As I ended the post of Oct. 30, I wrote of a sense of depression that writing these blogs has placed on me. And I think I've clarified it a little in my own mind.
From as early as we have records, we have fought wars to enrich ourselves. And, typically, the rewards never filtered down to the rest of us, but stopped in the pockets of whatever wealthy aristocracy was ruling as at the time.
Almost all wars have been fought for that reason - to fatten whoever had power at the time. And all such systems have eventually broken down.
World War 1 was essentially a war to reduce any rise of German big business so that it would not compete with that of Britain and France. World War Two was similar, with the addition of the U.S. seeking to scoop up remnants of the failing European empires - notably in Asia and the Middle East.
Most wars have been avoidable. World War Two was probably not avoidable. The savagery of Nazi and Japanese methods demanded a response - though I regret to say that their savagery was not so different from that of recent American (plus allies) wars as we like to think. In fact, I would argue that just about all wars since 1945 have been crashingly immoral - as well as being pretty useless.
The greater point, though, is that we can no longer afford wars. The constant wars of the U.S. since 1945, for example, have not only diverted almost all money away from social needs, but have created a monstrously corrupt war machine that is not only destroying American society, but has proven incompetent to win anything.
As we were fond of saying in 1945 (while doing nothing about it), modern weaponry of which nuclear bombs are only one group have made warfare incapable of achieving anything but total destruction of the whole planet.
It has also led us away from dealing with the even greater crisis of our time. Climate change is happening. It has the potential to destroy the whole planet and every living thing on it.
(In fairness, our local papers, Brunswick News, doesn't think it's all that serious. Today, it had another commentary by oil executive named Bill Whitelaw. He says we should all get together oil executives and the rest of the national politician to come to some reasonable solution. That's an old game - we're all buddies, and there surely is a middle path we can agree to. Yeah. But there is no middle path Either you destroy the planet or you don't. You can't half-destroy it.
The oil industry has been obstructive from the start. It's built into all industrial thinking. They are concerned only about profits. Nothing else exists. They also have no significant scientific training. Ignorant and rapacious, discussing the issue with the oil industry is like discussing with a lion what would be a fair share of you to eat.
Climate change is here. It's moving quickly. Within twenty years, we're likely to see masses of refugees all over the world - not just the tens of millions we have now but hundreds of millions - and some of them may be us. They'll be spilling out of Africa,, China, Latin America, parts of the U.S.....
There are going to be food shortages, starvation, such as the world has never seen. There are no Bill Whitelaw compromises. We are either deal with it or we don't. We need urgent work on the layout of our cities, of public transportation, of coping with exhausted farmlands (yes, even here.) - And spraying chemicals will just make things worse. And so far, industrial leaders have been an anchor, holding us down as the waters rise.
The destruction of climate change is real. It's happening already, and it's going to get a lot worse. We've known about this for decades. But all our industrial leaders can think of is profits - and those for only three months at a time.
Because of our failure to act so far, we may well decide to murder refugees in their millions. (In fact, we are already doing that by denying them entry to our countries.)
We can't even begin to imagine the economic and human crises facing us. And major industries, especially oil, have stood in the way of any action.
The time for discussion is long past. We have some very tough decisions to make - right now. And it is downright insane to think we can do all this and fight wars and enrich billionaires at the same time. So we have essentially decided not to even think about it.
As a capper, we have allowed out democracies to collapse into rule by aristocracies of wealth, undistinguished by either brains or morality, indifferent to the suffering they cause, made ignorant by their own sense of social superiority...... (That might explain why Bill Whitelaw should think that oil executives should have a right to negotiate what it is that we need.)
So, yes. It gets damned depressing to think and write about current events every day.
______________________________________________________________
This story about the murder of cyclists in New York dominated news all over the western world. Innocent American's killed. How Terrible!
Yes. It is terrible. But Americans, every day, starve more innocent Yemenis, men, women, and children, than the number of cyclists killed in New York. And it doesn't make the news. The U.S. with its own troops and with money and weapons and air support supplied to ISIS and related groups indiscriminately murdered (so far) at least 2 million people in Iraq and Syria. It killed 200,000 innocent men, women and children in Guatemala. And there are many more cases like that.
But notice that the American killings, if they are ever reported at all, are never called acts of terrorism. That absence is a part of of what is called 'fake news'.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/31/new-york-police-shooting-manhattan
Of course, when U.S. heroes fly over to spread scatter bombs and napalm on children, they aren't called terrorists. No. They're called patriotic heroes.
