Tag Archives: Ezra Levant

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

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It should have been a quiet week for Rachel Notley. We are still in the post holiday doldrums and the next legislative session is still weeks away as Notley keeps deferring it in hopes of building a functional caucus. The last session was an utter disaster and I can understand why Notley wants to hide from the next one even if I don’t agree with or respect the deferral.

A cuddly press conference was scheduled for today where the latest baby born of an MLA was to be showcased. People were expected to ooh and ahh and be distracted from Notley’s dismal and  plummeting support numbers.

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Instead of riding out a quiet week though, Notley chose to open up a media shitstorm upon herself. Over the last few weeks Notley’s government has been rather thuggishly kicking journalists from Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media out of government media events.

 

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Many media personalities don’t get along. They are heavily competitive and they have views that range on all sides of the ideological spectrum. It is tough to get a media consensus on pretty much any issue. One thing that will always get the media inflamed and cause them to circle the wagons though is when the heavy hand of government drops on one of their own. Media members and other pundits were mortified as an unapologetic Notley Comms person declared that Levant is not a journalist (nor apparently are any of the staff in his organization) and that they would no longer allow journalists from his outlet into their press functions.

While many in the media have little use for Levant and they have chafed under his constant attacks on what he calls “the media party”, they still recognize him even if grudgingly as a journalist. They saw his ouster as being a threat to journalistic freedom. The slippery slope was evident and the members of the “media party” rallied and decried Notley’s move.

Notley’s communications department is hopelessly inept but even they realized that enraging the majority of the media is not a good idea. In a panic, they sought out an expert in the issue and dropped the matter onto her lap.  They had taken a small issue and made it big again.

Still ever stubborn and petty, the Notley government refused to let Rebel Media into their events until a review was conducted. In considering how long their royalty review took, that suspension of journalistic freedom could have been pretty long.

By today it looks like expert advice prevailed and Rebel Media is now allowed back into government pressers. I suspect that the advice given to Notley and Oates was along the lines of “Look you idiots, you are losing this dearly. Let them back in before it gets even worse!”

Now things are back to how they were and a review is pending. We have to now ask though, what is the problem? Why is there a review? Should there not be a problem to address before spending tax dollars to seek a solution?

The only problem that can be seen is that Levant’s Rebel Media was pissing off the government. They were not disruptive in conferences and we have seen no evidence that other web based media has been either.

The Legislature rotunda is not running out of room and pressers are not being overwhelmed with small market journalists. Again, what is the problem?

There has only been one problem and that has been the Notley government infringing on journalistic freedom. Notley created that problem and in backing off it is solved. There is nothing that needs fixing.

As funds get wasted on a review for a non-issue, I do hope that some messaging got through into the dense minds of the Notley administration. Leave the damned press alone!

Notley would be a fool to come up with some sort of strict regulatory press policy after having endured this public relations nightmare. Of course, she hasn’t proven terribly bright on these issues so far so little would surprise me.

The problem we have today is an inept government with a thin skin. They need to look within to solve that problem rather than try to stunt open coverage of their actions.

Sometimes things are best left alone. I wonder if and when the Notley government will begin to understand this simple lesson.

 

Ezra Levant demonstrates the depth of environmental demonstrators.

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Yes, Ezra can be pretty bombastic and likes to work things up. In his going to these protests and covering just what those people are about though he is providing a good service to us all.

The usual coverage we see from media attending protests will be short interviews with the paid protest leaders who will fire out some short, canned statements as they have been trained. A person really needs to get on the ground with the fools who fill the ranks at these protests to see just how vapid and empty these protests really are.

I certainly learned first hand how pointless the entire “occupy” movement was in my regular visits on their illegal squatting encampment in a Calgary city park. The sights, sounds and yes indeed even smells of these protests really to have to be personally experienced to be fully appreciated.

Most people have no interest in going to check on these ragtag collections of union-organized, professional malcontents and I really don’t blame them. The next best thing a person can do though is look at interviews and coverage such as what Ezra has provided in his work yesterday. It really is worth a watch.

The truth is stranger than fiction with these people.

The power of social media.

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While I am prone to using thousands of words in a posting to get an idea out there, Amanda Achtman managed to cut the Redford Progressive Conservatives right to the core with a catchy and funny parody video that is less than two minutes long.

In light of Redford’s plummeting support and incredible budget deficit despite such a strong local economy, many many people are wondering just what happened to the party that they used to support.

People are abandoning the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta in droves as they simply really don’t know what the party even stands for anymore. Amanda drove that home excellently in her little video and it is going viral. It is an awesome example of a small grassroots effort making a strong impression on thousands. Proper use of social media can be very politically powerful.

