The Ends Do Not Justify The Means

'Political language....is designed to make lies sound truthful.....and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'

George Orwell

I’ve been writing daily and posting what I’ve written for almost six months now and you know what? I’ve come to the realization that what is behind most of what I have written is that I am simply tired of being lied to.

Whatever happened to integrity anyway?

Look at climate change as an example. It is now established that there was all kinds of fraudulent science and misinformation behind much of the data that was released in support of hysterical claims of global warming. In some quarters, those claims persist even as it is also now established that the warming period seems to have peaked and the earth has been cooling over the past decade.

Consider the claim that the wealthy don’t pay enough in taxes? What a hoot that one is. Even President Obama jumped on that opportunity with his ‘Buffet Rule’ even as he took full advantage of the tax system to reduce his personal tax liability. The myth is thrown around quite freely but  according to the IRS, it just isn’t true. Figures published on the IRS web site show that the top 5% wage earners actually paid 58% of all income tax collected by the IRS. More significantly, the bottom 20% of income earners received $8.00 in direct and indirect  benefits for every dollar they paid in tax while the top 20% income earners received less than $1.00 for every dollar of tax they paid.

The tax system is overly complex, expensive to manage and incredibly unfair to all tax payers but rather than address that, politicians and special interest groups who benefit from that complexity continue to put forward the myth that it is the rich who are not paying their fair share.  They are an easy and popular target and it is that mythology that special interest uses to protect its entitlements or rationalize new ones and one of the lies some politicians use to get themselves reelected. 

Simplifying the tax code and making it equitable for everyone would force special interest groups to start earning their own way like the rest of us, while politicians would have to depend on merit as the key reason for getting elected rather than bribing us with our own money.

That, my friends, isn’t going to happen any time soon, so don’t hold your breath.

News has become entertainment

Even the media lies to us as we saw recently with the hysterical and over-the-top biased coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting. What an absolute disgrace that coverage turned out to be. Honest, accurate journalism and objective analysis has been replaced by treating news like entertainment and by commentary that is little more than a personal soapbox from which to give vent to all manner of prejudice and misinformation.

The fallout from that, of course, is a loss of trust in the integrity of what the media report on anything.

In fact, that’s the fallout from all of the self-serving lies and misinformation being put out by one group or another in support of their particular ideology or cause.

Can you tell which are conservative or liberal?

Here are some simple truths.

The left is not comprised solely of socialist beggars looking for free handouts. To be sure there are some but most people who vote the liberal agenda are decent, hard-working folks who believe in social justice and want a better society for their families and neighbours.

Likewise, the right is not solely comprised of fascist extremists or religious fanatics who only believe in God, guns and keeping the poor….poor. Most who vote the conservative agenda are decent folks who simply believe in self-responsibility and enjoying the results of their labour without interference from government. While many on the left don’t like to admit it, many on the right are also very supportive of social safety nets for the disadvantaged and other issues that many on the left also support.

Not all students are whining, self-absorbed, spoiled brats looking for a free ride. Many are responsible, hard-working individuals who have assumed full responsibility for the challenges of financing and completing their university education. I admire them.

And, as hard as it is for most of us to accept, there are even some in the Occupy Movement who are sincere and honest people with jobs and who are non-violent. They are simply trying to call attention to their cause, as poorly defined and focused as most of us may believe that cause may be.

All of these folks have one thing in common. You can talk to them. You might not come to agreement on how to resolve certain issues but you can discuss the issues and debate them without all the hysterical, accusatory rhetoric that is the sole weapon in the arsenal of those who know they aren’t being honest with you.

I have many friends and colleagues who think I’m wrong on some of the issues, as hard as that is for you and I  to believe. We get along extremely well nonetheless because we are honest with each other and respect each other’s opinions. We also feel free to laugh together at our own foibles and laughter is even more unifying than sex…………….and almost as much fun.

You can’t laugh with liars for very long, if at all, and their sex is only self-serving. They’re out to screw you and that’s that! Most of them won‘t even kiss you before they take advantage of you.

We have too many like that in our society today.

Too many politicians, academics, union leaders, activists, religious fanatics and just plain, uniformed people who hide behind half-truths and outright lies to achieve their objectives, get their hands on money they haven’t earned or to advance some failed cause or other.

They tend to be driven by vested self-interest, by emotion rather than thoughts and ideas or by what is expedient rather than what is right and it is fairly easy to spot them. 

They tend to be divisive rather than unifying. Polarization works in their favour by keeping people running on feelings rather than facts. Politicians and activists are particularly fond of this tactic, as are most labour unions.

They are people who prefer to blame others for their problems rather than working with others who hold differing opinions to find real solutions.. They are the ones most likely to confuse what the believe for what they actually know and who are among the first to shout down your opinions, and deny your right to express them, while demanding you respect their right to express theirs. These are the most self-righteous and you'll find most extreme activist groups out there on the outer edges of the right and the left..

They’re beliefs tend to be among the most fragile because deep down inside they instinctively know that they don’t have much to support what they want to believe or are demanding from others. They yell, they bully and they bluster in the hope that neither you nor they themselves see the truth. In other words, these are the people who usually lie to themselves before they lie to everyone else.

Some are just flat out crooks who are only interested in taking your money and will say and do pretty much anything to get it.

