North Korea’s enduring nightmare

By Michael Petrou - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 3:37 PM - 0 Comments

Kim Jong Il’s death this weekend was something Western politicians both desired and feared. The North Korean dictator was an implacable enemy of the West, who pursued and obtained nuclear weapons, and was willing to give or sell the technology and know-how necessary for others to do the same. In 2007, Israel bombed what’s believed to have been a Syrian nuclear reactor that was modeled on North Korean designs.

Under Kim’s leadership, North Korea’s belligerence toward South Korea continued unabated. Only last year, the North torpedoed and sunk a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors on boards. Nuclear weapons aside, there are enough conventional artillery and rockets aimed at the South that Seoul would be flattened within hours of all-out war. Continue…

Lunch room monitor

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 3:14 PM - 0 Comments

Joe Comartin would like to empower the Speaker somehow to better sort out the unruly.

Mr. Comartin, meanwhile, told The Globe he believes Mr. Scheer’s rulings show he is acting independently but needs more clout. The Windsor New Democrat said the two powers the Speaker now has are either to refuse to recognize an MP or throw him or her out of the Commons. “That’s just not a broad enough way of enforcing discipline,” Mr. Comartin said.

He says through private members bills or opposition day motions, the NDP wants to debate and study how the Speaker can be given “more authority, more clear authority to be able to bring into line recalcitrant members and having the authority to discipline them in a greater variety of ways that we have now.”

I was watching a session of Prime Minister’s Questions a few months back and I saw the Speaker twice cut off the Prime Minister when he thought David Cameron was straying from the question asked. That seemed to me to be a neat trick.

So far as enforcing decorum, I’m not sure if I can see how a Speaker might be better positioned to maintain calm. (Does he need more than the threat of silence or expulsion?) Or perhaps I’m not convinced that excessive heckling is the problem here. (Would a House without heckling be inherently and practically better than what we have now?) Continue…

Back to the Blue

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 3:13 PM - 0 Comments

I really don’t know anything about this show except that it starred Jamie Rose as a maverick cop who plays by her own rules, and that she killed rather more people than the network was comfortable with. (The success of the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force led to a brief flurry of Dirty Harry-type shows, before there was yet another backlash against TV violence. Hunter, the best known of the bunch, survived by retooling itself to become much less violent and aimed at an older audience.) Also, that Danny Aiello was her partner. But while it doesn’t beat Paper Dolls in the “Most ’80s title sequence” sweepstakes, it’s still a pretty strong example of the combination of power pop songs with guns and explosions.

That title sequence replaced an earlier version with more graphics and freeze-frames. Probably a good choice.

Emmy Chances

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 1:37 PM - 0 Comments

I thought the season finale of Homeland was very powerful, especially as an acting showcase. (When a TV show has great performances, it’s usually a sign that the writers are doing something right too: on poorly written shows, good actors get no chance to do what they do best.) The plot mechanics could sometimes be a little dodgy, as they usually are in season finales, but the performance opportunities were all there, the central characters remained remarkably interesting, and the ending left me thinking not so much about the plot – who will find out what, who will do what – as about the characters, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and what kind of situations we might see them in next year. And it also helped that while there were twists, they were not Shocking Twists, the type of plot devices that writers pull out of their hat to tell us that everything we’ve seen is wrong. Instead it mostly confirmed what we’d seen, or resolved questions in a straightforward manner, so we could concentrate on Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.

Homeland has been called a modern-day Manchurian Candidate, though the two works are apples and oranges in some ways. The Manchurian Candidate is basically a satire of the entire Cold War, a more deadpan comedy Continue…

Who’s your daddy? Mommy doesn’t have to say.

By Charlie Gillis - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 1:29 PM - 0 Comments

Andrew Tolson/Maclean's

A Toronto man who believes he is the son of John Diefenbaker cannot sue members of his own family for allegedly cutting him out of an inheritance, an Ontario judge has ruled.

George Dryden says he will appeal, noting that his basic allegation remains untested—namely, that the man he grew up believing was his father mistreated him, and connived to keep family wealth out of his hands because he knew George was not his son.

Dryden alleges that his non-biological father, Gordon, knew all along that George is the child of Canada’s 13^th prime minister. Continue…

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 0 Comments

From the most recent print edition, 900 words or so on the tax debate we might have to have. And, from a couple issues ago, 600 words or so on Ruth Ellen Brosseau and Parliament’s new arrivals.

