Tally Ho! Gadget sweet.Hotdog red.

Yes, I know that title is something akin to Greek to most readers. Some will actually understand it. Doesn't matter though, it makes about as much sense as the one that appeared in the National Post on Wednesday.

Mark Collins: Canada buys an attack plane for defence

Which then goes on to cherry-pick bits and pieces of information from the US Navy and Royal Navy about how the future employment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter involves First Day Strike operations etc, etc.

Wonderful.

Here's a bit of news for the National Post and the editor who allowed that bit of spoiled milk to seep through.

1. The Canadian Air Force CF-188/CF-18A, acquired by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau, is actually the F/A-18A, a strike aircraft, originally designed and built for the US Navy. The "A" part of F/A designates it as an attack aircraft.

2. The giveaway, (if there was ever a need for one), is in the public nomenclature of the F-35. It's in the shiny brochures and everything: Joint Strike Fighter, just in case people were confused about what "JSF" actually meant.

This is in no way intended to approve or condemn the proposed purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But Collins missed the mark, if he actually had one, by a Saskatchewan section. Whatever is chosen to replace our current multi-role combat aircraft should also be a multi-role combat aircraft.

There is amusement in the comments section to the Natty Post article where he is roundly thrashed by those who would call him a liberal.

Maybe Kelly McParland has an agenda of which we are not aware.

As an added bonus... Collins authoritatively goes on to tell us about the radar suite of a TU-95H. Cool! How about if he gives us the EW and ECM capabilities while he's at it. OK. Maybe just the PRF of their targeting radar.

Canwest, Natty Post, CBC ... and Goldman Sachs

Canada's largest media company, Canwest Global Communications, aka AsperMedia, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday in a deal that essentially would hand control to its US creditors :

"Canwest reached a deal with a key group of lenders - mainly U.S. and foreign distressed funds that own most of the company's bonds - which will give them control of most of the restructured media company. Current shareholders would own just 2.3 per cent of the shares of the new Canwest, effectively wiping out most of their value."

The filing covers Global TV and the National Post but thus far not Canwest LP - Canwest's major daily newspapers across Canada - or its 15 money-making tv specialty channels whose profit rose 41% to $53-million in the most recent quarter over last year.

In January 2007, Goldman Sachs - this Goldman Sachs - bankrolled 64% of Leonard Asper's purchase of of 13 Alliance Atlantis specialty TV channels :

"a level far above Canadian foreign media ownership limits. However the CRTC approved the deal after the partners persuaded it that Canwest - not its giant Wall Street financial partner - would have effective operating control of the TV channels."

On the other hand, as the G&M Investor blog Streetwise reported yesterday (italics mine):

"Financiers working with Goldman said that over the past year, the investment bank put forward programming ideas for the TV networks, and offered strategic advice on restructuring, but was ignored by CanWest management and its creditors.

One concept that’s been tossed around, but couldn’t move forward until CanWest recapitalization was set, would see Goldman Sachs provide programming and financial support to the conventional television network as part of a larger deal that reworks the entire ownership structure to more closely align all the TV holdings.

There are three hedge funds driving the CanWest restructuring, and two of them are U.S. money managers: GoldenTree Asset Management, Beach Point Capital Management, along with Toronto-based West Face Capital Inc. ... These funds are also Goldman Sachs clients."

So, CRTC, you still good with this?
Goldman Sachs was not supposed to interfere with the programming of the Food Network but now expects to "provide programming and financial support" to local TV news stations?

More complications : The National Post - which never misses a chance to slag the CBC - and the CBC are now sharing content :

"The Post [will] republish CBC sports stories in the online National Post and sometimes in the newspaper. The CBC will run daily financial stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in cbc.ca’s Money section."

Translation : the publicly funded CBC will move further right as promised to run corporate news daily, while the privately owned Natty Post will now be partly funded by our tax dollars.

And those remaining 12 national and 26 community Canwest papers?
Paul Godfrey, CEO of the National Post, says he has found backers for a buyout of them.

Who will own what we think now?

Cross-posted at Creekside

The National Post is having another one of its "Iran Eyes Badges for Jews" moments

You remember that one, no?

This time round the headline goes : Toronto Pride organizers ban anti-Zionist group
By Joseph Brean, National Post (excerpted)

"Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), an anti-Zionist protest group that made corporate sponsors squirm by flying banners at last year’s Toronto Pride parade, has been banned this year, along with any other group that would advance a political agenda.

“We will be very much more careful this year. We will make sure that we have a presence to ensure that people don’t slip into the parade,” Pride Toronto executive director Tracey Sandilands said today.
Her announcement came with a warning to grand marshall El-Farouk Khaki not to use his ceremonial position as a pulpit to promote an anti-Israeli boycott.

Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B’nai Brith Canada, today called for disciplinary action against Mr. Khaki, a founder of the national support group Salaam: Queer Muslim Community, because he spoke to a QuAIA event on the weekend."

Yeah, whatever, Frank.

