Vladimir, Anna and Neda

Phil Burpee, Columnist, Pincher Creek Voice

Phil Burpee is a carpenter and 
farmer living north of 
Pincher Creek.
He keeps an eye on the world
from under the big Alberta sky.

All sorts of odd little bits of news filter down out of the Alberta sky. If you cock an ear you can hear the most astonishing things, and some not so astonishing at all. In the astonishing department, we hear that physicists in Switzerland seem to have found subatomic particles called neutrinos which appear to travel faster than the speed of light  - a paradox which would, if substantiated, undermine the essential tenet of Albert Einstein's General theory of Relativity which states, amongst other things, that the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) is both an absolute and a constant, and that it governs not only the three dimensions of up, down and around, but also the fourth  - Time. And Time itself is reckoned to slow to a halt as we near this speed, and reverse if we surpass it. These particular neutrinos, then,  may well be travelling back to last Tuesday, or at least to a few trillionths of a second ago. Astonishing. If we could just hitch a ride back, maybe we could ride all the way back to the glory days of the early seventies Stampeders with John 'Biggie' Helton. Ah, to dream, to dream.


In the not so astonishing department we learn that Vladimir Putin, that wily, hard-boned, black belt judoka, ex-KGB man, and current Prime Minister of Russia, has formally announced his intention to run for the Presidency in 2012 at the end of the term of current President Dmitry Medvedev. So cozy is this arrangement that Mr. Medvedev is touted as the next Prime Minister should Mr. Putin be so fortunate as to receive the largesse of the voters of Mother Russia. Given that Mr. Putin's United Russia Party has a virtual stranglehold on all relevant mass-media outlets, especially television, there is no real doubt as to his inevitable re-election to the position, from which post he will resume the pogroms - er, excuse me - programs he had been undertaking prior to his having coyly demurred at the end of his previous tenure. Now we understand all too clearly who will wield the whip-hand that governs the movements and behaviour of the Great Bear for the next twelve years. And now we must be additionally concerned at another potential casualty of this state of affairs along with democracy itself - the News.

In the liberal democracies engendered by the nations of the Free West, we base our perceptions of statehood on certain essential and inalienable realities  -  free markets, right of assembly, rights of thought, speech and opinion, the right to property, regular legislative elections through a constitutionally-governed process of popular representation, the rule of law, right of habeus corpus, and, perhaps most essential of all, the right to maintain a free and unfettered Press. For without a vigorous and investigative Press, we quickly succumb to propaganda and a duplicitous fog of misinformation. And these are troubled times for the women and men who would bring us the News. We may recall the name of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and investigative reporter who had been embroiled in the uncovering of nefarious doings in Chechnya involving the Kremlin, the Russian Armed Forces, and various mercenary, quasi-nationalist thugs in Grozny and elsewhere in the Caucasus. She had been a thorn in the side of then-President Vladimir Putin and his state/mafia entourage. She had been warned, many times. She told them to go to hell. Then one night, as she waited for her elevator in her apartment building with her groceries in her arms, somebody pumped five bullets into her head from an automatic pistol. It was October 7th, 2006  -  Vladimir Putin's birthday. No-one other than the killer was there to bear witness. Putin said nothing. Other troublesome journalists were felled. Putin said nothing. The message was clear  -  report as you may, but consider the consequences of speaking about what you may dangerously consider to be the Truth.

We may recall also one of the defining images of the early twenty-first century  -  that of Neda Soltan lying bleeding and dying on the streets of Tehran during the popular uprising against the stolen election that saw the reinstatement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. But here there were thousands to bear witness. And here there was one particular person with a cell phone camera who captured a fleeting video image of Neda's life ebbing away with the blood that ran from her nose and mouth. Here was citizen journalism writ large. Here was a raw, nervous, essential and hugely powerful visual representation of the News unfolding. No amount of Orwellian Newspeak could subvert this living News. Now we have eyes to see  -  millions and  millions of them. Like never before we have the power to dispel the darkness. As so goes the old spiritual  -  "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."

It is quite possible that, as with our democracy, for which we show such lazy regard on polling days with low turnouts, we may come to take the ability to know what is going on around us in this world for granted. We ought not. Without our newsgatherers we become blinded to the machinations of the great and the powerful. Without those who will step sometimes into harm's way to reveal certain truths, we are left with doctored drivel spooned up by those who would have us remain unaware. But it can be dangerous out there. We think of Daniel Pearl, slain by panicky, half-crazed splinter jihadists in Pakistan. And we think of the many journalists regularly targeted by right-wing paramilitaries in Latin America and Africa. We may even think of Izzy Asper or Conrad Black 'leaning' on the bylines of their media empires. And mighty China, the great Middle Kingdom itself, of course takes a stern view of inappropriate reportage which might deviate from acceptable norms of information compliance. Many is the hapless hack who finds himself cooling his heels in some dusty slammer way and gone out in the western deserts, far, far from Shanghai and all the happenings of the wider world.

George Orwell famously opined:  -  "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

It's all about information. Let us celebrate our newspapers and our radios and our television news shows in all their raggedness and glorious diversity. Let us not, even for one second, take these things for granted. Let us not leave it to the physicists and their busy little neutrinos to remind us that the past is inextricable from the present, as the present is from the future. If we don't write our own stories, create our own living mythologies, somebody else will do it for us. And then someday it will be too late, and we will entirely have forgotten who it was we were supposed to be.

Phil Burpee
October 9, 2011