How Juliette Binoche faked her orgasm

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 2:58 PM - 0 Comments

Juliette Binoche as a journalist interviewing a young prostitute in 'Elles'

There has been a full-frontal assault of sex and nudity onscreen at this year’s TIFF. It ranges from Last Tango in Toronto scenarios in Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz to Michael Fassbender flashing some serious endowment in Shame. The festival is also thick with prostitutes. (I’m referring to the movies, not the parties—but who knows?) Fassbender’s character in Shame is hooked on hookers. In Fernando Mereilles‘ 360, Jude Law is a travelling businessman who risks his marriage to Rachel Weisz by arranging a call girl. The House of Tolerance luxuriates in a fin-de-siècle Parisian brothel. And Whores’ Glory goes behind the scenes of the global sex trade.

But the most astonishing portrayal of sex and prostitution is to be found in a superb French movie called Elles, directed by Polish filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska. Juliette Binoche stars as a Paris journalist researching a magazine piece about student prostitutes. As two of her subjects talk about their tricks—shown in graphic interludes—her maternal concern for the young women gives way to a disturbing envy. Based on a documentary, Elles doesn’t glamorize prostitution, but it ditches the usual clichés to portray a generation of empowered, self-employed hookers who claim to enjoy their work. They cast their tricks, choosing men they find at least minimally attractive. Their problems are with their social invisibility and hiding their profession from their family.

By a fluke, I watched Elles at its TIFF premiere seated directly behind the star and her director. In my long years as a film critic, this has never happened before, and it was downright weird, seeing every nervous twitch and laugh from these two women in the foreground of their film. Like a scene from an Atom Egoyan movie. It was especially strange during Juliette Binoche’s masturbation scene: watching her watching herself struggle to attain orgasm. Continue…

Palestinians lobby Canada ahead of UN statehood bid

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:53 PM - 7 Comments

Palestinian officials and community members are hoping to influence how the Canadian government votes when an expected proposal for Palestinian statement comes before the United Nations. Canada is not expected to support the proposal, but lobbyists hope to convince the government to at least abstain from the vote, Embassy reports. Earlier this summer, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said the recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN would be meaningless and that the only way such a state can be created is through peaceful negotiations with Israel. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23. The Palestinians have not yet indicated whether they will seek full UN membership as an independent state, or an upgraded status as a non-member observer state. The first option requires the approval of the international body’s 15-member Security Council, where the U.S. is expected to veto any proposal on Palestinian statehood. To obtain an upgraded status as a non-member observer requires a simple majority from the 193-member General Assembly. Such a proposal is expected to easily pass, with or without Canada’s support. Linda Sobeh Ali, a Palestinian envoy in Canada, says she has heard that Canada is doing some lobbying of its own, trying to convince countries like Germany and Italy to vote against the expected Palestinian bid.

Embassy

Bless this mess

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

Samara has released its fourth report on the lives of MPs, including proposals for reform from those parliamentarians: reduce the power of political parties, fix Question Period, better train incoming MPs and so forth. Some of these proposals have been covered here and here. Coincidentally, Carleton’s Initiative for Parliamentary and Diplomatic Engagement will be conducting a two-day conference for MPs this weekend.

Samara has also launched a Democracy Index which will track the state of ours on an annual basis.

Shooting stars at TIFF

By Andrew Tolson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

Movie stars don’t have a lot of time.

When you’re photographing them, there’s no asking about their Aunt Phyllis or how their golf swing is progressing. Yes, there’s small talk of the ‘How are you liking Toronto?’ variety, but really, they just want you to get the shot and move on. They have a red carpet to walk, scripts to read, multi-million dollar deals to sign, and, presumably, eating and sleeping to do. For the Movie Star, this is all part of their job; the promoting, the glad-handing and the quickie hotel room portraits. It’s all business.

Which is why you only have one minute to take the photograph.

