August 9: Good news...

...after only a week of requests, Bell-Aliant is at last going to hook up my computer (but it will take another week.) What an age of electronic miracles!

Today's issue of the TandT will be a joy for lovers of pictures of Harper talking about nothing in particular while having one political groupie on each side of him, and four behind him. Could this have been a staged photo? Nah. Harper would never do that.

Below the picture are two stories of Harper saying nothing but blather. He assures us that fossil fuel development will not cause any environmental damage. Just about every scientist in the world would disagree with that. But what do they know?

A3 has the exciting news that our streets will be full of motorcycles for over a weekend, with Moncton's cultural elite gathering on Main St. to see how a motorcycle can be chained in place with its rear wheels resting on some logs, then the engine put in gear and revved up to make black smoke come from the rear tire. Life doesn't get any better than that.

For those less intellectually inclined, there's another "all are welcome" service at the Irving Chapel in Buctouche. Come listen to a reverend doctor who will no doubt preach on the evils of greed and indifference to the condition of others. Then you can go smell God's beautiful flowers. (Thinking it over, I'd choose the tire smoke, instead. The motor cyclists at least don't make the claim that their smoke has anything to do with God.)

On p. C1, read all about how Harper and Alward discussed the rail line that is falling apart in northern New Brunswick.  Neither of them said anything, of course. But, what the hell, it's important to report they discussed it.
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The editorial is about, guess what..."Moncton welcomes motorcycle crowd." Yep. That's the most important thing to think about.  Oh, there could be other topics. But they're pretty trivial. For example...
1. The MMandA railway won't be hauling any oil for Irving. It's bankrupt. And the oil pipeline is still some distance off. So - How is St. John going to get oil for its refineries?

Truck? Hardly practical for such quantities and distances. Will Irving Oil generously shut down its refining now that rail transport has proved so risky? Not bloody likely. Indeed, they must have known the risk from the start, and they went ahead anyway. So -  how are they going to ship it?

By rail, of course. So, tell us again, Mr. Alward, how safe our trackage is. And, Mr. Harper, have you taken any steps to ensure that oil carriers of that unsafe design that created disaster in Megantic will be prohibited?

Will anybody at the Irving Press even bother to ask these questions?

2. Or the editorial could have been about the scale of the Senate scandal - and the involvement of the PM's office. The pm's man who gave Mike Duffy a loan has left the employ of the government. Why? Doesn't that usually suggest something improper was done? Was the p.m. involved?

Then there's the case of Mike Duffy's residence. Duffy has been based in Toronto and Ottawa for decades, and that was very public knowledge. Kids watching TV knew it. Didn't the prime minister know that? And Harper surely knows that senators represent provinces. When he appointed Duffy, did it not occur to Harper to ask what his address was? Doesn't the pm know he can get addresses and phone numbers for all across Canada on his computer? Did the pm actually appoint a man as senator for PEI without at least asking a flunky if Duffy lived in PEI? Why didn't the TandT raise that obvious point? Is there nobody at the TandT who knows that senators are supposed to represent provinces? Didn't any ace editor pick up a phone book for PEI to look up M. Duffy?

3. When are we going to get more follow-up on the investigation into why 47 people died in Lac Megantic?  They died under highly suspicious circumstances. There are lots of questions to be asked. Why haven't we heard any questions from the TandT?

4. Why doesn't Irving press have or at least share a reporter in Ottawa, someone who's in touch with the politicians on a daily basis. The whole Irving press represents a substantial reading public. Most papers of that size have somebody in Ottawa. It makes a big difference for readers who want to know what's going on in their country. Instead, we get a paper put together by people with their noses firmly stuck in their own bellybuttons.
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I saw only one interesting item in today's paper. It was an opinion column discussing a topic I was already familiar with. What surprised me was the source of it.

"Corporate welfare payments can be traced back to 1962". Well, yes, there was a book on the subject about 1962. It was put together by David Lewis, then of the CCF party. It was called, as I remember,  Corporate Welfare Bums.

So I wasn't surprised at the column's mention of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money given away over the years to private companies, and given away for no good reason. What surprised me was who wrote the column - he is a member of the Fraser Institute.

Now, the Fraser Institute, like our very own Atlantic Institute of Market Studies, is really a front to produce propaganda for big business. So I was surprised to see it report on corporations that sponge off the government. Then I saw the catch.

It far, very far understated the extent of the corporate fraud that goes on. The column mentions just loans and grants - but that's only a tiny fraction. There are much bigger sums in 'sweetheart' contracts that way overstate the costs of private services offered to the government. On one of its bigger government deals of some twenty years ago, Irving Shipyards made a profit huge enough to pay for making its yards among the most modern in the world. The same thing happens with military contracts on a regular basis. (That's what Eisenhower was talking about when he warned of "the military-industrial complex".) Yessir, we're catching up fast to corruption in the US awarding of contracts.

Then there's the cost of absurdly low taxes we let corporations off with. And there is a cost - and we, you and me,  have to pay it. And there are the government creation of tax loopholes so that corporations and wealthy individuals can hide money where governments won't know about it - as in offshore bank accounts and false, offshore "head offices".

