Iraqi parliament approves new government

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 10:05 AM - 1 Comment

Iraq’s parliament has appointed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a second term in office, ending a deadlock that paralyzed the country for nine months. Back in March, ballot-box results showed the coalition led by al-Maliki, a Shia, trailing the Sunni-backed bloc of Ayad Allawi , a former interim leader, by a handful of votes. The new government led by al-Maliki includes all the major factions in Iraq’s political landscape, but the arrangement already shows signs that the political infighting isn’t over. Members of parliament, in fact, could not agree on candidates for the ministries of interior, defence and national security, which analysts say are key to promoting sectarian agendas within the country.

BBC News

The trouble with security

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images/ Lennart Preiss/AP

On May 2, 2006, a convoy led by Blackwater private security contractors drove over a roadside bomb in Baghdad. An Iraqi ambulance arrived at the scene and its driver was killed by “uncontrolled small arms fire.” A U.S. Army military intelligence unit interviewed witnesses and reported in a classified document that local Iraqis “are saying that the ambulance driver was shot by Blackwater.” But when the investigating soldiers contacted the tactical operations centre of Blackwater (now renamed Xe Services), “to try to confirm details of the incident,” the centre staff “would not confirm or deny at this time.”

This anecdote from the chaos of the Iraq war was contained in the more than 300,000 classified military documents released by the group WikiLeaks last week. Spanning six years of the conflict, they provided fresh evidence that security contractors killed Iraqi civilians, inflamed tensions with local people, and escaped accountability. In another case, the convoy of an American private security company named Custer Battles shot up civilian vehicles on an Iraqi road and then handed out cash to keep the locals quiet. A few days later, a different convoy of the same company fired on U.S. military police. In yet another incident, at a dangerous Iraqi checkpoint, a firefight unfolded when members of three separate security firms—two American and one British—shot at each other. While the documents posted on Wikileaks.org are heavily redacted and do not include contractors’ names, un-redacted versions provided to the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel and several other news organizations confirmed those previously reported incidents of civilian killings, and brought new ones to light.

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Afghan detainees sans scandal?

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 18, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW POTTER

If there is one thing the hysteria over the “detainees” scandal that preoccupied Parliament for most of last winter points to, it is a widespread resolve amongst Canadians to distance ourselves as far as possible from the abuses of executive authority that stained the American record in Iraq and Afghanistan. The names of prisons like Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram will remain synonyms for the moral collapse of the leadership of the West.

We tend to forget, though, that Canadian officials are themselves just as keen to be seen upholding the Geneva Convention and the basic principles of due process. That is pretty much why I found myself in southern Afghanistan last week, part of a journalistic foursome touring the buffed-up detainee centre at Kandahar Airfield, and, a day later, the infamous Sarposa prison in Kandahar City itself.

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Stay-At-Home executives

By Michael McCullough - Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Waterworks Technologies Opening doors: Many countries are badly in need of water treatment plants like this one in Iraq

Trent Sukovieff is savouring the comforts of his hometown of Calgary after spending the past four months in Iraq. “It’s like Christmas, New Year’s and everything all rolled into one,” he says of his visit. These days, home for Sukovieff and his fiancée is Dubai, where he heads up the Middle East headquarters for Waterworks Technologies, the company his father Len founded.

Building a water-treatment plant in Iraq is a tricky business, requiring patience and sensitivity to the local culture, Sukovieff says. Procuring a nut or bolt of a certain size, available at any hardware store in Canada, might take a week in the war-torn country. If you need something done right away, you can’t just call head office; they’re all asleep, so the support of a full-service office in nearby Dubai is a necessity.

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America's more friendly face

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 4 Comments

Dadang Tri/Reuters

Barack Obama’s rhetoric on the campaign trail and during his first days in office revolved around the promise of change, notably when it came to how America would relate to the Muslim nations of the Middle East. “We seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” he said in his inauguration speech.

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

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Bizarro world

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 21, 2010 at 9:01 AM - 26 Comments

Britain’s new foreign secretary says the coalition government will move forward with a judicial inquiry into his country’s alleged complicity in torture.

“So far ministers have stuck to the mantra that ‘we never condone, authorise or co-operate in torture’,” Hague wrote. “But this does not dispel any of the accusations. If anything, there is now a direct and irreconcilable conflict between such ministerial assurances and the account given by Mr Mohamed. That must be resolved.”

