Dec. 30: Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!

This has been a remarkable weekend even by Trump standards. He is pulling out, he says, from Syria because he has achieved the American goal of protecting the government of Syria. Remarkable.

When the US entered Syria, it was to overthrow the government of Syria. That was in 2009. To that end, it supported the Syrian 'rebels'. It also supported the false news that came out of a UK/Syrian propaganda site that called itself the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights   (which was operated by a Syrian haberdasher in London).

As well, it supported what was essentially a Syrian rebel propaganda outfit called the White Helmets, "freedom fighters" who revealed non-existent chemical weapons supposedly used by Syria. The invention of that gang led to a rush Hollywood film that won an academy award. Some of it's survivors now live in Canada. How gracious of us!

(The US proclaimed it sinful to used chemical weapons. This from the countries that used tons of agent orange to kill civilians in Vietnam, and that now support the starvation of children in Yemen.)

In addition to the U.S. and ISIS and it's so called rebels, Syria was attacked by Canada, Britain, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Australia. (Canada and the others, incidentally, never declared war. Under international law and under Canadian law, you're supposed to do that - even if the troops are sent as trainers. But our Canadian news media never mentioned that.)

But Syria - not just it's president we don't approve of but the man supported by most of the Syrian people - held on. And won.


As for fighting ISIS, the U.S. occasionally did that. But there were also long periods when it supplied ISIS with money and weapons.

Then Russia stepped in.

Then, after nine years of fighting, the U.S. announced that for all those years it had not been fighting Syria at all. No. It had been fighting ISIS.

So now, said Trump, 'Mission accomplished'. So all those brave bomber pilots will come home to march proudly though American streets.

Will  the American people believe this crap? A great many will, maybe even a majority.

Meanwhile, a refugees child died of flu at the U.S. border. But that's not the fault of the U.S. No.

In related news, Trump announces that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have been sponging off the U.S., accepting aid it sends them. How cruel to struggling Americans. So let's try to ease their pain.

1.Why are those countries poor and needing of money? That could have something to do with the fact that American and Canadian companies, as in mining, have been bleeding those countries dry for many, many decades.

(But give the U.S. some credit. The U.S. has been giving those countries at least a bit of money to make up for the plundering by American companies. Canada hasn't lifted a finger.)

2. Does that money get to the suffering of those countries? Almost certainly not. These countries are all governed under the thumbs of dictators who are servants to American and Canadian billionaires. Damn little money is going to get past their greasy fingers.

3. Guatemala has probably suffered most of that group. Since 1950, it has been invaded twice by American armies to establish dictatorships. Then, in the 1960s and later, the American CIA, led by sweetheart George H.W. Bush organized the mass murder of uncounted numbers of Guatemalans and Christian clergy (including a Canadian you never  heard of in our media, Raoul Leger of New Brunswick.)

I have never been able to find out how many innocent Guatemalans were killed by Bush. He was notorious in his love for killing innocent people. In order to get to the president of Panama, he once killed thousands of the poor and quite innocent to bomb his way to the president.

I once saw a figure of 200,000 murdered in Guatemala (Mayan people, clergy, missionaires, nuns....). But I have no idea whether that figure is to be trusted.

Perhaps it's just as well we don't get this news in our commercial media. It could be quite terrible if we - Americans,Canadians, British, French and others - were to realize what murdering bastards we are.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/huawei-canada-us-1.4953974

Some years ago, I taught Chinese students at a university in China. Many of them followed me back to Concordia university in Montreal to complete their studies. Never before or since have a seen such excellent students.

The never missed a class. Never slacked on their studies. I had to threaten to hospitalize one because he was taking pills to study all night. (He is now one of China's super, super rich.) I had never seen students like that before - and never since. That's one reason why Canada and the U.S. are in for pastings - and soon.

Both American and Canadian schools at all levels are dominated by the very wealthy. That's why the U.S. has plunged into the disaster of schools run by private business. That's why, in both Canada and the U.S., the super wealthy have taken over major control of our universities.

In China, children are eager to learn. In Canada, a great many aren't - and we really don't give much of a damn, either.

In Canada and the U.S., very large numbers of children will never see the inside of universities because we make it impossible with the cost of university learning in our countries. And we don't train the majority of our children in our public schools to even think of advanced learning.

One of the greatest advances in history was the creation of the public school - the one that all could attend. That is what made possible the explosion of educated people who could advance our society. But that was almost 200 years ago.

Today, most of our elementary schools are designed to turn out inadequately educated people. Our university teachers have virtually no training in education. In any case, most of our university age people can't possible afford university education.

And we are going to pay one hell of a price for that. Soon.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/americas

I have nothing against the White Helmet people. They are, like so many others, victims of a war.

But isn't it odd the U.S. didn't accept them?
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/27/survey-shows-most-americans-agree-ocasio-cortez-5-billion-should-be-spent-healthcare
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/28/shameful-shutdown-continues-trump-administration-suggests-unpaid-federal-workers-do

Well, that's what Trump does when he's short of money.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/28/unconscionable-rollback-trump-epa-lays-groundwork-coal-industry-release-more-mercury

Owners don't give a damn about climate change. If we don't tackle them, there is no sign that anybody else will do it for us.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/baby-its-warm-outside/

Soon, we cease to exist. Don't expect any help from industry owners in this. You should have figured out by now they will not lift a finger except to use violence against the rest of us.
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/28/who-cares-which-democrat-comes-out-on-top/

Who cares indeed? The Democrats have been as murderous and as kind to the devil as the Republicans have been. They have, since 1945, been as murderous on a world scale and as neglectful of individual needs and as kissy to the wealthy as the Republicans have been.

It's hard to see any election result that would really change anything. The U.S. doesn't need an election. It needs a revolution.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/imperialist-aggression-against-venezuela-canada-tries-to-use-international-law-to-justify-interventionism/5664252

Justin - go back to what you were good at - teaching lonely women on holiday how to snowboard.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50847.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50842.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50840.htm
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http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2018/889-veneration-of-power-leading-to-climate-catastrophe.html
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/14/opinion/oh-canada-dont-be-smug-fake-news-real-and-present-threat
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https://theantimedia.com/saudi-sudanese-children-yemen/

Well, the Christian world won't care, either. It's  the one  that's been killing children in Yemen as it is.
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https://truthout.org/articles/trump-signs-executive-order-freezing-pay-of-nearly-2-million-federal-workers/

Would he cancel the profits of billionaires?
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article204453.html

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204433.html

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204400.html
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https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/trump-will-make-palestine-great-again-the-31-most-uncomfortable-opeds-of-2018-1.6758748
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Though it has rarely made the news, Canadian has made virtually no progress in adapting our aboriginal people to some livable status. As a few starters, it would help to assign them more land to provide an operational base, to greatly increase spending on housing, education, and social needs to create a society with a sense of place, to give them what would really be theirs.

And that has to happen before the U.S moves in on us. I know that sounds extreme. It's  not. The U.S. is a dying power. It needs the extra population - particularly in the face of dramatic climate change. As it is, we are already the ante-room in the U.S. house.
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Since 1945, we have abandoned everything we said we fought for. Certainly, Canadians did not die so that billionaires could hide their billions from taxation. They didn't die so we could kill people in Afghanistan. They didn't die so that all the wimps in our political parties - Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats - could kiss up to the very wealthy. They didn't die for the likes of any of the political leaders we  have had since then. They didn't die so that major powers could use the UN as a base for world conquest. They didn't die so that the U.S. alone could kill at least 30 million people since 1945.

(Nor have the smaller parties been impressive.)

Politically and militarily, we have handed over all control of our lives and our futures and our families to some of the greediest and most ignorant people this world has ever seen.

Politically, morally, we have been one, gutless collection of sheep. We are acting on none of the serious issues facing us. We have handed absolute power to people unfit to use it. And if we ever had a sense that government existed to serve our needs, we have long since lost it.

Sorry. Bad mood after today's news. And after our failure to react.
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Dec. 22:: It's easy to see what's wrong....

...But what to do? Where to start?
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https:/www.thenation.com/article/overmatch-pentagon-military-budget-strategy/
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A pause for stray thoughts In the confusion over Trump's pulling out of the war on ISIS, have you noticed the laguage of the reports on this? All the ones I have seen make the point that the ISIS fighters are 'terrorists'.

Have you ever seen them refer to western troops as 'terrorists'? Almost certainly not, and almost certainly you never will. And this is an important lesson to learn about our news media.

