July 13: On renovating your mansion in the correct style

You'll find this useful article in the Home and Garden section, p. 1. It features Bill Clinton's home (Georgian style), along with multi, multi million dollar homes in Gothic Revival etc. And it's just packed with useful information on redecorating.

For us peasants, there is one picture of a bungalow such as one might hope to find in Moncton. The priceless advice on it? You might need a few extra lamps in it. Wow, and here we've all been going along holding candles.

This page is a fine example of lazy and sloppy editorial choice with no thought at all of who
the readers are.
Cheap, though.

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The front page is taken up with trivia about all the old cars in town. (Do you really care whether "couples come to Atlantic Nationals to socialize"?) And the rest of the first section is just as good.
Apparently, for example,  "Downtown scattered with edible plants".
Let's make it a supper date.
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Newstoday has a story on Edward Snowden the whistle blower who is taking sanctuary at Moscow airport. This is the man who crime is that he showed that President Obama was breaking the law and the constitution  with his massive spying on the private lives of almost all Americans (and everybody else). He's hoping to get sanctuary in Russia. But he probably won't.

There's no percentage for anybody in offering him shelter. If he's lucky, he'll get assassinated. If not, he'll he'll spend years of solitary and torture in the sweet land of liberty. Then he'll face a rigged trial, and spend the rest of his life in solitary.
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The editorial is trivial and brainless - a great improvement over a column that is usually obnoxious and brainless.

Bill Beliveau offers of column full of stuff we already knew. Hint, Bill.......

The oil involved in the Megantic disaster is Irving's. He chose to move it on a railway owned by a man notorious for cutting corners to save money, and one who has a bad safety record in the US. Our federal government loosened its railway safety regulations a year ago for people just like him.

Gee. Isn't Mr. Irving involved in the railway business, too? Isn't it possible he knew all about the risks of the railway he was using? Isn't it possible he chose it BECAUSE its practices made it cheap as well as dangerous?

And at whose request did Mr. Harper loosen the regulations so that such a train could run with just one human on it? Surely, it wasn't done just at the request of an American railway that was a small player on the Canadian scene.

A town is destroyed, and over 50 people are dead. We will now have a long, long enquiry. But however long it may be, we can be sure that some names will never come up in it.
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Norbert - go back to ranting. Your attempt at a serious analysis of the Egytian coup is contemptibly ignorant of both democracy and history.

If a democratically elected government becomes unpopular the military is entitled to overthrow it? Okay. So when to we get to tell our army to overthrow Alward and Harper, and replace them?

Then he compare the coup to our attack on Hitler.

However,
1. Hitler's Germany was not a democracy.
2. We did not go to war on Hitler to stage a coup against Hitler's rule. On the contrary, most of the western world, especially big business in Canada and the US supported Hitler. They supplied the money for his rise. They insisted the Berlin Olympics go ahead, though popular opinion was against them. Holllywood producers collaborated with Hitler in the 1930s to make films that served the Nazi propaganda machine. They were also big financial donors. In gratitude to Henry Ford, Hitler kept an enormous portrait of him over his desk. Early in the war, American oil companies continued to suppory Hitler with oil. Even in 1941, and almost a month after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States did NOT declare war on Germany. In fact, it was the other way around, Germany declared war on the US.
3.You say if people believe in human rights, they have a right to overthrow an elected government?  Okay. Then the American people have a right to overthrow Obama for his unconstitutional infringements of human rights.
4. There is a polarization on the issue of human rights between Islamists and democrats? Bullshit, Norbert.The world has a great many countries in which human rights do not exsit. You will find such dictatorships all over central America, and all of them created by the "democratic" US where the government spies on everybody, and where the president can jail people without charge ot trial.
Islamist Iran WAS a country with democracy and respect for himan rights. It was the US that overthrew it and installed a brutal dictatorship. When the US left South Korea after the Korean War, it left a dictator in charge. The US intervened in Haiti to destroy a democratically elected government which had popular support.
5. The army is going to bring democracy to Egypt? Norbert - it was the generals who kept democracy out of Egypt. It is the army that has ruled Egypt since King Farouk left. And the generals did it through all those years with heavy Americn support - not to say bribes.
6. You don't like Morsi?  I don't like Morsi, either. But Egyptians elected him in a legal election. Democracy means the people shall have the right to decide who will government them. Whether you or I like them, Norbert, is irrelevant. It is their decision, not ours. And not the army's. and not the US's.
7. Norbert, if you had the brains of a sparrow you would realize the US organized that coup in Egypt. The generals depend entirely on American aid.

The reality is that the US will not tolerate any democracy that is not a puppet for it. It has put economic pressure and military pressure on any South American government that has attempted to establish democrcacy. It helped overthrough an elected president in Vietnam, and install a series of dictator generals. But it happily bundles up with friendly dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Guatemala (where a US invasion destroyed another democracy that had popular support.)

To call the US a democracy is absurd. It has only two parties, both financed and controlled by billionaires. Both parties, like NB's liberals and conservatives, are the same party. Obama, like it or not, is Bush.

