At The Torch;
“Check your sources, Dave.”
The fun is in the comments.
Voice Of The Taliban
The Globe And Mail – Canada’s number one source for Taliban propaganda!
Update: The Cannonball Press has a headline you won’t see: “The Muslims try to kill everybody”.
Halp me Joodee Seegrow!
“The Cunsrvativ Pardee stuk me hear in this kichin…”
(Tune in to The World Tonight with Rob Breakenridge at around 10:05 Eastern tonight.)
The Dream World Of Wayne Easter
On Oct. 24, Rolf Penner appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food to testify against the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.
I’d like to start by saying that I’m here not only as the agricultural policy research fellow for the Frontier Centre but, more importantly, as a farmer from southern Manitoba who’s running 1,700 acres of land and whose primary source of income is that farm.
[…]
Right now we are in the middle of a really major rally going on in the wheat markets. We’re at the highest levels today that we’ve seen in 30 years. We can’t take advantage of it and it’s incredibly frustrating. The little bit that we can price out, we can’t deliver, which means we can’t get paid for it.
Instead, if we need cash, and most farmers do in the fall in order to pay their bills, we are forced to sell our other crops at prices that right now are lower than where I expect them to be later this year. In some cases, it’s below the cost of production. If we were free to sell our wheat, we could hold on to these crops until those prices improved and actually make money on everything.
Equally frustrating in all this is that, if this current rally were occurring in any other crop, I could right now start selling next year’s production at a guaranteed profit. But I can’t. The primary reason is not the Wheat Board; it’s the Wheat Board monopoly.
[…]
In its current form, the Canadian Wheat Board sits like a wet blanket over the entire prairie economy—starting at the plant breeders, through the farm gates, on to our rural communities, into our cities, and right on out through our ports. This dampening effect is widespread, pervasive, and very tangible. It’s high time that we give this wet blanket a well-deserved airing out.
[…]
But there is the question of civil liberties. When is it appropriate for the state to allow one group to vote away the civil liberties of another group? There should be no such thing in a free and democratic society as the right to vote away civil liberties. We’re not talking about electing a government here, and we’re not talking about finding out who likes strawberry ice cream better than chocolate. In this case, if strawberry wins, not only are you not allowed to buy chocolate, but if we catch you with chocolate ice cream, you’re going to jail.
What this is all about is finally giving western farmers the freedom to run their businesses in the way they think is best – not how the government thinks is best, and certainly not how their neighbours think it should be run. Western Canadian farmers should be able to enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and civil liberties as the farmers in the rest of Canada do. It is not right, in this day and age, that they are still forced to sit in the back of the bus.
Be sure to read the whole thing – it’s a thoughtful and clearly explained argument.
But wait – there’s more!
Hon. Wayne Easter (MP, Malpeque): Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions will be to Mr. Penner, who seems to live in quite a dream world, but in any event –
Mr. Rolf Penner: I make my living in that dream world, Mr. Easter.
Hon. Wayne Easter: I do, too.
Set aside the fact that Wayne Easter’s farm is located in PEI – a jurisdiction outside that controlled by the Wheat Board. Consider this: he has served as a Member of Parliament since 1993. During that time, he has also served as a minister and parliamentary secretary. The table below is based on this source – Indemnities, Salaries and Allowances, Members of the House of Commons – 1867 to Date. It is not presented as an accurate accounting of Mr.Easter’s compensation for service in Parliament, but to provide a general idea of his “off farm income” over that period of time. (For simplicity’s sake, I don’t include the $12,000 “additional expense allowance” that was provided from 1993 – 2000, his pension, or the additional salaries he earned as a committee chair.)
I venture there are more than a few western wheat farmers who would trade their “dream world” for that of Wayne Easter’s.
Update – More this mp3 file was forwarded by a reader who advises “Check out the last 9 minutes”.
