Oct. 24: Oh, grow up...

Today's editorial is, I am sure, a sincere one. That's why is so disheartening to see it is also such a childish one.

The editorial writer is disgusted that a political party, the Green Party, has called for an inquiry into the RCMP action in Rexton. In its thrilling and exciting sub heading "We Say" (as if anybody gives a damn what they say) "Call for inquiry implies serious, unfounded allegations against RCMP."

No, it doesn't, you twit. Inquiry is common after major events. Even choirs of guitarists who sing through their noses have inquiries after concerts to deteremine what worked well,and what didn't.

As well, a national authority on such police action, one who knows even more about it than the editorial writer of an Irving newspaper, has already raised questions about the action.

And the leader of the Green Party, it says, should follow the examples of Mr. Alward and Mr. Gallant. Right. We need more stuffed shirts in New Brunswick.

In the military, there are inquiries into even the most successful actions to see what can be learned from them. And those continue for centuries by military historians. There is nothing unusual, nothing that implies allegations serious or otherwise. I should be astonished if the RCMP has not already begun its own inquiry.

In this case, an astonishing feature was the appearance of men in combat gear, carrying military semi-automatics. We don't even know who they are because TandT reports have never made that clear.

What an ignorant and self-righteous editorial! What we really need is a much broader enquiry. What role did Mr. Alward's clumsy handling play in the outbreak of violence? What about all the lies that appeared in the Irving press on the subject of shale gas? What about the failure of the Irving press and Mr. Alward to provide us with information? What about the very, very suspicious case of prof. Lapierre? What about the ignoring and discrediting the Dr. Cleary report?

In the longer view, that violence was not caused by either protestors or police. It was caused by incompetent, dishonest, lying, manipulating politicians and journalists - acting to kiss up to their bosses in the world of big business.
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Norbert presents yet another ignorant but arrogant solution to all our problems - all of it based on things he knows nothing about.

For openers, and despite Norbert's claim, humanity is not all the same. Certrainly, there is no (or very little) difference between us racially. But there are huge differences socially. The family in China, for example, is a far more important unit than it is in Canada.

And, if Norbert is going to say that we all have great similarities to each other (which we do), then he might note that we are in many respects like the Nazis under Hitler. Indeed, there are few atrocities in history to match the American slaughter in Vietnam. We are, all of us, then, both good guys and bad guys.

Norbert also ignores a central point. Native people in Canada are legally entitled to certain rights because we live on land we took from them - and in exchange, we signed treaties giving them rights - and not a bad deal considering the comparison between what we got and what they got.

Norbert's policy is essentially assimilation. It has failed for over two centuries - some would say over four centuries.

Norbert is fond of adding "The Last Word", some wise-sounding saying he digs up for each column. These are often quite silly, and really have nothing to do with his column. Today, it's somebody who said if you treat people nicely, they'll be nice. If you treat them badly, they'll be bad. Now, what the hell does that mean?

In the context of this column, it can only mean that native peoples are bad. But if we treat them better, they'll be nice.  (Oh, that Mr. Cunningham is so smart.)
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Most bothersome in this whole affair has been the treatment of the Cleary Report by the government and the Irving press.

The report was mangled, quite deliberately, when Dr. Cleary first delivered it. It was then ignored when she won a national award for it. At the same time, an academic fraud who has long been of service to the Irvings was brought in to discredit her report - though even his claimed credentials would not have qualified him for that.

He was discovered (though not by the government or the Irving Press) to have lied about his training. That left everyhing said, promised,  hinted by government, press and the shale gas companies lying in shreds on the floor.

Look, you lying wretches. With the exposure of prof. Lapierre as your patsy, that means there has been only one, independent,  scientific report by a qualified scientist ever done on the shale gas issue in New Brunswick. NOBODY has ever proven that report to be wrong. And it says this is one dangerous idea.

I wish I could follow the advice of Norbert's quotation, and talk to you liars and hypocrites as if you were nice people to that you would become nice. But Norbert's quotations are as silly and feather-headed as he is.

You ignored the Cleary report. You didn't prove it wrong - because you couldn't. So you ignored it, and you found a fraud artist to cover up. But now he's been discovered. And you still ignore the Cleary Report.

What caused the violence at Rexton? It was the shale gas companies, the Irving ownership of all the newspapers, the complicity of the Liberal and Conservative parties and their utter failure to show any leadership - or honesty - or character - or even basic intelligence.

There is NO scientific evidence that shale gas is good for us or even harmless. We Do have the evidence that it is extremely dangerous. And you refuse to even mention it.

This is one hell of a display of greed, indifference, lack of leadership, and quite disgusting journalism.
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Rod Allen talks about Rod Allen. He thinks we care.

