Canadian Press and Media. The Sad, Sycophantic Sell-Out

Canadian Press and Media.  The Sad, Sycophantic Sell-Out

                                  PART TWO         Written by Robin Mathews  Mar. 1/15


How do we talk about Canadians in Afghanistan delivering prisoners to torture … following orders of the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper?  Then Stephen Harper closing parliament to avoid facing questions…?

How do we talk about Canadians leading the destruction of Libya, a modern, civil society with the highest standard of living in Africa? Canadian airmen led the air-strike destruction of women and children, towns, villages, ancient monuments … under orders from the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper?  How do we talk about the lies of a consenting press and media, its silence about that wholesale murder…?  And now semi-silence about the move towards needless slaughter in Iraq?

How do we talk about Canadian cabinet members embracing ‘the mad-man of the Middle East’ – Benjamin Netanyahu; about Canadian political leaders encouraging a State devoted to oppression of helpless people? How do we talk about the lies, the half truths… and the gaping silences … of the consenting Canadian press and media in that matter…?

How do we talk about “Western” betrayal in the Ukraine – about the half-truths told by the Canadian cabinet, repeated and repeated by the Canadian press and media?

How do we talk about the effort to end the struggle for liberation of South America from its more than a century under the U.S. heel? How do we explain the muddle-headed reporting and lies told by the Canadian press and media about Venezuela … the unending pattern of misinformation by the Canadian press and media about Venezuela?

How do we talk about the insanity of the proposed MONUMENT TO THE VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM in Ottawa? Where are the Canadian press and media to ridicule the idiotic idea?  Where are Canadian historians and political scientists?

Who among the drugged members of the Canadian press and media  choose to forget the major “victims of Communism” were the Nazis and the Fascists of the Second World War whose brutal, oppressive regimes intended world dictatorship, the erasure of all Jews in the world, and the subjugation (as slaves) of the Slav populations?

Who will forget that the Communists of Soviet Russia gave up more than twenty million lives to overcome the Nazi forces – and that major historians in the English-speaking world and elsewhere admit Europe (and beyond) would have been enslaved by Nazism without the heroic and undaunted resistance of the Communist Russian forces.

Who will forget that a major enemy of the Japanese dictatorship (which allied with the Nazis in Europe) were the Chinese Communists who fought the brutal Japanese for years in Asia.  The heroic Communist Canadian, Norman Bethune, took medicine to the front lines in the fight against the Japanese invaders and has become a global hero for his work.  We should not be blind or forgetful.  My own relations in Singapore assure us (as do millions of others in Southeast Asia) that the worst enemy and one of the most brutal occupiers in the twentieth century was the army of the Japanese dictatorial state. It became, at last, “victim of Communism” and of the other anti-fascist forces of the Second World War.

Do we forget that the liberators of Cuba – with whom Canada has never broken relations – created a Communist government, and its major “victims” were the U.S. invaders at the Bay of Pigs?  Do we forget that only in the last months Canada has helped to begin the healing between that Cuban government and its U.S. enemy? Do Canadians who have always recognized the Communist government of Cuba as the legitimate government now want to name the Cuban people “victims of Communism”?  Are we that dishonest, that hypocritical?
The presence of Communist governments in the world acted as a significant force in the shaping of social justice and security for large Western populations.  The existence of “the Communist alternative” restrained the mad-dog activity of neo-liberalism (what I call ‘neo-fascism’) in the West. When the Russian empire collapsed, Prince Charles remarked that he regretted the loss of a balance of forces in the world.

There is much more to say on the subject, but to make a monument in Ottawa to “the victims of Communism” would be such a violation of history, of honesty, of the Canadian facts of the last century that such a monument – if built – would have to be torn down by the first honest government that came to power in Canada. Where is the Canadian press and media to tell the truth about the proposed monstrosity envisioned by the neo-liberal, neo-fascist deniers of history?

 Who among the strange people of Canada’s press and media will call a spade a spade; will name murder for what it is; will write of the apparently deranged Conservative cabinet members: Stephen Harper, John Baird, Lisa Raitt, Pierre Poilievre, Tony Clement, Leona Aglukkaq, Jason Kenney, Chris Alexander, James Moore, etc. - and Andrew Scheer ... all approving the dirty wars, the oppressions, the lies, the election frauds, the destruction of parliamentary democracy, the false budget reports, the fraudulent legislation, the use of the RCMP as a Conservative Party Police Force, the attacks on the rule of law …?

The attacks on the rule of law…

Stephen Harper began the attack on the Supreme Court of Canada … and lost the first round.  But action by the Conservative Party of Canada to destroy the rule of law in Canada … goes on.  No longer following the established practice in which proposed laws were tested inside government for their relation to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Conservative government produces purposefully vile legislation - looking for fights with the highest court – to find excuses to gut it.