________________________________________________________________
This is an interesting story that looks as if it's about praise for Canada's medicare system. I've seen it in many sources now. Supposedly, it's about Senator Bernie Sanders' praise for Canada's health system. But, in ever source I've come across, it's really about the faults of the Canadian system.
Isn't that odd?
Yes. There are faults in Canada's medicare. But it's light years ahead of anything in the U.S. It's far, far superior. It reaches far more people. It's far cheaper to operate. And it's mostly free. So why, in a story of health care in the U.S. put a major focus on what is wrong with Canada?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/canadas-health-system-serves-as-model-for-sanders-but-faces-troubles-of-its-own
Incidentally there are good reasons why Canadian medicare has problems. A big reason is that most of the very wealthy don't pay their taxes. Another is that Canadian Liberals and Conservatives aren't anxious to improve it because that would make their corporate friends angry.
This looks to me very much like a story that has been 'cooked'.
________________________________________________________________
Here's story that says climate change, just through it's impact on pollution, kills well over 6 million people a year. And these are still early days. Perhaps Bill Whitelaw could write an column on how the oil industry and the dying could get together to work out a compromise.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/31/climate-change-public-health-emergency-doctors-lancet-countdown
______________________________________________________________
Oh, the irving press also has a story today praising the wealthy for the money they give to universities. Yeah - well, there are a few problems.
1. It would be much better if the wealthy would pay their taxes, and let us decide through our governments who should get it, and on what terms.
2. Their tax money could then be used to deal with the greatest disgrace of our universities - the cost to students who take decades to pay for them. It took me twenty years to pay for my education - and I had lived as a student on very short rations.
3. My own experience has been that the rich don't so much give to the universities as they buy them. It would be much better if the rich didn't have that power to interfere.
_____________________________________________________________
Here's a series of stories about Canada that deserve more attention than the none that they will get from the irving press.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/11/food-truth-and-reconciliation
As I read this next one, I thought of Bill Whitelaw and the irving press.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2017/10/government-people-not-fossil-fuel-corporations
The irving press, of course, no longer carries David Suzuki. It needs the space for the great mind of Bill Whitelaw.
Justin Trudeau is kissing up to the Donald Trumps of this world as his father never would have.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/yves-englers-blog/2017/10/ottawas-sanctions-support-venezuelan-opposition-constitute
______________________________________________________________
It is one of the most disgusting wars ever fought, a war of two of the richest nations on earth (Saudi Arabia and the U.S.) against one of the poorest nations on earth. It is a war against children, and the weapons are starvation, the disease of Black Death and, of course, the heroic patriots who are bombing them.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/31/yemen-war-us-military-house-resolution/
________________________________________________________________
The moral rot in the U.S. runs deep. It wasn't created by Trump. It was there when Trump was a baby. He is simply a product of it. And there is no sign of any significant change on the way.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/31/puerto-rico-electric-contract-cobra/
________________________________________________________________
The United States is far the most dangerous country in the world. It is the only country that actually believes it has the right to invade any country for any reason, the right to kill by the millions. the right to starve whole nations to death.
It's even linked to Christianity in the belief that Americans are God's chosen people.
Canada has to get us out of this connection. But Justin Trudeau is tying us more closely.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48128.htm
_________________________________________________________________
Read this. And think. Is this what our soldiers, sailors and airmen fought for in World War Two?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48128.htm
________________________________________________________________
Who runs Syria is Syria's business. And please don't tell me it isn't a democracy. The U.S. has been the largest creator of dictatorships in the world since 1945. And if a country is a dictatorship, it's the business of nobody but that country.
The U.S. now has troops in almost 200 countries. Many of its interferences are edging us into world nuclear war. Canada has to get away from any connection with this insanity. Indeed, countries all over the world have to get away from this insanity.
http://theantimedia.org/top-us-general-4000-american-troops-syria/
_______________________________________________________________
Earlier, I mentioned the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees to come. The Lancet, a pretty good source, estimates it will be a billion. We don't have a hell of a lot of time to deal with climate change.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/10/31/lancet-study-warns-global-health-crisis-and-1-billion-climate-refugees-2050
________________________________________________________________
Congo is a living reminder of the horror inflicted by western capitalists on the world. The people of Congo have suffered mass murder, torture, starvation, forced labour for almost a hundred and fifty years. It's still happening. And it's still happening all over Africa and Latin America - and all at the hands of our revered economic aristocracies, including the ones of Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/bad-children-starving-dr-congo-171028202316758.html
____________________________________________________________
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.820404
Oh, in a Haaretz story of some days ago (which I couldn't copy) it was revealed that African Jews, many of whom live in Israel - and always have - are shunned as Jews by the Israeli government.
