Jan 8: el stupido.....

Yesterday, my mind a turmoil of flu and banana-strawberry juice with veggies, I forgot the date for the Idle No More protest in Moncton. At last,  a friend told me - and I put it in my blog. Alas, I had forgotten it appeared twice in my blog - and I changed it only once.
It is Wednesday, Jan. 9 at noon. We meet in the parking area on the east side of Sears in Champlain Mall, and march to City Hall.

There's an excellent letter to the editor about it in today's TandT, "All N.B. can join protest movement."

The movement also made the first page again. Alas! It doesn't say much more than the very uninformative reports we've earlier had from The Moncton Times and Transcript. Now, here's a movement which is turning into a huge, international one, with support from all over the world, and with demonstrations occurring as far away as New Zealand. It's a Canadian movement, and one with a strong base in this province. And the weakest reporting on it that I've seen is in the Irving press. Mr. Irving must be all in a tizzy about this terrible Mrs. Spence. It's a good thing he has a real man like Stephen Harper to protect him from the demands of a starving women who's been living in a tent for weeks. Wotta man!

However, it is possible to get news about this Canadian and New Brunswick event. For a fuller story than I have seen in any Irving paper, check out the British press for Jan. 7, notably The Guardian.

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Probably the biggest story of today begins on p. A1 "EI reform criticism 'premature': minister". The minister is Keith Ashfield, minister of Oceans and Fisheries. It also carries a large picture of Mr. Ashfield. I have no idea why. It quotes him as making the fatuous statement that his his cuts in EI will create jobs. But he never really explains how that would work. If it would work, then places like Congo and Haiti which have no EI at all would just be rolling in jobs.

The closest the story comes to explaining his bizarre view is that the unemployed will have to work harder at finding jobs. But how that will create jobs is not clear to me. It that was creates recessions? People suddenly get lazy by the millions and stop looking for jobs? What? Is it some kind of virus? And jobs are created when people look for them?

This is a fatuous statement by a smug servant of big business like Mr. Ashfiield for which he offers no evidence whatever. But it appears as the sub-head to the story, as though this is the main point made by the story, "Reforms to employment insurance will create jobs, Ashfield predicts."

Right. And closing hospitals will cure all illnesses. Don't TandT reporters ever ask questions? Surely, they must know it's simply a fatuous waste of time to write down whatever the Ashfields of this world say.
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NewsToday has the story that Stephen Harper has chosen this time to release a study suggesting very bad accounting for public spending in Attawapiskat reserve (home of Theresa Spence). What a conicidence!
Too bad we couldn't get such timely reports on the T-35 contract, or on the thievery of Brian Mulroney. Too bad Mr. Harper has never taken a look at things like health, housing, education, social conditions on Canada's reserves. To bad he doesn't intend to, not ever.
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A reader sent in a comment that I should have read Monday's editorial as an example of everything that can go wrong with an editorial. I have to admit I rarely read editorials unless they appear to be particularly lying and obnoxious.Usually, they're just too trivial to read.
However, I should have read Monday's. It's trivial. But, oh, what a real stinker as a piece of writing! It's so wordy and awkward that it's really a tough read - and for no good at all.
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And a painful decision. The current events group will not meet tonight.
I'm quite sure my bout of flu is over, and I'm now non-infectious. But I'm no doctor (actually, I am. But I'm not the kind that's much use for anything.) Accordingly, I decided I should not take the chance of putting people at risk. So no meeting tonight.

But there are a couple of points I want to talk about, points of serious failures in New Brunswick society.
One is the fear that runs right through this society. It was highlighted recently when a Moncton city councillor announced his resignation from council because his outspokeness on council made it difficult for him to find a job.

And he's probably right. This is a city and a province knee-deep in questionable land deals, questionable contracts, questionable projects (like the Moncton events centre) -but everybody plays deaf and dumb.
When the Times and Transcript a couple of years ago ran a campaign of ignorance and hatred aimed at our public schools, I wondered where the hell the parents' association and the home and school were. Why were they silent? When I did contact them, what I met was hostility, that sullen disappoval you find in people who are afraid to challenge the boss. The district boards were equally weak and submissive.