And the US, though no doubt chosen by God, does not have much of a record of spreading democracy, and it does not have a God-given right to interfere in other countries.

Norbert, your column is a crashing example of ignorance and bigotry in just about every sentence. I would love to debate you publicly on this. But we knew that won't happen.

And you were editor of the Times and Transcript.

For an intelligent comment on the situation in Egypt, read Gwynne Dyer on the op ed page.
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On the Faith Page, the Lord's work goes on.. Church of the Nazarene is holding a community barbecue.

The day's sermonette is that preachers often endure the dreadful ordeal of being criticized by people who didn't like the sermon. Pastor, I don't want to trivialize the pain you must feel on those occasions - but this sort of rudeness is a daily experience for waitresses, bartenders, office boys, teachers...and so the list goes.

Imagine what it would be like if you were preaching real Christianity as Jesus did, and getting chased by soldiers, tried by a mob, abused in public, and executed.

On balance, you shouldn't get your knickers in a twist over the occasional persoon who says he didn't like your sermon. Indeed, there might be better reason to worry about the ones who liked it.

June 12: "Iwalked in the garden alone....

"While the dew was still on the roses..."
My father, a mechanic, loved to sing hymns, putting all 250 pounds of him into it. And, from the age of eleven, I was his piano accompanist. "And he walks with me and he talks with me...."  It all came back to me as I saw the ad on p. A3 of today's Times and Transcript.

We are invited to attend Irving Memorial Chapel in Bouctouche, and "Enjoy the beauty of God's creation throughout the grounds..." Of course, God didn't really do a great job in the first shot at it. The grounds needed a lot of expensive work by Mr. Irvinig before it could meet  holy standards. But there's no worry about time in the wilderness here because at The Irving Chapel, you can walk along the "...lovely ivory silk lilac path."

And there's none of your sittin' on the ground under a hot sun and chewin' on loaves and fishes. No sir. The Irving Chapel's got coffee fellowship in "The Barn".

And there's none of your standin' around listenin' to a  guy in sandals and a bunch of fishermen. No sir. The Irving Chapel's got one of them there Reverend Doctors all the way from Moncton.

Come and capture the spirit of the Irving Chapel. Learn how Our Father gave us shale gas that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Listen to tales of the holy work of offshore bank accounts. Feel The Spirit as it moves through the pages of the Irving Press, into the halls of government and the disciples of Business Inc. in Moncton.  Shout hallelujas for the events centre.

Enjoy, knowing that at The Irving Chapel, you are with the right sort of people, the ones who never get crucified.

Or, if you'd rather, check out the ad next to it for the casino. (The Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. All we need now is a temple to the whore of Babylon.)


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The Times and Transcript continues to ignore the confrontation between the SWN and anti-shale gas protesters. Well, they do carry the story of some trees cut down. But that's only so they can hint it was done by protesters.

They haven't written a word about the coming together of so many people in such difficult conditions (you try standing day after day under a hot sun with limited water or conveniences of any sort.) They're suffering for what they believe in. They're suffering not just for themselves but for everybody in this province.  There's an important story there for a real newspaper.

This is the biggest story for New Brunswick in years. The outcome of it is going to mark this province for a long time to come - not just in the impact of shale gas itself, but in the trust and cohesion essential for any society to survive.

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NewsToday has a big story on Lac Megantic. It's over a day old but, what the hell, it's the spirit that counts. I am still puzzling over the response of premier Alward and the silent stupor of his Liberal opposition.

Alward said that the railways in NB were safe. In response, Mr. Gallant seems to have sat there with his face hanging out. But consider this...

There is strong reason to believe that a factor in this accident was that the engineer was alone, one many driving a long train across a continent. He had no relief, no breaks, nobody to take over should be become ill.  Think of it. Isn't it amazing that a train could, any day, be racing along with only a dead man at the controls?). Aren't there regulations to cover that?

Well, there used to be. But the railways didn't like them. They thought it was too expensive to have two or three engineers on a train. So Mr. Harper changed the regulations to require only one engineer.

And that may well be why a town was destroyed and fifty people are dead.

If Mr. Alward did not know what the regulations were, then he was a fool to make a statement in the legislature that all was safe. If he did know, then he was a scoundrel.

In any case, what possible justification did he have to say an accident that happened in Quebec could not happen here? We have the same regulations in New Brunswick that applied in Quebec.

The leader of the opposition seems to have been equally ignorant. It was simple enough to find out. A phone call to Ottawa would have done it. I got it simply off the web.