For the Movie Star, there are varying degrees of involvement in the shoot. Most endure it like a grumpy kid having their picture taken with Santa Claus. Some enjoy the exercise, such as David Cronenberg, who cordially offered me his very effective Death Stare. Sarah Silverman had fun posing as if she were cramped into a photo booth. For some Movie Stars of a certain vintage, it’s about controlling their image: Juliette Binoche insisted on critiquing every frame and pronounced I “had the shot,” when I wasn’t sure I did.

(She was right. I did.)

But during that single minute I have with the Movie Star, it’s always an odd sensation, being so close to someone who is normally forty feet tall. Because after you’ve been face to face with them, in some anonymous hotel room or bland boardroom, you can’t help but feel the Movie Star seems, well, kind of normal.

Follow me: @andrewtolson @macleansphoto

Shooting Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes

Emily Blunt

Juliette Binoche

David Thewlis

Sarah Gadon

Scott Speedman

John Lydon, AKA Johnny Rotten

Sarah Polley

David Cronenberg

Sarah Silverman

Gerard Depardieu spills on urine scandal

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:12 PM - 0 Comments

In his first interview since he urinated into an empty water bottle on an airplane in front of other passengers, French actor Gerard Depardieu reveals he begged the flight attendant who blocked his access to a bathroom before take-off that he had to use the bathroom: “I am an elephant . . . I have a lot of pee.” When she refused, he borrowed a bottle from a friend, which then overflowed. “The bottle was too small, you know,” the corpulent 62-year-old actor giddily told CNN. The star of Cyrano de Bergerac and Jean de Florette says he said he would have cleaned up the spillage but by then other passengers had gathered with camera phones. Depardieu denied wine was a factor.

The Telegraph

Email suggests Chinese reporter and “Old Fox” more than friends

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:09 PM - 1 Comment

A recently translated email from the inbox of Shi Rong, the Xinhua news agency reporter who exchanged messages with Conservative MP Bob Dechert, includes references to a relationship with an older man that had taken a turn for the worse. In the email with the subject line “Old Fox,” the sender advises Shi to forget the “sad tales” about how an older man kept her waiting. “Sweep him into the dust bin, he is not good enough for you,” reads the email dated June 26, 2010. Dechert’s name is never mentioned in the email, which is among the more than 240 that were released to the media last week from Shi’s inbox. There were several amorous messages from Dechert, however, who is parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Affairs minister. Dechert, who is married, maintains he has a friendly and “innocent” relationship with Shi. He has also apologized for sending “flirtatious” emails to Rong. The opposition NDP has called for Dechert’s resignation, saying that his relationship with the Xinhua reporter is problematic because the news agency has close ties with the Chinese government. Many analysts and counter-intelligence agencies consider Xinhua to be a de facto intelligence gathering organization of the Communist Party of China.

The Globe and Mail

Republicans capture Anthony Wiener’s NY seat

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:49 PM - 1 Comment

U.S. Democrats lost a New York stronghold for the first time since the 1920s on Tuesday as a Congressional seat vacated by Anthony Weiner fell to a Republican challenger. Weiner resigned his seat in June after admitting he sent nude pictures of himself to women on Twitter. His district, which includes parts of Queens and Brooklyn, had been been Democratic for nearly 90 years. Republican Bob Turner won the seat over David Weprin, a state assemblyman, in a special election held Tuesday.

Reuters

Night of the TV Premiere Stars and Semi-Stars

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:47 PM - 0 Comments

A couple of links to articles on shows premiering tonight. Jennifer Dichtburn covers the CBC’s new show “Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays,” very confusingly scheduled for Wednesdays (at 9 p.m. ET) from The Drowsy Chaperone and Slings & Arrows‘ Bob Martin and Don McKellar, starring Martin and Matt Watts.

And Daniel Fienberg has a takedown of H8R, a new reality show where Slater from Saved By the Bell helps celebrities get back at people who are poorer and less famous than they are. No, really. In a complete reversal of one of the most important tenets of entertainment – we root for the slobs against the snobs, not vice-versa – the idea of H8R is to feed the victim complex of celebrities. I’m not saying all celebrities believe that everyone should love them and that the people who don’t are all “haters,” but some do, and they made a whole show about it. It’s like that Frasier episode where Frasier became obsessed with that one guy in the focus group who didn’t like his show. And Frasier was supposed to be completely obnoxious in that episode.

