"When the truth is treason, the problem is the government." -- US Senator Ron Paul

It's been interesting to watch the Main Stream Media contort over the recent release of Wikileaks documents.

First they were all excited, the New York Times and the Guardian and others even staking out exclusive rights for various territories and titillating their readers with the promise of salacious details on what diplomats really say about one another.

There was an initial gush of coverage as they tried to cover everything being revealed.

Then, when the documents began to cast a negative light on some within the political spectrums that different media conglomerates either openly support or oppose, we got conflicting opinions on whether the man behind the dump of secret documents was a saint or a scoundrel.

Some pundits called for him to be assassinated. Others insisted he was the personification of freedom of speech.

That led to an ethical debate about whether the leaks put innocent people in danger or helped others gain wider public awareness of their situation.

And as each day brings new revelations about how our ruling classes behave, I detect a growing concern that the Media might no longer be able to control what news we see or read.

Am I the only one beginning to wonder how you can arrest a man and hold him without bail because a condom broke, but you can't demand a better product from the condom manufacturer sponsoring the newscast obsessed with that part of the Wikileaks story?

Or far more importantly, why the arrest of Wikileaks' Julian Assange is your lead story while there is no mention of new documents he just leaked which prove the American government helped purchase little boys for Afghan police officers to use as sex toys?

Is one story of greater importance than the other? Is the Main Stream Media protecting somebody by not running with that Afghan revelation?

Or has their market research told them that you don't care about that sort of unsettling stuff and would rather watch the "Jersey Shore" version of the news?

Yesterday, the Houston Press ran the following headline:

Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops

Kind of gets your attention, doesn't it?

So far not one word in any Canadian news source I can find.

The story details a Wikileaks released document from US diplomats confirming that American security contractor DynCorp, hired by the US Government at an annual cost of almost $2 Billion to train Afghan police officers, used some of that money to procure 8 - 15 year old boys as "gifts" for Afghan police officers who use them for anal sex.

Apparently DenCorp also uses some of their public funding to purchase drugs to get the same Afghan cops in a party mood.

Stunned?

Not even just a little?

You can read the full story here.

Now, this isn't the first time I've heard this tale. It's been a hot topic for months with Alex Jones, an American talk show host who also runs the Prisonplanet.com website.

Prison Planet is the kind of place that inspires people to marry the words "Batshit" and "crazy", being mostly concerned with dangers of Chemical Contrails and Flouride in your drinking water. Yet every now and then Jones ragdolls something that doesn't sound quite as outlandish.

However, the powers that be probably feel as much need to respond to his revelations as they do to "The Weekly World News" reports on President Obama's private meetings with Batboy.

But the story didn't stay within the confines of late night radio and conspiracy websites. Not long after Jones began calling out DynCorp, the PBS series "Frontline" ran a documentary on the practice (known locally as "Bacha Bazi") which is still available on their website.

Again, nobody in the Main Stream Media explored the story further, maybe because they already had their quota of child rape stories what with Roman Polanski and the Catholic Church.  In fact the Washington Post downplayed it as a "questionable management oversight" of those on the ground in Afghanistan.

The only official reaction from the US State Department referred to the Afghan sex slavery of children as a "widespread culturally accepted form of male rape" which also violated Sharia law and the Afghan civil code the cops they were training would soon stop.

Nobody said they were rewarding the Afghan cops they were training by purchasing them their own child sex slaves.

This particular Wikileak raises a huge number of issues.

First, this isn't the first time DynCorp has been involved in the world of child sex. In 1999, one of their own employees, Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop, who wouldn't keep quiet about the sex trade of girls as young as 12 in Bosnia. That story has just been turned into a film called "The Whistleblower".

DynCorp, which was also a major player after Hurricane Katrina, has also been criticized for not being able to account for $1.2 Billion in US Federal money paid to them to train police in Iraq.

Which makes you wonder how these guys keep getting hired in Washington.

Or maybe, if you're real good at your job, the government doesn't mind you buggering a couple of orphans.

Then you've got to wonder if some of the ongoing Afghan resistance to NATO forces might have something to do with people not wanting to have their kids ass-raped by the coalition's local partners.

They've already had to endure our troops turning a blind eye to officials ripping off tens of millions in aid money that was supposed to make their lives better, so maybe their corruption line in the sand is Junior's back door.

I've talked to a few Canadian soldiers who've returned from their tours of duty in Afghanistan. The prevailing sentiment was that they felt enormous compassion for the people they were over there to protect but didn't much care for the local officials and warlords they were also instructed to support.

And since Canadian troops will now be staying in Afghanistan to take over the training of the local police, will they have to get into the business of pimping out children in order to get their trainees to play along?

Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, you want some sound bites guaranteed to make some cabinet minister squirm on "Question Period", they're right in front of you.

Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and US President Barrack Obama have kids the same age as the boys being abused, raped and murdered in Afghanistan. Shouldn't somebody be asking them why their representatives in Kabul have not only been aware of the practice but enabling it?

But this particular Wikileak isn't in the Globe & Mail today or featured on CBC's Newsworld. Instead both are fixated on the hacking of MasterCard by Wikileaks supporters.

Is that because MasterCard is one of their most important sponsors -- or because they are confident you really don't want to know?

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This has been a bad year for losing the friends and acquaintances who were around when I started my career. So far, the count is 13.

Somewhat to be expected when you edge past your 50's. But it's more than the number of soldiers we lost in Afghanistan this year. And yet I don't hear Michael Ignatief or Jack Layton calling for a withdrawl of Canadian artists from the Quagmire of Mainstream Media and negotiating a truce with the American TV and Film hegemony.

Already saddened by the weekend passing of playwright David French, I took another hit opening the newspaper to his obituary and finding another for film professor John Katz. And then, just a few hours later, the news that the voice of CITY-TV, Mark Dailey, had died was being posted online.

At best, only one of those names will register with any given group of Canadians, if they register at all.

If you're a fan of Canadian theatre, you might recall French as one of its early icons.

If you love movies, you might've read one of Katz's books on that medium or caught a film he programmed for some festival.

If you lived in Toronto you were likely aware Dailey anchored a newscast or made an effort to tune into a "Late, Great Movie" in time to catch his inimitable introductions.

Those who knew of all three might well think they didn't have much in common. But they did.

In a lot of ways, they were the same guy walking separate paths through the same point in space and time along a portion of Toronto that's come to be known as the Mink Mile -- and walking it with a purpose.

I don't know who coined the term, but "The Mink Mile" describes a section of Bloor Street in Toronto that stretches West from the city's official center at Yonge Street to a residential neighborhood known as the Annex.

The Mile's first blocks are filled with exclusive stores, the town's version of Rodeo Drive. Then comes the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto Campus before a stretch of funkier stores, beer joints and coffee hangouts that service the Annex's resident students, artists and downtown movers and shakers.

When the city birthed an explosion of Canadian theatre in the early 1970's, most of the theatres were in and around the Annex. It had a freer campus vibe. Beer was still 15 cents a glass at the Brunswick House and big old homes that would later be gentrified were cheap rooming houses and crash pads.

The summer I hit town, Bill Glassco's Taragon Theatre, which would become one of the our most respected, had its first hit with David French's "Leaving Home".

Better writers than I'll ever be have penned thousands of pages on what that show meant to Canada and Canadian theatre. It was basically our "Death of a Salesman" -- only more heart-rending. I had the good fortune of seeing it with the original cast, with bravura performances by Sean Sullivan and Frank Moore in the classic generational battle of father and son.

The play's emotionally shattering final scenes remain a testament to the power of theatre.

Back then, and really for most of the rest of his life, David was a fixture on the Western end of the Mink Mile. I never did one of his plays, but I worked a couple of shows at the Tarragon where he was writer in residence for a while. And he turned up at everything else that played in town, often by himself, always way in the back and usually leaving without saying much to anybody connected to the show.

But I lived in the Annex and would see him from time to time grabbing coffee in the morning or walking Bloor street late at night eternally lost in thought. We'd nod a "Hello". I'd compliment him on something else he'd written and he'd offer kind words about whatever I was doing.

Now and then we'd both have seen a show neither of us had anything to do with and discuss it over a cup of coffee. My reactions were those of an actor, his were the ones that writers have.

But he'd started out as an actor too and had written for TV long before he became a revered playwright with a play now included in the Oxford Dictionary's list of "Essential English Drama". Not bad for a guy who started out writing monologues for Howard the Turtle on "Razzle Dazzle".

What I recall most was how passionate he was about the theatre. Whether it was accurate or not, I got the sense he didn't think he was all that special, but the success of one show had put him in the spotlight and he wanted to make sure he didn't disappoint. He always gave me the feeling that if something he did wasn't dead, solid perfect it would let the whole Canadian Theatre scene down and he wouldn't allow that to happen.

John Katz hung at the other end of the Mink Mile, near ground zero of the Film Festivals he helped program and the offices of the fly-by-night producers who fed off the nearby bankers and lawyers and old money while fueling the break-through of a Canadian film industry.

John had a completely different personality from David French. He was outgoing and ebullient and effusive, always on the move and talking a mile a minute. He'd button hole complete strangers after a screening, not to get their opinion, but to make sure they'd loved it as much as he did. And he wouldn't let them go until they promised to tell their friends and make sure their friends told friends.

He never seemed to stop sparking people to do something to promote or further the film business. He wrote books about films, he taught filmmaking at York University and he scoured the world to find great films he could introduce to his homeland.

