Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

All’s well that ends well
Shania Twain tied the knot on New Year’s Day in Rincon, Puerto Rico, with Frédéric Thiébaud, the ex-husband of her ex-best friend, who apparently was too friendly with her ex-husband, Mutt Lange. Twain was escorted down the aisle by her nine-year-old son, Eja. “I’m in love!” she wrote in her blog last month.

Drummers, they get no respect
It’s no surprise the birthplaces of the Beatles have a special place in their countrymen’s hearts. Oxford Street Maternity Hospital, where John Lennon was born, has been preserved and converted into apartments. Walton Hospital, Paul McCartney’s birthplace, has likewise been maintained and converted into luxury apartments. People still live in George Harrison’s birthplace, 12 Arnold Grove. Then there’s Ringo Starr, whose childhood home faces the wrecking ball. British Housing Minister Grant Shapps has urged Liverpool council to reconsider plans to raze the rundown row house at 9 Madryn Street, where the former Richard Starkey was born, as part of a redevelopment plan. Ringo has said the house should be “done up” rather than knocked down. The campaign is on behalf of fans, who contribute millions to the local economy, says the group Save Madrin Street. It’s not for Ringo, “who has enough homes of his own.”

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Year in pictures – March

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Sarkozy vs. the press

By Julia Belluz - Monday, December 13, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Most of the reporters who say they have been targeted have been investigating politically explosive stories and scandals | Guillaume Horcajuelo/Eric Feferberg/EPA/Keystone Press

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has had, at best, a peculiar relationship with the press. Unlike his remote predecessors, who shut journalists out of their private lives, Sarkozy ferried reporters right into the presidential bedroom. “Me and Carla, it’s really serious,” he gushed at his first major press conference in 2008, referring to then-girlfriend Carla Bruni, whom he married that year.

In addition to courting the press, Sarkozy has enjoyed unprecedented power over it. The 23rd president of the French republic is the first to be in charge of nominating the chairman of France’s public television broadcaster, France Télévisions. Close friends, too, run some parts of the media, which has raised questions about dropped stories and the sacking of journalists who present unfavourable depictions of the leader. “Sarkozy plays with the press more than any other president,” says Dominique Moïsi, founder and senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations, “and he also seems more intent on controlling it.”

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Sarko's new globetrotter

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

With the masterpiece of Nicolas Sarkozy’s domestic policy (raising the retirement age from 60 to 62) safely hung on the wall, the French president has signalled that he will refocus his efforts on the global stage, an always popular move in a country that has seen its influence decline over the past century. While Sarkozy is busy selling the G20 nations on global currency plans or trying to impress Russia, he needs someone to manage the rest of the foreign file with the precision of a TGV conductor. That’s why he fired Bernard Kouchner, the left-wing foreign minister with whom he has often butted heads, and replaced him with former justice minister and one-time leadership rival Michèle Alliot-Marie.

The choice is a strong signal that Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party is going back to its conservative roots, says Thomas Klau, the head analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Paris. Alliot-Marie, known as “MAM” for her schoolmarm fashion sense, possesses the “safe hands” Sarkozy needs as he packs his suitcase and prepares to impress the world ahead of 2012’s national elections, says Klau.

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The eternal trouble of drawing up a guest list

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 9:19 AM - 43 Comments

The Prime Minister gets drawn into the Wikileaks drama, seemingly as a result of French pity.

Levitte began by explaining the French decision not to invite the Germans to the June 6 D-Day commemoration. “It’s my fault,” said Levitte, who said that President Sarkozy had initially been keen to invite German Chancellor Merkel to participate. “I pointed out to the President that if Merkel came, then Sarkozy would be obligated to invite the heads of state of Italy, Poland, and the Czech Republic as well.” Moreover, all of those leaders would have to be given an opportunity to speak as well, which would lengthen an already long ceremony. The cases of the UK and Canada were exceptional, he added, because both Gordon Brown and Stephen Harper were in such political trouble at home that the survival of their governments was at stake.

Sarkozy calls journalists 'pedophiles'

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 at 12:43 PM - 7 Comments

“See you tomorrow, pedophile friends!” was French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s reported farewell to reporters at the NATO conference in Lisbon, reports Radio France Internationale. Sarkozy was expressing his anger at journalists during a 10-minute briefing that his aides say was supposed to be off the record. He accused the media of reporting on allegations of bribery without any proof, despite the fact that a former defense minister is behind the allegations that during the 1995 presidential campaign of Eduoard Balladur, Sarkozy arranged for kickbacks from submarine sales to Pakistan. “Not a single one of you believes that I organized kickbacks for submarines in Pakistan. It’s incredible and it gets on television,” Sarkozy told reporters, before turning to one journalist and announcing, “You, I’ve got nothing against you. Apparently, you’re a pedophile… Can you explain yourself?” The Elysée denies the comments were made.

RFI English

France isn't the only country that needs to get real

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

MAXPPP/HUGUES LEGLISE BATAILLE/KEYSTONE PRESS

France’s penchant for public displays of political discontent is frequently at odds with the basic tenets of economics and logic. Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous 19th-century French writer, noted as much during the Paris Commune unrest of 1848 when he observed that French rioters understood quite a bit about politics but very little about the economy. Over a century and a half later, not much has changed.

