….because almost
all of today's Irving press is trash.
The only story worth
reading is on A1 “Senior officer tried to hush up visit to Oland
death scene, court told” Of course. This is Canada. Somebody in a
wealthy family is accused of a crime – and officials intervene to
mess up the case. The lesson is clear. Kill only poor people. Then
Harper gets really tough.
The editorial
cartoon has a picture of the world. It's called contagion. An arrow
points to East Africa labelled Ebola. Another points to the Middle
East with the label ISIS. A political cartoon should give people a
jolt. It should not simply agree with standard propaganda and
prejudice. A much better label for the Middle East contagion would
have have been U.S. (and possibly Britain).
Three of the four
commentaries are worth reading. The other isn't a commentary at all.
Brian Cormier doesn't like people who take bits of food from his
plate. Who bloody cares? Cormier lists himself as a communications
specialist. He needs another course in it. The one that says you need
to have something to communicate.
Alec Bruce has a
very thoughtful commentary on the NDP, and its recent slide in the
polls. I would add just a point to his analysis. The NDP is the only
party which enters a Canadian election with all the major, private
news media opposed to it, and offering their constant propaganda. As
a result, Canadians have no idea of the problems this country is
facing. The reaction of the NDP from its origin over fifty years ago
was to move further and further to the centre.
I can remember
furiously arguing this with David Lewis over supper. (He was then
leader of the party – and a brilliant man). His case was that its
ancestor party, the CCF, could not raise money to fight a campaign,
and it would never have the sort of money only the wealthy can give.
It needed union support – and they wouldn't give it unless the
party moved to the centre. (Incidentally, the bagman for New
Brunswick – a man I personally liked very much – was Romeo
Leblanc. His main job was to get money from you know who.)
In both Canada and the U.S., elections can be won only by the very,
very rich who provide the campaign money and who own the private news
media. And as long as that's the case, we won't have a democracy.
The Canada&World
section is a disgrace. Much of it is both local and trivial. Only
three stories are worth reading.
B2 has the story of
a Canadian Journalist who was jailed for no reason in Egypt. Harper
didn't lift a finger. “Harper 'betrayed and abandoned' me,
journalist says” Why did Harper behave that way? Simple. The
Egyptian government is a military dictatorship set up by the U.S. to
end democracy in Egypt. And Harper is a U.S. lap dog.
B6 has a reasonable
story on the Malaysian air flight downed over Ukraine. I am, though,
puzzled by the lack of any mention of machine gun fire (which could
only have come from an aircraft.) There were lots of pictures of it,
and machine gun fire (called cannon fire in its larger versions such
as 20mm guns)looks quite different from shrapnel. There are also
bigger questions.
1. Why was this
investigation given to The Netherlands, a close American ally and
perhaps even puppet state of the U.S. The majority of victims was,
of course, Dutch. But, in any case, should this not have been
assigned to the United Nations? It is, after all, a war crime under
international law.
2. Why was the pilot
instructed to fly over a war zone? Was that the regular pattern for
the flight? If so, who was responsible for failing to change that
pattern? Every country knows it should not allow flights over a war
zone.
3. Why did it take
fifteen months to investigate when the key evidence, the bits of
shrapnel, were before them from the start?
4. When will the
U.S. investigate the shooting down of an Iranian liner over the
Mediterranean some years ago, killing all aboard? And why have most
of the major news media never even reported it?
I do not suggest
this report is wrong because I really don't know. What I do know is
that there are irregularities here.
Also on B6 is the
story that the U.S. is providing military equipment to the 'rebels'
fighting Assad Syria. But that's not the real story.
1. the 'rebels'
aren't rebels. Most of them aren't even Syrians. They're hired
mercenaries.
2. The U.S. has been
training and equipping these 'rebels' from day one.
3. There is also a
substantial presence among the rebels, of the U.S. military and the
CIA.
4. It has also, from
the start, been a war to prevent Russia from have any economic
dealings with the Middle East.
Oh, and in an
amusing note, Obama says that “Russia risks slipping into a
quagmire in Syria” It's possible. And Obama would know because he
and Bush have created the quagmire. But what is happening now is even
worse than it might seem.
Russia and the U.S.
are now at war with each other. It's what's called a proxy war. They
don't send their forces directly against each other. They use others.
This has always been a proxy war since the U.S. started it many years
ago, using the 'rebels' as proxies.
For decades, the
U.S. has been using sanctions and threats to keep Russia out of world
markets. The Russian economy needs access to those markets. So Putin
has called the American bluff by intervening in Syria. The U.S. and
Russia are fighting each other in Syria, using proxies, but also
using their own forces – so far, only against the other side's
proxies.
But it takes only
one mistake, one accident, to make this a Russia-U.S. war. And
neither side is fighting for anything that could be called democracy
or freedom – though that is what it will be called.
Similarly, though
unreported in the Irving press, the U.S. is going to challenge
China's claim that two, artificial islands off the China coast are
Chinese territory. The U.S. response is a threat to send major
Pacific fleet units to within 12 nautical miles of those islands
without Chinese permission. Will China call the American bluff?
There appears to me
a desperation on all sides. And all of it caused by wealthy people
on all sides who want even more wealth.
There's a good column on C4 by student columnist Sabrina Stace. It's
about studying for mid terms – and it stresses the point of
avoiding ---well----stress.
Now to Israel –
and that brings two images to mind for me. From age 15 on, most of my
friends were Jews. They were very different from the Christians I had
known. They were extraordinarily compassionate, and intellectually
active. They led in movements like the nuclear disarmament movement;
they turned out in large numbers for talks on current events. It was
particularly striking when I had to give talks close together in
churches and synagogues. The churches wanted a light talk with a few
laughs. The synagogues wanted something serious and intellectually
challenging.
