Rick Salutin : a Great Warning

Rick has most Aof the story. But I am not sure he ever read any of the books by the great economist,Antony Sutton as I suggested. If he had, he would not be surprised at all. Rick lost his job because he is an independent thinker. The overwhelming dialectic"divide and control" propaganda never took hold with him...but make no mistake; there really are some powerful people in the world who look upon the masses like W. looks upon his cattle. Salutin's bosses are just more lackeys doing their lackey thing without even knowing it. The other aspect is that its only because the masses behave like sheep that we cn be so easily treeted as such: "Take off your belt and shoes and put them in the basket along with your cellphone and laptop....oh, and just ignore those 2 million people sneaking across the border between Arizona and Mexico; they are all just harmless fruit pickers." and be compliant; VERY compliant; think Helena Guergis and look what happened to her. So, you think this is a tangent? I wonder if Rick will, if he reads this. I hope he starts a blog; he could do some real damage with one.

it's easy

It's like the movie where the guy tries to live on fast food for a year. A healthy human being with a good diet was vomiting up his "food" by the end of the first day . His body knew it was being poisoned.

Try going 6 months to a year without corporate media, the longer the better. After that time try to "read" a newspaper. You'll understand instinctively why he was fired.

why?

it IS a security thing that killed him
the old age boom
the economy
the ecology
terrorists
all hammering at your inner monkey.
NOW with blood in the water, by the way.

packrat

Salutin's firing

Salutin made a mistake... he told the truth and major dailies will not tolerate such outrageous candor.

As Orwell stated" In times of tyranny it is treason to tell the truth.

Obviously, the Globe and Mail is vying for the position of Fox News North and has greatly diminished its claim to be our national newspaper. Maybe it should start sending its lead reporters to school board meetings if it wants politically safe issues.

Salutin's not the only casualty...

Apparently Tabatha Southey is also gone, according to a tweet from Paul Wells. Another shame--she's a witty and lively writer.

Globe and mail......Never read it

I read over 10 newspapers daily on line, from our local fish-wrap & Tyee, to American & and UK papers. On top of this I also read several blogs to gather my daily intake of news.

In my view the print media has become nothing more than propaganda rags for the elites in power and what news is printed is so slanted that it has become un-news, in the best Orwellian manor

The populace are being molded into government thinking zombies, believing what tripe the local fish-wrap feel fit to print.

The electronic media practice the "Goebbels Gambit" by repeating lies so often that they become truth.

Canada is on the verge of plunging into the dank world of Fascist corruption, where the media assassinates one character on the orders of its political masters (just ask Van der Zalm), while at the same time, covers up real government scandal and corruption like the BC Railgate scandal.

We have sold our sole to a corporatist government, there is no hope of escape, except for a massive revolution. I do not think our youth, seduced by the X-box and alike and brains numbed by drugs, have the will to fight for their future.

Hail to Rick Salutin (and the Tyee and Rabble.ca)

I've been reading Rick Salutin's fabulous prose for years. Thankfully, he is a regular at the Tyee and also at Rabble.ca, a topnotch independent media similar to the Tyee.

The G&M knows it has dealt a blow to Rick's courageous voice by cutting off his income. This is classic bullyism and occurs throughout Canada and the US. Controlling most of the money in society gives the oligarchs vast powers to punish and persuade. This is used particularly against public intellectuals. Toe the party line and you can stay and enjoy the goodies of capitalism. Disobey orders and you're fired.

Indeed, the entire genesis of the Tyee and Rabble.ca and others arose from Canada's other media bullies doing precisely the same thing. Firings, dismissals, black lists when you're bad. Raises, cocktail parties and bonuses when you're good.

Freedom of the press indeed!

This of course is how media and power are used around the world, where in most non-democratic countries the citizens know the facts and understand how crooked the system is. In the West, we are told we live in a democracy, so we have to pretend those in control were chosen by the majority, which of course is ludicrous. Soon, I expect the elites will decide to dispense with our pretend democracy all together as they are tiring of all the fuss coming from the masses.

But until then, let the Tyee and Rabble.ca and Public Eye and Gush Shalom and Al Jazeera continue to speak freely! Great coverage as always Tyee!

[EDITOR"S NOTE -- Actually The Tyee hasn't been publishing Salutin, but Rabble.ca has.]

