June 30: Evil Us?

The story that  you will never see in the irving press.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cra-tax-gap-foreign-holdings-1.4726983

240 billion dollars. Now do you understand why governments have to go over budget? Now do you understand why our schools and hospitals don't have enough money? Now do you understand why our children have to go deeply into debt for years to go to university?

And in the U.S., where greed reigns, it's much, much worse.
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Russia Times is, like Russia Today, propaganda for Russia. And, like Russia Today, it doesn't look at the  faults of Russia - just those of the west. But, knowing that, it is better than most western news media because the part that it does tell is true - unlike almost all western news media.

In this case, the writer is a VERY distinguished and knowledgeable American journalist, scholar and clergyman.

https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/america-shows-many-signs-impending-catastrophic-collapse-pulitzer-prize-winner-explains

And this is exactly what is happening. And it's happening in Canada, too.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-us-gun-violence-1.4722108
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The next is not an important story. But there's an amusing angle to it.

Many, many Montrealers move on July 1. This article treats it as though it were a French tradition.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jun/29/montreal-moving-day-what-happens-when-a-whole-city-moves-house-at-once

But 1 - it's not a tradition of any sort to move on July 1. And 2 - it has nothing to do with Quebec being French. I know that because I lived in Montreal, and from the age of 6 I helped my father move us each May 1, carrying furniture through the streets, and always to a place just a block or so away.

Once, BBC TV contacted me to do a broadcast on what this odd practice was all about. So I did. And it's not a French tradition.

It's Scottish. Two or three hundred years ago, most Scottish farms were rented. A moving family had to be settled in as early as possible to prepare for the planting. So May 1 was the chosen day. In the  19th century, the major landlords of Montreal were Scottish. So they continued the practice. (The same was true in some American cities. I believe Boston was one of them.)

Why was it moved to July 1? That's very recent - and it may well have been a separatist slap in the face at Canada Day.
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It's a big mistake to think of the Israeli government's vicious treatment of Palestinians, its murders of protesters, its theft of Palestinian land, its cruelty toward Palestine as being a reflection of Judaic values. Many, many Jews condemn what Israel is doing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/israelis-call-world-intervene-behalf-palestinians
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All imperial powers have a history of unspeakable brutality.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/30/british-intelligence-officers-linked-to-man-waterboarded-83
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Europe and the U.S. have a long history of racism and brutality in dealing with refugees - especially refugees created by U.S. and European racism and brutality.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/angela-merkel-refugee-crisis-drown

And, no. Canada is not pure.
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This next one is profoundly depressing to me. But it's common that aid given to poor countries by rich ones ends up in the pockets of the wealthy friends of the rich country. The U.S., for example, voted huge aid packages to rebuild  Iraq where shattered schools got a slap of paint, nothing more, at monstrous cost. That sort of of thing has happened all over Latin America and Africa.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gerry-caplans-blog/2018/06/canada-sends-military-force-mali
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An American invasion of Venezuela is quite possible. Coincidence - Venezuela has the largest oil deposits in the world. And the government of Venezuela is foolish enough to believe this should be used for the benefit of the people of Venezuela.

And Canadian cooperation with the U.S. in this is quite possible.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/29/venezuela-towards-an-economy-of-resistance/
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This is a huge story that I certainly have not seen in the irving press. If accurate, it is a major defeat for the U.S. (And Robert Fisk is a pretty accurate news man.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49740.htm

Once again, the biggest and most expensive military in the world has been defeated. (Remember Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan). And, if so, this is a huge setback for American influence.

And a thought. The U.S. since 1945 has been determined to make the whole world an American empire. But ever since then,  and despite it massive military budget, huge army and air force, and world leading navy, it cannot win conventional wars, even against small opponents.

That is a powerful temptation for nuclear war - as Trump has already threatened against North Korea.
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Why are people fleeing Latin America?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49748.htm

What is really needed is a wall to keep American capitalists and American armies out of Latin America.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49748.htm
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Almost a hundred and twenty years ago, Canada sent troops to kill South Africans  - including thousands of children and women in families that Canadian troops were responsible for.  We celebrated the Canadians on their return. They were patriots. They had served the king. They were glorious.

They were no such thing. They had murdered innocent people to produce bigger profits for already wealthy British businessmen. In Afghanistan, we sent 'patriots' and celebrated them with 'highways of heroes'. But this time it was to serve the greed of American billionaires.

We have been all too eager to kiss up to the wealthy and greedy.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-affairs-canada-statement-represents-a-complete-disconnect-from-realities-on-the-ground-in-syria-tacit-endorsement-of-al-qaeda/5645944
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/29/move-over-god/

Obviously, he's not a New Brunswick Christian clergyman.
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/arctic-is-turning-into-the-atlantic/
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Let's skip the details that news requires. The big, untold story is that we cannot survive the direction we have chosen. That was  obvious at the end of World War Two.

Then and later we were faced with some huge problems.

1. We saw - or should have seen - that the destructiveness of modern weapons made most future war impossible.

And we did nothing about it because our corporation bosses wanted war to increase their profits and to extend their power.

2. We've known about climate change for at least thirty years now. We know it can destroy us. We know we have little time to deal with it. And we don't lift a finger. And news media like the irving press pretends it doesn't exist. Why? Because big oil doesn't want us to interfere with it. That would hurt it's profits.
Is that a brainless position for big oil to take?  Of course. But big oil has never been known for anything but big greed.

3. We have created massive unrest and growing poverty all over the world. Thus the many and uncounted millions of refugees today. That unrest has been created largely by the greed of capitalism.  Thus the refugees drowning in the waters off Africa, and the Latin American children in American concentration camps.

4. We have created crippling conditions of spreading poverty even in  countries like the U.S. and Canada. And it's going to get much, much worse soon as big business (and the governments it owns) refuses to deal with the spread of automation in the work place. It should mean shorter hours and better pay for the average worker. But that's not going to happen because big business doesn't want it to happen.

5. The advances we have made - as in education, medicare, pensions - are in serious danger. Big capitalism is determined to either destroy or take over these.

