Tanzania: land of constant complaints

By M.G. Vassanji - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:25 AM - 4 Comments

Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

In Tanzania, is it that they complain too much, or they expect too much? Since the beginnings of economic and political liberalization in the 1990s, the nation has charged forward; the print media is bold and vociferous in both of the national languages, English and Swahili—especially the latter. Paved roads connect every part of the country, reaching towns and villages previously cut off during the rains; cellphones are in evidence everywhere. The country is connected. It’s as if an engine turned on one day, and the once laid-back country, known as “the land of not yet,” woke up. So what are the complaints about? Or, as a slick, modern voice on the radio says in an angular Swahili, “Wapi ni beef?”

I’m sitting in a full minibus in the lush, hilly southern province of the country, heading from the provincial capital, Mbeya, down to Kyela on Lake Nyasa near the Malawi border. We pass areas growing wheat and corn, tea, banana, avocado, red beans and cocoa. We pass roadside markets selling vegetables, timber and locally made furniture. Finally we arrive at the market town, Kyela, known for its famous Mbeya rice. I can’t help observing that if one did not long for modern amenities such as a hot shower, one could simply lie under a tree all day, picking the occasional weed, and not starve.

On the way, my companion Felix, a local investigative journalist, points out other places of interest: the modest headquarters of a yogourt maker whose product now reaches all over the country; the modest house of a local man who owns hotels in the capital; a downhill bend on the road that was formerly called Uwanja wa Ndege, or “Airport,” because—before the speed bumps came up—vehicles would fly off from this spot down into the valley below; a coal mine started by the Chinese. Felix also tells disturbing stories of abuses of village women by foreign mine workers.

Continue…

Your guide to this season’s hockey parents

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 3 Comments

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

It’s September and a new wave of little kids and their parents are experiencing minor hockey. The boys and girls don’t need any help having fun. As for Mom and Dad, some fair warning: here’s a guide to some of the parents you can expect to encounter over the next several winters.

“Talks Only About His Own Kid” Dad. This plentiful specimen of parent will gleefully analyze for you his child’s every pass, shot, mood swing, haircut, tweet and cereal preference. Come February, he still won’t know the names of half the other kids on the team. You can spot him easily because he’s the only dad keeping a plus-minus stat for a six-year-old.

“Complains About Ice Time” Dad. This father can often be found insisting that the team would have triumphed if only his child hadn’t been shortchanged by 23 seconds there in the second period.

Continue…

Wanted in Alberta: one premier

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 3 Comments

Larry Wong/Edmonton Journal

Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government turned 40 on Aug. 30. That first win back in 1971 was regarded as an upset, but one man saw it coming—Peter Lougheed’s rural boss, House leader, and political Merlin, Dr. Hugh Horner. In the days before the election, the tall, soft-spoken Horner circulated amongst legislature reporters, promising skeptical scribes that the upstart PCs would capture about 50 seats (the final figure was 49). Today Horner’s son Doug is part of a six-person field from which PC members will select a chief for an election fight anticipated next spring.

It’s the latest chapter in the tale of eternal Alberta PC renewal. This time last year there were many who didn’t think the Tories would make it to age 41. Premier Ed Stelmach, the compromise candidate who had succeeded Ralph Klein, had turned out to be a tongue-tied bungler. And the Wildrose Alliance, a right-wing alternative party led by young and eloquent Danielle Smith, was at the government’s heels in the polls. A January caucus coup led by Ted Morton forced Stelmach into a slow-motion retirement.

Morton is one of the candidates for the leadership, and whether or not he triumphs, his move seems to have been the best thing for the party. With a gang of possible leaders capturing media attention and shoplifting Wildrose policies, Alberta’s natural governing party has surged back into a commanding lead. A late July Environics survey gave the PCs a towering 54 per cent share of voters, with the Wildrose (renamed simply the Wildrose Party this summer) at 16 per cent and the NDP and Liberals even further back.

Continue…

Cruising North Korea

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images

For tourists who have gone everywhere and done everything, North Korea has launched the next must-do opportunity: a unique cruise down its scenic eastern seaboard. The trip starts from the economically depressed Rason economic zone near the northern Russian-Chinese border and meanders southward for 21 hours before the tourists are dropped off at the scenic Mount Kumyang resort. The inaugural media launch last week featured a choreographed dance, lots of kids waving fake flowers and even some fireworks. The menu featured plenty of local cuisine, especially dried fish, and karaoke was the entertainment, but the rest of the cruise amenities were a tad spartan.

