REVIEW: Requiem

By Jane Christmas - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

When his wife suddenly dies of a stroke just shy of her 50th birthday, Bin Okuma and his son Greg cope with the shock and loss in their own ways: Greg by returning to his studies on the East Coast; Bin, a visual artist, by driving across Canada to the opposite coast ostensibly to complete works for an upcoming exhibit. The journey in Itani’s latest novel becomes, as so many journeys do, a time to confront and release painful memories.

Bin’s family history is tied to the internment of Japanese Canadians following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and to the choices families were forced to make. Itani—who married into a family of Japanese Canadians—relates an evocative and cinematic tale that sweeps between the harsh treatment and conditions Japanese Canadians endured and the emotional internment that continues to haunt Bin to the present day.

Poignantly, the story’s determined brush strokes speak of quiet perseverance, underscoring the sense of loss, of talent suspended. Itani avoids judgment, letting the evidence speak for itself: one scene describes Bin’s community being yanked from its settlement, hustled onto a boat, and left to watch helplessly as people loot their homes. Prepare to gasp with shame.

The present-day story is almost dreamlike, echoing the vast and muscular landscape through which Bin travels as he plods slowly across the country, urged on by memories and the voice of his late wife to reconcile with his past and most importantly with his father. It is ironic that part of the story takes place a decade after the Canadian government’s formal apology to Japanese Canadians: there are some things restitution can never mend. With a precise, elegant style Itani avoids the maudlin, and delivers a taut novel.

Fighting violent crime, Canadian-style, in Trinidad and Tobago

By Richard Warnica - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Andrea De Silva/Reuters

On an average Friday night in Port of Spain, Trinidad, food-cart vendors line the streets, plying locals with treats like roti and doubles. But for a few weeks this summer, the carts went silent. Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister declared a national state of emergency on Aug. 21, following a wave of gang violence. The measure, which granted the police additional powers of arrest, included a curfew valid from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. As a result, workers who would otherwise have lingered outdoors until 11 p.m. or later were rushing home directly from work, says Dianne Williams, who teaches criminology at the University of the West Indies. “Those vendors would have felt it,” she says.

The question, though, is whether the criminals will feel it too. In September, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar extended the emergency, with reduced curfew hours, for three months. The measure came at the tail end of a decade’s rise in violence in Trinidad, and a year into Canadian Dwayne Gibbs’s three-year term as the country’s top police official. Gibbs, a former police superintendent in Edmonton, says the curfew has allowed police to get ahead of the criminals, to concentrate on strategic strikes instead of constantly reacting to crises. But others worry the emergency is just punting the problems down the field, delaying an inevitable return to the chaos while restricting the rights of the average citizen.

Part of the problem is that few agree on what exactly is behind the violence in Trinidad and Tobago. Beginning in 1999, homicide rates in the twin-island nation began to soar. That year, 93 people were murdered in the country. By 2008 the annual count had climbed to 550, a nearly sixfold increase in just 10 years. That rate, in a country with a population of just over 1.2 million people, made Trinidad one of the most murder-prone countries on Earth. And while the number of killings dipped slightly in recent years, in the eastern slums of Port of Spain violent gangs continue to operate with near impunity.

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What it’s like to find out your husband is a rapist

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 17 Comments

Courtesy Of Random House Canada

Last year, Shannon Moroney wrote a letter to the wife of convicted rapist and murderer Russell Williams. If anyone could understand the singular hell she was going through, Moroney believed she could. For she too had been blindsided by a spouse who committed a horrific crime. She’d been married only a month when, in November 2005, her 36-year-old husband, Jason Staples, abducted two women and raped them in their Peterborough, Ont., house while she was away at a convention in Toronto. In 2008, Staples was deemed a dangerous offender and imprisoned indefinitely.

But Moroney’s story, as told in her thought-provoking memoir Through the Glass, differs from Williams’s wife in a significant detail: the high school guidance counsellor married Staples knowing violent crime was part of his past. But, madly in love and believing in redemption—and the evidence his crime was a one-time event—she forgave him.

