Tag: CBC

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Profound Contrived Authencity: Little Bird (the MiniSeries)

Together, they reached for what Moscovitch calls “profound authenticity,” and created an opportunity for narrative activism: the idea that victims can help heal their trauma and change attitudes by telling their stories.  Globe & Mail

I don’t mind if someone wants to make a film or mini-series that “will help heal trauma and change attitudes”.  Just don’t put it on my playlist.

Changing attitudes is not the mission of real art.  Real art is about expression, revelation, insight, and beauty.  The minute you say, “oh, and we want people to  adopt our political views”, you have sold out the aesthetic dimension to the social dimension.  To make a film to tell people what to think about the way indigenous people were treated in Canada is to make a bad film.  To make a film about the way indigenous people were treated in Canada, just make a good film.  And if you are authentic about it, tell us what you know about the subject: not what you want us to think. And be honest: don’t caricature or exaggerate or make things up just to drive your point home.  Watch a film like “Come Sunday” which makes its point without dumbing down the issues.

So when my wife asked me to find the series “Little Bird” for her to watch, I checked it out.  I thought, it might be good.  I might want to watch it.  I looked for reviews on line and found the “review” (it’s not a review: it’s a press release disguised as news) linked above.

I suspect this series is about making liberal viewers feel great about themselves: I watched a sad story about injustice and felt bad for the victims for I am a good person.

I watched the first ten minutes.  As I feared, it starts by showing the girls who were abducted by the Canadian Child Family Services and RCMP living in nearly idyllic conditions with their happy affectionate parents.   Even worse: there’s that jerky hand-held camera work that immediately conveys “oh look how authentic we are we’re pretending we’re actually filming the real thing which wouldn’t be possible if we had a tripod” vibe.

I am immediately repulsed by most films that show parents being incredibly tolerant and affectionate and patient and loving with their kids as a setup for imminent tragedy or threat.  Nobody interacts with their children the way these parents do.  It’s manipulative and dishonest.  It is the hallmark of bad direction.  And that is how “Little Bird” starts.

In “Little Bird,” Bezhig is driven by her newly emerging repressed memories.  Variety

Oh no.  Seriously?  We’ve been through this movie before and it did not turn out well.  Not at all.    Not this time either.

Podemski: We looked at all the various ways in which trauma presents itself. Especially when it has been repressed for many years . We worked with our two story advisors, Nakuset and Raven Sinclair, who supported us in shaping the way in which our lead character, Esther, experienced PTSD through intrusive memory. We were able to express this authentically through the use of acoustic and visual layers which I think played very authentically throughout the story.

Okay, firstly, it’s not the trauma that has been repressed but the memory of it.  And memories are not repressed.  That is a fake trope from the 1980’s that has pretty well lost all credibility.   And the method by which they decided to tell the story of the “repressed” memories sounds more like therapy than art.  But please don’t try to claim anything like “authenticity” when you are clearly constructing a narrative that projects a political and social idea rather than any particular real human experience.

 

A CBC article on the movie contains this flag:

WARNING: This story contains distressing details

Oh please fuck off with your trigger warnings.   This is bullshit.  What kind of news is “distressing”?    A man falsely accused of rape while feminists claim that women never lie about sexual assault?  Al Franken resigning his seat in the Senate over ridiculously trivial allegations of inappropriate behavior?  Tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums?  Music by Neil Diamond?  Senile white men running the U.S. government?   Prescription drugs developed at publicly-funded universities which cost pennies to manufacture selling for $30,000 a pop?

 

 

 

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The CBC’s Tunnel Hysteria

CBC Hysteria: tunnel vision
Why does the CBC do this? A CBC reporter happened upon the story of a tunnel found in a wooded area near the University of Toronto and, for the next week, never failed to use the word “terror” in every report connected to it. Ooooo— it is near a venu that will be used during the PanAm games! We know that they are probably a top target of Isis!

