Dear Postmedia Editorial Board

This : 

is not an adequate response or apology for what was previously published in that same space by the Postmedia Editorial Board on August 24th : "[Elizabeth] May must renounce anti-Israel resolutions". Excerpted :

You are not RebelMedia. 

You are not some partisan advocacy organization that can pass off the blame for this appalling libelous attack on some hapless newbie book reviewer - although I notice you share with them the phrase "figleaf of Jewishness". 

No, you are the editorial board of Vancouver's largest newspaper. Shame on you for stating Independent Jewish Voices supports terrorism and denies the Holocaust.

IJV Statement On Canadian Media Giant Libeling Us

Corey Levine : Why I Asked The Green Party To Challenge The JNF's Charitable Status

The only upside to this ridiculous op-ed is the thorough drubbing you received in comments below it. First five comments, excerpted :

"As a former journalist and chair of Langara's journalism program, I'm shocked by the degree of distortion in this editorial."

"This editorial is preposterous!"

"What a very sad editorial, full of errors and inaccuracies and probably conscious lies."

"This 'editorial' is purposely disingenuous."

"This editorial could have been written by the Likud party."

Indeed.

Your op-ed also condemned a resolution sponsored by Elizabeth May and 28 other Greens calling for Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund, the largest private landowner in Israel. JNF has used its tax-deductible status in Canada to build and maintain the infamous “Canada Park” on the ruins of three Palestinian villages.  As you note in your correction, at the convention the language was watered down to call for any charitable organization's status to be revoked if they are in violation of Canadian or international law. 

In 2014 Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was Honorary Chair of the Jewish National Fund's annual Negev Gala.  
Elizabeth May has attended their galas in the past and consulted with JNF CEO Josh Cooper prior to the Green Party convention vote.


The offending op-ed, now taken down, published in the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen :

In February, the House of Commons passed a motion 229-to-51 condemning any actions by Canadian groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement. IJV was the first national Jewish organization globally to support the non-violent BDS movement; the Green Party is the first national party in Canada to follow suit. Bravo to you both.

h/t  Waterbaby
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NaPo : Wagging the dog whistle

National Post, flagship of the largest media conglomerate in Canadian history run by a foreign hedge fund, inhales a MEMRI *report* based on the online musings of four anonymous 'known' jihadi dudes titled :

"Pro-ISIS Activists React Joyously On Twitter To Canada's Elections"

Then they give it the fabulous new Trudeau-torqued headline you see at left.

NaPo tweets it. While your standard NaPo tweet gets around 1 to 15 retweets if they're lucky, this one gets 159.

VICE News follows suit with its own rewrite of the MEMRI report : 

"Canada Ran Away:' Jihadists Reportedly Rejoice Over Trudeau Victory"

as do others, and NaPo rewriter Bell retweets them too.  

"Disturbing but predictable" retweets the disturbing but predictable Jason Kenney.

btw None of them bothered to blur out the identities of the 'known' jihadi tweeters as I have done here. 

Is this a thing now?

It's fine now for the Minister of National Defence to promote tweets of 'known' jihadis if their messages can somehow be torqued to slag off on Trudeau?

Just as disturbing but predictable is the NaPo pipelining of MEMRI. Founded by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence and the wife of a Dick Cheney advisor, MEMRI got a thorough thrashing from The Guardian over a decade ago in "Selective Memri" : "Investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems.".  

Right Web and SourceWatch provide background and a handy list of MEMRI's PNAC and NeoCon advisors and directors.

Hey kids, remember this bullshit NaPo front page, complete with Hungarian couple from 1944?

It was May 2006. NaPo torqued up another report they'd been pipelined from another outfit and later had to retract and apologize for it. 

But not before it had been republished around the world and Steve got a chance to refer back to it publicly : 

"We've seen a number of things from the Iranian regime that are along these lines .  It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany."

So I'm just sitting NaPo's MEMRI presskit offering here while we wait to see if it gets the same overwrought reach-around treatment.

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G&M Endorses Harper's Perps with Perks Without Harper

Hilarious G&M editorial election endorsement today: "His party deserves to be re-elected. But after Oct. 19, he should quickly resign." 