Staples was convicted of second-degree murder in 1988 when he was 18; he served 10 years in prison. When he met the 27-year-old Moroney in 2003, at a subsidized restaurant for low-income patrons in Kingston, Ont., where he worked, he’d been on parole for five years. Moroney, a compassionate woman, was volunteering with her students. She was drawn to Staples’s good looks and intelligence, she writes; minutes after meeting him she noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and wondered if he had a girlfriend. Staples disclosed his past on their first date, explaining he’d killed a female roommate in a sudden fit of rage after she rejected his sexual advances, and would understand if Moroney bolted. She didn’t. Though shaken, she was curious; his candour and remorse impressed her. “I was surprised to find my heart going out to this man, even as I was repulsed by what he had done,” she writes.

She agonized over becoming involved, while admitting she’d “fallen in love.” She spoke with Staples’s psychologist, who said he wasn’t at risk of reoffending. His parole officer called him a model prisoner, “our best guy.” Moroney’s friends and family liked him immediately. The couple moved in together quickly, four months after meeting, and married two years later. Moroney depicts the relationship as blissfully harmonious as they fixed up their house and planned a family.

With the shattering news of Staples’s crimes, Moroney learned she was more than a collateral victim: he had photographed her—and others—in their bathroom with a hidden camera. Yet neither she or her family turned away. The memoir charts how Moroney supported Staples through the justice system while despising his crime and the damage he’d caused. She faced stigma herself: some friends shunned her and she lost her job. The situation became a test of sorts, she writes. “I could tell fairly early on what someone’s character was made of by how they reacted to my story.” The couple divorced in 2009 but remain friends. Staples supported her decision to write the book, and even edited the first few drafts.

The experience inspired new purpose and a career change: Moroney is now a paid speaker and advocate within the field of restorative justice, which focuses on victims, offenders and the community. After fearing she’d never trust and love again, she remarried last year after an eight-month courtship.

Through the Glass is a compelling documentation of a flawed penal system, a nuanced look at the humanity of a violent criminal, and a snapshot of the cognitive dissonance required by romantic love. Most of all, it’s a meditation on forgiveness, which Moroney shorthands brilliantly. “Forgiveness is a process; it’s not a single act,” she writes.

The book raises a myriad of questions, some unanswerable. Sitting in her publisher’s office, a poised and articulate Moroney fields them candidly. She likens Staples’s reoffending to “someone having cancer years ago and you’re told it went away and is never coming back and then it’s stage four,” which reflects her wilful optimism. She also addresses the “How could the wife not know?” speculation. At trial, a repentant Staples admitted he was “wired wrong, specifically sexually.” But their sex life was normal, Moroney insists, although looking back there were signs. Staples suffered from delayed ejaculation, she writes, which he blamed on being institutionalized. He also took long showers. “It’s not like I was naive—little tiny things I picked up became very important later,” she says.

Moroney never heard back from Russell Williams’s wife, which didn’t surprise her. She herself had been deluged with ugly mail after her address was made public. The cases are different, she agrees. Staples reoffended, which subjected her to harsher judgment. “People assume I’m a woman who sought out a violent offender but that’s something I don’t relate to.” She bristles at an “I married a murderer” headline about her memoir that appeared in a magazine. That may be how it appears to the world, but the man she married, she believed, had paid his dues.

There was a lot of anger and confusion to work through. “I’d visit him with a list of questions: ‘Were you ever with prostitutes?’, ‘Did you ever hurt anybody else?’ ” He said no. Many would not have trusted Staples’s reliability by then; she did. Seeing him in a dissociative state in court helped her understand how he could have snapped, she writes.

Why he snapped remains a mystery. Later he revealed that while in prison for murder, he developed a porn addiction and had been gang-raped; he said he’d been sexually abused as a child by his mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder.

