If you speak English, you speak this man (and some of his contemporaries) whether you've ever read him or not, whether you hated being subjected to him in high school or not. Shakespeare was born this day in 1564. Well, we say that by convention because we know he was baptized on 26 April, and he died this day in 1616, so the symmetry is pleasing. Cervantes, who began a revolution in narrative fiction, died the same day. This sonnet of William's ambushed me once at a low point in my life. I was just checking it for a reference, but suddenly every word spoke to my cranky sorry sour mood. I …
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Various threads of our lives, Rik's and mine, were suddenly drawn together on the morning of 13 March 1996, when a reporter we knew, then speeding to Dunblane from London, called to ask Rik to tell him everything he could about the town. Dunblane is a douce wee toun in central Scotland, just south of the Highlands. (Strictly speaking, it is a cathedral city because it has a magnificently restored cathedral.) It is beautiful, peaceable, the sort of place where nothing ever happens. I have other reasons to love it, but on this day I always remember the things that do happen "in a place like …
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Ahmad Abou El Maati is one of four Canadian citizens of dual nationality who became loosely linked together, incidentally and accidentally, by botched police and intelligence investigations in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the US.* All four were either apprehended in or kidnapped and transferred to Syria, where they were tortured.** Because El Maati's country of origin was Egypt (born in Kuwait to an Egyptian father), he alone was transferred from Syria to Egypt months after he was detained, and survived another two years of torture in a succession of Egyptian prisons. These four …
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And a good Burns Night to all friends who share Robbie's belief that "the common man, though e'er sae puir, is king o' men, for a' that." You don't write an ode to the haggis unless you are serious about solidarity with the people. Actually, I like haggis, don't get the icky-nasty-poo reactions to it at all. It's a steamed pudding made with ground lamb is all (including the liver, lights [lungs], and heart), and ok, it's usually steamed inside a cleaned sheep's stomach, but you don't eat that part. Along with the traditional neeps (turnips) and tatties, a bit of chutney is nice. Burns was …
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We'll all sing this any time, won't we. And if david.leigh@guardian.co.uk comes for a look, this is specially for him. Renée Fleming, Joan Baez, Suzanne Vega, and Lou Reed in Prague, 14 November 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the Czech/Slovak revolution …
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Happy Birthday to Some Old Guy, the Rev.Paperboy, and moi! I trust that you both are having as good a time as I am, working away on all those fascinating corruption and torture scandals the world offers up to us so plentifully every day. My cup certainly runneth over these days. As for the other kids present, beginning today you no longer have to need me and feed me, but you will be supporting me. I can has pension! Somehow I got old -- like really old. Don't know how that happened, hardly noticed it along the way, but there you go. As a present to us, I thought I would replay one of …
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Sometimes I live in the country Sometimes I live in town Sometimes I take a great notion To ... Ok, we won't finish that verse. Not tonight, anyway. (Great novel spun off that line, though.) pogge is responsible for ruining me by introducing me to this incredible concert. I love these guys, including the clanging percussion. And is there anything on the I'm-having-a-meltdown scale even close to a hard-working guy in a sweat-soaked T-shirt? Ry Cooder, Flaco Jiminez, and the Moula Banda Rhythm Aces, "Goodnight Irene" (1987) …
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Apparently someone (and gosh -- who could that have been?) discovered that WikiLeaks were not as well protected as they thought they were by relying on hosting in Sweden and Belgium. As I understand it, Swedish law indeed "enacted" (Julian Assange's term) the protection WL need for their sources but wouldn't prevent prior restraint against a publisher who didn't have Swedish press credentials. So Assange has spent the last week or so in Stockholm having interesting adventures, many of which you can watch on YouTube. Nice haircut, eh? Assange now has press credentials personally as a newly …
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That's the spirit, Justice Speyer! Reading passages from his 62-page decision, Speyer told a Toronto court that setting aside the extradition order was a "remedy of last resort" required in this case due to the fact that Khadr was illegally held and interrogated. Khadr's lawyers Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney had argued that extraditing Khadr would mean Canada supports countries that violate international law. Pakistan was paid a $500,000 (US) bounty to arrest Khadr in 2004. He was held without charges for 14 months and interrogated by intelligence and police agents from the U.S., …
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Lindsay Stewart does this to me too. The internets. We all know what they lead to. Coffee. …