If all had gone according to plan, the NDP candidate in the riding of Berthier-Maskinonge would have been noted little beyond the historical record. She would have been nothing more than an entry on the ballot that the majority of voters in that riding passed over as they marked an X beside the name of the incumbent, Guy André of the Bloc Québécois, or perhaps the Liberal candidate, Francine Gaudet, a former member of the national assembly of Quebec.

But then the polls changed and Ruth Ellen Brosseau became an example of democratic absurdity. And then our political hierarchy changed and Brosseau became a duly elected member of Parliament.

Lover/fighter

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

Susan Delacourt profiles Justin Trudeau at 40.

To mark his 40th birthday, he got another tattoo: a Haida raven on his left shoulder. And in the coming few months, he intends to put a check mark beside a big item on his lifetime to-do list — going three rounds in the boxing ring. His opponent will be Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau, a fit, 36-year-old who holds a second-degree black belt in karate and who reportedly told Trudeau he’d jump at the chance to clobber him in public.

“He’s a tough character. I’ve got my work cut out for me . . . I expect to get knocked down a few times,” Trudeau said. “But you know what? If there’s one thing I’ve shown over the course of my career and my life, I can take a punch.” Trudeau knows that Brazeau isn’t the only Conservative who would like to smack him around, and he gets some delight from this. “There’s something about me that makes them nutty,” he says, laughing.

A Science-ish year in review

By Julia Belluz - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

US Army Africa/Flickr

There are some things we think we know for sure when it comes to health. They manifest in the daily rituals we perform without question or doubt. Take flossing as an example. Jamming the waxy string between our teeth is the surest way to fight cavities, right? The famous “Wear Sunscreen” column-turned-song even lists “floss” alongside the things you should do for a full and healthy life.

But when scientists recently analyzed the studies comparing flossers to non-flossers, for a new Cochrane systematic review (the highest form of evidence) on the subject, they found they were mostly biased, industry-sponsored junk. Moreover, not a single study looked at the reduction of dental cavities in flossers versus non-flossers. Continue…

Greater equality through taxes

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

Kevin Milligan and friends consider how to deal with inequality.

Brian Topp assumes his proposed 35-per-cent federal rate would yield $3 billion in new revenues. Economists have fairly good estimates of how much revenue “slippage” we might expect for top earners, and these estimates suggest the additional revenue might slip down closer to $1.5 billion … How could this new money be used to help those who are struggling at the bottom? Cutting income tax rates in the bottom bracket doesn’t do much, since the basic exemption and other tax preferences mean that few low-income earners actually pay income tax. Instead, the right target is to enhance our system of refundable tax credits. As examples, think of the HST/GST credit, the Canada Child Tax Benefit, or the B.C. Family Bonus. These payments can be targeted by family income and delivered efficiently through direct deposits into recipients’ bank accounts.

More from Kevin and the gang here, here and here.

How exactly does Santa know I’m sleeping?

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; iStock; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

To aid in your enjoyment of the holidays, please consult this list of answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the songs of the season.

Q: According to God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, a blessed angel delivered “tidings” of the birth of Jesus—but only “unto certain shepherds.” Why?

A: Fortunately, theologians recently unearthed a transcript from the nightly shift briefing of angels on the evening in question: “Big night, folks. Big night. Coffey, Bates, Renko: you’re on choir duty. Let’s keep it peppy: Big sound. Blinding lights. Killer harp solo. Belker: you alert the shepherds. Bring tidings and so forth. But listen: only to certain shepherds, okay? We’re introducing a messiah, not holding a rave. And not Gary the shepherd—that guy’s a tool.”

Continue…

Epilogue to Occupy

By Emma Teitel - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Drost/ZUMAPRESS/Keystone Press

Tim Gilbert is a 48-year-old lawyer on King Street in Toronto. His office is on the 20th floor of the TD Trust building, where it overlooks the financial district. He is the chair of Toronto’s Design Exchange (in what used to be the Toronto Stock Exchange) and the principal lawyer at his own patent and trademark firm, Gilbert’s LLP. He is hoping to put a large flat-screen television on the far wall of his office for Skype interviews and conference calls. He is a strong believer in free markets. He is also a friend of Occupy Toronto—and one of the people responsible for the peaceful outcome of the police eviction at St. James Park on the morning of Nov. 23.

Since then, tent cities have turned back into parks and editorial boards have turned to new topics, but Gilbert hasn’t been so eager to move on. Since the eviction, the intellectual property lawyer has been meeting with some of the movement’s organizers (a term he says he “uses loosely”) to discuss “the group’s next step.” “I don’t agree with many of their solutions,” he says. “But I think it would benefit them to have some degree of leadership and organization.”