It was, perhaps, the most narcissistic news story of the year, so far: the CBC reporting on itself being absolutely, hysterically, almost sexually obsessed with what an amazing story this was.

It was a nothing story. It was trivial. It was not newsworthy in any respect whatsoever, except, perhaps, as a minor, one-off triviality.

But without a current contagion story in it’s dossier, the CBC had to do something to keep listeners riveted.

The most offensive part of it all was the way they kept insisting that the entire world was now enthralled with this ridiculous story and was waiting with baited breath for every new installment from the CBC, and couldn’t wait to hear Gill Deacon speculate as to what the purpose of this tunnel was.

It was nauseating and utterly unworthy of the CBC.

 

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The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi (II)

Some of the women who declined to go public with their charges against Ghomeshi cited the case of Carla Ciccone. Ciccone wrote a thinly disguised account of her date with a C-List Canadian celebrity radio host whom she had always assumed was gay. As she described it, he was rude, inappropriate, creepy, and annoying. Most people deduced immediately that “Keith” was Jian Ghomeshi, and apparently, she received a torrent of abusive e-mails and blog-posts defending “Keith”.

Nobody deserves that kind of abuse, but nor does she deserve to be held up as an example. As she herself described it, in spite of endless opportunities to end the date and go home, she ended up spending the entire evening with him at a concert, and even accepting a ride home from him after deciding to call a taxi. After all, she “couldn’t just leave”, no matter how over-whelming the stench of his cologne. Why? She didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends? She herself suggests that she was still hoping to take advantage of his celebrity status for purposes of self-promotion.

I was concerned that he would somehow ruin my fledgling career in Canadian media forever if I bailed on him, as stupid as that sounds.

Now, we readily condemn a man who uses the leverage of his power and influence to extract sex from an unwilling woman.  Is there anything wrong with the idea of using sex to extract a favor from a man with power and influence?

In other words, there was an offer on the table and I didn’t want to withdraw it just yet.

One also has the impression that she kept throwing herself at him in order to see if he would at least kindly provide her with more ammunition for her blog, if he wasn’t going to be nice enough to promote her career.

A student from the University of Western Ontario related that Ghomeshi lost interest in her as soon as she suggested he help her land a job at “Q”. She made this suggestion, apparently, after he had hugged her twice from behind, “inappropriately”.

Has everyone completely lost their minds here? She doesn’t allege anything illegal or abusive in this story. What she does do is smear somebody, publicly, for having bad taste, while making sure we all get the message that she was so desirable that he just couldn’t help himself. Yes, ick.

And let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with excusing “Keith’s” behavior– obviously, he’s a jerk. But not that much of a jerk, in this story. He’s interested in sex, obviously, and he’s into the chase, and he presses on for too long, but we’ll never know if Ciconne really gave him the clear signal that she wasn’t interested or if she was playing him. She certainly did play him in one respect: blogging about the date is an invasion of his privacy. If the shoe were on the other foot, who would be up in arms about it? Nothing that Ghomeshi allegedly did on this “date”– by her own account– was so transgressive as to deserve to be slimed like this.

And this is the narrative that justifies several other women making anonymous accusations? Because they make their case one with Ciccone’s claim that the contempt she received was unearned?

Why does Ciccone get to turn into a narrative the fact that she is ostensibly clueless– if she really is that clueless? She doesn’t mind you thinking she is clueless? It’s preferable to you thinking she’s a tease? And why is she so careful to clue you in that “Keith” pursued her…. well… why would he, if she really felt the way she says she felt after first meeting him? Because she didn’t say so? Or because she pretended to be interested in him just to tease out more of a pursuit?

Like I said, the abuse directed at her is repellent, but criticism of a public posting is not. It’s fair game.

I have a strong suspicion that if Ciconne had said, right at the start of the evening, “I am not interested in a romantic relationship with you– is that clear?– but I would sure appreciate it if you would advance my career” there would have been no material for her to blog about.