He added: “We cannot sweep these allegations under the carpet. Until the full facts are known, Britain’s name and reputation will be dragged through the mud – not least by the terrorists and extremists who will exploit these allegations for their own propaganda.’

“It is vital to remember that torture does not help us defeat terrorists; it helps them to try to justify their hostility to us.”

More here and here.

Iranian dissidents run, but can’t hide;

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

AFP/Getty

Iran’s northwestern border with Iraq is mountainous and sparsely populated. It has long been traversed by smugglers. Much of the illegal alcohol Iranians drink is carried over the mountains here. The region is also a popular escape route for political dissidents fleeing the country. Ahmad Batebi, whose face became iconic when the Economist magazine ran a cover photo of him holding up the blood-spattered shirt of a fellow protester, slipped across the border while on temporary leave from prison in 2008. Popular blogger Alireza Rezaei fled by the same route earlier this year. But dissidents who make it into Iraqi Kurdistan are not free from threats by the Iranian government. Iran has a consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, and Iranian dissidents say Iranian security agents are active there.

“I have been threatened so many times that I’ve lost track,” Hoomam Sadiyeh, an activist from the mainly Kurdish city of Mahabad in northwest Iran, told Maclean’s. Sadiyeh has been in northern Iraq since 2004. Late last year he received an email from a sender identifying himself as Habib: “Silly boy, you might think we won’t be able to reach you, but we can reach you a lot easier than you might think. Also we know who your fiancée is and when she might be returning. We don’t want to hurt anyone. So stop what you’re doing.”

Another Iranian dissident in Iraq, who asked not to be identified because his family is still in Iran, recently received a threatening email from his former prison interrogator.

Sadiyeh said the flow of Iranian dissidents into Iraq increased after the 2009 presidential election and the crackdown that followed it. He said the pressure to which these activists are subject in Iraq has had an effect. Many have stopped their political activities. Others have fled to Europe, some illegally. Sadiyeh had originally planned to stay in Iraq. Now he, too, has registered with the United Nations as a refugee and hopes to live elsewhere.

The bomb detector that bombed

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:50 PM - 3 Comments

In 2008-09, the Iraqi government spent $85 million to purchase 2,000 bomb detectors for use at security roadblocks across the country. Problem is, they don’t work.

The device, produced by ATSC (U.K.) Ltd., is a dowsing-rod-style bomb detector—basically, a piece of gun-shaped plastic with a metal wand sticking out of one end. It requires no batteries—it’s supposedly charged by the user’s body—and claims to detect dangerous materials thanks to a piece of paper that is “electrostatically matched” to the “ionic charge and structure” of ammunition, bombs and other contraband.

If that process of detection sounds ridiculous, it is: explosives experts, the British government and the U.S. Justice Department have all confirmed that the devices are useless. “They are positively dangerous in giving a sense of assurance that is exceedingly ill-founded,” says Sidney Alford, a British explosives engineer. “Lives have almost certainly been lost in consequence.”
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The People vs. Ex-Generalissimo Blair

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 59 Comments

It’s supposed to be Sept. 12—that’s to say, the post-9/11 era. For over seven years the entire Western world was forced to live out a kind of geopolitical Groundhog Day in which Bush, Cheney, Rummy and the rest of the gang woke up each dawn to the same eternal Tuesday morning in September, the same long shadows of the Twin Towers, the same undying certainty of another six decades of hard, cold, martial winter. It wasn’t only the ideologically opposed among the campus left and the Euro-elites: the vast mass of a once supportive citizenry got ground down, too, exhausted by the very lingo of the “war on terror” and anxious to inter it with the Bush presidency. That’s why Barack Obama was cheered from Berkeley to Berlin. He offered liberation. To invert the old line, war may be interested in him, but he wasn’t interested in war. And in those heady days of late 2008 that seemed almost plausible.
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, as Churchill said, although he might feel differently if he had to sit through an Obama state of the union. But what about law-law? In the United States, the United Kingdom and even Canada, it’s not enough to move on to Sept. 12: the Bush era itself has to be put on trial. In London, something called “the Chilcot inquiry” has been investigating the process by which the country signed on to the Iraq invasion. For weeks, the usual bunch of shifty grandees have killed any potential awkward line of inquiry with the all-purpose brush-off, “You’ll have to ask Mr. Blair about that.” So finally they did, summoning the now reviled prime minister into the witness box to grill him on the “legality” of the Iraq invasion. Outside, protesters denounced “Bliar,” as his name is now universally spelled: “BLIAR LIED! THOUSANDS DIED!” Like a pedophile serial killer, he was smuggled into the building before dawn, lest the mob turn on him: “The People vs. Ex-Generalissimo Bliar”—or, at any rate, as near as his former comrades on the left seem likely to get to hauling him up before a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
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This week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

