So needing a break from other tasks, I sat down to regain some of my youth.  The song I chose was Phil Ochs’ Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon, itself Ochs’ own rework of his original Here’s to the State of Mississippi.  My lyricist heart got little satisfaction or really any exercise in the end.  I was amazed at how little needed to be changed from a song about Richard Nixon to make it a song about Stephan Harper.   My political soul soared though.  This little exercise in a very few minutes brought home to me the reasons for my nagging discomfort with the Harper government.  I had watched it all unfold before:  The lies, the religious fakery, laws changed quietly, almost secretly through Order in Council.

How many thought after Watergate that government would never be able to get away with such shenanigans again with the watchful eye of the media ready to pounce at the first sign of government subversion and abuse of power.  Yet here we are, thirty-seven years after Nixon’s ignoble resignation.  Is it because of our delusion that Canada is somehow more moral than the United States?  Or is it just because the media we trusted to raise the warning is now owned by a handful of men who create our leaders for us?

Whatever the cause it seems so little changes.  Like lemmings we blindly we run merrily to our demise again and again.  So here it is.  The words are all Phil Ochs except for the name and a few minor adjustments to make it fit more snugly to Stephan ‘Milhous’ Harper.

Here’s to the State of Stephan Harper

Here’s to the state of Stephan Harper.

Where underneath his borders

The Devil draws no lines.

If you drag his putrid tar sands

Nameless toxins you will find

And the fat trees of the forest

Have hid a thousand crimes,

And the calendar is lying

When it reads the present time.

[Chorus]

Oh here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of.

Stephan Harper: find yourself another country to be part of.

And here’s to the schools of Stephan Harper.

Where they’re teaching all the children

That they don’t have to care,

All the rudiments of hatred

Are present everywhere,

And every single classroom

Is a factory of despair.

There’s nobody learning

Such a foreign word as “fair.”

[Chorus]

And here’s to the laws of Stephan Harper.

Where the laws are set in secret,

Proroguing every day.

He punishes with income tax

That he don’t have to pay,

And he’s tapping his own brother

Just to hear what he would say.

But corruption can be classic

In the Stephan Harper way.

[Chorus]

And here’s to the churches of Stephan Harper (and Billy Graham).

Where the cross once made of silver

Now is caked with rust,

And the Sunday morning sermons

Pander to their lust,

And the fallen face of Jesus

Is choking in the dust,

And Heaven only knows

In which God they can trust.

[Chorus]

And here’s to the government of Stephan Harper.

In the swamp of their bureaucracy

They’re always bogging down,

And criminals are posing

As advisors to the crown,

And they hope that no one sees the sights

And no one hears the sounds,

And the speeches of the prime minister

Are the ravings of a clown.

[Chorus]

Make it happen Canada!

But the question that should be asked is why Libya?  Government forces are cracking down on democracy protesters in a number of countries.  Last weekend another dozen or so people were killed by security forces in Yemen and our friend and ally Saudi Arabia has brutally intervened in Bahrain to prop up the monarchy in that country.  Is their suffering any less deserving of our attention and our intervention?

Once more the myth of Western humanitarianism is exposed.  But the media are silent.  Isolated reports dot the media landscape, because it is virtually impossible to keep events totally secret, but no more.  No theme songs and Hollywood graphics to mesmerize the public into a righteous indignation.  No daily interviews with correspondents on the ground.  The general public accepts what the media give it because they want to.  They want the myth to remain.  To step into the black river of truth flowing silently under the mask of civility would shame them.   Not because it is happening but because they don’t want to do anything to stop it.  How could they maintain the facade of moral civility if forced to face the foundation on which our wealth and power stand.

The Great Powers only engage troops in combat when their self-serving national interests are at stake.  In Yemen and Bahrain the existing governments have been friendly and cooperative with American aims in the Arab world.  In Franklin Roosevelt’s words they are “sons of bitches but they are our (America’s) sons of bitches.”  No depravity is too shocking, no slaughter too brazen but they are forgiven.  Those who are not collaborators are struck down to keep the myth alive.

Ribbons and other stickers on cars and in windows enjoin us to support our troops but it is the war they really want us to support.  Before you kill a human being yourself or by proxy step into that black river of truth.

