Prime Minister’s Office condemns rap video that glorifies Taliban terrorists

Your tax dollars are going to fund anti-Canadian propaganda that sympathizes with the Taliban and glorifies violence against Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

The Prime Minister’s Office sent out an email late this evening condemning rapper Manu Militari for producing a music video that disrespects our men and women in uniform,

Despite strong words from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Canadian taxpayer helped foot the bill for the production of the Manu Militari rap video and they also help fund the rapper’s music career and national marketing.

MusicAction is a non-profit organization funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and private broadcasters to produce and market the music of francophone artists. Since 1985, more than $90 million has been granted to this organization.

For 2012-2013, Manu Militari is slated to receive:
$7,705 (Album Production)
$25,000 (National Marketing)

In 2011-2012, Manu Militari received:
$20,000 (Album Production)

In 2009-2010, Manu Militari received:
$7,100 (Songwriting and contribution grants)

According to an annual report from MusicAction from 2008-2009, Manu Militari received the following funding from the organization:
$5,000 (Artist Management)
$20,000 (Album Production)
$25,000 (National Marketing)

Here is the video that is referenced by the Prime Minister’s Office (it was taken off of YouTube and now has been rehosted by Sun News),

And here are the roughly translated lyrics,

1431, Pashtunistan.

 

Before the first prayer of the day.

 

I leave my lair, a scarf tied around my neck.

 

My eyes scan the sky in search of a drone – as if I’d have time to run before the missile hits.

 

As I walk, I question myself about a thousand things at once but if I continue my journey it’s because [?] strengthens my faith.

 

I cross the rivers and the ravines of my tribal country. After many hours I finally make it to the side of the main road.

 

I get out my shovel, I hurry up to dig a hole in the ground to put an explosive charge of agricultural fertilizers.

 

Inside there isn’t any metal, the trap is undetectable. I just have to erase my tracks before going to the mountain.

 

I position myself strategically, I just hope that nobody spotted me by satellite.

 

I just try to calm my fear, ready for the ambush, finger on the detonator, I’m in no hurry, so I wait.

 

I’m waiting for the one, who should have stayed home.
I’m waiting, and as goes the old Afghan proverb: they may have the watches, but we have time.
I’m waiting for the one, who should have stayed home.
I’m waiting, and as goes the old Afghan proverb: they may kill the swallows, but they won’t stop the spring from coming.

 

[6 months earlier]

 

It’s been hours, the light has chased away the darkness, I realize just how close the road is.

 

Squinting, I may look stressed, but I’m reflecting – just like the sun on my RPG.

 

I’m aware that if I’m ever caught they’ll torture me or photograph me naked on all fours.

 

As if I was just a [?] I get wrongly accused [?]

 

As if [?] was like a cancerous virus, as if I had no children or no tenderness, as if I swept my cave with my wife’s hair, and I warmed myself at night with napalm.

 

As if I was a mentally ill, an extremist, but there are signs for thinking people.

 

I’ve been disfigured, I had acid thrown in my face, scratched out my image to better raze my village to the ground.

 

I’m not the kind that panics under fire, I have already kicked the butt of the British Empire.

 

I’m ready to do the same thing, I’m fighting for the same cause, I always refused the peace imposed by the occupier.

 

I’m far from being a beginner, I’m not afraid of wasting time, I’m ready, I have weapons and powerful arguments.

 

I want to free my land, is not about religion, turn off your TVs: I’ve never hijacked a plane.

 

I’ve fought against poppy cultivation, now if I’m growing it, it is to live, it’s you who’ve pushed me to do it.

 

I am not perfect. My way of life has created victims, but the attacks on my country have made me legit.

 

I’m waiting for the one, who should have stayed home.
I’m waiting, and as goes the old Afghan proverb: they may have the watches, but we have time.
I’m waiting for the one, who should have stayed home.
I’m waiting, and as goes the old Afghan proverb: they may kill the swallows, but they won’t stop the spring from coming.

 

I was about to fall asleep, when I detect the sound of an engine, which paralyzes my legs makes my heart race.

 

I lean hard against a rock, I am afraid of being poorly hidden. I look one last time to see if my weapon is ready to fire.

 

Death is so close, I’m already reciting the [?] The enemy approaches, I recognize Canada’s colors.

 

Like a hundred countries, adrenaline flows through me, in a few seconds they will understand how much I hate them.

 

The wait is almost endless, but I ready to make sure no one slip by me. Eventually the invader reaches my position, I feel so much stress I am feeling sick to my heart.

