In the confusion of
the past few days, I forgot to mention two, excellent commentaries in
the Irving press by Jerrica Naugler (Oct. 19, C3) and Jana Giles
(Oct. 20, C2). Both are high school students. Both are thoughtful and
thought-provoking. Both produce real commentaries rather that the
casual or pompous or irrelevant waste-of-spacers that are so typical
of the Irving press staff.
For Oct. 21, a big, need-to-know story is that people in Moncton are obeying
garbage disposal regulations.
The editorialist has
nothing to say. Too bad, Trudeau's phone call to tell Obama that Canada would be
pulling its aircraft out of the “war against terrorism” in Iraq was a sound decision – and rather more important than an editorial
about “bearing the torch”.
What torch? We seem to be slipping into the
American practice of reserving high political office for the
offspring of those who have held it before. I'm not sure that's a
healthy sign.
Norbert makes the
point that Canadians are, traditionally, largely centrist. Norbert,
all that means is that we vote for parties whose practices have not
much changed since 1867. Now, as then, the Conservative and Liberal
parties are essentially agents of big money.
But the world has
changed a lot since 1867. In fact, it's changed a lot just in the
last generation or so. Running a country to benefit only the wealthy
was never a good idea; but it's now actually causing the breakdown of
whole societies.
And war doesn't work any
more. Even a country with the massive defence budget of the U.S.
probably cannot defeat either Russia or China in a conventional war –
and nobody can defeat anybody in a nuclear one.
We need to rethink
our whole international system. We need to do what we said we were
doing with the founding of the UN. But we didn't do it. Instead, we
just deliberately wrecked the U.N.
We need to consider international economic relations. To leave the real power in the hands of the very wealthy few has never worked very well. Capitalism's worship of competition has always been destructive, and it has never fitted into any sort of democracy. Now, the consequences of big capitalism being allowed to run unrestrained could be, at best, violent and unspeakably abusive - at worst, fatal for all of us.
And we've just
completed an election in which none of these serious questions was in
anybody's platform – with the exception of the Greens. There is no
virtue in being a centrist when the centrists are off the
point.
Brian Cormier should
read the student commentaries, and learn what a commentary is.
Alec Bruce is
cautious – and so he says nothing. That leaves us with a guest
column as the only item in section A worth reading. It's about the
impact of poverty on children, a topic that has received little
attention from any Canadian government. This is an important column.
The lead story for
the section on Canada and the whole, wide world is the Oland trial.
There's another story about it on p. B2.
There are no stories
about events that could be the biggest game-changers of our age. In
one, Russia has thrown down the glove to the US. American
billionaires will not be permitted to control the middle east. They
will have to share control with Russian billionaires. This is the
result of 15 years of aggression, bullying and killing by the U.S. -
15 years whose only achievement has been to make the U.S. detested
throughout the region. Watch for Iraq to switch its allegiance to
Russia and China. Watch for Iran to be much less fearful of American
power.
And the U.S., for
all its tough language and its monster 'defence' budget does not seem
to be in a position to get tough with Russia and/or China. To make
the situation worse, U.S. policy has created such instability in the
region and such confused, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory
wars involving Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya it is often
impossible to tell which side anybody is on.
American policy has
been dictated in the interest solely of its oil industry. All that
has resulted in is mass murder, malnutrition, impoverished refugees,
sectarian wars and wars within wars. (And all of this is really more
important than even the Oland trial.)
Section B4 mentions
that China's Xi has been welcomed to Britain by the Queen. And
there's a mention that some British are worried about China's human
rights record. Xi might be worried less about that than many British
might think. Britain was responsible for over a century of
destruction, killing, imposed starvation, looting, forced purchasing
of opium in China, not mention the millions who died of starvation as
a result of the destruction of the old China.…… (Nor do the U.S.
and Canada have much to brag about in that area. Where is the big
effort to help native peoples? What about our use of domestic spies?
What about the right of the U.S. president to order the killing or
imprisonment of any American without charge or trial? What about the
U.S. record of illegal wars and mass killing?)