ALL soldiers, a airmen, sailors are terrorists. They always have been. That's not a moral judgement. That's just what they are trained for and what they are used to do.Ever since Dresden in World War Two, the U.S. airforce has concentrated on bombing civilians. This has most certainly included civilians and children., and the  score so far is well into the millions.

In cooperation with the Saudi, it has concentrated on a deliberate policy of starving children to death. And no matter when that war ends, thousands more of those who still live will die.

Even back in 1945, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was aimed at civilians, counting tens of thousands of children. That wasn't a coincidence. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets. The murder of those tens of thousands of children was deliberate.

Isn't that terrorism?

All military forces are terrorists/ They always have been.

But how often have you seen the ones are our side labelled as terrorists. I've never seen it, and I spend a lot of time going through the news.

Our news media uses the tern to justify our mass murder. In our news media, the other side is always evil. And this is what is called propaganda. Arguably, the most violent,  murderous terrorists for centuries have been the western imperial powers - notably, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France,,Belgium, and now the U.S.

But our news media will never tell us that.
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And, all this way down on my first page, it has suddenly dawned on me that my life sii being overrun with relatives for the Christmas season. My sons shall be kicking me out of my bed, and demanding tours of the local museums. Other children and grandchildren will, not unpleasntly, demand my time. And that will
undoubtedly though the blog off schedule.

But don't worry. The world will still be a mess when this holiday ends. And I shall return to annoy brainless patriots.
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In 1914, Canadians proudly lined up to serve their "home" - which, in those days, they thought was Britain. (They were so loyal to Britain that, in 1904, when Britain refused to support Canada against the threat of a U.S. attack, many, many Canadians still though of themselves as British. The thing happened in 1939 when Canadians rallied to fight another British war.

Then, almost in a flash, it all changed as Canadians decided they were now Americans, and so fought in Korea. Then it happened in Afghanistan and Libya - with every chance of happening in /Crimea and Venezuela.

Patriotism, which once meant loyalty to Britain now means loyalty to the U.S.

And Britain? /Well, with much of its empire destroyed (largely thanks to U.S. capitalists) it now has to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to please its masters.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/22/eu-nations-planning-no-deal-brexit-customs-trade
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/19/isis-not-defeated-in-syria-despite-trump-claim-says-uk


Well, yeah. But the U.S. was never quite committed to fighting ISIS in the first place. It was the Syrian government the U.S. wanted to destroy. In fact, there were many times when ISIS received U.S. help in fighting Syria.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/20/trump-admin-charges-ahead-reckless-plan-turn-over-arctic-wildlife-refuge-fossil-fuel
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News I could have lived without.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50812.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50810.htm
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Homelessness and poverty have been rising in Canada and the U.S. for some time. This is not a  coincidence. We have    rising poverty because we have had a steady increase in the shift of wealth of all of us into pockets of the very wealthy.
There is every likelihood this going to get worst. And, no. It's not because the rich have more gumption. It's because of their political power, their greed, and their indifference to others.

And as this goes on, the system will crash.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/cathy-crowes-blog/2018/12/new-advocacy-group-calls-toronto-declare-state-emergency
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article204400.html
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It's been a depressing several hours to write the above. And, while, it's easy to point out what shouldn't be done, it's harder to see what should be done. What we have in the U.S. is, essentially, the old, British empire - one of the most brutal and disgusting in history.

But what do we do now? And how do we do anything with this world of sheep/humans?
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undoubedtely

Dec. 20:Wow! The U.S. won iin Syria!

Let's not waste time on this one. The U.S. was never in Syria to help that country. It was, in fact, on the other side. No. Syria and Russia have been the winners. Not that there was ever any good reason for the U.S. being there in the first place - except to assist the ambitions of the American oil industry.

When I was in high school, I was fascinated by the British hero - Lawrence of Arabia. It was he, in World War 1, who delivered the middle east oil industry, notably Saudi Arabia, into the hands of British capitalists. Of course, the book never said that.

No, this was a tale of a heroic Englishman who brought - something - to the middle east. And what he brought was a century of exploitation and conquest in the region - first by Britain. U.S. capitalists jumped in right after World War 2, displacing the British in their plundering of the region.

The most dreadfully exploited was Iran which, under British control, has to supply oil for the whole Royal Navy - free of charge. When, after World War Two, the Iranians elected a government that insisted on payment for its oil, Britain invaded. But Britain needed help so the U.S. joined the war,, won it, and imposed a dictatorship - and took over the country.

Iran rose again, dumped the dictatorship, and took their country back from American billionaires. So now, Iran is evil.

For a century, the region has known nothing but mass murder and plunder at the hands of British and American oil barons - thus Iraq, thus Syria, thus Libya...(And as the greed spreads, thus Venezuela...)

Despite Trump's confident words, the U.S. has not won in Syria. Indeed, it never entered that country to help Syria in the first place. Now, it has lost - to Syria and to Russia. Watch for worse to come.

In 1945, we said we  had fought the war to end all wars. And we were going to re make our world so  that such a war would never happen again. We were going to set up a world body of government in the form of the UN. But we didn't. The UN simply became, like all the governments before it, the tool of the world's major capitalists. It was really the creation of a second world war whose purpose was to satisfy the big capitalists for the same reason we fought the first world war.

As a very young child, I  stood in the middle of a cheering crowd in Montreal in the jubilation of VE day, 1945. The war was over. My father was coming home. The whole world was caught up in peace and joy.

But it wasn't. Peace and Joy were the last things in the minds of our leading capitalists. They have led us into a world of war greater than anything we had ever seen. They have become our real ruling class - and they like war.

Today, we face the greatest threat that world has ever seen - in climate change. We have, maybe, a dozen years to get some control over it. And we are using those years to murder all over the world any people who are so greedy as not to give our wealthiest people whatever it is they want. Over much of the world, we are starving millions to death. We have, by now, created over a hundred million refugees - refugees created by our greed.

This is not the world Canadians died for in 1914 and 1939. We recognize their sacrifice one day a year. And for the other 364 days we ignore all that we say they fought for. We allow ourselves to be ruled by the greediest people in the world - people so greedy that in the extremity of their greed, we cannot see the fate they are condemning us all to.
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https://www.capebretonpost.com/opinion/columnists/gwynne-dyer-some-progress-made-on-the-climate-front-270075/

We are spending trillions of dollars on this earth for wars to sustain the oil industry for our multi-billionaires Is that what we fought for in 1939-45? WE are allowing hundreds of million to die of starvation and mass murder to please the super-wealthy.

Is this what Canadians fought for?

If so, take your patriotism and stuff it.
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Lots of confusing news on Syria.

https://www.commondreams.org/further/2018/12/19/we-won-and-thats-way-we-want-it-and-theyre-all-coming-back-and-i-have-no-idea

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/20/bombings-will-continue-phyllis-bennis-warns-us-military-role-syria-not-actually
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It's always been like this in Canada, the U.S. and many other countries. And we have very little time to stop it.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/19/tax-scam-turns-one-critics-say-law-one-biggest-transfers-wealth-richest-1-us-history
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This is what Canadians were told they were fighting for in 1939-45.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/20/a-world-federation-the-world-as-it-is-and-the-world-as-it-could-be/

But we threw it all away to make the greedy happy. And now? Now it's quite possible that it's too late.
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/20/which-nations-are-state-sponsors-of-terrorism/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/20/colombias-killing-fields/

Don't think of this as being the work of local thugs. Some people are paying for murder for it to reach that scale. Who is paying? Again, we should waste our time by just looking at the killers. In Guatemala, for example, uncounted thousands, perhaps as many as 200,000 were killed by CIA killers under that guidance of  that nice George. This has been going one all over Latin America for well over a century. Usually, the paymaster are the American taxpayers.  (The rich hate to pay for their killing.)

Are Canadian corporations involved in similar acts? Almost certainly. That may be why neither the Canadian news media nor our governments every mentioned that massacre.
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/rising-homelessness-in-america-the-reality-of-life-for-workers-in-a-booming-us-economy/5663396
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article204400.html

All these years later - after that wonderful day I was swept up in a crowd cheering for the the news world we were going to build....All these years later, we ARE the Naziis.
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And who is it that said something intelligent yesterday?

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/putin-warns-of-growing-threat-of-nuclear-war-that-will-end-civilization-1.6765283
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It's been a disturbing day of following the news. I found that most of the usual sources had nothing of substance to say. Our leaders - and our people - are not facing up to reality. That is particularly true of a ruling class of billionaires that is blind to the damage it is inflicting on the world and, ultimately, on itself.

