The Awakening

Finally. The commercial media and paid staff are just now starting to get the picture.

First, we have this from yesterday which took the Christian/Political right complaint against the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and gutted it by calling it frivolous, unconvincing and a cheap shot.

No kidding. How long did it take the Globe and Mail to sort that out in their infallible editorial minds?

Then, via Birth Pangs, we get Colby Cosh at (of all places) the National Post loosing a fusillade on the Canada Family Action Coalition which accurately describes the nature of its complaint against Chief Justice McLachlin. Utter garbage and completely bizaare.

Her lack of personal culpability doesn't appear to matter to CFAC and its executive director Brian Rushfeldt, which rejected her defence indignantly. Her back is the one that happens to be in whipping range, and the CJC provides a convenient venue for formalized vexation. If social-conservative groups wonder why they sometimes have trouble getting what they consider a fair hearing from the general public, now would be a good time to ask themselves how fair they are themselves.

CFAC's letter of complaint is a bizarre document even if one overlooks the sheer improbability of having a Chief Justice cashiered over some supposed act of jiggery-pokery involving the Order of Canada. CFAC's Web site, whereupon the hyperlink to the letter is currently broken, has marshalled "42 organizations" in support of their missive; eccentrically, the "organizations" include several small businesses (Can Am Fabricating and Welding stands strong in favour of life!) and at least one private citizen.

Note: Cosh puts the term 42 organizations in quotation marks if, for no other reason than to point out that some of them are small businesses and individual private citizens. Better research would have yielded a few more facts about those businesses. There aren't several - there is actually only one.

Its arguments, rest assured, are no less weird. The Constitution of the Order states that a member may be terminated if his conduct marks "a significant departure from generally-recognized standards of public behaviour which is seen to undermine the credibility, integrity or relevance of the Order." According to CFAC, Morgentaler's years of challenging abortion law are obviously in violation of "the norms of society": Ergo, the Chief Justice of Canada must be fired. It's simple logic, people!

The letter also claims, on who knows what authority, that two members of the Advisory Council -- the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Deputy Minister of Canadian Heritage -- opposed Morgentaler's appointment. Chief Justice McLachlin, it states, "overruled" their votes, which, one supposes, is an insane way of saying that they were outvoted in a ballot conducted by the Chief Justice. CFAC claims to be doubly outraged because a Privy Council boss and a deputy minister are "democratic voices" who "act according to the elected Government and the people of Canada." Indeed, what could be more democratically accountable than two unelected civil servants?

Again, finally, someone is getting the picture. Of the claims made by CFAC, none of them marry up properly with the constitution of the Order of Canada or the responsibility of the chair of the nominating committee. But we knew that some time ago and by Wednesday Chris Bird at Osgoode Hall Law School had clearly laid out how remarkably dishonest the CFAC complaint was/is.

I'm not accusing the National Post's Colby Cosh nor the editorial board of the Globe and Mail of anything nefarious here. In fact, most of us appreciate the national exposure of the true nature of CFAC's "complaint". But let's be right up front with it: by the time the G&M and NaPo editorials hit the street both of those papers had given voice to the CFAC, McVety and others, without scrutinizing their words and a serious amount of damage had already been done. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was forced to defend herself publicly against ludicrous charges which neither news organization (and others) combatted with simple fact-checking, an accurate description of the groups making the complaint nor the dishonest nature of the complaint itself.

In fact, it was the lack of completeness in the G&M and NaPo coverage which spurred bloggers into extracting a more complete picture of what was really going on. That's not a bad thing but it highlights the point that by the time the G&M editorial and Cosh's opinion piece were written all of the information appearing in those pieces had already been assembled and published and was available to anyone at a desk via a simple Google search. And it had been done by unpaid electronic-age pamphleteers producing information in their spare time.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that puts the for-profit paid media on a very secure footing. Give voice to a small collection of religious whack-jobs engaged in a smear campaign and then, after a loosely organized group of citizen desk-top publishers expose the truth, write almost exactly the same thing.

Nice, but there's something missing.

Most bloggers have no desire to become a primary source of news and breaking information. In fact, most of us want to do nothing more than comment on the stories the for-profit media produces. By way of credit we link to the published work and quote what has been written. It's time the for-profit media did the same in return.

In order to support the troops, you have to have an inkling of an idea of what's happening to them.