In other words, as Antonia Zerbisias put it : "The flying monkeys but not the wicked witch"

Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley then went on Faceplant to perform the 'little man behind the curtain' sketch. He bombed.  #MoreGlobeEndorsements followed.

Munchkinland flashback! Here's the G&M's 2011 Harper election endorsement :

"Only Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party have shown the leadership, the bullheadedness (let's call it what it is) and the discipline this country needs.

.... during his five years in office has demonstrated strength of character, resolve and a desire to reform ... 

Those who disdain the Harper approach should consider his overall record, which is good. The Prime Minister and the Conservative Party have demonstrated principled judgment ..."

With few exceptions, the rest of the media Munchkins also follow the yellow brick road of Harper endorsements with a yellow front page Con attack ad buy today ...as they have for the entire nine year Harper regime.

Saturday update : I'm updating the media graphic above as new editorial endorsements are published today.  Original graphic found at Reddit  

Also : Not only the Ottawa Citizen but the PostMedia chain is apparently running the same attack ad on their front page today, using Elections Canada's trademark yellow. Note : not merely an endorsement for the Cons, but an attack ad that mimics an Elections Canada notice.

Who are you getting your news from lately?
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Sunday update : 
National Observer : YELLOW STAIN : the bystander bigotry of newspaper endorsements
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Are there no workhouses?

Some holiday cheer from the Canadian neo-liberal think tank, Frontier Centre for Public Policy :

 Transcript :

"Labour laws in Canada are supposed to protect workers from exploitation and ensure their safety. But they are not always helping teenagers who are entering the workforce for the first time. Most provinces require that anyone younger than 16 or 14 obtain a permit to work or have written permission from their parents. Children under 12 are almost never allowed to work unless they might be helping on a family farm.  Teens who do work face many restrictions, including how many hours and which hours they're allowed to work. 

Some of these rules seem rather unnecessary. In Alberta, 12 to 14 year olds are forbidden from working more than 2 hours on a schoolday. Two hour workshifts four days a week are more disruptive than 4 hour shifts two days a week.
Minimum wage laws also make it more difficult for young people with no experience to find their first job. In the UK there's a lower minimum wage for people between the ages of 18 and 20 and for those under 18.  

Teenagers who live at home are often able to accept lower wages than adults.
It's time for governments to show more consideration for the needs of young people when developing labour policies."

Yes, why aren't more 12 year olds working four days a week for less than minimum wage?

I first got interested in FCPP back in 2007 when the Cons tapped them for policy advice on electoral reform. This was amusing because FCPP didn't seem very keen on electoral reform, although they were pretty big on private health care, denying the existence of climate change, disbanding the Canadian Wheat Board, and promoting bulk exports of water to the US.

Harper liked them well enough to give a guest speech at one of their fundraisers in Winnipeg in 2009 . This was the same year FCPP and the Fraser Institute co-sponsored the first Canadian tour of Lord Christopher "Global Warming is a Hoax" Monkton 

Currently on their main page they are featuring one of their research fellows, Wendell Cox,  also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Heartland Institute, and author of The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy.

Our media seem pretty comfortable quoting and reprinting them. From just the past few days :

CBC : 'Greenpeace dropout' Patrick Moore defends Kinder Morgan pipeline

   Climate change denier and not founder of Greenpeace Patrick Moore is environment chair at FCPP

Financial Post : When emissions disappear, so do jobs

 by a senior FCPP research fellow

while Global News is running a half-hour weekly podcast on Alberta politics with the VP of FCPP 

Yet somehow I'm not seeing any big media interviews and guest spots with Michael Harris of Party of One or Donald Gutstein of Harperism  - two authors who have recently written about how think tanks repackage neo-liberal ideas for easy public consumption through a media chain.
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Media advertorials

Hey kids, remember PostMedia's pitch for their tarsands promotion partnership with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers :

"Postmedia is proud to present its 2013 media partnership with CAPP.

We are a media company national in scope but community-focused. Canadians know our brands, trust our content, and welcome us as a vital member of their communities.

CAPP's messaging will extend to our massive mobile and tablet network so that vital energy information is never more than a click away. Our print coverage will include weekly energy editorial across our entire newspaper chain*, along with monthly joint ventures and quarterly special reports on subjects CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness."

