A tip o' the blog to My Blahg.The television ads, which began airing Monday, use footage from last fall's Liberal leadership debates to deliver the message that the new Grit leader is weak, indecisive and an environmental failure.
But that footage belongs to a consortium of TV networks which pooled their resources to provide live coverage of the debates. The Cable Public Affairs Channel provided the pool camera for each debate.
The networks are now looking into how the Conservatives obtained the debate footage for their ads.
Van Dusen said he is not aware of any request by the Tory party to buy or use any portion of the debate videos.
"It would come through me and I certainly don't remember ever getting a request," he said, adding that he "would've said no" if he had received a request.
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The running joke among many Afghanistan is not whether you'll be given a shakedown when passing through a checkpoint, but how much will be extorted from you. There have been reports, near the village of Senjaray, that the roadblocks are run by uniformed Afghan National Police officers - something that sullies the force's already blackened reputation. Irritated citizens also claim a powerful, former militia commander-turned local politician is behind the racket. "Like everything else, people will say the governor is corrupt; OK show me," said Lt.-Col. Simon Heatherington, whose assignment ended Monday. "It's like saying (in Canada) the prime minister is corrupt; OK show me.
Seems he forgot about the Gomery Commission....And its not like there isn't plenty of evidence of corruption....
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Contrary to what the spin masters would have us believe, not all pensioners are opposed to the government's decision to tax trusts. The National Pensioners & Senior Citizens Federation, which speaks on Thursday, supports Flaherty's decision. Its 450 chapters and clubs represent a million seniors and pensioners, including the 300,000 members of the United Senior Citizens of Ontario.Even before the Halloween decision came down, the NPSCF was concerned about "income trusts being sold to seniors on the basis of cash yields that are inaccurate, inflated and misleading."
What the Liberals should have done and didn't and what the Conservatives promised not to do, but did, affected investors, sure, but only a small number of well off seniors. Canadian seniors who have been screwed by Income Trusts should remember the financial term used for these kinds of investment; high risk.
This is not the same kind of rip off seniors in Alberta faced under the Tories in Alberta in the eighties (during the last big boom) when Dial Mortgage Abacus-Cities and Principal Trust collapsed. Those were avoidable and had been backed by the Alberta Treasury Branch as well as the Government. Yet when they collapsed seniors were left holding the bag.
Hasan ibn as-Sabah was thus the original “Old Man of the Mountain,” preceding his namesake Rashid ed-Din Sinan by a hundred years. He also founded a secret religious brotherhood of which he termed himself “grand master” and which aimed, in the words of the Arab historian Philip Hitti, “to emancipate the initiate from the trammels of doctrine and encouraged him to dare all. Below the grand master stood the grand priors.…the lower degree of the order comprised the fida’is, who stood ready to execute whatever orders the grand master issued.” If the word feda’i, or “self-sacrificer,” rings a bell, it should. It’s the singular of “fedayeen,” a term coined by Hasan ibn es-Sabah and widely used in Arabic to this day to describe irregulars fighting for an Arab cause. It’s a favorite of the Palestinians and also had wide currency during the recent fighting in Iraq.
Shiite Cult Aimed to Kill Clerics in Iraqi City Abdul Hussein Abtan, the deputy governor of Najaf province, gave an interview to Iraqi television from the battlefield, saying he was standing next to the dead body of the group’s leader. Mr. Abtan said the dead man had claimed to be the Imam Mahdi — the missing spiritual leader whom many Shiites believe will return someday to restore justice. Mr. Abtan described the movement as “an ideological and military organization with long experience,” and said that its leaders came from outside Iraq. He said it was relatively small, but had rallied a large group of “naïve people” over the past two days by proclaiming the return of the Imam Mahdi.This incident reminded me of the slaughter of the indigenous native resistance movement in North America known as the Ghost Dance.
They said the group, calling itself the Mahdawiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.The fighting around Najaf centered on a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad. The village is alongside a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the officials said.
The clash appeared to be one of the deadliest battles in Iraq since the American-led invasion four years ago, and it was the first major fight for Iraqi forces in Najaf Province since they took over control of security there from the Americans in December.
Cult leader and 200 others killed: Iraqi officialsNearly 400 people were in Iraqi army custody and 250 were killed, an Iraqi military source said. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh put the number of dead at 150 to 200.
There had been women and children in the camp but it was not clear how many were among the casualties, National Security Minister Shirwan al-Waeli told Reuters.
"One of the signs of the coming of the Mahdi was to be the killing of the Ulema (clerical hierarchy) in Najaf," "He claimed to be the Mahdi," Waeli said of the cult's leader, adding that he had used the full name Mahdi bin Ali bin Ali bin Abi Taleb, claiming descent from the Prophet Mohammad.
Among previous violent instances of people saying they are the Mahdi were an opposition movement to British imperial forces in Sudan in the 1880s and a group of several hundred, including women, that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.
