Ezra Levant, George Soros and Fox News North

Ezra Levant is an obnoxious little man.

Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to throw in my two cents on Levant, George Soros and Fox News North.

There has been an ongoing battle since we first learned that Stephen Harper used taxpayer money to hire Ari Fleischer and take Kory Teneycke to lunch, so he could import an all nasty right-wing nonsense, all the time, Fox News station in Canada.

Teneycke passed his taxpayer funded interview and was chosen to head it up.

And to prove that he could be just as vile as Glen Beck, he attacked anyone not on board with the project, including the wonderful Margaret Atwood.

But then when the advocacy group, AVAAZ started a petition to block special licensing for the station, Teneycke went a little too far, and appeared to have been complicit in some underhanded sabotage. He resigned and has been replaced by someone who isn't nuts.

But Ezra Levant, another Glen Beck wannabe, not content with just attacking Margaret Atwood and AVAAZ, wrote a column attacking one of the philanthropists who has donated to the organization in the past. The billionaire George Soros.

Billionaire George Soros has made a living wrecking the lives of others. Now he wants to mess with Canadians cried Levant.

And in the article he made libelous statements, suggesting that Mr. Soros collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary in 1944, to save himself. He also claimed (not merely suggested but claimed) that Soros stole Jewish possessions and that he was part of a group that actually murdered his own people.

It was pretty out there. It was also completely false. George Soros's only crime as a 13 year old living in a Nazi occupied country, was to pose as a Christian to save himself. He has been very candid about this and you would be hard pressed to find anyone not willing to do the same thing under those circumstances.

It's called survival, not betrayal.

Sun media was forced to apologize, and George Soros is now apparently going to sue both the paper and Levant. Levant should never have written it and the Sun should never have printed it. They knew that but did it anyway. I hope they get nailed to the wall.

So Why Did They Target George Soros?

Many people donate money to AVAAZ, so why did they single out George Soros? I think it's because he donates a lot of money to humanitarian causes and is everything Neocons hate.

- He has been critical of George Bush and called his administration the "Bubble of American Supremacy." Soros said the Bush administration "violated human rights and damaged American security by invading Iraq and deposing the regime of Saddam Hussein. 'The idea that we can impose our will on the world is really just the wrong idea,'" he said, vowing "to do everything in his power to prevent Bush from winning re-election. He grew up under an oppressive regime and saw the damage that Imperialism can do.

- He has been critical of the country of Israel (He is Jewish and not anti-Semitic)

- He provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa.

- Provided funds to a group campaigning against the death penalty

- He is one of 80 wealthy liberals who have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades.

- He has provided funding to help fight climate change

What a horrible "life wrecker".

But Then on the Other Hand we Have Rupert Murdoch

The man that Harper and Teneycke wined and dined to get this station, Rupert Murdoch, is also a billionaire. And he has used his media outlet to not only advance right-wing causes but squelch negative press.

For instance, when he was on the board of Philip-Morris, he routinely withheld any stories that revealed the dangers of smoking. From a 1985 PM internal report: As regards the media, we plan to build similar relationships to those we now have with Murdoch's News Limited with other newspaper proprietors. Murdoch's papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days. To sum up, then, on using our natural allies. We have made a start; we have proved that it can be done; we have found that they can be a very effective force; and we intend to do more in the future.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that tobacco can "wreck lives".

And Canadians are not the only ones rejecting Fox "News" style media. The UK is also fighting against the spread of this disease.

Our democracy is under threat if Murdoch wins control of Sky: Britain's great film producer once warned Tony Blair of News Corp's intentions. His fears are now being realised

Media monopoly: It's time politicians said no to Rupert Murdoch Vince Cable must refer the bid for BSkyB to Ofcom

Rupert Murdoch's Sky takeover should be blocked, Vince Cable told: Claire Enders writes to business secretary arguing he should stop News Corp buying 60.9% of BSkyB it does not already own

And let's see if this doesn't sound like what happened in Canada, after it was discovered that Murdoch's News Corp. had hacked phone lines to get what they wanted.

It was all looking so good for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Transition to new government achieved with a few favours owed on account of switching sides to support the eventual winner. Better still, a company stalwart at the new prime minister's side – director of communications and key adviser, no less. All in all, really very well placed to manage the political side of News Corp's fortunes as a major (and growing) force in British and international media.