I have to say, this was a jaw-dropper when I read it this morning. Raphael Alexander may be one of the saner members of the right-blogosphere but this little piece indicates a level of intentionally erected insulation or, as Red Tory in CC comments calls it, willful obduracy. (Emphasis mine)

One could write it off if it were one or two stories in the media, perhaps even from news sources considered to have a political bias. But more and more lately we are hearing about Iraq war veterans being cheated out of bonuses, compensation, and basic benefits in all forms of the American media. Not too many bloggers have picked up on this story, but it's an important one to tell. The idea that the U.S. is cheating war veterans first caught my attention in October...

This recently past October?!

I would like to remain polite during the writing of this. That will depend on where my mood takes me, however. I have no particular opinion of Raphael's political posture nor do I spend much time reading his blog. Regardless, I am still asking, "Which frigging rock have you been living under, Raphael?"

I was going to provide a list of links from this blog over the past couple of years which highlight the occasions during which the contributors to this blog pointed out the abysmal treatment endured by US troops at the hands of the Bush administration. I've decided not to do that. Look it up using the search function, or perhaps even Google. Do some digging. We have.

I was going to provide links to a plethora of progressive blogs which are relentless in exposing and making public all manner of injustice perpetrated by the Bush administration on US veterans. But why should I? The blogosphere is rife with posts on the subject. You do the work, if it can even be called that. Your new found awareness should provide you with enough curiosity to expose a litany of horrors with a few keywords in a search engine.

There's more. We have also been very vocal on the problems faced by other troops involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq, notably Canadian and British.

Yet, unlike you Raphael, according to more than one of the Blogging Tories, we don't support the troops. I have personally been harangued by some mouth-breathing cretin who wouldn't know where to find the ejection port cover on a C7 because, in the vacancy that exists between his ears, I am not supporting his beloved troops. I've also watched a few lies in comments as one individual attempted to tell me that he was the Canadian forward air controller responsible for a blue-on-blue US air attack on a Canadian position and that I didn't know what I was talking about. I let that particular dough-head go on believing he had scored a point even though what he purported to be was completely and utterly impossible.

This and thousands of other blogs, Canadian, American, British and beyond, have spent the last few years documenting a stream of injustice perpetrated on the troops by American, Canadian and British governments. From inadequate medical care and misappropriated pay and allowances to equipment that simply doesn't pass muster, the progressive blogosphere has been jumping on each and every instance.

But, apparently, we don't support the troops.

Then you come along, two years out of sync, sporting your little yellow "support the troops" fridge magnet to tell us about the latest Bush atrocity committed on his own armed forces as though it's something new and revealing. There's a lot telling in that.

Look up some of the following items:

- Walter Reed

- Extended deployments

- Day short rotations

- Loss of combat allowance due to being wounded in action

- Involuntary extension of enlistments by implementing "Stop Loss"

- Troops forced to buy their own body armour

- Families forced to pay for lost or damaged equipment of sons and daughters killed in action

- Failure to treat PTSD

Just to name a few of the subjects which the progressive blogosphere pounds on and all of which occurred before you noticed something wrong this recently past October.

But we don't support the troops, because we don't display some stupid depiction of a fridge magnet.

Let me put a lie to that.

I was one of the troops. I spent a whole, very long career as a member of either the British or Canadian Forces and served on exchange with US forces. It's impossible for me not to support the troops. They're my people. And I won't insult any of them with a fridge magnet.

As you are just now becoming aware of the treatment troops receive at the hands of the Bush administration, the progressive blogosphere has been vociferously attacking every injustice against those people that passes our eyes. All the while a palpable silence on those subjects has been evident amongst the Bush and Harper cargo cultures.

So, to repeat Canadian Cynic's words, we really do have the situation under control on this side of the aisle. In fact, it is the progressive blogosphere which has been supporting the troops all along by pointing out every occasion when government has fucked them over.

I suppose we're expected to thank you, that "centre-right" element of the blogosphere, for suddenly waking up and noticing that returning veterans are being treated as some form of waste product by the government which committed them to combat. That isn't going to happen.

No, Raphael, you came along late in the game. Earn your own stripes. They come with a cost. Some of the targets of any expressed outrage will eventually have to be some of the politicians you so admire. Ready to take them on?

If you are, then watch out for the booby traps. If you're not, then please feel free to going back to admiring the little yellow fridge magnet with our blessing.