Staples didn’t receive any treatment in prison, only assessment, which included monitoring his response to violent porn. She learned that the parole board dealing with his case had no record of his mother’s mental illness. “I knew more about the kids whose timetables I changed,” she says, referring to her job as a guidance counsellor. She wrote the book in part, she says, for victims’ families: “Corrections Canada says one of the most important things for prisoner rehabilitation is family contact. But they make it so difficult to get to the door of a prison—inconvenient hours, they’re located so far away. And when you’re visiting, you’re treated like a criminal yourself.”

Moroney doesn’t see getting involved with Staples as an error in judgment: “Jason wasn’t the wrong choice knowing what I knew, the beautiful life we shared. What happened had nothing to do with my choice. It only had to do with Jason’s choices.” (Her current husband volunteered his financial and legal status when they started dating.)

“People would say, ‘You forgave him once. You’re going to forgive him again?’ as if there should be a maximum. I want people to understand forgiveness is more for the victim. It’s more for me. I didn’t want to make a lifelong commitment to anger and resentment. It’s too much energy.” It’s “practical,” she says. “I could see a long road ahead and asked myself: ‘How am I going to get to a place where I’m capable of being loving, happy, trusting?’ ” That she has reached that point is her payback, she says without smugness. “What better revenge on the person and the system that hurt me so?” ANNE KINGSTON

***EXCERPT FROM THROUGH THE GLASS BY SHANNON MORONEY***

My heart was pounding. I had learned that Jason and I would have a “closed” visit, sealed from each other and from other visitors and inmates, but I still didn’t know what to expect. When I reached the door it clicked open and I entered a tiny room divided in half by a thick sheet of glass extending up from a steel counter. There was a small metal stool bolted to the floor in front of the counter.

I was still getting my bearings when Jason came through the door on the other side of the room—face down, drawn and grim. He was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. Was this my husband I was seeing through the glass? Jason looked up, our eyes met, and we both began crying uncontrollably. I put my hands up to the glass.

“Jason . . . ”

But he couldn’t hear me. He pointed to a phone receiver on the wall beside me. He picked up an identical receiver on his side. I cried into the phone, “Jason, what happened? What happened?”

“I don’t know . . . ” He was sobbing, almost unable to speak.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

We stood there for several moments, each of us holding a phone receiver in one hand, the other hand pressed against the glass, our palms together but unable to touch. It was hard to stop crying, but I had a million questions.

First, I asked my mum’s question: “Jason, didn’t you know how much I loved you? How much we all loved you?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry, I didn’t really know.”

As I looked into Jason’s eyes, I recalled a school picture taken when he was six years old, the year his dad died. In it, his face was solemn and his eyes were dark with sorrow and profound loneliness. They were the exact same eyes I was looking into now, 30 years later.

“Jason,” I said, “the police told me you said that you never wanted to see me again—why did you say that?”

The expression on his face changed from sorrow to confusion, and after a moment he said softly, “No, Shanny, I said, ‘My wife never has to see me again.’ ”

I felt a pulse of relief. It was something to hold onto amidst the confusion.

Jason went on to confess that he had been gorging himself on pornography over the weekend while I was away, and that he had gone to see a very violent movie at the theatre. I despise pornography, and I had no idea that Jason even looked at it, let alone the extent to which it was part of his life. He said he’d stuffed himself with junk food that day until he was in pain—something he now admitted he had started doing frequently a few months before, during the night while I slept. I winced as I recalled teasing him about eating too much junk food while I was away.

