Dear editor,
Re The day I almost quit reading the Gazette:
Anyone of the Gazette readers who has followed my occasional letters to the editor and/or read some of my ads, aimed to get a certain message across, will know that I consider a local paper extremely important.
The one issue where the Gazette editor/publisher decided to issue a feel-good weekly telling us they could find no bad news or almost no bad news (I would have to double check, although either way it does not make much difference), I had difficulties buying my friend’s copy – my own copy is house delivered.
I sympathize with the people in charge of making decisions weekly what goes and what does not go into publication. Anyone who listens a great deal to our national radio, the CBC, has heard enough stories of journalists fired from major newspapers because they did not observe policy from “above” – some right-wing, in power-establishment type of policy.
Take the case of the Chinese dissident. He objected to the one-child policy of the government, invoking his right to democratic freedom, as if this entitles him to condemn his government. Those opposed to official Chinese government orders re the one-child policy tried to exploit this situation, expressing sympathy for the dissenter (in fact, more than sympathy was expressed; it was exploited for and on behalf of Western democratic freedom — “Come to America: here you can do anything you like!”
And what nonsense! What if the Chinese population of 1.3 billion people doubled in fifty years, as the world population has more than doubled since 1960! Anyone can see the hypocrisy, the dishonesty in all this.
Let me return to our own small (but not so small, if you are personally affected) local situation.
In a small town one cannot fail to observe the increasing numbers of employable Aboriginal people who walk about all day, nothing to do and no money in their pockets. If you listened to the lawyer representing the Pineridge First Nation community in Nebraska, suing the liquor producing and distribution people for $500 million for the damage done to the aboriginal people, you will get an idea of the extent of the problem also in Canada of the First Nations people.
I suggest the $25,000,000,000 planned to spend on modern fighter aircraft, that money be spent locally, First Nation community to First Nation community from coast to coast, to undo the damage done to the people of this geographically great land.
This German immigrant of 61 years in the country and in his 82nd year, is especially sensitized to the injustice in the world. The reasons for that, there is not enough time and space here to explain. I leave it to the imagination of the reader of the Gazette to figure it out for him/herself.
May the Gazette thrive for years to come, allowing freedom of expression from every shade of persuasion!
Wilhelm Waldstein
Port Hardy