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unimaginative2
Guest
That may be. That's why it should be up to the families of the fallen soldier to decide whether they want the media present, and not up to Stephen Harper.
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That may be. That's why it should be up to the families of the fallen soldier to decide whether they want the media present, and not up to Stephen Harper.
A
Abeja de Almirante
Guest
Do you ask every parent, every time, if the media can intrude? What if four soldiers are returning, and only two parent wants the media there? If it's up to the families, then the best place to have the media would be the individual funerals or memorials, which we have seen, tastefully done.
This should hardly be an issue at all. The media is fully imbedded with our forces in Afghanistan, and reports and photographs the flag covered coffins and ceremonies as they're being sent home. The media still gets its cover story.
As for the flag matter, all Harper is doing is returning to tradition. Throughout the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and throughout the Cold War and muliple peacekeeping operations, thousands of Canadian soldiers have died, and we did not lower the flag for them. Instead, we remember all of them, equally, on November 11th.
This should hardly be an issue at all. The media is fully imbedded with our forces in Afghanistan, and reports and photographs the flag covered coffins and ceremonies as they're being sent home. The media still gets its cover story.
As for the flag matter, all Harper is doing is returning to tradition. Throughout the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and throughout the Cold War and muliple peacekeeping operations, thousands of Canadian soldiers have died, and we did not lower the flag for them. Instead, we remember all of them, equally, on November 11th.
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andreapalladio
Guest
Thanks, but we already know the Reform party position. The rules of the Peace Tower flag allow it to be lowered to honour any person. As the rules stand now, it would be lowered if Lord Black of Crossharbour died. Surely our soldiers deserve at least the same honour as that notorious man.
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Abeja de Almirante
Guest
This isn't Reform/CPC position, other than returning to Canadian military tradition. Even the Liberals did not follow their "new" tradition, with the flag being lowered for some dead soldiers, and not others.
Respectfully, Andrea, I do not think there is anything Harper or this group of Conservatives could do to satisfy you, other than to go away, and herald the return of the Liberals or perhaps an NDP/Green government.
Respectfully, Andrea, I do not think there is anything Harper or this group of Conservatives could do to satisfy you, other than to go away, and herald the return of the Liberals or perhaps an NDP/Green government.
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unimaginative2
Guest
Umm, yes, you are mouthing the exact Conservative position, word-for-word. Also note that it was a Conservative motion, adopted unanaimously by the House, to lower the flag for every dead soldier.
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ganjavih
Guest
S
spmarshall
Guest
Heh. Fox News Canada.
C
cdl42
Guest
Then they came for the caskets
By CHARLES ADLER
Link
They came for the national press gallery. I wasn't a member of the national press gallery and I said nothing. They came for the Canadian flag. I wasn't a flag waver and I said nothing. And then they came for the caskets.
Tory true believers will say that this columnist has now gone mad. Is he invoking the good name of the Rev. Martin Niemoeller to make the point that Stephen Harper is becoming Canada's first Fascist prime minister?
Not at all. But that's what the left will do with Harper's clumsy handling of the latest scotch broth from Afghanistan.
The real story is that our guys are giving up their lives to give Afghanistan a chance at freedom and democracy. The hope is that the country can become something other than one in which the world's sickest of predators train to commit mass murder. Canadians are fighting the good fight. But the Harpoons in Ottawa are spearing the real story. Four heroes falling in Afghanistan has morphed into a sad tale of flags and caskets. Flags won't get lowered in Ottawa and caskets won't be seen in Trenton. The left-wing media isn't making this one up. And the more the Harpoons try to lay it off on the media, the more Bush they look.
Harper's whiz kids surely must have computers. It doesn't take a minute to find out who put an end to having TV cameras at Dover Air Force base when the U.S. coffins were coming from Gulf War I. Dick Cheney was Bush the Elder's secretary of defence. Today Bush continues to talk about his personal relationship with Jesus. But many Americans have come to believe that George's Jesus is fat, bald and evil and goes by the name of Dick.
If the Harpoons want to ape the George and Dick White House, they will get smeared with the kind of language that you see at the top of the column. For years now, the Bush-Cheney strategy has been to blame the media while at the same time feeding selected stories to certain members of the media.