I'm surprised

that he lasted as long as he did. His pieces were so out of character with mainsteam media op/ed. Hopefully he'll keep writing and his columns will show up in independent (are there any left?) newspapers and websites like rabble.ca

Self-incriminating Defense

This attempt at defending Saultin (who has good days) is worthless. What are the "arguments"? Saultin shouldn't have been fired because he gets more comments than Simpson? Well, good column writing isn't a popularity contest, particularly not popularity as measured by online comments, which gravitate towards the sensational and simple-minded. Mark Steyn regularly gets the most comments at Macleans.ca, but that hardly means that he writes the best columns. Fox News ratings trump PBS Newshour many times over, but that doesn't make it better news. As for the column which the defense focuses on: what's even important here? A rehashed conspiracy theory (popular circa 2004-05), comprised of no new information and a bunch of disinformation (no understanding of Strauss on Plato, false claim re: Straussians supposedly being at Calgary, etc.). This is followed by a quotation about Saultin on Rob Ford, which is totally banal and no different from anything many other Globe columnists have written - and much inferior to the actual factual takedown of Ford published in The Globe previously by Marcus Gee, for example. So this defense of Salutin utterly fails to show that he ever wrote anything worth publishing in the first place. But hey, it got a lot of internet comments, and that's all that matters, right?

And Tabatha Southey, too.

I used to have fantasies of lunch with the 'Globe Girls' -- Christie, Jane, Margaret, Tabatha and I. It was mostly fun, though Tabatha and I occasionally shared an eyeroll because we totally get each other. Now they've axed her, the wittiest female at the Globe and Mail lunch table. While Salutin will be missed, Southey defended awkward teens before Dan Savage made it cool, and was the first to question the psychic powers of the federal Conservatives. F2 and F3 will never be the same.

I wonder if Mr. Salutin

isn`t relieved.

Urban Intellectual Fodder.

Neither original nor path-breaking, this art is derivative
hommage; postmodern commentary around the edges of art.

It is art born of attitude, not passion. It is art that postures
but doesn't grip. It is art created by those who are more
passionate about a career in art than about art itself.

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/09/are-our-writers-as-lousy-as-our-bankers.html

Gary Mason

has been more and more BC Liberal friendly lately. I think I know why now.

Unfortunate about Salutin and Southey; both decent writers, both with a viewpoint a lot of us could relate to.

Apparently that's a problem to the corporate dogs.

We can get opinions anywhere

We can get opinions anywhere online and we will read Rick Salultin elsewhere, though he will no doubt miss the income, and he will be harder to find.

What we are need desperately is decent reporting of world and national news. That will be the true measure of whether the Globe and Mail provides a useful service or should fade into oblivion, like most of the rest of the old media.

facebook page

Created a facebook page for Rick if you care to join

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Supporters-of-Rick-Salutin/118228651569193#!/pages/Supporters-of-Rick-Salutin/118228651569193

Media Monopoly dishes out canned news

Rick is a journalist who was telling it like it is when he lost his position as a writer held for many years. He has been working for a media mogul who has a monopoly on the news. Not so easy to pick up and find another job when the media giant is everywhere you tune in. It is why the story got picked up as if you have a media monopoly it is canned news as democracy goes down the tubes.

Salutin, Southey and the future

Now we need a vision of how the thinking class will wake up Canadians and save Canada from ravages of centralized power that only seeks more power.

Clearly we are headed to a place where knowledge is outlawed and propaganda is the only narrative, and we will not see how the hospitals and schools and work places will become redundant. Unless of course, the people wake up and do something.

This is a trajectory that began centuries ago, as power has shifted life to a mere resource.

I knew a person who use to

I knew a person who use to 2work for the Province Newspaper. About 10 years ago they started to tell her what she couldn't write about; she told them to "git stuffed" and walked.

We Love You Rick

Rick Salutin, please know that thousands and thousands (millions?) of readers and thinkers and citizens LOVE YOU. And your courage. And prose. Many of us are in our own way standing up to the tiny number of people who think they can tell us what to do, and think, and not to think (the elite). The majority is always more powerful then the minority.

Which also explains whey the minority elite are, in fact, cowards. Always have been. Always will be. While the honours you receive from us, the majority, will not replace the income the G&M has taken away from you, I do hope you measure it as something equally valuable.

Great coverage!!

Rick Salutin

Anybody who caught Salutin's interview on the O'Reilly Factor a month or so ago would have been embarassed. He was there rpresenting the Globe and I suspect they were embarassed as well. He sounded like a left wing nut.not a balanced and unbiased journalist. He came across very poorly.
I also suspect there is a change happening in the media in Canada. The advent of Sun TV has scared the bejeeses out of the media in Canada. They can see their readership and hence advertising revenue dropping like a stone.

Well done.