As the columnist writes, he examined only one, federal department and that, he says, is only the tip of the iceberg. That's why he finds only $22 billion of graft and fraud in the last fifty years. A more realistic estimate would be, at the least, in the many hundreds of billions. And, believe it or not, this also affects provincial governments which build schools, for example, and may be considering handing over road building and maintenance to private companies.   Then we have municipal governments that are engaged in matters like building events centres.

All of that is a major reason why, in the western world, that very very rich have been getting very, very, very rich in the past 30 years or so while most of the rest of us have been getting poorer.
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That last column was a pretty mild statement about how private corporations have grown rich and fat by creating widespread poverty. (And then they have the nerve to demand applause for being "wealth creators".  It's a pretty mild column. But it's probably the only piece worth reading in the whole paper.

August 8: Still waiting for a computer hookup..

...amazing how we become dependent on these things. I don't know how to pay bills without a computer. I'm out of touch with everybody.  My world has ceased to exist.

Harper is coming to Moncton today. (page A3) He is unlikely the visit Harper Lane, the street named directly after his family. When he comes to NB, neither he nor the news media ever mention that this province is his ancestral home.

There was room in the story to mention he was going to attend a hamburger barbecue. But there was no room to mention that the oil tankers of Irving crude that crashed into Lac Megantic were improperly constructed, and not recommended for carrying crude oil.

It is also mentioned in the Harper story that CN is closing over 200 kilometres of track in northern New Brunswick because it's too dangerous, and not worth repairing.  However, that dangerous track will stay in use for another year. That would be part of the trackage in New Brunswick that Alward assured us was perfectly safe.

Page A 8 has a story about federal Minister of Justice Peter MacKay getting even tougher on crime. (It has no effect on crime. But it does get votes. It always scares the hell out of me to see such a dim bulb getting high office in Ottawa.)

C3 has a highly suspicious story that "Yemen foiled al-Quaida plots". This is part of a story that has been running for days. The US began by dramatically announcing a temporary shutting down of embassies in an unlisted number of cities, claiming it had intelligence of massive terrorist strikes to take place. Now, it seems, the strikes have been foiled. But there is no word of what it is that was foiled - or where. Frankly, this looks like a promo.

The US government has to keep American citizens feeling hatred and fear for Moslems. That hatred and fear is what makes it possible for the US government to get away with illegally invading countries like Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, gutting the protection of rights in the US constitution, spying on everyone, and illegally attacking countries with drones and special ops. And I suspect this "emergency" is part of the official brain washing.
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The editorial needs really careful reading. It took me until the final, two paragraphs to catch on to the pitch. The editor, doubtless responding to orders from the boss, wants to introduce private medical clinics for "efficiency".

He makes the pitch that health care is a huge expense for taxpayers, so private clinics would be more "efficient".  Bull, bloodyshit.

Medicare is expensive. Yes. But private medical care is a hell of a lot more expensive - in insurance costs, in treatment, in everything. In fact, in the US, private health care is the major cause of bankruptcy for older people.

This is the thin edge of the wedge. There are people, very rich ones, who would like to see a private health care system so that they can get even richer. The 'efficiency' schtick is nonsense. Private health care is far, far more expensive than medicare. That's why the US has some of the worst health statistics in the developed world.

But, as in public schools, all the very rich can see in this is a chance to get their hands on more of our money - and maybe even to reduce their own taxes - again.

That's a pretty sleazy editorial.

Norbert's view that Via Rail's proposed security system won't work is probably right. This is a system that would operate with luggage searches, etc., just like airlines. But maybe it has nothing to do with security. Maybe, like this week's warnings of massive terrorist attacks, this is designed to keep us scared - and accepting of our drift into a police state.

Good title on Rod Allen's column - 'Pretty vacant....'    Right on, man.
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Not really much in the paper - so let's take a look at liberalism.

I said that conservatism sees our society not as a loose collection of individuals, but as an organic whole. Liberalism is simply the opposite.

It sees us all as quite separate individuals.

From conservatism, then, we get medicare in which all members of society work to help each other. From liberalism, we get the concept of individual rights, including the right of individuals to have a voice in choosing who will govern them.

Extreme liberals, like billionaires, use liberalism to promote freedom for themselves to make as much as they like in any way they like without having any of that conservative concern for others. For them, the liberal concepts of small government, low taxes, reduced social services are right thinking. (That means, by the way, that most people who call themselves conservative are actually more liberal.)

Harper is hostile to social services, to higher taxation for the rich, to protection of the environment we all have to survive on. And he has no problem with spying on Canadians illegally (environmentalists, for example), to pass on information to wealthy individuals. Some scholars refer to him as a neo-Liberal. Okay. But he's still more liberal than conservative.

Are you a liberal or a conservative? Don't be in any rush to answer because any sensible person is a mixture of the two. As a liberal, I support the individual right to honest news, and to have a voice in choosing government.

As a conservative, and therefore concerned about the welfare of the whole of our society as well the rights of individuals, I support medicare. As a conservative, I think we need to force the very rich to do more to support the society that has made them rich; and we need to limit the power of the too-powerful.

Both the Conservative and the Liberal parties are essentially liberal to neo-liberal. Both will pass legislation for the benefit of society as a whole only when they are pushed to the wall. In that way, bank-robbers are liberals in much the way that dictators are conservatives. Bank-robbers are concerned with themselves only, and not at all with the needs of the whole society. Dictators are conservatives in the sense that they believe in strong government over the whole society in order to control it.

