It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
One of the funny unintended consequences of the article below is the RONA ads which play on the CFL games, which show an American football field instead of a Canadian one. You can tell from the hash marks.
And some sponsorship experts say the CFL may be risking more than it realizes by selling Grey Cup naming rights.
After their 1953 inception, the league's most valuable player awards were called the Schenleys until 1989, when sponsor Schenley Canada Inc. cut its ties to the league. The awards have had multiple sponsors since but are no longer as well known. "The league has to ask itself, at what price do you sell your soul?" said Stellick. "The Grey Cup really is the soul of that league."
The more serious consequences are that a regulation that benefits the bank accounts of broadcasters does nothing for Canadian production. And of course the usual suspects will cry for the elimination of the CRTC because of this.
Such provisions were initially contemplated to give Canadian networks revenue that could be used to fund Canadian productions, including news, drama and comedies. But the report argues simulcasting has instead created overwhelming financial incentives to run U.S. programs in prime-time, since the networks can earn more ad revenue from American shows, which draw much higher ratings.
As a result, Canadian content is being marginalized to Friday and Saturday nights, or to the summer, when audiences are smaller. The report doesn't suggest killing simulcast rights, but the authors wonder if networks should be required to show a certain amount of domestic programs on weeknights.
"It's a great example of an unintended consequence of a regulation," Mr. Dunbar said in an interview. "We have all kinds of incentives for producing Canadian content, all kinds of subsidies for producing Canadian content, and then it's not really getting shown at a time when Canadians are watching television in large numbers. ...We are not saying abolish the rule.
The loonie has drawn the positive attention of some American's. The folks who normally pay little attention to their northern neighbours, being more concerned with their relations in Mexico.
However in the comments section of this item on global oil prices in the Houston Chronicle I found this;
Canadian money is worth the same as the dollar right now, and people are predicting it will get stronger due to their strong economy. Universal health care. Lower crime. Hmmm, what are they doing right?
The headline on the cover of the October 1 issue of Maclean's, Canada's leading newsmagazine, reads: "How Bush Became the New Saddam." The cover story to which it refers, penned by reporter Patrick Graham, summarizes "the brutal realities and strange alliances of the desperate U.S. mission" in Iraq.
The U.S. media is creating a storm of sturm and drang about the Iranian Presidents visit to the U.S. and his debate at Columbia.
Turning Ahmadinejad into Public Enemy No. 1 Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial is all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war.
There was joy in mudville when NYC cops, NY Port Authority and firemen rejected his attempt to place a wreath from the Iranian people at the WTC memorial. Though they probably would have objected to former mayor and Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giulianidoing it as well, something the media did not point out in there stories.
Mr. Ahmadinejad (whose government is, according to the State Department, one of the world's leading state sponsors of terror) was rebuffed in his attempt to visit "Ground Zero," where the World Trade Center towers were destroyed on September 11. That decision was certainly appropriate. While a New York City Police Department spokesman tersely cited "security reasons" for rebuffing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the real reason why he is being kept away is the eminently justified moral outrage of the American public. To permit a man whose government funnels hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Hezbollah and Hamas, who is providing weapons to Iraqi Shi'ite militias and Sunni insurgents that are being used to kill and maim American soldiers; who has given refuge to al Qaeda terrorists; and who is funneling weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan to visit Ground Zero would be an obscenity. This would be spitting on the graves of thousands of innocents murdered six years ago by the jihadists who are Mr. Ahmadinejad's ideological soulmates.
It seems they seem to have confused Iran with Saudi Arabia. None of the hijackers were Iranian. They were Saudi's, whom the U.S. still maintains as a bulwark Sunni State against Iran and the Iraqi Shia. And al-Qaeda has not been linked to Iran except in the imaginations and wishful thinking of the American right.
They deliberately overlook the fact that the Iranian people mourned with America after 9/11.
That the U.S. media and the White House rejected even this symbolic overture shows just how intolerant and stupid they are. At least some conservative pundits got it but of course they were on liberal PBS.
