The Moncton Times@Transcript - Good and Bad

Feb. 13:...keeping up with what's important...

2012-02-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

I was surprised to read we had a snowstorm over the weekend. But there's no doubt about it. There were two, front page stories about it and, for snowstorms deniers, a full page of pictures of snow on the ground. I wondered why it took so long to get my car out of its parking space.

In section D, there were three stories on the death of Whitney Houston.

The people of Moncton now have been told more about a snowstorm and the death of Whitney Houston than they have been told about shale gas and the strange choice of location for Moncton High School.

There was also a lead story "Metro embraces wet/dry program." But I didn't read it. It's bad enough to read garbage without reading garbage about garbage.

Much of the rest of Section A is taken up with entertainment events that just happened, and more that are to come.

Oh, and Riverview council will vote on whether to return to its old slogan, A Great Place to Grow. I can't wait to see the musical.

The motto of The Moncton Times and Tribune should be Keep 'em in the Dark. Keep 'em entertained. Just like ancient Rome.

The editorial for today sums up the only thing that interests the Irving media, investment. Today's editorial is enthusiastic approval of the possibility that air service to Moncton will be expanded. The assumption is that all investment is good, and investment will take care of all our problems. And that is just simple-minded.

All investment is not good. We probably would not cheer for investment in a huge storage facility to hold poison gas - but that, in effect, is what we are doing with shale gas with its poison we will spread not just over New Brunswick, but wherever the stuff is burned.

Yes, investment brings us jobs But how much do those jobs cost? New Brunswick has certainly attracted a lot of investment. So how come our budget deficit it so high? We draw visitors to Moncton, visitors who apend money here. How much does it cost us to bring them? How much of their money stays in New Brunswick pockets? How much of it finds its way down to the average New Brunswicker?

Ever see a story on that in the TandT? No. And you won't.Nor will you see investment solving social problems. What kind of social problems will Moncton face in the next twenty years? Well, among them will be suitable housing and mass transportation. Every city in the world faces those problems. Those problems are not being solved by investment. On the contrary, they're being made worse in Moncton by encouraging a 1950s style suburb like Royal Oaks.

There is no planning in Moncton. there is only an eagerness to snatch up make-a-fast-buck schemes by promoters.

It was very good of the Irvings to invest in newspapers for us. It provides jobs for journalists. But what do readers get? Only the propaganda that Irving wants us to get. The rest is trivia.

As an example of how the news is filtered, today's TandT did not carry the story on how a man from Saudi Arabia is in jail for writing something on Twitter that made light of Mohammed. He was in Malaysia at the time. He has now been extradited to Saudi Arabia where he is likely to be beheaded for the offense.

Saudi Arabia is an absolute dictatorship where the strictest rules of Islam are enforced. Recently, a woman was sentenced to beating with a cane for driving a car. Women are not allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia. Al Quaeda is a human rights organization compared to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

But in our news media, Al Quaeda is routinely described as extremist. Saudi Arabia never is. That's because Saudi Arabia is on our side. It is also the leading figure of the Arab league that is demanding democracy for Syria. Right. The royal dictators of the Arab league are very big on democracy.

And if that doesn't make you cynical about the motives of our leaders, read Alec Bruce's column in which he wonders why we are dragging our feet in switching to more systainable energy supply with, for example, windmills.

Well, it's all about investment. If we build windmills, how will those nice investors sell us shale gas, oil, coal, and uranium? I mean, we need those investors to pay off the debt we've run up by buying energy from them, selliing it to them at below market price, letting them destroy the enironment, and giving them lavish tax breaks.

Feb. 11: ...read the kids (oops, ...young people)...

2012-02-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

The most sensational story in Canadian history is on p. D1.Well, it should be the most sensational - but nobody seems to have noticed. Sticking it at the bottom of Section D, p. 1 certainly suggests that The Moncton Times and Transcript sees nothing sensational about it.

Harper wants to develop China into something like a free trade partner - and also to sell China the world's most strategically important resource - oil. Does that sound just like a trade deal? Well, if true, it's not just a trade deal.
1.Historically, Canada has always been the servant, both diplomatically and militarily, of some power that dominates its economy. Until the end of World War One, that power was Britain. Canada had no reason to take part in the Boer War, for example. In those days, when Britain went to war, the colonies were legally at war, too. But they were not required to take part. Canada did take part.It sent troops. The reason had nothing to do with justice or loyalty or the defence of Britain. The reason was that Canadian business leaders relied on the British Empire for investement and for markets. So it was business leaders who put the heat on the Canadian government to send over troops to kill and be killed. It was good for business that Canada should be a loyal servant to the crown.

Much the same thing happened in World War One. After all, if the war was so crucial to Canada that it would sent troops in 1914, why was it less important to the US, which didn't enter until 1917?

After World War Two, Canada's economic dependency shifted to the US. That's why Mulroney inked a free trade deal with the US. The new market for Canadian business was the US - along with some share of existing American markets, as in Latin America.

To maintain good favour with the US, we have to support it diplomatically and militarily. That's why we're in Afghanistan. That's why we bombed Lybia. That's why Harper now makes nasty faces at Iran.
We used to fight British wars; now we fight American wars. (Mind you, we're still in a big campaign to put pictures of the Queen wherever there's a bare wall in any government office. Much as we're now a servant to the US, Harper needs all those voters who are still gaga over the Queen, and Kate and all that.)

2. Chinese business is emerging as the most serious challenge to US economic power. The wars in Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan were stages in the US struggle against Chinese expansion. So will be the wars in Libya and Iran. The US Pacific fleet is already stationed to contain China. The US is also adding to its military bases, notably in Australia and The Phillipines, for the same reason. In short, the US is in the early stages of a cold war against China.

So, if the story is all true, which side will we be on? (I'm sure the US and China will be big-hearted and understanding no matter which side we choose.)

Oh, of course Harper has warned the Chinese that close relations with China will not prevent him from speaking out against human rights abuses in China. And we know that for a fact. I mean, look how he spoke out against the US for its slaughter of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guatemala. Look how he spoke out against the wide use of torture by the US (in violation of American as well as international law). Look at how he defended a teenage Canadian who was illegally held and tortured for years at Guantanamo Bay. Look at how he handed over at least two other Canadian citizens (who were not even charged with any offense) for prolonged torture.

I'll bet Chinese leaders are shaking in their boots.

The teens section in Whatever is really the only part of today's paper worth reading.

Jana Giles wrote a column that made me feel like the particularly unattractive remains of a pre-historic creature. I grew up in an age when we learned to communicate by putting a pencil to paper. Then, as we matured, we learned how to hold a little stick with a piece of metal on the end of it,and dip it into a bottle of black liquid - and make marks with that.

When I was thirty I at last got space-age equipment. It was called a typewriter. (All of this stuff can now be seen in any good museum.)

Jana Giles, of Lewisville Middle School, has writen her column about a new computer programme. She's a good writer. It's a well-written column. It's in clear language. And I can't understand it. I've been using computers for decades. I can't understand a column about them written by a girl in middle school.

Lucky I still have that stick with the metal thingee at the end, and a bottle of that black liquid.

Alex Corbett has his column on a subject we've all had to deal with. - when is it justifiable for us to be arrogant? I'm happy to tell him there are two answers. 1. Arrogance is justifiable when it works. 2. It is not justifiable when it is used by somebody else. In fact, those answers hold true for a lot of the habits we develop as we grow older.

Aurelia Pare has a commentary on a topic we all take seriously - but only sort of seriously. It's bullying. I would just add to points to what she says.

1. Bullying is not just something we pass through. There were kids I went to school with who were savagely bullied. Many of them suffered lives that were pemanently marked by the experience. It's not just a stage we pass through. It's an experience that cripples for life.

2. As for the bullies, it cripples them into growing up as louts who make life miserable for everyone around them.

Yes, we take bullying seriously. No, we don't take it nearly seriously enough.

Christina Korotkov has a thoughtrul commentary on something we all go through.When you plan your life, do you go for the dreams? Or do you to for the reality? I don't know the answer. I don't think anybody does. As a child, I grew up where reality was so limited that I was a life success by the age of 17.

Then I spent the rest of my life learning to go for the dreams - and better reality. Dreams can be reality. I guess, really, that reality is what other people think we can do. Dreams are what we think we can do. So, as a general rule, I'd say don't pay too much attnetion to other people.

Isabelle Agnew has the most intelligent commentary I've seen in the TandT on the Moncton High School question. That's because she attended a city council meeting on it, and saw through illogic of the major speakers. And it's party because she's a student - and saw through the blather of the representative of the Royal Oaks development. One of her reactions is particularly striking.

The presenter talked a vision of students from the new school being able to cross the street to a lovely park where they could sit outdoors and study. This is pure drivel. But it probably worked on more than a few of the adults in the audience, conjuring visions of happy children sitting out in the sun enraptured with nature and their class notes. Students and teachers have an advantage over most of those adults. They know that school runs from September to June. They know we live in New Brunswick. (They're taught that in school.)

I glance out my window on this typical New Brunswick day. It's been raining and snowing with all of it slowly turning to ice.

And, as I think back to my own student days, I cannot remember ever studying outdoors, not even on a nice day. Since those days, I've lived a life caught up in studying. In all of those years,I have never studied outdoors. How can one possibly study with traffic going by, people playing in the park, talking?

But here was a developer presenting this warm and fuzzy picture, and there were adults, sitting and nodding their heads in bemused images of happy students lying on the grass with their books. Monctonians, as ratepayers and taxpayers, are going to spend millions of dollars on this illusion.

There is no plan. There never was a plan. All we have is a highly imaginative picture spun out by a promoter. A high school student figured that out. The reportorial and editorial staff of the the Times and Transcript didn't.

There's a lesson in this. Read the Whatever section. Skip the rest of the TandT.

Feb. 10: How we "understand" the news....

2012-02-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Each day's news, going east from Moncton to Beijing, and west from Moncton to Beijing, is an unimaginably huge jigsaw puzzle with millions of pieces. And we need not only the events of the day to understand to see the whole picture of that puzzle; we need the millions of pieces that make up the past, and the millions more that make up an understanding of how humans behave. So how do we put the pieces together to see the picture that is the jigsaw puzzle?

We don't. In our own minds we look at the few pieces of the puzzle we get each day from the papers, from radio, from TV. Maybe each day we get five or ten pieces of the millions that make up the puzzle. Maybe, on the huge table we would need, we can get a couple of pieces that seem to fit together while other pieces lie in heaps. Then, with just those two or three pieces that seem to connect (or even without them) we use our prejudices and, often, our bigotry to invent the big picture we want to see.

Politicians, news people, opportunists know that; and they know how to use our prejudices and bigotry to create the big picture they want us to see. Harper gave an oustanding example of that less than a week ago with a public statement that the leaders of Iran are dangerous fanatics capable of dreadful acts of savagery. He sees Iran, he said, as the major threat to world peace if it should get even one nuclear bomb. Our news media and a great many of us accepted that as a perfectly reasonable statement.

China has nuclear bombs. It's leadership over the past half century has killed tens of millions of its own people. Russia, also nuclear-armed, has dreadful record of aggression and bloodshed over the same period.

The US killed millions of civilians in Vietnam and Cambodia and Iraq, and is now busy in Afghanistan. It has, so we are told, thousands of nuclear warheads.

And Iran, which might or might not be buiding a bomb, and which has not attacked anybody in over a century, is the major threat to world peace?

Well, they're not like us. They're religious fanatics.

And we in the West aren't?

The Nazi guards who herded Jews into death camps wore belt buckles with the words "God is with us" on them. Hitler declared himself a devout Christian. Most of the American pilots who dropped napalm and Agent Orange on Vietnamese civilians were Christians.

Follow the American Republican contenders. Read their speeches about how God wants the US to dominate the world as part of His great plan. God wants us to destroy Islam.

But we humans are like that. We see evil in people who are different from us, even when it isn't there. We don't see evil in people like us, even when it is there. Nor can we see beyond whatever ism it is we think we believe in.

We believe in capitalism or socialism or communism. Nonsense. There is no ism that works perfectly and forever. All isms are created by humans and, like everything else we create, all work only some of the time. All of them have created benefits. All of them have created suffering. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all ism.

And, as with religion, we create a false picture of good and evil - with our ism good and others evil.

Far from having the jigsaw pieces to prove such a picture, we even invent pictures for which there are no pieces in the first place. In the US, Democrats and Republicans each picture the other side as evil when, in fact, the policies of Obama, including torture, protection of the rich, and overseas aggression have been exactly those of Bush.

And here in New Brunswick, a majority of voters actually think there are differences between Liberals and Conservatives. (If you think there are differences, show me the jigsaw pieces that make up that picture.)

To all of these prejudices and bigotries we all have (yes, me too), there is the problem of the very little news we do get and how biased it is. Recently, the news has been full of stories and indignation about the bloodshed in Syria. The UN has to act! We must intervene! Now, think back just a dozen years ago.

How many pages of news in the Times and Tribune (or any other paper but the New York Times) did you see when Clinton admitted that the American government organized, supplied and led in the slaughter of a quarter million Mayans in Guatemala - men, women and children, whole villages in mass graves? The leading figure for much of the killing was George Bush Sr., when he was head of the CIA.

Did you read any denunciations of this by Canadian leaders? Any demands for UN intervention or a no-fly zone? And, quite seriously, do you (or I) really care?

When some 3000 innocent Americans were killed by the bombers of 9/11, we mourned with the US - and we supported its retaliatory invasion of Iraq (which had no connection with 9/11) which killed at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people; and we joined in the invasion of Afghanistan (which also had no connection with 9/11. Most of the terrorists were Saudis; and the planning was done in Europe).

For all our education and democracy in the West, for all our massive news coverage, we are easily manipulated - thanks to our own prejudices and biases. So how do we get past that?

Well, we probably never do get past it. But there are some things we can do to get closer to the truth.

1. We have to get rid of the idea that it is humanly possible to assemble all the jigsaw pieces. We have to be pretty humble about how much we really know.
2. We have to force ourselves to realize that people all over the earth behave as they do for the same reasons we behave as we do. We are not morally or religiously superior.We are not even really different.
3.We have to watch out for leaders who use our bigotry as a way to control us - as Harper did in his statement about Moslem fanatics.
4, We have to openly and seriously discuss these issues. New Brunswickers don't do that. I don't know whether they're scared or whether they just feel it's hopeless; but I have seen almost no public discussion of serious issues in this province.

That's odd because this is one province that has a lot of the puzzle pieces on the table. And it's not hard to get the picture that's on the cover of the box. Most recently -

Moncton City Council, like all city councils, has a responsibility to plan for the future of the city It has a responsibility to make its citizens aware of the plan, and of the reasons for it. If a private company or the provincial government try to force changes in it, city council has a responsibility to represent the people who elected it. Yes, Fredericton has the power to put a school were it likes. But Moncton council has the responsibility to publicly fight, even against the provincial government, for the interests of the people of Moncton. (Of course, the lack of any coherent or public plan would make such a fight difficult.) Council did not do any part of its job.

Why is the provincial government so adamant about where the new high school must be built? Do you need three guesses?

The result is one that this province has seen through most of its history. There is no planning for the future. The is no planning for the people. All we see are decisions made favouring get-rich-quick schemes by promoters who want gifts from the tax-payers.

The big jigsaw puzzle is a toughie. But the New Brunswick one looks easier.

Oh, I know. We'll show them. We'll vote Liberal next time.

Feb. 9: ..another good day for Norbert....another bad one for.....

2012-02-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

Norbert Cunningham's commentary of yesterday was both insightful and courageous. And the kid does it again. Yesterday, he spoke of the follies of the Israeli government. Today, starting from the recent convictions of members of a Moslem family for "honour" killings, he defends Moslems against the charge that their religioun encourages such killing.

That takes courage. In North America, you cannot criticize the government of Israel without running the risk of being accused of anti-semitism. But you can scream hatred of Moslems from the rooftops, and be praised for it. Our own prime minister did screaming of that sort just recently - and I don't know of a single newspaper that criticized him for it.

Incidentally, many Moslems, especially in the Middle East, ARE semites. Check the dictionary. That makes Harper an anti-semite.

Norbert Cunningham's column for today is solid, common sense on a topic that is more often treated with hysterical rants. The ranters and hate-mongers include, alas, our prime minister.

Well, we need an excuse for all those Moslems we have killed and robbed - and all those we plan to kill and rob.

Meanwhile, the story of Moncton High School gets murkier. As Brent Mazerolle explains it, the deal with developers to build a new high school in a new housing development is linked to a deal for those same developers to renovate the old Moncton High, perhaps as residences for rich seniors who would then revive downtown, maybe. But it can't be made official yet because that would have deprived other developers of a chance to offer bids - and we all know how strict New Brunswick is that all bidding must be open and above board. Or something.

And a residence for rich seniors would be could for downtown because - well - it would be good for downtown. This sort of vague babble has confused the whole issue.

1. Main streets are a product of villages and small towns when everybody was within walking distance of it.
2. It became the sort of super shopping, entertainment area we think of as downtown a little over a century ago with the development of the tramway and other forms of mass transportation.
3. It maintained that status into the early 1950s because most people still depended on mass transportation until that time. Most shopping was done in 'mini-main' streets in the various city districts.
(Montreal's downtown area was busy longer than most because it offered booze to American visitors in the prohibition years with all its jazz, prostitution, gambling, gangsterism and corruption of city government and the police department. If Moncton City Council was so hot on developing downtown, why didn't it put the casino there?)
4. The automobile killed downtowns across North America. It made the shopping mall both more accessible and convenient. The automobile is fatal to any downtown. That's why downtowns faded from the 1950s on.
Nor can hockey stadiums save a downtown. When the Montreal Canadiens moved from The Forum to their new quarters, it made no visible change to either neighbourhood. The character of a neighbour hood is not shaped by the presence of stadia. It is shaped the presence of cars. And, so long as it depends on cars, no downtown will have a character. Every city in the western world has figured that. Every city but Moncton.
Downtowns can survive with the subway. They can survive with convenient surface transportation - particularly if the system provides comfortable shelter - but that can work only if the whole system offers that sort of comfort and convenience.

5. Any solution to all this depends on a City Council that has a long term plan, and one intelligently based on a sense of where we are going to place people, in what sort of housing, and using what form of transportation. The plan has to show a sense of what conditions will be fifty years from now.
I see no evidence Moncton has any such plan; and no sense that that Moncton even thought of the future in its rush to rebuild MHS somewhere else.

6. There was no plan from the start. A developer came up with a housing scheme designed around the assumption that the autmobile will remain the means of transportaion for generations to come.So it's low density housing, and well removed from downtown.

So forget developing dowtown. They'll drive to the mall.

You're going to put some in the MHS building? Good luck. That's a healthy walk from downtown on a winter day. And if it's apartments for the well-heeled, you can bet it will have garages.

On a project like this, a city usually begins with a development plan. But it didn't begin with a development plan in this case of MHS; it began as a profit-making scheme for a builder. It's all very reminiscent of the hockey stadum farce. First comes a scheme for somebody to make a big profit. Then we get fancy talk out of council about how this is good for the future of the city. And all this gobbeldygook comes from a city council which clearly has no plan for the future, and which doesn't seem to know even what a plan is.

And, of course, there will be open and honest bidding for the deal. Of course. This is New Brunswick.

And of course we can trust it all because we've had three (count them, three) insightful reports by Brent Mazerolle and, today, another editorial saying what a great idea it is.

And can we have faith that if its good for The Moncton Times and Transcript, it's good for Moncton?
Come on. Has the TandT ever lied to you before?

Feb.8: There's a story...and there's THE story.....

2012-02-08T06:27:00.000-08:00

A good editor knows the difference.

The editing of the Moncton Times and Transcript is normally casual to the point of being sloppy. That is noticeable particularly in the NewsToday section. Today's sample of sloppy editing is "Deadly crash raises safety concerns".

The story, as it is covered, is about a traffic accident in Ontrario that killed eleven people. That certainly is worth reporting. But good editor would have noticed who is was that got killed - migrant farm workers. And alarm bells would have gone off - and the editor would have done some checking with other news sources. That's what other editors in Canada did.

Why does Ontario have migrant farm workers? (These were from Latin America.) It costs money to bring people in from Latin America; and there are, I understand, a great many unemployed Canadians.
Ooooh - and what's this? There are a quarter million migrant farm workers in Canada at any given time. Obviously, there's quite a business in bringing in very, very cheap labour to Canada - even in a time of recession.

That's quite a story - for an editor who's awake.

Nor has the TandT finished with its pimping for the Royal Oaks development project. Brent Mazerolle tops off yesterday's disgraceful piece of propaganda writing with another but more subtle piece of propaganada writing. This one, on the front page, is headed :N.B. to proceed with new school.

It looks like news. But the whole tone is that the new school at Royal Oaks is a done deal and a very sensible one. Those who object are "grumblers". Any remaining problems are just "rough spots" that will be "smoothed over".

Even if the existing Moncton High were repaired, he reports, there would still be a problem of air quality, among other things. (However, the developers are confident thay can rebuild the old MHS and make it profitable ) Perhaps it could be converted into a retirement home. Old people are more used to bad air.

(How come it can be fixed up and made profitable and safe? But not as a school?)

And we are still left with the question of how this fits into the Moncton City development plan - if there is one. My first high school teaching job was in a brand new school built to satisfy housing promoters in a district very similar to Royal Oaks, (A vast area of houses with lawns and garages heavily dependent on car transportation seemed a practical layout way back then - and the city had no development plan.) Just over a dozen years later, the school was closed, and then sold. There weren't enough students any more.

The developers didn't care. They had tucked away their profits long before.

Let's be positive about this. We can learn.
1. The Moncton city council is low on either brains or integrity - possibly both.
2.There is almost certainly no development plan - or, at least, none that anybody is paying attention to.
3.The Moncton TandT is on the side of the money every time.

And, just to help confirm all the above, the editorial echoes the boot-licking tone established by Brent Mazerolle's "news" stories.

Even the Archie comic strip in today's paper is one I remember from my childhood.

February 7: ...up is down, and down it up...

2012-02-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

It was just a day ago that Brent Mazerolle showed what a good journalist he can be with his story on a tragic failure of our justice system. Today ---

Look. His front page story on Moncton High and the Royal Oaks development is beneath contempt. It shows no sense of ethics or of honesty or even of some simple form of intelligence. It's not, in any sense of the term, a news story. It's an opinion piece pretending to be news. In fact, it's not even opinion. It's free propaganda for the Royal Oaks developers.

No ethical or competent editor would dream of putting such an article on any page of a respectable newspaper. Here is an article that sums up what is wrong with the Irving media, what is wrong with Moncton City Council, and what is wrong with New Brunswick.

There is no public debate in the province. What we have instead are dog and pony shows put on by promoters of various sorts while politicians sit looking on with their tongues hanging out and wagging their tails. All this presentation to city council last night was a prescripted show - and Brent Mazerolee was there as just one, more player.

He writes that the moving of the school was always a fait accompli because the provincial government can put a school anywhere it wants to. Sure. But a city council can make representations to a provincial government. Provincial politicians can be made aware that local members can get heat for displeasing Moncton priorities.

None of that has happened or will happen. Moncton City council has been with this thing all the way.

I thought City Council said, many times, it had a development plan. Where is it? And if we have one, why are we approving a house, lawn, and garage development of the 1950s? A plan is something for the future. Do they seriously believe the 2050s (or even the 2020s) are going to be the 1950s all over again?

That is one of the thousand and more questions that Mazerolle never bothered to ask.

Even the headline "MHS myths dispelled" is thoroughly unprofessional. Whether anything was dispelled is an opinion, not a piece of news. And since Mazerolle's piece was so obviously pandering to the developers and to that collection of social leftovers on city council, I have no reason to believe that anything was dispelled.

Only one group benefit from this decision. The Royal Oak developers. In the short term, they'll make money. In the long term, we'll be stuck with an obsolete housing area that's expensive to maintain, and has an expensive school in the middle of it.

This is the history of New Brunswick in four sentences. Developers wanted something. They got it. Times and Transcript joins politicians in asking developers to bend over so they can be kissed where it counts. Rate payers inherit costs and future problems.

No newspaper that would carry such cheap and obvious propaganda can be called a serious newspaper. Offhand, I can't think of anything to call it that is low enough.

Then, there's Norbert. It's not just that I agree with this column. It's that Norbert shows some real courage. Read this one.It's on the editorial page. It's well informed. It's well expressed - but,oh, this is risky.

It's about Harper's official position as cheerleader for the Israeli government. Norbert says this is dangerous for us - and dangerous for Israel. I think he's very right. But the reality is there is one hell of a powerful and vicious political lobby that doesn't like people to say that.

You can criticize Harper - and nobody will call you anti-Canadian. You can criticize the mayor of Moncton - and nobody will call you anti-Moncton. But, oh, if you criticize the government of Israel (not Israel itself; not Israelis, not Jews of any sort. Just the government of Israel) - oh, then you're an anti-semite and probably an admirer of Hitler.

You'll have B'Nai Brith and Jewish Council, both once quite respectable and useful community organizations, vilifiying you, maybe even setting you up for a charge under anti-hate laws. In Montreal, I spent much of my life in the Jewish community, so much that some people thought I was Jewish. But the atmosphere has changed. I still have good friends today in Montreal who are not only observant Jews, but very public zionists. But they think the Israeli government is wrong. They think it is an oppressor. They want peace now with the Palestinians. So they often find themselves ostracized and called anti-semites.

Imagine, observant Jews who are zionists, some of whom are actually Israeli citizens, are denounced by the Iraeli lobby as anti-semites. (A few, like me, are even on an American list as terrorist sympathizers simply because we have criricized the government of Israel.)

Harper is playing to that powerful, Israeli lobby. He and his cabinet freely issue hate-filled statements about Moslems. But you, even if you are yourself Jewish, dare say a word critical of Netanyahu, and you're in trouble.

I think Norbert's right. I think Israel is on a self-destructive course, one that threatens to pull the rest of us along with it. Hats off to Norbert for having the courage to say so.

Feb.6:The man who toldl me he never read a newspaper was....

2012-02-06T09:24:00.000-08:00

....Pierre Trudeau. I thought he was just being flippant. But friends of his confirmed it. Oh, he might have glanced over a paper occasionally to see how it was presenting news, and for getting headline information on major events. But he didn't read them to get details or to understand the news. He didn't need to. Neither do you.

Remember when the US invaded Iraq? Remember how the papers told us it was all because of weapons of mass destruction? Remember how we were also told that Saddam was a bad man who tortured people? Remember how we saw him put on trial for killing civilians?

All we needed to know was that the US had invaded Iraq. Common sense should have told us the rest. What newspapers did was not so much to report the news as to get us lost in a welter of propaganda.

The WMDs never existed. In fact, I doubt whether there is anyone who can say exactly what a WMD is. Saddam tortured people? So does the US - and on a worldwide scale.

The US said Saddam was a bad man for killing civilians? The same US that killed millions of them in South Vietnam, Guatemala, Iraq...? The same US that recently tried a marine sergeant for leading his men in the deliberate killing of civilians, including children, in Iraq? The same US that charged him only with disorderly conduct, then let him off without a day in prison? The same US that backed Saddam for years amd supplied him with weapons?

Common sense tells us that the war with Iraq was about oil. What the news media do is to smother our common sense in bigotry, self-righteousness, and a phantasy version of what people are like.

We are, by definition, good. Those who are different from us are, by definition, bad. (unless they are on our side.) Just a few days, we read in the TandT of Stephen Harper playing this game.

The government of Iran is bad, he said, because of it's philosophy - which he then defined as fundamentalist and Moslem. We just soak that stuff up. Of course. Iranians look different from us; the men need a shave; we're Christians - mostly - sort of. Yup. them Iranians is evil. No doubt about it.

Meanwhile, the Saudis and the Emirates are not evil. Well, they are Moslems, yes. They have shaving problems. The women wear veils. (and women in Saudi Arabia can be caned for driving a car). They're pretty fundamentalist. But they aren't evil.

No. They're on our side.So it's okay. In fact, Saudi Arabia and the emirates are calling for democracy in Syria. So we don't even notice that they are all absolute dictatorships. Nor do we notice that they, like Syria, used troops against their own people to quash demands for democracy.

What happens with newspapers is we forget that all people are much alike. You think that Hitler was evil because he hated Jews? You might check the Canadian and American record on that, not just in the 1930s, but even later. You might find out how Canadian and American business leaders thought Hitler had the right idea, and how a Canadian prime minister thought him inspirational.

We are all people. We are not evil people and saintly people. Just people. We do things for people reasons, all of us. There is greed and brutality in all of us. Sometimes, if we are lucky, there is goodness in all of us.

That's what most religions are all about. Too bad most churches don't realize that. Forgiveness and loving one's neighbour are not simply pious dictates. They are common sense. To forgive is simply to remember that we are dealing with people - who have all the good and bad in them that we have. To love one's neighbour is simply to remember that we should use that forgiveness in a loving way.

(I'm not trying to preach. I'm saying that much religious teaching - of all major religions - is essentially the same, and is common sense.)

Unfortunately, few churches seem to understand that. Last year, I remember seeing a Moncton church displaying a big sign asking people to pray for OUR soldiers in Afghanistan. More recently, television showed a religious group campaigning for a Republican leadership candidate, a genuine and typical circle of pious hypcrites asking God to give them victory in Afghanistan. Yea, God!

To understand current events, we have to remember two things. WE are not good. THEY are not bad. But we'll never learn that by reading the news.

And before we blame religion, we should remember the missionary who wanted to work among native peoples in Canada's West during the early days of white settlement. He asked the local chief if he could bring to message of Jesus to make his people good and law-abiding. The chief mulled it over.

"Well," he said, "we're having lots of trouble with white people here. They steal our land and our food. They get drunk. They rape our women. Tell you what. You preach to the white people around here. And, if it works, we'll give it a try."

There are just a couple of things in today's Moncton Times and Transcript that I really must mention.

1. P. C1 has a story headlined "Defence Dept.battles pricey contractors".
What appears to be happening is that defence contractors are ripping us off on the world they. There's nothing surprising in that. They always have. The US is notorious for corruption in defence contracts. We're simply catching up to it. But - that's not quite what the story is about.

The Defence Dept. is not battling anybody. In fact, the Defence Dept. has been letting them get away with it - just like in the US. The whistle blower is not the Defence Dept. The whistle blower is a union of employees of the Defence Dept.

The headline gives a false idea of what the story is about. Headlines are usually written by editors.
Two possibilities. 1. The editor is deliberately lying. 2. The editor is hopelessly incompetent.

2. Page one has a superb, well-written and important story "Ashley Smith was destroyed by prison system: mother". It is the story of a prison system, a government, and a society which commited as great an evil as I can imagine. It is the story of terrible hurts that can never be healed.

And it happened in a country so full of self-righteous bigots and opportunist politicians that it has just passed legislation to make the prison system even more destructive.

Read this story. It's on page 1.

Feb. 4: You know there isn't much in the paper when.....

2012-02-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

The big story on p. 1 (which is continued on p. 4 becoming, perhaps, the longest story in the paper) is about how to save on foodshopping by using coupons. And, of course, the front page also carries a free ad for a Jerry Seinfeld show coming to the Coliseum. There's also a full column of hype for Seinfeld on P. 5, along with the information YOU need to know - date, ticket prices, where to buy them, etc. (Great way to keep us informed on what we need to know in local news.)

P. A10 has a long story on census figures which haven't been released yet, not even to The Moncton Times and Transcript. But, luckily, it interviewed Prof. Savoie (of course) who hasn't seen the figures either - but says they show New Brunswick needs to develop shale gas (of course).

There's also a story about a couple of entrepreneurs who want to expand the digital business in Moncton, and who say they need a big tax break to do it. Maybe so. But the only planning I have ever seen in this city is to make it wide open to promoters - of real estate, manufacturing, concerts, whatever. Only two things have been missing...

1. Where are the audited accounts of what these deals have produced for us as compared to what they cost?
2. What plan does City Council have for the PEOPLE of this city - a plan for where and how they are going to live over the next fifty years? In this plan, should it exist, why does it make sense to move Moncton High into a sort of suburban development? Why does it make sense to encourage such a development at all. Why does it make sense to build a new hockey arena downtown? Why does it make sense to maintain a city plan (if there is one) so heavily dependent on the automobile? I mean, that sort of thing is what is called local news.

Again, good students' columns in the Whatever section. Alex Corbett has one that is funny, and quite cleverly written. There's a thoughtful column by Isabelle Agnew on bullying. In fact, all of the columns are worth a read.

The news today section has a bizarre statement by Stephen Harper, Iran, he said, is led by a fanatical regime..building weapons of mass destruction...I look at the philosophy that drives it (what does this mean?)...for the first time in world history we are facing a regime that not only wants nuclear weapons but compared to virtually all other holders of nuclear weapons...wants to use them...

Harper is bringing a style of hysteria-buildling into our politics which we've never seen before. This is real, Newt Gingrich stuff. It's also the purest bullshit.

Only one country has ever shown a desire to build nuclear weapons and a will to use them. That country is not Iran. It is the United States. And it did it twice.

Smaller countries all over the world want to build nuclear weapons - but not to use them. They know that would be suicidal. They want to build them to keep the keep countries off their backs.

There is no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. That is an opinion which has been expressed by both US intelligence and UN inspectors. It wants to develop the ABILITY to make one should it be necessary.

Iran is a threat to the world? Really? When was the last time it invaded a country? If you guessed a hundred years, you're still way short. Has Iran ever been invaded? You bet. Over the past century, it has been invaded by Britain, France, the US, by Iraq encouraged and supplied by Britain, France and the US. It's democratic government was overthrown by Britain, France and the US, who then imposed a brutal dictator. The present government came to power to get rid of the dictator.

The element of hysteria runs through Harper's statement. (He says, I look at the kind of philosophy that drives the Iran regime.) Note that it's not a government. It's a regime. Evil. And what does me mean by philosophy? Does that there philosophy mean the evil words of them moslem fanatics? Of course, they's different from us. We's good. They's evil.

In fact, the tone of that statement reminds me of a passage in Mein Kampf, when Hitler talks about his first reaction to seeing a Jew.

Anyway, we're good. Why, our side is so good we've had to kill millions of people over the last 60 years. Had to. They were going to attack us - Vietnam.Algeria, Yemen, Grenada, Guatemala, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan - and maybe now Syria and Iraq. Sometimes, we even had to torture children. A man's gotta do whut a man's gotta do. Why, if we hadn't bombed Libya, next things you know Ghadaffi would have been running wild in the Crystal Palace, and taking free rides.