Interesting column by Beth Lyons on abortion. In fact, abortion has been common for centuries, even in New Brunswick, usually at great risk to the women having them. It was (quitely) accepted as early as the 1870s with drug store sales  of a drug said to deal with "female" irregularity. When I first saw those ads, I assumed they meant that female irregularity was different from male irregularity. Actually, it was a "respectably" discreet ad for an abortion drug.

I know of no evidence that the banning of medical abortions will make any significant change in the rate of abortion.  However, if it will make you feel better, toss a buck in the collection basket. It's cheaper than being a real Christian.

Oct. 23: Enforce the law!

Damn right. Enforce the law! That's why we should be closely examining the oil train accident that killed 47 people in Lac Megantic.

That's why Professor Lapierre should be facing charges for accepting payment under false pretences - as in his years of university teaching and in his special contracts. And, if there are people implicated as, for example, government or business people who knew of his false pretences then they, too, should face charges.

Mind you, I don't want to pick on anybody. Now you take Mr. Irving. He seems to have been a strong advocate of prof. Lapierre. He donated the money that gave the prof the Irving Chair in Ecology at U de M. Giving the money for a chair is a pretty big deal, leading one to expect a pretty thorough study of credentials for a donating  such a chair. So it's a little bit difficult for one to understand how such a donation could be made to a quite unqualified person. They most do some pretty lax checking at Irving industries.

So any ciminal examination of prof. Lapierre would require a close examination of precisely how the donation was made - and why.

It's important to enforce the law.

Norbert believes in enforcing the law - but only sometimes.

On native peoples, for example, he would simply fall back on an old formula that has been followed by every Canadian government since John A.  That is, he recommends completely ignoring all our obligations under treaties we signed (which means ignoring the law) and making native peoples just like all the rest of us. That, for example, is why Harper is taking over control of native education.

It's been done, Norbert. And, apart from being illegal,  it's never worked.

The reason it doesn't work is that, contrary to what Norbert says, all people are not the same. I don't mean that they have racial differences. I mean they have social differences.

A poor child going to school often does poorly. A rich one often does well. Jewish and oriental children will often do better than Christians and westerners. This has nothing to do with race; it has to do with religious values, social expectations, self-confidence....

It's not the schools, Norbert. In the US, white and African-Americans have been going to the same school systems for well over a century. African-Americans are still far poorer, less represented in skilled jobs, and have a stunningly high presence in prisons.

Much of the turmoil and suffering in the middle east and Africa and, to this day, in Central America, has been due to our interference in existing social systems. Islam did not create terrorism. We introduced them to it, and our behaviour has made it worse. That's what happens when you disrupt a social system.

As to your simplistic view of law, would you obey a law that forced you to live on food you thought was poisonous?  Law should never be thought of as forcing people to do things against their own interests. In Germany, it was once law to turn yourself in if you were Jewish. Would you rant at those who disobeyed that law?

Native peoples don't want shale gas. They think it's poisonous. Think, Norbert. The purpose of law is to protect us. It is not to force us to do what the very rich want us to do.

As to your headline, "special status" has not failed. In fact, it has never been tried. Read some history, Norbert. Your suggeston of "getting everyone in the same boat" has been tried for over a century. It hasn't worked.

It has possibilities, though. Why not tell the Irvings to go live on native reserves, and to send their children to the local schools?

Norbert is going to write another column on the subject tomorrow. Lord love a duck.
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The editorial, of course,is  respect the rule of law. Yep. Respect the rules that are made by the rich to benefit themselves. In fact, even the editor can't really believe that. If he did, he'd be raising hell about the lack of progress in investigating Lac Megantic, at the utter refusal to investigate prof. Lapierre. And he'd be furious and the US and at us for flagrant defiance of international law in illegal invasions of countires, the overthrow of governments as in Haiti, the use of chemical weapons as in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. And the very wide use of torture -  including in US penitentiaries.
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Read the op ed page for important advice on how to feed a baby. Take the writer seriously. He's a reporter for the TandT.So he knows things.

 Below him, Brian Cormier writes a fascinating story of how he's trying to decide between renovating and moving.. The news you need to know. Thatnks to both writers for helping to better understand the world we live in.

NewsToday is a whole page of fast-breaking stories such as "New N.S. premier, cabinet, sworn in." and "Minister expects balanced budget/" It's only one page since nothing happened in the rest of the world.
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Except for a couple of stories, Section A is a sleeping pill.

I would suggest, though, that readers check Youtube for videos of the police actions at Rexton. The videos(which the police tried to stop) tell rather a different story about what happened. Far from marching on "warriors" ,the police were marching on women, some kneeling on the road and holding up feathers. They got pepper sprayed.