This is a province of lying and cheating and bullying, a province full of people who prefer not to hear or see what is going on.

This is coupled with a revolution sweeping the western world, a fundamental attack on democracy and individual rights. It's led by big business and you can read it every day in the new language that's coming out of big business.

In fact, it's not big business any more. It's not even capitalism. No, no. They are "creators of wealth", God bless their little hearts. Through illegal practices and widespread corruption, they plunge the world into economic crisis. But there is no penalty. If fact, governments give them more money so their executives can pay themselves even bigger bonuses. Every year for over two decades the very, very rich have taken a bigger and bigger share of the pie while everybody else gets poorer.

But that doesn't cause recessions. No. Recessions are caused because millions of poor people suddenly get too lazy to work. (Must be some sort of virus).

The other part is that they like to talk of public sector and private sector - of groups rather than of people. That signals a profound change. Our society was based on the rights of individuals. It's become based on the rights of groups. And guess which groups get the most rights.

These are fundamental changes. They mean the death of democracy as we have known it. And newspapers h ave played a key role in killing democracy.

And New Brunswickers pretend it all isn't really happening. Deaf and dumb.

Each of these points takes a while to explain -and we naturally have a strong resistance to hearing what we don't want to hear. I haven't figured out how to do this yet. Public meetings like the current events group would be best. But New Brunswickers are terrified about being public. (unless, of course, it's standing with a group of other people, smiling and holding up a giant cheque).

Jan.7: Sorry to miss Sunday...

This flu is a real gem. Like an unwanted guest, it never seems quite ready to leave.

Huge gaffe by our federal minister of  International Cooperation, a famous unknown called Fantino. He told a newspaper that all Canadian foreign aid projects to Haiti have been frozen. And this was the first news the government of Haiti and the various aid groups ever heard of it. Very smooth, Mr. Fantino. He says it's not efficient enough.

Well, Mr. Fantino has been in his post for six months. One might think he's had the time to put changes in place so he doesn't have to leave those people in misery. Oh, but he did utter a kindly thought, "Are we going to take care of their problems forever? They need to take care of themselves."

What a nice man.

Haiti is poor because our side has quite deliberately kept it poor for almost 200 years. Our side has imposed one dictator after another so that wealthy North Americans and Europeans could take over their land, bleed them dry as farm workers and as factory workers at a few dollars a day with virtually no education or medical care.

When Aristide provided the first, extended democratic leadership in that country, there was a staged invasion by thugs from the old dictatorship, then a staged 'peacekeeping mission' led by the US which allowed the thugs to stay but forced the the elected president into exile. Canada played its usual comic role in that. There is, of course, a new, elected president - but he's an American puppet voted in by less that ten percent of the electorate.

Fantino says Haiti aid money is wasted on corruption. Damn right. Most of it the corruption of us and our friends. Virtually all of the American aid has vanished into corrupt contracts with American contractors. The money has been spent. But Haitians still live in tents. Haiti is an outstanding example of the moral rot of North America.

But don't be distressed by it. Just read your Moncton Times and Transcript. They don't mention any of this.

The Idle No More movement made page one again - if in small print and lower on the page. (The big story of the day is that children are playing in the snow. There's also a whole page of pictures on A4 for people who have never seen snow before.) The Idle No More story tells us nothing more than the little we knew before - but it does add a strange note.

This report says the rail blockade at Adamsville ended because of a court order. In Saturday's report of the same incident, there was no mention of a court order. We were left with a sense of the blockaders just drifting off for no reason at all. Are those reporters products of the UNB Journalism programme? If not, UNB should make that public to protect its reputation. (If they are grads of UNB then, of course, it should keep it a secret.)

The TandT did not, of course, mention that there is a scheduled protest for all of us in support of Idle No More here in Moncton. It's Wednesday, Jan. 9, gathering in the parking lot on the east side of Sears in Champlain Mall at noon. We then march to city hall.