Energetic protests against plans by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy to reform the French retirement system have cut national fuel supplies, stopped trains and roiled the nation. But despite all this furious protesting, the motivation behind it requires a deliberate blindness to economic reality.

The current minimum age for retirement in France is 60, and a full public pension is available at 65. Today, there are approximately four people of working age for every person in France receiving public benefits. Without changes, the ratio will drop to 2:1 by 2050. A falling birth rate and lengthening life expectancy are to blame for this demographic crunch, along with a lowering of the retirement age from 65 to 60 in 1983 by the socialist government of François Mitterrand. It’s one of the lowest retirement ages in the developed world. The pay-as-you-go public pension plan is forecast to run a $45-billion deficit this year.

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Europe loses its cool

By Charlie Gillis and Nancy MacDonald - Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Charles Platiau/Reuters

Hugo Christy doesn’t have to worry about his pension for 40 years. He hasn’t even started working yet. None of this has stopped the 21-year-old student from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris from joining thousands of striking workers in mass protests against the French government’s pension reforms.

Rolling strikes and nationwide demonstrations against the move all but brought the country to its knees, as people from all walks of life decried the hike in the French age of retirement from 60 to 62, and the age for full state pension from 65 to 67. Last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to call in riot police, who used tear gas and batons to clear key fuel depots and get gas flowing to service stations—more than a quarter had run dry. Strikes shut Marseille’s docks, and left many of the southern port city’s sidewalks filled with rotting garbage. More than 300 high schools were blockaded, and streets from Paris to Nice were flooded with youth and workers carrying drums and bullhorns, chanting slogans, staging sit-ins, and singing the Internationale, the socialist anthem. Children as young as 10 demanded their government withdraw its reforms, suggesting either remarkable awareness, or some early instruction by their parents in the art of dissent.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 22, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Guess who?
Always controversial, Sri Lankan musician Maya Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., donned a niqab for Spike TV’s Scream Awards. Whether it was a comment on burqa-banning fever everywhere from France to Quebec to Syria, or just a fashion statement, was left unsaid; M.I.A. gave photogs a black-gloved middle finger.

One local boy to another
After 27 years, Vancouver’s B.C. Pavilion Corp. is pulling the plug on its controversial pink and green beaux arts Terry Fox Memorial Arch, the city’s lone memorial to Terry Fox. It will go, as part of an ongoing $563-million renovation of B.C. Place. Vancouverites who have griped quietly about the garish memorial—made of tile, brick and stainless steel, and featuring four fibreglass lions—may be heartened to know that Vancouver artist Douglas Coupland, who wrote 2005’s touching tribute, Terry, has signed on to design the new one. Coupland’s latest piece of public art, “Digital Orca,” is being shown outside the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Eyes right
Angela Merkel left pundits round the world slack-jawed with a weekend speech claiming German multiculturalism had “utterly failed.” It was an illusion, the German chancellor added, to think that Germans and the country’s immigrant class could “live happily, side by side” without newcomers assimilating. Immigrants, she said, “should learn to speak German.” Even centre-right daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung seemed cool to Merkel’s new hardline stance. Newcomers, it argued, “should be made to feel welcome.” But the hard right, whose support Merkel needs, feels differently. Merkel, once Europe’s most popular leader, is facing a conservative revolt within her centrist Christian Democratic Union party and, with a poor showing in regional elections this spring, could lose the leadership altogether.

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Sarkozy’s Roma stumble

By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

GETTY IMAGES/ JACQUES BRINON REUTERS

When he promised five years ago to take a pressure washer to a housing project populated mainly by immigrants, Nicolas Sarkozy’s political stock soared. Two years later, when he invited disgruntled newcomers to “leave a country they don’t like,” the resulting publicity helped propel him to the Élysée Palace. So on a level of crass politics, France’s 55-year-old president had every reason to think his latest dip in the well of Gallic xenophobia would pay off. Seldom has a French leader gone wrong playing defender of la République against the intruding hordes.

How, then, did a Sarkozy government offensive against illegal gypsy encampments in the country’s central cities turn out to be such a cringe-inducing failure? It’s been four weeks since authorities began deporting ethnic Roma by the planeload. Yet with each “repatriation” flight back to Romania, a backlash has grown. With more than 630 Roma expelled and 117 squatter camps dismantled, officials with both the European Union and the UN were criticizing the exodus, noting that few of the gypsies appeared to understand their rights. By last week, the chorus of critics had expanded across political and religious boundaries. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, condemned the operation as “a circus,” adding, “there are certain lines that must not be crossed.”

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Sarko’s summer soap opera

By Kate Lunau - Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

DANNY GYS/REDUX/ HORST OSSINGER/KEYSTONE PRESS

A family feud over the fortune of France’s richest woman—Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire, who’s worth a reported $20 billion—has touched off a scandal about alleged illegal campaign contributions that threatens to drag down Nicolas Sarkozy himself. For the French president, who’s pushing austerity measures to shore up the country’s economy in the face of the global economic crisis, it couldn’t have come at a worse time: earlier this month, his approval rating fell to 33 per cent, making him the most unpopular French leader since the pollsters started keeping track 30 years ago.