What happens in almost all newspapers is wild charges like this are almost the only news presented. And we hear all about whatever the Iranian government might have said at some point about Israel - but there's not a whole lot of reporting on Israel explosives and assassinations in Iran.

NewsToday is a bit of Egypt, a bit of Iran, a bit of a mill at Miramichi, a bit of Mitt Romney. It's not possible to understand news you get in that way.

What we need to start understanding is a realistic sense of what people are, and how they behave, and why. And that brings me back to my famous politician who told me he never read the papers. I think I'll get onto that on Monday.

Feb. 3: evening thoughts....

2012-02-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

Lots of activity on the blog site today with a record reading audience for a single day - and some interesting comments. It's hard to respond to all comments in the response box; so I decided to try it here.

The broadest comment is one that cited useful articles in the Times and Transcript, and said that these should have been noted by me. Special reference was made to stories about problems faced by the poor and the elderly. The comment also said that in reporting them the paper was doing what a newspaper SHOULD be doing. (It's true that I often don't mention good articles. But it's also true I don't mention nearly all the bad ones, either. Putting together a commentary on that would take all day - and nobody would put in the hour or two to read it.)

All newspaper sometimes do what a newspaper SHOULD do. That does not make them good newspapers. I can remember my time in China when I often read translations from the New China News Agency. Some of them were quite factual, honest, informative. But the paper as a whole was a propaganda sheet notable mostly for its omissions.

I try to examine the TandT as a whole - using whatever examples seem to be striking ones for the day. Yes, some of the time what appears in the TandT is what a newspaper SHOULD be doing. But that bit of should is 'marred' by masses of omissions, loaded language to set up emotional responses, and propaganda.

Admittedly, the same could be said of newspapers across North America and other parts of the world. But the Irving papers are really bottom feeders. Nor am I the first one to notice this. They have been condemned in federal studies, and are generally held in low regard by journalists (even though those other journalists come from heavily biased papers, too.)

What I have tried to do is to show when a story or commentary is a good one; and when it's a bad one.(misleading, unethical, trivial). "Should" has nothing to do with quality. All papers print at least part of what they should. That doesn't make all newspapers good.

Yes, the TandT will sometimes talk about the problems of poverty - but always in a way that nobody of any importance will object to. For example, one of the problems of poverty is the damaging effect it has on children in school. It's been proven many times. Kids from poor backgrounds don't do as well in school as kids from middle class backgrounds. In fact, it's quite common - even normal - to find a direct link between economic background and school grades.

But you've never seen a story on that in the Times and Transcript. And you never will. Nor will it examine whether there is any possibility of some link of the problems of the poor in this province, and the lack of problems of the rich.

That's partely because the wealthy of this region support a so-called think tank whose purpose is to spread propaganda to help them become wealthier. It's called Atlantic Institute of Market Stidies. Like related institutes in the US, for example, it wants to privatize large areas of the public education system so the wealthy can make money on the backs of our children.

In the US, where this movement began, it has opened up public education to private entrepreneurs - at an extra charge to parents. Result, the schools of the poor, the ones that most need the money, have suffered cuts. Middle class parents, who can afford it, pay extra to send their children to better funded schools. Educationally, it's been a disaster.

A 'should' newspaper would run storys and commentaries on this - as the TandT did. Mostly, it ran commentaries by the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies. It also ran editorials so shrill and ranting and so ignorant of education that it was embarassing to read them.

A 'good' newspaper would have pointed out that AIMS has a long association with the owner of the TandT and with others of his circle. It would also have taken the trouble to explore the opinions of, say, faculties of educatoin in this province. It didn't.

I believe it was about a year ago that Jim Irving wrote a column for the TandT in which he said that he had formed a coaltion with the government. He later added an announcement that he had formed a group of his friends who would plan the economic future of the province. That group larter morphed into an official government group which advises the Minister of Finance on the budget.

The TandT reported that - as it should have.

But good newspaper would have noted a good deal more.
1. that Mr. Irving had no right to declare a coalition with the government. You have to get elected to do that. And the government has to ask you.
2. that he had no right to appoint a group to plan our economic future. That's what we elect governments to do.
3. That in accepted such a group into official status, Alward was showing himself as either ignorant of the basics of democracy, or as a puppet. Or both.

The TandT runs foreign news - as it should. A good newspaper lays out its news in a pattern so we can see links between stories, and get an understanding that is broader than isolated pieces. It also draws on a range of news agencies for its stories. The TandT does neither. It relies heavily on two sources for foreign and national news, both of them notable for their use of loaded language and for bias. I believe I once wrote a blog on that.

Another reader commented that is it surely reasonable for a local newspaper to draw attention to anything favorable that is said about the community. Of course. That means it would have been quite reasonable to draw attention to a favourable article in a real estate magazine. What was not reasonable was to gush that Moncton is now the centre of attention for all Canadians. What was worse, was to toss in buzz words as a subtle bit of promotion. Nobody in Canada calls Moncton "the little city that could'. This term was invented by city council and by promoters that want Moncton to go deep into debt to build a new hockey arena that will benefit only a very few. That is using loaded language.

Finally, yes, it's true that commercial expansion is something a local newspaper should report. But the normal story we get is pretty small stuff - a new shop, a new kind of sandwich at some cafe, major stories about an autobigraphy of a former employee of Irving news media complete with information about where you can get your very own copy - and all spread out day after day.

Most of that doesn't amount to news, and certainly not front page news. This is free advertising.

Sometimes, the TandT does what it should. Sometimes, any newspaper does. But it stays far away from any story that might offend the boss; it openly pitches for whatever the boss wants; and most of it, even the commentary, is just trivial.

As for local news, the only section that carries honest local news is the sports section. Well, possibly the weather forecast. Sometimes.

February 3:

2012-02-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

First, some word for you. Gwynn Dyer has an commentary on the editorial page. I don't agree with it. But I have way too much respect for Gwynn to dismiss it out of hand. I've worked with him, and I've followed his writing for most of his career. He's one of the best in the business. Anything he writes is worth reading - agree with it or not. (In this case, I'm surprised at his failure to mention the degree of Turkish, Arab, and western involvement in enouraging the fighting in Syria - and the reasons we are giving for an excuse to intervene. The US is worried about mass killing? Really? Is this the same US that killed a quarter million native people in Guatemala? Still, Dyer has to be taken seriously.)

The oped page has a commentary worth reading by Craig Mazerolle, a student at St. Thomas University. It's about the crisis of high fees, big debts and lack of jobs for this university generation. It's a crisis caused, to a considerable degree, by the universities themselves.

I learned what indebtedness meant when I finished my education with a debt that took me twenty years go pay off. I also learned why universities are much to blame for their own high cost. I learned it by watching university administrators and professors who were obsessed with research because research is the way to gain prestige. They were so obsessed that teaching was almost irrelevant. And research is very, very expensive in time, in library and in equipment. That's a major reason why so many university students are getting very bad teaching at very high cost - and ending up with very high debts.

For lighter reading, there's the usual free ad appearing as a news story on p. 1. It's about new stores at the Mapleton shopping centre; and it's just full of exciting details about them. Next to it is a brilliant example of The Times and Transcript's capacity for a news story of pure gush. This one is about an article on Moncton. The tone is set by the first sentence. "We know our city is marvellous, and now the entire country knows it too". (The puncutation errors are not mine.)

It seems a nice article appeared in a magazine that just everybody reads cover to cover - Canadian Real Estate Magazine. Yessir. Across Canada, Sure. You read every copy, cover to cover. Moncton is the word on everybody's lips. Right across Canada.

1. serious newspapers don't publish this kind of boosterism drivel.
2. serious newspapers don't run a front page story whenever a new store opens in the neighbourhood.

Section A also has a groundhog day story. And, in a real feast for groundhog day aficionados, there's another one on p.C1. Enjoy.

The whole NewsToday section has its usual scattergun approach with stories ranging from Syria to sex education for older lovers to Alward visiting for a photo op. Nothing is explored to any meaningful degree. Nor is there any sign of a pattern to the arrangement of topics. The quality of the whole NewsToday section is summed up by an item on C 11.

It is a fuzzy photo of a man wearing a helmet and a visor. The caption says he is a Chilean policeman throwing a tear gas bamb at students during a protest in Santiago.

Why were the students protesting? How violent was the protest? Who started it? Who knows? All the TandT has is a fuzzy picture with a one-sentence caption that tells us nothing. And that sums up the general quality of the NewsToday section.

The editorial writer, as usual, has chosen a topic he or she doesn't know all that much about. It has a statement that provincial liquor stores were established to control the sale of liquor, to keep sales down so as to appease prohibitionists.

Not quite. that was the excuse that was given for establishing them. The real reason was to raise government money (mostly to build roads) without raising taxes. They were never established to control liquor. They were established to push it, to encourage drinking.

(If the editor would like information on how. I know that, I'd be delighted to pass it on - or he or she could look up 'Temperance Movement' in The Canadian Encyclopedia.)

What the editor really wants is for New Brunswickers to soak up more booze. In effect, it becomes a tax on the poor and the middle class - rather like the lottery. Now, I'm not in favour of prohibition. But I'm not sure that a logical alternative is encouraging the who province to get sauced to keep down taxes for the rich. Want to think about that ed.?

Surprisingly, and despite yesterday's big story about how the shale gas industry really, really wants us to get more information about it - there's no story today. Nothing from the shale gas industry. Nothing from the government. Nothing from the Times and Transcript.

The message is clear. the shale gas industry intends to go ahead no matter what. They know the government won't do much but put inadequate (and probably unenforced rules) up for them. They know the Irving Press isn't going to lay a finger on them. They know that because they know big brother is in their corner.

They know very well what it's going to do to this province. And they don't give a damn.

Feb.2: Did you know it snowed yesterday in Moncton?

2012-02-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

Today, I had to shovel to get my car out, then wade through some knee-high, white stuff to get to my copy of The Moncton Times and Transcript. It was lucky I found it because the TandT cleared up the mystery with all the details I needed to know. Apparently, it snowed yesterday.

Yes, it did. The front page has a picture of a car with white stuff on it - just like my car had - and an alert reporter had written in the caption that this stuff was, indeed, snow.Further details took up half of page 8. Then, for those who still had doubts, p. C8 had a full page of photos of people walking in snow and, oh, just everything. The pictures were almost all of downtown Moncton; but they said it snowed all over the city. Perhaps we'll get those pictures tomorrow.

Well, all newspapers have that habit of telling us the obvious. The TandT just wastes more space on this sort thing than a serious paper would.

Then it gets back to its normal job of pimping.

Today, it pimps for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers - with a fetching picture of one of the associations many Vice-Presidents, David Pryce. And why is there a picture of the eye-turning David Pryce in the TandT? And why is the article made up of quotations from David Pryce?

That's because the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told the TandT to do that. And that just might be connected to the fact that the owner of the TandT has some interest in shale gas.

The thrust of Mr. Pryce's comments is that the petroleum industry really, really, really wants the people of New Brunswick to like it. But they are also really and truly concerned that drilling for shale gas should have strict, strict rules (which people like Mr. Pryce are willing to draw up just to show how sincere they are.)

The industry is so sincere, it really wants to inform people - you know, honestly and impartially - so they can decide. After all, the truth is that shale gas drilling has been proven to be perfectly safe wherever its been done.

What a cheap piece of lying propaganda for a newspaper to put on its front page!

The industry wants strict rules? Then it must be awfully angry at NB governments for not drawing up any strict rules, and for not enforcing the few rules it had. Considering they've had ten or more years of this insolent neglect by NB governments, I'm amazed that the industry is giving NB another chance.

And they want us to get accurate information? So why haven't they been giving it for the last ten years? Too shy?

And I'm surprised that Mr. Pryce is talking to the Times and Transcript (or any Irving news source) at all, since they have all been distinctly vacant in their reporting on shale gas.

"Shale fracking can be done safely: spokesman" isn't news. It's a hooker's pitch. A truer headline might have been "Don't worry, honey. I get regular checkups."

Solid columns by Alec Bruce and Jody Dallaire on the editorial and op ed pages. The latter, speaking on pay equity for women, noted that some fields get low pay because they're thought of as women's fields, and for that reason are deliberately low paid. The origin of this belief lies in the general view in our past that women were inferior to men. (That's why they couldn't vote. That's why it was quite legal in Canada well into the twentieth century for a man to beat his wife in order to discipline her.)

Teaching had been a man's field in the early days. That changed with the growth of public schooling, and the need for more teachers, a need that had to be met while keeping the education budget low.So that's when school boards turned to women teachers - though at lower pay than the men. It was a practice that was common at least into the 1960s. It was even worse for non-white women in Canada. Most of them couldn't get teaching jobs at all until 1960 or so. And few women, of any colour, could even hope to be a principal until recent times.

(My first teaching job, a grade seven class, paid me 2700 dollars a year. A woman with the same qualifications as mine got 2400. The principal assured me this was fair because men were the ones who had to pay for dates.

I should have been so lucky.)

The op ed commentary by the staff writer, this time Rod Allen, is as trivial and pointless as all such staff-written op eds.

Tomorrow's headline - "Monctonians shovel out from heavy snow." (I shall be available for photgraphs.)

Oh, yes. This is the Thursday edition when the TandT announces events of the coming week. The Moncton Library submitted the name of a Current Events group I host at the library the first Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. The library's annoucement was printed though - as usual - with the Current Events group omitted. (Maybe I should ask the owner of the paper to give the editor a call. You know, just as if I were, say, a spokesman for the petroleum industry,)

Anyway, come to the library on Tuesday, February 7 at 7 pm. I'll open with some brief comments on the news, then we'll shift to general discussion. I'd be delighted to see you.

February 1: : Credit where credit is due.....

2012-02-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

The Moncton Times and Transcript has an intelligent editorial today. It's about Harper's plan to change the Canada Pension rules. I can't remember the paper ever having had an intelligent editorial before before. (Usually they look as if they were written by Newt Gingrich). But - hey - be grateful for what you can get. In this case, be grateful that the editorial was not written by the front page editor who destroyed the front page news story about Harper's pension plans.

The story, written by staff writer Ed Hobson, was well written. But the devil was in the headline and sub-head (normally written by the editor). It begins "Potential pension changes outrage seniors."

That's a good headline; and it's an accurate lead to what the story is about. But then there's the sub head, "But taxpayers' advocate calls the move a necessity if system is to be kept from going bankrupt."

Boom! Story blown out of the water. Forget the rage. Change is essential. That's it.

So why is that subhead so importantn? Because that's where a high proportion of readers stop reading.
That's why news stories are usually written with the essential information first, t hen get into the details - so you can stop any time and, in theory, have the basic information you need. That's why that sub head is a killer. Before we even get to explanation of the outrage, we are told Harper has no choice. Game over. Okay. What on the sports page and in Miss Manners?

To make it worse, the man (yes, just one person) who says it;s necesary to cut pensions is not what anyone would call an independent expert. He's the Director of the Taxpayers' Foundation - a pressure group to protect those who don't need government pension plans, and don't like paying taxes to help others get them.

The news story is well written. But the editor who wrote the head and sub head is, to put it kindly, unethical.

Liquor sales, you will be sorry to hear, are down. That's not unreasonable, given the slumping economy. Can you imagine the thinking of people who believe the answer to the economic downturn is to encourage New Bruswickers to get smashed more? Read all about it at the bottom of p. 1. And before you do, why not tilt a bottle to help the poor?

Skip the op ed page. It has its usually pair of trivial and even juvenile stories by staff writers. Here we learn that many people in Moncton love their pets. Wow! Who would have guessed?

I even have to disagree, though gently, with Alec Bruce.

Harper's policy of wasting money by cracking down on crime is not, as Bruce says, pointless. There's a purpose to it - though it has nothing to do with crime.

Harper doesn't need intelligent policies to win an election. Remember, he now has a rock-solid majority - though he has only a minority in terms of national voter support. He doesn't need a majority. He needs a grip on the special interest groups. These are people w ho will turn out to vote (and that's important with the low turnout votes we get). That way, you can win a majority with barely a third of the voters behind you.

So he targets fundamentalist religious groups. He targets the Israel lobby - which is very powerful in Canada. (Actually, many observant Canadian Jews, including Zionists, are highly critical of the Israeli government and its policies; and they are sympathetic to Palestinians. But you would never guess that from most of our news media.) He targets those, often the poorly educated, who think they live in a world of thugs and maniacs because they watch crime shows on TV every night. With the special interest groups and the huge financial edge coming from private corporations, Harper can have a majority in the House without ever coming even close in the election.

That's why we're going to swamped with pictures of the Queen and celebrations of the War of 1812 this year - to appeal to all those "special" who think it's so wonderful about Kate and what's-his-name. He'll also spend millions on those, millions and billions more on the war hysteria so that we'll happily go off to fight American wars in Syria and Libya - and anywhere else it's good for business. Of course, we'll have to cut back on pensions to pay for this brainless propaganda.

Why do so many people believe all this crap? Partly, it has to do with something a prominent Canadian politician once told me. He never read newspapers. I didn't believe it at first because he showed a profound understanding of what was going on in the world. So I checked with his friends. They confirmed it. He never read them. But he understood what was going on -and understood it far better than most newspaper readers did.

But that's a story for another day.

Jan. 31: Sorrry to be late, today....

2012-01-31T16:54:00.000-08:00

A busy day - not helped by the fact that the home delivery of my breakfast copy of The Moncton Times and Transcript has recently been arriving at an hour I usually associate with lunch. Now, it's getting late. So I'll confine myself to just two examples of bad journalism in the paper.

The first example is at the top of the op ed page. This space is almost always reserved for a column by one of the staff writers. And all of these columns have one thing in common. They are all trivial.

This time the word is handed down by Alan Cochrane, editor-at-large. Today's offering is of a popular subject with him, motorcycles. In particular, on this day, he was quite excited about dirt bikes, especially a Canadian bike of the 1970s. If you have have a passion for Canadian, dirt racing motorcycles of the 1970s, you might find this a little bit interesting, especially if you think adjectives like 'cool' are really hip. (In fact, 'cool' was already dead in most of the developed world before the 1970s.)

Here is prime, commentary space in a newspaper that is given over, every day to trivial gush. And it's no accident that this sort of pre-pubescent drivel occupies a position of honour in the TandT. The purpose of the TandT is not to inform readers. It's to keep them ignorant of what's going on. It's not to encourage discussion. It's to encourage us to slip into a zombie-like state.

There are, of course, plenty of really stinking newspapers in North America. But few, even of the worst, would stoop to this consistent waste of prime, commentary space.

The other example is a news story - or so it is billed. The story, top of NewsToday, is that professor Don Savoie says that New Brunswick must balance its budget soon.Duh, well, yeah. But is there anybody who isn't saying that? What on earth makes this a news story?

Then, he goes deep, deep for us iggerant readers. He says if we keep borrowing money, we'll have a high debt. Gee! Who would have thought of it? That's almost as intellectually challenging as a story about Canadian dirt-racing bikes of the 1970s. So why did they run this as a top, news story? And why did Professor Savoie agree to give such a shallow interview?

Professor savoie is quoted as saying he did it because he's concerned about the impact of provincial debt on the poor. Right. Well, maybe....but......

If you were a corporate boss and you had your flunkies appointed to an official body advising the Minister of Finance (a former Irving exec), and you were worried about people getting silly and expecting you to pay higher taxes, or about people getting even sillier and making you pay for your electricity or slow you down in cutting timber or demand tougher regulation (and maybe banning) for shale gas....well, Savoie's interview could be very helpful.

First, it is presented in such a way as to avoid the corporate role in running up our deficits. When Savoie offers his (simplistic) solutions to the problem, he doesn't once mention the cozy position of the rich in this province.

Yep, we have to cut or raise taxes. That's what he says. Of course, that's what he says. Putting it in that vague way will build support for cutting services to the public, cutting down on government, and raising taxes (on the poor and the middle class.) As a side effect, it may even build enough hysteria and narrowness of vision to approve of shale gas development - along with the destruction of our forests.

There's not a word of what should be obvious - cutting the fat out of big business in this province. Start with getting rid of these wasteful public/private partnership scams. Don't touch shale gas until we know it won't hasten the destruction of this province. Make corporations behave according to the rules of capitalism, not of fascism. And make the wealthy pay their share.

But Savoie doesn't even hint at any of these. Of course not. This "news story" is blatant propaganda.

It's a one-two punch. Cochrane's job is to knock any brains out of our heads. The Savoie's job, as we sit there stunned, is to tell us to believe what the boss wants us to believe.

Jan. 30: kidding aside....

2012-01-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

If you want to keep up on the news, then keep you money in your pocket. Don't subscribe to the TandT, either on paper or on the web. It is part lies, part propaganda, and part nothing. Don't waste your time listening to news on private radio. Private radio doesn't have the resources to fund adequate news rooms. As well, it would never report any news offensive to its advertisers. TV news shows? Usually better - but heavily moronized to satisfy the needs of show biz and ratings.

Better - not best - but better go to google. click on news. It free, up to date, wide in coverage, and far superior to the Irving news media.

If you want world coverage, go to The Gardian on the web. It's a superb British paper. If you want news on the middle east, go Haaretz, an excellent Israeli paper. If you want a radical edge, go to International Clearing House on the web. They're all free. But be careful of ICH. It's usually excellent; but there are times when its news is drawn from biased sources - then it comes just the polar opposite of the Times and Transcript.

Most of today's Tand T is so uninfomative, it's not worth criticizing in any detail. I mean, when the lead editorial is about raising chickens, you know you're in the little leagues. However, for a striking example of what's wrong with the paper, look at the editorial cartoon. It's about two horses labelled socialism and capitalism. They're having a tug of war over a globe that represents, I presume, the world. That is a hopelessly ignorant and irrelvant cartoon.

1. There is no such thing as socialism in the world -and there never has been a socialist government of any major state in historty. Socialism would mean all the business of the country was mutually owned and controlled by all the people - who express their control through democratic means.

The USSR was never socialist. The Soviet people never mutually owned or controlled anything. Ditto for China. Ditto for North Korea.

Some reader will mumble that Sweden is socialist. No, it isn't. And it never has been. Over ninety precent of all business in Sweden is privately owned.

Oh, says another reader. state pensions and welfare and stuff like that are socialist. No they aren't. They were intrroduced by people like Bismarck, Roosevelt and Canada's Bennett - all of whom did it to preserve private business in a time of crisis.

2. There is no such thing as capitalism in the world. Capitalism would be a system in which everything is privately owned, and in the which the private owners compete openly, honestly and at their own financial risk. Where does that happen? (except, of course, at the level of small business.)

Capitalism, real capitalism, is not a system in which private owners corrupt governments and control news and elections. It's not a system in which Big business gets cheap electricity at the expense of taxpayers - or grants, or subisdized loans, or soft regulations that aren't enforced, anyway. What New Brunswick has is a sort of welfare state for corporations. That's not captialism.

3. So capitalism and socialism are in a tug of war to control the world? Really? Okay. Name me a single major power in the world that is socialist. Name a single one that is capitalist in any real sense.
Are we at war with Afghanistan (Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia) to save capitalism? Exactly where is this tug of war happening? And who is tugging?

Today's cartoon is typical of The Times and Trnanscript. It's a statement on a subject of which the author knows nothing - not even such a fundmental as the meaning of the words he is using.

Social and capitalism (like terrorism and 'shock and awe') are terms that carry emotional reactions - but almost no understanding.

As for Alwrad, a premier should know what words mean too - so he can tell his finance minister that a government is not a business - and it should no more be run like a business than a candy store should be run like a hospital.What the finance minister is doing, of course, is spreading the propaganda that in New Brunwick a corporation is run like a business when, in fact, it's run like welfare recipient.

Higgs, our finance minister, is a former Irving exec, with other Irving stooges as official budget advisers, and with Irving, himself, declaring himself a member of the government. This isn't capitalism. And it isn't democracy.

It's the crude, greedy and self-destructive fascism that was pioneered by Mussolini.

Jan. 29: late on Sunday evening....

2012-01-29T17:01:00.000-08:00

This isn't directly about the Moncton Times and Transcript. It is, though, a followup of sorts to a column that appeared in it on Jan. 28. Aurelie Pare, a university student and columnist in the Saturday Whatever section, wrote a very useful article about the importance of study habits. I just thought I might be able to add something useful to it.

As a high school student, I became an expert in not studying at all. Elementary school had been a breeze. I was one of the golden boys all the way. But high school wasn't so easy. And, coming from a working class background in which nobody ever expected to finish high school, anyway, I just ignored study. By grade ten, I was often absent - though always with a note (supposedly) signed by my mother.

(The other trick was to tell the teacher that I had to go to the principal's office. It always worked. In fact, one day when Mr. McGarry caught me reading a cowboy story in class, he said, "Decarie. Go to the office right now and........No. You've been in the principal's office so often that if I send you now he'll expel you. So just put that cowboy book away, And listen.")

So I failed grade ten. Passed it in a breeze the second time around - but was soon failing grade eleven. Just before Easter, the principal really did call me to his office. "Let's face it, Decarie. You have no brains at all. It's time to go find a job." So I did.

A few years later, I began taking university courses at night. I still didn't study. But I got passes (mostly), even if they were rock bottom Ds. At last, I even got a BA (no major, though. My grades were too low for a major.)

Then I got the idea of going for an MA. Acadia very reluctantly decided to give me a chance - if I did another undergrauate year and did really, really, really well. Even somebody as lazy as me could understand that I had to make this one work. But how?

Here's how.

The basic principle is that the first time you study something, you will remember it only a short time - no matter how much you study it. The second time, you will remember it longer, - and so on. Obviously, I had to organize my study time to get maximum results.
1. I bought a set of index cards. Each one had four dates on it as, for example, Sept. 10, 13, 20, Oct. 20.

2. At each lecture, I put the date on my page (s) of notes. So, on Sept. 10, I would read over the notes for classes taken on Sept. 10. Three days later, on Sept. 13, I would read them over a few more times. Seven days after that, I'd read them again, then, a month after that, I'd read them again.
In the week or ten days before exams, I would go over all notes for the term.
The day before the exam, I would just relax.

3. It was very efficient. Each reading took only minutes (okay. maybe a half hour if I had several classes in a day.) But at the end, you could start me off at any page of my notes - and I could finish the whole term's notes for you almost word for word.

4. Two, strict rules.
a) study every day, including weekends. In total, you'll study less. But with the regularity and the spacing, you'll rembember more.
b) In that same study period, use extra time to work on assignments, readings etc.

I rarely studied as much as an hour a day. But at the end of that undergraduate year, I had straight As. I did the same for my MA courses; and that got me into a doctoral programme with a scholarship.

It worked for this miserable wretch of a high school dropout. Think of how well somebody smarter like you could do with it.

Confession - memorizing is not a good way, really, to learn. Most of the information I memorized in that last undergraduate year and in the MA was forgotten within a short time after the exams. But the reality is that most undergrauate education is taught as memory work. Most professors don't know any better. Most have never studied teaching. Many see the teaching just as a nuisance. But memorizing is most of how you will be taught. So you will either memorize your way through a bachelor's degree - or never get a chance to learn anything at all. ( Much of the same is true of graduate studies - though at that level you also have to make yourself as much like the professor as possible.)

Trust me. The method is easy. And it works.

Jan. 28: words, words, words.....

2012-01-28T09:54:00.000-08:00

A news story in a good newspaper gives you information. It does not try to propagandize the reader with loaded language. It gives the facts, just the fact, and leaves the response up to the reader. A good reporter knows that. A good editor enforces it.

North American newspapers are short of good reporters and good editors. The classic example is illustrated when those newspapers report a killing by a Moslem. The Moslem is invariably defined as a "terrorist". (Terrorists are bad.)

When American Christians commit a terror killing (Tiimothy McVeigh springs to mind). they are never called terrorists. They are called militias. (Militias - that sounds almost patriotic.)

When an American marine sergeant in Iraq led a murder rampage that took the lives of 24 innocent people, including children and elderly and crippled), he was never referred to as a terrorist though, in fact, his purpose was quite clearly to terrorize. He wasn't called anything; and the attack was rarely even mentioned in the North American press. (At his recent trial, he pleaded guily to 'disorderly conduct' which carried a maximum three month sentence. He was then released with no sentence at all - though he might be reduced in rank.). No news medium in North America has called him any bad names. In fact, most haven't even reported the story.

Now take a look at the TandT's front page story 'Metro gears up for ECMAs'.

It begins, "Ask anyone what was there and they'll tell you that the East Coast Music Awards, held in Moncton in 1997, was one of the best - if not the best of the ECMA celebrations to date. (Skip the bad grammar. Concentrate on the emotional tone.)

This is not the language of a sober report. This is the pure gush of advertising and artificial excitement. It's the sort of thing you expect to hear from a typical light rock radio host who is 47 going on 15.

This isn't a report at all. this is an ad.

Ditto for the lead story 'Metro's' Olympic legacy to be revealed'. Here again, the tone of breathlessness prevails. The hall of fame induction ceremony is prestigious. Come off it. If something is prestigious, you don't have to say it. We all know it. If we don't, then it's not prestigious. That's why we don't refer to Christmas as the birthday of 'the prestigious Son of God'.

That opening bit of puffery is followed by the exciting statement that Moncton is the smallest city ever to host the event. Wowie! Wowie! And even more '...they soon found out Moncton isn't normal in any sense...' It sure isn't.

("Hey, hi gang," said the 47-year-old radio host, "Forget all about school and teachers. Now, it's just us, the whole gang all together with the sounds YOU like to hear...and now, here's Acne Vampire and his latest hot, hot Howl I do it....")

There's another story (ad) for Bouclair at the bottom of the page.

P. A6 carries another story on a new business coming to Moncton. This time the puffery at the top takes an almost religious turn. "Company believes in Moncton". Sounds like no big deal? Okay. If the story were about an armed bank holdup, would be it be headed "Robber shows belief in bank?"

This is just feel-good writing. As well, there is not even a hint of what might be some pretty important information. There's lots of self praise about Invest NB's importance in bringing the new company here. But it doesn't say exactly what Invest NB did to make Moncton attractive. Any guesses?

The editorial page continues the tradition of playing with words. The editorial page praises Premier Alward's state of the province speech as 'rational optimism', a term that tells us almost nothing and, for that matter, reflects a speech that was itself vague and no great feast of reason.

After all, "specific changes to how we spend public money" tells us so little that even the editor doesn't pretend to know what that means. He comments "If he means cutting bureaucratic fat...."

For that matter, "bureaucratic fat" is a more emotional than rational term. Talk (as the editor does) about pie-in-the-sky bafflegab. Would he refer to the rocketing increase in corporate profits and executive salaries as "fat"? Of course not. The editor is an economic bigot. He uses derogatory terms for the civil service - but never for private business.

And what exactly is the meaning of the editor's term "run the province like a business?" Does that mean ignoring regulations as shale gas companies do? Getting cut rate electricity at the tax payers' expense? Paying senior policiticans millions of dollars a year - and then cutting their taxes to almost zero? Developing short term natural resources despite the long term damage to the province? Being arrongant enough to think they can run the government without bothering to get elected? Get a monopoly on provinicial news media to keep people in the dark about what's happening? That's how business operates.

No wonder the reporters can get away with writing such sloppy news stories.

And Norbert, as always, has his morsels of bigoted burps written as if they were wisdom. He refers, for example, to societies that provide basic human needs as "nanny states". I think we can agree he means that to be a derogatory term.

Okay. What about a province that spends it money on tax breaks, loans, gifts, unenforced regulations, and free resouces for corporations and wealthy individuals. Would he call that a nanny state?

Again, he attacks public education and, again, without having a clue to what it's all about. The book he quotes on this, for example, is British. In Britain, there are serious declines in education. But, Norbert, we live in Canada. And we are ranked in the top ten in the world for quality and quantity of education. Will you please learn something of what you are talking about?

As usual, Norbert's excuse for writing this column is that he read that book. That's nice. It's good to read. But it's also good to know what you are talking about. In this case, he read a book by an historian, and the historian's list of what made the West so economically successful.

But since Norbert doesn't know much about history, he doesn't notice issues of fundamental importance in western prosperity that British historian missed. There's slavery,for example, the basis of American (and some Canadian) wealth and, more recently, Belgian and general western prosperity. There's military dominance which not only enabled the West to plunder the rest of the world, but to add territory to maintain cheap labour, and to mopolize markets.

We had a chance to change that after 1945. We didn't. We simply allowed an American empire to replace the old, European ones. The trouble is, we have lost our old, military dominance. The western military record for the past fifty years is dismal. Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, the US once conquered emplies of tens of millions with tiny armies. Now, despited technology, even small wars against third world countries can tie them up for ten years and more.

And he still downplays cheap Asian labour as a source of our prosperity. Maybe he should read the New York Times which recently did a lengthy report on the Apple computer company in China. It refers to labour conditions in the Apple factories as brutal, dangerous,stunningly low paid -and productive of a high rate of suicide among employees.

His column completely ignores the corruption of politics and of capitalism itself by our corporate leaders. It completely ignores the fundamental cause of our decline - the greed of the very wealthy, their short-sightedness, and their utter indifference to anybody except themselves.

If you want a change of pace, a bit of a laugh, read the story about Jim Irving and how he cuts down New Brunswick trees only because he loves this province.

Jan 27: The power of propaganda.....

2012-01-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

New Brunswick's Premier Alward has announced that he will hire private business people to tell him how to run the government. (Somehow, I can't help thinking of him as one of the characters from Toy Story and, no, I don't mean Buzz Albright.) Some of the questions this announcement raises are obvious.

For example, ff running a government is like running a business, why do we have political parties and elections? Why don't we just do it like business does, and appoint the boss' son. Works for North Korea.

Obviously, the thinking (if one can call it that) which lies beneath Mr. Alward's decision is that business is more efficient than government. Funny how propaganda can have such an effect. Nazi propaganda had Germans believing they were winning the war right up to the last days. Americans believe their's is the land of the free, even though they can now be imprisoned, perhaps for life, with no charge or trial. They believe their form of business is the best in the world, even as their own eyes can see the poverty, ruin, and homelessness it has brought the whole western world to.