The strategy now has Bush's approval numbers starting to resemble Richard Nixon's. When Neil Young's Let's Impeach the President is released it won't be just the burned-out dope-smokin' lefties who nod with approval.
This week it isn't a Liberal defence minister who is telling the media to stay off the property in Trenton when the caskets come home from Afghanistan. In justifying the move, the honourable member for Subterfuge says the ban was being put in place to protect the families.
Hey, minister. Please jam a teething ring back into the mouth of the backroom infant who offered you that.
You have not a lick of evidence that military families have been offended by this or by the lowering of the flag at the people's house, the House of Commons. If you want to keep boiling your reputation in oil by putting all this off on the media, good luck with that.
It's probably not easy being Stephen Harper.
Ever since he first went to Ottawa to do backroom work in the '80s, he fell in love with the idea that Liberal governments were without moral legitimacy. The Liberals only formed government because the national media framed the issues, and in doing so, real Canadian leaders were getting framed. The Liberal Goodfellas took Mulroney out to the desert and beat him with a shovel and then did the same to Preston Manning. Facts rarely fracture the fantasies of a young man who is a chartered member of the paranoid right.
The problem is that even paranoids have enemies. If Harper continues play it Bush, his government will be buried in a casket of his own making.
By CHARLES ADLER
Link
They came for the national press gallery. I wasn't a member of the national press gallery and I said nothing. They came for the Canadian flag. I wasn't a flag waver and I said nothing. And then they came for the caskets.
Tory true believers will say that this columnist has now gone mad. Is he invoking the good name of the Rev. Martin Niemoeller to make the point that Stephen Harper is becoming Canada's first Fascist prime minister?
Not at all. But that's what the left will do with Harper's clumsy handling of the latest scotch broth from Afghanistan.
The real story is that our guys are giving up their lives to give Afghanistan a chance at freedom and democracy. The hope is that the country can become something other than one in which the world's sickest of predators train to commit mass murder. Canadians are fighting the good fight. But the Harpoons in Ottawa are spearing the real story. Four heroes falling in Afghanistan has morphed into a sad tale of flags and caskets. Flags won't get lowered in Ottawa and caskets won't be seen in Trenton. The left-wing media isn't making this one up. And the more the Harpoons try to lay it off on the media, the more Bush they look.
Harper's whiz kids surely must have computers. It doesn't take a minute to find out who put an end to having TV cameras at Dover Air Force base when the U.S. coffins were coming from Gulf War I. Dick Cheney was Bush the Elder's secretary of defence. Today Bush continues to talk about his personal relationship with Jesus. But many Americans have come to believe that George's Jesus is fat, bald and evil and goes by the name of Dick.
If the Harpoons want to ape the George and Dick White House, they will get smeared with the kind of language that you see at the top of the column. For years now, the Bush-Cheney strategy has been to blame the media while at the same time feeding selected stories to certain members of the media.
The strategy now has Bush's approval numbers starting to resemble Richard Nixon's. When Neil Young's Let's Impeach the President is released it won't be just the burned-out dope-smokin' lefties who nod with approval.
This week it isn't a Liberal defence minister who is telling the media to stay off the property in Trenton when the caskets come home from Afghanistan. In justifying the move, the honourable member for Subterfuge says the ban was being put in place to protect the families.
Hey, minister. Please jam a teething ring back into the mouth of the backroom infant who offered you that.
You have not a lick of evidence that military families have been offended by this or by the lowering of the flag at the people's house, the House of Commons. If you want to keep boiling your reputation in oil by putting all this off on the media, good luck with that.
It's probably not easy being Stephen Harper.
Ever since he first went to Ottawa to do backroom work in the '80s, he fell in love with the idea that Liberal governments were without moral legitimacy. The Liberals only formed government because the national media framed the issues, and in doing so, real Canadian leaders were getting framed. The Liberal Goodfellas took Mulroney out to the desert and beat him with a shovel and then did the same to Preston Manning. Facts rarely fracture the fantasies of a young man who is a chartered member of the paranoid right.
The problem is that even paranoids have enemies. If Harper continues play it Bush, his government will be buried in a casket of his own making.