When he was elected in 2007, Sarkozy was something of a novelty in France, says Edward Berenson, director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University. “He wasn’t squeamish about money and success,” he says. While it intrigued voters at first, “two years into the economic crisis, that perception is costing him.” And with l’affaire Bettencourt splashed across the French dailies—rife with tales of cash-stuffed envelopes and lavish gifts—the recession-rattled public’s patience for Sarkozy is wearing thin.

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Un challenge

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 2:48 PM - 5 Comments

Nicolas Sarkozy, host of next year’s G8, makes a declaration of bold specificity.

“I thank my Canadian friends for their contribution. I don’t know how it was organized,” he said in French. “I can tell you we are in a hotel where the comfort is extremely sufficient and extremely reasonable. I haven’t seen anything sumptuous. As for the French G8/G20, even though I can’t confirm the Canadian numbers, they will be ten times less. Exactly.”

The new breed

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 26, 2010 at 2:22 PM - 4 Comments

Interesting observation from the Prime Minister near the conclusion of this news conference today.

“I’ve never been at a summit where leaders seemed to more deeply feel the necessity of common action and common purpose. Why is that? Some of it may be some of the personalities around the table and the generational change that’s taken place in the G8 over the past few years.”

There is perhaps something to this.

Mr. Harper succeeded Paul Martin in 2006. Since then, in roughly this order, Nicolas Sarkozy has replaced Jacques Chirac, Dmitry Medvedev has filled the spot of Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi has returned to power in Italy, Barack Obama has succeeded George W. Bush, David Cameron has succeeded Gordon Brown and Naoto Kan has replaced Yukio Hatoyama. Of the eight leaders who attended the Prime Minister’s first G8, at St. Petersburg in 2006, only Mr. Harper and Germany’s Angela Merkel remain. And of the new arrivals, five—Harper, Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and Medvedev—are 55 years old or younger.

Yes, Mr. Sarkozy, that's the kind of man I think you are

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 10:59 AM - 2 Comments

Last September, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was asked if he would release an Iranian agent convicted of murdering a former Iranian prime minister on French soil in exchange for the freedom of a French student held by Iran.

No, he said. That’s blackmail. The French President then summoned some television-friendly indignation. Do you really believe I’m a man who would swap a murderer for a French student, whose only crime was speaking the Iranian language?  he asked.

Now we have the answer.

Here’s the tape:

Is France’s sale of warships to Russia really a good idea?

By Michael Petrou - Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 9:42 PM - 25 Comments

The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia was brought to a supposed end with a peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the agreement, which called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory, and promptly ignored it. Russian soldiers remained in Georgia for two months, and are still stationed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which most of the world recognizes as part of Georgia but which Russia declared to be independent states—another violation of the agreement.

Russia’s actions were a clear slap in the face to France. As Sarkozy himself pointed out, his signature was also on the document. And yet today, less than two years later, France has agreed to sell Russia as many as four Mistral amphibious assault ships—massive and technologically sophisticated vessels that can each transport and deploy 16 helicopters, four landing barges, 70 vehicles including 13 tanks, and more than 400 soldiers. They also include a hospital and can be used as amphibious command platforms. “A ship like that would have allowed the Black Sea fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours, which is how long it took us,” Russian naval commander Vladimir Vysotsky boasted, referring to the 2008 conflict.

The money that each $750-million boat will bring to France’s underused shipyards likely helped Sarkozy get over the Georgian war snub. But France is also a member of the NATO military alliance, which in April 2008 predicted Georgia and Ukraine would one day join it. The impending sale also coincides with the release of Russia’s latest military doctrine, which identified NATO’s eastward expansion as the main external military danger facing Russia.

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Europe’s war against Islam

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 9:50 AM - 93 Comments

Perhaps it is fitting that it was French President Nicolas Sarkozy who came to the defence of the Swiss, who voted in November to ban the construction of new minarets in their country. Sarkozy’s father was an immigrant to France, and his mother’s ancestors included Ottoman Sephardic Jews from Thessalonica. Sarkozy’s father abandoned his family and refused to help them financially. Sarkozy grew up poorer than his peers and resented it. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood.”

He was, in other words, something of an outsider. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that he might be predisposed to sympathy toward the millions of other outsiders now trying to find their place in Europe—the continent’s growing Muslim population. Yet Sarkozy reacted to the Swiss vote by urging that it be respected. “Instead of condemning the Swiss out of hand, we should try to understand what they meant to express and what so many people in Europe feel, including people in France,” he wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde. “Nothing would be worse than denial.” He urged French Muslims, who make up four per cent of France’s population and are more numerous than in any other country in Europe, not to challenge France’s Christian heritage and republican values.

Sarkozy, a populist politician, was simply reflecting widespread popular discomfort about Islam in Europe. A 2008 survey funded by the Germany Marshall Fund of the United States found that more than 50 per cent of respondents in Germany, Italy, Holland, and France believe that “Western and Muslim ways of life are irreconcilable.” Another study, by the Pew Research Center, revealed an increase in negative views toward Muslims and Jews in Europe from 2004 to 2008. (Attitudes towards Muslims and Jews in the United States improved during the same time period.)

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Snubwatch: We've found some photos that don't include Sarkozy!