As John McLaughlin took pains to point out it is not up to local cops, municipal service employees, or even state governments to determine international protocol that is a federal government responsibility one Bush shoved off onto New Yorkers.
He asks pointedly what right thinking states rights conservative would allow such a violation of that much honoured principle of American federalism. Should the case be reversed they would be outraged.
Further the disinformation machine of the American empire has been working overtime attempting to paint Iran as America's next big enemy. Even on the eve of the Iranian Presidents visit to the UN the U.S. military makes sure Iran stays in the headlines.
The media and right wing pundits have further painted Ahmadinejad as a Hitler and a Madman. Terms that dehumanize him and of course make him a target of American wrath and loathing.
A group of about 40 elected officials and civic leaders gathered on Sunday outside Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad was scheduled to speak on Monday.
Some carried placards with slogans such as "Don't give a platform to hate" and "Go to hell" while denouncing Ahmadinejad as a "Hitler wannabe" and a Holocaust denier.
"There is no excuse to invite this madman, this little Hitler," Dov Hikind, a New York state assemblyman, said.
Something they can't do with Osama bin Laden the real object of their hate, because, well he ain't addressing the U.N. and they can't find him. The worry here, and I think it is a serious one, should be; how secure is President Ahmadinejad in visiting New York?
By dehumanizing Ahmadinejad and making him the target of their wrath, he becomes an actual target when he lands on American soil today.
With all the right wing gun toting nut bars in the U.S. who have a penchant for assassination of presidents, rock stars, mass shootings in schools, workplaces, restaurants, and bombing of government buildings, I think there is a potential threat to the President of Iran.
With the jingoist media and right wing pundits and bloggers whipping up hysteria about his visit it leaves an opening for a self righteous self deluded nut to try and take him out. After all it happened to both Kennedy's and this is New York where Lennon was killed.
America is not a secure nation. It is a country of gun nuts. And many of those gun nuts have a simplistic right wing ideology; America right or wrong. And they believe America has the right to attack its enemies, and they believe a preemptive strike is self defense.
If some nut would take out his classmates for his feeling isolated on campus, what chance is there some fan of Fred Thompson or Joe Lieberman or heck even Glen Beck might decide to eliminate the world of this threat to America.
From their comments and those of their ilk they would probably applaud such an act.
The White House has set up all the conditions for war with Iran, the assassination or attempted assassination of Ahmadinejad would assure them of that wish.
In the run-up to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United Nations in New York next week, the Iran-bashing sentiment in the US media has escalated to new, unprecedented levels, with presidential hopefuls such as former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, adding fuel to the fire with their increasingly incendiary rhetoric against Iran.
Thus, whereas Romney has written to the UN requesting Ahmadinejad's arrest on arriving on US soil, citing the Geneva Conventions, Giuliani has used his European tour to second the warmongering sentiment of French leaders, promising to set Iran back "five to 10 years" if it refuses to comply with demands that it suspend uranium-enrichment activities.
And as for the US media, in their seemingly stiff competition on who will win the Iran-bashing trophy, New York's Daily News was the winner, with its full-front-page photo of Ahmadinejad circled in red with the accompanying write-up that he should "go to hell" for daring to request a visit to the former site of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in New York known as Ground Zero. [1] Another New York daily, Newsday, has been equally venomous, referring to Ahmadinejad as a "madman".
Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary.
While the U.S. government might want to look at Blackwater instead of Iranfor weapons smuggling into Iraq. Oh yes and ask them about the tons of missing weapons that they were supposed to be guarding.
Feds probe whether Blackwater smuggled weapons into Iraq: Federal prosecutors are investigating whether employees of the private security firm Blackwater USA illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that may have been sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, officials said Friday.
File this under oops we spoke to soon.
Iraq says won't move to expel Blackwater: "If we drive out or expel this company immediately there will be a security vacuum that will demand pulling some troops that work in the field so that we can protect these institutes," spokesman Tahseen al-Sheikhly, speaking through an interpreter, told a news conference.
