Bruce Abel questions my choice of sources for the article. Unfortunately, several supporters of Jim Harris declined to be interviewed, including Andy Shadrack, a key party activist from BC. When I spoke to Matthew Pollesel, I detected no bitterness, only shock at some of the party’s actions and sadness at how it was being run.
While my article certainly had a point of view, I stand by its accuracy and its fairness. I found that the Green Party under Jim Harris made radical changes to its entire policy package, with no policy convention and only cursory, non-binding attention to members’ wishes. This makes the Greens the most top-down of all federal parties. I also found that many candidates campaigned on the party’s previous socialdemocratic policies. When people vote for a political party, they should know what they’re getting.
When Jake MacDonald asks retired army Colonel John B. Alexander whether the Pentagon would invent the news Americans are watching (“Arsenal Of Illusion,” July/August), he answers, “As sure as a heart attack, I guarantee that they are doing it already.” The question then becomes, could the Pentagon fake things any worse than Fox News? Using such luminaries as Geraldo Rivera, Fox manages to create a world with so little resemblance to the real one as to be totally irrelevant to what is actually going on.
Not that other media are much better. The world according to George W. Bush gets a pretty good airing on the pages of Newsweek and Time. And in this country, when the cbc tries for some balance, the Fraser Institute accuses it of anti-American bias or some such nonsense.
Our corporate media adjust the world to their liking. If the Pentagon is going to fake it, just how much further into fantasyland will they have to journey? Aren’t we living in a largely manufactured world as it is?
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, BC
Affairs Of The Tusk
Dearest darling Walrus,
I was away in the country and came home to find your love letters (“Love Letters,” July/August) on my bed. I had no idea you felt this way. I have been savouring your words slowly on the deck of Laurier Pool; the pages have become wrinkled from my forlorn splashing. The voices were so remarkably distinct, none the typical love letter at all—no syrupy platitudes, no brokenhearted requests to return belongings (that John Coltrane album, that favourite sweater), and they held tricky and immense emotions in such small spaces, so diverse and compact. I have read them again and again. Oh my beloved tusky one, I am looking forward to our continued correspondence next summer. Please, please write again.
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