The NDP is a mixture of liberal respect for the individual combined with a conservative sense of the need to serve the needs of the whole society. In this combination, it was profoundly influenced by the Christian churches. It is no accident that the father of medicare in Canada was a Baptist clergyman, Tommy Douglas.

Much the same is true of the Green Party - though without such a pronounced Christian influence.

And what are socialism and communism? That's for another day. For a hint - the greatest socialist organizations of the western world are the armies.  Communism exists only in theory - and probably cannot ever exist in reality.

August 7: Dumb......

....dumb, dumber...I called a meeting of the current events club for the same night Maude Barlow was speaking at the Capitol Theatre. Moving is so confusing. And I still haven't got a computer hookup with Bell Aliant.  They are S-L-O-W.

I also messed life up by initially posting only a third of my blog. I place all the blame....somewhere else.
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The most interesting thing in today's TandT concerns its handling of the terrible deaths of two, young boys in Campbellton. It is covered in four, long stories, an opinion column, and an editorial. That is more coverage in one issue than it ever gave to the Lac-Megantic disaster in which almost 50 were killed.

And, in the case of the boys, the paper calls for an   urgent enquiry into how this happened. There was no such call in the case of Lac-Megantic. Of course, they should get tough on the Campbellton case. We should get to the truth of what happened, and take needed measures. But why wasn't that the case with Lac Megantic?

Well, it could have something to do with the fact that the python wasn't pulling a string of Irving Oil cars.
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The report of Maude Barlow's speech (p. C3) has unusual coverage. The report on what she said was brief. It had to be because almost half of the report wasn't about the speech at all. It was about the arguments in favour of shale gas that we've heard a thousand times before.

I was reminded, as I read this, of the report on Dr. Cleary's speech in Moncton. That report, too, spent more time on what pro-shale gas speakers said than on what Dr. Cleary said.

I have never seen that done with a report on a pro shale gas speaker.

For contrast, the story just above the one on Maude Barlow really isn't a story at all. It's really a free ad for a pitch by Frank McKenna (aka everybody's friend). He gushes like a groupie about refinery growth in St. John. And, quite unlike the story on Maude Barlow, there is not a word from anybody opposed to such a project.
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There are two stories on "terrorism" on p. C1, both of them examples of news stories as propaganda. Yemen, it seems, is in the forefront of the "war against terror". And a "terrorist" bomb killed 36 people in Baghdad.

Of course, there is such a thing as terrorism. But our news media calls it terrorism only when it's done by the other side. The US and Britain killed one and a half million people in Iraq. The majority, by far, were civilian. Sounds like terror to me. But our news media never call it that. Nor did they call it terrorism when the US killed half a million civilians in Cambodia by bombing - or two  million (probably much more than that) in Vietnam by bombing,napalm and poison chemicals.

They don't call it terror when Obama drones kill innocent people, including children in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. They didn't call it terrorism when the Guatemalan army, with training, equipment, leadership, and special ops help from the US slaughtered at least a quarter of a million native peoples. They don't call it terrorism when foreign companies (including Canadian ones) call in troops in Central America and Congo to "make examples" of workers who object to brutal working conditions and salaries of a couple of dollars a day.

No, terrorism is just for the other side. And the "war on terrorism" is a handy excuse for destroying basic freedoms in Canada and the US like spying on personal privacy, imprisonment without charge or trial, and the use of torture.

That's not just ignorance on the part of our news media. That's lying. And it's lying to create a terror on us - who are the least threatened people in the world.
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Norbert is disgusting. He refers to politicians in general as snivelling, double-speaking, hypocritical, sycophantic, toady, two-faced prevaricating, spineless sleaze bags. And it goes on and on.
1. A blanket accusation like that is just stupid. There are such politicians, of course. And they are the ones that Norbert usually supports. But I've known a good many politicians who were not like that at all.
2. I have known senior business executives who were like the above. But Norbert is too snivelling, sycophantic, toadying, and spineless ever to say such a thing. Indeed, one could well apply his words of contempt to almost the whole editorial staff of Irving Press.
3. At the end, he quotes John Ralston Saul. That would not please Saul. He intensely dislikes sleaze bags like Norbert.
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There is a quite exceptional letter to the editor, "Realistic goals are needed", by Frank P. Belcastro. In my experience as teacher (and as a student) I have found what he writes to be very, very true. It's about the process of learning, and how it can be affected profoundly by income levels, community values... We lose thousands of children every year because of education systems which do not take that into account.

This is also the reason why the evaluation of schools through statistics, as Atlantic Institute of Market Studies does it, is a crock. AIMS is really just the Irvings and friends interfering in our schools (with an eye to privatizing), and doing immeasurable damage.

There's also a good letter, "Drinking water getting scarcer". Let's not kid ourselves it can't happen to us.

Actually, the letters to the editor are the best part of today's paper.
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Okay, so I messed up on my current events group. So today, let's talk about what conservative means.

It does not mean respect for tradition, keeping taxes down, and it certainly has nothing to do with either freedom or private business. And the closest it ever came to conserving anything was in its early days when it was devoted to keeping the Church of England as the state church of Britain.