Quote: "Why did The Globe and Mail fire Rick Salutin? Without a better answer from the newspaper's brass, we're left to read Salutin's last two columns and ponder how power behaves when the politics of fear, and those who wield them deftly, are ascendant."

There is so much silence these days, it is refreshing to see it broken by some very good questions.

That final piece by Rick Salutin is highly worth the read, especially in regard to Straussian politics....where an elitist cold-blooded strategy "to fool and control" unapologetically trumps everything.

Add to that the dispassionate, insular nature of Harper and I won't write what I am thinking - only that the kettle whistling across this country has a decidedly high-pitch.

Harper is restlessly pacing,

Impatient and late for a very important date.

Where is our own counter-strategy?

Echo chamber of horrors

I read with horror the "progressive" whine here and all I can think is that you are a bunch of deluded granola munching Marxists.

The Globe and Mail (grope and flail, mop and pail, etc) is almost as ludicrously left as The Tyee, and here some of you are whining about how it fired one of you best and brightest because he was too far left and criticized the PM? It is to laugh.

If Canada is luck the CPC will win a majority next election and all of your collective heads will explode! All I have to do is look at Obama down in the good ole US of A to see what and NDP government would do to a country. His time is nearly up, BTW, I hope you enjoyed the show.

@Dwayne

CPC = Communist Party of Canada.

I didn't know you cared!

By the way, you mighr be surprised to know that NDP governments run the lowest deficits in the country compared with Liberals (who run the biggest) and Conservatives (who are number two)..As for Salutin on the O'Reilly Factor - who watches or cares about what the Fox news echo chamber does.

So Long Rick, Looking Forward to Your New Column Somewhere Else

Not surprised to see Rick Salutin get the pink slip at the Globe and Mail. The G&M has been casting about for a new mission statement and strategy for over a decade now. As Fox News, the success of other narrowcasting media sites, and the death of countless big city papers in the US have shown: The mushy middle is not a good place to be in the infinite channel universe that cheap broadband access has created.

In the brave new world of narrowcasting, the job of the resident token columnist, gamely battling the weltanschauung of the rest of the paper from the far corner of the op-ed page is an expensive and un-necessary luxury. It does not matter what you are the token for, leftist, rightists, women, gays or visible minorities, your time is over.

Those who want a different view don't need the op-ed gadfly anymore. They just click their mouses and get that different view from a vendor that similarly narrowcasts nothing but those different views. By doing this they also are able to offer them with greater credibility and authority.

The good news is that this world probably will make Rick Salutin a hot property now that he is a free agent. Looking forward to reading his new column on thestar.com, guardian.co.uk, or in some similar venue that caters to progressive and thoughtful journalism.

It's Business

Even though a few of his pieces used to venture into decent objective thinking, Salutin repeatedly made it quite clear where his sympathies are, coupled with the anger we see from other lefties that are frustrated because their side lost control of the ball and don't seem to have any hope of getting it back soon.

The polls tell us that that demographic that votes NDP are around 15% of decided voters. One poll had them at 12% last week. The Globe still has Lorrie (as Mansbridge affectionately calls him) Martin to relentlessly fly the extreme left flag, along with guest pieces by a smattering of other fringe scribes like Jim Stanford. That's enough. The Globe's management knows that for a national newspaper to be viable it should at least try and appeal to the 85% of the population that doesn't and never will vote NDP.

The occasional contrarian viewpoint is amusing and needs to be known but only appealing to around 15% of the population will only lead to a smaller market share, less sales and job losses.

CanWest's newspapers were recently up for grabs but we didn't see any left-leaning group interested in picking them up because neither national nor local newspapers are viable with a left wing slant, except perhaps in densely populated Toronto where the Toronto Star have that market wrapped up.

r'man

Salutin didn't discuss BC politics. So if you're talking federal politics by all means tell me when it was the Left "had the ball"?

The polls tell us that Conservative support in this country is mired down around 30% of decided voters. Yet the number of media outlets catering to this extreme fringe is almost total.

The media should in general reflect the values of Canadians, it doesn't. Instead it is a passionate defender of a long-discredited ideology.

Frank

The Globe wants to appeal to the majority of Canadians and their values and that 85% does not include those that support the NDP.

The extreme fringe you talk of has the support of more than double the real fringe, that is the 15% that support the NDP. Indeed, the Conservatives have had the support of more than any other party in the country for the past four years. Hardly a fringe.

Anyway, the Globe leans far more toward the federal Liberals.

Give 'em Credit

I should have said five years.

r'man

The Globe wants to appeal to the 30% of the voters on the far-right and ignore the other 70%.

That's bad for business. Its also par for the course which explains why Globe readership is what it is.

