Sept. 5 2003

Ok - I got another Letter - I really don't know why I do this - but they just get me so fucking MAD!!! with all their lies all the time - this one about an op-ed piece in the Globe Hide those unseemly snickers, gentlemen [[RM archive copy]], where we see the fucking Canadian media following faithfully along in the steps of the American media, gleefully rewriting history - if you can call something a few months old history yet! -


Editor -
Don't you people vet your writers at all? I've written before about how you allow your columnists to pretend to be offering "analysis" when they are writing nothing more than some combination of opinion and propaganda, but in this one - "Hide those unseemly snickers, gentlemen" by MARCUS GEE Friday, September 5, 2003 - you seem to be allowing your writer to embark on the Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" process of rewriting history. Of course, the White House-Pentagon-US government have been doing this regularly the last few months, but it is (as I have also noted before) somewhat disappointing, to say the least, to have the closest thing Canada has to a "journal of record" doing the same thing. You were at one time a good paper - it is a sad thing to see the depths to which you have fallen.

But specifically back to the Gee article - to say that the US only "reluctantly" engaged in this invasion is absolutely ridiculous, contrary to every fact - it was about as "reluctant" as, shall we say, a well-loved and spoiled 8-year old child racing down the steps on Christmas morning to get his/her loot (I won't bother getting into the loot the US expected from its self-declared Christmas - it's all evident enough, from control of the second largest oil reserves in the world through a secure military presence in an otherwise most important and strategic area of the world to somewhat more mundane considerations such as shovelling tens of billions of dollars to US corporations and "defence" industry contractors with close White House ties).

Most of the world has not forgotten - but have the Globe editors forgotten that almost the entire world spent months telling the US NOT to engage in this unprovoked invasion of another country - that the UN weapons inspectors were doing their job well, and there was NO threat to the US or anyone else from the Iraq government?

"Reluctant"? - have the Globe editors forgotten that the US lied, and lied, and lied repeatedly to try to justify its invasion, and belittled or ignored every attempt by the UN or others to mollify it and address its supposed concerns?? - and then, when most of the civilised world refused to accept those lies, it invaded anyways - and now that those lies are being exposed, the US government is itself trying to rewrite what it did and said leading up to their invasion?!?! (i.e. now they are trying to say that their reason for invading was that Iraq had a weapons "program" - a word which was NEVER used prior to the invasion, when they were so anxious to go bombing and killing?)

"Reluctant"?!?!?! What a terrible thing for the Globe to allow a writer in its pages to say. I quite understand there are wide-ranging parameters within which columnists write - but I also understand that there are certain things that are normally accepted as beyond the pale of, shall we say, acceptable discussion, things that have to do with Truth - you do not feature, for instance, columnists who deny the Holocaust, as you believe that to be an historical fact, and denying it is something you do not wish to be associated with through featuring a columnist with such a belief. But are we to conclude, then, from this Gee column, that you are going to join the revisionism the US is attempting to undertake now, and portray the US government as some kind of great Audie Murphy American hero, only "reluctantly" invading this other country to "save" its people from a fate worse than death, which is a completely false assertion?!?!?

There is more (there usually is, with revisionists - you may be familiar with the phrase - "Oh, what a tangled web we weave....").

Gee is not content with this somewhat sneaky (a single adjective stuck into an otherwise normal and relatively honest sort of sentence) introductory revisionism. He soon carries on and says "...Rebuilding a society as brutalised and run down as Iraq was under Saddam Hussein was always going to be hard...". It really is enough to make one angry, to see this kind of propagandistic nonsense spouted by a writer in the Globe. Iraq was indeed brutalised and run down earlier this year at the time of the US invasion - but conditions in the country had a great deal more to do with 10+ years of US-UN sanctions than it did with the regime of Saddam Hussein, as (again) most people in the civilised world are aware. I guess that I repeat again the part about "most people in the civilised world" is part of my anger - I used to regard Canada as part of the "civilised" world - but it is becoming more and more difficult to feel this way the last few years, as I watch my country, under the "leadership" of what could only be called Republican-North governments, becoming as shallow and stupid as the Americans seem to be.

Anyone with a wider knowledge of world affairs and history than is served up on American tv (which appears to include fewer and fewer Canadians, much to the detriment of our country, but apparently desired by our governments and media, who are promoting American entertainment-cum-propaganda over what used to be much better Canadian tv until the funding was cut) well knows that, prior to the invasion and bombing of that country under the first Bush, it was one of the most advanced of the Mid-eastern Muslim countries, with a secular rather than religious government, where the people enjoyed modern services and infrastructure comparable to most modern western countries, and the women were treated much better than under most Muslim fundamentalist governments (such as Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, for instance, which are still very non-democratic and women are treated as little more than chattels - Saddam was perhaps a harsh ruler, but no more so than every other mid-eastern leader, and let us not forget that while he was performing the worst of his "atrocities", he was doing so with the full backing and approval of the American governments of the day!! - part of the revisionism is, of course, "forgetting" such inconvenient facts). The infrastructure of the country was, of course, almost completely destroyed during the years of sanctions during which time, I suppose I need to remind you, over a million Iraqis - most of them children - died from fully preventable diseases due to those sanctions (which, again I remind you, the US government, through Madeline Albright, considered to be acceptable! - the hypocrisy of them, and Gee, is just too much!!). So again, I am MOST disappointed in your paper for allowing this type of attempted revisionist history to be appearing in your pages unchallenged. Mr. Gee is quite welcome to his opinion that the US is the world's John Wayne or whatever, but please try to exert a bit of editorial control over him when he tries, as in this piece, to make the Globe nothing more than some 1984-ian Canadian Ministry of Truth organ, rewriting history at will to support his fantasies of the way we are going to PRETEND the world is/was, rather than it actually is/was. We all, as children, enjoy our pretend games and our belief in Christmas and suchlike fairy tales - but George Bush and his Pentagon invaders ain't no Santa Claus with his little reindeer sleigh bearing gifts.

Your ever unpublished (are there no honest journalists left in your organization at all, who are even a bit embarrassed at what you have become, and how you refuse to allow intelligent, dissenting opinion in your pages?) - but ever watching, secure in the knowledge that the Canadian people WILL wake up some day and hold all of you people to account -

(my realworld name - ???? - well, just what is the "real" world anyway?!?!?!))