A week in the life of Sandra Bullock
For the first time in her career, the star of umpteen romantic comedy flicks is receiving critical praise for her acting. Bullock’s starring role as a mother of two who takes in a struggling football star in The Blind Side has already garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and last Saturday she was honoured with another trophy—this time at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. There’s only one major stop left in awards season—the Oscars—and Bullock is considered the front-runner.

Face of the week

GARY COLEMAN, who played Arnold Jackson on Diff’rent Strokes, was arrested in Utah on Monday on domestic violence charges

Good news

Helping Haiti
Heartbroken Canadians have rallied behind Haiti in inspiring ways. A multi-network Canada for Haiti telethon raised $40 million, including federal contributions, in just one hour. (In comparison, America’s telethon, Hope for Haiti—which featured some of the biggest stars in film and music—raised US$60 million over the entire broadcast.) Canada is also delivering much more than money to the earthquake-ravaged capital of Port-au-Prince. Along with troops and medical aid, Ottawa is fast-tracking Haitian adoption cases so that homeless foster children can arrive here as soon as possible. Rebuilding Haiti will take many years and many more dollars, but in these early days, Canadians have every reason to be proud.

Stop the head shots
It was a stern punishment—and a justified one. Patrice Cormier, the junior hockey player who landed a vicious elbow to an opponent’s head, has been banned from Quebec’s junior league for the rest of the season. It was a gutsy decision, considering that Cormier is a major star (he captained Team Canada at the recent World Junior Championships) with a bright pro career ahead of him. The NHL must take note. For years, the big league has mused about the need to get tough on head shots—but never acted. As the Cormier case shows, if you want to rid the game of dangerous, inexcusable cheap shots, you need to target the cowardly perpetrators.

Denouncing a tyrant
Are Venezuelans growing tired of Hugo Chávez’s tyrannical rule? Cable companies in the country yanked Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional off the air after it went against new rules requiring networks to carry certain programming, including Chávez’s speeches. In response, thousands of university students took to the streets, protesting the president’s iron grip on the media. An election is scheduled for September, and the winds of change may be picking up steam.
A new chapter?
This week offered two bits of encouraging news for bookworms worried that Amazon’s new Kindle e-reader will make hardcovers and paperbacks a thing of the past. Famed Winnipeg bookseller McNally Robinson has emerged from a short stint in bankruptcy protection (the company filed in December) saying it still believes there is room for growth in the traditional book market. Its main rival, Indigo Books & Music, is already proving that point. The country’s largest book retailer announced a 29 per cent increase in quarterly profits, even though online business fell 2.7 per cent, thanks to surging sales at its bricks-and-mortar stores.

Bad news

Unhealthy kids
A scary new report from the Heart and Stroke Foundation suggests that young adults are at risk for heart disease. Along with the obvious—that more and more young people are morbidly obese— the report reveals that the number of Canadians between 20 and 34 with high blood pressure has almost doubled over the past decade. Ontario thinks it may have the solution: starting in 2011, it will be illegal to sell junk food or pop in every school. A good start, perhaps. But considering that most schools are down the street from a convenience store, the ban sounds more like lip service than hip service.

Animal wrongs
Gail Shea, the federal fisheries and oceans minister, got a pie in the face from a PETA protester during a photo op in Toronto. Surprise, surprise. Another tasteless prank from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the same organization that once compared slaughterhouses to Nazi gas chambers—and just honoured Canadian director James Cameron for an “inspiring message” he never meant to convey. Said PETA: “Viewers will recognize how the plight of Avatar’s catlike Na’vi people, who are faced with being driven off their land by a greedy corporation, closely echoes the real-life plight of animals on earth.” Maybe the folks at PETA forgot to wear the special 3-D glasses.

Precision bombs
Iraqi extremists are doing their darndest to disrupt the country’s path to democracy. On Monday, three bombs went off outside large hotels in Baghdad, killing 36 people, all while international officials are working frantically to make sure that the country’s March elections actually happen. Meanwhile, the news in Afghanistan is equally discouraging. A new U.S. report expects security problems to increase in 2011, in part because the Taliban is getting better at bomb-making.