* National Post, Financial Post, Vancouver Sun and Province, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Montreal Gazette, and canada.com

Here's a few of the last two weeks' crop of Postmedia stories that "CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness".  If you only scanned the headlines, you might mistake them for actual news : 

Pipeline, barge, tanker, truck or rail-car: Producers putting safety first in oil and gas transportation

Strong global demand has Canada’s oil production on target to almost double by 2030 

Five Canadian oil and natural gas companies awarded for innovation in sustainable resource development

Oil Industry set to grow

Production of conventional oil on the rise

All five carry this byline at the bottom :

"This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department on behalf of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers for commercial purposes." 

Here's a bonus one from CIBC :

Skilled trades shortage in Alberta a tremendous opportunity for new and growing businesses

"This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department in collaboration with CIBC to promote awareness of this topic for commercial purposes."  

Then it was the Globe and Mail's turn. Currently the G&M staff are threatening strike action over this :

Leaked memo confirms Globe and Mail wants journalists to write advertorials

Globe executives want to monetize the integrity and reputations of The Globe and Mail’s journalists – the same award-winning reporters and editors that management proudly (and rightly) claims are vital to the enterprise’s future as a powerful, independent, fearless and profitable news organization. 

Under the company proposal, editorial staff would be assigned to write or produce advertiser sponsored “branded content” (i.e. native advertising) that is vetted by the advertiser prior to publication and held out to readers as staff-written content.
That content cannot offend a paying advertiser’s specific opinions and corporate interests or it will be changed. 

This proposal was presented to us by editorial management and has been vetted by the Editor-in-Chief. 

That would be Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley, recently busted for portraying his own published endorsement of teabaggin' Tim Hudak for premier of Ontario as the choice of the G&M editorial board :

The Globe's editorial board endorses Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives

when in fact the G&M editorial board had endorsed Kathleen Wynn instead.


So ... where are you getting your news lately?
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CSEC data mining Brazil's mining data

Amusing to see both NaPo and the G&M are hosting remarks from former CSIS deputy director Ray Boisvert dismissing the recent Snowden/Greenwald docs which revealed CSEC spied on Brazil's Mines and Energy Ministry. 
Snowden was present at the Five Eyes conference where the CSEC presentation on their Olympia spying program on Brazil took place.
Boisvert in both papers:

“We were all too busy chasing bad guys who can actually kill people. The idea that we spend a lot of time, or any time at all, on a country like Brazil is pretty low margin stuff, not likely to happen.”

The docs probably only represent "a war gaming exercise", says Boisvert, just “paper exercises” :

 'OK, let’s say our target in counter-terrorism lives in Mali and we have to go up against the Malian telecommunications system.’ They’ll go look at another country and say, ‘OK, well they have a similar network so let’s do a paper exercise and say ‘what do we need?’” he said. “I think that’s all this was.'

Because when you're "busy chasing bad guys who can actually kill people" and stuff, naturally your anti-terrorism war games will entail a cyber-espionage program searching for corporate secrets in a country where 40 of your own country's mining corporations are operating. 

Wouldn't have anything to do with looking for info on Brazil wanting to block a Canadian mining company from opening the largest open pit gold mine in Brazil, would it? Brazilian prosecutors say the company has failed to study the impact on local Indian communities and has advertized on its own website "plans to build a mine twice the size of the project first described in an environmental assessment it gave state officials."

Ok, foreign media. The Guardian, today : 
Canadian spies met with energy firms, documents reveal

The Canadian government agency that allegedly hacked into the Brazilian mining and energy ministry has participated in secret meetings in Ottawa where Canadian security agencies briefed energy corporations.

According to freedom of information documents obtained by the Guardian, the meetings – conducted twice a year since 2005 – involved federal ministries, spy and police agencies, and representatives from scores of companies who obtained high-level security clearance. 

Meetings were officially billed to discuss "threats" to energy infrastructure but also covered "challenges to energy projects from environmental groups", "cyber security initiatives" and "economic and corporate espionage".

The documents – heavily redacted agendas – do not indicate that any international espionage was shared by CSEC officials, but the meetings were an opportunity for government agencies and companies to develop "ongoing trusting relations" that would help them exchange information "off the record", wrote an official from the Natural Resources ministry in 2010.