So far, the Supreme Court of Canada has not lost in the Conservative Party-created fight.  But as Jeffrey Simpson [Globe and Mail) writes (Feb. 7), that fact “portends the [Conservative] party will use attacks against the court” as a continuing policy.

And those attacks have begun, as if on cue – by some of the ‘wholly independent’ members of Canada’s press and media.  How many of the attackers (“independent journalists”) already at work … and to come … are, in fact, a part of an organized (Conservative Party) team directed from the Prime Minister’s office?

The case against the Bank of Canada in the Federal Court of Canada – almost entirely blacked out by the conventional press and media of Canada – has raised a huge question.  What percentage of Canada’s press and media owners and their working journalists are, in fact, part of the Conservative Party Machine, directly doing Stephen Harper’s bidding?  Rocco Galati, lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Bank of Canada case, has expressed his suspicion that the press and media of Canada have been ordered into silence on the Bank of Canada case by the Conservative government … by, in short, Stephen Harper.

The attacks (mindless, foolish, illogical, neo-fascist) on the Supreme Court of Canada have begun.  On Thursday, Feb. 19, senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, Gordon Gibson, launched his attack (in the Globe and Mail), telling readers “the greatest threat to our democracy and Parliament” is – “the Supreme Court of Canada”.  In the face of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party hatchetting, smashing, crushing, bludgeoning democracy, Parliament, and the rule of law in Canada, Gordon Gibson blames … the Supreme Court of Canada.

Then comes (Globe and Mail, Feb. 20) Brian Lee Crowley. More poetic by far than Gordon Gibson, Crowley (managing director of the “right-leaning public policy think-tank in Ottawa” (Wikipedia), the Macdonald-Laurier Institute) writes of ”the gay abandon with which our highest court sweeps aside the annoying resistance of mere elected governments to its increasingly imperious will.” (Put aside the possibility that the present government of the Conservatives is a Robocall-fraud-elected-government, not a “mere elected” government).

Crowley’s (embarrassing) argument against the integrity of the court is based upon (nut-case?) economics.  In short, the decisions of the court create economic uncertainty. (Who says so?)  Uncertainty is bad for “growth and prosperity”.  Therefore … chop the power of the Supreme Court of Canada.  In my reading, Crowley’s argument comes dangerously close to saying “fascism is efficient; remove anything that interferes with the efficiency of fascism”.  For Crowley, the Supreme Court judges “don’t even hide their imperialist ambitions”. They are like Russia’s “slow-moving invasion of Ukraine”. (Are we to laugh or cry at such ridiculous prose in ‘Canada’s National Newspaper’?)

[Incidentally, the Globe and Mail reports the Macdonald-Laurier Institute differently than Wikipedia. For the Globe and Mail it is “an independent non-partisan public policy think tank…”  Maybe that says all that needs to be said about Canadian Press and Media honesty! No non-partisan managing director of a non-partisan think tank could, I say, write the Blatantly Reactionary Nonsense produced by Brian Lee Crowley in the article.]

We must expect the attacks will go on … and will get more vicious (and idiotic).  People will have to ask if they are orchestrated from the Prime Minister’s Office.  Maybe Stephen Harper can get Nigel Wright to meet each writer who attacks the Supreme Court of Canada and hand him (or her) a personal cheque.

My prediction is that we will soon read many more destructive and vicious (and grossly anti-democratic) attacks on the Supreme Court of Canada by people who have not yet weighed in - like Gwyn Morgan (former chair SNC Lavalin; Board of Trustees, the Fraser Institute); Andrew Coyne, who, as a columnist for the National Post and Postmedia Network “can disseminate neo-liberal and conservative ideas”. (Gutstein, Harperism, 2014, p.68]; Jonathan Kay, former National Post heavy and now editor of Walrus magazine. “Kay often endorses views regarded as conservative” (Wikipedia); Robert Fulford, Terry Glavin, Preston Manning, John Ivison… and …and.

The next attacker might be a seemingly raging, seemingly illogical, probably muddle-headed Rex Murphy who “plays radical” and said recently (Jan 10, National Post): “This part of the world has a sack full of pieties when it comes to free speech, but its own actions, and frequently its own words, put the lie to all of them.” We wait for the CBC’s Rex Murphy to write/speak about the Bank of Canada case, exercising his free speech, reporting the matter fully and calling loudly for close media attention to that important case.  We wait for the CBC’s Rex Murphy to attack Stephen Harper for his assault on the Supreme Court of Canada, for attacks by his cabinet  (in collaboration with the RCMP) on the free speech of environmental spokespeople and organizations.  We wait for Rex Murphy to do a round-up revelation of all the ways the Conservatives “with a sack full of pieties” have attacked and continue to attack free speech….

We wait. But we don’t hold our breath…. What Rex Murphy proves in his endless, empty, nervous chatter, I allege, is the unbroken truth of the title of this column.



Written by Robin Mathews


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