Capt. Jamil Hussein Gets Around – UPDATED
UPDATE – ASSOCIATED PRESS SOURCE EXPOSED AS FRAUD
More at Flopping Aces this morning: “Centcom has confirmed this Capt. Jamil Hussein is NOT a Police Officer nor is he employed by the Ministry of Interior:
Dear Associated Press:
On Nov. 24, 2006, your organization published an article by Qais Al-Bashir about six Sunnis being burned alive in the presence of Iraqi Police officers. This news item, which is below, received an enormous amount of coverage internationally.
We at Multi-National Corps – Iraq made it known through MNC-I Press Release Number 20061125-09 and our conversations with your reporters that neither we nor Baghdad Police had any reports of such an incident after investigating it and could find no one to corroborate the story. A couple of hours ago, we learned something else very important. We can tell you definitively that the primary source of this story, police Capt. Jamil Hussein, is not a Baghdad police officer or an MOI employee. We verified this fact with the MOI through the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team.
Also, we definitely know, as we told you several weeks ago through the MNC-I Media Relations cell, that another AP-popular IP spokesman, Lt. Maithem Abdul Razzaq, supposedly of the city’s Yarmouk police station, does not work at that police station and is also not authorized to speak on behalf of the IP. The MOI has supposedly issued a warrant for his questioning.
More here. (scroll down)
continue below for original post….
Via Flopping Aces;
The U.S. military said Saturday that Iraqi soldiers securing the Hurriyah area had found only one burned mosque and could not confirm reports that six Sunni civilians had been burned to death with kerosene.
Emphasis mine.
Not only could the stories not be confirmed, closer examination of the source, one Capt. Jamil Hussein, leads some to wonder if the mainstream media is again guilty of using the uncorroborated accounts of Iraqi “stringers’ of questionable allegiance to supply their insatiable appetite for “destruction in Iraq” stories.
Doing a search via Google I began reading the stories printed about the burned six and each and every one had one thing in common. The only person stating that this incident happened was one Capt. Jamil Hussein. Every news report printed this man as the source of the information.
If you do a search for this name you come up with ten pages of pretty much the same article describing the burning six.
Hussein also appears to be the source for a number of earlier reports.
Every news report I have found mentioning this guy is always quoting him about Shiite violence against Sunni’s. Coincidence? I doubt it.
One source, no independent verification, the incident disputed by local Imams – that is all it takes for the story of “6 Sunnis burned alive” to spread like a virus through the international media.
Check the link for continuing updates and additional commentary. There is now a military investigation into whether the Capt. even exists.
Centcom tells FA that they’re investigating who the hell Jamil Hussein is…if there even is a Jamil Hussein. For all we know this could be Ayman Al-Zawahiri calling up the AP to give his version of events. After all, the Centcom guy points out that there was another “volunteer” spokesman in another police department unmasked quite recently, and there’s a warrant out for him to be questioned. There are several more being verified now, most of them quoted in the AP.
(h/t to Andycanuck in the comments.)
Der CHIPS
“I mean, how far will these American imperialists go?
Is Anybody Listening?
I’m beginning to have some doubts about the reader/listenership claimed by mainstream media outlets. For the past few days, the story of the successful court battle waged by New Brunswick blogger, Charles Leblanc, has been spreading through the mainstream media, from the New York Times, to CBC.
I just finished listening to an interview on Mike on Crime over Rawlco talk radio, and once again, his blogsite was mentioned, along with clear instructions on how to find it.
So, where is the traffic?
“Bad Boy” Province?
No eastern media bias here;
Take note of the appearance of scare quotes in the headline. I checked this purported news item looking for the third-party source – as it turns out, the only people the headline “quotes” are Globe writers Dawn Walton and Katherine Harding;
Alberta’s role as the bad boy of Confederation will be decided next Saturday [….]
Some of the bigotry in the reader responses is a little more overt.
h/t Cal, in the comments.
Where In The World ?
The Cult Of Their Father’s Personality
Much of the news of this week reinforced the fact that political superficiality is second only to opportunism as defining characteristics of the Liberal party (which by default, includes much of Canadian media).
That said, I confess my curiosity was aroused by this headline;
“Trudeau mobbed at Liberal rally”.
