smoke and mirrors


port alberni combines the sublime beauty of fish street signs with a backdrop of industry polution on a gargantuan scale.
unrelated: i fell and hurt my neck last night. today i endured it. there are about 3 clinics listed in the phone book for nanaimo, only one of them that i phoned accepted drop-ins, the other one was private and the third didn’t answer the phone. after work, katherine took me to the one nanaimo clinic that i could make contact with.
the clinic was a lot larger than any of the ones i had been to in victoria. i guess with fewer clinics it had to be. my neck had been feeling progressively better throughout the day and by the time we arrived, it was an irritation.
there was an hour and a half wait at the clinic, so i decided that it was probably better to sleep tonight and see how it felt in the morning. i’ll just skip the gym/swimming this evening.
as the media pumps fear and loathing into the masses on the six-o’clock news, the messages from Bowling For Columbine begin to resonate deeper and deeper. it’s pretty hard to watch this stuff, yet things are happening on the global stage that are impossible to ignore. it’s not the same watching the news as it was before though. flipping from news source to news source really reveals some very different views on the situation. one news reporter woman from CNN went so far as to say that CNN’s management might not appreciate her sentiments, but she believes that CNN is being too selective with what they are deciding to show. maybe she saw Bowling For Columbine, or maybe she just sees what Michael Moore saw from the inside. her own point of view.
i have trouble watching western-world television coverage by itself. as much as i don’t support what is going on, i dislike only hearing half of the story from the media. i feel that they should also be showing television stations from The Other Side so that people can really feel informed. yes, the stories will be different, and they will be slanted the other way, but doesn’t anyone else feel that from the two different points of view, it would probably offer any given person a better idea of what is actually going on?

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1 Comment

  1. I so know what you are talking about and I so tried not to get into it in my blog…but since you brought it up 🙂
    Actually today on CNN they had a segment showing different viewpoints from different stations. They mostly showed clips from different Arab stations. Quite interesting, and so far I think they have the most down the middle approach.
    Damn you, now I am going to have to post, ’cause I can’t fit everything I want to say right here.
    *wanders off muttering with hands in the air

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