Oh, well, every penny saved can go to projects like making the gardens at The Irving Chapel ever more lovely.
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There is no news story on Edward Snowden, the whistle blower who revealed that President Obama is illegally spying on virtually all Americans - their letters, their e-mails, their credit cards, their phone calls. The information is also being handed over - illegally - to anybody who has the connections or money to get it.
And, most certainly, there is no story about how our own Mr. Harper is doing the same thing to us.
There is no story that a great many Americans who see the danger of all this to constitutional rights and to freedom itself are on Snowden's side.
Meanwhile, Obama is determined to get Snowden - to put him in a military prison for a long period of torture to be followed by a rigged trial, just as was done to Private Bradley Manning.
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The editorial is on a subject the editor knows nothing about - as usual. It concludes with a drool that the debate over shale gas is irrelevant; it is happening only because some people don't like shale gas; and it should go ahead because the government is willing to take the risks.
If you think this is a rational statement, then read it again, changing the words shale gas to Nazi death camps.
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Alec Bruce and David Suzuki are the only two items worth reading in the whole paper. And both are VERY worth reading.

Michael Sullivan continues to show a strong talent as a communicator. He writes this one to say it's silly to change licence plates just because the letters on it may be a racial slur. I don't agree with him. After all, it's easy to say we should ignore such things when you belong to a group that doesn't get slurred.

However, the fact that I don't agree with him doesn't mean this is a bad column. It's well written. It's clearly argued. It far outclasses the staff-written columns and the editorials. I just can't see it as a big enough issue to write about. Mr. Sullivan has talent. He shouldn't waste it.
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Generally, there is no sense in this paper of the enormour and dangerous change we are living through. The nature of world economies, the decay of democracy, the rise of government by a new aristocracy, the wildly out of control imperialism of the US, the tremendous chaos this has caused all over thw world, the weakening of our social cohesion with all the implications that has for our survival - none of t his is reflected in the Irving Press. And there seems to be only one writer at thos papers who has the brains to see it.

As a very small example of what is happening, take a look at what is happening with the shale gas issue. This confict has arisen largely because New Brunswick governments have been dishonest from the start. And they are dishonest because they are controlled by business leaders who have unlimited greed and arrogance and utter contempt for democracy.

As a result, New Brunswickers now find themselves bitterly divided against each other. Worse, a very large number have become divided against our police. The RCMP, once a universally admired force, is now seen by some not as an enforcer of the law but as an oppresser under the almost direct control of those who want to exploit us.

It is even worse in the US, much worse. Across North America, we are losing trust in politicians, in police, in the law itself. The rules, trust in the rules, trust in those who make the rules, trust in those who enforce them - all these are the glue that holds a society together. But all these trusts have been discredited. And behind it all is the realization (often unadmitted but still there) that democracy no longer has a meaning.

Either we repair what we had or we slip wholly into the chaos that was the twentieth century for most countries. If we don't recover the democracy that we once had (and improve on it), then we slide over the cliff.

One slide, the one led by big business takes us into fascism. That is what is now happening in Canada and the US. That is why I have reacted so strongly to Mr. Irving's arrogance in declaring himself in coalition with the government.

The other slide takes us into the communism of Mao and Stalin.

Add to that the witch's brew of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and robot killers at our disposal -and we are living in the most dangerous times this world will ever see.

And the Irving Press, far from being any help, is the front line of fascism. (Yes, I know the editorial staff of the Irving Press is too stupid to know what fascism means. But their ignorance of what they are doing does not do anything to find sanity.)
 

July 11: journalistic scumbags..

...that's a lower category than presstitutes.

1. A reader has informed me that Dr. Cleary, our Chief Medical Officer whose advice those twits in Federicton ignored when she warned about the dangers of shale gas, is getting a major, national award today. The Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors is giving her the Environmental Health Award. The Toronto Star carried the story yesterday.

But there's not a word in the Irving Press. Guess why.

And Norbert, who wets his pants whenever Prof. Savoie and Prof. Lapierre issue statements on subjects they know nothing about, will certainly say nothing about this award.

There is a profound rot in this province that runs through the Liberals, the Conservatives, city councils, and the newspapers. We would actually be better off if we had the mafia here.

2. Premier Alward, who can always be trusted to say something dumb in any emergency, assures us that our railways are perfectly safe. Oh, really? Does he know that the railway which burned down Megantic connects with New Brunswick. Does he know it has a bad safety record in the US?

He feels safe with a railway that has one engineer, working alone, who drives a 73 tanker train of oil across the continent? He has to drive all day, every day, no breaks, stay alert, then leave the train alone every night. So exactly what does our fearless leader base his confidence on?

If Mr. Alward and his whole cabinet added up all their IQ scores and reached a number equal to the IQ of an average mongoose, they would surely realize there is something terribly wrong with railway regulation in Canada. A town is destroyed and fifty people are dead.. To respond that our railways are safe is inane.

Of course, it's the engineer who's going to cricified for this.

As for the railway president, he showed up in Megantic four days after the blast. The Canadian Press report noted that he showed a great sense of humour. I'll be he's a barrel of laughs at funerals.

3. On a related topic, I forgot in yesterday's blog to note a really dumb report in the TandT. Superficially about the Megantic disaster, it was really propagnda for an oil pipeline - and so it duly quoted an oil industry spokesman as saying we need a pipline for Canada to reach energy self-sufficiency in the next 25 years.

What?

