I would assume that most journalists in New Brunswick got their training from the journalism school at St. Thomas University. That's a small, but pretty good school, with some instantly recognizable names among its faculty. So it must teach its students how to ask questions. Why, then, do most journalists in this province seem never to have heard of a question? So, just killing time on a Sunday, I'll compose a list of questions to give them the general idea.
The Sale of Moncton High School
1. On the sale of Moncton High School, the government has only one bidder to choose from. (An earlier prospect, Rompspen Mortgage, has dropped out.) The one left is OHMS Holdings. Who and what are these companies? Who sits are on their boards? Is there any connection between them?
2. The winning bidder is supposed to accept terms on the future use of the building. Most of these terms are written in government bafflegab; but there are obligations.
Will the government tell us, BEFORE making any decision, what the bidder proposes to do with the building? Will we get that information in plenty of time so that there can be public discussion and input before the bid is accepted?
3. A question that should have been asked from the start--- if a builder can a)pay for the building and the land b) make the needed structural repairs c)completely renovate the building for a different use, then d)still make a profit ----wouldn't it have been cheaper for the province to simply repair the place as a school?
4. Given the seemingly high expenditures involved in this sale, will there be some special goodies in the contract for the buyer? If so, at whose cost?
Contamination at Highfield Square
In his oped column of Oct. 13, young Mazerolle let slip that the contaminated soil might be moved to the old city dump, which already contains toxic soil from a previous experience. The dump is on low ground, right by the river.
1. Is he for real? Toxic materials have been dumped on low ground, in the city, beside a river? And it's possible the city plans to dump more? And no reporter has asked a word about this?
2. Does this have the approval of the Minister of the Environment? A highly toxic dump by a river and within city limits? Would it even be legal for him to approve such a thing?
3. When the city lawyer announced that the budget for cleanup of Highfield Square was already set, was this the dump he was thinking of? That would certainly be cheap. But it would be safer to spread it along high ground - say, Mountain Street - in one of the schoolyards.
4. We were informed this past week, that city hall has plans to protect Moncton in the event of higher ocean levels and the flood dangers this could cause.
How does dumping toxic waste onto low ground beside the river fit into those plans? In fact, instead of dumping more toxic soil into that spot, shouldn't we be moving what is already there?
Shale gas
We have been promised, long ago by The Moncton Times and Transcript and by the Government on the issue of fracking and shale gas. We've heard almost nothing from either of them. We were promised the toughest possible regulations. Where is the open review of those regulations? Where are the expert opinions on them?
Mass transit
We live in a city that feels it can spend a hundred million plus (probably a big plus) on an "events centre" - one with red and blue lines and goal nets. So how come paying transit workers a decent wage for one year is such a big issue that we have all had to suffer from the long, transit lockout?
Is there some towering, moral principle at stake here? You know and I know that there is big money in this province exchanged in questionable deals, in handouts to big business, in tax breaks,in the giveaways of whole forests etc. Would it kill us to give transit workers a slightly higher raise for the final year of their contract? This, unlike the other favours we hand out so freely, would be money spent in Moncton. So what's the big issue that makes this fight worth it?
It's okay. Journalists are supposed to ask questions. I mean, if we didn't want to know anything, we wouldn't buy a newspaper, would we? (Oops. Actually, we do buy it. Maybe we shouldn't ask questions, and maybe the paper shouldn't tell us anything. Maybe buying the TandT is a cheap way of checking out of a miserable world and getting permanently stoned.)
Oh - a blunder on my part.
I read on another site of a Visions United Church which seemed to be experimenting in an interesting way with its service, including using a move theatre. Is that the same Visions United I see advertised in the TandT? If so, I have not noticed anything about its experimentation in the newspaper. If this is the same Visions United, please drop me a note under comments. I'd be happy to give you what limited advertising reach I have.
I was interested to read that Kateri, a Mohawk woman from the Montreal region, will be canonized in Rome. So I issue fair warning to the Roman Catholic church. Reverend Zenon Decarie (a relative) is now being considered for canonization. That must make me eligible for some perks. Think about it.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Oct. 13: Oh, Brent.....
....it's at the top of the oped page. Brent Mazerolle's column. For a moment - alas! just a moment - I thought it was going to be about the contamination at Highfield Square. It was - sort of - eventually---
That first half of it was vague summary of some novel. I have no idea why. Then Brent mentioned a call he had received asking why the TandT had not covered the issue of contamination in Highfield Square. Well, geegollywhiz, wrote Mr. Mazerolle. He says he did cover it, last Spring.
With all due respect, Brent...and as you probably know...I discussed your coverage of last Spring. I discussed in this blog, and at length. I showed how it was written to say a minimum, and to give the impression this was nothing to worry about or even think about. There was no information about what the toxic substances are, how deep they run, how concentrated they are... Your whole article could be summed up as "Don't worry about it, folks. Nothing important." You didn't get much public reaction because you didn't want much public reaction. That was a story written to kill public reaction before it could even happen.
You asked no questions about what this toxicity can do, how it would be disposed of, what it would cost... You asked no questions at all. As to what the toxicity was, you gave only a vague reference to "the usual diesel spills... all cities have this"...in summary, no big deal.
As to source, you don't mention the original source. It was not "a citizen". It was this blog. You know that, Brent. And you know that it is normal practice at real news media to identify the source of a story.
Even when you get to a professional source, the CBC, you don't mention its name. It was just "another media outlet". Well, of course, he's not going to mention the CBC. This is the station that makes the TandT look ridiculous every day, the one Norbert Cunningham foams at the mouth about, the one the Irvings would probably love to see closed so they could buy it, and own all the news in New Brunswick.
Then he's surprised that I had to make an official request to get the information from city hall. After all, he called, and they said, "Yes. It's contaminated."
Well, yes, Brent. The told me that, too. But I've done a lot of journalism - and a journalist doesn't stop with whatever some clerk is gracious enough to tell him. And they wouldn't answer me. That's why I went to an official request.
Then he says it's no big deal because it happens in all cities. Yes, it does. So do bank robberies, murders, rapes, big drug deals and the opening of new restaurants. Does that mean these should not be covered in Moncton? Hell, when was the last time the TandT missed any of those - especially the opening of new restaurants?
Then he drops a bomb. He ways he thinks it will be dumped in some local site in Moncton - where we have dumped such contamination before..
WHAT? You didn't ask to find out? This is insane. It certainly should be illegal.Most real cities have to use dumps that pose as little danger as possible - and usually hundreds of kilometres away. Are you serious? Is Moncton actually going to dump this stuff right here? Right by the river? And has it, as he says, been dumping contamination there before? If you knew that Brent, why didn't you write about it last Spring?
If this is true, it's a bigger story than the contamination itself. It's probably safer to leave the contamination where it is Has city council really been dumping contaminated soil right here in town by the river?
And where the hell has the provincial minister of the environment been through all this?
Thanks, Brent, for handing me the job of making another official request for information. It's obvious that the Times and Transcript isn't going to do it.
He ends with a remark that is intended to sound deeply philosophic, I'm sure. But it succeeds only in being irrelevant, having nothing to do with the rights to information and safety that citizens should have. On the question of who made Moncton contaminated, he says, "Oh, right. It was us."
Actually, it wasn't. And even if it were, that would have nothing to do with solving the problems.
This isn't a column. It's a whine.
Bill Belliveau writes a column about the American election. It doesn't matter. The big money has abandoned Obama. Mitt Romney is getting it. And that doesn't matter, either. Both Romney and Obama pursue pretty much the same policies. That's why campaign speeches on both sides are lacking in any substance. That's why both have stayed away from discussing the environment, the enormous power of the military and defence industries lobbies, the uses of drones and the imminence of nuclear war. Both occupy exactly the same positions on these issues. Neither is anxious to discuss them because neither wants to do anything about them.
This campaign is a lot of froth and bombast. But nothing more than that. American democracy now is all "just pretend".
The editorial offers strong backing to the new site for Moncton High. That's a sure sign there's something crooked about it.
As for sports, I see we're still getting that juvenile headline for hockey games "wildtown catfight".
Okay. Let's pretend Moncton is a wild town. But how can it be a "catfight" when the wildcats are fighting the huskies?
And I have to argue with Jana Giles who writes (very well) in the Whatever section, this time on the importance of obeying your parents. I don't mean to say that children should, as a rule, disobey their parents. But - well - parents don't always know best. Getting older gives us more experience. But it doesn't make us wiser. (Take it from a person who's a lot older - but still can be very, very dumb).
We should certainly listen to our parents. We should certainly think over what they have to say. But there comes a time when we are the ones who have to make the decision because only we know what it is we really want out of life.
My mother wanted me to be a clergyman. My father, a religious man, was aghast at the damage this could do to the church. I listened to both. Flunking out of high school made it unnecessary for me to make a decision. But it was my father who had it right. I would have been a disastrous clergyman.
