Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper, and one of the world's best. I don't use it much for my blog because it costs money - and there's a limit to how many papers I can afford to subscribe to. But I've often thought Haaretz well worth subscribing to.
It's much superior to the Israeli government.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgxwHMPgkKCdpFKnFhgfrgnZZsQKq
_________________________________________________________________
As I go through the news of recent days, particularly the spread of coronavirus, I am struck by a constant reminder. The death total now for the whole world is some six thousand. That's since the first report of it on Nov. 17 - four months ago. How does that rank as an international disaster?
Actually, we don't know much about that. The reality is that our governments commonly lie about death tolls. They lie in gross style. And most of our news media print the lies as truth.
How many Iraqis were killed by the American invasion? When asked, the American commander said, "We don't count them." Then he gave a count in the low hundreds. In the years since, news media like Common Dreams have specialized in doing research, and have learned the count was almost certainly in the millions. And, in another point mentioned by Common Dreams, the count was especially high for civilians and children.
On can find similar results for American (and British and Canadian) killing in Afghanistan and other wars. There are no real figures for war deaths. And they are commonly off by millions.
As I write this, I've been checking on reporting on the Guatemalan conflict in the early 1960s. This was a conflict in which the U.S. used a gang of hired, international killers to murder some 200.000 Guatemalans. The hired gang was called the CIA. It murdered, tortured mostly innocent people, especially priests, nuns and missionaires who got in the way of American domination of their country. The "general" of the CIA was George Bush Sr., a devout church goer, and future president of the U.S. And, in fact, he was an agent of American capitalists who wanted control of Guatemala.
But - funny thing - almost all the sources that I checked blamed religious Guatemalans for the conflict.
The truth is that we have no idea of how many people our armies have murdered. in recent years. Indeed, this goes way back to the days of British imperialism when, for example, Winston Churchill deliberately murdered millions of the people of India by starvation, and ordered the bombing of Kurds by hitting only undefended, civilian targets. If Churchill were living today, he would probably be wearing a cap with "Make Britain Great Again."
How many people has the U.S. murdered in it's history? Nobody has any idea.
It began with the slaughter of native peoples - even before George Washington got into that game. It expanded with the war against Mexico to steal half of it, and then the conquest of Latin American, of The Phillipines....... (though it did fail in several attempts against Canada. Will there be another attempt against Canada? You can bet on it.)
We have no idea of how many people we have killed. And that's the first rule of war - always lie and blame the other side.
Coronavirus is certainly a threat to the world. But, at the present death rate of that disease, it comes nowhere close to the horrors we are inflicting with our wars.
Coronavirus will, eventually, disappear. But our greed and viciousness will not.
And we have now reached a point at which greed, viciousness - and lying politicians and news media - are the real coronavirus of our time. The world of today is, quite possibly, the worst it has ever been with destructive power so great that nobody could possibly win.
We, almost all of us, will survive coronavirus as we have always survived such plagues. But unless we take intenational action, and very soon, we shall not survive our own behaviour. But in all this, our greatest enemy will be - capitalism - including that capitalism that is a part of both China and Russia.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/coronavirus-latest-at-a-glance-tuesday
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/17/self-isolation-survival-guide-relationships-coronavirus
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/15/prepare-for-the-coronavirus-global-recession
Global recession has dreadful memories for me. I was born at the depths of the recession of the 1930s - and, even by the terrible standards of that time, at the bottom of the poverty ladder.That lasted even through World War Two.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/revealed-the-great-european-refugee-scandal
Onward Christian Soldiers....
________________________________________________________________
:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/delhis-muslims-despair-justice-police-implicated-hindu-riots
India's murderous attacks on it's Muslim population have not made much of a stir in western news - even as Trump visited India at the height of it and praised the government of India without mentioning it's role in supporting murderous riots.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-coronavirus-financial-supports-1.5500045
Governments don't have the money they used to have - not since those days when the super-rich used to have to pay income tax just like us peasants. We have allowed to sell out real power to those billionaires who sponge on us. So if governments are to continue that - where is the money going to come from?
We are impoverishing ourselves to hand out billions to the super-wealthy. And it's not just tax breaks. We also hand out billions of our money to people like the Irvings and the Alberta oil lords.
We have to deal with that - and soon. But I don't know of a single government in Canada (all of them Liberal or Conservative) that would have the courage or honesty to do that.