And we have a massive class of ordinary people who have no sense of what a horror we are creating, not even when we read of those horrors in the deaths by murder, by hunger, by greed that we read of every day.

Religions all over the world that we might expect to have something useful to say are silent - except for their frequent pandering to hatreds. God smiles when the U.S. starves children to death in Yemen. Of course. God's white. Real Americans are white. And God wants Americans as his chosen people.

The Christians, always willing to pander to the rich and powerful, have nothing to say about our savage behaviour since 1945, nothing to say about a ruling class that is obsessed with greed.

I have never had such a depressing blog to write. We accept the most towering and murderous greed as if this were normal.........but, oh, there's a price for that.
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December 18: An unhappy blog

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/18/unaccompanied-children-tijuana-us-immigration

 But who cares? _________________________________________________________________Will Trump fall? It might not matter. The views and values of a Trump government are much like those of almost every US government for the last 70 years an more. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/dec/18/michael-flynn-sentencing-donald-trump-latest-live ________________________________________________________________

htps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2018/dec/18/michael-flynn-sentencing-donald-trump-latest-live

 70 years ago,it was the proudest boast of Canadians that they were loyal to Britain and its eimpire. But, long ago, the empire disappeared. The Britain of 70 years ago, included Ireland. But no more. It is very possible that Scotland will be next to go. And over all of them is the crush of Brexit. And to Canadians? Who cares? The patriotism of 70 years ago, like almost all patriotisms, was manufactured. ________________________________________________________________

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/17/canada-saudi-arms-deal-justin-trudeau

Good luck on this one. Trudeau will need it - and we should never have signed that deal in the first place. It had nothing to do with Canada, and everything to do with a greedy and immoral weapons industry.
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American billionaires are financing British right-wingers? Gee. I wonder if they are also funding Canadian politicians.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-billionaires-hard-right-britain-spiked-magazine-charles-david-koch-foundation
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People do not make themselves refugees. The thousands who have tried to flee Central America were make refugees by the horror that American and Canadian billionaires have forced on them. They are dying of hunger. They are dying of abuse. They are dying of hopelessness. They are not fleeing to die. They're fleeing to survive.

A century ago the U.S. delighted to receive refugees. Of course. The words are on the Statue of Liberty. "Send me your poor,      you tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free...."

Of course, they didn't mean it. These were an endless supply of cheap labour, nothing more. The U.S. still has that endless supply of cheap labour - in the descendents of those who came. But there's no need to import them any more. It's cheaper just to set a low minimum wage Indeed, the American supply of cheap labour is, unremarked, growing as American industry increasingly is served by robots.

So America is no longer much interested in the poor and the hungry.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/17/181-nations-just-voted-help-refugees-only-far-right-united-states-and-hungary-voted_
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/18/trouncing-biden-and-beto-b

Well, I include this story because I like the sound of it. But I'm not at all convinced that Sanders would do all that well. Nor am I convinced I see the money for a winning campaign.
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For sixty years and more. the U.S. has been killing the Maya people of Guatemala. It's been a mass slaughter - but one that is rarely mentioned in the American (or Canadian) news media. It has been a torturing and killing of men, women and children to feed the hunger of American and Canadian capitalists who find the native Maya in their way. And so a seven year old girl died.
Of course, if she had been the seven year old daughter of an American or a Canadian billionaire, the press would have been all over it. But she was just poor, and a Maya.

So who gives a damn in this racist world ruled by the greedy?

https://www.thenation.com/article/guatemala-refugee-crisis-jakelin-caal-maquin/
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2018/12/its-depressing-compare-canada-1979-us-201

While it was legal for Canada to hand over a Chinese women to American authorities, the fact is that legality does not make it right. What concerns the U.S. is that she was doing trade with a middle east country the US doesn't like. Whatever possessed Canada to make a deal with such an American law?

And this one is likely to cost us heavily.
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When I was a child, to be a Canadian patriot meant to serve the interests of Britain. Now it means to serve the interests of the U.S.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/18/canada-serves-the-empire-again-and-again/

(Yes, I know our agreement with the U.S. requires us to arrest whoever the U.S. wants us to arrest; So why did we sign it?
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/18/israel-ethnic-cleansing-land-theft-apartheid-and-jim-crow/
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We commonly refer to   Muslim warriors as 'terrorists'. Heck, if you want real terrorism, you have to go to the Christian world. This is the world in which American soldiers march down the street, and Trump calls them heroes for helping to kill children in Iran. It's an old custom in the Christian world.

The British soldiers who murdered for British billionaires were praised by the wealthy British as "splendid chaps"

https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/18/britain-robbed-india-of-45-trillion-thence-1-8-billion-indians-died-from-deprivation/
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An economic crash - soon - is very possible. It's built into capitalism - and no-one has ever found a way to get it out. Part of the reason for this is that capitalism insists on - and gets - maximum abstinence in dealing with supervision and responsibilities. In this case, for example, the wealthy have declined to pay taxes like the rest of us. The result has been monster profit for the very wealthy, profits made even greater by the easing of costs for the wealthy with very low minimum wages. The result of this is money has been bulldozed from most of use to feed the greed of our wealthy. But now, that drop in the circulation of world's wealth for most of our population and shoveling of most of the profits to the already wealthy necessarily means a drop in wealth for most people - a drop that can be reflected in losses for the wealthy, too.

And if that is what is happening, we're all in trouble. The wealthy always like to spread the myth that they create jobs. The reality is they don't. Wealth is created by the work of all of us. And when all of us suffer the drop in earnings, the rich and the poor are losers.

Generaly, big busineess does not create wealthy. On the contrary, it's wealthy creates poverty, recession and depression. If you want your and your family to survive, don't waste your hopes on the rich. When the wealthy survive depression, it's no big deal because they have some much of the world's wealth the begin with. It's the rest of us who have to suffer from their greed.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50790.htm
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Canada has the drabbest set of politicians it has ever had to suffer.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50784.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50783.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50785.htm
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http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2018/889-veneration-of-power-leading-to-climate-catastrophe.html

In the U.S., there is a strong feeling that Americans are God's chosen people. That's not unusual. A similar feeling was very strong in the old, British Empire And in these, as in most empires, there is (was) a belief that God wanted them to rule the world and and, therefore, God saluted their mass murder and plundering.

It all become  blendedsinto their national-self image as divinely appointed rulers of the world, an image further strengthened that these favoured ones are acting not just in obedience to God, but in obedience to that old work-dog of killers and plunderers, patriotism.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/14/opinion/oh-canada-dont-be-smug-fake-news-real-and-pr
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/12/analysis/co2-vs-cops

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This is the final issue for the world. This is what the U.S. Congress thinks we should plan for. This is pure idiocy. But this is what our lieaders think is necessary.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/17/bipartisan-panel-us-must-prepare-for-horrendous-devastating-war-with-russia-and-china/

These are real plans.
_____________________________________________________________

Something we should  not forget.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/15/the-us-wants-to-bring-back-the-shah-of-iran/

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https://truthout.org/articles/181-nations-voted-to-help-refugees-only-hungary-and-us-voted-no/
________________________________________________________
http://www.voltairenet.org/article204400.html
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This has been the most depressing blog I have ever written. A pattern is clear. The winners in 1945 were, largely, people who gave no thought whatever to the lessons of World War 2. Our leaders, guided by major capitalists, simply put the whole world into a war that no-one could ever win. That is obvious most clearly in the U.S. which has been in constant aggression and war against dozens of nations.

World War Two was fought to benefit capitalism. This was true of both sides. It emerged from the war stronger than ever. And it doesn't work. After centuries of trial, it has not benefited any but a  handful of the greediest and most intolerant in our society. They are so determined to continue in power that they destroy any attempt to deal with climate change. For thirty years and more, they have refused to permit any progress that, without progress very soon, will destroy all of us.

The world has never before seen such a burden of weapons and death covering the whole planet. Nor have we ever seen such deference to greed in the face ot destruction.

The term nation can now be applied to only those few nations that have massive powerfs of destruction. There is no sense of human values, no sense of the human bonds we need to survive, no sense of an informed population. No examination of the projects of government we need to examine, no sense of international cooperation and help, no idea, indeed, of the meaning of humanity.

We have, perhaps, a dozen or so years to deal with our issues. At our present rate, we won't do it in a thousand years. There is no sense of a glue that hold us humans together.

