Hints emerge of elusive Higgs boson particle

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 1:06 PM - 0 Comments

Two teams of scientists studying proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva, Switzerland, say they’ve seen hints of the Higgs boson particle, whose existence should explain the presence of mass in the universe. They hope to know for sure whether this particle really exists by next summer, the New York Times reports. Scientists hope that by confirming the existence of this particle, they can explore why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter, as well as the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which make up the majority of the universe.

The New York Times

Show yourself

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

The Toronto Star reports that officials were already permitted to confirm an individual’s identity at citizenship ceremonies.

Before Monday’s ban of the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, Ottawa already had a protocol to verify the identity of a new citizen behind the veil. Officials at the ceremony, usually citizenship clerks, could pull aside someone wearing a niqab — a veil that only shows the eyes — and lift it for identification, the immigration department confirmed Tuesday.

Yesterday during QP, Conservative backbencher Wladyslaw Lizon seemed to be given some credit for alerting the Immigration Minister to the fact that one could be veiled while actually reciting the oath.

See previously Can you hear me now? and Values and religion

Rebel young man, rebel

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

David Staples looks at the young Stephen Harper who left home in search of something.

Harper got on with Imperial Oil with the help of his father, Joseph, who was a top financial officer in Toronto, Frank said. “Stephen had broken with his family because they had wanted him to be a chartered accountant at the University of Toronto, where his brothers were. He decided he was going to be a pioneer, he was going out West. He was going to find his own way. I was virtually told to hire him, but I did. And he was a very troubled boy when he came. I think what upset him the most was rebelling against what the family wanted him to do.”

… Mary also could see Harper was dealing with family issues. “He was very self-absorbed,” she said. “I would say he’s absorbed by two things. One is himself and the other is: Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the thing that I should be doing?”

ADQ goes poof

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

Interesting times, as always, in Quebec politics. You remember the ADQ, right? The right-y libertarian-esque party that veered weirdly into identity politics and helped spur that little spleen-bursting spat over immigrants and what not? Well, it’s no longer—swallowed up in one bite by the CAQ, the nascent political coalition led by former Péquiste minister François Legault. It’s an odd marriage spurred by a shotgun blast of political expediency: no sense, said Legault and ADQ leader Gerard Deltell, in further dividing the centre-right vote. That said, Legault himself told me of his misgivings about Deltell last summer—”too federalist,” Legault said of the former TV reporter—and the CAQ, which leads in the polls, will become even weirder when it inevitably starts attracting disillusioned Liberals and Péquistes. Legault has said he’s cast off the cause of Quebec sovereignty for the sake of the province’s purse strings and looming demographic issues, and has made it his mission to attract anyone and everyone, sovereignist or not, who feel the same. Continue…

What did the Conservatives promise on health transfers?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

The Harper government is apparently eager to cap increases to health transfers after 2016 and is apparently willing to argue that their election promise to increase transfers at 6% per year was limited to two years. The Ontario government seems to think that’s not quite what the Conservatives promised.

… Ontario government officials pointed to an interview Mr. Flaherty gave to the CBC during the campaign. “We will keep it at 6 per cent for whatever the duration of the agreement is,” Mr. Flaherty said last April, adding that the length of the new accord will be negotiated with the provinces. “It could be two years, five years, whatever.”

During the election—on Friday, April 8, to be specific—Michael Ignatieff promised to maintain the 6% increase and challenged Stephen Harper’s willingness to do likewise. The Conservatives duly responded. Continue…

House Speaker rejects privilege claim

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 10:37 AM - 0 Comments

House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer called out his own party on Tuesday for sowing confusion among voters in an opposition-held riding. Scheer, elected as a Conservative,  said calls placed to Liberal Irwin Cotler’s constituents that falsely claimed he was stepping down from his post were “reprehensible.” Scheer, however, ruled the calls did not violate Cotler’s parliamentary privilege.

Globe and Mail

John Williamson Maverick Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:52 AM - 0 Comments

The Conservative backbencher abandons the government’s free speech defence.