By Paul Wells - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 1:14 PM - 9 Comments

Uproar in France, where the New Yorker’s (perfectly ordinary) collection of head shots of world leaders in this week’s issue does not contain a photo of Nicolas Sarkozy. Incredibly, this seems to have been Sarkozy’s idea. The photographer was taking pics at the UN general assembly this autumn. Sarko waved him away, proclaiming — I have a very hard time believing this, but so far nobody has denied it — “I hate photos!”

Also not in the photo spread: Stephen Harper. So far no uproar in Canada. We’ll keep you updated on this fast-developing story.

The ‘science’ of global warming

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 341 Comments

“The gravest challenge that we face is climate change . . . Every one of our compatriots must feel concerned”—Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic;

“The climate crisis threatens our very survival”—Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe”;

“We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change”—Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom;

“Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children . . . this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”—Barack Obama, president of the United States.

The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of—to pluck at random—enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching “youths,” are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens—if only they can tax and regulate us enough. As they will if they reach “consensus” at Copenhagen. And most probably even if they don’t.

How did we reach this point? Ah, well. Like the proverbial sausage factory, you never want to look too closely at how the science gets settled. The other day, a whole bunch of electronic documents most probably leaked by a disaffected insider from the prestigious Climatic Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia were posted online. Given that the CRU has conceded their authenticity, they provide a fascinating glimpse at the science underpinning the calm measured statements of Sarkozy, Brown, Obama, and wossname, the Belgian bloke—as well as of Kyoto, Copenhagen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the “carbon credits” scam, the U.S. “cap and trade” monstrosity and every other major “climate change” boondoggle this century. They confirm what the soi-disant “skeptics” have long known:

1) The Settled Scientists have wholly corrupted the process of “peer review.”
Phil Jones, director of the CRU, writing to Michael Mann, creator (le mot juste) of the now discredited “hockey stick” graph, about two academics who disagree with him:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow—even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Professor Mann on an academic journal foolish enough to publish dissenting views:
“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”
Professor Jones’s reply:
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”
And you’ll be glad to hear they did!

2) The Settled Scientists have refused to comply with Freedom of Information requests by (illegally) deleting relevant documents.
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on Feb. 3, 2005:
“The two MMs [McKitrick and McIntyre, the latter the dogged retired Ontarian who runs the Climate Audit website] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
And, indeed, the CRU subsequently announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” the requested data.

3) The Settled Scientists have attempted to (in the words of one email) “hide the decline”—that’s to say, obscure the awkward fact that “global warming” stopped over a decade ago.
Phil Jones, July 5, 2005:
“The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.”

4) The Settled Scientists have tortured the data into compliance with political requirements.

From the computer code for one of the “Mann” models:

“Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions of growing season temperatures. Uses ‘corrected’ MXD—but shouldn’t usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

Yet perhaps the most important revelation is not the collusion, the bullying, the politicization and the evidence-planting, but the fact that, even if you wanted to do honest “climate research” at the Climatic Research Unit, the data and the models are now so diseased by the above that they’re all but useless. Let Ian “Harry” Harris, who works in “climate scenario development and data manipulation” at the CRU, sum it up. Mr. Harris was attempting to duplicate previous results—i.e., to duplicate all that science that’s supposedly settled, and the questioning of which consigns you to the Climate Branch of the Flat Earth Society. How hard should it be to confirm settled science? After much cyber-gnashing of teeth, Harry throws in the towel:

“ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently—I have no memory of this at all—we’re not doing observed rain days! It’s all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I’m going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?

“OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it’s just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they’re found.”

Thus spake the Settled Scientist: “OH F–K THIS.” And on the basis of “OH F–K THIS” the world’s enlightened progressives will assemble at Copenhagen for the single greatest advance in punitive liberalism ever perpetrated on the developed world.

Back in the summer, I wrote in a column south of the border:

“If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None. Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.”

In response to that, the shrieking pansies of the eco-left had a fit. The general tenor of my mail was summed up by one correspondent: “How can you live with your lies, dumb­f–k?” George Soros’s stenographers at Media Matters confidently pronounced it a “false claim.” Well, take it up with Phil Jones. He agrees with me. The only difference is he won’t say so in public.

Which is a bit odd, don’t you think?

Phil Jones and Michael Mann are two of the most influential figures in the whole “climate change” racket. What these documents reveal is the greatest scientific scandal of our times—and a tragedy. It’s not just their graphs but their battle lines that are drawn all wrong. Science is never “settled,” and certainly not on the basis of predictive models. And any scientist who says it is is no longer a scientist. And the dismissal of “skeptics” throughout the Jones/Mann correspondence is most revealing: a real scientist is always a skeptic.

It may well be that Warmergate has come along too late. I won’t pretend to know the motivations of Jones, Mann and their colleagues, but judging from recent eco-advertising their work appears to have driven worshippers at the First Church of the Settled Scientist literally insane. A new commercial shows polar bears dropping from the skies onto city streets and crushing the cars below. To those of us who still quaintly recall 9/11, it evokes grotesquely those poor souls who chose to jump from the Twin Towers and die in one last gulp of air rather than perish in the fireball within. But who cares? Their plight is as nothing next to that of the polar bear. Why are they plummeting to their deaths from the heavens? As the ad explains, “An average European flight produces over 400 kg of greenhouse gases for every passenger. That’s the weight of an adult polar bear.”
Oooookay. It’s A Warmerful Life: every time they call your flight, a poley bear loses its wings.