Actually, these black Africans have been Jews for a very long time, all the way back, I understand, to King David. But White Jews (most of them Europeans with no historical connection to Africa or the middle east, commonly have not accepted them.
Yes. Like the rest of us, Jews can be racist.
_____________________________________________________________
Yes. It's a very frightening world. What can New Brunswickers do about it?
First, recognize that the Liberal and Conservative parties have lied to you throughout history. Both of them are collections of puppets. And there is no hope of saving either of them.
Recognize that the wealthy of this province are robbing you blind. Many pay no taxes at all. Worse - they expect financial favours above that in the form of cheap forests, financial grants and other favours. And what that translates into is inadequate funding for essential services, for health, for education, for housing, for food... And their money does not shower down to you in jobs. They take more, far more than they give.
That has been going on for generations.
And you aren't going to change it by continuing to vote as your mummy and daddy did. Like it or not, if you want to survive you are going to have the find the courage to have an opinion, to talk and to say what you really think.
Without that, things are never going to change in this province. And you might as well decide to get out before you sink into its political stupor.
The NDP and the Greens are going to have to get a hell of a lot more realistic about what has to be done here, and have to reshape themselves if they hope ever to accomplish anything. Becoming more fluttery wings of the Liberals hasn't helped and isn't going to help.
The people who really own this province have no intention of playing nice. You have to toughen up to beat them.
And the Christians of this province should not assume that being Christian means being socially acceptable. In fact, any Christian in this province who is socially acceptable is almost certainly a hypocrite. Remember. Jesus was NOT socially acceptable.
And stop getting fooled by governments who say things like how they're balancing the budget or how they're giving away money to create jobs. That's a crock. Balancing the budget really means cutting at essential services while still allowing the wealthy to avoid taxes.
Make your political parties into organizations that are designed to serve YOU. That's they key. And anybody who tells you pipelines or gifts to corporations are good for you should be shown the door.
If you want to save this province, you need to make it clear that the people of the province are the real bosses of it. And you don't have much time to do it.
From as early as we have records, we have fought wars to enrich ourselves. And, typically, the rewards never filtered down to the rest of us, but stopped in the pockets of whatever wealthy aristocracy was ruling as at the time.
Almost all wars have been fought for that reason - to fatten whoever had power at the time. And all such systems have eventually broken down.
World War 1 was essentially a war to reduce any rise of German big business so that it would not compete with that of Britain and France. World War Two was similar, with the addition of the U.S. seeking to scoop up remnants of the failing European empires - notably in Asia and the Middle East.
Most wars have been avoidable. World War Two was probably not avoidable. The savagery of Nazi and Japanese methods demanded a response - though I regret to say that their savagery was not so different from that of recent American (plus allies) wars as we like to think. In fact, I would argue that just about all wars since 1945 have been crashingly immoral - as well as being pretty useless.
The greater point, though, is that we can no longer afford wars. The constant wars of the U.S. since 1945, for example, have not only diverted almost all money away from social needs, but have created a monstrously corrupt war machine that is not only destroying American society, but has proven incompetent to win anything.
As we were fond of saying in 1945 (while doing nothing about it), modern weaponry of which nuclear bombs are only one group have made warfare incapable of achieving anything but total destruction of the whole planet.
It has also led us away from dealing with the even greater crisis of our time. Climate change is happening. It has the potential to destroy the whole planet and every living thing on it.
(In fairness, our local papers, Brunswick News, doesn't think it's all that serious. Today, it had another commentary by oil executive named Bill Whitelaw. He says we should all get together oil executives and the rest of the national politician to come to some reasonable solution. That's an old game - we're all buddies, and there surely is a middle path we can agree to. Yeah. But there is no middle path Either you destroy the planet or you don't. You can't half-destroy it.
The oil industry has been obstructive from the start. It's built into all industrial thinking. They are concerned only about profits. Nothing else exists. They also have no significant scientific training. Ignorant and rapacious, discussing the issue with the oil industry is like discussing with a lion what would be a fair share of you to eat.
Climate change is here. It's moving quickly. Within twenty years, we're likely to see masses of refugees all over the world - not just the tens of millions we have now but hundreds of millions - and some of them may be us. They'll be spilling out of Africa,, China, Latin America, parts of the U.S.....
