New face, same old concerns

By Erica Alini - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Exit the wheeler-dealer; enter a pretty human-rights activist. If Pakistan wanted an image makeover, Sherry Rehman was the right pick to replace Husain Haqqani, the former ambassador to Washington and notorious smooth operator. Rehman, an MP for the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, is currently living under police protection after uttering the same kind of criticism of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws that resulted in two other high-profile politicians being killed by Islamists. Her Hollywood-heroine credentials also include a career in journalism and picking a fierce fight with President Asif Ali Zardari in 2009 over media restrictions.

Rehman’s new job, though, will be tough as well. She lands in Washington at a time when U.S.-Pakistan relations are at a historic low. Her country’s military and spy agencies have such a reputation for shady links with jihadist groups—a topic on which Haqqani wrote an entire book—that Washington carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May without a word to Pakistani generals. To make matters worse, shortly after the U.S.’s deadly attack, Haqqani reportedly secretly asked the U.S. to back an attempt to rein in his country’s military by creating a new, civilian-led security team. The awkward proposal, news of which later leaked to the press, infuriated the generals and cost him the job.

The Americans will likely be suspicious of Rehman too. She’s already under scrutiny for appearing to share some of the Pakistani military’s foreign policy fixations. According to the Financial Times, for example, she is worried about India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, a long-standing concern for the Pakistani army. It will take all her charm to win over Washington.

Bev Oda’s goat, and Dion’s new role in Scotland

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

The goat Bev Oda left behind

Attendees at World Vision Canada’s reception at the Fairmont Château Laurier included Liberal MP Mark Eyking and his wife, Pam Eyking, who have sponsored an 11-year-old boy named Claude, in Rwanda, through the organization for 10 years. They’ve sent him many things over that time, including a shirt six years ago that he still wears. Another long-wearing item of clothing was the brown Ultrasuede jacket from the ’80s that Mark Eyking wore to the reception. The MP is one of seven brothers and jokes they had one suit they kept passing around. Bev Oda, minister of international co-operation, spoke passionately about World Vision’s work. She recalled a visit to Tanzania where she was given a goat as a thank-you present. She told her staffer to get going on the paperwork needed to get the goat home to Canada—letting the staffer sweat it out for 30 minutes before saying she was kidding. The goat stayed in Tanzania.

Abercrombie and Iran

When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in Ottawa, he had meetings with Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. The ministers discussed the hot topic of Iran, while Israeli security personnel asked Hill interns if there was an Abercrombie & Fitch in Ottawa. There is not.

Continue…

If you don’t expect much

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Greg Weston figures cynicism will save Peter MacKay.

One thing the Conservatives do particularly well is read the public mood. And evidently what they are reading is an electorate so disenchanted and disconnected from national politics that dishonesty is considered just business as usual in the nation’s capital. As long as a government believes the public doesn’t care about politicians who lie, don’t expect those who do to be punished.

‘Just wrong on every level’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 5, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments

Bruce Anderson rips the Conservative campaign against Irwin Cotler and Peter Van Loan’s attempt to justify it.

This truly isn’t complicated. If our children tell lies about schoolmates, we punish them not shrug it off. When it happens on the Internet, we call it cyber bullying and bemoan how young people seem to have grown up without decent values. Conservative Christian groups presumably recognize this as something hard to square with the “Golden Rule” … It’s insulting, it’s beneath this government, and I’m sure it is an embarrassment to many good people in the Conservative Party.

The Commons: First impressions hastily made

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 7:11 PM - 0 Comments

Early on in the first NDP leadership debate, one of the moderators admonished the audience for applauding. There was apparently no time for such stuff. Indeed, there was barely any time to say much of anything.

The nine individuals arrayed before us, setup before a backdrop of fidgety humanity, took turns talking fast. Blessed were those who finished their sentences before the moderators, talking fast themselves, demanded that someone else start talking. Within this two-hour lightning round was something called “rapid fire,” in which each candidate was given 15 seconds to explain how they’d revolutionize the national economy or balance the federal budget. It was a perfect blur for the Twitter age, everything made to be answerable in 140 characters or less. Poor Romeo Saganash, suffering from bronchitis, spent the afternoon struggling to catch his breath. Continue…

World Vision Canada, MPs and Rick Campanelli

By Mitchel Raphael - Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

World Vision Canada’s held a reception at the Fairmont Château Laurier .

Entertainment Tonight Canada's Rick Campanelli (left), a World Vision Canada ambassador, with LIberal MP Mark Eyking (right) and wife Pam Eyking (centre).

Campanelli with Dave Toycen, World Vision Canada President and CEO.

Bev Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, (left), and Campanelli.