And I'll give a hint. Our first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, never called himself a conservative. His party was the Liberal-Conservative party. What would later become the Liberal party was then called the Reform Party.

The trouble with words is their meanings keep changing. Sometimes, a change is accepted by the public which, in its contrary way, commonly has several, quite different understandings of the same word. So, if  you call yourself a conservative, then the word means intelligent, thoughtful, reasonable, economically sensible.....  But if you call yourself a Liberal, then conservative means old-fashioned, pig-headed, grasping and corrupt.

Centuries ago, there must have been the same confusion over cute when, to some people, it meant attractive. But to others, still using an older meaning, it meant bow-legged. (As in acute). The result is we end up in furious arguments over politics that are, in fact, out of touch with any reality.

So let's settle on a very old and very simple definition of conservative. It refers to the way we see society. To a conservative, we are not just a collection of individuals. We are all bound to each other by obligations and needs. What we do affects not only us - but everyone. And what others do affects us. That goes so far back it is a fundamental principle of major religions.

The message of Jesus that we love one another is a conservative principle. Confucianism in China rested on the same principle.

Obviously, the idea we are all a group, a single thing and not simply a scattering of individuals, means we need some sort of control. The Chinese began that control with respect for one's elders - still an extraordinary force in Chinese life. And it continued with a social structure of respect for one's superiors all the way up to the emperor.

That same worldview is reflected in aristocracy and kingship, in military forces (with their obvious need to operate in close cooperation and obedience). The Roman Catholic church is a highly conservative institution with its emphasis on a hierarchy of authority and on respect for that authority. Public education did NOT originate with Roman Catholicism because there was no need for it. The Roman Catholic was expected to agree with church doctrine, not to debate it. Indeed, for centuries, most church attenders had no idea what the priest was saying in ritual. They couldn't understand what was being said because they didn't know Latin. And it was not considered necessary they should know it. They had only to obey, not to understand.

Dictatorship can reasonably be called a form of conservatism - if an unattractive one. Stalin's view was that all people of the Soviet Union were not really individuals but part of an organic whole.

There is no required economic system for anyone to be a conservative. It has nothing to do with capitalism, socialism, communism... The term has nothing to do with economics at all. It has to do with the way we see our society - whether as individuals - or as an organic whole in which we are all bound together.

And, yes, I know there are lengthy and tangled arguments we can get into about this definition. But we all need to settle on the same definition or discussion becomes meaningless. Defining conservative in this simple (and historically correct) way as a way of looking at society is the only way to bring intelligent discussion back to political matters.

Tomorrow, we'll take a shot at Liberal.

August 6: Two in one....

There's almost nothing to say about today's TandT because it's so inane. Instead, I'll probably spend more time on yesterday's - which had its own inanity.

In fairness, I checked out the Globe and Mail yesterday. Only the busines section placed it above the usual TandT.

There's really nothing in today's paper except for a quite terrible story on p. 1 about a python that escaped a pet shop, and strangled two, young boys. I wonder at the mentality of people who think keeping such a pet is a good idea.

The editorial beats the drum (again) for contracting highway maintenance to private companies. It will, says the editorial writer, give a hand-up to small operators. I'll bet it will.

You know, the little guys who can barely afford twenty trucks and a few hundred employees. - until, of course, some subsidiaries of big corporations get in on the game. Then watch your costs rise.

Norbert defends the police against charges that they have caused a rise in the crime rate. I haven't heard anyone dumb enough to make such a charge. Then he wanders off into a confused 'analysis' of statistics to suggest that doubling the police force would increase the crime rate. Then he suggests the crime rate is rising because young people are rushing into Moncton. But by that point, he had long lost me.

Alan Cochrane writes about motorcycles; in effect, writing vroom-vroom over and over. This is a good column for those who are easily thrilled.

Damn. I accidentally erased everything after this. Oh, well.....
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Monday's paper was pretty silly, too. Norbert told us we had none of them there arrogant and pretentious folks like Halifax has. No. Fredericton society is famous for its openess and warmth and jes' folks like the Irvings and McCain's, etc.  He also praises our very own Northrop Frye, the best known and least read author ever produced by Moncton. To bad Norbert was confused about the spelling of the famous one's last name. (It has an e at the end, Norbert. He ain't a long and skinny thing that goes with hot dogs.)

I disagree entirely with Steve Malloy's comments on language. But the greater part of his column is good stuff. He's not a pretentious writer - and he is blessed with common sense and insight.
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Then there was a letter to the editor. "N.B.'s finances keep getting worse". The writer suggests our government needs a board of management made up of successful businessmen.

Look-----
Our government already HAS such a board. It always has had.  That's why the finances are getting worse.

The most recent incarnation of such a board was created by Mr. Irving when he (illegally) made himself a member of the government and appointed "advisors" to the minister of finance - who is also an Irving retread. Politicians do not run the economy of this province.l Businessmen do.

The problem is that a government is not a business. It exists to define social needs and fund-raising, both based on models that reflect some form of philosophy and morality. Unfortunately, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have any concept of social needs, fund-raising, philosophy and morality.  Nor can business fill the gap.

