The Echo Chamber Repeats the Echo Chamber Repeat

"The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance." - Benjamin Franklin

If there is any one argument for the creation of Sun TV -- a.k.a. in Canada "FOX News North" -- it is the one-message pipeline that is the Canadian media. There have been endless incidents of North American news items the Canadian media has reported on without either context or clarity.

One simply need look at the reporting of the proposed Arizona immigration law that would allow Arizona police to request proof of citizenship. The Canadian media has reported much of the accusations of racism and have echoed the left-wing propaganda that this offers Arizona police carte-blanche to stop anybody for any minor offense and grill them on their race... er, sorry... nationality.

And yet those who do not simply swallow what the Canadian news or the left-wing mainstream media forces down our throats know that the Arizona law is in fact less arbitrary than the federal law that has been in place for decades.

But have we heard a single Canadian news organization speak of this more than in passing? Are you kidding?

And in Canada it is no different. In fact, I'm quite inclined to believe that the journolist fiasco that is brewing in the USA is probably already a well established entity in Canadian media circles. After all, how many times have we read an article that criticizes the Harper government for some small, insignificant and not particularly note-worthy issue only to find that the same day you could throw a stone and hit a dozen other media figures who just happened to be touting the same nothing story?

If anything, an alternative source for news that skews the left-leaning mainstream media in this country should be welcomed by all Canadians. After all, we can only better ourselves by challenging our beliefs, no matter how well-informed we believe we are. Because without a view from the other side, one simply cannot be well-informed at all.

One can only be ignorant.

If the Afghanistan Wikileaks prove anything...

...it's that conspiracy theorists are really going to have to stretch their imagination to keep believing that 9/11 was an "inside job".

After all, if 90,000 secret documents about a war that was started during the Bush administration can so easily get leaked to an online gossip mill, you'd think we'd have seen at least 1 document indicating that the US government staged 9/11 as well... you think?

I certainly won't miss Mr. Margolis... not in the least.

Eric Margolis always struck me as somebody who is certainly intelligent but unfortunately also willfully blind to facts in order to maintain his well-documented position.

Case in point, last week I was listening to the John Oakley show on AM640. Mike Stafford is presently sitting in for John and was interviewing Eric about the whole Omar Khadr/Guantanamo Bay affair. Eric was certainly well-informed about many aspects of Omar Khadr's path to imprisonment. He even claimed to have met Omar's father Ahmed Said Khadr while Ahmed was still very much involved in aid-related projects.

Margolis sited Ahmed's relief work as being the primary reason he didn't believe that Omar Khadr could possibly have been involved in any resistance movement or military activities. However, anybody who has spent time looking at the news surrounding Omar would most certainly have seen the now famous images of Omar with an AK-47 assault rifle in the background or Omar assembling an improvised explosive device.

You can even watch the episode of 60 Minutes that demonstrated this quite clearly.

Now, I have a hard time believing that Margolis with his well-informed positions would have missed this bit of information. So, the question really is, why does he ignore it?

The same as anything else when it comes to political posturing: ideology

Eric certainly has a right to his opinion. He certainly has a right to believe that the war in Afghanistan is a sham or some kind of shell-game devised by George W. Bush to get control over the Middle East in order to lower oil prices. He has the right.

But, truth is a... well... we know what it is. And obvious facts are obvious facts. Eric can claim all he wants that Omar Khadr is a victim that would never have been involved in military activities. However, I've never been convicted with drug dealers. I've never been shot at as part of a gang. And I've never been arrested at violent G20 protests. Why? Because I don't associate with those groups.

Omar was arrested in a structure where resistance fighters had gathered. And when the dust had settled, he was one of only two people who could have lobbed the grenade that killed US Sgt Christopher Speer. Video shows him playing with detonation cables and land mines. Can't say that any of those situations would be something your average Canadian would be a part of.

As such, I can hardly cry for Mr Margolis as he says good-bye to the opinion column he wrote for the Sun media. He's cried that his ouster is simply a matter of right-wing zealots trying to hush him.

I simply call it quality control.

Census Extortion

ex·tort

–verb (used with object)

1.

Law .

a.

to wrest or wring (money, information, etc.) from aperson by violence, intimidation, or abuse of authority;obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like.

b.

to take illegally by reason of one's office.

Much has been made by the media of the government's recent decision to abandon the mandatory long-form census. And of course, we hear every spasmodic complaint in the book being thrown around. We even have the looneys like Liberal MP Joyce Murray going so far as to call the government tyrannical.

Joyce Murray wouldn't know what tyrannical is if she was hit by pepper spray at an APEC conference in her home town of Vancouver.

But, I digress...

The real heavy-handedness going on is in the manner by which this census information is obtained. It is one thing to get an accurate view of the people in the room, city, province or country. It is an entirely different thing to threaten them with financial penalties and jail time if they don't sit down and divulge specific information about themselves, their homes, their families and anything else Statscan wants to know.

Extortion is extortion. If you need to apply the threat of force to obtain something of value, there is no other word for it. The government doesn't own us; we employ them. This means that if people do not want to give the government this information (and we have plenty of evidence that they do not) then they should not be threatened by force to do so.

If this is important information, there are other means to obtain it. We live in the information age where much of the information they are requesting could be obtained by well-maintained computer records. I know, I know... how can we expect our civil servants to do a good job, right? And a well maintained system would be far more precise and comprehensive than any form to be filled.

We certainly don't need a government that threatens its citizens to get what it wants.

Starting something new...

When I was younger, I was the type of person who held my views in check. I tended to be so-called "polite" in that I did not engage in putting forth ideas or opinions that might rock the boat. It took me a long time to realize that by not doing so, I may in fact be contributing to the boat sinking or capsizing in other ways.

And as such I came to the realization that it is the responsibility of every citizen, of every person, to contribute their perceptions and their ideas to the world. Only through exposure can ideas survive the crucible of reality. And if those ideas pass the test of analysis they may in fact be worth so much more than any degree of being polite.

With that... I am starting something new.

It's time to put my name to my ideas.

It's time to have the courage of my beliefs by testing them in the open where they can be dissected and either corrected or accepted.

I will not apologize for having a perception that is my own as all free people do.

And perhaps I may in fact contribute in ways unseen... a remedy of sorts for the society I have a privilege to be a part of.

So, let's rock...