Sept. 5: Some real news on p. 1

University "Tuition costs keep soaring: report". Even as universities grow, they are pricing themselves out of reach. In the US, it has reached the point at which pensioners are still paying down their university debts. And it's all quite unnecessary. Never very good teaching institutions (almost no university teachers have any training in teaching. Nor do they learn much on the job.) The result is that professors forever cry "The students are not ready for university study" when the reality is the professors are not ready for university teaching. And many of them have no wish to teach. Indeed, they scramble for research projects - some of value, many of no value - to justify reduced teaching duties. The result is courses and programme structures that frequently make no sense at all from a learning point of view. I can safely say that my three years of BA studies were the least useful years in my whole education. Add to that the fact that big business now runs the universities and, like everything else it does, runs them for its own profit. All of that adds up to one hell of an expensive education system for very little return. But change is almost impossible. Professorial reputation and egos get no gain from good teaching. Indeed, most have only the vaguest idea what good teaching means. And so we shall go on getting less and less value from our universities even as we get less and less from them. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Another front page story is that Via Rail is dying. That struck me as unfrortunate because I have just returned from a trip to Montreal, one way by bus, and the return by Via. Both cost about the same; but there the comparison ends. Via was in every way superior. There might be a column in this for Norbert. After all, Norbert delights in foaming at the mouth about how private business is superior to government ownership in all respects. Well... For many years, Via Rail was run as a government business. It had to because of massive failures of privately-owned railways about 1920. For many years, it provided superb service. Then along came Brian Mulroney. Since then, a privatized Via has, as the news story points out, been going downhill. Gee! I wonder if there's a connection. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And then there's the more usual sort of TandT "news" - Casino gives back to city. It seems the casino gave a cheque for ten thousand dollars to the SPCA. Goodie. But, oh, the money didn't actually come from the casino. oh, no. The money came from a service fee added to tickets for casino shows. In other words, the TandT uses a whole page to slobber over the generosity of the casino "giving back" to the community when, in fact, the casino gave nothing. Neat. Trivia, lying, kissing up and wasted space - all in one story. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A9 has what might be an important story.NDP leader Cardy accuses the government of planning damaging cuts in education. I expect it is. But I have trouble with this story. Mr. Cardy gets the story from a book by Dr. Savoie of UdeM. Now, Dr. Savoie is not an authority on education; and the news story gives me the impression his book touts a line encouraged by Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, an Irving propaganda outfit. I'd want to read that book before jumping to any conclusions. Indeed, this book is a good example of why the TandT, like any good newspaper I have ever heard of, should have a book review section. (No. I do not want to see this book reviewed by any of the staff hacks for Brunswick News. I would want to see it written by a prominent - AND INDEPENDENT - person with extensive training in education.) Such a review might... 1. encourage people to read in this low liberacy province. 2. It would bring the issue, and some understanding of it, to a much wider audience. 3.It would also help to make Brunswick News in a chain at least a step above supermarket tabs with headlines like "Shocking confession by Pope---He doesn't like going to church." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I also have another qualm about this story. New Brunswick's biggest problem, by far, is NOT its schools. The biggest problem is that the people of this province have no influence whatever on the government of it. That is true whether speaking of a Liberal government or a Conservative government. The reality is that New Brunswick is a dictatorship by big business - and especially by an arrogant and self-serving Irving clan. Until that issue is dealt with, New Brunswick is going nowhere. There is only one issue in the next provincial election. Break the power of big business and take back democracy. Fail to do that, and we fail everything. That means separate Green Party and NDP party make no sense. There needs to be a union of all those who are opposed to the arrogance, greed, and power of big business in the province. Such a party would have to have other planks in its platform, of course. But the great, overaching issue is to get our own province back. There is no point in piddling around with dozens of lesser issues.Irving should be told to get his highly improper hacks out of the Finance ministry. He should be told he is NOT in coalition with the government. Big business, in general, should be told that it has no right to set up "advisory" committees and then act as if government - at any level has to listen to them. (There are, for example, the appointees of Mr. Irving who are official advisors to the Minister of Finance, and the business committee that has announced it will advise Moncton city council on the "events" centre. They have no more right to impose themselves on government than a committee of bartenders does.) The people of New Brunswick have too long allowed themselves to be bullied, cheated, and exploited. The next election deals with that for it focal point - or we just go on spinning our wheels and destroying our own futures. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Norbert ends a trivial column with a quotation from Milton Friedman (who's now out of style, Norbert, ever since his disastrous leadup to the current economic crisis). Uncle Miltie says that in a free market no exchange takes place unless both sides benefit equally. Alas, no such free market exists - or ever has. Just about every major power in recorded history has used its power to steal from others by force, and leave the other impoverished. The Greeks did it. The Romans did it. The "capitalists" of all the western empires have done it for centures. Britain got rich by ripping of India, forcing opium on China, taking resources from Africa,dispossessing native people in the Americas. US business has done it in Central America as, for example, in Haiti which is the poorest country in the western world despite being a century under US control and producing huge profits for "free market capitalists". You will search long and wide to find both parties benefitting from such an exchange. You'll find it in small business. But for big business, free markets and fair exchanges don't exist. Think, Norbert. Think before you write. (Oh, yeah. When Britain conquered South Africa, British capitalists got billions of dollars in gold mines. Tell us all about the "equal exchange" the native people got.) Rod Allen is a delightful read for people who like to listen to really boring drunks telling long and pointless stories. Excellent columns again by Alec Bruce and Jody Dallaire. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________