There are going to be food shortages, starvation, such as the world has never seen. There are no Bill Whitelaw compromises. We are either deal with it or we don't. We need urgent work on the layout of our cities, of public transportation, of coping with exhausted farmlands (yes, even here.) - And spraying chemicals will just make things worse. And so far, industrial leaders have been an anchor, holding us down as the waters rise.
The destruction of climate change is real. It's happening already, and it's going to get a lot worse. We've known about this for decades. But all our industrial leaders can think of is profits - and those for only three months at a time.
Because of our failure to act so far, we may well decide to murder refugees in their millions. (In fact, we are already doing that by denying them entry to our countries.)
We can't even begin to imagine the economic and human crises facing us. And major industries, especially oil, have stood in the way of any action.
The time for discussion is long past. We have some very tough decisions to make - right now. And it is downright insane to think we can do all this and fight wars and enrich billionaires at the same time. So we have essentially decided not to even think about it.
As a capper, we have allowed out democracies to collapse into rule by aristocracies of wealth, undistinguished by either brains or morality, indifferent to the suffering they cause, made ignorant by their own sense of social superiority...... (That might explain why Bill Whitelaw should think that oil executives should have a right to negotiate what it is that we need.)
So, yes. It gets damned depressing to think and write about current events every day.
______________________________________________________________
This story about the murder of cyclists in New York dominated news all over the western world. Innocent American's killed. How Terrible!
Yes. It is terrible. But Americans, every day, starve more innocent Yemenis, men, women, and children, than the number of cyclists killed in New York. And it doesn't make the news. The U.S. with its own troops and with money and weapons and air support supplied to ISIS and related groups indiscriminately murdered (so far) at least 2 million people in Iraq and Syria. It killed 200,000 innocent men, women and children in Guatemala. And there are many more cases like that.
But notice that the American killings, if they are ever reported at all, are never called acts of terrorism. That absence is a part of of what is called 'fake news'.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/31/new-york-police-shooting-manhattan
Of course, when U.S. heroes fly over to spread scatter bombs and napalm on children, they aren't called terrorists. No. They're called patriotic heroes.
________________________________________________________________
This is an interesting story that looks as if it's about praise for Canada's medicare system. I've seen it in many sources now. Supposedly, it's about Senator Bernie Sanders' praise for Canada's health system. But, in ever source I've come across, it's really about the faults of the Canadian system.
Isn't that odd?
Yes. There are faults in Canada's medicare. But it's light years ahead of anything in the U.S. It's far, far superior. It reaches far more people. It's far cheaper to operate. And it's mostly free. So why, in a story of health care in the U.S. put a major focus on what is wrong with Canada?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/canadas-health-system-serves-as-model-for-sanders-but-faces-troubles-of-its-own
Incidentally there are good reasons why Canadian medicare has problems. A big reason is that most of the very wealthy don't pay their taxes. Another is that Canadian Liberals and Conservatives aren't anxious to improve it because that would make their corporate friends angry.
This looks to me very much like a story that has been 'cooked'.
________________________________________________________________
Here's story that says climate change, just through it's impact on pollution, kills well over 6 million people a year. And these are still early days. Perhaps Bill Whitelaw could write an column on how the oil industry and the dying could get together to work out a compromise.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/31/climate-change-public-health-emergency-doctors-lancet-countdown
______________________________________________________________
Oh, the irving press also has a story today praising the wealthy for the money they give to universities. Yeah - well, there are a few problems.
1. It would be much better if the wealthy would pay their taxes, and let us decide through our governments who should get it, and on what terms.
2. Their tax money could then be used to deal with the greatest disgrace of our universities - the cost to students who take decades to pay for them. It took me twenty years to pay for my education - and I had lived as a student on very short rations.
3. My own experience has been that the rich don't so much give to the universities as they buy them. It would be much better if the rich didn't have that power to interfere.
_____________________________________________________________
Here's a series of stories about Canada that deserve more attention than the none that they will get from the irving press.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/11/food-truth-and-reconciliation
As I read this next one, I thought of Bill Whitelaw and the irving press.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2017/10/government-people-not-fossil-fuel-corporations
The irving press, of course, no longer carries David Suzuki. It needs the space for the great mind of Bill Whitelaw.