Improper use of social media can be politically devastating. The Redford government see’s their lack of popular presence in the social media world (due to a lack of real grassroots support) so they have hired a cadre of leftover comms staffers from other provinces in a desperate hope of swinging online views. As with most of Redford’s efforts this has been a failure and the flood of tweets and such from her paid gang is really not taken terribly seriously by most.

Never ones to let a small irritation remain small, the Progressive Conservative twitter bunch thought that the best course of action would be to collectively report Amanda Achtman’s twitter account for spamming. This in effect leads to an account being temporarily suspended while they confirm that Amanda indeed was not spamming (and she wasn’t).

The foolish effort above of course then turned Achtman into an online grassroots martyr leading to radio and television coverage of the video. At times I swear the Redford gang will cross a street just to purposely step into a pile of dog crap.

Below is a link to Amanda Achtman on the Source with Ezra Levant discussing the issue.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/some-party-that-i-used-to-know/2297143795001

Good work Amanda. I hope we see more efforts such as your video from both you and others. It helps broaden political discourse for us all and as has been seen, it helps expose where the real extremists are.

Video captures the true essence of “Idle No More”

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Yesterday around a hundred hipsters and other assorted union-paid layabouts decided to march to the Sun Media building in Toronto to protest against free press in Canada. This unvarnished ten minute video really does show the “Idle No More” clearly for what it is from the gross idiocy, to the intimidation attempts on Ezra Levant as he tried unsuccessfully to get simple questions asked to the fact that natives among the group are actually a tiny minority.

“Idle No More” hasn’t been a native rights group almost since it’s inception. Many media outlets love showcasing the handful of actual natives at the front of demonstrations while neglecting to film the collection of white, urban-dwelling hipsters making up the bulk of the demonstration in the back rows. These union backed idiots with their baseless cause and vapid accusations are the same fools we had to kick out of Canadian parks at great expense last year. Now they are just hiding behind a few natives.

Don’t just take my word for it though, watch the video below and see for yourself.

 

At the 8:40 mark watch as a person almost criminally tries to physically intimidate Levant causing police to intervene and move Levant aside. At the 10:00 mark watch the gross and blatant anti-Semitism erupt from a nut. Watching the entire video really is a must though as it says so much about the entire “movement”.

The video above is what it is all about people. Directionless ire and rage being perpetuated by directionless fools.

There are some real native issues that Canada needs to address. This won’t happen through the fools with “Idle No More” and their bloated fake hunger striking Queen Theresa Spence however.

Credit and thanks to BlogWrath for heading out there to give us this video.

Adding a screen cap from the official “Idle No More” official page. The posting had been up for over an hour at the time of this posting.

Why is the anti-Semitism surfacing so strongly among a Native movement?

I’m sorry!

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Did my blog heading make you feel better? Sure, I haven’t stated what I am apologizing for but the words alone should make a person feel better upon receiving them right? The reason for the apology means nothing and the sincerity of the apology really doesn’t matter if one is to believe those chronically aggrieved people who’s thin-skin gets ruptured at the slightest hint of being exposed to something offensive. Those aforementioned people will invariably howl and yelp whenever they feel that their feelings (or the feelings of somebody else) have been hurt and will demand that the offender be forced to apologize.

Really people, what is a forced apology worth to you? The muttered “I’m sorry” dropped out by a person who clearly is not sorry in the least really means absolutely nothing so people should quit demanding these damned apologies at the drop of a hat. When those kangaroo courts that we call “human rights commissions” add forced apologies to the other punishments that they have laid upon a person who they have deemed offensive, does the forced apology reverse the damage? Is the person who was made to say the words of apology under duress any less likely to harbor offensive feelings?

Here is a recent situation that is stupid on many many levels. While in California a couple members of the Australian Olympic swimming team dared to visit a gun shop and have pictures taken of themselves while holding some perfectly legal firearms in a non-threatening way. Now not only will these guys be forced to leave the Olympic games in London early and not only are they banned from social media use, the swimmers were forced to apologize. Do you really think for a second that those two young men are sorry that they somehow offended some pant-pissing fanatical anti-gun zealots by doing something totally legal and non-offensive to the sane world? Do you think that these guys really feel badly for the hypersenstive assholes who have managed to ruin the once in a lifetime Olympic appearance that the swimmers have been training for for years? These poor athletes are not sorry in the least and their having being forced to apologize is simply a last humiliating punitive action taken by an overly empowered group of the politically correct.

Australia has an Olympic shooting team by the way. Lets hope that none of their team members is photographed while training or something.