Propaganda is powerful

Business is efficient? Really? If it's so efficient, why isn't New Brunswick more prosperous? After all, the province has been run by business for well over a hundred and fifty years. There certainly has been no time since 1867 in which big business did not finance and direct New Brunswick governments. When Mr. Alward says he's going to bring in big business, he is just making official what has always been obvious. And our own eyes can tell us that as a useful idea this is nonsense.

If big business in New Brunswick is so efficient, how come it needs so much propping up in the form of low, low taxes, low, low electricity rates, loans, government contracts, low minimum wages and outright gifts?

If business is so efficient, how come Public/Private Partnerships seem to produce less quality and higher costs than the old days of government doing the work on its own?

Big business now, already, officially advises government on the budget. In fact, big business has largely been setting the budgets for the whole history of this province. So how come our budgets are still such disasters?

If big business is so effecient, how come the American medical system is at once the least efficient and the most expensive one in the world? How come a baby's chance of survival at birth is higher over most of the developed world (and some of the undeveloped world) than it is in the US?

If business is so efficient, how come the spread of privatization of education in the US has made it an international basket case?

Big business is motivated by self-interest and greed. That's not just calling names. Leaders in modern big business all over the world have publicly admired the writing of Ayn Rand that lauds greed and self-interest as desirable.

Do you think it's a really good idea to have your life controlled by people who think their own greed and self-interest are good for you?

Is big business more efficient when it comes to honesty? Establishing regularions? Then how come the whole, American system has come crashing down because of dishonesty, corruption, and greed?

And do you seriously think that the shale gas industry (just to choose an example) could be trusted to set effective regulations for gas explorations and drilling? Hell. It won't even repect the flimsy rules we have.

Where, in defiance of all we can see around us, do we get the idea that big business is efficient?

It all goes back to World War Two. The previous war of 1914 had shown that private business was an economic disaster in the crises of wartime. It was expensive, inflationary, disorganized, self-serving...

Most of the world learned a lesson from that. The major powers in World War Two placed extensive power in government to control and plan the wartime economy. Civil servants set prices, quotas, interest rates, everything. And it was wildly successful as Canada ended the war with a booming economy, little inflation, few shortages.

The first reaction of big business was to recognize that the civil service was more efficient than big business was. For almost ten years after the war, then, it was common for big businesses to send their senior peope to Ottawa to study civil service methods. Then big business recognized the danger of that. It was advertising itself as being inefficient - and thereby encouraging crazy ideas like medicare and pensions.

That's when big business began organizing and financing "think tanks" like AIMS, propaganda institutes working with the close cooperation of newspapers owned by big business. The essential message is always the same. Big business good. Government bad. And fifty years of propaganda have worked. And so we - or a great many of us - can stand in the middle of the desolation caused by generations of greed, corruption, and dishonesty. and say, "Yep. It's all the fault of them there civil servants and welfare people. What we need is business methods in government."

Ah, well. In the old days, a Premier Alward at least would have restricted himself to kissing babies on their facial cheecks. Now, he kisses corporation bosses on their other cheeks.

Jan. 26: Let's try to be positive....

2012-01-26T10:05:00.000-08:00

Today's Moncton Times and Tribune was annoying for its lack of news, it's self-righeous posturing by Norbert Cunningham, and an op ed column by Rod Allen notable only for its laboured attempt at humour.

Cunningham contrubutes a typical Cunningham column in which he says that politicians lie. Well, some do . But the self-righteous Cunningham and the Irving media he works for have lied with them every step of the way. Both politicians and most of the journalists in this province are under the same ownership. And both lie because the ownership wants them to lie. But don't expect Norbert to tell the truth about that.

So let's be positive. What should be in the paper?

1. I would really like to know what the development plan is for Moncton (and for Riverview and Dieppe). I mean a real plan, one that starts with the conditions we are likely to live under two or three generations from now.

Will the automobile still be the major means of transportation? If so, we don't need a plan. We already have a city designed for that, with malls for the cars, and with car-dependent developments spreading out into the boonies.

But what if the car can't be the major means of transportation? What if the cost of fuel becomes prohibitive? What if it is at last recognized that exhaust pipes are not really a great idea? Then what happens to the new Moncton High? And what happens to Riverview - which is essentially just a poorly designed parking lot with houses in the way?

And if we can no longer move most people by car, what is our plan for moving them?

How will we heat houses? Will energy become so expensive - and maybe so scarce - that we will need to legislate efficiency standards - starting now?

A high proportion of Moncton housing is wooden - and aging. Should that be replaced by more plexes built to look like farmhouses of 1900? (The current wave of new apartments convey the impression that the only qualification to be an architect in Moncton is owning a ruler and a pencil. Will that be the standard for the future?)

As it is, our planning for the future starts by ignoring the future. It starts with somebody wanting a new hockey rink to be paid for by the public - and then the city council and the TandT get out their pom poms to lead cheers for building it by saying it will revive Main Street. (It won't.) The only planning that's going on here is planning on how to sell this idiocy to us.

So exactly what is the plan? And let's start the plan with looking at the future - not with some get-rich-quick scheme to benefit some devloper and hockey team owner.

2, As we face the problem of a huge, provincial deficit, it would be useful to know exactly what money we are getting - and from whom - and exactly what we are spending - and for whom.

How much is our government spending every year on goodies for private corporations? Which private corporations? It is, after all (and as the editor of the TandT said just recently) our money.

Exactly how much in taxes do these corporations pay back to us? (No. Not the taxes paid by their whole work force - the taxes paid by the Irvings and the Ganongs and the McCain's and the top execs.)
What is their nominal rate of tax? What is the tax rate after all the loopholes are figured in?
How can our finance minister possible have serious discussions with the public about the deficit if we're not allowed to know one of the crucial factors in creating the deficit?

3. When are we going to get a report on the handling of the two cases (at least) of shale gas companies that broke the law? I haven't heard even the apology that our government said so much about.

Where are the regulations? If we don't even have them yet, how can we possibly allow exploration to go on? This is like suddenly relizing we have no laws for driving - and so we let everybody drive a car, anyway - children, drunks, speeders. The only difference is that roads full of children,
drunks and speeders would probably not do nearly so much damage as would unregulated (or even regulated) shale gas drilling.

This is a province dominated by people who are greedy without limits, who give not a damn about what happens to anybody else, and who control most of the levers of power. This is a province that is not a democracy,and is nowhere close to it. If we don't wake up soon, today's deficit will be the least of our problems.

When one thinks of all that we need to know and discuss and decide on, The Irving papers aren't news media at all. They're sleeping pills. And the journalists who work for them should be ashamed of themselves.

Jan. 25: The big picture...

2012-01-25T09:04:00.000-08:00

"Gulf observers quit Syria"

Yawn. All them there foreigners. they're always fightin'. I guess ought help them rebels make a democracy - like ours.

That's what happens when you get news in isolated bites without any sense of the big picture. It reminds me of a visit to a zoo when I was a kid. There was a cougar. He (or possibly she) was lying against the wire enclosure, looking all warm and cute and cuddly under one of those suns that just spread gently right through you.

The whole scene was so loving and gentle that I squatted, and leaned against the fence so that I was almost touching that warm and cute and sleepy cat.

The next thing I remember was a termendous yowl, a thud as the cougar stood on hind legs to throw its weight at the wire - and me standing a good five metres away and wondering how I got there. That's what's called seeing the big picture.

A foreign nobleman and his wife got blown up by an anarchist in 1914. Tut-tut. That's the small picture. Days later, the bloodiest war in human history erupts. It's the same picture - but bigger.

"Gulf observers quit Syria" is the very small picture. In fact, the rebellion in Syria is being financed and equipped by Turkey, Ssudi Arabia, the emirates, and by NATO. It's being done because Syria is an essential ally to Iran. NATO wants to knock off the Iranian government because a) the western empires have been interfering in Iran for a century in order to get control of its oil. In the early 1950s, the west overthrew an elected government in Iran, and installed a dictator. There's a reason why Iranians don't like the west.
b) China wants that oil, too. As so much of the world industrializes, the search for energy fuel is a matter of life and death. New Brunswickers should know that. They are under one of the claws so desperate to get fuel that they are willing to take any risks (or to force others to take any risks) to get it. Only a desperate world would accept shale gas - or oilsands. Only a desperate apologist (professor Savoie springs to mind) would say, gee, we have to look at the economic benefits here.

c) Russia has both an economic and stratetic interest in Iran. The two countries (as well as smaller ones) border on the Caspian Sea -which may not be a sea at all. As a sea, it would merit open access to all ships. But, not without reason, Iran and Russia see it as a lake. (Its salinity is well below that of the oceans). That makes it common propoerty of the nations that border it. The whole basin of the Caspian is rich in oil and, as well, is a crucial transporation point for it.

That means at least three major powers (all nuclear) and several lesser ones have a vital interest in the waters that border Iran.

Remembering that, any news story about Iran's ally, Syria, is worth more than a yawn.

For a still larger picture, look at the strategy adopted by NATO in the case of Syria. It's a dead ringer for the strategy in Libya. Stir up a rebellion against a hated government. Train and supply the rebels. provide them not only with air support but special ops troops on the ground. Get our compliant press and its agencies (like Reuters) to present this as a struggle for democracy.

Sounds like a good idea. But look at what has happened in Libya. The country is nowhere close to democracy. The rebel factions are fighting each other. Conditions are so bad that popular support in Libya is swinging back to the old, Ghadaffi people.

So far, Syria is going the same route. The rebels are trained in Turkey (a US ally in this cause) which is joined by the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and the emirates (who have not the slightest intention of allowing a democracy to develop so close to them). Again the rebels are promised a "no-fly" zone -which really means only one side will be allowed to fly and drop bombs. As well, NATO ground troops ae in the area, and NATO is supplying the rebels with weapons.

Oh, yeah, and there are already signs of deep differences between various groups of rebels.

The strategy hasn't worked in Libya (though our press doesn't tell us that because Libya is old news. Out of style). It probably won't work in Syria, either. What it will do is take us a giant step closer to Iran -and the Caspian Sea - and Russia - and China.

And, in case you think that the western military can handle this with one hand tied behind its back, take a look as the dismal record of the western military over the last sixty years with its string of dismal defeats by small, backward, and poor countries going all the way back to Vietnam.

Don't cuddle up too close to the official version of the news. If you do, you'll get one hell of a shock when reality rears up on its hind legs, yowls, and rattles the cage.

As a footnote, NewsToday tells us that Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich to at least 30%. You remember Obama. He's the one who was going to end the Afghanistan War and close Guantanamo.
Anyway, he at least raises the question in a country in which Mitt Romney paid less than 15% on an income of tens of millions.

How come our finance minister Higgs didn't raise the issue of taxing the rich in New Burnswick? Page one of NewsToday has a big story about his view of balancing the budget. But there isn't a word about taxing the rich - and not a word about how much the rich cost us in favours. Couldn't the TandT dig and get some info on this? After all, as the editor said yesterday, this is public money they're getting.
And when was the last time Ganong and Irving paid 30% in taxes? Or even 10%. In fact, considering all their grants, subsidies, etc., do they really pay any taxes at all?

Higgs also refers to his virtue in seldom taking a sick day when he was an Irving exec. I'm so happy to hear it. And did he get nice holidays? Or would they just be two weeks of sitting at home? Any free memberships in nice, recreational clubs?

There's also a hilarious quotation by David Ganong to the effect that governments have to learn to say no to some people. To be fair, though, maybe he meant they should say no to people like David Ganong and James Irvng.

Nah.

There is what looked like a good story on government loans and grants to business in New Brunswick. It's on p. 6 of NewsToday. Unfortunately, it as about a professor from the business school at Queen's, a business school that never met a billionaire it didn't like.

In this case, he thinks government should not be involved at all in economic development. Of course not. It should allso private business to do whatever it wants. That's straight from the neanderthal school of economics.

If a government cannot been engaged in economic planning, then it can't govern at all. Virtually every decision a government makes involves the economy. (I once had to chair a meeting for the Queen's business school. I was stunned by the slack-jawed chatter that passed as economic analysis.)

Anyway, today's message is - no matter how sunny the day, don't lean up against a cougar's cage.

Jan. 24: to know everything....

2012-01-24T10:53:00.000-08:00

Commonly, journalists think they know everything. It's not (entirely) their fault. Journalism is all about seeing through lies and false alarms,understanding the big picture, getting to the truth. Nobody can do that, not really.But journalists devote their lives to pretending they can. It's the same with university teachers - and it can be very bad news when journalists and university teachers get together. Take, for example, today's column by Norbert Cunningham.

It's about a book by a Harvard psychologist, Stephen Pinker who was known, back in his graduate days as a great thinker. Or, more accurately he thought he was. He has now gone on to greater fame by using his psychology credentials to write books on topics he knows nothing about.

Naturally, Norbert the journalist felt drawn to those books - and he devoted today's column to Pinker's book on terrorism.

So we learn that terrorism goes back 2,000 years, that the worst terrorist attack from 1970 to 2007 was 9/11, that almost all terrorism has been caused by "different" people like arabs, Africans, you know - and terrorism almost never succeeds.

Bunk.

Terrorism goes back even before humans, to animals, for example, that terrorized their prey with roars. Human fighters have always used terror - in the painting of faces, in raids on neighbouring people to punish them. If the story of Exodus is true, God used terror against the Egyptians. And, certainly, the people of ancient Israel used terror - as at Jericho. For some Christians, terror (named Hell) is a prime reason for opting to be Christian. Revelations is a wonderful book on the subject.

There is probably no community of people which has not at some time used terror to defeat an enemy. And that means good, white folks just as much as any other.

In the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty were terrorists - killing, burning, stealing, raping. Why do you think so many Loyalists fled to British North America. When an American-hired mercenary was killed in Fallujah early in the Iraq war, the US retaliated with a massive bombing and shelling and random slaughter that killed uncounted numbers of innocent people. What was the napalming and bombing and poisoning of Vietnam about if not terror? Nobody can even guess how many millions of innocent people were killed. So much for Pinker's contention that 9/ll was the biggest act of terrorism in almost forty years. And that doesn't count the deliberate American bombing of civilians, killing half a million of them, in Cambodia. It was no secret. The purpose of the bombing of Cambodian cities was, as the American air commander said publicly, "...to bomb Cambodia back into the stone age." And what were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all about if not terrorism?

How about the CIA led slaughter of a quarter million of the Maya people - men, women and children - in Guatemala?... or the Ton-Ton-Macoutes who raped, beat and murdered at random in Haitia - supplied and paid for by the US taxpayer? They did it to keep Haitians terrirified so they would submit to abuse and overwork in European and American-owned farms and factories at abysmal wages.

French brutality in Morroco after 1945 was stunning even by European standards. Random killing and/or torture were the methods of choice there and in French Indo-China.

In 1920, the sainted Winston Churchill, as Secretary of the Colonies, launched terrorist bombings of civilians in Kurd villages in what is now Iraq.

The record holders in terrorism are probably Stalin and Mao, both of whom could count victims in the tens of millions. But that part of the world that is western and Christian has been no slouch. Nor have the terrorists been church dropouts. Remember the inquisition? That was terrorism. In fact, the very word 'terrorist' originated in the West. It was taken from the so-called "Reign of Terror" in the French revolution.

Nor is it true that terrorism seldom works. Western terrorism held much of the world prisoner for centuries after the age of Columbus. Modern states have been built on terrorism. European Jews pushed into what was Palestine using terrorist gangs against Palestinians and their British overlords. Modern Israel is a living example of successful terrorism.

I have no doubt that Pinker's book will be a best-seller. It has just the right blend of bigotry, one-eyed vision, and pseudo-intellectualism to fool a journalist.

Oh - there's kind of a related story that today's TandT missed. An American marine officer in Iraq was charged with ordering his men into a 45 minute orgy of killing. In retaliation for the death of a marine by a bomb, they invaded neighbouring houses, killing 24 innocent people, men, women and children - including an elderly man in a wheelchair.

After years of delay and denial, a charge of multiple murder was laid though, just to be fair, the jury was made up entirely of marines. But yesterday, perhaps to make it all easier, the accused plea-bargained for a charge of dereliction of duty. The maximum sentence for that is three months. Would that count as terrorism?

As Norbert says, we have to learn to cope with the uglier aspects of the world. Very true. But first we have to look at them. And some of that looking calls for a mirror.

Interesting editorial. It's summed up as "We Say: Publicly-paid benefits of any kind must be open to public view." Damn right.

So when is the TandT going to tell us how much in benefits like loans, gifts, tax breaks, resources and other favours we give every year to Irving and friends? That's public money, whether it's direct grants, or in taxes we have to make up for, or in the forests and minerals that belong to us. That's public money. Damn right they should be open to public view.

So why don't the editors at the TandT do it?

Jan.23: Do they do it on purpose - or are they really that incompetent?

2012-01-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

exhibit 1. headline p. A3 "Highfield Square Tenant ready to move on" Duh - well, yeah. The place is closing. We all know that. So it was kind of expected that the few tenants would move on.. Also that the doors will be closed, the lights turned off, and the cleaning staff dismissed. Are we going to get a big story on each of those,too? Here is a half page of the first section wasted on a story that really is no story at all. Oh, and another followup might be that people won't go shopping there any more.
In all, over two thirds of the section A is devoted to ads and non-stories.

exhibit 2. Three pages of the Sports section is devoted to the figure-skating championship. Okay. It was a big, sports event. But it was already the biggest story - almost two pages - of section A.

Moving on to NewsToday...

exhibit 3 "Giffords on road to recovery". This is about US Congress representative, Gabrielle Giffords who was shot in the head about a year ago during the Congressional elections. But her being on the road to recovery was not the story. In fact, she has been on the road to recovery for the best part of the past year. The story, as carried by other news media across North America, is that she is resigning her seat in Congress. Read the subhead. It says she's stepping down. That's the story. Read it. It doesn't say a word about how she is recovering.

That's not a small mistake. It's rather like running the story of the suprise attack of 1941 with a headline saying "US government plans renovations to Pearl Harbour". This is really sloppy editing. And it show how the editors themselves don't give a damn what's printed - so long as Mr. Irving doesn't give a damn.

exhibit 4 "BC family shaken up by close encounter with cougar". This is the lead story in NewsToday, the general and world news section - so I guess that makes it the leading world news of the day - though there is another big one on the same page...

exhibit 5 "Calgarians don't like new slogan". Apparently the city has a new slogan "Be part of the energy". (Does that remind New Brunswickers of anything?)
Both of those are news items we could have lived without. Meanwhile, in events that are heating up and may well involve us in wars, civil war in threatening in both Nigeria and Libya. we hear nothing. And for the frosting on the cake, we could be looking at a dangerous showdown between us and the Russians and Chinese over Syria and Iran. Nothing on that, either.

They're also silent on the statement by the governor of the Bank of Canada that he thinks the US economy will never fully recover from the recession. Thank about that. Think of what that means to us. No - sorry - slip of t he tongue. This is an Irving paper. Don't think. For God's sake, don't think.

But who cares? Hey, wasn't that a great story about the Cougar?

exhibit 6. The Your Investments page(always a pretty feeble one). The lead story is that a Vancouver investment house has bought up some main street property. That might not be a bad story - except for three things.
a) they have already run the same story on at least two occasions.
b) the use emotional language to influence our reaction to it. The company is, for example "showing confidence" in Moncton. Sure. Would they say a pickpocket is showing confidence that you have money in your pocket? What the investment company and the pickpocket are showing is confidence they can get something out of us.
c) they use the story, once again, to beat the drum for a hockey stadium/conference centre on Main St.

exhibit 7. Once again (as in again and again and again and again), they have a big ad for the autobiography of ex-Irvingite Ralph Costello. And, more excitement, it gives a list of "fine" merhant locations where it can be purchased - but only until February 4. (However, it is really not necessary to panic. Most store shelves seem to have more than ample copies in stock.)

exhibit 8. There's a big, big editorial about the importance of government help to re-establish the Enterprise foundry that burned down. But no editorial about how the elderly poor now have to pay up front for dental care - then hope for a refund.

That meams. that many, probably most, of the elderly poor will not be able to get dental care at all. Money spent on them would not only help people who need it, but would also create more jobs across the province than Enterprise did.

But who gives a damn about the elderly poor. Certainly not the editors of the TandT. In these recession times, their message is clear. We must cut back on unnecessary spending for the poor so we can keep up our unnecessary spending for the rich.

exhibit 9. The op ed page has its usual, pointless story by a staff writer, followed by the usual, pointless comments on life in the US contributed by Allen Abel.

In short, in this whole paper, there is virtually nothing of any importance or even relevance to read about. But I began by asking whether the editors of The Moncton Times and Transcript are incompetent or careless. In fact, they are neither.

The Irving newspapers are designed to keep people in ignorance of what is going on, fill them up with trivia until it trickles out of their mouths, all of it in loaded language to give the most favourable impression possible of our masters. The purpose is to ensure we never think of how we are manipulated and cheated, indeed that we never think of anything.

That takes a certain kind of editorial skill. It takes a certain kind of editor, one who knows who the boss is, and exactly what the boss wants. Aren't we lucky?

Jan. 21: let's be nice today...

2012-01-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Let's not talk about the rather important stories that the TandT didn't notice. We won't talk about their recent report of Harper announcing his crushing fear of an Iranian nuclear bomb - and how the TandT (and Harper, I guess) - did not notice the Jan. 19 story in the Christian Science Monitor which quotes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Israeli Defense Minister Barak, and an Israeli intelligence report to the US military as saying that Iran is NOT developing a nuclear bomb.

But, gee, I would think that might be a pretty important story considering Harper is hyping us up for a war on Iran.

Nor has the TandT reported a recent BBC story that, contrary to international law and to the terms of the Libya operation, British forces were on the ground in the recent Libya war, actively on the side of the rebels. But, then, they also never reported the even older story that American troops were illegally on the ground in Libya, too. That looks like the war of the future. We declare its a humanitarian operation, stir up a smattering of rebels, then fight without saying we were ever there. It's not a world without war. It's something more sophisticated - a war without war.

And it would be like shooting fish in a barrel to comment on its p. 2 story that Enbridge Gas (as in shale gas) is mad at the NB government for changing the terms of its pricing. Among other gaps, the story doesn't mention that J. Irving (also rumoured to be interested in shale gas) has publicly spoken in approval of giving enbridge the shaft.

Personally, I just can't get excited about Enbridge and Irving having a fight. As Pogo put it many years ago, "I've often seen two dogs fighting over a bone. But I've never known the bone to pick sides."

No. Let's pick the most reliable section of the paper, the teen' columns in Whatever. Start with Isabelle Agnew for a column this week that should be read by every news editor in the country.

It's a story about a teacher who declared that for one day blue-eyed children were superior to brown-eyed ones in intelligence, in social standing, everything. Accordingly, they got special privileges while brown-eyed ones suffered penalties. The next day, it was reversed with the brown-eyes a superior race.

There were two interesting results. The children who were declared to be superior actually believed it, while the other side actually believed in its inferiority. The other result is that the superior "race" of the day did better on exams - a situation that was reversed when it became the inferior "race".

That's not just a cute game. That's the way the human mind works; and that way of working affects us all of our lives.Those who are born into wealth and social status just naturally assume that they deserve their wealth and status because of their obvious superiority to those who are poor. It's a quite natural assumption, just as a prince grows up to believe he is superior to common people.

That "racist" outlook makes the prosperous more likely to do well in school; and to have higher expectations of themselves both in education and in careers. Where I grew up, the highest expectation of us kids and our parents was that we would grow up to have steady jobs. My first job was as a mail boy at Bell Telephone. At seventeen, I had achieved my life ambition. I was a neighbourhood success story.

Among middle class kids, it was more common to expect - no, to be entitled to - a Bachelor's degree before going to work. And so they did. Higher up on the social scale, the entitlement was to be a lawyer or a doctor, a professional of some sort.

Among the wealthiest "race" (and I came to know a great many of them), they were entitled not only to continued wealth but to assume leadership of the lesser breeds (us). It is a reponsibility and a right that they, like the old aristocracy, were born to.

That takes us to the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies and its school ratings. Financed to church out propaganda for our "superior race", it tests all students in the province each year in order to gather statistics that then rank the schools according to their students' grades.

Well, schools with large numbers of poor children will do poorly. Schools with large numbers of students who are well off will do much better. Statistics like that don't tell us anything about the schools. All they tell us is about the social environment the chldren are growing up in.

In fact, school rankings make the situation worse. When a school is ranked low, then it is officially "blue-eyed" or "brown-eyed", or whatever the inferior colour of the day is. So that almost guarantees it will continue to do worse.

The real purpose of rankings by AIMS is to lower public faith in the schools so that the rich can create one more Public/Private/Partnership in the so that they can put our tax money into their pockets. Well, after all, the very rich are entitled.... They're the superior race - every day.

The same thing is true of the MacLean's university rankings. It's all statistical. So it is no coincidence that there is a strong relationship between the "best" universities and the average income of the students (or their mummies and daddies).

The universities, never strong on integrity or on understanding of education, have played along with this scam, each struggling to get a nod from the great minds at Maclean's so it can draw more students. The result is that they are educational disaster areas, each divided from the others according to its "racial" standing.

But you have to read the teens' section of the newspaper to get a hint of what's really going on.

Of course, it can be difficult to cope with such a section. A seventeen-year-old who's as knowedgable as Aurelie Parie scares me. Her ideas of diet and and exercise just rub it in that spending my life in a hot tub while eating poutine was a mistake; and I know it's too late now. Now, I'll never be beautiful. Well, not again.

Jan. 20: Moncton: The City that exists to get ripped off...

2012-01-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

Today's editorial in The Moncton Times and Transcript brought a tear to my eye. A highly successful developer (land, stadia, hockey teams, hotels) is rumoured to have bought land around the Crown Plaza Hotel (which he already owns). That, says the editorial writer, is admirable. It shows confidence in the people of Moncton and in the City Council which has been working to build a hockey rink/convention/centre/entertaintment palace in the same area. Very admirable.Lots of character. That's the part that brought the tear to me eye.

It brought to mind a childhood friend who had a similar goal in life. He wanted to show confidence in the banks of Montreal. So he worked hard, studied hard to become an armed bank robber, with each sortie building confidence among Montrealers that there was, indeed, money in their banks.

(Alas! He strayed from his charitable work to deal in drugs as well.As a result, he is now spending the rest of his life in a big, stone and steel hockey rink near Montreal. But I digress.)

As a Monctonian, I am indeed proud that the developer, Aquilini Investment Group, is showing faith that there is money to be made in Moncton - just as my friend devoted his life to showing faith in the banks. But---

The whole basis of this plan is that we are going to put up the money to build the essential hockey stadium/convention centre/ emtertainment palace/whatever. Estimates of the cost to us tax-payers and rate-payers have ranged from a low of sixty million dollars to somewhere north of two hundred million dollars.

From that vague starting point, The Moncton Times and Transcript has led parade for us taking on an enormous debt (at a time when the province is cutting its never-very-impressive services for ordinary people) to deal with an already overwhelming debt.

To that vague start of mumbling about millions, the Tand T and City Council have added nothing whatever about economic benefits. Who will get the profits of this investment? Some ushers will get jobs, sure. A few restaurants will. Some bellhops and cleaners at the Crown Plaza. But where, precisely, will the big profits go? How much of them will even stay in the province?

And that's not even considering the impact of a world recession that shows every sign of getting worse, and perhaps lasting for a very long time.

And what will we cut to make it possible to pay back anywhere from 60 to200 plus millions of dollars? Will we cut back on housing? Education? Medical care? So that those who can afford it can watch hockey in a new stadium?

Remember how this started. It was all about a hockey stadium. Just a hockey stadium. But it was so obvious that the only person to benefit from a new hockey stadium was the owner of the hockey team, that it was morphed into a hockey stadium/convention centre. Then, somebody noticed that the world has no shortage of convention centres, some of them in cities even more exciting than Moncton. So It is now a hockey stadium/convention centre/entertainment palace - with more, no doubt to follow.

The has been pushed hard by city council and by The TandT - in the face of no noticeable enthusiasm from the general public. It is being done with no information about costs, projected profits, or who would benefit from those projects. It is being done with no sense of what the priorities of government at any level should be. This is not just amateurisn. It smells bad.

I would not dream of accusing City Council or the TandT of having been corrupted. They may well just be stupid and incompetent. But it still smells bad.

As well as I understand capitalism, the theory is that investors raise and risk their own money. The whole justification for them in making big money is that they have taken risks to get it. The theory is also that investors compete with each other. The defining works on capitalism say nothing about government help in the form of grants,gifts. tax exemptions, "private/public" partnerships, - or using newspapers for propaganda.

We don't have capitalism. What we have is a welfare state for corporations. It has gone so far that corporations are openly involved in the business of government - providing most of the financing for politicians who promise to be good, controlling our access to news about our own governments. Even, as in New Brunswick, naming their own people to government bodies.

This is not capitalism. Much of what we have is defined in dictionaries as coporatism, a system that is one of the varieties of fascism.

A new hockey stadium at whatever price should rank very low indeed on our list of priorities. And if it is to be built, let those who have become wealthy on our resources and our work, use their own money to build it.

I will believe in their confidence in Moncton's future when I see their money - and only their money - on the table.

In short, if any of the corporate bosses in New Brunswick think a hockey rink/whatever is a sound investment, let that corporate boss use his own money. Meanwhile, I suggest editors of The TandT read a few books about what capitalism is and what democracy is.

Jan.19: A use for editorials....

2012-01-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

Editorials were never a good idea to start with. Fault one is that the editorial pretends to speak for the whole newspaper. It can't, of course. In the first place, newspapers can't have an opinion. They are bundles of paper. Bundles of paper can't have opinions. Only people can have opinions.

In the second place, they can't possibly represent the opinion of all or even most of the people at a newspaper. Nobody even asks them what they think. Even on a good newspaper, the editorial tone is decided by a small group of editors, of whom few are qualified to offer useful opinions on the whole range of subjects covered by editorials.

Finally, editorials are normally not signed. We have no idea who is expressing the opinion of the day, or what his or her qualifications might be to speak on the subject. Editors are, or should be, experts on what should appear in a paper, where it should appear, and how it should be presented. That's it. Few of them have any qualification to take about anything else.

It's long been my suspicion that most people don't read editorials. And that shows that most people have good sense. Take today's editorial in The Moncton Times and Transcript. Essentially, it argues that the new Moncton High School should be wherever a developer wants it to be. In other words, let's forget the whole idea of city planning for the future. Let the developers decide to build 1950's suburban style streets of bungalows, wasteful of space and resources, and heavily dependent on the autmobile being the standard form of transportation for generations to come.

And we'll pick up the tab for the services and the school that will help the developers sell their houses just as the world slides deeper into a recession. What the hell. The build the houses. They sell them. They're gone. What do they care what happens next?

In other words, this is an editorial for the developers, and utterly without regard for the needs of Moncton. That's a common problem. Editorials, for all their posturing, are commonly propaganda for influential people. Should we just scrap them?

Perhaps -but there may be a use for them.

In every day's news there are reports of, for example, outright lies by people who are quoted. We print them because it's the job of a paper to print exactly what some people say. But in doing so, we are not publishing information. We are publishing disinformation.

For example, at the bottom of page C 1, the headline is "Iran, West at odds over new nuclear talks". The British government has never been much interested in talks, so the British foreign minister dismissed the Iranian request, saying that Iran was not serious. "It is significant", he said, "that when we discussing additional sanctions in the European Union an offer of negotiations emerges from Iran." The meaning of that is clear. Iran is not serious about talks.

In fact, the British foreign minister is lying - and he knows it - and any news editor should know it. Iran was requesting talks years before sanctions were even mentioned. In fact, the West has no interest in talks. Nor does it give a damn about whether Iran gets a nuclear bomb. The issue is western ownership and control of Iranian oil. That's been the issue for sixty years now, ever since Britain, France and the US overthrew the elected government of Iran to install a dictator.

The British foreign minister's statement is a lie. But he said it. The news is what he says. It's not true. But it's what he says that has to be reported. In the same way, much of the news we get from the news media is really lies and propaganda. It's not the fault of the reporters. (Well, sometimes it is.) But the net result is a false impression.

How about an editorial that dealt with lies in the day's news? That could be something worth reading.

There is also news that is unbalanced. At the top of the same page, NB Finance Minister Higgs talks about the looming budget as part of his "listening to the people". In his statements, as in almost all official statements about the financial crisis and the need to balance budgets, the whole burden of balancing is put on the backs of the poor and the middle class. Never once has Higgs even mentioned that the very wealthy and corporations have a share to carry, too. Read today's item at the top of p. 1 for a sample.

In his tour, Mr. Higgs has given no indication of how much of our debt is due to selling cheap power to corporations, to not enforcing regulations and sometimes not even legislating any, to tax breaks, to grants, to the high costs of public/private "partnerships".

How much does it cost us to support the Irvings and the Ganongs and the McCains in the style they feel entitled to? We haven't the faintest idea. But Mr. Higgs tells us exactly what it costs us for medecines for the elderly and poor. All of Mr. Higgs' attention is on spending for the poor and middle class - as if it was they who caused the recession; and so they, whose lavish use of medecine just for the fun of it, has to be attacked.

He tells us the exact average of sick days and holidays for civil service employees. There are no similar figures for corporation execs.

Editorial columns that dealt with samples of unbalanced and manipulated news could be very popular and useful reading.

And occasionally, the editorial could draw attention to examples of balanced reporting. There's a sample of that, too, on page C1. "Banks to hike service fees." It's a story about increases in service fees coming at a time when banks are already enjoying record profits. It's a story that gives us all the dots we need to connect for an understanding of what a rip-off is being done.

Ooh -beware of hidden stories. These are tucked into back pages, or less-read sections of the paper - when they really should be page one. An example was a story which the New York Times hid on p. E9. It was the story of President Clinton apologizing for the US directed slaughter of a quarter million Mayan native people in Guatemala. I really kinda thought that was a page oner.

Today's hidden story in the Moncton times and Transcript is on the Your Business page, a page that is less read than, say, Miss Manners, Hollywood birthdays or the comics. But it's surely rather big news in a province torn by the shale gas controversy.

Angie Leonard, who was a key figure in preparing shale gas regulations has quit. She has gone to work for an oil industry lobby group - that is, a group that does propaganda and sometimes nastier things for the oil industry.

She is the sister of another key figure in the New Brunswick shale gas saga - Energy Minister Craig Leonard.

Gee. I dunno. But I think that might be of interest to a great many readers - even those who only look at p. 1, then flip to Hocus-Focus.

