Managing Occupy protest cost city $1-million, city says – The Globe and Mail:
It’s masquerading as “objective” “news,” but in fact it’s anything but.
Note how Canada’s National Fishwrap steers the discourse: the whole story is about how much money the city of Vancouver had to spend “managing” the protest. The implications are obvious, and the questions they’re meant to raise are predictable — as are the resentment and demonization they’re sure to trigger. Goddamn hippies, taking up space, playing their drums and doing their drugs, and I’m paying more taxes to feed them and clean after them …
The effect is just as clear, as is the further debasement of the national conversation. Gee, I wonder whose interests that serves? I wonder whose agenda that’s helping to advance?
For Chrissakes. If I wanted to read the Sun, I’d buy the Sun.
Let’s just back this up for a second, and look at the underlying assumptions.
Since when do we evaluate the exercise of fundamental freedoms in terms of how much it costs to “manage” them? Are we using KPMG to decide whether freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are efficient or cost-effective now? Maybe we need to re-examine this whole voting thing. It costs money to run elections, you know. Should we really be in the business of delivering responsible government or guaranteeing basic rights?
Hello, Globe? They’re called fundamental freedoms for a reason. They’re there because they’re part of the sine qua non for open and democratic societies. We don’t assess them in terms of dollars and cents. Stick to your recipes, decor hints and eye-shadow videos and leave the serious conversation for the grownups.
Related posts:
- @GeorgeMonbiot takes down the corporate media
- The Sun’s effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?
- “Find new ways to protect Parliament?” WTF?
- Media culpa: George Monbiot’s unedited letter to the Globe and Mail
- The corporate media’s class-based agenda
- Class warfare and the corporate media
