(I apoligize for being late with this edition. My computer was attacked by evil spirits.)
_____________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/28/greta-thunberg-bristol-schools-shut-students-join-climate-strike
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/what-is-coronavirus-what-should-i-do-symptoms
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/worse-than-flu-busting-coronavirus-myths
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-donald-
This is the kind of news we should all be getting from our news media. But I haven't seen much of it.
Oh. And there's this.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trump-coronavirus-hoax-claim
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/29/pontypridd-braced-second-flood-in-fortnight-storm-jorge
For some reason, North American news media have shown little interest in the
terrible storms and floods in Britain and Northern Europe. But these are storms so severe they have not happened for many years - in fact, many centuries. I don't understand why we are getting so little information on the cause of them.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/canada-nevsun-eritrea-lawsuit-human-rights-slavery
Gee! Wealthy Canadians do that? Any chance a Canadian news medium will us this, and tell us their names - and maybe pictures of them?
Nah.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/canada-pipeline-protests-climate-indigenous-rights
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/us-taliban-sign-peace-agreement-afghanistan-war
The U.S., with the most weaponry (and the biggest weapons spender in history)
has not been able to defeat the Taliban in almost 20 years of fighting.
And Canada, for a time, helped the U.S. That's why Canada has at least a couple of roads that transported it's dead. They are called Highways of Heroes. They were heroes. But we weren't heroes in sending them.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/29/teachers-call-for-ban-on-shooter-drills-in-us-schools
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-china-epicurve-1.5479983
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-coronavirus-cases-1.5481218
________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/02/alberta-budget-corporate-lobbyists-return-legislature-hallways
Though Ontario has had coronavirus for many days now, this seems not to have attracted the notice of Ottawa's newspapers.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/29/american-fuhrer-delusionary-dictatorial-donald-trump-drunk-power
________________________________________________________________
https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/forever-chemicals-tap-water
________________________________________________________________
https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/david-ray-griffins-the-christian-gospel-for-americans-a-systematic-theology
_________________________________________________________________
An indigenous view of the Canada's blockade crisis.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/02/28/Blockades-Arent-The-Crisis/
_______________________________________________________________
This is a long and complex 'downer' on the chances of peace in Afghanistan.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53055.htm
_______________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53048.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53051.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53054.htm
Not to worry. Ontario premier, Doug Ford, says it's not happening. And Doug Ford has a high school certificate. So there.
_________________________________________________________________
Bernie Sanders may be the best of the contestants for the presidency. But he also has serious shortcomings. What makes him a potential winner is that his opponents are so awful.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53056.htm
Can the U.S. ever become a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? I doubt it. The wealthy own American governments. They always have. (Much as the Canadian wealthy own Canadian Liberals and Conservatives.) The American news media, like the Canadian news media, encourage this. The power in the U.S. and Canada is not the people. And the rich will not give up their power without violence.
_________________________________________________________________
_https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/01/24/analysis/what-we-mean-when-we-say-indigenous-land-unceded
_________________________________________________________________
https://thesaker.is/turkey-asks-nato-to-join-its-war-against-syria-and-russia/
________________________________________________________________
Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States."
I would urge both Americans and Canadians to read this book. I have a Ph.D. in History, so I've read a lot of history. I have never seen so much scholarship packed into one book. It starts with the murderous Christopher Columbus, and takes the reader to about the year 2,000.
I would also advise readers, perhaps, to read only twenty pages at a time because this book is so packed with information it can be overwhelming
________________________________________________________________
Then there is the nasty role played by our news media. When a coutry goes to war, the villain is also the other side, not our side. World Wars One and Two are excellent examples of that. (In fact, both were the same war - and all the countries fought for much the same reason.)
That was not how they were treated by the news media on each side. No. Our side were the good guys. The other side were the bad guys. In fact, they were all bad guys.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was a rapid growth of industry that promised huge profits for capitalists. Generally, those capitalists were close (to say the least) with the leaders of their governments. And the great desire for the capitalists on all sides was to grow more rapidly than the others.
This was particularly true of Britain, France, Germany and, increasingly, of the U.S.