Business economics are entirely devoted to just one thing - profit - unlimited profit that amounts to unlimited greed with utter indifference to social needs or any morality whatever. Business will happily destroy such a social need as education or medical care whenever it can make money by doing so. It has fought wars, beggarred whole nations, tortured, stolen - whatever it takes to make a profit.

That's why I am appalled that there are clergy who can be hired to preach at the Irving Chapel where we are invited to stroll in the beautiful grounds of flowers that are God's creation..... with a little help  for God with money raised by risking the public safety by cutting corners on railway costs. That's a little something to ponder when next you are sitting in the simple hush of the chapel.

A democratic government is based on parties with some code of morality and some philosophy of the nature of society. That cannot be said of either the Liberal or the Conservative party in this province (or federally). It cannot be said of Alward. It cannot be said of Goguen.

Essentially, there are two political philosophies - liberal and conservative. All others are related to them. The form they take will vary greatly according to the morality which guides them. Our Liberals and Conservatives have neither philosophy nor morality. They are simply labels that only the ignorant can believe in.

The sloppiest form of government is one in which certain groups (like business leaders)  are given power simply because of who they are. That sloppiness is what we have - and it's proper name is fascism.
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This evening at 7 p.m., I'll be meeting with the current events group at Moncton Library. My topic will be the real meanings of liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and fascism.  Everyone is welcome.

I've been working on this current events group for three years. But getting people in this province to turn out for public discussion is tough sledding. I had a such a group in a suburb of Montreal that was smaller than Moncton - and averaged attendance in the hundreds for fifteen years.  But Moncton is not a city that is accustomed to public discussion - so I'm lucky to get three or four. I'm seriously thinking of giving it up - so it would be nice to see some people.

August 3: stop press news...

....NB beer sales dropping.

what other newspaper in the world would run drivel like that as a big, front-page story?

In fact, there's only one story in all of section A worth reading - and that's worth it only because it's such a fine example of propaganda presented as news.

A U.S. State department official at the sentencing hearing of private Bradley Manning testified that his Wikileaks revelations harmed U.S. efforts to bring human rights to the world as people in some countries became afraid to deal with US officials to get help with human rights.

Sure, all over the world, people are turning to the US to help them get human rights. Come off it. In fact, the US is today the single most important nation in the crushing of human rights all over the world. The TandT story refers to the people "seeking rights" as "activists". Actually, the correct word would be spies. Choice of words is important.

There's nothing in NewsToday unless you really, really love to look at a whole page of people grinning inanely and holding up giant cheques. 

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Bill Beliveau offers a mediocre high school essay on why we should preserve the Senate. He's probably right that Harper cannot, on his own, change the Senate or abolish it. But he's dead wrong in thinking it can be reformed.

There is no point to electing a Senate when we already have an elected body in the House of Commons. Forget this rubbish about it representing "regions". Elected bodies represent people, not regions or mountains or lakes. And if it is appointed, we will get the same clowns we've been getting for almost a hundred and fifty years.

The Senate gives sober second thought to legislation? That's a crock. Most of them are deadheads who rarely have a sober first thought, let alone a second one. They are also, for the most part, ignorant political hacks. (I have known some honest and intelligent senators. But they were damn few.)

I have also appeared before a few Senate committees, notably the one on the film "The Valour and the Horror". This was a highly political (Conservative) committee designed to do a hatchet job on the film - which was about World War Two. They fawned all over witnesses who criticized the film, and squashed anyone who defended it.

I got off lightly because, though I defended the film, I spent most of my time pointing out that the senators on the committee seemed almost entirely ignorant of the history of the war, and quite ignorant of even simple elements of military practice. They didn't know, for example, that most bombing in World War Two was wildly inaccurate. They didn't know that most Canadian troops sent to Hong Kong were hopelessly unready and poorly equipped for combat. They were really a rare collection of 

bozos to be telling Canadians what films they should allowed to see about the war.

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Norbert's column suggests he really needs to lie down and rest in a quiet place. His faithful readers, of whom I am one, will remember that yesterday he said it was obvious that the Toronto police were completely right in shooting a knife-wielding man what was alone in a stopped trolley car. People who disagreed with him were "nervous nellies", chronic doubters, and even - ugh - that dreadfully unprofessional CBC.

Today, again referring to that Toronto case, he says unethical media and individuals jump to conclusions without adequate evidence. Again, there's lots of name calling - pandering, sleazy tabloids, activist driven fears about shale gas which overlook facts, news outlets which allow anti-social media who pander to the ignorant.....

Norbert. Yesterday, with no evidence, you jumped to the conclusion that the Toronto police were right to shoot. Today, on that same case, you say the available facts are few. Norbert, if you don't know the facts, how the hell could you jump to that conclusion? Doesn't that make you a "nervous nellie"? And you pour contempt on all those who want fuller information.

Of course, somenpeople who jump to the conclusion that the police were wrong are ignoring facts and working on prejudice. And of course such people can be wrong and sleazy, ignorant and prejudiced..

And so, obviously, can you, Norbert. By your own admission, you were wrong, sleazy, ignorant and prejudiced in your column of yesterday.  Almost all of your columns are just one ignorant and bigoted rant after another.

There are certainly questions I would like to know answers to. Nine shots were fired. That's a lot of shots. Now, think hard, Norbert. If all nine were fired by police, it suggests the target was not up close to an officer and threatening him. It also suggests a lot of misses (unless they were pumping slugs into a corpse.) It's lucky a bystander wasn't killed.

