Oh, Stephen!
It's amazing how the media has been bending over since Harper and the neocons got into power. In the Ottawa Citizen today, the talk is about the PM's secret visit to Afghanistan in order to support our troops -- a move right out of George Bush's playbook. He showed up in a Hercules, under tight guard, and a whole bunch of photo-ops were setup.
First, we have a picture of Stephen Harper arriving in Afghanistan, wearing desert camo-like clothes, and talking to troops. The next picture shows him "piloting" the Hercules shortly before landing, looking ridiculously awkward. The last picture shows Harper with a "determined grin" while talking to troops, showing that he's the guy to get the job done or whatever. As a side-note, I couldn't help but notice how fat Harper has gotten in the last few months, but that's beside the point.
What a fucking joke this is. Harper is being portrayed at this amazing guy by the media. They have maybe 1000 pictures to choose from for this article, and they pick the 3 showing Harper in the most flattering light possible. Just a few years ago, when Chrétien was in power, you couldn't get a single picture of him published without it being the only one to exaggerate and emphasize his facial disfigurement.
Now, the funniest of it all was that the media is praising how Harper was able to keep this Afghanistan visit under wraps from everyone. When the Liberals were in power, keeping secrets meant that there was some back-door money trading between the 'ol boys. With Harper, keeping secrets is a sign that he's a witty guy or something like that. I don't know about you, but I don't consider a PM who is a good liar and can keep secrets closely guarded a necessarily positive trait.
4 Comments:
Indeed Harper's ridiculous stunt yet again solidifies the cult of our military in this country. It seems in this day and age we cant have any productive or well-constructed debates because the ideals of the military are a higher ideal, a moral ideal that far surpasses any political dialoging. You hear this all the time both here and in the U.S, support our troops, support the brave men and women fighting for this country, we should shut up because these people are sacrificing themselves for our freedoms! But the dangers of having a kind of society and mass media focused on this kind of rhetoric is that our current government and future governments will continue to send soldiers off to war without even going through the very process of democratic discourse we champion so damn much in this country. There may be a higher ideal in freeing Afghanis from reactionary Islamic rule, but perhaps it would be far more rational to take the time to focus on the real problems and the real issues behind this very conflict before commiting Canadians to yet another humanitarian mission, and this rational process would involve getting the consent of parliament. Listening to rex Murphy's point of view tonight, he said that we cant even fathom removing these troops now that we have dedicated them to this cause, but I would like to say that this doesnt exempt us as Canadian citizens to criticize the mission or suggest to those we elected to parliement, alternatives that could alleviate the sufferings of Afghans and bring them progress in all of its forms. But lets also look reality in the face here, as so long as radical Islam and sharia based statism remains an omnipresent political and social force in Afghanistan, carrying out a humanitarian mission that simply maintains the status-quo or empowers the lesser of evils wont really do anything in the long run...
Oh and btw...he did get really fucking fat, me and my dad were dumbfounded how this douchebag had such a huge gut...and he almost seems to limp because of his gut!!!
We really need to stop and ask ourselves what the fuck we're actually doing in Afghanistan (and Haiti, for that matter), and what effects we're having. Could our skills and ressources be better used elsewhere? Why the fuck are we basically the only ones in Afghanistan right now with even a semi-significant force? How can the Americans get away with this hit and run tactic. They devastated one of the poorest nations in the world and left them to rot. We're cleaning up the pieces, but we're also leading combat missions that we should not be leading. The US is calling the shots politically, and we're doing the dirty work because we're such pussies that we have to be seen as friendly with the Americans. You know what, friends shouldn't be afraid of telling friends they're wrong. Friendly nations, like humans, should not require themselves to be mirror images of each other.
And lets not forget this taliban regime the U.S worked so hard to remove from power was an offspring of the CIA funded mujahideen...sigh...Afghanistan would of been much better under Soviet rule :(
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