The New CBC

The CBC has been a canadian institution. A source of truth in an ever-deceitful world. They got it wrong on many occasions, but they didn't appear beholden to the large corporate behemoths who controlled the dispersion of media events, and also appeared as an 3rd party source unfettered by government or corporate control.

Unfortunately that is no longer true and I mourn their passing. I just sent this message to the CBC newsroom in the somewhat vain hope that some there might try and ressurect their once proud tradition. even if it is in the form of a blog. There are many extremely capable journalists out there and few canadian blogs reflect that.

Here is a note of protest sent to that audience. I hope even one CBC journalist responds to it.

What on earth is happening to CBC. It's as if the news department has turned into Fox Broadcasting, that notorious US adjunct to the US State department. Similarly the CBC echo's many of the right-wing positions uncritically. Has the CBC simply become an adjuct of the ruling government of the day, a shadow of the controlled press they critisize ?

Aside from the abysmal set-up program on the National which tried to convince canadians to join the war on mid-east people by using local arabic quislings to present the case, the CBC has more and more simply thru local programming shown the obvious that canadians oppose the war and our role in the occupation of Afghanistan. Despite that the National and CBC hiarchy has presented programming which glorifies our role in Afghanistan as peacekeepers rather than occupying troops of an army headed by the USA. Each pronouncements by a canadian General lusting for bloody glory has been uncritically transmitted and propaganda worthy of the KGB about supporting our "boys" has occupied the news, including long newsclips showing the families back home.

But the body bags and injured soldiers keep increasing, as we learn the hard way as others have in the last century, including the British, Russian, and our own soldiers, that the Afghani ar ungovernable.

What is different is that the fundamentalist Taliban with it's Al Qua heda intelligentsia as set up and supported by the US in order to embarass the Soviet Union has now assumed a life of its own and the US supported Northern warlords are just as bad. The US has become the greatest creater of strife in the middle east (including it's uncritical and opportunistic support of the theocratic state of Israel.), surpassing even the British in it's clumsy attempt to aghieve domination of oil supplies.

The US designs are not very subtle yet CBC insists on presenting it in the US mold, Canadians are in Afghanistan to achieve a democracy implant.(whether Afghanis want it or not).

It seems however that CBCs news-room is a capture of the Harper right.

So stories about the attempt by the conservatives to abolish the Wheat-Board are presented as a fight between the MONOPOLY wheat-board and the free traders. Despite the fact that without the wheat-board small farmers would be at the mercy of the big corporations like Cargill or Agricore. In every newscast the conservative touchword MONOPOLY appears, despite the fact that corporate monopolies are what the farmers banded together to oppose in the 1930s.

In Manitoba the brain-addled or Donald Blenhem influenced newsroom ran with the Fraser Institute press release which showed that Manitoba ranked first in charitable donations in Canada. It was however 27th as compared to the Maryland, US first. The press release also didn't mention whether that included corporate donations, which can give considerable tax release to corporations.

An additional news-release statement from the right-wing Fraser institute (who wants to privatize any government institution, from the provincial hydro. phone companies and medicare) implied that the fault was with the social welfare institutions who gave the impression that the poor were taken care of. (The logic being to do away with these impediments to charity by the wealthy). Their logic flies in the fact that Manitobans elect a government which despite it's faults plays to the support of those less fortunate.

However the machinations of the Frase Institute didn't even impinge on the news report of the fearless, eagle-eyed denizens of the CBC news-room. Yellow jounalists, complacent collaborators, reduced to the status of government mouthpieces as in Latin America ? Certainly not what I would expect from canadian jounalists or the journalists being defended from death by PENN. Simply careerist slime.

As an old friend of mine, a reporter for the Montreal Gazette, Nick Auf Der Maur would say, "there are swine, and then there are journalistic swine. They simply shadow the editor, who's also a swine."

Whoa Suzanna.

Letter to My American Neighbours

These are terrible times. The US has become the state that many of us feared they would become without the counterweight of the Soviet Union. Not that the Soviet Union was a force for democracy or justice, but that they contended for the approval of the world's people.

Without contestation, the US has become the new Romans. They support and impose their majesty on any nation that impedes their imperial aims. With "Democracy" as their war-cry they invade any nation that will not bow to their aims, which is not democracy but subservience. Their "New World Order" is simply a catch-phrase for imposing an imperial regime on the world. They stand for the impoverishment and subservience of all peoples for the enrichment of the US. The decimation of Lebanon by the theocratic terrorist state of Israel, maintained economically and militarily supplied by the US is only the beginning. Syria is the eventual target by the most powerful military regime in the mid-east, which also has atomic bombs, Israel.