Sept. 4: Wow! A tattoo festival..

My apologies for my lack of any paragraph structure. I write this with one. But my Ipad has its own ideas. (My desktop computer, one month and a bit after I ordered Bell service, is still not working. Not, of course, that I'm implying anything about Bell service.) Shall put //at the end of each paragraph to see if that helps.// I was excited about all that is happening in Moncton. The "Hub City Tattoo Festival" will be a wonderful event for "art-lovers", with food from the Coliseum cafeteria, presentation of the "coveted" Tattoo of the Day award, a display of motorcycles, and all for only $35 for the whole weekend. Hold me back. This trivia uses up almost two columns of space.// The big story, top of page one, is that Camp Centennial has been around for 20 special years. Now, I'm a big fan of children's camps. (I've been camper, counsellor, and camp director for nine years). But this is not a front page headline, not for any serious newspaper. In fact, this lightweight story is well over a full page long. And that's absurd.// Another front page story tells us that the details of the school year are set. Well, duh, yeah, I guess they would be. But we are told little about them. And this is front page.// In other big news, a chocolate shop is opening somewhere. There's even a picture of it.// There's a whole page about Havelock having a show of horses pulling what the writer refers to as covered wagons. It's mostly pictures, presumably for people who have never seen a horse and wagon before.// There are only a few stories that are important for us to know. One of the most important is "Family courts swamped..." It's important because so many of the people who need access to justice are poor - and right now, they aren't getting any justice at all. But that's only a short story buried on A9."// Most of section (like most of the paper) is simply the usual Brunswick News strategy in keeping people in the dark, and softening their heads with a steady diet of trivia.// ................................................................................................... NewsToday begins with a story at the top that isn't a story. It's an opinion column, different from the real one only in the the person offering the opinion not writing it but dictating it to a person humorously referred to as a reporter. As a result, there is no questioning, no search for differing opinion. This isn't reporting. This is stenography. It's also vague and incomprehensible.// The general thrust (this from a Mr. Betts, a former Finance Minister) is the usual one that claims the civil service is too big, and there's too much government. He also says, many times, that government should do the "right thing". Wow! What an insight! And all these years I've thought it should be doing the wrong thing. Worth thinking about that deep thought.// Yessiree, government is too big. That's the whole problem - that and the fact that for the first time in history, New Brunswick policies are pushed by interest-groups.// Exactly what do you mean by interest groups, Mr. Betts. Oh, I know. You mean those powerful, interfering groups that favour things like medicare and feeding the hungry.// Mr. Betts, New Brunswick is run by interest groups - and, despite what you say, it always has been. Have you never heard of Irving Oil? Irving forestry? Business groups for an "events centre", land developers? Such groups openly run this province, and always have. These interest-groups, beginning with forestry go way back. Didn't you know that?// Mr. Irving, a big businessman, has openly and highly improperly interfered directory with government. His newspapers have a near monopoly on information - and they use it to keep New Brunswickers ignorant and saturated with propaganda.// Yes, we do have interest-groups like, say, the anti-shale gas movement. They try to represent what they think is good for the people of this province. And they represent ordinary citizens who certainly have a right as individual to to take political positions. It's called democracy. They represent what they think is right - and they are not powerful or welcome to government. (When was the last time the police punched out an Irving woman at a demonstrations?// By the way, if you really think government should be smaller, tell it to back off from the "events centre". If big business wants an events centre, and thinks it will be profitable, let the capitalists of big business do what capitalists are supposed to do. Let them build the thing and pay for it. Stop living off our taxes. Stop looking for a government big enough to run a very expensive welfare system for big business bums.// This is a silly column about a badly-informed man. I've never met the "author" of this column, Kurt Peacock; he's an embarrassment to journalism. Of course,he works for Brunswick Press.// ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Syria crisis continues. We're watching two, former empires (Britain and France) hanging on to the coattails of the last, desperate western empire, the US, in order to control the plunder of a continent. They claim, without proof, that Syria has broken international conventions. Maybe so. Maybe not. But I do know that Britain, France and the US have broken and are breaking just about every international convention and law in the book.// Obama claims that Syria is a threat to US security. That's sad. Terrible the way all those small and poor countries are always attacking the US. By the way, if Syria is able to threaten US security, that means it could threaten us, perhaps launching a massive attack by men on camels swimming across the ocean to loot Anne of Green Gables souvenirs.// You'll notice, though, that most nations in the West, including Canada, are backing away from this one. But it may not matter. This may well turn into something none of us can escape from.// Big, big story on C10 about a veteran who just met his teenage penpal. The news YOU need to know.// ............................................................................................ The editorials are just plain silly. Norbert has half of his column about a dangerous building in London that reflects enough heat to melt a car. Really. Gotta watch them buildings......by the way, Norbert, this city and/or province has allowed somebody to "renovate" two buildings in Highfield Square. The renovation is so great, they are virtually new buildings. // Now, it's illegal to put up new buildings on Highfield Square because the land is so polluted. And these are virtually new buildings. Why was that permitted? Who did it? And what dangers does it pose for people who work in those buildings?// Tell us about London's problems later.// Superb column by Alec Bruce. And I say that not because I'm a teacher but because I was a student. Like Alec Bruce, some of my teachers changed my life - and I remember them with great fondness. I once scored twelve out of a hundred in a geometry test. So that makes me six times smarter than Mr. Bruce. On op ed page, read Eric Lewis and Brian Cormier. But only if you're the sort of person who gives a damn enough to read those other columns about how some unheard of entertainer is 42 today, or that Beyonce likes caramel ice cream.//

