Good news, bad news: May 5-12, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, May 13, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Frederick Breedon/Getty Images

Some justice at last

It’s been over three years since Robert Dziekanski died at the Vancouver airport after RCMP used Tasers to subdue him. Now B.C.’s attorney general has laid perjury charges against the four officers involved for allegedly giving misleading testimony during the exhaustive Braidwood inquiry. While some, including Dziekanski’s mother, Zofia Cisowski, are disappointed the charges don’t relate to the tasering itself, Cisowski still applauded the move. The wheels of the law may be slow, but they do keep moving, and in this sad case the charges offer at least some measure of justice.

Harnessing hot air

Energy sources such as wind and solar could provide 80 per cent of the world’s power supply within four decades if governments provide the cash and policies to make it happen. That is the landmark conclusion of a UN panel that says it’s not too late to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a “safe” level. In the meantime, farmers are enjoying the heat. According to separate research, Canadian crops have been largely spared from the scourge of climate change—and our historically hard-luck farmers are profiting from increased demand.

Prize catch

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, it was a blow to China’s human rights record. But the big winner may be Scottish fish farmers. In a fit of pique, China has stopped buying salmon from Norway—its biggest supplier—and signed a deal with Scotland. Perhaps that contributed to the unprecedented majority won by Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party in the May 5 elections. Good news for nationalist politicians, not so much for fish.

It’s all relative

A NASA study has confirmed two of the “most profound predictions” about Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: that space and time are both warped and pulled by Earth’s gravity. Astrophysicists say the results, based on data measured by an orbiting space probe, will have implications “beyond our planet.” In other physics news: engineers have developed a golf ball that won’t slice. Now there’s a breakthrough we can relate to.

Bad news

Parivartan Sharma/Reuters

Revolution relapse

In the post-Mubarak era, Egypt is transitioning, but to what? Christians and Muslims clashed in Cairo, leaving 12 dead and two churches in smoldering ruins, amid signs Islamist hard-liners are asserting their power. At the same time, Syria continued its crackdown against anti-government protesters, killing scores of people and injuring hundreds, while in Libya, forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi hammered rebels. Clearly the fight is far from over for the pro-democracy movement across the Middle East.

Retirement blues

Tens of thousands more baby boomers will face retirement without a company pension plan, Statistics Canada reported this week. Since the recession, membership in private sector plans has fallen below that of the public sector for the first time ever. Which is why Canadians should be cheering the Canada Pension Plan’s tripling of its 2009 investment in Internet-calling-company Skype, recently purchased by Microsoft for US$8.5 billion. Unless you work for the civil service or at a university, the CPP may be all the help you will get.

Red carded

Lord Triesman, the chair of England’s failed bid for the 2018 World Cup of soccer, is alleging at least four FIFA members demanded bribes for their votes, including a knighthood for Paraguay’s representative. Trinidad’s football head wanted $2.5 million cash for an “educational centre.” London’s Sunday Times reports two West African delegates were paid $1.5 million to support Qatar’s winning bid. And in France, the national team is embroiled in scandal after it emerged officials considered quotas to limit the number of African and Arab-born players on their development squads. The ugly side to the beautiful game.

Unholy bonds

A good marriage isn’t necessarily built on love or even physical attraction, suggests new research in the Journal of Politics. Among the strongest shared traits between U.S. spouses is their political attitudes, the study found. The political bond forms early in marriages, but it’s not always enough to keep them together. Just ask political power-couple Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, who separated this week.

Independence Day

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

AFP/Getty Images

When, on the evening of Nov. 13, Aung San Suu Kyi suddenly appeared from behind the red iron bars surrounding her house, her lonely prison for most of the past two decades, her ecstatic supporters erupted into cheers; many were reduced to tears. Thousands had rushed to Suu Kyi’s crumbling white villa on Rangoon’s Inya Lake after security forces began taking apart the compound’s barbed-wire barricades: a clear signal the world’s most famous political prisoner would finally be freed from house arrest.

The crowd’s size, enthusiasm, and the strong youth element suggest “the Lady,” as she is known in Burma, had emerged from captivity with her popularity and moral authority intact. “We haven’t seen each other for so long,” Suu Kyi, dressed in a purple longyi, a Burmese sarong, told supporters, her grace unbroken. “We have a lot to do.”

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 12, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Doggone it
Cesar Millan, TV’s “Dog Whisperer,” was a hit with the crowd at sold-out Scotiabank Place in Ottawa last week, even though Ontario law deprived him of a key cast mate—Junior, the two-year-old American pit bull that recently took over from the dearly departed Daddy as Millan’s “right-hand man.” Millan, halfway through a tour of Canada, demonstrated training techniques on local dogs and expounded on his philosophy of calm assertiveness, but took time to criticize Ontario’s 2005 ban on pit bulls. “In the ’70s, the breed that people were afraid of was the Doberman,” he told the audience. “In the 2000s, it’s the pit bull. It’s not the breed, it’s the human behind the dog.”