We now hear that a former fellow at York University, student, Jim Hounslow, has come forward with allegations that Ghomeshi touched his genitals. Once. That would be more than 25 years ago. This is breathlessly reported at Yahoo as if students never made any moves on each other and if they did they now need to be shamed. It’s piling on and it’s as ugly if not uglier than the other allegations against Ghomeshi.

The Unjust and Jian Ghomeshi Part I

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Tactless CBC

Who you gonna blame
The star of the game
Or the no-name girl in the marching band?

Quarterback, Kira Isabelle

I just heard the CBC play some songs from the CCMA show (Canadian Country Music Awards). First, a sensitive song about a young girl in the marching band who is date-raped by the star quarterback of the football team, who then posts pictures of her naked on the internet. (The chorus is “Who you gonna blame/The star of the game/or the no-name girl in the marching band?”)

The ever-tactful CBC followed this with a presentation of “Day Drinking” by Little Big Town. “I know you know what I’m thinking/Why don’t we do a little day drinking? Day drinking! Day drinking!… Ready get set, baby here we go”. Sung with that bombastic pseudo-rock stadium gusto: woohoo!

Maybe the CBC programmers were doing a little day-drinking of their own.

Incidentally– or not– I note that line in the chorus– “who you gonna blame/ the star of the game/or the no-name girl in the marching band” captures nicely a sentiment expressed by many women about the issue of date-rape, but which I find problematic in this sense: it is no doubt true that too often, the famous athlete or favorite son or celebrity miscreant, is automatically believed because so many figures in authority have a vested interest in believing him. After all, he is the star; she is a nobody. Maybe they really believe him, maybe not, but she, after all, is still a nobody.

And I note that “Quarterback” is not necessarily about date-rape– it might well only be about betrayal, though the chorus makes less sense that way.

I simply point out that reversing the automatic belief– which many women seem to do– is equally offensive, and when the argument is put that way– who are you going to believe?— the implication is that the woman should always be believed instead of the man. The implication is that women never lie when claiming that the sex was non-consensual.

And the ongoing curse of these issues is that, in the majority of cases, it is simply her word against his. Confronted with this issue, many women (and many sympathetic men) respond with “why would she lie about something like that?”. That’s not an argument, and even if it were, the answer is not that hard to find: is it so hard to believe that woman might consent to sex with a man because she believes it is the beginning of a relationship, but, soon after, when she finds out she was used, she wants him punished?

Or there might be a more exotic explanation, as in the case of Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair.

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Sarah Slean’s Diva Moment

Sarah Slean is a terrific singing talent. Maybe a good songwriter too. But.

On the CBC, late at night, May 20th 2011, Sarah was being interviewed as part of a songwriter series on CBC, on Apropos. She told a story about a song she had written. She was living in Paris for whatever reason. Every day, she walked past a little café. And every day she saw a middle aged man sitting there drinking by himself. She said the man looked like he had given up on life. “He pierced me,” she said. She was so moved by his plight that one day she just decided out of the blue to write him a letter. She wrote in the letter that he should “start again”. No matter what you have done in the past, let it go, and start again: the universe loves you.

The next day, when she brought the letter to the café, he was gone. The next day as well. And the next. She gave up on the idea, though she left the letter in her bag. She wondered if he was lying dead in an apartment somewhere, un-noticed and unremembered.

Up until this point, I thought it was a fairly interesting, compelling story. I was all ears, as I drove back from a wedding in St. Catharine’s. I wondered if she would end up buying a beer and sitting down and joining him, to show that there was hope, at least, of friendship in the world. That she would show a little interest in him, ask about his life, his family.

She continued her story. A little later, she walked by again, and there he was! Her heart beating wildly, she walked right up to him and handed him the letter and then walked on. She did not stay to talk.

She was very pleased with herself.