The aftermath of Occupy—with park cleanups donated by businesses and rhetoric that’s seeped into the national dialogue—suggests the movement has made a dint in the national psyche.

Continue…

Keystone pipeline prospects dim after U.S. Senate vote

By Erica Alini - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:34 AM - 0 Comments

A bill that may force U.S. President Barack Obama to make a decision on the Canada-Texas oil pipeline within 60 days passed the Senate on Saturday. Republican senators celebrated a small victory for a political manoeuvre that may compel the president to take an unpopular stance on a hot-button issue in the run-up to the 2012 election. The U.S. State Department said it would “almost certainly” turn down the project, even if the White House approves it. The State Department has postponed its decision until after next years’ election because it says it needs to study alternative routes for the pipeline. As currently proposed, TransCanada Corp’s 700,000 barrel-a-day oil pipeline would cross one of the country’s largest aquifers in Nebraska. The bill now moves to the Republican-led House of Representatives.

Reuters

Sexism and the Israeli military

By Patricia Treble - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Israel’s defence minister and military chief of staff are in trouble for chauvinistic comments that were caught on tape. Last Tuesday, Ehud Barak and Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz were watching an army exercise when Barak jokingly asked where the “girls” were. Gantz responded the female soldiers were on break, that “they sing during their break”—meaning they don’t do it on duty. The comments touched a nerve because they were making light of an incident in September when religious male soldiers—who want more gender segregation in the military—walked out of a ceremony rather than listen to female soldiers sing.

Adding to the alarm was Gantz’s reaction when he realized the comments were recorded. He warned the journalists not to air the comments, cautioning Nir Dvori of Channel 2 that “otherwise this will be your last story.” Soon, however, the online news site Ynet broke the story. Gantz later apologized.

While the two Israelis thought their gaffes might stay secret, Chilean President Sebastian Piñera had no such luck at a conference in Mexico where he “joked” that “when a lady says ‘No,’ she means ‘Maybe,’ when she says ‘Maybe,’ she means ‘Yes,’ and if she says ‘Yes,’ she’s not a lady.’”

Return of the fighter

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Carolyn Kaster/AP

As they argue amongst themselves heading into the first primary votes next month, Republican presidential hopefuls can agree on this much: President Barack Obama has been “absent,” “missing,” “nowhere” and ineffectual on the most pressing issues of the day.

“He’s done nothing” on the debt, said Mitt Romney at a campaign stop last month. “He has completely disengaged from his job,” Michelle Bachmann told Fox News in November. Obama has shown “no leadership” on China, according to Jon Huntsman, and a “lack of leadership” on Syria, according to Rick Perry. On the economy, quipped Bachmann: “It’s been like, Where’s Waldo?”

It’s something of a U-turn from what Republicans argued in the prelude to the mid-term elections in 2010: that a power-hungry Obama was steamrolling America into an unrecognizable socialist state. That line helped sweep Tea Party candidates into Congress and gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives. But all of a sudden, they say, Obama is fiddling his thumbs—particularly in the face of America’s US$15-trillion debt.

Continue…

Newsmakers: Dec. 8-15, 2011

By Colby Cosh, Richard Warnica and Alex Ballingall - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Phil Cole/Getty Images

Rocking for good

An unknown Canadian band is rocketing up the charts with an unfinished track. Pray (For L.J.) by Pardon My Striptease was released on iTunes to support the B.C. band’s frontman, Andrew Putt, whose one-year-old daughter Lilee-Jean is fighting an aggressive brain cancer at the B.C. Children’s Hospital. Pray hit No. 2 on iTunes’ Canadian rock singles chart with surprising speed; only Nickelback’s When We Stand Together stood in its way, prompting Pardon My Striptease to challenge their fellow rockers to match their donation if they overtook Nickelback’s slick, professional single. Take note, haters: Nickelback agreed to the challenge and lost this week, making the hospital’s charitable foundation $50,000 richer.

Domination, Canadian style

There comes a time, in some games, when one team takes on a look of pure physical dominance. So it was at the recent final of the International Rugby Board’s Women’s Sevens Challenge in Dubai. The Canadian team, tournament underdogs, rumbled into the final by beating Australia. Led by Canuck captain Mandy Marchak—who put the game out of reach with a try in the second half—they thoroughly outclassed the heavily favoured English side, winning 26 to 7. The victory was a good omen. Rugby Sevens, a modified version of the better-known game, will be a full-medal sport at the 2016 Olympics.