Sept. 2: You can't go home again...

I was born, and lived most of my life in Montreal. My ancestors from France settled there about 1651. The old road that connected the Decarie farms is still in use - as the six lane, jam-packed Decarie Expressway. But,oh my, it's changed. Culturally, it's diverse than ever - and that's enjoyable. But I found the jamming of high rises in the city centre crushing and ugly - and then there are miles of bland suburbs and dreadfully ugly apartment buildings. And everything is far away. The Parti Quebecois government is playing on this fear of change with a bizarre piece of legislation called the Charter of Quebec Values. In effect, Quebeckers will in future be told what their values must be. And wearing a turban or a veil isn't one of them. There are a great many Moslems and Hindus in Montreal now - and Africans and Orientals. And they are now being told how they must dress and act. As if there is any such thing as "Quebec values"... Like the days the PQ spoke of culture, the whole idea is absurd. No society has its values or it's culture molded in concrete. Culture and values are constantly changing. They're supposed to. There are great differences between us and our grandparents - and greater still the further you go back. In its culture days, the PQ brought in some excellent social programmes - which had never existed in Quebec. It changed the culture. It also severely reduced the power of the Roman Catholic Church - though its power had been the outstanding feature of Quebec culture for over two centuries. But the PQ has run out of useful political ideas. So now its playing pure fear and hatred of anybody different. It will probably work in rural Quebec. Fear and hatred are they have have left. And it's in province in which both French and English have a stunning history of bigotry and hatreds and racism. Quebec now has lost all sense of political direction. All that's left is fear and hatred and racism. It was nice to get back to New Brunswick - and home. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Speaking of fear and hatred, Obama has picked up where Bush left off. The US has fought war after war with no good or even legal reason. For a long time it was driven by speeches and news stories that preached or implied hatred and fear of communism. That was good enough kill or sicken or poison uncounted millions of Vietnamese. It also came in handy when a gang of US mercenaries overthrew the elected government of Guatemala (even though it wasn't communist) and instal a de facto dictatorship very friendly to US big business - especially Dole. Now, our politicians and news teach us to hate and fear Moslems. That has justified the theft of Iraqi oilfields and the murder of over a million Iraqis. It has also justified the greatest mass torture in history, the holding of prisoners in violation of international law, the suspension fundamental rights in the US, the use of Drones for indiscriminate slaughter (also in illegal attacks). Now, we get almost all our news from North American sources. It's all slanted. Sometime the slant is planned - as in Iraq and Syria. And sometimes it's just reinforced by the prejudice of the reporters. And, yes, reporters are prejudiced. How could they help it? We all have prejudices. It's very human. Added to that, the publishers and editors of private news are heavily leaned on by big money. Indeed, the owners of most private news systems ARE big money. Brunswick News is not different - it's just contemptibly worse. The best and most honest news media in Canada are CBC. But it, too, comes under heavy pressure to follow the governmentand big business line. YOu've seen reference to terrorist Moslems. How about terrorist Christians? (Yes, there are such things, and Bush and Obama have been two of them.) You hear of Syrian rebels constantly - though very few of those people are rebels. You hear of the US wanting to establish democracy through the rebels. IN fact, democracy is the last thing most of the rebels have in mind. And the last thing the US has in mind. To be a rebel, you have to be a subject of the country you are fighting in. But the majority of the "rebels' are, ,in fact, foreigners hired by Saudi Arabia and the emirates - all of them crushing dictatorships. When we speak of the terrible things the Syrian government has done to those nice, democratic rebels they are, most of them, tied to what we otherwise call terrorist groups. When we speak of the US going to war to bring democracy, that's bullshit. The US allies in this war are Moslem dictators, Britain, and France. And neither the US nor its allies have any wonderful record of bringing anything but dictatorship and pillage and sometimes starvation. The US spent the whole of the 20th century installing dictators in Latin America - and it's still doing it. (In fairness, I refer to the US, not to the American people. They are caught up in a history that is almost entirely fictional - rather like Harper's idiot depiction of the War of 1812. And they are stuck with news sources that can come close to the stink of Brunswick News.) So what is going on in Syria? 1. US big business wants imperial control of Africa and the Middle East. 2. Britain and France follow the US lead and support it because they badly miss the loot from their old empires. So they support the US hoping to get a slice of the pie. 3. Syria's independence from American power and its alliance with Iran (which American big business also wants) is in the way. 4. Whatever Saudi Arabia wants out of this is not democracy - and it's certainly not religion freedom. The Saudi kings and the emirs are the severest dictatorships in the world. And they, our allies and very good friends, hold religious views at least as strict as those of Saudi Arabia. 5. I don't know whether it's true that Syria used poison. If so, it's not clear to me why western intervention with all the death and destruction it's going to cause is any remedy. Nor do I see why a nation which tortures, uses cc-chemical weapons (agent orange and depleted uranium and has killed millions of innocent people is the one that should be sitting in judgement. 6. Obama is reluctant to make more than a symbolic punishment because - look the the record - the American military has been stunningly ineffective in these wars for the last fifty years. In consequence, it has destroyed more than it has won. But the interest may not be in winning. After all, winning with those rebels means an Islamic state hostile to US interference. What Obama might be thinking of is heavy use of missiles to destroy and survival of Syria as a coherent state - which is roughly what was done in Libya and Iraq. Our problem in understanding all this is the prejudice and bias (very human) and the deliberate propaganda of most of our news services. that's why it's bad to rely as we do on North American news services. We need also to look at rogue services and news from foreign services like Al Jazeera. After all, at its worst Al Jazeera completely outclasses Fox News, National Post, and, most certainly, the Irving Press. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ I hope this tablet sends mail in paragraphs as I wrote it.

August 26: Mr. Baird is outraged....