Your headline is right, though. "Some news media are tossing away their credibility".

Brent Mazerolle breaks away from his usual "What I did last summer" story to write on the same police shooting. He does a much better job of it than Norbert did.  

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Solid column by Gwynne Dyer. It's about the army takeover in Egypt - and one should pay special attention to a point he mentions only briefly - "that permanent collusion between well-fed Egyptian soldiers and the foreign military and commercial interests who feed them".

We are encouraged to believe that most wars are caused by religion or politics. In fact, most wars are caused by capitalism that has run so far out of control that it has reversed roles and taken over the powers of government. That's what Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia have really been all about.

Indeed, almost all western wars of recent centuries have been fought for that reason.  

That's what the War of 1812 was about - though you would never guess if from our official "celebrations". Our news media kid us that they are for democracy when, in fact, our specialty is more often in destroying democracies - as we did in Iran and Guatemala.  An out of control capitalism feeds on poverty, dependence, dictatorship - and muscle in the form of troops. We westerners - including leading Canadian companies - have been responsible for millions of deaths in places like Congo.

As we watch China is its switch to capitalism, the potential for war is something to worry about. For thousands of years, China was probably the least aggressive country in the world. The only wars were against potential invaders.

That pattern of leadership was smashed when western capitalists used military force to open China to their trade. That experience forced China into more than a century of social and political chaos marked by forced addiction to opium, starvation, disease, looting by western business, and internal fighting.

The question now is whether China can control its capitalist leaders. Or will it go the way the west has gone, to hand over real political and military power to the capitalists?  (oops. sorry. I should say "entrepreneurs". It's such a nicer word.)

If China becomes like us, we're in real trouble.

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Oh, speaking of China - loved the Whatever section with its big story on NB students in China, and lots of good, thoughtful student columns, including one on the China trip. How I envy them. I lived and worked in China for a time. Loved it.

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And a final thought. When will our tough as nails reporters ask the big questions about Lac Megantic?

Why were the railway regulations changed a year ago? Who did it? At whose request?

This wasn't just a minor accident. Almost fifty are dead. Doesn't anybody give a damn?

Obviously not.

August 2: Wow! 12 billion dollars just for jobs in NB

That's certainly the impression given by the headline on p. 1. "$12B pipeline is 'a game changer' "
The same tone is picked up in the story (several stories, actually) and the editorial and Alec Bruce's column. Yes. Those who left will come streaming back. NB's economic problems are solved. We're all going to be rich.

Right.  All that money will go to create jobs, and all of those jobs will be in NB. Right.

At the same time, we are hastening and worsening the catastrophe of climate change. But the important thing is that Irving stocks should do well for the coming months.  And the climate change won't bother the stockholders. They can guarantee that through special prayers at the Irving Chapel.

Directly below the story is a photograph of a leading oil executive.
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In related news (p, A4), Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians will be at the Capitol Theatre on Tuesday at 7 p.m. on Tuesday to say why we should oppose shale gas. It'll be nice to hear from somebody who hasn't been bought.

NewsToday and Your Business have more wow! Wow! Wow! stories on the pipeline. One of them says that the Liberals and the NDP and the People's Alliance all clapped hands for the project. I expected the Liberals to do so. They approve of whatever they're told to approve of.

The NDP is a disappointment - and not for the first time over the last dozen years or so. The Green Party opposes it. Trouble is the Green Party has too narrow a policy base to ever form a government or even an effective opposition.

A reader, responding to yesterday's blog, said that we have only two choices facing us. We will either develop a more progressive political system, or we will develop a fascist one. Not true - because we already have a fascist one. Mr. Irving made that very clear when he announced himself as a member of the government, and when he and his friends appointed committees to "advise" government departments and city council.
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The search for bodies has ended in Lac-Megantic. Now, can we begin the search for responsibility?  Who changed the regulations last year? There are strong indications that one of those changes is what caused the disaster. So who did it? For what reason? Who asked for it?

Give a call to your man in Ottawa, the man who speaks for the people and who serves them. Give a call to Robert Goguen. And good luck.

All those people are dead. Did they all die to save a buck? Of course, they did. The only question is who made this possible....

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There is no mention of serious and growing riots throughout Turkey in opposition to the government for its Alward-like habit of kissing corporate rear ends. Turks are also opposed to its attempts to establish strict Islamic law. Interestingly enough, the US supports the extreme Islamist government in this quarrel. But that's a long story involving the whole hoax of the 'war against terrorism and extreme Islam'.
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The editorial is the usual corrupt pitch to contract road maintenance to private business because it would be cheaper. It provides not the slightest evidence that it would. And the editorial writer would be an even bigger fool if he tried to prove it.  Government contracts to private business are notorious sources of corruption and overspending. That's one of the things President Eisenhower warned about in his final speech as president.

Norbert talks about something he knows nothing about - proving his opponents wrong in his usual way  by calling them names.  A young man had been threatening people with his knife in a Toronto  streetcar. It stopped, and everyone got off. The police came to deal with this man in a stopped and otherwise empty streetcar. When he refused to drop his knife, they shot him.