These are just five of the monstrous and urgent issues facing us. And we're not doing a thing about any of them. I checked my irving press today....

The lead, front page story is about a boy who was killed in a hit and run accident 13 years ago. The point of the story? His mother misses him.

Yes, this is sad. But it isn't news. It tells us nothing we can do anything about. There's no lesson in it. There's no remedy. A mother is sad about the death of a child?  Of course, she is.  There are thousands of people like this in New Brunswick.  This is a sad story. But it's not news. This is what in the days of honest journalism used to be called a sob story. And it's almost a daily feature of the irving press.

As I follow the provincial election news, I still have no idea of the principles that the two, major parties represent - and not much about the other parties.

The big, world news? Well, a Canadian soldier died in a swimming accident in Ontario. Yemen? Iran? Israeli snipers killing a 13 year old Palestinian boy? U.S. collapsing in Syria? Refugees fleeing wars and starvation drowning as they try to escape? U.S. preparing war in Venezuela? Who cares? Our irving press aren't newspapers; they're sleeping pills.
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I am sure there are readers who think I'm exaggerating when I write of the dangerous times we have entered. I wish I were exaggerating. But here are some of the factors in it.

For nearly 500 years, the western world (that's all us Christians) has dominated most of the rest of the world. It has killed uncounted millions - in war and in the horrible abuse, torture, starvation, exploitation of its imperial victims. Nobody will ever know the full number. Tens of millions were deliberately starved to death in China, in India, in the Philippines, in Latin America, in Africa. It's still going on. And we sang songs to celebrate the killing - like "Land of Hope and Glory"....

All of this slaughter and theft and abuse did nothing for most of the people of Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, the U.S..... No. The profits (or loot) went to a small number at the top.

The one doing most of the killing lately is the U.S.;  but the backroom boys of Britain and France still jump in to lick American boots.

The abuse and killing has all been to enrich a very small number of people, the ones we call the big capitalists. Very little of it crept down to the rest of us. British landowners quite deliberately allowed Irish families to starve to death in the potato famine - though there was plenty of food available to feed them.  From 1800 or so, the British were swept off their farms to work in dangerous mines and factories from childhood, and for very small return.  Factory cities were normally vile and filthy and wretched and violent like The Gorbals of Edinburgh  where my grandmother was born. It happened in the U.S. and Canada, too. Well into the early part of the twentieth century and all over the western world, workers were treated like filth, paid as little as possible - and died young. Strikers would be beaten, shot by troops. And that happened in the U.S. and Canada as well.

To this day, the "wealthy" U.S. has over 40% of its population living in deep poverty. Any social services have come only under great pressure. (In the U.S. there are almost none. Indeed, even the prisons are privatizing with terrible results for the prisoners - in a U.S. which has far the biggest prison population in the world. In Canada, we have some services - like medicare and public education. But they are under threat from Canadian capitalists who, with the help of propaganda rags like the irving press, want to privatize them for private profit.)

What's behind all this, of course, is human greed and arrogance. That has always been with us. But it's taken on an even more dangerous form with big capitalism.
Capitalism is based on greed. It's only purpose is to take while giving back as little as possible.

Capitalism has always been associated with war, too. For centuries, we have sent our people off to war "to fight for the Queen", "for love of country"... But wars are almost never fought for those reasons. Almost all of them are fought to satisfy the greed of the very wealthy. The Boer War was fought to steal South African gold mines. World War One was fought to maintain the economic dominance of Britain against a rising Germany. So was World War Two.

(Yes, I know Hitler was evil. But that wasn't why the war was fought. In fact, most western capitalists just loved Hitler because he would stop communism. Many backed him right to the end of 1941. Britain and France declared war only because, by 1939, he was being too successful in building Germany's economic power. Yes. I know he was murdering Jews. But none of the western powers, including Canada, gave a damn about that. Indeed, in Britain, Canada and the U.S. Jews were hated, especially by the very wealthy and the aristocracy. Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were not the only Nazi enthusiasts in the Royal Family and the British aristocracy.)

The U.S. has invaded over 71 countries since 1945. The ONLY legal reason for invasion is if the target country is a threat to  your country. For most of the period since 1945,NO country has been a threat to the U.S. Nobody attacked it. Nobody was in a position to attack it. So why were all those countries invaded and people murdered? It was so American capitalists could make money out of them and out of the resources of their countries.

There's really no doubt about it. Capitalism is a strong incentive to mass murder. It recognizes no limitations to murder and exploitation. This is not an empty accusation. We have centuries of evidence of it. In Canada, it was capitalism that destroyed our native peoples. That's why Canada sent troops to our West to kill Metis and native peoples - to clear the way for capitalist development.

And all the benefits of the killing stay with the  capitalists. Again, there's no doubt about it. Big capitalists create poverty. That's most obvious is in Latin America and Africa. But it also explains the shockingly high rate of poverty in the U.S. It also explains why New Brunswick governments go into debt. It's because the big capitalists of the world, including New Brunswick, don't pay taxes - and they expect lots of government handouts.

They also, of course, have access to corrupt politicians. That's why, in the U.S., it's obvious that big capitalists own the governments. In fact, they ARE the governments. That is what has created two thoroughly corrupt parties. But most Americans, shackled by generations of propaganda about American 'democracy', have no sense of alternatives. The result, with Trump, was an election he won on what was essentially a vote against rather than for anything.  That was the reason why Hitler targetted the Jews. He really had nothing to offer. So he had to attract the "voting against" people. Ontario has just done the same with electing Doug Ford.

The situation in Canada, among Liberals and Conservatives, for corruption is much like that in the U.S. And Canadians, too, really don't have much sense of the need to have parties of some moral stature.

This is what has taken the world into 70 years of wars, not one of which had any justification. And it's even worse than it used to be. Up to World War 2, capitalists at least paid some of the cost of their wars. Now, they don't. The rest of us have to pay the bills - and take the risk getting killed.

So where is this taking us?

That's a story for next time.