On the first official sailing of the cruise ship—a rusting former ferry—some cabins were furnished with mattresses on the floor, while most below-deck bathrooms lacked water, which ran brown in other cabins. Still, officials of the secretive, impoverished nation hope the cruise will be so successful that next year they can rent a bigger and better ship.

We reject your democracy and substitute our own

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 67 Comments

A majority of voters in a plebiscite have voted to maintain the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopsony.

A total of 62 per cent of prairie wheat growers – 22,764 farmers – voted to keep the monopoly versus 38 per cent – 14,059 farmers – who voted to eliminate the monopoly and be able to sell their wheat on the open market.

Just over half of barley growers – 51 per cent – voted to maintain the monopoly compared to 49 per cent who voted to eliminate it. The vote was held by mail-in ballot of farmers in the CWB area including Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Turnout in the referendum was 56 per cent for wheat growers, 47 per cent for barley growers and 60 per cent for farmers who grew both.

The government responded last night with a note entitled “Statement from Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on the Result of the Expensive Survey.” Continue…

A Giller for the masses

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

David Cooper/Toronto Star/Getstock

It turned out to be a grand Labour Day weekend for literary Saskatchewan. Two women from the province won the Scotiabank Giller Prize’s new promotional plums: one got the Readers’ Choice Award, given to the book that received the most votes in an online poll conducted by the CBC; the other was the randomly chosen winner of two tickets to the November Giller gala in Toronto (plus airfare, hotel stay, clothing and meal allowances). Myrna Dey, 69, from tiny Kamsack, 330 km east of Saskatoon, took the Readers’ Choice for her debut novel Extensions, while Helen McCaslin of Regina, also 69, won the tickets.

The Giller itself did all right—in a situation that could have come out far worse. The idea of adding a populist element, the Readers’ Choice, to a literary award that’s never been shy about promoting itself—but is sensitive to constant outraged cries that it “missed” a popular book (like Emma Donoghue’s Room last year)—must have seemed a natural. But it was always going to fit uneasily with another core aspect of the Giller: the prize derives its prestige from its elite status.

The Giller’s three-person jury, which winnows down the submissions by stages to the ultimate winner of the $50,000 prize, is always made up of book insiders, mostly writers and announced with fanfare every spring. As Giller director Elana Rabinovitch puts it, “We select juries for their expertise very carefully and have full faith they will see where the rubies are.” Despite the fact all literary prize lists are explained, by insider gossip, in terms of book trade politics, to raise the possibility that popularity might influence judges disturbs a lot of literati. “Now we’ll see—and to my mind it cheapens the prize—people barking like trained seals to get mentioned,” says novelist Andrew Somerset.

Continue…

Mind the espionage

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 11 Comments

While analysts and observers debate the significance of Bob Dechert’s flirty emails, J. Michael Cole raises various concerns.

It is too soon to tell whether Dechert was indeed the target of a “honey trap” by Shi, and we’ll leave it to Canada’s intelligence officials to go to the bottom of this. But one thing is certain: Baird’s reference to the whole affair as “ridiculous,” and his refusal to fire Dechert over the matter, is both premature and ultimately naïve.

Stephen Harper’s government can choose to put its head in the sand and pretend that its new-found friend in Asia does not represent a security risk, but this won’t change the fact that China was, and remains, a threat. And with opportunities for contact increasing as Ottawa further opens up to China, so will the potential for recruitment by Chinese spies. Beijing’s denials notwithstanding, there is little doubt that it possesses both the means and intent to do so.

Late-Night Succession

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 7:16 PM - 1 Comment

I was reading Bill Carter’s latest missive on the late night landscape, which is as you’d expect: hosts fighting over a piece of a shrinking pie, Leno still beating Letterman, both looking diminished. It also talks about the importance of social media, which I sometimes suspect may be overstated. It’s not that social media – in whatever form it happens to take, since it won’t be based around Twitter forever – can’t be incorporated into comedy. It definitely can be, especially on a show like The Colbert Report that blurs the line between fiction and real life. I’m just not certain that this is what’s needed to attract viewers. Carter mentions that Leno and Letterman “don’t do much of anything involving social media,” but neither does Jon Stewart. If interactivity works for comedic purposes, go ahead, but nothing is more off-putting than a comedian straining to incorporate those elements without enjoying them.