Don’t blame veils
A parliamentary report is urging the French government to ban Muslim women from wearing full face veils on public transport, in hospitals, schools and government offices. The niqab, said Bernard Accoyer, speaker of the National Assembly, is “a symbol of the repression of women and of extremist fundamentalism.” Unfortunately, he is only half right. The niqabs themselves are not the problem. In fact, many Muslims choose to wear the veil—not because they are oppressed and following orders. The real problem is the other half: the women who are forced to cover their faces by radical fathers and husbands. France—and Canada, too—should figure out a way to punish those specific men, not every woman.

Saddam is back – on TV, at least

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 1:19 PM - 6 Comments

Saddam TV is on the air. A mysterious television channel dedicated to celebrating former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein made an unexpected debut across the Arabic world last week. The so-called Saddam Channel, launched by al-Lafeta TV, headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, has no actual programming: instead, it presents a flattering montage of still pictures that show Saddam dressed in uniforms, a variety of suits, even straddling a white horse. Accompanying the pictures are recordings of Saddam’s speeches and poetic recitals, and a patriotic song urging viewers to “liberate our country.”

The Saddam channel is shrouded in mystery—nobody knows who is bankrolling it, or from where exactly it is being broadcast. The Associated Press tracked down a man in Damascus named Mohammed Jarboua, who claims to be running the channel, but he balked at divulging too many details due to “threats that the Iraqi government will shut it down [and] kill its employees.” He also denied reports that the channel is being funded by Baathist loyalists, former members of the outlawed Sunni-dominated political party Saddam once led.

Other versions of the station’s origins have also surfaced. The man who headed Saddam’s defence team at the start of his trial in 2004, Jordanian Baathist Ziad Khassawneh, claims it is supported by wealthy Iraqis in Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of the Arabic world, although he declined to mention who they are. The launch of the Saddam Channel on Nov. 28 coincided with the third anniversary of Saddam’s execution, according to the Islamic calendar. Officials in Iraq have labelled the channel “an attempt from the dissolved Baath party to return to Iraq’s politics,” but are undecided about shutting it down.

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Remember Iraq? (Advice followed)

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 3 Comments

My colleague Michael Petrou reminds us to remember Iraq. Good idea. Let’s survey the latest grim tidings.
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Remember Iraq?

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 8 Comments

It’s startling how quickly Iraq has fallen off of our collective radar. There are good reasons for this, I suppose. Notwithstanding carnage such as the bombings suffered by Baghdad this week, the level of violence continues to trend sharply downward. He wont get it, but former president George W. Bush deserves credit for reversing Iraq’s slide into anarchy with his troop surge gamble, which he approved in the face of opposition from just about everyone. President Barack Obama derided the strategy and is now mimicking it – albeit with less resolve – in Afghanistan.

This morning I was reminded of how far Iraq has come, how far it still has to go, and why we can’t yet afford to look away. I met with members of La’Onf, a network of Iraqi civil society groups committed to human rights, democracy, and, above all else, non-violence.

This year, Rights and Democracy, a Canadian institution created by Parliament in 1988 to promote and defend democracy and human rights abroad, awarded La’Onf its ‘John Humphrey Award,’ which comes with at $30,000 grant. Ibrahim Ismael and Saba Al Nadawi were in town to accept it. Continue…

What military wives need to know

By Julia McKinnell - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 11:46 AM - 4 Comments

“My best advice? Never, and I mean never, talk about your marriage with another man,” writes the wife of a U.S. marine who fought in Iraq. “You may need to let off steam but it’s best to go to the other wives, your chaplain or your therapist. Men LOVE to make it better for lonely military wives,” writes Mollie Gross in Confessions of a Military Wife, a new tell-all book that’s packed with advice for other military wives, culled from the author’s experience living at Camp Pendleton in California. “Even if you do not have feelings for that man, he will develop feelings for you.”

In a recent phone interview with Maclean’s, Gross describes military life for wives as stepping back into the 1950s—most women don’t work and are full-time housewives, raising kids. “I did notice a lot of the wives drinking on a daily basis. It shocked me. I encourage women to ask themselves, what can I learn while my husband is away?” She suggests learning to sew or learning French or taking a cooking class. When her own husband, Jon, was deployed, Gross honed her skills as a stand-up comedian, which is her current career in Los Angeles now that he’s back.