That's what it says in the Montreal papers. And for good reason. There's a possibility those terrible Syrian government people have used poison gas. Oh, my goodness. It's a war, and they're killing people in a way that's not nice. But, you know, it's different when Syrians do it. Like, when the US smothered the surface of Vietnam with Agent Orange, it was a chemical weapon. It killed huge numbers. It caused starvation by destroyiing crops. It caused a huge rise in the births of hideously deforned babies - Babies with one eye, with no ears, etc. But I didn't hear any words of outrage from us. I can't recall any sermons about it -- and I would bet there were no special prayers at the Irving Chapel. The British and Americans used HE shells made of depleted uranium to plaster whole cities in Iraq. It still is radioactive - and will be for more than four billion years. As it is, babies are born dead or diseased, and their parents die of cancer in that wretched atmosphere. But, hey! Have you heard of anything that suggests anybody on this side gives a damn? In his final year in office, President Clinton publicly admitted to the killing of some 250,000 innocent and helpless Mayans in Guatemala. It didn't even make the news. Obama daily kills people, guilty and innocent alike, children and adults with drones and bombings. But Mr. Baird is not upset by that. Americans, British and Canadians combined to kill in Libya for reasons that are still not clear. Nor has it done Libya any good as it has lived ever since in chaos and violence. But we don't pay any attention to that as long as we get the oil. Harper distributes racist literature attacking native people on largely invented reasons. So who gives a damn? Harper is cracking down on those lowlifes who commit crime - longer sentences, tougher. But a prime minister who accepted bribes, then lied to avoid income tax, got a quick questioning, then was allowed to keep his loot and go back to his mansion so long as he paid the income tax. Where's the outrage? The owner of a pet shop has two snakes escape. It's headliing news for weeks - including a headline that says the owner's hands are soaked in blood. A prominent member of a prominent new Brunswick family has some association with a train wreck that kills 47 people. That story lasted for two days; the possible connection with the NB family was never mentioned - and they certainly were not accused of having blood on their hands. Nor have I seen any outrage from Mr Baird or anybody else in our government. 3,000 get killed in a suicide attack in New York. There's a rush to sympathy, and we all buy memorial souvenirs, and our churches have special services. Millions are killed in Vietnam. Over a million in Iraq. \over a half million in Cambodia. Nobody knows how many in Afghanistan, \Pakistan, Somalia, \yemen. Most were civilians. But they don't matter. Thay wasn't white folks, not really, and they didn't have our profound religious values. I mean. They were different. So we don't get mad over killing them, and how they get killed. Certainly, mr. Baird doesn't. Indeed, hypocrites like Mr. Baird will speak on \nov. 11 on how our soldiers died in Afghanistan to save our democracy. \And million of us will nod our heads - though we surely all know this is bullshit. Our democracy was never threatened byn Afghanistan. Nor was the US threatened. our soldiers died in Afghanistan because it seemed like good politics at the time. It'a a repeat of what happened over a century ago in South Africa when Canadians died to make very rich Englishmen even richer. I read that Pamela Wallin spent much of her Senate money to speak in support of our troops. She must be remarkably stupid (if she really believes that.). If she and those other politicians really supported our troops, they would have refused to send them in the first place. No, Mr. Baird is very selective in his outrage. Even sadder, we are, too. That just seems to be the human condition.

August 24: Where we are; and where we are going

The popular myth is that we are in a democracy in which all are born equal - which suggests that we all have an equal voice in government. That is obvious nonsense. With very few exceptions, the children of the very rich are the ones who grow up to become very rich, themselves. The children of the very rich, no matter of how low intelligence, are sent to expensive schools with lots and lots and extra help. The children of the rest of us go to public schools which are, for the most part, very good. But, partly because the rich don't like paying taxes, they really never have enough money and, when times are bad, face cuts that don't ever happen in the schools of the children of the rich. But that's not the only difference in opportunity. Children of the very rich are raised in a world in which getting higher education is accepted as a natural part of life. They aren't necessarily bright. But they further in school than most children because it's as natural as learning how to brush one's teeth. As you go down the social scale, that naturalness disappears. I began grade one in a school for which the highest expectations were that a child