Continue…

Kim Jong Il: ‘so ronery’

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments

As many jokes and YouTube links made clear last night, Kim Jong Il’s image in the West comes largely from a puppet movie that he probably shouldn’t even have appeared in. The movie was Team America: World Police, a film made in 2004 by South Park (and later, Book of Mormon) creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone as their comment on the War on Terror, back before we completely won that thing. Kim was the villain that the titular Team went up against, plotting to unleash terrorism upon the world with the unwitting help of useful idiots like actor Matt Damon and U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix.

The choice of Kim as the villain, like so many of Parker and Stone’s choices, got them attacked for a failure of nerve on both sides of the political aisle. For liberals, the presence of Kim seemed like an attempt to avoid taking a stand on the Iraq war (though since the war started while the film was in development, it might not have been possible to make the movie about Saddam Hussein). For conservatives, it was sidestepping the issue of Islamist terrorism. But for Parker and Stone, the reason for the choice may have been a simple one: they find stereotypes really funny, and the character of Kim Jong-Il allowed them to dig up every possible stereotype and build scenes around them. The dictator’s big song is called “I’m So Ronery,” and it was that song, and clip, that made the rounds on social media yesterday night. Continue…

Peter MacKay in Munich: Let’s not be pound foolish

By Paul Wells - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Here’s the speech Peter MacKay gave at the Munich Security Conference in 2010. I’m not a huge fan of the Defence Minister’s speeches, but this one is sturdy enough. Here‘s who was in the audience: people who run much of the world, aren’t used to thinking about Canada, and will not particularly notice if a Canadian government minister fails to show up at the next conference. The kind of audience Canadian government officials need to speak to, in other words.  Continue…

So, who wants to talk about higher taxes?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Brian Topp wanted to talk about taxes. Paul Dewar wanted to stick to the issue he and the other leadership contenders were supposed to be discussing. “I thought we were talking about the environment,” Dewar said. A few seconds of crosstalk ensued and then the moment—a rare point of conflict in the first NDP leadership debate—passed.

Afterwards, Topp stressed his larger point. “If we want to win a government mandate, we need to go after a government mandate,” he told reporters. “And the way to do that is not only to issue your list of spending proposals, but to show how you’re going to fund them.” It was suggested that perhaps his fellow candidates weren’t ready to have that discussion. “I intend to fix that,” he said.

The early going of the race to become the next leader of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition has been so polite that this had the feeling of a rude guest interrupting afternoon tea. But figuring out how to get candidates within the NDP talking about this may be the easy part. The real challenge would seem to be changing the entire national political debate to include taxes as anything other than that which must be cut. Continue…

Cairo clashes continue for fourth day

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:18 AM - 0 Comments

Thirteen people are reported dead after the fourth straight day of Tahrir Square clashes between security forces and those opposed to military rule in Egypt. Reuters news agency also reported that hundreds have been wounded and scores arrested since Friday. Violence broke out in the streets of Cairo after the second round of the country’s first free parliamentary elections in decades. Police and military forces wielded batons and used tear gas against stone-hurling protestors. Reuters says it has filmed police beating fallen protestors and dragging women through the streets. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged restraint and called on the Egyptian military “to respect and protect the universal rights of all Egyptians.” Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the “excessive violence” on display in Cairo. The ruling military council directed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi has pledged to hand over power to an elected president by July.

Reuters

Revenge of the nerd stocks

By Kate Lunau - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

On Dec. 6, Alec Baldwin was booted off an American Airlines flight after he refused to stop playing Words With Friends, an addictive Scrabble-like game from Zynga Inc., which makes free online games. Famous for its Facebook offerings like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, Zynga enjoyed a publicity boost that couldn’t have been better timed: it’s going public this week, in what observers say is the largest initial public offering (IPO) from a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc., in 2004. Zynga isn’t the only free online games maker causing an investor frenzy. Last week, Asian rival Nexon Corp. set the price for its $1.2-billion IPO, said to be Japan’s biggest all year.

These companies might offer their games for free, but both have found ways to get people to spend real money once they’re playing. In Nexon’s popular MapleStory, for example, couples who wish to get “married” have to fork over $25 for the wedding package. (About three-quarters end in divorce and after 10 days players can remarry.) Only three per cent of Zynga’s 227 million monthly users are paying players, chief executive Mark Pincus told potential investors last week. Even so, that didn’t stop its IPO from being worth almost $1 billion.