Some in the political class go along because it’s too much effort to resist. A few are presumably true believers. But what a lot of the rest like about “global warming” is the “global” bit: you can’t do anything about it at town or county or even national level. No, sir, we need a “global” response. Fortunately, as Herman Van Rompuy, “president” of “Europe,” puts it: “2009 is the first year of global governance.”

That’s great news, isn’t it? I would urge the delegates at Copenhagen to listen to the experts and issue a comprehensive statement fully reflecting the rigorous scientific evidence. Here’s my draft:

“OH F–K THIS.”

Magazine cover of the week

By Paul Wells - Monday, November 23, 2009 at 12:38 PM - 6 Comments

The cover line translates strictly as, “But what is happening to him?” and perhaps more loosely as, “So what’s his problem?” The editorial, by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, laments the French president’s “rain of projects, min-reforms, mini-measures…a sort of legislative bulimia.” The headline on the edit is “The Spanking Syndrome,” because apparently Sarko’s latest brainstorm is to ban spanking.

One ticket to paradise, This story has legs, and Daughter knew best

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

One ticket to paradise
The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks will soon have his day in court. But much to the chagrin of some relatives of the 2,751 who died in the World Trade Center attack, the fate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be decided in a civilian trial on U.S. soil, not far from Ground Zero. Mohammed, who has been dubbed “one of history’s most infamous terrorists,” is one of five suspects who will be transferred from Guantánamo Bay to New York. His chances of acquittal may be slim, but the jury will also hear of the waterboarding and other measures used in his interrogation. After admitting his guilt to an Al Jazeera reporter in 2002, Mohammed confessed at a closed-door review at Guantánamo Bay: “I was responsible for the 9/11 Operation from A to Z.” Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. A conviction could speed Mohammed along on his self-proclaimed path toward martyrdom.

This story has legs
Any doubt Sarah Palin is overexposed was put to rest this week when the latest Newsweek hit the stands. There, in full, fetching colour, is a leggy portrait of the ex-beauty queen, ex-vice-presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska. The very ex-y Palin has one arm resting on an American flag and the other on a cocked hip. Less flattering is the headline: “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” Palin is everywhere now, flogging her bestseller, Going Rogue, in which she dishes about the media, being “bottled up” by Republican strategists, and her abiding faith in “God and Todd” (her husband). As for the come-hither photo, she complains on Facebook, “The out-of-context Newsweek approach [is] sexist, and oh-so-expected by now.” True, she posed for the picture, but it was intended for Runner’s World, where legs are just things you run with.

Daughter knew best
Carter Spencer, 39, was drunk and high on cocaine last October when he plowed his truck into Christopher Raymond Kniffen, a 19-year-old skateboarder, at a Regina intersection, leaving Kniffen to die in the street while he drove on to his cousin’s and had a couple of more drinks. The next day, Spencer washed his car. Nothing would have connected him to the fatal hit-and-run had Spencer’s own 13-year-old daughter not contacted police and given a statement 2½ weeks later. “His 13-year-old daughter demonstrated more responsibility than he did,” Crown prosecutor Sonya Guiboche told the court. Last week, Spencer pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and to leaving the accident scene knowing someone was injured. He has 32 criminal convictions, seven of them for driving offences, and had been stripped of his licence after failing to pursue a substance-abuse program. Sentencing is scheduled for later this month.

Hush-up money
Lou Dobbs has used his bully pulpit at CNN for increasingly oddball debates surrounding illegal immigrants and the “birther” movement, which claims U.S. President Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and is ineligible for office. How does one top that? It’s a question Dobbs is trying to suss out now that he’s left CNN, the news network that was his home for almost 30 years. Rumours have him heading over to rival Fox News or even running for president. The gossip also has him getting dropped rather than quitting the CNN punditocracy. The New York Post reports the network was so maddened by his move to the right and so worried it would tarnish the network’s reputation that it agreed to grease his departure with $8 million.

The fight of his life
When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar started having hot flashes last year, the NBA Hall of Famer says, “I knew something was up. But I didn’t think it was going to be something as serious as leukemia.” As the 62-year-old recently revealed, he was diagnosed last December with Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia, a rare form of cancer of the blood and bone marrow. But despite the frightening moniker, the disease can be controlled with medication and regular checkups. So far, says Abdul-Jabbar, so good: “I responded well to the treatment. I just want that to continue.”

Plus you can’t even get HBO
Accused murderer and gang leader Jamie Bacon of Abbotsford, B.C., has a new cell outfitted with a fridge, toaster and microwave, but it hasn’t stopped a litany of complaints over his treatment at the Surrey Pretrial Centre. Bacon’s lawyer, Kimberly Eldred, is seeking to have him moved out of isolation and into the general prison population as he awaits trial in connection with the murder of six men in a Surrey, B.C., apartment. Eldred told a B.C. Supreme Court judge that Bacon’s six months in isolation constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Although he was moved to a refurbished cell after previous complaints, she says Bacon can’t see his TV from his bed. As well, the cell, unlike the previous one, lacks a shower, “the one thing in life he could control.” Lawyers for the prison told the hearing he remains in isolation to keep him safe and to prevent him from conducting gang business. There were attempts on his life before his arrest.

