Bruce Dowbiggin
Unspeakable Terror, Unfathomable Treachery: Exposing The Despicables
What if they staged a war and nobody bought in? After Wag The Dog on #Covid19 vaccines, mass Rez school secret burials, #Russiagate, Hunter’s laptop, Nazis in Parliament and the Trucker Convoy you can appreciate that some in the population have Blockbuster! Story skepticism about the real story of the Hamas attack on Israel.
So good luck to the rulers and their Media Party selling a narrative on Gaza. If there is fatigue in the general population about another Blockbuster! then you own it. The one crystallizing aspect of horrific events such as this or 9/11 is the stripping away of the Mikado-like political phonies and exposure of the bias in your media. The faux-experts in academia find their dialectical materialism diatribes blown away like dandelions in the wind.
Hollywood leftists see their demands for measured justice rendered absurd. And the virulent radicals in organized labour confirm all the suspicions about their use of members’ dues to excuse the behaviours of scoundrels. For this service, some small measure of thanks.
While nothing assuages the brutal loss of life in Israel and Gaza we do have a clearer picture of the people— official or not—who now infest our communities with their anti-colonist clap-trap.. (FFS, the Israelis are indigenous to the area and can show it goes back 3000 years.) People who danced in the streets of Arab cities after 9/11 are now dancing in the streets on Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Our PM harvested this sociopathy from abroad, and now we reap the whirlwind at home.
And, gosh darnit, the purchased media is trying hard to keep the lid on his Pandora’s box of despicables who walk among us. “Do not refer to militants, soldiers or anyone else as ‘terrorists.” CBC’s director of journalistic standards, George Achi, wrote in an email to employees on Saturday. “The notion of terrorism remains heavily politicized and is part of the story.” (BTW The Canadian government classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization.)
This laughable prohibition comes from the same network whose staff regurgitated PMJT’s claims of Nazis, Putin stooges and the “far-right” among the Truckers Convoy. They won’t use the term “terrorists” because it’s “political”, but “far right” apparently is GoodThink.
Outsiders noticed the double standard at work. @AnnCoulter “When Muslims in Canada drove their trucks through the streets, celebrating the slaughter in Israel, you figure Justin Trudeau froze any of their Bank accounts?” Trudeau, BTW, delayed any statement condemning Hamas 48 hours till Monday, sending his staff to explain— falsely— that the CDN embassy in Tel Aviv was functioning for citizens stranded in Israel, when, in fact, it was “operational”, whatever that means.
By the time Trudeau finally spoke up the leaders of France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States had already expressed support for Israel and condemned Hamas for “its appalling acts of terrorism.” Canada was not included in the statement. Gee, wonder why? Could it be Skippy is passé with the heavy hitters?
Meanwhile out-of-her-depth Foreign Affairs minster Melanie Joly declined to say whether Canada would support Israel’s full retaliation against Hamas. But did say Canada will keep sending millions in “humanitarian” money to Gaza, as if Hamas won’t abscond with it.
All this gibberish was set against rationales for brutality from the fashionable Left. Mohammed El-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for The Nation, stated: “What is happening in occupied Palestine is a response to weeks and months and years of daily military invasions into Palestinian towns, killings of Palestinians, and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade.” Yadda yadda.
There was a predictable rush among Canadian politicians to placate the Hamas apologists and equivocate the slaughter by demanding the attackers’ feelings be considered equally. The mayor of Canada’s largest city tried to work the word-salad dance, condemning Hamas, then including them as a victim , then sorta’ condemning them while saying, “My earlier tweets on this have been deleted because of the harm and confusion they caused.” (Confusion? Really?) All in the space of a few hours on the weekend. Now that’s leadership.
Across leftist media Woke voices sought to diminish the horror with vanilla equivocations. The same networks that leapt instantly on the George Floyd death, inflaming passions with false reporting and hagiographic distortions of the death of the convicted felon— and who then stood aside as rioters and looters burned American cities in “mostly peaceful” demonstrations— suddenly took a “bothsiderist” approach .
