Friday, May 30, 2008

Raising the Alarm

We were leaving the funeral for Dr. Carl Pinsky today, around noon, when I said aloud "I suppose today we'll do a Lesson In Journalism about those 2 stories about the legislature - and the one story about that MLA they missed - and recap the news of the month a bit."

Not 2 minutes later, the monthly recap of what The Great Canadian Talk Show was all about in May, was in essence, heard on CJOB.

* Car thieves try to kill 2 cops in the Maples.
* Gunshots sprayed at a house in the 400 block Mountain, 5 people narrowly escaping injury.


The mainstream media ignored the decay of law and order in Winnipeg until only when it could be no longer denied, and now when cops dive for cover and a housefull of people almost get whacked, the MSM headlines this afternoon reduce the crisis to:

"Police officer fires at stolen vehicle"
"Chaos on Fife; Police matter ties up area"
"Shots fired into home; no injuries reported"

The MSM uses dismissive labels like "alarmist", and have now started attaching "so-called" in front of "revolving door justice system", to undermine the validity of the observations of reasonable citizens. They bleat about how we need to deal with the "root causes", without ever admitting that the biggest root cause of crime in Winnipeg today, is that the car thieves and gangs and crack dealers think they can get away with it because so many of them do, and their rights supercede the rights of the innocent living their lives in peace.

After what went on in the past 24 hours, I for one gladly accept the label "alarmist". Yes we have been sounding the alarm and been the voice of the people. Only to the social engineers in the media, is holding the judges and ministers and councillors and MP's to account for their failure to protect the public, considered a bad thing. Those who ring the alarm to force the community to deal with a serious public issue need not make apologies to anyone.

The only apologies we want to hear is from elected officials who prefer to issue press releases and attend meetings, instead of addressing the public security issues which are only going to escalate until again one night, we have more bodies than ambulances available to carry them.

More today at 4PM. (with Spirited Kenny on the food crisis, a Luc Bourdon tribute and much more.)