Lady Love keeps her day job
By day she is Brooke Magnanti, a researcher in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in Bristol, U.K. But online, in British bookshops and on the telly she’s the previously anonymous Belle de Jour—a semi-fictional London call girl. Magnanti outed herself this week because of concerns a former boyfriend would reveal her secret. She admits she bases her writing on her experience working as a $530-an-hour escort in 2003 as she struggled to finance her Ph.D. Her body of work spawned the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, broadcast on Showcase in Canada. Reaction from her scientific colleagues, she says, has been “amazingly kind and supportive.”

Rocking the boat
Gordon Cruse, a 67-year-old retired corrections worker at Victoria’s Youth Custody Centre, used to be a pirate, but not the bad kind. Calgary-born Cruse was one of the original outlaws beaming taboo rock ’n’ roll into British homes from Radio Caroline, a ship broadcasting offshore to thwart staid 1960s-era radio regulations. His primary job was reading the news, but he also spun rock records, the kind the BBC was still too stuffy to play (the Beatles, the Stones). Authorities shut down the outlaw stations in 1967, but their antics are now immortalized in the hit comedy Pirate Radio, a film Cruse has already seen five times. “Changing British radio as the pirates did was a once in a lifetime excitement immeasurable in its scope,” he once told the BBC. “To be part of that—me, a humble Canadian flatlander—is a unique and exceptional experience.”

Yes, he went to the Wall—but when?
A host of world leaders and everyday East Germans claim credit for tearing down the Berlin Wall; last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy chipped in with his own version of events. His Facebook posting had him rushing to the Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, as giddy crowds of Berliners bashed away at the concrete monstrosity. He posted a photo of his 34-year-old self wielding a hammer against a graffiti-covered part of the structure. But critics are skeptical Sarkozy was that fleet of foot, considering news reports have him in France that day in 1989. While he was clearly there in the early days of the Wall’s demise, even former prime minister Alain Juppé, who accompanied Sarkozy, says he is unsure about the date. Sarkozy is sticking to his story, but former Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal isn’t buying it. She jokes it is equally likely he was at the Bastille in 1789.

Worth a thousand words? Try $100,000.
It was a shocking offer for former supermodel Cindy Crawford. Last summer, a man allegedly contacted Crawford and her entrepreneur husband, Rande Gerber, threatening to go public unless they bought a photograph of their seven-year-old daughter, gagged and tied to a chair. The couple instead brought the matter to authorities, who deported 26-year-old Edis Kayalar, of Germany, for being in the U.S. illegally. Refusing to take no for an answer, Kayalar is said to have called the family again, this time demanding $100,000 for the photo. Kayalar, reportedly on vacation in Turkey, has been charged with extortion in the U.S. and is under investigation in Germany. As for the photo, it was taken without Crawford’s knowledge by a former nanny during a game of cops and robbers. The picture was allegedly stolen from the nanny.

Mama was a dealer at MotorCity
Joe Cada knew the odds weren’t in his favour when he dropped out of community college to commit to poker full-time. “You have to be very careful when you decide to make it a living. More people lose than win.” So far, the gamble has paid off. In November, the 21-year-old Michigan resident became the youngest person in the history of the World Series of Poker to take home the jackpot. Cada, who will be sharing the US$8.55-million prize with the backers who helped pay his entry fee, comes by his card-playing prowess honestly. His mom is a dealer at Detroit’s MotorCity Casino, and family gatherings, says his uncle, “always seemed to end up in a card game.”

Another Obama speaks
This Obama lives far from the White House, in a rented flat in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo shares a father with his half-brother, the U.S. President. Barack Obama Sr. affected the two men in different ways. The President has written of the abandonment he felt when his father left when he was two. His half-brother’s autobiographical novel portrays their father as an abusive alcoholic. “His mother was being attacked and he couldn’t protect her,” he writes of one assault. “And that was just one night. There were many more.” Mark was born in Kenya to his father’s third wife. The two half-brothers have had little contact. Barack Sr. died in a car crash in Kenya in 1982.

Ross Rebagliati's run for parliament, Hollywood's new It girl, and an underwater cabinet meeting

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, October 30, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 13 Comments

No dope
When Ross Rebagliati tested positive for a banned substance at the 1998 Winter Games, the callowness of youth became the basis of his defence. The substance was marijuana, and Rebagliati was a snowboarder from Whistler. What youngster ever ventured forth in that town without inhaling a little second-hand THC? Nearly a dozen years later, Rebagliati is leaving the freestyle aspect of his image behind to seek nomination as a federal Liberal in Kelowna. He lives in the city with his wife and five-month-old son, where he is the picture of upstanding sobriety. That’s just as well: if he gets the nod, he’ll face Tory cabinet minister Stockwell Day, a powerhouse at the polls who wears his conservatism with pride. Rebagliati fully expects the pot controversy to come up during the campaign. “I think the issue has been dealt with,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been able to prove my character over the years.”