When I decided to go to university, both my parents were terribly upset, and even angry. But I knew this was something I had to try. So I disobeyed them.
Obeying is essential as a part of growing up. So, gradually, is disobeying. And we all have to go through it - with great pain on both sides.
That first half of it was vague summary of some novel. I have no idea why. Then Brent mentioned a call he had received asking why the TandT had not covered the issue of contamination in Highfield Square. Well, geegollywhiz, wrote Mr. Mazerolle. He says he did cover it, last Spring.
With all due respect, Brent...and as you probably know...I discussed your coverage of last Spring. I discussed in this blog, and at length. I showed how it was written to say a minimum, and to give the impression this was nothing to worry about or even think about. There was no information about what the toxic substances are, how deep they run, how concentrated they are... Your whole article could be summed up as "Don't worry about it, folks. Nothing important." You didn't get much public reaction because you didn't want much public reaction. That was a story written to kill public reaction before it could even happen.
You asked no questions about what this toxicity can do, how it would be disposed of, what it would cost... You asked no questions at all. As to what the toxicity was, you gave only a vague reference to "the usual diesel spills... all cities have this"...in summary, no big deal.
As to source, you don't mention the original source. It was not "a citizen". It was this blog. You know that, Brent. And you know that it is normal practice at real news media to identify the source of a story.
Even when you get to a professional source, the CBC, you don't mention its name. It was just "another media outlet". Well, of course, he's not going to mention the CBC. This is the station that makes the TandT look ridiculous every day, the one Norbert Cunningham foams at the mouth about, the one the Irvings would probably love to see closed so they could buy it, and own all the news in New Brunswick.
Then he's surprised that I had to make an official request to get the information from city hall. After all, he called, and they said, "Yes. It's contaminated."
Well, yes, Brent. The told me that, too. But I've done a lot of journalism - and a journalist doesn't stop with whatever some clerk is gracious enough to tell him. And they wouldn't answer me. That's why I went to an official request.
Then he says it's no big deal because it happens in all cities. Yes, it does. So do bank robberies, murders, rapes, big drug deals and the opening of new restaurants. Does that mean these should not be covered in Moncton? Hell, when was the last time the TandT missed any of those - especially the opening of new restaurants?
Then he drops a bomb. He ways he thinks it will be dumped in some local site in Moncton - where we have dumped such contamination before..
WHAT? You didn't ask to find out? This is insane. It certainly should be illegal.Most real cities have to use dumps that pose as little danger as possible - and usually hundreds of kilometres away. Are you serious? Is Moncton actually going to dump this stuff right here? Right by the river? And has it, as he says, been dumping contamination there before? If you knew that Brent, why didn't you write about it last Spring?
If this is true, it's a bigger story than the contamination itself. It's probably safer to leave the contamination where it is Has city council really been dumping contaminated soil right here in town by the river?
And where the hell has the provincial minister of the environment been through all this?
Thanks, Brent, for handing me the job of making another official request for information. It's obvious that the Times and Transcript isn't going to do it.
He ends with a remark that is intended to sound deeply philosophic, I'm sure. But it succeeds only in being irrelevant, having nothing to do with the rights to information and safety that citizens should have. On the question of who made Moncton contaminated, he says, "Oh, right. It was us."
Actually, it wasn't. And even if it were, that would have nothing to do with solving the problems.
This isn't a column. It's a whine.
Bill Belliveau writes a column about the American election. It doesn't matter. The big money has abandoned Obama. Mitt Romney is getting it. And that doesn't matter, either. Both Romney and Obama pursue pretty much the same policies. That's why campaign speeches on both sides are lacking in any substance. That's why both have stayed away from discussing the environment, the enormous power of the military and defence industries lobbies, the uses of drones and the imminence of nuclear war. Both occupy exactly the same positions on these issues. Neither is anxious to discuss them because neither wants to do anything about them.
This campaign is a lot of froth and bombast. But nothing more than that. American democracy now is all "just pretend".
The editorial offers strong backing to the new site for Moncton High. That's a sure sign there's something crooked about it.
As for sports, I see we're still getting that juvenile headline for hockey games "wildtown catfight".
Okay. Let's pretend Moncton is a wild town. But how can it be a "catfight" when the wildcats are fighting the huskies?
And I have to argue with Jana Giles who writes (very well) in the Whatever section, this time on the importance of obeying your parents. I don't mean to say that children should, as a rule, disobey their parents. But - well - parents don't always know best. Getting older gives us more experience. But it doesn't make us wiser. (Take it from a person who's a lot older - but still can be very, very dumb).
We should certainly listen to our parents. We should certainly think over what they have to say. But there comes a time when we are the ones who have to make the decision because only we know what it is we really want out of life.
My mother wanted me to be a clergyman. My father, a religious man, was aghast at the damage this could do to the church. I listened to both. Flunking out of high school made it unnecessary for me to make a decision. But it was my father who had it right. I would have been a disastrous clergyman.
When I decided to go to university, both my parents were terribly upset, and even angry. But I knew this was something I had to try. So I disobeyed them.
Obeying is essential as a part of growing up. So, gradually, is disobeying. And we all have to go through it - with great pain on both sides.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Oct. 12: Read Alec Bruce...
...take it seriously,very seriously, especially the last sentence. For all his gentle tone, Mr. Bruce is reminding us of the central fact of our time. The American empire is collapsing just as those of the British and French and Dutch and Spanish and Portuguese did before. It's the last of the western empires that began with Columbus.
It's military record has not, to put in kindly, been impressive for the last sixty years and more. Despite size and wealth and technology, it cannot beat backward and poor countries with only primitive weaponry. It has tried to make up for its weakness by draughting NATO as a sort of private pet version of the UN. It has abandoned any pretence of observing human rights - resorting to torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians, using drones as assassination and terror weapons - usually used on countries it is not even at war with.
Americans aren't like that. Not normally. But they've been driven into a frenzy of paranoia and fear by manipulative politicians and the news media owned by some of their wealthy friends. The paranoia and fear are so great, they have almost torn up the constitution their founders bequeathed to them. A president can now attack countries without declaring war (Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan), and without the permission of Congress. A president can now imprison any American for an indefinite period with no charge and no trial. Or , to save time, a president can now even order the assassination of an American citizen. No reason required.
Five million Americans are now on government lists to be watched as suspects of...who knows? Many more will be added as surveillance drones fill the skies over the US. The US, once the model of freedom for the world, is now a police state. And a dreadfully corrupt one at that, a nation owned and ruled by the very, very rich.
With a national debt so huge that even government computers cannot keep track of it, the US is kept afloat to spend yet more money on wars only by printing more paper. There is nothing behind that paper. And someday it will collapse.
Private capitalism was allowed to run wild, with almost no regulation. And where there was any regulation remaining, the law was ignored. That's what caused the banking collapse and the bailouts. In Iceland, bankers who did that went to jail. In the US, not a single banker was even charged with anything. And not only did they avoid legal charges, they got paid for all their crooked losses by the American people, - and they got billions in bonuses for their cleverness. Similar bubbles are bursting all over Europe.
Meanwhile, wars have to be fought to preserve the empire that America lives off, wars in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, maybe in the Far East. The rules of war, such as they ever were, have long since disappeared. And the US has not been doing well.
What will it do when it finds it cannot establish the military dominance it needs to survive?
Nobody is in a position to use nuclear weapons without suffering with everyone else in world-wide destruction. Well, Israel might. It has some 200 nuclear weapons; and its enemies have none to shoot back with. The US is not in such a favourable position. But it does have far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. What happens on the day they realize they cannot win all those conventional wars? That only a heavy strike against some powerful enemy will work? that they can make deals with other nuclear powers to stay out?
What happens if on that day the president is a George Bush or a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney? - or an Obama (whose policies are not so far from those of Romney as they both like to pretend.)?
Americans wouldn't do such a thing?
No. Most of them wouldn't. Most of them wouldn't torture, either. Or kill civilians with drones. Or drive the world economy and billions of people into desperation by illegal actions, put most other Americans into generations of hopeless debt, and so thoroughly corrupt a government it would pay them for what they had done.
There is nothing anti-American in this. We all know Americans. We all know most of them behave pretty much like us. The problem is that American capitalism and American politics have been perverted into thoroughly anti-American forces And the American news media have turned anti-American along with them.
Sorry to take so long on this one topic. It's just that Bruce's column is the first thing I have seen in that paper to give any hint of what is going on.
David Suzuki is excellent about what needs to be done NOW about climate damage. In NB, expect neither the liberals nor the conservatives to do any of it.
Norbert uses a whole column to give the meaning of a word, something which could have been done in a paragraph. Of course, he needed more space to fume and rant and call people names. I have no idea why. Sometimes he's right. Professors are,as he says, so wrapped up in their own tree that they've not a clue how to deal with the forest. Well, yeah. Journalists are like that, too. So are corporation bosses. I've worked closely with all three. And all three are overrun with horse's asses.