One thing that caught my eye was the bit about whether Letterman will step down due to his declining ratings; Carter’s sources lean toward saying that he will stay on for at least a couple more years, and the network won’t try forcing him out. The question then is what this means for Craig Ferguson:

Yet if Mr. Letterman does decide to extend his time on the show, it will certainly affect Mr. Ferguson, who has a clause in his contract guaranteeing him the 11:35 slot when Mr. Letterman leaves. One possible outcome that some CBS executives have cited — though they say they don’t fully believe it — is that Mr. Ferguson might quit his 12:30 show if Mr. Letterman remains.

That sounds delicious; it would be like the Leno/Conan thing playing out on a smaller scale. Smaller because this is a less-watched show and a TV franchise with less history behind it. (Though if you think of Late Show as part of a franchise Letterman created on NBC with Late Night, then it does have quite a lot of history. And isn’t it fair to say that the host, rather than the network, really defines the franchise? That’s what Letterman was trying to prove by moving from NBC to CBS, and that’s what Conan O’Brien has tried to prove by doing a show that is very similar to his NBC show.) I saw a Ferguson episode lately where he seemed really off his game to me, but even when he’s off his game, he can be very interesting to watch. Like Letterman, his prickly personality defines the entire show, and he doesn’t really care whether you like him or not – unlike Jimmy Fallon, who very much wants us to like him and has succeeded in crafting a show built around charm and lightness.

If Ferguson is the designated successor to Letterman, then Fallon is clearly being groomed as the successor for The Tonight Show: during the Leno/Conan fracas he kept his head down, didn’t make enemies, and concentrated on trying to improve his show, which he did. Depending on how long he and Ferguson are willing to wait for the old guys to leave, they could conceivably wind up stepping into the big jobs around the same time. Maybe that won’t happen, or maybe the networks will find someone else to put in there (maybe even a woman, if such a thing is even allowed in broadcast TV late night). But Fallon vs. Ferguson would be almost a hipper version of the Leno vs. Letterman battles. Fallon would probably beat Ferguson, as he currently beats him at 12:30, and that possibility might lead CBS to find someone younger, contract or no contract. On the other hand, he doesn’t beat Ferguson by that much, and the difference could be chalked up to the difference in lead-ins. Anyway, Fallon and Ferguson are both doing good shows on different philosophies – Ferguson, the shoot-from-the-hip broadcaster, Fallon, the guy who enjoys being silly and celebrating popular culture.

Should officials have to reimburse the government for personal use of government jets?

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 6:09 PM - 16 Comments

The Dechert files

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 7 Comments

Glen McGregor translates one email and posts video of Bob Dechert’s promised smile for the cameras. John Baird brushes it all off and says Mr. Dechert will keep his job, while security officials seemingly gave the Conservative MP a pass.

“The renewal of background checks on members of the ministry and parliamentary secretaries has been finalized,” says the note, signed by Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council. “In 2008, the Prime Minister requested that security background checks on Ministers, Ministers of State and Parliamentary Secretaries, and their spouses or partners, be renewed every two years while the appointee occupies a position as Minister, Minister of State or Parliamentary Secretary.”

Further details in the note are censored. But Dechert retained his position as parliamentary secretary immediately after the March security check – and became parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the cabinet shuffle soon after the May 2 election campaign.

Emily Blunt on what it takes to make a good romantic movie

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 0 Comments

The Commons: Introducing Brian Topp

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 4:44 PM - 7 Comments

He sat down and declared that he was here today with Françoise Boivin, the woman at his right, to announce their endorsement of Ed Broadbent, seated to his left, as the next leader of the NDP.

This was a joke. It is always good to lead with a joke. Jokes—and the ability to both tell and appreciate jokes—are what separate us from the apes and the terrorists. And as long as we have jokes, we can be defeated by neither.

So, at the outset, there was a certain amount of chuckling. And on this note, Brian Topp proceeded to announce himself as a candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Canada. Continue…

Charest to overhaul construction industry (!)

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 3:37 PM - 6 Comments

Yes, he’s smiling. You would be too.

The government of Jean Charest announced plans to table a bill that will do nothing short of “initiating a complete in the construction industry that will mark a new era in work relations [in the province],” according to the very quotable words of Industry Minister Lise Thériault. The report (English-language highlights courtesy of the Gazette here) includes measures to remove significant power from the various construction unions. It is the fruit of a lengthy commission overseen by a five member….