Likewise, Canadian media has never been telling us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  How could they?  Professional journalism, first created in the 1920s in Great Britain in order to undermine the unions and break the general strikes plaguing the country, has always only accepted the truth that serves it.  Schools of journalism from that time to this have taught objectivity based on use of only authoritative sources.  So journalists are to seek the authorities (i.e. the government and its agents) and diligently report whatever truth they fabricate.  This is what is called objectivity.  Anyone who is not sanctioned by these authorities is not to be listened to or given credibility.  Authoritative sources include the government itself, academics and think tanks sanctioned by the government and of course the business community.  Labour unions were considered unreliable and biased as were the academics that worked for them.  Anyone who challenged the government’s definition of the truth was considered a crank, and not to be taken seriously.

It is not that all the news is a lie but neither is it the truth.  Perhaps the greatest myth being propounded here is that there is a Truth.  Truth is contextual, temporal and personal.  Our truth is simply reality filtered through our biases.  Empathy is a better professional ethic for journalism than objectivity.  A celebration of all voices is preferable to one person’s supposed truth.  Insight, something truly valuable, can be found anywhere.  Just as the only person who could ever fully explain Nietzsche to me was a homeless alcoholic in Toronto.  While I reject the neo-con reject of all expertise as suspect, expertise and experts might be found in more places than are dreamt of in the philosophy of professional journalism.

With these current CRTC deliberations a number of petitions are circulating along with calls on all of us concerned with the truth to write the agency and anybody else who will listen.  I have resisted.  Not because I don’t want the truth to be reported but because I would be sanctioning an ongoing fraud.  To demand that the current restrictions remain is to give credence to a lie.  How can I sign a petition or write a letter in support of truth to maintain the chimera of the truth?

Now the story repeats itself in Tucson.  Where is the acceptance of responsibility?  Real idea leaders have the character to stand up and admit if there words brought death.  Either to justify it in the cause of a greater good as those who fought the war against fascism or to denounce it as an error in speech, a flaw in their idea that they did not expect or intend to end like this.  Thus far silence broken only by rationalizations that ignore the elephant in the room.  It is difficult to know if people like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and the rest even believe the non sense that comes out of their mouths.  I suspect it has more to do with ratings and getting their fifteen minutes of fame, of boosting their egos and of raking in the speaking fees than it does with a sense of civic duty or trying to build a better stronger society or hell just reporting the news but that is from a bygone era when news was information not info-tainment.  The cost though is the life of a child among others.  Six people dead, others struggling to recover.  What makes you so important that we must pay like this?

But it is not just the Right Wing that has perpetrated and escalated this sewer of hate on the airwaves and the printed page.  All of the media needs to bear its share of the blame.  Instead of shouldering that responsibility and reflecting on where everything went wrong the media has gone out of its way to focus the blame away from them to the lone gunman.  He was deranged.  He had a history of social and psychological problems.  Geraldo Rivera who has made a bad joke into a career conflates everything from Puerto Rican independence to the plight of the Palestinians together as some sort of background report.  Of course he failed to mention the American Revolution and the acts of terrorism committed against innocent civilians by the Sons of Liberty, men revered as heroes by the very journalists that incite this new psychotic patriotism.  Not everyone who commits an act of political violence is deranged and while some of his examples fit others certainly did not.

In this case the young man does have a history of problems.  There are only two possible groups that will be influenced by the ravings of the lunatic pseudo conservatives:  one is those who believe they can benefit from the chaos, fear and the blind obedience to those who seem to offer control and order; the other group is the weak, the frightened, the disenfranchised, the terminally gullible lost in a world that has left them behind.  An education system has abandoned them leaving them with few skills to discern truth from deception. It has left them hostage to the swirling winds of political manipulation.  Sadly, this is by far the larger of the two.  Our gunman falls within this second group.  Told that the president of the United States and his supporters are actually attempting to destroy his country and told in the same breadth that that country is the best one that has ever been created (both incorrect), what was his simple mind supposed to to?  And what will the next simple mind do?  This is not over.  If nothing changes, if the same morons of media spew their idiocy unfettered, there will be more carnage, more funerals.