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/coronavirus-guide-explainer-1.5497009
________________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-sean-mallen-coronavirus-1.5491827
_________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/03/alberta-covid-19-cases-rise-74-ucp-push-budget-through-jason
________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/03/can-jason-kenney-pass-ucp-budget-prorogue-legislature-and-get
________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, in a typical, everyday life............
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
________________________________________________________________
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-davis-covid-19-essay/
________________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/many-lawmakers-out-town-democratic-house-quietly-weakens-paid-leave-provisions
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/coronavirus-death-toll-continues-rise-iran-global-calls-mount-us-lift-immoral
______________________________________________________________
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/03/17/Ten-Ways-Pandemics-Change-Humanity/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-as-coronavirus-spreads-johnson-plays-roulette-with-british-public
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And some good news....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cuban-drug-could-save-thousands-lives-coronavirus-pandemic/5706643
..... And I note that this good news does not seem to have been reported in most North American news media.
_________________________________________________________________
And another story that North American news media have been pretty quiet about.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/maximum-pressure-march-us-hybrid-war-venezuela-heats-up/5706559
This is Trump's kind of war. It goes against international law. In effect, it murders huge numbers of innocent people. But it involves no risk to the U.S. or it's military. Trump is also using the same method, probably with much worse results, in Iran. It's risk-free murder of the helpless.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-indifference-public-health/5706599
________________________________________________________________
I don't go so far as to agree with this next story. But it is quite true that countries - especially the imperial powers from Portugal to Spain to France to Britain have happily used biological war against others for centuries.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-wuhan-virus-cia-biological-warfare-cuba/5706466
_________________________________________________________________
Despite the joyful tone of this next item, it does nothing to cheer me. This will also have an impact on Canada.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54018.htm
________________________________________________________________
And more....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54017.htm
_______________________________________________________________
And more.....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54022.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54013.htm
________________________________________________________________
A root cause of the problem...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54021.htm
Capitalism is NOT effective. It has NOT produced an efficient U.S. And it has greatly interfered with efficiency in Canada.
_______________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54014.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54009.htm
________________________________________________________________
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/16/opinion/canada-can-and-should-play-bigger-role-preventing-future-pandemics
Canada's problem here is that we are dominated by American interests. Most American leaders in business and politics have no interest in Canada except to use it as an errand boy for American business in Canada, and as an ally of American capitalism.
_________________________________________________________________
https://theantimedia.com/iraq-and-russia-prepare-to-boost-military-ties-as-us-threatens-sanctions/
I know nothing about the values or principles of Russia's Putin. Nothing about whether he's a 'good' guy or an evil one. But his records shows that he seems to have more brains than most national leaders - and far more than American ones.
I'm sure he has calculated that the U.S. will back off over a war about Iraq. But, oh, this is still dangerous - for all of us.
_______________________________________________________________
Enough. This is the most unpleasant blog I have ever written. And I'm sure it will depress you to the same degree. But...well.....
This day at least offers us some very basic solutions. Perhaps the most important one concerns the nature of American power.
For all that mythology, it has never been true that the U.S. was a land of the American people, of democracy. On the contrary, power in the U.S. has never been directed or controlled by the American people. Like the Britain it is modelled on, it has alway been a society controlled by the wealthiest, and so much so that it has never really given a damn about the rest of society.
That's why, as you read this, the U.S. has a very high percentage of it's people living in poverty - and an even higher percentage of them terribly vulnerable to their abandonment of the rich. Indeed, I'm not referring simply to those in poverty but to the majority who are just getting by.
The U.S. is run and governed by the super rich and, oh, most Americans have been drifting downward for some years now. The capitalist system is one that cares only about itself. It always has been. It simply does not care about ordinary people. That's American governments are full of Donald Trumps and why my province of Ontario has a Doug Ford. Such people are quite indifferent to what happens to the rest. That's been a human characteristic since the beginning of recorded history. Now, the U.S. is about to crash. But the Trumps and the Bidens will ensure that they will be protected. Canadians, somewhat better off on matters like medicare, will still get savaged by it's Doug Fords and it's Irvings.
We've been here before, in the 1930s. Canadian governments then did nothing for the terrible suffering that most Canadians endured.
Capitalism cares only about the capitalists. It's approach to economic depression has always been to enrich the capitalists - and to hell with the rest.
And the Canadian and American people? Their reactions have yet to be useful.
Oh - will Christian evangelicals remain faithful to Trump? You bet they will. They believe this, under a Trump, is part of God's great plan for the end of the world. And that's what they want because they, and only they, will be accepted in heaven. (Whether God will kick out all those non evangelicals of the past thousands of years, I don't know.)
Would the election of the Democrat Biden be of any help? None whatever. Biden, like Trump, is committed to the prosperity of the people - but only the very, very rich ones.