Justin Trudeau is kissing up to the Donald Trumps of this world as his father never would have.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/yves-englers-blog/2017/10/ottawas-sanctions-support-venezuelan-opposition-constitute
______________________________________________________________
It is one of the most disgusting wars ever fought, a war of two of the richest nations on earth (Saudi Arabia and the U.S.) against one of the poorest nations on earth. It is a war against children, and the weapons are starvation, the disease of Black Death and, of course, the heroic patriots who are bombing them.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/31/yemen-war-us-military-house-resolution/
________________________________________________________________
The moral rot in the U.S. runs deep. It wasn't created by Trump. It was there when Trump was a baby. He is simply a product of it. And there is no sign of any significant change on the way.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/31/puerto-rico-electric-contract-cobra/
________________________________________________________________
The United States is far the most dangerous country in the world. It is the only country that actually believes it has the right to invade any country for any reason, the right to kill by the millions. the right to starve whole nations to death.
It's even linked to Christianity in the belief that Americans are God's chosen people.
Canada has to get us out of this connection. But Justin Trudeau is tying us more closely.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48128.htm
_________________________________________________________________
Read this. And think. Is this what our soldiers, sailors and airmen fought for in World War Two?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48128.htm
________________________________________________________________
Who runs Syria is Syria's business. And please don't tell me it isn't a democracy. The U.S. has been the largest creator of dictatorships in the world since 1945. And if a country is a dictatorship, it's the business of nobody but that country.
The U.S. now has troops in almost 200 countries. Many of its interferences are edging us into world nuclear war. Canada has to get away from any connection with this insanity. Indeed, countries all over the world have to get away from this insanity.
http://theantimedia.org/top-us-general-4000-american-troops-syria/
_______________________________________________________________
Earlier, I mentioned the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees to come. The Lancet, a pretty good source, estimates it will be a billion. We don't have a hell of a lot of time to deal with climate change.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/10/31/lancet-study-warns-global-health-crisis-and-1-billion-climate-refugees-2050
________________________________________________________________
Congo is a living reminder of the horror inflicted by western capitalists on the world. The people of Congo have suffered mass murder, torture, starvation, forced labour for almost a hundred and fifty years. It's still happening. And it's still happening all over Africa and Latin America - and all at the hands of our revered economic aristocracies, including the ones of Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/bad-children-starving-dr-congo-171028202316758.html
____________________________________________________________
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.820404
Oh, in a Haaretz story of some days ago (which I couldn't copy) it was revealed that African Jews, many of whom live in Israel - and always have - are shunned as Jews by the Israeli government.
Actually, these black Africans have been Jews for a very long time, all the way back, I understand, to King David. But White Jews (most of them Europeans with no historical connection to Africa or the middle east, commonly have not accepted them.
Yes. Like the rest of us, Jews can be racist.
_____________________________________________________________
Yes. It's a very frightening world. What can New Brunswickers do about it?
First, recognize that the Liberal and Conservative parties have lied to you throughout history. Both of them are collections of puppets. And there is no hope of saving either of them.
Recognize that the wealthy of this province are robbing you blind. Many pay no taxes at all. Worse - they expect financial favours above that in the form of cheap forests, financial grants and other favours. And what that translates into is inadequate funding for essential services, for health, for education, for housing, for food... And their money does not shower down to you in jobs. They take more, far more than they give.
That has been going on for generations.
And you aren't going to change it by continuing to vote as your mummy and daddy did. Like it or not, if you want to survive you are going to have the find the courage to have an opinion, to talk and to say what you really think.
Without that, things are never going to change in this province. And you might as well decide to get out before you sink into its political stupor.
The NDP and the Greens are going to have to get a hell of a lot more realistic about what has to be done here, and have to reshape themselves if they hope ever to accomplish anything. Becoming more fluttery wings of the Liberals hasn't helped and isn't going to help.
The people who really own this province have no intention of playing nice. You have to toughen up to beat them.
And the Christians of this province should not assume that being Christian means being socially acceptable. In fact, any Christian in this province who is socially acceptable is almost certainly a hypocrite. Remember. Jesus was NOT socially acceptable.
And stop getting fooled by governments who say things like how they're balancing the budget or how they're giving away money to create jobs. That's a crock. Balancing the budget really means cutting at essential services while still allowing the wealthy to avoid taxes.
Make your political parties into organizations that are designed to serve YOU. That's they key. And anybody who tells you pipelines or gifts to corporations are good for you should be shown the door.
If you want to save this province, you need to make it clear that the people of the province are the real bosses of it. And you don't have much time to do it.
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