We cannot prevent it if we continue to delude ourselves and not take responsibility; responsibility ourselves for allowing this diatribe to continue, responsibility for watching and laughing when we know that others are being duped.  Making the actual announcers who use this hate speech to further their careers responsible will be much harder as they show no moral character themselves.  Appealing to their better natures is an appeal to a void.  But, a start might be to hold them legal accountable when they do step over the line.  When Glenn Beck in the Moyers piece ruminates on whether he would need to hire someone else to kill Michael Moore or if he could do it himself, the law should take him at his word.  It is a  crime under Canadian law to utter a death threat and I believe it to also be a crime in most U. S. states.  I interpret those remarks as a clear threat against Michael Moore’s life and should not be taken as a joke just because Beck is a radio and television personality.  It’s not much of a beginning but if we don’t start somewhere things will only get worse.

Conservatives are often the culprits in both countries though not exclusively as the reference to Clinton shows.  It is not really that the Liberals are all that chaste.  But Conservatives are always lecturing us to be choirboys, seemingly forgetting that being a choirboy can be hazardous to your virginity.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Gerda Munsinger Affair that scandalized the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.  Apparently Gerda had done the rounds of the Conservative party leadership including the minister of defence.  She was rumoured to have connections to the East German secret police.  The story was disseminated in the early 1960s, likely by the Kennedy administration who worked tirelessly to oust poor old Dief and install the more likable (at least to Kennedy) Lester Pearson.

More recently there was the scandal over Maxime Bernier leaving secret documents at his girlfriend’s home.  Pundits at the time wondered why he would risk his political career by dating a  woman with biker connections who had once worked as an exotic dancer.  Ah! our intrepid media, a brain trust if there ever was one.  I can give you two very large reasons up front it you would like.  If the reporters don’t realize why they should talk to their cameramen because they always seemed to place the reason front and center.

I always knew Betty Davis eyes were a popular look but Sarah Palin hair?

Now we have the dynamic duo of scandal, Rahim Jaffer and wife Helena Guergis.  Allegations have been brought to the prime minister’s attention of some shenanigans by Ms. Guergis and she was asked to resign from cabinet and was at the same time expelled from caucus.  Although no official word has surfaced as to what specifically she is supposed to have done rumours abound.  The only observation I will make is that having a minister resign is a common tactic to ease pressure and embarrassment for the government.  But also expelling the member from caucus in one fell swoop is not an every day occurrence.  Whatever this is Harper must think it makes him and his government, which is the same thing, look really, really bad.  I can hardly wait I am so excited with anticipation.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at her husband Rahim Jaffer a former Conservative MP from Alberta, land of cold hearts and toxic waste.  Apparently, Mr. Jaffer was internalizing some toxic waste of his own last September when he was pulled over by Ontario police.  He was speeding, drunk and cocaine was found in his car.  In a plea bargain the more serious impaired and drug possession charges were dropped and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving.  Wait for it.  That’s not the best part.

The reason for pleading Mr. Jaffer down was the Crown’s decision that conviction was unlikely.  Why you might ask?  Well the Ontario Keystone Cops refused to let the man see his own lawyer on request and made the poor man get naked.  That’s right, naked.   Now I know we hear constantly in the media that there is a shortage of cops out there and the workload is getting pretty heavy.  Dalton McGuinty says these little slip ups will happen from time to time.  But really now, give these poor guys some R and R and let them see their wives and girlfriends once in a while.  We can’t have police roaming the highways looking for some unsuspecting speeder to fulfill their fantasies.

Now I could be interpreting this wrong.  After all I am reading it in a CBC report where the wording could be read another way.  The actual quote is “… repeatedly denying Jaffer access to his own lawyers and a strip search after he was pulled over on a rural road …”.  So was Jaffer asking for a strip search.  Maybe he’s thought the silhouette of his body in the moonlight would bring a soft sigh and a warning rather than arrest.  Either way our police need to find better ways to relieve the tension.  Perhaps that could be a new use for those tasers they are so fond of.

Of course, even if the Crown had moved forward on the cocaine charges Jaffer could have used Richard Hatfield’s defence.  Hatfield, then Conservative premier of New Brunswick, was found at Fredericton airport with a bag of marijuana in his luggage.  He denied it belonged to him and had the police dust the bag for prints.  When his weren’t found charges did not proceed.