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In Iraq, new challenges for women

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 1:50 PM - 0 Comments

For years, sectarian fighting in the “Triangle of Death,” the cluster of towns surrounding southern Baghdad, was so intense that hundreds died every day. Sunnis and Shiites, embroiled in a civil war, were killing each other and U.S. and Iraqi forces, summary executions were carried out on the street, and bounties were offered for anyone who killed police, National Guardsmen, and Shiite pilgrims.

As of last year, however, bloodshed in the Triangle had plummeted by as much as 89 per cent, according to the U.S. military. That was thanks in part to new counterinsurgency techniques, but the violence also diminished because Sunni insurgents who had been working with al-Qaeda turned against the terrorist organization. Plus, warring factions have simply “exhausted themselves,” adds the University of British Columbia’s Michael Byers, an expert in global politics. The region has become one of the safest in the country, a showcase for what the U.S. hopes to achieve in Iraq.

Yet new challenges have cropped up. Survivors of the war, many of them women, are now struggling to feed their families, while their husbands, often former supporters of the Saddam Hussein regime, have been detained or left jobless, says Byers. Although the Shiite-led al-Maliki government has promised amnesty to Sunni fighters who renounce al-Qaeda, it remains highly suspicious of them. The underlying tensions that caused violence to spike have not been resolved, and Sunnis may return to violence if they cannot find employment. “This is not a happy society,” says Byers. “We are now seeing the very deep consequences of not planning for the post-invasion phase.”

Across Iraq, the war has laid waste to infrastructure, put ethnic tensions at a boil, and left behind a scarred, displaced civilian population. “Ending conflict,” Byers adds, “is not the only goal.”

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 27, 2009 at 10:45 AM - 3 Comments

A week in the life of twilight
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new box-office champion. The Twilight Saga: New Moon grossed $72.7 million on its first day in theatres last Friday—the previous best was The Dark Knight’s $67.2 million. Screaming teenagers lined up for midnight screenings to find out what would happen to vampire Edward and vampire-lover Bella (though most already knew the outcome from reading and rereading the novel). Said teens then proceeded to scream throughout the movie.

GOOD NEWS

Tough on child porn
The Harper government introduced a smart new bill aimed at curtailing child pornography on the Internet. Under the tough legislation, Web-hosting companies and Internet service providers that fail to report pornographic content on their servers would be punished. This is the most logical way to get to those vile people who post child porn online: service providers are the closest link to unmasking this underground scourge, because they, in effect, carry the content (even if they don’t know it). If ISPs are scared into cracking down on what appears on their servers, the battle against child porn will be half-won already.

Bittersweet swap
Israel and Hamas appear to be closing in on a deal that would see the Palestinian terrorist group release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Palestinians in June 2006. Israel would offer 1,000 Palestinians currently being held in Israeli jails in return, including alleged murderer Marwan Barghouti, currently serving five life terms in an Israeli prison. The swap, should it happen, would be bittersweet for Israel: while Shalit’s return would be cause for celebration, Barghouti would likely assume a top leadership role in Fatah, and perhaps replace the moderate Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian leader, a move that could bring Fatah and Hamas together. In the long run, then, this deal could actually hamper Middle East peace.

GST, American-style
Does America need a GST? Some economists are now arguing that instituting a federal value-added tax could be the answer to bringing down America’s huge deficit. This won’t sound like good news to consumers—Americans will certainly find a VAT-style tax just as annoying as Canadians find the GST—but it makes good economic sense, and deserves to be given due consideration. Let’s hope that aggressive provincial politicians from our side of the border don’t turn Washington off the idea.

Jon & Kate abate
The saga of Jon and Kate Gosselin and their eight young children is, thankfully, over—their TV show, Jon & Kate Plus 8, aired for the last time on Tuesday night after three seasons. We were never fans of the older Gosselins—though the kids are inarguably cute to watch—but the public squabbling after their marriage ended earlier this year was too much to take. The parents ended up looking like selfish brats—their kids were the real heroes. Jon and Kate’s messy divorce will surely continue, but at least not in prime time. We expect Oprah Winfrey will find a much classier way to sign off when her show ends in 2011.

BAD NEWS

Vexing vaccine
Swine flu confusion continues. While some experts have opined that the worst of the H1N1 pandemic is now behind us, others are warning against over-prescribing the vaccine. The World Health Organization also seems utterly confused: it’s recommending that doctors give out the vaccine to anyone showing symptoms of swine flu, and at the same time recommends that healthy people with mild symptoms not be given the vaccine. As if that weren’t enough, the WHO also announced on Tuesday that it has seen an unusually high number of severe allergic reactions to the vaccine in Canada.