Most of the world's scientists agree that using oil and gas is causing severe climate change which, in its turn, will inflict great damage on us. Indeed, we have been warned that we are rapidly approaching a point at which cutting back on oil and gas won't save us because the trend will be irreversible.

Reporter - "But if we're still using oil and gas 25 years from now won't it be pretty much game over?"

That's what a reporter should have asked. But he didn't. An editor should have pointed out the failure. That's what editors are for. But he didn't. (It has to be a 'he'. The Irving Press keeps female staff on a leash.)

The 'news' story became what was really a propaganda story for the oil industry..

A reporter is not simply a stenographer. He or she is supposed to be critical, to question. But it doesn't happen in the TandT, They're expected simply to report whatever propaganda they are given.

4. I came across all sorts of items that should have been in the paper, but weren't.
a) the military coup in Egypt was almost certainly planned and bankrolled by the US. The consequences of that are hellish as that whole region spins out of control, and as US foreign policy continues its 60 year run of disaster.
b) Of those Americans who have jobs, 53% get less than $30,000 a year. Boy,  that's some recovery. And those are our customers.
c)Big business in Canada and the US has been making huge profits.. I haven't found a record of small business in Canada, but in the US, small business is doing its worst in recorded history. However, in both countries, Big business maintains an illusion that it has everything in common with small business through clubs like Rotary, and invitations to dinner to hear inspirational speeches from the provincial biggies.
d) One American in six is livinig on food stamps. That's up somewhat from the one in seventy that was the case two generations ago.

That's important. When one group is allowed to run wild - as we have allowed big business to do - the whole society pays one hell of a price - and may well destroy itself.

e) There's a war (really, it's a mass slaughter) going on in Congo. Nobody knows how many millions have been killed; but it's the most killing we've seen since World War Two, and runs into many millions. Troops, led by a government controlled by big business, slaughter people at random, millions of women and children are raped by the soldiers. Children are forced to become child soldiers.

A friend, who recently returned from 35 years in Congo as a missionary told me about the wildness of it, and how to go outside after dark was suicidal.

This, with torture, no education, no hospitals, stunningly low wages has been going on for almost a hundred and fifty years as western companies (especially Canadians in the mining business) Have stripped that country of its resources and brutalized its people. The total of dead for all those years is in the tens of millions.

But, what the hell. It's Congo. Who gives a damn?

5. Editorial and op ed?
The editorial is the usual propaganda, this time for the hockey rink/events centre. (The TandT has yet to mention that the existing colliseum could be extensively  renewed and "event centred"  for a fraction of the cost of a new complex at Highfield square.)

The editorial slobbers all over a new group which has entered the struggle for an "events" centre that is essentially a wildly oversized hockey rink for a city of this size. The new group is called Business Inc. But who is Business Inc.?

Not a single name is mentioned. Is it possible it is made up of people who stand to make big money off this project - even if we get ripped off and maybe even driven broke by it? After all, in addition to all the other problems, the world is in one hell of an economic crisis. This is scarcely the time go into hock for an expensive project that may (and probably will) turn out to be a disaster.

Is it possible that Business Inc. is the same people who,  under our local Irving, formed a committee to "advise" the city council on development?

And why is this province so lousy with with business muscling in on government? This is nominally a democracy. We elect councillors to run the city. Mr. Irving, like the rest of us, gets one vote. What kind of city council do we have that let's him in on city government?

Another Irving did the same thing in Fredericton, announcing  himself as a member of the government, and inserting his flunkies as official advisors on economic planning.

In Quebec, the mafia akes ten percent, then goes away. It does not take over the government. Here, big business makes democracy a joke and, I suspect, takes a lot more than ten percent.

Alec Bruce's column on Hipsters is a good one, and quite true. However, I can't help noting that hipsters are an easy target and, in this province, not a very significant one. This ain't Toronto.

Norbert's column is bearable. That's a big step up.

Rod Allen begins well and, this time, writes less pretentiously than his usual cutesy style. But he seems to be incapable of having anything to say. This is a page for opinion and insight. Rod Allen is an editor, for Pete's sake. He's supposed to know something about what's in the news. And this is supposed to be a page on which he stiumlates our thinking. This column wouldn't stimluate a cat in heat.

Jody Dallaire's column this time is information rather than opinion. Ideally, it should have appeared as a news item. It didn't. But that's not ms. Dallaire's fault. She has given us useful information that we wouldn't otherwise have.  Thank you for that.

The last Letter to the Editor is an important one about the attitude of the new executives for our health networks. She refers to it as "bullying". So it is. And it's worse than that.

This new system is not only using hopelessly inappropriate methods to make judgements about the system. It's also the first salvo against the whole idea of medicare. What our business leaders want is  health care designed to make profits for millionaires. That's a human disaster wherever it's been tried. But who cares about humans?

 

July 10: What newspapers cannot do...

Last night, on Youtube, I watched some of the many videos of the fire and explosions in Lac Megantic. No amount of reading could prepare me for the horror of what I saw. I was hypnotized by it.  It is astonishing that the firefighters were able to bring it under control. Newspapers cannot convey those intensities of horror or those of  joy that can be caught with a camera.

