28 Oct The only thing we have to fear… are the fearmongers
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s shooting in Ottawa, here are four brief readings: two from readers, and two from columnists running counter to the national press hysteria.
Longtime Contrarian reader Tim Segulin writes:
Finally the Harper government has the undeniable pretext it has sought for years to spy on the phone and internet communications of innocent citizens without need of judicial oversight.
After shrill charges that those who didn’t agree ‘stood with child pornographers’ and an attempt to install it by exploiting the Rehteah Parsons and Amanda Todd tragedies was foiled by the Supreme Court, now the Harper government can claim that we are in a war to defend our democracy and that real time, ongoing surveillance it the necessary price we pay to protect ourselves against home grown terrorism. The recording and the Homeland Security industries to our south may have special reason to be pleased with the next omnibus bill, rushed once again through Parliament before its contents can be studied.
On the other hand, a Harper-supporting reader thinks the shootings warrant greater police powers:
Nice, theoretical position you have taken on the zealots like this character in Ottawa. I frankly don’t care if he is mentally ill or not (obviously something was not right with him). My concern is simply that our security forces have to be able to detain these folks BEFORE they do something – not just assess it afterwards. If they have the tools now – use them. If not, get them.
This is a clearly a different type of threat than our current laws and practices were predicated on. So far, I think we have been lucky that these folks have focused on soldiers and politicians and haven’t seemed particularly interested in just killing civilians. What happens when a mass attack is planned or conducted against the mass population? What will the look back look like then? We should have, we could have, we might have won’t mean a hill of beans.
I wonder if the hatred for Harper and fear of his motives is clouding the judgement of normally wise folks.
My sense is that rules will be strengthened now to a minor degree allowing these folks to be stopped. Conversely, much more dramatic changes will come after the next attack with mass effect. You should prefer now to later.
Now two journalists I have criticized in the past, both writing for the website iPolitics.ca. First, Andrew Mitrovica:
One man with one gun.
Apparently, that’s all it took for this country to lose its mind last week, dutifully abetted by much of the nation’s media.
History. Context. Perspective. Understanding. Skepticism. Thoughtfulness. Canada’s so-called media and political “elites” abandoned them all. In their stead, we got a week-long diet of chest-thumping patriotic clichés, cheap, meaningless hyperbole and tropes that, taken together, have already manufactured widespread consent for what will surely be another assault on our rights and freedoms engineered by a cynical Conservative government….
Not to be outdone, the telegenic TV anchors rushed to heal our grievously damaged collective psyche without recognizing just how trite and condescending they were being.
Watch this diabetes-inducing performance by Kevin Newman as he tries valiantly to hold the nation together while anchoring CTV National News last Wednesday.
“We have been through one of those days we will never forget. A moment when history pivots. Delivered to us by a man intent on killing. Who walked into the centre of a building that represents our values and opened fire,” Newman said with all the gravitas he could muster.
Watching his polished solemnity I wondered whether Newman was convinced he was standing at a church alter while delivering his maudlin sermon rather than sitting behind a desk in a television studio in suburban Toronto.
But that’s what happens when media outlets reach for almost grotesque hyperbole to describe last week’s tragic, unsettling events, as ‘Canada’s 9/11.’ This irresponsible distortion prompted TV anchormen and women to turn the sentimental empathy meter up to 11 because that’s the hoary role they’re expected and yearn to play at times like these.
Last, Michael Harris:
If there was no connection to ISIL, did the government really need to give the authorities more powers of arrest? Did the government, which had already given CSIS more tools to fight terrorism in 2012, including the power of preventive arrest, really need to add even more extraordinary power to this already extraordinarily powerful agency? How do you lower the threshold for preventive arrest, which already lowers the threshold of basic civil rights protection? How much lowering is enough?
After all, with the huge resources the Harper government has spent on national security since 2006, including an obscenely expensive billion-dollar new home for CSEC, this crude attack was not stopped. As the Manchester Guardian noted, this was a spectacular failure of Canadian intelligence, despite all the additional powers that community has been given by Stephen Harper.
But the emotional waters had been whipped up to a frothing cauldron by the media. On the day of Cpl. Cirillo’s murder, there were a barrage of unconfirmed reports of multiple shooters and multiple shooting scenes in Ottawa. The effect was to foster public hysteria. The coverage of the event reached an irresponsible crescendo when it was mentioned on the CBC that this could be Canada’s 9/11. It was then gravely reported by the network that everything had now “changed.” The script could have been written by the Harper PMO.
Both of these articles are worth reading in full.