And your point is, Norbert?
Speaking of a person who doesn't know what he's talking about, the editor knows nothing about education.
The only real news in the paper is disappointing. A provincial court declined to hear the case dealing with the provincial government's choice of a site for the new high school. Now, nothing further can be done until the written decision is handed down. And that could take a very long time, indeed.
Other observations
1. the big "news" story on A. p.is a blatant, free ad for a bar and grill. At that, it ranks as one of the more important stories I've seen in Section A.
2.The lead story in sports is "Wildtown Catfight".
Really, that's the kind of juvenilia that even Don Cherry is above. Wildtown, wow, pant, pant. Catfight. Yowie! In a middle school newspaper, that might show promise in the writer. In an adult, it suggest a serious need for growing up. Or it suggests the writer thinks people who read the sports section are morons. I don't that's true. And it I don't it's a good idea to give that impresion.
To add to it, The whole layout, including the pictures and the colour are obviously to provide hype for the game. Let the team do its own advertising, fellas. You're there to report, not to be cheerleaders. (I hope.)
I have written to the Minister of the Environment asking for further information about the contamination of Highfield Square.- and for the location of some 885 officially reported sites around the province. We shall see.
Sorry for the lateness on this one. My electricity went as dead as a Times and Transcript editorial.
It's military record has not, to put in kindly, been impressive for the last sixty years and more. Despite size and wealth and technology, it cannot beat backward and poor countries with only primitive weaponry. It has tried to make up for its weakness by draughting NATO as a sort of private pet version of the UN. It has abandoned any pretence of observing human rights - resorting to torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians, using drones as assassination and terror weapons - usually used on countries it is not even at war with.
Americans aren't like that. Not normally. But they've been driven into a frenzy of paranoia and fear by manipulative politicians and the news media owned by some of their wealthy friends. The paranoia and fear are so great, they have almost torn up the constitution their founders bequeathed to them. A president can now attack countries without declaring war (Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan), and without the permission of Congress. A president can now imprison any American for an indefinite period with no charge and no trial. Or , to save time, a president can now even order the assassination of an American citizen. No reason required.
Five million Americans are now on government lists to be watched as suspects of...who knows? Many more will be added as surveillance drones fill the skies over the US. The US, once the model of freedom for the world, is now a police state. And a dreadfully corrupt one at that, a nation owned and ruled by the very, very rich.
With a national debt so huge that even government computers cannot keep track of it, the US is kept afloat to spend yet more money on wars only by printing more paper. There is nothing behind that paper. And someday it will collapse.
Private capitalism was allowed to run wild, with almost no regulation. And where there was any regulation remaining, the law was ignored. That's what caused the banking collapse and the bailouts. In Iceland, bankers who did that went to jail. In the US, not a single banker was even charged with anything. And not only did they avoid legal charges, they got paid for all their crooked losses by the American people, - and they got billions in bonuses for their cleverness. Similar bubbles are bursting all over Europe.
Meanwhile, wars have to be fought to preserve the empire that America lives off, wars in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, maybe in the Far East. The rules of war, such as they ever were, have long since disappeared. And the US has not been doing well.
What will it do when it finds it cannot establish the military dominance it needs to survive?
Nobody is in a position to use nuclear weapons without suffering with everyone else in world-wide destruction. Well, Israel might. It has some 200 nuclear weapons; and its enemies have none to shoot back with. The US is not in such a favourable position. But it does have far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. What happens on the day they realize they cannot win all those conventional wars? That only a heavy strike against some powerful enemy will work? that they can make deals with other nuclear powers to stay out?
What happens if on that day the president is a George Bush or a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney? - or an Obama (whose policies are not so far from those of Romney as they both like to pretend.)?
Americans wouldn't do such a thing?
No. Most of them wouldn't. Most of them wouldn't torture, either. Or kill civilians with drones. Or drive the world economy and billions of people into desperation by illegal actions, put most other Americans into generations of hopeless debt, and so thoroughly corrupt a government it would pay them for what they had done.
There is nothing anti-American in this. We all know Americans. We all know most of them behave pretty much like us. The problem is that American capitalism and American politics have been perverted into thoroughly anti-American forces And the American news media have turned anti-American along with them.
Sorry to take so long on this one topic. It's just that Bruce's column is the first thing I have seen in that paper to give any hint of what is going on.
David Suzuki is excellent about what needs to be done NOW about climate damage. In NB, expect neither the liberals nor the conservatives to do any of it.
Norbert uses a whole column to give the meaning of a word, something which could have been done in a paragraph. Of course, he needed more space to fume and rant and call people names. I have no idea why. Sometimes he's right. Professors are,as he says, so wrapped up in their own tree that they've not a clue how to deal with the forest. Well, yeah. Journalists are like that, too. So are corporation bosses. I've worked closely with all three. And all three are overrun with horse's asses.
And your point is, Norbert?
Speaking of a person who doesn't know what he's talking about, the editor knows nothing about education.
The only real news in the paper is disappointing. A provincial court declined to hear the case dealing with the provincial government's choice of a site for the new high school. Now, nothing further can be done until the written decision is handed down. And that could take a very long time, indeed.
Other observations
1. the big "news" story on A. p.is a blatant, free ad for a bar and grill. At that, it ranks as one of the more important stories I've seen in Section A.
2.The lead story in sports is "Wildtown Catfight".
Really, that's the kind of juvenilia that even Don Cherry is above. Wildtown, wow, pant, pant. Catfight. Yowie! In a middle school newspaper, that might show promise in the writer. In an adult, it suggest a serious need for growing up. Or it suggests the writer thinks people who read the sports section are morons. I don't that's true. And it I don't it's a good idea to give that impresion.
To add to it, The whole layout, including the pictures and the colour are obviously to provide hype for the game. Let the team do its own advertising, fellas. You're there to report, not to be cheerleaders. (I hope.)
I have written to the Minister of the Environment asking for further information about the contamination of Highfield Square.- and for the location of some 885 officially reported sites around the province. We shall see.
Sorry for the lateness on this one. My electricity went as dead as a Times and Transcript editorial.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Oct. 11: The Front Page.
On most papers, the front page is the big one. That's the page that attracts buyers. For an example of the front page in a related medium, check out the scandal mags at the checkout of your favourite supermarket. The front page (the cover) is full of the most ghastly photos in the magazine. The word 'shocking' appears at least twice on every cover. 'Prophecy' is big, too, especially if it's a prophecy about the end of the world.
No, we don't want that in the Times and Transcript. But it would be nice to see a front page highlighting of the most important stories of the day, especially those things which will have a profound effect on our lives. In that context, I'm not sure that a tractor dealership being in financial trouble really cuts it. Or even the news that university fees are up by 2 or 3%.
On p. C1 is a lengthy story on federal plans to change the rules for equalization payments to provinces. Any change, up or down, in a programme that supplies this province with $1.5 billion a year, is going to be kind of important to us. As well, it has serious implications for the unity of Canada. That's a front-page story.
But it's presentation as purely a national story leaves it incomprehensible for New Brunswickers. There should have been a supplementary story on what New Brunswick uses its payments for, what is likely to be affected by any changes - and views expressed by both provincial politicians and people who know what they're talking about.
So here's a story with two problems. It isn't given the prominence it should have (it's way back in the third section) - with the result that many won't read it. And it doesn't have the focus it should have for this readership.
Mind you, it could be worse. The big story on p. 2 is "Owner searching for cat lost in accident". There's a real, need-to-know grabber. P.13 has the daily half page on the Oland mystery which tells us once again that there is nothing to report.
For a truly useless story (and a misleading one), see A, p. 3. "Tickets handed out over the long weekend". Police gave out "close to" 200 tickets.( Actually, it was 180, so why not just say so?) The "close to" hints that this is a large number - but there is no hint in the story that it is.)
And, no, the 180 was not just in Moncton; it was also on the highways of this region and in Shediac. That's a hundred and eighty tickets for quite a large area and population base. Is that a lot for such a population and one a long, holiday weekend? I mean, at 60 a day, and including parking and seat belts, it doesn't sound like a whole lot. But who can tell? We aren't given any figures for a normal day or for a holiday weekend.
The subhead makes it worse. "Officer says compliance rate seems higher as compared with last years."
Well, that might help - if we knew what the compliance rate was last year on a holiday weekend. No. Actually, it wouldn't. The sub head gives the impression that the compliance rate refers to traffic offences in general. In fact, it refers only to seat belts. And since it doesn't give any figures or comparisons, it's useless, even at that.
The story is credited to TandT Staff. Good move. If I had written that, I wouldn't want anybody to know it, either.
Page C 6 carries a useless story that could and should be an important one. It deals with a lengthy inquiry into a Canadian soldier's suicide. He was suffering PTSD.It's the longest such inquiry ever held - and Postmedia manages to write a long story about it without ever giving us any clear idea what it was all about.
