Monday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Daniel Wilson takes a look at how far too many in the media went along with the Harper Cons' hatchet job against First Nations:

(C)ompare the generalized outrage last week to the shrug elicited by the non-indigenous mayors around the country who have resigned after corruption allegations, are currently being investigated for fraud or sued for conflict of interest. 

By the standard applied to First Nations, the situations in Montreal, Laval, Mascouche, London, Toronto, Mississauga and Winnipeg are proof that all non-indigenous governments are corrupt and mismanaged and should have their funding cut off.  Such logic would suggest that Canadian citizens don’t deserve clean drinking water or schools for their kids since they are too lazy to insist on proper governance.

The unabashed complicity of the mainstream media in carrying out this hatchet job for the Harper government and unleashing a torrent of racism should be the subject of professional examination and deep personal shame for those involved.

- But then, Tobold Rollo points out that it's far from a first for the corporate press to be on the wrong side of history:

No one can know for sure just how long it takes for a journalist to “go soft”. The conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. once stood (sorry, wrote) courageously in opposition to the civil rights movement, reserving some of his most heroic denigrating prose for leaders such as Martin Luther King. Two decades later, Ronald Reagan would oppose the creation of Martin Luther King Day because of its economic impact only to sign it in the face of public pressure. But Buckley, still resilient, boldly pointed out the irony of creating a holiday in King’s name given the man’s laziness: “it rankles that we should be asked to take the day off to remember a man whose career was built on leisure.” Yet Buckley, too, would succumb. Fatigued by decades of demeaning the labours of the subjugated, Buckley finally gave in and pronounced his admiration for Martin Luther King. Truly heartbreaking.


If today’s writers have half the tenacity as our friend Buckley, we should see them exhibiting the first signs of quiet approval for Chief Theresa Spence and the Idle No More movement in about ten years. But for the time being we are a truly privileged audience, living in a time when the artful denigration of Indigenous peoples invites us to reflect on those heroes of the past who mocked the words and deeds of blacks, women, and homosexuals. These are truly amazing times.

 - Meanwhile, the #ottawapiskat hashtag has been offering the public an opportunity to judge the Harper Cons by the standards they've set for First Nations. Here are a few particular favourites.

- And needless to say, the comparison leads nicely to Jessica Bruno's report on how the Cons' use of public dollars can only be explained as a matter of partisan gain rather than reasonable public administration.

- Which looks rather consistent with the Cons' security apparatus - which is placing a higher priority on silencing left-wing voices who might dare to "bring attention to perceived policy failures" than dealing with neo-Nazi or white supremacist threats.