| Green Island Letters |
 Dave Patterson Feb 2017
The Shattered Truth- - an open Letter to Canadian Journalism Students (and anyone interested in the sorry state of 'journalism' in Canada c2017)
Your Canadian media (and education system, but I'm focusing on media here) have been lying egregiously to you and all Canadians about what has been going on in your country and the world for the last 30-odd years - demonstrable, undeniable lies and gatekeeping, and engulfing their readers/listeners with a great deal of highly one-sided propaganda, lies and propaganda and gatekeeping having **very** serious and tragic consequences (millions of murdered and displaced people and untold billions in infrastructure destruction in the mideast and resulting in the so-called 'refugee crisis' of the last few years, worldwide terrorism, massive looting of the Canadian treasury, for starters..) that would almost certainly not have occurred if Canadians had had a clear and honest picture of what was going on in their country and world; and then filling in whatever space is left with an increasing trend of passing off gossip and 'infotainment' as 'news pablum' to keep the innocent children entertained and passive while the carnage continues in other parts of the world, which even in your youthful innocence you should understand has nothing whatsoever to do with real 'journalism', if that is what you truly aspire to. And for you to pass through your Canadian 'journalism' school, it will be required for you to accept and internalise these lies (and of course essentially agreeing to write up whatever new lies are presented to you as 'news' during your career), and come to believe the propaganda, and see a central part of your 'journalism' work as presenting gossip and 'infotainment' as 'news', so you can continue to lie to the Canadian people, and do your Ministry of Truth job of keeping the proles believing whatever the masters of society need them to believe to maintain their oligarchy. Won't you be so proud of what you have become.
Let's go back to 1990, what they call the first Gulf War, and the first of the modern 'OMG those monsters we have to stop them!!!' story, probably before most of you were born. If you know a bit about this history, it's probably something like this - The very evil bastard Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, a lovely democratic country, and was committing various atrocities there that we in the democratic west simply could not allow, for example, his soldiers were going into hospitals in Kuwait and throwing poor wee babies out of incubators so they could steal them - oh, nasty evil heartless monster bastards!! - and of course the US (and its 'coalition of the willing', ( ;) ;) ) including Canada) went over and bombed and killed a whole bunch of Iraqi soldiers and civilians and freed Kuwait, yay!!. But that's a kind of airbrushed story - the truth would be a bit more like this: Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and the US did not want Saddam having any more oil with its attendant power, so the invasion was not going to be allowed to stand. That wasn't enough of a reason for most western people to go to war, of course, against a country half way around the world that presented no threat to us, so the war had to be sold, and we had, among many other things, the Kuwaiti incubator babies PR stunt noted above - a total and complete fiction specifically created by a US PR firm to get westerners to at least accept the US getting all huffy and taking the side of Kuwait (which was not actually a 'lovely democracy' either, but a very brutal Arabian monarchy similar to Saudi Arabia etc) and driving Saddam out, resulting in the deaths of maybe 150,000 Iraqis directly, with a very large number (in the millions, including half a million children who died from preventable disease and malnutrition) following through the Clinton years with the sanctions against Iraq. The incubator babies story was a blatant PR lie that could have been easily revealed by real journalists, and the US-led carnage stopped before it started, but instead was trumpeted from the front pages of the media as they ramped their populations up to war. (A place to start here for some details you won't get from your Cdn media histories..). A few years later, we were told about another monster, Milosevic in Yugoslavia, murdering his citizens out of nothing more than crazed blood lust and burying them in mass graves OMG we have to stop this!!!! - and bomb bomb bombs away, lots more people killed and infrastructure bombed - and when the bombing was over and the UN and others went looking for those 'mass graves' - why, none to be found golly!! - again, another blatant lie used to push Cdns into accepting the regime change of a leader who dared stand up to the US (John Pilger, one of the true journalists we have today, writes about it here). Again, a lie sold by the media, a lie with very serious consequences, and a lie never later acknowledged - indeed, more lies soon to follow, for a couple of years later, we had the biggest lie with the gravest consequences to date -
