# The Sanitized Tour of Afghanistan



## 54/102 CEF (27 Nov 2010)

This story got my attention http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/11/26/don-martin-safety-a-canadian-mp-in-afghanistan/

I wrote the author as fols:

I read your piece on Jim Abbott in the National Post today. I agree
with you on the perils of the sanitized tour.

At the same time though - I see all news as sanitized once we get into
a slugging match anywhere that needs big time government dollars.

Unfortunately you`re part of the puzzle holding back Canadians from
seeing the greater picture - which is political and economic in that
part of South Asia or what ever the political scholars call it.

What else could be going on that we`re not seeing?

This is about energy - Pakistan - India and China, not really about
Iraq or Afghanistan.

I came to this conclusion from discovery of the website below during a post
grad course with Royal Military College in War Studies

An hour out of your time to watch this lecture given by the Advanced
Physics Lab Think Tank at Johns Hopkins University may be very worth
while for you

Note what he calls the War Zone in
http://outerdnn.outer.jhuapl.edu/rethinking/VideoArchives/DrGeoffreyKempPresentationVideo.aspx

We are pretty far away from this which may be why we don`t see it.

In conclusion - your work is very valuable - but greater context in
light of the lecture link above could assist awareness of Canadian
media consumers like me.


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## Greymatters (27 Nov 2010)

Reads like the whole piece was just in reaction to one sentence spoken by an MP.  I think he missed the whole point.  That journalists risk their life and suffer the consequences is a fact, but so is the fact that most of them have little good to say about the CF or the work being done over there, which is what the MP is really talking about. (i.e. a piece someone posted here a while ago where the journalist spent most of her piece deriding testosterone-laden jocks who spent more time bragging than working).


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