Sometimes the camera doesn't do it, either, of course.  When we see aerial bombing on TV, it's usually at a distance so that all we see are impressive puffs of smoke. There is none of the sense of horror we get from the up close view of the fire in Lac Megantic. Try to imagine such an intimate video of the day after day bombing that killed over half a million people in helpless Cambodia.

And there are things that TV just avoids. There were videos of American helicopters carpeting almost the whole of South Vietnam. But the cameras weren't around months later when the first of tens of thousands of babies were stillborn - or born with no ears or nose, and with only one eye. Some were born with hearts and lungs fused. But they didn't live long. It's still happening, too, all these years later. No nation has ever used chemical weapons on the scale and viciousness the US does. So spare me the righteous indignation about those horrible Syrians who might or might not have them.

Nor were there cameras on the ground when Lt. Calley led his troops to slaughter some 800 villagers in Vietnam, from the oldest right down to babies.

TV news can deliver compelling images - or it can hide them or disguise as spectacular but distant.

But if you want to understand news as well as see it, then newspaper and radio are still the way to go.
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The news becomes understandable with words carefully chosen so that they don't give false images. For example, the word rebel refers to a person fighting his or her own government. It can also carry a sense of struggling for freedom and democracy - though it doesn't actually mean that.

Now, the people fighting the Syrian government are not, for the most part, rebels. They're hired mercenaries from other countries. Many are Islamic fundamentalists. And, for most of them, democracy and freedom are words they hold in contempt. But radio and print routinely refer to them as rebels. This sort of word game is routine among journalists.

The word hero means someone of oustanding valour. Someone exceptional. In the Second World War, Soviet news referred to all soldiers (on their side) as heroes. Western cartoonists made great fun of that.

But just a few years later, it became standard practice in the western world for news agencies to do the same thing. It still is. The men who flew helicopters that sprayed agent orange over Vietnam were heroes. The pilots who killed hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Iraq (against no opposition at all) were heroes. The men who sit in air-conditioned rooms near Washington to guide drones to kill people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are heroes. In fact, the American government has just recently approved of medals for them.

Generally, the Irving papers seem to carry only two kinds of news. One kind is biased. The other kind is trivial.
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For the biased, see page C3 for a big story on Lac Megantic - sort of. In the face of  that tragedy, some genius of an editor decided we needed to know how safe oil is. So we get a half-page of pure propaganda from oil interests.

As for deepening our understnding of news - or offering a thought-provoking opinion about it - that's why we have editorial and op ed pages.

Today's editorial, unusually, actually makes sense. So, as usual, does Alec Bruce.

Norbert, on other hand, mixes bias with inconsistency. His column is about statistics - and the dangers of relying on them. It's a good point.

But why does he single out public health officials for using suspect statistics? I'm not aware they are notable offenders.

Why does he say they NEVER give the sources of their data. That simply isn't true. Any group will normally not spend much time on sources because it's time-consuming and, frequently, of no value to the average listener. If  I'd had to give sources for everything I said about Canadian history in a course, then the lectures would be just a string of sources with no room for the information.

Then he advises readers to check the sources. Norbert - that's just dumb. Many, many such sources are difficult to find and, once found, difficult to understand. And, very often, it takes an expert to decide whether a source is reliable, and exactly what it tells us.

Be careful with statistics, indeed. they offer only a part of any story; they are easily twisted - and Norbert - you have recently indicated approval of organizing health care management, education, and the whole civil service  on the basis of statistucs...do you ever think, Norbert? or do you find it easier just to slander people?

If you're honest, when can we expect to see your column telling Mr. Irving and Atlantic Insitute of Market Studies to screw off with their simple-minded use of statistics?

Like you said - keep statistics in perspective.

On op ed, we have Eric Lewis and Brian Cormier who, as usual, explain nothing that has to do with anything. And anyone who is provoked into thought by anthing either of them says must lead an incredibly lonely and closed life.
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Oh - I'm delighted to read that Moncton City Council is developing plans to deal with such a disaster as struck Lac Megantic. However, I can't help noticing that such disasters are rare compared with those which seem to be caused by climate change (flooding - with two major and highly unusual ones in the last month for Canada, and with a hurricane in New York.)

We have plenty of information in columns from David Suzuki (often with sources for Norbert) on this matter; and Suzuki, with tens of thousands of scientists all over the world, agree that the major cause is the burning of fossil fuels. Does city council - or any other level of government in this country - have any plans to keep the chaos as low as possible?

Does council have any plans for the safe disposal of millions of litres of toxic waste water?

And if fossil fuels are causing the problem, exactly how will moving trains away from Moncton be a solution?

 

July 9: Fuss, feathers, and my crash....

I know. Tuesday at 4 p.m. is late to start a blog that should have been finished before noon - especially after missing yesterday. Look, I have issues, okay? I have relatives summering in widely  scattered parts of the maritimes, relatives I haven't seen since last summer So I'm driving a lot. And in three weeks, I'm moving.And this morning, the power failed in my apartment. I just fixed it. Donne-moi un break.