Finally, tonight’s the night NBC launches its new comedy hour with Up All Night and Free Agents, trying to get the jump on what will be some extremely tough competition in this hour. The big news about Up All Night is that it has been re-tooled somewhat to give a larger role to Maya Rudolph (and also because if they hadn’t retooled it, they’d have had back-to-back shows about people who work for PR firms). This seems like a good idea, since the material about two swinging parents raising a baby never seemed like it was enough to carry an entire show: opening it up into a hybrid family/workplace show gives it more places to go depending on what does or doesn’t work. And also, the comedy that many of these family shows are trying to imitate, Modern Family, is a success partly because it jumps around from family to family, place to place.

It’s also understandable that Maya Rudolph’s part would be beefed up, not only because of Bridesmaids but because she’s less of a known quantity than Christina Applegate, and her popularity has more room to grow. The interesting thing about NBC’s choices for this new block is that they are both built around familiar TV faces who never quite achieved true TV stardom. Hank Azaria, the star of Free Agents, is a great “hey, it’s that guy” actor (and voice, of course) who has never made it as a headliner. And Applegate has been starring in TV shows since the ’90s without ever exactly becoming a star – Jesse and Samantha Who? started out promisingly thanks in part to good time slots, then got canceled. Asking her to headline a show that leads off a whole evening is definitely a risk.

Though of course if the shows do well, it’ll be a risk that pays off. (This seems more likely for Up All Night, thanks to Lorne Michaels’ exceptional ability to promote his shows within NBC – 30 Rock went from struggling show to an anchor of NBC without ever really becoming a hit. Besides, Emily Spivey, the creator of the show, is a writer who has experience in sketch, sitcom and even King of the Hill.) It’s good to see a network building shows around people who aren’t absurdly young or trendy. The point is just that Applegate and Azaria are not really established TV stars, in the sense of having starred in a hit TV series. They are excellent performers who are somewhere on that line between supporting player and star. These shows will either push them over the line, or establish that they aren’t stars – but there’s a third option, the Maya Rudolph option, of rebuilding the show around a potential star.

Chevron reports possible oil leak off Louisiana coast

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:46 PM - 0 Comments

A Chevron oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico may be leaking, the company reported Tuesday. Parts of two pipelines connected to the facility were closed to help cope with the possible spill. Chevron has not said how much crude may have leaked from the installation, which sits off the coast of Louisiana. Meanwhile, oil prices slipped below US$90 a barrel Wednesday amidst falling consumer demand.

Reuters

Canadian Press

Edwin Boyd

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

Edwin Boyd

In an impressive feature debut, Canadian writer-director Nathan Morlando makes a folk hero of flamboyant Toronto outlaw Edwin Boyd, leader of the legendary Boyd Gang. After returning from a tour of duty in the Second World War, Boyd makes a frustrated attempt to make his career as an actor, and finds a more lucrative role robbing banks, using heavy make-up to create a dashing alter-ego. (If only he’d got that job with the Lorne Greene School of Broadcasting, he might have become a national treasure instead of a public enemy.) The film follows Boyd’s seven-year rampage of heists and jailbreaks that ended with his final capture in 1952. Hard to believe this sort of thing went on it Toronto the Good. In a blistering performance, Speedman creates a complex, charismatic portrait of a sympathetic psycho who lives a double life. He’s flanked by a strong cast that includes Kelly Reilly as his long-suffering wife, Brian Cox as his policeman father, and Brendan Fletcher and Kevin Durand as accomplices. Morlando lets the story fly with kinetic energy and style. The machine-gun bursts of garage rock that turn the robberies into music videos are jarringly anachronistic, yet true to the nervy spirit that fuels this hellbent saga.

Picking sides

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 4 Comments

While Thomas Mulcair says he has the support of a “very large majority of my Quebec caucus,” Brian Topp went west yesterday and picked up the support of four prominent New Democrats from British Columbia.