I would not take Alec Bruce's column about the return of American manufacturing very seriously (and I suspect it is written tongue in cheek.) Even if some should come back, the American economy would still be blasted by the moral rot that runs deep in both the public and private sectors, and the the wildly overmilitarized nature of the US. It faces generations of war against countries that are no military threat to it, and generations of corrupt, military spending. When an empire falls,it goes all the way.

The biggest news in a very boring paper is in letters to the editor. Two of the them are long, illogical, and wildly uninformed letters about gun ownership.

"In countries where only the army and police have guns, citizens have lost all freedom and liberty and live under a dictatorship..."  Well, yeah. You see it every day.  I mean just look at the lack of freedom in countries that are strict on guns - Britain, The Netherlands, Denmark... Brutal dictatorships, all of them.

The US, on the other hand, because its people have guns, have unlimiated freedom. The president, for example, had the freedom to have American citizens jailed and even executed with no charge or trial. (saves on lawyers.) The US also has the biggest internal espionage system in history with more secret police and unwarranted searches than even Hitler or Stalin could have imagined.

How come all them pistol-packin' folks ain't out in the street defendin' their constitution?

A Moncton writer adds a load of misinformation about Canadian history. US settlers, he said, depended on the gun. Canadians did not.

Oh? How did we kill all those Indians? Hugs and kisses? How did our early settlers get meat? Dress up as female moose in bikinis to lure male moose? Anybody ever hear of the Riel Rebellion?

As for the gun-totin' US, the settlers did not carry guns just to look cute - or to defend freedom. (By the way, the American revolution did not bring personal freedom. Americans already had that as part of their British heritage. What the revolution did was to bring national independence, something quite different.)

Far from leading the world in individual freedom, the US was one of the last to extend it to African-Americans and women. And carrying guns did not win them those rights. In fact, citizen carrying guns often held them back.

US settlers, like ours, had guns for survival. Far more than ours, they also used guns in series of wars and aggressions to steal Indian and Mexican land, and to murder as many native peoples as possible. Let's forget the romantic image of the frontiersman fighting for justice and freedom. He was more often a murdering, thieving, bastard.

Finally, the note adds a regret that God is not allowed in the schools. Well, what can you do? He/She doesn't seem to be allowed in the churches, government or corporate offices, either. Enough of this silly whining about schools as if they have destroyed religion in this morally decayed society.

Sorry not to hit on any big topics. There simply wasn't anything in today's paper to talk about.

On Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 7 p.m.,  the current events group will meet in the library. I open to topics. But I would like the begin the way big business has been using words highly charged with propaganda, and highly destructive of democracy. Some of those words are "public sector", "private sector", "partnerships" - words with loaded meanings and very serious implications. We've come a long way from democracy - a long way the wrong way.

And don't forget the next day, Wednesday, Jan. 7, noon at Champlain Mall - the parking on the east side of Sears.

Jan. 5: THEY NOTICED...

The  Moncton Times and Transcript hasn't said much; but it has noticed there's an Idle No More movement.
They haven't noticed what lies behind it - the wretched housing, the poverty, the ill-health, the federal neglect.No. that would be boring. But blocking a railway line? Now, that's important. That's page one. Headline story.

Since the TandT still hasn't explained what it's all about, many readers will look on this as a silly and even dangerous act, But that's okay with the TandT. Their boss isn't one to sympathize with common people who think they should have rights, too.

There's another big protest on p. A3, one of changes to EI benefits which affect seasonal workers. But this time there is very full discussion of the reasons for it. (The contrast with the Idle No More story in this respect is quite striking.)

We return again to Idle No More in NewsToday, p.1, with the PM agreeing to meet aboriginal leaders. Is this a victory for Chief Theresa Spence? Not at all. In fact, the delay of a week in meeting a women living in a tent and on a starvation diet is one indicator of his casual attitude. Indeed, the meeting he agreed to is not with her at all but with leaders of the Assembly of First Nations,, a group which has traditionally been happy to play word games with Harper while getting nothing done.