So thank you for being consistent, Conservative party.  Hypocrisy is what you are best at.  Good thing cause you aren’t good for anything else.  The Liberals may be slimy, power-hungry spawn of Satan who would pimp their mother for a vote, but at least they admit it.  The Conservative choir may sing like angels but up close there cassocks smell of booze and stale sex.

Families of nine Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were shown on the news yesterday visiting Kandahar and the memorial to the Canadians who have fallen in that conflict.  It was a touching moment.  Emotions played on the faces of the family members as they stood before the stone etchings of their son or daughter.  The media followed by interviews with a couple of the pilgrims who unanimously support the mission and support extending it if necessary.

What did the media expect them to say?  What else can they believe but that the mission is important and necessary in order to justify the sacrifice and the grief they have suffered?  The sudden loss of a loved one in a conflict half way around the world must stand for something or their grief would destroy them completely.  All families of fallen soldiers must believe the sacrifice had noble purpose or go mad.

This pilgrimage was a personal journey and should have remained so.  What purpose was served by the media presence?  To the families no purpose whatsoever.  But for the media and for the government the purpose is clear and as petty and self-serving as the reasons that drew us into this conflict in the first place.  Each group, media and government, are attempting to assuage their own guilt by maintaining the myth.  But we don’t need our government giving us myth we need the truth and we need the media to question that truth incessantly.  That is the role of the media.  I can almost forgive the government for lying to us.  In a poll in the United States a couple of years ago the American public admitted they preferred their government to lie to them.  A lie is often easier to deal with than the truth.  Besides governments are by nature secretive little entities.  So it is the media that bears the greatest guilt because it is their job to wake up the public to the truth before it is too late.

The evidence has been there from the beginning concerning our real purpose for deploying to Afghanistan.  Our neighbour, our closest ally and our friend the United States asked us to go so they could free up assets to deploy to their upcoming Iraq invasion.  We said yes because they are our neighbour, friend and ally and because we were in negotiations with them over a  number of cross border issues at the time.  The two most important were softwood lumber and border access following 9/11.  The United States has its own reasons for being there.  Chief among those are access to Kazakh oil and gas without having to ship through Russian territory.  There is also evidence of resources in some of the other Central Asian states as well.  Nothing about this mission has been about human rights or democracy or any of the other catch-phrases that allow us to sleep at night while murdering people half a world away.

But removing the Burka, routing out terrorists, building a modern society (aka. American society) and creating democracy raises pride to console the tears and makes the whole thing a little more bearable.  This war was never about that.  The Soviet backed government of Afghanistan that we worked so hard to topple, which led us to create the Taliban and Al Qaeda was a secular government that had outlawed the burka and encouraged women to engage fully as equals in society.  It was an American tactic to encourage Islamic fundamentalism among the mujaheddin as a way to gain popular support among village elders and traditionalists.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States and its western allies supported various groups in power in Kabul including the Taliban.  The Taliban were in close negotiations for a pipeline with the U.S. government and private firms such as Haliburton whose envoy to the Taliban was Dick Cheney.

Realpolitik is messy but it, not the spirit of humanity, motivates state actions.  No war has ever been fought for humanitarian reasons and none ever will be under our current international system.  Without a compelling selfish interest no state will risk its assets.  But without a higher moral purpose no democracy will sanction a foreign war.  Hence the lie.  We are manipulated to support something we really don’t understand.  We make it about nationalism just like the Nazis, the ultimate nationalists.  We, like them, take pride in the delusion that we are creating a better world; we, like them, believe we know the mind of god and it is consumerism.

The media knows this.  Instead it pretends as if it is too stupid to be able to assemble diverse evidence into a meaningful package and present a comprehensive report to the public.  That is news and the job of the news organization.  So we don’t have to research raw government documents and expert data on our own; or interview public figures and experts to tease out meaning; the  news media is to bring all this information together, plot its interactions and present us with understandable meaning .  Instead our newsrooms more resemble the Reichsministrie of Propoganda than the movie All the President’s Men.  Much of what is reported is lifted directly from press releases and the rest is assured not to ruffle the feathers of advertisers or their close buddies in government.