Election problems
Iraqis were preparing to go to the polls in January, but now it looks like they will have to wait to cast their votes. Parliament has been unable to pass an election law, because of objections from Sunnis that they will be under-represented—and Sunni Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi has threatened to veto the law. (Iraq’s Kurds have also protested the election on the same basis, though a recent amendment to the election law seems to have satisfied them.) With the United States set to begin withdrawing troops next year, a constitutional crisis is the last thing that the war-torn country can handle. If there is to be success in Iraq, this election must occur on time, and it must be free of corruption. There is no alternative.

Gore vs. Alberta
Al Gore is at it again, and this time he’s inconveniencing Albertans. In a speech on Tuesday, the former vice-president (and almost-president) opined that oil extraction from Alberta’s tar sands presents a serious environmental problem. This after he pasted the sands project in Rolling Stone magazine in 2006, saying, “They have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But, you know, junkies find veins in their toes.” We don’t buy Gore’s doom-and-gloom scenario (odd, isn’t it, that his latest funereal pronouncements come right after he released a new climate book), and we hope Alberta’s hard-working population won’t suffer because of his reckless speechifying.

Idol no more
Former American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert embarrassed himself—and offended a whole lot of others—on Sunday night at the American Music Awards.His raunchy performance included pantomimed fellatio and a make-out session with a keyboard player. If you weren’t already convinced that pop music has become more about selling sex and less about actual talent, we now rest our case.

FACE OF THE WEEK

The first anniversary of Barack Obama

By John Parisella - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 8:03 PM - 34 Comments

One year ago, I was in attendance at the closing rally of the Obama campaign, where close to 100,000 supporters packed the Prince William fairgrounds in Manassas, Virginia. As the participants left the grounds, there was an almost Zen-like atmosphere. Few doubted that the next day, November 4, 2008, their fellow Americans would for the first time pick an African-American to be their president. The question was no longer when, but by how big a margin? The Obama-Biden ticket swept into power with 365 Electoral College votes to 173 for the McCain-Palin ticket, garnering 53% of the popular vote in the process. It was a clear mandate and the best popular vote performance by a Democrat since LBJ in 1964. Particularly interesting were Obama’s victories in key southern states such as Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. By the eve of his inauguration, the president-elect was riding high in the polls, hitting a plateau with a 65% approval rating. Obama had not yet begun his first year in office and it had become obvious that the eyes of the world were on this new president.

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Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 9:35 AM - 74 Comments

Gerard Kennedy humbly suggests his private member’s bill won’t lead to lawless anarchy.

A generation ago, Canada accepted thousands of “draft-dodgers” and also thousands of resisters who left active military service in the United States because of that conflict.

Today, the Canadian government of the day resorts to smears and innuendo to stifle even a debate on our reaction to the two to three hundred American service people from the Iraq War who are looking for asylum in Canada, with official spokespersons throwing around vile words like rapists and terrorists.  It is sad, the Harper government doesn’t have the courage of its convictions to debate the issue openly on its merits but sadder still if Canadians don’t insist on such a debate.

The facts of my private members bill Bill C-440 are plain: it would create grounds for humanitarian consideration for permanent residence in Canada.  The narrow grounds would be a finding of genuine moral or conscientious objection to leave the armed services in a war not sanctioned by the United Nations (such as the Iraq War), and subject to compulsion by way of return to service or stop-loss (a controversial U.S measure that forced military personnel back into war zones even after their service was concluded).  All the other protections to screen out unwelcome elements remain in place; against anyone who has a prior criminal record would not be considered (eliminating the rapist canard raised by the Harper government). National security or human rights concerns or even considerations health, financial or inadmissible family members would also all be protections of Canadian interests that would remain in place.

A year and a half ago, the House passed a motion that recommended the government allow conscientious objectors to seek asylum here.

'God bless America'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:37 PM - 53 Comments

Kady has news of the latest outrage: Michael Ignatieff likes America.