“Could it be?” I thought to myself.
As it turns out, this was not the unveiling of the most ambitious embalming project since Lenin. (Talk about “life of the convention”!)
No – just another story quoting the giddy exhalations of the dead politician’s eldest y-chromosome beneficiary;
“I feel like a rock star,” [Justin]Trudeau said to himself as he signed autographs at an event meant to fire up support for Glen Pearson in tomorrow’s byelection in London-North Centre.
Pearson spoke, too, at his campaign headquarters in a strip mall on Adelaide Street, paying respects to the main attraction.
“We have someone in our midst who someday may be prime minister . . . We are in the presence of royalty,” Pearson said. “Thank you for giving us this big boost,”
And I thought this week’s “Celebrate Liberal Irrelevancy” media event had already been claimed by CBC’s The National, in bringing the meaningless opinions of Alexandre Trudeau on the “Quebecois nation” motion in Parliament to a national audience.
For those too disinterested to tell them apart, “Sasha” is the second[1] of the Trudeau sons. He recently shared these and other personal insights into Cuban dictator Fidel Castro ;
“Combined with a Herculean physique and extraordinary personal courage, this monumental intellect makes Fidel the giant that he is.”
I and other Canadians waited patiently over the commercial break for followup segments with Ben Mulroney and Catherine Clark, but alas….
Footnote:
[1] The third and youngest Trudeau son is perhaps best known for his valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to have a lake in British Columbia named after him.
The Torch
Lots of good reading at the Torch lately, especially on Afghanistan. Instead of picking out a post, I suggest you just start at the top and scroll down.
The First Round
The results from the first round in Alberta’s “Pick Your New Premier” vote.
Dinning 29470 30.2%
Morton 25614 26.2%
Stelmach 14967 15.3%
Oberg 11638 11.9%
Hancock 7595 7.8%
Norris 6789 6.9%
Doerksen 873 0.9%
McPherson 744 0.8%
CBC;
The race for the leadership of Alberta’s ruling Progressive Conservative party has been narrowed from eight candidates to three, with former treasurer Jim Dinning leading the pack after a first round of balloting Saturday.
He will face backbencher Ted Morton and former cabinet minister Ed Stelmach in a second ballot on Dec. 2.
Someone requested a new thread – so, here you go!
Vitruvius in the comments ;
The Edmonton Champagne Socialists, Mastercard Marxists, Limousine Liberals and Welfare Wankers Journal was dripping with condescension and disappointment in their coverage this morning, so things must be going well.
“Stab victim’s family wants justice”
The distraught family of a dead 16 year old boy allege racism on the part of justice officials who have not yet charged the man who took his life.
“If he was a native man and he killed a white man it would be first-degree murder,”
The Calgary Sun quotes uncle, Rick Bear Hat;
“He has taken a kid’s life over jumper cables,”
(They were wrapped around his neck at the time.)
The LA Times – All the News That’s Fit To Make Up
Or buy from enemy propogandists. Patterico;
Last Friday, my reader Tom Blumer sent me a link to an interesting blog post, by a blog called “One Oar in the Water,” which attacked the L.A. Times story about the Ramadi airstrike. The post quoted what purported to be an e-mail from a soldier who was involved in the Ramadi incident. The e-mailing soldier claimed that the “Times correspondent in Ramadi” has ties to the insurgency, and is knowingly repeating enemy propaganda:
The [L.A. Times article] is an example of why you simply cannot believe most media reports coming out of Iraq. The LA Time[s] reporter, Solomon Moore, is not in Ramadi. He relies on an Iraqi stringer here who has ties to insurgents. In this article, Moore repeats almost verbatim, insurgent propaganda we have intercepted. The fighting in question occurred in my battle space within Ramadi and I was personally and intimately involved.
The soldier then disputed certain assertions made in the L.A. Times article. The soldier said that there had been no airstrike, and that only a few insurgents had been killed, by small-arms fire and tank fire.
It’s a long post, and carefully researched.
