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Unintelligence sources

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By Frank Moher The Prime Minister, in his role as Chief Scarifier, performed as expected on Thursday, once again using an atrocity for political gain, and to serve his government’s agenda to reduce Canadians’ civil liberties. No surprise there. What was surprising — or, if not surprising, then wall-to-wall evident in the 24 hour news […]

The shootings: How the media fed our inner monster

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By Montreal Simon You think you know the story. You’ve seen the pictures on TV a million times. Over and over again. You’ve seen how the media have tried to explain what happened, and how they’ve framed the narrative, complete with more heroes than you can count. You know what Stephen Harper wants you to […]

Radio Caroline, all over again

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By Jim Henshaw By now, virtually every Canadian is aware of the stare-down going on between Netflix and our broadcast regulators, the CRTC. But there’s a similar confrontation concurrently flying under most of our media’s radar between the self-same CRTC and a group of radio stations in Vancouver. These stations, unlike Netflix, have their offices, […]

Gambling on CanCon

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By Jim Henshaw Now and then, I wander into a casino. Since I mostly live in Canada, where wagering is government run, I don’t stay long. That’s partly because our politically correct casinos seriously dial back the fun factor, designating where you can drink and how noisy you’re allowed to be. In addition, there are […]

Alice Cooper, Canadian icon

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By Frank Moher Did I miss the part where Alice Cooper became a Canadian? Because otherwise, HBO Canada’s new doc Super Duper Alice Cooper appears to mark some strange turning point in Canadian film funding. And believe you me, this is a Canadian film — at least if its list of financiers is anything to […]

Who will tell the CRTC a good story?

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By Jim Henshaw Last week, it appeared that CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais had found himself in a socially awkward position. The Writers Guild of Canada had presented their clear and cogent argument on the quality and appeal of Canadian made television. It wasn’t anything Blais hadn’t heard before. And maybe he was tired or maybe […]

Programmed by Facebook

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By Jim Henshaw This week the President of the CBC shared his vision of the future of our national broadcaster. It was a vague vision. Something about being leaner by thousands of jobs and less real estate, not overly committed to documentary projects or news and accessing audiences via social media and mobile instead of […]

The “Economic Action Plan” Action Plan

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A BoB Short Despite spending over $100 million promoting their Economic Action Plan (EAP), the Conservative Party of Canada contented itself with just one, no-charge domain name, actionplan.gc.ca. Now anti-Conservative group Shit Harper Did has jumped at the opportunity, footing the $9 bill to purchase economicactionplan.ca as home of their new campaign. The website currently […]