Britain had a big lead with it's huge empire which, by starvation, mass murder forced its colonies under the control of British capitalists. France had colonies in what is now Vietnam and Africa and, like Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and, increasingly, the U.S. In all cases, the industrializing countries murdered, plundered their colonies, and then forced the survivors into something like slavery and starvation. (And they also abused their own people in that way.)
But the great powers feared each other. That's what led them to form alliances - to pit national groups of capitalists against each other. Before 1914, all the significant capitalist governments were in two groups - each nervously eyeing the others, each with armies on borders next to their rivals.
The trigger for the war was the murder of an Austrian archduke. He really didn't amount to anything. But his murder set up something like a panic for war as each country feared 'the other side' to used this incident to cause a war. So they all went to war - with the U.S. hanging back to see who was likely to win.
But that's not the way it was reported in the news media. In each country, the message was that the other side was evil. There side was good. That was true especially for the British news media. In fact, Britain was then at the peak of its mass murder and plundering of more than 400 million people, perhaps a world record for murder and plunder.
In the British news media, the British were good, and the Germans were evil. Of course. The British news media were owned by the wealthy who were the murders and plunderers of over 400 million people. But, from the start of the Empire, all those 400 million people were evil, and their British murderers and plunderers were gallant gentlemen.
Canadians went into that war that it had nothing to do with. And that was because Canadians were gallantly going to the aid of their king. In fact, their kings ( and Queen) had done nothing for them. Quite the contrary, when Britain went to war against the Boers in South Africa so it could steal South African gold (as the Boers had been doing), Britain demanded that colonies like Canada
should rally to the king in killing Boers (Dutchmen). It was to set Canada up for the World War that was coming.
World War One was a war of capitalists against capitalists. who made the citizens fight their wars for them.
When the war ended, everybody agreed that no country was responsible for it. But Britain and France laid all the blame on Germany. Why? The why was because the war had been fought to destroy German competition. And there was a great danger that German capitalists would rise again as competition.
So Britain and France inserted a condition penalizing it for the war. And that was so severe, that all of Germany descended into a hopeless poverty. And that is what set the stage for Hitler. In other words, Britain and France were as reponsible for World War 2 as Hitler was.
However, British, French, and American capitalists learned to love Hitler. There had been a revolution in Russia that threatened to make Russia a major industrial power - and therefore a threat to the West. And Hitler? He was a good, old-fashioned capitalist. And when he murdered Jews and gypsies? The reality is that we didn't care. Indeed, we applauded him. Israelis understand that very well, indeed. That is why they became so ruthless and cruel in their treatment of Palestinians.
We really didn't change until 1938-39. And then, though the western leaders well knew what Hitler was doing, they began to turn against him because it had beome obvious he was the agent of German capitalism. He was economic competition against France, The Netherlands, and Britain.
That's when the western news media turned against Hitler. But our press never talked about the real reason we went to war. No. Hitler was evil. And we were good. That was why.
When China kicked out the British and their puppet Chiang Kai-chek, all the British and Americans saw was the (evil) rise of China to become a world power.
None of the news media noticed the American slaughter and impovershment of The Phillipines or the more than a century of slaughter and plunder in Latin America.
And why did the U.S. enter World War Two? Was it theJapanese Attack on Pearl Harbour? No.In fact, that was a set up.
The U.S. capitalists saw World War Two as their big chance to take over the British Empire in the Far East. But it needed an excuse to get Americans to fight.
Japan's weakness was it lacked oil. So the U.S. cut off it's oil supply. It knew that Japan would reply with an attack - somewhere. But it wasn't expecting Pearl Harbour.
No matter, The U.S. had it's excuse.
Shortly after, it joined the war in Europe (after waiting for almost two and a half years). But it wasn't to help Britain. it was to establish a presence in places like the British oil fields in the middle east and the fading British empires in Asia.
In short, almost all of the partipants in World War Two joined the war for the same reason they had for World War One. It was, essentially, the same war.
And the villains of it all? They were the capitalists of both sides. And their wars have continued from 1950 to today.
But in our news media, the other side - only the other side - is evil.