Then I realized that she was less interested in this man who “pierced” her than she was in herself being pierced. And then she wrote a song which she freely admits is really about her. The song is not about him, or whatever interesting thing happened to him, or whatever interesting things he would do in the future, or why he was unable to connect with anyone, or why he had given up. It was all about this courageous young girl who summoned the audaciousness to actually have an amazing insight into her own insight.

And the very definition, to me, of a diva.

The CBC has a soft spot for divas. Many afternoons, on my way home from work, they will play the latest recording by someone who seems endlessly fascinated with her own voice. It’s a kind of showiness that is all about theatricality and ostentation and effects for the sake of calling attention to one’s self, and really quite boring.

Visitation

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CBC News: Copying CNN’s Dismal Formula

Richard Stursberg came to the CBC about six years ago, hired some American consultants who told him that people want more weather, more banter, more light news, more trivia in theirs newscasts, and systematically destroyed the least worst news broadcast in Canada.

My wife and I now watch PBS news from the U.S. I’ve tried out CTV occasionally. Incredibly, it is better than the CBC National. I didn’t think I would ever be saying that.

So here’s the CBC:  Nancy Wilson is the hostess on the weekend. She is a perfect little hostess and I think she should take time out from her busy hosting gig to maybe hock a little Tupperware or Avon on the side. In the meantime, she conveys to the viewer just how remarkably trivial the world is out there. One minute it’s a tornado or earthquake or war killing thousands of people, the next it’s chilly out there– did you bring a sweater, Mark? Might be a good day to curl up with a warm book. Did I mention the airplane crash? Let’s go to the reporter in the news room– look! He’s got his sleeves rolled up! He must be working very hard, and you can tell he’s incorruptible because, for God’s sake, he has his sleeves rolled up. And he’s moving! He’s walking from one desk to… where-ever. The camera is moving with him. By golly, this is real news I care about, not some mere journalist. And now, let’s cut to Diane to explain how we can keep our kids safe from meteorites– Diane? Diane has moved to the same desk as Nancy– they are having a conversation about the news, just like people you know.

I’ll admit, the PBS Newshour seems a little dry in comparison. There is a ten or fifteen minute lead story, explored in depth, then the news headlines, then three more stories, usually, each allotted about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes, compared to most news broadcasts, is a lot of time. Stories can be explained and analyzed in depth. The expert guests often look rather plain– you immediately suspect they were recruited for their expertise rather than their looks.

Stursberg has now resigned, with no explanation. I hope the CBC realizes they made a big mistake and chooses to head off in a different direction. The first step should be to unmakeover the National.

Am I the only one who does not like the National makeover?  No, not by a long shot.  Ratings are down between 30 and 40%.  More on Richard Stursberg.

The idea was that even if old fogies like me get pissed off, the new format would attract young people. One prays for future generations if they’re right.

So, when do they admit failure and move on to something more interesting?

By the way, CTV News ratings are currently about double the CBC’s.

The CBC makeover into a pale clone of CNN is not a coincidence. The chairman of the CBC, Richard Stursburg, openly wanted the CBC to be more like the big American stations.

So that’s why we also got absurd programs like “The Border” and “Dragon’s Den” and “Battle of the Blades” and “All for one with Debbie Travis”.

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Pandemic!

You would think we all would have learned about hysterical over-reactions from the hysteria surrounding SARS in in 2003, and the even more over the top hysteria over Avian flu in 2006.

But then, many people don’t think it was an over-reaction. Many people believe we were almost swept by a deadly virus that could have killed … well…. I have no idea. I have no idea how many people many people think it might have killed. Nobody will say. Nobody will say because if they did say, they would quoted frequently when we find out that the real numbers are not quite anything like the predicted numbers, or the monumental solemnity with which Peter Mansbridge intones the phrase “pandemic”.

All we know is that SARS actually killed about 774 people world wide. Avian flu? When is the last time you saw a headline on that? Right– way before Michael Jackson died.