It's hard to know what to say about a newspaper in which the front-page, read-all-about-it headline is "Canadians urged to wear more sunscreen".Mind you, it does show that the TandT is paying more attention to climate change than Moncton City Council has. (Incidentally, the editorial mentioned the threat of climate change. So how come the editors haven't noticed that shale gas has some pretty strong connections with climate change? And how come they haven't noticed the utter failure of all levels of government in this country to take any protective measures?

What we have to work on is some way to make climate change protection profitable for the Irvings.The the TandT will shove it down our throats like the events centre and shale gas.

And, on p. 4, the TandT has at last noticed there's a big confrontation going on over the biggest political and social issue to hit this province in decades.  Well. it doesn't say much about the confrontation between anti-shale gas protesters and SWN. Instead it concentrates on a court hearing for Chief John Levi. Still, it's a competent and fair report - not something we often see in the TandT.

NewsToday has some competent reporting on Canada - if not much of it, then runs its usual page of groups smiling and holding big cheques as donations, and somebody getting thanked for doing volunteer work. These are almost daily features, so much so I had long assumed New Brunswickers to be exceptionally generous with both time and money. In fact, New Brunswick is close to the bottom for Canada in both categories. In fairness, though, volunteers have been a dying breed across Canada for a good forty years.
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The most important story of the day is on he last page of Newstoday, "Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood urges revolt against army". It's a common, garden variety of superficial news that one comes to expect from sources like The Associated Press - lots of names, lots of incidents, but conveying no sense of  what it all means. Here's what happened.
1. President Morsi was elected in Egypt'first, democratic election - hailed at the time as a triumph of the march of democracy in the Arab world  The US, in particular, hailed this election as the beginning of a new age, and did as much as possible to take credit for it. (US leaders like to kid us all they are big on democracy, and want to carry it everywhere.)

2.The army overthrew Morsi, took power  for itself and, in  a confrontation with Morsi supporters, killed over fifty of them. The army has now resumed its normal role as ruler of Egypt.

3. Now, I don't like or approve of anythng Morsi has done. For that matter, I think Alward has done enormous damage to New Brunswick, and Harper has done what could be fatal damage to Canada. But I certainly would not call in the army to oust either of them. In a democracy, you get what the majority want. You might not like it. But that's the price of democracy and, for all its faults, it works better than any other system. The Egyptian army overthrew democracy. (Oh, I know it's going to call a new election. And I can just imagine how fair and open that will be.)

4. President Obama was faced with a military coup. It is, supposedly, American official policy always to support democracy. It is also American official policy to cut off aid to any country in which democracy is overthrown. So what did Obama say and do?

Nothing.

He never even said the word 'coup'. He said nothing of cutting off aid (mostly for the army) to Egypt.

Slice that any way you like. The reality is that the US will support democracy only when the elected government agrees to be a good puppet. That's why the list of American-created democracies is a very short one. And the list of American-supported dictatorship very long, indeed.

5. Where is this going? Almost certainly to a rapid growth of ultra-islamic groups in Egypt, possibly amounting to a civil war. The whole region is collapsing into a general civil war, largely as a result of decades of destructive American foreign policies - both political and economic. This is in an area rich with weapons, including chemical ones, thanks to US 'aid'. It's also an area vital to the US, Russia, China and, of course, Israel - all of whom have nuclear weapons.

This is kind of important - even more important than wearing enough sunscreen.
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With nothing much to talk about in today's paper, I can touch on a subject which is dreadfully inadequately reported.

In his last address to the American people, President Eisenhower warned them about the military-industrial complex. The proof of his warning has been in every US bedget for decades. The military-industrial complex is the biggest, most corrupt scam in history. And it has come to Canada.

It begins with retired generals ( and Canada has more of these per capita, probably, than any country in the world. They promptly get executive titles in big corporations, then earn big bucks by talking MPs and the Defence Department into wildly overpriced and poorly planned purchases.  For example......

When Defence Minister Peter Mackay (if he still is defence minister at this writing) announced the stunningly high cost of our new fighter plane, he said that his estimates included cost of maintenance over the many years it will be in service. MacKay was full of it - and he knew it.

It is not possible to estimate the cost of operation of any piece of machinery over the years. Who knows what can happen? Who knows what changes to them will be necessary over the years? Who knows what the intense service of combat will do to their durability?

Whenever you hear a politician excusing costs by including some number for maintenance, you can be sure he's lying. You can also be sure that by the time it becomes clear that he was lying, the news media will long have forgotten the whole story and, in any case, the minister will by that time have a good job as an executive for the defence industry.

For a good example of political corruption and incompetence, take a look at our submarine fleet. (We have just four for all of Canada.) All four have spent most of their time in dock going aground on their own beer bottles, or in rehab. But, in the recent award of contracts for a new navy, there is no submarine - though submarines are probably the most important vessels for Canadian defence.

But, apart from CBC, few of our news media are going to look at what this is all about, and why we are spending so many billions the way we have contracted to.

