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Bruce Dowbiggin

Snobs & Yobs: How Canadian Media Made Themselves The Convoy Story

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In case you missed it, the most compelling story to emerge from the #Convoy2022 was the disrespect shown to Canada’s media covering the event. Just ask them. While the stalemate dragged on, heart-wrenching stories of reporters scorned and told to “get lost” dominated the feed of the Media Party. One Radio-Canada stalwart was actually shoved live on-air. Gasp.

It was poignant to hear how people supported by government handouts bravely did the jobs reporters have done for ages without complaint. They were the stars of their coverage, and we were going to hear about it. (Right on cue the hapless Toronto media lifted the flag of Press Infallibility, calling the harassment a national disgrace. pace G & M TV critic. )

No one had had the heart to tell the ladies, gentlemen and others of the press before the event that a large portion of the population now dismisses them as mouthpieces for the prime minister and his coterie of WEF followers. Even though their ratings had cratered and their influence disappeared it was business as usual in the minds of CBC, CTV, Global and the titans of the printed word.

They were brave, intrepid warriors wandering like Diogenes, searching for the flickering light of truth amongst the protesters. Doing a dirty job for all the world to see their courage. Even as they carried #PMJT water about swastikas, white power, KKK and national threats they took a bow at their own courage. It’s hard to think how this could be more out of touch, but we’re sure they’ll find a way.

This just in: They hate you. No one cares. Do your job.

Sarcasm aside, the descent of the media’s credibility— already crumbled— plunged faster than the bobsleighs at the Beijing Olympics. They ignored the PM’s salvo against truckers that started the debacle— “‘antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia that we’ve seen in display.’ “— to concentrate their scorn on the horn-honking rabble who came to sully the Glebe, Centretown and Sandy Hill. They were, the words of Andrew Coyne, “Yobs”.

The crisis moment arrived when the police advanced on protesters on Friday. CBC and CTV locked off their cameras to focus solely on the fray. Former police officials from across the nation were deputized as “experts” to cover the clashes. They pronounced the police reluctance to use force— in the words of Liberal MP Mark Gerretson— as the “gold standard”.

Then the damned New York Times broke the spell. The Parnassus to Canadian journalists reported that police had advanced with guns drawn. Immediately CBC grandee Carol Off denounced the Times’ story. Then video appeared showing—oops— a squad of cops arresting a man in a van at gunpoint. The Times then lectured their “see no evil” junior cousins on how to cover a riot. How embarrassing.

Okay, it happens. Anyone can get a story wrong once in a while. But, we were assured by Canadian media, the rest of the police work was impeccable. Sadly, CBC and its colleagues forgot that this is the age of citizen journalists. Despite police attempts to keep prying eyes away from the “battle zone” the police gold-standard myth was exposed by private citizens and Rebel Media.

Footage showed police viciously kneeing and assaulting a Romanian immigrant driver as he lay trapped on the ground (only Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed him). Video showed cops using similar WWE tactics in other parts of the lines. In another segment heavily protected cops shoved a woman and tossed her phone to the ground as they threatened her with arrest.

Most egregious, an indigenous woman, run over in her wheelchair by a formation of mounted police, was taken to hospital for her injuries. (Remember #PMJT said this was a white-power protest) This assault only came to light as a denial of rumours she’d died. Which was made worse when an RCMP private chat room showed Mounties laughing at the woman being ridden over and promising to do the same when called up for duty. With no rebuke from #PMJT.

The point is not did cops have physical encounters with demonstrators. These things happen when cops engage unarmed but unruly demonstrators. The point is the snow job performed by CBC/ CTV/ Global and their colleagues on any of this, instead interviewing and congratulating friendly cops and themselves on escaping danger.

Even after video rebutted the narrative of brave reporters and heroic cops, it was repeated— without media correction— by Liberal MPs in the parliamentary debate the networks ignored for almost three days. Liberals seemed to conflate defiance in the face of @CBCNews / @CTVNews interviewers with assault.

Journalistic assault is reporting the Liberals’ fake stories about swastikas, condo fires, Putin influence, cenotaph clearing and property destruction without corroboration. Or having no recall of previous indigenous blockades of rail lines, the “Occupy” movement in many cities, the never-ending siege of Caledonia, etc. All of which lasted months, not weeks. No ther Convoy was unprecedented.