The Sioux began performing the ghost dance in 1890 after large herds of buffalo had been killed off.
They believed this magical dance would bring back the buffalo and eliminate their white enemies.
But white Americans became frightened of the ghost dance and demanded protection, leading to the Wounded Knee.In early October of 1890, Kicking Bear, a Minneconjou, visited Sitting Bull at Standing Rock. He told him of the visit he and his brother-in-law, Short Bull, had made to Nevada to visit Wovoka. They told him of the great number of other Indians who were there as well. They referred to Wovoka as the Christ and told of the Ghost Dance that they had learned and the way that the Christ had flown over them on their horseback ride back to the railroad tracks, teaching them Ghost Dance songs. And they told him of the phophecy that, next spring, when the grass was high, the earth would be covered with new soil, burying all the white men.The new soil would be covered with sweet grass, running water and trees; the great herds of buffalo and wild horses would return. All Indians who danced the Ghost Dance would be taken up into the air and suspended there while the new earth was being laid down. Then they would be replaced there, with the ghosts of their ancestors, on the new earth. Only Indians would live there then.
This new religion was being taught at all of the Sioux reservations now. Big Foot's band, which consisted mostly of women who had lost their husbands and/or other male relatives in battles with Custer, Miles and Crook, would dance until they collapsed, hoping to guarantee the return of their dead warriors. Sitting Bull greatly doubted that the dead would be be brought back to life. He had no personal objections to people dancing the Ghost Dance; however he had heard that the agents were getting nervous about all of the dancing and were calling in the soldiers on some reservations. He did not want the soldiers to return to kill more of his people. Kicking BearGhost Dance shirts, painted with magic symbols, the soldiers bullets would not strike them. Sitting Bull consented to Kicking Bear remaining at Standing Rock and teaching the Ghost Dance.
this year's Super Bowl commercials add a new twist --One of the biggest new themes of this year's game is getting amateurs into the act.
And so that is why these ads will fit right in.....
Liberals Will Be Attacked By Conservatives During Superbowl
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While those reviews have focused chiefly on Vista's new functionality, for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print." Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.
The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user.
Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge. During the installation process, users "activate" Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft
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Among other practices cited at Thursday’s hearing:
_Some credit card issuers use a billing method that charges interest on credit card debt already paid by the consumer.
_The massive solicitations mailed to consumers _ an estimated 6 billion in 2005 _ and targeting of college students and the elderly.
Gee I thought the Conservatives represented all the Western Farmers.....
"I think if we lose the wheat board, we're going to lose a lot of income," said Larsen, who held up a pro-wheat board placard.
"I don't like the way (federal Agriculture Minister) Chuck Strahl has put forward such a manipulative and dishonest question on the barley plebiscite."
Stewart Wells, president of the National Farmers Union, got a loud ovation at the rally as he accused the federal Conservatives of being underhanded in their attempt to end the wheat board's marketing monopoly."We've had this endless stream of dirty tricks and manipulation and the gag orders and the firings," Wells told the cheering crowd. "For the first time in my life, I'm actually afraid for democracy in this country."
Stephen Harper's Conservatives are going to lose farm votes on the Prairies over their ideologically driven assault on the Canadian Wheat Board, says fired Wheat Board boss Adrian Measner.
Measner told reporters yesterday that the Harper minority government will pay for its campaign to end the board's monopoly when it goes to the polls.
"I have talked to a lot of farmers who say they are unhappy with what has happened," he said. "They voted Conservative in the last election, but won't in the next election."
Meanwhile the Harpocrites have failed to pay their own CWB CEO appointee his salary.
THE Canadian Wheat Board will pay its new chief executive officer just as soon as the Harper government enters discussions on what the president's salary should be, says a Manitoba farm leader."I think (Agriculture Minister Chuck) Strahl has led people to believe we're unwilling to pay our CEO, which is not true," said Bill Toews, one of two farmer-elected board members from Manitoba.
New wheat board CEO Greg Arason has not been paid in five weeks, ever since Strahl fired Adrian Measner and appointed Arason without consulting the board.
Hey Bill Toews wouldn't be related to Vic Toews would he?
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Wheat BoardRussian and foreign press comments on the recent meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The official meeting between the two leaders started with Putin’s request to say hello to Israeli President Moshe Katsav. Those words became the most unexpected moment of the entire meeting, The Jerusalem Post wrote.
“Say hello to your president. What a strong man! He raped ten women! I never expected that from him! We all envy him,” NEWSru Israel quoted Putin as saying. Mr. Olmert was obviously confused with those remarks. Ehud Olmert said that it is not the right time to envy the Israeli president, who will most likely have to face the trial on rape and sexual abuse charges
This After A Year In Power, Tories Still Tied With Liberals In Polls leads to this; Wary Tories rip Dion in TV ad blitz
