pubs were staffed by servers with Eastern European accents. The new arrivals were so ubiquitous in the trades that “Polish plumber” became a catchphrase.

Inevitably, however, thousands have also floundered. Estimates vary, but a disproportionate percentage of homeless in London are from Eastern Europe, most of them Poles. And when they do stumble, they fall harder than the locals. Migrants who have not worked full-time for more than a year do not qualify for many social assistance programs, such as housing benefits. Last year, a charity worker found homeless Poles roasting rats. Continue…

REVIEW: The Keeper of Lost Causes

By Sarah Weinman - Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Judging from the bestseller lists of late, the appetite for Scandinavian crime fiction shows no signs of abating. Three years after his Millennium trilogy unfurled its first volume, Stieg Larsson still sells a few thousand copies a week; Jo Nesbo keeps building on past successes, and Lars Kepler’s The Hypnotist made a major splash upon its release last month.

Inevitably, readers want to know what they should read next, and for those looking for a fast-paced tale mixing arch comedy with stomach-twisting suspense, this novel from Denmark’s Jussi Adler-Olsen admirably fits the bill. It introduces a new series featuring Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Mørck, who, like his fellow Scandinavian police brethren Harry Hole and Kurt Wallander, isn’t one for sticking to the rules. He’s as guilt-ridden as they are, thanks to a case that nearly killed him (two colleagues weren’t so lucky).

He’s “punished” to run Department Q, a special investigations unit built out of funds his bosses needed to use or lose, and tasked with a seemingly dead-end missing persons case. And, as Mørck learns, just a little behind the reader, this simple case is anything but. In the process, Adler-Olsen educates us on the horrifying depths of human behaviour, the immutable laws of physics and the importance of refusing to give up—both on living and on a going-nowhere investigation.

Continue…

Sarkozy’s deficit leadership

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 10:43 PM - 21 Comments

“Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Tuesday called for closer coordination of economic policy among the 17 countries that share the euro currency and proposed that they enshrine in their constitutions an obligation to balance their national budgets.”

— New York Times, tonight

“France and Germany will propose that the 17 member states of the Euro zone adopt, before summer 2012, the golden rule on budget balance, to write into their Constitutions the objective of deficit reduction. The prime minister, François Fillon, will make the ‘necessary contacts’ with the various French political forces to see whether a consensus is possible to adopt this golden rule, Nicolas Sarkozy said.”

— Le Monde, tonight

M. Fillon should not waste too much time on this. Even if there were a consensus in France on a constitutional amendment to require budget balance, or at least to require a fond willingness to pretend to be moving toward something approaching budget balance (it is satirical to call something this vague a “golden rule”), I’m here to tell you there is no way to amend 17 national constitutions for any purpose before next summer.

Besides, as everybody knows, there is no way on Earth to make Nicolas Sarkozy serious about budget restraint. Might as well try to make him modest and tall. A brief stroll down memory lane:  Continue…

Louisina monks enter the casket business

By Stephanie Findlay - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 6:03 PM - 0 Comments

In December 1889, Benedictine monks established a monastery in the pine forests of southeast Louisiana, 65 km north of New Orleans. At Saint Joseph Abbey, as it’s known today, the monks have long run cottage industries to help pay the bills. More recently, they’ve started manufacturing funeral caskets—a venture that prompted the Louisiana funeral industry to complain they were unlicensed vendors.

The monks wanted to craft simple “monastic” caskets, as well as slightly less simple “traditional” caskets. (Both models are customizable for crypts and mausoleums—the way to bury the dead in the land of the bayou—and priced below the national average of $2,200). But before they could deliver their first casket, they received a cease-and -desist letter from the Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors—a Louisiana law prohibited the sale of caskets except by licensed funeral homes. Rather than turn the other cheek, the monks went to court. Last month, a judge ruled in their favour, saying the law was unconstitutional. The monks now hope to sell 10 caskets a month. “A Christian death is not about having this big fancy casket, but going out simply,” says Abbot Justin Brown. “We come in with nothing—we go out with nothing.”

Tories stifle widow through IP laws, twirl moustaches, cackle

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 5:19 PM - 29 Comments

Robert Keyserlingk was a lifelong Tory who died horribly in 2009 from mesothelioma, a cancer typically caused by asbestos exposure. Keyserlingk had regular contact with asbestos in his youth while working summer jobs on Canadian naval ships.

