Following The Desmarais Money

Political Animal 69 Comments

I’m launching a new conservative political movement today – “Jason Kenney for Prime Minister”.

Mr. Kenney noted that Parliament unanimously voted to make the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen, and said it is disturbing to think that Canada would let a foreign power dictate whom it should honour.
“I think it reconfirms that Mr. Chrétien and the Liberals have always pursued a policy in this area calculated to their own personal financial interests and those of rich and powerful friends,” Mr. Kenney said yesterday.
“It’s no mistake that Mr. Chrétien was calculating his retirement income in his relations in this area. [It was] a few weeks after he left the premiership that he was being signed on as a consultant to multinational companies with commercial interests in this area.

And what’s got into the Globe and Mail? It’s not often you see the incestuous political ties between top Liberals and PowerCorp mentioned in this context;

Mr. Kenney was clearly referring to Power Corp., the conglomerate founded by Paul Desmarais Sr. His son, André Desmarais, now the co-CEO, is married to Mr. Chrétien’s daughter, France, and Mr. Chrétien’s long-time campaign manager and adviser, John Rae, is a senior Power executive.

h/t Maz2

The Canadian Blogosphere’s First Legal Offense Fund!

Roadkill 64 Comments

Jason “my law degree DOES NOT smell like Crackerjacks” Cherniak ponders his options….

I could start up a donation link on my sidebar and hold the money in trust, but I don’t want to try it only to find out that people aren’t really interested. I also don’t want to seem like a whiny person who wants everybody else to protect him. I think the answer is to put it all out there, as I have above, and let my commenters and other bloggers express their opinions. Hopefully, such an online brainstorming session will have some benefit no matter what the general view is.

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. A lawyer is considering soliciting donations from his readership to pay the bills on a libel suit. Not a suit he’s defending himself against – a suit he’s threatening to file.
Because he can’t afford a lawyer.
He does not volunteer how the spoils might or might not be divided should he prevail.
Part of me hopes he goes ahead with this. The precedent could prove quite useful around here.

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 34 Comments

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night vintage music show, here are Art Kahn & his Orchestra performing Dream Sweetheart (1932, 2:50).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Update: Tonight’s SDA LNR Cheese Plate, featuring Appenzeller, Drumloch, Dubliner, and Shropshire Blue, is now available. If you’re looking for Tomme de Montagne, Montgomery Cheddar, or Colston Basset Stilton, please see the archives.

Just a conduit, eh?

Uncategorized 32 Comments

Gloria Galloway does her best to impersonate a piece of PVC pipe. I’m not buying it:

So to Gloria Galloway, I say this: stop hiding behind the myth of journalistic objectivity, and start taking responsibility for the choices you make as a journalist – for what you choose to report, for what you choose not to, and for how you go about it. The soldiers will respect you a lot more when you take accountability for your choices.

This seems to be Spank A Journalist Week at The Torch.

Sidewinder Resurfaces

The Libranos 41 Comments

Adscam was small potatoes in the Libranos legacy;

A seasoned, 30-year career Canadian diplomat, Mr. McAdam’s assignments included London, Copenhagen, Barbados, Amman, Bangkok, Bogota, Dublin, Helsinki, Glasgow, Tokyo and, twice, Hong Kong.
His second Hong Kong posting, 1989 to 1993, as immigration control officer, included responsibility for southern China. He was tasked with protecting Canada from international people-smuggling rings, murderers and drug-smuggling, organized criminals from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong.
It was his last posting.

Read the whole thing. Finally, Donna Jacobs is doing what the rest of the mainstream media “investigative journalists” should hang in their heads in shame over.
Flashback – to his credit, Peter Worthington wasn’t afraid to mention the Sidewinder report in an op-ed in 2005. A search of SDA will turn up other old items, though some of the links are now dead. If anyone has the link to the once available surviving copy of the original Sidewinder report (officially ordered destroyed by the Chretien government), let me know, and I’ll rehost them myself.
Update – here it is. Sidewinder: Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada.

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 48 Comments
  

Arts funding? Sports funding? Why not combine them?

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our regular comedy show, which has been rescheduled to Monday night this week due to the Olympics, here from The Wonderful Wide World of Notes is New Horizons in Music Appreciation, with host Professor Johann Peter Schickele and analyst Bob Dennis covering the play-by-play during a Beethoven’s Symphony #5 match between the New York Mills Philharmonic home team v. guest Danish conductor Hilega Dankezan, in beautiful New York Mills, Minnesota, from Prof. Schickele’s famous album The Wurst of P.D.Q. Bach (1978, 8:49, MP3, 6MB, see also P.D.Q. Bach).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Tony Blair’s Britain

Great Moments In Socialism 43 Comments

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and Richard Simmons rules the world!

Dangerously overweight children will have to be taken from their parents and put into care because of Britain’s worsening “obesity epidemic”, council leaders have warned.
One million children will be clinically obese within four years on current trends, storing up future problems from heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure and diabetes.
The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents 400 councils in England and Wales, predicted social services teams would have to take drastic action to improve the health of seriously overweight children.

Heh. “Like residential schools, for fatties!”

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 43 Comments

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, we have a majestically powerful, spiritually uplifting, and emotionally draining performance; here for your delectation are the University of Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Gdansk Music Academy Strings performing Baba Yaga’s Hut on Hen’s Legs and The Great Gate of Kiev from Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition, Thüring Bräm conducting (2005, 9:50). To the degree that it is possible for you to listen to this through a proper hi-fi, as opposed to teeny-weeny computer speakers, and to view it full-screen, I highly recommend it.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

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