Jan.18: No news continues.

2012-01-18T09:45:00.000-08:00

There was really only one story worth reading today. The Common Front for Social Justice has told the finance minister he should not reduce the debt by cutting off services to the poor. He should do it by raising taxes paid (or, rather, not paid) by the upper middle class and by corporations. The request is actually quite modest. (It's for only thirteen percent for corporations ), which is probably less than the corporations collect in government welfare.

Twenty percent would be far more realistic - especially given all the exemptions that corporations can claim. It's a good idea. But even 13% is not going to happen. The Finance Minister knows quite well who he represents -and it's not the poor or the middle class. (But he'll listen. What a thrill! listening is so much easier than telling Mr. Irving to pay a little bit of his way.)

Front page also had a story about the location of the new Moncton High. It's pretty much the same story it had yesterday on that subject. I guess they felt some readers just can't get enough of a good thing. There's also an editrorial saying pretty much the same as the story.

There's also yet another story about how the closing of Highfield Square is an 'opportunity'. Again, it's essentially, more than essentially, the same story they ran yesterday. That is, it's not a story. It's a plug for borrowing a couple of hundred million by this over-its-head-in-debt province at a time when world economies are in collapse. Weneed it. For a hockey rink. Worse, even in good times, this spending of public money would bring most of its benefit to private hotel chains, hockey team owners,etc.

Funny how corporations and the very wealthy who are forever raging about big government and taxes and who hate welfare suddently become all keen when it's big government and taxes handing out welfare to them.

Good newspapers don't repeat the same stories day after day. And good newspapers don't use news to propagandize its readers into wasting money.

And good newspapers don't waste space on stories that have no relevance at all to their readers. Page one begins a major story that is really an ad for the skating championships. The head blurb on the story is that hotel rooms are still avaliable for those wish to attend the event. Think about that.

Are we people in Moncton being advised to rush to one of the hotels to get a room? Surely not. Surely the pitch for hotel rooms in Moncton is aimed at people who live some distance from Moncton.

So why write such a story when almost all the readers will be people who live here, and don't need a hotel room? Do they think there are New Yorkers who browse the The Moncton Times and Transcript to see what's going on in the hub of the world?

That story illustrates the thoughtlessness with which the TandT is put together. The editors routinely run stories about nothing, repeat stories without any new information, and daily select two or three international stories which appear to be chosen simply at random. And it wastes most of its op ed pages, on childish, little stories by staff writers.

This is a paper run by people who just don't care what the news is. So long as they have a near monopoly, they can sell ads. All they have to make sure that nothing that is critical of anything the Irvings and friends want is ever reported. Once that's done, they feel free to run anything that's trivial and cheap.

Keep 'em in ignorance. That's the motto of The Moncton Times and Transcript.

Oh, don't ever exoect to know the whole story about the Halifax sailor arrested for espionage. He might have been working for the Russians. The Russians do have an interest in our northern waters. But the US, too, has a long record of refusing to recognize Canada's claim to the Arctic. And many other countries like China and Japan and Britain and Norway are deeply interested in a region that is becoming navigable.

The not so subtle hints are that the Cnadian was tipping off Russia. Maybe. But there are no friends between nations, not when big money or strategic advantage is involved. It's quite common that the paid informant himself doesn't know who he's working for. After all, your average spy does not walk up to a potential traitor to say, "Hello. My name Boris. I am spy for Russia. You haf plans to sell?"

Nor is it likely that Harper would be enthusiastic about letting the word out if Britain or the US or some other "friend" were involved.

We'll probably never know the whole story.

Jan. 17: The no-news snooze

2012-01-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

Again, there's little to say about The Moncton Times and Transcript because so little is in it. There's the usual ad disguised as news about a new act at the casino. There's a good deal of space devoted to a story about the choice of a new location for Moncton High School. Indeed, the real story is that we are even discussing the proposed location. The 1950's are over. The very idea that we should discuss whether we should be building a new school in a remote and undeveloped area of bungalows, each with a big lawn and a hedge, suggests that the City of Moncton still has no plan for the future development of the city. And, if the city does have a plan, it has no sense of what the future will be like. The day of the auto-based suburb is over.

The relocation of MHS appears to be a short term, money-making scheme being promoted by a developer. It's a plan that is half a cenutry out of date. We need a newspaper that would offer us some serious ideas of what the future will be like, and what kind of a Moncton we need to meet it.

And, no, I don't mean public consultation. "Listening to the people" sounds good to NB politicians since it's a cute PR stunt to make us think the government really cares what our opinions are. But, at best, it's like consulting a random group of amateurs for the kind of insight that can be gained only from professionals."Listening to the people" is not democracy. The listening part happens on election day. Once, the people have spoken, it's up to the winning party to carry out policies based on the principles it campaigned for. And it consults experts on how to do that.

Running for election on no principles at all, and then using cute PR like "listening to people" has nothing to do with democracy. Look back. It has produced one government after another that has simply been a mouthpiece for large corporations.

A related big story is the death of Highfield Square. Gee. They noticed. It's about time.Higihfield Square has been a corpse for years. Still, it somehow escaped the notice of Moncton City Council in its plans for the future. The result is that the fate of Highfield Square is likely to be left to developers who will be looking for a quick profit and, almost certainly, public favours to help out with the costs.

The lead editorial delicately hints at that possibility, though without mentioning how rate-payers and tax-payers will get stuck with the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars. And this for a project whose greatest beneficiaries will be a hockey team owner and a handful of hotels.

Staff writer Alan Cochrane, ono the op ed page, picks up the theme the editor didn't finish. Why, this is the perfect opportunity for the hockey arena/convention centre to be built with borrowed public money in order to serve private money. Cochrane even gushes that it has an ideal location.

Really? If it has an ideal location, how come it's been running at a loss for years? And exactly how would this fit into the city plan for development even if the city had one?

Anonymous has a comment below yesterday's blog in which he says that he checked the google sources on the story about Obama sending troops to Libya. He looked only at the first one, saw that it was a right wing, conspiracy-mad site - and decided to give the whole story a miss.

Well, that's not a good idea.

There isn't just one site carrying the story. There are thousands of them - and not all of them are right-wing fanatics. In any case, the sources themselves have a source. There is a report of such a move of troops from a real person. And that person is not right wing.

She is a former Democrat congresswoman with what passes in the US for left-wing credentials. She then became national leader of the Greens. As well, she has long been critical of US policy toward Africa, and has been in a better position than most of us to get information about it.

Okay. Maybe she's a left-wing conspiracy nutbar. There's still good reason to consider she might be right.

The US regards control of Africa as essential. In particular, it wants to shut out China because Africa is a rich source of loot in the form of oil and other natural resources. The West has been looting Africa for over a century. The cost in poverty and human life has been enormous. Little Belgium, all by itself, was responsible for millions of deaths. The US is now actively at war (undeclared and under-reported) with at least two African countries. It has also had a heavy hand in recent regime changes.

The story, for the press, is that the US is intervening for humane reasons and to spread democracy. (I won't waste time arguing what utter nonsense that is.) As well, they also had ground troops in Libya during the rebellion (as did the Brits); and Libya has recently seen a falling apart among the rebels, as well as signs of support for the Ghadaffi side.

I don't claim the report of troops is true. But I would suggest that if you connect all the dots, it seems plausible. Looking for a "reliable" source sounds nice. But there is no fully reliable source, never has been. You have to connect the dots.

And you can't connect them if you have only one dot.

Jan. 16: Fighting the blands....

2012-01-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

I'm late in writing today. The problem I'm having is that today's Moncton Times and Transcript was almost entirely frivolous and pointless. It wasn't just the usual mix of ads and misinformation disguised as news stories. It was supremely tedious, irrelevant and boring. I really could think of nothing to say about a newspaper so amateurish and newsless.

The one expection to its dreariness - and a brilliant exception - is the column by Alec Bruce on the "Davos" men. Read it. It's important not just for its anlysis of how we are manipulated but for its preception of how our world works.

I am having trouble with my own comments section. I publish all comments I receive (with the exception of a few that are simply personal abuse). But, lately, I can't answer them. For the last several days, the whole page simply disappears when I try to respond. And there were two comments today that require a response.

A Moncton resident (whom I have met) name Downe wrote to point out I made an error in my comment on the Code of Silence award. I was wrong to say it was a recent story. In fact, it was quite old.

Mr. Downe is quite right. I was wrong. He was right. But he will burn in hell. It's not nice to correct old people.

Anonymous writes that he cannot find a reliable source for the story I mentioned about the US assembling troops in Malta to be sent to Libya.

I didn't say I had a reliable source. I said there were many reports of such a movement. In fact, if you google American troops Malta Libya, you will find thousands of them. It's possible they are all unreliable. But, since there is nothing in the TandT to talk about, let's think over this business of sources.

I used to think I knew what reliable sources were. I learned that I don't.

An American soldier in his early twenties has been held in a military prison in the US for over a year. In that time, he has been tortured with solitary confinement and sleep deprivation. That is in violation of international law. But UN observers have never been permitted to see him. At last, after a year of torture, he has been formally charged and put on trial. This has all been going on for over a year. But it rare to find any mention of it in "reliable" sources.

The story of torture on a grand scale in Afghanistan broke - but not in a "reliable" source. It broke with a video on Youtube. When Lt. William Calley led his men on a slaughter of hundreds of villagers from babies to the elderly in Vietnam, nothing appeared in the "reliable" sources for weeks - though all had the information. When the CIA engineered the genocide of a quarter million Maya in Guatemala, no media in all of North American mentioned it. When Clinton publicly admitted it and apologized, one of the very few to carry the story was the New York Times (but hidden on p. E9).

And few would accept the reality if they did tell the truth. The news media (most of them) have revealed that US military autthorities now have the power to arrest and imprison indefiniitely any American citizen with no charge and no trial. This single move wiped out centuries of the development of human rights and democracy. England was a freer country under the evil King John than the US is today.

It doesn't matter. The news doesn't make a dent on us humans. We still, with straight faces, talk of America the land of the free, and of how the US is dedicated to bringing democracy to the world.

We have all known for years that the very rich have been taking a bigger and bigger share of the world's wealth - and that they have made it worse by dumping most of the tax load on the rest of us. We know the very rich buy politicians, whole political parties, and elections. We can read daily of incidents in which our governments have been corrupted. It doesn't take any great brain to figure out just from the little that is published that this is why world economies are in collapse.

It doesn't matter. The New Brunswickers who voted Liberal, then got mad and voted Conservative, will get mad at the Conservatives next time and vote Liberal.

The finance minister will consult New Brunswickers on the provincial budget. We all know it doesn't matter a damn what we say about it. The budget will be set to please the Irvings and Ganongs, etc. as it always has been. Nor does it matter a damn what we think about shale gas. Neither the government nor the Irving news media will do anything about it. And most of the public will just sit there with their faces hanging out.

Tbe US lied about its reasons for the war in Vietnam. It lied about its reason for invading Iraq. It lied about the invasion of Afghanistan. It lied about the extent of its involvement in Libya. It's lying now about its motives for intervening in Syria. (And does anyone who knows the death toll of civilians in Vietnam, Guatemala, Cambodia, Iraq,etc.really believe we cared whether Col.Ghadaffi was a brutal ruler? Don't people know that Saudi Arabia, a leading critic of Syria, used its troops to kill rebels in the ermirates?) You know know something strange is happening when the king of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most absolute dictator in the world, is joining a campaign for `democracy`in Syria.

Us humans develop our views of the world very early. The fundamental view is that WE are good. THEY are bad. A Moslem who kills is a terrorist. A western Christian who kills is a freedom fighter. And our news media are full of words that few people understand. But it doesn`t matter that so few understand them. the real meaning of them doesn`t matter. All that matters is the emotional meaning,the gut reaction to words like conservative, liberal, left, right, terrorist, extremist.

The reality is that we are living in a world not of saints and devils, but of people, just people. And it`s a world that greed and power and lies and illusions have driven wildly out of balance.

News media are operated by people. Like all us people, reporters and editors are driven by self-interest, by manipulation, by misconceptions of the what the world is like....

In short, sources are less important that one might think. Most sources are faulty. Some are more worth paying attention to than others. Some are outright liars and manipulators. Some at least try to be honest. Some very small and unprofessional sources have been known to be right when even the big ones, like the New York Times were either wrong or silent.

We cannot learn about current events by looking for good sources. We have, first, to develop a realistic view of how humans behave. If we don`t, we simply will not recognize the truth even when we see it - as, for example, most people have not realized the truth of what it means when the American army can arrest citizens and imprison them indefinitely with no charge or trial.

Once we rid ourselves of the silliness that human behaviour is all about good and evil, once we realize we are talking about humans on all sides, then we can make intelligent decisions about when sources are reliable and when they are not.

(For those surviving Christians who believe the world IS made up of saints and devils, I suggest they read The Bible more closely -starting with the bits about forgiverness and loving your neighbour.)

Sorry there was nothing to say about The Moncton Times and Transcript. There was Alec Bruce at his best. But, oh, the rest was painful.

Jan. 14: Nuthin' to worry about, folks. Just keep moving.

2012-01-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

Quite a number of news agencies have reported the US is moving 12,000 troops to Libya. You remember Libya. That's the place where we just dropped tens of thousands of tons of bombs on cities - for humanitarian reasons - and we hurt so few that NATO has never thought it worth while to say how many civilians got killed - for humanitarian reasons.

Anyway, it turned out happy. The good guys won; and Libya is now a democracy. So how come the US is sending in 12,000 troops? Could it have something to do with the fact that the rebels are now fighting each other? Keep moving folks, nothing to look at.

News around the world is the video of four American marines in Afghanistan, urinating on the bodies of some men they had just killed. There are dozens of copies of it on Youtube. But not a mention in the Moncton Times and Transcript. Just keep moving, folks. Nothing to see.

The level of political discussion in the US is now so low that the contest for Republican leader has become an international embarassment. In a recent development, candidate Newt Gingrich has launched a major attack on Mitt Romney. Romney, says the Newt, is unworthy to be party leader or president because - he can speak French! (No. I did not make that up.)

It's pretty frightening to see these levels of hysteria and ignorance in a country as important to us as the US. But, there, there, just read the TandT, and you won't be worried at all.

The only story of trouble in the world is a Reuters report that Obama is being forced to get tough with Iran. He has tried so hard for peace all these years. But the Iranians are just impossible. And, gee, if they get a nuclear bomb, that would be the greatest threat to world peace ever. Well, that's according to Reuters... But if anyone at the TandT had a brain at all, that person would know -
1. The western powers have for over a dozen years been spreading the story that Iran is within months of developing a nuclear bomb. This long ago became the longest pregnancy in history.
2. Iran (Persia) has not attacked anybody in over two centuries. Its last war was fighting off an invasion by Saddam Hussein - who was urged on and supplied by the US and at least two NATO powers.
3. Even when smaller countries try to develop such a bomb, it isn't for attack. Any small country with a bomb or even ten knows that it would be wiped out if it made any such attack. They want a bomb to keep the big powers from invading them- as NATO is planning to do with Iran. Ever notice how the west has avoided attacking North Korea? Even Kim Jong was never crazy enough to launch an attack. But he knew the value of having a retaliatory threat against big powers.
4. Quite apart from the thousand or so nuclear missiles that the US could easily spare for Iran, Israel has another 200.
5. The planned attack on Iran has nothing to do with a nuclear threat. It has to do who gets to control the world's oil supply. The problem is that a western attack on Iran could well trigger a general war in the middle east - and that could well trigger a world war.
But not to worry. The image that the TandT peddles is of reasonable, moderate Obama who goes to war only when he really, really has to. That's good PR.
When the rest of the world thnks of Obama, the image it sees is of four marines urinating on men they have just killed. That's bad PR.
Don't look at the bad PR, folks. Keep moving.

The big story of the day is on page three. New Brunswickers can now get 'a world-class product with rich content'. Yes. For just two dollars a month you can get all New Brunswick papers on the web, and all of them just as good as The Moncton Times and Transcript. Hurry, hurry, folks. Line up here to read everything that Mr. Irving wants you to read.

As usual, the columns by teens in the Whatever section are worth a read. Unlike most of the TandT, they are not about selling anything, or writing about nothing, or spreading propaganda. They are the honest expressions of people developing insights and sharing their development with us.

My advice to Isabelle Agnew is not to worry about the twits who object to her disapproval of 'Merry Christmas'; and who find her disapproval anti-Christian. I disapprove of the expression Merry Xmas because I AM a Christian. The ones who delight in saying Merry Christmas are much the same ones to discriminate against gays, who pray to God to help us kill people who interfere with our oil supply, and who think it's more important to build ships to fight American wars than to provide medical care.

People like that, who claim to be Christian, are hypocrites. Charles Dickens, who was a devout Christian, couldn't stand them. Ever notice there are no clergymen and no church services in A Christmas Carol?

Jan. 13: The making of an editorial writer...

2012-01-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

I remember the day well. I was twelve years old, just back to the city from scout camp, walking down St. Gerard St, when I came to a crossing. I looked to the left. I looked to the right. And I felt a glow of pride, even arrogance.

There was no traffic. But as looked left I could see, for the first time, I think, my left shoulder. And as I looked to the right, I saw my right shoulder. I smiled, stood straight, sucked in my stomach. I was a man. I had shoulders. The summer at scout camp must have done it.

Journalists go through a similar experience. The basic social rule of journalism is the importance of knowing everything about - everything. Since few beginning journalist know much about anything, the easy way out is to pretend not to believe anything coming from anybody. (Believing exposes you to the danger of being suckered.) Some journalists can build a whole career on not believing anything - and not knowing anything.

But there comes that magic day, for some, when they make the leap from being cynical to being cynical AND believing they know everything. I saw my left shoulder, and that day I became a man. A journalist convinces himself he knows everything, and in that day he becomes an editorial writer.

The Moncton Times and Tribune has an example of this almost every day. Today, there is a pompous (sorry, thundering) editorial on school reform and French immersion. As a former teacher, I realized immediately this was a writer who had not the faintest idea what he was talking about - a person who probably had never taught and had no training whatever in education. It happens every day on editorial pages around the world as young young journalists peck through their shells to become editorial writers.

Actually, there were two, news stories, real ones, that had the makings of a good editorial. In one, Harper announced the Second Coming with the new shipbuilding contract it has given to Irving. It will bring back the great age of shipbuilding in the Maritimes.

(No, it won't. Cheap labour countries will still beat us out in building commercial vessels - unless Irving breaks all the unions and pays only starvation wages - a possibility I wouldn't ignore.) In any case, much of the 30 billion dollars of our money will go in profits to Irving, tax breaks, deals, and equipment to make Irving even richer in future. This is one hell of wasteful way to create jobs.

One might also wonder why we are spending so lavishly on our navy. For the answer, read Gwynne Dyer's column. 1.We're doing it because politicians can get rewards big time by giving lush contracts to the defence industry. 2. We're doing it so we can supply cannon fodder for the wars the Americans have been losing for the past fifty years - and which benefit only American resource companies.

The other story is that Harper is dumping 25 billion dollars of the cost of medicare onto the provinces. Gee. You'd think an editor reading that would be able to add two and two.

With one hand, Harper has spent 30 billion to make rich people richer, and to fight wars that have nothing to do with Canada. With the other hand, he makes up for this wasteful spending by encouraging the demolition of medicare. And that, in a nutshell, is the general policy of this Canadian government.

For once, I'm going to disagree in part with Alec Bruce's column. It's on the commemoration the War of 1812. Harper has expensive plans for this. It's his usual style - may a big noise and rouse sentimental enthusiasm (at a cost of 30 million), and using that a cover for damage he intends to do to the country.

I can speak with some feeling in insight on this boondoggle because 1. I am a retired historian of Canada who 2. also taught military history, including a course on the War of 1812. As well, I was invited to Ottawa to sit on the advisory board for the commemoration - and was so disgusted by the plans that I heard that I wrote to the minister that I wanted nothing more to do with it, and to demand that my name not be used in any connection with it. (I shall publish his reply if I ever get one.)

Generally, I agree with what Alec Bruce says about it. However, Canadians did play a major, military role in that war. The British maintained a large fleet on the Great Lakes, and drew heavily on the Atlantic colonies for crews. As well, many an colonial merchant converted his ships to privateers; and many a fortune, especially in Nova Scotia, was found on their looting.

Canadians also figured prominently in the land war. The troops that marched from Fredericton to Montreal in mid-winter bore the name of a British regiment. But many of the soldiers were maritimers.

A Quebec colonel named de Salaberry fought quite brilliantly as leader of a Quebec French regiment, at one point defeating an American army that far outnumbered his. Ontarians were also prominent, sometimes in British regiments, sometimes in what were called 'fencibles', regiments formed to fight within their own territory (that is, not required to cross national borders. Many American regiments were organized in the same way.)

Finally, native peoples played a major role in battle and in reconnaisance. The Americans were so terrified of Canadian native peoples that General Brock frightened the commander of Detroit into surrendering simply by saying he had native war parties with him.

However, I quite agree that Harper's celebration of the war is an expensive piece of shoddy sentimentalism. It's designed to cover some of the even more shoddy measures he has in mind.

Finally, a sad note. Highfield Square, like so much of downtown, has for years been a reminder of the impossibility of combining cars, downtown, and people. (A lesson we may have to learn all over again if we're foolish enough to build a new hockey arena.)

For years, the shopping halls of the Square have been places to go when you want to be alone. Now, the last major store, The Bay, is closing shop. But I have the solution.

Give Highfield Square to Jim Irving. He will demand (and get) grants, subsidies, tax breaks and interest-free loans to re-open all the shops. Nobody will return to shop there, of course. But it wouldn't matter. Irving could make a profit just on the grants, subsidies, tax breaks and interest-free loans.

You think it won't work? I don't see why not. It's exactly the same thinking that lies behind the proposal for a hockey arena/convention centre.

Jan. 12: addendum to the day's blog.

2012-01-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

1. I forget to mention a local boosterism item that the Moncton TandT seems not to have heard of. that's odd. The TandT usually remembers to print long stories about Moncton or the New Brunswick itself becoming famous - you know, for opening a snack bar, whatever. But here's a story that will make the name of New Brunswick echo across Canada. And the TandT missed it.

A New Brunswick institution has been named a top contender for a journalism prize of the year in Canada. Yes.

every year, The Canadian Association of Journalists selects some group for it Code of Silence Award, a prize for the leading organization or person with withholding what should be public information. Now, this year, the nod will probably go to early favorite Stephen Harper. But a New Brunswick institution is right up there.

It's the New Brunswick Liquor authority - something about financial funniness about the departure of the director and the special treatment he received.

Funny that our journalists wouldn't know about that. Maybe they aren't accepted for membership in the CAJ.

2. A reader named Ann recently sent in a comment which I published for, I think, the Nov. 11 blog. I tried to reply to it; but my computer just goes blank. Anyway - she asks why I don't take on the big papers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail. She also asks why I moved here if I don't like it. Why didn't I stay in a big city like Montreal?

Well - there's nothing hard about taking on the New York Times, etc. In fact, I have often done so in journalist chat groups. The big North American papers are much overrated for honesty and objectivity. The Globe and Mail is a partiularly easy target.

However, I am writing for readers who have easy access only to the Irving newspapers of New Brunswick - espcially for local and provincial news. You write for your audience. They have a right to have access to an alternate opinion. that's a right I try to meet.

Why did I come here? Because I like it. I've lived in a big city all my life, thank you. I prefer Moncton. I dislike the power of big corporations and I despise the politics, of course. But I would feel the same way about any part of North America.o

Jan. 12: A very Moncton Times and Transcriptish sort of edition...

2012-01-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

The front page wins back its spot as the "dumb-down" page with a big story about how Tim Horton's is changing its cup sizes.
Just above it is another piece of fast-breaking news. Moncton is having a mayoralty election this year. And the big news is that there's nothing yet to report about it.

The NewsToday section is, as usual, made up entirely of stories from Postmedia and Reuters - and they display the typical qualities of those sources.

There is for example, an interview with Donald Savoie of Moncton U who can always be relied on to say something that Mr. Irving will nod and smile at. This time, he helps out by missing the point of criticisms that have been made of Harper for getting public involved in the Alberta pipeline debate.

Of course, as Dr. Savoie says, Harper has a right to speak on the issue. In fact, we all do - and nobody has denied that. But that was not what the criticisms were about.

1. Harper and his ministers have made wild charges that those who oppose the project are billionaire socialists and/or enemies of Canada. The sort of irresposible statement is fearmongering and lying. You see, Dr. Savoie? It's like a prime minister farting. It's okay to do it. But he shouldn't deliberately do it in public.
2. The project is now before a supposedly independent and quasi-judicial body. For a prime minister to comment on the issue, especially in the terms he did, is highly improper. It is an attempt to put pressure on what should be an independent body. As such, it is comparable to the prime minister publicly accusing a person of being guilty of murder while the case is still in trial.

Funny how we can always know what Donald Savoie will say before he says it. Funny how he's almost the only professor ever quoted in The Moncton Times and Transcript.

Then there's a story about how things are improving in Haiti, thanks to independent, small businesses that are springing up. However, it says, investors are still nervous because of Haiti's history of corruption.

BULL SHIT.

1. The earthquake devastated Haiti two, full years ago. Close to two milliion are still living in tents; and even basic cleaning hasn't been done. What happened to all that aid money?
a) much of it was never paid. Canada paid. Iceland paid. China paid. The US has never paid more than a fraction of it. It's easy enough for even a Moncton TandT reporter to check this. It's all on google.
b) Most of the American money never got close to Haiti. It went to contractor friends of the Bush government who spent it all on "studies" and banked the profts offshore.
c) Private business is worried that the government might be corrupt? That's odd. It didn't bother them for the eighty years that they were busy maintaining those corrupt and brutal governments - with the approval and help of the American government. Indeed, what upset private investors was Haiti's first, real election when it chose Aristide as leader. He was a former priest, and he was honest. That's what bothered them. That's why they and the American government overthrew Aristide.
Haiti has been deliberately kept poor and corrupt by private business and the US government. Again, it's no secret. There are many quite respectable studies of this - and lots about it in google.
d) The same thing happened with the US' much-touted aid to rebuild Iraq. Almost none of it ever reached Iraq. It went to private contractor friends. That's why Iraq has electricity for only hours each day, why sewage is in dangerous disrepair, and why, even in a major city like Baghdad, there is a lack of clean water. (In fact, for hours every day, there is no water at all.)

Then there's a half-wit editorial on how the idea of lowering cottage taxes shows that the government is listening to the people.
1. Governments are not elected to listen. They are elected because they stand for certain principles, and they convince voters that those are the principles they want to be governed by. (So far as one can tell, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have any principle beyond being loyal servants of their feudal lord.
2. If they listen so much to the people, how come they're still not doing anything about the shale gas issue? There's been no information, no enforcement even of the feeble rules that do exist, no hint of new regulations - nothing. This scheme is simply being bulldozed no matter what people in New Brunswick think or say. And Mr. Alward will, like so many of his predecessors, retire from politics to a better paid world.

Alec Bruce's column is a gentle warning. Read it carefully.It is a very gentle but much ignored expression of a reality.

The reality is that the power of the US dying, and dying fast. And, no, it's not going to get better. That has pretty severe complications for us. And Jim Irving's recent babble about us needing to get more peppy has nothing to do with any reality.

We can only hope that the US does not decide to hold on to power by starting a major war while it still has a huge, nuclear edge. It would never do that? Have you been following the speeches of the Republican Party candidates? Have you googled Project for the New American Century? A document signed by leading figures in American public life?

The perverse variety of capitalism that is now practiced in the US and Canada (as well as much of the western world and very especially in New Brunswick) is self-destructive. In fact, it's not capitalism at all. It's more correctly called corporate fascism. We may well be facing the its last moments.

Jan. 11: my own conspiracy theory....

2012-01-11T11:44:00.000-08:00

(my pologies for nissing a day. I had computer problems. But I spoke sharply to it, so it is now working properly.)

Since, once again, the Moncton Times and Tribune has no serious news worth discussing, let's take a close look at a minor item because it takes up a lot of space on p.C1; and it tells us a lot about, well, about conspiracies. It's called "Conspiracy theories bad for democracy". It's a report on a book by a U. of Windsor Political Science prof.

Essentially, according to the report, the book says that conspiracy theories are bad for democracy because they can encourage violent ideologies as people become so caught up in conspiracy generated fears that they abandon democracy for violence. Conspiracy theories, according to the book, go back to the beginning of the twentieth century.

Now, I have not read the book. I don't know whether this is a really silly book or a biased report (Postmedia is notorious, even by North American standards, for its biased reporting.)

Some very doubtful points in the book probably can't be blamed on the reporting. Hiere are three examples. It says.....

1. that conspiracies theories go back to the early twentieth century

2.that a conspiracty theory is being cirulated that North American union is being negotiated by politicians, one in which all national identities will be destroyed

3. that the conspiracy theory that secret forces manipulate our politicians discourages democracy, Well,....

1. I have never heard of any period or region in world history in which conspiracy theories have not circulated. The idea that they began only a century ago is just plain silly. As well, they have often proven quite correct.

. My Scottish ancestors were right to believe that England was conspiring to conquer them. Native peoples were right to believe that Europeans were conspiring to take their lands. In 1812, Canadians were right to believe that Americans were conspiring to invade Canada. History of full of conspiracies that we usually call diplomacy. There was a British/American conspiracy to invade Iraq. The excuse for it was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. When nobody could find them, Bush and Blair developed a new conspiracy theory that he had hidden them in another country. Pharoah believed that Jews were conspiring to flee slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh was dead right. There is nothing recent about conspiracy theories. They are sometimes wrong and even invented. But they are also often qute right.

2. The conspiracy to create one country of all of North America existed long before the twentieth century - and it's not only true, but public knowledge. In the nineteenth century, it was a common political stance in the US that its "manifest destiny" was to control North American right to the North Pole. The US did invade Canada in 1812, and threatened to for most of the nineteenth century.

So far as Mexico is concerned the US long ago pushed its border way south to get to the Rio Grande. Ever wonder why so many places in Texas, Nevada, California and Arizona have names like Los Angeles and Las Vegas? That's because the US took one third of Mexico to create those states.

And some people are so silly as to believe there is a conspiracy to remove all borders and to create one, unified North America? Now where would they get such a silly idea? I know. Maybe it's by following the news - you know- stuff like US and Canadian police being allowed to operate in both countries, having unified border regulations and border patrols, Canadian and American troops being free to operate in either country... stuff like that.

3. Secret forces manipulate our politicians? What silly idea! Everybody knows that Jim Irving gives all his support to the Green Party and the NDP. The only reason he accepts tax rebates and cheap electricity is because the Green Party forces him to. Otherwise, he makes it a point never to interfere with government at all.

It's true that both major parties in the US get elected on donations of the extremely wealthy and from large corporations. But that's just because they love democracy, and want to see it work. Corporations also spend billions lobbying congressmen. But that's not a conspiracy. They do it because they're soft-hearted and want to protect the poor (now half of the US population) from the evils of medicare and lower taxes.

I have not read the book. I don't know whether this report from Postmedia is accurate. But I do know this.

If the book is really as reported, it is silly.

If the book had been about how conspiracies of the wealthy and influential are quite common - and are often quite true, Ppostmedia would never have circulated the story - and the Moncton Times and Tribune would never have printed it.

If the report is at all accurate,though, it raises a more chilling possibility - a conspiracy theory the book doesn't seem to mention.

As the universities become desperately short of money, they increasingly rely on donations from the very, very rich. But there's a price for all that money. The very, very rich want control over the universities. They want to make sure the "right" sort of professors get hired, professors who don't ever criticize the very, very rich, professors who do research useful to the very, very rich, and professors who give opinions for media that are the sort of opinions the very, very rich like to hear.

If you were to do that with politicians and universities, it would be called buying them and corrupting them. When the very, very rich do it, news media like Postmedia and The Moncton TandT call it philanthropy; and the universities give them honorary degrees. (The politicians just give them tax breaks and cheap electricty, stuff like that...)

This is a news story worth reading. It hints a lot about the mendacity of the Moncton TandT - and possibly about the moral decline of our universities.

Jan. 9: Why corporations don't give a damn about the damage they do...

2012-01-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

In that variety of capitalism we like to call "free market" (because free is a nice word), there is no morality, no responsibility, no mercy. The corporation exists to make money. Nothing else. To make money whatever the cost to people or nature or the future.

Indeed, the only future that exists is three months. That's the time for the quarterly report - the test of the corporation's worth in the stock market, the test of CEOs for the bonuses they hope to make. The corporation will impoverish, poison, even kill for that profit.

Canadian railway builders worked Chinese labour to death because it was the cheapest way to get track laid/ For the same reason, they also used Chinese for the dangerous work of dynamiting. Until the the early nineteenth century, New France and Canada had slaves, both African and native. Few slaves lived beyond their twenties. But they were good for profits. George Washington was probably the biggest slave-holder and the wealthiest man in the United States.

Infant mortality is high in the US. that's because it's good for business. Without medicare, the infants of the US poor have the highest mortality rate in the developed world. But their sacrifice keeps taxes down, and boosts the profit margin.

Private business has often enough fought foreign wars for oil, for resources, and for cheap labout. It has killed millions in just the last fifty years. (It's never labelled as war for profit, of course. It's always to fight terrorism or spread democacy. Sometimes, we even bomb people for "humnitarian" reasons.)

As well, we support oppressive and corrupt governments in places like Haiti, Guatemala, all over Africa. We poison the land with our cost-saving mining pracrices; and we maintain poverty for profit. We do it to provide corporations with cheap resources and cheap labour.

That's not the way capitalism is supposed to work. But it's the way we have allowed it to work.

Anyone who reads the news even casually knows that. Captialism can work. So can cars. But both work properly only if we control them. If we don't control cars, they smash lives and, eventually, the cars themselves. Uncontrolled capitalism, the kind we live under, has the same destructive and suicidal tendencies.

In other countries, out capitalists impoverish and kill quite freely for the sake of profit. There is no reason to think we at home are exceptions to the rule. In the US, for example, one-half of the population is now officially classified as poor. That means hunger, homelessness, ill health, high infant death, early adult death. Meanwhile, the rich are actually getting richer at a record rate - and demanding ever more savage cuts to government spending on the poor. The rich are getting richer BECAUSE the poor are getting poorer Eventually, that will break down because concentration of wealth in the hands of the few will so far reduce purchasing as to make the system unworkable. But, of course, it only has to work for three months at a time.