June 28: VERY dangerous times

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/26/canada-wood-buffalo-national-park-report-climate-change

Yes. It's happening.
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2018/06/caribou-science-denial-cripples-conservation-efforts-0

But what does David Suzuki know? He's only a scientist of world status. No. Trust your local oil barons. They're rich. So they know....things.
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The Canadian government has refused to recognize the recent Venezuelan election. The irving press has paid almost no attention to this story - though it could well lead to Canadian military involvement. The U.S. wants a war with Venezuela. The American oil industry wants a war. And, quite likely, the Canadian oil industry wants it. So Canada, once more, could find itself fighting a war to increase the profits of American capitalists - and some Canadian ones.

http://rabble.ca/news/2018/06/venezuela-democratic-because-majority-voters-made-it-so
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I am certainly in support of sending Canadian peacekeepers to Mali. But I very much fear they will be at greater than usual risk, and that they are being placed in Mali to tidy a mess created by U.S. capitalism.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/28/i-heard-the-news-today-oh-boy/
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A particularly horrible war ignored by the irving press is the American and Saudi war against civilians in Yemen.  (ignore the official report that only 10,000 civilians have been killed in four years. Nobody has the faintest idea of how many have been killed, not when so many of them have been killed by starvation and lack of medical care. As well, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been dropping a bomb every five minutes on the people of Yemen. That's at least 1400 bombs a day for some 1400 days. That comes to something more  than one and a half million bombs. So either the death figures are a lie or the U.S. has the most ineffective air force in history.)

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/28/war-against-civilians-the-us-in-libya-and-yemen/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/27/terrifying-trends-collide-surging-deforestation-making-world-hotter-drier-place
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/27/yemeni-suffering-made-easy/

Where the hell are our churches on this? Where is Christianity? We live under a political and economic system that murders innocent people all over the world, that starves children by the tens of millions, that has created massive poverty even in the homelands  (such as Canada and the U.S. and Britain...) of capitalism.

New Brunswickers should be sure to go to the Irving Chapel this Sunday. It has the best ministers money can buy.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-diplomat-launches-bold-attack-on-trump-and-his-family-daring-to-take-action-no-other-country-has-dared/5645792
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The big, world capitalists don't care who they impoverish and exploit. American big capitalists are quite happy to do it to Americans. Canadian big capitalists are happy to do it to Canadians. And they are doing it as the poor get poorer, and as all money drifts into the pockets of the wealthy.

Americans also have to pay for the wars of the billionaires since the latter can't be bothered to pay taxes.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49725.htm
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This story is about Britain - but it's also true in Canada and the U.S. - and most of the capitalist world. The chances of rising from poverty are very, very slim. The poor aren't stupid. But social attitudes and poverty itself work against them. I grew up with friends who were illiterate. They weren't stupid. They lived in an atmosphere that closed out any possibility of rising. I had, like them, grown up in the expectation of spending my life on a factory floor.

Later, I would meet many very rich people. Most of them weren't smart. But they had easy access to expensive schools that could make them sort of literate, a tradition of family expectations of what was normal, and connections with the world of wealth - and inherited wealth and power. One does  have to be smart to maintain that inheritance - just vicious.

As a professor, I taught the very poor and the very rich. I had good students and some real stinkers in both categories.

For the most part, the wealthy are wealthy simply because they were born that way.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobility-in-richest-countries-has-stalled-since-1990s
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49718.htm

ditto in Canada.
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It's been known for  years that the U.S., beginning with Obama, was equipping, training and paying for ISIS and other terrorists to overthrow the government of Syia. But it's been secret from most people because our lying news media kept it a secret.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49714.htm
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/children-and-over-60s-homelessness-england/

What do you think their chances are of rising on the social ladder? But you can be a moron and still inherit the family business. In fact, it's quite common.
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https://truthout.org/articles/weve-found-16-1-million-in-political-and-taxpayer-spending-at-trump-properties/
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The front page story in the irving press for Jun 27 is that Willie O'Ree, the first African Canadian to play in the NHL, has been added to hockey's hall of fame. That's nice. But a little glib.

The article puts the blame for the exclusion of African Canadians on racist American fans. Come off it. O'Ree never made the majors until the 1950s. And then he made it in an American team. Were there none before  him who could play hockey? And, for decades, none after?

It wasn't Americans who kept African Canadians off the ice. It was Canadians. I had a friend who was a gifted hockey player - and black. He was hoping to get an athletic scholarship and study law about 1950. NO CANADIAN UNIVERSITY WOULD ACCEPT HIM FOR ANYTHING. He had good grades. He was a proven  hockey player.

But llmost all Canadian universities up to the 1960s and later accepted only a small number of blacks. I saw that when I attended the Baptist school, Acadia. Yep. Only God's white people were equal.

So my friend went to Princeton where those American 'racists' accepted him for both school and hockey. He later became one of Canada's more distinguished lawyers. His sister, (as late as 1960) became the first black teacher in Quebec.
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Cartoonist de Adder of our very own irving press has his usual cartoon attacking the Liberal government. Obviously, the boss has told him who he wants to win the election. The excuse is government overspending by the Liberals. The real reason is the willingness of the Conservatives to open up fracking.

Then there's the commentary writer Herb Emery who teaches Regional Economics at UNB. I've begun to wonder if he, too, hears his master's voice. His June 28 column attacks Saint John for not having enough money to operate the city. Funny thing, though. He doesn't mention that irving has permission NOT to pay the city tens of millions in property taxes.

Then there's a column by an outfit called Frontier Centre for Public Policy. It wants to privatize a function of the federal governments. Surprise. Surprise. The centre is one of the favourite propaganda houses for big business that the irving press just loves.
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I have often written in these columns that the U.S. set out to conquer the world after 1945. But that's more than a little glib. It's not the whole U.S. that set out to do that. It's the very wealthy, working through their puppets called Democrats and Republicans, who intend to conquer the world.

Thanks to a reader who sent me the following about this.

Nobel laureate James Buchanan is the intellectual linchpin of the Koch-funded attack on democratic institutions, argues Duke historian Nancy MacLean

"...many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to “reform” public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. ... Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy.

The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.