Anyway. There once was a time when Stephen Harper was deeply concerned that his political opponents didn’t like America. So deeply concerned that his entry in the Hansard index for the second session of the 37th Parliament has its own subsection for “Anti-Americanism.” So deeply concerned that he stood in the House of Commons on April 3, 2003 and moved that “the House of Commons express its regret and apologize for offensive and inappropriate statements made against the United States of America by certain Members of this House; that it reaffirm the United States to be Canada’s closest friend and ally and hope that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is successful in removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power; and that the House urge the Government of Canada to assist the coalition in the reconstruction of Iraq.”

Speaking on behalf of that motion he enthused about the United States, cited Sylvester Stallone and deemed our proximity to that great nation to be “our biggest asset in this very dangerous world.”

Full text after the jump. Continue…

An awful, terrible man we were once quite eager to make prime minister

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 10:30 PM - 61 Comments

December 12. The Liberals “have made a commitment to the coalition to get the economy on the right track for Canadian families,” NDP Leader Jack Layton said in a prepared statement. That commitment included Ignatieff’s signature on a piece of paper, Layton said. ”Every Liberal and New Democrat member of Parliament has signed a letter to Her Excellency the Governor General stating that they collectively and individually lost confidence in the government and were committed to governing together.”

December 17. Yesterday, Layton said he met Ignatieff and had a good discussion. “The coalition continues as a very significant presence in the debate that’s taking place now.” On a lighter note, asked whether he has a Christmas present for Ignatieff, Layton said he’ll probably frame the coalition agreement and give it to him.

Tonight. NDP National Director Brad Lavigne set the stage for an election war for the left with the Liberals by suggesting Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was into torture, into Iraq and out of the country … “Mr. Layton has written a book about investing in Canadians and their communities. Mr. Ignatieff has written books defending torture,” said Lavigne. “Mr. Ignatieff has defended and supported the war in Iraq … If Mr. Ignatieff or Mr. Harper were prime minister in 2004, Canada would still be in Iraq today.”

Unlike father, unlike son

By John Parisella - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 2:21 PM - 5 Comments

The recent edition of Time magazine contains a story describing the last days of the Bush-Cheney Administration. By then, Dick Cheney had developed a near-singular focus on obtaining a pardon for his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby. The issue was one of only a few on which George W. Bush disagreed with with his second-in-command. Libby had been found guilty of lying to investigators looking into the Valerie Plaine incident, in which Plame was outted as a CIA agent by officials in the administration. Cheney’s aide was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and to pay a fine of $250,000. President Bush, who had earlier vowed that he would fire anyone involved in the incident, decided to commute Libby’s prison term, to much criticism from the Democrats and the press. His decision nonetheless upheld the conviction, leaving Libby, a former high-profile lawyer, facing permanent disbarment.

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And now . . . a loopy Iraq war movie

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 5:15 PM - 0 Comments

In The Loop enters theatres with so many strikes against it, it is hard to imagine the film finding any audience at all. It’s a British comedy, with all the thick accents and obscure references that entails. It’s an Iraq war movie, three words that are interchangeable with “box office poison.” It’s a cinematic sequel to a TV series you probably missed.

Yet In The Loop has one asset that should recommend it to everyone: it’s really funny. As a bonus, it’s a whip-smart satire on the way government works, or doesn’t, both in London and in Washington. Continue…

'Death wells' in Turkey tell a dirty story

By Kate Lunau - Friday, June 12, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 4 Comments

Along the highway that runs through southeastern Turkey toward Iraq, wells poke up through the cornfields: a pastoral image, yet these well shafts are thought to hold a dirty secret. They’re being opened up by an excavation team, working under armed guard, as it searches for the remains of hundreds of civilians who vanished during the conflict between Kurdish separatists and Turkish security forces in the region during the 1990s. These “death wells,” it seems, may have made the perfect hiding spots for the bodies of victims.

In 1984, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government to fight for an independent state. Since then, an estimated 40,000 people have been killed in southeastern Turkey. In the mid-’90s, when the conflict peaked, villages were razed and civilians suspected of separatist sympathies vanished. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported some were dumped in the wells, while others were doused in acid and left in fields as a warning.

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On the eve of war

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 11:33 AM - 11 Comments

Five days before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, UCLA hosted a debate entitled “American Power and the Crisis Over Iraq,” including Mark Danner, Robert Scheer, Christopher Hitchens and Michael Ignatieff.

Someone has uploaded to YouTube video of Mr. Ignatieff’s contributions—in four parts here, here, here and here.

If you prefer to hear more than one quarter of a four-person discussion, CSPAN has helpfully put the full two hours of debate online here.