“The British Columbia party is in many ways the heart and soul of our party,” Topp told reporters at a news conference. “And no one is going to become leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada without doing very well in British Columbia.”

Romeo Saganash is apparently set to announce a leadership bid. Nathan Cullen and Peggy Nash are still thinking about it. Pundits Guide has launched a special minisite to track the race.

Canada to extend Libya mission by three months

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:31 PM - 2 Comments

Canada will extend its involvement in NATO’s Libya mission by three months, CTV reports. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to formally announce the decision next week at a NATO meeting in New York. Canadian warplanes joined the bombing effort earlier this year to protect civilians from forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi. Now the former rebels control much of the country, but pockets of loyalist resistance remain. Gadhafi’s whereabouts are also unknown. Abubaker Karmos, a Libyan dignitary to Canada, told CTV that his country still needs the protection of Canadian forces. He also suggested that Canadian companies could be rewarded with construction contracts as Libya begins rebuilding after its civil war. On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada will reopen its embassy in Tripoli. He also said more than $2 billion in frozen Libyan assets will be released so that the new Libyan government can restore electricity, water and hospital service to people in the country.

CTV News

Montreal daycare attacked twice in one day

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

A daycare in a Montreal suburb has been firebombed twice in one day, and for a third time in two weeks, after being raided two years ago by police as part of an investigation into ID fraud. Police and firefighters arrived at the Bébé Einstein Daycare in Rivières-des-Prairies at 11 p.m. on Tuesday, having already investigated the scene earlier that morning, when remnants of a Molotov cocktail were found. The daycare was first attacked on Sept. 3, and was raided in 2009 during an international probe into ID fraud, after authorities said that counterfeit credit cards, drivers’ licenses and passports were being made on site. No one was reported injured in the attacks and damage was said to be minimal.

CBC News

Who’s afraid of a gay man’s blood? We are.

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 12:11 PM - 9 Comments

Adam Piotrowski/Flickr

The Statement: “In our case, we’re absolutely certain that going from a lifetime deferral to a five-year deferral or even a one-year deferral … would absolutely make no difference in terms of the risk of HIV (transmission),” Marc Germain, Héma-Québec, 09/08/2011

Starting in November, the United Kingdom will join South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other countries that have lifted the lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with other men (MSM) and instead impose a 12-month deferral period after oral or anal sexual contact with a same-sex partner has occurred. This rule will apply whether or not a condom was used.

The policy change is based on the findings of the independent Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues, and Organs, which reviewed the evidence on donor selection criteria, taking into account improvements in blood testing, monitoring from countries with shortened deferral periods, and donors’ compliance with the ban. They concluded that the science “no longer support[s] the permanent exclusion of men who have had sex with men.” Continue…

The things you learn at goat school!

By Julia McKinnell - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; iStock; Photo Illustration by Lauren Cattermole

When North America’s only goat school first opened in Maine, it attracted a total of 12 students. Now, Ken and Janice Spaulding’s school is a two-day affair that often draws more than 100 students. This year’s goat school is on Oct. 8 and 9 at Stony Knolls Farm in Saint Albans, Maine.

For those who can’t attend the school but are interested in owning goats as pets, or raising goats for milk and meat, Janice Spaulding has just released a do-it-yourself manual called Goat School: A Master Class in Caprine Care and Cooking. In it, you’ll find everything you need to know about assisting a pregnant goat in labour to how to whip up a 30-minute mozzarella using goat’s milk and rennet.

“Goats are amazing creatures. They are smart, funny, personable, nosy, and did I say smart?” writes Spaulding. “They can open any latch, sometimes unlock doors, turn light switches on and off, take things apart, and they love to help. They will help you shovel snow or poop, they will untie your shoelaces for you, and they love helping take things out of your pocket.”

Continue…

The limits of reform

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:38 AM - 1 Comment

Robert Asselin considers what institutional democratic reform can’t do.