“How long have these things been going on?” I asked. He said he’d become addicted to pornography while he was in prison the first time. It was something he was ashamed of, and that’s why he’d never discussed it with me before. The issues with food had come and gone to greater or lesser extents throughout his life, beginning in his early teens. The voyeurism was new in the last few months. He explained that he had always known something was wrong with him, but that he convinced himself that he was in control of whatever it was, experiencing long periods of time when he was “unplugged” from his demons, times when there was no “interference with the wires in his brain.” Recently, the addictive behaviours had been building again, though he couldn’t explain exactly why. In agony, I asked him, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I was so afraid. I wanted to keep you out of it; to protect you from it. I thought it would go away.” This choice was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, and he knew it. He shook his head. “I see now how wrong I was, and it’s too late.” “You could have told me anything, Jason. I would have done anything to help you. We could have prevented this, if only you had the courage to tell me—or anyone—what was going on inside.”

“I know. I know that now.” He looked strained and without hope. We cried for several minutes, unable to speak. It pained me to find out that Jason had let himself fall into the spiral of this degradation. Learning about his hidden habits repulsed me completely. Jason had fooled himself into thinking his addiction would go away on its own, and in so doing, he had victimized me and others. He had denied the seriousness of his compulsions and let shame and fear prevent him from getting help. Then he exploded, wreaking havoc on the lives of the two women and countless other people who were now affected. I felt helpless, and completely betrayed.

REVIEW: Caligula: A Biography

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 3 Comments

In the long history of Roman emperors, it’s the mad ones who mostly linger in popular memory. That certainly includes Caligula—meaning “little boots,” the nickname he picked up as a child dressed in miniature legionary gear—who ruled Rome from 37 to 41 CE. (Viewers of the 1976 BBC dramatization of I Claudius will recall him as the character, played by John Hurt, who came out from a room, blood-splattered after a fatal encounter with his pregnant sister/wife, and muttered to Derek Jacobi’s Claudius: “Don’t go in there.”) Guilty of incest with his sisters, a sadistic torturer and mass killer, an emperor who declared his intention to name his horse Incitatus to one of the highest state offices, Caligula has always been portrayed as flat-out crazy.

Guilty as charged, concludes Swiss historian Winterling, except for that first, crucial accusation. (Oh, and the incest charge, which didn’t surface until a century after Caligula’s death.) But there was nothing insane, Winterling argues, about Caligula’s attempts to get out of his political dead end, or the cynical wit he displayed. Take that racehorse he wanted to make a consul: could there have been a more biting display of contempt for the Roman aristocracy than to suggest a horse for its most coveted honour?

The Roman Empire was founded by Caligula’s great-grandfather Augustus, who established his one-man rule by keeping to the outward forms of the moribund republic. He would pretend to be first among aristocratic equals and “suggest” measures to the Senate, which would pretend to debate them before doing exactly what Augustus wanted. But Caligula had no tolerance for double-talk: he was supreme ruler and wanted it openly acknowledged. That spawned ever more conspiracies against him and increasing paranoia and vicious reprisals from him. Inevitably, a plot did succeed in killing Caligula, a day before his planned move to Egypt—a culture open to the idea of a divine monarch. A persuasive new Caligula emerges from this elegant revision: not mad at all, but just as bad and dangerous to know.

How dare Tom Cruise

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 11 Comments

Sigrid Estrada

Lee Child is six foot five, and so too is his fictional creation Jack Reacher, who also sports a 50-inch chest, 250 lb. of muscle and the ability (and willingness) to snap bones like matchsticks. And thereby hangs a tale. Mythic hero Reacher—a lone drifter who’s been traversing America since he left the army as a major, carrying just an ATM card, foldable toothbrush and expired passport, and stopping long enough only to right some hideous wrong—has been hugely popular since his first appearance in 1997’s Killing Floor. But Reacher is now firmly ensconced in the big leagues: 50 million copies sold; fall rather than spring publication (Child’s 16th Reacher novel, The Affair, was released Sept. 27); and, at last, Hollywood adaptation.

The last development is not unalloyed good news for Reacher Creatures, as true devotees are known. Not only has superstar Tom Cruise acquired the movie rights, but when filming begins this month for One Shot (2005), he—tiny Tom Cruise himself—will portray the literally larger-than-life hero. Fans have been venting their rage and dismay for months. Most started off absolving Child of blame in their online postings—acknowledging that authors have little control over film casting—but have lately started to resemble those Londoners who roundly abused Arthur Conan Doyle on the street a century ago after he killed off Sherlock Holmes. There’s a new truculence in the air as the Creatures demand Child do something to prevent the Cruise travesty.

