{"id":1479303,"date":"2024-07-25T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T04:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1479303"},"modified":"2024-07-25T00:20:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T04:20:00","slug":"the-cost-of-a-hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-cost-of-a-hoax\/1479303\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost Of A Hoax"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cost Of A Hoax<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The scandal surrounding Canada\u2019s Kamloops Indian Residential School (1890-1969, British Columbia) is an ultracautionary tale about the damage inflicted by self-interested politicians and activists, backed by a media that toes the line. <\/strong>The 2021 scandal sprang from the alleged discovery of 215 graves of indigenous children. They were said to have died under suspicious circumstances at the Catholic-run school and then buried in unmarked graves behind the facility. Kamloops was one of the largest schools in the residential system through which indigenous children were culturally deprogrammed and indoctrinated to mold them into \u201cproper\u201d Canadians.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When the story broke, the press fell over itself in a race to sensationalism. CBC News on May 28\u00a0declared<\/a>, \u201cRemains of 215 children found buried at former B.C. residential school, First Nation says.\u201d\u00a0The Toronto Star\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0on May 28,\u00a0\u201cThe remains of 215 children have been found.\u00a0Now, Indigenous leaders say, Canada must help find the rest of the unmarked graves.\u201d The international press jumped on the speeding news train with their own\u00a0headlines<\/a>, such as \u201c\u2018Horrible History\u2019:\u00a0Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada\u2019\u201d from The New York Times on May 31.<\/p>\n

Actually, no graves had been discovered; their\u00a0existence<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0extrapolated from \u201canomalies\u201d in the earth found by ground-penetrating radar. <\/strong>Such anomalies are commonplace, however, and usually indicate a tree root, a large rock, or some other innocuous presence. Today, after three years and almost $8 million of publicly unaccountable funds being expended, no graves have been found. No one has bothered to even start the digging necessary to verify anything.<\/p>\n

Evidence is optional in the court of opinion<\/h2>\n

The world was ready to believe without evidence.<\/strong> The residential school system was a horrific page of Canadian history and an act of cultural assault, if not cultural genocide. Perhaps this history lent an automatic credibility to the accusations that many students died prematurely and were buried anonymously as a cover-up or out of callousness.<\/p>\n

The fallout from these accusations was stunning. Canada was internationally smeared as a genocidal nation; the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>\u00a0called for prompt action on a massive \u201chuman rights violation\u201d; the Pope apologized; dozens of Catholic Churches in Canada were burned down in retaliation; the 2021 Canada Day celebrations were canceled in national shame, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking a knee to indigenous people. Subsequent government funds were pledged, including $3.1 million for a National Residential School Student Death Register and $238.8 million for a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund. Other governments followed suit. For example, the government of Ontario\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0$10 million to search for unmarked graves at residential schools in this province.<\/p>\n

Eventually, academics and journalists began to ask for evidence. In a 2022 New York Post article entitled \u201cBiggest fake news story in Canada: Kamloops mass grave debunked by academics,\u201d Professor Jacques Rouillard of the Department of History at Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al expressed an increasingly common concern. \u201cNot one body has been found. After … months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School?\u201d And why hadn\u2019t\u00a0a single missing person\u2019s report<\/a>\u00a0on them been found?<\/p>\n

Almost alone among prominent Canadian media, the National Post ran a series of articles that showed cracks in what had become an almost sacred narrative about Kamloops. <\/strong>A Sept. 6, 2023, headline\u00a0asked<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cWho started calling residential school burial sites mass graves?\u00a0At least in the beginning, First Nations didn\u2019t claim there were deliberately hidden \u2018mass graves.\u2019 Media and activists did.\u201d A May 30, 2024,\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0concluded,\u00a0\u201cCanada slowly acknowledging there never was a \u2018mass grave\u2019. There was much that was dark about residential schools, but no graves have been confirmed at Kamloops to this day.\u201d In late 2023, the\u00a0anthology<\/a>\u00a0\u201cGrave Error:\u00a0How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools)\u201d appeared.<\/p>\n

In response to a growing backlash, the special interlocutor assigned to the Kamloops criminal case\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0Parliament to make\u00a0\u201cdenialism\u201d of this matter illegal under the\u00a0criminal\u00a0code.\u00a0<\/strong>Those who expressed public skepticism would be vulnerable to prosecution for a hate crime in much the same manner as those who denied the Holocaust. Under\u00a0section<\/a>\u00a0319 of the criminal code, the willful promotion of antisemitism, unless in a private conversation, could lead to up to two years in prison. This includes \u201ccondoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust.\u201d\u00a0Discussions of Kamloops<\/a>\u00a0would receive the same treatment. On Nov. 26, 2023, the\u00a0Canadian Press<\/a>\u00a0reported that Justice Minister Arif Virani was still considering how to criminalize residential school denialism. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed sympathy for the idea.<\/p>\n