But the easiest way to spot them is by how quickly they are prepared to rationalize illegal or immoral behaviour to justify their actions. These are people who believe that the rule of law only applies when it supports their cause or is expedient.

Justice is always one of the first casualties of people who believe that the ends justify the means.

I’m tired of it all to be honest. I believe it is impossible to build a successful society on values that lack integrity and by people who put expediency ahead of the truth. If a person’s beliefs are so fragile that they can only be supported by distorted half-truths and outright lies, then those are beliefs that aren’t worth having let alone following.

Our democracies are led by such people and by many who either have no consistent values or who work overtime to ignore the values they were taught.  

It is not serving us well in government, business, labour or academia. Even some in our court systems have lost sight of the true meaning of the word justice.

This was driven home to me recently by the jailing of a 17 year old rape victim who was incarcerated in order to compel her to testify against her assailant.  Despite the fact that she had been brutally victimized by her rapist, the prosecutor was able to justify victimizing this young girl a second time because he believed the ends justified the means. There is nothing honest or decent about that and we are all demeaned by it and should feel shamed that such a thing could happen in a free society.

In the end, the only hope we have is that lies are more fragile than truth simply because lies have no substance and can be exposed and defeated by the truth. The truth is substantive because it based on fact. It requires nothing but itself to exist. It remains the truth regardless of the lies that are put forward to try and obscure it.

Truth cannot be changed simply by lying about it. It may be overlooked, it may be ignored but unlike lies which have to be constantly reinforced by more lies, the truth stands on its own merit.

In the end, the old adage is true. The truth shall set you free and all of those who claim to want to build a better society with freedom, justice and equality for all would do well to remember that.

Trying to create a better life for the world on a foundation of lies and half-truths is like building your house on a foundation of sand. Sooner or later, that house will sink and be lost.

Nothing real can be built out of anything that doesn't actually exist and lies are merely words that blow on angry winds. In the end, they just blow away and leave nothing of value behind.

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

- George Orwell

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Noise!

There are days that I wish I had been born in a different era. Any era will do on those days because all I’m looking for is an escape from the noise. I get tired of the yelling and screaming online and in the media. I get tired of bureaucrats speaking in a language none of us understands and who work overtime trying to socially engineer our societies with politically correct doublespeak and regulation upon regulation for even the most mundane things.

I get tired of politicians pretending to believe in something just so we will elect them and even more tired of the sanctimonious and divisive rhetoric that spins out of that from their supporters. Much of that noise comes from folks who have bought into the fantasies spun by them and that’s all it is much of it is now…..noise.

 We have successfully turned our freedom of expression into a form of ideological slavery.

Oh, I know. We’ve had some form of government since the dawn of time and I’m sure the folks living in caves divided up into left and right political ideologies. “Kill the T-Rex  - “No. It’s an endangered species and we need to protect it.” And I’m equally certain they had some kind of primitive bureaucracy to support the tribal council, some faceless group to ensure that all spears and clubs were properly registered and that the tribal elders got their share of every root foraged or mystery beast killed for dinner.

What they didn’t have was the constant yelling and screaming that passes for informed discussion and debate these days. My God but it gets tiresome after awhile. The entire free world is capable of taking one fact, it doesn’t matter what it is, and exploding it into days and weeks of arguing, accusations, conspiracy theories and, of course, countless accusations about the perfidity of the opposition.

And here’s the really stupid thing. Most of the time, whatever that issue was gets forgotten almost as quickly as it emerged once a new one shows up. Remember NDAAP or SOPA or RoboCall?

Often the accusations have virtually nothing to do with the original issue and you’d have to invest a considerable amount of time and energy trying to find some facts to debate. Instead it’s all personal attacks. There is no sense of proportion anymore and everything is a threat to someone.

Here is something I have learned that may help you wade through some of the overwhelming noise. The more personal the attack, the more threatened the attacker feels because they really don’t have much upon which to base their opinion. 

I’ve reached a point where I have simply accepted that there is no point in discussing anything with people like this. They don’t listen to anyone but themselves or those who agree with them and there is nothing to be learned from them. 

Debate is an excellent way to learn. It offers the opportunity to challenge your own opinions by looking at, and discussing, facts from a different perspective. You can’t have that debate with people who start from a position that has no factual basis or who think that debate means clobbering their opponent over the head with ill-informed opinion and personal attacks.

To me, it is no different than racism and religious intolerance. It is opinion and belief based on emotions rather than factual information. Like being anti-gay, it’s just another form of intolerant prejudice.

Often, with these people, the language is so over the top, it becomes impossible to consider it let alone take it seriously. Too often they use an issue as an opportunity to open up a debate on something else and pick over old scars.

Some state governments have recently passed or are attempting pass legislation to change abortion laws. That is an issue worth debating. There are real consequences to those decisions and we should be discussing them. Instead of debating the issues and the wisdom behind those decisions, the left has characterized it as a ‘War On Women’ and the language quickly moves from discussing a serious issue in a serious way to yelling and screaming that the Republicans hate women.

How absurd is that?

Within days, Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, utters a poorly phrased but otherwise harmless comment about Mitt Romney’s wife never having worked a day in her life and the right fires up its troops and declares that it is the left that is actually at war with women. The rhetoric escalates and the stupidity is that both sides have successful and intelligent women. Getting around that to prove one side or the other hates women requires a certain amount of verbal tap dancing. Day after day, pundits, politicians, bloggers, mainstream media scavengers fuel the war until the rhetoric is so loud, you can’t hear yourself think and certainly not about the original issue.