Thank you, Enbridge, for providing the snacks for the one in May 2013.  

Keith Stewart, an energy policy analyst with Greenpeace Canada, said:

"There seems to be no limit to what the Harper government will do to help their friends in the oil and mining industries. They've muzzled scientists, gutted environmental laws, reneged on our international climate commitments, labelled environmental critics as criminals and traitors, and have now been caught engaging in economic espionage in a friendly country. Canadians, and our allies, have a right to ask who exactly is receiving the gathered intelligence and whose interests are being served."

Good question. And did no Canadian media request these same FOIs?
You know, I think I blogged about government security briefings to energy companies a few years ago - I'll see if I can find it.

Meanwhile, would be interesting to hear Boisvert's explanation as to why the CSEC logo appeared on another NSA doc about intercepting phone calls and emails of ministers and diplomats at the 2009 G20 summit in London. 
More "paper exercises"? Filling in an empty spot on the page while chasing bad guys? 

And re the recent NSA spying on Brazil PM Dilma Rousseff and the state oil company Petrobras. Did CSEC help out its Five Eyes partner there too?
Back in 1983, CSEC spied on two of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet ministers on behalf of Thatcher and Britain's spy agency GCHQ, so this wouldn't exactly be new territory for CSEC.

Fun fact : The annual report on CSEC produced by its independent watchdog commissioner must first be vetted by CSEC "for national security reasons" before it can be released. [head/desk]
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P.S. I pillaged the CSEC slide at top from Lux ex Umbra, where you can view the rest of them.

Friday update : Don't shrug at spying.
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Election fraud falling through the crack(s)

Stephen Lautens : "Robocall" Judgement - A Victory For the Conservative Party?

Susan Delacourt : Where is Conservative outrage over 'robocalls' scandal?

POGGE : Campaign Capers: Judge Mosley rules and the results stand

Saskboy : ConCalls : Conclusions You Can Confirm Using CIMS Computer

Trapped in a Whirlpool : It's the fraud, stupid

Dammit Janet : One of These Things is NOT Like the Others
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OccupyVancouver told to get the hell off our lawn

Gary Mason, Globe & Mail :

"The weekend death of a female protester at the Occupy Vancouver site has done incalculable damage to a global protest campaign that suddenly finds itself at a crossroads.

Increasing problems at the sites are now overshadowing Occupy’s root cause and tarnishing the image of the entire movement. Its future gets cloudier by the day."

See, Gary would really like to support the movement but because 22 year old Ashlie Gough selfishly died at Occupy Vancouver instead of a few blocks away in the Downtown Eastside where these things go unreported, sadly he now finds himself irrevocably drawn into the get-the-hell-off-my-public-lawn media camp.

Gary declares that with the Vancouver election just 12 days away, this is "a referendum on Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's leadership", a quote happily repeated by CKNW's Bill Good on his mayoralty  debate radio show between Robertson and NPA hopeful Susan Anton this morning.

Yup, Robertson better get cracking on evicting the homeless for safety reasons, even if they're safer here than anywhere else.

Robertson is indeed going for a fast-track court injunction to evict them tomorrow, backed up by the VPD:

"The Occupy Vancouver protest can continue. The tent encampment, as it stands now, cannot."

Luckily Kev at Trapped in a Whirlpool has provided this excellent rebuttal :

"Those who feel threatened by the Occupy movement think that by forcibly clearing out the encampments that they will cut the movement off at the knees, nothing could be further from reality. The camps will eventually end organically on their own, signalling the onset of the next phase of the movement towards social justice. But no matter how they end the movement has become unstoppable.

The Occupiers and their supporters have already succeeded in changing the conversation from one of tax cuts , deficits and the necessity of austerity to one of social and economic injustice. This is no small feat. Thanks to the Occupy Movement, Labour appears ready to end it's internecine wars and start to unite again in order to battle for the common good once more, again no small feat.

In other words this first phase of the movement has already been a huge success, violently suppressing this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the current sate of affairs will only prove to many that they Occupiers are right and can only as it has already done result in it's growth.
The battle for a better world has been joined and while it will likely be a long one, those who hanker for a more just society will never surrender."