Child, too, is now showing signs of being fed up. “I realize the fans are mad and resentful, and I’m thrilled they care,” he said in an interview with Maclean’s. On the other hand, though, “If we all want the film to be a success, why not go with the great actor with the star power? I look at it as a professional author, like a musical act would consider a proposed cover version of a song—something new is more exciting a prospect than the same old thing. Besides, no one at all looks just like Reacher.”

The spat over authenticity is more than a little ironic, given that neither character nor author are quite what they seem. Lee Child is actually former TV producer Jim Grant, an Englishman no less, as is Reacher himself in certain ways, however much of an American icon he’s become. Child, who acquired his pseudonym almost reflexively (“I’ve always worked in showbiz: new project, new name—that’s what you do”), calls Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household’s classic—and very British—1939 thriller about an English big-game hunter who stalks an unnamed European dictator (Hitler, of course), “a groundbreaking book, the ancestor of what I do.” The protagonist, Child adds, “could have been Reacher’s granddad.” So he could, and not just because of their common integrity and stiff upper lips, but in their utter lack of introspection. Household’s hero actually believes his own cover story, that he’s just checking to see if the idea—a long-distance rifle assassination—is achievable.

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There’s no way to spot another Russell Williams

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 3 Comments

Andy Clark/Reuters

Kevin West was Russell Williams’s right-hand man at CFB Trenton. If the base commander was at a ribbon cutting ceremony or a photo op with a visiting politician, Chief Warrant Officer West was always nearby. The two men golfed together. They ate dinner, with their wives, at each other’s houses. And on the Sunday night in February 2010 when Williams confessed to police that he was a serial killer in colonel’s clothing, West was among the first in uniform to hear the unthinkable news.

Early the next morning, while Williams was leading police to Jessica Lloyd’s lifeless body, Kevin West picked up his BlackBerry and typed a message to senior staffers at the base. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he wrote, at 2:11 a.m. “Request you all meet in the WHQ conference room as early as possible tomorrow morning. I will be in my office for 0700 hrs. This is extremely important, more information to follow.”

What followed is still difficult to fathom. An elite officer who piloted prime ministers and the Queen—and oversaw the country’s largest air force base—was doubling as a depraved sexual predator who somehow managed to ascend the ranks without a whiff of suspicion. Grasping for an explanation, the Canadian Forces launched an “immediate review” of the way candidates are selected for senior command positions—and whether enhanced psychological testing might have revealed the real Russ Williams.

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The disappearing Duchess

By Patricia Treble - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 13 Comments

Danny Martindale/FilmMagic/Getty Images

William and Kate’s appearance last Thursday at the Royal Marsden hospital was the most ordinary of royal engagements. The duke and duchess of Cambridge opened a new children’s cancer centre. It’s the sort of duty that royalty undertake every day. Yet the visit was accorded superstar treatment by the world’s media, largely because it was just the second public engagement for the couple since completing their tour of Canada and America on July 10.

So an event that lasted a few hours generated stories well past the weekend—he’d pulled a 24-hour shift as a search and rescue pilot in Wales before rushing to the Surrey hospital, her engagement ring vanished during the visit! (She’d removed it and washed her hands before meeting patients with low immunity.) WhatKateWore.com, a site devoted to Kate’s fashion, saw its visitors on Thursday jump from an average of 8,000 a day to more than 20,000.

While gossips postulate Kate’s seclusion is because she’s either pregnant with twins or depressed because she’s too thin to conceive, the reason is more prosaic: it’s a long-term strategy by the royal household to ease her into a life of duty and unceasing attention by a curious world. Earlier this year, Judy Wade, the royal editor of Hello!, said, “We were told she’s not going to do much in the way of official engagements at all in the first few years because they want the marriage to work and they want her to have a gentle introduction into royal life.” (The recent royal tour is seen as a one-off variation from that plan.)

