Jagmeet Singh is fighting his first general election as leader of Canada's Not-so-new Democratic Party. The socialists (for that's what they are) are struggling to hold onto third place in the polls, facing a serious challenge [seriously? Ed.] from the loonier left Green Party.
Mr Singh was in Toronto this morning, where he promised to put a cap on the amount telecoms could charge long-suffering Canucks for cellphone and internet service. Not that it matters, because the NDP has two chances of forming the next government -- slim and none. Anyhoo, following his speech, the turbanned tribune fielded some questions from the press. Adrian Wyld, of Canadian Press, snapped this photo.
Said photo appeared with the story on the CTV News website, around lunchtime (EDT). It also appeared on the CBC News website, where it remained for about 40 seconds before being taken down and replaced with a stock shot. Maybe the picture has a hidden meaning that Walt didn't get? What does that emoticon mean anyway? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, please, to the usual address.
There was another shooting in northwest Toronto last night. Gangbangers are a real menace in certain parts of "Toronto the Good", which is fast becoming a world-class city, like, errr, Chicago. 95% of the time, the victims are black and so are the perps. Everyone who watches the local newscasts knows it -- just watch the videos of bodies, alive and dead, being wheeled away from the scene on gurneys -- but the (((controlled media))) are deliberately colour-blind on that point.
Particularly reluctant to admit that black crime is a serious problem in the "Greater Toronto Area" is Canada's state-owned broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and its flagship TV station, CBLT. Here's a screen grab of how CBC News reported last night's "incident".
Contrast the last sentence of the text with Inspector Knacker's tweet, immediately below. Notice the missing word in the CBC's suspect description? You might think "independent" media would be a little more honest and realistic, but now that they are to receive some C$650,000,000 from the Liberal government because, as everyone knows, the media are struggling financially, they are being even more circumspect than the CBC. The CBC's biggest rival, CTV, didn't give any suspect information at all!
Mr Bean is the most famous screen persona of British actor Rowan Atkinson. You knew that, didn't you? That's for anyone who may have thought Mr Bean is a real person. Mr Atkinson is rightly concerned about the intolerance of the liberal elites and the cancerous growth of political correctness. "We need to build our immunity to taking offence," he says, in this short (9:20) address at the Parliamentary Reception for the Reform Section 5 campaign.
That was in October of 2012. The campaign succeeded (bravo!) but, IMHO, the chill of censorship has only gotten worse since then. One of our readers has just been banned forever from commenting on the CBC News website. Her crime? Apparently it's including in some of her comments a link to WWW. Walt suggests that the CBC remember the old saying: Just because you've silenced someone doesn't mean you've converted him!
Trust in the lamestream media is at an all time low. There are heavy agendas at work, and people have noticed. Much of the "news" purveyed by the likes of the Clinton News Network, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcorping Castration and even ESPN is either fake or so biased it might as well be fake. Conservative/Republican/alt-Right BAD!
Liberal/Democrat/antiFa/SJW/"progressive" good. Just compare the coverage of the same story -- any story -- on (for example) CNN and Fox News. Are they reporting on the same event? Are they living on the same planet?
More problematic, in terms of getting the truth, is what the lamestream media don't tell us. Anything that doesn't fit the liberal narrative, or makes the "progressive" flavour-of-the-month look bad, is suppressed. In a lame effort to show that it is fair and unbiased (as it should be, since it's taxpayer-funded), the CBC allows comments on its news site. But only sometimes. And only some comments! Two of Walt's readers have been having fun trying to post disparaging words about Canada's SJW "Minister of Global Affairs". They are competing to see who can get more comments "pinked" (= disabled). One of them, who I'll identify only as "JU" is currently in the lead, having been banned from the boards for three week. The words "hate crime" were used in the notice of his punishment.
Here's another example. This week I put up a post on the latest terror attack in London, in which "someone" drove a car into a crowd outside Westminster, the British parliament building. It took two days for the London police and the state-owned BBC to provide any information about the attacker. When the facts could be suppressed no longer, they finally admitted the would-be killer was "a British citizen", to which they added, almost in a whisper "born in another country". Turns out the other country was Sudan, a predominantly Muslim country in Africa.