Thank you, Kev.


Linking arms for OccupyVancouver :


A wonderful "Open Love Letter to #OccupyVancover" from My Little Soapbox. 

Some sage advice from my friend Chris Corrigan on how the movement can continue : Revitalizing #OccupyVancouver

Boris : Testing Occupy .

Montreal Simon : The Occupy Movement and the Marginalized

Dope City Free Press: Letter To the Mayor of Vancouver and a Letter Written the Next Morning To Occupy Vancouver's Organizing Committee
       
        with an intro to Mr. Beer 'N Hockey above from RossK

Petition : I Support Occupy Vancouver
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Chris Hedges smacks down Kevin O'Leary

Yesterday CBC continued its ongoing snide, dismissive, and condescending coverage of the third week of Occupy Wall Street with an interview with author/activist/Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges on its "inside the business world" show, the Lang and O'Leary Exchange.  After the by now obligatory opening protestations of puzzlement as to what OWS is all about - "low budget" and "pretty nothing burgers" as blowhard host Kevin O'Leary described it - he then responded to Hedges' patient explanation by calling him "a left wing nutbar".

Since Holly Stick kindly left me the link this morning, Let Freedom Rain has posted a link and commentary on O'Leary's FoxNews behavior but I'm putting the vid and a transcript up here because Hedges' argument bears repeating and also because, as appalling as O'Leary's behavior certainly was, even more appalling is that O'Leary affects to be completely unable to follow Hedges' logic as to what exactly went wrong that caused OWS to happen.
He and other CBC talking heads either don't get it or pretend not to get it but you got it right away, didn't you? A more damning example of how completely dissociated our state broadcaster is with the plight of the 99% I cannot imagine.

CBC link here. Transcript follows ...

The show opens with a clip of Obama talking about Occupy Wall Street :

"I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel that we have the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street. And yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practises that got us into this problem in the first place."

Introduction to Hedges and Occupy Wall Street movement ...

O'Leary : So what exactly is everyone complaining about? And also give me a sense of how much momentum this movement has because it's pretty nothing burgers so far - just a few guys, guitars. Nobody knows what they want - they can't even name the names of the firms that they're protesting against - very weak, low budget.

Hedges : I wouldn't agree with that assessment at all. They pulled thousands of people into the street last night and here in Washington when everyone marched past the Bank of America, they were shouting Shame! Shame! Shame! They know the names of these firms and they know what these firms have done not only to the American economy but to the global economy, and the criminal class who runs them.

Fill-in for Lang : Well Kevin made this point that nobody knows what they want. What do you say to that? We know that this is a very diverse group, there are many different agendas at play ... what is the sense you have of what this movement would like to see happen?

Hedges : They know precisely what they want ; they want to reverse the corporate coup that's taken place in the US and rendered the citizenry impotent and they won't stop until that happens and frankly if we don't break the back of corporations, we're all finished anyway since we're rapidly trashing the ecosystem on which the human species depends for survival. This is literally a fight for life - it's that grave, it's that serious. Corporations, unfettered capitalism, as Karl Marx understood, is a revolutionary force  - it commodifies everything - human beings, the natural world which it exploits for profit until exhaustion and collapse. The bottom line is we don't have much time left - we are on the cusp of perhaps another major banking crisis in Europe, defaults in Greece, followed by Spain, Portugal. There's been no restrictions, no regulations on Wall Street - they've looted the US Treasury, they've played all the games that they were playing before and we're about to pay for it all over again.

O'Leary : Listen don't take this the wrong way but you sound like a left wing nutbar. If you want to shut down every corporation, every bank, where are you going to get a job? Where are you gonna work? Where's the economy gonna go?

Hedges : Corporations don't produce anything and

O'Leary : Oh really!?

Hedges : No. Financial corporations on Wall Street

O'Leary : Are you driving a car to the protest?

Hedges : They are speculators. I'm talking about the financial institutions like Goldman Sachs. They don't manufacture, they don't make anything - they gamble, they use money, and they believe falsely that money is real as we dismantle our manufacturing base and send jobs over the border to Mexico and finally into the embrace of China.

Fill-in for Lang : Well I see that you and Kevin could get into an actually huge argument here.