Remember that issue? It was abortion but nobody is talking about abortion are they? Instead, they are yelling, screaming, sneering, accusing and labeling the other side and the original issue, which should always be treated with consideration by both sides, is long forgotten.

And we wonder why we never seem to move forward.

The simple fact is that issues like abortion are contentious and difficult for both sides of the debate and both sides of the debate have valid concerns. The only way these issues can be resolved is by consensus and there can be no consensus when people are using words like weapons designed to hurt and intimidate each other.

I watch this constant flow of anger and derision and often find myself wondering if most of the people involved ever stop to think that it is their fellow citizens and not some foreign enemy they are attacking.

They are people just like you and I. They have families, jobs, believe in democracy and many, bless their hearts, have even been known to laugh out loud now and then. How does having an opinion that doesn’t agree with our own suddenly make them, not only the enemy, but less than human? Have we really lost that much of a sense of civilized behaviour and respect for the opinions of others?

I think we have and I think it is born in fear and insecurity which we hide behind intolerant and accusatory rhetoric.

We’re like frightened animals trapped in a corner that lash out and snap at anyone who gets close when they feel threatened. In this case, it is our opinions that are threatened and we are afraid because too many of us lack the confidence in those opinions to debate them without anger. We all have opinions and in North America we are free to voiced them but instead of voicing our opinion with confidence, we attack and denigrate the opinions of others. It shows not only a lack of the same respect for others that we expect and demand for ourselves but a lack of confidence in the opinions we’ve formed.

I think we need to reacquaint ourselves with some of the fundamentals of democracy and one of them is that just as we expect our opinions to be respected even when others disagree with us, so too should we be respecting those with whom we disagree. When the time comes, we vote and the majority decision dictates the decision. Yelling and screaming doesn't change that and accomplishes nothing except more anger, yelling and division.

I grant you some opinions are so stupid they aren’t worth much consideration but that doesn’t mean we have to go out of our way to treat the people who hold those opinions as an enemy of the state.  We don’t gain anything by that other than to create a climate of hostility and intolerance where people talk at others rather than to others. It breeds mistrust, anger and polarization….

….and that, my friends, has been the undoing of more than one civilization in the past.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

The Death Of Trayvon Martin - A Feeding Frenzy By Well-dressed Sharks

I am part of a multi-racial family that includes whites, blacks and Asians. My step daughter is a blend of all three and our family has some experience with racial intolerance. I mention that because it was part of the motivation that led me to write about the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

As a result of some of what I have written, I have been called a racist, a Nazi and a member of the Klan. I wasn’t overly offended by the labels understanding that they usually came from people who hadn’t invested five minutes to think about what is actually known about the shooting before they jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation. Instead they followed blindly like sheep and bought into the narrative created by a mainstream media that ignored and corrupted its own professional standards from the outset and by cynical opportunists with an agenda, like Al Sharpton. The sheep were manipulated and they were willing accomplices to that manipulation.

But if I am not angered by the names I have been called for speaking out, I am angry - I am very angry.

A young man died. It was another unnecessary violent death in a country that has lost too many to pointless violence and both his life and his death have been treated with the utmost disrespect and turned into an ugly circus. 

photo: icis.com

It became nothing less than a feeding frenzy. Like mindless but well-dressed sharks, too many have torn at this story and each other in a  hysterical madness.

It started slowly and then became an out of control frenzy as more sharks joined in to feed. Eventually, the sharks even began turning on each other, snapping at anything and anyone in an attempt to get a piece of the carcass. There was metaphorical blood everywhere and now the New Black Panthers are calling for their followers and the black community to rise up and swim the Red Sea, a specific reference to swimming in the blood of others.

People who have nothing to do with the shooting of Trayvon Martin have been verbally attacked and in some cases, physically threatened and put in harm’s way by others like Spike Lee. Not content with undermining Mr. Zimmerman’s right to presumption of innocence, members of the mainstream media have attacked each other, manipulated the facts and outright lied.

It has disgusted me and left me angry - very angry!

I’m angry with the hypocritical attitudes of those who have influence and privilege speaking carelessly about this terrible tragedy. They didn’t lead; they followed the insanity and further fed it.

Rev. Al Sharpton       (photo: Miami Herald)

I am angry with Al Sharpton for a cynical opportunism that has accomplished nothing except to divide and endanger a community, a community not his own.  I’m angry with all of those in the virtual world and beyond who should have known better, those sheep who have seen Mr. Sharpton in action in the past and who know him for what he really is but who followed him anyway. 

But I am mostly angry with the mainstream media for their abandonment of balanced reporting and their lack of professionalism, integrity and ethics. It was the illusion of news coverage by pretty boys and girls in expensive suits who brought an elitist, biased attitude to this story and what they have done is a disgrace.

Instead of covering the story and letting the narrative unfold as facts became known, the media created a narrative and then presented or withheld information to support it.

It started with the visual representation of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. The media deliberately skewed the story by choosing to publish a picture of Trayvon when he was 12 and a mug shot of George Zimmerman from 6 years ago. The contrast was dramatic and fit their narrative perfectly.