Now you may think that 774 is a big number. And it is– by all means. That’s a lot of death. It may sound rather clinical to observe, however, that compared to a number of other causes, it’s not really a very high number. Car accidents? Cancer? Homicide? Starvation? Every year about 4,000-5000 people die from seasonal flu alone in Canada, and about 40,000 to 50,000 in the U.S. When is the last time you saw twenty headlines in a row about those deaths? Why? Don’t they matter?

The problem is that every few years– on schedule, it seems– the media whip us all into a frenzy over some new virus that supposedly is going to decimate the population and destroy our civilization. Do you recall Legionnaire’s Disease? SARS, of course. Avian flu. With the notable exception of the AIDS virus, none of these actually had much of impact beyond the usual seasonal swell of flu deaths. SARS is reported to have been “contained”. What on earth does that mean? Sports and other events were cancelled; anyone with a temperature was quarantined; nurses wore masks; thermal scanners were installed at airports. Did any of this actually have any effect on the spread of SARS? I don’t believe it.

I’m not sure yet about getting vaccinated myself.

Fear drives bad politics. When people are willing to wait in line for eight hours to get a flu shot, you know that they will not countenance a government that says “the media are exaggerating the problem– there’s really not much the government can or should do to prevent the spread of H1N1”. The government knows that it better look like it’s doing something. The media know that the government knows that it better look like it’s doing something. Both of them want to feel important, so we have the sober Peter Mansbridge solemnly intoning that “Canadians are concerned”– as if he had some hotline to the brains of 30 million people– that not enough vaccine is available for every Canadian.

Do Vaccinations matter? A fascinating article from the Atlantic Monthly.

And an even more fascinating article in Wired which draws the opposite conclusion.

Which is more persuasive? Right now, I lean towards the Wired article because one of it’s main points is that the public has a foolish tendency to ignore the science and go with their feelings. It was the government– not the scientists– that announced that vaccines would no longer use thimerosal even though it was safe, so that the vaccines would be safer. They might have also announced that they were making witchcraft illegal, not because there are witches, but because we will all be less likely to suffer from magic spells.

Bill on SARS.

Now this one tops them all: the CBC is doing an online poll to ask viewers what story Wendy Mesley should cover tonight. One of her possible topics is this: can the public be trusted in a pandemic? I am not kidding. (Unfortunately, it is winning.)

What the hell is that supposed to mean? That the government should not compel people to get vaccinated?

 

The contemptible CBC: my wife and I have watched the CBC national news for about 15 years now. I used to think they were reasonably sober and serious and comprehensive, aside from occasional hysterics about SARS or Princess Diana… I don’t know– maybe they never were. We want some Canadian news, so I was reluctant to switch exclusively to McNeil-Lehrer but maybe it’s time. I was disgusted with their coverage of the SARS crisis back in 2003 and I am even more disgusted with their coverage of H1N1 now. The CBC has gone absolutely hysterically over the top this time.

From Wikipedia: As of 22 April, all Canadian SARS cases were believed to be directly or indirectly traceable to the originally identified carriers. SARS was not loose in the community at large in Canada, although a few infected persons had broken quarantine and moved among the general population. No new cases had originated outside hospitals for 20 days

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The CBC Does One Better Than Cheney

What is this shit? And why is it on the CBC?

I mean “The Border”, a CBC drama about the unbelievably exciting lives of Canadian border guards, who we all know risk their lives every day confronting terrorists and drug dealers as they pour over the border into Canada…

I watched an episode by accident. An Islamic terrorist (sigh) had a bottle of anthrax which his wife– wearing a head-covering, of course– obtained from some U.S. lab (sigh) she had worked at earlier, then smuggled into Canada. The terrorist was headed to the Yonge and Bloor subway line to smash the bottle in front of thousands of innocent Canadians. The Minister of Justice and the chief of CSIS were having a set-to about whether or not there was time to water-board the woman. An RCMP agent decided, instead, to take her baby to the subway station so it would be exposed to the anthrax— if she didn’t tell them where her husband was with the anthrax.