In any case, Harper could well get the governor-general to sign Bill C-45 before any meeting. So the meeting really won't matter. But the TandT doesn't mention any of this. Once again, we get news that has no meaning.

The story also makes Bill Beliveau's column - in which he explains nothing, but neatly trivializes the whole thing in his final sentence.

On oped, Brent Mazzerolle writes, for the first time in my experience, a real, opinion column. Gwynne Dyer is, as usual, good. He may, however, by a little facile in saying that any US interest in the middle east has nothing to do with oil. It is quite true that one US, the US of the American people, does not depend on Middle East oil. But another US, the one of oil billionaires, depends very much on control of Middle East and African oil and other resources to control world supply, and profits.

And, with Canada's First Nations suffering dreadful living conditions imposed by us through our governments, with millions dying every year of hunger and preventable illness and war and other violence brought on by our greed and interference in Syria, Congo, all over Africa. the clergyman who wrote the sermonette for today's Faith page  must have thought long and hard.

"What would Jesus talk about on this January 5?"

"I know. He'd talk about New Year's resolutions."
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The rest of this blog is not about today's Times and Transcript. It's about doing what the Times and Transcript has failed to so - explaining what the Idle No More movement is all about...

....and why it's about you, too. Let's start with a basic principle of how Canadian democracy is supposed to work.

The governing party has a proposal to, say, introduce a tax on walking. So it proposes the new law in the form of a bill which it then presents to the house of Commons. MPs get copies of it, have time to read it, and then to debate it. In that way, they get a thorough grasp of  the proposal and of any dangers in it. That public debate reaches us through the news media (or at least any news media not owned by the Irvings) - so we understand what's going on and why.

If the House of Commons votes in favour of it, the bill goes to Senate for the same process.
Finally, it is signed by the Governor-General - then it ceases to be a bill, and becomes a law.

In a democracy, the importance of focussing on one bill at a time, and taking adequate time for discussion, is what informs us, and makes us part of the democratic system. But Harper is not a big admirer of democracy.

Let's forget the conservative - liberal crap. Harper is not a Conservative. Anyone who says so doesn't know what the word means. He's not a liberal, either. He's a dictatorial, secretive believer in the goodness of greed. He's a narrow idealogue who has none of the ethics and principles that one might properly associate with conservatism and liberalism over the years. All that counts is making money - for whoever - all that matters is now.  But he has lots of legislation ready that won't stand up to public inspection or to public debate. So how does one deal with the messy stuff of public debate, discussion and informing the public?

Easy. He's done it twice. Just take all the bills you want to get passed without discussion, put them all into one, enormous bill (called an omnibus bill) that's so big that nobody will have time to give each bill the attention it needs. And you make sure it gets short time by wrapping it up with the budget bill which has to be passed within a time limit. Then you use your majority to ram it through before the public has the faintest idea of what it's all about.

A Governor-General with courage would defy almost a century of tradition, and refuse to sign.

A Governor-General with any sense of ethics would resign his post before signing such a document.

Alas. We have a Governor-General chosen by Mr. Harper. Mr. Harper chooses flunkies, not people of courage or integrity. Look at his cabinet.

Native peoples are the first to react because this is a prime minister who has repeatedly treated them with contempt, who gutted aboriginal health funding, who withheld documents from a commission studying the shameful treatment of native children in residential schools, who has, without consultation, thrown out environmental regulations essential to native health and survival in order to please mining companies and the like.

There's more of the same in Bill C -45. There are changes that all but abandon any effort to protect what is left of our streams and forests and farmlands. There is a possibility that a provision in the bill could be used to weaken and even to destroy the basic piece of legislation that native peoples must have - the Indian Act. In fact, Harper has given himself the power to destroy the very idea of native peoples. Oh, and another provision to make it easier for him to take over native lands.

In short, native peoples are facing the threat of final destruction at the hands of a man who has always behaved toward them (as toward most people) as a thoroughly smug bastard.