Media had no curiosity about who was carrying swastikas and Confederate flags among the protesters (anyone interview any of them?)— even after they were kicked out by the demonstrators. Instead the media disgraced itself further when an illegally hacked list of donors to the Convoy was printed by media. The suddenly curious Jimmy Olsens published it, then left no stone unturned to find a lady making a $50 donation in BC.

Make no mistake, the past three weeks were about one thing for MSM journos: covering #PMJT’s fatal error in underestimating the Convoy movement. Everything— enlisting media, inventing alt-right threats, false flags and now martial law— was to protect his leadership and reputation with his globalist cousins.

Example: Did anyone grill him on the real terrorism on the pipeline that weekend? Twenty people with axes? Setting fire to vehicles with people inside them? No? Anyone doing their jobs?

There were some reporters who brooked the urge to go all-in on the narratives. CBC Radio’s Evan Dyer tried to bring perspectives to what’s involved in reporting a riot. David Common kept his cool. And CTV’s Evan Solomon attempted to push back on the size of the threat and ask pointed questions. For the rest, it was demonize the demonstrators, not the PM. Burnish their own halos for surviving an “occupation”.

When you see such Media Party enterprise journalism remember that they’re not writing stories for the public or their bosses or even Trudeau. They’re writing to impress each other. Bragging rights in the morning story meeting is the gold medal. (Just ask Wendy Mesley what happens when you diverge from the party line in story meetings.) Hell, they brag on air about how good they are.

And nothing got bigger props than building up the Liberals now-cancelled Emergencies Act by raking the truckers’ incursion on NIMBY Ottawans. As Kelly McParland of the National Post writes, “The belief that Liberalism is Canada, and any criticism is unCanadian and unacceptable may be the defining quality of this government.”

While Canadian reporters blissfully back-patted each other, their peers outside Canada were less impressed with the comfy-pillow treatment of Trudeau. Here’s the NY Times shooting holes in the media’s demonizing of the truckers’ behaviour: “They have a right to be noisy and even disruptive. Protests are a necessary form of expression in a democratic society, particularly for those whose opinions do not command broad popular support.”

Here’s the Wall Street Journal on Trudeau’s enormous gaffe imposing martial law.. Here’s the Financial Times, the voice of British business, on the faux-Emergency act. “The measures are designed to respond to insurrection, espionage and genuine threats to the Canadian Constitution rather than peaceful protest, no matter how irritating and inconvenient,” Here’s Piers Morgan on Trudeau’s strategy that went unchallenged in his purchased media.

Even the EU took time from its Ukraine threat. Cristian Terhes, a member of the European Parliament, declared that Canada’s prime minister was acting “exactly like a tyrant, a dictator. If you raise doubts about the vaccines, you’re outcast.” Yobs, indeed.

For an independent press this upbraiding of their coverage would be embarrassing. Coming from a press that is fulsomely rewarded by the ruling government it was an existential failure.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Why Canada’s Elites Are Captives To The Kamala Narrative

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“As he closes the election with rank racism, relentless unreality and authoritarian threats, Trump’s popularity among Canadian Conservatives is higher than ever. This seems like it could be a problem”.— Bruce Arthur, Toronto Star 

A problem for whom, Bruce? It’s telling that while 50 percent of Americans see through Kamala Harris and the DEMs coup narrative as complete bushwah, probably 90 percent of Canadians– led by Arthur and the corporate media– lap up this condescending narrative. Their biggest fear remains that the populist revolt against authority in the U.S. might threaten Canada’s elite class. Like Toronto Star squishy columnists.

In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”

The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.

The northern pecksniffs have loads of insanity to work with as Trump seemingly edges ahead in polls. There’s the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the shrieking disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.

Then there’s Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Forget that Trump did nothing of the sort when he was president from 2016-2020. It’s every hysteric for himself as Nov. 5 looms. Their biggest fear? Those who vilified Trump the past decade will be out of the power loop for at least four years— or longer if VP candidate J.D. Vance extends the Trump revolution. It’s panic time.

Picked up on by those fearing their place in the Canadian power grid might fall next. The disdainful cheers from Arthur and Andrew Coyne and the CBC bien pensants at each thrust of Trump-as-Nazi echo through a press corps which now fawns over Mark Carney, the bespoke banker/ heir apparent to Trudeau. They grasp at each anti-Trump narrative like starving men in the desert.