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"Like most Canadians, I am indifferent to the visit of the Queen." Thus pretty much ended the Canadian television career of Joyce Davidson, an otherwise admirable presence on CBC's early public affairs program Tabloid in 1959. Even at the time, I thought that Davidson's misstep had more to do with her presumption that she knew what "most Canadians" thought or felt about almost anything than it did with enthusiasm for the queen, and Gallup poll numbers seem to confirm that reading. (She had also generalized about what Canadians think in front of an American audience, which just made things …
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Paul Jay of TheRealNews network asks Jonathan Kay of the National Post whether there should be an independent public inquiry into police actions over the G20 weekend (I would date it back further than that) in Toronto. Kay's basic strategy: deny, deny, deny. He tries in his pompous way to sound even-handed and fair, but this is a man in some serious denial. When cornered, he waves section 1 of the Charter -- the section that he says sets our human and civil rights "in context" -- thus giving it a weight that I do not believe the courts in practice have given it. No rubber bullets, in spite …
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There have been two developments in the case of the banning of four reporters from Omar Khadr's pre-trial suppression hearings at GTMO. You will recall that the four banned journalists are Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, who has written a book on Khadr, Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail, Steven Edwards of Canwest News, and Carole Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, the most experienced reporter covering GTMO generally. Pretty clearly an example was being made of the four keenest reporters on the case -- "to discourage the others" -- since other reporters had also published the name of …
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As Toronto police chief Bill Blair has explained to us through this past week, Canadians can't just open their front doors and walk outside on some mindless flibbertigibbet impulse. Only the "curious and naive" do that sort of thing, getting in the way of the police and preventing them from doing their job, which, after all, is what life in the city is all about. Anyone reckless enough to exit his/her dwelling-place without a government-approved purpose should not be surprised to find his/her civil liberties "abridged," as the premier of Ontario so helpfully put things to his fellow citizens …
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Whose streets? Harper, McGuinty, Blair -- answer that question. C'mon, you guys: make them answer. And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again. Rise again, rise again - Though your heart it be broken And life about to end No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend. Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again. And then, on the turn, because we all love Robin Williams: …
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The citizen in this video makes me proud to be a Canadian. He stands his ground not only for himself but also for the Charter and for you and for me. Early in the video you will hear one officer say -- of Allan Gardens! -- "It's a government building in here." He says that quickly and quietly, and it's the only time in that long encounter that any of the police comes close to admitting to citizens the regulatory "boost" that Dalton McGuinty slyly gave the police almost a month ago, as pogge outlines here and here. Even before the female sergeant appears, it becomes clear that police have …
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As we hang out and read around, waiting to hear of how Obama proposes to dispose of his (and our) troublesome NATO ISAF commander, we run into some pithy observations about how far removed sheer swagger is from the Right Stuff, in military operations and in foreign policy both: "Commanders who indulge in sloppy, tough guy, cowboy lingo -- 'smack-down, scumbags,' etc. -- tend to run sloppy, tough guy, cowboy operations,'' said an experienced combat commander. "Units, and especially staffs, tend to adopt the language and demeanor of their commander ... Applause lines in the testosterone-driven …
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If Stanley McChrystal (pdf) were a good Roman, he would have fallen on his sword by now. Mind you, he would have done that because he'd know what the summons back to Rome meant and what was about to happen to him if he didn't do the honourable thing. I guess McChrystal isn't exactly expecting anything that drastic, since he is headed for Washington, for a chat with SecDef Gates first and then a more sternly worded chat with the C-in-C. Don't ask me: I haven't the faintest idea where this is going or what Obama will do, although I know how he'll look whichever way he jumps. If you've read …
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It is not often that I agree with Stockwell Day about just about anything. He's sure right about the G20 leaders, though, and the paranoid xenophobes in Ottawa who have turned a modestly civilized city into a nightmarish armed fortress. Thanks to Antonia and her many clever Facebook friends. …