Capitalism is outdated. It has been proving that for many years. The nation state is almost certainly outdated. Patriotism? What's become simply a device to make young warriors kill innocent people. It's easy to do this with nations saturated with false patriotism. We don't learn from each other. We've given no thought whatever to intelligent and honest news agencies.And that may explain why, in Canada for example, we don't have a single party worth taking seriously. (Canada is typical in, after these many years, it still has not even a fundamental sense of what has to be done.It is

At this stage, it is not possible to believe that humans will survive. Indeed, it is quite possible that we will beat nature by destroying all of us before climate change does it.

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Dec. Not a good computer day.

This will be a short one. My computer is playing games with me which are driving me mad. Among other things, my text is so small I can barely read it. It seems to come out rspectably in the final format - but full of errors. Amd I can't seem to change it in the final form.That's why you'll see little comment in this one - and it all may be cut short to preserve my sanity. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For over a century, Canadian and American corporations have abused the people of latin America. They have forced them to work for poverty salaries in file conditions and a batterred environment. That, not a sweeping desire to be American or Canadian is why they are fleeing from their countries. We have made their lives unlivable. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/7-year-old-guatemalan-girl-dies-after-u-s-border-patrol-arrest-1.4945926 And, no, those 15,000 children in horrible conditions are not 'terrorists sneaking over the border to assassinate Americans. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/13/the-guardian-view-on-china-and-the-us-unlucky-canada-is-taking-the-hit ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Democratic Republic of the Congo is fabulously rich in natural resources. But it has been a place of poverty, misery and early death ever since is was handed over toe Belgium some hundred and fifty years ago. Granting it independence after World War Two changed nothing as western capitalists continued to loot, torture, muurder, impoverish its people. https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-congos-election-not-about-welfare-of-citizens _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/14/good-first-step-devos-forced-cancel-150m-student-loan-debt-thousands-scammed-profit https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/15/federal-courts-disastrous-affordable-care-act-ruling-only-bolsters-case-medicare-all Capitalism exists only to make profits for its owners. Nothing else. Forget the frivel about how is creates mobs. It creates the minmum possible number of jobs - and at the lowest possible prices. The bulk of its money goes into the pockets ts of the ca[otalists who then hide it from taxation. In short, capitalism lives by increasing poverty for all of us. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And enough. Writing on this dreadful screem is driving me crazy. I must go to the computer shop. I shall return, I hope, on Tuesday. (And I hope this turns out as normal print..... _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dec. 13:: Not sure this will work.....

Not sure how or if this blog will work. My computer is behaving oddly. I can't even proofread because the print on my end in terribly small. In 1939, Britain was the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. And Canadians, most of them, were fiercely loyal to Britain as 'the Mother Country'.
That's why Canada gladly fought in the Boer War, And then world wars 1 and 2. And that's why so many thousands of Canadians died. That's why, in my school days, the flag at the front of the class was the Union Jack,  the flag to which we pledged allegiance every day. That's why, every morning, we sang God Save the Queen. To be a patriotic Canadian was to serve Britain.

But that was another Canada.

World War 2, with considerable help from the U.S. destroyed the British Empire. It tried to steal China from Britain - but failed because the Chinese had their own ideas on that subject.  However, the U.S. did steal most of Africa and the middle east from British capitalists. And Canadians never made a peep.

Of course  not. The patriotism fever that caused us to kill and die for Britain was pure propaganda. Canada has fought in wars since 1945. But they are American wars.   (However, we don't hang star-spangled banners in our schools, and children don't sing God Bless America in the morning.) Andif Canadians fight and die today, it's with a patriotism that ties them to the U.S.

Beware of people who talk patriotism. It's almost always a cover for serving murderous billionaires.

Today, we're watching the final collapse of the pre-1939 Britain.

And who gives a damn?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2018/dec/13/theresa-may-heads-to-brexit-talks-in-brussels-after-seeing-off-vote-politics-livede
________________________________________________________________

Now, it's quite possible that Canada be asked to send troops to help the U.S. we all love in a patriotic way to get tough with those nasty Venezuelans and aren't as nice as they should be to Americans.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/venezuela-nicolas-maduro-assassination-attempt-white-house-ultra-right-locos
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/10/love-knows-no-borders-agents-arrest-32-as-religious-leaders-gather-at-us-border

Wouldn't it be nice to see religious leaders in Canada do some religious leading?
But don't hold your breath.
____________________________________________________________

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/12/china-canada-diplomat-michael-kovrig-detention-latest-

Typically, Canadians are patriotically serving the U.S. - even though it extremely that the U.S. has any legal right to charge her with anything. Her sin, it seems, is that she has had economic dealings with Iran. And the U.S. has told the world it is not allowed to deal with Iran.  But let's get real. The U.S. has no right to ban anybody from trading  with anybody.
________________________________________________________________

https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-saudi-game-of-thrones-could-be-its-ruination
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The creation of the NDP was a terrible mistake. It's predecessor, the CCF had been a party of accomplishments. Most notable was its it's creation of  medicare for all Canadians. It was quite an accomplishment for a small opposition party to force the Liberals and Conservatives into adopting such a broad programme.

The CCF had been a party of creation, of innovation. But the CCF was not popjular with Canada's billionaires. And that meant it never came close to the income it needed. So it had to turn to the unions for funding.

But the union, alas, were too much like the billionaires. The price for union support was the create a new party,  the NDP, that would destroy much of innovation and principle that had marked the CCF.

And it hasn't changed.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2018/12/courage-there-way-forward-federal-nd
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/13/we-see-you-stephen-miller-white-house-reportedly-considering-despicable-and-racist
______________________________________________________________
https://www.thenation.com/article/trump-immigration-undocumented-housekeeper/
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/13/the-nostalgia-for-george-h-w-bush-and-the-dream-of-a-kinder-gentler-imperialism/
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Latin Americans are not trying to flee to the U.S. because they love it. They're fleeing because for more than a century the U.S. has made their own countries into hells on earth.

U.S. corporations (and Canadian ones) force the people of Latin America to work in unlivable conditions for unsurvivable pay. They destroy the lands. They plunder the wealth. They forbid the legislation that is needed to make life bearable. They destroy education. They make health care out of the question. They install dictators. And they murder anyone who objects.

What gives the U.S.  the right to do this?

Well, a majority of American Christians feel that God wants them to rule those countries and, for that matter, to rule the whole world. The figure for Republicans is over 60%,  And, surprise, it's over 80% for Democrats.

This belief in America's relationship with God goes back centuries  to at least the Pilgrim Fathers. And it's much encouraged by American billionaires.

That's why it's okay for America to starve the children of Yemen to death. God says it's okay.
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This next story is almost certainly true, John Bolton was a long, long history of such behaviur  (and so have most American governments.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50751.htm

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50749.htm

And contrary to what any of our news media might say, Canada is on the U.S. list. What it has now is a very subject Canada. But that's not going to be enough.
For convenience and to meet changing conditions, the U.S. iis gonig to want Canada to a part of the U.S. Count on it.
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...not just in the U.S....

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/12/news/opposition-pounces-ontario-police-chiefs-call-investigation-appointment-doug-fords
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/12/discuss-kerch-strait-and-azov-sea-tensions/

And it is very possible we shall find ourselves fighting a war over this.
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https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/676300525/almost-15-000-migrant-children-
now-held-at-nearly-full-shelters

Gotta watch them kids. They could be terrorists.
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Don't worry about this next one. Wealthy Americans don't even think about it

https://truthout.org/articles/theres-a-hunger-crisis-in-north-carolina/
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I taught university for almost 40 years. Student course evaluations showed that students liked my courses, but found me a hard marker. I was a hard marker. But most of my students, by far, passed their courses with me. I was, therefore, stunned at the failure rate in American colleges as reported below. Universities, of course, will trot out their usual song that they have high standards.

But that's bullslhit. A forty percent failure rate suggests to me abysmal teaching - and other problems.

To make it worse, rich countries like Canada and the U.S. force students to pay heavy costs for course and living expenses. I remember well, my shock on graduating to learn that I face d 15 years of paying off student loans - a situation that makes it impossible for most even to think of higher education.

Tiny Cuba can afford to pay for education. That's why Cuban doctors are to be found all over the world. But rich Canada and the U.S. can't afford it.

But that forty percent figure for the U.S. is stunning. To make it worse, rich kids of no brains at all can do well in university.  Rich kid George Bush Jr. could get a first degree despite being close to illiterate. (He was also heavily into drugs at the time.) He also got accepted after for a graduate degree at at super reputation school - and he passed. (Impossible. But it happened.)