A
andreapalladio
Guest
Respectfully, Andrea, I do not think there is anything Harper or this group of Conservatives could do to satisfy you, other than to go away, and herald the return of the Liberals or perhaps an NDP/Green government.
Quite right. Except about the NDP.
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unimaginative2
Guest
The problem is that even paranoids have enemies. If Harper continues play it Bush, his government will be buried in a casket of his own making.
The problem is that I fear that he won't. The Canadian media has been behaving much like the American mainstream media. The glaring obviousness of his behaving exactly like George Bush, even down to taking whole paragraphs from Bush's speeches, doesn't appear to be affecting anybody.
A
Antiloop33rpm
Guest
The problem is that I fear that he won't. The Canadian media has been behaving much like the American mainstream media. The glaring obviousness of his behaving exactly like George Bush, even down to taking whole paragraphs from Bush's speeches, doesn't appear to be affecting anybody.
Its rather surprising how clueless most people are about it. I feel like Im witnessing the past 6 years of Bush politics all over again. Except this time I cant laugh and feel comfort since it is happening in Canada. I understand that we are a somewhat insecure nation that feels the need to buddy up with whomever the empire of the time is, but, this is almost comical in how closely he is following Bush protocal, and how lock step people are falling into line.
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bizorky
Guest
This is not so much a flip-flop as it is the setting of policy for what is to come. While people may agonize over the fate of Iraq, Afghanistan is a much more problematic part of the world. I think the government is settling into the idea of a long stay in that region.
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Abeja de Almirante
Guest
One thing we've not addressed is how starved the media must be for something to report if the lowering/or not, of flags and TV coverage of returning soldiers makes continuous top line news.
A
AlvinofDiaspar
Guest
Abeja:
Actually, I don't call reporting on government actions and posturing in the intersection of domestic, foreign policy and war to be "starved". If this matter is as you say, unimportant, why would Harper et al. go about making these policy changes consciously?
Speaking of things unaddressed, I have noticed you haven't replied my comment on your assertation that the Liberals (particularly Trudeau) were responsible for the "greatest majority" of the national debt. I await your response.
AoD
Actually, I don't call reporting on government actions and posturing in the intersection of domestic, foreign policy and war to be "starved". If this matter is as you say, unimportant, why would Harper et al. go about making these policy changes consciously?
Speaking of things unaddressed, I have noticed you haven't replied my comment on your assertation that the Liberals (particularly Trudeau) were responsible for the "greatest majority" of the national debt. I await your response.
AoD
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Abeja de Almirante
Guest
As apposed to unconsciously? I just don't think this is a big media item. If the government had banned the media from covering the Afghan campaign, I would be concerned about censorship, but in fact, the government has imbedded reporters with the forces, where they're reporting the troops movements, both dead and alive, from the front lines. The media can also attend any memorials and funerals that the families want. As for the flag, it is no big deal for me; and for the majority of Canadians and the media who I believe continue their day on November 11th each year without much pause or reflection, this is more about finding something to complain about in a sea empty of adscams and loose lipped ministers. Tens of thousands of soldiers died in Canada's wars and never complained about such things. Lower the flag on rememberance day for all soldiers.Actually, I don't call reporting on government actions and posturing in the intersection of domestic, foreign policy and war to be "starved". If this matter is as you say, unimportant, why would Harper et al. go about making these policy changes consciously?
How should I reply? What do you want? When Trudeau took office in 1968 Canada had a debt of $18 billion, when he left office in 1984, that debt stood at $200 billion - an increase of 1100%. Imagine if Mulroney had done the same 1100% spending spee; his inherited $200 billion debt from Trudeau would have been $2,200 billion. My intended point was that the Liberals established Canada on the road of longterm national debt. Mulroney continued this, and also had to go. I voted for Martin as PM in 2003 because I thought he'd fix this, but after Adscam, Gomery, Dilwahl and the rest, the whole Liberal crew had to be put in "time out". Once they've cleaned out the closet, and bring in some fiscally AND morally (no, not socons, just folks with integrity) responsible folks, I'll consider voting LPC again.Speaking of things unaddressed, I have noticed you haven't replied my comment on your assertation that the Liberals (particularly Trudeau) were responsible for the "greatest majority" of the national debt. I await your response