Fox News Insults Canada

Idiots. They're all actors, they don;t even know anything.

Take Fox off of cable and satellite feeds in Canada immediately.

Replace them with Al Jazeera.

Best idea I've heard today!

  That Crowley woman just makes my skin crawl.  Almost as revolting as Barbara Amiel

Works for me!

On CTV's QP today it was suggested that is exactly what the Americans want, so they can run the war their way.

Watching faux is like walking into one of those honky tonk places where everyone is related, and the decor hasn't changed much since the days when straight razor crew cuts were in fashion.  I find it's better to be drunk before you arrive.

I've been saying that about Hollywood for years!

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

Per the initial quote in the piece linked to in the OP: "The spectacularly stupid and offensive Fox News show Red Eye with host Greg Gufeld (above) sunk to new depths this week by belittling a neighbor and ally in the so-called war on terrorism."

Well, Canada is definitely a neighbor.

But, since most progressives in Canada want nothing to do with the United States (militarily or otherwise), why would they be offended for, in effect, not being called much of an ally by some info-tainment talking heads?

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

No, we're a neighbour.

Except that!

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

The youtube video is up to almost 7,000 comments now ... correction ... over 7,100 now. 200 comments posted just while I was writing this!!

For once I don't mind if the gung ho right wing puppies unleash their invective on the target!

 Faux News indeed!

Here's the correct youtube link

Yeah, don't forget, that's why they call it "the Red Zone".  They're just bitter because the rest of the country cleaned the floor with them in the last election.

It's mildly interesting to see the type of cheap baubles that the marketplace of ideas produces in that country.

Not being a viewer of much on TV myself, it sounds like Red Eye is more info-tainment program with (allegedly) witty talking heads/actors/entertainers on the show.

They sure struck a sore spot with Canadians, that much I can say.

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

At least they were right about the Mounty uniforms. I usually see those from miles away while I'm stealing maple sap.

speaking of creepy ...

so be it.

they can deal with their own shit.

I read on the youtube comments:

#1 cause of death of Canadian soldiers - IEDs

#2 American soldiers

FOX News scrapes bottom

Jonathan Kay, National Post  Published: Tuesday, March 24, 2009

It's only when your own tribe gets targeted that you realize how low the media has sunk.

 And he would know ...

Following that come tired jokes about Mounties, cold weather, horses, and soldiers getting pedicures. Then the participants get bored and start making fun of Mexicans ("They like the siestas").

For as long as I can remember, armchair critics have assured me that the problem with the mainstream media is its left-wing bias. But as this example from a right-wing source helps demonstrate, the larger problem is sheer stupidity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcJn5XlbSFk

13,130 comments and counting ...

I remember reading about an article written in the right-wing National Review called "Bomb Canada".  I never read the article but I do remember there was a commotion north of the border and one commentator wrote: Canadians responded as Canadians always will when faced with overt aggression. They wrote inordinate numbers of letters of concern, exercising what Canadian writer Douglas Coupland calls their "almost universal editorial-page need to make disapproving clucks."  I don't even know who Coupland is but that pretty much captures what's happening now with "13,130 [Youtube] comments and counting..."!!

The whole thing is a bit silly, no?

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

I kind of agree with Sven here.  I mean, big deal, some late night shock jocks make stupid jokes and remarks about Canada.  So what?  Ever heard of "Talking to Americans"?  They don't even pretend to be a news show.

Fox is not news.  None of it's programming is.  Far worse has been said of us by better organizations.  We needn't become aligned with the right through indignation over what a panel of bozos have said on an obscure late night hillbilly act.  Leave it to the Canadian 'support the troops' crowd to express their outrage for being slighted by one of their sources of authoritative news.  Our concerns lay elsewhere.

If Canada had a principled armed forces that obeyed international consensus and didn't engage in colonialist occupations as a lapdog sidekick for a bullying fading superpower, we could stick to our convictions and rightly dismiss these Fox News hacks as so much detritus from a fading regime.