At one point the chief officer for these inquiries was asked how many suicides at military bases he had been asked to review over a period of three years. He said he didn't know, maybe between 10 and 20 - or 25. What the hell is going on here?
Here is a story that screams questions. How can a chief investigating officer not know how many cases he dealt with in just three years? And these are just the suicides on bases. How many such suicides have there been been overall? In the Afghanistan years, how many Canadians died, but are not counted as war casualties? Exactly what is PTSD? Has the incidence of it risen, dropped, remained stable in our wars of the past century? Have their been any studies of this? Have recent developments in warfare led to a rise or a change of any sort in PTSD?
What rates of homelessness, inability to function in society. divorce, criminality has it caused? We all say on November 11 that we remember them. Well, apparently, our military, our government, and our news media don't remember some of them at all. No Highway of Heroes for them.
For a newspaper like the TandT, this should be very much a New Brunswick story, with this province's high rate of enlistment for service. How has PTSD affected New Brunswickers?
Address questions like that, and you serve the interest and the needs of your readers. But the Moncton Times and Transcript has no interest in serving the needs of its readers. This is a business. It serves its advertisers. It serves its boss. Check out the ads. They have more originality and thought devoted to them than to any news story. For a prime example, check out the newspaper's own ad on C, p.6. (It's right under the PTSD story.)
There's a hint of something the Times and Transcript should look at in a letter to the editor "Clean up sites at all cost". It points out that the ministry of the environment lists 885 sites in NB that have been officially reported as contaminated. Now, that's interesting. A good newspaper would get on that right away, telling us at least where the major ones are, when they were reported as contaminated, and what such a report legally requires the owners to do.
They could start with sites within the limits of Moncton. Highfield Square springs to mind. (The city told me of at least one more such site in the downtown area - but wouldn't name it.) Of course, it still hasn't broken the news about Highfield Square, even as we prepare to buy it for six million.(Gee! Maybe that's the answer to all the contamination across the province. We just talk dumb city councils into buying the contamination at millions of dollars a site. We could wipe out the provincial debt in a snap.
Meanwhile, I must drop a note to the Minister of the Environment to find out whether he knows anything about Highfield Square - and how long he's known about it.
Generally, the TandT is put together with no sign of any thought of what is important to its audience, or of making the story meaningful to the reader. Part of that is, I'm sure, journalistic incompetence. Part of it is the inevitable consequence of monopoly ownership. Finally, its the result of the purpose of the Times and Transcript - to keep the people of Moncton as ignorant as possible of what is happening around them, and to them.
P.S. The rise in university fees is an important one - not in just the rise itself. The universities are on the losing end of a severe crisis. They have priced themselves out of the market so they are no longer an opportunity for the intellect so much as they are a finishing school for the rich. As such, they are ceasing to be a guide for social progress, but are becoming an obstacle to it.
The main reason for this is that universities have become hooked on academic snobbery. (They always have been, of course. But it's getting much worse.) That snobbery, encouraged by half-wit ratings like those in MacLean's, has put far too great an emphasis on research - research that is extremely expensive, and often frivolous. As a small part of this, our universities are expensively stuffed with subsidized journals that nobody reads.
I well remember a gem of the type. It was an article on the history of lacrosse in North America before Columbus. It was really nothing more than a collection of guesses. How could it be more? There was no recorded evidence to draw on. But you can always find a subsidized journal to publish such drivel in. And that's good for the snobbery rating of your university.
That means that teaching, which should be an essential function, is ignored. There is not, to my knowledge, a good or even a so-so teaching university in Canada. There is not even a university which understands what teaching means.
The result is that the universities increasingly rely on the financial support of big business. But big business is not a fairy godmother. It wants a payback. It wants control of the universities. To a large degree, that part of the game is already over. Big business has won. Get ready now for the decline of any subject in the university that does not put money into the pockets of those people who already have most of the world's money. Get ready for even more courses in business and economics that are pure brainwashing and propaganda (and whose professors routinely get quoted approvingly by papers like the Times and Transcript.).
But don't expect to see all this in the news. It is almost unheard of in the news business for there to be a reporter who has a clue about the subject of education. And why should they? All they have to do is to print what Mr. Irving wants to see.
Meanwhile, we have lost what should have been our greatest resource for social mobility and and social progress.
No, we don't want that in the Times and Transcript. But it would be nice to see a front page highlighting of the most important stories of the day, especially those things which will have a profound effect on our lives. In that context, I'm not sure that a tractor dealership being in financial trouble really cuts it. Or even the news that university fees are up by 2 or 3%.
On p. C1 is a lengthy story on federal plans to change the rules for equalization payments to provinces. Any change, up or down, in a programme that supplies this province with $1.5 billion a year, is going to be kind of important to us. As well, it has serious implications for the unity of Canada. That's a front-page story.
But it's presentation as purely a national story leaves it incomprehensible for New Brunswickers. There should have been a supplementary story on what New Brunswick uses its payments for, what is likely to be affected by any changes - and views expressed by both provincial politicians and people who know what they're talking about.
So here's a story with two problems. It isn't given the prominence it should have (it's way back in the third section) - with the result that many won't read it. And it doesn't have the focus it should have for this readership.
Mind you, it could be worse. The big story on p. 2 is "Owner searching for cat lost in accident". There's a real, need-to-know grabber. P.13 has the daily half page on the Oland mystery which tells us once again that there is nothing to report.
For a truly useless story (and a misleading one), see A, p. 3. "Tickets handed out over the long weekend". Police gave out "close to" 200 tickets.( Actually, it was 180, so why not just say so?) The "close to" hints that this is a large number - but there is no hint in the story that it is.)
And, no, the 180 was not just in Moncton; it was also on the highways of this region and in Shediac. That's a hundred and eighty tickets for quite a large area and population base. Is that a lot for such a population and one a long, holiday weekend? I mean, at 60 a day, and including parking and seat belts, it doesn't sound like a whole lot. But who can tell? We aren't given any figures for a normal day or for a holiday weekend.
The subhead makes it worse. "Officer says compliance rate seems higher as compared with last years."
Well, that might help - if we knew what the compliance rate was last year on a holiday weekend. No. Actually, it wouldn't. The sub head gives the impression that the compliance rate refers to traffic offences in general. In fact, it refers only to seat belts. And since it doesn't give any figures or comparisons, it's useless, even at that.
The story is credited to TandT Staff. Good move. If I had written that, I wouldn't want anybody to know it, either.
Page C 6 carries a useless story that could and should be an important one. It deals with a lengthy inquiry into a Canadian soldier's suicide. He was suffering PTSD.It's the longest such inquiry ever held - and Postmedia manages to write a long story about it without ever giving us any clear idea what it was all about.
At one point the chief officer for these inquiries was asked how many suicides at military bases he had been asked to review over a period of three years. He said he didn't know, maybe between 10 and 20 - or 25. What the hell is going on here?
Here is a story that screams questions. How can a chief investigating officer not know how many cases he dealt with in just three years? And these are just the suicides on bases. How many such suicides have there been been overall? In the Afghanistan years, how many Canadians died, but are not counted as war casualties? Exactly what is PTSD? Has the incidence of it risen, dropped, remained stable in our wars of the past century? Have their been any studies of this? Have recent developments in warfare led to a rise or a change of any sort in PTSD?
What rates of homelessness, inability to function in society. divorce, criminality has it caused? We all say on November 11 that we remember them. Well, apparently, our military, our government, and our news media don't remember some of them at all. No Highway of Heroes for them.
For a newspaper like the TandT, this should be very much a New Brunswick story, with this province's high rate of enlistment for service. How has PTSD affected New Brunswickers?
Address questions like that, and you serve the interest and the needs of your readers. But the Moncton Times and Transcript has no interest in serving the needs of its readers. This is a business. It serves its advertisers. It serves its boss. Check out the ads. They have more originality and thought devoted to them than to any news story. For a prime example, check out the newspaper's own ad on C, p.6. (It's right under the PTSD story.)
There's a hint of something the Times and Transcript should look at in a letter to the editor "Clean up sites at all cost". It points out that the ministry of the environment lists 885 sites in NB that have been officially reported as contaminated. Now, that's interesting. A good newspaper would get on that right away, telling us at least where the major ones are, when they were reported as contaminated, and what such a report legally requires the owners to do.
They could start with sites within the limits of Moncton. Highfield Square springs to mind. (The city told me of at least one more such site in the downtown area - but wouldn't name it.) Of course, it still hasn't broken the news about Highfield Square, even as we prepare to buy it for six million.(Gee! Maybe that's the answer to all the contamination across the province. We just talk dumb city councils into buying the contamination at millions of dollars a site. We could wipe out the provincial debt in a snap.
Meanwhile, I must drop a note to the Minister of the Environment to find out whether he knows anything about Highfield Square - and how long he's known about it.
