Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Public Means That CBC Belongs to Us Not Stephen Harper

"You gained power by using the highest and noblest thing in life – religion – to appeal to the lowest – to greed, selfishness, cupidity. By using this fiendish combination, you set loose an uncontrollable flood of passion. You set neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend, brother against brother, man against wife. And then you crucified a suffering people upon the cross of your vanity and ambition." (1)

Those words were written in 1937 about the first leader of the Reform movement, then called Social Credit; William Aberhart. And seventy five years later they ring just as true for their latest head honcho.

Stephen Harper intentionally exploited religious beliefs for political gain and is now scrambling to clean up his mess.

It took more than four years for the media in Canada to start to pay attention to the threat imposed by the Religious Right in this country. A handful tried to sound the alarm, but no one listened.

Now Marcie McDonald's book has hit the stores, and CBC ran a segment. It was news.

But true to nature, the Reform-Conservatives are crying religious persecution.

I'm sorry but speaking out against a government that wants to engineer a nuclear attack in the Middle East, so they can fulfil a biblical prophesy, is not religious persecution. It's an intervention.

Yet now CBC risk losing their funding (a Reform Party goal for years) because of it. When Canada was a democracy they were allowed to report the truth. But under our fascist regime, they may soon learn that the truth is a dangerous concept.

Lots of people go to church in this country but not many have an agenda other than spiritual renewal. They use their faith to do good and understand that all humans have value.

The Christian extremism employed by this government marginalizes gays, women and Muslims. This is not who we are as Canadians and if Harper cuts even a dime from the CBC budget, we need to scream, and scream loudly. I can't believe I'm linking to an article written by Jane Taber. I gave up on her a long time ago. Who knows. Maybe she'll see the light. (pun intended)

The CBC is fuelling a “faith war” and using its taxpayer-funded position to “foment religious division,” the Prime Minister’s strategists in their latest attack on the public broadcaster.

In a memo to supporters, the backroom operatives note that this is just the next step in the CBC’s “ongoing campaign against the Conservative Party.” At issue is a story about the rise of the right-wing religious groups and their connections to the Stephen Harper’s government that ran on The National last night.

This poison ruined the Republican Party in the United States, and they may never recover. It's time more people in the media stood up to this sanctimonious hatred.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting that the title suggests the CBC belongs to the public. Well that is the way it should be but unfortunately none really owns it. We all finance it but have no say in what CBC does. We can't even get information on it because CBC goes out of it's way to block the freedom of information act. One day if Harper makes the CBC accountable maybe it could belong to us!

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