For military matters in Canada, I know of only one, good web site - http://www.espritdecorps.ca/

It's not as feisty as it used to be. But it's still the best around.

 

The most terrifying book.....

(This was written a week ago. It appears dated for Sunday only because I shall be out of touch with my computer that day.)

Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons. , Walker Publishing, New York, 2007.

 Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark are well established and extraordinarily connected world-class investigative reporters. Much of their work has been done for  The Guardian, a newspaper infinitely more distinguished than any in North America - and even ahead of the Irving press. Their research is phenomenal in scope, their information highly detailed and, with their reputations, they had access to the highest levels of government in the western world, in Pakistan, in other parts of Asia - and with the shadowy people who are often the real movers and shakers, and who really know what's going on..

Their message is that all the nuclear secrets are out, and available to anybody with enough money. The major source of this disaster is our good friend and ally, Pakistan. It is also a good friend and ally to the Taliban in Afghanistan and, until his death, to Osama bin Laden.

The story begins with a Pakistan impoverished, and under the rule of a powerful military that had and has an almost paranoid hatred of India, and with close connections to the Taliban and to the most extreme Moslem jihadists (those who wished to impose the strictest religious rule on the whole of the Moslem world.)

In 1975, a young engineer named A.Q. Khan returned home to Pakistan with three suitcases of documents stolen in The Netherlands. They contained the secrets to constructing a nuclear bomb. The generals immediately set him up with research facilities and a huge budget. Where did a poor country get the money for a huge budget?

 It got it from the US.

The US was using Pakistan as a conduit for weapons and supplies to help the Taliban fight off a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It also rewarded Pakistan for its cooperation by giving it hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to build hospitals and schools.

The generals stole from both packages to pay for nuclear research and supplies. With this, Khan was able to set up not only the research and manufacuting facilities he needed, but also to set up a remarkable world network of illegal suppliers of technology, components and uranium. (One of his suppliers - of uranium - was Canada.) He soon had a network that connected most of Europe, Asia, and North America.

And every president from Ronald Reagan to George Bush knew what he was doing. And every one of them covered it up. And every one of them lied even to congressional committees. (which is illegal under the constitution.)  And every one of them continued to give hundreds of millions of "aid" money to Pakistan even though they knew what it was being spent on.

(The list stops before President Obama only because the book was published in 2007. In fact, he has continued the aid; and Pakistan has continued its sales.)

Intelligence analysts who knew what was going on were horrified. But when one of them, being officially interviewed by a congressional committee, felt he had to obey the constitution and tell it the truth, his career and, effectively, his life were destroyed. The others got the message.

One reason for the behaviour of succeeding governments was that they needed Pakistan for the proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Then they needed Pakistan for their own war with Afghanistan - though the Pakistan rulers consistently betrayed the US.

(The one exception to such betrayal was Benazir Bhutto. But she never had any real power, and rarely knew even what was happening.)

Once he had developed the bomb, and had a stockpile, Khan began exporting the technology, selling it to Libya and Iran, though neither ever got to the point of building one. He also seems to have had some contact in advising Al Quaeda in how to build a more portable bomb for use in terrorism.

George Bush's axis of evil was a crock. North Korea, Iran and Iraq were not the problem. Iran and Libya were still some distance from a bomb. Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who detested the religous views of the Pakistan generals and the Taliban, never even considered building a bomb.

The problem was Pakistan. It was the supplier, and was far the biggest nuclear threat to the world. So why did the Bush White House invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and plan to invade Iran while largely ignoring Pakistan?

Bush did put some heat on Pakistan to stop the sales. But the Pakistan government simply made a show of putting all the blame on Khan (forcing him to apologize on TV as his punishment), then putting him under house arrest. And the sales went on.

No problem, Bush pretended the issue was settled, and promptly released some 350 million dollars in aid to Pakistan's generals. Since then, nothing seems to have changed - which means we have every reason to expect a terrorist, nuclear device to explode in a western city. And it will come courtesy of  the most dangerous country in the world, Pakistan.

The book does not provide a convincing reason why the US government has consistently lied about this, and has taken no serious action. Yes, it is true that Pakistan is strategically important to the US. But surely not that important.

It's true that both democrats and republicans would be terribly embarassed if the truth got out. Well, yeah. But not nearly so embarssed as they'll be if a nuclear device goes off in New York.

The authors explain George Bush's behaviour by saying the people around him were obsessed with Iraq and Iran. Well, okay. But why? Neither of them was in a position to be the threat to the world that Pakistan is. If we knocked off all the Iraqs and Irans in the world, we would still have Pakistan as the greatest threat. 

So, let me try a guess.

The wars in Iraq and Libya, and the threats to Iran, arose out of business interests. Oil companies wanted those wars to get control of the oil fields in Iraq, Iran and Libya. There is some evidence that American corporations were also interested in the mineral wealth of Afghanistan. There was money to be made out of wars in those countries.(Can you think of any other reason for the long and costly war in Afghanistan that makes any sense?) There was no big money in invading Pakistan.