But what's this? In the comments section below the NaPo article, Pride Co-Chair Mark Singh shows up :

"In response to concerns about political messaging in the Pride Parade, Pride Toronto released a statement outlining its position on this issue. This article incorrectly claims that Pride Toronto has banned political messages from the Pride Parade."

followed a few comments further on by a letter copied from Pride director Tracey Sandilands, source of the quotes for NaPo mischief :

"WE WILL NOT BE TAKING SIDES IN ANY POLITICAL ISSUE AND WILL NOT BE BANNING ANY GROUP that participates within the boundaries of the laws of Canada and our anti-discrimination policy.
Also, at no time in our interview did I say anything about ‘warning' El Farouk.

I would appreciate it if you could amend this before final publication.
Regards
Tracey Sandilands,
Executive Director

Well that would seem clear enough.
However, undaunted by requests from both a Pride Co-Chair and the Pride director he interviewed that his bogus article be fixed - not to mention the picture gracing the front page of the Pride Toronto website clearing showing the "End Israeli Apartheid" banner - NaPo reporter Joseph Brean replies in his own comment section that he stands by his article :

"I am the author of this article. It was my decision, approved by editors, to use the term "ban" to mean that QuAIA, which marched in last year's parade, will not be permitted to do so this year. [snip]
Anonymous accusations that this article, which presents comment from people on all sides of this issue, is "false" and that I am "intentionally spreading lies" are silly and wrong."

So there you have it - accusations from the source of his article that said article is "false" are "silly and wrong".

Well done, NaPo. Some traditions die hard, don't they?
Bring on the Transparent Badges for Atheists !

h/t Rabble, Mycroft in comments at the NaPo article, and the divine Ms Z posting at BreadnRoses, who promises a column on this at The Star tomorrow..

Cross-posted at Creekside

Update : From Antonia Zerbisias column today, as promised.

"So it's pretty rich when the language of gay oppression is used against Toronto's Pride parade, to be held June 28, by another group that purports to champion human rights. Especially a group that is openly aligned with anti-gay rights Christian fundamentalists such as Charles McVety, Canada's most vocal lobbyist against same-sex marriage, and John Hagee, who claimed God sent Hurricane Katrina to stop "a homosexual parade."

This is what happened last week when B'nai Brith issued a news release asserting that the gay community's "agenda" was being "hijacked by anti-Israel agitators."

Napo appears to have got caught carrying some editorial water for Dimant. Somehow I suspect this is not over.

Vatican cardinal : Gaza "a big concentration camp"

Reuters : "Pope Benedict's point man for justice and peace issues on Wednesday issued the Vatican's toughest criticism of Israel since the latest Mideast crisis began, calling Gaza a "big concentration camp".

NYTimes : "The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered “shocking” scenes — including small children next to their mothers’ corpses — when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza battered by Israeli shelling.

The statement said a team of four Palestine Red Crescent ambulances accompanied by Red Cross representatives made its way to Zeitoun Wednesday where it "found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all, there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses.

In response, the Israeli military did not comment directly on the allegation. In a statement, it accused Hamas, its foe in Gaza, of deliberately using "Palestinian civilians as human shields" and said the Israeli Army "works in close cooperation with international aid organizations during the fighting so that civilians can be provided with assistance. "

Presumably this "close cooperation" began just yesterday, the first time the Red Cross was allowed access.
"Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do."


"....an eye for an eyelash..."

Meanwhile, over at the National Post, Kelly McParland happily quotes Jason Cherniak, "President of Liblogs, a site that aggregates blogs from writers identifying themselves as Liberals", who gives us a short history of Gaza in which Israel is astonishingly blameless.
I will refute each of Mr. Cherniak's remarks with those of someone much more expert than myself : Avi Shlaim, "Oxford Professor of International Relations who served in the Israeli army", writing in yesterday's Guardian . I urge you however to read Prof. Shlaim's short history in its entirety.

Cherniak : "In the summer of 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza. This was a complete and total withdrawal, where even settlers whose families had lived in Gaza for decades were withdrawn to Israel. It was everything the world had ever asked from Israel as far as the Gaza strip was concerned. Israel showed nothing but restraint from the summer of 2005 until December 2008 in its relations with the people of Gaza."
Shlaim : "The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children."

Cherniak : "Eventually, by June 2008, Israel was able to negotiate a cease fire with Hamas, the “State of Calm Agreement”, brokered by Egypt. That agreement fell apart in December 2008 when Hamas once again began attacking Israel with rockets imported from Syria and Iran."
Shlaim : "It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men."

Cherniak : People need to "demand that governments around the world start to take action to save the people of Gaza from their own elected government[Hamas]."
Shlaim : "The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood."

Shlaim writes that Gaza is "an open air prison".
This morning "Israel warned thousands of people in the Rafah zone on the Egyptian border to leave their houses ahead of planned air raids on Thursday."You have until 8am [06:00 GMT]," said leaflets which were dropped by the Israeli military."

Where are they to go for safety? Certainly not UN buildings or schools.

So which description do you personally prefer, Mr. Cherniak : "concentration camp" from the Vatican or "open air prison" from the Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford ?

Cross-posted at Creekside

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