Before his death, he crusaded against Canada’s government-supported asbestos industry, and his wife Michaela has carried on the cause since. Every month, she pays $300 to run this banner ad on websites, which links to her own anti-asbestos website:

The Conservative Party is now threatening to sue her for trademark infringement. Continue…

Photo gallery: A day in the life of Tony Bennett

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 0 Comments

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Photo gallery: A day in the life of Tony Bennett

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Tony Bennett tours an art gallery

Friday, July 1, 2011 - Tony Bennett in Montreal for the Montreal Jazz Festival. Tony, a fine artist himself, tours an art gallery while in the city of Montreal. Photograph by Jessica Darmanin.

Hans Memling
"Portrait of a Man"
About 1480 or later
MMFA, purchase, Horsley and Annie Townsend Bequest and William Gilman Cheney
Bequest
Photo MMFA

Circle of Quentin Metsys
"Portrait of a Man"
About 1520
MMFA, gift of Mrs. Charles F. Martin
Photo MMFA

Pieter Brueghel the Younger
"Return from the Inn"
About 1620
MMFA, gift of the Maxwell family in memory of Mrs. Edward Maxwell
Photo MMFA

1 of 6 Photos

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‘I think it’s better that we stick to the facts’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 4:42 PM - 19 Comments

Conservative MPs on the finance committee move to ensure you are not frightened by this week’s hearings.

At a planning meeting Monday evening, NDP finance critic Peggy Nash put forward a motion requesting that a panel of economists be included as witnesses Friday, but the Conservatives used their majority to limit the invite list to Mr. Flaherty and Bank of Canada officials.

“It’s imperative, in my opinion, that we not do anything that might worry Canadians. And I think that hearing from the Minister of Finance and the Bank of Canada will help to reassure them, as they should be, that there is concern, but that we are proceeding, as parliamentarians, in their interests,” explained Conservative MP Shelly Glover, who is Mr. Flaherty’s parliamentary secretary.

If you dare look, here are some of those economists now.

Prime Minister of the last 43 years

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 3:11 PM - 26 Comments

Angus-Reid asks a thousand Canadians to identify the best and worst prime ministers since 1968. The results below (with changes from four years ago in parentheses).

Best
Trudeau 36% (+3)
Harper 19% (+5)
Chretien 12% (+4)
Mulroney 6% (-8)

Worst
Mulroney 19% (-1)
Harper 19% (+4)
Trudeau 13% (-)
Chretien 10% (-3) 

Mr. Trudeau tops 36% in British Columbia, the Prairies, Ontario and Atlantic Canada and bests Mr. Harper in every region except Alberta. Quebec is the only jurisdiction that ranks Mr. Harper less than second.

More than one-third of teachers are bullied online

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:41 PM - 3 Comments

More than one-third of teachers have been bullied online, according to a new survey from Britain’s Plymouth University, which also showed that while 72 per cent of this abuse came from students, 26 per cent actually came from the parents. Most teachers who claimed they’d been abused online were female, the BBC reports, and a lot of the abuse came from chat on social networks. People also posted videos of teachers on YouTube, abused them on ratemyteacher.com, or set up Facebook groups to mock them.

BBC News

Former BQ leader joins CBC

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:36 PM - 4 Comments

Prominent separatist Gilles Duceppe, the former Bloc Québécois leader will debut a weekly morning segment on the French-language arm of the CBC next Thursday. Duceppe expects to cover a broad range of issues on the new show, entitled called “la performance de la semaine,” such as the financial crisis, Canada’s Arctic, and the health and education systems.

QMI Agency

Harmless bacteria used to fight drug-resistant microbe

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:27 PM - 0 Comments

Singapore researchers have found a way to re-engineer harmless bacteria—a strain of the E. coli that is present in the human gut—to fight a common drug-resistant microbe that can be deadly to hospital patients with weak immune systems, Reuters reports. Scientists put foreign DNA fragments into the E. coli, which helped it sense the dangerous pathogen and release a deadly toxin. One engineered microbe inhibited the growth of the deadly pathogen, called the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, by 90 per cent. Researchers say the same formula could be used to fight other infective agents.

Reuters

Please call back in four years

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:23 PM - 70 Comments

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson responds to the concerns of the Canadian Bar Association.

“From coast to coast one thing is clear, Canadians want to see their communities as safe places to live, raise their families and do business. We have listened to Canadians and with the strong mandate we have received, we’ll continue to act on their behalf,” he said.

In case Conservative voters did not fully understand the significance of their ballot, the government has been very specific in the few months since May’s election, invoking their mandate to explain back to work legislation for Canada Post, job cuts at the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, reducing the corporate tax rate, cuts to Audit Services Canada, the consolidation of search and rescue resources, a $600 increase in the guaranteed income supplement, the end of the Canadian Wheat Board, the elimination of the long-form census, Senate reform, the Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act, back to work legislation for Air Canada employees, the Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act, free trade, tourism, war in Libya, the elimination of the per-vote subsidy, sales tax harmonization with the provinces, cuts to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency as well as meaningful and thoughtful House debate.