U.S. education is in trouble, big trouble.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-12/nearly-40-american-college-students-never-graduate-study-finds
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Dec. 11: A bad day's news.

Will we? Won't we? Will we? Won't we?

As time runs out, it looks as though we won't.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/09/us-russia-ally-saudi-arabia-water-down-climate-pledges-un

_https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/tackle-climate-or-face-financial-crash-say-worlds-

_https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/cdn-environment-groups-tell-world-canada-not-slowing-emissions-from-oil-and-gas-1.4940732

It's called insanity.
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So imagine what the reaction is going to be like as climate change REALLY becomes obvious.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/europe-holds-it-breath-as-macron-moves-to-quell-protests

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/11/east-antarctica-glacial-stronghold-melting-amid-climate-change

But not to worry. I mean - if we can't trust our oil billionaires and their puppet politicians, who can we trust?
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/11/yemen-war-norwegian-refugee-council

Onward Christian soldiers...
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/toronto-black-residents-more-likely-shot-dead-ontario-human-rights-commissio

Don't blame just the police. They are reflections of the attitudes of the people of Toronto - and other cities.
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Insanity is not limited to western capitalists.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/09/us-russia-ally-saudi-arabia-water-down-climate-pledges-un
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It's good, if rare, to see Christians acting like Christians.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/11/not-your-average-demonstration-faith-leaders-arrested-demanding-demilitarization-us

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This story is probably nowhere close to its ending. And it may go well beyond France.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/11/the-macron-implosion-will-it-spread-to-other-eu-members/
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/10/donald-trump-the-perfect-president-of-a-perfect-capitalist-state-and-what-that-implies-for-the-working-class/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/11/war-over-ukraine/
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And in two of the richest nations on earth, here's a taste of reality.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-homelessness-crisis-deepens-across-north-america/5662535

We joyfully hand out billions to oil barons and other billionaires.But the poor and homeless? Hey! It's their own fault. Right?Just a few weeks ago I lived close to a heavily forested park. It was in a city that had financed the building of a 120 million dollar hockey rink for it's Junior team.

No problem. The hockey team was owned by a member of the local billionaire family - and, he already had a pretty good rink. But, you know, he thought a new rink would be nicer.

Then, on the coldest day of the year the police spotted tents in the forested park. They booted the families out, and tore down the tents. Problem solved. And what happened to those families?

Who knows?

Who cares?

The important thing is the billionaire likes his stadium.
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Palestinians are the Jews of our time. And the bits and pieces of land they have left are their Buchenwalds.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50732.htm

And the Israelis have become their Naziis.

You think that's anti-semitic? Oh. Don't you know that Palestinians are semites, too? And don't you know that large numbers of North American Jews have become highly critical of the behaviour of Israelis in their treatment of Palestinians? (Read Haaretz.)
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50734.htm
_______________________________________________________________

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50724.htm

Well, billionaires are such nice and thoughful people. I'm sure they'll.....
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https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ukraine-accuses-russia-blockading-kerch-strait-59675276

Now, won't that be nice?
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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/04/four-million-british-workers-live-in-poverty-charity-says

Britain, like the U.S., like most countries, has always treated its working class vilely. Go to Images on your computer. Type The Gorbals to get a view of British slums. Go to any British city of, say, 1900. Wealthy British, American and Canadian have always abused and plundered their own people.
(I well remember my own days in a factory of whirling machines, great, uncovered belts attached to the machines, unspeakably filthy washrooms. I remember a worker who fell down a flight of dreadful stairs, and was carried out unconscious. I remember workers whose only recreation was to get drunk on payday, and to borrow for the rest of the week. At 65, if they lived that long, they were fired. And there were no pensions. Filth was everywhere - in the shop, in the home, in their clothing, and soaked into their skin.
________________________________________________________________

Yes, I know this is a Russian site. I also know that it tells the truth. (That doesn't mean this is fair and honest reporting. No. This is a source that tells the truth in each story - but it does not touch stories that make the U.S. look good or Russia look bad.)

https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/446042-britain-support-repressive-regimes/
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50722.htm

So, Canada has detained a wealthy Chinese woman at the request of the U.S. government to face   criminal changes in the U.S. This story certainly makes one wonder about the legality of the arrest. But that will be for American courts to decide.

For now, the question is ------

If China had asked Canada to detain an American billionaire to be turned over to China......would Trudeau have done it?

If it is true that the U.S. wants to try her on a charge of having economic dealings with Iran, then there is no case. The U.S., for all its love of sanctions, has no right to tell people which countries they are allowed to deal with.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/10/features/jail-was-scary-climate-change-upon-us-former-head-bc-teachers-federation-says

Nice to see someone to admire in the day's news.
_________________________________________________________________

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/corruption-causes-poverty-un/

And this isn't even counting the trillions lost all over the world as billionaires avoid taxes by hiding their money in special banks. We are being robbed blind by our "upper class".
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/11/usa-the-worlds-invasion-nation/
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46522358

The U.S. is greatly annoyed, But, you know, the U.S. thinks it was quite alright for it to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine to create a threat to Russia, It's okay to plant American troops  (and Canadian) near Russian borders, and to plant its nuclear bases close Russia.

Russia and China are increasingly making themselves felt in the middle east and in South America. Get used to it.
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Hey! What's 21 trillion among friends?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztDHmkRK6I8&feature=youtu.be

It's billionaires are robbing the U.S.  (and Canada) blind. Eventually, it will all crash.
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https://truthout.org/articles/from-insects-to-starfish-were-edging-toward-biological-annihilation/

Don't worry about it. Our billionaires, who think only of us and what is good for us, will do....something.....
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It's very rare to get a look at the world the very, very wealthy and the politicians they own.Here's a look at France's president Macron. He reminds me of another of the type, New Brunswick's Frank McKenna.  McKenna is a member of the Bilderberg group which feels that billionaires should rule the world. That's no exaggeration. In a recent meeting of wealthy Canadian business leaders, McKenna proposed they should take over the government because us voters don't know what we're doing.

These are the people who have created the disaster of a world that we now live in.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204303.html
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/brent-patterson/2018/12/its-dangerous-world-land-and-environmental-defend

The number of killings is certainly much, much higher than suggested here. Many of these killings are ordered by corporations - Canadian ones among them - to dispose of people who interfere with their profits. The mass murder of Maya people in Guatemala that was directed by George H.W. Bush is an example of the bigger killings.
________________________________________________________________

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/12/questions-and-answers-about-yellow-vest-uprising-france
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This has been a long day of writing the most depressing blog I  have ever written. Democracy is pretty much dead as billionaires take over. Under the billionaires, mass murder is daily routine. As well, there is a steady decline in living standards for most people. And that will get worse as the majority, by far, of American people believe that God intends them to rule the world. No. That is not an exaggeration. Indeed, it's worst among Democrats, over 80 % of whom feel God wants them to rule the world. So much for democracy.

The concept that government should be aimed at providing security and benefits for the people has pretty much disappeared in favour of pouring all our blessings to the greediest people in history.

And, if we don't deal with this, we are going to see one hell of a crash because our world cannot survive so much power in the hands of people so shallow they understand only their own greed.

Dec. 08: more than 70 years after 1945......

----we have not done any of the things we said we fought that war for.

The ring is closing on Trump. Alas. That could mean it's closing on all of us.Trump's responses to charges against him have always taken the form of personal attack on his critics. This is not a man who will  ever recognize that he has been wrong. His ego will  never permit that. The question now is how far will his ego take him.

It is quite possible he will take  the power of the president well beyond the limits imposed by the constitution. And we can only guess at the chaos this will create across the U.S. as his followers defiantly follow him......not to mention the chance of a war as a distraction.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/08/donald-trump-mueller-investigation-cohen-manafort

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/07/comey-testifies-at-house-hearing-he-calls-desperate-att

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/07/paul-manafort-mueller-special-counsel-filing
_________________________________________________________________

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/07/rich-nations-arent-paying-their-fair-share-mitigate-climate-crisis-says-report

Of course, the rich nations aren't paying their share. They are the nations - like the U.S., Canada, Britain who are owned by the billionaires who make money, in the short term, because of climate change. The oil industry is just one example.
________________________________________________________________

And here's another.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/07/complete-wiping-away-clean-water-act-trump-epa-rule-would-free-corporations-pollute
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/07/europe-condemns-people-drown-forcing-msf-ship-cease-migrant-rescue-missions

Onward Christian Soldiers....
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I was very lucky. My father was a reader, and he encouraged me  to read from the age of six. When visitors came in the evening, he would get me up to recite

'Your may talk of gin and beer
When you're quartered safe out here
And you're sent to penny fights and Aldershot it.
But when it comes to slaughter
You will...........on water
And you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.'

