All I know thus far is that they claim they closed due to a lack of volunteers, but social media site Reddit has a submission implying that there is more to the story involving the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

All that’s on the site is a picture of Harper and Bush shaking their dirty hands and two YouTube videos. The potential for this site is great and it would have been so much better had they created a website that totally believed that Bush and Harper are indeed running for office. If they put up more content than just two videos the site could be something that goes viral in Canada. Still, the videos have a good number of views since they were uploaded on Oct. 1 with 18,514 and 9,439 views respectively.

The videos also play as attack ads against Harper and are blatantly supporting the Liberals. Had the videos been all about the “good” things that the two neo-cons have done it would have more effect. It could attack the very root of what’s wrong their policies. But I guess by doing that the Liberals would also be criticizing their own stances albeit indirectly. We can’t forget that Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were the ones who helped set the stage for neoconservatives in Canada.

Here are the videos from the site:
On the economy:

On foreign policy:

Originally posted on my personal blog, AdamClare.com.

News media in Toronto is following trends similar to those around the world - large corporations buy up smaller companies, and they also diversify by purchasing other forms of media and entertainment properties (such as magazines, television stations, telecommunications, and even pro sports facilities). Needless to say, this has profound implications - including the increase in popularity of cross-property advertising.

It’s expected that Rogers will use dedicated ad space to advertise its mobile phone, Internet, and TV services on the web pages of its subsidiary news organizations such as 680news and CityNews (much like blogTO promotes its Urban Maps in dedicated ad space on blogto.com).

The groups in question are easily accessible through facebook and seem to be pretty active.

Pair Vote (Swap) - Canada Election 2008 is the place to partner with someone else to try to coordinate the best voting option based on your respective locations.

Similarly, Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada provides the same service.

Click here for an example of how this vote-swapping works.

It leaves me to wonder why the people behind Vote for Climate don’t have a facebook page.

We are the Department of Culture, a growing community of Canadian citizens who are artists, arts professionals and cultural workers concerned about ensuring the social and cultural health and prosperity of our nation in the face of a Federal Government that is aggressively undermining the values that define Canada.

We are you: the painters, architects, dancers, writers, actors, designers, filmmakers, sculptors, performers, photographers, ceramicists, directors, curators, musicians, archivists, fashion designers, producers, weavers, choreographers, editors, librarians . . .

WHAT WE STAND FOR:

The Department of Culture was founded on the following objectives to:

ENCOURAGE A MULTIDIMENSIONAL VISION OF CULTURE that emphasizes living interactions between the artistic, cultural, social, political and economic aspects of society.
PROMOTE A VIEW OF CITIZENSHIP in which all Canadians are active participants in the creation of culture rather than simply as passive receivers of it.
ENSURE THAT GOVERNMENTS, AGENCIES AND INSTITUTIONS ARE ACCOUNTABLE for their social and cultural agendas.
SUPPORT THE CREATIVE AGENCY OF ARTISTS to make political change through all forms of artistic production.

Hopefully copyright issues will become an election issue.

Michael Geist’s “C-61 in 61 Seconds” Youtube competition — in which netizens were encouraged to make 61-second videos explaining what was wrong with Canada’s proposed equivalent to the US DMCA — has just come to end. Judges that include BNL’s Stephen Page and Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian selected three entries as their winners.

The bill is dead — thanks to the election that was just called — but one thing we know about bad copyright legislation is that it’s tenacious.

C-61 in 61 Seconds - The Winners

His analysis finds that Democrats who appear on The Colbert Report enjoy a significant increase in the number and total amount of donations they receive over the next 30–40 days when compared to similar candidates who do not appear on the show. Specifically, Democrats who come on the program raise $8,247 more than colleagues who don’t do so on the 32nd day following their appearance—“a bump of roughly two-fifths over the normal rate of receipts.” Republicans do not appear to benefit at all from appearing on the program; notably, they raise more funds in the month before coming on the program while actually raising less money in the month following their appearance—hinting at a possible “Colbert bust” for the GOP instead.

While conceding that it is “important not to read too much into these results” Fowler does also state that “one might be tempted to dismiss the importance of the Colbert bump because it is just money.” Clearly, political fundraising is done for a purpose and the most important consequence of any bump is whether Colbert candidates win elections. With only the 2006 elections having been completed since The Colbert Report came on the air, the upcoming 2008 elections will likely provide greater insight into this interesting and humorous wrinkle in modern American politics.

arrrrrrrrr

Torrent files are also used for legit purposes as well. i won’t list them all here, but you can find more info on legit torrents here.

Popular Swedish file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay has been blocked by most of the major Italian Internet service providers, the company said in a note on its blog.

The action follows Italian law enforcement’s actions in last month to shut down Colombo-BT.org, which the IFPI called the largest BitTorrent site in the country and which offered links to 390,000 music and 500,000 movie files.

For its part, The Pirate Bay said it has already changed IP for the site, which the group said should return access to half of the ISPs.

It also recommended Italians switch their DNS to OpenDNS, “so they can bypass their ISP filters,” and directed users to LaBaia.org (Italian for “The Bay”), which is operational.

WatchingTV Online will be following YouTube and the new way of watching video and TV on the Internet, it’s impact on the Television industry and will explore the new generation of TV series, focusing on their impact on society - in the US and around the world.

The blog author of textually is on vacation until Aug 19.