"The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” 

"Why should the increasingly powerful federal government be able to force the wealthy to pay for goods and programs that served ordinary citizens and the poor? "

"Buchanan saw society as a cutthroat realm of makers (entrepreneurs) constantly under siege by takers (everybody else) His own language was often more stark, warning the alleged “prey” of “parasites” and “predators” out to fleece them. "

"Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented immigrants? They could, and have. Might they engineer a retirement crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? Done. Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign forced arbitration agreements? Check. Gut public education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? Getting it done.

Would they even refuse children clean water? Actually, yes.

MacLean notes that in Flint, Michigan, Americans got a taste of what the emerging oligarchy will look like — it tastes like poisoned water. There, the Koch-funded Mackinac Center pushed for legislation that would allow the governor to take control of communities facing emergency and put unelected managers in charge. In Flint, one such manager switched the city’s water supply to a polluted river, but the Mackinac Center’s lobbyists ensured that the law was fortified by protections against lawsuits that poisoned inhabitants might bring. Tens of thousands of children were exposed to lead, a substance known to cause serious health problems including brain damage.

“To value liberty for the wealthy minority above all else and enshrine it in the nation’s governing rules, as Calhoun and Buchanan both called for and the Koch network is achieving, play by play, is to consent to an oligarchy in all but the outer husk of representative form.” Nobody can say we weren’t warned. 

__________________________________________________....... and back to me again.....

In short, the purpose of the very wealthy is to destroy democracy, and to take control of all humanity for the benefit of the very rich. That, in its early form, is what privatization of education and health services is about. That is what almost all the editorials in the irving press are about - condemning our politicians for incompetence, supporting the shift to private ownership for everything. They never  have a word of criticism of private capitalism - though private capitalism is what is responsible for our provincial deficits.

And we might remind all those twits in the Chamber of Commerce, all those cheerleaders for the big capitalists, that they are nowhere close to being players in this game. For all their eagerness to identify with the very wealthy, they don't count for a tinker's damn.

Trump wants to make American great again? Well, he certainly doesn't plan to make the 40% or so of Americans who live below the poverty line great again. For all of Trump's bragging, poverty has actually risen under him - and it's going to get worse. No. The'great' part of America will continue to be what is has always been - the multi-billionaires.

These  very wealthy are the part of America that is going to be great. It is possible - even likely, that they will invite the 'great' of the rest of the world to join them in the greatness of ruling the world as they now rule the U.S., Canada, Britain and others. Conquest of the world by the super wealthy!

And since the super-wealthy have long since proven that all they care about is their own greed, you can be sure that you won't be getting any of the goodies.

They're working from a strong base. They own almost all of our news sources. That's why the irving press is such a lying and trivial chain of newspapers. In the U.S., they are demolishing the few social services like education and health that the U.S. still offers. They're doing the same in Britain. And they're chipping away here in Canada with their privatization schemes. They have long since destroyed democracy in Latin America, and reduced most of that continent to poverty.

They effectively own that mass of corruption that the U.S. calls Congress. And, yes, they own what's left of 'democratic governments' in Canada. They're busily destroying unions, especially in the U.S. (Nothing worse than employees demanding decent pay.) We are heading into a world of hunger and despair - actually, we're already in it - ruled by the new 'masters of the universe'.

Meanwhile, and like Hitler,  they have to find someone they're protecting us against. Enter Mexicans and Latin Americans. In Europe, enter the Africans and people of the middle east that our new gods  have driven into  hunger and poverty and misery. Listen to what Trump says of them - they're evil (just like the Jews); they're criminal (just like the Jews).

Hitler's Naziis had values - just, so we are told, as we have values. Yes. We murder and impoverish but that's okay because the people we murder and impoverish (as Hitler did) are of races inferior to us. The hatreds we see spilling out of the U.S. (and Britain and France - and Canada) are the racial hatreds that Hitler found so useful. But most of our news media don't say that because they're super-wealthy owners want us to hate.

We are well into the most dangerous period the world has ever seen. Effective power has been seized in much of the world by the superwealthy whose news media fill us with hatred and lies. They are a rebirth of the medieval aristocracy who made the world their servants. But this is worse. The medieval aristocrats didn't have nuclear weapons and chemical poisons.

The medieval aristocracy did, though, have Christian churches eager to bless all that the slaughter and theft and poverty that the aristocracy created. And our new aristocracy, too, have that.

What we are living through is a continuation of the world of Adolph Hitler.  But much more dangerous. And it's reflected even here in little New Brunswick. No. I'm not exaggerating.

http://theantimedia.com/trump-america-hitler-germany/

The super-wealthy of Germany just loved Hitler. They thought he was a great guy. Ditto for big capitalism in Italy.

This is not what Canadians fought and died for World War 2. The did not fight and die for  politicians who would accept payoffs and give favours to the wealthy. They did not fight and die for a population which is either too lazy or too scared to give serious thought to what an election is about.  On Nov. 11, we remember those who served - as we should. What we should also remember is what we told them they were dying for. But no, November 11 services almost always play up the glory - and ignore our betrayal of why they died.

And The Canadian Legion, I'm afraid, dances to the tunes of the big capitalists, and seems indifferent to those who served to create a better world._____________________________________

Forgive. A reader sent me a passage from the Bible (Romans 13). I, clumsily, erased it in error. Here it is.

13 All of you must obey the government rulers. Everyone who rules was given the power to rule by God. And all those who rule now were given that power by God. 2 So anyone who is against the government is really against something God has commanded. Those who are against the government bring punishment on themselves. 3 People who do right don’t have to fear the rulers. But those who do wrong must fear them. Do you want to be free from fearing them? Then do only what is right, and they will praise you.

4 Rulers are God’s servants to help you. But if you do wrong, you have reason to be afraid. They have the power to punish, and they will use it. They are God’s servants to punish those who do wrong. 5 So you must obey the government, not just because you might be punished, but because you know it is the right thing to do.

6 And this is why you pay taxes too. Those rulers are working for God, and they give all their time to the work of ruling. 7 Give everyone what you owe them. If you owe them any kind of tax, then pay it. Show respect to those you should respect. And show honor to those you should honor.