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2018/12/decline-reading-causes-decline-thinking-which-impairs-social
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2018/12/politicians-who-deny-reality-arent-fit-lead
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The disturbances in France have the potential to become much, much more serious.

https://www.thenation.com/article/france-yellow-vest-protest-macron/
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https://www.thenation.com/article/noam-chomsky-90th-birthday/
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The following looks like a good - if humiliating answer to climate change. Alas! Even if the oil barons bought into it, they'd still cheat.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/07/what-if-we-just-buy-off-big-fossil-fuel-a-novel-plan-to-mitigate-the-climate-calamity/
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We're all in a tizzy over the murder of an innocent man by the Saudis. Hell, the U.S. and Britain do it every day.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50720.htm
_____________________________________________________________

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50717.htm
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Now, this scares me. How do you think the U.S. would react if Russian ships sailed into the Caribbean? (We don't have to ask. It happened in the time of JFK and the U.S. reacted before the Russians even got there..)

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/navy-black-sea-aggression-freedom-of-navigation-operation/2018/12/05/id/893324/
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With time quickly running out, the record of Canada and of Justin Trudeau on climate change has been dismal. At a time when we need dramatic change to reduce carbon emissions - a very, very short time - our government is actually planning to build a new pipeline for those nice billionaires in the oil business.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/05/news/trudeau-governments-trans-mountain-purchase-has-trig
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I really don't know what to make of this next story. I have noticed that reports on it in the commercial news media have been very, very vague.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/08/chinas-uyghur-problem-the-unmentioned-part/

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The sin of Juslian Assange was that he told the truth about American government torture and murder. Some Americans might not like that. But it is not a crime to tell the truth. But what is truth has nothing to do with this case. American authorities are determined to imprison him for life. For telling the truth.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/06/julian-assange-rejects-uk-ecuador-deal-leave-embassy/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0GHWSi_cXY&feature=youtu.be

It's possible we are watching an explosion of dissatisfaction in much of the world. Trump was elected  - out of dissatisfaction. So was Doug Ford. Something very similar could be happening in Britain, and in parts of Europe - and Canada.
It's the sort of dissatisfaction that encourages disorder and anger without ever providing answers.
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And - as a counter-balance the media's maudlin coverage of Bush's funeral.

https://truthout.org/articles/i-will-not-speak-kindly-of-the-dead-bush-was-detestable/
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Israel has discriminated against its arab citizens from the start. It forced them into ghettos, it restricted their rights. It kicked them out of districts Israeli wanted. It humiliated them by submitting them to the sort of humiliation suffered by Blacks in the worst days of American racism - such as not being permitted to sit on public busses - or being forced into arab sections and, of course, to give up seats to Israelis as the bus filled.

As for those Palestinians living in their own land of Palestine, it stole their land and houses so that almost no Palestine really exists. Israel starves the Palestinians (and the U.S. has helped by cutting their food supply). Israel routinely cuts off electricity every day to Palestine. Every hardship, humiliation is used to make life miserable for Palestinians

It's hard to believe that Jews and Palestinians lived together in peace and even friendship for over two thousand years. Yes. They did. Then European Jews swarmed in, and acted as though it was Palestinians who had caused the holocaust.  Indeed, treatment of Jews has been, for centuries, far worse in North America and Europe, Indeed, the Jews of Israel bear a strong resemblance to the behaviour of Anti-semitic Christians in Europe and North America.

And the U.S. - which still has a good deal of anti-semitism in it - is helping the Israelis to destroy the people they lived in peace with for many centuries.
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So where is all this taking us?

We are headed for climate disaster. Whey are we being so stupid? Well, I wish I knew much more about human behaviour. The oil industry has used all its considerable power to block dealing with climate change. And it is not possible that the industry leaders are all so stupid that they cannot see what they are doing.
No. What they are caught up in ia the very human refusal to see what they don't want to see. That's why government set stunningly long term objectives for dealing with this. That's why Trudeau has set a long, long objective of doing nothing by using our taxes to pay for a pipeline to make our oil bosses happy - at a cost of 12 million dollars month just in interest,a  project that will last for 30 years and more.

Why do Canadians accept this? I really don't know. The world's leading scientists tell us we have, maybe, a  half dozen years to make substantial progress. But we sheepishly follow our oil bosses and Trumps and Trudeaus.

What can we look forward to in international relations? Lots of chaos (as in France, as in electing Trumps, as in the rise of naziism in much of Europe. Lots of turmoil - but with no clear objectives.

At the same time, we can expect a rapid decline of the U.S. It is happening  now, combined with a  rapid rise of China. The great danger here is that western capitalists will react by demanding a world, nuclear war.- a war we will all lose.

What it is hard to find in this world is any major power with social values. We are very, very dangerous people - to ourselves.
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Dec. 6: Forgotten promises

1945 was a year of promises. We were going to create a new world of peace, sharing, cooperation,,, and, right from the start we betrayed all that we said we had fought for and that so many had died for.

He handed real power back to the billionaires of this world who used it as they had always used power - to murder and plunder. Even the Korean War, which we were told was to  protect the freedom of South Korea, was a lie. South Korea was not free. It was a dictatorship made up of those who had been collaborators with the Japanese. The purpose of the war was not to free anybody. It was to give the U.S. a base for the invasion of China to make it a part of the American empire so that it could be plundered by American billionaires.

We now seem to have come to a point that is most dangerous, France is in serious disorder. Naziism is enjoying a revival in Europe - and the naziis, as in Ukraine, are on our side.

The U.S. failed utterly to pass on any of the benefits of peace to the American people. Instead, all power went to billionaires - and the result of that was the utter destruction of democracy. Poverty levels, despite Trump's blogs, are high and growing much higher. Virtually nothing is being done about climate change  because that would annoy our billionaires.

All of this is why, I think, we are seeing political aberrations like populism, widespread anger, and undirected  hatred.

Added to that, the U.S. seems to be on the edge of a serious economic and military decline, so serious it may actually break up the country. The future seems to lie with an expanding China which is spreading its influence on all continents - including South America and Africa.

Meanwhile, climate change is very likely to give rise to an American desire to annex Canada. No. That's not hokum. Wake up. The U.S. is perhaps the only country in the world which has spent almost every year of its history invading - somebody.

None of this leads us to anything predictable - but lots that is dangerous.

We desperately need to find our way back to the ideals we spoke of in 1945.
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Just over a week ago,   I moved from the province of New Brunswick to Ottawa, Ontario. After 15 years of New Brunswick's propaganda press I was looking forward to getting a real newspaper.

Big mistake. The Ottawa Citizen lies just as much as the Irving papers and, oh, it's bland and trivial. I read a story about the funeral of George H.W. Bush, what a wonderful man he was, and how his loving son wept. (I shall pass lightly over the facts that Bush jr. did not weep for the two million or so that he slaughtered in Afghanistan and Iraq in illegal wars in which most of the casualties were civilians and children. Like  his daddy, George Jr. was the eager servant of American billionaires  who want to rule the world.)

If either father or son was glorious, then Hitler was a saint.

https://www.thenation.com/article/george-h-w-bush-icon-of-the-wasp-establishment-and-of-brutal-us-repression-in-the-third-world/
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And a story that wasn't important enough for the Ottawa Citizen.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/india-pollution-deaths-study-1.4934929
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The quality of The Guardian can vary a great deal. It's virtue, unlike most of our news media, is that it at least sometimes tells the truth.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/04/george-bushs-legacy-isnt-so-peaceful
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_https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-can-humanity-really-win-the-global-warming-fight

I met Dyer some forty years ago when I worked in the same studio with him at CBC Montreal. I thought he was good then. I think he's brilliant now.
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This next story wasn't important enough to make the Ottawa Citizen.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/06/charts-new-study-shows-greenland-ice-sheet-likely-hasnt-melted-fast-more-7000-years
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https://www.commondreams.org/further/2018/12/05/richer-rich-people-and-terrified-brown-people-bush-was-basically-trump-better
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Canada can afford medicare for all it's citizens. Cuba, despite crippling sanctions by the U.S., can afford medicare for it's people It can also afford free university education,  and it can supply much of the Latin world with doctors.