It’s 1990s redux in Ottawa as think-tank Aristotles work to reinforce their status quo. While a public that has CPC ahead by 20 points in the polls demands change, the Liberal/ NDP cabal want that old-time political religion of insider baseball Ottawa-style. Here’s NDP attack bot Kathleen Monk insisting that PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievre get security clearance on the Chinese election interference case so that he might better be skewered for not telling Canadians the truth included in them about how their elections are being subverted by the Chinese.

No one drawing a Liberal support cheque worries aloud that Trudeau knows the truth contained in this files, that it’s injurious to him and the NDPs, that Canadians need to know the names of MPs and senators taking bribes, why a police request sat on a minister’s desk for 54 days unopened. It’s Poilievre/ Trump who’s untrustworthy. It’s a strategy that the Libs and NDP pray Poilievre will fall for. Pierre’s sin is he doesn’t believe the public should depend on government for everything. That’s heresy in Canada’s Family Compact, and so the Trump comparisons.

The anti-Trump vendetta also means that Canadians have decided that Elon Musk, the pre-eminent genius of the 21st century— is now Josef Goebbels to Trump’s Hitler. As we wrote recently “on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.” 

So now the sneering scribes are going after him, too, in spite of his Canadian citizenship. This is no small thing as Canadians reflexively grab at any shred of CanCon elsewhere. Canadian politics under the Liberals has become a vedette exercise since Pierre Trudeau started dating Funny Girl Barbra Streisand.  In the U.S. outsiders to the political system are rare. Much of the pearl clutching about Trump results from his not being manipulated by the byzantine American political universe.

In cases such as Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, the nominees were moulded by the machine to highlight their acceptability. Ronald Reagan excepted, the insider track is the preferred route to a nomination in either party. Biden personified lifelong membership in the insiders club. As did John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, John McCain, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Gerald Ford, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and so on.

But in Canada, the Liberal party in particular now disdains the tried-and-true. After decades of zero-charisma PMs such as Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent and Mike Pearson, the Grits went ga-ga for the international flair of PET. His irreverence and impertinence on the world stage was catnip to Liberals as the 1960s cultural revolution shook up staid Canada. Since then the blue print has listed more toward “star” candidates from outside the party, such as Michael Ignatieff, Stephane Dion, Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney.

Trudeau II is the epitome of the vedette candidate, bathed by the glow of U.S. magazines and slathering leftists in Europe. Liberals felt vital as long as the trust-fund PM got props from outside, such as when WEF honcho Klaus Schwab outed Skippy as one of his lieutenants. Trump, the antithesis of the Dauphin, is a blustery carny riding the wings of populist outrage. His crass, bumptious style personally offends the sensibilities of Toronto Star scribblers and CBC wind therapists.

The clincher for Canadians is the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer has embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump. From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support has been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.

So as we head to next Tuesday’s end to the election marathon in America, the finger-wagging will increase as Canadians try to elevate themselves above a nation that, for all its faults, has actually staged a policy choice. Meanwhile in Canada, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh once again embraces his coalition with a drowning Trudeau for another year.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Musk Win: How Elon’s Heel Turn Has Driven The Left Insane

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It’s not often that we can watch the workings of our modern world with childlike glee. But glee might be the best word to describe the feelings of most as they watched the stunning safe return of the booster rocket from Starship X. The video showed how the arms of the Starship X tower grabbed the rocket from out of thin air as it slowly descended to earth, gently place it safely back on the launch pad.

In normal times the person who created such a company would be hailed as the pinnacle of human potential. Add in that he has also created revolutionary electric cars and Starlink satellite systems and the PayPal network and you’d probably nominate the South African/ Canadian in question as a permanent Nobel winner. He’s among the world’s richest people as a result.

But on his way to immortality Elon Musk made one critical mistake: purchasing the website Twitter, now re-branded as X. In doing so he fired 90 percent of the previous staff and instituted a policy of open speech for the Right on the site— starting with restoring Donald Trump’s account. Which put Musk on the Hit List for leftist plutocrats.

How? He hired prominent independent journalists such as Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberg and Matt Taibbi to show that Twitter, along with Facebook and other prominent social media sites, had been paid to censor opponents at the behest of the Joe Biden campaign during the 2020 election. He started posting about the disturbing contrast of America’s voting system (results up to three weeks after election) compared to Argentina (6.6 hours).  He pointed out that America is broke, saying things like “”The reason why I’m involved in politics this time, is because this time it’s a fork in the road. I think we’re doomed if Trump doesn’t win, so he’s gotta win.”.