Were the police right to do so? I have no idea. Neither does Norbert. If he attacked the police, they were certainly right to shoot. If he just stood there and refused, they weren't right. But there seems to be no evidence on this one way or the other.

But, oh, Norbert knows all about it. And those protesting the shooting are "spouting nonsense" based on "bias and pure speculation". Speaking of nonsense, bias and pure speculation, I 'd be willing to bet that Norbert doesn't have even the faintest idea of who those people are or what reasons they gave.

He concludes with a quotation from Martin Luther King which has no clear relation to his column and which, I suspect, Reverend King would find offensive.
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We'll skip lightly over Alec Bruce.
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Michael Sullivan has a quite reasonable column about how and why Alward's Conservatives are in real trouble.  Mr. Sullivan's problem is that he still thinks there is a difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Even more bizarre, he thinks Liberals are on left, and Conservatives on the right.

Look. The terms left and right were coined to describe which side of the speaker members sat on in the National Assembly that followed the overthrow of monarchy in France. They have nothing to do with political philosophy.

As well, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have anything that could be called a political philosophy. Provincially and federally, both parties exist solely to serve big business, and to create career openings for smoothies like Frank McKenna who get a chance to show big business how useful they can be.

This column really decided me. My next talk at the Moncton Library (the first Tuesday of August at 7 pm) will be on the correct meanings of Conservative and Liberal. I invite Mr. Sullivan to attend.

(Oh, yeah. The word 'tory' has pretty much gone out of use except for older members in some of the more exclusive men's clubs in London.)
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David Suzuki is, as always, pretty solid.  And he's the only one in this paper who would never clap hands with joy over the pipeline.
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Watch out for a subtle note that you'll find in the papers - that we have to cut social spending because
1. Our debt is becoming too big.
2. It encourages people to avoid work.
3. We have to practice restraint in spending because of the recession.

This is a serious propaganda campaign being spread over the western world, a campaign financed by big business. In contradiction of it........
1. A debt can become too big by spending. But it can also become too big by letting big money pay absurdly low taxes - and by spending money on gifts to big business.
2. Countries like Sweden which have extensive social programmes do NOT suffer from large numbers who stay home and loaf. Nor has cutting social programmes, as in the US and much of western Europe, had the slightest effect on increasing employment. Most people on social programmes are on them because they need them, not because they suddenly became lazy.
3. Practicing restraint will not end a recession. It has not done so in Spain or Greece or France. It did not do so in the 1930s. Quite the contrary, cutting social programmes makes a recession (or depression) worse. In Canada, the prime minister who was the first one to understand that was R.B. Bennett in 1935. He is the real starting point for Canada's social programmes.

And, for the benefit of Michael Sullivan, R.B. Bennett was a Conservative. And if you use the word conservative correctly, it is natural that a Conservative should be the one to introduce social programmes.

And why would big business be so eager to crush social programmes? For the same reason it created this recession. It's a mix of greed and stupidity. As a result of the recession, big business has made massive profits, shifting an ever-greater share of the world's wealth into the hands of a very few people.

But there is still some left to get. Cutting social programmes would create money that could be funnelled to the very rich. We are watching an income gap growing at a rate never before seen in modern history. It would also, with the destruction of unions, force incomes down to third world levels. So far, it's working as average salaries in North American have been in decline for years.

What will the result be? Massive poverty and suffering. Crime. Violence. More of the wars we have been waging since 1945, many more of them, wars of the rich against the poor, wars for even bigger profits....a strong possibility of widespread fascism.

The alternative? We remind the rich that even they are just equal - not superior -, to elect government that honour that principle, governments which will force the very rich to live under the law just as the rest of us do.

And we don't want their crap newspapers feeding us ignorance and propaganda.
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August 1: Norbert criticizes the CBC...

but loses it.

It's funny, really. Norbert has a magnificent vocabulary that is an echo of nineteenth century rural life. CBC editors, he suggests are "nervous nellies" and "sourpusses".  Boy. And they talk about Shakespeare.

The CBC, it seems, is also superficial, with minimal research. He even compares it to tabloids. You know, the ones with headlines  like "Harry shocked to learn that Prince George is not his child." Of the tabloids and, presumably,the CBC, he concludes, "The tabloids operate in an amoral parallel universe where the bottom line is selling newspapers."

Oh, Norbert. You're speaking of privately owned papers - like the one you sold yourself to. The CBC is publicly owned, and far the best news service in Canada.

As well, your paper goes lower than "amoral tabloids". Not only does it exist to sell newspapers but to go a step lower down to amoral to immoral with its lying propaganda.
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It's hard to know whether the editorial writer is in on a government fix - or is just dumb. His column is about a new committee being formed to check railway regulations. That's a great way to take attention away from the real issue.

There has been an agency to check railway regulations. It has existed for over a century. The Lac Megantic disaster was not caused by a lack of committees to regulate railways. It was caused because somebody or some committee changed the regulations last year. That's why almost fifty people are dead.

Who was that somebody? Who was the responsible person? Why were the regulations changed? Who requested a change? Is there any connection to any railway company or user of one? Those are the questions an editorial writer and the whole Canadian media should be asking. Is it a coincidence that the regulations were changed just as a desire developed to transport large quantities of oil?

