Propaganda Watch

CBC Townhall meeting to be stacked with immigration advocates

The following e-mail was sent to Karin Chykaliuk on Tuesday 3 March 2008

From: Tim Murray
To: Karin Chylkaliuk

Karin Chykaliuk,
Producer,
CBC Radio One 99.1

RE. CBC TOWNHALL MEETING WITH ANDY BARRIE OUR WONDERFUL MOSAIC March 6/08

I have to love Andy's panel. It consists of Uzuma Shakir, an advocate and activist for the rights of newcomers. Patrick Habamenshi, a Rwandan refugee, and Raheel Raza, who works to promote cultural and religious diversity through her writing and speaking. One more panelist, the famous Mr. TBA, will no doubt shore up the pro-immigration front.

It's quite astonishing that a state broadcasting system doesn't even to make any attempt to represent those 65% of Canadians who oppose the kind of "diversity" that these panelists and Those Who Know Better support. You see, the kind of diversity most Canadians prefer is intellectual diversity. As one Canadian of Chinese origin recently put it, there is little point in sitting around in a discussion group with Mark Kelly when everyone looks very differently but spouts the same politically correct multicultural group-think. Occasionally one does bear witness to a CBC panel where one, just one, beleaguered white face sits facing off against a Third World chorus. That's diversity in the same way a dab of whipped cream is atop a very tall chocolate milkshake.

The other kind of diversity Canadians prefer is biological diversity, you know, when wildlife habitat isn't paved over by the subdivisions which are being built to house the immigration tidal wave. Almost three-quarters of species at risk are found in areas threatened by urban sprawl, and 70% of those housing units are occupied by immigrants. In Greater Vancouver it is more like 85%. Ontario Environment Commissioner Gordon Miller said that in the next 25 years immigration will jam 6 million more people into Southern Ontario. Hope you like dim sum and curry because you will be trading away flora and fauna to get it. Andy's panelists seem nice enough, but I am more enriched by our native biological heritage than them.

Multiculturalism is much like a leaky air-mattress in a swimming pool. To be kept afloat, it needs constant pumping. The air, in this case, consists of infusions of people from "non-traditional" sources. Once it stops, the colonies break down and people assimilate (horrors!). The mattress sinks. So this is not really about the mosaic, is it? That's a smokescreen. It is about the corporate pyramid scam of population growth, of cheap labour and real estate development. And the CBC is part of that growth coalition, holding up rose coloured glasses through which people can mistake congestion, pollution and environmental degradation for "enrichment" and "vibrancy".

Suggested panelists: An ecologist, a biologist and John Smith, an Anglo-Celtic Canadian born and raised in Toronto who was passed over for a city job in favour of a Jamaican woman just off the plane who got hired because a) she was a woman and b) she was black. Who would be screaming for balance then?

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
March 6/08

More pro-dredging propaganda from the Herald-Sun

In the middle of the story concerning Blue Wedges' court case to prevent the destruction of Port Phillip, the following was slipped in:

More than 5000 competitors in the world's biggest single triathlon took to the bay yesterday without seeming to suffer any ill-effects from nearby dredging.

The 400m swim leg of the BP Ultimate/BRW Corporate Triathlon was staged off Elwood Beach, about 4km from where the dredger was working.

Race organiser Adele Ormando said there had not been one complaint about bay conditions from competitors.

As if the reported experiences of physically fit competitors in one sporting event in the face of so much other solid scientific and anecdotal evidence should settle the question of whether or not Port Phillip Bay should be dredged. As one example, see the story of 29 February 2008. See also the Blue Wedges web site at .

The story continued:

The dredge continues to comply with safety standards.

Whether or not safety standards are complied with during the course of the ravaging of the pristine marine environment of Port Phillip Bay by the Queen of the Netherlands is hardly likely to be a core concern of opponents of the dredging, but, nevertheless, the inclusion this largely irrelevant fact no doubt serves the purpose of helping Rupert Murdoch's Sun-Herald to put a positive spin on the dredging operation.

The Australian newspaper peddles NSW electricity privatisation

This was posted to a discussion -207324">Time to give the b-team a turn, concerning the NSW Labor Government's bid to sell the publicly-owned electricity generators against the opposition of the union movement, the Labor Party and the NSW public. As further information comes to hand about the claims by The Australian Newspaper, they will be posted to this page.

Can anyone comment on claims made the story in the Australian of Friday 29 February:

JUDGING by the Victorian experience, households and businesses in NSW can expect lower prices following electricity privatisation, together with more choice for consumers and fewer supply interruptions.

Greg Wilson, chairman of Victoria's Essential Services Commission, said similar fears expressed by opponents of the Kennett government's state power sell-off in the 1990s had proved baseless.

"When you look back to the debate, and the view that this would lead to increases in profits and prices and under-investment, the facts themselves in our performance reporting show the opposite," Mr Wilson said.

Based on a standard annual electricity consumption of 4000 kilowatt hours peak and 2500kWh off-peak, the commission found customers could save $79-$150 through market offers, depending on the standing tariff, which ranged from $926 to $956 across the five retail areas.

...

"Those detractors of the process in NSW who try to claim that the performances deteriorated in Victoria are actually completely wrong," (said Brad Page, chief executive officer of the peak industry body, the Energy Supply Association).

...

They do admit the record of privatisation in SA was "less clear-cut". (I thought it was a total fiasco), but manage to conjure up a favourable spin to put on the whole experience:

In South Australia, power interruptions have been stable, with the exception of the heatwave summer in 2005-06. South Australia received a net total of $4.9 billion for the breakup and sale of power, coal and gas assets between 1999 and 2001, compared with the $22.5 billion reaped by Victoria.

All these these claims appear to superficially lend plausibility to the case for privatisation in a very narrrow limited sense, but one can be practically certain that we are being given far less than the complete picture.

What we are certainly not being told of will be the loss of employment and training opportunities (i.e. ''feather bedding") as has occurred with the .

Tha Australian's Editorial of the same day, perversely named seized upon this study to push it's usual pro-privatisation message. Naturally to the Murdoch editorial writers, the wishes of two- thirds of the NSW public whom it claims to have been duped by "a union-funded scare campaign" counts for nothing.

Letter to Courier Mail: No passenger terminal for Brisbane!

The following letter was posted to the Courier Mail Newspaper in response to its beat-up story (see ) about the lack of terminal facilities for luxury cruise ships on the occasion of the docking of the Queen Victoria near the grain terminals. The letter was not published. Amongst the four short letter published, none raised environmental objections to the luxury cruise industry.

Dear Editor,

Brisbane no more needs a new luxury passenger ship terminal ("Tourists sure to harbour a bit of resentment", 27 Feb) than it needs the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Hale Street Bridge, a second airport runway or any of Lord Mayor Newman's other extravagant white elephant projects.

If the world were not on the brink of environmental calamity, then perhaps a modest upgrade to the facilities near the grain terminal would be in order, however, a far more responsible stance by the Brisbane City Council would be to actively discourage the international luxury cruise industry, with its scandalous waste of non-renewable natural resources and its unacceptable additional output of greenhouse gases.

yours sincerely,

James Sinnamon
[email protected]
Independent Candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane

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