Ottawa ends mandated retirement

By macleans.ca - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:12 AM - 0 Comments

The federal government has quietly killed mandated retirement in federally regulated industries, ending a controversial practice that began 30 years ago. A provision altering the applicable section of the Canadian Human Rights Code was tucked into the budget bill signed into law last week. Beginning in Dec. 2012, 12,000 federally regulated employers will no longer be able to force out employees when they turn 60 or 65. “This was an overnight success after 20 years of lobbying,” Susan Eng, a vice-president at CARP, told the National Post. “They buried it in the larger budget bill, and this is one time where I’m glad they did.”

National Post

The museum is the message

By John Geddes - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Jeff McIntosh/AP

A huge tire from one of the giant mining trucks that rumble around Alberta’s oil sands is not on display outside the Canada Science and Technology Museum to draw attention to its current exhibition, “Energy: Power to Choose.” That’s disappointing to Denise Amyot, president of the federal museum’s parent corporation, who wrote in an email last spring that she thought an outsized tire “would have been a big hit!” But some oil industry officials didn’t like the idea, according to Amyot’s note, so it was dropped. And quashing the tire gimmick was just one example from documents obtained by Maclean’s under the Access to Information Act of what appears to have been pervasive influence from the energy sector in shaping the exhibition’s content.

The show, which opened last July, is the cornerstone of a six-year project by the museum called “Let’s Talk Energy,” which includes a website, classroom materials, and a plan to tour the exhibition across Canada. The Imperial Oil Foundation and Encana Corp., two fossil fuels heavyweights, are its major sponsors. In a document sent to potential sponsors, the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation pitched the advantages of supporting the project this way: “Your story will be part of a balanced approach, bringing information and perspective to the public that cannot be delivered through the filters of the mainstream media.” For this “enhanced communications” opportunity, major sponsors were asked for $100,000 a year for six years.

The show includes informative displays on consumption and conservation, wind and solar power, hydro and nuclear. But it’s easy to see why the oil sector in particular might find it appealing. For instance, in an email to Daniel Bourdeau, the museum corporation’s director of sponsorship sales, an “exhibition interpretation officer” working on developing the show last year wrote: “I think this is a ‘good news’ oil sand story that we would like to tell, but we really need the assistance of [the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers], the Govt. of Alberta, or one of the oil companies.”

Continue…

When is a winglet a sharklet?

By Gustavo Vieira - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Airbus Press Room

Next time you’re seated in the window seat of an airplane, take a close look at the wings—chances are you will see a fin-like airfoil protruding from the tip. Winglets, as they’re called, have been fitted to airliners since the ’80s, but Airbus has come up with a new name for them: “sharklets.” It’s part of an effort to escape a patent on the increasingly important technology that’s held by a close partner of Airbus’s main rival, Boeing.

To the naked eye, the difference between sharklets and winglets is in name only. Their purpose is to cut down on fuel—between 3.5 to seven per cent—by reducing aerodynamic drag, which they do by literally slashing through the air. The best bang for the buck is in mid- to long-range flights, when cruising speed is sustained for longer periods, consequently compensating for the winglets’ added weight.

In the Airbus versus Boeing battle, modern winglets have become a selling point for customer airlines under pressure to find greater fuel savings. Airbus will install its 2.5-m sharklets on its popular A320s, which are beating its Boeing competitor, the winglet-fitted 737, by the hundreds in firm orders in 2011.

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The case for a Canada-U.S. land swap

By Paul Rosenzweig - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images

Canada and America are about to resume negotiations over a cross-border customs agreement known as “land pre-clearance.” These negotiations failed in 2008 and, despite good intentions, may very well fail again. There is a better way—a land swap, formally exchanging territory on opposite sides of the border. It may take longer—but a long process that succeeds is far better than a shorter process that doesn’t.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a plan they called “Beyond the Border.” The main idea behind it was for Canada and the United States to co-operate on a secure perimeter for their common space—in effect, applying the NORAD model to the movement of people, goods and services into North America. This is fundamentally a good idea for both countries—like it or not, our security is inextricably linked. From a Canadian perspective, one of the major corollary benefits of a joint approach to the perimeter would be the “thinning” of the border between the two countries, facilitating travel and trade.

To that end, one part of the December plan to implement the agreement (released earlier this month) calls for Canada and the United States to negotiate a land pre-clearance agreement—that is, an agreement where American customs and immigration officials will physically be located on the Canadian side of the border to screen people, trucks, and cargo before they cross into the U.S.; Canadian border officials would, likewise, do their work at a facility on the American side.

Continue…