Along with wrongly connecting Arar and his wife to Al Qaeda, the fabled horsemen sapped efforts to secure his release, smeared his reputation, and then obscured a hapless investigation from their political masters.
O'Connor's damning report was released Monday and by now heads would be rolling in any normal organization. But the federal government and the RCMP are, well, different.
Accepting responsibility is alien to both. Their reflex response is to sniff the political winds and wait until the storm inevitably gives way to the calm of public indifference.
So, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli hasn't resigned or been fired and Harper's young administration is sounding old, paying the usual lip service to reform.
Why more isn't happening is part of the queasy banana republic relationship between politicians and federal police. Few talk about it openly, but here in the capital, the nation's trusting affection for a picture-postcard RCMP is tinged with nervousness, even fear.
Elected and appointed officials are equally reluctant to challenge an RCMP that, despite a mottled record, enjoys more credibility than politicians, bureaucrats or, for that matter, journalists. As official Ottawa — and particularly Liberals — were reminded in December, even a slightly raised RCMP eyebrow can be disastrous.
It's the last election's strongest consensus that the turning point was a curious letter to the NDP confirming that the RCMP would investigate suspected leaks of then-finance minister Ralph Goodale's income trust decision. That the letter would become public and torpedo the Liberal campaign should have been as obvious to the force as the implications of telling traumatized U.S. agents that Arar was an Islamic extremist.
So far, one RCMP investigation is as substantial as the other. O'Connor found no evidence that Arar is anything other than he claims and no charges have been laid in the trust case.
http://tinyurl.com/n3hqz
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 25, 2006]
Note: http://tinyurl.com/n3hqz
Arar Case Tests Harper's Accountability Promise
Posted on Sunday, September 24 at 08:16 by 4CanadaContributed By
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political winds and wait until the storm inevitably gives way to the calm
of public indifference."
Travers is one of the best journalists. But in this case, he's giving the
Get-outa-jail-free card to the media who after all provide the winds for
governments and the people to sniff.
One example: who in British Columbia or in all of Canada, apart from the
judiciary itself, knows what was decided on 18 Sept. in Supreme Court in
a case which could shake the very foundations of government
provincially and federally? CanWest sent a reporter, that day, and
decided NOT to publish.
Inevitably, the public will be called apathetic -- "the calm of public
indifference," says Jim -- because the population simply has no way of
obtaining this information if the media won't do its job.
Jim Travers, I repeat, is one of the best. But he told me that even he
believes that the Basi & Virk affair is strictly a B.C. issue. It is not.
Those who hold the belief that the press is sacrosanct need to acquaint themselves with the following <br />
fifth estate n.<br />
A class or group in society other than the nobility, the clergy, the middle class, and the press.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.monthlyreview.org/0502rwmscott.htm">http://www.monthlyreview.org/0502rwmscott.htm</a><br />
<br />
“In The Brass Check, Sinclair made a systematic and damning critique of the severe limitations of the “free press” in the United States. “(T)he thesis of this book,” he wrote, is “that American Journalism is a class institution serving the rich and spurning the poor.”*If The Jungle was notorious for its aggressive assaults on capitalist industry, The Brass Check pulled even fewer punches. The title itself is a reference to the chit issued to patrons of urban brothels at the time. Sinclair drew an analogy between journalists and prostitutes, beholden to the agenda, ideology, and policies of the monied elites that owned and controlled the press. It was an integral part of his broader critique of the corruption of U.S. politics and the appalling nature of capitalism: “Politics, Journalism, and Big Business work hand in hand for the hoodwinking of the public and the plundering of labor” (p. 153).”<br />
<br />
It is we, the people of conscience, who are charged with the responsibility to blow the whistle on those outside of the fifth estate.<br />
<br />
To expect the media to serve any other than those it is co-joined with is a romantic illusion and the idea the press is there to inform must be put straight, They are not!<br />
The press is there to feed the herds, or if you prefer, the flock.<br />
Until the citizens of a country, them selves hold their employees accountable and strip them of the temporary power they have been assigned expect no change, Forever wail and gnash teeth, for all the good it will do unless each and everyone of us assumes our rightful power. <br />
<br />
Dio<br />
<br />
<br />
<p>---<br>Diogenes said:<br />
"I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels."
This gives the media a clear corporate bias.
"Freedom" of the press in our society means nothing more than freedom from government coercion not freedom from other forms of coercion. In fact, many reporters see themselves as so entitled to freedom from government control that they believe they should be above the law.
The "freedom of the press" is one of the biggest myths of our time.
The term "Free press" is a modern day fable, an oxymoron that never existed except in the minds of idealists, who no doubt soon discovered the error in that way of thinking.
All one needs to do is briefly look at the influence that newspapers and their owners had on public opinion in the 19th and 20th centuries to understand that, sadly, most of what we consider "news" is either fluff of no consequence, or outright propaganda designed to sway public opinion.
Naturally this made the media an essential part of the political process.
Today we still have newspapers, along with the added power of television media such as Canwest, CNN, and others each pushing their soundbyte "headlines" as being complete stories, when all they are is crafted snippets designed to deceive.
Our "free press" is as "free" as our corporate run society.
Behold fascism in all it's glory.
---
"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"
"The Weapon" - Rush