Generally, the TandT is put together with no sign of any thought of what is important to its audience, or of making the story meaningful to the reader. Part of that is, I'm sure, journalistic incompetence. Part of it is the inevitable consequence of monopoly ownership. Finally, its the result of the purpose of the Times and Transcript - to keep the people of Moncton as ignorant as possible of what is happening around them, and to them.
P.S. The rise in university fees is an important one - not in just the rise itself. The universities are on the losing end of a severe crisis. They have priced themselves out of the market so they are no longer an opportunity for the intellect so much as they are a finishing school for the rich. As such, they are ceasing to be a guide for social progress, but are becoming an obstacle to it.
The main reason for this is that universities have become hooked on academic snobbery. (They always have been, of course. But it's getting much worse.) That snobbery, encouraged by half-wit ratings like those in MacLean's, has put far too great an emphasis on research - research that is extremely expensive, and often frivolous. As a small part of this, our universities are expensively stuffed with subsidized journals that nobody reads.
I well remember a gem of the type. It was an article on the history of lacrosse in North America before Columbus. It was really nothing more than a collection of guesses. How could it be more? There was no recorded evidence to draw on. But you can always find a subsidized journal to publish such drivel in. And that's good for the snobbery rating of your university.
That means that teaching, which should be an essential function, is ignored. There is not, to my knowledge, a good or even a so-so teaching university in Canada. There is not even a university which understands what teaching means.
The result is that the universities increasingly rely on the financial support of big business. But big business is not a fairy godmother. It wants a payback. It wants control of the universities. To a large degree, that part of the game is already over. Big business has won. Get ready now for the decline of any subject in the university that does not put money into the pockets of those people who already have most of the world's money. Get ready for even more courses in business and economics that are pure brainwashing and propaganda (and whose professors routinely get quoted approvingly by papers like the Times and Transcript.).
But don't expect to see all this in the news. It is almost unheard of in the news business for there to be a reporter who has a clue about the subject of education. And why should they? All they have to do is to print what Mr. Irving wants to see.
Meanwhile, we have lost what should have been our greatest resource for social mobility and and social progress.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Oct. 10: a good question from a reader...
saved me for today. There really isn't a whole lot to say about today's moncton times and transcript that I haven't said before. So I'll deal with what there is, then get on to the question.
The Reuters report on Syria (NewsToday) has some oddities. It has a report of a suicide attack by a rebel fighter in Syria. Now, suicide attacks usually come from what our press likes to call 'extremists'. (Western pilots who kill hundreds of thousands of civilians are never called extremists.) Anyway, human bombs are usually from the Jihadist elements of Islam. Now, the rebels are supposed to be on our side, according to Reuters, and are fighting for democracy. There seems to be a contradiction here.
There is no mention of a report that appeared in the British press - that the mortar shells landing in Turkey, and provoking Turkey into a response, appear to be bombs supplied to the rebels. not those used by the government forces.
And, of course, Reuters is still drawing its casualty figures from the Observatory for Syrian Human Rights - without mentioning that the "observatory" is one man, a storekeeper who lives in Britain, and who gets all his information from the rebel side.
Today's editorial shows almost human intelligence. It comments favourably on the Anglophone East school district's programme to make graduation possible for dropouts. It also adds that it should be made available to adults who did not complete high school.
I fully agree. I know it works. I know its good for the individual. It's good for our whole society. It's good for our economy. But -
The editor suggests the programme should be financed by cutting education budgets in other areas. Please. A little sense, here.
With children paying hundreds of dollars for supplies, and with schools wasting time selling chocolate bars and pizzas to keep operating, our schools are already shamefully underfunded. Here is a programme that is economically beneficial to the province. Why should we be such fatheads as to weaken our schools to carry it out. Couldn't we, instead, be a little less generous to big business? Or, couldn't we look into the pockets of those business barons who pay less tax than any of their brethren across Canada?
Alec Bruce has an interesting column on entrepreneurs. That's tricky because it's an emotionally loaded word ever since senior business execs have started to wrap themselves in it. It's become a standard word to use in attacking strikers, critics of super-big business, and usually used as a sort of blessing, a sign of virtue.
But it covers a very wide range and, in reality, your local convenience store owner has very little in common with the Irvings or McCains or Ganongs. In fact, the two groups have almost nothing in common.The small entrepreneur has almost everything in common with the rest of us. The big entrepreneurs have no such links.
On the op ed page are the easily excited Eric Lewis, and Brian Cormier who is something like Miss Manners as she would be if she never said anything at all useful.
There is, of course, no mention of contamination under Highfield Square or of what game the city council and the land-owners are playing on us.
Now to the interesting question from the reader. What is democracy?
Well, it starts with a principle. The people have the right to decide who will govern them.
That sounds clear. But it isn't.
Until the 1920s, women weren't people so far as democracy was concerned. In the US, slaves weren't people until after the civil war - and long after then, even to the present day, all sorts of games have been played to deprive African Americans of the vote.
In the early US, Canada and Britain, it was common to restrict voting to those who owned some property.
In Britain and Canada, we have a House of Lords and a Senate that nobody votes for - though both have the power to govern.
One could go on at great length about this sort of anomaly. At what point do you decide that a nation has or does not have a democracy?
Another problem is that making any intelligent choice of who is to govern us, we need information. It has to be complete, unbiased, honest. (Well, not everyone will agree with that.)
In any case, most North American news reaches us through a relatively small number of news agencies owned by wealthy people. Not surprisingly, they are filled with the biases they want us to have, They are commonly dishonest. And they withhold essential information. The worst of the lot may well be Fox News. But even the most prestigious ( such as the New York Times) have some very bad days, indeed.
Radio news, with the exception of CBC, is generally pretty thin gruel. That's because few radio stations have adequate news staffs. They find it cheaper to get their news from the newspapers. In any case, they, like the newspapers,they never present news that might annoy the boss or advertisers.
War news is particularly untrustworthy. For more on this, there is an excellent book called The First Casualty. Most war news is either lies or heavily biased or has big, big gaps. Have you ever seen a report in the TandT of how many people have been killed by drones - and what proportion are innocent civilians? (Hint, think big. Think close to 90%).
Most North American News is nothing but manipulation, hysteria, loaded language - and big gaps where there should be essential information.
Then there's honesty. That's always a problem in any system dealing with people. Usually, elections are won by the party with the most money - or almost as good as the most. The only people who can give you big money are the very, very wealthy ones. And they don't do it for enthusiasm for democracy. They do it to buy power.
Historically, we have tried to limit that by putting restrictions on how much individuals and corporations can contribute. But we haven't been very effective and, anyway, the rules are loosening. In the US, they scarcely exist any more. That's why the US is fighting the most expensive election in history.
Only two parties can run with any hope of winning. Both are financed by pretty much the same people in oil, Wall St. and the defence industries. For all the emotion and debate we see,, it doesn't matter who wins. Both sides are owned by pretty much the same people.
Canadians aren't like that? Don't kid yourself. John A. Macdonald was not only on the take, he was, while prime minister, on the boards of railways that received huge government grants, and was President of Manufacturers' Life. Harper is profoundly influenced by Canada's big money.
For over a century, Canada had a protective tariff. That what because big business wanted one. Brian Mulroney switched that to free trade. But it wasn't his idea. Canadian big business wanted to switch to free trade because it no longer needed protection, but did need access to the American market. It wasn't Brian's idea. The big money contributors to the party told him to get on his horse, and get a free trade deal. So he did.
Democracy, like all human creations, is flawed. Like almost all human activities, it is influenced by manipulation, lies, manufactured fears, greed, amorality.
What democracy we have is always a compromise of some sort.
So at what point do we decide a democracy is not really a democracy at all? You will never find two people to agree on that.
I would say that in the US, democracy is dead because it no longer matters who Americans elect. George Bush was Obama, and Obama could, very soon, be Romney. These are all just puppets.
New Brunswick is not a democracy. It is effectively owned by a few, wealthy families. It's information by news media is beneath contempt. And most of its people, accustomed to this abuse for at least two centuries, simply accept it and vote for two parties that are really the same party.
The principle sounds good. And it is good. The people have a right to decide who will govern them. But the devil is in the details.
good for the provincial economy.
good fro
The Reuters report on Syria (NewsToday) has some oddities. It has a report of a suicide attack by a rebel fighter in Syria. Now, suicide attacks usually come from what our press likes to call 'extremists'. (Western pilots who kill hundreds of thousands of civilians are never called extremists.) Anyway, human bombs are usually from the Jihadist elements of Islam. Now, the rebels are supposed to be on our side, according to Reuters, and are fighting for democracy. There seems to be a contradiction here.
There is no mention of a report that appeared in the British press - that the mortar shells landing in Turkey, and provoking Turkey into a response, appear to be bombs supplied to the rebels. not those used by the government forces.
And, of course, Reuters is still drawing its casualty figures from the Observatory for Syrian Human Rights - without mentioning that the "observatory" is one man, a storekeeper who lives in Britain, and who gets all his information from the rebel side.
