The 4-minute clip of Murphy-Grewal meeting (new slide show)

Dear friends,

Sorry about the long delay, which has caused some of our regulars to complain of hunger pangs (see here). (There are also many recent posts on Grewal at Edward T. Bear's Blankout Times.

Anyway, here is a new slide show of the Murphy-Grewal meeting of May 18th. Presentation of this recording is complicated by the fact that we have three versions. There is an 8-minute version that was released soon after Grewal announced that he had been taping his conversation. There is a four-minute version that was released (by mistake?) to the public on May 31. And there is the full version, which I accept as genuine (or close enough that it doesn't matter), which was mounted on the Grewal's site on June 2nd. (A transcript followed on June 5.)

Anyway, if you go to the slide show, you'll see a print out of the conservative transcript (it dates itself to June 5 on p. 1). In yellow is what is in the 8-minute clip; in a red band down the left margin is what is in the 4-minute clip.

As you watch the slide show, watch that red band. The four-minute tape is not merely a section of the original recording, it begins with the opening seconds, then cuts out most of the hello-how-are-you, then begins with what are probably the most embarassing minutes for the Liberals. (In context, however, I don't think that they are that bad--but I'll post on this later.)

The effect of the cut, however, is that one thinks that one is listening to a whole conversation. This means anything that could be misinterpreted out-of-context probably would be misintrepeted. This is all the more so since there had already been an eight minute tape released that begins more or less (but not exactly) where the 4-minute tape picks up (after that gap). This meant that providing those few seconds at the beginning of the four-minute tape had the effect of giving the listeners of the 8-minute tape the confidence that it, too, was being heard in context.

That was the effect. But was this its purpose? I'm not sure. On the whole, the editing of this tape, while highly unsettling, is less tendentious than in the Murphy-Dosanjh-Grewal meeting (which you can see graphically at the first slide show. Personally, I wonder whether this may be the work of a more subtle mind. But that is speculation.

[Edited. The date of the release of the unedited tapes is corrected to June 2]