“I don’t think there will be any more use of suggestions that a byelection might happen,” said New Brunswick MP John Williamson, one of the Conservatives who had initially defended the phone calls as simple “voter identification.”

Williamson, a former communications director in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office before he entered elected politics, said all parties will continue to conduct phone campaigns to identify potential supporters for future elections. He also said that Conservatives would not call misinformation “free expression.” “Let me put it this way: that was the weakest argument put forward,” Williamson said.

A president-in-waiting?

By David Agren - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Alex Cruz/EPA/Keystone Press Agency

Mexican politicians deliver annual reports known as informes, serving up pomp, pageantry and political theatre. Informes glorify accomplishments and gloss over failures, perhaps making it no surprise that recently departed state of Mexico governor Enrique Peña Nieto—the early front-runner for the 2012 presidential contest—served up some unbelievable crime numbers this fall. Peña Nieto bragged of achieving a 54 per cent reduction in the murder rate between 2005 and 2010—and friendly media outlets trumpeted the claim. “Peña Nieto lowers homicides 50 per cent,” screamed the tabloid La Razón. It took The Economist magazine, however, to take Peña Nieto to task, calling his figures “absolutely false” because a statistical revision in 2007 caused the homicide rate to tumble, and forcing the presidential contender to subsequently issue a rare mea culpa.

Such scrutiny is rare for Peña Nieto, who presented new statistics showing a three per cent decline (during the same years the federal murder rate more than doubled to 21.9 per 100,000 inhabitants). For the most part, his ascent from provincial politician to presidential front-runner has been marked by deft media and crisis management—and, critics allege, plenty of positive coverage from Mexico’s dominant media empire, Televisa. Peña Nieto leads the early polls for the July 1, 2012, election in which his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)—which ruled Mexico for 71 uninterrupted years until 2000—will attempt to regain the presidency. Polling firm Consulta Mitofsky gives the telegenic Peña Nieto a nearly 30-point advantage over his closest competitor. “He’s emphasized personality more than issues so far,” says George Grayson, Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Peña Nieto recently unveiled proposals for economic and structural reforms, many of which PRI lawmakers have actually torpedoed in congress for the past 11 years. And he spent much of his six-year gubernatorial administration, which concluded on Sept. 15, promoting public works projects. “Government that delivers,” boast signs all over his state. He didn’t speak that much about crime during his time in office, even though drug cartels have waged turf wars in the state of Mexico, which surrounds most of Mexico City and contains its grittiest suburbs. The 45-year-old contender’s stated ideas for quelling violence, including gradually withdrawing the military from the streets and generating better intelligence, generally differ little from those of President Felipe Calderón. And he’s rejected the idea of brokering a deal with the deadly drug cartels that are behind most of the country’s violence—although PRI politicians allegedly did just that in past years to keep a lid on crime. It’s something some voters expect will happen again, in spite of Peña Nieto’s statement. “The PRI is returning to put this all under control,” says engineering student Alejandro Mendoza, 22.

Continue…

SOPA critics are ready for a showdown

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 0 Comments

americancensorhip.org

For background on this potentially Internet-breaking bill, see my last post on the subject. 

How much does the Internet hate America’s proposed Stop Online Piracy Act? A LOT.

In anticipation of a congressional hearing on the bill on Thursday, online activists are mobilizing in a big way: Continue…

Norman Nathan Parker

By Nicholas Köhler - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Norman Nathan Parker was born on Jan. 12, 1966, the third of four children, and grew up in Back Bay, N.B., a village on the Bay of Fundy, where his parents Glendon and Melva worked at the Connors Bros. sardine cannery. Jutting out into the sea, with a white, red-trimmed lighthouse standing sentry nearby, Back Bay is a place of flinty, taciturn people, folks who, despite hardship, have managed to live off the briny riches of the mercurial bay—calm one minute, fog and treachery the next.