The opening round

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, December 4, 2011 at 1:47 PM - 0 Comments

The first debate of the NDP leadership campaign can be live-streamed here or here starting at 2pm.

The rules of engagement are here.

We’ll be by later with observations.

No mo moustaches

By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 8:55 PM - 0 Comments

NDP male Movember participants before they shaved off their moustaches and the woman MPs who helped them raise funds.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault, 20, the youngest MP ever elected, shows off one month of moustache growth.

Conservavative MP Ed Holder (right) went from a beard to a goatee for Movember. Technically goatees don't count.

Holder goes smooth.

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 6:41 PM - 0 Comments

We tried to save the House of Commons.

Brian Topp pitched higher taxes (and considered equality). Nathan Cullen pitched democratic reform. Martin Singh pitched a national pharmacare plan. Paul Dewar prioritized. Robert Chisholm talked leadership.

Elections Canada tried to figure out kids these days. The Department of National Defence tried to keep the cost of its new headquarters quiet. The NDP bought billboard space. The omnibus crime bill went unaccounted for. The House voted to keep curtailing debate. The Harperization of Canada was confirmed. The Conservatives peddled rumours and defended their right to do so. Tony Clement explained his verbal typo. And the Speaker ruled John Williamson and Geoff Regan out of order. Continue…

Security and torture

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Montreal Gazette obtains a CSIS memo that raises more questions about CSIS and the use of information obtained through torture.

In the letter, Judd urges the minister to fight an amendment to C-3 proposed by Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh that would prohibit CSIS and the courts from using any information obtained from torture or “derivative information” — information initially obtained from torture but subsequently corroborated through legal means.

“This amendment, if interpreted to mean that ‘derivative information’ is inadmissible, could render unsustainable the current security certificate proceedings,” Judd writes. “Even if interpreted more narrowly to exclude only information obtained from sources and foreign agencies who, on the low threshold of “reasonable grounds” may have obtained information by way of torture, the amendment would still significantly hinder the Service’s collection and analysis functions.”

As I noted in September, a ministerial direction issued by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews in 2010 seems to allow for the use of information obtained through torture—a possibility the government dismissed after it was raised by a CSIS lawyer in 2009.

Remaking masterpieces

By Joanne Latimer - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 9:10 PM - 0 Comments

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Calgary-based artist Spencer Pidgeon put Gumby and Mr. Bill in his photo remake of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Montreal photographer Vinna Laudico recreated John William Waterhouse’s Ophelia with a fashion model in her neighbour’s backyard. Hamilton-based photographer Kevin Thom remade Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus on the shores of nearby Burlington Beach, featuring artist Laura Hollick wearing a copper bikini. Instead of standing on a giant shell, she’s standing among rolled-up canvases of her paintings. “It’s symbolic of Laura’s rebirth as an artist,” explained Thom, who is one of over 500 entrants in the Remake photo contest on Booooooom.com (that’s seven o’s), an art blog run by Vancouver artist Jeff Hamada.

The contest’s mandate to recreate a classic work of art without special effects proved to be catnip for artists. The month-long contest is now closed, and Hamada is assembling a jury of design and art bloggers to dish out the prize—a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, worth $899, donated by the software firm.

Hamada graduated from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in 2006, and founded Booooooom two years later. “It was never my intention for the blog to be my full-time job,” says Hamada, who designed a line for Endeavor Snowboards and T-shirts for the street fashion label 3sixteen. “But it took off when Kanye West posted about me on his [now defunct] blog, kanyeuniversecity.” Booooooom is now one of the biggest art phenomenons on the Internet, attracting over three million page views a month. “Booooooom isn’t only for people who went to art school,” added Hamada. “It’s not elitist, at all. I edit the site to welcome people who don’t necessarily know art history.”

Continue…

Watch Stephen Harper discuss jobs and the economy with CityNews

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 6:25 PM - 0 Comments

Some Jews are more Jewish than others

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 6:07 PM - 0 Comments

We expect the Israeli government to warn its citizens against the dangers of intermarriage. But the Netanyahu government has been warning Israelis against marrying or associating too closely with other Jews–American Jews. One of the 30-second television ads, pulled from U.S. TV after an outcry among American journalists and bloggers, shows a young Israeli woman living in a U.S. city with a man who is implied to be Jewish-American. The guy, an American hipster if there ever was one, doesn’t understand why his girlfriend is sad on Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli memorial day. “They will always remain Israelis,” the announcer says in Hebrew. “Their partners may not understand what they’re talking about.” Steven Weiss, who first reported on the campaign for The Jewish Channel, summed up the message as “Marrying American Jews could make Israelis lose their sense of identities.” Or as the Netanyahu government sheepishly put it when announcing the cancellation of the project, they “clearly did not take into account American Jewish sensibilities.”