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This might explain the behaviour of some of our clergy. All rulers are God's servants. According to Paul, Hitler was a child of God chosen by Him/Her to rule. Duh.........

That would mean we should all have obeyed Hitler as Hitler was God's agent. Duh...so maybe I should go to the Irving Chapel.

June 26: The irving press - triviality and insanity

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

....Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years! Immigration must be based on merit - we need people who will help to Make America Great Again!
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I keep seeing news reports that refugees crossing a border are 'illegal' immigrants. That is NOT true. They are NOT illegal. Under international law, refugees fleeing from their homeland are doing something that is perfectly legal. It is a human right to flee terrible conditions and dangers. And we have a legal obligation to accept them if that is the case.

And Canada and the US do have a legal obligation - and a moral one. Those refugees are mostly people fleeing from countries that American governments and American corporations (and Canadian corporations) have made dangerous and unlivable. That's true of refugees from Latin America, Africa, the middle east.....

We aren't doing them favours by admitting them. We're really giving a very slight apology for making their countries into hellholes. Your friendly Canadian mining barons can (but won't) tell about the horror they have made of lives in Latin America, Congo, and other regions.

What's illegal about it is Canadian governments  (like the present one) that turn the refugees over to  the American government which  (separately) imprisons both the parents and the children.

Trump often says that "illegal" immigrants will kill Americans. But if he really wanted to protect Americans against killers he'd take action against American police who average close to a thousand murders every month.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order. Most children come without parents...

Oh, there's also the problem that many of the refugees are children who cross without their parents. Thousands have crossed in that way. Think about that.

Does this mean Latin Americans just want to get rid of their children? That's a logical conclusion....if you're a racist. The more likely one is that if the family can't get across, maybe the children will escape the hell that U.S. billionaires have made out of Latin America. Maybe they will break through to relatives in the U.S.  Now - think how desperate a parent must be to do that.
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And here's a story not likely to make the irving press.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/irving-shipbuilding-repair-upgrade-1.4718556

And gee, I wonder who was putting the pressure on. It would have to be somebody in the federal government, and probably somebody close to the maritimes.
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And this one could have implications for New Brunswick. I guess that's why the irving press hasn't reported it.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/06/24/watch-bayer-monsanto-a-match-made-in-hell/
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Climate change is happening. It's going to keep happening despite the efforts of the irving press to ignore it and despite  ( in fact, because of...) the unspoken plan of New Brunswick's Conservatives to legalize fracking.

http://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-climate-change-will-precipitate-migrant-apocalypse
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http://rabble.ca/news/2018/06/trudeau-must-end-safe-third-country-agreement-us

This is the law - the one that we have been ignoring when we send refugees back to the U.S. We and the U.S. are also the cause of the refugee crisis by the behaviour of our corporations in making their homelands unlivable.
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Western nations, especially the U.S., Britain and France have been making the middle east hell for over a century as they plunder its resources and murder its people.

But we've scarcely seen a word about it in the irving press.

http://rabble.ca/news/2018/06/defiance-launched-gaza%E2%80%99s-flaming-kites-cannot-be-extinguished
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Too bad I can send on only a bit of this story. The bigger story is that the royal family of Britain - and its aristocracy - have been anti-semitic for centuries. Though they require huge staffs of thousands (Prince Charles alone has 150 household staff), they had never hired a Jew until the present Queen came to the throne.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-william-in-israel-british-royal-family-s-complicated-history-nazi-germany-1.6198604
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Yet another story the irving press didn't have room for.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/26/thousands-of-refugees-forced-onto-death-march-into-sahara-desert/

We are creating the refugees.
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And as we look in the next extract about this moral rot, where the hell are the Christians? Where the hell are the Christian churches? Will our slaughter of the children of Yemen be the subject of a sermon at the Irving Chapel?

Not bloody likely. I guess that's why Christians give faith a bad name.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/26/americas-jaws-drip-with-the-blood-of-yemens-children/
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Most people of the western world have been lied to and/or kept in ignorance of what is happening by most of their news media ever since their origins in the second half of the nineteenth century. That is what produced a Trump. That is what might give New Brunswick a Conservative government and fracking in the next election.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/24/the-most-dangerous-man-in-history/
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49705.htm

My goodness! Democrats and Republicans take bribes? Oh. How very different from our Liberals and Conservatives.....sort of.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49713.htm

Of course, Russia  has a right to be in Syria. It was invited. The U.S. wasn't.

And this is very dangerous. The U.S. has been acting as though it can do whatever it likes. Russia - and perhaps China - are now drawing lines in the sand. We are very close to Trump deciding to go nuclear.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49709.htm
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Bush and Obama were both mass murderers. They killed to protect and increase the profits of American capitalists - no other reason. Both are regular church attenders. Jesus preached to people like Bush and Obama. But to the best of my knowledge, He never agreed with their values.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49707.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49706.htm
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The irving press line is that giving our money to the wealthy will make  us all rich. The Economist is a publication that is a great deal more truthful and more intelligent than the iving press.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49708.htm
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Trump has been busy  wiping out any action to deal with climate change. Here's a man who, despite his appearance, knows more than all the world's leading scientists put together. Mind you, that puts him in the same league with New Brunswick's Conservatives.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/25/unconscionable-and-shocking-trumps-head-noaa-proposes-axing-climate-and-conservation
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U.S. policies have been essentially the same for the whole of American  history.
They have always been designed the benefit the wealthy and put into practice by the corrupt of the government.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/21/how-us-policy-in-honduras-set-the-stage-for-todays-mass-migration/
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American women are the MOST abused in all of the western world. How's that for American Christian values?

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-most-dangerous-women-metoo-poll-results/
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Well, it seems the oil industry in the U.S. has been less than honest in reporting the damage it does to the environment. (Of course, that would never happen in Canada.)

https://truthout.org/articles/methane-leaks-from-oil-and-gas-60-percent-higher-than-epa-estimates-new-study-finds/
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The following story is, I'm sure, a lie. If it were true, the irving press would have told us.

https://truthout.org/articles/area-of-global-dead-zones-doubling-every-10-years/
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https://greedmedia.com/japanese-americans-imprisoned-at-texas-internment-camp-in-1940s-watch-border-crisis-unfold-with-heavy-hearts/

Canada put Japanese Canadians into prison camps. I got to know one of them in grade seven. We became good friends, and many years later, I would work with him in the campaign to get an apology from the Canadian government.