________________________________________________________________
It's much superior to the Israeli government.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgxwHMPgkKCdpFKnFhgfrgnZZsQKq
_________________________________________________________________
As I go through the news of recent days, particularly the spread of coronavirus, I am struck by a constant reminder. The death total now for the whole world is some six thousand. That's since the first report of it on Nov. 17 - four months ago. How does that rank as an international disaster?
Actually, we don't know much about that. The reality is that our governments commonly lie about death tolls. They lie in gross style. And most of our news media print the lies as truth.
How many Iraqis were killed by the American invasion? When asked, the American commander said, "We don't count them." Then he gave a count in the low hundreds. In the years since, news media like Common Dreams have specialized in doing research, and have learned the count was almost certainly in the millions. And, in another point mentioned by Common Dreams, the count was especially high for civilians and children.
On can find similar results for American (and British and Canadian) killing in Afghanistan and other wars. There are no real figures for war deaths. And they are commonly off by millions.
As I write this, I've been checking on reporting on the Guatemalan conflict in the early 1960s. This was a conflict in which the U.S. used a gang of hired, international killers to murder some 200.000 Guatemalans. The hired gang was called the CIA. It murdered, tortured mostly innocent people, especially priests, nuns and missionaires who got in the way of American domination of their country. The "general" of the CIA was George Bush Sr., a devout church goer, and future president of the U.S. And, in fact, he was an agent of American capitalists who wanted control of Guatemala.
But - funny thing - almost all the sources that I checked blamed religious Guatemalans for the conflict.
The truth is that we have no idea of how many people our armies have murdered. in recent years. Indeed, this goes way back to the days of British imperialism when, for example, Winston Churchill deliberately murdered millions of the people of India by starvation, and ordered the bombing of Kurds by hitting only undefended, civilian targets. If Churchill were living today, he would probably be wearing a cap with "Make Britain Great Again."
How many people has the U.S. murdered in it's history? Nobody has any idea.
It began with the slaughter of native peoples - even before George Washington got into that game. It expanded with the war against Mexico to steal half of it, and then the conquest of Latin American, of The Phillipines....... (though it did fail in several attempts against Canada. Will there be another attempt against Canada? You can bet on it.)
We have no idea of how many people we have killed. And that's the first rule of war - always lie and blame the other side.
Coronavirus is certainly a threat to the world. But, at the present death rate of that disease, it comes nowhere close to the horrors we are inflicting with our wars.
Coronavirus will, eventually, disappear. But our greed and viciousness will not.
And we have now reached a point at which greed, viciousness - and lying politicians and news media - are the real coronavirus of our time. The world of today is, quite possibly, the worst it has ever been with destructive power so great that nobody could possibly win.
We, almost all of us, will survive coronavirus as we have always survived such plagues. But unless we take intenational action, and very soon, we shall not survive our own behaviour. But in all this, our greatest enemy will be - capitalism - including that capitalism that is a part of both China and Russia.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/coronavirus-latest-at-a-glance-tuesday
_________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/17/self-isolation-survival-guide-relationships-coronavirus
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/15/prepare-for-the-coronavirus-global-recession
Global recession has dreadful memories for me. I was born at the depths of the recession of the 1930s - and, even by the terrible standards of that time, at the bottom of the poverty ladder.That lasted even through World War Two.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/revealed-the-great-european-refugee-scandal
Onward Christian Soldiers....
________________________________________________________________
:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/delhis-muslims-despair-justice-police-implicated-hindu-riots
India's murderous attacks on it's Muslim population have not made much of a stir in western news - even as Trump visited India at the height of it and praised the government of India without mentioning it's role in supporting murderous riots.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-coronavirus-financial-supports-1.5500045
Governments don't have the money they used to have - not since those days when the super-rich used to have to pay income tax just like us peasants. We have allowed to sell out real power to those billionaires who sponge on us. So if governments are to continue that - where is the money going to come from?
We are impoverishing ourselves to hand out billions to the super-wealthy. And it's not just tax breaks. We also hand out billions of our money to people like the Irvings and the Alberta oil lords.
We have to deal with that - and soon. But I don't know of a single government in Canada (all of them Liberal or Conservative) that would have the courage or honesty to do that.