After receiving tips from viewers across the U.S., Weiss collected together several of these ads last month, announcing that “a concerted effort is targeting Israeli expatriates in at least five cities to convince them that their heritage will be lost if they don’t soon leave America to go back to Israel.” The campaign, created by the Israeli Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, uses every technique imaginable to make Israelis feel that their identity is in danger. One billboard urges people to leave America before their children start calling them “daddy” instead of addressing them in Hebrew. In another TV commercial, an Israeli couple is appalled to discover that their American-raised granddaughter thinks that she’s supposed to celebrate Christmas. The message is clear: Jews born and raised in America might just as well be goyim.

The Atlantic’s Israel specialist Jeffrey Goldberg, who translated some of the ads for his blog, was appalled at finding an anti-American message emanating from official Israeli productions. “I don’t think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads,” he fumed. But Sofa Landver, the minister who runs the department responsible for the ads, thinks that American critics are showing “foolishness” by taking offense, and that the response has been great from its target audience of expatriates: “We managed to touch all the right emotional buttons,” she enthused.

Talking to the Jewish Journal of Greater L.A., Landver said that she has “the highest respect” for American Jews, but that the campaign had nothing to do with Jewishness. “Minister Edelstein is the one who needs to communicate with the Jewish Community,” she said, referring to the Minister of Information and Diaspora. “I’m in charge of returning Israelis.” In other words, these ads aren’t saying that American Jews are less Jewish than Israelis; that’s someone else’s bureaucratic department. They’re just saying, as Landver put it, that “Israelis who linger too long in the Diaspora risk losing their Jewish roots.”

But some observers find it ironic that at the same time the Netanyahu government demands maximum American cooperation and respect, it is signing off on advertisements that portray America as an alien country, sapping the uniqueness of Israelis. “The message is: Dear American Jews, thank you for lobbying for American defense aid,” Goldberg wrote, “but, please, stay away from our sons and daughters.”

Dispelling fears of foreign telecom ownership in Canada

By Peter Nowak - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 5:56 PM - 0 Comments

Time to welcome the barbarians at the gate. (PhotographLayne/Flickr)

There was quite a bit of speculation leading up to Tuesday’s speech by Industry Minister Christian Paradis at a telecom conference on whether he would address the festering issue of foreign ownership. The speech came and went, and Paradis–although he visibly gave the speech–continues to be, policy-wise, the Invisible Man.

Despite the fact that two successive government-appointed panels–one Liberal, the other Conservative–urged lawmakers to lift restrictions that limit foreign entities from having any meaningful ownership of Canadian telecom companies with an actual physical infrastructure, Paradis et al. continue to show a lack of backbone to do what’s necessary. As both panels have pointed out, removing those restrictions would not only bring Canada in line with every other developed nation, it would also improve competition and lead to better services and prices.

Continue…

A hundred communities like this?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 5:43 PM - 0 Comments

Peter Mansbridge talks to Assembly of First Nations Chief Shawn Atleo about Attawapiskat.

‘Surviving Progress’—the eco essay as eye candy

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 5:36 PM - 0 Comments

Author Margaret Atwood in 'Surviving Progress'

Turning ideas into seductive, irresistible cinema isn’t easy, especially if they’re the kind of ideas that are good for you.  An effective propagandist like Michael Moore, who pulls in a big audience, does it by swinging for the fences of melodrama and farce. And the more sober agit-prop artists often have trouble breaking out of the festival circuit. But a fresh genre of populist persuasion has emerged in recent years that’s met with remarkable success: the dynamic docu-essay . Some notable examples include The Corporation, an likely hit that  diagnosed capitalism’s basic organism as a psychopath; The Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s power-point polemic, which put global warming on the map; and Inside Job, a forensic inquiry into Wall Street’s 2008 financial meltdown. The popularity of these films (the last two won Oscars) underscores a genuine appetite for global analysis that the fragmented vision of the news media fails to provide. Also, advances in digital cinematography, graphics and editing have sexed up the docu-essay to the point that ideas can be presented as virtual eye candy. The latest example is Surviving Progress, a Canadian documentary about the increasing weight of the human footprint of the planet. It’s a high-level lesson that is enlightening, engrossing and beautiful to look at.