It is not just the loss that we experience in the Afghan debacle but where such complicity could lead that is of most concern. We are already experiencing a powerful move toward authoritarianism in our domestic society.  The anti-terrorism laws are only the prominent tip of the iceberg.  Whether police in Ontario charge people with a law that doesn’t exist in the statutes, shoot an innocent man (Dudley George) and then perjure themselves rather than take responsibility or the RCMP taser Robert Dziekanski in British Columbia and again lie in court or  resource companies invade and pollute your land in Alberta without allowing you recourse to protect it, the breakdown in trust between the agents of authority and the citizen continues apace.  Yet the media keeps its silence filling our minds with pleasant snippets and diversions rather than attacking the issues that will impact us most profoundly, if often without our notice until it is too late.  We ourselves must shoulder some of the blame for this.   Where are the crowds outside the major publishers and broadcasters demanding their right to know.

Individual reporters take shelter in their jobs.  They can only report what their editors, publishers and news directors allow.  It is there job.  That was the defence the Nazis used at Nuremburg as well.  We were just following orders.  We had our families to think of.  If not us someone else would have done it.  All true as far as it goes.  But it still boils down to one of two things.  Either they don’t stand up because they agree with maintaining the lie in which case they are complicit.  Or they fear the consequences of standing up and speaking their mind in which case they are cowards.  Those who are complicit I have no words of comfort for you.  May you soon be together in hell with your mentor Josef Goebbels.  To those who shrink from fear I have greater understanding.  But while you might be able to lie to the country you can’t lie to yourself.  You know the truth and you know your neighbours rely on you to make decisions.  Sometimes decisions concerning the life and death of those closest to them.

Each journalist must make their self assessment  and decide whether they are collaborators complicit in undermining the ethic of our society or cowards who to save their own skin let their neighbours suffer.  But shame on both for victimizing the families again to use them as a prop in your deceit.

Responding to a question about his access to Obama and what he would advise him if they did speak, Wright inappropriately used the term Jews.  I am certain he was really referring to White House Chief of Staff Raum Emmanuel who as part of his job does control access to the president.  It was a poor choice of words, an ignorant remark, made in anger and frustration to lash out foolishly at someone standing between himself and a young man he had felt a kinship with, but it was not necessarily a sign of deep seated anti-semitism.  Bigotry against Jews is a plague upon our society that is so ingrained that often people don’t realize they are perpetuating it.  It is appropriate to point out that the Reverend Wright was wrong to use the word as a term of derision.  But it is not a story that warranted several days of media buzz.  I doubt it would have gotten as much attention as it did had it not been for the other, real story, that should have shocked America and made society examine its darker recesses.  The rest of Wright’s remark stressing that he believed Obama should hold to the principles that led him to seek public office and not compromise to the political hacks who care only about winning elections at any price, is a more important story than the ill thought remark.  Important not just in relation to Obama and whether or not he is really following his conscience, but for politics in general.  If everyone who sought public office followed Reverend Wright’s advice how much better the world would be.  Politicians acting on principle, doing what is right instead of acting on avarice and doing what is expedient.  That would be worthy of a round table discussion. 

Also note that no other evidence of active anti-semitism was reported against Wright.  No investigative team of crack journalists scoured the Reverend’s past to see if a charge of anti-semitism was warranted against him.  Rather the media was content to seductively lay out this one instance in virtually the same breath as the story of the Holocaust Museum shootings and let the audience draw the inference.  Having never made the accusation of anti-semitism directly they maintain a comfortable deniability.  Titillate the audience with innuendo but stop an inch short of defamation.  And people wonder why I would sooner believe a story in the National Enquirer than the National Post. 

I am sure, as my wife suggested, that had Lincoln farted during his famous speech on the battlefield at Gettysburg CNN would have been first out of the gate with the story.  Video footage of screwed up noses and quick glances amongst those directly behind Lincoln would have circulated on YouTube by now.  A panel of pundits would convene to ponder the political significance of the fart.  Was Lincoln wafting a message to the retreating Southern army?  Was the stench of this particular fart such as to raise concerns about the president’s health?  Should someone with a flatulence problem be trusted with the most powerful office of the state?  Oh yes I am sure Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper would devote an entire show each to this pressing news event.  And Rick Sanchez would be calling for a dictionary to look up the word flatulence.