might complete high school. But that was at the edge of phantasyland. Most parents couldn't afford to even think of university. Not one of those kids in my grade one class ever finished high school. They weren't stupid. They were certainly as bright (brighter) as some of the super-rich kids I would later meet and teach. But university was a concept simply foreign to their world. To this day, it is true that school grades are profoundly affected by social and economic background In the latter respect, Chinese children often do well in school - despite economic origins. That has much to do with the influence of Confucianism in exalting the importance of respect for parents, and of maintaining the honour of the family. (When I taught in China, no student ever missed a class. No paper was ever late.) Jewish children are raised in an atmosphere of respect for discussion, for opinion, for knowledge. I was frequently (perhaps 30 times a year) invited to speak in synagogues - and they expected a serious speech. But, in a period of 35 years, I can remember being invited to speak in Christian churches on no more than four or give occasions. Jewish kids often do better in school. They aren't more intelligent. They simply come from a culture which respects intellectual activity. Synagogues invite speakers to discuss current events, books, art.... Christian churches have pancake suppers. Being born into a certain social class, like being born into a certain religion means that the working class, native peoples, lower middle class (in short, most of us) are not created equal. From the starting gun,the race is a very uneven one. Nor does it end there. The rich child grows up with an assumption that he has a right to rule. No matter how intellectually vapid the person may be, there is that sense of a right to rule others. The British monarchy and its aristocracy produced some stunning morons. But they never doubted their right to rule. Big business is much like that. Would you call a meeting of people from across the province, including university presidents, to plan the economic future of the province? (And if you did, would it raise more than a giggle?) Would you then announce to the government and the public that you were now a member of the government? And that you were going to appoint your own advisors to tell the minister of finance how to plan the economy? If you did, you would have them rolling in the aisles. and the premier, if he was feeling polite, would tell you to get lost. Irving did it. He did all that. The university presidents, who should have told him he was being a pompous ass as well as being highly improper in all this, couldn't scamper fast enough to turn out. The premier accepted Irving's aristocratic right to be a member of the government without being asked or even being elected. People in big business openly claim the right to be partners with government in this province. They have no such right - any more than you or I have it. Any such claim is pompous, arrogant, and unconstitutional. But they did it. And they continue to do it. We now have a self-appointed business council horning in on civic affairs - and the mayor and councillors reacting as gutlessly as the premier, his party and the Liberals did to Mr.Irving. It's accepted that if you are rich enough, you have a right to govern. No. Nobody has any such right. In a democracy, we all have the same right - one vote. When any group claims a right, as a group, to be directly involved in government decision making, this is not democracy. In older days, it would have been called government by aristocracy. In Mussolini's Italy, it was called fascism. And the people of New Brunswick have accepted these arrogances and outrages like a herd of sheep. There is virtually no public debate, no protest. We have allowed our basic rights to be tossed aside, and our lives poisoned, by a small group of arrogant twits. Certainly, if there is a brain operating up there, I have yet to see any evidence. This is,by far, the biggest problem facing this province. It is far the biggest problem in the next election. There is no point discussing anything until those buzzards are taught that their right to influence government is the same as ours - one vote. If this is not done, and done very soon, this province has no future whatever- and not a thousand casinos and 'event centres" and tidal bores will change that. New Brunswickers have to show some courage and have to break away from mindless babbling about Liberals and Conservatives when these are simply cartoon figures. There are no Liberals and Conservatives. They are just puppets of big business. Finally, try to get people to understand that business methods have no place in government. Business is not about people. It's about profits. Going to business for advice on government is like going to a barber for treatment of a heart attack. Government is not about profits and charts and graphs. It's about people. It's about us. And, oh, I wish New Brunswickers would realize - it's about them. It's time New Brunswickers stopped acting like a herd of sheep baaing for the shepherd to get a wolf to protect them.