Written and directed by Canadians Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks—and inspired by Ronald Wright’s best-seller, A Short History of Progress— the film confronts the issue humanity driving itself into ecological debt. Literally digging holes in the planet. The way we treat the the Earth’s natural capital becomes synonymous with the way Wall Street treats wealth.  If The Inconvenient Truth and Inside Job had a brainy love child, it might look like Surviving Progress. Continue…

Week in Pictures: November 28 – December 4, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 5:28 PM - 0 Comments

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Week in Pictures: November 28 – December 4, 2011

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Anti-government protesters wave Bahraini flags

Anti-government protesters wave Bahraini flags and gesture as they participate in a rally and march Friday, Nov. 25, 2011, that drew tens of thousands to Maqsha, Bahrain, just outside the capital of Manama. Participants in the rally, organized by several opposition societies, waved Bahraini flags along with those of Arab spring countries Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt, while calling for the fall of the Bahraini government, freedom for prisoners and democracy in the Gulf island kingdom. (Hasan Jamali/AP Photo)

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Next A Kashmiri Muslim man rides a bicycle in Srinagar, India

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This week has four sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 4:57 PM - 0 Comments

Monday. Convictions without courage
Wednesday. Tuesday night in Cornwall and Tragedy of numbers
Thursday. The power and the responsibility

‘That is appropriate’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 4:44 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Minister stands by Peter MacKay.

Mr. Harper, who was in Burlington, Ont., to open an arts centre, was asked by reporters to explain what message it sends to Canadians if a minister can mislead the House of Commons and there are no consequences for his actions. Mr. Harper replied that the government has been very clear. “The minister was called back from his vacation and used government aircraft only for government business. And that is appropriate.”

This is more or less in keeping with what Peter Van Loan told the House this morning.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has already answered these questions. There are really no new facts here. The fundamental facts remain the same. The Minister of National Defence paid for air travel to and from his personal vacation. Government aircraft were used only when he was called away on government business.

Both of these explanations seem to completely sidestep the question of the search-and-rescue demonstration. When Mr. MacKay first addressed this issue in September, that demonstration was foremost in his explanation and it was for that demonstration that he cut short his fishing trip.

The trouble with Quebec politics, in a nutshell/by-election

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

Bruno Boutot/Flickr

Here’s your Friday afternoon understatement : Jean Charest’s Liberals aren’t popular these days. The government has encountered a number of scandals over the last year and a half, the mother of all of which—collusion and corruption in the provinces construction industry—has stuck to the Liberals largely because of Charest’s disastrous mishandling of the file. (To wit: for two years he said no, forget it, pas de chance to an inquiry into the industry… only to allow it, but not before the issue thoroughly stained Charest himself and, arguably, the Liberal brand.)

If there has ever been a time for a bellwether by-election, it’s now. You know, one where voters demonstrate their ire towards the government by electing a candidate from the opposing party, regardless of who it may be, and regardless of past voting history or traditional party alliances within the riding. A mini-revolt against the dreary status quo, in other words. And look at that! There’s an opportunity for as much in less than 72 hours! Continue…

‘This is the line in the sand’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 3:27 PM - 0 Comments

NDP MP Charlie Angus returns to Attawapiskat, with interim leader Nycole Turmel in tow.

‘What we are fundamentally all about’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

Brian Topp considers equality.

Successive governments have turned their backs on the pursuit of equality using arguments that we now know to be false: that ever lower taxes and less government generate growth, that the unfettered growth of free markets will end poverty and “lift all boats,” and that social programs and economic rights make our economy non-competitive. These conservative truisms are not true. Strong social programs are a competitive advantage. A healthy, highly-educated workforce and modern infrastructure are the crucial ingredients of a strong economy and they must be funded collectively…

We can make better choices. We can respond to these changes and challenges. We can promote sustainable economic development and greater equality—in the mainstream of the industrialized world, as many other countries have chosen to do, by electing a modern, fiscally prudent,economically literate, socially progressive, determined, practical, future-focused social democratic government dedicated to addressing these issues with commitment and determination, one practical step at a time.

On pointlessness

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 1:31 PM - 0 Comments

Julian Fantino, the associate minister of defence, responding to a question this morning about Peter MacKay’s helicopter ride.

There is no point in repeating the same response which is that he used the aircraft while on vacation to fulfill requirements to do with his job.

Shell to exit Syria

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 2, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 0 Comments

Royal Dutch Shell will end its operations in Syria, the first European oil major to exit the violence-ridden country, the Financial Times reports. The company’s announcement on Friday came after the European Union imposed sanctions on three Syrian state-owned oil companies, which act as the local partners of various foreign oil companies. The moved is aimed at forcing Syria to curtail its oil production, delivering a considerable financial blow to the government of Bashar al-Assad. Other European oil giants, including France’s Total, are expected to leave Syria as well, while Chinese and Indian companies remain unaffected by EU sanctions.

Financial Times