That's why Chief Theresa Spence is on a hunger strike - because that bill could be signed by the governor-general at any time. Once that happens, it's too late for discussion. Oh, Harper will discuss matters with native peoples, of course, in a few months (or one of his flunky cabinet ministers will) - when he can again safely ignore anything they say.

No. The discussion has to be now or never.


This has become not just an item of national news. It's a major international story, whether the Moncton Times  and Transcript notices or not.

The march in support of Idle No More in Moncton will be on Jan. 9, gathering at 12 noon at Champlain Mall
on the east side parking lot. From there, we March to City Hall.

Yes. We. We will be there in support of the First Nations, of course - but also because bill C-45 is a threat to us. Ramming through legislation in this way is a threat to all of us. It's a direct attack on democracy; and it also has provision profoundly dangerous to our health and safety.

Harper's great plan to to make quick bucks by wildly irresponsible exploitation of our resources that will make the bucks for billionaires, and leave us impoverished in a poisoned land. You can see t hose policies now in a Congo that has been pillaged and brutalized for over a century, and by some of the very same people (many of them Canadians) who now wish to do it to us.

We might go down.But, dammit, we won't lie down.

Jan.4: this is the second of two Jan. 4 posts..

I'm back to the real world, more less, but surprised the Tand T had no  story on my bout of flu. It's a quite vicious one. I mean, they had a whole page of people smiling and holding giant cheques. A shot of me bravely sitting up in bid wouldn't have broken the bank.

The Idle No More movement seems to have lost any interest it ever had for The Times and Transcript. It didn't even mention that there will be a march on Jan.9 from Champlain Mall to City Hall in support of the movement. If you want news on that, better to google The Moncton Fress Press - La Presse Libre de Moncton.

The TandT does have a First Nations story about how native leaders and city leaders are getting together on a project on p. A6. Unfortunately, it gives no clear idea what the project is, what it's supposed to accomplish, or even precisely what problem it's addressing. I notice, though, the headline carries the word Partnership with a capital "P". In New Brunswick, that commonly means government/private ripoff scheme which is not even going to attempt to look at the roots of the problems.

There is no reference at all to the Idle No More movement in this story - a pretty strong indicator that this initiative is an attempt to muffle it. That's the nice thing about owning all the newspapers in a province.

There is a prominent story on p. C6 on Idle No More. But it doesn't tell us any more than the other two that were published. Nor does it give any idea of the extent of the movement. Nor is there any indication of exactly what conditions on reserves have sparked this protest.
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There is a new columnist for the oped page on Fridays. He is Steve Malloy who also "authors" movie reviews. (Will somebody tell the editors of this wretched paper that "author" is a noun; it is not a verb. He is the author of a column. But he does not author it; he writes it.  Somebody should also tell this writer and the editorial writer for today that "parameter" does not mean what they think it does. There's a job for you, Norbert, raise the literacy of journalism at the TandT.)

Malloy begins his first column well with the story of a photographer who took pictures of a man being pushed in front of a train when he could, instead, have saved him. That sort of journalism was unethical. Agreed.

Then he leaped to the conclusion that this has all been caused by social media like mobile phones with cameras, Facebook, etc. Anyone with any knowledge should know that this sort of journalism was going on at least decades before there was a facebook or a cellphone.

Then there are several paragraphs of pure drivel about how journalism requires years of training and honing the craft - and how reporters work to strict codes of ethics and impartiality.

Look, I have taught journalism ethics; and I can assure you that thirty years ago there wasn't even a definition of what those ethics were. I have worked in print,radio and TV, private and public. And the only organization I knew that took ethics at all seriously was CBC.

The news media, far from having standards of any sort, are awash in prejudice, lying, manipulation, half-truths, ignorance. They are also whores for the owners.. There is a whole library of books on this. I would give Mr. Malloy a list of the books - but anyone who can write for the TandT and not know what it is would not be able to understand a book.

Then he tells us that the Orwellian world of today - of police surveillance, of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment (as in the US), of torture are the result of social media. Puh-leaze. What are you talking about? Did social media invent spy drones? Did it authorize unwarranted search of people's private lives? Was it social media that just signed a bill to keep Guantanamo open for political prisoners? Did social media give President Obama the power (recently confirmed by US courts) to order the assassination of American citizens without trial and without even giving a reason?