But isn’t water-boarding…. torture! Huh! Only to those wimpy liberals with their foolish toleration of diverse cultures that speak different languages and wear head-dressings! Only to those naïve pussies who don’t comprehend the realities of human evil nature! Don’t you know that CANADIAN lives are in the balance? Not cheap Jamaican lives, or worthless Italian lives, or insignificant Indonesian lives, or damned-to-hell Islamic lives, but valuable, important, fabulous CANADIAN lives!

Slight plot flaw there– since they didn’t know where the husband was, and didn’t really know for sure if he had anthrax, it was slightly improbable that the agent would just happen to take the baby to the one subway station the husband happened to select for this grand infection! Shameless contrivance!

Amazingly, the CSIS agents and police entered the subway station and out of all the people of various nationalities and races immediately picked out the one guilty man. The man with the anthrax. Which an agent grabbed before he was able to smash it on the ground, in front of his own baby, which could have been a telly-tubby doll for all he knew because he never really got a look at it. Come to think of it, neither did his wife, who was shown the agent taking the telly-tubby to the subway platform on a closed circuit television and immediately believed that the evil, Satanic westerners would never lie about whether or not it really was her baby in the white bundle if she had no way to actually seeing his face.

It’s enough to make you really, really, really and truly sorry that you ever supported the idea of Canadian content. Really, really, really sorry. Almost as sorry as after watching “Little Mosque on the Prairie”.

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The Supposed Alleged Possible Canadian Terror Plot: Entrapment

And there it is, near the bottom, almost as an aside:

He was paid.
He was paid more than $300,000.

That’s near the bottom of the article linked to in the left column, which describes, with great earnestness, the authentic, real, god-awful truth about Islamic terrorists operating in Toronto: that they really mean it, that they are serious, that they are a real threat.

Frontline and the CBC, which collaborated on the report, have a lot of credibility. Unlike Fox, or even CBS or NBC or ABC, they tend to take a more measured and less sensationalistic approach to stories about terrorist cells operating in North America. (Though even CBS’s “60 Minutes” recently ran a rather odd piece on how terrorists are using the internet to train young jihadists.) But there it is, a long, detailed, well-researched program (and website), detailing how the 17 young men were seriously plotting to storm the Parliament buildings, take MPs hostage, and behead them one by one until Canada withdrew it’s armed forces from Afghanistan.

And then, way down the page, there is that one little, embarrassing detail: the informant, Mubin Shaikh, whose revelations to CSIS (the Canadian Security Service) led to the arrests, was paid more than $300,000 for the information.

When the trial is held, Mubin Shaikh will be the star witness. Undoubtedly, he will have to reveal the fact that he was a paid informant to the court. Then the court will have to decide whether $300,000 is an incentive to exaggerate or distort his information. They should also decide whether $300,000 is an incentive for someone to incite. They should also consider the question of “entrapment”.

The question is, would Mr. Shaikh have been paid if he had not provided the RCMP with suspects?

No, he would not.

It is possible that CSIS has additional proof. We won’t know until the trial, of course. It is possible that the additional proof wouldn’t mean much if it wasn’t put into “context” by $300,000 worth of testimony. It is possible, if not likely– I say it is likely– that the additional evidence CSIS will offer will have been produced as a result of the activities and encouragement of Mubin Shaikh.

The question that should be asked is, would these young men have committed a crime if they had never met Mubin Shaikh?

Perhaps you believe that the police are willing to pay large sums of money to informants if their information clears suspects of suspicion. Perhaps you live in Disneyland.