The 'paramilitaries" were working with the police-as were security guards (which strikes me as extremely unwise since  security guards commonly have little training).
As for the paras, they were very heavily armed with army rifles, semi-automatics with 40 shot magazines. That's not a weapon to move a crowd back. It's only function is mass and indiscriminate slaughter. The militarization of the police in uniforms and weaponry is a very worrying development in a democractic society. This is exactly what has been  happening in the US where police are being redesigned to fight the general population. This is what a police state is.

Norbert, yesterday, said he was impressed with the courage of the police (an army of them and all armed) marching on the protestors. I was more impressed by the courage of those women who knelt on the road, and who faced the pepper spray.

So far, that scattering of  crude, even antiquated, weapons that the police have shown to the papers is a long, long way down from the firepower I saw on the police side.

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The law was enforced in Hitler's Germany and in Stalin's USSR. It is enforced in the US where people can be jailed indefinitely with no charge and no trial. The law is enforced in Saudi Arabia where women are whipped for minor offences

Enforcement of the law is not always "a good thing".

Oct. 22: The importance of editors

In the news business, the editor is the key person. Editors are the ones who mold kids out of journalism schools into real reporters. Editors are the ones who select which stories are the ones that are important. Editors are the ones who make sure that each story gives the average reader enough information to make it understandable. The editor has a breadth of knowledge that gives him a background when he writes a comment column - like an editorial. And an editor has the wisdom to know when he doesn't know enough to write on some subjects.

But not at the Irving press.

In that press, the editors accept the boss' rules. Nothing embarassing for the boss is to be printed.  Nothing that disagress with the boss is to be printed. Propaganda and outright lies are always welcome. And triviality is good because it means nothing, and so offends nobody.

No serious journalist would accept an editorial position at the Irving press.

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Imagine if Irving head offices in Portland, Maine, were occupied by protestors supporting those at Rexton. (There is a great deal of opposition to the Irvings in the state of Maine. That's because they behave in Maine as if it were New Brunswick - and nobody likes to be treated the way New Brunswickers are.)

Imagine if the US were caught listening in to phone calls, hacking government and private computers, and generally spying on France and Mexico so blatantly that the presidents of Mexico and France make official complaints to Obama.

Suppose a recent report said that environmental scientists working for the federal government as well as those dependent on government subisidies live in a state of fear because they are not allowed to reveal any of their findings to anybody without government permission - and that permission is hard to get.  Harper keeps an iron control over what we are allowed to know - even when research is funded by our taxes, and when the findings may be crucial to our futures.

Well, imagine no more. All of those things happened yesterday, and not one made the Irving press. Howevr, "Food writer loves taste of Moncton" rated first page treatment.
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The editorial writer praises the RCMP for its skill in stopping the Rexton blockade. I wonder how many blockades that editor has put an end to. I wonder if he (or she - nah, it's gotta be a he; the Irving press isn't big on female editors.) - so I wonder if he has ever even read something about it. Almost certainly not.

There was a news item just yesterday that Canada's leading authority on the use of police force said this case was NOT handled well. But I'll bet the writer of that editorial doesn't even know that there are such things are authorities on crowd control.
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Norbert, as usual, foams at the mouth with his usual prejudice, even bigotry, and ignorance, He exalts the virtues of obedience to the law, seeing this as the key to civilized society. My, I should love to see Norbert's articles condemning the American and French revolutions, and condemning George Washington as an  unlawful protestor. This would no doubt be a much better world if the US were still a British colony, and France a kingdom under the Bourbons. And, certainly, the world would be much better off if Russia were still ruled by a Stalin.

And there's nothing more annoying than those damn women in Saudi Arabia protesting and demanding the right to drive, and the right not to be beaten by their husbands.

Norbert, we live in a world created by protestors. If there were no protestors, we wouldn't have democracy. We wouldn't have newspapers because we would be allowed to get information. If there were no protestors, we wouldn't have any civil rights at all. And we'd still have slavery.

Ever heard of Magna Carta? That was forced on King John by protesting lords.

Try to understand Norbert. Law and order, while necessary, are there because they are useful to the people who have power. Law and order in the US meant using electric cattle prods on African-Americans who protested against their status. Law and order in Canada means stealing native land, sticking them on reserves, and then ignoring them.

There were protesters in Nazi Germany who tried to help Jews. And, I suppose there were Nazi Norberts who wrote bitter columns about them. (Incidentally, law and order was the justification for Canada TO REFUSE to help German Jews from the 1930s until the very late 1940s. It was also the justification for putting innocent Japanese-Canadians into prison camps during World War Two, and then confiscating and selling their homes and all their possessions.)

Necessary change comes from those protestors you so much dislike. But you're not a protestor, are you, Norbert? Of course not. You like a province owned by a family that also owns the two, major political parties. And why not? Getting all those free scraps from their table has served you well.