Norman’s disposition was sunnier than most, a charming boy with green-brown eyes and sand-brown hair who shared a bunk bed with his little brother and never learned to read or write. At 15, too young by law for full-time employment but by temperament too restless for school, his parents secured special dispensation from a judge to let him work. This he did with gusto, at Harvey Hooper’s lobster pound, and later on the sealing line at the cannery. Soon he struck out on his own—“he couldn’t work under anyone,” a relative says—buying an 18-foot skiff for clamming and periwinkling at low tide. About that time he took up with Rose, a woman older than he and already pregnant. Ashley became his daughter, too, whatever her ancestry, though he was soft. “You’re the adult,” Rose would say. “Punish her!” And he’d try. More often he’d mouth the words to Roy Orbison—Oh, Pretty Woman—“grab my hands and dance,” says Ashley, “he’d get me twisting.” At night he’d wait for teenage Ashley to get home; it broke his heart she got pregnant at 14.

He was full of contradictions—a fisherman who couldn’t swim, a family man who drank too much Bud and caroused (“he loved his women and the women loved him,” says Ashley). When, after 16 years, he and Rose split, Norman quit booze. Yet he’d go back to it now and again, and meet new women. “He was a charming guy, I can’t remember the women he been with,” says Melva. When his friends hit rough patches with girlfriends, they went to Norm’s to drink and throw darts. “House for battered men, they called it,” says Melva. With Melinda, a much younger woman, Norman had Nathan, a red-headed boy. Though things with Melinda grew rocky, Nathan got his father’s full attention—they fished and four-wheeled on nearby Frye Island, where there was good hunting, too (years back, Norm shot himself a 14-pointer, and searched for the trophy for days after the wounded buck fled into the bush). When Nathan came to live with him full-time, Norman quit drinking for good.

Continue…

The voice of the people

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments

Speaking with reporters after QP yesterday, Irwin Cotler was asked if he would advise somebody to get into politics.

I would still recommend people going into politics. I go back to what John Turner once said when I first started to work with him in, in my late 20s, and he said politics is the highest form of public service. I still regard is as the highest form of public service and I was brought to this House when I was 12-years old and my father turned to me and said, and I still remember his words, and he said son, this is vox populi. This is the voice of the people. Today, people might react cynically. I don’t. I still think this is the voice of the people. I intend to speak and work on behalf of the people. And on this issue, their voice has not yet spoken the final word either. 

At Huffington Post, Mr. Cotler explains his concerns with the Speaker’s ruling.

Canada’s style guides

By Elio Iannacci - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Ever since America’s Next Top Model hit the ratings jackpot in 2003, networks have been investing in fashion-focused reality TV. This fall, 20 new style-centric reality shows appeared on the small screen alone, and production has begun on another dozen slated for 2012.

The result is a new star system that includes models, stylists, magazine editors and countless other behind-the-seams scenesters. Many are plucked from fashion magazines, mens- and womenswear boutiques, design studios, even hair and beauty salons.

Canada’s contribution are two of the most blogged, watched, tweeted and talked-about stylists, Joe Zee and Brad Goreski. Both men—who hail from Ontario—have their own reality TV series, minus the typical Devil Wears Prada moments currently plaguing shows such as Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model. In the cutthroat world of on-camera fashion, Zee and Goreski’s approachable style stands in stark contrast to the faux fierceness associated with tastemakers and clothing creators.

Continue…

Canada: the Roma’s next stop?

By Richard Warnica - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Murad Sezer/Reuters

Robert fled his native Hungary in the winter of 2010. At 36, he had a job and a home in Budapest. He was doing well where many were not. (The economy in Hungary crashed in 2008 and has yet to recover.) But Robert—who did not want his last name used for fear of what might happen if he’s ever sent home—is also Roma. And for the Roma, life in Hungary, which was never easy, has become much more difficult of late.

Robert, who is working part-time as a caretaker in Toronto, says he was attacked and beaten three times by gangs of Hungarian nationalists. Not long ago, someone scrawled the word “cigány”—a nasty slang for Roma—on his apartment wall. Later, a Molotov cocktail exploded against his door. Robert flew with his wife and young son to Canada. There he joined a growing queue of Hungarian Roma seeking political asylum.