From worshipful respect, Musk was suddenly met with scorn, derision and, in Europe, plans to censor him permanently. Brazil shut down X completely. British intelligence targeted his association with Trump. The radical Left in the U.S., accustomed to its version of truth, suddenly decided that Musk was in line with Nazis and the Far Right.

As blogger Mike Benz notes, the deep state targeted him for not playing along. “CCDH — whose explicit written goal is to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” — not only has its Chairman come from NATO’s Atlantic Council, its former Comms chief was a CIA operative who worked extensively in NATO intelligence ops… CCDH’s former Head of Communications is a self-described “CIA operative” in her own Twitter bio (!!) with an extensive history of NATO operations: ‘Covert operations, intelligence & disinformation’”

While admitting that he’ll likely be in jail within six months of Kamala Harris winning the presidency, Musk is unfazed. Here’s fired CNN talking head Don Lemon challenging— and losing— on Musk’s commitment to free speech. But Musk’s deft debating didn’t discourage the purchased media of the left from trying some more.

Here’s Vanity Fair excoriating Musk for veering from their catechism. Here is reliably lunatic NBC News saying Musk is— gasp— against DEI. For good measure here’s Reuters giving an airing of former Twitter employees grievances against Musk. Topped by president Joe Biden’s demand to “Politically, lock him up — lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do,” said even as he president’s Justice Department was in fact trying to jail Mr. Trump literally.

When he realized that the Left was using him as a piñata Musk responded to the onslaught by making an alliance with former president Donald Trump, the Beelzebub of Woke folk and the bureaucrat’s nightmare. Because Trump, the braggart, was at least in favour of free speech for other braggarts, Musk agreed to join his team after the election as Efficiency Czar for government.

Musk began saying things like he’d reduce the approximately 340 agencies in the U.S. federal government to just 90. He also questioned the usefulness of most people in the DC bubble. He began asking why the government’s $42 B plan for rural internet, awash in delay and debt, shouldn’t be shelved for his Starlink system which already serves customers at a fraction of Kamala Harris’ white elephant.

While he was at it, Musk also eviscerated the DEMs pet cause of border reform. “If given 4 more years to do it, the big govt machine will legalize vast numbers of illegals, making all swing states permanently deep blue, just like they did with California. Every major Democrat politician has stated that their goal is to legalize all illegals. Believe them.

If you thought January 6, 2021, was a shock to Washington’s privilege, a Musk efficiency regime— combined with RFK Jr taking on the healthcare industry— will be tantamount to setting off a thermo-nuclear device beneath the Senate lunchroom. Democrats and the trained hamsters of the GOP establishment swore a fatwa on a guy whom they’d venerated not long ago.

Here’s the New York Times, party organ of the DNC, on Musk’s Efficiency commission. “That would essentially give the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.” Yahoo calls him a threat to national security because something something something. MSNBC, the TV voice of Woke Washington, declarded that Musk is using his power to sue his critics into silence.

But such is the temperature of the DEI Left as it faces imminent destruction in the 2024 election. Having rationalized two assassination attempts on Trump they now nurse snuff fantasies about eliminating Musk the Menace. As legal scholar Jonathan Hurley writes, “It is all part of Musk mania and the need to break the only executive who has defied the anti-free speech movement.”

You can measure their panic by the employment of DEMs superstars like Barack and Michelle Obama and the odious Clintons. While the obsequious Obama laments division in the body politic, Kamala Harris states: “Trump is literally Hitler and he will use the military to kill US citizens.”

Obama, who institutionalized the Racism® industry upon his winning the presidency, is accusing Trump and Musk of… you guessed it… racism for dividing Americans. From Henry Louis Gates to struggle sessions in the military to embracing race hustlers with ankle bracelets in the White House, Obama guaranteed the George Floyd America as it heads to the polls on November 5. Before Musk bought Twitter, he got away with it all, But a Musk X has exposed the glib Obama as a petty Marxist tyrant.

That a transitional figure such as Musk is being sacrificed to the altar of Woke politics is, regrettably, no surprise in these times. Which makes it no less reprehensible. The Obama motto regarding enemies is “No one gets out alive”. Perhaps Musk should heed A.E. Houseman who observed, “smart lad to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay. For early though the laurel goes, it withers sooner than the rose.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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