|
|
Thursday March 27,
2008
News or dramatic effect?
Whether it's about homegrown terror, or conveniently
(mis)placed blueprints, or people running for office, or even about the
Tibetan protest, today's media may as well be movie makers. It
seems
everything they report on has been staged for effect and it's their
business to try to make it look real.
1) Dubious jihadists and klutzy cops
A lawyer for the Toronto "terrorists" is telling it like we all
suspected. The
terrorist training camp was a farce (SunMedia)
He likened it to F Troop - "where pale face and redskin
both turn chicken" (YouTube Video)
As
earlier conjectured, it's looking more and more like a couple of agents
provocateurs lured some young guys
to a makeshift camp to see if they could get something going, and
especially to see if they could get the group noticed by the neighbours.
Typical of all investigations involving so-called national security,
the cops could get jobs on F-Troop as well:
The
lack
of intercepts from the CSIS and RCMP wired van on the 10-hour drive to
and from Opasatika that the Crown said was to find a safehouse and
weapon storage site is also highlighted.
"Either the
probes
malfunctioned, or the evidence was lost or destroyed by the police, it
will never be known," the document states. "At the end of the day,
there are only disjointed fragments of these 20 plus hours of
intercepts available to the defence."
Toronto
Terror, London Terror,
Chicago Terror, NY Terror - all entrapment?
2) Blueprint for empty distraction
Guess what's missing from this new item:
Canwest:
MPs' panel has DND's discarded blueprints in its sights
Committee studying security of suppliers mulls expanding probe ... But
Thomas Sullivan, the president of M. Sullivan & Sons Ltd. of
Arnprior, the firm hired to design and build the headquarters for the
counterterrorism unit, said the project was "non-secured work" and
didn't require security clearance.
Apparently, while
talking to Mr. Sullivan, Canwest neglected to ask him what
date was on the blueprints he used, and if he had discarded them, and
if so where?
So this is not about shedding light so much as about creating an
impression, and giving the non-opposition something to publicly chew
on - enabling larger issues, like the Mulroney inquiry, like the
Cadman affair, like the WAR, to drift quietly out of sight?
From
the McGill Tribune:
By-elections
are usually a time where voters punish the current government if they
are unsatisfied, as it's usually harder to motivate satisfied voters to
go to the polls. This, combined with recent negative media coverage of
the Conservatives over such events as the Cadman affair and the
so-called 'NAFTA-gate' scandal, would have led one to believe that
Harper was being set up for a massive rebuke. But it never happened-and
everyone has an opinion as to why.
My opinion is
that we're
headed to a virtual two party system. The Libs and Cons have all
but
formed a coalition and the Greens are coalescing with the Libs. That
leaves only the NDP with any substantial number of seats (the Bloc
being a party for Quebec only), if the Greens don't get them in the
next election.
3) How Green is our May?
Green
Party leader Elaine (thanks to Brian for picking up my
blooper) Elizabeth May wants her old
school chum Hillary Clinton to get elected because it would strengthen
her own position in Parliament. From
Canwest:
May
knew
Hillary Clinton when the Democratic candidate was at Yale law school
and predicts a second president Clinton would re-sod the playing field
for her as a Canadian party leader.
"I think it
will make a huge difference," May remarked. "It would be a big change
and helpful to me if she gets elected."
From looking at
May's
commendable list of issues - nuclear power, oilsands, asbestos and
uranium mining, and the legalization of marijuana - that she would like
to see debated at election time, it would appear that she doesn't
consider the war an issue worth debating. Neither did Clinton when the
Iraq war was proposed in Congress, and to this day she
doesn't regret it (CNN).
SierraClub:
War is one of the greatest environment hazards in existence.
Thanks to Bahija for this link: The
top 10 firms profiting from Iraq
4) Behind the Tibetan protest
A typically blinkered American flag waver has taken smugness to a new
level in order to deliver a strong dose of anti-China propaganda: IHT:
Rejecting dissent, China exposes its candor gap
It's all about how even the most embarrassing dissent is allowed in
America but not in China, ignoring completely that if China were not
emerging as a "big player" and economic rival of the US the American
media would have no interest whatsoever in China's internal problems,
and would stick to downplaying and ridiculing American dissidents.
Whatever his religious beliefs, the Dalai Lama is a political figure,
pure and simple. It's no coincidence that he was received by Bush
and
Harper just prior to the Olympics, and it's no coincidence that there
is an uprising of Tibetan monks at this time. There doesn't seem
to be
any purpose to it except to make China look bad at a time when the
world is paying more attention.
The
Toronto Star quotes the Chinese:
China
alleges the Dalai Lama was conspiring to wreck the Beijing Olympic
Games this summer and helped incite the unrest, which began earlier
this month with a series of peaceful marches in Lhasa, the Tibetan
capital, but soon turned deadly.
The Beijing
government says at least 22 people have died in Lhasa, most of them
"innocents" killed by rioters, while exiled Tibetan rights groups say
140 Tibetans have died in the crackdown across western China.
The Chinese
government is not exaggerating the violence if the Dalai Lama himself
has had to
admonish the demonstrators to cease their violence (GulfTimes),
no doubt because they are making his projected aura of peacefulness
look false.
The above quoted article contains another choice tidbit of which
Americans who faddishly groove on foreign gurus may be quite
ignorant.
The Tibetan monks are communists - you know, one of the ideologies they
(and we) are supposed to hate.
Also: those who shout "Free Tibet" should know that the Dalai Lama has
stated he is not seeking independence from China. From IndyUK:
"The
Chinese constitution already mentions autonomy [for Tibet]. So that
should not be just a word on paper but implemented on the spot," he
said, sitting in front of a statue of the Buddha. "The whole world
knows Dalai Lama is not seeking independence, one hundred times, a
thousand times I have repeated this. It is my mantra – we are not
seeking independence."
He just wants it
to be more like Quebec. Or maybe like the Vatican?
Note that he is declining to enter into talks with Beijing just now,
saying it might raise false hopes. I'm sorry, but such a lame
excuse
makes me wonder if he's waiting for an all clear from the US.
I believe in religious freedom and the right to dissent, and more power
to the Tibetans if they can swing a good political deal. But I
find it
hypocritical that the words "brutal suppression" have been applied to tactics used
against protesters in Britain, the US, Canada and Israel to absolutely
no avail, yet evoke
such a smug sense of superiority when used against a country that's
gone out of favour.
Canadian dissidents are largely a passive and non-violent lot, yet are
met with guns, clubs and tear gas. If they turned violent, as
they did
in China, we would see exactly the same response as China's, or
worse. Can you
imagine what would happen if Quebec ever did seriously try to
secede? The
west has absolutely nothing to be smug about.
Remember when the Olympics was supposed to be all about international
brotherhood? But it was always about big money and politics.
yayacanada
|
|