Since 2008, refugee claimants from the former Communist country have soared. From a paltry 34 in 2007, the number of Hungarian applicants climbed to 2,297 in 2010. That made Hungary the top source for refugee claimants in Canada that year (it continues to lead the category in 2011).

Continue…

The wild bid, the fake and other art tales

By Barbara Amiel - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Jeff Coulson

The most difficult task a columnist can have is to write about a universally Good Thing. Santa Claus comes to mind. Well, no, it’s not Santa Claus I am about to discuss, topical though that would be in this December cheer, but rather Murray Frum.

Mr. Frum could be defined by many aspects of his life, unfortunately all of them very good. He was born poor, sleeping on the living-room sofa behind his father’s tiny grocery shop (good). He became a dentist, married a nice Jewish girl from Niagara Falls, Barbara Rosberg (triple good), and happily played Dennis Thatcher to super-broadcaster Barbara Frum while making lots of money in real estate and giving lots away. His gift for attracting the best women was confirmed when, after Barbara died, he married the enchanting, high-achieving business executive Nancy Lockhart. Now he has written a book about an aspect of himself (dodgy) but it is sadly not for sale, thus modest and good.

Published this month, the book is titled Collecting: A Work in Progress. Frum is a very important collector of African and Oceanic art as well as fine things in general. The Art Gallery of Ontario has the Frum gallery built with his own money and choice of architects. Frum sensed that superb as Frank Gehry’s new AGO addition would be, he was not the person to design the setting for Frum’s donation of African tribal art. This in itself is an excellent lesson: great name architects often build lousy museums. The best example is Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, an evocative, even brilliant building but a disaster as far as creating display space and best viewed empty.

Continue…

Great snakes! Tintin takes India.

By Jen Cutts - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Paramount Pictures

Not even “thundering typhoons”—to borrow a line from Captain Haddock—could have kept moviegoers in India away from The Adventures of Tintin. Steven Spielberg’s 3D revival of the exploits of the boy-reporter-turned-detective earned $1.5 million in its first weekend, the highest-ever opening for an animated movie in India. Tintin opened there fully six weeks ahead of its Dec. 21 North American release date. Spielberg himself made the call. “Tintin is huge in India,” a Sony Pictures (India) spokesperson explains.

Why are Indians so taken with Tintin? Sandip Roy, writing on The Huffington Post, suggests it was his independence and curiosity—traits “never encouraged in our schools, which were all about obedience and memory.” The books were first translated into Bengali in the mid-’70s. The Hindi translation, which began in 2005, was an onerous process, befitting its cultural significance. It took two years to find a translator who “lived, ate, dreamt and breathed Tintin,” according to publisher Ajay Mago. “The litmus test,” he adds, “was how well a translator could translate ‘billions of blue blistering barnacles.’ ”

Private art in the public eye

By Jason McBride - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Liz Sullivan

Toronto art collectors Samara Walbohm and Joe Shlesinger have only one criterion for buying a piece of art—it must be something they love. But their love is broad and imaginative enough to encompass artists as diverse as blue-chip boldfaces General Idea and Ed Burtynsky to lesser-known names such as Vancouver’s Graham Gillmore. It’s a love so overwhelming that the couple, faced with a collection that had outgrown their three homes—and that swelled every time they jetted off to another international art fair—set out earlier this year to find a new place to store it. But when they did finally find that place, they decided to turn it into a private gallery and share their love with the world.

That gallery, Scrap Metal, opens in Toronto this week, and its first show, “Read All Over,” consists of more than 20 paintings, sculpture and video all exploring the role of text and books in contemporary visual art. Books are in Walbohm’s blood; she’s also co-owner of Type Books, an independent bookshop. Shlesinger himself is a photographer and the managing director of Callisto Capital, a private market equity firm. Ninety-five per cent of the work in the show comes from the wealthy couple’s collection, and includes pieces by Douglas Coupland, Micah Lexier and Annette Messager, as well as an installation by the late British conceptual artist John Latham that has never been seen in its entirety in Canada. Before the 5,200-sq.-foot, L-shaped space had been transformed into a gallery, it had been vacant for years; prior to that, it was a Portuguese winemaking facility. The name came from an old sign found on the premises.