Oh, Norbert also says "protestors and civil disobience have been tolerated for two years,...."  Tolerated? Norbert - protest is a right. Can you understand that? It is not something to be tolerated. We have a right to be protest.

And protesters, h e says, made no attempt to use democratic channels. Norbert - what the hell democratic channels are you talking about? That government which is owned by big business? The newspapers which are owned by big business? A spokesman like you who is owned by big business?

And tell me what democratic channels were followed by the shale gas industry. Tell me all about how they have been completely open and democratic.

Then Norbert calls the protestors fascists. Norbert, you don't have a clue what the word fascist means. Here's a hint. When a big businessman writes to a newspaper to announce he is now a member of the government (without being elected), that is fascism. That is a real meaning of the word.

Then he quotes an  "expert" Christy Blatchford (a journalist from the same kennel as Norbert) of The National Post that the majority of residents of Elsipogtog get more welfare than other recipients.

Norbert, that is a disgusting statement. Given the levels of welfare they get, that still keeps them well below the big recipients of welfare in Rothesay. You use poverty as an excuse to condemn people. They have lost everything - and they now get bare, subsistence living.

It gets worse. It becomes an accusation that some of them just want money. Possibly so. What the hell do you think SWN is there for? And if you criticize these poor people for wanting money, how about taking a swipe at your boss who makes truckloads of money out of such things as overpriced ice-breakers.

This is the most ignorant and vile newspaper column I have ever seen. And we can be quite sure that Norbert would never say such things about his boss.

Law and order can be very desirable. But any law and order eventually becomes abusive and counter-productive. It also is used to prevent essential change. That's why protestors are essential to a healthy society. Ignorant and bigoted columnists are not.
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Well, I spent more time on Norbert than I meant to. And there's more to say. But for those who like the Irving press, for its normal emptiness and triviality, I recommend the op ed page column by Alan Cochrane. He's an editor, too.
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There's an excellent Letter to the Editor   (but not, blessedly, by an editor). It's "Canada's failing grade in education investment".
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Oh, an afterthought. I said a newspaper story should give us enough info to get the fullest possible meaning of it. P. A3 has a story that doesn't meet that requirement. It's really an ad "Speaker to discuss Middle East". The speaker is sponsored by Jewish Federations of Canada, and works for public radio in Israel. Here's what it doesn't tell you.

Judaism has a tradition of community groups that offer help, encourage discussion and learning, do youth work - a tradition far stronger than anything I have seen among Christian churches.

However, the behaviour of the Israeli government has created a sharp split among North American Jews. The majority support Israel no matter what it does - killing Palestinians, stealing land, deporting arab citizens.....

That majority, working in conjunction with the Israeli government, have taken control of most of those community groups, and uses them to lobby governments and spread propaganda for the Israeli government.

Many other Jews, though they support the state of Israel, are very much opposed to its government. There outlets are organizaations such as Jews for Peace in the Middle East.

In the US, Jewish Federations of the US has turned against the Israel government (though not against Israel.) It still continues with a community focus on helping Jews in the US and in Israel.

The Jewish Federations of Canada have gone in the opposite direction, acting as a propaganda arm of the Israeli government. Since the speaker on this occasion also works for government in Israel, I would guess that this speech will be heavily biased.

Oh - I'm not an anti-semite. In fact, most North American Jews are not semites in the first place. Palestinians are semites. Many arab peoples are semites. Most Jews are not.

But the TandT probably doesn't have an editor who knows any of that.

Oct. 21: Alec Bruce's column is brilliant...

This must be the first column I have seen in the Irving press that has a sense of the whole story - in this case, of the violence at Rexton. This is really quite exceptional, and captures points the reporters, for the most part, have missed. And, certainly, the editors have missed these points entirely.

There's also another good column by Steve Malloy who,  as always, can take what seems a small and local matter, and bring us to realize the greater implications of it. Well done.

Now, let me make myself unpopular.

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Legal is not the same as right. Illegal is not the same as wrong.

It was perfectly legal in Guatemala for the CIA and the Guatemala government to murder a quarter million native peoples in order force the survivors to accept lives as unspeakably cheap labour in the mines. It was legal for the mining companies to poison the land and waters as much as they liked. It was legal to murder Mayans who tried to stop them.

In Canada, it was quite legal to confiscate native lands. It was legal to kill native peoples who objected. It was legal for the Canadian government to deliberately starve plains native peoples to death. It was legal to forcibly take native children from their homes, and to place them in brutal, residential schools. And, certainly, it seems always to have been legal for Canadian governments to ignore their treaty obligations to native peoples.

It was all legal. But none of it was right.

To get closer to home, it was legal for shale gas companies to make sweetheart deals with the New Brunswick governments to carry out exploration anywhere they liked, and without informing anybody of what it was all about.