As I mingled with the Japanese community, I soon learned they all had one thing in common. It was impossible for them, all those years after, to talk about what it had been like for a child or an adult to be given a half hour to leave their homes with only what they could carry, and to be dumped in indoor cattle pens, then taken to primitive shelters in cold and remote regions. My friend, 6 at the time, choked up in his first sentence as he tried to answer my question about it. (He would later become one of Canada's most distinguished medical doctors.)
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We are at a dangerous time.

Capitalism dominates not only our economic world. It also dominates our political lives - all of us. Anyone who can live in New Brunswick and not see that is a fool.

Capitalism is a system based on profit - nothing else. It has no human values, no
compassion, only an unlimited greed.

That's why it has to be controlled. But we have allowed it to run loose. We are allowing it to destroy us  And that will, sooner than later, destroy capitalism itself and all of us with it. (Of course it will. That will require great stupidity. But I have never said big capitalists are intelligent.) For decades now, the world's wealth has increasingly been flowing into the pockets of the very wealthy. American poverty has been estimated at 40% and rising. And the basic services for that 40%  - health care, education, old age security - are disappearing.  (American illiteracy stands at 50%). But instead of providing essential services, America capitalism wants almost all spending to be on weapons whose only role can be to destroy the whole planet.)

In effect, capitalism is destroying its own future. It is interested only in money that flows to itself. It is too greedy to understand that its own prosperity depends on a prosperous society. That's why capitalism, with the help of New Brunswick's irving press, wants to privatize health care and education so Canadians can be just as sick and uneducated as American are.

Will capitalism control itself? No. That's never going to happen. A philosophy
based on greed can only destroy itself. And we humans have destroyed ourselves, our empires, our civilizations in this way throughout history.  But there's a difference.

Today, we have the weaponry for the final destruction of all life. And we have capitalists eager to use that power. Trump, for example, is clearly eager for a war with China. But there is no way that an American military which can't beat Afghanistan will defeat China. It will take nuclear weapons to do the job - and at that point, we all join the dance of death.

In the face of this, New Brunswickers are a pretty placid lot. For most of its history, New Brunswick has been controlled by various economic barons - from the old days big landowners and timber lords to today's irvings and their friends.

And New Brunswick has always voted for the Liberals or the Conservatives, both of them servants of the wealthy. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives have anything that could be called social or political values. Neither of them has a platform of any substance.

The NDP and the Greens have some values. Some. But they have two faults. One is that they split the vote. This is insane. They should long ago have united.

The other fault is that their programmes are pretty wimpy. The NDP made itself wimpy when it took over from the old CCF party. That was the fault of the labour unions who used their power to turn the NDP into a 'three cheers for capitalism' party. Neither the NDP nor the Greens seem to have given any thought to stopping the capitalist stampede. But that cannot possibly accomplish anything until they do that.

And no party seems to have given any thought to the issue that could be the death of this province. The very wealthy of this province don't pay income tax. Some don't even pay local taxes. But they all have their hands out constantly for government favours. (with a little help from the irving press which daily tells us that we should pay businesses to come here, and then we'll all be rich. Hell, we've been giving handouts to those leeches for a couple of hundred years. And we're still poor.)
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A closing note for New Brunswick readers.

The June 25 edition of The Moncton Times and Transcript has an intelligent commentary on the commentary page. It's by Ian Peach - and it's only the second intelligent column I have ever seen on that page.

Alas! The other commentary on that page is more the irving press style. It's from a propaganda outfit called Consumer Choice Center. (I guess they don't know the Canadian spelling of centre.) Anyway, it's pitch for more chocolate milk in our schools.

Miraculously, there's another intelligent commentary in the June 26 paper. (Wow! Two in a row.)  This one, by professors at UNB and St. Thomas, says, with evidence, that schools are quite right to control what drinks are  safe for students.

But, back to normal, cartoonist deAdder has yet another cartoon attacking the provincial government for overspending. That seems to be irving policy since it's a theme that might defeat the Liberals and let in the Conservatives who are likely to approve fracking for our poor, oil industry.

Norbert Cunningham picks up the theme in his column. Kiss. Kiss.

Nobody at the irving press has even mentioned why New Brunswick governments have to overspend. It's because the wealthy of this province don't pay any income tax. And some, at least, don't even pay property tax. They haven't for at least fifty years. That's many, many billions of dollars.

Oh, yes. We could cut spending on education, privatize much of it, ditto for health... We could say to hell with the people of New Brunswick; let's all work in praise of our economic gods.....

And, given the record of our Christian clergy on social issues, we could be getting sermons on that.

Meanwhile, the irving press remains unspeakably trivial, a newspaper deliberately designed to keep a province in ignorance.a

June 21: The robots of New Brunswick

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/james-hansen-global-warming-1.4710713
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For a break from today's news, note the following photos of the wild, wild, west.
Notice what's largely missing? It's guns. Only a few people in these pictures are wearing them. Of course not.  Most towns and saloons very sensibly banned the wearing of guns.

The wild, wild west was actually a safer place to be than most of the eastern cities. And the quick draw shootout? Anyone who has done any shooting knows that such a shootout would be crazy. It never happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRQfB7sJ0aQ
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/trump-immigration-1.4711365
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Have I ever mentioned that the irving-owned newspapers of New Brunswick are cheapest, sleaziest, most lying newspapers I have ever seen?  Today's newspaper  has 2 (count them, 2) stories about the rest of the world. One is that Trump has promised to put an end to the separation of children from parents attempting to cross into the US from Mexico.  And the UN has accused the Syrian army and the rebels of war crimes.  Wow!