There’s only a small clutch of private exhibition spaces in Canada, but they have often been the most adventurous and nimble contemporary art venues in the country. Private galleries—which tend not to charge admission—enjoy a freedom from both the financial pressures of commercial galleries and the sluggishness that can plague fund-starved public institutions. “We don’t have a massive bureaucracy and a million stakeholders,” says John Zeppetelli, the curator at DHC/ART, a much heralded, four-year-old foundation in Montreal created by theatre and film producer Phoebe Greenberg. “We do what we want, but we do it responsibly.” Walbohm echoes this sentiment: “Something that’s been bugging us for a few years is this emphasis on brands and big names. The Art Gallery of Ontario, for example, has to put on a blockbuster show to get people in the door. But we don’t have to do that.” In 2009, condo developer and marketer Bob Rennie, who has publicly feuded with the Vancouver Art Gallery, spent close to $20 million converting the oldest building in Vancouver’s Chinatown to house his own personal collection of more than 1,000 international works. The acclaimed Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, whom Rennie collects, has called it “a dream for any artist.”

Continue…

Straight shooters

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Captive Media chart: National Bank Financial Group

A U.K. tech company has made going to a public urinal uniquely interactive (don’t worry, it’s not what you’re thinking). Bored by the usual male bathroom experience of staring at the wall ahead, Captive Media decided to develop “a urinal-mounted, urine-controlled games console for men.” This is how it works: a man stands in front of a urinal and points his “joystick” (their pun, not ours) at one of three target stickers placed inside the bowl. A screen mounted on the wall above the urinal measures the speed and accuracy of the player’s stream using infrared lights and displays it, along with other players’ rankings, on a virtual score board. Players can upload their scores to social media websites through their cellphones.Venues that have the gaming consoles—the company has sold the service to two English pubs so far—say their urinals have never been cleaner; supposedly a direct result of the game’s focus on “shooting” accuracy.

P.D. James enters the Austenverse

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

David Harrison/Redux, Alex Baily /CP; Photo Illustration by Lauren Cattermole

“Did you know there were about 70 of them?” asks P.D. James, a note of wonder still in her voice. “And some of them so extraordinary—zombies and sexual obsessions.” The grande dame of classical British mystery novels, now 91 and still hard at work, is talking about sequels to one of the best-loved novels in English literature, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813. Baroness James of Holland Park had decided, as she was turning 90, that perhaps she shouldn’t embark on any projects as lengthy as another novel of Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh, and her thoughts turned to some unfinished business she had with Pride and Prejudice. “Austen is absolutely my favourite novelist,” says James, “Emma is my favourite book—I think it’s a perfect novel—but I’ve always wondered about Darcy’s emotional reactions. I thought I’d write a story working through that, and then I thought I’d better have a look at who else might have done that.”

And so James encountered the Austenverse, as it’s become known. Beyond Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bollywood’s Bride and Prejudice and the nine more or less straight-up film adaptations of Austen’s novel, there is an entire fictional sub-genre of unhappy modern women obsessing over the author’s placid rural world. Sometimes the women in those stories play out their dreams in an Austen-esque way, or even end up in Austen-era England. In one 2008 BBC miniseries, Lost in Austen, a 21st-century Londoner switches places with heroine Elizabeth Bennet—that is, with a figment of Austen’s imagination—and proceeds to wreak romantic havoc in the setting of Pride and Prejudice.

James being James, her entry was always going to be different, and right from its title: Death Comes to Pemberley might as well have been called Death Comes to Eden. Aside from its zombie-killing corner, the Austenverse is a happy land where really bad things, like violent death, just don’t happen. The story opens in 1803, six years after the original was written, long enough for Elizabeth and Darcy to have had two sons and settle into his ancestral home of Pemberley. It’s the evening before the annual ball and there is unspoken tension in the perfect family. Matters worsen as a carriage careens up to the house and wayward sister Lydia tumbles out, screaming that her husband Wickham has been killed.