In 1979, he programmed Ira Wohl's documentary "Best Boy" for Toronto's "Festival of Festivals" and when it didn't find a distributor bought the Canadian rights himself. It went on to win the Academy Award.

Around the same time, he wrote the first of two books on documentary filmmaking, "Image Ethics" about the responsibilities of those in the film world when they make public the private lives of ordinary people.

It's the kind of book those making most of what passes for reality on Canadian TV completely ignore.

But others did not and many who took John's courses at York University would go on to win Academy Awards and other cinematic accolades of their own.

"Image Ethics" became a seminal work in establishing the Media Ethics Association and it led to required courses in most North American schools of media and journalism.

But John was also often found in the trendy eateries of the Mink Mile and his love of film and writing skills got him into a few script and story deals with the Canadian movie moguls who habituated the same locales. 

We'd often talked about movies. But one night he phoned because one of those moguls was "screwing him around" and he needed some advice. I helped him as much as I could. And I guess it worked out okay. Because a few months later, he sidled up to me at a screening in his trademark white suit, pastel shirt and loud tie to whisper a quiet "Thank you". It was the only time I ever heard him speak in a hushed tone.

A little over a decade ago, John's reputation as a teacher and the academic success of a couple of his other books landed him a job teaching at Penn State, where a new generation of film students were entertained and inspired by lectures that would continue until mere days before his death.

Like John Katz, Mark Dailey was a transplanted American. He'd started his professional career as a cop in Ohio, but gave that up to report on crime in Detroit and eventually brought his act to Toronto and a seat-of-its pants news department at CITY-TV.

Mark became a well known face up and down the Mink Mile and pretty much every other street in the city. While other reporters did their stand ups from crime scenes in a suit and tie, Mark showed up in a trench coat and fedora, like some ink stained wretch from an old Dan Duryea movie.

His voice soon became synonymous with CITY-TV, delivering breaks and bumpers and program introductions in a breezy, refusing to be impressed style that gave the impression the guy was on the street 24 hours a day. He was the reporter who never stopped dogging a story and didn't give a shit if you didn't like how he told it.

If you search Youtube, you'll find dozens of intro's Mark voiced for CITY-TV's "Late Great Movies", most of them pointing out that the film was far from great, starred people nobody had ever heard of and often included spoilers like "Tonight you'll see the guy who now signs my paycheck get shot".

I first met him when he came to do one of those five minute bits on a new play opening in town. That was normally the turf of some young pretty who worked at the station. But I guess she was sick that week because Mark drew the assignment.

Given the location of the theatre, he might have just been nearby because somebody had been murdered in the back alley.

Most entertainment beat reporters doing that kind of thing turn up wearing fashions no real actor can afford and work from a press release because the show hasn't opened yet. Their first question while the videographer sets up is always "So, what's this play about?".

But Mark had attended the previous night's preview performance and asked the tough questions that most entertainment reporters think will either flummox the interviewee or their audience. Like everything else he did, he was a breath of fresh air.

Years later, our paths crossed again when he was anchoring CITY newscasts and I was doing ride-alongs to help make a cop show more true to life. Ever the reporter, he'd caught a call on his police scanner and decided it was a story that needed his touch.

It took a couple of minutes for him to recognize me in this new career configuration. But once he did he went on at length about how much he liked what we were doing, giving me a list of stories and local cops I should look up while also mentioning some he remembered from the mean streets of Detroit. I dutifully followed up and one of those Detroit stories made it onto the show.

What all three of these men had in common was how passionately they cared about what they did and the city they called home. Not that many others didn't or don't. But with David, John and Mark, it seemed to be a calling, something they had to do for all the others they passed as they made their way along the Mink Mile.

Each in their own way gave rise to something that, at one time, defined Toronto; its indigenous theatre, its scrappy film industry, its roving reporter who really was "Everywhere".

Often, when people die, someone will say that their work here was done. And that's a feeling I can't shake about so many of those I've lost this year. For while I know there are men and women of equal talent and passion doing the things that they did, it still feels like those who have gone left because Toronto and the Canadian entertainment world didn't need them anymore.

Canadian theatres are struggling to survive these days, especially if their plays are written by a Canadian like David French.

Despite a sparkling new theatre for Festival films that would have made the heart of John Katz leap with joy -- more people will see "Black Swan" during its opening week in Toronto than will see every single Canadian film released there this year in total.

Meanwhile, the TV station that Mark Dailey symbolized falters in the hands of people who think reporters need to wear suits and be eternally deferential and respectful to owners who only know how to imitate rather than innovate.

The Mink Mile is firmly back in the grip of the bankers and the lawyers and the old money that first established it. Not that it ever truly belonged to anybody else. But for a time, people like David and John and Mark made it feel like it was a place for everyone.

