Tuesday, March 10, 2020

March 10: It doesn't get better.

Despite Trump's assurances that coronavirus is no big deal, all of Italy has been shut down by it. And NOBODY has even a rough count of how many Americans have it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-update-latest-italy-shutdown-lockdown-who-pandemic-outbreak-quarantine-uk-cases-usa-america-australia-live-news-updates
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I'm finding my local news media are starting to pay attention -  but not much. A hockey game gets more coverage.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/wearing-face-mask-how-doctors-deal-with-coronavirus-risk-daily-lives
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/10/elon-musk-college-for-fun-not-learning

Having taught in universities for  almost forty years, I think Mr. Musk is full of it. It's true there is a serious problem in our universities. But it's not the lack of fun.

One problem is the cost of university education. That, alone, makes university impossible for a very large part of our population. And there's an even bigger problem.  Almost all university professors have no training in education. None. Zilch

In some programmes that doesn't really matter. Business programmes, for example, are simply job training. But my field, History, is quite different. It, like many other programmes, should be about learning how to think, how to make judgements. But professors have no training in that. Instead, I can recall years of memorizing lectures that had nothing to do with thinking. The lectures were information that had nothing to do with making judgements, and everthing to do with memorizing for the exam - almost all of which would be forgotten after the exam.

What students in such fields have to learn is not forgettable information. They have to learn how to think, how to make judgements about the pronouncements of the professor. It's not the information that has to be learned - it's the skill of making judgements about it.

I had classes with capitalist historians and marxist historians  when what I had to learn was the skill of judging the worth   (and purpose?) of their views.

And some professors didn't even have the basic skill of communicating with an audience.

But, as I learned, saying this was seen as an insult to professors who wasted their time and student time with lectures to be memorized, a task that could be more simply (and as uselessly) achieved by issuing a text book for memorization.

(Then there was the course on Chaucer's  Pilgrim's Progress. In every class, we read around the room to learn how to speak in very old English. I now pass on to you, dear reader, all that I learned.  "If yow  leste" means - if it is pleasing to you.)
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-latest-at-a-glance
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/how-can-i-go-back-delhi-fearful-muslims-mourn-riot-dead

India's leaders have, in effect, approved of the mass murder of their Islamic citizens. Trump visited and shook hands with the national leader who approved this mass murder.
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Billionaires, including Canadian ones, have been making huge profits by, among other horrors, using young children to work in their mines at very low salaries. In return, we send them missionaries.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/10/human-rights-activist-forced-to-flee-drc-over-child-cobalt-mining-lawsuit
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-canada-death-1.5491907
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-oilpatch-price-plunge-1.5491173
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https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/cathy-crowes-blog/2020/03/torontos-homeless-people-deserve-covid-19-plan
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https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-whatever-you-call-it-china-has-made-a-mess-of-the-covid-19-crisis/wcm/aa0db324-b865-461f-949d-606a15a78e4a
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/10/hiding-behind-false-and-misleading-claims-biden-refuses-commit-signing-medicare-all
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/09/closing-nyc-schools-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-last-resort-says-official-due-114000

114,000 homeless school children in New York? And the number of homeless children in the U.S. is 2.5 million. This is in a country in which the major cities are, for the most part, ruled by the super wealthy or by their puppets.  This is in a country in which billionaires who control everything don't pay income tax - but who commonly demand and get huge financial gifts for themselves.

But to stay with New York and it's 114,000 - it's mayor until a few years ago was a man named Bloomberg who is 'worth' 69 billion dollars and who was until days ago, a Democrat candidate for president And what did he do for homeless children when he was mayor?

https://www.salon.com/2019/12/15/how-bloomberg-made-life-worse-for-the-poor-in-new-york/

Our world has always been dominated by greed. But probably  never on the scale we are seeing now. Can any leader, even one who wants to end this carnival of greed, be permitted to do anything?

Alas! I doubt it very much. The super wealthy can buy politicians and news media....and they can buy evangelicals. Any attempt to stop the abuse of us and our children will almost certainly be met by violence.