Significantly, Harper is looking at cuts to medicare and social services and pensions while he spends record amounts to make huge profits for North American defence corporations. As American presidents have, he is working to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few which, inevitably, means less in the hands of everybody else.

But don't worry about the very rich. They will simply transfer their investments to other countries (as they already are doing). And then we become the land of cheap labour.

Now we can narrow the field to New Burnswick and to Moncton.

The New Brunswick budget is set by a cabinet minister who is (or was) an Irving executive. He is officially advised by a committee appointed by Irving and friends.

This is a good idea because they know about economics? Well, no.

What they know about is making profits for the quarterly report. The know all about getting money. Running a province is quite different. It's not about making profits in the short term. It's about serving people, the voters of the province and their families. To say that a corporate executive would be good to plan a provincial economy is like saying a holdup man would make a great bank manager.

New Brunswick is owned by a handful of corporations. That means, given the short-term thnking of corporations and their indifference to human needs, we're on a suicidal course. In this rush to disaster, corporations have the full cooperation of Brunswickmedia. For a sample of that cooperation, read the comments on the op ed page (AKA the dumbdown page) of today's Times and Transcript.

Craig Babstock thunders, "Crime that victimize the innocent are reprehensible" (So crimes that victimize the criminal - as in a gang war - are okay?) The people of Sussex are, I should think, generally a pretty innocent bunch. Was the crime of carrying out illegal shale gas exploration there reprehensible? I will eat my hat and the TandT the day Babstock ever says so.

(The other "duh" column is one by Allen Abel about a brave little horse that won a race. Some commentary. We really needed that story to be well informed.)

As for Moncton, why is it so big on attracting special shows? Who benefits from all the time and money we put into them? You and me? Not likely.

Conventions and spectacular events will bring in money; but much of it will go to hotels whose owners live far from Moncton. Most of the jobs for people who live here will be short term, low skill, and low paid.

Will a one or two hundred million dollar hockey rink make money for us? Not likely. Most of the jobs in it will be low paid; and it's possible, even likely, that the cost of it will never be recovered. But who cares?

The owner of the hockey team will get what he cares about - the use of a very expensive arena at a relatively modest price. He'll make it profit, three months at a time. If we lose money on the deal, that's our problem.

Of course, you need to stir the public up to sell it such a deal. You need emotion. You need an almost patriotic goal. So you talk about what a shame it is that Main Street is not what it used to be, and pretend that all this is about restoring a glory that, in fact, never existed.

Why would a city council buy such a silly scheme? Is it corrupt? Probably not. Commonly, most councillors are overawed by meeting with the rich and prominent. They want to agree with the rich and prominent as a mark of their own, new social status. You can see the same phenomenon with MNAs.

Besides, most MNAs and councillors don't know anything more about the world than anybody else does. And newspapers like the Moncton Times and Transcript make sure it stays that way.

The result is a western world that is in the grip of a perversion of capitalism that is short-sighted, indifferent to human needs and, ultimately, self-destructive. That is why we need to get democracy back. That is why we need journalism that informs us.

The alternative? You're watching it next door in the death throes of the last of the great Western empires.

Jan. 7: I awoke about seven.....

2012-01-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

showered, dressed, and took the stairs down to the ground floor (I could have taken the elevator; but I wanted the exercise so I could become beautiful again); walked out the front door, hung a right for some ten metres, and turned into a supermarket to get some cereal and milk. Next door to it was my opitician's office and next to that my bank. If I had turned left I would have passed a clothing store, then a delightful boutique of toys for big boys with items like real, steam powered train sets. Like most streets in the city, it also had several restaurants.The whole street around me was as varied and handy as a shopping mall. Most streets in Hong Kong were like that, bustling with variety, interest and convenience.

I didn't notice any hockey arenas or convention centres. Most streets seemed to do very well without them. What made the "main streets" so vibrant was their density of population in high rise apartments. Few people owned or needed cars. (There were traffic jams on the roads, but not because people needed cars. Mass transportation was cheap and efficient. But those who could afford cars drove them for prestige; and in a densely populated city of eight million or so, it doesn't take a high proportion of car owners to make a traffic jam.)

For contrast, think of how far most people in Moncton would have to stroll to do any shopping. Block after block of single family houses, duplexes and triplexes make that pretty impossible. Even on a shopping street like Mountain Road, the large areas required to park cars make a winter stroll pretty unattractive.

Moncton, like virtually all North American cities, is designed for cars. Not for people.

Have you noticed how many recent wars have been fought in countries that have oil? Noticed the eagerness of oil companies to produce oil at ever greater risks - massive pollution in Alberta? High environmental risk areas like the seas and the Arctic? Fuel sources both expensive and dangerous like shale gas?

There will come a point when we cannot pollute enough, or pay enough, or war enough to support our reliance on fossil fuels. Moncton, like other cities, is built on a plan that, whatever we want or think, is going to break down. Next rush hour while you're idling your engine in traffic, think of fuel at two dollars a ltire - five dollars -more.

The private car, always monstrously expensive as a means of transporting people will soon be, quite simply, beyond our means. Think of that on your drive back from shopping as you pass kilometres of bungalows and lawns and parking lots. Think of walking those kilometres with your month's groceries.

Think of the expense of building and maintaining all those kilometres of sewers, water mains, sidewalks and roads. Think of a future - very soon - when we simply will not be able to afford this. It's coming. In fact, it's already beginning.

You figure we have 200 million to spare? And what we need most of all is a hockey rink? With a big parking lot? It won't work. It hasn't worked anywhere else; and it won't work here. But - spend a fraction of that on apartment housing and you'll give downtown Moncton what it needs to put shops and restaurants and move theatres on Main St. - people. You'll get people who want to use the shops and restaurants every day, people who will be happy to live on a street designed for people rather than cars.

Moncton will survive quite well without a new hockey rink. But survival will be much tougher in a city designed for cars.

I would not suggest super high-rise, egg box apartments. (I remember too well the one in Hong Kong that was reputed to be the most densely populated spot on earth.) But city council with imagination could tap into the ideas of apartment building pioneered at Expo 67, with small, private garden areas for each apartment, with community facilities, and (unlike the Expo 67 model) with ground floors designed for commerce.

Alas! Moncton's politicians and business leaders seem to be able think only of special events and a quck buck. Neither of those will solve either the problem of a sprawling city or the problem of a dying main street.

Why is their thinking so short term and so little related to the needs of the people who live here? We'll take a look at that on Monday.

Jan. 6: hockey, convention centres, and main street.

2012-01-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

Ste. Catherine St. was the main shopping street of Montreal for most of the twentieth century. It was the street of the great department stores, the popular restaurants, the clubs, boutiques and, way at the end of all the shops and clubs stood The Forum, the legendary home of the Montreal Canadiens.

The Forum was packed for every game, and packed again for concerts, boxing, wrestling, and for all us kids, 17,000 at a time, when the circus came to town. It seemed to be always in use.

Funny thing, though. The restaurants, clubs and boutiques petered out blocks before The Forum. Its end of St. Catherine St., with a couple of seedy bars, and a second-hand store was always the dead end.

I stood across the street from The Forum one summer day to watch the parade from it to the news arena. Dickie Moore and Jean Beliveau, waving from a convertible, led the parade with loudspeakers blaring the decades of cheers recorded for Bill Durnan, Toe Blake, and The Rocket.

A few years later, I strolled by the new arena. I noticed that the only new business that had opened was a tiny, sandwich shop, mostly doing a lunch hour business for office workers.

So what's all this Times and Transcript pitch to spend hundreds of millions for a hockey arena/convention centre to revive Moncton's Main Street? Main St. started to die sixty years ago. Main streets have died all over North America. They were killed by the automobile and the shopping mall. Nor is there any evidence of hockey rinks and convention centres magically reviving them - not anywhere. They didn't do it before the auto and the mall. They aren't going to do it now.

Why are the Moncton City Council and the Times and Transcript pushing so hard for a scheme that will be ruinously expensive for ratepayers? Because it will make Moncton Main St. the hub of the hub of the smart set in the Maritimes? Come off it. If you put the whole Maritimes together, you stil have nothing like the population of Montreal - and there ain't no convenient subway to get here from Halifax - or even from Dieppe. And, at best, you will get a very tiny sandwich shop out of it, a sandwich shop that is going to have to slice a lot bread and ham to pay off $200,000,000.

The rink/convention centre would be a stunningly wasteful use of money. Worse, the very idea of reviving main street is a plan to restore the past - rather like spending a couple of hundred million to intall hitching posts and water troughs along the curbs with a livery stable on each block.

What Moncton needs is a design for the future. (Indeed, while Moncton has been planning for the past, the reality is that the future is already here; and we're going to suffer unless we make some big changes very, very soon.)

So, tomorrow, let's take a look at what the future requires.

Then we'll take a look at why The Moncton TandT and Moncton City Council, don't really give a damn about the future or about the people of Moncton..

Jan. 5: Sorry for today...

2012-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

After weeks of packing, moving, and unpacking, I find I just can't write a coherent column today.

There's really nothing in the Moncton TandT on this Jan. 5, anyway except for excellent columns by Alec Bruce and Jody Dallaire.

As for news, the world (yes, including Moncton) is on the edge of a major war and and and even deeper economic crisis - but the big story in the TandT's international news is that Peter MacKay got married in Mexico. (It doesn't mention whether he went by helicopter.)

In any case, I want to change pace a little. I'd like to take a closer look at Moncton city council's determination to go into hock for a couple of hundred million or more to build a hockey rink/convention centre. I'd look to take a look at the motivation of the people behind this piece of idiocy, at why our corporate elite is so short-sighted in its planning, at how we have been pushed into big government and big debt not by the poor or the elderly or the sick, but by the rich and the influential.I's the coroporations who wanted and got a welfare state a state for them - a nanny state for the very rich.

It's not the leftists who destroyed capitalism. It's the people who call themselves capitalists who have twisted it into a perversion of what it was meant to be. The system can work. But, as it is now, it is taking the corporations - and us - on a suicidal course.

Moncton's proposed hockey rink and convention centre is a handy, bite-size piece to illustrate what is going terribly wrong and why.

Nor will I be speaking of dangers fifty years down the road. We don't have anything resembling fifty years in which to wake up. We don't have ten years. In fact, just look at the stream of traffic at rush hour on the Riverview causeway. Then think of the Strait of Hormuz being closed to oil transport. (No, Peter MacKay didn't get married there. But the Strait of Hormuz could have a pretty serious effect on your drive home. And it could be very soon.)

Jan. 4: The new year..

2012-01-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

The banner headline of the Moncton Times and Trnascript for today is that the mayor of neighbouring Dieppe will not seek re-election. Wow!

The advice of Eric Lewis on the op ed page is that this is the year Moncton, teetering on the edge of the greatest financial crisis the world has seen, has to go over its head into debt to build a BIG hockey rink. And, wow, maybe we can get Bruce Springsteen to do a show this summer.

Never mind that within 20 years, probably much less, Moncton will be close to unlivable because of transportation costs and other problems arising from its aprawl. This is a city desiigned for 1900, modified in 1970 for 1950, and now being planned for nothing at all but making money for hockey team owners and hotels. Riverview, a throwback to the '50s' will certainly be unlivable in the near future. But, in the face of the huge changes this city needs, Eric Lewis and and the Moncton Times will go on beating the drum for a new hockey rink.

What a rink would really do is to make a quick profit for somebody at a long loss for everybody else. But that is what has happened as short term greed has triumphed over pressing needs in our society.

So far, there has been nothing in the paper about the real world, and what's going to happen in the coming year..

1. Premier Alward will plunge ahead with shale gas development. He will continue to spread false information and false comfort.

Why be polite about it? Alward is going to screw you. It's decided. If he ever does introduce strict regulations, he won't enforce them. He will, though, strictly enforce the law against anyone who objects as Irving and friends destroy and impoverish the province.

So much for democracy and an informed public in New Brunswick.

2. Harper will make it a big year for the British connection in Canada with a royal visit, pictures of the queen all over the place, and a year-long celebration of the British-Canadian victory over the US in the War of 1812.

And, as we all watch the dog and pony shows paid for with our tax dollars, Harper will be dissolving Canada itself into an American colony. The process is already well begun with the Canadian armed forces remodelled and re-equipped to fight American wars, and with Canadian and American police and military authorized to work on either side of the border.

3. Americans will start disappearing as the Obama government expands it power to arrest and detain without trial or charge anybody it chooses to. Most of the North American media will applaud this as a defence against moslem terrorism. In fact, it has nothing to do with moslems or terrorism.

Almost half of the American population lives below the poverty line. Uncounted millions are homeless. Assistance money is being cut off so Obama can divert even more spending to weapons and wars. There is a rage mounting at the suffering of the poor and the increasing wealth and power of the rich. The American empire, the last of the great, western empires, is in a rapid collapse.

Obama may have no principles; but he is not a fool. The danger of serious uprisings, even revolution, and very soon, is obvious. The power to arrest and detain (forever, if necessary) is not aimed at moslem terrorists. It's aimed at discontented Americans. The basic requirement of freedom and democracy, the right to legal process, has been erased. The corporations that pay for Obama's campaign funds have what they have long wanted - a thoroughly fascist and police state.

That's not just calling Obama and the corporations names. Check a dictionary. Look up fascist. Look up police state.

Obama is also gearing up for more and bigger wars. NATO (the colonial armies of the American Empire) is already heavily involved in events in Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and, soon, Iraq again. He will also soon be looking at wars (both covert and open) in Latin America - as well as expanding through the Pacific to contain China.

These wars of a dying empire have been financial, military and political disasters for fifty years. But much of the western world, and especially the US, has been controlled for decades by a self-destructive perversion of capitalism. There are many definitions of capitalism. But none of them is based on the greed, short-sightendess, and contempt for humanity that we see in the very wealthy of the US and Canada. Read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations some day. Rich people who live off government welfare were not what Goldwin Smith defined as capitalists. Not at all.

We live in a perversion of capitalism that has created its own crisis of poverty and war. The crisis is not something that might happen. It is happening. Right now.

Most of us will refuse to believe that. It's very human. We refuse to see what we do not want to see.
So it was that Germans applauded Hitler and Russians applauded Stalin and Chinese applauded Mao even as these leaders imprisoned or murdered them (without charge or trial - just like Obama is now authorized to do.)

The churches, being run by humans, also refuse to believe what they see. In Germany, they largely accomodated themselves to the Naziis. In the US, few said a word about the slaughters in Cambodia and Vietnam and Guatemala. In Canada, our chaplains told the press that our troops in Afghanistan were doing an important job - though what that job was and what has been accomplished remain unclear. Nor have we we heard a clerical voice raised about the morality of bombing civlians in Libya. (Maybe the Moncton Baptists figure those Libyan civilians were all gay.)

Whether or not we recognize it, though, doesn't matter. We are facing a brutal year. We cannot escape the effects of the economic damage that has been done by bandit business. We cannot escape the wars that our political and economic leaders have committed us to. Our chldren cannot escape the world we are allowing to be created.

2012 may well be the most decisive year in well over 1500 years.

But don't worry about the Irvings of this world. Money can always be moved around.

Just think about the important things. The mayor of Dieppe will not be running for re-election. And how about those hockey Wildcats, eh?

I didn't comment on Norbert's column because, as a piece of logic, I would have failed it in a high school class. Besides, it's not enough to talk about the incompetence and the propaganda of The Moncton TandT. There's a reality out there. Thanks to the perversion of capitalism that our business world has become, we live in a corrupt and decaying society. Saving it will be neither quick nor easy.

Or we can build a new hockey rink to watch the Wildcats. (As I write that, I think of the great emptiness I felt as I walked through Coliseum in Rome. I think of how, so many years earlier, it was packed for the daily sport of killing even as the barbarians broke through the walls of the city.)

Moncton, if you don't wake up in 2012 then, by the time 2013 rolls around, it won't matter.

Jan. 3: No news news

2012-01-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

I didn't even attempt to write a blog on yesterday's Times and Transcript. There was simply nothing in it. The whole day after New Year's Day edition was about what happened in 1911. But we already knew that.

Today's, January 3, is almost as bad. The front page has a big story about a TV start who advises brides on what sort of wedding gown to buy, a story on how good Mayor Leblanc was in 2011 and he'll be even better in 2012 (from the horse's mouth), and a real "stop the presses" story on how you have to plan your new year's resultions.

Oh, and there's an assurance from Mr. Irving himself that he plants three trees for ever two he cuts down to make Majesta toilet paper. I've often wondered about that during reflective moments of solitude in the bathroom. It makes me proud to think I'm doing my bit to rebuild the forests of New Brunswick.

P. A2 announces the first meeting of the Moncton Knitting Club tonight at the library.. (Sure wish I could get them to announce my current events groups at the library. It`s tonight, too, at 7 pm.

Then, of course, we have two, big stories on how the mayors of Dieppe and Riverview had good years in 2011, and plan even gooder ones for 2012, just like Moncton.

In this whole paper, the only item worth reading is the column by Alec Bruce.

The Times and Transcript is deliberate trivia. And it works. It keeps us ignorant of the news by reporting only trivia. By doing so, it discourages any serious discussion of what`s going on, and focusses attention on meaningless prattle by politicians, and on issues that really count - like whether our liquor stores are selling enough booze.

It`s quite deliberate. The paper is owned Irving who also owns pretty much everything else in the province. That`s why we have newspapers that tell us which movie star is having a birthday today - but not how our government tries to manipulate us into agreeing to poison our land and water; and not how little Irving pays in taxes.

This is where a Norbert Cunningham comes in. Ì can never decide whether he is a willing dupe. I suspect, rather, he`s one of those people who truly believes, but will forever believe only what he wants to believe. I have a friend who genuinely believed that the torture at Guantanamo didn't hurt. It was love taps There are many people like that.

In today`s column, for example, Norbert makes a point that citizens have a responsibility to keep well informed so they can make responsible decisions when they vote. Hello, Norbert, are you (all) there?
Where are we supposed to get this information from? Certainly not from any Irving paper or from any privately-owned radio or TV station.

Norbert also says we should teach our children more history because that would make them less cynical about politics if they did. Yes, indeed, studying how John A. Macdonald dealt privately in real estate for the railways while he was prime minister, and how Mulroney took a suitcase full of money in a hotel room, and how K.C. Irving moved to Bermuda to avoid income tax would do a lot to build pride and interest in our political and economic system.

Norbert begins by saying we should guard against any attempts to weaken democracy. He particularly opposes legilation favouring special interests. Oh, Norbert, that's cute. And I'll even consider it possible you believe what you're saying - even though you have consistently worked for the good of special interests.

Yes, we citizens have a right to speak out, says Norbert. But if we do, then he has a paragraph ranting that we are irresonsible and anti-democratic. Indeed, if we complain about a threat to democracy, then we are attacking democracy itself. This 'spoiled brat syndrome' threatens democracy itself. Yes.

Oh, and there's a big threat to democracy that has come in the form of the net. The net has a sinister, dangerous side that endangers democracy. There is nothing worse than allowing individuals (spoiled brats) to criticize their social betters.

On the other hand, a monopoly of control by one newspaper owner is good for democracy.

Tomottow, Norbert will explain how the web is a threat to true democracy which can only work when governments and news media are owned by giant corporations. (That's what used to be called fascism. That's how the dictionary still defines it.)

So why doesn't Norbert say he's writing a column in defence of fascism? Because Norbert is one of those who sees only what he wants to see. He sees trivia, and calls it information essential to democracy. He sees a government (elected by a minority of the eligible voters), watches it pushing through a project that has massive public opposition - and says the majority has spoken. He sees government run by and for corporations and calls it democracy. This is a terminal case of seeing only what he wants to see.

In a quotation from Stanfield, Norbert concludes, "It is a very simplistic view that politicians are to blame for everthing.." Quite so.

The reality is that much of the blame has to be shared by corporate bosses who buy politicians, and by "journalists" who work as propaganda agents for the corporate bosses.

Dec. 29: Hey! Donne-moi un break...

2011-12-29T17:38:00.000-08:00

The story leads the NewsToday section. The American Council on Science and Health tells us that fracking is not a threat to health. Isn't that nice? And the council is a really professional body, too, made up of oh, just oodles of concerned scientists and medical people. And who puts up the cash for its reports and tests and publication?
Well, the council stopped giving information on that some twenty years ago. But the last time they told us, it was those nice people at - oh, you know, Exxon, Kraft, drug companies... - and that's reasonable because an organization like the council costs lots of money to run.
And does it have real scientists and doctors? Sure. We don't know how many because they're kind of shy about telling us that. They claim it's over three hundred., though that's been questioned. And I'm sure they're quite sincere - some of them. But, at tops, they represent less, way less than one percent of all the scientists and medical doctors in North America.

So what you have is really a propaganda front (something like AIMS or the Fraser Insitute) that gets its money from big business. And their propaganda is what the Moncton Tand T presents as news coming from a pretigious research organization.

Gee. Could that have anything to do with the fact it said fracking for shale gas is really good for you?

On that same note, the New Brunswick government, another outfit that operates as a front for large corporations, has an expensive insert in the paper to tell us the "facts" about fracking. Apparently, there's nothing bad about it at all. In fact, the bitsy, teeny little chemicals that are used in it are often those that are found in our daily food.

After a full year of promises to give us information, the government has taken a chunk of our tax money, and given it to the Irving media to give us expensive propaganda which will benefit the folks at Irving Oil. What a sleazy lot!

Meanwhile, Norbert Cunningham has followed up on yesterday's attack on education specialists with a rant that is even rantier and more ignorant than yesterday's.

He begins by talking about how mediocre our public schools are. In saying that, he shows his ignorance of the available data from quite reputable sources. Canadian public schools, in fact, are world leaders in the teaching of reading, science and math. This data comes from test scores from all over the world conducted by UNESCO (which is even more pretigious than the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies).

As well, Norbert says our schools are not as good as they were fifty years ago. In fact, the same data I mention above shows that Canada is a leader in the proportion of students who score better than their parents and grandparents. All the evidence is that the schools are not mediocre - and that they are getting better, not worse. In fact, in his whole column, Cunningham makes ranting statements without a single piece of evidence. Not one.

Then he says the intrusion of the 'experts' (by which he means researchers into mentods of teaching) began some fifty years ago. That is utter bullshit.

Even a superficial glance through google would have shown him that research and publication in that field has been thriving for well over a century just in Canada . Around the world, it's been going on for thousands of years - back to the crusades, back to the Moslem empire, back to the mandarins of China. It goes back even to primitive humans, deciding what their children must learn, and how to teach them.

In my Education courses of fifty years ago, I was taught by some of Norbert's despised 'experts'; and they, before I was born, were being taught by experts who had been, in their turn, taught by 'experts'. Fifty years! What tripe!

And Norbert's big solution to the problem of 'mediocre' education all over the world? Fire the experts. Yep. That'l fix it all up. Just fire all them there 'experts', hire teachers right off the street with no training at all.

By the end, his foaming at the mouth makes him a little incoherent. I think he is suggesting that the universities should fire all their professors of education. Gee, Norbert. If t hey're as dumb as you say they are, the only place they'd be able to get jobs is working for the Irving news media.

In that whole, ranting column, there is not a single piece of evidence, of analysis, or even of common sense. So what's the game, Norbert? Has the big boss told you that his war against the public schools is on again? Has he figured out a new way to make money out of our children?

I suppose I must have read worse columns than this. But I'm damned if I can think of one.

Dec.28: Back to the Future....

2011-12-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

One of the problems in understanding the news is to figure out what to believe in various sources.

For example, today I came across a story which quoted a medical study estimating that 14,000 American infants died as a result of the recent nuclear plant accident in Japan. According to the study, radioactive fallout hit the US west coast severely enough to kill 14,000 infants. (There is no mention of BC). The report was written by reputable medical scientists, and published in a respectable health journal. Is it true?

I have no idea.

What bothers me is that I read the story in a newsletter published online for the oil industry. (You can find it at http://vit.lyl/vKeIFv (I hope got that right.)

Fossil fuels and nuclear fuels are in competition. Is the oil journal overinterpreting a story? Is reporting on the environmental damage caused by nuclear fuel as a way of combatting fears of the environmental damage cause by fossil fuels? Is it reporting this INSTEAD of reporting the hazards of fossil fuels? I don't know. But this is a problem with every news source.

Take, for example, today's story on Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird who says Canada is going to build up its military, and take a tougher stance on world affairs. He's proud of the achievements Canada made in Afghanistan and Libya. And he's showing impatience with the UN, and has decided not to try for a seat on the UN Security Council. He says the Conservative government has rebuilt our military, in contrast to the Liberals who allowed it to decline.

Sounds impressive, but....
1. What great achievements in Afghanistan? After a decade, is Iran now a democracy? Is it a better place to live? Most authorities on that war say we lost it, and lost it a long time ago. There is no democracy. There is no significant rebuilding. The people of Afghanistan are not better off. So what was our great achievement?
2. We carried out a humanitarion mission in Libya? Since when is bombing cities humanitarian work?
How many innocent civilians did we kill? If the number was small, was does NATO refuse to release the number? (As recent article by The New York Times claimed a civilian death toll of 80 due to bombing. That report was absurd - and The NYT reporter later admitted it was a survey of only a very small area; and that the real number must be many times that.) In fact, other sources report thousands of civilians killed - and some even tens of thousands.
So our military achievement consists largely of killing large numbers of people (to save them) and leaving the rest in the unhealthy and miserable desolation of what is left of their cities.
And for what? For the country that is now sliding into a civil war between rebels and rebels?
3. We are rebuilding our military? Good. But why?To defend Canada? Nobody has attacked us.
We are rebuilding out military to act with NATO to fight American wars. We are back, in 2012, to where we were in 1912.
A centurty and more ago, a weakening Britain used the Empire to help fight its wars. That's why Canadians died in South Africa in the Boer War. That's why after World War One, Canada made the world know that it would no longer fight other people's wars. Every Novemember 11, we remember (or are supposed to remember), the Canadians who died to win that freedom for Canada.
Harper (with Baird) has taken us back to the future, committed to fighting the wars of another overstretched empire. In 2012, we will celebrate our heritage by national events featuring the War of 1812, complete with coast to coast pictures of the Queen. Celebrating out heritage is Harper's cute way of making sure we don't notice him destroying it.
4. Oh, and it's not the Conservatives that began taking us in this unpleasant direction. It was the Liberals. They're the ones who sent troops to Afghanistan, and then committed them to a combat role.
5. Of course, we're not running for a seat on the Security Council. We're not running because our national reputation is so far down the tube, there is no chance we would be elected. But it doesn't matter. Following the US, Canada has abandoned the UN. The great experiment is over. Our new UN is NATO. And NATO is our British Empire, and Obama is our king.

Norbert Cuthbertson has a ranting column on a subject of which he knows nothing. One could laugh at it, were it not for the damage he causes. There are people who listen to the rant. And what they hear, they adopt as their own opinion even though, like Norbert, they know nothing about it.

Norbert's attack is on the schools. He has no training in education. He has no teaching experience, so far as I know. But he pronounces that education authorities all over the world are wrong. Only he knows the truth.

It's these here eddication PhDs, and them there innovators. They's made them schools worser, not better. And he's agoin' to write another column tellin' us more rants on how he knows better.

Norbert, have you ever heard of UNESCO? It's one of them there groups that studies stuff and makes reports. One thing it studies is eddication. And you know who's right up in the top ten every year? Out of all the countries in this world? In performance in Reading. That there math'maticals? and science?
Why, it's Canada.

If eddication, ya gotta figure, was gettin' worse, then people over 50 would know more from their schoolin' than people of 20 or so. But, in fact, in every country in the world, the younger ones know more from schoolin' than the old one. And Canada is one of the leaders in that respect. So that must mean education is getting better, not worse.

Oh, did I say EVERY country is getting better? Silly me. One country, just one in this whole, wide world is getting worse. The United States is the only country in which young people know less than older ones.

Of course, those are the published figures from 1910. Word is the US system has become much worse since then, dropping from 17th in the world to a hundred and something... You know why?

Because they stopped payin' attention to them there experts. Instead, they read newspapers full of ranters like Norbert who don't know what they're talking about - but who do know what the boss likes. What the boss likes are those phoney school rankings compiled by Atlantic Institute of Market Studies (who also don't know what they're talking about.)

Media ranters in the US softened Americans up for the widespread privatization of large chunks of public education. The very rich like privatization because they can then get their hands on your taxes. It's been a disaster for American public education as it gets flushed down the toilet in world rankings. But, hey, the boss likes it. So who cares what happens to the kids?

Discrediting the public schools has been a constant theme in The Moncton Times and Transcript. There's a reason for that. And it has nothing to do with keeping Canada in the top ten in the world. It has more to do with things like shale gas that make the rich even richer by sucking every possible bit of blood out of this province.

Dec. 23: The silly season, lack of ethics, the usual...

2011-12-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

There is really no news in today's Moncton Times and Transcript. There is just triviality, horoscope, comics... In other words, it's business as usual at the TandT. That makes Norbert's column particularly annoying. He gets off on a rant about how newspaper news media just report silly news in this, the silly season. It really doesn't occur to him that this is what the TandT does every day of the year.

In naming news media who run silly news stories at the Christmas season, the points out CBC. Now, in the years I've read his columns, he often criticizes the CBC. I notice, though, he never criticizes private radio or television. Private radio newscasting and new analysis is abysmal across the country. Private TV is a bit better, but not much. But Norbert attacks only the CBC. It's really not CBC Norbert is all in a snit about. It's the evil of the people of Canada owning anything when his boss could be owning it and making big money out of it.

Then there's the question of journalistic ethics. Take a look at the editorial, "A good day's work".

Two thirds of it is the usual brainless praise for the New Brunswick government over the past term. that's okay. We're used to brainless. But the last two paragraphs are something worse than brainless.
They are a shameless and dishonest defence of the shale gas industry in New Brunswick.

Let's deal with the ethics part first. The owner of the TandT is a major player in shale gas exploration. An editorial writer, one with any integrity at all, tells us when he or she might be biased about the topic of the editorial. An ethical journalist that his boss is a major player, and admits it from the start so we have fair warning. That way, we know that this is a column kissing ass.

Then there's the question of honesty. "Somehow New Brunswickers need to evn better informed about energy issues." Damn right they do. And the major reason they aren't informed is that the government has either hidden information or broken promises or given false information. And so has the newspaper this half-wit, unethical and dishonest editorial appears in. In over ten years, both parties have told us almost nothing. Both parties are still babbling about tough, new regulations. Not only do we still not have the regulations - but we haven't hired inspectors even if we do get the regulations.

And show me where private radio - a substantial part owned by guess who - has taken up the slack. I've worked for private radio. I know how bad its news rooms are. and how carefully they censor the news.

Then bias and dishonesty takes a nasty turn. "One considerable segment of the protesters are older New Brunswickers who return to the province hoping for a peaceful retirement..." Where did that pseudo-statistic come from? The protesters that I have met are of all ages and are both rural and urban. Why toss in this older New Brunswickers stuff?

Because the editorial writer wants to make a threat. "These are the same people who will rely more than any other slice of the population on a well-funded health care system..." And the writer implies without shale gas development they won't get health care.

If shale gas continues to do the damage to earth, water, and the atmosphere it has already done in some US states, it's the young people who will need the health care - and we won't have nearly as many older people to worry about.

The federal department of the environment has already leaked a document about the permanent damage to the land, plants, the water table and to people downstream from the Alberta oilsands. (The TandT didn't report that, either.)

Look. I'm sorry. Mr. Irving will have to make do with whatever money he may have saved in his RRSP. We can keep using fossil fuel - for a little while. But there comes a point when the damage is irreversible, when you can't do it any more - not even with all the money the shale gas industry has to buy politicians and hack journalists. You can't do it because the the planet will be dead. We may already have passed that irreversible point.

To illustrate for the TandT just how serious that would be, there would be nobody to buy ads in the paper.

The industry has hidden information from us. It has bombarded us with propaganda. It has lied. And it has done so with the hearty cooperation of irresponsible politicians and newspapers. like - you know who.

Even by the standards of the Irving new media, this is a disgusting, lying, insinuating, manipulative and unethical editorial.

Ah, well, this is the season when we are jolly, and when even the hungry get fed. I shall post only sporadically for the coming week because it's a holiday time, because I'm moving, and because my computer needs repairs.

A reminder, though. Again, I have to do it here because the Times and Transcript won't publicize it in its metro section. On Tuesday, January 3, at 7 pm, the current events group will meet in the Moncton Library. I shall open with a very short bit about the Home Defence Authorization bill that has been passed by congress, how it likely to be used, and how it will affect Canada. This is probably the news story of the century. But it has yet to appear in the TandT.

Then we'll go on to discussion of any topics you wish to raise.

Meanwhile, enjoy the holiday.

Dec.22: the news media - entertainment, propaganda, trivia, very little news.

2011-12-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

Again, most of today's TandT is trivial. Again, important news is barely touched on. There's still no analyis (and barely a mention) of the bill allowing the US army to imprison people without charge or trial - or any mention of how this is certain to affect Canada.

They do mention new border crossing and airport rules. But there isn't much to say yet. However, what will be announced will probably be the gentle beginning. The border agreement between Obama and Harper is going to have a profound effect on the nature of Canada. But don't worry. It'll happen so slowly, you won't even notice. And, Lord know, the TandT will not spoil it by telling you.

That's what the new health accord is about, too. Medicare is an offence to the Harper ideology.The new accord is another thin end of the wedge.

Oh, there's no mention of a leaked report by Environment Canada that poisoning of the rivers by oilsands production is causing serious damage to plant and animal life downstream. (Us people count as animals.)

Norbert Cunningham's colum on the editorial page is particularly annoying, today. It's begins as a generally decent column on charities. But it flushes the toiled towards the end..."If charitable services didn't exist, we'd either be living in a much less pleasant, more brutal society or our governments would be raising their taxes well above the present levels and creating a full-bown nanny state."

Norbert you're full of it - "it", in this case, meaning buzzwords, ignorance, and bias - as well as a stomach-wrenching display of kissing up to the boss.

