Disaffected Lib has a great piece on the plight of broadcast networks in this country and the subsequent cry-baby response that is coming from ConTV and Conwest.
Summary: “Hey CTV … piss off!”
I was reading the letters to the editor in the Toronto Star this morning and one Dan Skrobot of Toronto succinctly and perfectly described the Harper Sales Tax [square bracket additions are mine]:
Isn’t the HST just more Conservative downloading? Mike Harris still haunts us, but this time with the protege Jim Flaherty pulling the strings of a desperate Ontario government. The lesson here is who gets what in this deal, and why all the pieces in the Conservative puzzle are starting to fit into place. Harper and Flaherty first decide to buy our votes with a GST cut [of which we got no benefit except an unprecedented deficit], then a home reno tax cut [which has only served the purpose of people who can afford renovations], and billions more in stimulus spending to the point of no return in structural deficits [which has somehow translated to the largest marketing campaign for a government ever seen on this planet]. The only answer is to increase taxes, but if tax cuts equal votes, then the reverse doesn’t fir their master plan, so they turn to struggling provinces to raise the tax for them. Harris-style mismanagement of our finances, plus a desperate Ontario willing to accept a bribe ($4.5 billion) to raise taxes means lower provincial transfers down the road, leaving more for the Conservatives to clean up their fiscal mess or buy more votes. The brilliant part is that Harper’s ethically challenged party will be rewarded and Dalton McGuinty’s patsies will be sent packing.
I’ve said all along that the provinces should avoid anything that the Cons offer to them to make the HST work. Why? Because you simply can’t trust a Con that offers money. It’s not in their DNA to give money, but to take away.
I’ve also said many times that the Harper Sales Tax will create tectonic rifts between all Liberals in the country, particularly in BC and Ontario, as they wrestle with the conundrum of rapidly rising deficits and short-term monetary offers to do the evil work of the Harper Regime.
From Yahoo Business.
It looks like the Cons will be burying another $63 million in taxpayer money in ‘carbon capture’ schemes, mainly in an effort to prove that the Tar Sands are worth the unprecedented environmental disaster that they’re subjecting on this planet.
If I can show them if I fart in my hand and cup it and hide it under a pillow, can I get $63 million as well?
Gee. It’s a good thing we waived the right to sue GSK on their untested vaccine.
Here’s a hot story about the brew for Canada that people are in a big hurry to have pumped into their arms:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hv_UnE27MKQefLNmQxLUqQF557NQD9C5TKJG0
Sorry folks. Have you thought of taking Vitamin D capsules instead?
What a massive cluster f**k this whole thing has become.
Monkeys playing with their own feces could have managed this situation better.
Here’s another article about what’s actually in some of the vaccines.
Here are some notes from the article, which comment on an information leaflet distributed by GSK:
My advice folks: run, don’t walk, away from the clinics.
Research Credit on both stories: www.cryptogon.com
Igantieff bullied his way to the top.
The Green Party of Canada AND the NDP are gaining on Canada’s ‘traditional’ parties.
What does this all mean? The Greens and the NDP MUST drop their gloves, get together, agree on their differences and lead this country into the future.
Let’s face it: there are only 3-4 central issues that separate the two parties. We must encourage all of the representatives from both parties to do the following:
With Ignatieff’s Liberals about to implode and the Harper Conservatives poised to make impromptu visits to Geneva to defend their war crimes in Afghanistan, there’s no time like the present to respond to all Canadians with a progressive platform.
It’s that simple. We need action today, so lobby your local MPs, candidates and the leaders of these two parties.
Canada’s future depends on it.
For the first time in Canadian history, is it conceivable that our Prime Minister is complicit in war crimes?
Allegations in this article that appeared in the Toronto Star seem to indicate as much. This article demonstrates additional supporting testimony concerning the Canadian involvement in handing over prisoners to be tortured.
As the allegations get more serious and intense, I pray that dozens more public servants have the bravado to stand tall and tell the world what about we’ve allowed to happen. If they are bullied and maligned like the Cons did to Colvin last week, it will be the thin edge of the wedge in our sense of decency, pride and function of this country.
Write your MPs today. Demand an inquiry into this disgusting mess.
——————-
Article copy:
WASHINGTON–Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office used a “6,000-mile screwdriver” to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul.
The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper’s office in Ottawa “scripted and fed” the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse “at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero.”
“It was highly unusual. I was told this was the titanic issue for Prime Minister Harper and that every single statement that went out needed to be cleared by him personally,” said the former official, who is not Canadian.
“The lines were, ‘We have no evidence’ of coercive treatment being used against detainees handed over to the Afghans. There were very clear instructions for a blanket denial. The pressure to hold to that line was channelled via Canadian military and diplomatic personnel in Kabul. But it was made clear to us that this was coming from the Prime Minister’s Office, which was running the public affairs aspect of Canadian engagement in Afghanistan with a 6,000-mile screwdriver.”
The official described the tensions over the fate of detainees as “uniquely Canadian” – despite the fact that doubts over the treatment of Afghan detainees were ubiquitous among all NATO partners with military footprints in Afghanistan.
“It was not an issue for anyone else, though other nations ought to have been as concerned as the Canadians. The Americans in particular were not remotely squeamish on this. To them, everyone was an enemy combatant.”
Dutch soldiers deployed in Uruzgan province north of the Canadian positions in Kandahar forestalled such concerns by “operating in a fairly Dutch way by being very, very risk-averse.”
“The Dutch were extremely nervous about the level of intensity of their military engagement in a way that the Canadians were not.”
Australian soldiers, by contrast, operated almost exclusively under joint Special Forces command exercised by the U.S. military – activity that remains shielded by a total news blackout. “We just weren’t encouraged to ask about Special Forces. They operate on a need-to-know basis and there was no need for us to know,” the former official said.