British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, included Savage (real name Michael Weiner.  Great, we Germans spend a half century trying to outlive the stereotype only to have this idiot come along.) in a list of people persona non grata in the United Kingdom.  For this Savage is threatening to sue.  He claims he has never incited violence on his talk show or in his writings.  Technically that may be true.  I have never actually heard Savage say ‘Go forth and smite down the democratic liberal wherever you find him, in expresso bar or at Gay Pride Parade.’  Does he need to say this to be inciting violence?  No.  But will shutting him up stop these attitudes? Also no.  This is hearts and mind time and censoring Savage will not change the mind of one bigot. 

Silencing his message from the public airways will only drive it underground and add to its mystique.  More, it gives the message credibility.  Why censor something unless you are afraid of it.  Believe me that will be his spin on the matter.  ‘They know I speak the truth, that is why they fear me.  They fear that I might tell you what they don’t want you to know.’  His message doesn’t need to be silenced it needs to be challenged.  Isn’t it interesting that these champions of freedom seldom allow themselves to be caught in a public debate with anyone able to expose them as the frauds and fools that they are.  Cowards naturally shrink from a fight.  When they are caught as happened when Bill O’Reilly interviewed Phil Donahue on Fox the shallowness of their position reveals itself.  When Bill began his talk-over terrorism of his guest, a style common to these types, the articulate Donahue rose to the occasion and left O’Reilly sputtering back on the ropes desperate to survive the round.  That is what is needed to counteract the menace of these self-righteous megalomaniacs. 

Those of us old enough to remember Alan Berg, a American Left Wing radio shock jock murdered outside his home by Right Wing extremists, know that challenging these sociopaths has its risks.  Glenn Beck fantasized on his radio show about killing Michael Moore saying he thought he would be able to do it himself rather than hire a hitman.  His words dripped an underlying desire to really do this not just fantasize.  Nothing worthwhile comes without risk.  If we don’t soon begin to challenge these miscreants we will condemn ourselves and our posterity.  Their view of the world is unsustainable; left unchecked apocalyptic war and environmental catastrophe are certain.  Challenging the pied-pipers of doom sounds worthwhile to me.  Donahue, Moore and others have proved it can be done.  You and I can do it too.   Don’t sit by complacently when a colleague or acquaintance parrots the latest vitriol from one of these idols of ignorance.  Fight back!  Most of us would feel uncomfortable sitting passively while someone made a pejorative remark about Blacks or women.  There is no reason why we should condone with silence similar comments and ideas about immigrants, the poor, or homosexuals or any group whose only offense is their existence.  Nor is it wise to leave unchecked ideas that will cripple our biosphere. 

Political correctness has allowed hatred to hide.  Censorship does just the same.  It makes the stupid the mysterious.  I don’t want these ideas and hatreds hidden.  I want them in the clear light of day where I can draw a good bead on them and shoot them down.  So don’t call for censorship.  Join me on the firing squad and execute ignorance with suppositories of wisdom.

There are many forms of psychological abuse against our children, some idiosyncratic and some social.  The young girl driven to suicide by a thoughtless adult who first raised her hope for love through creating a fictitious suitor on a social networking site and then cruelly dashed that hope in a warped attempt to assist her own daughter to bully the victim is an example of just how serious psychological abuse can be.  Social abuse differs only in method not impact.  We rail at the image of children brainwashed to strap explosives on their tiny bodies, becoming human weapons for the political, religious, social or just plain perverse agendas of groups like the Taliban or the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Such psychological abuse of innocents undermines any possible validity their philosophies could warrant.  No justification exists for inculcating hate in the minds of young people.  Brainwashing anyone to make them believe what some other wishes is always wrong.  In the case of youth it is also always criminal. 

I doubt there is a single reader that has disagreed with me so far.  I want to go a step further though.  What about brainwashing by omission.  If we agree with the above arguments should it not be a natural step to say that intentionally withholding knowledge from children for the purpose of manipulating them into believing what some other desires them to believe or to think is also wrong and criminal.  That is a natural corollary of my arguments above.  Al Qaeda does not say to a young suicide bomber, ‘read this treatise by Osama bin Laden and this pamphlet by Thomas Paine and then go kill the infidel because bin Laden is right and Paine is wrong.‘  My suspicion is that Al Qaeda training facilities do not have well stocked and balanced libraries.  The abuse is not in presenting the children with a biased idea, all ideas are by nature biased, it is in presenting the idea as the only idea.  Omitting information from children in order to inculcate any social agenda is abuse.  And therefore anyone who would perpetrate such abuse should be sanctioned by our society accordingly.  Presenting children with all perspectives but saying that we as Canadians, or in this community or this family believe that one or the other perspective is the correct one is different.  That is not necessarily abuse.  A child’s country, community and most particularly family will likely be more persuasive than an obscure author.  The child may therefore be guided by such authoritative opinion but they still are aware that other perspectives do exist.  It might cross the line into abuse if we were to present the other perspectives with derision or ridicule.  This is not an exact science and a judgement call must be made at what point abuse occurs.  But the case I have in mind at the moment clearly crosses that line. 