 The narrative was that George Zimmerman was a white, right-wing racist, just one more example of white against black racism in America. When it turned out that Mr. Zimmerman was actually Hispanic the media scrambled to create a new phrase to protect the narrative; white-Hispanic. The narrative was about white racism in America and didn’t work as well without reference to Mr. Zimmerman being white.

The narrative stated that Mr. Zimmerman was never arrested but that had to be amended  when the police released a video tape showing Mr. Zimmerman arriving at the police station in handcuffs the night of the shooting. 

That was glossed over quickly because it also didn’t fit the narrative that Mr. Zimmerman got a free pass that night of the shooting or that the police hadn’t done their job. 

Some clucked about how Mr. Zimmerman seemed to be walking in the tape without any signs of having been injured during the altercation he claimed took place between him and Trayvon Martin; evidence they suggested that perhaps the altercation never took place. They pointed out that there was no indication of any injury to the back of Mr. Zimmerman’s head which they subsequently had to amend when an enhanced version of the tape was released.

They also didn’t report that the police who were first on the scene had requested two ambulances, one for Trayvon Martin and one for George Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman’s was subsequently cancelled after EMR treated him in the back of a squad car.

And then there was the famous 911 tape.

Various media outlets turned themselves inside out to get audio experts to listen to the tape, to enhance it and do whatever they could to prove that Mr. Zimmerman referred to Trayvon Martin as a ‘coon’. Hours were devoted to playing the tape both on and off air to try and prove that Mr. Zimmerman uttered a racist slur. Contrast that with the lack of coverage of the most recent tape by the Black Panthers where words like honky and white devil are thrown around liberally in reference to white people.

It didn’t work out for the media. The enhanced version of the 911 call clearly showed that Mr. Zimmerman used the term ‘punk’ not ‘coon’.

The media made much of the fact that their audio experts claimed that there was only a 48% chance that the voice calling for help on the tape was Mr. Zimmerman's. They were very quiet about the fact that this meant there was only a 52% chance that it was Trayvon Martin's which is about as close as a 50/50 circumstance as it is possible to get without actually getting it.

The media played up a narrative of how blacks are the victims of violent crimes by whites and ignored justice department statistics that clearly show that it is whites who are seven times more likely to be the victims of black induced crime.

But the narrative started to unravel.

In an attempt to protect it, a producer at NBC went so far as to edit the tape to make it appear that it was Mr. Zimmerman who first identified Trayvon as black and therefore help prove that the shooting was racially motivated. When it was revealed that the tape had been altered by NBC and it was actually the 911 operator who first mentioned race, the narrative was further undermined and the producer was fired from his position.

As a result of the narrative unraveling, the agitators have begun to abandon ship. Jesse Jackson has become very low profile and the Rev. Al Sharpton who promised an Easter weekend of protest that would force the Sanford police to arrest Mr. Zimmerman suddenly had other, more pressing business to attend to in New York and was a no show. Instead, they have left streets of Sanford to The New Black Panthers and Neo-Nazis and the threat of increased racial violence.

Even the media are backtracking now. Perhaps it is because they’ve been caught in one inaccuracy too many or perhaps it is because the narrative they initially created has broken down to such a point that they now stand exposed for their lack of balanced reporting and unprofessional behaviour.

Perhaps it is because their right-wing racist narrative is now completely discredited by the revelation that Mr. Zimmerman is actually a registered Democrat and advocated for the disciplining of at least two of the police officers investigating him. 

George ||Zimmerman advocated for justice for
Sherman Ware brutally beaten by a police officer's son

His demand stemmed from the brutal beating by a police officer’s son of a homeless black man, Sherman Ware. Mr. Zimmerman played an active role in trying to get justice for Mr. Ware while the hypocrites in the media and like the Rev. Sharpton were noticeably absent. Apparently they only support the glamour causes.

We still don’t know everything that happened the night Trayvon Martin was shot but it has become increasingly clear that the narrative fed us by the mainstream media and racist opportunists like Al Sharpton is not accurate and almost none in the media undertook any attempt to present balanced coverage. 

We know a great deal of Trayvon Martin, we know very little about George Zimmerman beyond the negatives the mainstream media selectively fed us.

It may well turn out that charges should and will be laid against Mr. Zimmerman and if they are, justice should run its course, but make no mistake about it. If charges are laid, that will not justify what has happened here. The media and the bottom feeders have created an environment of suspicion, anger and intolerance that will lead many to deny the facts once they are known and presented

Mike Wallace, a renowned American journalist died today and he is remembered with respect and admiration. As a result of their actions, their lack of professionalism and ethics, there are very few journalists in the mainstream media today who come close to deserving the respect he earned. Many have lost the right to even consider themselves journalists after having so egregiously denigrated the profession that Mr. Wallace and others like him so painstakingly built. 

It has left me angry at the dishonesty of it all. I am angry at the lack of professional standards, the rush to judgment, the hypocrisy and the damage these people have done.

Most of all, I am angry that so many others were so easily manipulated by those with an agenda and a narrative they created to support that agenda. I am angry that fundamental rights like due process and the presumption of innocence were so quickly trampled and I am angry that so many have so little respect for their own society, they rush like mindless sheep to trample it.