All based on lies, undeniable lies, lies never acknowledged by the western press. For good enough reason - - as here the propaganda function of the western media - including the 'great free Canadian media' - begins to come very clearly and undeniably out into the open, as a few years after Saddam is gone and chaos running rampant through the mideast, we start hearing stories about the horrible horrible monster in Libya, slaughtering his own people OMG we have to stop him!!!!! - but now the media have no excuse to be trumpeting the accusations against Gaddaffi as they issued from the US Pentagon, as if they were true journalists, they would be receiving such accusations with a great deal of skepticism rather than passing them on enthusiastically to the people they were supposedly serving. Any **real** journalist at this time would have to be saying - Hey, maybe we should all wait a minute here with these latest accusations about some leader in the mideast doing terrible things to his people so we have to bomb him - you know, they told us lies about Iraq, and then Milosevic, and then Iraq again, and when we published those lies to get the citizens of our country onside with bombing and killing and bombing and killing, and the people of our country supported the bombing and killing on the basis of those lies, doing huge destruction the terrible results of which are still be felt today in chaos and misery and destruction all over the mideast - so now, when we have more accusations of another monster doing terrible things - well, just maybe a real journalist should ask some questions this time, look for a bit of verification, that kind of thing - are you people lying to us again about your latest monster or what????? - of course, no such questions were ever asked (by the 'mainstream' media, that is, by this time a *lot* of us here in 'better not believe everything the media tells you' land had questions), even though by this time there was a huge body of highly credible work available on the internet challenging and pointing out the problems with these accusations, and another leader daring to stand up to the US was taken out, very brutally. And later of course it turned out that most of the accusations made about him were - well - you know - lies. Lies and lies and lies, they lie and lie and lie, and there are huge consequences for all of us around the world. (start to journey into 'the truth' about what a hero to Libya and Africa Gaddaffi really was here - 10 things about Gaddaffi they don't want you to know )
Lies about US regime changes are perhaps the biggest and most physically damaging the last few decades (go back further if you like, Iran in 1953 and the deposition of the democratically elected Mosadegh, or Vietnam in the 60s, Chile in 1973, Reagan's cointelpro wars in the 1980s, etc etc etc etc get a book called Killing Hope by William Blum for some real history you won't hear much about on the CBC), but money is very important in our world, and the lies and gatekeeping about what is really going on with money and the economy are just as massive and egregious and breathtaking, when you understand them. As wouldbe journalists interested in what is going on in Canada, you should at least be familiar with 'the national debt', how big it is, how much interest we are paying on it and have over the last 30-odd years - but what you probably don't know yet is that this entire debt is a massive fraud and scam, and every penny we have paid as a country in 'interest' on that debt over the last 30+ years ( a couple of trillion dollars) need not have been paid - two trillion dollars of Cdn taxpayer money turned over fraudulently to bigtime 'investors' while politicians cried lying crocodile tears about having no money for things Canadians wanted, and the media did an excellent job of selling the 'debt crisis' and gatekeeping what was really going on - it's all explained here, if you are I am sure that sounds extreme, but just try talking about any of the things I have written about above with your teachers, and see what the response is - I'll guarantee you that you'll be told whoever spreads such ideas is just some kind of internet nutcase Putin-lover and you're just wasting your time even listening to such nonsense. Which should be enough of a red flag for anyone aspiring to be even a citizen thinking for themselves let alone aspiring to be a journalist to get their curiosity aroused - the accusations above are very serious, and the prima facie evidence for them beyond dispute if you do even a bit of independent reading and thinking, so they cannot be simply dismissed as 'internet nutcase conspiracy theories' as they try to dismiss anything which challenges their narrative - so if your 'journalists' in your 'journalism school' are not lying to you, why wouldn't they encourage a serious and open discussion of these things, if they have nothing to hide? The answer to the question is simple and clear, as I stated at the opening - the accusations I make are beyond deniability, and your authorities in the Cdn media have been lying egregiously to you and all Canadians for the last 30 years, and any open discussion of these things would easily prove their perfidy thus such open discussions cannot be allowed - and it is time they were exposed, and the truth let out of