And yes. That's true of Canada as well.
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/global-warming-on-a-rampage

And so it was that the voters of Ontario elected a man who probably can't even spell 'global warming'.
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Here's a radical change of tone about coronavirus.

https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/coronavirus-no-need-for-fear-stay-calm
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https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/iran-and-the-us-holy-code-book-of-double-standard-morality

Sometimes, the U.S. and Canada should look at themselves in a mirror. The U.S. is a useless and illegal killer. And Canada is it's loyal servant.
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/09/joe-biden-is-demented-racist-shark-food/
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2020/02/28/Blockades-Arent-The-Crisis/
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/idf-knee-capping-besieged-gazans-hundreds-of-palestinians-killed/5705989
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-states-imposed-economic-sanctions-big-heist/5705987
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-confiscates-sole-medical-vehicle-serving-1500-palestinians/5705900

The above item has no connection with what we used to think about Jewish or Christian principles. The 'good guys' in this are Muslims.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53084.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53091.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53085.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53086.htm

Well - somebody had to say it.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/09/news/coastal-gaslink-broke-bc-pipeline-rules-more-50-times
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/09/analysis/how-tc-energy-transcanada-treated-indigenous-rights-its-mexico-projects

Yes. Canadian capitalists act just like American ones.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/08/news/greta-thunbergs-attackers-reveal-grim-pattern
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/coronavirus-paid-sick-leave-united-states/

The U.S., like a great many other countries doesn't give a damn about it's own people - unless they're the very rich ones.
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The following item is long, but  worth the read.

We are the Naziis of our time. Our news media of World War Two never told us the truth of what that was about. It was not about Nazi murder of Jews. The reality is we didn't care about that. For Britain, the purpose of the war was to reduce the competition of German capitalists so the world could be exploited by British capitalists. For the Americans, it was get control of British capitalism by, for example, stealing British oil fields in the Middle East - and British colonies in the Far East. And the U.S. has been trying to do that ever since - as in Latin America and the Middle East and, quite possibly, in much of Asia.

This is not a criticism of Canadians who fought in those wars. They believed in the reasons they were given. And they performed well. But our governments lied to them just as Hitler had lied to the German people.

The reality is that almost all wars in history have been fought to satisfy the greed of the very wealthy. And the purpose of most news media is to lie to us about it.

That's why Canadians went to kill Afghanis. And North Koreans. And Libyans. And Haitians. And trained people to kill Syrians.

That's how we became Naziis. And it began long before Hitler's time . The British Empire was as greedy and murderous as any empire in history. Indeed, it murdered far more people. And Canada joined in to kill Boer settlers so that British billionaires could steal South African gold. Why did Canadians do this? It was because they were serving the King! (That's the usual sort of excuse for murdering and plundering.)

Take a look at Churchill's record. He had nothing but contempt for those who weren't rich and, as for colonies, he happily worked and starved them to death in the millions. The U.S. today (and going back to the earliest British intruders) has been as murderous and plundering as Britain was.)

https://truthout.org/articles/auschwitz-survivors-dont-want-their-past-to-be-their-grandchildrens-future/
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https://truthout.org/video/activists-call-for-health-measures-to-prevent-coronavirus-at-immigrant-jails/

Good luck, prisoners. The Trumps and Bidens of this world won't even look after their own people.
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https://truthout.org/articles/no-one-knows-how-many-immigrant-kids-have-disappeared-in-us-custody/
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https://truthout.org/articles/war-on-terror-rhetoric-is-being-used-to-justify-the-killing-of-syrians/

All wars are wars on terrorists and are reported as by terrorists on one side. That's what war is. The term 'war on terror' was invented by the U.S. to justify it's own terrorists - though it never calls them by that name.
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https://theintercept.com/2020/03/10/coronavirus-covid-19-government-federal-contracts/
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Hitler was not an aberration. For all his dreadful faults, he was a typical. western leader - and very similar to the western powers of today.







































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