On the contrary, it's only through social media that we learn that. Most of the regular news media never published the story of the court's decision. just like it never published the story of the slaughter of 300.000 Guatemalans.

This world that we see forming today also existed in Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's USSR, and the Tsar's Russia. That was long before social media. Indeed, social media is the only counter we have to the police state that faces us.

It's early days yet. There may be subjects Mr. Malloy can do a creditable job on. But this, lord love a duck, is not one of them.
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The other op ed piece is an excellent one by David Suzuki -though I think he is an optimist.

Alec Bruce's column carries a touch of fear if you push it just a step further. It's about the artificial voices which can now be created to answer questions on the phone. What inventions like this do are to wipe out millions of jobs around the world. That would be fine if it meant more leisure, more time for study...But usually it doesn't. Usually, it means cheaper labour costs and higher profits for corporations - but widespread poverty for others.  Just as free trade, for example, led to the export of jobs from the US. The result was not leisure or better lives. It did mean high profits for corporations. But it has also meant massive poverty in the US with "real" unemployment close to 25%.

Capitalism, uncontrolled, is a great producer of wealth, but the worst distributor of it ever known..

Save the editorial for bedtime. It's better than  a sleeping pill....everything is okay...everyone is happy...it's all very beautif...

Jan. 4:a delay on Jan. 3.........

I'm actually beginning this on the night of Jan. 3. I didn't write a blog earlier today. It was partly because I was just too ill with this flu. But it wasn't just that. It was the quality of the Jan. 3 Times and Transcript. I was so blandly bad that I just couldn't criticize it. It would be like criticizing a dachsund for being messy in using the toilet.

It wasn't all bad. Jody Dallaire was in good form. So were Alec Bruce and Norbert Cunningham. But Rod Allen continued with his illusions that a)anybody cares what he does in his spare time and that b)he is a terribly, terribly witty writer. The editorial was on snow clearing safety, a subject on which there has already been a major article and, I believe, another editorial. Meanwhile, some kind of important things have been going on in the world.

Africa is close to exploding. Jihadist Moslems are building power across the continent, often with the close help, money, weaponry, mercenaries of our friends in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Turkey. If the "rebels" win, expect them to make a grab for a chemical weapons stockpile alleged to be held in that country. Also expect a carnival of looting and killing that will dispose of any moderate Moslems and Christians.

Libya, the country in which we provoked and abetted a civil war pretending we were acting on humanitarian grounds is so dangerous that foreign nationals are advised to stay away.

The US is responding to the chaos that is overwhelming the continent by stationing more troops there - a move which nicely ignores the fact that western interference is what has caused the chaos in the first place. The TandT story on Syria is the usual daily details which no sense of potential this has for a major war that could go nuclear.

The Canadian papers in general are no whizzes. But most of them have realized the Idle No More movement of native peoples is a major national story - and becoming a major international one. The Moncton Times and Transcript at last noticed it on Jan.2 with a brief and not very informative report. Today, it ran almost the same report again.

Look, kids, there are people who live right here in New Brunswick who are First Nations people. They are deeply involved in the Idle No More movement. Didn't any editor have the wit to contact them for their views? Wasn't there even a cub reporter who wondered if there were any problems in NB?

But that just sank me into thinking about the ethical and moral rot that marks the economic, political and journalism leadership of this province. Nor is it just here. Others have already noted it as characteristic of the whole western world. The lack of any noticeably ethical and moral principles has led us well down in the collapse of the western empires that ruled the world for five hundred years. That same lack of principle has destroyed capitalism itself.

And the politicians, most of them, and the journalists have been the servile, crawling things. And we have been, too. We have accepted the normalcy of our immoral society. These maggots who feed on us are our creation.