Another committee won't do a damn thing to answer any of those questions. Harper could assign a clerk to answer these question in two minutes. But he won't. He'll set up a new committee - clap, clap.
And we still won't know why all those people died. And the new committee is being created to make sure we don't ask. Who are you covering for, Harper?

Oh, as an aside. The writer also says Moncton lines have an excellent record. It also says several people have been killed in train accidents in Moncton. Well, you can't have it both ways. You can't have a record of several people killed - and say the record is excellent - not unless you are an executioner.
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Then there's Rod Allen's 'opinion' column. 'Bring back the Wikiwalk; bring it back, woo!' Well, that's fair warning. If you read this crap you have only yourself to blame.

Excellent columns by Beth Lyons and Alec Bruce. In the case of Bruce, he offers a well-reasoned column on why Justin Trudeau has picked up the pot issue. I don't say that to defend or support Trudeau in any way. And Bruce doesn't put it that way, either. This column is neither for nor against Trudeau. It is simply an intelligent and impartial explanation of why he has picked this issue.
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The Sports section is still a cheap, lazy and sloppy few pages for people whose lips move when they read. This time is has a sort of sports column - on fishing. But if fishing is a sport, then chess is a sport and, in comparison, a violent sport with heavy body contact.
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In Your Business, Adam Huras has an article on how a new shale gas video praises a "research" panel. Have you no shame, Adam?

The video was put together by the same people who put together the "research" institute. Of course, it praises the "research" panel.

Huras also mentions research and researchers frequently, giving one the feeling, along with the word "institute" that this is really an impartial, scientific body devoted to carrying on research. And that is loaded writing, and loaded writing is dishonest. This is no more a research institute than is Atlantic Institute of Market Studies or the Fraser Institute. This is a collection of scientists who are flexible in their views, put together to serve the interests of the very, very rich.

I didn't see the name of Dr. Cleary on the list of this "research institute". Nor do I see any medical doctor. Gee, I should think that a good reporter would have the brains and integrity to ask about that.

As for those who are named to this "research institute", I would suggest that universities clean up their act, and establish some code of ethics for their intellectual prostitutes. Of course, that's not going to happen. After all, our university presidents were all among those who dutifully trotted out a few years ago when Irving invited them to be on his highly improper committee to plan the economic future of New Brunswick.

Not surprisingly, Huras also mentions the "pioneering" work of Frank McKenna. Yep. Good ol' Frank. That's how he's made his money. He's a "fixer" for the very, very rich. Don't expect him to be the kind of guy who lies beside you in bed with his hands above the blankets.
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Private Bradley Manning will soon learn his sentence for telling the truth about the American government. It had lied to the American people about its reasons for going to war and killing over a million people. It had lied (or covered up for very serious war crimes). Now, he's going to die.

Oh, that won't be the sentence. That will be the effect in the new, US police state. He has already been held three years in solitary, forced to sleep on the stone, cell floor with no blankets, and wakened every half hour. Whatever time they give him, he'll go back under those conditions. And he'll die.

Now, they just have to murder Edward Snowden for telling the truth. Move over, Mao and Stalin.
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There's really no news in NewsToday. So here's a story they could have used  - but never will. Did you know that Canada has at least four units of special ops - troops trained for special missions, raids, assassinations? Did you know that they are closely tied to US special ops, the ones that Obama sends at random into any country at all to kill or destroy?

Okay. Do you also know that we have no right to decide on or even hear about their actions? The only people who do that are the prime minister, the minister of defence, and those in special ops.  Parliament is completely in the dark.

In short, Harper has the power to send troops into combat in any foreign country. That's an act of war. In other words, Harper can commit us to a war without consulting parliament.

He wouldn't do that? He already has. So, for that matter, did at least two of his predecessors. Canada, through its special ops, was in combat in Afghanistan from the start. It still is.

It can also be useful for, say, Canadian mining execs who have a world reputation for brutality and destruction.  Their behaviour commonly raises local opposition. How nice that they can just drop a word to Harper - and we'll secretly send in some thugs to terrorize those trouble-makers. US special ops does that. It's a safe bet that ours do, too.

If these are heroes, then so are mafia hit men.

Above all, we have a constitutional right to decide through parliament when and where we will go to war. You may well  hear that on Nov. 11. They gave their lives to maintain our rights and freedoms. In particular, (read your history), those who died in World War I died to win us the right to decide for or against war.

That right has gone. So - where is the column by the editorial writer? Where is the indignation from Norbert? A lot of other rights have gone, too, like freedom from arbitrary invasion of our privacy. The US is a police state as vicious as any in history. We, especially under Harper, are rapidly moving in the same direction.

But maybe good ol' Frank McKenna can help to set up a province wide discussion so we can find - you know - common ground.
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And, surprise, surprise, our pipeline will be built. Too bad that so many people in Lac Megantic died too soon to hear the good news.

So, let's see. What does this mean? With most of the scientific world warning us that we are close to tragic effects resulting from burning fossil fuels, we are going to encourage the heavy consumption of the world's dirtiest oil for decades to come.

Meanwhile, I see no great activity at any level to deal with the tragedy this will lead to.

Anyone who can still vote either Liberal or Conservative is either a fool or, like our corporation bosses, too greedy and stupid to see the end of this road.