Oh, hell, let’s just get on with the applause, shall we? It’s for you, Mr. Charest. A year ago our Premier’s numbers were in the cellar, the PQ had the force of public opinion behind it (as far as the construction business was concerned, anyway), a fellow named François Legault was far and away the province’s most popular politician even though he wasn’t running for anything, and hardly a day went by where he or one of his ministers was under attack for some sort of alleged skullduggery. In short, everything was sticking, and everything sucked.

Now where are we? The PQ is in full-blown Gong Show mode, François Legault has yet to start his party—and is still well short of its fundraising goals, from what I hear—and whatever lingering collective fury that remains over the construction industry will be in large part placated by this dandy, well-timed little report. Is it any good? Probably. Will Theriault’s Bill do anything? Yeah, sure, maybe. But that’s not the gobsmackingly-impressive part: it seems, with this construction-industry-overhaul-à-la-sauce-électorale, it seems Charest is going to ride out yet another storm.

Place your bets: here are our favourites to win the 2011 Polaris Prize

By Aaron Brophy - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 3:23 PM - 1 Comment

The Suburbs, Arcade Fire’s concept album about tract housing ennui, has already netted the Montreal-based band an Album of the Year Grammy, the Best International Album award at the 2011 Brit Awards and the Juno Award for Album Of The Year. All that’s left now is planning the parade for its inevitable win at the prestigious Polaris Music Prize gala on Sept. 19 in Toronto, right?

Not quite. Arcade Fire’s victory won’t be so easy or clear-cut.

The Polaris Prize, which honours “the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label,” has frequently been awarded to unlikely outsiders (see: Karkwa’s victory in 2010, F–ked Up’s in 2009, or Patrick Watson’s in 2007). Continue…

And speaking of foreign workers

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 8 Comments

Two-thirds of those Afghan interpreters who applied for refugee status in Canada have apparently been turned down.

The special-measures program was announced with much fanfare by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in the fall of 2009 and brought Canada in line with other NATO countries which had already launched similar initiatives. It ends Monday.

Applicants had to demonstrate they faced extraordinary risk as a result of their work with Canada. Few didn’t. Working as an interpreter for NATO forces in southern Afghanistan was akin to having a Taliban bull’s-eye on the back of a shalwar khameez. Stories of night letters, threatening phone calls, abductions and even hangings were part of the job. As interpreters also travelled with soldiers and diplomats, at least six were among those killed during the IED strikes that claimed 161 Canadian lives.

Brian Topp, candidate

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 14 Comments

Even winners can’t always spot winners. Buried in Tom Flanagan’s book Harper’s Team there’s a brief mention of the candidate Stephen Harper supported, against Preston Manning and Stockwell Day and two sitting Members of Parliament, for the Canadian Alliance leadership in 2000: Tom Long. Harper wasn’t alone. To my occasional annoyance, my top boss at the National Post, Conrad Black, was clearly doing what he could to make himself helpful to Long, a young strategist for Mike Harris and the Ontario Conservatives. Long was a fun guy to have coffee with. Smart, sharp-tongued, a clever analyst of assorted political figures’ weaknesses and opportunities. A lot like Stephen Harper, come to think of it.

He turned out to be a really bad political candidate. So did Belinda Stronach, Mike Harris’s own pick for the Conservative leadership in 2004.  In 2006 a bunch of youngish federal Liberals, including some of the brightest  young members of that party’s federal caucus, decided the party needed generational change — and a leader who had been far, far away from the scene when the Adscam mess was happening. They settled, enthusiastically, on Gerard Kennedy.

It’s hard to spot a winner. Intelligence and wily street smarts are part of politics, but so is simple aesthetics. Does a leader’s voice fill a room? Does he dominate or fade away in a crowd? Does he come off as crushing or petulant when angered? Can he give you goosebumps?

The best way to find out is to test a candidate in smaller forums before tossing him into a big one. Which is why smart parties tend to shy away from people like Tom Long or Belinda Stronach. Or Brian Topp, who sat in the National Press Theatre this morning trying to explain why the first job he wanted in electoral politics is the biggest a New Democrat can ask for: the party leadership. Continue…

Topp will run for NDP leadership

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 1 Comment

Brian Topp, president of the NDP, has confirmed he will run for the party leadership to replace the late Jack Layton at a press conference in Ottawa on Monday. Topp made the announcement alongside NDP MP Françoise Boivin and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, both of whom pledged to support his bid. The initial backing of Boivin is not only a sign of Topp’s wide-ranging appeal in the party, but could also indicate a possible split between Quebec NDP MPs who might support a leadership bid by House Leader Thomas Mulcair. While Topp spent much of his career working in Saskatchewan, Boivin made note of his upbringing in Quebec, where the party holds 59 of the NDP’s 103 seats in Parliament.