Hedges : Well you know I don't usually go on shows where people descend to character assassination. if you want to discuss issues, that's fine but this sounds like Fox News and I don't go on Fox News. Either you discuss the issues and ... look, you have had very eloquent writers - people like John Ralston Saul in Canada who have laid this out with incredible lucidity - and to somehow attack this critique by calling someone a nutcase engages in the kind of trash talk that's polluted the corporate airwaves.

O'Leary : Excuse me, let's debate the issues then. ...

Hedges : You were the one who started it - you were not debating the issues.

[crosstalk] ...I did not call you a nutcase, I called you a nutbar.

Hedges : You said [I] sounded like a leftwing nutcase .. bar

O'Leary : Yes, bar, nutbar.

Hedges : That's an insult.

O'Leary : Are you left wing in leaning at least would you say?

Hedges : No, I would say ..

O'Leary : You're a centrist?

Hedges : Can I finish?

O'Leary : Please.

Hedges : I would say that those who are protesting the rise of the corporate state are in fact on the political spectrum the true conservatives because they're calling for the restoration of the rule of law. The radicals have seized power and they have trashed all regulations and legal impediments to a corporate reconfiguration of American society into a form of neo-feudalism. And that's what we're really asking for - is the restoration of the rule of law.

O'Leary : Ok, but you don't see any value in the banking system providing a financial infrastructure ...

Hedges : That's not what I said.

O'Leary : I'm asking you.

Hedges : A banking system that functions as a banking system should. And in Canada you do not have a banking crisis because you did not tear down the walls between commercial and investment banks and turn all of your banks into hedge funds. If, instead of handing massive sums of money to CitiBank, Wells Fargo - which are basically zombie banks that still hold tremendous toxic assets - we had created ten regional banks with $10 billion each and leveraged them 10 to 1, people could have been saved. Six million people have been pushed out of their homes because of foreclosures and mortgages. We could have reinvested in communities, small businesses which cannot get credit would have gotten credit. Instead they're just sitting on the capital and not lending it.

O'Leary : So we're certainly giving you an opportunity to speak your mind. Just so we can come full circle, what do you suggest should be done with Goldman Sachs specifically?

Hedges : They should be prosecuted. When you shove sub-prime mortgages on families that you know can't repay it and then you dice up those mortgages as assets and sell them and bet against them through AIG, that's fraudulent activity.

Fill-in for Lang : Alright, well thank you so much for joining us - we like to hear your thoughts.

Hedges : Well it'll be the last time.

Update : Dianne Buckner was the other co-host. h/t to Christine in comments

Alternate source of pulled video:


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Dear useless fucking Canadian media

Occupy Wall Street media coverage : Day 3

The Guardian : The call to occupy Wall Street resonates around the world *

New York Examiner : Protestors take Wall Street in "Day of Rage" against corporate cronyism .

Wall Street Journal : Wall Street Protesters Plan to Stay Awhile .

Business Week : Wall Street Areas Blocked as Police Arrest Seven in Protest .

International Business Times : Occupy Wall Street Protest, Day 3

Georgia Straight : Anti-capitalist protesters descend on New York City, but where's the coverage? .

Good question, Georgia Straight. Let's see ...
CBC,  Toronto Star**, G&M,  PostMedia, CTV, Reuters Canada: ... zzzzzz ... crickets ... zzzzzz ...

Thanks so much for that, Canadian MSM.
Three Koch-funded tea-baggers communing in a bathtub have you all flying in film crews but the occupation of Wall Street somehow reminds you how important the Emmys are to all of us.

Roseanne Barr speaks at Occupy Wall Street and announces her run for presidency.








The most fascinating part of the livestream coverage for me over the weekend was the really incisive discussions and then, after the NYPD demanded no signs and no amplifiers for speeches, watching hundreds of people learn the logistics of direct democracy in a decision-making process : how to give everyone a voice without a hierarchy and how to use the "human microphone" to ensure all are heard.
Everyone watching via the net learned from this. An invaluable lesson.