Here in Alberta, we still have the blessed CBC harping on about how Danielle Smith still refuses to apologize for a blog posting made by a former Wildrose Party candidate years ago. I think Hunpserger’s blog posting was offensive myself but I don’t think it is Smith’s job to apologize for it. Danielle Smith’s apology would not make Hunsperger’s blog posting any less offensive and we damn well know it would not sooth any of the feelings that Hunsperger hurt so why is the CBC still on this post electoral witchhunt anyway? The only one who should apologize for the views held by Alan Hunsperger is Alan Hunsperger and here is the part that is so important yet apparently lost on so many: Alan Hunsperger should only apologize if he sincerly is sorry for having held that view! There is simply no point in forcing Hunsperger to state words of apology if he doesn’t mean it.

Last year Ezra Levant dared to utter the Spanish expletive: “Chinga tu madre” on his show on the Sun News Network. Apparently this offended some people like English speaking, union-employed blogger David Climenhaga who sent a complaint to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. No Spanish speaking folks have been found prostrate and sobbing in offense to Ezra’s statement but the CBSC feels that a forced apology by Levant and the network is called for. Thankfully Ezra is not taking this quietly (as usual) and in his beligerant response to the CBSC he is proving excellently just how worthless forced apologies are. Would Levant’s actual uttering of the words “I’m sorry” make the hurt go away for anybody (assuming somebody was found to have been hurt)?

Apologies have merit and value in many situations. An apology will only be worth something though if the person making the apology is genuinely sorry. If anything, forced apologies cheapen sincere ones and bring the merit of them into question. Our society needs a thicker skin, an ability to change a channel and needs to lose this idiotic obsession of demanding apologies from people who simply are not sorry.

Perhaps down the road some pendejo is going to take offense to something I say or write. Perhaps that flake will actually manage to find some government body that could force an apology from me as HRCs often do in their kangaroo courts. Should that day come to pass, I do hope that the fool demanding my apology sees this blog post to truly understand just how heartfelt my hypothetical apology would be.

For your viewing pleasure.

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 A few weeks ago, Ezra Levant was one of three panelists debating Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act at a function hosted by the Canadian Association of Journalists. Liberal MP Keith Martin was one of the other panelists as well as Ian Fine (relation to Larry Fine perhaps?) from the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

 It was good to see Fine actually appear at something like this as it was certain to be a hot-seat. Journalists in Canada are rather concerned about the chilling effect that the latest onslaught of frivolous human rights complaints against major media outlets in Canada by Islamic radicals and the debate was sure to be rather rough on Fine. I suspect that Fine regrets having appeared at the function now. Had Fine been able to defend the behaviour of the CHRC with fact he could have come out of this. Sadly, Fine resorted to fabrication and distortion. I guess this is not surprising from an organization that has been selectively deleting incriminating sections of transcripts of hearings that are relevant to the RCMP investigation of their corruption.

 Ezra Levant was well prepared and countered Fine every time he was fibbing at the microphone (which was rather constant) and the bulk of the debate was some shaky damage control efforts on Fine’s part. Personally I think Ezra was a little over the top in his approach, but he certainly had well researched fact behind his every point.

 The entire debate is close to 1 1/2 hours and CPAC has it in it’s entirety here. 

 As that is longer than many would like to sit at a computer watching a video, Richard at No-Libs kindly condensed the debate to it’s most relevant points in an 8 minute version. The video was initially hosted at Youtube and had a great deal of viewings. Shortly after it having been placed up, the video was pulled as Youtube had apparently pulled the video as they had been advised of a defamation action related to it.

 I don’t really blame Youtube for this. They have to cover their butts and do not want to get caught in the middle of every legal wrangling that comes from posted videos. When they get such complaints, they err on the side of safety. The question is, who complained? How could a condensed version of Ian Fine’s own words be defamation? If anything, the foolish thug simply defamed himself.

 The efforts on the part of the CHRC and it’s handful of anti-speech defenders to hide facts and keep debate from the public eye and are pretty telling in themselves. It is nothing less than disgusting that our tax-dollars are paying these people.

 Well, the internet is much more than YouTube alone and the video has travelled elsewhere. The cheap censorship efforts of the CHRC and ilk such as Richard Warman are failing. Richard has assured us that the video will be hosted in perpetuity wherever such videos may be hosted.

 I strongly recommend that those who have not seen this video watch it now and spread the word. Let these censors know that the more they try to shut down open-debate, the louder the debate will get.

 

 The pitch on this issue is heating up daily as the rats scurry around their sinking CHRC ship trying to patch the holes on their corrupted vessel.