Today's editorial shows almost human intelligence. It comments favourably on the Anglophone East school district's programme to make graduation possible for dropouts. It also adds that it should be made available to adults who did not complete high school.
I fully agree. I know it works. I know its good for the individual. It's good for our whole society. It's good for our economy. But -
The editor suggests the programme should be financed by cutting education budgets in other areas. Please. A little sense, here.
With children paying hundreds of dollars for supplies, and with schools wasting time selling chocolate bars and pizzas to keep operating, our schools are already shamefully underfunded. Here is a programme that is economically beneficial to the province. Why should we be such fatheads as to weaken our schools to carry it out. Couldn't we, instead, be a little less generous to big business? Or, couldn't we look into the pockets of those business barons who pay less tax than any of their brethren across Canada?
Alec Bruce has an interesting column on entrepreneurs. That's tricky because it's an emotionally loaded word ever since senior business execs have started to wrap themselves in it. It's become a standard word to use in attacking strikers, critics of super-big business, and usually used as a sort of blessing, a sign of virtue.
But it covers a very wide range and, in reality, your local convenience store owner has very little in common with the Irvings or McCains or Ganongs. In fact, the two groups have almost nothing in common.The small entrepreneur has almost everything in common with the rest of us. The big entrepreneurs have no such links.
On the op ed page are the easily excited Eric Lewis, and Brian Cormier who is something like Miss Manners as she would be if she never said anything at all useful.
There is, of course, no mention of contamination under Highfield Square or of what game the city council and the land-owners are playing on us.
Now to the interesting question from the reader. What is democracy?
Well, it starts with a principle. The people have the right to decide who will govern them.
That sounds clear. But it isn't.
Until the 1920s, women weren't people so far as democracy was concerned. In the US, slaves weren't people until after the civil war - and long after then, even to the present day, all sorts of games have been played to deprive African Americans of the vote.
In the early US, Canada and Britain, it was common to restrict voting to those who owned some property.
In Britain and Canada, we have a House of Lords and a Senate that nobody votes for - though both have the power to govern.
One could go on at great length about this sort of anomaly. At what point do you decide that a nation has or does not have a democracy?
Another problem is that making any intelligent choice of who is to govern us, we need information. It has to be complete, unbiased, honest. (Well, not everyone will agree with that.)
In any case, most North American news reaches us through a relatively small number of news agencies owned by wealthy people. Not surprisingly, they are filled with the biases they want us to have, They are commonly dishonest. And they withhold essential information. The worst of the lot may well be Fox News. But even the most prestigious ( such as the New York Times) have some very bad days, indeed.
Radio news, with the exception of CBC, is generally pretty thin gruel. That's because few radio stations have adequate news staffs. They find it cheaper to get their news from the newspapers. In any case, they, like the newspapers,they never present news that might annoy the boss or advertisers.
War news is particularly untrustworthy. For more on this, there is an excellent book called The First Casualty. Most war news is either lies or heavily biased or has big, big gaps. Have you ever seen a report in the TandT of how many people have been killed by drones - and what proportion are innocent civilians? (Hint, think big. Think close to 90%).
Most North American News is nothing but manipulation, hysteria, loaded language - and big gaps where there should be essential information.
Then there's honesty. That's always a problem in any system dealing with people. Usually, elections are won by the party with the most money - or almost as good as the most. The only people who can give you big money are the very, very wealthy ones. And they don't do it for enthusiasm for democracy. They do it to buy power.
Historically, we have tried to limit that by putting restrictions on how much individuals and corporations can contribute. But we haven't been very effective and, anyway, the rules are loosening. In the US, they scarcely exist any more. That's why the US is fighting the most expensive election in history.
Only two parties can run with any hope of winning. Both are financed by pretty much the same people in oil, Wall St. and the defence industries. For all the emotion and debate we see,, it doesn't matter who wins. Both sides are owned by pretty much the same people.
Canadians aren't like that? Don't kid yourself. John A. Macdonald was not only on the take, he was, while prime minister, on the boards of railways that received huge government grants, and was President of Manufacturers' Life. Harper is profoundly influenced by Canada's big money.
For over a century, Canada had a protective tariff. That what because big business wanted one. Brian Mulroney switched that to free trade. But it wasn't his idea. Canadian big business wanted to switch to free trade because it no longer needed protection, but did need access to the American market. It wasn't Brian's idea. The big money contributors to the party told him to get on his horse, and get a free trade deal. So he did.
Democracy, like all human creations, is flawed. Like almost all human activities, it is influenced by manipulation, lies, manufactured fears, greed, amorality.
What democracy we have is always a compromise of some sort.
So at what point do we decide a democracy is not really a democracy at all? You will never find two people to agree on that.
I would say that in the US, democracy is dead because it no longer matters who Americans elect. George Bush was Obama, and Obama could, very soon, be Romney. These are all just puppets.
New Brunswick is not a democracy. It is effectively owned by a few, wealthy families. It's information by news media is beneath contempt. And most of its people, accustomed to this abuse for at least two centuries, simply accept it and vote for two parties that are really the same party.
The principle sounds good. And it is good. The people have a right to decide who will govern them. But the devil is in the details.
good for the provincial economy.
good fro
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Oct. 9:
Section A is the usual series of trivia. There is the daily story on the Oland mystery, with its daily message that there is still nothing much to say about it. But a few items caught my eye. One is the Legs for Literacy headline.
A piece of well-meant advice to the reporter on this one. Legs for Literacy is not an easily decipherable term. What do legs have to do with literacy? It's kind of important for readers to have a basic knowledge of the topic from the start. But it's not until the end that I learned that this is a fund-raiser for literacy programmes in our schools. Without that knowledge all we are reading about is people running around for no very clear reason. The purpose of the run is surely the major feature of that story. But not many people are going to read far enough to know or to care what it's all about.
Actually, this advice should go to the person responsible for the layout of the story - the editor. But I didn't address it to him because I have doubts about the literacy skills of the editors.
And, surely, the story raises another question. Why is it necessary for volunteers to raise money so that we can have adequate literacy skills in our public schools? Despite our budgetary problems, we seem to have lots of money to toss at a hockey rink and at tax cuts. Tell you what...
Why don't we fund our schools properly and make the rich pay adequate taxes in the first place? Then we can ask for volunteers to run so we can build a hockey rink and help Irving and co. with paying their taxes?
Page 1 had another education story that caught my eye, this one a programme to help high school dropouts to finish high school, and get established with jobs. This programme (Alas! It is offered by only one district, Anglophone East) is a superb idea. I speak with both experience and emotion on this issue since I was a school dropout whose whole life was changed by just such a programme.
Again, though, I have to wonder about it. Why is such a valuable programme available only in one school district? Here is a programme that not only opens a new life for the student, but benefits the whole province for the rest of that student's life. It's been done in other provinces for almost a century. The New Brunswick government certainly distributes its money in some very odd ways.
In NewsToday, Reuters continues its usual, misleading reporting on Syria. The emphasis this time is on claims of how the war must be ended by western intervention. Actually. such an intervention would almost certainly make things worse, plunging the whole region into turmoil. And all the while, there would be a much simpler way to end it. Cut off the money, weapons, and mercenaries that are making this war possible for the rebels.
Intervention will make this worse. The cure is non-intervention. We, with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the emirates, UK, US created this war by intervening at the start with money, weapons, mercenaries, propaganda, training, special ops, etc. We could stop it tomorrow simply by unintervening.
But wouldn't that put rebel supporters at risk of retaliation? Yes, it will. And what do you think will happen to government supporters if the rebels win?
Our intervention at the start created a mess. We can't fix it. When you cry and stomp your feet and throw your supper on the floor, you can't fix it. The best you can do is to stop things from getting worse. More crying, stomping our feet, and dumping food by us will make things worse.
But we will continue to intervene and to make it worse. You can bet on it.
There's also a story on a report from the Broadbent Institute that's worth reading. (Of course, since the story comes from Postmedia, it has to load the dice a little by referring to the Broadbent Institute as 'left-leaning'. Postmedia and it's hangers-on like the Irving press never refer to the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies or the Fraser as right-leaning, even though those two lean so far right, they are lying down.)
The report is that the distribution of wealth in Canada is out of control, is worse than almost any other country in the world, that as most Canadians are getting poorer, the rich are piling up wealth. There's not much doubt about that. The government's own statistics have been showing that for decades.
It also points out that countries with a better distribution, like Germany and Sweden, are doing better in recovering from the recession, that they have less mental illness, live longer, less obesity, and less homicide.
Gee! I really must go to the Irving Chapel, and prayerfully reflect on that.
The editorial is another tough-minded, get-to-the-bottom-of-things article that is also a free ad for the wine festival. A must read.
Norbert has a three part column today.
Part 1. funny. It's another rant against CBC, this time for not asking enough questions in a news story. This comes from a newspaper which thinks that a question mark is just an upside down drawing of a coat hanger.