The Globe and Mail

Entourage, Not Against the Machine

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 12:24 PM - 9 Comments

The finale of Entourage was very heavy on romantic relationships. It sometimes seems like shows become romantic soap operas inevitably, inexorably. There was a lot of embarrassing material (“If he slept with [another woman], he did it over you”) and embarrassing jokes, but you probably knew that, because Entourage has not exactly been at its creative peak in a long time. As with any show that starts out strongly and suffers a decline, it’s almost hard to remember that it once seemed fresh and interesting. (Possibly it was more interesting because Larry Charles was one of the writer-producers for the first two seasons, but I have to admit that I don’t have strong enough feelings about exactly when the jump-the-shark moment was. It just seemed to be enjoyable, and then it wasn’t so enjoyable.)

Entourage always had its weaknesses and a certain air of smugness; the flaws that did it in are not new flaws. But I think it’s worth remembering what made it interesting at the time. There have been many insider shows about Hollywood, and they almost all bomb – think Bracken’s World, think The Famous Teddy Z, think Action. One problem so many of these insider stories have is that they tend to portray Hollywood as a ridiculously unpleasant world, even though we can see for ourselves that it isn’t. Action is Hollywood the way many people, particularly writers, like to see it: full of Philistine producers, backstabbers, nymphos and nastiness. The problem is that this mostly seems terrible to people who live in Hollywood, and therefore have higher expectations. To people who dream of living in Hollywood or getting anywhere near show business, it comes off as whiny.

So Entourage managed to make the Hollywood-insider concept a success by, in a way, portraying the happy side of Hollywood. It’s fun to be a movie star. It’s also fun to hang out with a movie star even if you yourself are just a hanger-on. Powerful agencies are more glamorous than they seemed to be on The Famous Teddy Z, where the lead character worked for a major agency that was rather drab and behind the times. And even failures in Hollywood seem kind of fun by comparison with failures anywhere else – when a Hollywood star’s career goes down the tubes, he does it with more money and more entertaining debauchery than most of us can aspire to, and being a down-and-out movie star means doing jobs that would seem like huge success to most of us (including most aspiring actors). It’s just not possible to convince us that these people’s lives aren’t fun. Entourage just ran with that, being openly and brazenly escapist. This, ironically, made it probably more realistic than the usual à clef Hollywood story.

The finale was a silly episode and the tag scene was silliest of all. Yet that scene seemed to sum up the show: Ari Gold is torn between one lifestyle that seems like an escapist dream to 99.99999% of the population, and another escapist-dream lifestyle. Which dream will he pick? Will we find out in the Entourage movie they keep talking about (which is more likely to get made than the Arrested Development movie, but that’s about all I can say for it)? The dilemma seems like a bigger budget version of something Michael Scott might have dreamed up in his “Threat Level Midnight” movie. And that’s kind of the point. Entourage probably wouldn’t work on a broadcast network, because while broadcast networks deal in escapism, their kind of escapism is about giving us the feeling that we can identify with these people – that they’re average Joes in some way, even if they have more money than us and live in bigger apartments. HBO came up with the perfect alternative for a smaller, paying audience: shows that give us a feeling of vicariously living other people’s incredibe lives. (Their most popular shows, from The Sopranos to Sex and the City to Boardwalk Empire to Curb Your Enthusiasm, tend to centre on ostentatiously wealthy or high-living people.) It got out of hand with Entourage.

The first candidate

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

Francoise Boivin won’t be running to be NDP leader. And neither will Ed Broadbent.

We know this because both turned up an hour ago to sit beside Brian Topp and endorse his candidacy.

More on this later.

Gander, Nfld., remembers 9/11

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

In a somber ceremony of thanksgiving and remembrance, residents of Gander, Nfld., welcomed passengers stranded by the 9/11 attacks back to their community on Sunday. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson thanked the locals for their help and hospitality ten years after the terrorist strikes froze international travel and left about 200 planes grounded far from home.

Canadian Press

Scores killed in Nairobi fire

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

At least 120 people were killed in Kenya after gas spilled into a sewer and ignited underneath a densely-packed slum. Local media say the toll will likely be much higher, and the disaster which was probably sparked by a discarded cigarette. Residents told Reuters the fuel spilled from a depot owned by the Kenya Pipeline Company, where the slum’s residents often siphon fuel from.