The Trayvon Martin shooting was a terrible tragedy turned into an ugly circus of hypocrisy, racial intolerance and outright lies and fabrications. It has been a feeding frenzy by mindless sharks out to get what they could for themselves. It is both a travesty and a disgrace that has demeaned the life and death of a young man for no better reason than to fit a narrative that met the needs of a few who benefited from it.

I think that has angered me more than anything else.

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© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

(photo: defense.pk)

In Canada, there is a furor unleashing over the recent Auditor General’s report on the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been exposed for misrepresenting the true costs of the purchase while bureaucrats and military leaders have been exposed for outright misrepresentation and manipulation of ,and during, the procurement process.

This is nothing new. The previous Liberal government under Jean Chretien lied to get elected and worked overtime to hide the true facts of Adscam which saw millions stolen from taxpayers to line the pockets of Liberal bag men and supporters. People went to prison for that one.

It isn’t any different in the United States. The costs of President Obama’s healthcare plan have been exposed as seriously misrepresented while the previous Republican government started a war in Iraq based on a lie about weapons of mass destruction.

President Obama
(photo topnews.in)

There are countless more examples and it is clear that a lack of integrity is not a monopoly of the right or the left. It has become a part of how politicians and government now operate. But if it is acceptable to them as the normal course of business, it is not acceptable to most of us.

Even the media lies to us now. That isn’t a paranoid conspiracy theory, just a simple fact. There has been an egregious and deliberate misrepresentation of some facts in the Trayvon Martin shooting as the mainstream media manipulated and altered tapes and evidence to fit a narrative rather than letting the facts and the evidence establish their own narrative as they became known.

That isn’t acceptable to us anymore either.

Now more than ever, there is an attitude in our societies that the ends justify the means and organizations, groups, causes, unions are all part of the great obfuscation.  But it remains government that is the worst offender primarily because they are the sworn protectors of our constitutions and our rights.

They have forgotten that as they manipulate the truth in the contradictory belief that it is possible to arrive at a just place through unethical and dishonest behaviour.

The Bush administration justified its lie about weapons of mass destruction because it believed that there was an urgent need to remove Sadam Hussein in the war against terrorism. 

President Obama and his supporters did not reveal the truth about the true cost of healthcare in order to get it passed because they believed that the value of healthcare justified the misrepresentation.

In Canada, the Liberals lied to hide criminal wrong doing that had been undertaken in what they considered to be necessary to fight Quebec separatism and who knows what the current Conservative government was thinking when they lied about the cost of the F-35.

Prime Minister Harper
(photo Toronto Star)

Of all of the lies, that is the one that strikes me as the most absurd and, quite frankly, just down right stupid.

The procurement process for the F-35 was initiated by the former Liberal government in 1997. The Conservatives, who inherited the file in 2006 when they took office, could have easily walked away from this with all of the blame attached to their political opponents. Instead, they defended the purchase, took ownership of the file and are now in crash and burn mode as a result.

I can only surmise that lying and hiding the truth have become so second nature to politicians and governments that the Conservatives lied automatically and without thinking.

Whatever the reason, that lie and thousands of others like them do more than misrepresent the true facts of the issue at hand; they have the cumulative effect of undermining trust in government and ultimately in each other. We lose our ability to trust and without trust, our society is gravely weakened.

The lack of accountability leaves the electorate feeling powerless. The lies and deliberate misrepresentations demean the ability of the electorate to believe in the political process and that is evidenced by the declining number of voters at every election.

Government and politicians may lie to us, mislead us and hide the truth from us but in the end, we are the ones who are most responsible.

Election after election, we choose sides and condemn one side while embracing the other as honest and decent. We are fools and those that mislead us count on our simple-minded foolishness. Instead of bickering among ourselves about which is the better candidate, we should be uniting together regardless of our political leanings to demand a higher standard from all politicians and their parties.

We should demand accountability and refuse to support any political party that isn’t prepared to legislate or support tough integrity standards. The media should be subject to the same basic standards of integrity as everyone else and when they are caught in deliberate misrepresentation, there should be real and serious consequences which for television and radio networks should include the possibility of losing their broadcast license.

I don’t care what democratic country you live in, your country belongs to you. Government is there to serve not to rule. It is there to manage your common resources to the benefit of all, not just a privileged few or those who have enough influence to earn special entitlements. Media feed off the freedom your democracy affords and they should be fully accountable to treat that with the utmost respect.

Instead of arguing among ourselves over which candidate is a fascist or a crook or just plain stupid, we need to stand together and force our politicians to be open, to be transparent and above all else to meet the highest possible standard of integrity.

In Canada, the new omnibus crime bill will see more serious crimes treated with more serious punishment. It may well be time for an omnibus political crime bill that sees dishonest politicians go to prison for misrepresentation, fraud and mismanagement.

Conrad Black went to prison over millions of mismanaged shareholder investments. Governments have squandered billions, even trillions and lied about it. I fail to see how they are any better than people like Mr. Black or others like him.

One thing, however, remains clear. If we ever stop squabbling among ourselves long enough to force government to impose stricter accountability on politicians up to and including possible criminal prosecution……we’re going to need more prisons.