It was legal for New Brunswick governments not to bother to tell us what was going on or to seek out opinion. It was legal for the Irving press to keep mum about it for years and then, when the story got out, anyway, it was quite legal for Irving press to become a propaganda organ and, frequently, a liar for the shale gas industry.

Apparently, it must also have been legal for a professor to lie about his credentials for years and, based on those lies, to accept government positions that involved the safety and even the lives of New Brunswickers. Certainly, he has suffered no legal consequences for what is surely a criminal offence.

Well, it must have been legal because I've never seen men with visors aiming pepper spray at Mr. Irving, Mr. Alward, the shale gas executives, or any of those people who have betrayed all of us.

In an aside, there also seems to be a grey area in the law. I should have thought it would be illegal to ship a highly volatile oil in tank cars not designed for it, to file a false report of what kind of oil was being shipped, and then to run it into a town, killing 47 people.

But, apparently, not so.

Right and wrong concern moral values, the way our behaviour affects others.

Legal and illegal sometimes concern moral values, too - as in laws against theft, recklessness, assault....  But legal and illegal often, and far too often, concern only the interests of those who have the power to make and unmake the laws.

Nobody was killed at Rexton. But, oh, we have lots and lots of news about it and lots of legal action. Forty-seven were killed at Lac Megantic. The story was good for two days in the Irving press - with no mention whatever of the legal and moral aspects of it.

None of this has been been hinted in the Irving press.
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As well, something else has not been looked at.

The New Brunswick government issued licenses to shale gas companies years ago with virtually no public discussion. Right up to Alward, no government has made no attempt at an honest explanation of the issues. Nor have the shale gas companies.

In particular, no attempt was made to talk to native peoples BEFORE they became alarmed. Fracking trucks just appeared on the roads.

Even in a province in which the arrogance of big business is legendary, this was an arrogance over the top. Mr. Irving and others wanted to explore for shale gas. They completely ignored all the people of New Brunswick. Their trained politicians did the same. Mr. Alward is now having talks with native leaders? Sure. After years of doing nothing, and a  month of confrontation with native peoples, he decides to talk. You wretched little man, Mr. Alward. The talks should have begun years ago, BEFORE there was a confrontation.

There should also have been honest information from the newspapers owned by your boss.

Who created this crisis? You did, Mr. Alward, you and Shawn Graham and those before who arrogantly allowed this proposal to go forward without giving a damn what people thought.

You made it worse, Mr. Alward, by rudely, ignorantly and ruthlessly pushing aside the only professional advice you had - the report from Dr. Cleary.  Your boss killed the report in his newspapers. And then you and, probably, your boss, hired a fraud who had been useful to you in the past to counter Dr. Cleary's report.

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The action in this story is not the violence though, so far, violence is all the news media have been talking about. That violence has so far been minor. No. The real story is the arrogance, the greed, and the stupidity of those who think they can subvert the normal processes of government, pass laws that benefit only themselves, run the province without even getting elected, use newspapers to lie, and to assume it is all part of God's great plan for them to rule our society.

The stupidity is that they don't have the faintest idea of how to run a society. They aren't running it now. They're destroying it. That's what happens when we get the silly idea that what is legal is necessarily what is right.

 

Oct. 20: just a few thoughts on a Sunday...

I'm still bothered by a statement that appeared in the TandT two days ago, the day Rexton made world news. It referred to certain, heavily-armed people there as para-militaries.

Now, it is a safe bet that most people don't know what a para-military is, and a safer bet that nobody knows what the TandT means by a paramilitary. Will the TandT please tells us what a para-military is in its definition? Does it mean hired mercenaries? Does it mean SWN security? Does it refer to a special branch of the RCMP? It's important to know because all of the above definitions raise serious problems.

(There's also something comic about men wearing macho camouflage outfits. The idea of camouflage is to help you to blend into the background. But the colours of these outfits actually make them stand out.)

If it means hired mercenaries, this is one hell of a radical departure for Canadian policing. If those men had used their weapons, there would have been a mass slaughter at Rexton, and a quite indiscriminate one. So, if they were hired mercenaries, what special training did they have to act with restraint and judgement?

And what was the point of arming them with what appear to be military semi-automatics? Wasn't that more than a little over the top for the situation?

If they were mercenaries, should we be hiring such people at all?

Were they security guards for SWN? If so, what the hell were they doing taking part in a police operation? We have police to control public disorder, not to take sides in it. And who on earth gave anybody the right to arm security guards with such heavy weaponry?

Were they from a special branch of the RCMP? If so, who's bright idea was it to turn the RCMP back to its nineteenth century origins as a military force. The role of police is to enforce the law, not to conquer. And you are still left with the awkward question of why they were so heavily armed.