The story is true enough. but the U.S. is deliberately starving millions to death in Yemen. That's a war crime. Since 1945, it has killed millions in illegal wars. Those are all war crimes. They are war crimes because ALL of  those wars were illegal. (And, therefore, Canada was guilty of assisting in war crimes in Afghanistan - but the irving press never mentioned that.) It assisted the mass murder of Guatemalans. It has illegally been practicing mass torture (with Canadian and British participation) since 1945.

How many of the stories above have been reported in the stinking irving press?

Today, there was, at least, one. And it was reported - as usual - only because it didn't mention American war crimes. Nor did it mention that the U.S. is pulling out of the war crimes section of the UN because the UN has (correctly) accused Israel of very serious war crimes. The Israel newspaper Haaretz has had no problem with reporting this fully and honestly. But not the western press.

In fact, the U.S. has, for 70 years been by far the most active force in destroying the UN. And, just a reminder that the UN is, we are told, a major institution that Canadians fought and died for in World War 2.

So where the hell is The Canadian Legion on this one? How will it deal with this on Nov. 11?  (answer  - it won't.) What a pack of hypocrites we all are. The reality is we were lied to. World War Two was not fought to stop German and Japanese aggression. It was fought to clear the path for aggression and murder and plunder by American capitalists - with British and Canadian capitalists tagging along.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-united-nations-human-rights-1.4713021http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-united-nations-human-rights-1.4713021

In fact, here's a list of just one site's news for the day. Compare this to the feeble two stories in today's irving press.

http://theantimedia.com/

This one, alone, has ten times as many world news stories as our Mickey Mouse irving press. And they are all  better reported than the two in the irving press.
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Sara Netanyahu is the wife of the Israeli P.M. who ordered the murders of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians and murdering over a thousand unarmed ones on their own territory. (Something which Trump feels is quite correct.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/21/sara-netanyahu-charged-misuse-public-funds-israel
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The irving press didn't even have this Canadian story though it is surely good news, indeed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2018/jun/21/viral-clip-of-canadian-mp-breastfeeding-her-son
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Canada doesn't need immigrants? Well, Canada needs them in the near future - and desperately. As climate changes our habitable areas will spread north. It's already happening. We need to fill that area. Why?

Within ten to twenty years, the U.S.  will be looking to annex Canada - and it's north. It needs the land. It needs the water. We had better have people there before that happens.

Why not just have American immigrants? Because they come hooked onto America's big capitalists who want Canadian water and agricultural land - and Canadian bodies for its armed forces. Thanks. But Canada already has its own super greedy big capitalists

Check the news. Think. The progress on the Korean issue has not been handled by Trump. The person behind this was the PM of China. China is becoming the dominant power in Asia. That means a steady retreat for the U.S. in Asia. American capitalists will want Canada as a part of the U.S. to sustain some American regional power.

Anyway, what's wrong with immigrants? We're all immigrants, and at some point our ancestors were hated as immigrants. - French, English, Scots, Italians, Ukrainians, Irish, Catholics, Protestants, Jews.... we've all disliked each other at some point. And we've all  needed each other.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/19/canada-safe-third-country-pollongericy-us-no--safe
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This opinion is about Britain. But it's important to Canada. Health care for all and education for all are essential services for all Canadians. But the very wealthy don't see it that way. For them, all this exists only to increase their profits. That's why the U.S. has largely destroyed health care and  public education. That's why Canadian billionaires would love to destroy them in Canada. That's why billionaires, for years, have been muscling their way into our universities. That's why university presidents (and some professors) have been kiss-ups at the service of the wealthy.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/21/broken-welfare-state-reinvent-it
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You don't believe in climate change?That's nice. The good angels of irving inc. will love you. And don't worry. The irving press won't tell you about it even as people die.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/21/climate-change-and-kashmir/
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Trump is a liar, a bully, a servant of the very wealthy, is murderous...big deal...
he's not the first U.S. president of that sort.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/21/how-the-new-york-times-lies-about-lies-obama-v-trump-as-example/
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This next one shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in New Brunswick. Manipulation of the Liberals and Conservatives by the wealthy is an old story here.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/21/crisis-trust-poll-finds-people-living-democracies-think-governments-arent-acting
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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-railway-owned-by-nbs-irving-family-pleads-not-guilty-to-safety/

Gee. I wonder how the two-fisted,  tough-as-nails irving editors missed this story. And I'm   sure their gifted cartoonist could have done a great cartoon on it.
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The collapse of American democracy happened a long time ago. The vote for Trump was a result of that collapse. People didn't like what they had. But they had no idea of where else to turn in their rejection of what was offered to them.

That's what happened with Ontario and the election of Doug Ford. That's what has happened with just about every election in New Brunswick. And that's what's is likely to happen in the current election. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have come up with any general philosophy of the role of government and the social values of their parties. The Greens and the NDP have - though not nearly enough.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49679.htm

(A group of Conservative candidates, including their leader, came to the building I live in. They were a dreary lot who had nothing to say.)
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49680.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49690.htm

Boy! Are we in New Brunswick ever lucky to have the tough-minded journalism of irving press.
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New Brunswickers live in a province in which glyphosate is widely used - and where the chief medical officer who warned about it was disposed of.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/french-beekeepers-sue-bayermonsanto-on-glyphosate-in-honey-u-s-court-allows-glyphosate-contamination-of-honey-labeled-100-pure/5644873

I don't know. Either New Brunswickers have a deep (if foolish) trust in Mr. Irving, or they're gutless.
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The U.S. is planning to dominate China, and so to dominate the whole of the Pacific region. This is be monstrously expensive - and it will benefit only billionaires in search of captive markets. But the billionaires won't have to pay the expense of the his war because most billionaires don't pay for any war - even though the wars are fought to benefit them. No. Billionaires don't pay taxes. We do. That's why it's necessary for the U.S. to destroy education, social services, medical care, all that trivia us common people depend on. That's why why they and  their children and their children's children and more face the biggest and most unpayable national debt in history.

Will the U.S. be able to dominate China? Not in any conventional war. Remember. The U.S. is the country that couldn't dominate Vietnam or Afghanistan. What it can do, very well might do,  is to launch a nuclear war on China. But that would turn loose a world of nuclear wars that would make the whole planet uninhabitable.