Statement from the occupation at Wall Street

In Pictures


* OK, so Kalle Lasn cowrote this one
** No Star coverage except for Antonia Z on Friday: Is the Arab Spring coming to America?
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Monday evening update : Well, helloooo Canadian media! Welcome to day 3. Links to Canadian coverage noted in comments below.
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Globe & Mail : Polling for pillocks

Yes, really. That's what it says.
Tune in later in the week when the Globe & Mail asks :

Poll : Who is the greatest Canadian ever?

* Brian Mulroney - free trade, Ronald Reagan, opera

* Kim Campbell - girl

* Neither

VOTE



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Canadian media : It can't happen here.

We're getting a lot of stories from our media who are at pains to assure us a Canadian equivalent to the Rupert Murdoch scandal of cozy incestuous relationships with British politicians and illegal phone hacking/dirty tricks couldn't possibly happen here in Canada.

Really? No cozy incestuous relationships? No dirty tricks?

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch.

We know this because it showed up in the mandatory disclosures media consultant and former White House flack Ari Fleischer made to the U.S. Justice Department. Ari, you will recall, had a personal contract with Steve to grease US media wheels for him. Teneycke had a dream of a Canadian Fox news channel.

Four months later, Teneycke had left the PMO - barely a year into his job as Harper's chief spokesman - only to pick up a contract with Quebecor to explore a project that Ottawa insiders almost immediately described as a fledgling "Fox News North."

Three more PMO staffers followed Teneyke to SunMedia : an issues management adviser, an advertising manager, and an issues management researcher, described as "a guy who could dig up any dirt on the opposition in a jiffy".

Teneycke himself had to take a brief three and half month leave from heading his new project after conflict-of-interest embarrassments ramped up following his Sun op-ed and public admission to prior knowledge of the hacking of an Avaaz petition hostile to his setting up of a Fox News North in Canada.

Teneycke was back in the Sun saddle during Steve's re-election campaign in April this year when a fifth former PMO staffer, Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart, sent him a photo of an Ignatieff look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait in 2002.
"Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning" ran the SunMedia headline and story, sans photo, before Teneycke apparently tumbled to the ruse.

Patrick Muttart was working for the Con election war room at the time, while simultaneously heading the "Canada/US practice" at the US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, where he works under Terry Nelson. Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and McCain-Palin campaign manager, now a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, is famous for the race-baiting campaign ads and phonejamming dirty tricks done under his GOP watch, and for employing the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record during his run for US president.

Amusingly, the CTV piece, Harper immune from Murdoch-style scandal, makes extensive use of analysis from Muttart to assure us a similar scandal could not happen here. We just don't have the same "intense, quasi-incestuous" clique of political and media elites, Muttart says without irony.
Besides, another Harper former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, explains about Canadian papers: "so few people actually read most of them."

Yet somehow the rightwing National Post muddles on for 13 years losing $9-million a year, no one seems to know who owns CanWest/PostMedia now besides it being some US hedge fund and so much for the rule limiting foreign media ownership to a third, and 99% of the papers which endorsed a candidate in the last election all endorsed Steve.

We could have a Murdoch-style scandal here and it would be out of the news cycle again the same week, no damage done.

Update : More from David Climenhaga at Rabble
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Stockwell Day on the tragic shootings in Norway

CBC Power & Politics at noon Friday , edited

Evan Solomon : This raises again.the spectre of international terrorism. 

Stockwell Day : As recently as July 8 in Norway there was a dragnet for al-Qaeda suspects related to the Manchester bombing. Whether this group is tied to them we don't know ...

Solomon : A suspect has now been arrested. This looks like a multiple series of attacks that are going on. Now remember Norway did have a small number of troops in Afghanistan.
It's a very very fluid situation but it does raise all sorts of security issues about - this is a hackneyed phrase but on a day like this it suddenly has new poignancy - the war on terror.

We don't know whose taken credit for this, or responsibility for this attack but if indeed it is al Qaeda if indeed it is an extremist act that has any connection to what's happened in Afghanistan, how do we square that with what the PM said at the end of our mission there that Afghanistan and what's going on there is no longer a threat to global security?

Stockwell Day : Well the level of training that was going on in Afghanistan was extreme in exporting terror.
[Stock goes on about our accomplishments in Afghanistan] In Canada we've had the Toronto 18. Security has to be #1.

Solomon : The profile of these extremists ... Somalia - these are the places where extremists take root.