But now their work is done and its time for somebody else to step up before what they accomplished disappears forever.

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It's not as much fun to catch a plane as it used to be. Time was you could just climb aboard without anybody wanting to see anything more than a boarding pass.

You'd stretch out in extra wide seats, drink as much as you wanted, wander around the aisles, smoke 'em if you had 'em and dig into a full course meal using a razor sharp steak knife and silverware you could've easily sharpened into a shiv before you went up to hang with the pilots and maybe even strap into the jumper seat to watch the landing from the cockpit.

Then around 1969 (the year with the most hijackings on record) out came the metal detection wands and then the carry-on baggage X-ray and departure lounges where your Mom wasn't allowed to come in and give you a final hug.

Since 9/11 and the shoe and underwear bombers, just getting to the plane has become an obstacle course. And once you're strapped in, you know you better be on your best behavior.

I'm sure a lot of that is warranted and it's certainly understandable. But more and more, I'm wondering if the claim that it's all "Security Theatre" isn't just as valid.

I caught a flight to the Caribbean a few weeks after 9/11 and was frankly both impressed and relieved at how much extra attention was paid to what I was carrying on the plane and how many people wanted to double check my ID.

It was probably unlikely that a crowd of drunken Canadian sun-seekers might include a suicidal terrorist muttering "Death to America", but since we were flying over a number of major US cities, you couldn't blame anybody for wanting to make sure.

But on the way home, we didn't even go through a metal detector and departed from an airport without so much as a picket fence around it. The phrase "soft target" came readily to mind and I began to wonder how much of the security concerns were for show rather than an actual defensive strategy.

When you fly from Canada to the States, you usually have to kick your shoes off. But you don't when you're flying domestically. Yet I've been on US bound flights when the Screeners told me they "weren't doing that today".

Maybe shoe bombers don't take advantage of Saturday discounts.

Like many people, I've also gotten aboard and discovered a Buck knife left over from my last camping trip that nobody found. Twice I've gone through three sets of security before the airline employee at the gate asked if I had my real boarding pass instead of the one I was waving around for a later connecting flight.

Either those security people who had sternly studied it couldn't read or they figured I wasn't getting on any plane with what I was carrying so I obviously posed no in-flight threat.

But the most obvious hint that the airport security check might be an elaborate form of performance art occurred one day while I was at the pre-security security check where the guy with a display of correct sized liquid containers checks to make sure you're not carrying any that aren't.

As his partner squinted at my "not actually for this flight" boarding pass, I watched him confiscate a couple of over-sized water bottles and Michael Jordan them into his trash recepticle. I remember thinking that if they'd contained Nitro Glycerin, he, me and about half the airport would've been instantly vaporized. 

Then as he went through my stuff, an airport maintenance guy came by to drop off a fresh trash barrel and pick up the one full of seized cans and bottles. For starters, he wasn't wearing a Hazmat suit.

In fact, he didn't even have a pair of rubber gloves. So like the security agent, he knew there really wasn't anything dangerous in what he was hauling away.

I asked if they got to keep any of the cans of soda or bottles of booze in the trash. He smiled and shook his head. "I wish. But it all has to go into the dumpster."

Me: "Where does the dumpster go?"

Him: (a shrug) "Into a garbage truck like all the other trash."

Meaning if somebody was carrying some airborne botulism, can of radioactive isotopes or whatever else evil genius terrorists concoct, it's now in your local landfill -- or already seeping into the groundwater -- or mutating rats and seagulls into giant, rabid killing machines.

When the latest traveler's indignity, "the pat down", became de rigueur South of the Border, I became convinced the process was more for show than actual terrorist interdiction.

And like all theatre, it's a little more expensive to produce than other forms of distraction.

Perhaps an argument can be made that knowing such a search option exists deters would-be evil-doers, but I still feel sorry for all those folks who have to be groped and re-groped just so they can go somewhere to see their grandchildren.

I also think a lot of the firestorm of protest came from people less upset by the intrusion on their privacy than the realization that their world is changing yet again, and that once respected and deeply held values are being pushed aside with no assurance that what's coming will make life better.

And nobody seems capable of explaining why the completely non-intrusive security screening at Israeli airports with its incredibly higher success rate at preventing terror attacks won't work just as well here.

Maybe, like every teenage girl, Americans are discovering its just far easier to come up with 50 guys who only want to grope you than to find one who can sense what's really on your mind.

Maybe, like so many things that become major media events, the "pat-down" will one day seem as normal as emptying all the change out of your pockets before going through a metal scanner.

Maybe it'll be just one more thing that mediocre stand-up comics endlessly riff about.

Or maybe it'll be one of those things that makes people want to hang onto the life they value a little tighter and fight to make those performing the theatre actually do something real for a change.

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