This had nothing to
do with racial characteristics. Judaism placed a heavy emphasis on
learning and discussion. Christianity does not. (Pope Francis is an
exception.) This spilled over into education. Education was and is
important in Jewish society. In every year I taught in Montreal,
Jewish students dominated among leading students in the provincial
exams. No, Jews aren't born brilliant. But they're raised with a
tremendous respect for learning.
Then I think of my
Palestinian students, almost all of whom did quite decent work, too.
And I think of one, a tall, lank guy who was an excellent student,
and the time he sat in my office, talking about going home to
Palestine.
It was a tale of
despair, of a homeland that was a barren concentration camp, forever
kept poor and with no control of it's own life by an Israel that
routinely stole its lands and homes, killed its people. Everything
was hopeless.
And, oh, the mutual
hatreds were intense. Some Israelis, perhaps a majority, see
Palestinians as an inferior people – much as Hitler felt about
Jews. Of course. When you abuse and kill people, you have to believe
that you belong to a superior race. That's what Britain thought about
the people of Africa and Asia and just about everywhere else. That's
what our ancestors thought (and what many Canadians still think)
about our native peoples. France had contempt for Algerians, Spain
and Portugal for the native peoples of Latin America. We're taught to
hate. Now, it's Muslims who are on our list.
How how does all
this explain the hatred between Jews and Palestinians? Well – that
has something to do with ----us.
In the 1920s, 30s,
40s, 50s and even later, nobody took second place to the U.S. and
Canada as Jew-haters. And very, very few cared about what Hitler was
doing to Jews – and that was an attitude reflected at the highest
levels of education, business, immigration practices, Hollywood…..
Montreal didn't have a Jewish (or Black) schoolteacher until 1960,
though Jews had been living in Montreal since the 1750s. Much the
same was true across Canada.
In the late 1930s,
Prime Minister MacKenzie King visited Hitler. He knew about the
state-sponsored attacks on Jews, the arrests, the beatings...but he
came home with nothing but praise for Hitler. From the 1930s to 1948
it was virtually forbidden for Jewish refugees to enter Canada. In my
childhood, almost all Jews in Montreal were poor, and lived not far
from the very poor district I grew up in. The writer, Mordecai
Richler, grew up there, and he once shared with me some of his more
unpleasant thoughts about Christians in those days. (Mordecai was
never a hater, though.)
The same was true of
the U.S. The U.S. now has a Black president. Well, it's about time.
Now, name me a Jewish president – or a Jewish prime minister of
Canada.
I knew Jews who had
survived the camps. They had been abandoned by most of the world and
most notably by Canada and the U.S. in the most horrible persecution
in history. Then, in 1945, their hatred just had to find a new
target.
The world decided to
create a Jewish homeland. (And please don't tell me that bilge about
Israel being the Jewish homeland. In the first place, it was taken
through war by the tribes that became Israel. In the second place,
most Jews have no significant connection with Israel at all. Israel
is no more the homeland (in any historical sense) of Jews than Canada
and the U.S. are the natural homelands of us European and African and
Asian intruders. In fact, even our native peoples don't have their
original homelands here – but at least they were the first humans
to get here.
What we did was to
give Jews a land that wasn't ours to give. It was already settled by
Muslims and Jews who had lived there together in peace for almost two
thousand years. And we kicked out most of the Muslims, and stuck them
on a barren piece of coast. We could have given them part of Canada
or part of the U.S. (and we would have been the better for it), but
we preferred the Palestinians to be the generous ones. This was
guaranteed to create hatreds on both sides.
For their part, the
Israelis knew from the start they had nothing to thank us for. The
U.S. has given massive help – but they know that's to maintain U.S.
influence in an important region for billionaires. And they know that
Harper supports them only verbally, and only to get the Jewish vote.
Jews have been
placed in a hostile world. The lesson of world war two is that they
have no reason to expect friendship from anybody. They have to look
after themselves. That has made them military-minded and anxious to
expand their borders for both economic and military reasons. That, as
has always happened in history, makes them see Palestinians as an
inferior people who can be killed and/or kept prisoners in poverty
until it's time to push them out.
Palestinians
understand that – they hate right back. This is the way people
react. They hate so that they can feel free to kill. In that respect,
Israel has some resemblance to Nazi Germany – and the British
Empire, and every other empire there ever was. I was often struck by
that when I talked to death camp survivors.
If there are good guys and bad guys in this, Canadians and Americans
are among the leading bad guys.
As a by-the-way,
Israelis don't depend on Harper's promises of support. They know how
outdated and feeble Canada's armed forces are. World ratings of
military strength leave us well behind countries like Switzerland and
Portugal.
Our military badly need rebuilding. They also need a sense of
purpose. Since 1945, they've simply been a branch of the U.S.
services – offering token support in wars that have nothing to do
with Canada. The reality is much as it was in 1812. We still live
beside an imperialist and aggressive country with a much bigger
population than ours.
And some good news.
Donald Trump has said something that is mostly, (well, partly)
intelligent. Check it out.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/13/donald-trump-foreign-policy-doctrine-nation-building
_____________________________________________________________________________
Finally, the only purposes of the Irving press are to make profits for the owner and, more important, to keep New Brunswick in ignorance of just about everything. It's deliberate. The vice-president of the newspaper chain is an Irving with a degree in journalism. It is not possible he would not see the failings of these papers. Nor is it possible that editors could be so ignorant of journalism as not to see what this is all about.
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