August 23:apologies...

In the chaotic soap opera that is my life, |have suddently been called to Montreal and Ottawa. So, rather than talk about the Times and Transcript each day (which gets pretty repetitious because the Times has the same failings and idiocies every day), I think it better to talk about more general issues. One example is the eternal debate over which "ism" - capitalism, socialism, or communism - is best. In fact, none of them is. Theoretically, they all could be. But economic systems are not run by theories. They are run by people, and usually, as in our case, by a small number of people perverting whatever system it is in their own interests. Of course, capitalism can work. But it needs regulation. Without that, pure greed and self interest take over - with the result that the system destroys itself and us with it. Yes, capitalism can work. But only if it has an informed public taking part in open discussion and exercising real control over the government. In turn, it requires that government to exercise regulation of business, especially big business, so that it serves the interests of the whole society. We don't have those essential components of a successful capitalism. And without those components we don't have capitalism at all. This preversion of capitalism has led us into economic decline, international financial instability, and unsustainable wars. Socialism can work. Indeed, socialism has been a component of just about every government that ever existed. And, in conjunction with a real capitalism has been very successful. Canada's economy of World War Two was extraordinarily succcessful - because it combined socialism, government regulation, and sometbing resembling a real capitalism. Communism, despte the rhetoric, has never existed. Marx's concept of it was so highly idealistic that | doubt it could ever be achieved. The Soviet system was really just an old fashioned dictatorship. Don't be afraid of government regulation. Every society needs some regulation to survive. This venom for regulation and big government which one reads in the TandT is just brainless propaganda. So long as there is an organized society there will have to be a form of government which will have to exercise some regulation. The question is who will control that government and that regulation. It can be a Stalin, or a small group of billionaires, or it can be us. The Stalin system destroyed itself. \our billionaire system is destroying itself. The only way out is for us to return to a real democracy in which the real power is exercised not by a dictator or a consortium of billionaires, but by us. Without that, we face the same sort of looting by billionaires that has plagued Africa, South America and the Middle East. (Indeed most of the world.It's also what caused the War of 1812 - though I saw no mention of that in the "celebrations") We now face endless war and, eventually, the high probability of nuclear war. The presnt system has already run into some very serious failures. For example: 1. The US military, for all its size, sophistication and destructiveness, has been ineffective, even against small and poor countries ever since 1945. (The Korean War was NOT a victory. The Western countries were fought to a draw by a China that was then a third-world country. EVen the so-called victories like Iraq and Libya haven't won anything but very temporary victories for western oil companies. And all the military power of NATO, made up of nations that once ruled the world,cannnot defeat tiny, backward, and primitively armed Afghanistan that has no air force, no navy, and no regular army. In the last seventy years the world has turned upside down as the nations which once built empires with tiny armies now have only one source of supremacy. 2. That source is the nuclear missile, coupled with powerful anti-missile defences. Would they use them? According to a respected foreign policy journal, serious plans for such a strike on China are already being advanced. (Most of the sources for this are at home. I'll send that info along with I get back. Oh - and also the info on how big business manipulation of aluminum prices has cost us all billions of dollars in just recent years. So much for jabber that "capitalism" produces the best goods at the cheapest prices. Think about this the next time you buy some food in its aluminum can.) 3. Then there's the question of what New Brunswick has to do to save itslf. I don't see any provincial party coming up with a definition of the problem, much less of the answer. Certainly, the Liberals and the Conservative never will because they are a major part of the problem. The fundamental issue is that New Brunswick has to kick big business out of the government. It has no business being there. Democracy has to be restored. Failing that as a starting point, New Brunswick can only go further downhill. 4. And, without getting religious on you, there may be a few lines on the utter collapse of morality in the western world. That has been closely tied to the rise of our perverse version of capitalism which which depends on immorality and matherialism to sustain it. Morality is an essential basis for the survival of any society. It doesn't have have to be the morality of any one religion. It may be a moraltiy not based on any religion at all. But there must be shared concepts of right and wrong. But the form of capitalism we have developed is based on amorality. Tha's why I find the Faith page of the TandT so annoying. in a world in which he murder, torture and impoverish people by the hundreds of millions, we get sermonettes on trivia like how we shouldn't gossip. That's why I find it so objectionable that any clergy or any Christian (or any person of any morality) should participate in the Irving Chapel. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

