July3: It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry...

A story that won't make the irving press.

//www.haaretz.com/us-news/85-year-old-rabbi-arrested-during-trump-immigration-policy-protest-1.6222744
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/03/mediterranean-migrants-drown-three-days-libya-italy

Maybe if our capitalists stopped killing these people in their countries, they'd stop fleeing and drowning.
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It's too early yet to cheer. But some American voters might be waking up.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/02/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democratic-politics
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/02/iran-mek-cult-terrorist-trump-allies-john-bolton-rudy-giuliani

How soon we forget. The last time the U.S. interfered with Iran was to destroy a democratically elected government, and install a brutal dictatorship. Now, they're bringing democracy. Yeah. That's how our news media will run it. The reality is that the U.S., since 1900 or so has been the world's biggest destroyer of democracies.
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2018/jul/02/10-crises-millions-flee-world-looks-away-in-pictures

None of these stories has reached the pages of the irving press. It's not as if they're new. Congo has been suffering mass murder, torture, starvation, exploitation from western capitalists for almost a hundred and fifty years. Millions have been killed by hunger and western guns.
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/02/america-is-one-dollar-one-vote-not-one-person-one-vote/

The U.S. is ruled by an unelected aristocracy which rules only to benefit itself. Much the same is true of Canada, especially insofar as the Liberal and Conservative parties are concerned.
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/01/trumpet-to-war-spectators-and-pragmatistsat-their-own-execution/
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Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has paid a diplomatic visit to the White House. He has no more right to do that than you or I do. He is no longer an elected official. Nobody in our elected government approved his visit or even knew about it. The is arrogance and, potentially, very dangerous arrogance.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2018/06/do-we-need-canadian-version-logan-act-put-stop-dangerous

Funny the irving press never even noticed it.
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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/07/02/update-2018-more-evidence-half-americans-are-or-near-poverty

Gee! Ain't it wonderful what capitalism can do? The poverty rate in Canada is about 14%, and New Brunswick, in contradiction of today's column in the irving press by Norbert Cunningham, is not the province worst off.  In fact, it's quite average. ( Yes. New Brunswickers are being ripped off by their very wealthy. But so are the other provinces.)
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49769.htm
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Another story that hasn't appeared in New Brunswick's irving press - and won't.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/end-immigration-detention-in-canada-an-open-letter/5646285
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The Canadian government lies just as much as the American government does.

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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The irving press regularly publishes columns about how we should love our billionaires because they create jobs and make us all wealthy. And that's a crock. They do create jobs. But overall, billionaires cost us money. They don't pay income tax. Often, they don't pay property tax, either. And they routinely expect us to give them expensive favours. The truth is that the wealthy make us poor. That's why the U.S., with the biggest and richest capitalists in the world, also has such a high poverty rate. And that's why new Brunswick is poorer than it should be.

And that's why it's owners think it a great idea to have the irving press to lie for them.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-billionaires-become-billionaires/5612125
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The next reading is VERY long. But it's an interesting psychiatric examination of Donald Trump and some of his circle - like John Bolton.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/03/a-psychological-evaluation-of-donald-trump/
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https://greedmedia.com/melania-trump-raked-in-up-to-1m-for-photos-licensed-only-for-positive-stories/
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And it's nice to see Christians acting like Christians.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christ-church-cathedral-puts-jesus-mary-joseph-in-cage-protest-ice-detentions/
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About 2000, I was invited by Canada's Conservative government to be a member of a committee that would plan events for a national celebration of The War of 1812. I went to one meeting, realized this would be controlled by a bunch of government hacks, and pulled out. And as the celebrations happened, I never had reason to regret my decision.

This next item is long one. But it's a good one for anyone interested in that war.

https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2018/07/02/the-forgotten-and-peculiar-war-of-1812/
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This next is the most astonishing analysis of Trump's policies I have ever seen. Frankly, I don't know what to make of it. Alas! It also has huge gaps in it, so it's hard to understand how it would work in practice. Still, it does explain some of Trump's behaviour.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article201778.html
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There are two ways to govern. One is by determining the needs of the whole society, and working to meet those needs. The other is by encouraging the greed of a few, meeting their needs on the theory the benefits will work their way down. The latter is the editorial policy of the irving press. And it doesn't work. It never has worked.

Capitalism is a system based on greed. The only purpose of the capitalist is to make money for himself. For all the capitalist (and irving press) talk of how this benefits all of us, it isn't true. The greed of capitalists is the cause of almost all wars. That's why the U.S. has made such a mess of the middle east. That's why Canadian and American capitalists plunder and impoverish Latin Americans. That's why, in the U.S., poverty is dangerously high.

Capitalism ran loose in the world well into the 20th century. Then it plunged us all into the horror of the great depression. And, in those dreadful years of the 1930s, capitalists and the governments they owned did almost nothing to ease the suffering. We had better years in the 1940s, 1950's, 1960s... but greed has come back to rule.