Mubin Shaikh was paid an initial $68,000 U.S. So, suppose he reported back to CSIS that nothing was up. No reason to be concerned. There’s a couple of hot-heads, but they are just shooting off their mouths. They are kids who, not unreasonably, are against the war on Iraq because they believe it is motivated by the U.S. desire to control oil supplies and support Zionism. They believe the U.S. invaded Iraq. Oh yeah… Well, they believe the U.S. lied about weapons of mass destruction so they could invade Iraq to steal its oil. Okay– it it illegal to believe that? It is if you are an Arab living in North America or Europe.

Do you suppose Shaikh had any reason to believe he would receive an additional $300,000 if he continued to report that there was no serious terrorist plot?

I suspect that among the 17 youths that were arrested, were a small number of relatively serious-minded extremists, who genuinely hated decadent western culture, and dreamed of seeking revenge for the perceived humiliation of the Moslem world at the hands of the Israelis and Americans. (Shaikh is not going to propose the ridiculous to CSIS.) But I suspect that for every ten youths like that, maybe one or two ever actually end up doing something. Of that number, a smaller percentage acquire the means and determination to actually do something effective.

I wonder if the infamous 3 tons of ammonia nitrate will turn out to have been Shaikh’s suggestion.

Apparently, the RCMP ended up “providing” the (fake) material.

Stunningly– I say– the RCMP provided them with fake ammonia nitrate, in order to provide evidence for the crime they allege.

There are several American cases that sound alarmingly similar: a paid informant infiltrates a local youth group, encourages the boys to talk “jihad”, then reports on their conversations to Homeland Security and they sweep them up. In most of those cases, there is no evidence that any of the suspects ever took any steps to actually commit any terrorist acts. In some cases, there was bravado and bragging and macho posturing. The victims of this scam are threatened with years in prison for very serious charges, but then agree to plead guilty to a relatively minor charge, and then the government holds a parade and awards medals to everyone.  The plea, the result of bullying, becomes the proof that there really was a threat.

The boys went up north and took training… from Mr. Shaikh. They used paintball guns and pellet guns and, Mr. Shaikh claims, some live ammunition.

Why does this all look so pathetic?

Why is it so offensive to me that reporter Linden McIntyre of the CBC seemed to spend an inordinate proportion of his report on Mr. Shaikh’s civic-mindedness, and his concern for the Moslem community, and his own spiritual journey from misspent youth to respected leader of the Moslem community in Toronto… before telling us about the $300,000?

Mr. McIntyre knows a good story and how to package it.  A real journalist is more skeptical than he is.

If Mr. Shaikh really was a man of integrity, why would he even have accepted the money, knowing, as he must have, that a reasonable person would question how much honesty $300,000 can buy?

Frontline (PBS) on the Canadian Terror Plot Informant

Imagine, if you will, an Arab power that “takes possession” of a number of American citizens, declares them enemy combatants, and locks them away in solitary confinement in a horrible prison somewhere.  Suppose the U.S. protests, and demands their release.  Suppose this Arab state says, “these men are terrorists”.  And then the U.S. says, they are not.  We can prove they are not.  And the Arab state says, you can make those arguments at the trials.  Right now, the world is too dangerous for us to release these men.  What if they invade our country after we release them?  And the U.S. says, okay, when are the trials?  And the Arab state says, never.

Imagine the outrage.  How dare they?

I wonder how many people just assume that the government would never do such a thing — buy evidence. They couldn’t get away with it, could they? They can and they do, on a surprisingly regular basis. Sometimes our judges slap them down for it, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, like the rest of us, they seem to believe that a higher good is served by abridging the most precious rights we have in a democracy.

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Are you Scared Yet and Lucky George: More on Canadian Jihad

On the CBC tonight, members of the mosque where Qayyum Abdul Jamal sometimes led prayer services and taught reported that he made inflammatory and “extreme” comments. Among other things, he said that Canadian forces were in Afghanistan to rape Moslem women. He criticized any involvement with politics because most politics involves corruption. He thought movies and television were filled with sinful ideas and images.