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Government Takes Over Where The Mob Left Off
http://www.blogger.com/publish-confirmation.g?blogID=3913113766829019414&postID=2743530982779969899&timestamp=1333739990190&javascriptEnabled=true

The Shameful  Disgrace Of The RoboCall Scandal
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/real-disgrace-behind-robocall-scandal.html

Reflections The Day After Super Tuesday
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/reflections-day-after-super-tuesday.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

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The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Trayvon Martin - The Silence Of Selective Racism

For weeks, the mainstream media and the social media lynch mob have been all over the shooting of Trayvon Martin with accusations of racism. The narrative was that Trayvon Martin was the victim of a racial bias in America that saw blacks disproportionately victimized by whites. That narrative has been unraveling as more details are released by law enforcement.

Watch this video and then we’ll talk about interracial crime.

Personally, I don’t know if racism played a role in the Trayvon Martin shooting. It might have, it might not. I don’t know and neither does anyone else. What we do know is that there has been an incredible rush to judgment and hypocrisy by those who would seek to capitalize on tragedies like this.

Throughout this ugly circus, the mainstream media and hypocrites like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and even celebrities like Spike Lee, President Obama and Oprah Winfrey willfully ignored the reality that racism is a two way street that affects us all.

The simple truth is that the black community doesn't have a monopoly on being victimized by race and hate crimes. In fact, whites are up to seven times more likely to be victimized by blacks than blacks are by whites according to Justice Department statistics. 

That doesn’t excuse those who commit these terrible crimes nor does it justify turning a blind eye to blacks who are victimized by hate crimes committed by people of other races. No person in our societies should have to live in fear because of their race, culture, religion or economic circumstance. Our societies should be better than that for everyone but they aren’t and they aren’t because those who hold positions of leadership and privilege are typically at the head of the lynch mob.

Rather than uniting us, they trip over each other in their desperate attempt to prove to the world that they are in touch with the heart of the current issue. They aren’t! Oprah Winfrey was infuriated by the shooting of Trayon Martin. Where is she now that a white man is fighting for his life in hospital, another victim of interracial crime? Where are Spike Lee, Shepherd Smith, President Obama and L.Z. Granderson who were so quick to jump on the racism bandwagon after the shooting of Trayvon Martin?

They are silent.

Instead of presenting racism as a black only problem, the President should have been appealing to all Americans to remain calm and united and allow law enforcement to do its job. Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey should have used their considerable reach to help people come together rather than pointing fingers and fanning the flames of hatred.

As for the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, well….we would all be better off if they just packed up their tents and went home.

But the biggest hypocrites in all of this are the mainstream media.

Where are they now as a 50 year old white man lies in a coma fighting for his life after the savage beating he took from 2 black teenagers. Oh, they’ve reported it but there isn’t the feeding frenzy on this story that the Trayvon Martin story continues to receive.

You won’t see satellite trucks outside the hospital or interviews with white community leaders about the problem of racism in America. It doesn't fit the narrative they manufactured and have been feeding the world for the past four weeks.

They barely remember the beating of a Latino man in California last week by a gang of black teenagers or the 13 year old boy who was doused in gasoline and set on fire by 2 black teens in Kansas City. Those stories came and went faster than a Black Friday shopping spree and with about as much depth.

Racism is a problem and not only in America. It is a hateful, destructive cancer that undermines the value of our societies and it is aided by the politically correct opportunism of those who refuse to look at racism for what it really is and how it really exists.

People, not blacks or whites or Asians or Latinos; people are being victimized by hatred because of their race and that is the real issue. It shouldn’t matter what your race is when you are a victim of a hate crime or which race the perpetrator belonged to. What should matter is that all racially based hate crimes should be equally condemned, equally fought and equally important to all of us.

Anything less, as we have seen today in the different manner in which two interracial crimes are being reported, is nothing less than its own form of racism!

It is selective racism and it is hypocrisy. by those who were so quick to label the Trayvon Martin shooting as  the primary problem of race hate crimes in America. The silence of these people now is deafening!

RELATED


"This is for Trayvon" - Black youths beat up 78 year old man in Toledo last Saturday
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/04/it-begins-youths-screaming-this-is-for-trayvon-beat-78-year-old-white-man-in-toledo/

Black youths attack and beat Latino teen on his way home from school in Southern California
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/01/us-crime-california-beating-idUSBRE8300HU20120401

Black teens douse 13 year old white teen with gasoline and set him on fire in Kansas City
http://www.kctv5.com/story/17048649/teens-set-13-year-old-student-on-fire

Trayvon Martin - A Perfect Storm of Imperfect Journalism

http://www.blogger.com/publish-confirmation.g?blogID=3913113766829019414&postID=6379313514028243348&timestamp=1333563506679&javascriptEnabled=true

Media Wars - MSNBC's Touré & His Arrogant Verbal Attack On CNN's Piers Morgan

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/msnbcs-toure-has-racist-meltdown-on.html

Trayvon Martin - A Tragedy Turned Into An Ugly Circus of Opportunism And Racial Hatred

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/i-watched-clip-of-l.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Trayvon Martin - A Perfect Storm of Imperfect Journalism

Let me be clear. Calling what has happened with the mainstream media’s coverage of the Trayvon Martin story ‘imperfect’ is like calling a hurricane unsettled weather. The way this terrible tragedy has been handled by most in the mainstream media is nothing short of an appalling travesty.

News organizations have been tripping all over themselves, not to uncover the truth and deliver news to the public but rather, to ‘prove’ their biased version of events. MSNBC acts more like the prosecution than an objective presenter of fact while Fox News has decided to be the defense for George Zimmerman.

