Several days ago, I
wrote a blog that included reference to a commentary by Brian Murphy
– lawyer, former Conservative member of parliament, and columnist.
I thought it the most ignorant and/or self-serving newspaper column I
had ever read. And I wondered that an editor could allow such
gibberish to appear in print. But what was it possibly about?
It's a column on his
admiration for both Conservatives and Liberals. Only Conservatives and
Liberals. And he just loves them all – the big-hearted Mulroney,
the thoughtful and intelligent Harper, just loves them.
Message? Mr. Murphy
loves all humanity (with the exception of Greens and NDP.) You can
trust Mr. Murphy because he's a liberal Conservative, and possibly
even a conservative Liberal, or maybe a Mulroney closet Liberal.
.
And why would he
want to send such a message? It tells us we're safe with Mr. Murphy
because he's so broad-minded, you can't see any mind at all. It's
been stretched to transparency.
I understand there's
a race on for the Conservative leadership. And a loving and broad-minded man is just what the party needs.
And if that is the reason for the column, it was damned
unprofessional of him to write that as a newspaper opinion column,
and even worse for Irving press to print it.
The front page
headline? “Saint Andrews welcomes prime minister”. Boy, I can see
where people will be talking about that for years to come.
However, by some
editorial slip, there are two stories below this that are worth
reading. One is about the stress suffered by first-responders. The
other, at the bottom of the page, is the rise of food prices – a
topic the Irving press otherwise seems not to have noticed. Nor has
it made any significant attempt to explain it, and what it means for
us.
By page four we're down to reading about how a Shediac woman enjoyed
her military service, and how Scouts nurture future leaders. Now, I'm
all for scouts. I was a Wolf Cub, Scout, Rover Scout and Senior
Scout. My father was a scoutmaster. I like the work the scouts do.
But it does not produce leaders. That's not how Baden-Powell designed
it. Its purpose, like most youth movements of its type, was to
develop reliable followers. That's why it was so widely copied in
Mao's China. That's true of most of those early 1900s youth groups.
The only exception I know of is a group founded in the United Church
– Canadian Girls in Training.
The editorial seems
pointless until you get to the last paragraph which says government
is too big. We're heading in possibly bad times? Fire civil servants.
In fact, Canada has
had many recessions and even depressions. It took years for
governments dominated by big business to catch on to the reality. A
recession is precisely when you need big government. That was proven
in the great depression of the 1930s. Come on, you people at Irving
press. We know you have to kiss up to the boss. But try not to
slobber.
Norbert Cunningham
is just vague. “We need to ensure doctors…..maximize their time
doctoring...”
What are they doing
now, Norbie? Playing poker in the cafeteria? His final advice is we
should should make 'wise' reforms to medical care. That's so true.
We really should not demand stupid reforms?
Craig Babstock
writes about the life and death of David Bowie. This is the second or
third such commentary in this paper – and all of them really say
nothing. His death affects people in different ways, says Babstock?
Okay, Babstock, can you name a way? In fact, what I have read in the
Irving press shows that its columnists have anything to say about
Bowie beyond Wow! Great! Famous! Have they never even heard of the
religious phases of this life, and how they affected his music? Have
they ever heard of the social values his songs advocated?
Good column by Steve
Malloy on daycare.
Alec Bruce has a stunningly good column on literacy in New Brunswick.
I would only add a small point. Those contests in which children on
encouraged to read, read, read for a wild week are, at best, a waste
of time. The poorly literate don't take much part. And the literate
learn to read quickly, narrowly, and uncritically. Anyway it's not
the children. It's the whole society that lacks literacy. And the
Irving press, if anything, encourages illiteracy. (I can't get that
commentary by Mike Murphy out of my mind. It was designed for the
illiterate – unless he really believes that tripe that he wrote.)
Literacy isn't about speed reading. It's about enjoying, about
learning, and it's fundamental to thinking.
Canada and World has
one story worth reading. It's the lead on B1. It's another one about
the firing of Dr. Cleary; but this time the reporter asked some
questions and the answers are very suggestive. She asked an
employment lawyer who said that when the government says she was
“fired without cause”, that means they didn't have a reason that
would hold up in court.
