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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-12-15, Page 19THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2016. PAGE 19. Letter to the Editor Lucio responds to Nov. 17 Vodden letter THE EDITOR, I am obliged to have my statements reviewed before public release. It takes time. Thus, this belated response to Brock Vodden's Nov. 17 letter to the editor in The Citizen in which he attempted a refutation of Ted Johns' letter to the editor of Nov. 10. With calculated rhetoric, Brock Vodden's Nov. 17 letter to the editor in The Citizen attempts to refute Ted Johns' letter of Nov. 10 by manufacturing demeaning, hubristic phrases and putting them into the mouth of Mr. Johns. Vodden is also adept at reframing legitimate, but inconvenient, statements and queries and shrewdly transforming them into fictitious insults against Blyth by an `outsider'. The parochial, narrow-minded distinction of `outsider' or `stranger' is a recurring one, both in The Citizen and in practice in the community. One must conclude that it is consistent with the views of, at least, the owners of that local, cultural icon of contemporary media. Mr. Johns' letter describes, accurately, a known, highly - organized process of unelected people strategically insinuating themselves into positions to assume functions of control. John Ralston Saul characterizes this ongoing process as a "slow motion coup d'etat". Political opportunists recognize that control of cultural production and distribution is second only to control of the money supply in achieving control over an entire society. This is not new in Canada, or Huron County, as the even-handed Tiger Dunlop knew. He was an opponent of the Canada Company and the elitist Family Compact, both of which provided some with a living and others with obstacles to overcome. Ironically the Huron Tourism Association and its hard-working, pioneering members of more than two decades are recent, ruthlessly targeted victims of this undisguised process. Mr. Johns is not alone in his sentiments. The probability of the fate of the Huron Tourism Association and other events that have taken place, or are about to take place, in Blyth and area, was stated, expressly, in prescient detail, in an attachment to a letter distributed to Huron County Council in July, 2016, protesting the activities of the oddly erratic, vague and fuzzy, incoherent and variously monikered, 14/19ish entity. The hauntingly prescient attachment was also a letter, written to the municipality of North Huron 13 years ago. Vodden, and others, discourage democratically necessary, opposing views with the chill of verbal intimidation. Most of Mr. Johns' statements and queries, including that of the obscurant nature of 14/19, are informed and well-founded as revealed by facts that have been established with the participation of Councillor Vodden, who, now, repudiates some of them in his caustic attack on Mr. Johns and, secondarily, on Mr. Johns' letter, which is hardly a poison pen letter. Vodden, I've noticed, often employs bombast and exaggeration. Other 14/19 advocacy columns in The Citizen have also been dismissive by claiming that opposing views were "uninformed" and "lacking scope", or, even more tellingly, by pre-emptively labelling potential dissenters as "whiners, complainers and losers." It's puzzling that dismissers offer not information or scope, but, mostly para-mythogical, foundational types of tales, discordant for being callow and each emitting the faint whiff of a putrefying, residual, umbilical cord. There seems to be a denial about 14/19's secrecy and reticence slowly transforming into the desperate, tell-tale, signs of fundraising failure. The reported, frantic, 1 lth hour importuning of governments for funds to stave off total disaster served to give credence to the other damage -control signs of utter failure. Even North Huron Council complained, repeatedly, that their requests for fundraising status updates from 14/19 were met with equally utter silence. Mr. Johns' questioning is justified by other related facts: the belated tell-tale hiring of two, not inexpensive, fundraising consultancy groups; the rushed public-private partnership for the management of Memorial Hall and questions of whether public oversight, or other access to information, could be denied, legally, by the terms of the agreement; the wimpy, insipid, plan for the utilization of the Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity, which makes sense only if one sees the CCRC as a self-perpetuating propaganda machine with charitable status; the ballooning of 14/19's original, projected budget of $6,000,000 which now, could surpass $20,000,000 before the dust settles and the pressure mounts from the `managers' of the Memorial Hall `property' to make her pay her own way by applying gaudy red lipstick and showing a little leg so she can more easily be chilled to eager, predatory, corporate sponsors flush with trillions of public dollars from the largest financialized bank fraud in history. An economic case could be made that Blyth is poised to be a giant sponsorship -seeking mechanism, paid for and maintained by a new serfdom and designed to help showcase, and grind out a constant flow of unearned income for international, national and regional corporate brand interests, and especially local ones with key asset ownership and control. Such are the loyal -to -no-one, ruthless workings of financialization and modern feudalism. It is not without reason then, that Mr. Johns perceives that something doesn't quite gel or add up in the weak and dubious operational rationalizations of the 14/19's Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity — and its powerfully emotional, but flimsy, reaching -out - to -embrace -other -communities rationale. Perhaps this is inevitable from 14/19, an organization, some members of which position themselves as entitled and deserving by frequently lamenting or having it advocated, in the pages of The Citizen, that they, alone, have had to do the "slogging" while in reality, it is a matter of record that they had right before their eyes, since 1997- 1998 and beyond, the original detailed, democratic, inclusive, participatory concept based on `community -ownership - management -and -control'. This was suppressed, but, now, adulterated, is celebrated as an "ambitious and visionary concept". They, alone, chose to adulterate that original concept and to pursue an inverse version excluding and ignoring almost the entire community which was being seducingly assured that "It's All About You", even as the 14/19, "cloaked in secrecy" was determining and designing a community future based on privatized, key -asset ownership, management and control, a future which, blithely, cynically, and perhaps ominously, it declared "could change the face of the Blyth community forever." Tiger Dunlop would be partial to Ted Johns' frankness. An effective foil to sycophancy. Laura Lucio. The Citizen Check Recycling Tips on Page 5 • Medical Advances Study Report on Page 6 • World News Special Report on Page 1 #1 And We Still Try Harder! Recent circulation figures show The Citizen has the highest circulation in the northern part of Huron County, #3 in the entire county. 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