1. Do you seriously think that distributing cans of beans at Christmas makes any serious dent in poverty?
In the US, some 150 million people are living in poverty. Uncounted numbers are homeless. Children go to school hungry. Are you seriously suggesting that volunteer groups can compensate for that?
I grew up very poor - just as many New Brunswickers have and still do. In that whole childhood, I can remember only one gift of charity, a gift of crayons from Santat Claus at a lodge party.
In northern Canada, we have a reservation with appalling conditions of hunger, sanitation, of life in worse than an animal state. Have you sent them a can of beans, Norbert?
The poor are poor because the rich have gathered in such a high proportion of the money in circulation. Don't you read the national income figures, Norrbert?
What a column of ignorant (or lying), self-righteous blather!
2. Norbert, you know as well as we all do that New Brunswick would have had a smaller government years ago - if Mr. Irving wanted it to have a smaller government. But he doesn't want that. He wants what you call a nanny state. But he doesn't want the state to nanny the poor. He wants it to nanny him.
Tell you what, Norb, why don't you collect and publish the figures on how much government charity we give to corporations in this province? How much of our forests we hand over? What sorts of subsidies we give to corporations? What we pay for their energy supply? What we have to pick up for the taxes they don't pay?
Norbert, the corporations of the province are what cause poverty - along with flacks like you and Mr. Allward, and with the propaganda and triviality of the newspaper you work for..
3. Norbert, can you name a single society in all of human history in which charity has made even a dent in poverty?
4. Yes, government help would mean higher taxes - from those people who have money to afford higher taxes. Are you under the impression that the money paid in taxes comes from somewhere different than money we pay for charity? Do you seriously suggest that amateur volunteers whose work is necessarily on loosely coordinated and whose administrative and economic skills are limited can make the most economic use of that money?
5."If we opt for less of a government role, the bigger role we can expect charities to play." Where did that gem come from? If there were any truth to that, the people of Haiti today would be living the good life. Again, can you name a single society in human history in which lack of government social services has led to the need being filled by volunteers?

Norbert, this column is not only vicious and ignorant. It is a kiss-up to the boss. You, if I recall correctly, were the one who recently wrote about how how the CBC is biased. You, of all people. You, who work for the most biased and trivial newspaper I have ever seen.

Mind you, some blame has to go to the people of New Brunswick. They've put up with this sort of crap for years. If they are robbed by corporations (who now want to add even more to the environmental damage they do) it is because the people of New Brunswick are too passive to dump your propaganda, and too gullible when they decide which Irving Party they should vote for.

We might, too, consider the role of the churches in all this. New Brunswick is the province in which many churches rise with the wrath of the virtuous and self-righteous to denounce gays and lesbians - but smile on and even bless those who inflict poverty, suffering, and environmental poison on them and their spiritually shallow followers.

Well, maybe Norbert's right. Maybe we should cut down government. Tell you what, let's close off all grants, subsidies, etc. for Irving and his corporate friends. Then, all of a sudden, volunteers will spring up to pass around the hat.

Let's try it, Norbert. And, if it works, then we'll try it on the poor.

Dec. 21: another dog lost in Moncton...

2011-12-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

For the second day in a row, front page news in The Moncton Times and Transcript is the flash that another dog is missing in Moncton. Well, maybe not a flash; it happened almost a month ago. But it's still front page news. In fact, it's probably the most important story in the whole paper. But I can't write a whole blog on a paper so dreadful that it's big story of the day is about a missing dog.

So let's talk about what it doesn't have in it.

1. I still does not have the story of Obama being about to sign a bill that would give the army to power to arrest and imprison American citizens simply on suspicion - and with nobody even saying what the suspicion is about. There is no charge, not trial, no lawyer. And the army will have the right to arrest citizens of other countries in their own countries. (Canada springs to mind.) The excuse is, as usual, the war on terror. (And the FBI has already announced it considers demonstrators of any sort to be terrorists.) Any American - or Canadian - will soon be subject to arrest simply because somebody up there doesn't like him or hears a rumour that he might possibly be acquainted with somebody who might know somebody who might be a terrorist.

This is the biggest news story in over two centuries. The American revolution and its constitution of 1776 have been scrapped. And the panic is not about terrorists; it's about the rebellion of ordinary Americans.

Oh, I know, I know. I'm one of those anti-American liberals, possibly even leftist, probably a friend of gays, the type who goes over the top about anything the US does. And you are, perhaps, a sober type of person, practical, conservative.....

Okay. Google American Thinker December 20.

American Thinker is a right wing journal of commentary - a FAR right wing journal of commentary. Read what its commentators have to say about the bill. Read what four U.S. generals have to say about it.

We are watching the collapse of American democracy. A country which permits imprisonment without even showing that there has been a crime and without any legal process no longer has the most fundamental of civil rights. Without those rights, it cannot be called a democracy.

What we are watching is even more. It's the collapse of the last of the great European empires.

But don't take my word for it. Don't take the word of the American Civil Liberties Union (probably a rabble of liberals and gays). Check out American Thinker. Read its commentators. Real Americans. Conservative. Asexual.

The other area in which the The Moncton TandT has been silent is on shale gas. It's the most hotly discussed issue in the province - except in the TandT and, of course, in the rest of New Brunswick's English language papers. Odd that it missed the local papers because there's been lots of information about problems with shale gas all over the world. There's been so much to keep up on, it was only yesterday I came across a map showing what areas of NB are covered by shale gas leases. the leased areas are huge. And you'll never guess who the biggest, single lease holder is. Hint - it's a New Brunswick based oil company.

That's odd. I mean, if a missing dog is first page news, and if p.3 has a big story about city hall getting 12 more parking spaces... Well, you'ld kinda think the paper would have room for local story like that. I mean, it should be beating the drum for a local boy who's done so well. I mean, geegollywhiz, he owns a big oil company and all kinds of things. You'ld think that the newspaper he owns would be all proud of a local boy who worked his way up.

On a more serious note, an ethical paper would publish such news no matter who the owner might be. Or, minimally, an ethical newspaper would announce that it can offer no news at all on the subject because it is compromised by the nature of its ownership. Failing even that, an ethical journalist would find honest work somewhere else.

Nor has there been much in the paper about the drop in promised spending for medicare. Yes, I know there's a recession, and we cannot spend what we don't have.

The problem with that is we do have. Defence Minister Mackay, alone can spend more money in two and a half days than some families can earn in a year. We have plenty of money to buy absurdly overpriced fighter planes, to assist oil companies (dirty, heavily polluting companies) to export their oil. We spent millions trying the get the world to buy our asbestos, a product widely banned as a carcinogen. We're going to spend tens of millions celebrating the War of 1812, the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen, and a visit from Prince Charles.

The money for all those things is available. We're not having a recession because money is melting or something. We're having a recession because the very rich have been taking most of our money for the last thirty years.

Now is the time to pay for the recession the rich have caused. But the very rich aren't going to be asked to pay for it. Harper - like the dismal Mr. Alward - will insist they must keep all their money - and be given even more. So the rest of us will have to pay. One way we'll pay is by the gradual srangulation of medicare.

If you want to learn more about that, don't waste your money on The Moncton Times and Transcript. go to info@Canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca and www.canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca

You would never know it from the pages of the TandT (or most other North American news media), but we are living through the most revolutionary times in over 500 years. This is not a time for us to read dishonest trivia like the TandT, and just stand around with our faces hanging out.

Dec. 20:

2011-12-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

I caught a bit of "Cross-Country Checkup" on, I think, Saturday night. The big phone in topic was "what was the biggest news event of the year?". Was it the marriage of Kate and what's-his-name? Perhaps the new, pad computers? Or Lindsay Lohan posing nude for Playboy?

And that comes form the most intellectual of our news media. The front page of today's Time&Transcript has a big story about a family that lost a puppy. Well - we read the papers, and we listen to the radio. I guess we get what we want.

The TandT has still not given coverage to the story that Obama is about to sign a bill that would give the American military the right to put American citizens living in America into indefinite imprisonment in military prisons without charge or trial - without even showing that a crime had been committed in the first place.

This wipes out the civil rights that are essential to democracy, the right to knowing the charge, to having access to a lawyer, and to a fair trial. In effect, this cancels the American constitution. (It also cancels the international bill of rights which the US signed many years ago - but who cares?)

There doesn't even have to be a crime. Somebody imortant doesn't like you? You go to a military prison - where torture can be used. Case closed.

This is the American Revolution in reverse. It's the end of free speech. It's the end of democracy.This is not an exaggeration. This is reality. Look at it.

Of course, it was exciting to see Kate and what's-his-name in their wedding photos.

Will it affect us? You bet. Remember the agreement Harper and Obama signed to borrow each other's troops in case of civil disorder? If there is serious civil disorder in the US -and there will be serious discorder, there will be times when it will be advantageous for Obama to send in Canadian troops.

Indeed, given the recent agreements on shared policing with the US, it is quite possible that Harper will pull out the War Measures Act - which gives similar power to a Canadian government.

Oh, the new, US bill also gives power to the American military to detain (kidnap) anycitizen of any country - and to do it in that peron's country. Shared policing will make that even easier in Canada.

Okay. Let's say the royal wedding is the story of the year. The crushing of civil rights in the US is the story of the last couple of centuries. But you won't find it at the supermarket checkout counter. And you won't find it in the Times and Transcript.

Lots of good stuff about lost puppies, though.

Harper is reducing promised health care payments to the provinces. That makes the news - as it should. But it is presented in a subtly biased way. To be honest, we should be given such a story in the context of the whole budget. But we aren't.

The story simply quotes the government line that we have to make cuts in difficult economic times. No doubt. So are we cutting out disastrous expenditures on a fighter plane of doubtful value? Are we cutting down on handouts to corporations? Are thinking of perhaps raising taxes on the very rich?

The reader needs to know that. Otherwise, the story becomes "we are making cuts to health, but it is the only thing to do in hard times." Just common sense. Very common.

Actually, Canada is not suffereing hard times. All that Canadian money we've printed is still there. The trouble is not that we're runiing out of money. They problem is we've allowed most of that money to end up in the hands of a very few. We are a welfare state, a nanny state - for the rich and for corporations. But you would never guess that from the tone of reporting.

Interesting column by Gwynne Dyer. He argues that we should not confuse religion with morality. Using Britain as his example, he argues that most people are moral, though only a small and dwindling minority are religions (especially in Christian circles). Dwyer is too kind.

Here, in New Brunswick, only a minority attend religious services with any regularity. I have never seen so many churches for lease or for sale as I have in Moncton. But most people are still pretty moral.

However, I see nothing moral in the behaviours of our provincial or federal governments. (And I bet all those MLAs make it a point to go to church and shake hands at election time.)

There's no shortage of self-rightiousness in New Brunswick churches; but not much sign of faith. I regret that because I think faith can strengthen morality. But those who go to church seem to be more interested in looking respectable and pointing their fingers are 'evil' people than in practicing their faith.

This came to mind as I read a letter to the editor complaining about a student columnist who wrote that she was a pagan.

Come on. Most Canadians aren't even pagan, let alone Christian in any real sense. And 'Merry Christmas' has long ago come to mean spend money, and get lots of nice presents. As for the Happy Chanukah stuff, that's really an offshoot of the North American, commercial Christmas.

Chanukah is, of course, an important religious celebration. But it became North Americanized as Jewish immigrants blended into our society. Thus the 'Happy' Chanukah wishes. I remember, as a kid, visting Jewish friends who had a tree with blue and white lights in the house, and with presents around it. They called it a Chanuka Bush. (and even they felt it was both a bit silly and funny.)

I wish it were otherwise. But I see little Christianity in Canada - and nothing in most of our political and business leaders that could be called morality or faith of any kind.

Dec. 19: Bad editing, bad news services in the Times and Transcript

2011-12-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

These blogs have often mentioned the unreliable sources and the sloppy editing of the NewsToday section. Today provides a classic example of it.

For this section, the TandT relies essentially on two sources - Reuters and Postmedia, and both are unreliable. Now, let's take a look at the lead story of this section. "Last U.S. troop leave Iraq, ending war.

It comes, of course from Reuters.

For openers, that's not really a flash. The war ended last week. There was a ceremony marking the end of it. The NewsToday editor must have known that because it appeared in News Today last week - in fact, the story appeared at least twice. To run the same story three times is pretty sloppy editing.

Then there's the bias of Reuters.

The story that tells us that the war cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis. Now, methods of counting war dead vary widely. The most conservative count I have seen can be found on Google. It's called Iraq Body Count. It counted only those seen to be killed by correspondents. It did not count thse who died of wounds weeks (or even days) later. It did not count those who were killed unseen by reporters. It did not count those who died of exposure or starvation in the war. It did not count those who died because the war left them with almost no hospital space. It did not count those who died in the displacement of five million refugees. To the best of my knowledge, Iraq Body Count is the most conservative count that there is.

Its count is somewhere over a hundred thousand. (Yes, that is tens of thousands. But we usually say tens of thousands to suggest it was under a hundred thousand.) The US government admits to 120,000 to 130,000. Other counts, from quite unbiased and reputable sources go higher, much higher.

The Lancet, the very prestigious British medical journal, published studies putting the death toll at close to one and a half million.;

But Reurter says it's tens of thousands.

US oil companies are now "helping Iraqis to develop their oil fields." In fact, US oil companies have taken over Iraqi oil fields as spoils of war - and on very favourable terms. They are not required to leave any of their profit in Iraq - and the price of Iraqi oil is effectively controlled by the oil companies. Oil companies are "helping" Iraq develop in the same way that a bank robber "helps" a bank to clear some storage space for new money.

Then we are told the country is being torn apart now by religious strife. Oh? Iraq has been there a long time. How come religious strife didn't destroy the country a century ago and more?

Could it be that the strife comes from Iraq being smashed into poverty - with electricity still not working more than a few hours a day, with schools and hospitals and houses and roads and sewers blasted into rubble? With high unemployment, with lack of food?

The US claims to have spent billions on rebuilding Iraq. So how come even the electricity system doesn't work most of the time? Where did all the money go?

It went the same place as the American earthquake relief for Haiti went - into the pockets of contractors who were friends of the American government. That's why 2,000,000 Haitians are still living in tents with no water and no sewage. That's why Iraq is still a mass of rubble. Indeed, US senators were recently insisting that Iraq should repay the US for the trillion dollars it spent destroying the country.

None of this appears in the Reuters story. Nope. The big problem facing Iraq, according to Reuters is that them their Islams is all tore apart by religious strife.

US taxpayers spent a trillion dollars and killed enormous numbers of people and destroyed a nation to --get weapons of mass destruction that never existed. It was a lie, an excuse to get control of the oil for American ( and some British) private companies.

It was all a lie; and Reuters knows it was all a lie. Even the NewsToday editor at the TandT must have figured it all out. But that's still the story Reuters has been telling and that the TandT has been publishing.

So now, the official version is it was all caused by them there iggerant religious fanatics. Besides, Saddam was a bad man. So it was worth killing - let's be conservative - tens of thousands of innocent people to get him

Oh - by the way - if Saddam was such a bad man, why was the west supplying him with weapons - especially to support his invasion of Iran that killed another million?

And if Saddam was so bad for killing innocent people, what were Bush and Tony Blair?

Never trust Reuters. Be careful of trusting any foreign correspondents. But be especially careful of official Chinese news sources, official Russian news sources - and of Reuters.

And of Post media - but that's another blog.

Dec.17:

2011-12-17T06:08:00.000-08:00

The Moncton Times and Transcript still does not see it fit to mention the new American bill passed by Congress and due to be signed into law by Obama. The implications of it are so profound that it is not too much to say it makes the US officially into a battleground, and effectively destroys the concept of civil rights and liberties.

The change is so profound that, even in reading it, it will be almost impossible for its implications to sink in. Briefly, the US is now, in law, a battleground in which the US military can take prisoners - as on any battlefield, detain them in military prisons indefinitely - all with no charge, no trial, no rights. All the reason needed is that the prisoner is suspected of being cooperative with or even just sympathetic to terrorism. And, since there is no definition of terrorism in the law, terrorism is whatever the military says it is. The moment that Obama signs that bill - and he says he will sign it - American rights and freedoms are dead meat.

Wouldn't it even occur to a news editor to wonder why such a bill was passed? After all, the idea that we have to destroy freedom to save it is surely a little absurd. As well, it is hard to believe that the level of terrorist activity in the US has been so high as to require such extreme action. So what 's it all about?

Try this.

The poor in the US now are almost half of the US population. That's according to figures from the US census. Homelessness is at record levels. And thirteen percent of the homeless are military veterans; that's a pretty high percentage for such a small part of the population. Unemployment is at depression levels.

Congress, meanwhile, is cutting unemployment programmes and food stamps so it can spend more on weapons, and keep taxes low for the rich. (It's rationale for doing so is that if you give people help, they will lose the incentive to go out and look for jobs - in a society that has no jobs.)

The US is in a social meltdown, now on the edge of severe and widespread anger, desperation and disorder. It's been coming for some years.

Bush saw it coming when he ordered a combat brigade (about 5000) to be permanently based in the US. Obama saw it coming when he signed an agreement with Harper just months ago allowing Canada and the US to draw on each other's military in case of civil disorder. Now, Obama will sign this latest bill because he knows the rebellion of the poor and the starving and the homeless is near.

Terrorism is the excuse for the bill. But it's not the reason. The reason is to protect the privileges of the rich against the desperation of the poor. But not to worry.

Relax. Pick up your Moncton Times&Transcript, and let your mind drift off to the world of its Section A headline, "Will this Christmas be white or wet"?

Or, if you insist on living on the wild side,there's a superb op ed column by David Suzuki.

As well, the columns by students in Whatever are worth a read. I find there's a pleasure in reading good writing by people who are actually thinking about their experiences as they pass through the most intense years of their lives, thinking about the future, finding profound meaning in things we rarely think about at all - like smiling, having a positive attitude.

Another virtue of this student column section is that it give students a break from learning in school. It gives them a chance to learn from their own observations; and a chance to learn from performing a job.

I particularly noted Alex Corbett who talks about that constant teen-age dread - failure. And he argues that failure is good because we learn from it.

(Well, yes, some people do. I never have. If I had learned from all my failures, I'd be an Einstein by now.)

Dec. 16: Extra. extra. read all about it...

2011-12-16T06:32:00.000-08:00

In most newspapers, the front page carries the biggest news of the day. This, after all, is the big draw for potential buyers - a screaming headline that announces a matter of great importance and interest. Now, I would have thought the news of two more incidents of shale gas fracking beiing carried out (illegally) without local permission would qualify as pretty big news to a province that is sharply divided over the issue of shale gas.

But, no. Today's front page did have one attention-grabbing story - the acquittal of the Tingleys. That's really not big enough to make newspaper buyers reach for their wallets; but it's the biggest item on p. 1.

The others are 'a merry Christmas really is possible', firefighters plan for river emergencies, the children at a daycare centre are giving toys to poor kids for Christmas..... Wow! Where's my wallet?

And the story on shale gas companies breaking the law? Well, it had to appear. After all, it was a public statement by resource minister Northrup. But it's way back on p. C3, perhaps so as to prevent people from getting over excited.

No need to worry, though. The minister says that the breaking of the law was unintentional - a decision he must have come to in about five minutes. Maybe he's right, though. Corporation executives who put hundreds of millions of dollars in projects - and who did it without knowing the the law is - must be an extraordinarily bone-headed lot. Not the sort of people one wants running wild through the neighbourhood.

Reuters provides us with another story on the official end of the Iraq war. It's pretty much the same as their story of yesterday, and just as uninformative. If you read other papers, like The Guardian for Dec. 15,the picture is more disturbing.

For example, the President and the Premier of Iraq declined to attend the farewell ceremony. To make their absence less obvious and less embarassing, soldiers were placed in the seats that had been reserved for the Iraq government.

Papers all over the world, includinig Canada, are calling the whole Iraq war one of the great blunders of history. At a cost of a trillion dollars which, according to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, will become 4 trillion by the time the last veteran dies), and at the cost of well over a million lives and the destruction of the infrastrucure of Iraq, the US leaves behind it only hatred and suffering and poverty and instability in an already dangerously unstable part of the world.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the US census now reports that 48% of all American are now classed as poor, and predictions are the number will rise sharply as Congress cuts unemployment and food stamp programmes so it can free up money to buy more weapons and to keep taxes low for the rich. The argument is that cutting aid will encourage people to look for work. What work? Taking in each other's washing?

The big news all over the world - but not even mentioned in the TandT - is that Obama will sign a bill which makes the US itself officially a battle zone in the "war against terror". Under the bill, the US army is given the right to kidnap American citizens even on American soil (as well as any nation's citizens anywhere in the world), and to detain them indefinitely in military prisons (which, I have heard, use torture quite freely) with no charge, no lawyer, no trial, no evidence.

The definition in the bill is that it applies to anybody who might be suspected of any form of connection or sympathy with any terrorist group. There is no definition of what a terrorist group is. In effect, this means the army can kidnap anybody it wants to. You think Israel is not trying hard enough to read a peace deal with Palestine? You're a terrorist sympathizer. You're opposed to drilling for shale gas? A project vital to the defence of the US? You're a terrorist sympathizer.

This cancels not only the American constitution, but centuries of the development of human rights.

This act places the US under martial law - just like a conquered country taken over by a foreign army. It is a revolution which reverses the American Revolution of George Washington. It makes the US a police state in the tradition of Stalin's USSR. This is no overstatement. This is what has happened.

What does this have to do with you?
1. It gives the US army authority to kidnap you. Don't worry about the reason. They don't need one.
2. Remember the immigration and border agreement recently signed by Obama and Harper? This makes it easier for US police to pick you up for indefinite imprisonment with no right to trial. It also means Harper will be under pressure to pass a similar law empowering out own armed forces.

The is the story of the century. And just about every newspaper in the world is treating it as such. But not Brunswickmedia. They haven't mentioned it. Their big story is "A merry Christmas really is possible."

Sorry to spend so much time on what isn't in The Moncton Times and Transcript. The problem is that there's nothing it it. That's the purpose of the Irving press. Keep 'em dumb. Keep 'em trivial.

Dec.14: thinking out loud: no. 2

2011-12-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

So how and why do people organize societies in the first place?

Well, we know that primitive hunters formed societies in order to cooperate for more effective hunting. There a direct line from their development of team strategies and tactics to hunt and their use of weapons to do their work that goes through the armies of Alexander the Great and all the way to modern armies. Working together to kill people, after all, is pretty much the same as working together to hunt game.

Then came agriculture. That, too, created societies to, for example, build water ditches for irrigation, to share labour at peak work times and, very important, for mutual defence against the hunter-warriors who swept down to raid them at harvest time.

Unlike the hunters, who had to follow game, the farmers had to stay put - where the crops were. They also had to form compact villages for mutual defence against the hunters.

But usually they couldn't match the killing skills of the hunters, so farm villages would hire some of the hunters to protect them. This was the theme of a Japanese film called 'Seven Samurai'. It was copied as a Hollywood western starring Yul Brynner in which seven gunmen were hired to protect a Mexican village.

Both films rather romanticized the hired killers. In real life, as villages grew and as they linked up to each other for trade, the hired warriors/hunters would use their brute force to become kings and aristocrats.

But to sustain that organized societies, there had to be rules. The example of that development that most of us are familiar with is the story of Moses.

(No. I'm not going to get religious on you. I have no idea whether the story of Moses is true. I don't care. Even if there were no Moses, stories like it are found in other religions. If it's not a true story, it's at least a good example of what seems to have happened in many parts of the world.)

In The Bible, Moses finds himself with a large number of people following him into the wilderness for who could know how many years of nomadic life. They were really nothing more than a mob. To survive, they needed rules and authority. In the story of Moses, those two necessities are combined.

Moses comes down from the mountain with the rules. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Most of them are eminently sensible rules. I think we can agree tht any society that accepted killing or stealing as acceptable behaviour wouldn't last long. But how was Moses going to get people to accept those rules?

Well, maybe Moses did talk to God. Or maybe he pulled a fast one. But his opening line laid down the authority, "I am the Lord they God".

That combination of rule and authority was practical. Indeed, it was essential for just about every society in the world. It was usually expressed in religion - Hinduism, Islam, Confucionism, Judaism, Christianty, Islam.We made those practical rules into what we call morality.

We should not allow that religious tone to obscure their essential value. They are practical rules. They work. However silly the various religions got in inventing trivial and sometimes bone-headed little rules all their own, the fundamental morality of any major religion is much the same. That's not because God says so. It's because that fundamental morality preached by Moses works. It holds a society together.

We have since tried all sorts of authority, from dictatorship to democracy. But the purpose and durability of a society is still determined by its morality. That doesn't mean that people have to be religious. But they do have to respect morality. Otherwise, the game doesn't work.

Do we have a moral society? Is it moral to believe that competition is a rule of morality? The rule of our society is often that to amass a fortune by exploiting others is good, to think only of yourself and your wants is desirable. Does that strike you as a sound piece of morality? Does it strike you as a practical way to hold a society together?

The latest US census shows that 48% of americans are living in poverty, and the their number is growing. How long do you think a society like that can survive? Meanwhile, the very rich are able to ensure that their money is safe from the taxman. As the society continues to move in that direction, we are seeing rising levels of violence by the authorities. Indeed, congress is now voting to allow the army to arrest American citizens on American soil, to detain them indefinitely with no charge, no lawyer, no nothing. How long can a society with that moral standard survive?

We need to forget isms for the time. We need to start with our sense of morals, our sense of what is practical in ensuring a lasting society. Let's nail that down first. Then we can talk about authority.

Then, once those are straight in our minds, let's look at what we really have, and what we have to change.

The starting point is morality - not because morality is good but because it's practical. It works. Immorality doesn't work.

Dec. 15: The bottom of p. A5 tells you all you need to know.....

2011-12-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

....about the quality of The Moncton Times and Transcript. For the fifth issue in a row, it's a "news story" plugging the autobiography of a former exec of the Irvings and their imitation newspapers. In case you missed it for the last four issues, it appends the usual column telling you how much the book costs, and exactly where you can get one. In return, you might want to send a note to the editor of the Moncton TandT, telling him where he can shove it.

For the fifth time, it's written by the same reporter, often using the same sentences used four times earlier. I don't know how many times I've read that the autobiographer had "an iron hand", that he was kind-hearted, that he was a child of the depression, that he went from being paper boy to publish for the Irving papers in St. John. The repetitions suggest that the reporter has a limited vocabulary - and is still unfamiliar with the correcting meanings of gruff and guff. (He uses only gruff, even when he means guff.)

Gruff is an adjective. It refers to a tone of voice or manner. To say someone has a gruff voice, therefore, is quite correct. However, it is not correct to say that someone took no gruff - though the reporter says so at least three times in this compelling series.

Guff (note the missing r, is a noun. Loosely, it can refer to bluster or talking back or talking in circles. One cannot give or take gruff. There is no such object as a gruff. What you give or take is guff.

The reporter can find the word guff and its history in Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.

Why spend so much time on a blatantly silly news story? Because nothing could show more clearly the contempt that the Irving papers have for the intelligence of their readers - and their use of the papers to spread whatever propaganda - and even lies - they want New Brunswickers to believe.

They largely ignore real news, and fill their pages with propganda, trivia, irrelevance. These are newspapers based on the assumption that we are stupid and ignorant - and it is the job of the newspaper to keep us that way. The leaves Mr. Irving free to suck the province dry - with the help of his Liberal and Conservative flunkies.

The result is a population in this province that is remarkably passive, remarkably accepting of abuse, has a series of governments whose only policies are buzzwords, and who freely give us and our futures away to corporations.

Brunswickmedia is contemptible by any standards I have ever seen in the newspaper world. But, obviously, it works.

There's not much in the rest of the paper. If you're not interested in news, then this is the newspaper for you.

Reuters offers its usual half-story about the US pullout from Iraq. Actually, though Obama calls it a pullout, American forces are really just moving next door - to Kuwait. As well, American bases in Iraq remain, and will be maintained by thousands of "private contractors".

The full story of what's happening in Iraq and Syria and Iran is kind of important to New Brunswickers. That whole region could blow up at any time and, if it does, it is a sure thing that Harper will commit us to the war. It might be a good idea for us to learn what this is really all about, and whether we really need or want to send people there to die.

That would be so much better than just sending them, then putting medals and condolences personally signed by the prime minister in the mail for their family survivors.

late night thinking out loud... no. 1

2011-12-14T19:53:00.000-08:00

Around the world, partisans of every side are saying the solution to all our problems is democracy - or it's capitalism - or it's social democracy - or it's some other ism.

Captialists point to the enormous creation of wealth under their system. Well, fifty years ago, Russians would think with pride of their rise to power - from a backward country whose huge armies just a couple of generations earlier had been pushed to the modern USSR which ranked with the US as a superpower. It was easy to forget the gross brutalities of Stalin that made such advances possible. Nor would many foresee the crash that was to come.

Capitalists, as they point with pride to the growth of wealth under their system, forget the the enormous poverty and suffering in places like Africa and Central America that made their accumulation of wealth possible. They also ignore the reality of the crisis we're living through. That, too, is overlooked. Capitalism has been used to create wealth out of destruction. And it's even now turning its destructive powers on itself.

Democracy, socialism, communism, capitalism will sometimes work and sometimes not work. None of them is based on any fundamental and eternal truth of on any infallible formula. All of them are created by people and run by people. And people, alas, are not perfect mechanisms.

Communism, as practiced by Stalin and by Mao, bore slight resemblance to the ideals of Marx. The United States, even as it was founded on the prncipal that all people are created equal, elected as first president the man who was the biggest slaveowner in the country. And, though a country that constantly praises democracy, has oven overthrown democratically elected governments and installed dictators all over the world (Haiti, Guatemala - all over Central America, Iran,Chile...)

The problem is not in any particular system of government or of economics. The problem, surely, is in the people who exercise power (or who fail to exercise power) within those systems.

So why do we have those systems in the first place?

Can we agree that we look for systems because we want to live in a society - and not in isolation?

So maybe - remember this is thinking out loud - and hoping to hear responses - maybe before we start demanding the ism of month as the solution to our problem, maybe we should look at ourselves.

Why do we want a society? What kind of a society are we thinking of? And, if we want a society, how do we propose to hold it together?

These, surely, are the first questions we have to answer. We can't solve problems until we define what they are. Why? What kind? How will we hold it together?

There are questions that were asked and answered all over the world thousands of years ago. And all over the world, the answers took the form we call morality.

But you can't build morality into a political or economic system. Systems aren't people. It's the people who run the systems who have to be moral. Within a democracy, that means we have to be moral. And we aren't. That's the cause of our problems.

(No. I'm not going to suggest we should all jump up and clap hands for Jesus. Morality can be found in churches. But churches (like political and economic systems) are run by people - they can scre up just as badly as capitalism and socialism do.)

No - let's think a bit about what morality means..

And remember, I'm thinking out loud. So you do it , too.

Dec. 14: Ah, come on....

2011-12-14T09:36:00.000-08:00

...for the fourth issue in a row, The Moncton Times and Transcript has a front page story about a book by a former Brunswick News staffer. Again, it's pure gush by the same reporter, Marty Klinkenberg. Again, it tells you that it costs just $29.95 (plus tax), making it the ideal Christmas gift (perhaps for someone you don't like but have to buy something for.) And it tells you where you can get it. If you live in Moncton, you can get it - guess where? The office of The Moncton Times and Tribune. Yes. And on Monday, it will appear in bookstores all over the province. I mean, just all over.

The questionable story in section A is a story that a poll (again, by Corporate Research Associates) shows New Brunswickers split, 45% for and 45% against - and 10% undecided on the question of shale gas. 83% worry about it despite even strict regulations. 64% feel it will yield long-term benefits.

How are those last two figures possible? Do they mean half of those who worry that it might destroy the environment feel that the long term benefit is worth destroying the environment? I'd love to know the questions that produced such confused answers. But, again, CRA doesn't tell us exactly what the questions were.

Oh, yes. The 45% who favoured shale gas, favoured it "in principle". What on earth does that mean? Either we approve of something or we don't. Exactly what does approving in principle mean? People use the term commonly - but the meaning is never clear. Try this one, for example,

"Do you approvae of abortion in principal?"

"Yes. But I believe God will send you to hell if you have one." Is that a yes or a no?

Again, Corporate Research Institute does not supply us with the questions. And, again, the CEO pontificates on the meaning of the survey, and concludes it will take strict regulations before the public will accept the idea of producing shale gas.

This combination of unstated questions, seemingly vague ones (as in "in principle") combined with CRA's record of service essentially for private business, and with the CEO's habit of preaching at the end all make CRA polls on public affairs highly suspect.

It does, though, give us a hint of what the Allward government plans to do.The survey, in fact, may have been designed to be the opening shot in Allward's next move. He will puff and blow about passing strict regulations (something both Liberals and Conservatives have been puffing and blowing for a decade with no results), and about strict enforcement - which hasn't happened at all.

He will use the poll as evidence he is listening to the people.

In regard to enforcement, check out the lead story in NewsToday "Environment rules not enforced: watchdog". This story is in reference to the federal government. In fact, lax enforcement is notable, it seems, wherever the fossil fuels industries operate. And, in that context, New Brunswick has a particularly stinking record.

In any case, it doesn't matter how strict the rules are or how well they are enforced. Accidents will still happen. And, once they happen, it's too late for enforcement. As well, the present technology in shale gas development is still so new that we don't have anything close to an idea of what regulations are needed - or whether any regulations at all will ensure safety.

Allward's hope will be that New Brunswickers can be fooled yet again - and he can latch onto that sixty percent who are naive enough to believe that government regulations will solve the problem. They don't seem to have solved the problem anywhere else in the world. But New Brunswick will be different.

Right.

There is an important story in the NewsToday section that the Pentagon has severe doubts about the F-35 fighter plane. Why is that important? Because the Harper government has committed itself to that extremely expensive plane as the major weapon of our armed forces. Its price is still rising out of control; and the experts in the Pentagon seriously doubt the future of the F-35.

Harper and Mackay can look patriotic and all that to pump up the defence budget, and stock up on the latest goodies. . But first we should made sensible choices about what our armed forces should equipped to do - and then make some sensible choices about what to buy for them. So far, they've been willing to spend. But they don't seem to have been willing (or able?) to think.

There's a story that puts the dead in Syrian fighting at 5,000. Isn't that interesting? We have a count of the dead in Syria while the fighing is going on. But we don't yet have a count of the dead in Libya even though we stopped the killing there weeks ago. Funny how Reuters can find some numbers, but not others.