Oh, I know. I know. Mr. Alward says the native peoples were an armed camp, and the police issued a general description of their weaponry. But there are two problems with that. One is that the police could not have known about the weaponry since it was not discovered until after they advanced.

The other problem is the general statement that they had guns and blades and bombs.

What kind of guns? How many? It makes a difference. Two guns is bad - but short of an "armed camp".  Blades could mean anything. I don't know how many times I 've had to turn over to airport security guards my fingernail clippers.

It's the job of a reporter get specific information, and not just to accept vague statements. It's the job a reporter to know the meanings of words like "para-militaries", and to make those meanings clear to readers.

If those were really para-militaries at Rexton, then that is one hell of a dangerous development in Canadian law enforcement. I wold expect it to happen in a police state like the US, but not here.
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On a lighter note is the story that Saudi Arabia has refused to accept a seat on the UN security council because, it says, the UN is useless in defending human rights. It gives as an example the failure of the UN to intervene in Syria on the side of the rebels in that country's civil war.

It also is a good example of why the news doesn't really tell the news.

Rule no. 1 of understanding world affairs - no country gives a damn about anybody else's human rights. If a country goes to war on the excuse that it is defending human rights, it's lying to cover its real reason - which is usually plunder.

Remember how we got sucked into sending "peacekeeprs" to Haiti?  Far from protecting human rights of Haitians, we were there to destroy them. The elected President of Haiti was arrested and exiled because he was doing terrible things like building schools and hospials, and trying to raise wages above the normal five dollars a day - and taxing honest billionaires who owned factories in Haiti.

But our peacekeepers fixed that. Now, Haitians get less than five dollars a day, tens of thousands still live under canvas while more live in some of the world's worst slums. And there's no more silly talk about sending children to school. No. Let the little bastards work at pennies a day. And taxes on billionaires? Forget it.

When we read news, we get an account of what has happened. But it very seldom tells us why it happened. Often, it can't - because news has to be fact, and the why part is often opinion. That's why a good newspaper has opinion columns written by knowledgeable people. --while the TandT sin opinion columns with stories about how the writer had a doggie woggie when he was a little boy. Others, with a few but honourable exceptions, are no opinions at all, but the propaganda the owner of the Irving press wants us to believe.

In the case of Saudi Arabia as the great defender of human rights, it is a dictatorship in which human rights do no exist. It certainly has given support to the rebels in Syria. Indeed, along with the US and Turkey, Saudi Arabia started that war in the first place. But it never had anything to do with human rights. They wanted the Syrian president out of the way because he was too independent.

As  for the rebels, most have no interest whatever in human rights. Most are not even Syrians. They are mercenaries (para-militaries) hired, trained and armed by Saudi Arabia, the US, and other freedom-lovers.

That's what is really happning is Syria. Saudi Arabia and the US and a few others,  have created a war that has killed over 200,000 people. Think about it. If anyone wanted to improve human rights in Syria, should killing ever more by the best way to do it?
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So far, there have been three flaming wrecks of CNR trains carrying dangerously inflammable material. But don't worry. CNR execs assure us they have an excellent safety record. And oil company execs assure us that it's perfectly safe to transport flammable materials by rail.

So that's okay.

CNR, by the way, was created out of a number of bankrupt private railways in Canada at the end of World War One. If was privatized in 1995 because private business is so much better than the government at running these things.

So that's okay, too.
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What to watch for at Rexton?

Alward is going to play the money card. He knows quite well that SWN will not stop its operations there. And Alward bears no resemblance to the St. George who slew the dragon.

But the native peoples are not in this for money. That've been clear from the start.

Nor are they simply rowdies out there to make trouble. They are concerned about their lives and their children's lives. And they're showing tremendous courage in standing up to bullies in the oil industry and government. One could wish that more people in this province had as much concern for their families, and as much courage to defend them from bullies.

But, duh, there could be jobs in it.

People like Irving - and his politicians  - have always believed that money is the bottom line, the only bottom line. It's not. Even if Alward can manage  to shove through a money setttlement, that won't end the problem. These people want control of their own lives. And, unlike too many of us, that control is not for sale.

You know, I suspect that some people look at the religious rituals of native people, at the use of fire and tobacco, and the holdinig up of feathers, and they think - how primitive, how crude, how silly..."

Maybe. But I could wish our Christian churches would take a break from their pie sales and pancake breakfasts to live their faith as the native peoples have at Rexton.



 

Oct. 19: decent reporting...

...lousy editing...

As a day's newspaper rolls out, editors (are supposed to) look it over, see if the stories have any areas that still aren't sufficiently explained, then go over it with reporters to be covered in their assignment for next day.