Continue…

Canning it

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Jenna Wakani

Coca-Cola’s climbdown from its white holiday-can debacle has been awkward, to say the least. The soft drink giant is already phasing out a limited edition white Coke can launched one month ago as part of a special holiday promotion with the World Wildlife Fund to protect polar bears (key figures in Coke’s Christmas marketing for decades). Confused consumers took to social media sites to register their displeasure, complaining that the snowy white cans were too difficult to distinguish from silver holiday-themed Diet Coke cans and, somehow, made the fizzy brown pop taste funny. Now, two weeks after putting up a bizarre “fact sheet” on its website to explain which cola was in which can, Coke is talking up the abrupt return of its “iconic” red holiday cans (“Phase II”) as though it were in the cards all along. A Christmas miracle!

Rage against the dying of the light

By Julia McKinnell - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Redux

Anger and annoyance are often dirty little secrets for women whose husbands are terminally ill. Sometimes the wife is furious at her husband for smoking and causing his own cancer. At other times she is riled when she has to clean up after him because he won’t wear adult diapers, viewing them as “babyish and feminine.”

In The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook, author and widow Diana Denholm urges wives to write down everything that upsets them as the first step in the process toward fewer fights and more peace.

“Nothing that affects you is off-limits to your list. Whether it is a toilet seat that stays up, disrespectful behaviour, or crumbs in the bed: if it bothers you, it should be on your list.” Denholm, whose partner was diagnosed with colon cancer a month after he proposed to her, illustrates with examples from the women she interviewed. “Cathy” wrote: “What I hate most is when I’m trying to fix him a meal, he gets in my way. Then something falls or spills and he has a fit and he threatens to pack a bag and move out. Sometimes, I wish he would move out!” Later, the same woman writes, “Gee, what am I supposed to do about the smell? His bedroom has such a smell—it makes me sick to go in to help him. Yes, he’s got a colostomy bag, but he has the strength to get up and take care of himself.” On her list, “Fran” wrote: “I pray his death will be peaceful. But I really need to know when he’ll die. Yes, I feel guilty about wanting this to be over. But how much more can I take?”

Continue…

Pierre Cardin sparks a feud

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Lacoste is an idyllic French village, full of Provençal allure, but, villagers say, its charms are under threat—ever since Pierre Cardin came to town. The Italian-born fashion designer has sparked a vitriolic feud that centres on Lacoste’s very identity: opponents say he’s gutting the town’s soul by transforming it into his own backcountry retreat; supporters say he’s bringing in much needed tourist dollars and employment.

The 89-year-old says he’s trying to create a “cultural Saint-Tropez.” Since his first purchase in 2001—the hilltop castle where the Marquis de Sade once hosted orgies—Cardin has sunk over US$30 million into Lacoste, staging festivals, rebuilding statues and buying up 22 properties on the town’s main drag, known derisively as “Cardin’s Champs Élysées.”

Simmering tensions recently bubbled over; protesters on tractors—some wielding pitchforks—angry over a proposed golf course, blockaded the opening of a musical Cardin had commissioned, forcing him to abandon his plans.

“Before he came, I used to have friends,” long-time resident Colette Truphemus recently told the BBC. “Now there’s nothing. No life, no friends. He has killed the village.”

How Germany finally took control of Europe

By the editors - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Remy de la Mauviniere/AP

Among the many desperate calls for help during the current European crisis, that of Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski stands out for its sheer lack of precedent. “I may be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity,” Sikorsky said last week in Berlin to his hosts. “You have become Europe’s indispensible nation . . . nobody else can do it.” Only Germany can save Europe now.