the dark room they have been hiding it in. Which should be your job, as a new generation of aspiring real Canadian journalists rather than more Mickey Mouse Club cheerleaders, sorely, sorely needed at this time in our, and world, history. You can join the secret and evil Brutus Club - or join the highly honored ranks of 'shine the light where they don't want it shone!!' real journalists profession. I hope you choose right. If the CUP allows this letter to be distributed, maybe it's time for some of you to accept the challenge, to begin the drive to really take back Canadian journalism, and regain the trust of Canadians, as you start working for the people of Canada rather than the new feudal overlords who have been using the media to keep them passive and ignorant of what is really going on in the world, activities about which you and any Canadian who cares about what is going on in their country and world should be absolutely outraged, and would be if we had an honest media reporting on these things. (and don't worry about money - worry about being true to yourself, and the people of Canada, and those little things called Truth and Honesty and Integrity, things *real* journalists still understand, which is why you won't find any wandering around the 'legacy' media these days - if you start to do real journalism, the people in Canada who care will start to support you, and honor you. We are not, however, interested in paying for lies and propaganda and gatekeeping and pablum.) There is a great deal more going on than I have covered in this short letter, and I'd be more than happy to dialogue with you about these things, and answer questions you might have, if you want to try to save our country, or if you're really ready to get into the rabbit hole, you could start here - Democratic Revolution Handbook . Adults only please, this is really 'red pill' stuff. And since this is a bit long, I have put it on a webpage for easier sharing with anyone should you wish to do so - Open letter to Canadian journalism students about the current abysmal state of your chosen career . Dave Patterson
(note for any future interest - sent to all of these places with not a single response:
(I think the Canadian lion is dead, Mr Shelley - what now??}
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Or you can challenge the lies and propaganda and gatekeeping, and try to become a real journalist, a very honorable profession for those who eventually earn the right to be identified as such, whose only true calling is digging out and challenging the lies of power and telling the citizens of your country what Power does NOT want them to know. If you choose this latter path of refusing to be shut up and insisting on talking about things you are being trained to *not* talk about, you will, of course, quickly find yourself being told to leave the 'journalism' school - but if you have a real calling, you will understand that was the first test, which you just passed - and then maybe you can join the very, very important struggle to re-establish a true 'for the people' journalism in Canada, something that is desperately needed in our chaotic and dangerous modern world, so full of lies and misinformation and led by some very bad people who need to be challenged, but 'we the people' need the information necessary to challenge them.
Ok - Lies, egregious lies with very serious consequences, that no true journalist would ever condone, yet have been filling the pages and airwaves of the 'mainstream' Cdn media for decades.
Saddam has WMDs we have to stop him before he nukes us all OMG!!!! and quite a number of related lies (Niger yellow cake letter, Blair's 'dodgy dossier', etc) - and of course I am sure you remember this, no WMDs ever found, there never were any, all the stuff pushing Cdns and others into accepting the US bombing and destruction of Iraq was, once again, based on intentional lies, sold unquestioningly by the corporate propaganda media to the citizens they were supposed to be serving but were now clearly and undeniably propagandizing and manipulating in service to Power, simply in order to remove a leader who in no way threatened us, but simply dared stand up to the wouldbe world hegemon, the USA. And this time there were again severe consequences, but this time orders of magnitude greater, with not only the deaths of hundreds of thousands of more Iraqis, women and children primarily, but over the next few years as Iraq descended into utter chaos, the beginnings of ISIS and the chaos all through the mideast and the refugee crisis of today.
And it goes on - after this came the lies about Syria and Assad (start here 
really ready to venture outside of the box, and give up your place in journalism school - I can absolutely guarantee you that if you insist on trying to talk about this with anyone in 'authority', you won't get anywhere near the Canadian corporate propaganda media, as burying this truth very deeply is one of their central roles, and the reason no real journalist insisting on digging around in places the rulers do not want dug around in will ever be allowed to talk about this on the CBC or in the major print media.
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