But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more. From Breitbart News (a source routinely disparaged by the LSM) we learn that Salih Khater "came to Britain after spending two years in Libya, and was granted asylum by the British government. Just weeks before what police are treating as an attempted terror attack, Khater was granted full British citizenship. And yes, he's a Muslim. (To be fair, Breitbart cribbed their report from the Times of London, one of the least worst mainstream sources.)
The media, academia and the clever folks in Hollywood still can't get over the fact that Donald Trump won the election in spite of their strenuous efforts. Alleged people like Joy Behar jsut can't get over it! They rail against POTUS for every supposedly evil deed, word or even thought committed since his election, or before it, or expected to be committed in the future (e.g. starting a war with Iran).
At the moment they're consigning him to hell for having supposedly used the word "nigger" -- notice I didn't wimp out and refer to it as "the N-word" -- a decade or so ago. And for calling a woman of colour a "dog", even though the Donald has used the same epithet, recently, to describe a number of white men. Honestly, dear reader, who amongst us has never in his life called people names like that... or worse?
Fortunately, it doesn't matter. Outside of the chattering classes on the coasts, no-one cares. No-one is even listening! Last week, more viewers tuned in to the history channel and HGTV than CNN. Fox news is still the most-viewed news channel. In the (((controlled media))) you'll find all the "truth" that (((George Soros'))) of Jeff Bezos' or can buy, or that the liberal democratic governments of Canada and Britain will allow. But the real truth is over here, in the wonderful world of blogs and independent media.
Here, as a public service, is my highly selective list of blogs and websites which present real news and alternative opinions. I won't embed URLs because I know my readers are intelligent enough to use a search engine to find the ones they're looking for. Most of these have been quoted or mentioned on WWW, so you can also use the search window in the top right corner to find them. Bill Whittle; Blazing Cat Fur; Breitbart News; Canadian Times; Dr Rich Swier; Lew Rockwell; Michelle Malkin; The Occidental Observer; People's Cube; Post Millennial; Rebel Media; The Remnant (great site for traditional Catholics!); Ron Paul Liberty Report; Small Dead Animals; Steyn Online; Taki's Magazine; White Genocide Project.
Chrystia Freeland? Who she? For readers outside of Canada (and many inside!) Walt will explain. The fragrant and unbearably smug Christina "Chrystia" Freeland is Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs (or "Global Affairs", whatever the new PC term is). She started out as Minister of International Trade in the first government of Justin "Junior" Trudeau, and was "elevated" in 2017 after demonstrating a lack of talent for international negotiations on free trade. See "Vote NO MA'AM!", WWW 25/10/16 and "Bill Maher calls BS on 'shared values' with Muslims", WWW 18/4/16. Walt regrets that Ms Freeland's minion have succeeded in having the video of her appearance with Bill Maher deleted. As I remember it, he made her look like a fool who knows next to nothing about the real world.
One of our agents was trying to make the same point in the "Comments" section of some articles on the CBC News website. He called out Ms Freeland for being a "limousine liberal" -- a useful idiot who knows next to nothing about the real world. Our agent has been trying for a week or so to get the CBC to print that comment -- just the "limousine liberal" part -- or anything close to it. Here's what happened.
By "pinked", our agent means his comment got "disabled". That's the word that appears in the PINK bar. Geddit? But why? What's so offensive about "limousine liberal" or the coded version of the phrase used here by our agent? Here are two more screen grabs.
You have to give our agent full marks for perseverance, eh. But he's now given up, and appeals to Walt for help. What he wants to know (but can't ask the CBC since there's no way to contact the moderators) is whether the Corp's list of prohibited comments includes any negative reference of any kind to the Honourable Chrystia Freeland. The supplementary question -- assuming the answer to the first to be "yes" -- is WHY? Why is the CBC so in love with Ms Freeland that even the mildest of snarks about her is verboten?
In one case, the mere mention of her name got "pinked". What about free speech? Why is Ms Freeland above criticism? Anyone from the CBC who wishes to answer these questions is free (geddit?) to use Walt's comments section. All you have to do is click on the headline, and the box will appear. We're waiting.