Currently there is a bill before the Alberta Legislature that would allow parents to withdraw their children from class if the curriculum includes anything which goes against their religious beliefs.  The premier is even trying to defend this abomination by saying that it is only religious questions.  Translation:  Religious brainwashing good; any other brainwashing bad.  I’d bet you hot cross buns to pancakes (the Anglicans should get that one) if I were to demand the right to remove my child from class to avoid having them exposed to capitalist ideals,  the same god-bothering twits behind this bill (wonder what’s in their libraries?) would be pushing to remove her from my home to save her from this twisted old socialist.  Every evangelical from Lethbridge to Fort Macleod would be burning my effigy in their state of the art tele-pulpit.  So why the muted response to this legislation.  A polite whimper from the CBC (okay what do we expect, they’re Canadian) is all the coverage I have seen so far.  Of course the CBC missed a number of child abuse / religion stories until it was too late just ask Catholic choir boys and our Aboriginal people.  Capitalism encourages behaviours and causes practices that I am convinced harm innocent human beings and are anathema to the basic cooperative nature of humanity.  In simple terms capitalism to me is a crime against humanity which should be prosecuted as we prosecuted Naziism at Nuremburg.  So I would be remiss in my responsibilities as a parent to allow some pro-capitalist school system to expose my child to such obscenity.  Right?  If I firmly believe this, and I do, I should shelter my child from it.  Wrong.  I would be abusing my child.  Ignorance weakens a human being and my job as a parent is to strengthen my child to survive in a world of conflict and contradiction.  To disarm that child from the start is the ultimate abuse. 

For those who want to argue that the two things are not the same tell me why.  If you can’t defend your argument, you don’t have one.  Premier Ed Stelmach, if you pass this bill you are a child abuser.  You are a pariah in our society and should be sanctioned accordingly.  To the RCMP (let’s pretend they might listen to reason and are not just the goon squad for sordid politicians), if child abuse is an abhorrent crime within our society you must focus all of your resources into bringing Mr. Stelmach and every member of the legislature in support of this bill before the bar of justice and seek out those who use the money of god to manipulate and control society.  Save our children now and we won’t need a parade of religious leaders apologizing later.

Would you want a president that spent every waking hour thinking only of your foreign wars, bank and industry bailouts and unemployment figures?  Would that make any of those things better?  And hey what about sleep?  Maybe the president should get hooked on bennies and stay awake 24/7 because after all the United States never sleeps.  The economy moves on, insurgents attack in the Gulf or Central Asia, somebody is working the final hours of their job or losing their home.  How dare he sleep!  We shouldn’t wake him up with that 3am. phone call.  What is the lout doing dozing off in the first place?  (Wonder if he got it yet and how he responded?  It did seem last fall that it was the most important issue of the campaign to those of us looking on.)  Or even worse he and Michelle would take the nation’s time to say howdy to each other horizontally if you know what I mean.  Image the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calling at such a moment.  He hears a terse ‘WHAT?’from the president and asks for permission to launch the American nuclear deterrent and only hears a chorus of yes! Yes!! YEs!!! YES!!!! on the other end.  Guess we are all cooked. 

Sorry if I am beginning to get a little absurd here, but really!  Maybe the news media should ask itself if it doesn’t have more important things to cover than this nonsense.  But since they have run out of story ideas on Paris’s panties they have to have something so it’s Barack’s brackets.  CNN and the rest of them are what puts the laughter into professional journalism.  Not in the sense of covering the funny story which is good as we all need lighter moments in our lives, but in the sense of their childish obsession with the trivial and mundane.  To paraphrase Monty Python ‘I hope there is intelligent journalism somewhere in the universe because there is bugger all down here on earth.’