The story of the day
is that New Brunswick and Nova Scotia are joining in a big sex-trade
deal. It will give moose the right to cross provincial boundaries in
order to – you know. That's the biggest story in Section A.
Then there's the
breaking story of a restaurant that got big coverage when it was
flooded. Now, it's getting big coverage for being repaired. In a
similar note, we have our third story about an elderly woman in
poverty who is struggling to live in a shack. And the sub-story is
that her generous, New Brunswick neighbours are helping her. And
there is still not a word about how many New Brunswickers have to
live like this. Or about what they need.
A4 has the story
that the Lieutenant-Governor is going to volunteer twenty hours of
her time to helping young children with learning problems. It's a big
story in this province of terrible literacy, and it suggests this is
just the beginning of an attempt to involve many more adults in
voluntarily helping young children.
I certainly applaud
the Lieutenant-Governor for her action. But teaching children to read
requires trained teachers. How typical for New Brunswick! When it
comes to a new hockey rink, we slap a hundred million down without a
thought. But when it comes to teaching our children, (or helping
elderly women who are malnourished and living in desperate
conditions), we gotta cut costs, and look for freebies.
Functional
illiteracy, as well, is not simply a child or a school problem. Many
children don't read because their parents don't read. We also have a
library that is far too small for a city, and is one of the
worst-funded in Canada. It is not a coincidence that this is also a
province with a marked lack of interest in anything that requires
thinking.
Anyway, I don't believe our schools need mentors. I have Norbert
Cunningham's personal opinion on this when he wrote that we already
have too many teachers.
The Opinion and
Commentary pages are a wipe-out.
The editorial is
about how we need more bomb-sniffing dogs. Tell you what, kid. Just
take out one row of seats in the hockey rink – and there's your
bomb-sniffing dogs.
Norbert writes yet
another column on the theme that elected governments set the budget
for this province. In Norbert's view, we live in a province in which
the very rich can pay a minimum wage of ten bucks an hour, corporate
execs can get a thousand dollars a day and more, much more, the rich
can get an increasing share of the total income for the province, pay
low taxes, and get loopholes to pay no taxes at all. And the
governments of this province do take orders – but not from you and
me.
Norbert, I'm so
happy you read Richard Saillant's book on 'Over the Cliff'. Did you
know there are other books, too?
Yes, there are.
The president and
CEO of Horizon Health Network writes a long column to tell us we have
to do the right thing. And, in that sentence, I have told you all he
has to say. Brian Cormer has a bedtime story that he thinks if a
commentary. Alec Bruce has a rant that we're too slow in developing
shale gas. In that same column, he says it probably won't develop now
because it can't compete with the cheap price of oil.
Well, Alec, leaving
aside the issue of possible effects fracking (such as the massive
spill that now afflicts southern California – you know, the one
that the Irving press has never reported) the reality is that there
is no market for the stuff – so we never had any possibility of
making money out of it in the first place. Read about the falling
price of oil.
Then he challenges
us. Are we timorous or bold and forthcoming?
Well, I'll tell you,
Alec. When it comes to challenging the wealthy, we (and especially
our private news media and the staff of our private media and the
Liberals and Conservatives) are the most drooling and timorous lot
I've ever seen.
Wanna do something bold and forthcoming? Write a column challenging
the Irvings.
There is really
nothing at all in the Canada and World section. I give up on Latin
America, China, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, most of Africa, because we never
hear anything about them. I'm astonished they can ignore so much of
the middle east when we could find ourselves locked into a war
involving Syria, Russia, France, Britain, the U.S. and others in a
war that could lead to a nuclear war – all through a war which has
nothing to do with any Canadian interest.
Would Trudeau allow that to happen to us? I suspect he already has.
How else to explain Canadian aircraft attacking Syria? We are playing
with a November 11 which will have many people to remember – but
none to attend.
As I suspected
several days ago with Canada's $15 billion sale of armoured cars to
Saudi Arabia, they are not for military purposes. They are police
vehicles which will be used to kill Saudis who disagree with the
government. I couldn't believe the military sale story because
armoured cars are close to useless in battle, and have been for
almost seventy-five years.
Canada is breaking a
pledge not to supply weapons to countries with bad human rights
records. They don't come worse than Saudi Arabia. It is also, along
with Turkey, the major supplier of money and weapons to ISIS.
But, said a Canadian
government spokesman, there's very high profit in this. Still glad
you voted for Trudeau?
There's also a story
that American police are scamming Canadians. Cars with Canadian
plates are commonly stopped for no reason. Police then search the car
and the driver and passengers, mostly for money which they take –
and keep. Then they wave goodbye. But Canadians should not be
offended. They commonly do that to Americans, too. And just imagine
what they do to Mexicans.