I really don't know whether the editors at Irving press are lazy, or terrified of saying something that might offend Mr. Irving, or whether they're just plain thick. But I have never seen evidence they examine the stories at all.

There were obvious questions left after yesterday's story.
1. What started the violence? Yesterday's story said it began when police manhandled a native chief. Today's story says it started because, as Alward is quoted, the protesters were an armed camp.

Those are quite different versions. And they raise another question. How did the police know it was an armed camp when they didn't find those weapons until AFTER their advance on the protesters?

This is not to criticize anybody on either side. The point is we need to know exactly what started it That's important to the story. And, after two days, we still don't know.

2. Yesterday's story carried pictures of men dressed in military-style camouflage, and carrying combat rifles. They were described as para-militaries who were working with the police..

What is a paramilitary? Very-roughly, it is a person who is armed and (perhaps) trained for military combat, but does not fight for his national army. They are normally mercenaries who will fight for whoever pays them. And, as one might guess, the proportion of psychopathic killers among them is very high. The US rents hundreds of thousands of them from companies that deal in such things.

But I have never heard of paramilitaries being used in Canada or, for that matter, within the US. Obviously, it's in bad taste to turn killers loose on your own people.And their rifles not only have a high rate of fire, but use a light bullet at high speed which is unstable when it hits, creating more damage and more deaths than the rifles of World War Two. We are very lucky that nobody was killed by them.

So - who were these para-militaries? Where they contracted foeeign mercenaries? Or did the writer just not know what a para-military is?

And why was such a deadly group mixed with police to deal with a riot?  Editors whould have picked up on that. They didn't. That's why we have news today that tells us no more than the news did yesterday.
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As well, the paper still gives us no insight into the background and the ramifications of that violence.
The closest it comes is a column by Michael Woloschuk in NewsToday. He, at least, shows an awareness of how this all goes back centuries to the earliest contact, and the shattering experience of being overwhelmed by an alien society. It's an experience that most of us can't even begin to understand.

And it was made worse, far worse, by our abuse and murder. That last native person in Newfoundland died over a hundred and fifty years ago. Many fell victim to tuberculosis, but many also died simply of murder with a bounty paid for each one.

Native people were deliberately starved to death on the plains, and everywhere saw their traditional economies made impossible as they were forced onto reserves. Then there was the mental, physical and sexual abuse of the residential schools. At no point in that whole, wretched history did Canadian governments make the slightest attempt to honour their obligations.

Most recently, Harper has opened the final war on native peoples, the destruction of their social structure so that no indentifiably native society remains, a campaign marked by racist litereature from Ottawa to be distributed by goofs like Robert Goguen, and by Harper taking over control of native schools. The purpose is to get them out of the way so he can destroy the environment for the benefit of his oil-drilling friends.

And we're suprised there was a riot?

New Brunswick is a good example of the inactivity. It should have been obvious from the start that native peoples would be profoundly affected by oil exploration - and might well object to it in their back yards. That was well over a decade ago.

So when did a premier first deign to even talk to native peoples? Not until there was a blockade at Rexton. Not until it was obvious this was a major problem.

For that matter, no New Brunswick government told the rest of us about it, either. Under pressure, Alward set up a medical study, then trashed it and insulted the whole medical community. Then he and the papers promised there would be a steady flow of information about fracking. He was lying. So were the papers.

Then he picked out an academic fraud, apparently a buddy of Mr. Irving, to be the mastermind for planning shale gas - a subject in which he proved to be a fraud.

It's not just native people who were abused in this way. It's all of us. Even Alward talks are a fraud. We know there is no possiblity he is going to make a deal that would mean stopping the drilling. We all know that. Alward has lied to us as long as he's been in politics. No wonder native people blocked a road. If New Brunswickers were not such a supine lot, every road in this lying province would have been blocked.
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The editorial is either brainless or unscrupulous. (Though it's hard to imagine the person who wrote such an editorial having enough brains to be unscrupulous.)  Its point - pretending to be in sympathy with native people - is that this is really a question of money, not of safety. All the native peoples need is a bigger share of the profits. In short, they can be bought.

That is cynical enough. then it advises we call in the federal government to help. Right. Native peoples will love that - big daddy Harper who has been such a keen environmentalist and friend of native peoples, the one who wrote that racist tract about them.

Anyway, that's going to be the Irving route. It's all really just about money. I mean, if we just got paid more for it, we'd love to have great ponds of toxic waste all over the province.

All this is the word of a government and a newspaper chain which have done nothing but lie to and manipulate us from the start.

This is what destroys societies.
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Brent Mazerolle writes a column that is weepily on everybody's side. Alas, It shows not the slightest understanding of what this is all about. And he's one of our great, duh thinkers. Duh, this could create jobs.