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Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 11 Comments

Scott Clark and Peter DeVries take on EI premiums.

Simply put, the EI premium rate is a bad tax – probably the worst tax that the government has available to raise revenues. It inhibits employment and economic growth; it is unfair in its impact on low-income workers; it is extremely complex to calculate and administer…

The best option would be to get rid of the EI premium rate altogether and replace it with an alternative source of revenue. One way this could be done is by replacing the lost revenues, about $20 billion, by increasing the GST and corporate income tax rates.  This would address the problem of the working poor by spreading the burden over much larger tax bases.  In addition, the GST low-income tax credit could be increased, sheltering these individuals altogether.

‘We don’t fully understand some of the things the school was involved in’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 9 Comments

Greg Weston looks into what Bruce Carson was doing after he left the Prime Minister’s Office.

In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Turner said the board has simply written off about $15,000 of taxpayers’ money that Carson spent on personal travel and other expenses during his last month on the job. The school — a think-tank set up at the University of Calgary with a $15-million federal grant — withheld another $13,000 it owed Carson when he left under a cloud of controversy in March…

The Canada School of Energy and Environment was supposed to bring together the best and brightest from the public and private sectors to create new clean energy technologies and strategies. Instead, Carson effectively turned the school into a one-man advocacy centre to promote the Canadian oil industry in general, and the oilsands in particular, a role he had played through most of his time in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Election night in Newfoundland and the Yukon

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 7:14 PM - 1 Comment

With results now coming in from Newfoundland and Labrador the Progressive Conservatives appear to have been easily reelected. The NDP seems set to become the official opposition.

Later tonight, we should have results from the Yukon, where the Yukon Party is hoping to be reelected.

10:57pm. With six seats to the NDP’s five, the Liberals will remain the official opposition in Newfoundland. The New Democrats still drew a higher popular vote and their five seats are precisely five times as many as they had when the election was called.

1:00am. The Yukon Party holds on to its majority. The only movement from the 2006 result was for the New Democrats and Liberals: the former gaining three seats, the latter losing three.

The $30 tablet is here. But you can’t have one—yet.

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 6:00 PM - 19 Comments

The Aakash is a pretty crappy tablet computer.  Made in India, the Android gadget’s touchscreen is small, with no multitouch functionality. Its battery only lasts for a few hours, its processor is fairly slow, it has no camera, and though it has WiFi, you’ll need a USB dongle to connect to the mobile Internet when away from wireless broadband. Compared to the iPad, the Aakash is a piece of junk—except for the one stat where it blows Apple completely out of the water: price.

The Aakash costs $37.98 to manufacture. Ten thousand units are currently in the hands of Indian students. Thanks to a government subsidy, they cost $30 each. A retail version of the Aakash is expected soon, with 90,000 units shipping to Indian stores bearing a sticker price of $50 to $60. There’s no word on a North American release just yet.

Here’s a short video report on the Aakash from NDTV: Continue…

Former Quebec cabinet minister charged with fraud

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 5:42 PM - 1 Comment

Tony Tomassi, a former minister in Jean Charest’s cabinet in Quebec has been charged with three criminal offences in connection with his use of a credit card linked to a private security firm that received millions in government grants. Tomassi was fired over the scandal and will now face charges of charges of fraud and breach of trust. He is due to appear in a Quebec City courtroom on November 14.

Montreal Gazette

‘Do it for your country’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 4:45 PM - 12 Comments

The prepared text of a speech—an interesting, perhaps even charming, and apparently quite personal speech—delivered today by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to students at the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey School of Business.

I am happy to be here. This is a room full of important people. You are the people our country needs in the highly competitive and challenging global marketplace of today and tomorrow.

Our future success depends on you.