Reuters

Three-year-old Keinan Hebert returned to family

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 11:38 AM - 6 Comments

A three-year-old boy was safely returned to his family on Sunday in Sparwood, B.C. after he was missing for several days and presumed abducted. Kienan Hebert disappeared after being put to bed last Tuesday night. The boy was returned home early Sunday morning, allegedly by the suspect in his abduction. On Sunday, Keinan’s father, Paul Hebert, tearfully told a press conference that “Kienan is happily home and he’s playing with his brothers and sisters.” He also thanked the person who returned his son to the family. Meanwhile, Sparwood’s mayor urged the suspect, 46-year-old Randall Hopley, to turn himself into police. Local RCMP also urged Hopley to come forward, addressing him directly by saying that “it is very, very important that we speak to you right now.” Police received a call at 3 a.m. on Sunday telling them that Keinan would be at his family’s home, which was empty at the time. Upon their arrival, the boy was sitting alone beneath a blanket on a couch.

CTV News

Econowatch: early September 2011

By Colin Campbell - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

The relative calm of markets during the first week of September brought a welcome end to a thoroughly rotten August. For several days, investors rediscovered their inner bulls, largely on reports that U.S. Federal Reserve officials are warming to the idea of buying even more government bonds to try to stimulate the economy.

But there is a wide gap between the sense of optimism that was on display and what’s happening on the ground. Unemployment remains high, with no sign of healthy job creation on the horizon in the U.S. There is still no lifeline in sight for those whose mortgages are underwater (and who couldn’t refinance even if rates keep dropping). The body of evidence suggests that the economy is teetering on the edge of another downturn. In Canada, it has already slipped into reverse as exports fell—a warning sign of what’s happening beyond our borders.

So what might a new round of so-called quantitative easing do to tip the balance in the direction of growth? If the last round, dubbed QE2, is anything to go by, probably not a heck of a lot. Launched in 2010, it sought to add $600 billion into the U.S. economy (on top of the $1.7 trillion added during QE1 to halt the 2008 financial crisis). For awhile, markets soared thanks to all the cheap money available. There were also hopes that the benefits would spill over and translate into lower interest rates, more lending and eventually more spending by businesses and home buyers.

That didn’t happen. The confidence boost from rising stock prices wasn’t enough to overcome America’s bigger economic problems: unemployment and slow growth. QE2 has also been blamed for driving up commodity prices, pushing up the cost of fuel and food. And there’s no reason to think it’ll be any different this time.

CP/iStock/Getty Images

Signs of the times:

• An Italian town has come up with a bold plan to avoid Rome’s deep austerity measures: secession. The mayor of Filettino (pop. 1,000) wants to create a sovereign principality and has already printed up a new currency—adorned with his photo, of course.
• Mere weeks after downgrading U.S. debt to AA for the first time in history, Standard & Poor’s continues to hand out superior AAA ratings to mortgage-backed securities containing subprime loans—the very same financial instruments blamed for spawning the 2008 financial crisis.
• It’s not just bottled water and batteries that fly off store shelves during hurricane season. Strawberry Pop Tarts are another emergency staple, according to an economist who studied Wal-Mart’s extensive preparations for storms.
• As the EU grapples with a deepening financial crisis and fears of a second U.S. recession grow, luxury Parisian fashion house Hermès has a different problem: meeting soaring demand for expensive handbags and silk scarves. Yet another piece of evidence that we may not all be in this together.

Majority of Canadians see “irreconcilable” rift between Islam and the West

By macleans.ca - Monday, September 12, 2011 at 11:07 AM - 213 Comments

Results from a recent poll reveal that a majority of Canadians surveyed feel there is an ideological rift between the Muslim world and the West which is “irreconcilable.” Of the 1,500 consulted in the week before the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, 56 per cent felt the West and the Muslim world could not overcome their perceived differences. Thirty-three per cent felt they could be reconciled, while 11 per cent did not answer the question. The poll was conducted by Leger Marketing on behalf of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, whose director, Jack Jedwab, told Postmedia News that the survey’s results contradict “a fundamental idea in multicultural democracies like ours that conflicts between societies can be resolved through dialogue and negotiation.” However, Jedwab said the result provided a slight “ray of hope” in that 52 per cent of Canadians say it’s wrong to conduct extra airport security checks on people who “appear to be of Muslim background.”

Postmedia