Contributor: "YYC"
Egypt: 'This is a massacre'
The 18 million residents of this sprawling city awoke Saturday to find not a police officer in sight. Some had shed their uniforms and left them abandoned the street where protesters picked them and waved them gleefully on sticks.
Maybe if the Toronto G20 protesters had been ready to stay in the streets until they were heard, and had been desperate enough to risk life and limb, as the Egyptians have (100 dead so far), the police and government might have been worn down. But in Canada we have only weekend protesters.
I suppose that's because because so many of the organizers have day jobs, but I'd be willing to bet that many of the youthful attendees don't, although obviously things have not yet reached the sorry pass of the youth of Egypt.
There appears, however, to be a high degree of political lethargy among Canadian youth, and Obama-style hypnosis of young people (false promises of jobs and reduced tuition fees?) may be the goal in the next election :
Elections Canada takes aim at disengaged young Canadians
Only 37.4 per cent of voters ages 18 to 24 cast ballots in the 2008 federal election. Turnout by young voters has been dropping steadily since the 1960s, when about seven in 10 of those eligible to vote for the first time went to the polls.
The jobless numbers are growing here, and one hopes that our politicians will take note of what happens when things get too desperate in the general population. Right now we have an ingenious way of diguising the true numbers of unemployed - by counting only those on Unemployment Insurance not those whose insurance has run out, but who is really fooled by that?
Yes, I know our politicians have taken to calling it "Employment" Insurance, but they exist in 1984 whereas I not only remember the past, but also live in the present, and can recognize newspeak when I hear it. The true numbers will be patently revealed when unemployed workers take en masse to the streets, like their Egyptian counterparts.
Then, of course, the MSM will show pictures of looting and burning, painting the "mobs" as vandals and savages, while the police commit (VIDEO) their own brand of vandalism and savagery on the bodies of peaceful dissidents.
VIDEO: Obama's hypocritical instruction manual on how to handle protesters
Looting in Egypt?
Al-Jazeera is reporting that apprehended looters were in possession of central security services IDs and government issued weapons.
Watch the latest developments in Egypt live on Aljazeera
VIDEO: Former CIA agent on FOX: "I think you can write off the peace process forever"
Question: Isn't unending war the goal of the global agenda?
Related on YYC: As in Egypt ...
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Unemployment: Recipe for Unending War?
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2 comments:
I tuned into Aljazeera's coverage of Egypt yesterday and what I saw was sadly predictable.
The newswoman interviewed two people who were in Cairo to get their views.
The first was a man who was no longer in Cairo but in a small town nearby. The newswoman asked if it was because it was too dangerous to be there. "No" he said "I'm tired of the tear gas." When she asked him if it was too dangerous to go back he said No, this was a truly wonderful moment in history and that the next morning when he felt well again he was going to return.
She then turned to a woman online who was still in Cairo and asked how bad it was and about the terrible looting and what kind of people were in the streets. The woman replied that the streets were full of men women childen, people of all ages and that people were peaceful in spite of the huge numbers and this was a great moment.
The whole time the woman was talking the images running across the screen were those about the "terrible looting" in the Cairo museaum. In fact, the newswoman even cut-off her interview to take a few moments to go on and on about the "terrible looting", the "loss of thousands of years of Egyptian history".
The images showed a few items broken, a smashed glass case and pretty much everything else in the vast collection unharmed. Of course the military were there patrolling with machine guns.
I write all this because it's important to point out again and again how the media works.
This demonstration is basically peaceful with men women and children in the streets. There is looting (but we have no idea who is doing it) and the only violence committed seems to be that by the police against the peaceful protesters.
But the newswoman did her best to put the demonstrations in the worst light possible.
Dear Readers: The above comment was actually posted on January 30th, despite the date of February 1 displayed.
The reason: Human error (mine); I accidentally deleted a number of comments and have been busy trying to reconstruct them.
Unfortunately I receive emailed copies only of comments made by readers, not my own, so my reply to Anonymous is gone forever.
My sincere apologies to any readers who find their past comments wrongly dated or missing altogether. Haste does indeed make waste, and I promise to govern myself accordingly in future.
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