Stockwell Day : The single reason for this type of terrorism ... this type of terrorism will continue ... and we hope to be able to limit it through the 21 century ... is the result of extreme lunatic insane ideological teaching and it happens whether the people involved are from poor areas or wealthy areas. Don't forget Osama bin Laden himself was a multi-millionaire growing up in Saudi Arabia in a very very wealthy family. The Toronto 18 were all in good financial shape. Many of this extremist al Qaeda type extremist lunatic ideology that is even being bred in the US - these are coming from people who are not disaffected by poverty. This is the result of an insane extreme religious teaching and I encourage those within the broader community to reach out to extremists within their own community and they've got to get the message out to the young people that they are being told lies - that the afterlife for them is not what they're being promised.

Thank you, Doris.

BBC : Scores killed in Norway attacks

A massive bomb blast shattered buildings in the capital Oslo, killing at least seven people. Then a gunman rampaged through a youth camp run by the ruling Labour Party, killing 84 people. On Saturday police continued combing the island as a number of teenagers were still missing, feared dead.

Norwegian media identified the man as Anders Behring Breivik, 32. Police charged him for the island massacre and the Oslo bomb blast.

Police said the man was answering questions and they described him as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist.

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Arab Spring activists applaud Brigette DePape from Cairo

Canadian journalists blew off Senate page Brigette DePape's silent 20-second Stop Harper protest during the Throne Speech as a "stunt" undeserving of even its requisite 15 minutes of fame. Five days later  those ... same ... journos ...  are ... still ... writing ... about her in the national press.

Having pretty well exhausted the 'disrespectful to Parliament' angle on the first couple of days, some of them have now moved on to characterizing her call for "a Canadian version of the Arab Spring, an Arab Spring for Canada" as 'disrespectful to the Arab Spring'.
Apparently she shouldn't have mentioned the Arab Spring without first setting herself on fire or something. Way to reach, guys.

So above, just for them, are some Arab Spring activists in Egypt applauding Brigette DePape from Cairo.

"If you are inspired by our Arab revolutions, do as we did. You need one; I know you need one. It's not just an Arab Spring; it's a World Spring."

Update : SunMedia still whining about Brigette on Day 8 of her 15 minutes of fame.
Natty Post on Day 9 : "Her 15 minutes are up."

Brigette Speaks at Anti Harper Rally in Ottawa
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Hey, Globe&Mail, who's your daddy?

I didn't think I'd be mentioning Tim Pawlenty so soon again after Steve's rip of Pawlenty's tea party ad for his own election campaign, but for the third time in five days the G&M has run a story on TeaPaw's entry into the Republican race for the 2012 presidential nomination.

"A laid-back Midwestern Republican who governed a Democratic-leaning state, " went Friday's fluffer.
"A serious Republican," reads the headline in today's Globe Editorial, "to make Americans forget Donald Trump." A list of TeaPaw's virtues ensues, winding up with :

"Mr. Pawlenty is pursuing sound policy ideas for the greater long-term benefit of the United States.

Mr. Pawlenty is on the right track: His brand of truth-telling is a political strategy that could ultimately be more rewarding than the usual approach, stroking the base’s pleasure points."

Speaking of not stroking the base's pleasure points, TeaPaw presents his own one minute endorsement of himself :


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In their rush to publish their latest Republican mancrush, the G&M appears to have forgotten all about the Tea in TeaPaw. Here he is in January with American Family Association's Bryan Fischer :

I've been a strong supporter of the family, pro-life positions, traditional marriage positions.
I was co-author of the law in Minnesota that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. I've been a vocal supporter of an amendment in Minnesota that would put that into our constitution.

[W]e now have a small majority of people on our Minnesota Supreme Court we are conservative and strict constructionist. I think Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided by the Court. But I have been careful that I appoint people, particularly at the appellate level, that share this strict constructionist philosophy.

I have been a public supporter of maintaining Don't Ask, Don't Tell and I would support reinstating it as well.

Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart was working for both the Con war room and US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs/IGG Group's "Canada/US practice" during last month's election. Muttart's new boss is Terry Nelson, now Senior Advisor to TeaPaw.

So, G&M, who's your daddy?
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