September 16, 2002
Or dead. Depending upon which day you read the New York Times. When George W. Bush and U.S. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld were asked about the status of bin Laden, they both stated that they didn’t know.
The truth is that only a small number of people know whether or not bin Laden is alive or dead and they aren’t talking. A Toronto Sun/Leger Marketing Poll published in the Toronto Sun on September 8, stated that 76 per cent of all Canadians think that Osama bin Laden is still alive. Nine per cent think that he’s dead, and presumably the remaining 15 per cent didn’t have an opinion.
If there ever were an article that shows the media’s obsession with polls this is it. The poll is absolutely meaningless and whoever spent money commissioning it could probably have a very successful career as a Toronto City Councillor. Since the poll tabulates peoples’ feelings that are not based on any concrete facts, its information value, is nil. Unlike polls conducted about Elvis, whom we know did die on August 16, 1977, the Osama guessarama isn’t even interesting. You cannot compare someone who thinks bin Laden is alive to someone who thinks the king is still here and working at a Burger King somewhere in Michigan.
This poll is a perfect example of the dumbing down of the mainstream media.
Human Weapon
On September 2, CBC Newsworld aired "Human Weapon", its first in a series of 10 documentaries dealing with 9/11. The program attempted to answer the question of why some people are willing to become suicide bombers.
Although other areas were dealt with, the main focus of the documentary was the Middle East and no CBC production describing events in that region would be complete without the network spewing its anti-Israel rhetoric. Near the beginning of the program, a couple of bombed out buildings were shown with the accompanying voiceover saying "Jenin, a refugee camp, bombed into rubble by an Israeli army striking back." That was the equivalent of showing Ground Zero in Manhattan and saying that New York City was bombed into rubble. The truth, not that the CBC is concerned, is that only a very small portion of the camp was bombed, and Jenin, much like the Big Apple, still exists.
Towards the end of the show, after talking about a Palestinian bomber, the narrator stated that six days after a suicide bombing, the Israeli Army, in a show of military might, bombed the Palestinian Authority’s Police Headquarters as well as other public buildings. Much like Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bill Graham, the network seems to think that Israel should only use proportionate force, and, like the Minister, doesn't define what it is.
In between taking shots at the Jewish state, the documentary deals with suicide bombings from the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut to the latest bombings in the Middle East as well as making brief references to Japanese kamikaze pilots during World War II and the IRA hunger strikers in the early 80s. Suicide bombings carried out by Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka are also shown. There are interviews with weeping and wailing relatives of the bombers as well as showing a proud widow of a suicide bomber gathering the kiddies around the television set to watch a video of daddy blowing himself up. What wasn’t shown, was how the victims and their relatives felt about the incidents that occurred. The focus of the show was what made people want to be suicide bombers, but the program did focus on the "poor" families of the deceased bombers. Why not survivors and families of the victims?
The only thing that could be considered surprising about the documentary was that although it did its best to humanize the bombers, no references were made to the 19 men who hijacked the planes on September 11. It would have been interesting to understand why Mohammed Atta, an educated Saudi from a well to do family spent over two years training and plotting to fly a plane into a building.
The CBC probably avoided a detailed discussion of September 11 terrorists for a good reason. Unlike the Palestinians and the Tamils, they did not have a political reason for doing what they did. Their motives were religious and religion is much too politically incorrect for the CBC to get into.
Arthur Weinreb is a lawyer and author and Associate Editor of Canadafreepress.com
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