Part 2. is a blame the government rant. It also shows a certain ignorance of the English language. It's about the cost of flying which Norbert get mixed up with democracy. Deciding which airplane to fly on is a choice that has nothing to do with democracy. The term democracy refers to the process by which we choose and (occasionally) operate a government. Freedom refers to that degree to which we can do as we choose. Deciding what airline to fly is a free choice, Norbert, not a democratic one.
Part 3 is a free ad for Future Shop.
Alec Bruce is brilliant. If you have only five minutes for the paper - read this one.
On op ed, Alan Cochrane begins with a reference to the old, Peanuts cartoon strip. That's the high point. If you care about the rest, then read it by all means. If you're interested in this, this is what will interest you.
Gwynne Dyer has an excellent and original column on reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons. This world has over 11,000 of them. What are the chances they will be used some day? Very close to 100%. And then they will never be used again.Nor will any part of this planet.
The small nuclear powers are no great threat. Even if North Korea were to fire its whole arsenal, the damage to the world would be relatively small; and it would be followed by the complete destruction of North Korea.
Will nuclear weapons continue to spread? You can bet they will. Every country wants one - if only as a warning to the big powers that threaten them. And with that inevitable spread, there will inevitably be a country which will do something foolish - and it's very likely to be one of the big powers. Even as we read this, the US is deploying its forces for action against China. This is the US whose conventional forces could not beat little Vietnam, and cannot beat primitive Afghanistan. What would you guess its chances are in a conventional war against China?
I know that getting rid of nuclear weapons sounds crazy. Almost as crazy as keeping them.
Still no mention of the pollution under Highfield Square. Boy! Can't wait till Brent Mazerolle gets into one of them there tough scrums with him shouting questions at the city councillors. You don't fool with Brent, or with any of the reporters at The Moncton Times and Transcript.
A piece of well-meant advice to the reporter on this one. Legs for Literacy is not an easily decipherable term. What do legs have to do with literacy? It's kind of important for readers to have a basic knowledge of the topic from the start. But it's not until the end that I learned that this is a fund-raiser for literacy programmes in our schools. Without that knowledge all we are reading about is people running around for no very clear reason. The purpose of the run is surely the major feature of that story. But not many people are going to read far enough to know or to care what it's all about.
Actually, this advice should go to the person responsible for the layout of the story - the editor. But I didn't address it to him because I have doubts about the literacy skills of the editors.
And, surely, the story raises another question. Why is it necessary for volunteers to raise money so that we can have adequate literacy skills in our public schools? Despite our budgetary problems, we seem to have lots of money to toss at a hockey rink and at tax cuts. Tell you what...
Why don't we fund our schools properly and make the rich pay adequate taxes in the first place? Then we can ask for volunteers to run so we can build a hockey rink and help Irving and co. with paying their taxes?
Page 1 had another education story that caught my eye, this one a programme to help high school dropouts to finish high school, and get established with jobs. This programme (Alas! It is offered by only one district, Anglophone East) is a superb idea. I speak with both experience and emotion on this issue since I was a school dropout whose whole life was changed by just such a programme.
Again, though, I have to wonder about it. Why is such a valuable programme available only in one school district? Here is a programme that not only opens a new life for the student, but benefits the whole province for the rest of that student's life. It's been done in other provinces for almost a century. The New Brunswick government certainly distributes its money in some very odd ways.
In NewsToday, Reuters continues its usual, misleading reporting on Syria. The emphasis this time is on claims of how the war must be ended by western intervention. Actually. such an intervention would almost certainly make things worse, plunging the whole region into turmoil. And all the while, there would be a much simpler way to end it. Cut off the money, weapons, and mercenaries that are making this war possible for the rebels.
Intervention will make this worse. The cure is non-intervention. We, with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the emirates, UK, US created this war by intervening at the start with money, weapons, mercenaries, propaganda, training, special ops, etc. We could stop it tomorrow simply by unintervening.
But wouldn't that put rebel supporters at risk of retaliation? Yes, it will. And what do you think will happen to government supporters if the rebels win?
Our intervention at the start created a mess. We can't fix it. When you cry and stomp your feet and throw your supper on the floor, you can't fix it. The best you can do is to stop things from getting worse. More crying, stomping our feet, and dumping food by us will make things worse.
But we will continue to intervene and to make it worse. You can bet on it.
There's also a story on a report from the Broadbent Institute that's worth reading. (Of course, since the story comes from Postmedia, it has to load the dice a little by referring to the Broadbent Institute as 'left-leaning'. Postmedia and it's hangers-on like the Irving press never refer to the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies or the Fraser as right-leaning, even though those two lean so far right, they are lying down.)
The report is that the distribution of wealth in Canada is out of control, is worse than almost any other country in the world, that as most Canadians are getting poorer, the rich are piling up wealth. There's not much doubt about that. The government's own statistics have been showing that for decades.
It also points out that countries with a better distribution, like Germany and Sweden, are doing better in recovering from the recession, that they have less mental illness, live longer, less obesity, and less homicide.
Gee! I really must go to the Irving Chapel, and prayerfully reflect on that.
The editorial is another tough-minded, get-to-the-bottom-of-things article that is also a free ad for the wine festival. A must read.
Norbert has a three part column today.
Part 1. funny. It's another rant against CBC, this time for not asking enough questions in a news story. This comes from a newspaper which thinks that a question mark is just an upside down drawing of a coat hanger.
Part 2. is a blame the government rant. It also shows a certain ignorance of the English language. It's about the cost of flying which Norbert get mixed up with democracy. Deciding which airplane to fly on is a choice that has nothing to do with democracy. The term democracy refers to the process by which we choose and (occasionally) operate a government. Freedom refers to that degree to which we can do as we choose. Deciding what airline to fly is a free choice, Norbert, not a democratic one.
Part 3 is a free ad for Future Shop.
Alec Bruce is brilliant. If you have only five minutes for the paper - read this one.
On op ed, Alan Cochrane begins with a reference to the old, Peanuts cartoon strip. That's the high point. If you care about the rest, then read it by all means. If you're interested in this, this is what will interest you.
Gwynne Dyer has an excellent and original column on reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons. This world has over 11,000 of them. What are the chances they will be used some day? Very close to 100%. And then they will never be used again.Nor will any part of this planet.
The small nuclear powers are no great threat. Even if North Korea were to fire its whole arsenal, the damage to the world would be relatively small; and it would be followed by the complete destruction of North Korea.
Will nuclear weapons continue to spread? You can bet they will. Every country wants one - if only as a warning to the big powers that threaten them. And with that inevitable spread, there will inevitably be a country which will do something foolish - and it's very likely to be one of the big powers. Even as we read this, the US is deploying its forces for action against China. This is the US whose conventional forces could not beat little Vietnam, and cannot beat primitive Afghanistan. What would you guess its chances are in a conventional war against China?
I know that getting rid of nuclear weapons sounds crazy. Almost as crazy as keeping them.
Still no mention of the pollution under Highfield Square. Boy! Can't wait till Brent Mazerolle gets into one of them there tough scrums with him shouting questions at the city councillors. You don't fool with Brent, or with any of the reporters at The Moncton Times and Transcript.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Oct. 5: Will NB get new area code?
Almost certainly not. It doesn't need one: and it's not likely to need one. READ ALL ABOUT IT. PAGE ONE IN YOUR MONCTON TIMES AND TRANSCRIPT TODAY. NOTHING IS HAPPENING. NOTHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
Read NewsToday for all YOU need to know about the world. One page.
The editorial is simple-minded hypocrisy of what we have to be thankful for on this day - free speech,open dialogue on matters like the environment...
Bull shit Mr. editor. and no-one knows that better than you. You and your friends have withheld the information we need to have an open dialogue. Anybody you don't agree with gets smeared in your newpapers - and there are no other newspapers on the stands. (Though there is the Moncton Free Press on the web. Check google.)
Craig Babstock and Allen Abel combine on the op ed page to say nothing
Alec Bruce writes an amusing column - and it's not as light as it might look; there's a hard edge of truth in it.
And as for Norbert - the kid does it again. Right out of the ball park with a column on climate change. Norbert says we have to deal with it now. And Norbert is right... but...
1. Which newspapers are the ones who have been holding back information on the risk of environmental abuse in this province? Read much about shale gas in the TandT?
2. Our municipal politicians are planning to look ahead on this issue as regards the danger of flooding, says Norbert. He congratulates them, though adding that politicians seldom look ahead.
Well, okay. But who has been looking ahead on this one? The Moncton Times and Transcript? The corporate bosses? In fact, the latter are the ones who have been getting in the way of looking ahead. They're the ones who own the politicians and the news media that have downplayed the dangers facing us, and have encouraged risk for the sake of their profits.
Worse, the corporate bosses have demonstrated very clearly that they are not capable of planning ahead. All around the world economies are in ruin. Levels of poverty in North America are reaching levels we haven't seen in a century - even as the rich are themselves reaching news levels of wealth. Face it, Norbert, these people you have been praising for their enterprise are greedy, short-sighted, and self-obsessed.
