The Liberals have come out with a series of vicious attack ads aimed at the Conservative Party that has taken the lead in the polls with not much time to go before the January 23rd election. One of the TV ads was pulled before it made it onto the airwaves. To a background of the sound of marching, the voiceover said,
Stephen Harper actually announced that he wants to increase military presence in our cities. Canadian cities. Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada. We did not make this up.
The ad never made it to the ever increasingly large "small screens" throughout Canada but it was posted on the Liberal Party's website. according to the Liberals (who we all know never ever lie) the ad was never meant to be seen by the public.
as part of his party's policy platform, Stephen Harper did announce that he wished to post at least 100 soldiers and 400 reservists in Canada's major centres so that they would be there to deal with disasters such as flooding, ice storms and terrorist attacks that no one wants to admit is a possibility. The ad, especially the line "soldiers with guns" strongly implies that a Harper government would use the force of Canada's military against its own citizens. That, of course would turn Canada into a military dictatorship from its present form as simply a dictatorship.
In the olden days, back when the media was restricted to newspapers, radio and television, if a party wanted to kill an ad the ad would disappear after being viewed by only a small group of party workers and production people. But those days are long gone. The offensive ad was placed on the Liberal Party's website and now lives on in cyberspace. It doesn't take anyone with Internet access very much time to find the ad and view what they can not see on television and what the Liberal Party doesn't want you to see.
The Liberals weren't the first ones to equate Harper's military policy with using soldiers against Canadian citizens. Eighteen-year-old amon Beckles was gunned down while attending the funeral at a Toronto church of his friend Jamal Hemmings, who had been shot to death the week before. al Bowen, the pastor who conducted the funeral said that the military should be brought into Toronto to deal with the city's gun violence. Bowen repeated his call from the military after the Boxing Day shootings; around the same time that Harper made his announcement of placing soldiers in major cities. Some of the media, such as the Toronto Star, implied but did not specifically state, that the two statements were related and that Stephen Harper would employ the military against Canadian citizens, but left it as an inference that could be easily drawn. The Liberals did the same thing despite protestations from Paul Martin.
On the bright side, the new media is allowing bloggers to make fun of the Liberals by spoofing their ridiculous ads. Damian Penny wrote,
Little Susie Smith, a seven year-old girl in Brampton Ontario, has her bicycle stolen.and from the blog of Maclean's columnist Paul Wells
, Just now at the Subway on Bank Street.Thanks to the Internet, this completely ridiculous and mean-spirited attack on Stephen Harper and the Conservatives is likely to cause more harm to the Liberals than it ever will to the Tories.
Perhaps the worst thing about the Liberal ad is that it is just so easy to string a couple of things together so that people can make inferences and then reach the conclusion that you want them to reach.
Liberal MP Keith Martin apologized for the ad and said it was released by some "idiot".
Prime Minister Paul Martin said that he approved the ad.
We're not making this up.
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