August 21: Exciting development for future of downtown...

....small house in downtown is moved to lot next door. "House move is seen as good for downtown." The word 'trivia' hardly seems adequate for this sort of mindless bilge.

And the police have seized evidence in the deaths of two boys in Campbellton. Have they seized evidence in the Megantic disaster that killed 47? Who knows?  Who cares?

But the Campbellton case was, at worst, an accident. The 47 killed in Megantic were quite likely more than that. They were quite likely victims of a risk taken quite deliberately to raise profits - and 47 people paid the price of that risk.. But ain't nobody in our news media going to ask that question.

Apart from several good letters, today's TandT is the usual bilge, trivia, half-truths and propaganda it always is. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about how most newspapers in Canada - and in the world - hide more news than they publish.

For example, I believe it was yesterday's editorial that babbled about how the capitalist system is based on competition which then produces the best goods at the cheapest price. Right. What you didn't get to read was how Barclay's bank and J.P. Morgan Chase have recently been find a total of a billion dollars for cheating customers by manipulating power charges. How's that for competition producing the best goods at the cheapest price?

Goldman Sachs is currently under investigation for manipulating aluminum prices.

Major banks in the US, Britain, and Europe have been caught laundering money for the criminal gangs that control Mexico's largest export - drugs. At most, they got slap on the wrist fines.

How many reports on that have you read in any newspaper - or heard on any private radio station?
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In Guatemala, the army supplied, trained and led byCIA officers, and supported by US special ops, murdered some 250,000 native peoples - men, women, children, elderly.They wiped out whole villages, then bulldozed the bodies into mass graves.

Priests who supported the Mayans were tortured and murdered. Nuns were raped, tortured and murdered. Why? The native Mayans objected to mining companies kicking them off their farms and out of their homes. They objected the these mining companies using thugs to beat them or kill them if they complained about the abuses and starvation wages they were paid. (Prominent among those mining companies were Canadian ones led by people whose names you might well recognize.) And when it got so bad the company thugs couldn't handle it, that is when the mass slaughter began. It was led for a time  by George Bush I in his days as head of the CIA. A real sweetheart.

In 1998, President Clinton publicly apologized for what had been done. It appeared in the New York Times. It appeared ONLY in the New York Times. No other paper mentioned it. One of the victims was a young Acadian, a lay missionary who now lies buried near Moncton. The Irving Press has never mentioned him. There wasn't even a twitch of Norbert's hideous moustache.
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There is probably no country in Latin American which the US has not invaded (many of them several times) so that North American billionaires can make huge profits out of their mineral and agricultural wealth. (Think of the Dole company which played a major role in the Guatemala horror.)