That isn’t their role and they have undermined the very credibility of their own profession with this incredible orgy of prejudice and speculation, and in some cases, deliberate misinformation.

Even the venerable CNN is guilty of biased, one-sided reporting which along with the rest of this mess has led to increased racial tensions, misunderstanding of the facts and the undermining of legal rights like the presumption of innocence and due process.

It is highly disturbing to watch respected journalists drop their professional standards down to the same level of pseudo-journalists like Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, Touré and Al Sharpton. The journalistic standard set in coverage of this story has more in common with the National Enquirer than the legacy of Edward R. Murrow.

The simple truth is that we don’t know what we don’t know and there is much about the shooting of Trayvon Martin that we don’t know………yet. This has left news organizations with an information void that they have rushed to fill with speculative commentary, much of which is slowly being proven to have been wrong as more facts are being released by law enforcement.

How is the public served by a fourth estate that has lost control of its own professional standards to this degree? How does a society benefit from journalism that has been allowed to dissolve into mindless commentary and dishonest reporting?

The simple truth is that it isn’t and we are seeing more and more evidence of that with each passing day. It has become so appalling that television news journalists are now not only arguing with the very people they invite on their shows to provide information but are lecturing each other about who is more sensitive to the race issue. 

With great privilege comes great responsibility and there is not much greater privilege than the freedom of the press.

That freedom has been sorely abused by the coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

The media have engaged in egregious displays of yellow journalism and have trampled anything even remotely related to fair and balanced coverage.

Instead of covering the story the mainstream media has filled the airwaves and newspapers with speculation, biased analysis and accusatory comments. Some have doctored material to support their racial based narrative, including MSNBC which removed part of the conversation in Mr. Zimmerman’s 911 tape. That was the part of the tape that clearly showed that it was the 911 operator who brought up race, not Mr. Zimmerman. 

What we do know is that a young man is dead, the victim of another pointless and tragic violent death in a country with too many pointless violent deaths. We know that the only other person who was present has presented a version of those events in which he claims he acted in self-defense. While it is still unclear whether or not charges will or even should be laid, with each passing day, as more factual evidence is released by law enforcement, his version of events is being somewhat strengthened.

We know that local, state and federal law enforcement are investigating what happened and if there was ever a case which was bound to have a thorough and complete uncovering of the truth, this is it. That isn’t good enough for the media. 

The media have completely disregarded the integrity true journalism demands. They have created a narrative that they continue to cling to with only a grudging acknowledgement of the truth as individual facts are released which contradict that narrative. This is evidenced in the video clip below.

In the first link below you'll see a report about a letter sent by the Martin family's lawyer demanding an investigation into a meeting between State's Attorney Wolfinger and The Sanford Chief of Police. The letter claims that it was at this meeting the two overruled the investigating officer's recommendation to lay manslaughter charges against Mr. Zimmerman.

You’ll notice that the report does not challenge the contradiction between the Martin attorney’s demand for an investigation into that and her subsequent statement that they don’t know if such a meeting actually took place.

Just the other night, Sheperd Smith of Fox News referred to Trayvon Martin as "little Trayvon". Trayvon
was over 6' tall but that doesn't fit the narrative of a small boy being gunned down by a ruthless racist either.There have been unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Zimmerman was stalking Trayon when in fact he was following him until told not to by the 911 operator at which point Mr. Zimmerman was returning to his vehicle when he claims Trayon attacked him. 

Aren’t those the kinds of discrepancies that the media are supposed to challenge rather than ignoring everything and anything that doesn’t support their manufactured narrative? Journalism is about uncovering a story, not creating one. Unfortunately the coverage of the Trayvon Martin story has been a manufactured and manipulated narrative from the beginning.

I don't know what happened that night other than a young man was shot and the shooter claims it was in self-defense. I don't know if that is true or not. I don't know if the shooting was racially motivated, the result of an altercation, fear, deliberate action or carelessness but the media don't know either. That lack of knowledge hasn't stopped the mainstream media from assuming they do know and pre-judging guilt or innocence of the shooter.

Freedom of the press is a cherished constitutional right. The media are quick to protect that right by every means at their disposal as they should. It is more than merely unfortunate that they don’t have the same respect for the legal  rights of due process and presumption of innocence. 

Instead, they have behaved like mindless pigs at the trough and what they have done to their own profession and to the public’s right to know the unvarnished truth is nothing short of a disgrace.

RELATED

NBC Producer Fired Over Misleading Edit of 911 Tape
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/07/nbc-producer-fired-over-misleading-edit-of-trayvon-martin-shooting-911-audio/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

State Attorney outraged by "outright lies" made by attorney for Martin family

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/State-Attorney-Norm-Wolfinger-outraged-by-federal-review-request/-/1637132/10042672/-/tovmqt/-/index.html

Enhanced video shows that George Zimmerman was injured contrary to earlier media report to the contrary

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/04/02/erin-mattingly-zimmerman-head-injury.cnn

Piers Morgan interview with MSNBC's Toure
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/msnbcs-toure-has-racist-meltdown-on.html

Trayvon Martin - A Tragedy Turned Into An Ugly Circus of Opportunism and Racial Hatred
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/i-watched-clip-of-l.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Media Wars - MSNBC's Touré & His Arrogant Verbal Attack On CNN's Piers Morgan

I am not a particular fan of Piers Morgan. I find him annoying quite frankly and more than a little arrogant at times. I don’t like his interview style or his habit of interrupting the people he’s interviewing. When it’s a celebrity, he can even get a bit cloying.