Tongues wag
The pejorative term is “WAGs”—wives and girlfriends—and many of the consorts of high-paid athletes seem like over-tanned decorations of the players they date. Kate Hudson doesn’t really fit that bill, with her wholesome appearance and successful career as a film star. But the 30-year-old actor nabbed the spotlight during baseball’s American League playoffs by enthusiastically cheering on her current beau, Alex Rodriguez, from her front row seat in Yankee Stadium. Other Yankee WAGs reportedly don’t enjoy the theatrics—most notably shortstop Derek Jeter’s girlfriend, Minka Kelly. But Hudson must be doing something right: after years of post-season mediocrity, A-Rod boasts a shining .438 batting average with five home runs and a whopping 12 runs batted in. Continue…

Meghan McCain fights back, Georgia May Jagger models, and Jean Sarkozy gets a boost

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 2 Comments

The thorn in Stelmach’s side
It was a rough week for Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. A new poll suggests he and his Progressive Conservatives are in free fall. His televised speech, intended to reassure Albertans about his handling of the recession, was widely panned and his attempt to set an austerity example with a 15-per-cent cut in his premier’s allowance fell on deaf ears. The nurses’ and teachers’ unions have rejected his call for voluntary wage freezes. And on Saturday, the Wildrose Alliance chose former journalist Danielle Smith as its new leader—continuing the Alliance’s evolution from cranky protest party to credible conservative alternative.

To ghostbust, you must first believe
Peter Aykroyd, an 87-year-old former federal civil servant who lives in a spirit-infested family homestead north of Kingston, Ont., has penned one of the season’s odder memoirs. A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters tells the multi-generational story of his spiritualist family. The foreword is supplied by his famous son, Dan, Saturday Night Live comedian and co-writer of the hit movie Ghostbusters. Dan writes how his family, from his great-grandfather onwards, were serious and scientific investigators of the paranormal. “Part of Ghostbusters’ appeal derives from the cold, rational, acceptance-of the-fantastic-as-routine tone that Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, director Ivan Reitman, and I were able to sustain in the movie,” he writes. With good reason: the Aykroyds are believers. Dan’s grandfather was a Bell Telephone engineer who considered the possibility of contacting the spirit realm via a crystal radio set. And one of Dan’s daughters, he writes, claims “glops of light and other shapes attend her when pictures are taken in and around the old family farmhouse.”

They did it for their families
An extramarital affair with a legislative assembly clerk has damaged the personal life and reputation of Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland. Now his political future rests with Ted Hughes, a no-nonsense former judge and one-time B.C. conflict-of-interest commissioner. Hughes conducted a hearing in Yellowknife to determine if Roland breached the public trust by keeping secret his relationship with clerk Patricia Russell. Both were married and have since left their spouses to live together. During the hearing Russell denied allegations she shared confidential caucus discussions with her lover. Roland told Hughes they kept the affair secret out of consideration for their families. Hughes may table his report by the end of October.

Beatles vs. Stones, next generation
The children of two of rock’s biggest names have taken a different approach to fame. James McCartney, son of Paul, has always avoided attention. He recently debuted his band Light to just 30 people in a tiny Oxford pub. McCartney, 32, and his band went to extraordinary attempts to conceal the name and parentage of their lead singer. “James has a way with melody,” wrote an approving gossip columnist for the tabloid Sun, “and a set of pipes which are more than a match for his dad’s.” Meantime, Mick Jagger’s toothy daughter Georgia May Jagger is sprawled topless atop a Union Jack in a new advertising campaign for Hudson Jeans. While crossed arms or strategic camera angles keep the photos just on this side of decency, they have still caused a stir, because, to paraphrase an old Beatles tune, she is just 17.

This little piggy went to Paris
Newsmakers spoke in haste last week when it suggested Paris Hilton was unlikely to acquire a British-bred micro-pig because the extremely intelligent animals aren’t available in the U.S. Hilton has now ordered a bred-in-the-U.S. Royal Dandie Extreme miniature pot-bellied pig from an Oregon breeder. “So excited for my new piglette [sic] to come home to me,” she Tweeted on Friday. The always predictable folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are less than enthused, saying she treats her pets as “disposable.” In fact, the pet-loving Hilton has quite a menagerie; it’s boyfriends that end up in the discard pile.

From hell, straight to Whistler
Skateboarding San Diego chef Dave Levey survived the fire-and-brimstone of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to win the top prize on his Hell’s Kitchen reality show on Fox TV. Levey wins a job for a year working under executive chef James Walt at Araxi Restaurant in Whistler. He starts Jan. 4, barely a month before the start of the Winter Olympics. Of course, he’s survived greater challenges. Not only did he endure the usual hazing by Ramsay, he spent most of the competition in pain after breaking his wrist. Such grit, combined with the 32-year-old’s skater-boy vibe, should make for a perfect Whistler fit. Levey says the tightly edited reality show was mostly real. “What people saw,” he says, “is very similar to who I am.”

Curves and all
Meghan McCain, daughter of former U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, would like to get something off her chest. “Don’t call me a Slut,” she thundered in her column on the Daily Beast website. The furor erupted after McCain used Twitter to post a picture of herself spilling out of a low-cut tank top. Reaction to a revealing photo of a Republican-values gal generated almost as much Web traffic as a certain Colorado family’s errant balloon. First an abashed McCain Tweeted an apology: “I have clearly made a huge mistake and am sorry 2 those that are offended.” Then she got mad. “Honest, I don’t feel that I have anything to feel ashamed of,” she wrote in her column. “I’ve always embraced my curves and will continue to do so.”