Now scroll back to News International's defence of its conduct. Its position was based on two issues: that phone hacking was restricted to one "rogue" journalist and one private investigator and that the man then in charge – the editor, Andy Coulson – knew nothing about it but nevertheless did the right thing by resigning.

Eerie isn't it?

Ding Dong, Teneycke's Gone .... Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

Good news today. Kory Teneycke has resigned. But our battle is far from over.

"The resignation of Prime Minister Harper's former spin doctor from the leadership of one of Canada's most powerful news organizations is a battle won in a longer fight against crony-media in Canada.

We've seen a massive people-powered movement growing to protect our democracy, with 80,000 petition signatures and $110,000 raised online in just days. We saw the big corporate response - with smear pieces in Quebecor newspapers, legal threats, and insider knowledge of criminal sabotage of our petition. But Canadians did not back down.

Teneycke's resignation was sudden and unexpected, and followed Avaaz's request to the RCMP yesterday for a criminal investigation into the sabotage of our petition. This event only reinforces the need for a full police inquiry.

I hope Avaaz nails him to the wall. We have to send a message that crony-media is not welcome here.

Good work guys!

Kory Teneycke and Avaaz Was a Stephen Harper Rerun

During the 2008 election campaign, John Baird sent out a press release suggesting that a “Wall Street Billionaire” was bankrolling an anti-Harper campaign, in violation of the Canada Elections Act?

The group that Baird referred to as a 'Shadowy Foreign Organization', was Avaaz, who had launched a 'vote for the environment' blitz, urging Canadians to vote strategically.

Baird held a press conference and everything.

After the conference, staff members of Minister of the Environment John Baird distributed a press release accusing the Avaaz effort of being a shadowy foreign initiative, funded by foreign billionaire George Soros, which is violating Canadian election law. All of these allegations are false.

In fact, the Avaaz campaign is exclusively run and funded by Canadians, and has been fully reviewed and registered as a legitimate third party by Elections Canada and is listed on its website. Avaaz proactively initiated full consultations with Elections Canada lawyers, who approved the application. “Our campaign is of, by, and for Canadians, and strictly Canadian money is being used, that’s verified by an auditor registered with Elections Canada”, said Avaaz Executive Director Ricken Patel.

In other words, John Baird was full of it.

So when the Canadian organization Avaaz launched a campaign against Fox News North, despite the fact that it was determined that Avaaz was indeed not a 'Shadowy Foreign organization', Kory Teneycke, rehashed Baird's former lies, implying that the advocacy group is foreign and has no business meddling in Canadian affairs.

Unlike his foreign Fox News North, and their spin-off teabaggers, trying to make Canadian politics just as toxic as they are in the U.S. (Be sure to sign the petition if you haven't already).

Heather Mallick wrote an excellent column on the subject: Fox News North is a rancid idea. She has some experience with Fox News in the United States, and confirms that:

Fox celebrates ignorance and fosters hate, it’s your weasel heart, that chunk of you that spurts endorphins when a hated rival crashes his car on Ambien or is caught with a gerbil where a gerbil shouldn’t be. It’s a poison tree. Weirdly transfixing as Glenn Beck is, when you eat the Fox apple, it eats away at you. And it’s a news cartoon. When real journalists make a mistake, we feel a sickness in our soul. It’s humiliating, it should, and will be, publicly corrected and so-workers avert their eyes. Fox isn’t like that. They seemingly make up numbers, flying unburdened through their fenced-in no-fact zone.

Much like the way the Harper government operates, in a no-fact-zone.

Fox targets women. And racial groups. But most worryingly, it targets individuals in the same way the Harper government does. Tom Flanagan, who has helped guide Harper since he met him in 1990 at the University of Calgary, laid out his game plan for the conservative takeover in his book Harper’s Team. What matters is the cleansing of alleged liberals from the actual governance of the country. Once you get elected, Flanagan wrote, “you choose judges, appoint the senior civil service, fund or de-fund advocacy groups.” This is the Fox agenda and certainly the Harper agenda we see now.

We don't need this garbage and we shouldn't have to pay for something we don't want. It's that simple.