Absolute powers of persuasion
Chinese authorities may not have much success persuading European governments to boycott the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony honouring jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, but they’re having better luck at home. Author Yu Jie, a friend of Liu’s, said he and his wife have been stopped from leaving their Beijing home by security officers, for fear they plan to go to Oslo. Meanwhile, Guo Xianliang, an engineer from Yunnan province, disappeared while on a business trip in Guangzhou. He’d been detained for distributing flyers about Liu, according to fellow activist Ye Du. Police have also reportedly detained a young woman, Mou Yanxi, who tweeted her support for Liu. “If such behaviour goes on,” her friend Zhang Shijie tweeted last week, “it will eventually happen to all of us.”

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Rewarding Europe's favourite American

By The Editors - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 3 Comments

Nineteen times in the past 108 years there was no winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. This includes the First and Second World Wars, when it was obviously impossible to present such an award, as well as other years when no suitable candidate was apparent. This should have been one of those years.

Barack Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is hasty, incongruous and an embarrassment to all involved. Its only function appears to be the foisting of hypocritical European ideals onto American politics. As such, we could have done perfectly well without it. Continue…

'That choice is now his'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 12:11 PM - 54 Comments

Glen Pearson considers Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize, Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff.

Politics is desperately in need of game-changers – leaders who go for the impossible as opposed to the prudent, for principle over power, peace over pragmatism. Stephen Harper can never be that person because he’s an incrementalist, attempting not to change the channel but to just bore us with all the noise in hopes we won’t catch on to the subtle changes he’s introducing. To accomplish his agenda, he requires stealth.  Michael Ignatieff is the only leader close enough to forming government who has the potential to inspire us once again. But for that to happen he mustn’t be so much defined by politics as transcending it. That choice is now his.

Was Obama's Nobel for "awesomeness" and positive thinking?

By Anne Kingston with Katie Engelhart - Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 11:30 AM - 42 Comments

On the weekend, Australia’s former foreign minister Alexander Downer weighed into the reaction to Barack Obama’s surprise win of the Nobel Peace Prize, calling it a farce that has discredited the award. Like Kanye West storming the stage of the MTV Video awards to express his anger when Taylor Swift beat out Beyonce, Downer pronounced Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, ignored after years of struggling for human rights in his country, a more worthy selection.

He isn’t alone. Response to Obama’s win has become a watershed that signals the official end of Obamamania and suggests the world’s most esteemed award might also be overrated. Lech Walesa, ex-president of Poland who won in 1983 summed up the most common all splendid oratory-no action yet criticism of Obama: “Well, there’s hasn’t been any contribution to peace yet,” he said, apparently not impressed by his cancelling the U.S. missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. “He’s proposing things, he’s initiating things, but he is yet to deliver.” Continue…

Why Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize

By John Parisella - Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8:00 PM - 120 Comments

As Canadians, we have always venerated the Nobel Prize for Peace. Among the many illustrious winners throughout the decades, Lester B. Pearson stands out for us. The award has come to symbolize what is best among global leaders and the need to work in harmony to advance the cause of peace. Many win the award after years of persistence and accomplishments. The fact that Barack Obama unexpectedly won this award less than a year after his election is stunning. Most would agree that hope played a greater role than real achievement in this year’s selection.

The American far-right will no doubt criticize the choice and emphasize that nothing much has been accomplished by the new president. But the same crowd that applauded Chicago’s loss of its 2016 Olympics bid will have to find a new rationale for this one. Last week, it was a sign the world was rejecting Obama and not Chicago, as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh put it. Now, I guess it will be all about the world making a mistake about Obama—either that, or that the American President has yet to prove he is a real American and African emissaries skewed the results in his favour. Whatever the tirade, expect the far-right to go ballistic in the blogosphere.

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'It doesn't seem important. It is.'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 44 Comments

The prepared text of Michael Ignatieff’s speech to the Canadian Club this afternoon.

I’m here today to talk to you about Canada’s place in the world—how we’ve lost it and how we can get it back.

The world is changing, and Canada has to change with it.  Our identity as a people will be defined by the place we find in the world that is taking shape on the other side of this global recession.

Canada was born inside two Empires, the French, the British, and we have matured beside the most powerful nation in history, the United States.

What happens to our identity, our place in the world, when the centre of gravity shifts to Asia? When India and China become the powerhouses of the global economy?

We should have nothing to fear from the rise of these new powers. A new world creates new opportunities for Canada. Opportunities to trade, to learn, and to create the global architecture of security for this emerging new world. But only if we have leadership that seizes these opportunities.

Ce que nous faisons à l’étranger contribue à nous définir. C’est le reflet de notre personnalité. C’est le reflet de ce que nous pouvons apporter au monde pour qu’il soit meilleur. C’est le prolongement de ce que nous sommes comme peuple.

By and large, Canadian politicians scarcely utter a word about Canada in the world on the hustings.  It doesn’t seem important. It is.

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