Former B.C. premier appointed British high commissioner

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 2 Comments

The Canadian government has appointed former Liberal British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell as Canada’s new high commissioner in Britain. Campbell comes into the high-profile role after he resigned from the provincial top job last fall after 26 years in politics. Sanjeev Chowdhury, the director general of programs of the 2010 G8 and G20 summits, is the new consul general in Brazil. Several other diplomatic appointments were announced Monday: Glenn Davidson, a former vice-admiral with the navy who became ambassador to Syria in 2008, is now Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan.

CBC News

Germany’s GDP growth slows

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 1 Comment

Germany, Europe’s top economy, experienced much slower-than-anticipated growth in the second quarter of this year. The disappointing numbers have raised questions over how much support the country can lend to the European Union bloc in the midst of its debt crisis. According to early figures from the statistics office, growth fell to 0.1 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms. Analysts blame a negative trade balance, dwindling consumption and less investment in construction projects.

Reuters

Pro-Gadhafi forces fire Scud missile at rebels

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:47 PM - 1 Comment

Forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi launched a Scud missile at rebel positions for the first time in Libya’s ongoing conflict, according to U.S. officials. They allege the missile was meant to strike the rebel-held city of Brega, but instead it landed harmlessly in the desert. The missiles have a range of about 800 kilometres and can carry a one-tonne warhead. Gadhafi’s military is said to possess at least 200 Scud missiles. The decision to launch one comes as rebel forces continue to advance on Gadhafi’s stronghold in Tripoli. Rebels seized two towns within 100 kilometres of the capital Monday in a bid to bolster their ability to control access to the town.

BBC News

Hackers make false announcement of Jean Charest’s death

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:42 PM - 0 Comments

Hackers targeted the website of the French-language newspaper Le Devoir on Tuesday morning, publishing a short article announcing the death of Quebec Premier Jean Charest. The article stated that Charest had died of a heart attack at the Université de Montréal’s hospital, and that the hospital had verified the news. Charest’s press secretary, Hugo D’Amours, confirmed that the premier is alive and well, and called the hoax “sad and in bad taste”. The newspaper’s website shut down at approximately 2:30 a.m. and was revived just after 4 a.m.

Toronto Sun

Forces to regain regal titles

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:39 PM - 8 Comments

Canada’s military is royal once more. In a symbolic move, the Canadian government is renaming the three branches of the armed forces, restoring the “royal” moniker to the air force and navy and tacking ‘Canadian’ onto the army. Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CTV the changes correct a “historical mistake.” The forces lost their regal titles when the once-separate branches were combined in 1968. Under the changes, the air force, now known as Air Command, will become the Royal Canadian Air Force. The army, currently Land Force Command, will become the Canadian Army, and Maritime Command will be once again known as the Royal Canadian Navy.

CTV News

How Kia and Hyundai became cool

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 10 Comments

Reuters/Valentin Flauraud

Hyundai’s entry into the North American car market in the 1980s was an inauspicious one. Though low-priced models like the Excel and the Pony attracted frugal buyers, the South Korean company’s name quickly became synonymous with unreliable cars, and even found itself the butt of comedians’ jokes. But these days, Hyundai and its sister brand Kia have become the biggest growth stories in the automotive world—so much so that some are talking about the possibility of South Korea one day rivalling Japan’s industry clout. Continue…

Edmonton’s murder belt

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 3 Comments

Perry Mah/The Edmonton Sun/QMI Agency

The 2011 homicide counter started clicking early in Edmonton, and it has not stopped. Just three hours past midnight on New Year’s, police were called to an Ethiopian restaurant on Edmonton’s 107th Avenue—the “Avenue of Nations,” where East African immigrants are following the earlier footsteps of the Vietnamese boat people. On reaching the scene, investigators found 23-year-old Somali man Mohamud Mohamed Jama dead from a gunshot to the head.

A wounded witness refused to co-operate, and other patrons clammed up too. Fellow Somalis declared the victim a “typical Canadian young man” who “wasn’t involved with gangs or drugs.” But Jama died nine days shy of his sentencing for a 2007 aggravated assault; he had pleaded guilty of stabbing another Somali man eight times.

Jama’s unsolved murder struck a wearisome chord for Edmontonians, from the north-central crime scene to the frustrations of the cops trying to pry loose information from clannish Somali-Canadians reluctant to trust police. Yet the bloody big picture of Edmonton in 2011 defies neat categories or models. For reasons that remain obscure, a working-class city has exploded this year into unrelenting, record-breaking levels of violence.

