Celsius 41.11
Zenfisher @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 12:38 pm
The Liberal party of Canada is conservative. The world media will be basing their data on conservative values.
Scape @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:03 pm
Godz, seek help. Your arguing with an established industry standard not a biased view.
$1:
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When they talk about Canada, they know what they are talking about.
thirdEye @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 2:01 pm
Avro Avro:
I like your desperate attempt at saying the Sun has lefty wackiness in it.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnist ... 08992.html
Just about as left-wing looney as they come. This would have made more sense in the Star.
$1:
Tue, June 22, 2004
Harper is cut from a different cloth
By Val Sears
Ottawa Sun
Hey, wake up, we're sleepwalking toward the edge. Who would have dreamed, six months ago, that we might have Conservative foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day, toy dinosaur under his arm, representing Canada at the next summit; Heritage Minister Myron Thompson, selling the CBC to some Americans so we get nothing but commercials and Finance Minister Monte Solberg gambling on massive surpluses to pay for tax cuts.
And the Reform/Alliance/Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, that nicely programmed Stepford politician, transformed into a moderate, and thus betraying the hopes and passions of the neo-cons and social conservatives who carried him to the heights.
Are we really to believe he can control the right-wing backers who created him to end abortion -- and thus consign women to the crochet hooks and knitting needles of that dark yesteryear, or that we won't see a Senate that will compete with the House of Commons or use the Bible as an instruction book for social legislation?
Can we imagine mob rule by referendum with good people voting their prejudices instead of the issue? Do we want our prime minister to simply be a "headwaiter to the provinces" while national standards tumble and firewalls go up everywhere?
Sure we're mad at the Liberals, disappointed in the Liberals, fed up with the Liberals after an 11-year rule. But to punish them by punishing ourselves is foolish in the extreme. I'm a lower-case liberal who has voted for both the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP at various times and on issues that concern me. I expected the upper-case Liberals to govern most of the time and with a good measure of clean competence.
Clearly, they have not. But I'm damn sure they would not be so thoroughly stupid again with so many eyes upon them if they win. Paul Martin is a good man, brought up in a grand tradition of Parliament. Why he wavered and stumbled in the first half of the campaign, I cannot imagine.
I do believe his advisers drew the wagons in too tight, excluded too many fine Liberals and manipulated their boss to the point of humiliation. Perhaps Paul can give them a good kick in the ass now and go his own way.
The issues in this campaign seem to have been buried under reams of polls, concern about Harper's hair, Martin's stammer, the endless chatter of Jack Layton and the meaningless harangues of Gilles Duceppe. But listen, if only for a moment, about Harper's privatized health care, aircraft carriers for the military, scuttling down to Washington as fast as his hands and knees can carry him and worry, in these last days, if things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold.
This is an election, not about interest, but about principles, and Harper's principles seem to twist and turn as he swings in the electoral winds. Why doesn't he just head for the market, turn right and keep going? And declare himself clearly on the Charter right to abortion and same-sex marriage?
I'm reminded of Brian Mulroney's remark to an aide after the television debate: "How did you like my courageous silence on abortion?"
The Tories, as they were, had a great leadership tradition all the way from Sir John A. Macdonald, through John Diefenbaker, Bob Stanfield and Mulroney, who for all his blarney and occasional tawdry behaviour, was never a hypocrite.
Stephen Harper is of a different mold and a danger to our traditions.
We had all better wake up from our dozey indifference or pay dearly for the misery loosed upon the land.
Harper is cut from a different cloth
By Val Sears
Ottawa Sun
Hey, wake up, we're sleepwalking toward the edge. Who would have dreamed, six months ago, that we might have Conservative foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day, toy dinosaur under his arm, representing Canada at the next summit; Heritage Minister Myron Thompson, selling the CBC to some Americans so we get nothing but commercials and Finance Minister Monte Solberg gambling on massive surpluses to pay for tax cuts.
And the Reform/Alliance/Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, that nicely programmed Stepford politician, transformed into a moderate, and thus betraying the hopes and passions of the neo-cons and social conservatives who carried him to the heights.
Are we really to believe he can control the right-wing backers who created him to end abortion -- and thus consign women to the crochet hooks and knitting needles of that dark yesteryear, or that we won't see a Senate that will compete with the House of Commons or use the Bible as an instruction book for social legislation?
Can we imagine mob rule by referendum with good people voting their prejudices instead of the issue? Do we want our prime minister to simply be a "headwaiter to the provinces" while national standards tumble and firewalls go up everywhere?