The US has, for 54 years, supported government forces against rebels in a civil war in Colombia which has lasted for 54 years, and killed at least 220,000 people -most of them, by far, civilians. Who is on the side of the US besides the Colombia government? There are two groups that stand out. The very big ranchers who want cheap labour, and the cocaine dealers. They're on our side. Read much about that in any newspaper?
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Just weeks ago, former president Jimmy Carter said that democracy in the US was dead. Okay. You don't like him. That's still a pretty startling statement to come from a former president. Did you read about it in the Irving press? Did Rod Allean write a column about it? (Well, in fairness, Rod Allen probably doesn't know who Jimmy Carter is.)

Carter made his statement because of the effective destruction of the fourth amendment to the US constitution. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probably cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

The Fourth Amendment goes to the heart of the meaning of democracy. And Bush and Obama have utterly destroyed it. Any American can now be seized and imprisoned with no charge or trial - ever. Obama has publicly announced his right to order the assassination of Americans (and anybody else) with no due process at all. An army of government spies with the world biggest information storage freely examines private mail, phone calls, computer use, etc. of every American and most of the rest of us. So much for the constitution.

And if you   seriously believe that Harper is not doing at least some of this to us, you are in la-la land. Environment movements, for example, are routinely spied on by the RCMP as "terrorists". and reports on them are delivered twice a  year to representatives of the very, very rich. The RCMP has also spied for decades on amybody that the very rich don't like. A prime example was Tommy Douglas, the Baptist clergyman who introduced medicare. (Dangerous radicalism, that. Probably took orders from Stalin.)

Ever read anythinig about any of the above in the Irving press or any other paper?)
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Lots about Iran in the news. But never any mention of why Iran seems to dislike the West.  Well...

Britain got control of Iran in World War I. It promptly gave monopolgy control over Iranian oilfields to British capitalists. (You know. The sort of people who create wealth and who compete to bring us the best at the cheapest price.) They also forced Iran to supply the Royal Navy with fuel oil - free - in a deal that outlasted World War II. Ever wonder what it cost to tank up a 40,000 ton battleship?

The oil capitalists looted Iran pretty thoroughly, giving back virtually nothing. But after 1945, the dying British Empire had to accept a demand from Iran for democracy. And so Iran elected a man named Mossadegh whose first move was to take over control of the oil fields for Iranians. Britain was too weak to respond. So if made a deal with the US to use the CIA to help overthrow Mossadegh, and to establish a dictator in the person of the Shah. In return, the US would get a cut of the Iranian oil fields.

There followed 25 years of extraordinarily brutal rule with big money for every body except the people of Iran. That's why Iran turned ultra Moslem and anti-American.

I mention this because on Monday, the CIA was forced through the freedom of information act to open its files on this affair; and for the first time it admitted what it had done. That information was released on Monday, August 19, 1013. Today is Wednesday, August 21, 1913. Noticed any big story on it in the Irving press? Or any other paper?
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Virtually all of the North American (and world) press hides information. The little it prints is heavily shaped by a bias that comes close to lying. The only real distinction of the Irving press is that it appears to be more brainless than any other in Canada. Often, they don't have to hide news because none of their editors know it's there in the first place.
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Let's hope that tomorrow this wretched paper will have something worth talking about in it.
If not, there are a couple of things they haven't covered that are worth taking a look at.
One is an article in Yale Journal of International Affairs on US plans for a nuclear attack on China. (yes, it's quite likely).

The other looks at the question of why the US is supporting a Syrian "rebellion" which is dominated by groups that the US itself has branded as terrorist. And the question of why the whole middle east and much of Africa is in chaos.

The chaos might be a deliberate policy - a result of the fact that for the last seventy years the US military has shown itself to be incapable even against very small and poor countries. (A rare exception was Grenada with its tiny army of some hundreds of reservists with virtually no equipment and no air force. They US was victorious, with a huge aircraft carrier and some ten thousand troops. With that triumph of the world's leading power over a tiny, tourist island, Ronald Reagan made his fatuous statement, "America walks tall again". And Clint Eastwood starred in an even more fatuous movie about it.
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The general rule is that news is never to be trusted. Journalists have always been biased. Journalists have always hidden information. And that has always been true of even the best news services like BBC, CBC, New York Times, The Guardian... But even on their really, really, bad days the best services tower over all the rest. And all the rest, even on their relatively bad days, tower over the Irving press.

Tell us more, Mr. Editor, about how capitalism exists to compete and how, in doing so, it gives us the best product at the cheapest price. Use the Irving press as your example.