Canuck Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (aka the Hair Apparent) keeps rabbiting on about how diversity is Canada's strength. He keeps admonishing old stock Canadians about their dislike of Third world "refugees" and other immigrants, especially Muslims. Last spring, his Liberal party rammed a motion -- M-103 -- through Parliament to discourage people from saying anything which would tend to fan the flames of Islamophobia which are sweeping Canada faster than a BC wildfire.
Although the motion only confirms the "sense of Parliament" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- it has had a profoundly chilling effect on the pussies in Canada's lamestream media, notably the state-owned Canadian Broadcorping Castration. Today's case in point is "Husband arrested in stabbing of pregnant woman, whose baby died after C-section", a report on the CBC News website. Here are the first three paragraphs of the CBC News report.
A baby delivered by C-section after the child's mother was repeatedly stabbed has died in a Montreal hospital. Police arrested the woman's husband, the primary suspect in the stabbing, not far from the apartment building where she was attacked. The man could face murder charges, according to police spokesperson Cmdr. Michael Chartrand.
The man's name has not been released.[My emphasis. Walt] Neither Kamila Hinkson (the CBC typist who got the byline for the story) nor anyone else in the Canadian English-language media has so far had the intestinal fortitude to name the accused. (Ed. hasn't checked The Rebel, yet.) Could their reluctance to name names (from which we might guess the ethnicity and/or religion of the perp) have anything to do with M-103 and the government's dislike of anyone saying anything that would put non-Christian, non-white "newcomers" in a bad light? Let's check the French-language media to see what we can find out.
Turns out Ms Hinkson and her PC colleagues have been, errr, a little economical with the truth. La Presse tells us:
Le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) ne voulait pas confirmer l'identité du suspect avant la fin de son interrogatoire hier. Mais sur le boulevard Langelier, à Montréal-Nord, plusieurs ont immédiatement fait le lien avec un locataire connu pour son problème de toxicomanie. Sofiane Ghazi, 37 ans, était en couple avec une femme de 33 ans qui avait déjà deux jeunes enfants et qui attendait son troisième. La dame avait parfois peur de son conjoint, ont raconté plusieurs sources fiables. For those not versed in the language of Molière, Walt can reveal that although the Montréal cops didn't want to disclose the ID of the culprit until they had finished their interrogation [Pass the rubber hose, please. Ed.], neighbours told La Presse they figured it was a 37-year-old crack addict by the name of... wait for it... Sofiane Ghazi. M Ghazi was coupled with a 33-year-old woman who already had two young children and was awaiting her third. Let's see. "Sofiane Ghazi". Doesn't sound French to me. Or English. Or anything else "old stock". If M Ghazi's ethnicity, religion and status in Canada are ever disclosed, Walt will let you know. But don't hold your breath.
Meanwhile, down at the courthouse... an interesting legal question arises. After being stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen, M Ghazi's partner was delivered of her child, by C-section. The mother survived, but the child, born live, did not. Was the child, then, a murder victim? Canadian courts will now have to revisit the question of when a fetus becomes a human being.
Under the Canadian Criminal Code (Agent 3 advises), "a child becomes a human being...when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not (a) it has breathed; (b) it has an independent circulation; or (c) the navel string is severed." By that definition, the "thing" that M Ghazi stabbed, while still inside "its" mother, would not be considered a human being. That, of course, is what the pro-abortion people keep saying. It will be interesting to see what position the feminist Justin Trudeau and his feminine Minister of Justice take on this case. UPDATE 26/7/17: The English-language Canadian media have now overcome their shyness to reveal the identity and other details of the murderer. We can call him that, for Sofiane Ghazi has been charged with the attempted murder of his wife, Raja Ghazi, and her baby. In an updated report by a different typist, CBC News reveals that, according to his Facebook page, M Ghazi moved to Montréal from Oran, Algeria, in 2012. Something like 95% of Algerians are... wait for it... Muslim. Unless and until M Ghazi says otherwise, we'll assume he too is a follower of the Prophet. Perhaps he will say that this was an affair of honour for which he should be excused in the name of "accommodation".