In t his case, notice that it's civil servants and municipal politicians who are taking the lead - not corporations. Not for the rich this planning for the future. They're too busy with the present - as in getting rid of a large piece of contaminated land that they don't want to pay for cleaning up.
Earlier, I said I would take a look at what the corporations are planning for us. Okay. This is a slow day.
I said corporations actually require big government. Their banks go broke? They need big government to bail them out. Oil supplies are in jeopardy? They need big government to fight wars to stop that. People are opposed to shale gas? They need big government to make the world safe for polluters. And, very soon, people rise up against the poverty and dangers being forced on them? Corporate bosses need departments of homeland security to buy lots and lots of ammunition to shoot at them.
So where is this all heading?
Corporations want control of all major political parties. This has largely been achieved. In the US, they are now fighting the most expensive election in world history. The resources for press control, for psychological manipulation of the voters,for advertising, for spreading lies are enormous - and all of them come from the very, very rich. One effect has been that the two most immediate and pressing issues have not even been mentioned by either side - the closeness of nuclear war, and the crisis of climate change.
Result? It could not matter less whether Mitt or Obama wins. Both are controlled by much the same money.
American politics are even a bigger comic opera than New Brunswick politics.
Why do corporations and the very wealthy want this control? Well, there's the obvious need to keep their taxes down, and so to discourage social programmes, education spending, etc. But there's something even more important.
Government spending has become huge, necessarily so in a modern society. Corporations want that tax money, your tax money, for their profit. They want to privatize everything they can -education, police, prisons, the military. They don't want government to charge them taxes. It wants government to charge everybody else taxes, then hand them all over to private business.
They want politicians, as our representatives, to take full responsibility. But they want them to have no power and, certainly, no power to regulate big business. They want us to be sheep in the field with no shepherd. They want to be wolves who are free to dine as they like. That's what 'think tanks' like Atlantic Institute of Market Studies are all about. Thats what The Moncton Times and Transcript is all about. That's why they're eager to destroy CBC as the US has destroyed Public Broadcasting. That's why Norbert is forever telling us how incompetent civil servants are.
The movement for a world run by the wealthy has gone a long away. Here, we have our cutely named Public/Private Partnerships (yeah. that's what we'll call it - partnership.) In the US,we have public schools that are privately owned but charge fees as well as getting tax money. All people are created equal; but in the US that changes when they go to school.)
Britain has private prisons and private police forces. Private armies operate all over the world, the largest private one being that of the US. All of this requires control against those foolish, ordinary people who don't know what's good for them. So we have massive domestic spying. In the US, some five million people are on lists as suspected terrorists -or whatever - All of us all over the world are now easily watched at every movement by spy drones.
We're watching power over the whole world being gathered into a very few hands to a degree and with means of enforcement never seen before.
Go to the Irving Chapel this Thanksgiving. Go by all means. And as you sit in that hallowed room, reflect on that.
In general, the privatization of everything has proved disastrous. Of course. A society is not simply a creature of economic principles and self-interest. Schools and police forces and social services have to be run on moral principles. The foundation of a society has to be moral. It doesn't have to be a religious morality. But some sense of morality, of the worth of people, of our obligations to the whole society have to be there. Morality exists and has existed for millennia because it's practical, because it's a necessity for survival.
Corporations do not operate on morality. They exist only to make profits. Nothing else. Morality means consideration for others, not just for yourself. You can cover the earth with Irving chapels, and still not change that reality.
The greatest single crisis we face is the intrusion of powerful corporations into our democracy, and into the moral base of our society. There are, most certainly, other and very serious problems. But we cannot deal with them until we take power back from those who are stealing it from us.
Read NewsToday for all YOU need to know about the world. One page.
The editorial is simple-minded hypocrisy of what we have to be thankful for on this day - free speech,open dialogue on matters like the environment...
Bull shit Mr. editor. and no-one knows that better than you. You and your friends have withheld the information we need to have an open dialogue. Anybody you don't agree with gets smeared in your newpapers - and there are no other newspapers on the stands. (Though there is the Moncton Free Press on the web. Check google.)
Craig Babstock and Allen Abel combine on the op ed page to say nothing
Alec Bruce writes an amusing column - and it's not as light as it might look; there's a hard edge of truth in it.
And as for Norbert - the kid does it again. Right out of the ball park with a column on climate change. Norbert says we have to deal with it now. And Norbert is right... but...
1. Which newspapers are the ones who have been holding back information on the risk of environmental abuse in this province? Read much about shale gas in the TandT?
2. Our municipal politicians are planning to look ahead on this issue as regards the danger of flooding, says Norbert. He congratulates them, though adding that politicians seldom look ahead.
Well, okay. But who has been looking ahead on this one? The Moncton Times and Transcript? The corporate bosses? In fact, the latter are the ones who have been getting in the way of looking ahead. They're the ones who own the politicians and the news media that have downplayed the dangers facing us, and have encouraged risk for the sake of their profits.
Worse, the corporate bosses have demonstrated very clearly that they are not capable of planning ahead. All around the world economies are in ruin. Levels of poverty in North America are reaching levels we haven't seen in a century - even as the rich are themselves reaching news levels of wealth. Face it, Norbert, these people you have been praising for their enterprise are greedy, short-sighted, and self-obsessed.
In t his case, notice that it's civil servants and municipal politicians who are taking the lead - not corporations. Not for the rich this planning for the future. They're too busy with the present - as in getting rid of a large piece of contaminated land that they don't want to pay for cleaning up.
Earlier, I said I would take a look at what the corporations are planning for us. Okay. This is a slow day.
I said corporations actually require big government. Their banks go broke? They need big government to bail them out. Oil supplies are in jeopardy? They need big government to fight wars to stop that. People are opposed to shale gas? They need big government to make the world safe for polluters. And, very soon, people rise up against the poverty and dangers being forced on them? Corporate bosses need departments of homeland security to buy lots and lots of ammunition to shoot at them.
So where is this all heading?
Corporations want control of all major political parties. This has largely been achieved. In the US, they are now fighting the most expensive election in world history. The resources for press control, for psychological manipulation of the voters,for advertising, for spreading lies are enormous - and all of them come from the very, very rich. One effect has been that the two most immediate and pressing issues have not even been mentioned by either side - the closeness of nuclear war, and the crisis of climate change.
Result? It could not matter less whether Mitt or Obama wins. Both are controlled by much the same money.
American politics are even a bigger comic opera than New Brunswick politics.
Why do corporations and the very wealthy want this control? Well, there's the obvious need to keep their taxes down, and so to discourage social programmes, education spending, etc. But there's something even more important.
Government spending has become huge, necessarily so in a modern society. Corporations want that tax money, your tax money, for their profit. They want to privatize everything they can -education, police, prisons, the military. They don't want government to charge them taxes. It wants government to charge everybody else taxes, then hand them all over to private business.
They want politicians, as our representatives, to take full responsibility. But they want them to have no power and, certainly, no power to regulate big business. They want us to be sheep in the field with no shepherd. They want to be wolves who are free to dine as they like. That's what 'think tanks' like Atlantic Institute of Market Studies are all about. Thats what The Moncton Times and Transcript is all about. That's why they're eager to destroy CBC as the US has destroyed Public Broadcasting. That's why Norbert is forever telling us how incompetent civil servants are.
The movement for a world run by the wealthy has gone a long away. Here, we have our cutely named Public/Private Partnerships (yeah. that's what we'll call it - partnership.) In the US,we have public schools that are privately owned but charge fees as well as getting tax money. All people are created equal; but in the US that changes when they go to school.)
Britain has private prisons and private police forces. Private armies operate all over the world, the largest private one being that of the US. All of this requires control against those foolish, ordinary people who don't know what's good for them. So we have massive domestic spying. In the US, some five million people are on lists as suspected terrorists -or whatever - All of us all over the world are now easily watched at every movement by spy drones.
We're watching power over the whole world being gathered into a very few hands to a degree and with means of enforcement never seen before.
Go to the Irving Chapel this Thanksgiving. Go by all means. And as you sit in that hallowed room, reflect on that.
In general, the privatization of everything has proved disastrous. Of course. A society is not simply a creature of economic principles and self-interest. Schools and police forces and social services have to be run on moral principles. The foundation of a society has to be moral. It doesn't have to be a religious morality. But some sense of morality, of the worth of people, of our obligations to the whole society have to be there. Morality exists and has existed for millennia because it's practical, because it's a necessity for survival.
Corporations do not operate on morality. They exist only to make profits. Nothing else. Morality means consideration for others, not just for yourself. You can cover the earth with Irving chapels, and still not change that reality.
The greatest single crisis we face is the intrusion of powerful corporations into our democracy, and into the moral base of our society. There are, most certainly, other and very serious problems. But we cannot deal with them until we take power back from those who are stealing it from us.
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