Oh, and there's no mention that Libya has been slipping into a civil war. It seems some factions don't want the same kind of democracy that others to - and some don't want it at all. So much for our "humantarian" bombing to bring stability and democracy to Libya.

On the editorial page, Norbert Cunningham agrees that climate change is a serious problem. Predictably, though, he feels it's a problem best left to private industry to solve. The part he seems to have missed is that private industry has demonstrated pretty bluntly that it has no interest in solving the problem. And that's true whetther the private interests are based in the US or Canada or China or India.

The op ed page, as is too usual, is a waste of time. People need some substantial commentary to make meaning out of the news. The Times and Transcript has little news to start with - and far too little comment of any substance.

Dec. 13: Incroyable...

2011-12-13T08:25:00.000-08:00

For the third issue in a row, The Moncton Times and Transcript has the same story on the front page. It's not really a news story at all. It's really a gushing ad for a book by a former New Brunswick media exec. All three were written by the same reporter; and all three repeat much of the same gush as the others.

Marty Kinkenberg is the writer of all three stories - and he's now either dreadfully embarassed by the paper he works for or, like so many other Brunswicknews staffers, he must have no shame at all.

The only breathlessly new information this time is that the author of this wonderful book is that he was a poor child who grew up to be a philanthropist. You know what a philanthropist is. That's somebody who rips the poor off all year - or helps someone else to rip them off - but makes sure every poor child gets a bag of candy at Christmas. Jesus would be impressed.

There isn't much on national or international news. As I guessed, in an earlier blog, there is no mention of the extraordinarily anti-freedom bill that is now going through the US congress and, of course, no mention of the possible effect on Canada.

That's because they needed room for a fast-breaking story about how climbing stairs is healthier than riding an elevator. There's also a flash that the red-tailed hawk may become Canada's national bird.

Nationally - Canada is withdrawing from th Kyoto accord. Of course. If Harper were to stay, there'd be billions he'd have to pay for not even tryiing to live up to the standards set in the accord.

And, in a move that's bound to win votes from the sort of yahoos who don't think we have enough people in jail in this country, Ottawa has forbidden Moslem women to wear veils at citizenship ceremonies. The reason given is that their answers to the oath of citizenship can't be heard clearly enough. Nobody has ever heard of microphones?

Actually, I'm more concerned we could have women sneaking in to Canada disguised as men - or men sneaking in as women. What this country really needs is citizenship ceremonies in the nude. We could sell tickets.

We're close to war and utter chaos in the middle east, with Canada almost certain to join the dance. Pakistan has just kicked the US off one of its airbases in Pakistan, and has cut off all supplies for the Afghanistan war that pass through Pakistan. The result is that the cost of shipping in war supplies has now risen by 400%. No news on shale gas, of course. There is, however, yet another op ed column to go along with all the stories we've read pimping for an expensively world-class hockey rink for Moncton.

There is a very sensible column by Alec Bruce on Dieppe City Council's heartless, and bone-headed handling of water supply to a subdivision. It's a good example of why it's not enough to get news. We also need intelligent analysis of it to stimulate our own evaluations and responses. The TandT is dreadfully weak on both news and analysis.

It's also weak on grammar. Norbert writes."A lazy person could easily waste their talent..." Gee, Norbert, 'person' is singular. 'Their' is plural.

We're in much deeper trouble that one could guess from reading the TandT. I suspect the trouble, commonly identified as liberalism or conservatism or capitalism or socialism or communism, runs far deeper than that.

I don't want to do it in a regular blog, partly because it's thinking out loud, partly because it has to do with morality. (No. I'm not going to talk about clapping hands for Jesus, or Muhammed, or Buddha.)
It does have to do with all religions - or all the major ones I know of - with the practcal side of all of them - with our neglect of that practical side - and with the general collapse of morality, even in religious cricles, all over the world. Maybe I'll do it on a late evening.

Meanwhile, gotta rush out to buy that great story about the man who was born poor but got rich - and who was good to the little childrren - one day every year.

Dec. 12 addendum

2011-12-12T16:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes (usually) there is more news in Rolling Stone than there is in the Times and Transcript.
Today, for example, Rolling Stone had a story that I'm quite sure the TandT will not have tomorrow - or ever.

A bill which will be called the National Defence Authorization Act if it passes (and it probably will pass) is now working its way through the US Congress. It will officially authorize the indefinite imprisonment of anyone, including both foreigners and Americans, on "suspicion" of any link to al Queda or any (undefined) "associated forces" - or anyone who in anyway is suspected of being a threat to the US. That's a definition so broad it could mean anyone who critizes the government at all.

It requires no charge to be laid, no trial, no lawyers allowed, no limit to the length of detention. Those charged will be immediately handed over to the army for imprisonment and any 'appropriate' treatment .

That's contrary of course, to the American constitition - and contrary to every prinicple of democracy and individual freedom. But it will probably pass; and Obama, who has already had people imprisoned or assassinated without charge or trial, will probably sign it.

Not our problem? Think again. Under the recent agreement between Harper and Obama, American police and other agents can operate in Canada. The nature of the agreement will require a close similarity between Canadian and American law in the area of homeland security. Expect a no-fly list for Canada. Expect highly intrusive airport searches. Expect American agents to have the right to arrest Canadians - "on suspicion".

The TandT probably won't mention any of this. But it's kind of important - to you. Watch what you say in the new Canada. Watch who you vote for.

Will Harper agree to all this? You betcha. He wants to be really, really good friends with the US government because that would be good for Canadian coporations and their access to the American market. And Harper, like Alward, listens - to corporations.

Dec. 12: The TandT as a school for pimps

2011-12-12T09:32:00.000-08:00

Just when you think you've seen them all...

Today's front page of today's TandT has the same story it did on Saturday. And it was written by the same reporter. It was obvious the first time this was a piece of gush to push the sales of a book written by an ex-Brunswickmedia exec. The second version is pretty much the same gush, with just a few changes in the wording.

There's a cutesie note that this was a man who wasn't afraid to stand up to Irving but - surprise - they almost always agreed.

Oh, another surprise. The book is published by Brunsick Press which is owned by Brunswick News which is owned by the Telegraph-Journal which is owned by - the good fairy. I hope that the editors at Brunswick Press are better than the editors at the TandT - and know the difference bettween gruff and guff.

I have never seen anything in a newspaper so blatantly unethical and, at the same time, so comical.

And people pay for this tawdry juvenilia.

The front page also has a story about a woman from Alberta who says her well was poisoned as a result of fracking for shale oil. Nice of them to notice. Actually, if you just google, you will find nothing strange or unusual about the poisoning of wells or waterways or lands or living things by fracking for shale gas. You will find some 713,000 entries - and that doesn't begin to touch the possible long-term consequences on the land, the water, and us.

Quite recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency has issued serious warnings about shale gas methods. I don't believe the TandT has mentioned that. But Time magazine did - and it's even bigger than The Moncton Times and Transcript.

Why the rush for shale gas, and for 'dirty' oil as in Alberta? Why do oil companies now want to drill in ecologically frail areas such as the Arctic?

1. They are very worried about current sources of oil. With the enormous rise of fossil fuel use, especially in Asia and Latin America, present sources almost certainly will not be adequate. As well, it may be militarily challenging to maintain access to them. This makes the oil industry enthusiastic about North American sources, whatever damage they may do.

2. Oil companies want to maintain their high profits.

3. Why are Canadian and American governments anxious to serve the wishes of oil companies? Check the figures on political funding for the Liberals, Conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

4.Finally, neither the oil companies nor the governments give a damn what the consequences are for us.

So what's the game here? The NB government and Brunswickmedia will play the game of pretending to study the issue, then will come up with new and "tough" regulations which will have "tough" enforcement. That is - we'll go back to square one. (There is no way the gas companies will accept regulations or penalties or enforcement. And if they did, it wouldn't matter because all the same consequences would still be there). Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives will do a thing for you. And they both have the record to prove it.

The only major international news story is 'Historic climate deal reached'. Bullshit. No climate deal was reached. What they have agreed is to work towards another big meeting to try to reach an agreement in three or four years. In other words, more than a dozen years after politicians realized we were destroying the earth, they decided to take another three or four to think about it some more. And then another five to put those laws in place. Nothing of any practical effect will be done until 2020 - and probably not even then.

No deal was reached. That's the only historic part of it. Even as we're watching the ice caps disappear, species disappear at an alarming rate, climate variations have massively disrupted agriculture, we're going to think some more. To do something. In 2020. Maybe.

I hope the ice caps and the melting tundra and the farmland can wait. But I doubt it. It may already be too late.

Why did Canada appear to be opposing any agreement?
1. Large, Canadian corporations don't want an agreement because they have invested heavily in fossil fuel. Like Alward, Harper knows who he answers to.
2. It's the same in the US. So, in taking a prominent lead in stalling things, Harper was kissing up to Obama. Good Canadian Harper took the heat for Obama. Obama will be nice to Canadian corporations.

Solid column by Alec Bruce.Good one by Norbert - though I shudder to see he has adopted the hideous use of quote as a noun.

The best part of the op ed page is the lost and found section.

Make it a point to read a very touching story on p. A2; it's about the Canadian veterans of the fall of Hong Kong in 1941. We sent almost two thousand troops to protect Hong Kong in case of a Japanese invasion. Very few were combat-ready. Their officers were inexperienced. All were inadquately equipped or trained at all in the short range weapons they would need. The had no air cover. They would face an overwhelming force of Japanese with years of battle experience in China.

Half were killed in battle or died in captivity where they were worked, beaten and starved to death. Few of the survivors would ever again be physical healthy; and all would live with the horror of memory.

I knew some of them, and went over the scenes of fighting with them while I was in Hong Kong. I saw a long flight of steps up a hillside that was covered by michine guns. The Canadians repeatedly charged it. One veteran wept as he remembered the blood flowing down those steps.

One of the most poignant photos I have ever seen is of the soldiers marching down to the docks in Vancouver to leave for Hong Kong. A child of five or so has broken away from his mother to hold out his hand to his soldier-father. The father bends and reaches back to him.

It must be somewhere on google. I'll take a look for it.

Why did we send ill-trained and ill-equpped soldiers to Hong Kong in 1941? A place that was indefensible? It's a little too long to tell here. But the story does no credit to our political leadership of the time.

For an excellent book on the battle of Hong Kong, try to find Captive Christmas, 1941. It's widely available in Hong Kong, but rare over here.

The story reminds us to remember those soldiers and their sacrifice. I would just add a little to that. Remember those soldiers BEFORE we send soldiers off in future. We have squandered lives in Afghanistan for no gain whatever. Nor was Canadian freedom under any threat. We have killed civilians in Libya. There's a lot more of that coming soon.

Let's think BEFORE we send them.

Dec. 10: o-o-o-ooh. Big, blank space in today's news.

2011-12-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

Remember that treaty Harper just signed with the US? The one to integrate our border security? Good. Now check Google news. It has a story about that agreement from Postmedia. (And Postmedia is the most pro-Harper, right wing paper in the country.)

A leaked cable from the US government says this is a step in the gradual economic integration of Canada with the US. Doesn't sound like much? Well, it is.

Economic integration, which would include a common currency and common access to resources would make necessary closely linked national budgets. For a start, goodbye medicare. Hello, food stamps. Welcome, overpriced defence contractors.

It would mean that Canada would, for all practical purposes become ten American states.

The US has wanted to add Canada since it invaded in 1812; (indeed, since it invaded in 1775). In this next year, we will be celebrating our victory of 1812 - even as we accept our defeat in 2012.

Through the nineteenth century, the US openly spoke of expanding all the way to the Arctic. That's why it never recognized the Canadian claim to the north. They called their policy Manifest Destiny. It has now resurfaced as Dominionism - an obvious command from God to domination. (Check any speech by any Republican leadership contender.)

Harper has taken a giant step in signing away Canada. There's been almost no discussion either with the public or with the House of Commons. Take a look at the condition of the US - the millions who are starving without any significant government aid, the soaring poverty, the civil unrest, the savage cuts in social programmes to save on taxes for the rich, the destruction of public education..... Take a good look. You're looking at Canada - very soon.

This is the way that Canada ends. "Not with a bang, but a whimper."

And Harper still has four years to go.

The TandT had no room for that story. But it had big spaces for a gushing story on A1 and A4 about the memoirs of a publisher (who has, not accidentally, connections with Brunswick Media). He began life so poor - get this - so poor that the only way, as a child, that he could get onto a golf course was by being a caddy.

I pause to brush away a tear. How we must all feel guilty about our own youths when we all had full membership in any golf course of our choice! It brings backs memories of me at age eleven, when I paid a fourteen year old caddy seventy-five cents for carrying my heavy bag of expensive clubs around eighteen holes, then toddled off to the club bar for a scotch.

There's also a story that salaries of ALL public employees, including the head of NB Power should be public. Agreed. So should the salaries of all senior executives in private business. That would give us a balanced view of the salaries of all those who live on our tax dollars.

Reuters has its usual, half story about the growing chill in US/Russian relations. The major cause of it is a US plan to build a "missile shield" on the Russian border. But the story barely mentions the missile shield and gives not hint of what the missile shield is all about.

Older readers may remember the days we were told it was good for major powers to have nuclear weapons because the danger of mutual destruction would ensure that nobody would ever use a nuclear weapon. That was always a questionable theory (not to say a hare-brained one). Now, consider this-

The anti-missile shield is designed to block any Russian nuclear missiles that might be fired. Okay. But if both sides having nuclear missiles was supposed to prevent a nuclear war - now, think about this. A missile shield would mean that, in effect, Russia would no longer be capable of using nuclear weapons. That would mean the US would be so far ahead in weaponry that it could launch them without fear of retaliation. Goodbye, fear of mutual destruction.

The US would never use such weapons? Actually, it is the only country in the world that ever has. Twice.

There is no mention of Pakistan, though it is on the edge of war with the US, and is openly discussing a war over water supply with India - both India and Pakistan are nuclear.

The editorial is about how Moncton will rise again, and come to the rescue of a multi- millionaire who needs a hockey rink. Ah, the city with a heart. (What the hell. It's Christmas.)

Michael Murphy, a candidate for the Liberal leadership and a former Shawn Graham cabinet minister, contributes a very sensible column on the shale gas policy he would follow. I wish I could believe him.

The student columns are, again, solid. Jana Giles make an important point about the necessity to be organized. I feel particularly strongly about that because I had to learn the hard way, losing ten years of my life in the process. One of the single, most important things students can learn is getting organized. Nothing affects their futures so profoundly as learning to make a habit out of being organized. It's important to teach it in school. It's even more important to teach it at home.

Alex Corbett has a thoughtful and quite original take on the connections between drama and football. ( and gets a plug in for a play he's appearing in. My daughter saw it with her class, and loved it.)

Christina Korotkov has a thought-provoking piece on reading. I well know the problem she describes. Wordy writers really turn me off. But she goes past that to see a value to them.

Jessica Melanson has an amusing and well-told story. And - she's writing in her second language.

Our schools are turning out some pretty good writers.

Oh, I could wish our students writers would have a chat with our sports writers. The word 'classic' means something of such high quality that it sets the standard for all to follow. Then sports reporters got hold of it.

It began with major golf tournaments.Okay. The Master's is a classic. It's a bit of a corruption of the word. But it's a big game. Okay.

But now, every second string elementary school basketball game for the grade four classes in a two-school town is a 'classic'. Enough.

Dec. 9: A "good news" headline presented as "bad news"; and other such..

2011-12-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

Ottawa is not going to contribute to the cost of a Moncton downtown hockey rink and convention centre. (The cost would be anywhere from 100 million to twice that and more, depending on who you ask.)

That's good news for Canadian taxpayers, better news for New Brunswick taxpayers who would have been even more on the hook to contribute, and superb news for Moncton rate-payers who would have been on the hook for city taxes as well as federal and provincial ones for generations to come. And all this at a time when the whole world's economic future is very much in doubt. (The city claims to have a 30 year city economic plan. That sounds impressive - but is surely uncertain because the rest of the world doesn't have a plan for even the coming week.)

We have seen no evidence of any great demand from the citizens of Moncton for such a centre though, no doubt, Corporate Research Associates could provide us with a poll showing that 57% of Monctonians support it. Nor have we ever seen evidence of exactly how much of the money produced by such a venture would stay in Moncton - or exactly who would get it.

This is a important story. But the tone of it suggests that it's bad news with the only good news part being that the valiant Moncton City Council will fight on.

P.A3 has what will seems to be a scandalous story to many readers - the salaries of top civil servants (and severance pay) in New Brunswick. True enough, for those earning minimum wage or even a comfortabe bit more, civil service pay150,000 to 200,000 plus severage deals of a hundred thousand or so will look pretty high.

In fact, they are far below the salaries for jobs at similar levels in private business. A dozen years ago, a board of private businessmen offered me a job. The assigned a lawyer to me to explain all the goodies I could ask for and expect to get. The salary could be 280,000 - maybe more. Severance pay would be half a million. Expensive club memberships would be part of the deal. I would have an interest-free loan to pay my mortgage. A car would be provided, with maintenance and gas part of the package.

That was a dozen years ago. And the offer, though from businessmen, was not in the business sector. In that sector, salaries and benefits run much higher.

One often hears that those who fail to do the job in private business get fired. Nah. That part is just for the peasantry in private business. When you do a bad job - and are at the senior levels - you get a severance package that can - and frequently does - run into the millions.

The fact is that when it comes to pay levels, the public sector is far more efficient than the public one.

A good news story would have made comparisons with the private sector to put the public sector into perspective. This one didn't. The public reaction to this story will likely be indignation, and muttering about how you don't get away with that sort of thing in private business.

The story, by failing to provide comparative figures, gives a false impression. And 'false impression' is a nice way of saying 'lying'.

(To which some people will answer, "At least the private sector spending doesn't come out of our pockets." Oh? Where do you think it comes from?)

The story that "Canada wants a new climate deal by 2015" gives the impression that Canada is taking the lead in preparing for action to cut carbon emissions. In fact, the reverse is true. Canada, at the Durban conference, took the lead in killing any hope for action.

It did so because corporations in Canada and the US are afraid that any serious action on climate change would hurt their short term profits - thus their campaign of denial that climate change is happening at all. Canada's stand has made us contemptible to most of the world. But it is very pleasing to Harper's dearest friends, the corporate bosses of Canada and the US.

Similarly, the story on Harper's border deal with the US dwells largely on Harper's enthusiasm. It says little about the concerns over it (and doesn't explain even the few it mentions. This agreement marks a fundamental change in the nature of Canadian life. We have heard very little about it. And it has happened without any agreement from or discussion in the House of Commons. (Tell me more about how our soldiers fought for democracy and freedom.)

The second editorial "A call to action" is just dumb. Just about every expert in the world agrees that Harper's "getting tough on crime" omnibus bill is both expensive and ineffective. The editor picks one case, a very emotional one, in which the assigned penalty would have been longer with tougher legislation. Then he uses that one, very isolated case, to suggest that the experts on crime all over the world are wrong.

There is not a word about Pakistan, Iran, or Syria - though we could soon be at war with all of them, and though such a war could also draw in China and Russia. Way to keep your eye on the ball, Mr. News Editor.

The only fresh air in the whole paper is in two columns, by Alec Bruce and David Suzuki, on climate change,

There's an excellent letter to the editor by Jean-Claude Basque of the NB Common Front for Social Justice.

There's a pretty silly one from a reader who didn't like a student columnist's recent views on religion. Apparently, the letter-writer is under the impression we live in a Christian society. Yeah. That's why we made the baby Jesus into Santa Claus, and shifted the theme of Christmas from giving to shopping. That profound faith of Moncton is why the city is peppered with churches that have "For Sale" signs on them.

Dec. 8: Vaudeville in New Brunswick....

2011-12-08T08:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Natural Resources minister Bruce Northrop announced that Windsor Energy would not be prosecuted for violation of gas exploration regulations. There's no doubt it did violate them. Windsor Energy admitted long ago that it violated them - to save money. It seems, though, that our "tough" regulations have no penalties attached to them. Let's think of what that means.
1. Explorations has been going on for ten to a dozen years. In that time, we have had no protection whatever against the dangers of such explorations - despite the fact that we have frequently been told we have no reason to worry because we have such tight regulations.
2. Shale gas is not a side issue. In fact, it is being pimped as the key to New Brunswick's future. This is a major issue And the man most responsible for it, the minister of resources it did not know that the regulations could not be enforced?
If that is true, Mr. Northrup should be ordered by the premier to fall on his sword. If that is true, it's an astonshing display of incompetence on the part of the minister, and it's incompetence that that has endangered the health and safety of all New Brunswickers.
3. This has been going on for years. The legislature through all those years has been dripping with lawyers. As well, there are lawyers employed by government who specialize in the wording of laws. Is it possible that all those experts, over so many years, and whether Liberal or Conservatives, noticed that we had passed such important regulations, but had "forgotten" to include penalties?
I cannot believe that all those people were so stupid for so long. They must have known well what was going on.
4 Brunswick Media has a legislative reporter. Usually, legislatve reporters have some training and considerable experience. Usually, they read bills that are before the house. Did the legislative reporter not bother to read even such an important piece of legislation? Or did editors simply decide not to print his story?
5. How come this gap in the legislation was never noticed earlier? Is it possible that it wasn't noticed because the government has never bothered to carry out inspections or to enforce the regulations before?
6. How could it possibly take the RCMP, with all its expertise, a month to notice that the regulation was enenforceable?
7. Obviously, Windsor Energy knew it had nothing to fear. That's why it broke the regulation in the first place. I would think it almost certain that Windsor Energy pointed that out to the premier and to Mr. Northrup the day it happened.

This looks like comic opera. But there's nothing comic about it. We're being played for suckers by the energy industry and by both mainline parties. The whole future of the environment and of health in this province has been placed in jeopardy by the same people who lied to us almost daily about how tough the regulations were, how the inspection was tough, and how both would get tougher.

We've been lied to by the whole political structure of this province for years - and on a crucial issue in both economic and health terms.

And what will Mr. Northrup do about it? Well, he's going to pass even tougher regulations and, in cotrast to his past performance, he's going to enforce them. That's not good enough. And based on the record it's not believable.

Mr. Northrup: if you were a man of any integrity and honour, you would apologize and resign. Indeed, I would say the same for all members of the legislature including (especially including) the premier.

In newspaper terms, this is not just the story of the year. This could well be the story of the cenutry. This is the worst debasement of democracy and political inegrity this province has ever seen. So where are the commentaries on it in The TandT?

There aren't any.

If you look really hard though, you can find the story itself - hidden on p. A12. It's a very short one.

The editorial is a piece indicating the editorial writer has a (deliberate?) ignorance of statistics and of polling. It not only accepts the very misleading poll that shows the Allward government in high popularity, it draws conclusions about it that cannot possibly be drawn from the data in the poll.

Generally, it's a kiss-up to the dreary Mr. Allward, and it's accompanied by a kiss-up cartoon from de Adder.

Excellent op ed column by Jody Dallaire, using samples of legislation to show how some politicians work, and the real reasons they pass the laws that they do.

There's also a thoughtful column by Rod Allen. In it, he mentions seeing a woman reading a paperback, "A**holes Finish First". He concludes "I hope it isn't true. I hope that isn't a 'bible' for our times.

I'm afraid it's worse than that. The Bible for our times - it has been for some 40 years - is "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. It's a book in praise of greed, self-interest, and indifference to others. Read it to understand the political and corporate circles of New Brunswick.

Nov. 7: addendum for Nov. 7

2011-12-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

There will be no charges against SWN (shale gas company) for illegally carrying out shale gas exploration in Sussex. Apparently, it's not illegal to break the law if you're a gas company. Next time you get stopped for speeding, tell the police officer it's okay; you're a gas company.

So now our fearless minister of natural resources has two choices. He can ask for an apology or, as he did earlier, get tough and ask for a sincere apology.

I doubt whether he'll get either.

I also doubt that we'll see the legislation tightened at any time in the near future.

Dec. 7: Lies, damn lies, and....

2011-12-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

Statistics can, to say the least, be misleading. They often are - and are often deliberately misleading. (Even when they tell the truth, they can be - and often are - used to give a false impression.) They can also be slanted by the precise wording of the question.

To add to the problem, polling companies are hired to do polls. Unlike Santa Claus, somebody pays them for what the they - and that somebody often makes it clear what sort of results he or she would like to see. A good reporter or a good news editor should know that.

Evidently, The Moncton Times and Tribune is short on good reporters and good editors. Today's lead story is that the Alward government's popularity is up, with the support of 57% of NBers. The Liberals got 28%, the NDP 23%.

Oops! That doesn't add up to 100%. It adds up to 108%. But that's not all. Not by a long shot.

A later part of the report says that 20% either refused to reply or didn't know; ( it isn't clear whether this was referring to a particular question or to to the whole thing.) In any case, the conservatives did not get got support of 57% of all New Brunswickers - or even of 108% of all New Brunswickers. They got the support of 53% of those who answered. But those who answered represented only 71% of New Brunswickers.

That means real Conservative support was more like 42% - and there's over a three percent margin of error. Nor is even that the whole story.

The company hired to do the research is Corporate Research Associates, a purely commercial outfit frequently employed by large corporations. Is it possible CRA might have a bias? Is it possible it might, for example, skew the results with clever wording of the questions? (We aren't told the wording of the questions.) Is it possible they might be selective in their choice of districts in which to conduct the survery? There's a hint of some, considerable bias in paragraphs two, three, and four of the front page story.

The CEO of Corporate Research associates told the rerorter that the party's handling of the shale gas issue might be the reason for it's good results. "The way they've handled shale gas has been pretty even-handed, " he said. Even-handed? What - they've provided full information? They've given both sides of the issue? They've prosecuted SWN for deliberately breaking the law in its most recent exploration in Sussex? Get real.

He also said proof of the government's even-handedness is shown in its promise to bring down the toughest regulations of any jurisdiction to protect the environment.

We've had no regulations to speak of for a dozen years - from either Conservatives or Liberals. This Conservative government has had power for over a year. It's been promising tough regulations since the start. We still haven't seen any.

It has taken no significant action against SWN, even though SWN publicly admitted it broke the law, and did so to save money.

This, says CEO of Corporate Research Associates, is proof of even-handedness. Gee. I wonder which party he supports.

Like many statistical reports, this one is not to be trusted.

Even the CEO of Corporate Research Associates must know that 57% support in a poll in which 29% of those questioned refused to answer does not represent 57% support from all New Brunswickers. And even if all the polling methods were honest and competent (- the CEO's statement does not make this reader confident of that -), it still would not support the claim of 57% of all New Brunswickers.

Trained statisticians would know that. Trained journalists would know that. There are only two explanations for such a poll being reported as this one was. Some people are unethical or some people are incompetent. Possibly, some people are both.

This sort of reporting (combined with the triviality of the reporting in general, the manipulation and sloppiness of editors, the bubblegun silliness of its City Views and Hump Day on the op ed page, the obvious bias and rant of much of its editorializing and commentary) is what makes The Moncton Times and Tribune the worst paper (in a lump with the rest of Brunswick Media) in Canada.

It has also and consistently been deplored by parliamentary studies of the quality of news media in this country. The only print media that the majority of New Brunswickers get are designed to keep them in ignorance of what is going on in the world, in Canada, in New Brunswick, and ieven in Moncton. It is designed to distribute propaganda to keep people obedient to their real masters, but happily absorbed in reading horoscopes, advice from Miss Manners, and an op ed page that is largely children's stories for adults. Try the two gems on today's op for examples.

Oh - Norbert let his enthusiasm for buzz words and bias slip in today's column. As a major leader in setting up social programmes, Britain is often criticized, especially by the rich, as a "nanny" state, one which spoils the poor with things they don't deserve - like health care.

Nannay state. Good choice of words. Sets up a clear image. People like Norbert pick up words of that sort - and use them instead of thinking.

In today's column, Norbert refers to Britain as a nanny state, That buzz term, in the view of Norbert's of this world, say all there is to say.

Evidently, Norbert doesn't know that Britain has the largest wage gap between rich and poor of any developed country. Yes, substantially larger than either the US or Canada. And, like the US and Canada, the rich of Britain are getting even richer, and the poor poorer.

That, of course, is because it's a nanny state. Even worse than New Brunswick, Britain has massive poverty and indebtedness because it's a nanny state - for corporations.

Dec 6: addendum

2011-12-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

I note that our esteemed natural resources minister, Mr. Northrup, has hired an oil industry lobbyist as his aide. Boy.I bet that'll scare SWN.

Let's see. We have an ex-Irving executive as finance minister who is advised by a team of business execs picked by Irving, and an oil industry lobbyist hired to advise on government policy toward the oil industry. And most of the news media owned by Irving.

Democracy in action.

Nov. 6: read todays Times and Transcript in 4 to 5 minutes...

2011-12-06T07:04:00.000-08:00

Worth a read - Alec Bruce column, David Suzuki column, letters to the editor (some very good ones today.)
That' s pretty much it. Most of the news is either trivial or uninformative.

Norbert Cunningham column is a good story for ranting grouches in bed with a tummy ache. This is is about civil servants who live high on the taxpayers' dime. (Where does he think Mr. Irving gets his dimes from? Where does he think CEOs on million dollar salaries get their dimes from? Do theirs come from people who don't pay taxes?)

Their is nothing ( again) on Mr. Northrup's investigation into SWN (which long ago admitted it broke the law when it began exploration for shale gas in Sussex.) The TandT has paid more attention to some person who's been stealing sex toys than it has to this abusive behaviour by a corporation.

So - this is a good day to to start a promised look at school rankings - a practice now all the rage in Canada and the US. We'll start with the granfaher of school rankings in Canada, the MacLean's annual rankings of universities.

For a start, there is no such thing as a best university. As teaching institutions, all Canadian universities are much the same. For a start, almost all university teachers in the US and Canada have exactly the same training in teaching. That is - they have none.

They are trained in their subjects. They are not trained in how to teach them. To know how to teach is kind of important. But, generally, across Canada and the US, few universities have the faintest idea what teaching means. They should, one would think, be teaching students how think for themselves, how to express themselves, how to make judgements. But, for the most part, they don't. And it has never occured to them to even think of how it could be done.

All the typical history teacher knows, for example, is to is how to recite historical "facts" to be memorized for an exam. It's a waste of time. Six months after the exam, the students, having no use for the "facts", will have forgotten most of them.

That's why The Canadian Council on Learning (a federal body) just weeks ago reported that Candian universities are "dysfunctional".

So far as most undergraduates are concerned, there is no significant difference between any two Canadian universities.

However, if you are going for a master's degree or, especially, a doctorate, then it pays to go to a university with a big name. It's not that it will be any better than another. But the snobbery of the academic world (and of the business world) will make your degree more admired.

So how can magazine editors become the experts who decide which is the best university? Simple. All they do is copy the educational ignorance and the snobbery of the academic world. So a good university has lots of research grants. What good that is to most students is not clear. But it is something you can measure.

Something else you can measure is the size of the library. The best university has the biggest library. In fifty years of being a student and then a professor, I spent my life in libraries with hundreds of thousands of books. (Never did get around to all of them.)

Yes, of course, you want a library with a good selection - of the books you need. The average undergraduate does not need hundreds of thousands of books.

Another thing you can measure is class size. So MacLean's looks for small classes as a measure of quality. Look - a class whether small, medium or big - will be good if it is taught by a good teacher. I have been in large classes taught by good teachers - and they were worthwhile. I have been in small classes taught by bad teachers (one, at the doctoral level, was a top expert in his field) - and they were a waste of time.

Then, there is another problem. All students have different needs. A university whose snobbery is inspiring to one student will be distasteful to others.

The MacLean's survey looks for, as it must, things it can measure. Alas! Most of the things one can measure have nothing to do with whether a university is the best one for you or for anybody.

But the impact of the MacLean's survey on universities has been strong and destructive.

In their scramble to do well in the survey, and so to draw more students, universities scamper to design their education systems the way magazine editors, of all people, tell them they should be designed.

They demand ever more research from their professors, for example, which results in thousands of articles that have to be published in subsidized journals because few will read them. Why should they? Many of them are research for the sake of research, and have no value whatever. But publications are something MacLean's can measure - the heat is on profs to publish - publish anything. But publish.

As result, teaching - never a strong point in our universities - has sunk to abysmal levels (without ever being half-decent to start with.)

Historically, universityies were a last fling at childhood (irresponsibility with beer thrown in) for rich kids. Professors and the few serious students went about their studies wtihout paying much attention to the party kids.

That changed about 1950 as our society required more highly trained people. And so the universities became really an extension of public schooling. The professors couldn't just stand there reciting facts. They had to learn how to teach.

But they didn't. The old snobbery and egoism of research ignored the need for teaching. The MacLean's pseudo-scientific surverys have made it far, far worse. We are spending a lot of money on universities - for pretty meagre returns.

Meanwhile, if you're going to university, forget the MacLean's survey. Pick the one you think will suit you.

Just don't expect great teaching, no matter which one you choose.

On the next slack day, we'll look at the drive for school ratings of public schools, the greedy reasons behind it, and the damage it has done to our schools.

Dec. 5:

2011-12-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

The lead story on p. A1 sets the tone for this whole issue of The Moncton Times and Transcript.

"Metro Moncton lights up for Christmas" Gee. LIghts at Christmas.Who would have noticed? But you can't fool the staff of the TandT. No, sir. They spotted those lights, and their investigative reporters found out why they're up.

Inside, there's even more exciting news and opinion. The editorial, for example, lays it on the line, "Moncton Council should set prudent fiscal course". Damn right. Nothing worse than an imprudent fiscal course.

(Going on the basis of earlier editorials and opinion pieces in the Tand T, the prudent thing would be to go in the hole for a couple of hundred million to build a hockey rink.)

The crises of Pakistan, Syria and Iran have us on the edge of World War Three, if not already in it. But there's not a word on them.

Canada is destroying what 's left of its international reputation by blocking any progress to international agreement on climate change. There's a story on the fast and steady increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. But nothing on how Harper has opposed taking any action. (If he supported action, it would displease his corporate sponsors.)

Enjoying our mild December? It's melting our permafrost up north, and releasing unprecedented amounts of CO2 - to join the CO2 from our shale gas - which will make it even warmer. Arctic ice is melting at the fastest rate in 1400 years.

Thank you, Mr. Harper, for protecting our billionaires.

In the whole paper, there is only one, real story. Performing Arts NB is shutting down for lack of government funding. In this province, where so much of artistic performance consists of acts like farting to the tune of White Christmas, this shutting down of real Arts is a serious loss - especially for rural New Brunswick which has little enough to enrich it.