But the poor, little U.S. can't afford any of this.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/06/power-kneecap-bold-demand-incoming-democratic-tax-committee-chair-says-medicare-all
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/06/record-high-carbon-emissions-show-we-are-speeding-towards-the-precipice-of-irrevocable-climate-chaos/

And over much of the world, governments are doing nothing whatever to deal with this. The wealthy don't want anything done. They make their money out of oil and coal. They seem not to realized that it will kill them, too. There is a real sickness here we need to deal with.
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I don't know why it continues to surprise me. Children have been major targets of war for almost a century - going back to Churchill's order to the RAF in 1920 to bomb undefended Kurd villages. The U.S. has been taking this to an ever higher level since the bombing of Dresden in World War 2, and then the unspeakably savage bombings of North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya Yemen......

We are told that Jesus loves the little children. I certainly hope He does because     us Christians and our churches certainly haven't done it.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/06/yemen-85000-dead-kids/

85,000 not enough for you? Well, cheer up. many millions are starving, and likely to die.
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The British Empire, the one that Canadians fought two wars to defend, was one of the most brutal and murderous in history with estimates of its dead running to hundreds of millions. Of course, the British people, for the most part, got nothing out of it. While they lived in some of the world's worst slums, it was the British upper class who go the profits. And that's still true as the British wealthy, like other wealthies all over the world hide their money in tax shelters. And that means trillions of dollars stolen from revenues - which is why the U.S. can't afford health care, free university tuition or even decent public education.
Canada is much the same.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-the-spiders-web-britains-second-empire-how-the-british-elites-created-a-network-of-tax-havens/5661820

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50713.htm
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France could be facing a revolution.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-06/france-deploys-12000-riot-cops-closes-eiffel-tower-coup-attempt-feared-yellow-vests

And it may not be retricted. The French demonstrations, lie to spread of populism in the form of people like Trunk and Ford, looks eerily like a general collapse of any sense organization or direction in the western world, at least.

The U.S. is facing a similar division - and it's quite possible these divisions will lead to national break-ups.
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https://thesaker.is/why-russia-wont-invade-the-ukraine-the-baltic-statelets-or-anybody-else/
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Not everyone admires Canada's Justin Trudeau.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/discreet-sham-justin-trudeau-181204113121488.html

More important for those who live in Canada, he has been stunningly inert on the whole issue of climate change. Alas, I see little difference in the positions of the parties who tell us they are concerned about climate change - and the Conservative party is off in another world altogether.
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Here's a story from Haaretz about our 'democracy-loving friends' in Ukraine who want us to invade Russia for them.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/meet-the-lonely-ukranian-jew-fighting-his-country-s-new-fondness-for-nazis-1.6722836
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Dec. 4: These final days.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/george-herbert-walker-bush-obituary-reaction-1.4928813

Brian Mulroney - an excellent choice to deliver the obituary for George W. Bush. Bush, like his son, was a mass murderer to please the rich. Mulroney took his love for the rich out in corruption. He is, to my knowledge, the only Canadian prime minister to get  caught being 'on the take'.

(Well, yes, John A MacDonald was on the take. So was Charles Tupper - VERY big time. And MacKenzie King could be careless. But John A and Tupper were never caught. Mulroney was.)

In the case we know of, a man had supper at the p.m.s residence, presenting him with two large suitcases stuffed with money. And this was certainly not a virgin stab at being on the take for Mulroney. Luckily for him, another Conservative was prime minister when Mulroney was caught. So he got off easy.

I often drove past his magnificent mansion in Montreal. Our tax dollars at work

Mulroney is a political sleaze. He has to be to satisfy a wife who lives for  high-priced shopping. Pretty scatter-brained - but not evil.  Bush was a mass murderer and torturer.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/02/george-hw-bush-family

https://www.thenation.com/
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/g20-china-latin-america-1.4929316

What is now the U.S. has been an empire since the day the pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. They and their successors built the new land into their empire step by step, massacring the native peoples who already lived there. The American revolution was fought so that the Americans could expand into the west, slaughtering more of the native peoples as they went. It fought a war against Mexico to steal the land that became Texas, Nevada, Arizona, California. It invaded Canada three times for the same reason. It took over Hawaii without the consent of the people of Hawaii. and parts of Asia.Then it turned itself loose on Central and South America, then overseas in the middle east.

But, almost certainly, it's imperial days are dying as China and Russia move in. Especially China.
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It has been disgusting to follow news coverage of the death of George H.W. Bush.
For seventy years, the U.S. has been torturing and murdering huge numbers of the people of Guatemala. It has used the CIA to destroy any elected government. It mass-murdered the native, Maya people. To this day, Guatemala is a wretchedly dangerous place with a homicide every 90 minutes - and a conviction rate of  2%.  The whole nation has effectively been destroyed by people like George H. W. Bush in order to please American and Canadian mining companies.

George H.W. Bush and his idiot son would have fit right into Hitler's Germany.

But none of this is in our news media. No. We're getting a sweet, old man who loved his family. Let's get real. Hitler, too, loved his mother - so much that he helped her Jewish doctor to escape the holocaust. What a sweetheart!

Our news media are, almost without exception, disgusting. And now that I've moved to our capital, Ottawa, I'm finding it's Ottawa Journal to be as big a stinker as the irving press of New Brunswick.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-russia-azov-crimea-putin-1.4928575

This is what has scared me from the start about Canada's involvement  in Ukraine. There is no reason, none whatever, why Canadian troops should be there. We are being sucked into a  crisis created by the U.S. and Ukraine. As  in Afghanistan and Korea we run the risk of fighting somebody else's wars.

That is something that began over a century ago when Canadian troops went to South Africa to kill Dutch farmers so that wealthy British could steal the South African gold mines. That, too, had nothing to do with Canada. Indeed, like most of the British empire, this had nothing to do with most of the British, either. They got nothing out of the empire but slums to live in and factories that bled them.

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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/christopher-hedges-farewell-america-1.4911396
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/03/the-2018-firestorms-there-is-no-planet-b/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/04/why-the-migrant-caravan-story-is-a-climate-change-story/
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This story hasn't made much of a splash in Canadian news media.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-backs-repression-killing-of-protestors-in-haiti/5661774
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The Ukraine-Russia confrontation may be the most dangerous development since 1945. And Canada is up to its ears in it with Canadian troops there to train a Ukrainian army which is openly Nazi.

This all began when the U.S. organized and financed an uprising against the elected Ukrainian government, and brought a pro-Nazi, pro-U.S. party to power. And you imagine that U.S. reaction if Russia had done that in Mexico to bring an anti-U.S. government into power?

This one is very, very dangerous. And Canada, which has no business being there, has troops in the middle of it.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-us-installed-fascist-tyranny-in-europes-heartland/5661763
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Civilians, especially children, have been the main targets for killing ever since 1920, at least. That's when Winston Churchill, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, ordered the RAF  to bomb undefended Kurd villages. It became worse in World War 2 with all sides murdering civilians on a grand scale. The U.S., Britain, and Canada made that clear in World War Two with their bombing of Dresden.

(When this was revealed in a Canadian film by the National Film Board, The Canadian Legion pulled out all the stops to kill the story. To it, war was about heroism and glory. But the reality is quite different. And the legion should be the first organization to tell us that instead of being the first to lie about it. Nobody blames our veterans for it - and nobody should blame them. The orders come from higher up. I remember well testifying on all this to the Canadian Senate. A veteran bomber pilot was in tears because his grandchildren asked if he had killed children. Hell, it wasn't his fault. He was barely more than a kid himself at the time..)

With the Korean and Vietnam wars, the U.S. air force made civilians and children its major targets, a pattern that continued in Afghanistan and Iraq - and now Yemen.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50697.htm
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This is just one, small sample of why our major, commercial news smedia are so dishonest.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50701.htm
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New Brunswick - the province owned by an oil baron. The province whose new premier used to be a senior official in the oil baron's pocket. (and who still is). Watch for violence on this one, violence which the local news media (owned by the oil baron) will blame on the opponents of fracking.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/12/03/news/new-nb-premier-hopes-bring-energy-east-pipeline-back-dead

Of course, I should add that the oil baron of New Brunswick is a highly educated man, so he doesn't pay any attention to what crackpot scientists say about climate change. He doesn't have to. He went to a university for all of two years before dropping out. So he knows - things.
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/04/the-tale-of-two-karls/
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Most (almost all) news media are liars and propagandists. That's been true since the origins of the modern newspaper in the late nineteenth century. It was a natural development. The modern news medium requires a large staff, expensive printing equipment - all to deal with mass circulation. Only the wealthy can afford to own that. Thus their use of the news media to serve their investment purposes.