The former official, speaking in a telephone interview Saturday, said that throughout the ISAF Headquarters in Kabul “everyone knew that if a detainee got handed to the NDS (the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence service), they were not going to be in any way looked after the way they should have been.
“The NDS operated under almost impenetrable secrecy. The closest relationship the NDS had with any foreign forces was with the Americans. But that ran completely outside of ISAF channels because of the exclusively American parallel operation in Afghanistan.”
The dynamic was especially disturbing to Canadian military officers based at ISAF in Kabul, the former official said. “One delightful Canadian officer, a colonel, who worked just down the hall, spoke privately to me about his general unease about the fact that detainees were being handed over (and) the procedures were not as robust as they should be.”
Many NATO officials in Kabul were also aware how seriously Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin was following the issue, he said.
“Richard Colvin behaved as a straight-up-and-down person, completely honest and doing his job to the best of his abilities,” the former official said.
“He had to be terribly careful. He couldn’t speak to us about this. But it was clear that the tone at the Canadian Embassy had changed. It became far more politicized – and it was clear that Richard Colvin was struggling enormously to do his work on the question of detainees.”
Colvin, whose searing testimony in Ottawa last week ignited the furor anew, may ultimately be remembered as the man who ended Canada’s war in Afghanistan. With the countdown already underway toward an end to combat operations in 2011, a new round of national hand-wringing over Canada’s role in the faltering effort makes renewal of the commitment far less likely.
Amid the swirl of accusations – who knew what, when did they know it – foreign aid workers who have logged years in Afghanistan wonder at the naiveté that informed good Canadian intentions from the beginning.
“What did they think was going to happen when they handed over detainees?” asked one Kabul-based foreign national, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal against his organization’s Afghan staff. Torture allegations have swirled around every Afghan government since the Soviet-backed regime of the 1980s.
Afghan warlords who seized the country in the chaotic wake of the Soviet withdrawal used torture, as did the Taliban who replaced them.
And just as the Taliban continues to use torture today – British Coldstream Guards last year uncovered a Taliban torture chamber in Helmand province – aid workers on the ground say the NDS does the same, operating with impunity under the enfeebled regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“Torture in Afghanistan is routine. It is matter-of-fact. In Canada, you might have to blow a Breathalyzer if you are stopped by the police. Well, in Kandahar when you piss somebody off the NDS will come and get you and hook you up to their machines,” a senior humanitarian aid official told the Star, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It is medieval, horrific. It is what they do to exercise power and control. And we are terrified to speak about it openly because it leaves our Afghan staff completely exposed and vulnerable to reprisals. To pretend otherwise is a fantasy narrative.
“What disturbs me most – this story is all about Canada and Canada’s moral authority on the international stage and about which minister will have to resign. And sooner or later Canada will leave and it’s over.
“I would just remind people that for Afghans it is not over. And for the Afghans who have worked closely with the Canadians up to this point, what do you think is going to happen to them when you’re gone?”
Jim Flaherty will be making an announcement today concerning how the Harper Cons will address the ballooning Conservative ad spend and promotional campaign deficit.
Be prepared folks: with any luck, they will be in full door knob mode and will approach the ballooning Conservative ad spend and promotional campaign deficit much like they addressed the economy: with complete inaction and blindly.
Their gut instinct will hopefully materialize and they will talk about the massive array of program cuts, sell offs and privatizations that will have to occur in order to ‘get our books in order’.
I say let them. They have proven their financial incompetence before and they will do it again, raising the ire of all Canadians as we face death by 1,000 cuts.
The opposition parties should step aside, let them introduce these cuts and finally, yes finally, show the true colours of the Harper Regime.
No matter how shrewd these people are politically, their financial mismanagement of this country will have to provoke an election so that we can finally get rid of these people.
Enough’s enough. I agree with Scott Tribe that we need an independent tribunal to gain an understanding of how much our local politicians knew about Afghani torture.
Besides that, what can we do to act against the Harper Regime? They are starting to ramp up a smear campaign against Richard Colvin, the man who had the cajones to stand up against the Harper Regime and identify that Canada is clearly at risk of being fingered for war crimes as a result of our handing over people to being tortured in Afghanistan.
We’ve even got our own Wiki page titled Canadian Afghan detainee abuse scandal.
This is disgusting.
This is NOT MY CANADA!!!!
What would you do if you only had one week to live?
This is the question hurled at the main character (Ben Tyler played by Joshua Jackson) in the movie “One Week” and the plot proceeds from there.
It may seem like a depressing theme, but it’s a magical (yes, magical) piece of Canadiana.
In fact, there are two lead roles being played out with Ben Tyler as a mere second:
The only thing that’s really sad about the movie is the loss of personality for all of Canada as we seem to be all to eager to embrace crappy and caustic imported material from the US (including certain Republican Conservative platforms).
When you have a few moments, watch this movie. My wife and I watched it last night and we were both spellbound.
In a show of cry-baby negotiation style exhibited only by school yard giants like our Prime Minister, CTV has announced that they will pull the plug on their broadcasts if they don’t get their way.
Please, oh please, say this is true. Please, oh please, push them to pull the plug!
Wouldn’t it be nice to have the clean airwaves available for other services that actually act in the best interest of the TV watching public or Canadians at large?
Wouldn’t it be nice to finally end all of this bitching about who should stick it to consumers?
Wouldn’t it be nice to see an end to partisan Con ads washing up on ‘So You Think You Can Dance Canada, v58′, resulting in a constant indirect subsidy to these industry laggards?
Yes! Please pull the plug. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, it would be a small step for a Canadian broadcaster, but a giant leap for Canadian democracy.
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