He almost sounds like Dr. James Dobson.

What was missing from these several accounts of Jamal’s teachings was any mention of violence, or an advocacy of violence against Canadian targets.

It’s not unreasonable to believe that he wouldn’t make such statements in public. But it is also very striking that the CBC decided to broadcast this piece. Why is the CBC trying to help the prosecution? Where is journalistic objectivity? Where is even one astute reporter to point out that many extremely conservative Christians and right wing militia groups in the U.S. have been making similarly contemptible speeches for years, but we haven’t seen many of them rounded up? They have, for example, called critics of the Iraqi war “traitors”. They have called pro-choice activists “murderers”. They have had even harsher words for rock musicians and film-makers.

One of the pieces of evidence against the seventeen “terrorists” is their participation in training exercises held in wilderness areas north of Toronto, allegedly with real bullets.

In California, there is a valley where gun enthusiasts can legally shoot off as many guns as frequently as they wish. In fact, the range is polluted with tens of thousands of casings– and beer cans and fast food wrappers. They can also go to rifle-ranges in almost any city in America, and they can carry the loaded gun, concealed, to and from the range in most states.

Ah– but they aren’t threatening to actually go out and kill anyone. Maybe. Or is it just that we assume that white people carrying loaded weapons around are okay, even if a few white people do end up committing murders, whereas Moslems doing the same thing are presumed to be terrorists.

Did the U.S. make any effort to infiltrate and control militia groups in the U.S. after Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing?

The hype and hysteria about this case is unbelievable.

The saddest part is that even the reporters who occasionally toss in a phrase like “of course, they haven’t been convicted” act as if overwhelming proof has been offered that there was a real plot and that these suspects were actually intending to carry it out.

Peculiarly, some of the members of this group are charged with belonging to a terrorist organization, while it is admitted that they had no connection to Al Qaeda. By inference, it seems they had no connection to any outside terrorist organization at all. In this case, the government appears to be saying they are guilty of belonging to a group of which they are guilty of belonging to. I’m trying to figure out if the government is really that stupid– okay, I hear a chorus of people saying, no, no, they can’t be– or if there is some angle on this that makes sense. How do you prove in court that they belonged to a terrorist organization? By showing that they were intending to act like a terrorist organization. But then you will have to show that they actually were plotting to commit terrorist acts. If you have proof of that, then you don’t need the charge that they belonged to a terrorist organization. You could simply charge them with conspiracy.

I suspect that when the dust settles, we will hear about some young, emotional Moslem men who said stupid things and dreamed of joining the battle against the decadent culture in which they lived, but didn’t actually have any definite plans for attacking anything or anyone.

I suspect we’ll find out that the ammonium nitrate for the bomb was not only provided by the RCMP, but may even have been suggested.

Someone says to me, how can you say that before all the facts are in? I say, you’re right. People shouldn’t make those kinds of hysterical charges until they know more facts about what actually is going on.

Just as public officials should stop congratulating themselves and each other on having stopped a terrorist attack when they have yet to prove that any such attack was really being planned.

Lucky George W. Bush! Why? Because this story has pushed the real story onto the back pages for a day or two, which is, that the political and military situation in Iraq looks worse, and worse, and worse. A comment from a woman in Baghdad: It’s as if they are just killing each other for sake of killing now…

The media coverage of the arrest of the 17 “terrorists” has been nauseating. Even the CBC, that alleged bastion of liberalism, seems to feel compelled to tour around Toronto showing its audience video of what a reporter thinks would be logical targets for a terrorist attack, including the CN tower, CSIS headquarters, and the Air Canada Centre– without any evidence that the “terrorists” thought this. None at all. Even the police haven’t leaked that information yet.

If you were a lackey of Stephen Harper’s and you wanted to scare citizens of Toronto as much as possible, you could not have scripted a more compelling presentation.

The CBC’s treatment of this story is worse than bad.  It is disgusting.