Big business has always been a major force in American policy. As I look at the increasing takeover of government in New Brunswick by big business, that would seem to be a situation duplicated on a huge scale in the US.

And, as we are seeing happening with business inteference with our schools and hospitals, greed and short-sightedness make the leaders of big business hopeless asses when they try to take over government functions.

And that may explain why American foreign policy has been such a slow-motion train wreck for the last fifty years and more. In the Moslem world, for example, the west, led by the US for the last half-century, has created sectarian wars of the sort that has blown Syria apart, and seems well on the way blowing Africa and much of Asia apart.

Indeed, the existence of what some people call "extreme" Islam owes almost everything to the century-old abuse of Moslem countries by western business, then really set aflame by a hatred campaign against all Moslems encouraged by the George Bushes of this world,  and by western news media to justfy the indiscriminate killing of. Moslems to open the way to profit for big business.  That's why we now have civil wars between the "extreme" Moslems that we have created, and the more moderate Moslems.

This book, packed with details and unfamiliar names and acronyms is a slow read. But it's essential for an understanding of the terrible danger we are all in.

Read it. And be scared. Be very scared.
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How come this story never made the Irving Press? Don't their editors ever read books?  Wull. probl'y not -            'lessen they got pitchers 'n them, er pages t' colour 'n stick things.



 

July 6: church and state

I write this dated for Saturday, but I'm writing it late on a sweltering, Friday late afternoon. I shall be posting it on Saturday morning, along with another post for Sunday because I shall be, in that time, soaking up some cold (I hope) salt water.

In the July 5 TandT, Michael B. Sullivan wrote an outstanding opinion column on the separation of church and state. I think he was quite right. (I also think there should be a similar separation of business and state, because when they are not separate, what you have is fascism - and fascism is what we now have in New Brunswick. And I am not using fascist as as sort of name-calling. I am using it in the correct sense of the word.)  However, Mr. Sullivan might disagree with me on that - so let's just speak of church and state.)

One thing I particularly like about his column is that he was careful to state a precise meaning for separation of state and church. It does not mean they have nothing to do with each other. It doesn't mean that at all. It simply means that the state should not be funding the church. To that, I would add that the church should have no special powers in dealing with government. Its members have the right to influence government. Of course, they do - as individual voters. No more. But certainly no less.

I shall write this especially for Christians because most New Brunswickers are (nominally) Christians. I would say the same for any major religion I can think of because all religions that I know of have more in common than in opposition to each other. (The hatred they often show for each other really has nothing to do with religion.  It's stirred up by people who have something to gain by creating hatreds.)

I expect that on this Saturday's Faith Page we shall see lists of churches doing the Lord's work. Apparently, the Lord is very keen on lawn sales, pancake breakfasts and lobster suppers. And the sermonette will be on how we Christians are all going to heaven while everybody else goes to  hell. (In extreme cases, it may be only Mormons or Baptists who go to heaven. Anglicans, in particular, are doomed. If there is any serious discussion, it is likely to be on some crucial point like whether the streets of the New Jerusalem will be paved with gold.)

Even casual reading of the scriptures of almost any faith should reveal that is not what religious teachings are all about. Particularly - in relating to our daily lives they are most concerned about outlining a moral code. And it's always a moral code essential to the survival of our societies.

No church has the right to tell any government what to do - (nor, for that matter, does any billionaire.) What a church does have is a right and a responsibility to encourage its followers to employ the moral code of their faith in making political judgements.

Some years ago, I asked the clergyman of my church if we could form a current events group. (This was before I learned that New Brunswickers are terrified of discussing current events out loud.) He looked doubtful, then asked if I could put it in a Christian context.

My first reaction was anger. This was the church interfering with free thought. Then, the most important thing I have ever learned dawned on me. I had always, even in my most atheist years, made my political judgements in the context of the moral codes I had learned in Sunday school.

If there is no morality, then you have nothing to base any judgement on except greed and self-interest - and we won't last long if we continue that. Indeed, my objection to government, the newspapers, and big business in this province is that they operate on no moral code whatever. Certainly, I cannot find any moral code, not even when I accept the invitation to sit in the reverent hush of the Irving Chapel - and contemplate.

I DO NOT suggest the clergy should preach on politics. I should be very much opposed to any such thing. But they should be encouraging their congregations to think about - and discuss -  the politics and business around them in the context of the moral codes of  their faith.

If the streets of Moncton were filled with prostitutes, the clergy would certainly encourage discussion of it in the context of faith. Why don't they do the same with presstitutes?

I am not suggesting that the church should tell people what to think. Not at all. The church is quite unqualified to do that. But it is qualified to encourage its members to place worldly decision into a religous context. Indeed, it's a responsibility for it to do so.

There are moral dimensions to the shale gas debate, to the ethical standards of big business, to taxation, to the destruction of social programmes, to the use of our military to fight oil wars. to the treatment of native peoples by our governments, even to the priority and cost devoted to a hockey rink.

Churches should not spend their time being exclusively boring and respectable. Jesus was neither of those.