 

I let a first humvee pass, even a second disappears, but the third: say hello to the devil for me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your United Nations

One month ago, a wayward bureaucrat (or rapporteur as he is styled) found himself in Canada and decided to tear a strip off our country on the topic of food security in Canada. Yes, while Canada sends billions of food aid to developing countries, the UN came to criticize Canada for how available food is to poor and aboriginal communities. Canada is 6th on the human development index, and while poverty and famine grip other regions such as the horn of Africa, the scant resources of the UN were used to study Canada.

Today, we learned of the head of the UN’s Health Agency’s trip to North Korea where she praised that country for its health system and said that it should be the “envy” of the developing world,

“Based on what I have seen, I can tell you they have something that most other developing countries would envy,” [the head of the UN’s health agency] told journalists, despite reports of renewed famine in parts of the country.

 

“To give you a couple of examples, DPRK has no lack of doctors and nurses, as we see in other developing countries, most of their doctors and nurse have migrated,” the director general of the World Health Organisation said.

 

She also highlighted its “very elaborate health infrastructure” extending to a district network of household doctors, she added.

 

Chan visited the closed communist nation Monday through Wednesday at the regime’s invitation.

 

She met senior ministers and visited health facilities in the capital Pyongyang, as well as a rural hospital about an hour’s drive away.

 

Her visit to Pyongyang came amid reports of a severe food crisis in North Korea.

 

Good Friends, a Seoul-based welfare group with contacts in the North, said in February that 2,000 people had starved to death there this winter.

 

A growing number of North Koreans have fled their homeland, which has relied on outside aid to help feed its people since a famine in the 1990s killed hundreds of thousands.

North Korean officials offer stage-managed propaganda tours for visiting tourists and dignitaries that is so predictable, the same stops (and sanctioned photo essay) unfolds for any outsider that visits: statues, monuments, the metro, and empty dining halls with lots of food. When tours go off-script, they are noted as a newsworthy aberration.

It’s no surprise that the article describing the UN tour of North Korea ended with this concession,

Chan later accepted that what she saw in Pyongyang “might not be representative of the rest of the country.

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Canadian history (pre-1982)

Today marks the bicentennial anniversary of the beginning of hostilities during the War of 1812. The war between the Americans and British for what is now modern-day Canada was a formative event in our history for who were are as a people, it marked a heroic win for British forces in holding the line against the American incursion, and helped defined the politics of our young country and raison-d’etre of its formation. The conflict lasted nearly three years and claimed about 15,000 lives.

Streetlamps in Ottawa are marked with banners commemorating the 200 years since the event. As a significant element of our national heritage, it is being recognized as such with a national public awareness campaign by the Minister of Heritage and Prime Minister Stephen Harper which includes new stamps and minted coins, celebrations during Canada Day, and commemorative deployment of the Royal Canadian Navy to Canadian and US ports.

The War of 1812 represents an important aspect of this Prime Minister’s rebranding of our national image at home. For years, “Canada” was based upon a Trudeaupian narrative hatched out of Ottawa from successive decades of the central Canadian establishment consensus. What made a Canadian a “Canadian” was the fact that he had universal healthcare, and had a well-funded national public broadcaster. Indeed, we were more defined by the nation-building done by our legislators, than by that done by the heroism of hundreds of thousands who put their lives on the line in defense of Crown and country.

Conservatives look to our history and see the individual heroism that defines us while liberals look to our “social history”.

In Ottawa, the chattering classes have been treating the bicentennial of the War of 1812 with disdain, suggesting that recognizing it either costs too much or that it is crass political posturing. To be sure, part of the legacy of this government will be in its recognition of Canadian symbols and history long airbrushed out by Canada’s establishment elite. Consider the push-back received when the Minister of Foreign Affairs wanted to restore the place of the Queen’s portrait in DFAIT and in our missions around the world. And what of the establishment freak-out of the restoration of the royal moniker to branches of our military despite widespread excitement among active personnel? Hundreds of thousands served their country under the “royal” designation. The government’s act was broadly seen (outside of Ottawa) as a restoration of pride. Consider too, the bellyaching heard ’round the Ottawa bubble when Conservatives passed on throwing a ticker-tape parade for the hardly notable 30th anniversary of the Charter.

The 200th anniversary of a war which helped define the formation of Canada may have happened long before 1982 when some in Ottawa believe that Pierre Elliot Trudeau granted us collective and individual rights. The perceived snub of this social history caused great consternation among national columnists and their friends in the Liberal Party, while the recognition of our men and women that serve our country with greater bravery than most of us will ever muster is seen as a waste or a spectacle.

Today, we recognize our nation-builders past and present who guaranteed the rights and freedoms that a pirouetting charlatan in a cape with a rose in lapel would later “liberate” for us to the great admiration of cynics who believe that Canada’s definition stems from governance, not from its glory.