You are the leaders of tomorrow.

I want to talk about tomorrow. But first I want to spend a few moments on yesterday.

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U.S. foils alleged Iranian plot to kill Saudi ambassador

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 4:01 PM - 8 Comments

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday that federal authorities had disrupted a plot by the Iranian government to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. and to bomb the Saudi embassy in Washington. Holder said the two men charged in the alleged plot have links to the secretive Quds Force, a division of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has carried out operations in other countries. Court documents suggest the assassination would have been carried by men with ties to a Mexican drug cartel, but who were in fact confidential sources for the Drug Enforcement Agency. Manssor Arbab Arbabsiar, who was arrested September 29, and Gholam Shakuri, who remains at large, have been charged with conspiracy to murder a foreign official; conspiracy to engage in foreign travel and use interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. specifically explosives; and conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism.

New York Times

Irony alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 3:52 PM - 3 Comments

The same minister who helped use the “border infrastructure fund” to build gazebos and public toilets in his riding and left no official paper trail in doing so is also the government’s most prominent champion of open government policies.

Mr. Clement said by sharing the information that government uses to make decisions, citizens can become more informed and engaged on public policy issues. “You can get into this whole world of crowd-sourcing where rather than it just [being] cabinet committees or caucuses deciding policy, you could get the public that are engaged in a particular issue to help come up with options or even help make decisions,” he said. “That to me is the ultimate future of open government.”

Part of the Harper government’s open data agenda will be a central database of access-to-information requests and releases, which, as the Globe notes, sounds something like the database the Harper government eliminated three years ago.

Gilad Shalit to be released under terms of prisoner swap deal

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 3:51 PM - 3 Comments

The Israeli government has come to terms with Hamas officials on a tentative agreement to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who’s been held captive in Gaza for five years. The deal would see Shalit released in the coming days in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, according to a report on Israeli Radio. Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid in June 2006 and several attempts at securing his freedom have failed over the years. The exact terms of the deal remain unclear, though a Reuters report indicates the first wave of 450 Palestinian prisoners will be released at the same time as Shalit, while the remaining 550 prisoners will be released at a later time.

The Guardian

Air Canada braces for strike by flight attendants

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 2:26 PM - 3 Comments

Air Canada flight attendants could walk off the job as early as Thursday after negotiations with the carrier broke down over the weekend. Two-thirds of employees voted on Sunday to reject Air Canada’s latest contract offer. It was the second time workers failed to support the deal that had been negotiated by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, having already done so in August. The workers and Air Canada seemingly remain far apart on issues such as wages, pensions, crew rest, working conditions and work rules. Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt has already indicated the government would force striking employees back to work in the event of a strike.

CTV News

Afghan prisoners routinely tortured: UN report

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 2:16 PM - 0 Comments

A blistering report by the United Nations found Afghan prisons are home to the “systematic torture” of detainees by the Afghan intelligence service and the Afghan National Police. “Use of interrogation methods, including suspension, beatings, electric shock, stress positions and threatened sexual assault,” the report noted, “is unacceptable by any standard of international human rights law.” Of the 324 security-related detainees the UN interviewed, 89 had been handed over to the Afghan intelligence service or the police by international military forces, and in 19 cases, the men were tortured once they were in Afghan custody. Prisoners handed over by Canadian troops, however, appear to have been spared the abuses. An unnamed detainee, who says he was tortured by members of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, was quoted as saying that For those arrested by Canadians, two NDS officials were allocated for further interrogation and those interrogated by them never complained about ill-treatment by NDS officials.”

New York Times

Vancouver Sun

Taking it to the streets

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 2:04 PM - 52 Comments

Brian Topp considers the Occupy Wall Street protests.

There are false roads open – like the fantasist right-wing populism of the American Tea Partiers. And there are better roads open – like modern, prudent, determined and fearless social democracy, of the kind Jack Layton was talking about. Perhaps we will go down that first road, brought to us in Canada in our mild Canadian way by Stephen Harper and his team. Hopefully we will go down the other, on offer in Canada through Mr. Layton’s team.