Sure we're mad at the Liberals, disappointed in the Liberals, fed up with the Liberals after an 11-year rule. But to punish them by punishing ourselves is foolish in the extreme. I'm a lower-case liberal who has voted for both the Progressive Conservatives and the NDP at various times and on issues that concern me. I expected the upper-case Liberals to govern most of the time and with a good measure of clean competence.
Clearly, they have not. But I'm damn sure they would not be so thoroughly stupid again with so many eyes upon them if they win. Paul Martin is a good man, brought up in a grand tradition of Parliament. Why he wavered and stumbled in the first half of the campaign, I cannot imagine.
I do believe his advisers drew the wagons in too tight, excluded too many fine Liberals and manipulated their boss to the point of humiliation. Perhaps Paul can give them a good kick in the ass now and go his own way.
The issues in this campaign seem to have been buried under reams of polls, concern about Harper's hair, Martin's stammer, the endless chatter of Jack Layton and the meaningless harangues of Gilles Duceppe. But listen, if only for a moment, about Harper's privatized health care, aircraft carriers for the military, scuttling down to Washington as fast as his hands and knees can carry him and worry, in these last days, if things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold.
This is an election, not about interest, but about principles, and Harper's principles seem to twist and turn as he swings in the electoral winds. Why doesn't he just head for the market, turn right and keep going? And declare himself clearly on the Charter right to abortion and same-sex marriage?
I'm reminded of Brian Mulroney's remark to an aide after the television debate: "How did you like my courageous silence on abortion?"
The Tories, as they were, had a great leadership tradition all the way from Sir John A. Macdonald, through John Diefenbaker, Bob Stanfield and Mulroney, who for all his blarney and occasional tawdry behaviour, was never a hypocrite.
Stephen Harper is of a different mold and a danger to our traditions.
We had all better wake up from our dozey indifference or pay dearly for the misery loosed upon the land.
vic_ticious @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 2:35 pm
here's some liberal press for you.
$1:
Posted September 28, 2004
By Youssef M. Ibrahim
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Imagine a television talk show where the hosts debate the merits and demerits of cannibalism, discussing whether it is good to kill people to eat their flesh, liver and hearts -- seriously, on the air on prime time.
This past Tuesday, Feyssal Al Qassem, the infamous anchorman of Al Jazeera's program "Counter Direction," or "Alti jah Al Muaakess," went well beyond.
Al Qassem hosted an Egyptian guest who over an entire hour was allowed to advocate, with sickening insistence, the beheading of hostages in Iraq as a legitimate act of resistance to what he called "these American dogs," regardless of whether the captives -- who are of many different nationalities -- are military personnel, civilians, aid workers, or spies.
They are all mercenaries, the Egyptian man screamed, as Al Qassem of the Al Jazeera network cheered him on. Truly, he who has no shame is not afraid. Arabism and Islam have nothing to do with such people.
Where does Al Jazeera, and Al Qassem, think they are taking their Arabic-speaking viewers, the young before the old, when they put on a talk show tantamount to issuing a fatwa, or edict, for murder in the name of Islam and God or Arab Nationalism?
Do Al Qassem and his network appreciate how much damage they are doing to the religion of 1.2 billion Muslims, in addition to polluting the minds of many who watched him dish out this garbage?
Al Qassem -- whose program is already known as vile, loud, and messy -- descended further into ignominious behavior.
As the host of this unbelievable conversation, Al Qassem prompted, watched and blessed a so-called Egyptian political commentator arguing that people having their heads severed from their bodies in the most savage of ways is okay in the name of resistance to American occupation -- and more important -- to teach the Americans a lesson.
How about what this teaches Arab children? What will they retain when they hear gratuitous invitations to kill, slash, hate, demean and ostracize "the other", including innocent journalists, aid workers, and United Nations officials, both men and women who came to help Arabs of Iraq?
On Al Qassem's television show, the guest representing the opposing view, an Iraqi who argued hopelessly that such savagery is inhuman, was at a loss for words. Who would not be?
There is a point where freedom of expression in the media stops and advocating irresponsible bloody savagery begins. Clearly Al Jazeera and Feyssal Al Qassem have no idea where that point is. Sponsors, mainly the government of Qatar, should pull the plug on him, tell him he is fired, and then apologize to Arabs, Muslims and the whole civilized world for this smear.
Like it or not, Al Jazeera has a huge following of Arabic-speaking people. This is a public trust. If a satellite channel claims to speak in the name of Arabs, its bosses and sponsors must make sure it does not spit where it eats.
Al Jazeera has absolutely no right to allow ignorant, persons and reckless anchormen to further soil the reputation of all Muslims and Arabs by debating decapitation of human beings. There are no pros and cons here.