The only thing that has impeded US imperialist designs is the heroism of the Afghani and Iraqi people. Had they achieved an easy victory oil-rich Iran would have been an easier target, sandwiched as it is between Afghanistan and Iraq. Close by is also the repressive US client-state of Saudi Arabia. But puppet states are not easy to establish.

And of course there is also the countries such as Venezuela, the 3rd largest supplier of oil to the US who is using oil revenues to help their people, rather than enriching big US oil corporations, not to mention Cuba which has been a thorn mainly because they defied American might because the people supported the government, nor Bolivia which has defied the US and would use oil revenues to raise their people above impoverishment. These people can thank the Iraqui insurgents, otherwise they would likely be invaded, like Guatamala so many years ago. Or Grenada, or Haiti, or the Dominican Republic, or Chile under the supervision of the CIA, or Nicarauga by Olier North, and so many other countries. The "Empire" is getting short of troops for it's nefarious ventures.

Hopefully because the american people are waking up and are no longer willing to fight for the profits of corporations cloaking themselves as patriots. "The Rights of Man"by Thomas Paine, one of the great fathers of the American Revolution should be a required readings in schools to counter all the crap that now seems endemic and accepted across this once great country. Lack of dilligence was why Hitler gained power in Germany. Forgetfullness of the values which formed your country is why the US seems destined to the same fate.

Since at this time the US is embroiled in an imperial war, which like in Viet-Nam they will not win and there is an immense deficit of $3 trillion, one can only imagine a bad outcome which WILL affect the American people. A collapse of the US and world economy. Hopefully the US populace will wake up before this happens and somehow manage to turn things around.

As a canadian, whose parents were born in the US, and will also suffer from this US folly, I can only hope that the original beliefs of the constitution of the US will once again resurface and reject the birthing of a fascist America.

I haven't posted much lately. Perhaps the "Shock and Awe" policies of western governments have rendered me speechless in the absence of any meaningfull response from the populace. I've also had consideral personal events to deal with. Mea culpa. Depession at the general world situation is no argument. Strangely I've also noticed a falling off in the posts of many articulate leftist bloggers. Perhaps my general malaise is shared.

Nevertheless I must continue, if only not to view myself much like the old gentleman in my village who would holler loudly and expond righteously in answer to the Sunday religious radio broadcasts. I find myself at times responding to some CBC broadcast with angry curses and cries of "Bullshit", "effing Fascist", or "yellow journalist doing a rotten spin".

So if anyone actually reads these missives I have a vehicle that says I'm not an insane antagonist ranting about nothing.

My intentions are to give an alternate view to the common responses to the issues that bedevil us.

Instead of just cursing the idiots that plague us I hope to advance what I think are rational ideas. We'll see if my intentions are followed up with my present resolve.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives may have bit off a bit more than they can chew. Even in Staunch "family values" territory like the prairies support for his $100 a month proposal which scrapped the liberal proposal for establishing a Public Childcare program based on the lauded Quebec one has less than passing grades.
For those working parents desperate for childcare with few affordable options it is a slap in the face.

Neither G8 nor Live8 Will Ease 3rd World Poverty

Monday, July 25, 2005

It's like a circus. While the G8 meets to determine how to dissect the body of the world, a world-wide celebration holds court on your local television screen decrying 3rd world poverty.

Wowee !! A big extravagaza uniting all the wealthy rock stars and their fans in an effort to mitigate collective guilt by having fun, as Geldorf once more unleashes his minions in an attempt to ressurect his faded career and the entertainment industry makes $millions. He and the other poster children still can't comprehend that charity won't ease the suffering of the impoverished of the world. Only throwing off the yoke of neoliberalism will.

That means opposing the G8, WTO, the IMF, and all the phony aid organizations who simply extend justification for the rape of 3rd world people. The genecide of the people of Dhafur won't end no matter how much aid is given. Only a concerted effort which also includes aid but more importantly UN troops to stop the genecide and relocation policies of the Sudan government can. While hands are wrung over how horrible the Ugandan massacres were, and why the west didn't step in, another genocide is taking place which the world more or less ignores.

STOP THE DHARFUR GENOCIDE NOW !

The parable of the hatchet or the nonsense of nation-building in Afghanistan

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