Abstract: The paper examines some aspects of The Globe and Mail’s treatment of East Timor in the 1990s as propaganda. It focuses on John Stackhouse’s 1996 feature article "Destino," while briefly considering the Nobel Prize "problem." I argue that via the tropes of "communist contamination" and "tragic destiny" both Stackhouse’s article itself and the surrounding coverage at the time constructed East Timor’s future as inevitably Indonesian. In so doing The Globe conveyed the impression that the efforts by Timorese and their Canadian supporters to achieve East Timor’s independence from Indonesia and surcease of its oppression were futile.

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