Xi's visit to
Britain is a sharp reminder that the days of western empire, 75 years
gone in Europe, and crumbling today in the U.S., are over. We need
some very serious thinking of how to re-organize our world in the
face of that change.
Instead ( and
unmentioned in the Irving press), the U.S. is organizing war
exercises for its navy, partly in waters claimed by China.
Oh, I know, China's
claim is based on artificial islands it built in those waters. Now
think really hard. How far is Hawaii from the U.S. mainland? And when
did the native people of Hawaii vote to join the U.S.? These naval
“war exercises” are an old, imperial game. And it's a game whose
time has passed.
B5 has a story on
the violence sweeping Israel – especially Jerusalem. Too bad it's a
story that gives only the Israeli point of view. How many stories
have we seen in the Irving press about conditions in Palestine? About
Israeli control of life for Palestinians? About officials at the
highest level in Israel who are as brutal and racist as Hitler ever
was? About a government whose only reaction to the violence has been
to respond with violence?
Israelis are not the
helpless victims of this violence. It is the product of decades of
abuse of Palestinians. It is the product of a Judaism that has become
profoundly racist. It is the product of an Israel whose soldiers kill
Palestinian children for throwing rocks, but did nothing to an
Israeli mob that lynched an innocent man who had the misfortune to
look as though he might be a Palestinian.
This is the sort of behaviour that creates groups like ISIS.
As a footnote to all
this, I wonder that the Irving press made no comment about the Jewish
vote in the Canadian election. Harper went to great lengths to get
that vote. He did it by defending Israel against all criticism. So I
checked a key riding for the Jewish vote in Montreal. A man I know
was the Conservative candidate in that riding. He is an ardent
Zionist. He lost. I haven't had time to check other Jewish ridings in
Canada. But this suggests to me that in Canada, as in the U.S., a
great many Jews have become critical of Israel. Many of them were and
remain believers in a Jewish state. But they are not pleased with the
behaviour of Israel.
I routinely check a
site called Information Clearing House. I don't entirely trust its
news sources but, in comparison to our mainstream news in the western
world, it's brilliant. The top left-hand corner has a black rectangle
which has a daily list of people killed by U.S. police. But it's not
possible to read it because it vanishes almost immediately.
Information Clearing
House has always had trouble from the various espionage and sabotage
groups in the government of the freedom-loving USA.
A reader sent me the
site below – I don't doubt that Putin is a very tough guy, quite
capable of being ruthless. But we Canadians forget that we have a
neighbour with an extraordinary record of killing, torture, illegal
invasions, imposed starvation – and we Canadians have taken a part
in all this. Remember the records of George Bush, Obama, Tony Blair…
But our press is almost never critical of these people – just those
on the other side. So here, thanks to a reader, is a more balanced
look at Putin.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/17102015-putin-and-the-press-the-demonology-school-of-journalism-oped/
The same reader,
bless his heart, also sent me this disturbing story. A British court
has ruled that is legal for police to spy on members of parliament.
It's worth reading this to understand why this is a serious matter.
Canada,
incidentally, has been spying on Members of Parliament ( as well as
the rest of us) for at least 70 years.
There's also the
largely untold story on drone strikes. Recent leaks from U.S.
documents show that the majority of those killed by drone strikes are
innocent people. Yet these happen almost every day in many parts of
the world. They are assassinations ordered by the president, acts of
war without any justification for war and without any legal reason
for it. Those ordered for assassination can be Americans or citizens
of any country, names selected by the president and his advisors for
death without charge or trial. This is what, in the 1930s, was called
Murder Incorporated – a criminal organization in the U.S. that
hired itself out for killings.
There's also
evidence from American sources that drones are ineffective except in
creating even greater hatred for the U.S. And this is the country
that criticizes Putin for being brutal – and Xi for not
recognizing human rights.
The easiest way to
get stories on this is to google al Jazeera drones Almost all the
information comes from leaked American documents.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Oh, The Guardian
(UK) has the story that Trudeau is cancelling Canadian bombing of
Iraq and Syria. The Irving press seems to have been unaware of it.
The only big, world story the Irving press has is that some witnesses
at the Oland trial heard noises in the night.
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