You're getting cranky, Frank

Rod Mickleburgh. Gary Mason, Frances Bula, Jeffrey Simpson, John Ibbitson, Lawrence Martin, Jeff Rubin, Brian Topp, Jane Taber, Robert Silver, Roy MacGregor, etc,

Sure Frank, all Globe regulars and all far-right wingers, heh? I guess to you Ibbitson, Topp or Simpson are far-right.

This explains Globe readership:

"Over the past year, our weekday print circulation grew 5 per cent last year, and 6 per cent on weekends – when our competitors were all in retreat. Our online traffic is up 20 per cent. Our mobile traffic is up 500 per cent. "

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/community/digital-lab/a-new-globe-in-print-and-online/article1735935/

r'man

Christie Blatchford, Margaret Wente, Derek DeCloet, Brian Milner, Eric Reguly, Rob Carrick, Barrie McKenna, Neil Reynolds, Marcus Gee, Rex Murphy etc etc

By all means tell me where the Leftees are because from where I'm standing its obvious more than 30% of the columnists are right-wing.

As for Ibbitson, he is right-wing, I once posed as a very right-wing guy in an email exchange with him. Very enlightening.

The reason you find the Globe balanced is because it caters to your extreme views of society. You find most of their columnists hold opinions close to yours. Kinda like me and the Tyee.

The Globe's shiny new persona

The best thing about the new almost tabloid version is the ads: bright, colourful and eye-catching. And obviously NOT laid out by the Globe gang.

Sadly they provide only eye candy and the rest of the paper is dismal and kind of cramped looking.

I understand Stephen Quinn will join his lady wife as a columnist in the BC section tomorrow. Woo hoo!

Bring back Salutin and Heather Mallick...

Also, apparently the Globe still manages to turn a small profit which can't be easy, my wife and I cancelled home delivery a week ago and they're still dropping a paper at the door every morning - two additional phone calls don't seem to have made a difference.

Like the National Post, I bet the Globe's circulation figures are hopelessly fraudulent...because exactly the same thing is going on with at least two other attempted subscription cancellations in my family.

At least with the Times Colonist, when you call up and tell them why you're quitting and explain the reason is they are a shitty paper, they get the message and stop dumping their crap on the doorstep.

We need more police!

"... driven by my Irish cop heritage, I feel some sort of need to step in, and make it all better for the law-abiding citizens like myself. Why should people be allowed to break the rules with impunity – and with arrogant smugness to boot? ..."

Vancouver's bylaw breakers
Stephen Quinn

Globe and Mail.

Like Stephen Harper, Stephen Quinn is just fed up with criminals getting off with no punishment!

* * * * *

"The Globe wants to appeal to the 30% of the voters on the far-right..."

Frank

Is this the kind of thing you mean, Frank?

I've nothing against either Stephen Quinn,

Or his lady wife Marsha Lederman - the suggestion that he's anything like as valuable as Rick Salutin for a so-called 'national' newspaper is absurd...

I'm actually fed up with right wing criminals like Campbell getting off with no punishment - a lot more concerned than I am about a few bylaw breakers.

And I'm even more fed up with people who constantly make excuses for them...like the usual gang of suspects Neal Hall, Gary Mason and Justine Hunter.

Still, Quinn is one of the few moderately bright lights still ‘burning’ at CBC AM 690. Compared with the Puffmaster Flash on the morning show he's a veritable 'treasure'....

That said, for those who think Quinn has some value as a writer/journalist don't restrict yourself to his scribbling at the Globe. Oh my no, have a look at this:

http://twitter.com/cbcstephenquinn

How does anyone live stuff like that down?

right-wing media

Chock that up to another publication that has drifted more and more to the 'right' over the years, and has now dropped off my radar. The same thing happened to MacLeans years ago (when it got taken over by Rogers) and then National Post when it got sold to Can West (formerly owned by Conrad Black of course). There are no national 'liberal' mass publications anymore. Luckily there is some relatively objective fare on the internet (like this site), otherwise the right would pretty much have a total strangle hold on mass media. But what they dont realize is they are loosing access to vast swaths of readership and influence; they are alienating themselves out of the picture !

Rick Salutin

While his "on the money" criticism of Harper may be a key factor, I believe that Rick's repeated, entirely justified and well documented criticism of expansionist/occupier/oppressor Israel played a major role in getting him fired.

For those of you who have not heard the news. His replacement? None other than Irshad Manji, an intellectual lightweight and a loyal toady of the media establishment.

Chapeau monsieur Beers!

But aren't you worried being so blunt about it?