Members of Parliament won’t be less partisan because we have fixed elections dates and politicians won’t stop lying because they suddenly have to be evaluated by a group of citizens.  The situation will only improve if voters start demanding a higher level of political debate and discourse, if more politicians start saying what they really think and if politics ceases to be a reckless partisan confrontation and spectacle inflated by the media’s appetite for controversies to feed its ravenous 24 hours news cycle.

Vancouver—the most livable city?

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 3 Comments

Photographs by Simon Hayter

Thinking of buying a home in Vancouver? If your budget is less than $600,000, well . . . forget about it. As of earlier this month, a search for detached residential properties on the Multiple Listing Service, the standard industry database that advertises real estate for sale through brokers, turned up a mere six houses priced below that threshold. These are not mansions, either. One is a 30-year-old, 1,260-sq.-foot dwelling. Another dates back to 1922. For many with a yearning for picket fences and a private drive, it means the entry point into Vancouver’s real estate market is out of reach.

According to Demographia, a survey of property affordability published by Illinois-based consultant Wendell Cox, the median price of a house in the city was 9.5 times the median income in the third quarter of last year. It doesn’t get any less affordable, the report indicates, except in Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia. Back in Vancouver, if you’re willing to settle for a bungalow, you’ll need an annual pre-tax income of $157,800, according to a study by the Royal Bank of Canada.

If thin walls, potentially obnoxious neighbours and lack of greenery don’t scare you, though, you might have better chances. According to Vancouver condo king Bob Rennie, one of the city’s best-known real estate brokers, the average selling price for an apartment last year was a more reasonable $313,000 (excluding high-end properties in the top one-fifth of the market).

Continue…

You’ll absolutely love ‘minkfish’

By Jacob Richler - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Simon Hayter

Early one morning on a recent West Coast Fishing Club trip to the Haida Gwaii, I dipped a baited line into the frigid waters with the expectation of an imminent battle with a ripped and angry tayee, as the biggest chinooks are locally known—and instead, promptly reeled in a five-kilogram ling cod. I had never seen one before and it was ghastly, with a huge and hideous head, monstrous pectoral fins and a long, slender, amber-flecked grey body that once on deck writhed like an eel. “You should keep it,” said chef David Hawksworth, who was fishing on the same boat, and went on to explain that from a culinary perspective, if not that of an angler, he often preferred ling cod to salmon. So keep it, I did.

Two days later, back in Toronto with company over for dinner, I pulled the ling cod from the refrigerator. The fish had been cleaned and filleted for the journey home, and sizing it up thus, I could not think of another creature whose aesthetic could be so vastly improved through a simple act of decapitation.

The remaining flesh of the two long fillets was thick, firm and white. While the grey skin still wore its scales, chef Hawksworth had assured me that these were so tiny as to be undetectable on the palate, once cooked—and that is what I call convenient fish design. So I progressed directly to portioning it up, and cooking it.

Continue…

Getting too close to Neil Young

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:18 AM - 1 Comment

After the blitz of TIFF’s opening weekend, many of the A-list stars and visiting media junketeers have left town and you can already feel the air going out of the festival. Yesterday afternoon, I ran into TIFF CEO Piers Handling in front of the Lightbox, who was clutching a Boss bag (a fresh shirt as part of his sponsored wardrobe), and appeared remarkably fresh for someone who had lingered at a party until 3 a.m. His first late-night indulgence, he said. Before the festival, he’d told me that toughest part of his job was simply standing on his feet at endless receptions.

Me, I’ve been running between interviews and screenings, seeing more good movies about deranged men—notably Edwin Boyd, starring a magnetic Scott Speedman in the true story of the post-war bandit who robbed banks in face paint and became a Toronto legend, and Rampart, a moody L.A. crime drama fired by a blazing performance from Woody Harrelson as a dirty cop. In a sweeter vein, I’ve caught a couple of genuine crowd pleasers: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, a charming romantic comedy from Lasse Hallström, and Undefeated, a documentary about a Memphis high-school football team of disadvantaged black kids and their white coach—The Blind Side meets Friday Night Lights. Continue…

Giving testosterone a workout

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Ian Gavan/Getty Images

On Jane Fonda’s recent media blitz to promote her new book, Prime Time, the 73-year-old looked radiant. She attributed her glow to the fact that she’s having great sex in her seventies—thanks partly, she said, to the testosterone she’s been taking. As Fonda gushed about the virtues of using the hormone in a “gel, pill or patch” as a libido enhancer, some experts were horrified. “Jane looks great,” says Gloria Gutman, a gerontology expert at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. “However, if she is doing it by juicing herself up on testosterone, that is scary.”

