Gordon Lightfoot: Canadian
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”; ‘Summertime Dream’ (1976)
“does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn minutes to hours”
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The First Three News Stories On 07/02/07
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Yesterday’s News Tomorrow: This is something I used to do, but stopped because it became way too time intensive. Basically my cable package gives me access to the public broadcasters of Britain, America and Canada — BBC World, PBS: The News Hour and CBC — as well as all of the American and Canadian National and several Local American Newscasts, and two Canadian Cable News Channels so I thought it’d be interesting to see what priority news stories got from the three countries… unfortunately the transmission tower for the American PBS station I was using collapsed in an ice storm back in April, and they’re pretty much dead until the fall. But “The News Hour” does rebroadcast their newscast online so I’ll be using that starting next week. The problem was the time involved became insane… taking notes from three to six newscasts every Monday evening, then finding my own sources, rewriting the whole thing then getting it up on the blog… it was usually a six hour post. But I think I’ve figured out how to make it manageable, so starting next week the Monday News Threesome is something I’m bringing back… basically this is aboot me trying to get back into the schedule I dropped aboot six weeks ago. Until then, this is a little quickie…
These are the first three stories from the three Canadian National Newscasts: the CBC — our “public” broadcaster, and our two private channels, CTV and Global. We’ve got aboot a hundred or so “specialty” cable channels but those cost extra and I like my apartment with electricity.
Page Jump:
Global National; CBC The National; CTV National News
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5.30pm Global National
1) Security Sweep: Global is now claiming to be “Canada’s Most Watched Newscast”… maybe, probably, but it’s definitely the most American in terms of production and reporting style. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, American newscasts aren’t nearly as vacant as some believe. The non-bomb situation in the UK seems to be rapidly winding up, suspects have been picked up in Australia, Glasgow, Liverpool and on a highway near Cheshire. There really wasn’t anything new to this particular report, but reporter Stuart Greer definitely wanted to make sure the gravity of the situation was understood by everyone. As he was summing up he mentioned that “people” “believed” “there was an al Qaeda link”, he then threw us a clip of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Her Cleavage telling us “everything’s going to be alright”, but nothing aboot al Qaeda. Then we’re back to Stuart for the wrap up and he tells us “it’s unclear if there are any links to al Qaeda.” The only people mentioning al Qaeda in all of this seem to be the reporters…
2) Improving Relations: While he was in the general region Russian President Vlad Putin requested an unexpected meeting with President GW Bush. A lot has been made aboot this meeting apparently having very little focus, and the stuff they’re releasing to the media pretty much shows that there has been no apparent focus… “common ground over Iran”, “thawing relations”… but this is one of the strangest political and/or diplomatic meetings I’ve ever heard of, these types of meetings take months to prepare for. The protocol involves encyclopedias, they have whole departments dedicated to this sort of thing, Russian Presidents don’t just “pop over” for a quick meeting with the President of the United States. It is interesting that the next story occurred just after the meeting…
3) Americans Have Proof Of Iran Proxy In Iraq: Surprise! Iran is using Hezbollah as their proxy in Iraq. According to the American Military, Lebanese and Iraqis are being trained in Lebanon and sent into Iraq to make IED’s and basically fuck shit up. At their — really weird — meeting Russia changed its tone aboot Iran’s nuclear program, not entirely embracing the American position, but making it pretty clear Russia won’t automatically veto a stronger Security Council resolution.
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10pm CBC: The National
1) Aftermath From Attempted Bombings: CBC was really late to this whole story. By the time CBC’s cable news channel — CBC Newsworld — finally started talking aboot the Glasgow Airport incident, the other cable news channel — CTV Newsnet — had the story for aboot half an hour. The CBC never really seemed interested in the story for the first few hours, in fact the first real report came when BBC World’s 6pm broadcast took over the station. Anyway. Reporters, for some reason, seem perplexed that “professionals” like “doctors” would conceive of doing something like blowing up a thousand people. As if the World Trade Center has been destroyed by illiterate street people — two of the suspects so far are “doctors”, but not really as one was a medical student. The really interesting part of this will be how America reacts to CCTV being instrumental, once again, in finding the people responsible.
2) Suicide Car Bomb In Yemen: A whole lot of Spanish tourists got killed when a suicide bomber jammed his car into a convoy of buses and pulled his trigger. He must not have gotten the memo that Spanish soldiers weren’t in Iraq anymore.
3) Putin And Bush Meet: There were really convincing reports out of Russia not too long ago aboot Putin’s sexual proclivities… remember that bizarre moment a few months ago when Putin grabbed that random kid and, basically, molested his stomach? Yeah. Anyway. Putin does have a point aboot the Missile Defense System the Americans are pushing… if he was Chinese his point would be more convincing. The Shield can be considered a First Strike Weapon… picture this: the Americans get their Shield working properly. That means America can rain nuclear weapons down on China, taking out 99% of China’s nuclear weapons. Those Chinese weapons, normally, could be fired all at once, overwhelming the American Shield. But with only 1% of their arsenal left the Chinese response is taken care of by The Shield. Hence the Americans can blow the shit out of the Chinese whenever they want with total impunity. So Putin doesn’t want Shield Missles in Poland or the Czech Republic because he loses face at home… every time America or NATO gets a little closer to Russia, Russians get a little more disgraced. So Putin is offering Southern Russia as a compromise, but the Americans — I think — will add Poland and the CR to their increasing arsenal of “stuff” to bring Russia onside against Iran… none of this was in the CBC report, which really didn’t offer much.
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11pm CTV National News
1) Bombing Arrests In Britain And Australia: The British police have cordoned off nineteen houses in Britain, as their search “intensified”. One of the most impressive things to come out of all this — beyond the whole CCTV issue — has been British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s cleavage. The suspects can be held without charge for 48 hours, after that the police can ask a judge for another 48 hours up to a maximum of a month. I’ve seen British, American and Canadian reporters talking aboot how the suspects aren’t talking… but it looks as though they’re all using the same anonymous source. The camera angle used to get the clip of Jacqui Smith making her official statement, which came from a static camera inside Parliament, looks down at the person who is speaking… honestly, it looked like she had someone’s ass in her shirt.
2) Canadian Soldier Killed By American Fire: As expected, an American Army report has concluded that Canadian Private Robert Costall and an American soldier were killed by “friendly fire” from US Special Forces during an insurgent attack against Forward Operating Base Robinson in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The battle occurred in the early morning of March 29, 2006. At the time Private Costall was the 16th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. To date there have been 60 Canadian soldiers killed while fighting for the new Afghan government.
3) Scooter Libby Sentence Commuted: Scooter wasn’t pardoned, his sentence was commuted, which means he’s still a criminal and he still has to pay a fine of $250,000. No one, let alone the Democratic political headhunters vying for the mans job, should be shocked that President Bush did this. One report I saw summed it up pretty nicely: a Federal Court decided that Scooter was going to have to wait in prison while his appeals were worked out. That meant Scooter was going to a Federal Prison in a couple of days. Article Two, Section Two of the American Constitution says the President gets to pardon or commute the sentence of anyone he wants to… except someone who has been impeached, which was why Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon so quickly. So, like it or not, the President can do this — which, when you think aboot it, is actually a good thing because it proves his administration still has a copy of the Constitution hanging around somewhere.
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If you find a broken link, or the YouTube stuff isn’t loading
properly, let me know and I’ll find an alternative…
I’m Canadian, it’s what we do. Off the ice.
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0_o
cultural sn:afu 