I've always said that there are good journalists and good pundits in Canada. I do, however, subscribe to the Chomsky-Herman model of the media. The main media has become a big business. As a big business, they share interests with other big businesses. As forms of mass communication, they were engaged in a partnership with elites who desired and who would interest a mass audience. They are part of the system in other words.
The system in Canada relies upon easy access to valuable resources and a fee simple regime of property ownership facilitates this. The treaties with the First Nations obstructs this. As well, the First Nations are an expense to the state and to corporations (who used to pay more in the way of taxes than they do now). The thing is, the people who run Canada want the First Nations gone, and the corporate media are members in the group of the people who run Canada. So they want the First Nations gone too. It's that simple.
Far from being objective reporters about the struggle between the First Nations and the government, they're active participants on the same side as the government. Undermining support for the First Nations' struggle is their contribution to the cause. We shouldn't be surprised by their behaviour. It's their rational self-interest (or, anyway, how they see their self-interest).
What we are seeing though, is how ugly naked self-interest is. That's what's different about the usual run of things. The gloves are off here. The First Nations woke up in the late-1960s when the assimilationist "White Paper on Indians" threatened them with total elimination as a proud and separate people. Things move slow though, when the powerless confront the powerful. Glacially slow. And now, with a racist, deluded scumbag like stephen harper in power, the system has decided on a big push-back. But the First Nations are up against the wall. As they've said recently, they have nothing to lose. This struggle is not going to end. If the system refuses to meet the First Nations peacefully, it will become violent, because this is all-or-nothing for them.
And, therefore, the corporate media's leadership reveal their true colours. Hypocritically damning Chief Spence for missing receipts while endorsing harper for Prime Minister! Letting snarling, drooling attack-dog Christie Belchforth call Chief Spence's hunger-strike an act of terrorism. Calling for the unilateral tearing-up of treaties. Refusing to acknowledge the hideous, widespread and systemic racism in their own comments sections.
We won't be rid of this filth, we won't ever be rid of this filth, without a revolution in social relations that makes the retrograde values espoused by yahoos like Christie Belchforth seen for the insanity that it is. Until then, Belchforth's bile is serviceable to the elites and so, bile she will spew. The extermination of the First Nations as a separate people is serviceable to our corporate masters and so the destruction treaties and the denigration of an entire people we shall see.
The system in Canada relies upon easy access to valuable resources and a fee simple regime of property ownership facilitates this. The treaties with the First Nations obstructs this. As well, the First Nations are an expense to the state and to corporations (who used to pay more in the way of taxes than they do now). The thing is, the people who run Canada want the First Nations gone, and the corporate media are members in the group of the people who run Canada. So they want the First Nations gone too. It's that simple.
Far from being objective reporters about the struggle between the First Nations and the government, they're active participants on the same side as the government. Undermining support for the First Nations' struggle is their contribution to the cause. We shouldn't be surprised by their behaviour. It's their rational self-interest (or, anyway, how they see their self-interest).
What we are seeing though, is how ugly naked self-interest is. That's what's different about the usual run of things. The gloves are off here. The First Nations woke up in the late-1960s when the assimilationist "White Paper on Indians" threatened them with total elimination as a proud and separate people. Things move slow though, when the powerless confront the powerful. Glacially slow. And now, with a racist, deluded scumbag like stephen harper in power, the system has decided on a big push-back. But the First Nations are up against the wall. As they've said recently, they have nothing to lose. This struggle is not going to end. If the system refuses to meet the First Nations peacefully, it will become violent, because this is all-or-nothing for them.
And, therefore, the corporate media's leadership reveal their true colours. Hypocritically damning Chief Spence for missing receipts while endorsing harper for Prime Minister! Letting snarling, drooling attack-dog Christie Belchforth call Chief Spence's hunger-strike an act of terrorism. Calling for the unilateral tearing-up of treaties. Refusing to acknowledge the hideous, widespread and systemic racism in their own comments sections.
We won't be rid of this filth, we won't ever be rid of this filth, without a revolution in social relations that makes the retrograde values espoused by yahoos like Christie Belchforth seen for the insanity that it is. Until then, Belchforth's bile is serviceable to the elites and so, bile she will spew. The extermination of the First Nations as a separate people is serviceable to our corporate masters and so the destruction treaties and the denigration of an entire people we shall see.
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