Instead, Canada has found that when they join a game they cannot play, a game that is obnoxious, odious and criminal, they are roughly treated by a gang of obnoxious and odious criminals. And so we respond cravenly, slavishly, shocked that these thugs do not lavish us with purple praise for appropriately heeding America's call. Why else would we care what this bunch of jokers think? Because it is the respect and acknowledgement of precisely these jokers and their lot that we crave. Instead, they call us like we are: a warmonger with no army, a conqueror with no horse. This mocking is righteous and deserved. It is the weed our governments, who desperately covet a place on the world stage, have sown, and now it has gone to seed.

I am not now, nor have will I ever be, a member of the "support your tropps" crowd.I don't want anyone dead, but I am no flag waving nationalist. 

My point was that while Sven thinks this is satire, I see it as hatemongering -  not just towards Canada, but towards Fox's numerous targets of hatred. I hope I've made myself clear. 

Well said.

I find it endlessly amusing the the "Heroes", those "sacrificing for freedom", those "Brave boys", fighting evildoers, kickin' ass, etc, go apeshit when their feelings are hurt.

Boo.

Hoo.

Well I wasn't offended. More bemused. But I think it's a good thing that a stink is being made. There are a lot of fox-news watchers in Canada too, and I think this will be one little monkey wrench in the machinery of their self-delusions. It's not going to make them wake up, but every little bit helps.

I personally have an old friend in TO who's a rabid right-wing idiot, and I know for a fact he'll be outraged by this ('cause practically everything outrages him). Maybe it will help him realise the stupidity of faux news.

In the immortal words of Leslie Neilson(As Frank Drebin) BINGO!

What was their intention, then?  Do you think they intended to get stuck in a quagmire?  Now, I think it's fair to critique the U.S. and NATO by saying, "I said at the beginning that this was a mistake and that it would result in no good" or "This is an utter mess and we should withdraw immediately".

But, it seems more than a bit silly to assert that the U.S. and NATO consciously embarked on this undertaking with the intent and purpose of failing.  Even someone who is stupid or evil will avoid purposely failing.

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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!

http://icasualties.org/OEF/DeathsByYear.aspx

Well, I hope this works because it took some work!

These are the casualty rates (from above)
expressed in proportion to the populations of these countries
http://www.prb.org/pdf08/08WPDS_Eng.pdf

Deaths of soldiers per 5 million people


SKorea.... Portugal.....Finland..... Hungary
0.2............1.0............1.0.............1.0

Sweden.... Italy......... Poland...... Czech....... Lithuania
1.2.............1.2..........1.2............1.5...........1.5

Germany.. Romania... France...... Latvia....... Australia
1.8.............2.2...........2.2...........2.2.............2.3

Spain....... Norway..... Netherlands.......US........Estonia
2.8.............3.2...............4.7..............11.2.......11.2
.......................................................(671)
UK........Canada........Denmark
12.5.......17.7...............19.2
............(116)

-edit- there!

Now this is interesting data that you can actually draw some conclusions from.

Of course the US has lost the most soldiers numerically, by a long shot,
and proportionately they are still among 5 with the most losses.

But the US population is roughly 10 times that of Canada, and we've lost proportionately more soldiers than the US.

I think sometimes even our American friends forget the size of the population of the US compared to most of the rest of the world's countries, Canada in particular.

It's not surprising to us, but to some to our south it is.

NOBODY ever said Canada's military is not good!

Our soldiers are known to 'punch above their weight' by using their brains for more than battering rams.

-edit

Apologies, and no offense intended to US troops, but we think they use you badly.

Like the Mohawks of Grand River (1812-14, +), the Highlanders also  scared the shite out of enemies (first) with their ungodly yells ... and then  'follow through'.

I think it is more accurate to say we do not have a tradition of military aggression.