_________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/28/greta-thunberg-bristol-schools-shut-students-join-climate-strike
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/what-is-coronavirus-what-should-i-do-symptoms
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/worse-than-flu-busting-coronavirus-myths
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-donald-
This is the kind of news we should all be getting from our news media. But I haven't seen much of it.
Oh. And there's this.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/joe-biden-trump-coronavirus-hoax-claim
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/29/pontypridd-braced-second-flood-in-fortnight-storm-jorge
For some reason, North American news media have shown little interest in the
terrible storms and floods in Britain and Northern Europe. But these are storms so severe they have not happened for many years - in fact, many centuries. I don't understand why we are getting so little information on the cause of them.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/canada-nevsun-eritrea-lawsuit-human-rights-slavery
Gee! Wealthy Canadians do that? Any chance a Canadian news medium will us this, and tell us their names - and maybe pictures of them?
Nah.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/canada-pipeline-protests-climate-indigenous-rights
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/us-taliban-sign-peace-agreement-afghanistan-war
The U.S., with the most weaponry (and the biggest weapons spender in history)
has not been able to defeat the Taliban in almost 20 years of fighting.
And Canada, for a time, helped the U.S. That's why Canada has at least a couple of roads that transported it's dead. They are called Highways of Heroes. They were heroes. But we weren't heroes in sending them.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/29/teachers-call-for-ban-on-shooter-drills-in-us-schools
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19-china-epicurve-1.5479983
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-coronavirus-cases-1.5481218
________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/02/alberta-budget-corporate-lobbyists-return-legislature-hallways
Though Ontario has had coronavirus for many days now, this seems not to have attracted the notice of Ottawa's newspapers.
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/29/american-fuhrer-delusionary-dictatorial-donald-trump-drunk-power
________________________________________________________________
https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/forever-chemicals-tap-water
________________________________________________________________
https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/david-ray-griffins-the-christian-gospel-for-americans-a-systematic-theology
_________________________________________________________________
An indigenous view of the Canada's blockade crisis.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/02/28/Blockades-Arent-The-Crisis/
_______________________________________________________________
This is a long and complex 'downer' on the chances of peace in Afghanistan.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53055.htm
_______________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53048.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53051.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53054.htm
Not to worry. Ontario premier, Doug Ford, says it's not happening. And Doug Ford has a high school certificate. So there.
_________________________________________________________________
Bernie Sanders may be the best of the contestants for the presidency. But he also has serious shortcomings. What makes him a potential winner is that his opponents are so awful.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53056.htm
Can the U.S. ever become a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? I doubt it. The wealthy own American governments. They always have. (Much as the Canadian wealthy own Canadian Liberals and Conservatives.) The American news media, like the Canadian news media, encourage this. The power in the U.S. and Canada is not the people. And the rich will not give up their power without violence.
_________________________________________________________________
_https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/01/24/analysis/what-we-mean-when-we-say-indigenous-land-unceded
_________________________________________________________________
https://thesaker.is/turkey-asks-nato-to-join-its-war-against-syria-and-russia/
________________________________________________________________
Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United States."
I would urge both Americans and Canadians to read this book. I have a Ph.D. in History, so I've read a lot of history. I have never seen so much scholarship packed into one book. It starts with the murderous Christopher Columbus, and takes the reader to about the year 2,000.
I would also advise readers, perhaps, to read only twenty pages at a time because this book is so packed with information it can be overwhelming
________________________________________________________________
Then there is the nasty role played by our news media. When a coutry goes to war, the villain is also the other side, not our side. World Wars One and Two are excellent examples of that. (In fact, both were the same war - and all the countries fought for much the same reason.)
That was not how they were treated by the news media on each side. No. Our side were the good guys. The other side were the bad guys. In fact, they were all bad guys.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there was a rapid growth of industry that promised huge profits for capitalists. Generally, those capitalists were close (to say the least) with the leaders of their governments. And the great desire for the capitalists on all sides was to grow more rapidly than the others.
This was particularly true of Britain, France, Germany and, increasingly, of the U.S.