The polite liberal shuffling of media feet on Hamas was reminiscent of the famous 1991 SNL skit where Phil Hartman is a newspaper editor struggling to convince the rest of the staff to put Pearl Harbour on the front page of their paper. Meanwhile, Star Trek relic George Takei turned his light saber on Israel. “The Israeli government has cut off food, water, and fuel to 2 million people inside Gaza. Collective punishment is not only contrary to international law, it is inhumane and illogical. How will this deescalate the violence rather than radicalize many more? It is madness.”
Prompting @BecketAdams to note, “after 4-5 years of U.S. media personalities condemning “bothsiderism” in Trump coverage, we’re inundated now with point/counterpoint commentary where the topics are like, “Is it wrong to rape and murder Jews?” and “Terrorists: do they have a point?”
Peter Savodnik on USSA News targeted the “ersatz activists of Hollywood and Silicon Valley” like Takei. “People who turned the Ukrainian flag into their avatars, those who worry about misgendering and triggering and safe spaces, those who insist words are violence (those for whom violence is apparently not violence)—they’re busy ignoring all this.”
Perhaps most shocking to Canadians was the full-throated braying of support for Hamas from organized labour leaders. The staff union at McMaster University was succinct, “Palestine is rising, long live the resistance.” CUPE’s Fred Hahn was similarly unrepentant. “As we all think about reasons to be thankful this #thanksgiving2023, I know I’m thankful for the power of workers, the power of resistance around the globe. Because #Resistance is fruitful and no matter what some might say, #Resistance brings progress, and for that, I’m thankful.”
(After taking incoming for three days, CUPE came up with “@cupenat CUPE grieves the loss of life brought by the recent escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine. We recognize that many Canadians are terrified for their loved ones and we offer heartfelt condolences to all affected families and communities.”)
Well, when you put it that way! Even at the depths of WW II when the Nazis were committing unspeakable crimes, no one from the U.S., UK, Canada or Australia wildly cheered and encouraged the rape, kidnapping and murder of German citizens by Allied soldiers. Those crimes could get soldiers executed. The Soviets? That was a different story. @FredHahnCUPE is the Red Army.
Don’t believe the faux contritions. CUPE and their union pals will go to their graves believing this poison of victimhood. They will not respond to logic, cajoling or emojis. The only course of action is to identify them, isolate them and remove their financial support till they recant or expire.
This utter leftist defeatism of Trudeau/ Obama Nation is becoming clear once again: “It was around this time in the Obama Admin that all the world watched with horror as ISIS burned people alive while Obama focused more on calling them ISIL. And everyone in the media wrung their hands and said gosh- golly I wish we could do something. Michelle held a sign, made a sad face, and posted on Social. That was it. We’re powerless. We lose.” —Daniel Turner.
We are back there again. It will only get worse as Israel goes street by street in Gaza. Expect the sob sisters of journalism to describe it as being like the Warsaw ghetto with Israelis as Nazis and Hamas as the Polish underground. They have friends to protect. Why should they finally get history correct now?
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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. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new 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 http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the “what colour is that green light?” decision to fire their head coach Sheldon Keefe last week. The removal of Keefe after five years followed a dispiriting first-round playoff series loss to a very ordinary Boston Bruins team. Coaching may or may not have been the root cause of that loss. (Keefe himself admitted “teams are waiting for the Leafs to beat themselves”.)
The real reason for the firing is 1967, and we don’t think we need add more than that.
In essence, the management of MLSE— the owner of the Maple Leafs and a lot of other sports stuff in Toronto— needed to throw a body to the baying hounds of disappointment. Also known as Leafs Nation. Newly minted CEO Keith Pelley, fresh from the PGA Tour/ LIV psychodrama, was certainly not going to pay the price.
Nor was GM Brad Treliving who has only been on the job for two seasons. The key decisions on Toronto’s lopsided salary cap were decided long before Treliving occupied his desk. That left two people in vulnerable positions. 1) Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, who has been drawing an MLSE cheque for a decade. 2) Keefe.
When was the last time you saw a coach fire a team president? Precisely. Keefe joins the list of (briefly) unemployed coaches who circulate in the NHL like McKinsey consultants. Shanahan gets a lukewarm mulligan from Pelley. But after the failure of the Kyle Dubas experiment— “who needs experience?”— and now just a single playoff series win in a decade Shanny’s best-before date has arrived.
Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan attends a news conference in Toronto on April 14, 2014. Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said Peter Horachek will remain the team’s interim head coach until the end of the season. Shanahan met the media Friday for the first time since coach Randy Carlyle was fired on Tuesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Depending on who he and Treliving enlist to coach— remember, Mike Babcock was too tough and Keefe was probably too player friendly— it had better produce instant results. Because Shanny, the pride of Mimico, is out of chances. The coach choice will also be affected by whichever player or players that management decides are superfluous to ending the Leafs’ ridiculous run of misery.
The Leafs brass’ press conference last Thursday did little to shed light on what happens after Keefe’s expulsion. Just a lot of MBA determinism on a bed of baffle gab. A crabby Steve Simmons question/rant briefly threatened the harmony of the moment, but order was restored. And the media bitching switched from the press box to social media and podcasts.
Speaking of the fourth estate, the other unmentioned aspect of this story— indeed every story in the NHL these days— is just how it was revealed to the public. When people sipped their morning Tim’s or Starbucks the (almost) coincident bulletins came down the social media pike about Keefe’s dismissal.
Predictably, Chris Johnston of Sportsnet and Daren Dreger of TSN announced the breaking news within heart beats of each other. While there had been speculation on Keefe’s fate for days, the announcement coming from the networks duo confirmed the story in the minds of the industry. That allowed everyone else drawing a cheque as a hockey journalist to pile in and swarm the dead body.
In today’s sports journalism, where social media has replaced newspapers, scoops are governed by a protocol. There are the heralds— in the NHL it’s currently Johnston and Dreger— and then there are the disseminators. The days of a rabble of reporters all scrambling to get a story bigger than who-will-play-in-tonight’s-game are gone. Today, it’s a very narrow funnel for scoops.
It’s the same in the NFL where Ian Rappaport (NFL Network) and Adam Schefter (ESPN) monopolize the tasty scoops on behalf of their employers, who also happen to be NFL rights holders. In the NBA, Brian Windhorst (ESPN) has the inside rail when it comes to the LeBron James/ Steph Curry scoops. In MLB… it’s probably Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic) but no one cares about baseball anymore, do they?
The leagues like it this way, doling out stories to guys they can trust. None of this is criticism of Johnston or Dreger, who have deftly maneuvered themselves into the coveted “from their lips to your ears” spots. From our own experience we can remember the exhilaration of having the best source or sources on the really big stories. Like Johnston/ Dreger, we worked hard for a long time to develop those sources and only very reluctantly let anyone else horn in on our stories.
It was also our observation that this order of things journalistic suited a lot of reporters who either couldn’t get good sources or didn’t want the stress of being first on stuff. It was enough that, like the Keefe story, they’d get the goods eventually and most fans would not care who was first. So long as you had a take. So be it.
Some resentful types took potshots at our work if it upset their pals in the dressing room or the management suite. On the Stephen Ames/ Tiger Woods story in 2001, we had the late Pat Marsden tell us on air that we’d done a great job on Ames’ criticisms of Tiger. Only to hear him lambaste us— again on FAN 590— only minutes later as we listened driving home from the studio. But we digress.
Many reporters are complacent in playing the game, so long as their bosses didn’t enquire why they are getting scooped all the time by the same few rivals. With the death of daily newspapers that doesn’t happen much any longer. (Many editors today may only see stories when publication brings a libel notice.) For them a salty take is good enough.
The scoop business is also affected by the multiple roles now demanded of sports media types. In addition to their “day job” on a beat they also have to supply digital content and talk-back hits to the Mother Ship. Most also are feeding a weekly podcast, dictating time on air rather than time working the phone. There are only so many hours in a day to chase a story.
Better to play the Breaking News waiting game.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher 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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Have you ever been to a concert where a hot new product like Tesla is mentioned and many in the crowd applaud in approval? Have you been at a dinner party when you say you went to a new Thai restaurant, and everyone at the table explodes in rhapsodic glee? Have you ever been to see a comic and he mentions he has the latest iPhone with the nifty camera and people actually cheer?
You see those people cheering a piece of tech or a style of cuisine? Those are the people who believed Justin Trudeau when he told them to sink everything into real estate when interest rates were near zero. They. Will. Believe. Anything. So long as they think it makes them cool kids. Trudeau could say he can control the weather by stopping cows from farting, and they’ll be wearing a bovine flatulence T-shirts pronto.