And it is not the first time Al Jazeera has done that. For years it has given prime time to the rabid Egyptian so-called religious leader Yusuf Al Qardawi, who issued an edict allowing the killing of Americans in Iraq and wife beating. The other day Al Itihad, the Emirates Arabic daily, to its credit, denounced him as an "ignorant man" misleading Muslims. Abdelrahman Al Rashed, the manager of the competing Arabic network Al Arabiya, also to his credit, also took him on saying he is polluting minds and shaming Muslims. It is now up to the Qatari government to stop these charades.
All this comes shortly after Al Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, condemned as a crime the kidnappings and beheadings of anyone being carried out in Iraq in the name of Islam.
What's worse is that in an electronic voting on the issue, a huge majority of Al Jazeera's viewers encouraged decapitation while less than 10 percent voted against.
The calamity that most of those who voted for it were Arabs and Muslims living in the West with free access to the Internet, enjoying the full freedom of Western democracies.
What does this say? That Al Jazeera has successfully polluted the minds of millions who should think differently, or that Arabs seriously suffer from schizophrenia?
Is it a surprise that prominent psychiatrists say that 10 percent of Arab children do not sleep for 10 days after viewing such repulsive kidnap-and-behead-industry photos and images of people begging for their lives with masked men standing behind defaming the Holy Koran by holding it up high.
If adults are confused, what are children supposed to be? A friend, a medical professional, wrote me the other day an e-mail in which she said, "We do not need nation-building. We need nation-rebuilding. This is a big, big issue."
Indeed, as long as people such as Al Qassem are not checked, we are in trouble.
Youssef M. Ibrahim , a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. This essay, moved by UPI, a sister news agency of Insight, first appeared in Gulf News.
By Youssef M. Ibrahim
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Imagine a television talk show where the hosts debate the merits and demerits of cannibalism, discussing whether it is good to kill people to eat their flesh, liver and hearts -- seriously, on the air on prime time.
This past Tuesday, Feyssal Al Qassem, the infamous anchorman of Al Jazeera's program "Counter Direction," or "Alti jah Al Muaakess," went well beyond.
Al Qassem hosted an Egyptian guest who over an entire hour was allowed to advocate, with sickening insistence, the beheading of hostages in Iraq as a legitimate act of resistance to what he called "these American dogs," regardless of whether the captives -- who are of many different nationalities -- are military personnel, civilians, aid workers, or spies.
They are all mercenaries, the Egyptian man screamed, as Al Qassem of the Al Jazeera network cheered him on. Truly, he who has no shame is not afraid. Arabism and Islam have nothing to do with such people.
Where does Al Jazeera, and Al Qassem, think they are taking their Arabic-speaking viewers, the young before the old, when they put on a talk show tantamount to issuing a fatwa, or edict, for murder in the name of Islam and God or Arab Nationalism?
Do Al Qassem and his network appreciate how much damage they are doing to the religion of 1.2 billion Muslims, in addition to polluting the minds of many who watched him dish out this garbage?
Al Qassem -- whose program is already known as vile, loud, and messy -- descended further into ignominious behavior.
As the host of this unbelievable conversation, Al Qassem prompted, watched and blessed a so-called Egyptian political commentator arguing that people having their heads severed from their bodies in the most savage of ways is okay in the name of resistance to American occupation -- and more important -- to teach the Americans a lesson.
How about what this teaches Arab children? What will they retain when they hear gratuitous invitations to kill, slash, hate, demean and ostracize "the other", including innocent journalists, aid workers, and United Nations officials, both men and women who came to help Arabs of Iraq?
On Al Qassem's television show, the guest representing the opposing view, an Iraqi who argued hopelessly that such savagery is inhuman, was at a loss for words. Who would not be?
There is a point where freedom of expression in the media stops and advocating irresponsible bloody savagery begins. Clearly Al Jazeera and Feyssal Al Qassem have no idea where that point is. Sponsors, mainly the government of Qatar, should pull the plug on him, tell him he is fired, and then apologize to Arabs, Muslims and the whole civilized world for this smear.
Like it or not, Al Jazeera has a huge following of Arabic-speaking people. This is a public trust. If a satellite channel claims to speak in the name of Arabs, its bosses and sponsors must make sure it does not spit where it eats.
Al Jazeera has absolutely no right to allow ignorant, persons and reckless anchormen to further soil the reputation of all Muslims and Arabs by debating decapitation of human beings. There are no pros and cons here.