Britain had a big lead with it's huge empire which, by starvation, mass murder forced its colonies under the control of British capitalists. France had colonies in what is now Vietnam and Africa and, like Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and, increasingly, the U.S. In all cases, the industrializing countries murdered, plundered their colonies, and then forced the survivors into something like slavery and starvation. (And they also abused their own people in that way.)
But the great powers feared each other. That's what led them to form alliances - to pit national groups of capitalists against each other. Before 1914, all the significant capitalist governments were in two groups - each nervously eyeing the others, each with armies on borders next to their rivals.
The trigger for the war was the murder of an Austrian archduke. He really didn't amount to anything. But his murder set up something like a panic for war as each country feared 'the other side' to used this incident to cause a war. So they all went to war - with the U.S. hanging back to see who was likely to win.
But that's not the way it was reported in the news media. In each country, the message was that the other side was evil. There side was good. That was true especially for the British news media. In fact, Britain was then at the peak of its mass murder and plundering of more than 400 million people, perhaps a world record for murder and plunder.
In the British news media, the British were good, and the Germans were evil. Of course. The British news media were owned by the wealthy who were the murders and plunderers of over 400 million people. But, from the start of the Empire, all those 400 million people were evil, and their British murderers and plunderers were gallant gentlemen.
Canadians went into that war that it had nothing to do with. And that was because Canadians were gallantly going to the aid of their king. In fact, their kings ( and Queen) had done nothing for them. Quite the contrary, when Britain went to war against the Boers in South Africa so it could steal South African gold (as the Boers had been doing), Britain demanded that colonies like Canada
should rally to the king in killing Boers (Dutchmen). It was to set Canada up for the World War that was coming.
World War One was a war of capitalists against capitalists. who made the citizens fight their wars for them.
When the war ended, everybody agreed that no country was responsible for it. But Britain and France laid all the blame on Germany. Why? The why was because the war had been fought to destroy German competition. And there was a great danger that German capitalists would rise again as competition.
So Britain and France inserted a condition penalizing it for the war. And that was so severe, that all of Germany descended into a hopeless poverty. And that is what set the stage for Hitler. In other words, Britain and France were as reponsible for World War 2 as Hitler was.
However, British, French, and American capitalists learned to love Hitler. There had been a revolution in Russia that threatened to make Russia a major industrial power - and therefore a threat to the West. And Hitler? He was a good, old-fashioned capitalist. And when he murdered Jews and gypsies? The reality is that we didn't care. Indeed, we applauded him. Israelis understand that very well, indeed. That is why they became so ruthless and cruel in their treatment of Palestinians.
We really didn't change until 1938-39. And then, though the western leaders well knew what Hitler was doing, they began to turn against him because it had beome obvious he was the agent of German capitalism. He was economic competition against France, The Netherlands, and Britain.
That's when the western news media turned against Hitler. But our press never talked about the real reason we went to war. No. Hitler was evil. And we were good. That was why.
When China kicked out the British and their puppet Chiang Kai-chek, all the British and Americans saw was the (evil) rise of China to become a world power.
None of the news media noticed the American slaughter and impovershment of The Phillipines or the more than a century of slaughter and plunder in Latin America.
And why did the U.S. enter World War Two? Was it theJapanese Attack on Pearl Harbour? No.In fact, that was a set up.
The U.S. capitalists saw World War Two as their big chance to take over the British Empire in the Far East. But it needed an excuse to get Americans to fight.
Japan's weakness was it lacked oil. So the U.S. cut off it's oil supply. It knew that Japan would reply with an attack - somewhere. But it wasn't expecting Pearl Harbour.
No matter, The U.S. had it's excuse.
Shortly after, it joined the war in Europe (after waiting for almost two and a half years). But it wasn't to help Britain. it was to establish a presence in places like the British oil fields in the middle east and the fading British empires in Asia.
In short, almost all of the partipants in World War Two joined the war for the same reason they had for World War One. It was, essentially, the same war.
And the villains of it all? They were the capitalists of both sides. And their wars have continued from 1950 to today.
But in our news media, the other side - only the other side - is evil.
_________________________________________________________________
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