I can understand an Irving being greedy enough and foolish enough to want more money so badly he would risk lives and earth and water themselves in order to get that money. After all, rich people, like all of us, are entitled to be stupid. But what motivates politicians to be so base they would ignore the warnings of our own  chief health officer, and put lives at risk? How low and/or stupid does one have to be to do that?

And how could any journalist be so unethical, so base, as to take part in this - to lie outright, to stupefy (as with the inanities of those staff writer 'opinion' columns).

And how sad it is that most of the province is too intellectually lazy, too short-sighted, too obedient and too supine to save their own lands, their own health, and their own children from this savagery.

There was a lot to criticize about the Jan. 3 Moncton Times and Transcript. But it just felt a waste of time to do it without thinking a little of the root cause of it all -   the profound moral and ethical rot in our society.

Jan. 2: don't kiss me....

..no matter how great the urge. I don't know what this latest round of flu or colds or whatever is all about. But it's a honey. I've slept only one night of the last five. Last night, I know I was awake because I regularly checked the clock. But I lay in a stupor with my eyes closed, and seeing on my eyelids column after column of the Times and Transcript. I hope I can credit that for reduced time in Hell.

Any maybe a bit of was conscience. I didn't give credit to editorial cartoonist de Adder for a good daily cartoon, plus a page of his best for the year. For all his skill as artist, I've been slow to warm to him because he lacks the viciousness of the great editorial cartoonists. Most of them are really not nice guys - and that's what gives their cartoons an edge It may well be that de Adder is just too nice.
As well, of course, he wouldn't dream of being critical of a corporate boss. How many cartoons have you seen of Irving?  But, then, who is there in the whole world of New Brunswick journalism who has ever criticized Mr. Irving or his trolls?

Page one. Big story. 'Snow clearing safety is essential'. Page 3 is entirely taken up with pictures of people swimming on January first.

Four is pictures of city politicos at a party.There is no story to this. And the pictures seem pointless because few of them are either naked or beautiful.

And so we come to the obituaries, the only page with even a sense of journalistic integrity..

That last page completes a big story that began on page one. It's really not a story. It's a free ad for an expensive restaurant.

The biggest Canadian story by far is the Idle No More movement of native peoples, centering on a courageous fast undertaken by a native leader who want a smug Stephen Harper to talk to her about the horrible conditions on Canada's reserves - and to discuss some action.  You know, she wants him to talk to her in the same way he scampers to talk to big money when it wants to find faster ways to poison our lands and waters.

Whatever and whenever Harper makes up his mind, his inaction has already branded him as beneath contempt.

Anyway, that's far the biggest story in Canada. But it wasn't big enough to displace whole page in Section A given over to New Year's day swimmers, another of partying politicos that hardly anybody ever heard of, and another about an expensive restaurant. The only room for Idle No More was two,half-page columns on p. C3.  Near it, with almost as much space, was a big story about beer sale hours in Russia. Well, you never know when you might be stuck in Moscow, and can't find a beer anywhere.

Page C 8 has a rather important story about the grim health of President Chavez of Venezuela. Too bad it missed most of the important part. The US used to control Venezuela as it still controls much of Central America through dictators and other puppets. It would like to control Venezuela again. That's why US newspapers rarely say a kind word about Chavez and what he has accomplished. Venezuelans are nervous that the US will take advantage of the uncertainty in Venezuela to manufacture a phoney rebellion. (Gee! Would that nice Mr. Obama do such a thing?)

Anyway, don't worry about it. If it does happen, the Times and Transcript and most of the rest will publish it jubilantly as Venezuela's struggle for freedom. Just like those other struggles for freedom (as in Guatamala) that led to American dictatorships.

The big story in Section D, p.1. is that Duchess Kate craves lavender shortbread. Lord love a duck.

The editorial is about how Mayor Leblanc deserves the title "Newsmaker of the Year" from the TandT.Quite so. He deserves to bear the shame of being praised by the Times and Transcript.

If you felt intellectually challenged by the story that Dutchess Kate craves lavender shortbread, you may find that the two, op ed columns a more comfortable read.

Alec Bruce has a thoughtful column on the truth. What is it? What you want to believe? What you have evidence for? What you sense the truth to be?