And it is not the first time Al Jazeera has done that. For years it has given prime time to the rabid Egyptian so-called religious leader Yusuf Al Qardawi, who issued an edict allowing the killing of Americans in Iraq and wife beating. The other day Al Itihad, the Emirates Arabic daily, to its credit, denounced him as an "ignorant man" misleading Muslims. Abdelrahman Al Rashed, the manager of the competing Arabic network Al Arabiya, also to his credit, also took him on saying he is polluting minds and shaming Muslims. It is now up to the Qatari government to stop these charades.
All this comes shortly after Al Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, condemned as a crime the kidnappings and beheadings of anyone being carried out in Iraq in the name of Islam.
What's worse is that in an electronic voting on the issue, a huge majority of Al Jazeera's viewers encouraged decapitation while less than 10 percent voted against.
The calamity that most of those who voted for it were Arabs and Muslims living in the West with free access to the Internet, enjoying the full freedom of Western democracies.
What does this say? That Al Jazeera has successfully polluted the minds of millions who should think differently, or that Arabs seriously suffer from schizophrenia?
Is it a surprise that prominent psychiatrists say that 10 percent of Arab children do not sleep for 10 days after viewing such repulsive kidnap-and-behead-industry photos and images of people begging for their lives with masked men standing behind defaming the Holy Koran by holding it up high.
If adults are confused, what are children supposed to be? A friend, a medical professional, wrote me the other day an e-mail in which she said, "We do not need nation-building. We need nation-rebuilding. This is a big, big issue."
Indeed, as long as people such as Al Qassem are not checked, we are in trouble.
Youssef M. Ibrahim , a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. This essay, moved by UPI, a sister news agency of Insight, first appeared in Gulf News.
will Al Jazeera be granted a licence by the CRTC before Fox? wouldn't surprise me at all
thirdEye @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 2:45 pm
vic_ticious vic_ticious:
will Al Jazeera be granted a licence by the CRTC before Fox? wouldn't surprise me at all
It already has been.
Scape @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 3:38 pm
Won't happen. Jewish groups will never let it come to pass because they contest that it is not journalism Al Jazeera will be promoting but giving a platform for ideas of hate. They will then be ably to successfully reject the application under Canadian hate crimes laws even if 99.99% of the reporting is fact checked, with a delay for censors and not allowed prime time broadcast it still will never be allowed in Canada. This issues that are of importance to Al Jazeera are simply too contentious irregardless of their merit.
thirdEye @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 3:50 pm
Avro Avro:
$1:
This would have made more sense in the Star.
and why is that?
Sigh....
thirdEye @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 7:14 pm
Avro Avro:
Well......I'm waiting, tell me why does it not make sense in the Sun again?
Quit twisting my words. I said it would make more sense in the Star...because the Star is a left wing rag suitable for the tired and ridiculous rants of left wing crackpots.
Stop trying to goad me into telling you what you want to hear all the time. I am not going to change my opinions because of some arrogant user on a message board.
thirdEye @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 7:27 pm
Avro Avro:
It would also be sweet Thirdeye if you could please stop picking and choosing what you respond to its kind of irritating. I'm Not trying to be a dick but it is quite vexing.
The award for being the biggest dick while not trying to be a dick goes to....
I will pick and choose whatever I god-damned feel like reponding to, thanks. What is really irritating is your smart-alecky way of trying to trip people up with the things they say, and trying to get them to admit that you are right.
Oh, and by the way, you do the same thing so piss off with your "holier-than-thou" approach to posting.
I'm tired of this argument, because it all just boils down to one's own perception and opinion. I originally just posted a link to a freaking movie with an alternate viewpoint for fuck's sake, it didn't have to turn into the grand inquisition for media and the last word on WMD in Iraq.
Scape @ Wed Sep 29, 2004 8:26 pm
Avro Avro:
$1:
Won't happen. Jewish groups will never let it come to pass because they contest that it is not journalism Al Jazeera will be promoting but giving a platform for ideas of hate. They will then be ably to successfully reject the application under Canadian hate crimes laws even if 99.99% of the reporting is fact checked, with a delay for censors and not allowed prime time broadcast it still will never be allowed in Canada. This issues that are of importance to Al Jazeera are simply too contentious irregardless of their merit.
Oh my
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you telling me that Jews control the media? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO it can't be true. 
Not Jews, laws and in this case they know how to effectively squelch descent. I think that their cause would be more effectively served if they had an international media to present their side on the issues as well, like a radio Israel if you will. Since that is not an option then Al Jazeera must be silenced. Some may argue that the neo-cons are the new Jews and therefor they have all the control but I reject that that for they represent the financial interests but not the culture and are far too elite to represent the common Jew. That, however, is just my interpretation. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories that suggest that Zionists are conspiring to rule the world.