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Update: Text of the letter from the DoD to the four news organizations on the turn. I'll be back with updates as we get them, but Spencer Ackerman is reporting via Twitter that Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail, Steven Edwards of Canwest, along with Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald (also a brilliant reporter on all things GTMO) have been banned by the Pentagon from reporting not only on Omar Khadr's military commission but on all further commission hearings at GTMO. They are being turfed out ostensibly because they have used the real names of some …
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That probably isn't the last thing I'll have to say about the UK election, but it is the deepest thought I've got at the moment and the most heartfelt. In the last interview with Blair that I saw in the Guardian (trust me: it's too boring to read), he did his standard public-schoolboy routine, pretending to value good common sense and decency and all that, and his advice to "vote for what you believe in" would have been inspiring coming from many other people. There was one word he never uttered, though: Iraq. He talked a bit about foreign policy, but suddenly in Tony Blair's world, UK …
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In yesterday's pre-trial hearings at Omar Khadr's kangaroo-court trial military commission, we heard from Agent 99 11. Today the Cone of Silence descended. Can the shoe phone be far behind? Just before I get to Barbie Agent 99 11, I have a legal question about U.S. pre-trial hearings. Paul Koring at the Globe and Mail reports today that the Cone of Silence descended (the commission went into secret session) while at least one of the videotapes showing Omar's conversations with CSIS agents at GTMO in 2003 was played for the court. Does the use of that videotape or any other evidence derived …
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If they're walking around and gathering in groups and they're not Americans, they must be insurgents, yes? A couple of them might be armed, but then again, those could be cameras (except we hate journalists anyway, right, especially foreign journalists?). Well, it's not like they have the Second Amendment or anything, right? Only Americans get that. So they're insurgents, or even if they aren't, we kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. Oh, and the kids and the unarmed guys in the emergency van? Their fault for bringing kids into a battle. Here's the "battle" as recorded on a classified …
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Kate and Anna McGarrigle and friends, "Gentle Annie" …
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For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad For all their wars are merry And all their songs are sad. -- G.K. Chesterton Except for blacks in North America and the Caribbean, no one has done the language that we call English greater honour than have the close cousins that the dreaded Sassenachs colonised and subjugated most cruelly, first and longest. Through the twentieth century, in literature and folk music both, the Irish taught so many how to speak and how to sing with wit and soul. Liam Clancy, Tommy Makem, and some Clancy brothers singing one of the greatest of …
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Thou met'st with things dying, I with things newborn -- The Winter's Tale, III.iii.112-13 I don't usually know my cats' precise birthdays, although almost all of them have been spring kittens, but I remember the day that Minerva (the all-black) and Mathilda (b+w) were born. The phone rang very early that morning. A reporter we knew in London wanted Rik to tell him everything he could about Dunblane, a douce wee toun in Scotland that had suddenly become a very sad place. Dunblane was a family home to Rik, so on and off through the day he talked the reporter through a race to the airport …
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We don't usually do Disney here. (I've actually tried to make a minor career out of dissing Disney every chance I get, and I'm moderately disappointed that they haven't yet sent fearsome lawyers out after me.) But it is so true. Nothing says love like spaghetti. I love you: I feed you spaghetti. Twenty-five years ago tonight, he made me spaghetti. And then it was pretty much like this. …
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Irrational joy breaks out across a country that is really pretty big, as the Arrogant Worms sing, all things considered. This is simply the most beautiful Canadian spring I've ever seen, and I'm not young. I'll probably have to eat my words about the weather in a week or so, this being Canada. And we are facing some horrible moral challenges in the hints and leaks we're getting about our special ops (JTF2) transfer of Afghan prisoners to the U.S. black sites at Bagram and Kandahar. I don't know how we calm our souls with argument when we know that such horrible things have been done in …
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Many of our "parliamentarians," provincial and federal, are contemptible for one or both of two reasons: they are profoundly ignorant and bigoted, or they are profoundly cynical. The statement following from the leader of the Opposition is a low point in the history of democracy in Canada. It is an insult to the Charter guarantee of freedom of conscience and a shocking display of patriarchal presumption from a man famous for his obsequious paeans to imperial power, "empire lite" and "torture lite." (A little sleep deprivation here and there -- usually accomplished by mini-crucifixions of …