Scary or not, Fonda isn’t the only star talking about hormones. Suzanne Somers devotes a whole page on her website to it, and Sylvester Stallone has revealed he’s taken human growth hormone and testosterone to bulk up. The value of these treatments is hotly debated. Women on testosterone can experience side effects like hair growth and male-pattern baldness, oily skin, a deepening voice, and even enlargement of the clitoris. (Fonda went off it during her book tour because it was giving her acne.) Gutman and others argue the long-term effects aren’t really understood. But these hormonal treatments are more in demand than ever.

Testosterone is typically considered the “male” hormone, but womens’ bodies produce it too; it affects everything from muscle mass and bone density to libido. About 12 per cent of women aged 50 to 59 suffer “frequently” from problems with desire, says Dr. James A. Simon, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at George Washington University, and half say it causes them “some kind of distress.” In 2004, Simon led a study to see whether an experimental testosterone patch could enhance the sex drive of women who’d undergone surgical menopause, where the uterus and both ovaries are removed. These women saw one or two additional episodes of sexual activity a month. “It doesn’t sound like very much,” says Simon, but it was a 74 per cent increase over the average.

Continue…

James Forrest Kienholz

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

James Forrest Kienholz was born in Nelson, B.C., on Sept. 12, 1946, the first of five siblings (Melvin arrived next, then Lorraine, David and Beverley). James’s father, Forrest, was a Greyhound bus driver; his mother, Malendar (neé Davidson), was the anchor of the family home. “I had a house full of kids all the time,” she says. “I always baked bread and buns on Monday mornings, and all five kids wanted to bring a friend home for cinnamon buns. I let them each to bring one, so that meant 10 kids every Monday morning.”

As a child, Jim was a natural athlete. He spent the summers playing baseball and soccer and anything else that kept him outdoors. When the kids went fishing on Kootenay Lake, Jim always took the time to bait his little sister’s hook. “We would collect grasshoppers from my grandmother’s backyard and use them for bait,” Lorraine remembers. The family had a cat named Mittens. Jim’s pet rabbit was Sniffles.

When he was 13, a family of refugees from the former Yugoslavia moved in across the street. Dan Skopac barely spoke a word of English, but Jim and his brothers welcomed him to Canada, sharing their Batman comic books and teaching him the language (good words and bad). “Jim was three years older, and I just thought he was such a cool guy,” says Skopac, who remained lifelong friends with the Kienholz boys. “He had his comb-back hair with the Brylcreem and he looked like James Dean and Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes and Fabian all rolled into one.”

Continue…

A new kind of Mexican influx

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 1 Comment

In some regions, the battered U.S. economy is getting a boost from an unusual stimulus—investment from well-heeled Mexicans. Drug violence and gang-related kidnappings have led to an exodus of the wealthy in recent years, as Mexico’s businessmen increasingly seek safety north of the border. As industrial hubs such as Monterrey, Mexico’s third-largest city, watch their entrepreneurs pack, places like San Antonio, Texas, are welcoming a flurry of Mexican investment.

Pouring money into U.S. business projects, especially ones demonstrated to create American jobs, is, in fact, one of the speediest and surest ways to obtain U.S. work permits and green cards. The number of investment visas granted to Mexican citizens has grown 73 per cent between 2006 and 2010, according to the U.S. State Department. Though Chinese applicants still constitute the bulk of investors hoping to land on U.S. shores, rich Mexicans have become a much sought after source of capital in some areas of the southern United States. And though some in the States are questioning a system they say is “selling” residency rights to the wealthiest bidders, most don’t seem to mind Mexico’s new influx of designer sunglasses, private jet airplanes and, above all, job-creating money.