Now, we can hear you laughing in derision at our skepticism about the real estate-economy that has taken over the nation— the new economy that Justin fed, watered and then bragged about. (To the exclusion of the other cornerstones of our once-dynamic nation state.) The one that will be going to Market one of these days for a meeting with an air compressor.
Again, you laugh. Despite the housing shortage Justin says we can easily accommodate two million new souls a year, no problem. He says Trump was a vile racist for wanting to exclude unhinged radicals from zombie countries back in 2017. The freshly-arrived from Trump’s “shithole countries” with “shithole value systems” and “shithole economies’ will prop up the value of Canada’s two-million dollar cash-cow bungalow in West Van or Etobicoke. And the Happy People believe.
Why? Because Justin and his cabinet are in Control, and they’ll just rein in these types when they get here and start asking that Jews be exterminated or white people surrender the merit system to DEI droogs. That little dustup at the universities where nervous trust-fund virgins claim to be onside with systemic rape? Justin can stop them anytime. Everything is cool. After all, Canada is the model for a postmodern state.
And that stuff about how the Canadian real estate market being 80 percent propped up by drug money, kleptocracy profits and Blackrock? Pshaw. That is just the Far Right Diagolons trying to panic you into hiding your money from the government which just wants to send it to the “shithole” countries in a kickback loop. If nothing else, the banks will save you— if there’s any shareholder value left after this deranged DEI diversion.
Can’t happen here? We know people who were around the EU in 2008 when the U.S. mortgage debacle cratered economies around the world. For years they’d been served by Poles in the service industry, Spaniards in the restaurant kitchens and Bulgarians doing the physical labour. Life was good. Everyone drove a Beemer and owned a condo overlooking the sea.
Then, one day, they noticed that all the airport parking lots were overflowing with Beemers that went unclaimed. No one had paid rent in months. The banks noticed that all these lovely fellow citizens of the EU had drained their savings, reached their cash credit limit on the Mastercard and skedaddled with the dough. Funny, they all must have gone on holidays to once, no?
No. They were gone. Bye bye. Adios. And the credit bubbles in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, France and other EU worthies popped like the champagne they’d been sipping for years on easy credit and idiotic notions of productivity. Nations like Iceland went bankrupt overnight. Counties in England threw their keys on the table. People’s life savings evaporated.
But Justin says that won’t happen here on his co-watch with Jagmeet the Bespoke. Sure, no one under the age of 40 can afford those two-million dollar cash-cow bungalows in West Van or Etobicoke. But those old Boomer geezers will die soon, and after we tax the daylights out of the estate, the kiddos will inherit the house. Probably after we turn it into a four-plex or fine them for having empty bedrooms because they couldn’t afford kids.
One of the ferocious beauties of market economies is their way of periodically turning on themselves when too many people are getting rich too easily. The Canadian RE economy of Justin Trudeau is one of them. It’s about a decade old without any sign of dropping. Life is good. Everyone drives a Tesla and rents a condo overlooking the sea.
Little wonder. Everything he and his faculty lounge of dimwits like Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly and Steven Guilbeault have done this decade has been to prop up the value of real estate owned by their real pals in Asia, Europe, the assorted kleptocracies in Africa or the sub-continent. It was like an ad for Chlorox the way these “investors” blithely laundered their dirty money in Canadian condos and low-rises. When news leaked out that mobsters were using casinos in B.C. (where Justin’s maternal side came from) as a laundering station it was covered up very quickly.
But the clock ticks. Even Justin’s former finance minister Bill Morneau is warning that the bubble is going to pop if Justin keeps printing more money to keep the real estate values so unsupportably high. The entire middle class of Canada, which has ridden the real estate train, will see their life savings evaporate like Jody Wilson Raybould’s political career.
No matter. Justin’s been living in government housing since 2015 (some of it with his Mommy). What does a trust-fund nit know about making rent cheques or a mortgage payment? Without Sophie spending like a dervish, he never needs to look at an America Express card again. He’s got 17 more months to build up credits with his future benefactors, and he’s not applying the handbrake now.
Okay, you can applaud now.
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. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
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