M Ghazi's FB page says he works at clothing retailer Lacoste and formerly worked at a heating, ventilating and air conditioning service located in Saint-Bruno. Last month, he was arrested and charged with assaulting his wife. Around the same time, he was arrested for allegedly stealing perfume from a Jean Coutu pharmacy.
Nothing has been said yet about M Ghazi's immigration status, but Walt predicts (lifetime pct .988) that no matter the disposition of these and the latest charges, he will undoubtedly remain in Canada for a long time, possibly forever. After all, Junior Trudeau says Canada must welcome Muslims because they add to the diversity which makes the country strong.
Note from Ed.: This is the continuation and end of our look at the personalities who have anchored CBC-TV's National News (later rebranded as The National) from the beginning until the retirement of the current host, Peter Mansbridge, whose last newscast will air tonight. If you missed Part 1, click here to read that first.
Following the departure of Lloyd Robertson, the CBC resumed its search for a "real journalist", and in 1978 decided on Knowlton Nash, who had decades of experience in print journalism as well as broadcasting. He spent much of the hippy-dippy 1960s in the USA, covering virtually every major story of that time and that place. He stepped down from reporting in 1969 to join CBC's management in Toronto as Director of News and Current Affairs.
In 1978 he auditioned for the role of anchor, and was subsequently chosen. As a nod to his journalistic background, Mr Nash was given the title "Chief Correspondant" rather than "News Anchor". He continued in the role until his retirement in 1988, and died in March of 2014 at the age of 86.
Now it's time to acknowledge the news anchor who had the longest tenure, until Peter Mansbridge came along. That would be the comparatively little known George McLean, who in 1965 took over Rex Loring's role (see Part 1) as backup and weekend anchor. If the "regular" anchor wasn't there, not to worry, because George would get the job done. Known for his reliability and ability to stay calm in high-stress situations, Mr McLean would become one of the most recognizable faces and voices at CBC News. One reason for his success, some say, was that he looked and sounded a lot like Walter Cronkite! Here's a video of his goodbye newscast.
That telecast aired in 1988. George McLean, little remembered now, was on the job for over 20 years! He died in March of 2016, aged 92.
Now we come to Peter Mansbridge, seen here with Knowlton Nash, whose career with the CBC has spanned half a century. Really. As a callow youth of 19, he was working as a dogsbody at the airport at the end of the earth (Churchill MB) when he was called on to make an announcement over the public address system. The station manager for the local CBC affiliate heard his mellifluous tones and hired him on the spot! The rest, as they say, is history.
Peter Mansbridge debuted as the sole anchor of The National on 1 May 1988. He also served as co-anchor for CBC Prime Time News from November 1992 to the fall of 1995. During his 29 years as anchor, he has covered Canadian news stories including federal elections, party leadership conventions, the Meech Lake Accord negotiations, the Charlottetown Accord and its referendum, the 1995 Quebec referendum, floods in Manitoba in 1997, ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in 1998, the six days in September 2000 that marked the death and state funeral of Pierre Trudeau, and the 2003 blackout across much of eastern North America.
He has also anchored coverage of many world events, both in the studio and on the scene. In the studio, he anchored coverage of the Gulf War, the War in Kosovo, the 9/11 attacks and the 2014 Parliament Hill shootings. He was on the air live when the 2003 invasion of Iraq began and anchored coverage of it. On the scene, he anchored coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the funerals of Princess Diana and Pope John Paul II, numerous royal, papal, and US presidential visits to Canada, numerous Olympic Games, and the inauguration of US President Barack Obama. He reported extensively from Normandy both 50 and then 60 years after D-Day and from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands for the 50th and 60th anniversaries.
With the retirement of Lloyd Robertson from CTV National News on 1 September, Mr Mansbridge became the longest-serving active anchor among the big three Canadian networks. Last night the CBC aired a well-deserved tribute to Peter. Here it is.