Bullying victims are taking schools to court

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 14 Comments

Ward Perrin/PNG/Vancouver Sun

In 2009, Daniela Cervini, a Toronto-based lawyer, was approached by a group of parents whose children were bullied at an elementary school in Owen Sound, Ont. For years, the parents claim they had been trying the prescribed channels—meetings with vice-principals, principals, police, board superintendents—with what they perceived as no results. They turned to litigation, “just because they weren’t being heard,” says Cervini. This year, four claims were filed in Ontario Superior Court against the Bluewater District School Board involving three schools, five teachers, three principals and one vice-principal. All are for gross negligence—the failure to protect students from bullies. Each lawsuit is for $8.5 million, well above the $1-million standard in personal injury claims. Together, at $34 million, the Bluewater suits are the biggest of their kind in Canada. As Cervini puts it: “You hear so much of this talk in the media and current culture of zero tolerance and bullying. It would seem that the schools have this under control. They don’t.” She expects them to deny the allegations; so far they have filed only a notice of intent to defend.

Bullying lawsuits have appeared in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Waterloo, Ont., as parents turn to the civil courts for justice. And while policies may be consistent in some school districts or provinces, how effective those policies are remains open to debate.

Bullying may have found its way into Ontario courts because the province’s approach has been more focused on discipline. “The easy fix to school boards seems to be you just suspend a kid that did the bullying, which doesn’t fix anything,” says Martha Mackinnon, executive director of Justice for Children and Youth, a Toronto-based legal-aid clinic for children. In Ontario’s initial anti-bullying legislation, the Safe Schools Act, vice-principals and principals were recast as police, required to conduct formal investigations of bullying complaints and penalize offenders according to a gradated system. It’s also known as the “zero tolerance” act.

Continue…

Rick Perry: number one with a bullet

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 3 Comments

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Barack Obama’s approval ratings of 43 per cent are the lowest of his presidency—as low as George W. Bush’s in his second term. The number of net new jobs the gasping American economy created in August was exactly zero. And on a sunny afternoon in a meticulously manicured suburb of Manchester, N.H., a state that plays a key role in picking presidents, several hundred Republican voters have gathered to hear from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the man who has vaulted to the lead of a raucous race to oust the President. The crowd skews somewhat grey-haired and more than a little country-clubby. Men sport khakis and button-downs, the women tailored dresses and high heels. Tidy white golf carts shuttle guests from their cars to a white tent that has been set up on grounds studded with American flags.

Even among this well-heeled group there is fear about where the country is headed—financially, politically, and even metaphysically. “The country, the people have lost their faith,” says Joyce Gardiner, a 68-year-old retired marketer from Londonderry. “Obama,” she purses her lips, “is inept.” James Shephard, 57, who says he lost his job at a plant that manufactured bomb-disposal equipment, is here to take pictures of the event for a Tea Party group he recently joined. “The vice is squeezing tighter and tighter,” he says. “People say they have to do something before the boat goes over the cliff.”

A murmur of excitement runs through the crowd as the governor arrives. Perry is tanned, square-jawed and sporting the salt-and-pepper mane that gave him the nickname Governor Goodhair. Along with his blue shirt and khakis, he sports some Texas flair: black ostrich leather shoes and a gold-tipped belt bearing a buckle embossed with a large “R.” Perry smiles broadly with a wink here, a thumbs-up there, as a glowing introduction is read out: the son of tenant farmers, Air Force veteran, still married to his high school sweetheart, and governor of the state that created 40 per cent of all the new jobs in America since 2009. “A person of action,” sums up the host. Perry takes the podium with the swagger of a man who has been governor for a decade (he took over when George W. Bush moved to the White House), who has never lost an election (he switched his affiliation from the Democrats to Republicans in the 1980s as they ascended in Texas), and who carries a concealed weapon (the .380 laser-sighted Ruger came in handy last year when, while jogging, he shot and killed a coyote who threatened the family dog.)

Continue…