Related – Via Mudville Gazette, “all the news to not bother telling you about”;
Fighting back: the city determined not to become al-Qaeda’s capital.
While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.
A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.
Bob Rae
Running his campaign the way he did Ontario!
I believe this calls for an SDA poll…
UPDATE – the plot thickens! – Anti-Ignatieff blog linked to Rae camp. (Via National Newswatch.)
UPDATE II – Darcey thinks the real story here is the involvement of the Globe & Mail in pimping a non-story.
There is nothing remarkable about the blog itself, just regular reprints and quotes of news articles critical of Ignatieff along with some pro-Rae ones. Seemingly small and insignificant but somebody took the time to track the guy down and obviously had to send some info to the Globe and Mail which also writes:
The dispute over Internet postings underlines the high stakes of the Liberal leadership race
Especially when Canada’s national newspaper gets involved.
Dinning vs Morton
The perceived front-runner is Jim Dinning, a former Alberta treasurer who put the province on track to reach its prized debt-free status by slashing the budget – and thousands of civil service jobs – during the height of the Klein Revolution in the early 1990s.
Dinning has a wide base of powerful support, from the business elite and a majority of the Conservative caucus to much-respected former premier Peter Lougheed.
But all indications suggest Dinning will be challenged by Ted Morton, a social conservative whose strong stands against same-sex marriage and Ottawa’s involvement in what are considered provincial matters have made him increasingly popular to the party’s right wing and rural arm.
Also in the race are former Klein cabinet ministers Lyle Oberg, Ed Stelmach, Mark Norris, Dave Hancock, and Victor Doersken, as well as community activist and businessman Gary McPherson.
There you go, Alberta readers – open thread!
Go Huskies!
It’s the first time the Vanier Cup will be hosted outside of Ontario.
Ontario and British Columbia may be wastelands for university football where big crowds are measured in the 100s, but the same can’t be said for the Prairies, the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec.
Tomorrow, The Score will be broadcasting the Vanier Cup from Saskatoon — a game that will see the Saskatchewan Huskies take on Laval Rouge et Or.
It should be an interesting take on how many in the rest of Canada will tune in. Kickoff is at 2 p.m.
They picked a good weekend for it!
Saturday: Sunny with cloudy periods. Increasing cloudiness late in the day with 60 percent chance of flurries in the evening. Wind becoming northwest 20 km/h late in the day. High minus 21. Wind chill minus 36.
Gives new meaning to “kicking into the wind”.
When the Huskies scored a come-from-behind upset in the Mitchell Bowl to make it to the home field final, another 760 tickets went on sale to Griffiths Stadium. They reportedly sold in around 5 minutes.
Previous: The teams faced off on the same field at last year’s Mitchell Bowl
Update A tipster in the comments advises you can access the Vanier webcast here.
There’s Nothing Neo About Me, Baby
When I was an infant, William Boetcker’s “Conservative creed”* dangled in a mobile over my crib.
Iranian Military Application Form
Vest supplied free of charge.
Related: This is helpful.
No Wonder They’re Bawling
They’ve been cut from the teat.
From the office of Carol Skelton MP (Saskatoon-Biggar-Rosetown), a few details on those “spending cuts” that have “sent shockwaves through the literacy community”.
We are not cutting any literacy training. Instead, we want to refocus spending for literacy on programs that teach people how to read and write, instead of funding conferences and advocacy work.
[…]
Some of the old-style spending on literacy under the previous Liberal Government included:
Contracts for websites: $81,900, $45,000, $71,000 (with a consultant billing of $750 per day for work completed), and $70,000.
Contracts for promoting meetings: $53,760, $220,500.
Contracts to consultants: $57,905 paid to a media consultant for working 31 days, $800 per day to a consultant to develop a strategy, $206,600 paid to a researcher.
Salaries for Literacy industry executives: $151,561 per year to an Executive Director, $45,000 paid to a National Director for 50 days of work, $103,972 paid to an Executive Director for one year of work.
Read the full release here, which includes a few of the programs the spending is being rediirected to.