So farewell then, Peter Mansbridge. Today will be your last time anchoring The National and telling grateful Canucks "Thanks for watching. Now go to sleep." OK, just kidding about the last part, but Agent 3 assures us that watching Mr Mansbridge read the news is the last thing he does most nights, before turning out the light. So also it has been for millions of Canadians. Now, no more.
Peter Mansbridge first sat in the CBC National News anchor's chair just over 29 years ago. Since then he has become an institution -- a rare thing in the Not-so-great, Not-so-white North -- the Canadian counterpart to the late great Walter Cronkite. In spite of the fact that he spoke for the state broadcaster, Canucks trusted Peter not to lie to them, and he didn't... as far as anyone can tell. People trusted him. The news was what he said it was, no more and no less.
Peter Mansbridge was not the first CBC national news anchor, of course. The CBC's English television service debuted in the fall of 1952. Agent 3 is old enough to remember those early days, and with his help we've put together a photo montage of most of the people who sat at the Big Desk from them until now.
There at the creation (or almost) was Larry Henderson, the only CBC newscaster to sport a dapper pencil moustache, à la Errol Flynn. By all accounts, Mr Henderson was no Errol Flynn, but a serious but pleasant straight shooter, establishing the model for those who would follow. He was the first regular reader of the National News, serving from 1954 to 1959. A devout churchman, he went on to become the editor of the Catholic Register. He died in 2006 at the age of 89.
Special mention must be made here of Rex Loring, a long-time CBC newsie who passed away in April of this year, at the age of 91. (There must have been something in the water at CBC's old Jarvis Street studios in Toronto.)
Known mostly for his work on CBC Radio, Mr Loring filled in for Larry Henderson on weekends and when the latter was off. At one point he even grew a moustache -- no pic could be found -- so he'd be all set to take over when Mr Henderson left, but in vain, as the job went to the moustacheless but more avuncular Earl Cameron. A pic of Mr Cameron proved even harder to find than one of Mr Loring's moustache, but Ed. did manage to locate this very short clip of Earl doing his job.
Earl Cameron succeeded Larry Henderson as the anchor of the CBC National News in 1959. During the 1960s, managers at CBC News moved towards a philosophy of regarding news announcers as journalists rather than performers. As part of this shift, they put pressure on the announcers' union to accept an agreement prohibiting news readers from commercials or accepting outside contracts with ad agencies. In 1965, Mr Cameron gave up reading commercials for such products such as Crest toothpaste and Nash Rambler automobiles, but that didn't save him. He was dropped from the anchor position the following year, but continued as a staff announcer for another decade. He died in 2005 at the age of... wait for it... 89.
There was something of a revolving door (or a revolving chair) at the National News for the next four years, as the CBC kept up its search for a "real journalist" as opposed to an actor or "bingo caller" who just read what was put in front of him. (Rex Loring was the acknowledged master of the "cold read" -- reading convincingly a script which was handed to him while in the middle of a newscast.) Lloyd Robertson had moved to Toronto to host CBC Weekend in the late 1960s, and anchored The National from 1970 to 1976, before jumping to the independent CTV network.
One of the reasons he left the CBC was his frustration at union regulations which confined news anchors to the role of announcer, prohibiting them from writing their own scripts or participating in editorial decisions concerning the news broadcast. Mr Robertson is still alive and, at the age of 83, still appearing occasionally on CTV.
Some of our readers will have fond and funny memories of the SCTV News, a regular shtick on SCTV, the funniest sketch comedy show ever. Eugene Levy's Earl Camembert character on SCTV was named after Earl Cameron, but otherwise bore no resemblance, except maybe for the bow tie that Earl sometimes wore. The name was merely an offhand joke designed to get a laugh from Canadian viewers. The same is true of Camembert's co-anchor, Floyd Robertson, played by Joe Flaherty, who otherwise bore only a small resemblance to Lloyd Robertson.
Note from Ed.: We were originally going to do this tribute to the CBC newscasters as one long(ish) post, but as I did the research, I found so many photos and videos that I've decided to cut the piece into two parts. Scroll up to see Part 2, including a video of the late, unsung George McLean and, yes, more about Peter Mansbridge.