Again, we get the
statement from government that it intends to return the focus to
protecting and promoting the health of citizens. Well, that suggests
Dr. Cleary was not doing that. That would be a cause. But it can't be
because if it were, the government would have a cause for firing, and
it wouldn't have to give a separation package.
No, what this case
tells us is a hint of the sleeze of governments in this province –
and, probably, of their obedience to their master.
There isn't much
point to reading the rest of the Canada and World news. It has no
meaning withpit opinion columns to put these stories in some
perspective. Just reading news is the same waste of time that a week
of speed-reading is. To understand news, you need opinion to stir
your thinking. Opinion columns don't tell you what to think. But
intelligent opinions can spur your own thinking so that you actually
get something out of the reading. Reading without thinking is a waste
of time. News without analysis is a waste of time.
Oh, the Irving press has missed the big story of the past week or two
– the collapse of the Chinese economy. If that continues then,
believe me, it will not just be a spectator sport.
Just to follow up
on the business of reading and thinking, here's an article from an
Atlantic site, Schoolhouse Counselling. I'm not sure I agree with all
of it – or even most – but we need to think about our illiteracy
problem, not just read news stories about it. (And surely not to just
read Norbert on the subject.)
And, if you really
want something to think about, try these two on the Koch brothers,
big stakeholders in oil, including the Alberta type, opponents of
climate change, owners of American governments – and maybe not only
American ones. I have a couple of stories about that which were sent
to me by a reader. However, the reader doesn't want some electronic
mischief that would cause his/her identity to be revealed. (That's
the kind of world we live in now.) I'm not yet sure how to do that,
so I'll just give a brief summary of them.
The Koch brothers,
the ones who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to say
climate change isn't happening, wanted (and, I guess, still want) the
Keystone pipeline from Alberta to a point on the southern border of
the U.S. A few points to consider in this context….
1. The Koch brothers
are very big time buyers of politicians.
2. They want to
pipeline to cripple the Venezuelan oil industry – which the Koch
brothers don't control.
3. The Venezuela oil
industry is owned by the Venezuelan government.
4. Venezuela has
the biggest proven oil reserves in the world.
5. A Keystone link
from Alberta to their southern refineries would save the Koch
brothers some 2 billion dollars a year.
5. Harper was an
advocate of an east-west pipeline. He changed his mind, and decided
it was better to send the oil south. Coincidence.
And an afterthought
– does anything in the above account (or any other account) suggest
to you that the oil industry intends to allow us to develop renewable
sources of energy?)
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Opinions are divided
over whether China's economy is about to collapse. You can check The
Guardian about that. Just google China economy. What is undeniable is
why it is happening.
The government party
of China calls itself communist. Actually, and like the Soviet Union,
it never was communist. I think the Chinese and Russians must use the
same dictionary as Brian Murphy does. And, certainly, today both
China and Russia are capitalist. And all the capitalist countries
have been having a hard time. A major reason of the decline in China
is one that has also been common in other capitalist countries,
including Canada.
Big business is
always looking for handouts which it calls loans, but often never
repays. One can think here of Atcon, of Bombardier which hit Quebec
for a billion, and is now hitting Ottawa for the same. And then
there's the unforgettable bailout of banking houses in the U.S. for
700 billion, even though it was their improper and, often, illegal
behaviour that caused the crisis.
Now, maybe China
will learn what Russia, the U.S., Canada and others have never
learned. Capitalism is not like the Easter bunny. It's operated by
humans. Humans can be greedy, cruel, thieving...That's why we have
regulations called laws that we are required to live by. But there
never has been much regulation of capitalism, and what little there
is rapidly being cut away. (Cutting away is what today's editorial in
the Irving press is really all about. “Less government” really
means more freedom for the greedy, amoral, (and often unintelligent)
among us.
__________________________________________________________________________
And that's why the
world's top 62 billionaires have ….. but you can read it the
Guardian below.
Note the suggestion
for the only way to stop this super-wealth built on the poverty of
billions. Pay higher wages. Crack down on tax-dodging. Invest in
public services.