Continue…

How 1493 changed our planet forever

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 4 Comments

Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

There is no more iconic year in the history of the Western hemisphere, no clearer then-and-now dividing line, than 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the Old World arrived on the shores of the New. On the far side of that chronological line lay what American science writer Charles Mann described in 1491, his sweeping look at the reality of indigenous American societies. Now Mann has turned his attention to the near side in 1493—to the beginning of the planet’s most significant biological moment since the death of the dinosaurs.

The bare bones of the so-called Columbian Exchange have long been familiar to schoolchildren, even if teachers have understandably emphasized some parts over others: tomatoes, tobacco and syphilis to the Old World; people, horses and smallpox to the New. But as 1493 demonstrates, the exchange wasn’t even close to being a limited meeting of flora and fauna. Faster than light in terms of the history of Earth, the Columbian Exchange is still ongoing: 17-cm New Zealand flatworms only began devouring European earthworms (and thereby degrading soil quality) in the 1960s. Life on the planet seems to be returning to the days of the single supercontinent Pangaea 250 million years ago: globalization, as it turns out, is as much a biological as an economic phenomenon.

Continue…

Irish studies flourish in Quebec

By Josh Dehaas - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 3 Comments

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Only a tenth of Canada’s 4.4 million Canadians of Irish ancestry call Quebec home. And yet, it’s the epicentre of research on the Emerald Isle.

Concordia University’s School of Canadian Irish Studies—the only one of its kind in Canada—will have more than 700 students enrolled this fall, studying everything from the Great Famine to James Joyce. The first ever bachelor of arts in Canadian Irish studies will begin in January. “The success of Irish studies at Concordia is quite striking,” says Will Straw, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, “particularly since these kinds of ‘area’ studies programs are having difficulty in other universities.”

Interest in Ireland is especially high in Quebec, says Michael Kenneally, principal of the Concordia school. “Here in Quebec, if you’re interested in cultural nationalism, colonialism, post-imperial identities, partition and decolonization, rebellion and independence, Ireland is a case study for all of that.” And, he adds, “preserving the Irish language has a lot of resonance in Quebec.”

Continue…

The Neverending Story That Ends

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 5 Comments

TV fans are frequently discussing the issue of whether a show is helped by setting a definite end date, and the latest round of discussion has been touched off by the announcement – not unexpected – that Breaking Bad will end after its fifth season. (AMC and Sony settled for a 16 episode final season, which the network will likely split into two separate runs. The production company would probably have been happier with a longer order – say 24 episodes, which would allow them to split the season into two reasonable-sized DVD sets – but it’s better than the shorter order the network was originally talking about.) Vince Gilligan, the creator of the show, said that knowing exactly when they will end the show “will allow us to build our story to a satisfying conclusion.” Darrin Franich in Entertainment Weekly responded with this piece, arguing that an end date can sometimes take away the “improvisation” that is built into a serialized television show, and lead to a mechanical final season where we’re too aware of everything being wrapped up.

In the case of Breaking Bad, although I will almost certainly wind up wishing it had run longer, there’s a very good argument that the show will benefit from an end date. So much of the writers’ energy has to go into finding ways to keep Walt alive or out of prison. With a finite number of episodes Continue…

Democracy via the metal folding chair

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:04 PM - 0 Comments

Here is the last election recreated as a video game wrestling match between Stephen “The Nightmare” Harper, Michael “The Professor” Ignatieff, Jack “The Future” Layton and Gilles “Franco” Duceppe. (For the sake of distinguishing between the two white-haired gentlemen, Mr. Harper seems to be wearing a dark tie, while Mr. Duceppe’s is light blue.)

The exciting ring introductions are here.

Letter implies cover-up in phone hacking scandal

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 12:04 PM - 0 Comments

Fresh allegations came to light Tuesday that upper-level executives in the Murdoch media empire were aware of phone hacking by journalists at Britain’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid. A letter written four years ago by the paper’s Royal correspondent Clive Goodman was published Tuesday, alleging that phone hacking was “widely discussed” at editorial meetings with “the full knowledge and support” of other journalists. The letter also describes how then-editor Andy Coulson —who went on to work in Prime Minister David Cameron’s office — offered to let Goodman keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in the hacking accusations he faced before the court. The letter raises doubts about the media company’s previous position that Goodman was hacking phones on his own, without the newspaper’s knowledge. It also casts doubt on testimony provided by Rupert Murdoch and his son James, who denied suspicions the company tried to buy off Goodman by paying his legal bills during the ordeal. The letter is dated March 2, 2007, shortly after Goodman was released from prison for intercepting the voicemail of three members of the Royal Family.

The Guardian