This is all quite insane. But the very greedy of the American world - which is includes Canada - have proven they are quite insane with greed.

https://truthout.org/articles/girding-for-confrontation-the-pentagons-provocative-encirclement-of-china/
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http://thesaker.is/interview-of-pepe-escobar-the-world-is-waiting-for-the-apocalypse-if-there-is-a-conflict-between-america-and-russia/
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Here's a story that has been around for a very long time. But it has never, ever made the irving press of New Brunswick. I guess the editors are too shy. They feed us endless crap about the philanthropy of the irvings, but never mention that they're being philanthropic with our money - and they also hide away billions of our money just for themselves in secret bank accounts. We are the ones who pay for the charities that the irvings take credit for. And we are the ones who give billions to them as a sort of charity.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mossack-fonseca-panama-papers-new-leak-1.4714187

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/paradise-papers-canada-connection-1.4386126

Meanwhile, the editorial for June 20 is another lame-brained one about the government running up a deficit. Of course it runs up a deficit. How can we avoid a deficit when the wealthy don't pay any taxes? Not federal, not municipal.

Then there's another kissup to big business from Herb Emery of UNB. It doesn't mention the tax havens, of course. No. It tells us how we have to give more money, more breaks to business to come to this province. It's the old, very old line that if we give money to the rich, they will shower money on us.

If that were true, we'd all be driving Rolls-Royces today.

Then there's a sort of decent column by the NDP leader on the importance of  providing after-school care for children. I don't doubt it. I don't doubt the worthiness of it. But we should be reading political statements about the realities of life in this province. We have to make the very wealthy pay their taxes, their income taxes, their property taxes, to stop expecting handouts from us.... We have to establish a real government by the people to get past the years, the decades, the centuries that this province has been bled dry by local barons. We can't just piddle around the edge of this problem. The NDP and the Greens have to focus on social principles and values in a province that has rarely seen much of either.
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And that problem is going to hit us in the face very soon as we learn the hard way that high school graduation isn't worth a poop. No. I'm  not kidding.

Big corporations are switching the low pay jobs over to robots. We've already seen big job losses across North America. They are going to get much bigger, in the millions - and soon. Robots are cheaper than people. High school will no longer be the door to even low paid jobs.

What are we going to do for those people who lose out? Certainly, big business isn't going to lift a finger for them. It never  has. We need to get very serious about post high school education. And it has to be free so that everybody has access. We have to become a well-educated society because that is who most of the jobs will be for.

You don't care? Then get ready for the chaos.

We are already watching the rise of politicians reminiscent of the Naziis of the 1930s, politicians who feed on the anger of people, but have no solutions. Trump is a prime example. So is Doug Ford of Ontario. We're going to see a lot more of this. It's going to turn into national violence and greater hatreds as the Trumps and Fords prove to be ineffective and they are replaced by people even worse. And it may well be happening in just a decade.

I expect the U.S. to blow before Canada does. In the U.S., the super wealthy are enjoying their plunder of the nation, the impoverishment of its people, and of people all over the world. That is what will turn into a violent outbreak from people who, alas, have not the faintest idea of what is needed.

We need to control the very wealthy. We need some politicians, at least, who have an idea of how to do that, and a willingness to do it. We need a society that  itself understands what social values and principles are and how they should be applied. We don't do it because our society has been kept in ignorance, by our news media especially, of what those values and principles are. And because we have kept ourselves in ignorance by our own fears.

In short, we are ruled by a greedy lot who lack the intelligence to see they are creating one hell of a crash. (Can the leading capitalists of New Brunswick meet  the intellectual demands of government? I don't see  how. These people seem to want the Conservative opposition to revive fracking in this province. The world's leading scientists say this is a very bad idea. But our major, economic leaders, who, incidentally, have little more that high school leaving, are all for charging ahead - which, I presume, is why the irving press and cartoonist de Adder are kissing up to the Conservatives.)

And this is all made worse by an even greater crisis. About half of New Brunswick's population is functionally illiterate. (In the U.S., it's over 50%).

Public education began, for the most part, in the early 19th century, commonly ending about grade 7, though it might reach high school in some areas. That produced the intellectually trained people we needed for the growth of industry. But that was over a hundred years ago. Now we need a far higher level of training, partly for the technical and intellectual times we live in, partly for the demands of maintaining democracy. High school doesn't cut it any more.

Now, we need much more advanced training from business colleges to universities and all the way through graduate school. And that can't be done without free (public school) tuition  to the highest levels. The reality is we cannot afford politically or socially, to throw away the input of half of our population. (No, the billionaires can't do it. They have proven morally and intellectually to be not up to the job.)

And, yes, that will have to mean that university professors will have to learn how to teach. And politicians and billionaires will have to learn to keep their interference out of all levels from Kindergarten to Ph.D.

The public school was a wonderful development. But that was over 200 years ago. The world has changed. (We also need a marked effort in adult education, again with no interference. After all, the crunch for education coupled with the rapid rise of robotization within a generation means we don't have much time.)

In these very challenging times, half of our populations really don't know much about anything. But they have the right to vote. Thus the victories of Trump and Ford. Thus the many years of leadership by Conservatives and Liberals. Thus the wimpy platforms of the opposition parties. In New Brunswick, this is made worse by a provincial population that is determined to be D and D, (deaf and dumb) to avoid any real discussion of political values - a condition made easier by a provincial newspaper chain that actually is D and D.

All this is heading us, and soon, into severe violence and, quite possibly, world nuclear war.

For a start, New Brunswickers have to be helped out of their collective coma. And they certainly aren't going to get that help from the irvings or their newspapers.
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And I wonder.... In Montreal, I gave talks, some seventy to ninety a  year, to audiences in churches, synagogues, libraries, teachers' associations .... Audiences were usually three or four hundred up to a thousand. I notice that doesn't happen in New Brunswick. Indeed, the few times I've seen political speakers in New Brunswick, they've been as drab and pointless as their audiences.

Do serious, public talks ever happen in this province? Or is everybody just scared?