The U.S. has murdered many millions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Syria, Guatemala. And all with the same reason - to plunder those countries for the benefit of American capitalists.  Britain and France, especially Britain, ran capitalist empires in their day. But their days in the sun are over, so now they have to scramble to kiss up to U.S. capitalists.

Capitalists are so powerful that they, not the public, set the agendas for most countries. That is what has given us endless wars since 1945. That is what has caused monstrous suffering and death. That is why we have tens of millions of refugees.

Meanwhile, we have to deal with the greatest threats the world has ever seen. We have constant wars which have made it impossible to deal with our real problems. One of those problems is oil which is creating climate change. The oil barons assure us it's not - which is why Trump refuses to deal with it.

You think it's not happening? Okay. Then you're in the same camp as greedy old men of no particular education. Opposed to them are the world's leading scientists - as well as our own observation of climate warnings -Arctic meltdowns. and increasingly violent and destructive weather patterns.

Instead of dealing with that problem, we spend our time fighting wars - paid for by us but not by the billionaires who don't pay taxes - at world record costs. Those costs have to come from you and me - and they happen at the expense of medical care, education, food and housing, adequate pensions....(but don't worry. The wealthy aren't suffering.)

Tied to that is the destructiveness of modern weapons. In nuclear and chemical warfare, we are far, far beyond the destructiveness of World War 2. Forget all the gab about heroes and patriotism and the Queen. It is a certainty that the next major war would destroy the world. Even if we didn't get bombed (and we would get bombed), we would be living on an Earth no longer habitable, and swarming with dreadfully deformed people.

The U.S. is currently testing super nukes. So is Russia. This is insane. This is an issue we should have dealt with in 1945. We didn't. We should be dealing with climate change. We aren't.  Almost all of our time and spending has gone for weapons to be used in a war that none of us would survive.

As it is, we can afford to spray our forest  (and our animals and ourselves) with a chemical considered dangerous in medical circles. We can afford to let billionaires skip billions on taxes - and to let them get generous handouts whenever they ask for them. (Our news media assure us that capitalism is good because it creates jobs. What a crock that is! If capitalism created jobs, we'd all be getting richer instead of poorer. And Latin Americans would be rolling in wealth.)

Capitalism can work. But it can work only if it has strong oversight and controls from the rest of us. Instead, we've allowed it to run loose and, oh, it's murderous - murderous, cruel, degrading, destructive....

Here, in New Brunswick, we face an election in which both major parties are owned by capitalism, and most of the news we get comes from sources controlled by capitalism. That's why the Liberal and the Conservatives have no sense whatever of the social values that an effective government must have. And most voters have no idea of those social values because the Liberals and Conservatives and most of the news media don't even know what 'social values' means.

We also risk descending into what has happened to the U.S. People get disgusted with their government; but instead of seriously learning about alternatives, they vote for the person who expresses their hates. And those usually take a racist form. It's what Hitler won on. It's what Trump won on. It's what Doug Ford of Ontario won on.

All over Europe and North America we're seeing a racism that ignores the real problem of a capitalism running loose, and with that racism and capitalism operating on the greatest pile of weapons the earth has ever known.

We blew it. We blew all the things we could have done after World War Two. Instead, we threw everything away to satisfy the most greedy and irresponsible people of this world, and we're now running along the path to our own destruction.

Alas, the churches aren't much better. The very institutions that should be providing moral leadership are, as usual, ignoring it. Oh, they will get all excited about abortion. But the righteous don't approve of it. But they have no problem with starving babies and children to death in Yemen and bombing innocent civilians into splinters all over the world

The apostle Matthew said that it was no more possible for a rich man to see God than it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Evidently, rich men now have open house with God. Still tough on camels though.

Uncontrolled capitalism is the most vicious, most greedy and most dangerous force this world has ever seen. And we have very, very little time to get control of it.
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For comic relief, I read the irving press every day. Today's lead story looked gripping.... "DFO mulled less harsh fishery measures: Docs". Under it was a bold red banner with the word Exclusive. Yes. The only place in the world you could get this story was in the irving press. And what is the story?

Well, a government committee was formed to shut down any Canadian fisheries in areas that were dangerous for the survival of the Right Whales. And the big news as expressed in the headline? Duh. The committee considered some ideas less demanding than others - and some more demanding than others.

That's it folks. Gee! Isn't that what all such committees are supposed to do? And for this we get a lead story with an "Exclusive" label?

deAdder has his usual pointless cartoon to say he doesn't like Liberals. (That means the owner doesn't like them.) Norbert Cunningham writes about how St. John is in trouble because of it's debt. He says it's okay, though, because we can follow the sage advice of professors few people have ever heard of. One big idea is for the province to pay off St. John's debt. Brilliant - except...

The reason St. John is in debt is because the irvings pay very, very little municipal taxes. So we're all going to get hit because the irvings, just as they don't pay income taxes, aren't big on paying municipal taxes, either. In other words, capitalism which already drains off our money is now going to drain off even more.  Funny how none of those 'experts' on finance mentioned that.