The source for this
is not one I automatically trust. It's biased. It's really
propaganda. But my experience is it uses truth as propaganda. That's
quite a contrast with the sort of propaganda we get in our private
news media.
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This next site is an
interesting one. I chose one of its stories at random, the American
use of drone strikes in Pakistan (a US 'friend'), and the hundreds of
children killed by them. And this is just Pakistan. Drones are also
used in Yemen, in Africa, in unnamed places all over the world.
'Friend' Pakistan,
by the way, is also a major supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan –
just as our good friend, Turkey, is a major supporter of ISIS.
Private companies
(which seem to be mainly Canadian) are suing the U.S. government for
blocking their oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas. They're looking
for billions to make up for the future profits they might (or might
not) have lost.
In this new world, a
government which forbids, say, a pipeline because it constitutes a
severe environmental risk can be sued. It will endanger our water
supply? Tough. It poses a serious risk to human life? Them's the
breaks.
The court this goes
to is not like other courts. They are designed to handle cases like
this. The design is built into free trade agreements. In these,
unusual courts, the judges and lawyers rotate, perhaps one month a
judge, the next a lawyer. And all the judges and lawyers become
billionaires in a very short time.
Many free trade
deals have done massive damage to societies. These free-trade
'courts' are the final step in destroying democracy and allowing the
very rich to rule the world.
Think hard about the
meaning of the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership. And don't kid
yourself that we are partners of any sort. The biggest enemy facing
us and the whole world is the greed of unregulated capitalism. That's
why writers for the Irving press tell us nothing in their newspapers.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Experts at the UN
are urging Obama to close Guantanamo, to stop using torture, and to
punish those responsible for carrying it out.
I'm surprised The
Legion didn' t say that on Nov. 11. Isn't that what so many Canadian
died for in world war two? How can we remember so well what they died
for, and then completely forget to do it?
In the years since
1945, the world has abandoned virtually all the principles we said
we fought for. Democracy is about done for. And we have led the way
in the abandonment. We are moving back to a world like the middle
ages in Europe – only much more brutal. Greed is not only
acceptable, it is regarded as a right of those who have the wealth to
be greedy while others starve. We don't even notice the daily
contradictions. An elderly woman gets press coverage because she
lives in horrible conditions…..
Could this have
anything to do with living in a society in which some people can
earn thousands of dollars a day? And pay very low taxes (if any)
while that woman depends on the kind hearts to of our neighbours to
survive?
You think ISIS is
evil? I agree. We torture, starve and kill far more people than ISIS
ever can. We have become a society almost without morality (except
for those devout souls who hold up signs saying we should not kill
babies by abortion. Apparently, it's okay to kill them with bombs and
starvation.)
We have some who
claim to have various religions. But I see no trace of anybody in
political power or anybody in big business who represents any
morality whatever. And we accept that.
I thought the NDP
was wrong, dead wrong, in its approach to the last, federal election.
Its approach abandoned the principles the NDP arose from. Instead, it
went for where the voters were. Yes, I can see how that would win an
election. But where most of the voters are is dead wrong. Where they
are is making us progressively poorer, increasingly subordinate to
the rich, and largely ignorant of what is happening – even here in
New Brunswick. Win an election in those circumstances, and you have
won the power to do nothing at all.
If we want to make
New Brunswick a place that has concern for its people, it's not as
simple as changing parties. New Brunswick has been changing parties
for over a century and half with no sign of improvement. If, in this
year of 2016, it is still possible for a population to care so little
about poverty, education, health care, homelessness, (and a decent
news service),if it is still possible to take pride in leaving the
needs of people up to charities – usually sponsored by companies
that use their cheques as cheap ads – we're not going to changes
things simply by changing political parties.
We have to change
the people of New Brunswick. We have to change them to expect more of
government, to be more critical and more openly critical of the
wealthy who control the province.
We have to give them
the opportunity to be better informed than they are by the private
news media.
This is a problem
with a dreadful imbalance of wealth and power in the hands of the
wealthy. But it's an imbalance that the people of New Brunswick have
regarded as normal for many lifetimes. If we want to change that,
it's not enough to change the parties. We have to change the people.
Absolutely correct. We, the people, are the ones that need to stand and bar the path the greedy have taken. That path which led them to politicians which would clear the channels, the policies, which enable their immoral manipulations. We can point fingers at the dissasociative, perhaps sociopathic greeds of those such as JDI, but the ones that opened the barn doors came with names such as Lord and McKenna. THEY knew what riff- raff would avail themselves of the opportunity. We need the people of NB to get their heads out of the gutter while there's something to salvage. We need to change and change now, not in four years.
ReplyDeleteAccording to climatologists which the IPCC deem radical (perhaps because they don't pull their punches) four years from now may be too far into the tipping point for our meager efforts to have any effect on the end result.