But the Wall Street occupiers are there to let the Wall Street revellers and bonus-hunters know that their own particular party – and the whole approach to government that made it possible in the United States and here in Canada – has just about had its day.

Retired enforcers consider legal action against Don Cherry

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:48 PM - 10 Comments

Three former NHL tough guys are “considering further recourse” against Don Cherry over the comments the Coach’s Corner host made on Hockey Night in Canada last Thursday. The bombastic television host called Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson “turncoats,” “hypocrites,” and “pukes” for their stances on fighting in hockey. In a statement released by Grimson’s legal firm, the former NHLer characterized Cherry’s outburst as “baseless and slanderous.” The CBC has distanced itself from Cherry’s on-air comments, saying that “While we support his right to voice that opinion, we do not share his position.” Cherry, meanwhile, said during Saturday’s segment that he had no regrets about the segment, except “the puke stuff and kids listening.”

CBC News

World tuberculosis cases decline for the first time ever

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

According to the World Health Organization, the number of people who get sick with tuberculosis dropped last year for the first time, and the death toll was at its lowest level in a decade. In 2010, 8.8 million people got sick with TB and 1.4 million died. The number was at its highest in 2005, when 9 million got sick, and the death toll peaked at 1.8 million in 2003.

Reuters

Drug-resistant gonorrhea is on the rise

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

Gonorrhea strains are becoming resistant to the antibiotic usually used to treat the sexually transmitted infection, according to the BBC, which reports that doctors in the UK are being told to stop using the normal treatment (the antibiotic cefixime), and to use two more powerful antibiotics instead: a pill and a needle. The Health Protection Agency is warning we’re headed to a point when the disease is incurable, unless new treatments are discovered. The bacterium that causes gonorrhea is very adaptive, and has gained resistance to more and more antibiotics.

BBC News

Politics these days

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 12:04 PM - 47 Comments

While pollsters try to adjust for the demographics of voting, Ilona Dougherty defends the young non-voter.

You’ve probably heard the rote statistic about how only 37 per cent of Canadians aged 18-24 cast a ballot in the 2008 federal election, compared with 68 per cent of those over 65. But here’s something you may not have heard: during that same election, the majority of youth were not contacted in any way by a candidate or political party. What about the 65-plus crowd? Well, 69 per cent of them were contacted directly, by my calculations, using the Canadian Opinion Research Archive. When young Canadians aren’t being consistently asked to participate, it’s hardly surprising that they don’t turn out for elections.

Robert Asselin frets on a number of fronts. Continue…

Dimitri Soudas stays on message

By Richard Warnica - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 14 Comments

Jessica Darmanin/Maclean's

It is the spokesman’s lot to be forever in frame yet rarely in focus. Spokesmen deny and confirm. Sometimes they reject or agree. They speak often, in other words, but say little. One would imagine, then, that after a long stint in communications, the average spokesman would have a lot of pent up things to say. But if the spokesman in question is Dimitri Soudas, one would be wrong.

Soudas stepped down this fall after nine years alongside Stephen Harper, a man he calls “the greatest prime minister Canada has ever had.” Soudas joined Harper when the latter was leader of the Canadian Alliance. He stayed with him through the Conservative merger, the Paul Martin minority and the coalition crisis. He leaves after a stretch as the Prime Minister’s chief spokesman and months after his old boss won the majority government he had long craved.

Recently, Soudas signed on as the executive director of communications for the Canadian Olympic Committee. In the week before confirming his new gig, Soudas spoke to Maclean’s about his years with Harper, the tone in Ottawa and what he would do differently, if he had it to do over again. (The answer: not much.) Soudas remains deeply loyal to his old colleagues. In conversation he retains the demeanor of a communications professional, forever on message, even if, as is the case, it’s not his message anymore.

Continue…