Very often, it's what we want to believe. That may explain why Mr. Harper has pretty much abandoned even a pretence of concern about climate change or environmental protection. It's simply not happening. Mr. Harper, with his degree in economics, knows more than most of the world's scientists - even without doing any research.

After all, a great many people could die because if his decisions. So I'm sure he's confident.

Shale gas companies, along with a UdeM prof with no medical training at all are convinced that shale gas is prefectly safe. Of course, it's to their advantage to really and truly believe that, and to believe that the chief medical officer of the province doesn't know what she's talking about.

The politicians of both parties and the Irving press all believe it.

When we want to believe something, no matter  how outrageous it might be, we have to make ourselves stupid in order to believe it. It's happened over and over again throughout history. And so we have a political and economic leadership basing its decisions on an assumed stupidity.

Well, it's either that or they're a bunch of greedy and murderous bastards. And I certainly wouldn't want to say that.

No. they believe what they want to believe because they're stupid.

Jan1: For the first time......

I cannot find a single, kind word about this whole trivial, lying, ignorant, propagandistic and generally wretched issue of the Moncton Times  and Transcript.

The front page has a big story that the TandT name Mayor Leblanc the city's newsmaker of the year. Why he was named isn't clear. Can it be because he didn't tell us that he was negotiating to buy a Highland Square that is contaminated and will cost unguessed millions to clean up? Isn't that hiding the news more than making it? Can it because he agreed to move Moncton High out of town in order to make life easier for the Royal Oaks developers?
The top story of the year was that the events centre made great strides.  What great strides? The story doesn't really say.

There's another top story that on-street parking on Main has been a big success. The story gives no reason for believing that.

A6 has a story that retail is booming with even Main St."showing signs of life." That's one hell of a  far cry from a front page story of just a week ago that Main St. was a huge success. So when do we see the figures on main street shopping?

A6 also has a story on shale gas which does not even mention opposition to it. Energy Minister Craig Leonard said the industrial activity will be safe. Thank you , Dr. Leonard. Now will you please explain the errors made by the province's chief medical officer when she said it might not be safe? And please explain why you chose, instead, to accept the word of another Ude M fink of no medical qualifications whatever?

NewsToday has a lead story that good economic days lie ahead. The bearer of good news is Dr. Savoie of Ude M, a man who never had a opinion that Irving would not applaud. It tells us Dr. Savoie is nationally famous. Hint- if somebody is nationally famous you don't have to say so. And if you have to say so, then he ain't.

And the poverty rates in NB are dropping. Yes. Yes. Well. It depends. If you look at recent years, it's getting worse. But if you pick a magic year like, say, 34 years ago, then things are getting better. Really, even by TandT standards that's pretty blatant lying.

And, sigh, Alec Bruce. Alec, capitalism does not create jobs. Jobs are created by resources and labour. What capitalism does it make sure the capitalists get the major share of the profits. Worse, capitalism itself no longer exists except at the level of the small entrepreneur. Big capital makes its way by its powerful influence to get get gifts from government (and and me). We are now at a point at which big business and government are so intertwined that democracy of any meaningful sort has ceased to exist.

What exists now is a government in which some people are elected, and some are there simply because they represent big money. (Like the business execs who advise Alward and Harper on economic matters.) Worse, these people, for all their arrogance, are commonly just quite stupid and greedy. That stupidity and greed have destroyed American society - with consequences we can scarcely guess at.

They have have created a US that is so far in decline, that it will soon be of no use even to them. They have pretty much destroyed the constitution, the concepts of rights and freedom. Harper will follow because he's one of the same breed. (hint - that soft, smiling confidence is a sign that here is a man who understands little, but who thinks he understands it all because he believes in an  ideology.

When  whole province will accept news as trashy and lying as the Irving press, then there isn't quite time to wake up. Just getting some real opposition into the NB legislature would be a big help. This is last chance time. If in the next election, New Brunswick simply trades Conservative turkeys for Liberal turkeys, then we're had it.