The model was Randolph Hearst who used his press in the U.S. to promote wars with Spain in order to get control of the Spanish empire in Latin American and the Phillipines. And, in both cases, it promoted the use of dictators in lands it 'freed' from the Spanish.

Sometimes the reason for the lying was to boost morale and sell papers. That was why the British press made a hero of Baden-Powell in the Boer War. It was a war that needed a hero as the British were doing rather poorly. The bright spot was a 'courageous' Baden-Powell in defence of Mafeking.  The problem? He wasn't supposed to be defending Mafeking. The British command was furious with him. But because the press had made him a hero, it had to report him to general.

Baden-Powell used his fame to create the Boy Scouts. In World War 1, he offered his services to the army again. But it refused, saying his work with the Boy Scouts was too important.

The Canadian press pushed hard for Canada to join Britain in the Boer War. It wanted that because the capitalists who owned the Canadian press wanted a close connection with Britain on which they depended for investment.  (Canada then had no obligation to fight British wars. But British capitalists wanted to change that because they knew that a war was coming with Germany - and they wanted a precedent that Canada would fight all British wars. And so it was that Canadians were sent to kill and die in the Boer War - murdering Dutch farmers so that British capitalists could steal the gold mines of South Africa.  The Canadians, incidentally, were also in charge of concentration camps where some 15,000 Dutch civilians died, almost all of them the elderly, women and children, of malnutrition and and general neglect).

But some newspaper were honest. The Guardian (Britain) was probably the best of them. It still can be good - but its reputation has suffered in recent years.)

https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/12/the-guardians-reputation-in-tatters-after-forger-revealed-to-have-co-authored-assange-smear/
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(In this context, I am reminded of Conrad Black with whom I shared a radio studio and more time than I wanted to in Montreal. He was a stunningly successful newspaper owner - he was also a stunning liar and egoist. He never listened to anyone. In conversation, he would close his eyes to glory in the sound of his own voice.
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https://truthout.org/articles/a-blue-wave-from-another-universe/
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https://truthout.org/articles/how-climate-change-helped-create-the-migrant-caravan/
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https://theintercept.com/2018/11/27/epa-water-protection-climate-change/
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http://www.voltairenet.org/article204116.html

Check the language of  your newspaper. Any act of murder carried out by Muslims is commonly referred to in our papers as 'terrorism'.

The biggest killer in the world since 1945 is the United States. But it's murderers are never called terrorists. More likely would be heroes. (Actually, a very large part of today's U.S. army is made up of  hired killers. Unlike ordinary soldiers, they are very, very highly paid - and a great many are not Americans - rather like the French foreign legion. These are people who would fight for either side. And right now the American side pays better.)

That's a subtle form of propaganda that our news media specialize in. The other side in war is always evil. Russians became heroes when Hitler invaded. There were even movies about the heroic Russians who, surprisingly, were portrayed as being exactly like Americans. But then, in  1945, they all became evil again.
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https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/general-motors-job-cuts-harbinger-crash-181129153107220.html
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Let's try to put much of this into a context. I say earlier in this blog that our news media constantly lie. That lying often takes the form of speaking of "the enemy" as invariably being evil while we are invariably good. Let's just think about that.

The Western plunder of the rest of the world begins with Christopher Columbus.
He murder and plundered millions. He enslaved. He tortured. But it's only very recently that our history books are catching up to that. I can remember as a child being told what a wonderful man Christoper Columbus was.

Then there followed the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch empires - then the biggest of them all, the English speaking empires of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the U.S.

They killed, enslaved, plundered, tortured all over the world with Britain the champion killer. The British carried that role to North America with the earliest English settlers. The American revolution changed nothing as the new US continued its massacre of native peoples, it's massive theft of their land, it's mass murder to plunder Latin America (which still goes on - and with the avid cooperation of British and Canadian corporations, especially in mining.

Indeed, the English-speaking people also plundered, murdered and abused their own people. At the peak of British power as the wealthy splashed about in their stolen treasure, working class children were sent out to work at the age of six for as much as fifteen hours a day in factories. And while the rich splashed about in the country estates, the working class lived in some of foulest slums known to history. Indeed, that still happens. Go to The Gorbals on your computer to see what a real slum can look like.

It was very similar in Canada and the U.S. In Toronto in the late nineteenth century, a teen age worker lost his arm to a piece of dangerous and exposed machinery. He was immediately fired and sent home minus his arm.  (That  story caught my attention because I once worked in a factory like that when I was a teenager.)

There was no medical care for the poor. (There still is very, very little of it in the U.S.)

The powerful force behind all this was the emerging economic system called capitalism.  It was and is an elevation of unlimited greed based on no moral principles whatever. That is particularly noticeable in the U.S., but also, increasingly, in Britain. And with threats rising in Canada.

Just recently, a former premier of New Brunswick hosted a conference in Ottawa to which only the wealthy were invited - and only those from New Brunswick. He advised them to return to New Brunswick and to take over the running of the government. Yes. He actually advised a corporate take over of the province.  (In fact, that corporate takeover has largely happened many years ago. The province is now effectively owned by an oil billionaire of no social conscience whatever - who also owns all its newspapers which never mentioned a word about this revolutionary meeting.)

In the U.S. this process is well under way in a nation that has long ago destroyed democracy. Where will this take us?

It's already taking us there. It's been taking us into deeper poverty for decades now. We are governed almost entirely by the pure greed of a small number. That almost certainly will lead to a dreadful crash. As well, rule by greed has made it impossible to make progress on climate change. And in a very short time, that will become a permanent condition.

Meanwhile, capitalism exploits our sense of patriotism to murder anybody who opposes us. Killing Afghans is patriotic. Starving the children of Yemen is heroic. And God, of course, is on our side. (Read all the smarm about that murdering bastard George F.W. Bush to get a sense of that.)

We are, all of us, headed into economic and social disaster, led by people of unspeakable greed who, with their narrow sense of capitalism, will destroy us - and them.

Meanwhile, their newspapers egg us on to help them kill and torture and plunder.
Ever notice that in our news media, our side is always good, and the other side is always evil. Notice it. The people of Yemen are evil. We are starving their children to death - but we are heroes, and they are evil.

World War 2 was fought on this myth.

Hitler was evil. Well - yes. But that's not why we went to war. The notion that we went to war for that reason is rubbish.

For a start, Hitler's murders in the 1930s came nowhere close to the British and American mass murders of several centuries. Estimates of killing by the British run to over 350 million people. The U.S. has been at war almost every year of its existence - and there's no guess at how many millions it has killed.

As to Hitler's killing of Jews, that was never the reason for going to war against Hitler. Indeed, anti-semitism was just as powerful a force in Britain and North America as it was in Germany - just as anti-central American is today a hate force in the U.S.

In fact, western capitalists just loved Hitler. He was their barrier against communism. Great guy Hitler.

No. What turned western leaders against Hitler had nothing to do with him being evil. It had to do - especially for Britain and France - with the way Germany was emerging as a business rival. That's what the war was really about.

In fact, it was World War 1 all over again. Despite the news stories about Germans being evil then, that was never the reason for either war.

Similarly, the U.S.joined the war for reasons that had nothing to do evil enemies. The U.S. joined the war  ( Yes, I know all about Pearl Harbout - but the US had decided on war long before Pearl Harbor) - the US joined because it wanted to rip off the British empires in China, India. There were fortunes to be made in that. They also hoped (and succeeded in) ripping off much of the British Empire in the Middle East.

The U.S. saw World War Two as its chance to conquer the world. That's why it invaded North Korea - as a staging area for an invasion of China.

Yes, I know we should be proud of the patriotism of Canadians who have fought in our wars. And, indeed, we should be. We should also apologise to them. It's not their fault that now, over seventy years later. we have failed to do anything we said we were fighting for in World War 2. Certainly, we never thought we would now be helping out in murdering children in Yemen, or protecting a Saudi Prince.

We have utterly failed in every thing we should have done after the two world wars. We have allowed the wealthiest in our world to lie to us through their news media, to rouse us to more killing of innocent people. 1945 was a wonderful chance to get us past wars, and to create a world of cooperation. But we didn't.

And so, led by the greediest people in history, and effectively made into their puppets, we are now poised for the final stage of the history of this world because, alas, our real leaders are not only our greediest people - they are also our least intelligent.
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Sorry. It's getting late - and I'm just too tired to correct all this tonight.