Compare this to the
servile slush we get every day in the Irving press. Check the record
of wealth over the years in this story. Wealth does NOT trickle down
to the rest us. In fact, it goes the other way. That's why,
everywhere, the numbers of billionaires it takes to own half the
world goes down – and the number of poor goes up.
That is by far the
biggest problem this world faces. We have to get capitalism under
control – NOW.
Wake up, New Brunswick.
To add to our
troubles, ISIS plans to pump an extra 500,000 barrels of oil a day.
This will be delivered through our friends in Turkey to be sold on
the world market, and then retailed to our friends in the oil
business. And it will be used to finance the ISIS wars. (Notably, the
U.S. is not considered to be a problem in all this. After all, it
never has been. Despite the fears of Donald Trump, ISIS has been
protected by the U.S. from the start – and Donald Trump would
protect it, too. It's helping to give the U.S. oil industry control
of all middle east oil.
The price of oil is
not dropping because the King of Saudi Arabia wants to show his
appreciation of us. It is dropping because the Saudis and all their
western buddies want it to drop. The dropping price is a weapon in
the war of western capitalists against Russia and Chinese and other
capitalists. Saudi Arabia is paying a heavy price for this war, but
it and others of its type, need to destroy other economies so they
can control the world. Sieg Heil.
We pay less to fill our gas tanks so that a few people can gain
enormous power. Once they have it, watch for oil prices to soar.
Paul Craig Roberts
is the most highly qualified commentator I have ever come across. He
spent years working at the highest economic and political levels in
U.S. government and in journalism. And he has a story that even the
eagle eyes of the Irving press missed.
Hillary Clinton may
be facing a legal charge serious enough to jail her.
Actually, that's not
what attracted me to this commentary because I could say the same and
worse, much worse, about Obama and Bush. In fact, Trudeau really blew
it when he allowed Canadian aircraft to attack Syrian territory –
against international law, and without parliamentary approval.
But the real meat of
this story is how Bill and Hillary and Bush and Britain's Tony Blair
became enormously wealthy as a result of going into politics. All can
get hundreds of thousands of dollars for fifteen minute speeches to
university graduations, supper clubs, etc. Tony Blair reached sixty
million years ago, and it's still growing.
Now, I have run
university graduations. I got TV host Barbara Frum to speak for the
price of a supper. So what's going on here?
The very wealthy are
paying the politicians back for “favours”. These are bribes, paid
after they're out of politics. (and for Hillary, while she's still in
them.) Universities are big for this because the wealthy have their
people sitting in control of the boards of governors. It's more
common in the U.S. and Britain than it is in Canada – far more
common. But it can happen here.
This is a very
respectable setting for criminal favours.
Then there's a story
from Russia's Tass. I would normally be suspicious of such a source;
but I've known abpit this story for several years – from good
sources. However, it hasn't yet made the Irving press.
Our news reports on
Syria often come from an outfit called Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights. It's reports are featured regularly ( and seriously) in the
western press in reporting on Syria. However, even the news media
know that it's a fraud. The “observatory” is one man. He lives in
England. And he is the one who tells us how Assad is an evil man.
So I can believe
this Tass report. It just adds details to what has already been
reported in honest media.
Israel's Netanyahu
is all aflutter because he says Iran will build a nuclear bomb.
There is no evidence it will – and no advantage to it. As well,
poor little Israel has some 250 nuclear missiles – and with the
capacity to deliver them by submarine. So what's really bothering
Netanyahu?
He wants Israel to
control the region – including Iran.
Anyway nuclear arms are perfectly safe. We've been assured of that
every year since 1945. Nuclear weapons don't cause war. They're a
deterrent. Yeah. That's it. So – if they're a deterrent, then
everybody should have them. Then we'd never have a war again.
Oh, yeah. The topic in my headling - men tipping their hats.
People object to
Muslim religious practices relating to women, like wearing the hijab.
Actually, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are much more closely
related than one might think. And all three have a history of
suppressing women. (And all three still do so.)
In a Christian
church, for example, men take their hats off. Traditionally, women
don't – and any changes in that have been very, very recent.
Christian men also tip their hats to women. You think that's all for
politeness? No. It's a putdown.
I'll talk about that
tomorrow.
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