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/coronavirus-guide-explainer-1.5497009
________________________________________________________________
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-sean-mallen-coronavirus-1.5491827
_________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/03/alberta-covid-19-cases-rise-74-ucp-push-budget-through-jason
________________________________________________________________
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2020/03/can-jason-kenney-pass-ucp-budget-prorogue-legislature-and-get
________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, in a typical, everyday life............
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
________________________________________________________________
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mike-davis-covid-19-essay/
________________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/many-lawmakers-out-town-democratic-house-quietly-weakens-paid-leave-provisions
_______________________________________________________________
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/coronavirus-death-toll-continues-rise-iran-global-calls-mount-us-lift-immoral
______________________________________________________________
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/03/17/Ten-Ways-Pandemics-Change-Humanity/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-as-coronavirus-spreads-johnson-plays-roulette-with-british-public
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And some good news....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/cuban-drug-could-save-thousands-lives-coronavirus-pandemic/5706643
..... And I note that this good news does not seem to have been reported in most North American news media.
_________________________________________________________________
And another story that North American news media have been pretty quiet about.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/maximum-pressure-march-us-hybrid-war-venezuela-heats-up/5706559
This is Trump's kind of war. It goes against international law. In effect, it murders huge numbers of innocent people. But it involves no risk to the U.S. or it's military. Trump is also using the same method, probably with much worse results, in Iran. It's risk-free murder of the helpless.
________________________________________________________________
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-indifference-public-health/5706599
________________________________________________________________
I don't go so far as to agree with this next story. But it is quite true that countries - especially the imperial powers from Portugal to Spain to France to Britain have happily used biological war against others for centuries.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-wuhan-virus-cia-biological-warfare-cuba/5706466
_________________________________________________________________
Despite the joyful tone of this next item, it does nothing to cheer me. This will also have an impact on Canada.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54018.htm
________________________________________________________________
And more....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54017.htm
_______________________________________________________________
And more.....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54022.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54013.htm
________________________________________________________________
A root cause of the problem...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54021.htm
Capitalism is NOT effective. It has NOT produced an efficient U.S. And it has greatly interfered with efficiency in Canada.
_______________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54014.htm
________________________________________________________________
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54009.htm
________________________________________________________________
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/16/opinion/canada-can-and-should-play-bigger-role-preventing-future-pandemics
Canada's problem here is that we are dominated by American interests. Most American leaders in business and politics have no interest in Canada except to use it as an errand boy for American business in Canada, and as an ally of American capitalism.
_________________________________________________________________
https://theantimedia.com/iraq-and-russia-prepare-to-boost-military-ties-as-us-threatens-sanctions/
I know nothing about the values or principles of Russia's Putin. Nothing about whether he's a 'good' guy or an evil one. But his records shows that he seems to have more brains than most national leaders - and far more than American ones.
I'm sure he has calculated that the U.S. will back off over a war about Iraq. But, oh, this is still dangerous - for all of us.
_______________________________________________________________
Enough. This is the most unpleasant blog I have ever written. And I'm sure it will depress you to the same degree. But...well.....
This day at least offers us some very basic solutions. Perhaps the most important one concerns the nature of American power.
For all that mythology, it has never been true that the U.S. was a land of the American people, of democracy. On the contrary, power in the U.S. has never been directed or controlled by the American people. Like the Britain it is modelled on, it has alway been a society controlled by the wealthiest, and so much so that it has never really given a damn about the rest of society.
That's why, as you read this, the U.S. has a very high percentage of it's people living in poverty - and an even higher percentage of them terribly vulnerable to their abandonment of the rich. Indeed, I'm not referring simply to those in poverty but to the majority who are just getting by.
The U.S. is run and governed by the super rich and, oh, most Americans have been drifting downward for some years now. The capitalist system is one that cares only about itself. It always has been. It simply does not care about ordinary people. That's American governments are full of Donald Trumps and why my province of Ontario has a Doug Ford. Such people are quite indifferent to what happens to the rest. That's been a human characteristic since the beginning of recorded history. Now, the U.S. is about to crash. But the Trumps and the Bidens will ensure that they will be protected. Canadians, somewhat better off on matters like medicare, will still get savaged by it's Doug Fords and it's Irvings.
We've been here before, in the 1930s. Canadian governments then did nothing for the terrible suffering that most Canadians endured.
Capitalism cares only about the capitalists. It's approach to economic depression has always been to enrich the capitalists - and to hell with the rest.
And the Canadian and American people? Their reactions have yet to be useful.
Oh - will Christian evangelicals remain faithful to Trump? You bet they will. They believe this, under a Trump, is part of God's great plan for the end of the world. And that's what they want because they, and only they, will be accepted in heaven. (Whether God will kick out all those non evangelicals of the past thousands of years, I don't know.)
Would the election of the Democrat Biden be of any help? None whatever. Biden, like Trump, is committed to the prosperity of the people - but only the very, very rich ones.
________________________________________________________________
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