Kids say the darnedest things
Lisa Scott of Paulina, La., promised her son Tyren she’d take him to see U.S. President Barack Obama, so last Thursday they went to the President’s town hall meeting in New Orleans. Tyren raised his hand during a question period and Obama gave him the floor. “I have to say, why do people hate you?” he stammered. “They supposed to love you…. God is love.” The President gave a diplomatic reply about how such anger is politically motivated, and people are worried about their futures. The answer was fine, but the question later gave some commentators pause. Just when and why had the hate and rage so troubling to a young boy become a daily part of American discourse? “It was a pretty good question, I must say,” Tyren’s mother later reflected.

Free from Evin
Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari was released on bail Saturday after almost four months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Maziar, who holds dual Iranian- Canadian citizenship, was arrested June 21 after reporting on the demonstrations following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. “Hopefully this is a sign that other journalists who continue to languish in jail in Iran will also be released in the near future,” said Annie Game, executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expres sion. Bahari’s wife, Paola Gourley, is confined to a London hospital where she is due to give birth to their first child on Oct. 26. It’s unclear if Bahari, who still faces charges, can leave Tehran to attend the birth.

Fortunately, only the marriage is dead
Just three years ago they were rockers in love. The musical marriage in 2006 of Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley ended last week with Lavigne filing for divorce. Neither said what caused their “irreconcilable differences.” Lavigne was seen this summer in St. Tropez with oil heir Brandon Davis. Whibley was recently in Las Vegas with model Hanna Beth Merjos. It may simply be they married too young. As Lavigne said on her website, “Deryck and I have been together for 6 years. We have been friends since I was 17, started dating when I was 19, and married when I was 21. I am grateful for our time together, and I am grateful and blessed for our remaining friendship.” And Whibley is grateful to be alive. Internet rumours last weekend had him dead—not a good start to single life. Luckily that was just a hoax.

Spacing out
There’s a bit of a ham in any politician but the Elvis-loving former Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi is uncommonly blessed. He once famously crooned the King’s tunes while on an official tour of Presley’s Graceland mansion. But now Koizumi, 67, is really reaching for the stars. His newest gig is as a voice actor for an extraterrestrial hero who fights aliens from outer space in the movie Mega Monster Ball: Ultra Galaxy. Sure, it was great to be premier of a major world power, but being Ultraman King has its advantages.

Sarko’s son also rises
Jean Sarkozy, all of 23 and repeating his second year at the Sorbonne, has been given a boost into the family business by his father Nicolas. The French president has appointed his son chairman of La Défense, the public agency administering France’s biggest business district, in west Paris. There are predictable cries of nepotism and even some of Sarkozy’s cabinet squirm at claims he is running a presidential monarchy. Sarkozy has denounced the “hysterical manhunt” against his son. Jean maintains a dignified silence, relying on what critics concede are two of his greatest assets: his golden good looks and his very nice hair.

G8 PDA

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 2:23 AM - 4 Comments

An entertaining pool report from the official welcoming of G8 leaders to Pittsburgh.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives with his wife. They get a warm welcome from both Obamas, the warmest so far. There’s a lot of familiarity. Hugs, chats about daughters.

Granted, it would still seem, at least on the public display of affection scale of American relations, that the Harpers rank slightly behind the Browns (“hugs, kisses, more hugs, more kisses, handholding, you name it”) and Sarkozys (“Mr. Obama kisses her four times … Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Sarkozy chat warmly. A lot of touching there too”).

Against all odds

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 19 Comments

Last month, Jillian Harris packed up her bags and moved house from Vancouver to Chicago to live with her fiancé, Ed Swiderski, whom she’d known all of nine weeks before giddily agreeing to marry him; they plan to wed within the year. The couple’s warp-speed romance, one of several Harris was juggling on the last season of The Bachelorette, was served up like spray cheese on crackers to a fixated audience of millions. The 29-year-old gushed about her instant connection with the 30-year-old Swiderski on Live with Regis and Kelly in July: “We had that one date when everything came together,” she said. “I knew I could not let him go ever.”

As psychotic as that statement sounds, it’s the linga franca of the whirlwind courtship, a phenomenon far more fascinating in reality than any on faux “reality” programming. Lately there’s been a crop of them. Earlier this year, the 70-year-old writer Joyce Carol Oates married Charles Gross, a professor of psychology at Princeton less than a year after her husband of 47 years, with whom she’d had a happy marriage, died. In January, the National Post columnist Diane Francis wed John Beck, the CEO of the construction conglomerate Aecon Group, knowing him less than four months. The couple, both in their 60s, met at a dinner thrown by the conservative think tank the Fraser Institute, which, when you think about it, is the perfect forum for finding Mr. or Ms. Right: Beck, who arrived late, ended up in the only available empty chair, next to Francis. The opinionated pundit declines to comment on her personal life, but in an email response to a question from the Globe and Mail about the relationship’s rapid progression, she wrote: “When it’s right you just know it.” Continue…