It’s hard to argue against Sikorksi’s logic, at least in the short run. Ireland and Portugal have been bailed out at great expense. Investors were forced to take a massive loss on Greek bonds. Now even major European states such as Italy and Spain are teetering on the edge of insolvency. If these governments lose the ability to continue borrowing, the entire continent could be plunged into complete economic collapse, with grim implications for the rest of the world, including Canada.

Throughout this two-year-long crisis, only Germany has retained the financial and moral clout sufficient to save the day, thanks to its low unemployment rate, reasonable debt levels and robust financial sector. (France, for all its bluster, remains a necessary but junior partner in this project.) After decades of backstopping the European experiment by buying bonds and, more recently, providing the bulk of the recent bailout packages, Germany has begun to exert a new sense of authority. In particular, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been demanding strict new rules over spending in individual countries as the price for continued German intervention.

Continue…

REVIEW: The Sisters

By Jane Christmas - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 7:35 AM - 0 Comments

Jensen’s ambitious first novel chronicles the lives of two sisters, Mabel and Bertie, over the course of nearly a century. The saga begins in pre-Depression Kentucky on a farm in a desiccated little town called Juniper, where the motherless teenagers have been living with their drunken, abusive stepfather. Mabel has a plan for her and Bertie to escape their little corner of hell as soon as Bertie graduates from the eighth grade, but she decides to keep the plan secret from Bertie. It proves not to be a wise strategy. On the day of Bertie’s graduation, Mabel hops the first train out of town and waits for her plan to unroll, unaware that an attempt to deliver the critical communiqué to Bertie has already foiled it, altering the course of their lives. Over the next few years, Mabel sends word and money to Bertie, but Bertie, having misread the situation, slumps into bitterness and refuses to open Mabel’s letters. Her silent bitterness festers and is passed along the female line of subsequent generations like a bad gene.

There are a lot of characters in this story—readers will need to refer back to the family tree Jensen provides—but the interest lies in watching how the women, all of them defiant but flawed, nurse rejection and social isolation, and internalize abuse. They cover up their mistreatment, layer on the deception, and tiptoe around other people’s grudges and slights without doing the deeper work required to understand the underlying causes. Then again, how could they when they have not been nurtured to do so?

Families are a complicated business at the best of times; this story serves as a cautionary tale about how some become truly and irretrievably stunted when people get locked into their own distorted attitudes and forget how to forgive.

REVIEW: December 1941: Twelve Days That Began a World War

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments

Scholars have been seeking decisive hinge moments in the greatest and most chaotic episode in history ever since the Second World War ended. John Lukacs found one in his marvellous Five Days in London, May 1940 (1999), when Churchill ensured the conflict didn’t end then on Hitler’s terms. Now Mawdsley is focusing on another, less arguable in its claims—the war did indeed go global in his title month 70 years ago—but equally intriguing in its new take on events.

On Dec. 1, 1941, the war was overwhelmingly a European fight. The Wehrmacht still had hopes of taking Moscow and decapitating the U.S.S.R.; Britain had yet to register a major military success; Japan was unchecked in Asia; and American isolationist sentiment remained ascendant. Twelve days later, the world looked very different. In a series of savage counterattacks, the Soviet Union showed it was far from dead—the Nazis’ one-year campaign to destroy it had failed. Britain (and its future Commonwealth) had rallied and in Africa achieved their first significant victory over German forces. Crucially, Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration of war had finally brought the Americans into the struggle. (Churchill famously remarked of Dec. 7 that he had gone to bed and “slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”) Most sinister of all: December 1941 was the month in which Hitler committed the Nazi state to the genocide of Europe’s Jews.

All of these are well-known facts; where Mawdsley, a historian at the University of Glasgow, shines is in his linkage of events. On a smaller scale, British success in Africa meant shifting Luftwaffe units there, leaving the Nazis’ Russian front weaker. On a higher geostrategic level, both Japan and Germany expected the other to bail it out: the Nazis especially thought war in the Pacific would keep America from European intervention. And since their previous strategy in that regard—essentially holding European Jews as hostages against U.S. power—had failed, Hitler felt free to give full rein to his murderous anti-Semitism.