I know that's why I am so uncomfortable with Afghanistan. I feel it's the first time we have sent our soldiers to an unjust war, and that's our responsibility, not the soldiers. In my opinion, it's against Canadian values.

Our soldiers care about the Afghans, the kids going to school, the crops surviving so families can have a livelihood and are not forced to join the Taliban.

I don't get that same sense from the US COMMAND. They are there to 'secure' the area ... ie, control it 'for business purposes', and they'll install whatever puppet will answer to them, regardless of what's good for the people.

And the US'll bomb the crops just to make sure they don't fall into Taliban hands, regardless of the fact that it deprives families of their livelihoods and puts them at the mercy of the Taliban.

I suspect the American COMMAND answer to that would be

"Who cares! Bomb them here or bomb them there! Just bomb them!"

(Am I being too unfair?)

Personally, I think we have a proud and valued and honourable military tradition.

 -some edits to clarify criticism is of COMMAND,

NEVER soldiers.

God bless em all.

I doubt that very much. Sounds like a conceit. Sounds like sport team fan talk.

I doubt that very, very much. If they cared for the people of Afghanistan, they wouldn't be occupying their country and killing them on orders from the Pentagon. I think the soldiers (they're certainly not "ours". We have no ownership of the Canadian Forces. We pay for their indulgences, but we have no say in their use) care more about their institution and their place in it. Afghanistan is a prop.

You don't buy all that crap about "Canada the Peacekeeper", do you? Our national rhetoric may say one thing, but our realpolitik involvments in many imperialist causes goes ignored. Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, for example. Or the Boer war.

Good for what? Sandbagging the Red River?

Our "allies" (co-conspirators) are obviously smarter than our simpering scumbag government. 

Who's "us"? I'm not occupying Afghanistan. And I think that describing the criminal occupation as a "burden" reinforces colonialist attitudes towards the occupied, and shifts the narrative where we portray ourselves as the victims of those ungrateful natives. Like the Americans think they were the victims of the Vietnamese.

Canada has a history of joining in military ventures of its imperial master, whomever that happens to be at the time. And Canada has a bad habit of being eager cannon fodder for futile operations the masters themselves wouldn't go anywhere near. So Canada romps off stupidly to South Africa, to Flanders, to Dieppe, to Afghanistan, all hoping to please the King, who doesn't really give a shit what "sacrifice" one of its' two-bit provincial vassal thinks it made.

<>The way I see it, the difference between the way most Americans view the war and they way most Canadians do is the "spin" our governments have put on it: Although the "spin" as told may sound more vulgar to Canadian ears, the U.S. government is at least honest with its public

<>In Canada, the politicians and the media can't even wrap their tongue around the word "war". They keep using that kinder and gentler f-ing word "mission".

The first time Harper described what is going on over there as a war was on the second last day of the recent federal election. He was tired and my guess is it was a freudian slip. Here's what he said, "...Our invasion of Afghanistan." He probably meant to say, "...Our mission in Afghanistan." The second and, to my knowledge, only other time to date that he described Afghanistan as a war was in his March 1 2009 CNN interview: "My own judgement... quite frankly is we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency."

If we can agree that there is a war going on in Afghanistan and Canadian soldiers are fighting in it, then we need to come up with a definition of what war is to define what we are doing in Afghanistan.

War is killing, injuring and destroying.

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

Are we fighting a war?

Are we "helping" Afghans?

To find the answer to this question, all we have to do is 'follow the money'.

Here is the money trail:

Of the money we are spending on Afghanistan:

90% goes to prosecuting the war.

10% goes to reconstruction, development, humanitarian aid.

Clearly, our priority is prosecuting the war in Afghanistan.

Shooting, shelling and dropping bombs on Afghans - in other words - maiming, murdering and burning villages, homes, women and kids, is not 'helping' Afghans.

As I said, telling the truth may sound vulgar, but at least the American government (unlike the Canadian government) is more honest with its public in this respect.