Having said that I acknowledge that he tends to be well-informed, reasonably objective and is not afraid of challenging those he interviews when they make a statement he believes is either incorrect or requires substantiation or amplification. Despite that, I seldom watch his program, Piers Morgan Tonight.

I did, however, watch his interview with the brother of George Zimmerman and his subsequent interview with Touré, an author and self-professed essayist who is also a contributor to MSNBC. Touré  has written a number of books, mostly fiction and is best-known for his writings about hip hop music and pop culture. He has recently been quite vocal in his views of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Watch these videos.

I have been around a long time but I have seldom seen such an arrogant and intolerant tirade as Touré delivered during this interview. He exemplifies precisely the kind of uninformed hatred for anything that contradicts his fiercely held opinions that has become the heart of the problem in race relations in America. Like too many, he doesn’t listen he talks and dismisses anyone and anything that doesn’t support his opinions with a conceit that is almost beyond imagining.

Touré is one of those narrow-minded people that like to think they have a monopoly on the truth while distorting it to serve their own prejudice. In Touré's case, it is intellectual posing and insecurity that is palpable.

He loves big words and clearly thinks that the ability to toss in words like obfuscate somehow elevates his opinion above that of everyone else and Mr. Morgan got it right when called Touré’s rant “a load of fatuous nonsense.”

It continues to amaze me that people like Touré are so quick to seize on one opportunistic moment to support their intolerance while ignoring both the broader issues and those events which tend to undermine their opinions.

He criticizes Mr. Morgan for not being tough enough on the brother of George Zimmerman but he is wrong. Mr. Morgan did challenge Mr. Zimmerman’s brother on a number of key issues. What Mr. Morgan didn’t do was accuse Mr. Zimmerman's brother of lying. He probed issues respectfully but pointedly and he didn’t attack him or speak down to him as Touré did Mr. Morgan.

I find people like Touré to be dangerous, ill-informed hypocrites. He criticized Pierce Morgan for his interview but is silent on Spike Lee’s depraved indifference to the safety of an elderly white couple when he retweeted the couple’s phone number and address in the belief that it was that of George Zimmerman.

To people like Touré, that wasn’t a hate crime or racist. Likewise, he is silent about the two black youths who doused a 13 year old white teenage boy in gasoline and then set him on fire in Kansas City earlier in March. That isn’t racist to him either.

For people like Touré and the Rev. Al Sharpton, there is no such thing as equality because they willingly choose to seize individual events that only support their intolerant opinions. I contrast their ravings with the simple, dignified approach taken by black students at Howard University who wanted to make a point about young black men and did so quite effectively.

Touré’s self-aggrandizing vocabulary doesn’t come close to their eloquence. They were able to get across their message about the racial profiling of young black men without the need to accuse, attack or blame.

It continues to amaze me how the mainstream media have, for the most part, lost complete control of their responsibility to objective reporting and informed analysis. Both Touré and the Rev. Al Sharpton have inserted themselves into the very story they are reporting for MSNBC. The Rev. Sharpton is now calling for boycotts and action against the community unless his demands aren’t met.

Likewise, Touré was silent on the new revelation that MSNBC has been forced to admit that it doctored evidence in the Trayvon Martin case that it had presented on its network.

It is unbelievable.

These men have no respect for due process, the presumption of innocence or even reasoned and objective analysis.  They claim to be in support of racial tolerance while exhibiting the very intolerance of those, like the Klan, who went before them. The only thing missing here is the white hood and a burning cross. They are intolerant, opportunistic and as much responsible for the racial divide in America as anyone they criticize.

At the end of the day, it isn’t fools like Touré and the Rev. Sharpton who will contribute to the advancement of racial tolerance and equality. It is young men like those in the Howard University video. It is those within both the black and the white communities who respect the rule of law and due process and those who understand that nothing of any value was ever built on intolerance, conceit or hatred.

Touré demonstrated quite effectively that whatever his qualifications may be for commenting on hip hop and pop culture, his knowledge and understanding of the word tolerance is quite limited. He also demonstrated conclusively that a big vocabulary is not a substitute for a small, intolerant mind.

You can dress it up anyway you like; try to hide it behind fancy words but in the end, bigotry by any other name is still bigotry.

RELATED:

Pierce Morgan interview with the brother of George Zimmerman: Part 1
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/03/30/piers-robert-zimmerman-jr-threats.cnn

Pierce Morgan interview with the brother of George Zimmerman: Part 2
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/03/30/piers-morgan-robert-zimmerman-jr-interview.cnn

Trayvon Martin: Do I look suspicious? - anti-racial profiling video by Howard University students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH5bB8HUWFs

MSNBC Caught Distorting Evidence In Trayvon Shooting
http://grumpyelder.com/?p=21218

NBC launches internal investigation into altered 911 recording
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/03/31/NBC-Fanning-Flames

A better way to break down the barriers of intolerance and hatred
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2123384/Cyber-sleuth-Noel-traces-needs-die-Facebook-troll-offers-pay-studies.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others