However, we have to cut some budgets so we can finance cheap electrcity and other gifts for Irving, McCain, Ganong et al.

A reader has asked me to write a piece about why school and university ratings are a scam - and who's behind them. I have some writing on this in my earliest blogs. But it may well be a good idea to repeat it, perhaps in more conpact form. If the TandT continues non-news as it has today, I'll make it a section of a regular blog. If not, I'll write a couple of extra blogs in the evenings.

The blandness of the TandT is no accident. The whole purpose of that paper is to keep us in ignorance of what is happening, and how we are affected by it. The only exceptions are things that in no way affect our corporate masters.

That's why we are so well informed about sports, horoscopes,and how to throw a great cocktail party.

Oh, and Christmas lights.

Dec. 3: addendum to Dec. 3 blog....

2011-12-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

sorry. I forgot two things.

1. Our Current Events group meets at the Moncton Library at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 6.
I have to mention it here because The Moncton Times and Transcript won't include it on their weekly events page.

We'll begin with why school ratings, like those in MacLean's Magazine, are a fraud - and why the ranking of public schools in New Brunswick is not only a fraud, but a scam. As well, both the MacLean's ratings and the AIMS ratings of public schools are doing damage.

Then we'll switch to topics you would like to raise.

2. I unpardonably forgot to mention the Whatever Section with its columns written by students. As usual, all of them are thought-provoking and worth a read. The one by Tess Allen particularly struck me because it brought back painful memories of my undergraduate years.

Ms. Allen argues that it is very important in university not to skip class. She's so right.
Part of the reason she's right is a sad one. But it's a reality. Many, perhaps most, university undergraduate classes are really about memorizing what the professor says. It's too bad. But it's true. University should be about developing the mind. But most of it is about memorizing information for an exam, information you will forget forever within six months. That's reality.

But going to classes, in any case, is not the whole story.

To do well in university, it's also essential to set a rigid schedule of study, and to stick to it EVERY DAY, no matter what. If you have nothing assigned, study anyway. Go back over lecture notes. But set a time every day.

Give yourself free time. Have a schedule for free time, too. You won't learn any more by overdoing the study.

In my BA years, I often skipped classes. I rarely studied until the night before the exam. My average was so low that professors referred to it as beneath contempt.

So I did another undergraduate year. This time, I took it seriously. I went to classes. For a half hour each day, I went over the notes for that day, for the classes three days earlier, for those seven days before that, and again on the thirtieth day. In the last two weeks, I went over all my notes.

The night before an exam, I didn't study. I relaxed so I wouldn't be walking into the exam all tense.

Result - straight As.

University isn't hard. Just don't skip classes - and don't leave study until the night before.

Dec. 3: A mixed bag...

2011-12-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

The ftont page carries its usual free ad for the casino - disguised as a news story. Otherwise, section A carries its usual load of trivia ---except---

On p. 2, there is an important story, and one I would not expect to find in the TandT. It's easily missed because its print size and style are different from those of most stories. It looks, in fact, like one of those "clarifications" that nobody reads. But the story is important.

Wikileaks has announced it will release documents showing that 125 companies around the world - including three Canadian ones - are helping governments to spy on citizens through monitoring their phone calls, e-mail, and web browser history.

That's no small deal. Such spying without a warrant is against the law. And for good reason because it means goodbye democracy; hello police state. It also raises interesting questions about who is paying these companies for their service.

This should be a front page lead, not a dinky note hidden on p. 2. Will the TandT be saying anything about what this means? Will it assign reporters to get opinion from legal experts? Will it follow up on the story?

I doubt it. I mean, it hasn't mentioned the case of one of the contributors to Wikileaks who has been well over a year in solitary confinement in an American military prison (without trial), and has been subjected to daily torture such as sleep deprivation. UN human rights inspectors have been denied permission to see him. So who cares if we're being spied on?

Three important stories in NewsToday.
1. The disaster of our new, F-35 fighterbomber continues. More problems in its design have been found. Originally, the cost was to have been 9 billion, and that is the fiture given in the Postmedia story. In fact, the price is already some four times that - and this latest problem will drive it much higher.

As the story says, the US and Canada will not back out of the project because so much money has already been spent on it that withdrawal would be politically embarassing. Gee. We certainly wouldn't want to embarass anybody.

2. Harper and Obama will meet to discuss security issues. People concerned about civil rights are worried about this one. We have already erased the Canada-US border so that armed police and other law agents from the US can operate freely in Canada. In effect, that means that in law enforcement terms, a separate Canada no longer exists.

This meeting will take it even further to bring us into line with American practices. (Hint - a US president now has power to imjprison and even assassinate with no legal process. Over a million Americans are on a "no fly list" - without any legal process, without even a reason.) Watch for a 'no-fly list on Canada. And don't kid yourself that you would never be put on such a list.

Why is Harper doing this? Does it benefit you and me in any way? Not likely. But it does represent the coporations in the Canadian Council of CEOs who want a more open US Canada border for their goods. And if we all surrender control of our own country to do that - so be it. After all, so far as corporations are concerned, what globalism means is that we no longer have governments - or democracy. That's so that corporations can do what they like.

3. Are you on a low sodium diet? Harper is pretty much killing our ability to check the accuracy of the labelling on foods in the stores.

Well, gotta save money to pay for those F-35s and all that illegal spying on Canadian citizens.

On D3, Reuters has its usual uninformative story about Pakistan. Here are the real elements of it -
1. The US has been invading Pakistan air and land space for at least a couple of years to hunt down Taliban. In the process, it has killed large numbers of Pakistani civilians and soldiers.
2. Recently, US helicopters attacked a Pakistan military base on the border, within Pakistan territory. Pakistan says it frantically radioed US commanders to stop the attack. But it went on for almost two hours, killing a large number of Pakistan soldiers. The US has refused even to apologize.
3.The democratically elected president of Pakistan was killed by army leaders who took over the government.
4. The US iimmediately announced its support of the military government - and has been paying it off ever since. Thus the ability of US forces to get away with so much espionage and killing in Pakistan.
5. Pakistan is the only Moslem country to have a nuclear arsenal.
6. China cannot possibly allow the US to get control of Pakistan.
7. China has a nuclear arsenal.

Now, connect the dots.

On D 4, a favourable story about shale gas. What a surprise! A professor thinks it's a good idea. The professor is employed at University of Calgary School of Business, and academic director for petroleum land management.
Wow! Isn't Calgary in Alberta where all that oil is? Don't big businesses normally fund schools of business?
How about connecting those dots?

On D5, in a long list of school announcements, Disctrict Two director Karen Branscombe has, for the second year in a row, been named by The Women's Executive Network as one of Canada's Most Powerful Women.

That must be a mistake. Last year, when she won the same award, the editorial writer said she was gallivanting around picking up awards instead of doing her job. This year, no editorial.

Now, if Mr. Irving gave a starving child in Somalia a bag of peanuts, we'd have a big picture of him shaking hands with somebody - and a headline saying Philanthrophist feeds the starving. You know, the kind of photo story we see almost every day in the TandT.

What ms. Branscombe has accomplished deserves more than two sentences on a back page.

The editorial is on sewers, again. (It's one of those topics that loses its charm quickly.)

Bill Belliveau's column is bang on about how Harper is destroying Canada. Too bad he never writes similar ones about the Liberals.

I am disturbed by the rampant socialism in Norbert's column. He wants to see TV dramas without ads. This is precisely the sort of attitude that destroys the creativity of the capitalism that God gave us. The purpose of TV (and newspapers) is to sell ads. The purpose of the drama is to get people to watch the ads.

Sheesh. Next thing thing you know, this closet Marxist/Occupy Moncton/hippie will be praising the CBC.

Good column, and an amusing one, by Brent Mazerolle.

And it wraps up with a very clear explanation from Gwynn Dyer on what is happening at the climate change conference in Durban. What's happening is that we our abandoning our children to a self-destructing world. And Canada is leading the way. And we're doing it to protect the profits and high executive salaries and perks of the corporate world.

Dec. 2: Ho-hum

2011-12-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

This motning, I found a flyer - just one page - in my mailbox. It spoke of a senior's nursing home in Moncton in which an elderly man was kept in restraint in a specialized chair designed to keep him immobile. He was kept in it for 545 days. When he was released, he could not walk - and he will never be able to walk again.

It's an easy way to handle troublesome, elderly people.
The flyer said that is also illegal; but that minister of justice, Marie-Claude Blais has said not a word about it.

It was signed John Heffler.

Across North America, indeed across most of the western world, there is a profound dissatisfaction with politicians and with news media. The blog is a product of it. The Occupy movement is a product of it. The wide use of tweeter is a product of it. The flyer in my mailbox this morning is a product of it.

It is no coincdence that all these things are developing at the same time. Nor are they happening simply because of the invention of the computer. (The personal computer has been around for a good forty years, now. But it's wide use for news and comment is much more recent.)

No, it's not computers are making us angry and dissatisfied. What's making us angry and dissatisfied are politicians and news media that are obvious puppets of large corporations and very wealthy individuals who use them to rob us - and to keep us in ignorance of what they are doing.

Just yesterday, we learned that Mr. Alward indicated he might be favourably disposed to a federal proposal to pay EI ONLY to high school graduates. That is surely a bizarre response.

1. Those who lack education are the ones most likely to get laid off and to need PEI.
2. It seems to assume that it is their own fault if they don't finish high school. In fact, every study I have ever seen shows that the children most likely not to finish high school are the poor. It's not being stupid or lazy that made them drop out. It's being born poor.
(This is a subject I feel strongly about because I was born poor; and I didn't finish high school. It was pure luck that got me out of that dead end. None of my childhood friends finished high school, either. They weren't stupid. They weren't lazy. They were poor.)
What this bill does is to turn the poor into a sort of race, an inferior people who deserve whatever happens them.

But our politicians don't call it that because racism is out of fashion. Today, few in the US or Canada would say, "Make the Blacks Pay. Make Jews pay. Make orientals pay.) But it's perfectly acceptable to say "Make the poor pay. They deserve it."
3. The poor, the uneducated did not cause this recession. It was caused by rich and well-educated people. Surely, if someone must suffer, it should be those who caused the problem. But, far from them suffering, we have been handing over even more money to them.

There's a topic for an editorial. But you'll never see it in most of our mainstream newspapers - and certainly never in The TandT.

So what's happening is that people are taking the responsibility for spreading the news. They have to do it because most of the news media are simply propaganda sheets for their owners.

Today's A section of TandT does have one important story It's about a new liquor store in Dieppe. So y'all get down there, y'hear? Do your patriotic duty The more you drink, the more the goverment can give tax breaks to the rich.

There's a noteworthy story on the first page of NewsToday. It looks as though Defence Minister Peter McKay may have been caught lying to the House of Commons about the reasons for a trip he took in an armed forces helicopter. (He claimed it was a training flight. Documents suggests it was simply for his personal convenience.) Now what?

Time was - not long ago - that lying to the house was the most serious crime an MP could commit. He could attend the House drunk (John A. often did). He could accept bribes. (It seems clear that Brian Mulroney did; but nothing has happened to him.) But lying to the House was unacceptable. The only proper thing for a gentleman to do was to resign. In fact, a British defence minister resigned just recently for a lesser crime.

Somehow, though, I suspect our democracy has slid so far down that Peter MacKay will not resign. And Harper won't force him to.

There is still not a word about the crisis in Pakistan which could well draw us into a war. In Pakistan, the government is the military. It acts for the US because the US supplies the military with what it calls "aid". (Actually, it goes largely for bribery to the leading officers of the military and their friends.)

American troops and drones and manned bombers have reoutinely entered Pakistan, klling hundreds of civilians and Pakistani soldiers, along with the occasional Taliban. As a result, the country is tearing apart, and is on the edge of civil war. It's made even worse by the American refusal to apologize for the lastest attack that killed at least 25 Pakistanki soldiers, possibly more than 30.

Gee! Is it possible the US wants an excuse to invade Pakistan so it can take out the only nuclear arsenal in Moslem country? Gee! Just guess which country might be asked to contribute troops to make it look like a legitimate, peace-keeping venture. Guess who we might be remembering next Nov. 11.

Their nothing about the crises in Syia and Iran - not even a mention that China has threatened war if there is an attack on Iran. I know that's not as important as the question of Moncton sewerage. But such a war might have an effect on Moncton. D'ya think?

On the editorial page, the first editorial is almost good. But it loses it for the reason that editorials so often lose it. Editors assume that because they are editors they are therefore experts on a wide range of subjects. I've met a lot of editors. Very few are expert at anything but editing - and a substantial number not even good at that.

This editorial suggests that students getting bursaries should be required to have exceptionally high grades from high school. However, as I pointed out at the start of this blog, the records shows that kids who get poor grades in high school usually get them because they're poor - not because they're stupid. Those who get high grades usually get them because they come from higher income families - not because they are especially gifted in any intellectual way. So, giving bursaries to students with high grades would simply mean giving more money to people who already have it. (Which sometimes appears to be the official policy of the Tand T.)

Norbert writes a column that starts well on the problem of climate change - then drops the ball when it comes to solutions. The reason some governments (like ours) do not react to the problem of climate change is because the corporations who do most of the polluting that cause climate change fear that slowing it would hurt their profits. The problem, then, is not just climate change; the problem is the power that big business has in what we fondly call "democracies).

For his final inanity, Norbert suggests we could improve things by walking to work. Norbert, read the NewsToday section of your own paper. The Arctic and Antarctic are warming at the fastest rate in recorded history, releasing methane into the atmosphere which creates warming. (Methane - that's the stuff we're releasiing into our atmosphere under the name of shale gas.)

Yes, I'm sure if I walk to work that will solve the problem.

Ii began reading the op ed column by Bill Brewer with interest and sympathy. But then he falls into the trap that the government, assisted by the TandT, has set.

When Premier Alward suggested reducing the number of MLAs as a cost-saving measure, he knew damn well that the saving would take us not an inch on the miles we have to go to balance our budget. The problem is not the number of MLAs we have. The problem is the billions we have given away to the Irvings and the McCains and the Ganongs in grants, gifts, interest-free loans, and absurd tax breaks.

It's not the MLAs that made us poor (except in the sense that they allowed it to happen.. And in that case the answer is not to reduce them in number. The answer is to vote them out.) No, the cost of a few MLAs is not what makes us poor. So cutting down by a few MLAs will save very, very little. And it will still leave us a legislature full of MLAs who purr when the Irvings, McCains and Ganongs tickle their chins.

So why did Alward suggest such a cut? Well - he knows people have no great respect for politicians. So most people will think getting rid of some is a great idea. That will take their attention away from the real problem, the enormous economic, social and environmental problems being caused by our Irvings, etc.

Meanwhile, Mr. Alward will still have enough flunkies left to do what his bosses want. And our deficits will continue to rise.

Dec 1: (this is just a note. the regular blog is below this.)

2011-12-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

Something strange is going on with my computer. I have a growing list of comments to be either published or deleted. But, whatever I do, they get neither published nor deleted. It also seems that many old ones which were published have been deleted.
Time to take the computer in too the shop.

Dec.1: Wow! A first page with news on it.

2011-12-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

No, it's not the story about the Moncton bar that got an award from Music New Brunswick. It's the lead story about Dr. Anthony Ingraffea's talk at the Capitol Theatre last evening. Again, it's a well-written story. I would add to it only the feeling of community and enthusiasm in the audience. It was a refreshing experience.

Inevitably, at question period, you get somebody who grabs the mike to make his own speech. This time it was David Plante speaking for the New Brunswick Mining Association. He is reported as raising two points - both of them rather strange.
1. "it's difficult to hear someone talk about how things worked in Pennsylvania and other states, and assume the same thing will happen in Canada."

Very true. If you hit somebody with a baseball bat in Pennsylvania and other states, it will hurt him. But one shouldn't assume getting hit with a baseball bat will hurt a New Brunswicker. So let's try.

2. There's been no cost-benefit analysis.
Another good point. I mean, if we make enough money out of it, it's worth poisoning the earth, air, and water. Our kids will thank us for it.

SWN Resources and the government of NB were invited to send speakers to participate. They didn't. There's a story that SWN refused to participate because it wouldn't have been given enough time.

Right. The format offered would have given them a total of 20 minutes PLUS the very long and tedious time given to Mr. Plante. In all, that would have been a little more than the 30 minutes allotted to Dr. Ingraffea. And we all know how SWN loves to give equal time to anti-frackers at it presentations.

Amazingly, there's a third story on fracking (I cannot bring myself to spell 'fracing'.) In this one, Premier Alward announces that all that's going on is exploring. No rush. Exploring will take another three to five years.

But, gee, Mr. Alward, exploring has been going on for a dozen years - and it poses all the dangers that production of shale gas does. And we still, as Mr. Alward has said, don't have any adequate regulations or enforcement in place. That means we could be poisoning this province for a total of seventeen years by Mr. Alward's reckoning. Lotsa time. Lotsa time.

In connection with this is an important story on NewsToday. The thawing of permafrost seems to be releasing methane into the atmosphere at a much greater rate than realized. That, in turn, is speeding up global warming - which releases more methance. By coincidence, methane is the gas that we commonly call shale gas. Lotsa time. Lotsa time. And, anyway, we gotta do a cost/benefit study.

The big story about Harper is that he is about to pass Diefenbaker to become Canada's ninth longest-serving pm. Well, duh... In most Canadian newspapers, the big, Turner story is that with Canada already the world's largest polluter per capita, Harper is busy wrecking the world climate control conference in Durban. The stories about this in other Canadian papers feature words like coward, irresponsible, shameful, and embarassment..... But in Moncton, the big story is he's going to pass Diefenbaker. Tweet, tweet.

I emphasize national and international news because New Brunswickers get almost no information in print about them. And they do affect us. Like it or not, we are part of Canada, part of a continent, part of the world. What happens to other countries happens to us. What happens to us happens to them.

Anyone who pours poisons out into land, water or sky poisons everybody.

As well, the TandT has yet to publish anything significant on the very dangerous situation developing in Pakistan - and nothing on Syria or Iran, and very little on LIbya. There are no reports at all on the growing use of drones - and their high civilian casulaties.

That's important. We are going to be drawn into all those dangerous situations. Tehran is not in another world. Military transports could be carrying Canadians there to risk their lives, and get them from Moncton to Tehran in a day.

And on the next Nov. 11, we will all turn out to be all solemn about those who died there, and how we must all remember t hem.

Hell, the time to remember your soldiers is BEFORE you send them. We have to ask first why we are sending them, whether it is necessary or advisable to send them, whose interests are served by sending them....

We cannot do that without information. And we certainly are not getting information from BrunswickMedia.

Solid columns on the editorial page - Norbert opens his with the funniest paragraph I've seen in ages. He also examines book reviews to say (correctly, I think) that Peter Newman is a much overrated journalist and writer. Of course, Norbert knows about this from reading book reviews in a newspaper that has them. The Moncton TandT is one of the very few dailies I've seen that does not have a weekly book review section. That must be the fault of t he education system - or the Liberals - or the Occupy movement....whatever.

On the op ed, a solid column by Jody Dallaire. Above hers is one by Rod Allen. Like most of the efforts that grace that City Views slot, it needs close study to figure out what it's about, and why it was written in the first place. That takes time. I've read it several times, and still haven't figured what it's about. Or why.

Oh - today's paper has the weekly events section. Check out the entries for the Moncton Library. You won't find my name there. It gets sent in to advertise the current events group at the library the first Tuesday of each month at 7 pm. But the TandT, perhaps as a public service, doesn't publish the part that announces my group.

Anyway, it's December 6, 7pm at the library. This week, the opening topic is school ratings (as in MacLean's university ratings and in the rating of New Brunswick public schools) - why they're a fraud, and how they do tremendous damage to education.

Finally, as Norbert likes to end his column with a quotation, I'll try it.

According to Senator Joan Fraser, the New Brunswick news media are so dysfunctional (almost entirely because of Irving control) that they are the worst in the developed world.

For the full story, google Joan Fraser Brunswickmedia. It should be the first one that pops up. (Senator Fraser was on a parliamentary committee that did a major study of news media in Canada.She was also a major figure in Canadian news media, rising to be editor of The Montreal Gazette.)

Nov. 30: A good day for the TandT

2011-11-30T06:45:00.000-08:00

The Moncton Times and Transcript actually ran a story on a speech to be delivered to tonight at the Capitol Theatre tonight. It's on the front page. It's a full story and a fair one, a first rate job by reporter Craig Babstock. The same story also reported that Conservative MLA Kirk MacDonald presented a 16,000 signature petition to the legislature protesting against fracking - and one of the signatories was Mr. MacDonald himself.

Full marks for the reporter on that story. Why not full marks for the paper?

Well, it gets marks for running the story. And the editor gets marks for a clear and impartial headline to it. But...

There is a newsworthy letter to the editor by Anna MacDonald of Miramichi. It's about the appalling behaviour of the Alward government MLAs during meetings of the assembly. We thank ms. MacDonald for her letter - but wonder why the TandT has never reported on this behaviour.

There's a less praiseworthy story on p. 2. "Liberals try to start feud" It's made worse by an opening paragraph that seems to support the idea that Liberal MLAs tried to start a feud between labour minister Martine Coulombe and her brother, federal ACOA minister Bernard Valcourt..

In fact, if you read the story, you learn that the Liberals did no such thing. Indeed, they took pains to avoid making any connection between the two.

That's a serious bias bias the paper showed. Any journalist knows that many, perhaps most, readers look at only the headline and the first paragraph. So this story looks very much like one that was deliberately persented in such a way as to give a false impression. And that's called lying.

In national news, we read that the civil service has grown hugely in the Harper years. No surprise there. Since 1867, the biggest spenders have been the Conservatives - you know, the ones who always talk about small government. Ditto in the US where the Republicans have generally been big spenders - though the Democrats have been no angels in this category.

In Canada, Liberals have generally been a little better. The most careful governments in spending have generally been NDP.

Here, in New Brunswick, we don't really know much about government spending because we get no information at all on what the big corprorations cost us.

In foreign news, amazingly, the NATO attack that killed some 30 Pakistani soldiers has still not been mentioned. The TandT must be leading the world in ignoring this one. Even the Pakistani government, though bought and paid for by the US, has had to respond by cutting off all American supplies to Afghanistan (which is one half of all US supplies for the war). Pakistan, itself, has been brought to the edge if civil war. Both China and Russia have made it clear they have a stake in what happens (and they really do). So this is - kind of - dangerous.

Reuters reports the Iranian demonstrations at the British embassy in Tehran. It generally reinforces the usual western view of Iran's irresponsible behaviour towards the West. There is no mention that Britain took control of Iran about 1920, ripped off its oil, and even forced Iran to supply free oil for the whole Royal Navy from 1920 to the late 1940s.

When the democratically elected government of Iran objected to this, Britain, France and the US overthrew it - and installed a brutal and corrupt dictator. That's why Iran now has a government that doesn't like the west. That's why people who have been bombed, robbed, tortured, sabotaged by the west for a hundred years stage riots when the west promises more of the same.

The editorial and op ed pages are better than usual. The editorial is reasonable enough, even if one disagrees with it. The Alec Bruce column is superb. Norbert's column is quite decent.

Cormier writes about how black coffee is becoming popular. This was given almost half the op ed page. I have no idea why.

Some things that I am sure we all would like to know never appear in this paper. How much does it cost us to supply cheap electricity, loans, tax breaks, grants...to corporations in this province? It would really be quite nice to know that at budget time.

What is the wage gap in New Brunswick? I suspect it's the biggest in Canada - which makes it one of the biggest in the developed world.

Exactly how much do corporations pay in provincial taxes? (not the tax rate. what to they actually pay?) How does that compare with what we give them?)

What has been the cost of a dozen years of shale gas exploration to us? What have we received in return?

New Brunswick is a have-not province. But isn't that because some New Brunswickers, a very few, have. And have a hell of a lot.

This province produces money. There doesn't seem to be a problem in that area. The problem is that most of the wealth it produces gets ripped off - and that's been going on for over a century and a half.

Nov.29: The news that isn't in the TandT

2011-11-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times (World edition) for today has rather a big story. Major banks in the US and Europe, in defiance of the law and in full knowledge of what they were doing) have been laundering Mexican drug money. One of them just got fined a hundred and sixty million for ir. (Big deal. The amount they laundered was $420 BILLION.)

That's just one bank. So what 's the total for all the banks? It must be bigger than the whole national budget for Mexico. This is an important story from many angles. But it's not in the TandT.

The TandT has reported on Egypt's first, democratic election. But it got the report from Reuters so, as usual, it's not quite complete. For example, there is no mention that the Supreme Council of the Military (the generals) has announced it will retain power no matter who is elected. It will also refuse to permit any consitutional change that would reduce the power of the generals.

But to get to that part of the story, you'll have to look up The Irish Examiner for Nov. 29,

On Syria, again from Reuters, we are told more of what we already knew about the sanctions by the Arab League. It still hasn't told us exactly what the Arab League is, what a collection of dictators and killers it is, how member states have killed (and are still killing) their own citizens for precisely the same reasons the Syrian government is.

Nor is there a mention that Iraq has abstained from the vote.Isn't that interesting? Almost the only democracy (sort of) in the Arab League does not support the sanctions.

The Arab League accuses Syria of war crimes, torture, murder, and rape. Gee. They didn't say that when the US did it to Iraq. The Arab League also says it has to intervene for humane reasons. Right. The dictators of the Arab League have a long record of concern about humane behaviour.

There is really nothing in local news.

The op ed page has its usual, utterly pointless column by a staff writer, this one about the thrill of travel, and getting to see fascinating places like Oxford, Nova Scotia.

Even Norbert has nothing to say. This time, it's about issues that might be covered in the budget. One issue is the environment, particularly shale gas. Norbert does not seem concerned that nothing has been done about that for over a decade. He takes comfort that the government will do something about it. And, though it might not be much, it will be progress. In other words, we ae being set up for Alward not doing much about anything - and beiing told that at least it's progress.

So that takes care of that problem.

Speaking of progress, there is still no news of developments concerning Mr. Northrup's fearless demand for a sincere (Northurp expects sincerity; he is not man to mince words) apology for illegal shale gas exploration. Nor is there any word on the government's intense criminal investigation of an illegal act the company has admitted it did. (If I went through a stop light, would a sincere apology make it okay? Or could I expect the police to study the case for several weeks (at least) before issuing a ticket? Or maybe just a demand for a sincere apology?)

Good editorial cartoon, though. I wonder if de Adder would be allowed to do a similar one for the so-called "progressive conservative" party.

Nov. 28: ---added note for the day I should have put in the main post...

2011-11-28T07:11:00.000-08:00

Journalists should be careful of linking the Peace Movement of the 60s to the Occupy Movement.

The Peace Movement faded because the situation is was protesting disappeared. Remember - the big issues were the Vietnam War and the military draught. The Peace Movement won on both counts. The US got out of Vietnam (after killing several million people and poisoning the land), and no American government since then would touch the idea of a military draught.

The Occupy Movment is addressing a much bigger issue. And that issue is not going to disappear. The stakes are huge. Either corporations come to dominate the world (as they do New Brunswick) - in which case we are going to see serious violence and social disintegration - or we will get democracy. The corporations are not going to back off without a fight.

They and their political friends were quite happy to beat, jail and even kill peace protesters in the sixties. This is bigger. And our coporate leaders will be all the quicker to use violence. We're already seeing it in Euope. We can soon expect to see it in the US.

Nov. 28: Amazing....

2011-11-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

NATO helicopters kill some 30 Pakistan soldiers at a border post. and Pakistan ( the main supply route for NATO) cuts off supplies to NATO in Afghanistan. Pakistan is trembling on the edge of either civil war or a break with the US.

I didn't expect The TandT to carry a full story. But I thought they'd - you know - mention it.

No mention, either, that the Arab League has passed sanctions against Syria - even though this could be a prelude to another war in which Canada would be involved. Again, I never thought the TandT would tell the whole story. But I thought there would be at least the usual Reuters half-truth.

But not a word, nada, zip, in either case.

Nor is there any news of the charge of illegal seismic testing for shale gas in Sussex. Of course, it's a complicated case. All they have to go on is the word of eye-witnesses, and the confession of the company that it did test illegally. So far, not even the "sincere" apology that the valiant Mr. Northrup demanded. And not a word in the TandT.

Finally, that page humorously referred to as Your Investments doesn't even mention the recent OECD forecast of a bad year for Canadian exports.

Of course, they needed room for the big story of the day - NB Liberals find new way to elect leader. There's even a picture of real Liberals holding up pink cards to prove it. I'm so glad.

In fairness, there was a very small story that was news "Moncton occupiers promote buy nothing day". But it was buried on the last page of the A section. The buy everything day (Santa Claus parade) covered two and a half pages plus, of course, all the advertising pages.

The op ed page is, well, the op ed page. Craig Babstock is very concerned about a rash of what seems like arson. The cure, he concludes, to tell arsonists that before they start fires, they should realize that some people could get hurt. Right. That should do it.

Allen Abel shows his usual talent to take a theme that looks promising, then do nothing with it.

Today, I both agreed and disagreed with Alec Bruce. Occupiers aren't articulating legitimate grievances that should concern everyone? In fact, in his next paragraph he mentions what he considers legitimate grievances - and the Occupy movement HAS been articulating them.
In fact, I can't think of any group that's been articulating them more - certainly not the Liberal and Conservative parties of New Brunswick; and certainly not BrunswickMedia.

He's certainly right about The Globe. It has become, especially in recent years, a biased, dishonest, cheap shot paper. It's not yet anywhere close to the TandT in those categories. But, then, the TandT has the advantage of having Norbert.

Just a few points on today's Norbert.

He praises the Conservatives for "consulting' the people, but cautions that consulting does not mean we always get what we want. Very true. But consulting does not mean simply that the government asks the public to talk. Consulting means it is listening. As a dictionary fan, Norbert should know that.
Has it listened on shale gas, for example? Could you perhaps list some things it has done as a result of listening (besides handing out propaganda sheets and promising regulations and enforcements that never happen?)

Then he slams the Liberal leader for saying the speech has few specifics on deficit reduction - but that the government has a cut and burn policy. Norbert says, well, it has to be one or the other.

No, it doesn't, Norbert. Come on. You're the one who's so keen on the correct use of words. You don't need to know the specifics to know from the throne speech that the policy is cut and burn.

Then he has a gem worth quoting. "Too often intelligent debate has been replaced by intransigence based on stubborn belief or pure ideology." Now, nobody illustrates that problem better than Norbert.
I would not, though, make such a charge against the Liberals or the Conservatives.

Neither of those parties has a belief or an ideology. They are both parties of stooges and puppets and opportunists. (It's hard to believe that any party of any principal at all would allow a self-appointed committee of corporate bosses to write the budget, harder to believe that any democracy would tolerate that.)

The promise for regulation and "robust" enforcement of the shale gas industry is a good one, says Norbert. Damn right. It's been a good one for 12 years. And it will probably still be a good one for 12 more. But so far, we've seen precious few regulations; and the only enforcement of any regulations has been against people opposed to having their land and water poisoned.

Government is bloated? A waste of money?

Corporations that soak up resources almost free of charge, that pay low taxes (if any), that get big government grants, that are allowed to escape regulations (or to escape enforcement when there are regulations, that pay their senior execs millions in bonuses, and that get billions of our money for corporate owners - thus creating our huge deficits that the poor will have to pay for - these corporations aren't bloated?

How many civil servants in NB make over a million a year? How many teachers get lush bonuses? How many civil servants get special tax breaks and government grants courtesy of the tax payer? How many nurses live in mansions and have chauffeur-driven cars?

Norbert, you can be as bigoted as you like. After all, that goes with having a senior position at the Moncton Times and Transcript. But please try to stop short of treating your readers as if they were as bigoted (or ignorant) as you seem to be.

Nov. 27: Tomorrow,(Nov 28), will the Tand T tell the whole truth?

2011-11-27T12:59:00.000-08:00

1. Even the Moncton Times and Telegraph will surely carry the story that the Arab League will vote sanctions on Syria - and it will surely say the reasons it do so (along with France and Turkey) are humanitarian (to stop the fighting) and to establish democracy. Betcha, though, it won't tell us much about who the Arab League is.

It's for a start, Saudi Arabia, os one of the least democratic countries in the world. In fact, it's an absolute monarchy.
Bahrain is similar. Both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia teamed up to use troops and to kill protesters who wanted democracy inj Bahrain. Saudi Arabia has also freely killed it's own citizens who had complaints about the lack of democracy.

Then there's Libya. Yes. Ghadaffi was a long time member of the freedom loving Arab League. And they never sanctioned him. NATO still refuses to release the butcher's bill for its humanitarian bombing of Libyan civilians. And papers like the TandT don't ask.

Kuwait - another dictatorship. The United Arab Emirates - ditto.

Egypt, another long time member, and a country whose army is still busy killing protesters who want democracy.

Then there's Yemen, whose government the US has denounced as evil. The US and France are, as I write this, bombing Yemen, with heavy loss of civilian life. They are also supplying and supporting a Kenyan army which has invaded Yemen.

Yessiree. That sure is a great collection of humanitarian and and democracy-loving states. The US is now taking this case to the UN, urging UN approval so we can kill some more people for humanitarian reasons.

Let's see if the TandT will say anything about what the Arab League really is - and what these sanctions are really all about.

It surely will carry the story of NATO helicopters who attacked a Pakistan border post (within Pakistan territory) killing some 30 Pakistan soldiers. And the TandT will probably say that Pakistan has cut off all supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

What it probably won't say is that NATO is hated across Pakistan for years of random killing by NATO assassination squads and drone bombers. Hundreds of civilians have been killed.I don't believe any of this has ever appeared in the TandT.

The government of Pakistan, though it is largely controlled by the US, has to react to these latest killings or face a civil war. Thus the announcement that supplies to NATO will be cut off.

Most of this news, by the way, is no secret. Most of it is on google news - and it simply copies items from real newspapers.

And will we hear anything about progress on the great mystery of whether illegal seismic testing was done in Sussex? Or will we just get more op ed drivel about what a wonderful man Mr. Northrup is for taking action (without being terribly clear about what that action might be.) Oh, I'm sorry. It's true .Mr. Northrup has demanded a sincere apology. Way to blast 'em baby. No point in letting them off with an insincere apology.