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The best title for this story I've seen yet comes from Yale law professor Jack Balkin at Balkinization: "Justice Department will not punish Yoo and Bybee because most lawyers are scum anyway." Keith Olbermann's Friday night MSNBC segment with Georgetown constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley is more succinct: "Off the hook." Late Friday the DoJ released two long-awaited reports, the FBI's "final" (heh -- we'll see) report on its investigation of the anthrax attacks in 2001, and the OPR (DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility) oversight report on the work of the department lawyers …
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Someone once described these songs as the greatest make-out music ever, and I can testify to that am happy to repeat the obligatory tribute. Johnny Mathis wasn't a heavy breather himself, at least not as a singer, but I think we could say that he has long been the cause of heavy breathing in others. He certainly gave male vibrato some of its finest moments on record. Ok: some of its most extended moments. If you're one of the mockers, I would ask you to listen to his effortless shifts from major to minor, the perfect pitch (lost in many later performances), the range, the tone, the cool. …
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Happy Year of the Tiger! I have no idea what kind of monkey it is who is teasing the gorgeous tigers in this video, except he is an Old World monkey with a black face, the grace and talent of a Baryshnikov, and a wicked sense of humour. The tigers aren't cubs, but they're very young -- teenagers, sort of, and I guess the monkey can tell. Must be fun to be a monkey -- oh, wait ... …
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Update on the turn National security. State secrets. Damage to international relations. The control principle. Executive prerogative. In Canada, the U.S., and the UK, one version or another of those privileges has been invoked by governments in a number of legal cases having to do with torture, "extraordinary rendition," and surveillance. The question arises again and again in each of these cases: are our governments legitimately protecting us with such claims, or are they protecting themselves or others from embarrassment or worse, covering up crimes, domestic and international, stemming …
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Don't look at me that way. You've paid all your bills? Och, but the numbers hurt my head. Bessie Smith still owns this song, 1923 and never done better. Others have done it well since, though, especially Bessie's wonderful reincarnation Janis. You can tell when a blues singer truly aspires, because he will figure out his own way to do this song. Eric Clapton, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" (Jimmy Cox, 1923; 1997) The cheque is in the mail, eh? …
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For a' that, and a' that It's comin' yet, for a' that That man to man the world o'er Shall brothers be, for a' that. -- Robert Burns, 1795 May the bursting hurdies of your haggis have gushed warm-reekin' rich when you stabbed into them tonight, and may your single malt be at least thirty years old and still non-corporate. Here is a kind of raw but interesting live performance of one of Burns's last songs. Paolo Nutini, "A Man's a Man, for a' that" For the classic audio from the Corries, who first revived so many auld Scottish folk songs and saved us from a long tradition of stage …
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Paul Quarrington, novelist, musician, and screenwriter, died at his home in Toronto on Thursday morning, aged fifty-six. Michael Posner's obituary is a fine and living thing, spoken from the heart and pulse by friends who were with Quarrington through his last days, and I encourage everyone to read it. When we lose people like Paul or Kate, I try to resist the impulse to think that they died too soon. People live as long as they do, and this week we have two models of creative genius to remember who packed worlds into the time they had. Quarrington was best known as the GG-winning author of …
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Scott Horton, "The 'Guantánamo Suicides': A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle," Harper's, 18 January 2010. There is no substitute for reading the whole of Scott Horton's investigation into the deaths of three prisoners at GTMO in June 2006, so you know the drill: go read. We already knew, from the work of Professor Mark Denbeaux and his research fellows at Seton Hall law school, that the U.S. government's official claims about the prisoners' deaths -- which the Obama administration is maintaining in ongoing court cases -- were implausible. As Marcy Wheeler wrote in December, the dead …
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For Rik, now a young man forever in memory. Thou art that. Liam Clancy, "The Dutchman" (1968, 1992) …
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And I've never seen him on Parliament Hill. Also. I do, however, for my sins, know who he is, and I'm not even a member of the Conservative caucus. Even if I were, I think I would have picked up on Evan Solomon's prompts after his first two or three tries. Aside: Why does this story keep making me think of Where's Waldo? Of all the good chuckles I've had over this story today, the best was the first I read, from Dylan at Right of Centre Ice, which is a treat, very neat little piece of writing: "Shelly, Shelly, Shelly": ... Goodale can hardly keep himself from laughing and then he goes …
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