Making the open discussion of a news story into an illegal act obviously guts freedom of speech and journalism. The government wants to control both the information we can hear and our judgment of its worth. This is nothing new, and it is well-explored ground.<\/p>\n

But lesser-discussed damages inflicted by the handling of Kamloops are important and common to many cover-ups.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every day that passes without exhumations casts more doubt about the validity of the Kamloops story. If the narrative is true, then refusing to confirm it is an outrageous offense against the indigenous children lying in these graves. If false, then it is an outrageous offense against any indigenous person who reports a true atrocity in the future and is received with greater skepticism due to Kamloops. If false, then Kamloops also provides shade for real genocides around the globe.\u00a0The CBC\u00a0reported<\/a> on\u00a0June 22, 2021, \u201cOn the same day Canada helped to launch an international effort at the United Nations to demand that China allow free access to Xinjiang to investigate reported human rights violations, China and its allies have called on the UN to investigate crimes against Indigenous people in Canada.\u201d When genocide becomes a game of political chess, it loses its connection to truth or justice.<\/p>\n

The politicization of Kamloops also prevents genuine healing for those involved because healing rests on understanding, not lies. As it stands, there is deepening antipathy on the part of the main parties: the white Christians accused and the indigenous people. Since May 2021,\u00a0at least 33 Catholic Churches have\u00a0burned to the ground<\/a>, with 24 being confirmed as arsons.The Catholic Register on June 5, 2024,\u00a0noted<\/a>, \u201cOver 100 Canadian Christian churches have been vandalized, damaged by fire or outright burned to the ground since the Kamloops\u2019 claim first came to light.\u201d (A map<\/a>\u00a0of vandalized or destroyed churches is here, valid as of February 2024.)<\/em> To some, it feels like open war has been declared on Christianity, especially Catholicism.<\/p>\n

For their part, how can indigenous people join hands with white Christians when the latter are portrayed as the murderers of their children who bury the evidence in unmarked graves? The residential system has ceased to be the historical shame it truly is and has become, instead, a multigenerational burden of guilt that stretches forward forever.<\/p>\n

It does not have to be this way. The continuing turmoil is created by those to whom it brings power and money.\u00a0The Epoch Times is correct in\u00a0stating<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s absurd that people can claim a site contains the bodies of hundreds of murdered children yet refuse to allow further investigation into the issue. Only when we have confirmed what did or didn\u2019t happen in Canadian residential schools will we be able to close the door on that chapter of our national history. Until there are excavations at the Kamloops site, the myths will continue to be spun and national healing won\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> In the most literal sense, it is time to start digging for the truth.<\/p>\n

This is unlikely to happen. For one thing, in his 2021 federal election campaign, Trudeau leaned heavily on the promise to right the wrongs done against indigenous Canadians. For another thing, the federal government owns much of the mainstream media. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa\u00a0explained the government\u2019s system<\/a>\u00a0of financially \u201csupporting\u201d the media:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the current system covers 25% of the journalist costs up to $55,000 per employee (or $13,750), the government\u2019s\u00a0fall economic statement<\/a>\u00a0increases both the percentage covered and cap per employee. Under the new system, which is retroactive to the start of this year [2023], Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations (which covers print and digital but not broadcasters) can now claim 35% of the costs of journalist expenditures up to $85,000 per employee. It increases the support to up to $29,750 per employee or an increase of 116%. This new support will run for four years at a cost of $129 million ($60 million this year alone).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Thus, in a literal sense, the federal government owns much of the mainstream media, at least in terms of paying their salaries.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is yet another cost of perpetuating an official narrative without evidence. Dismantling freedom of the press is a prerequisite to establishing the politically sacred version of an event, such as the discovery of 215 bodies of indigenous children. If the bodies exist, they will probably never be exhumed and given a proper burial. There is no political advantage in doing so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 07\/24\/2024 – 20:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/cost-hoax<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cost Of A Hoax Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute, The scandal surrounding Canada\u2019s Kamloops Indian Residential School (1890-1969, British Columbia) is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1479304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1479303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1479304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}