Brent, listen to what the doctors have told us, the ones who actually have degrees in what they're talking about. Fracking is immensely destructive of the environment and of human health. (duh, but it creates jobs).

Concentrate, Brent. Try to remember what our parents tried to tell us, and what we try to tell our children, "THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU CANNOT HAVE."

Can you understand that Brent? We are destroying our environment at an unheard of pace. Scientists - real ones, not frauds hired by our politicians and economic bosses - say we are within a decade of feeling the effects of climate change. Very soon, it will be too late to prevent it. And Harper has done...well, he suspended all our research on climate change, and wiped out most of our regulations. But, duh, it creates jobs.

Oh - yeah - we're going to have the world toughest regulation. Yeah. This come from our governments which began shale gas drilling without regulations at all, and still doesn't have any. Nor is there any indication of any being developed.

There are some things you cannot have.
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Norbert, as he so often does, writes on three topics, on all of which he is ignorant. Maybe he should be head of our Energy Commission.
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The Rexton incident sums up most of New Brunswick's problems. It's newspapers are lying and incompetent, It's political leaders, so far, have been puppets of Irving, and Irving is driven by an unlimited greed and indiffference to others. He also has effectively destroyed democracy in this province and it is that destruction which will destroy New Brunswick society, itself.

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But don't worry. Our churches are pitching in with answers to our problems. Check out the Faith Page - pie sales, rummage sales, pancake breakfasts...

The Lord works in mysterious ways....

 

Oct. 18: A society in decay....

It's too early to decide who was to blame for yesterday's violence at the anti-shale gas group. The available reporting on it, though quite good, is still vague on some points. (The TandT reporters seem to have done a good job on this story so far.) The problem is that the violence was not caused by something that happened just yesterday. This goes way back; and we have to get rid of some of our fixed thinking to make sense of it.

We have to go all the way back to New France. That's when our ancestors killed native peoples who got in the way. They also took native peoples as slaves - something rarely mentioned in the history books - though that didn't work out very well; native peoples died young in slavery.

Then there was the final taking of their land by the British- which was simply old-fashioned theft - accompanied by the signing of a treaty (which no Canadian government has ever honoured.)

As an afterthought, native peoples in the way of European settlement in Canada's west were quite deliberately starved to death in the late 1880s. Following that, the decision of Canadian governments was to take the children away from their homes, and put them into residential schools which would, it was thought, convert them in "regular" Canadians. In short, the idea was to destroy the native societies. Problem solved.

But it didn't work. Quite apart from the brutality of the schools, the children did, indeed, lose much of their sense of what being a native person meant. But, coming out of those awful schools, they could not become "regular Canadian" children.

No Canadian government has ever come to grips with the meaning of the treaties. Native peoples have been allowed to sink into poverty and isolation, with social problems that are almost beyond understanding. So , for years, governments have simply ignored the problem and ignored their obligations. Most have hoped native peoples would simply disappear. Harper has been more active. He wants them destroyed.

Harper is determined to move oil. That's why he was destroyed almost all environmental protection in Canada. That's why he has cut off funding for research on climate change. (Of course, we all know from propaganda circulated by the oil industry that there is no climate change, and polar ice is not melting and and sea levels are not rising. But it's amazing how deluded people can be, and how they refuse to listen to the wise minds in our oil industry.  The people in the tiny nation of Kiribati - a chain of islands in mid-Pacific have been so deluded that their low-lying islands are threatened, they actually believe two of them have already disappeared, and their president has advised all of them to leave over the next few decades because the whole nation is only a couple of meters above sea level, and will be gone by the end of the century.) We should send those people copies of the Times and Transcript to straighten them out.)

Harper is determined to move that oil. Native peoples and their treaties are in the way. So Harper has declared war on them. It began a year ago with his attack on native chiefs for their very high salaries. That's why we got notices from the wicked witch's flying monkeys like Robert Goguen that were quite openly racist.

(In fact, most chiefs did not get high salaries and, in any case, what the chiefs get is none of Mr. Harper's business. Native peoples have treaty rights to manage their own affairs.)

His next move doesn't look dangerous. But it is. He intends this year to take a direct hand in the education of native children. He particularly mentioned the teaching of history to native children. Why is Mr. Harper, who knows little about the subject, so interested in history? Because he wants them to learn the white man's version of history. In short, this is a step back to what the residential schools were intended to do -to destory any sense of native identity.

That's the background to the violence at Rexton - centuries of abuse, lies, and betrayal. You cannot understand what happened yesterday unles you understand that background.

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But fear not. It was only native peoples who were abused, lied to, and betrayed. New Brunswick governments have been handing out shale gas permits for over ten years. They just never bothered to tell us. And in all those years, there have been no regulations - and certainly no enforcement. They still haven't designed the regulations. And they asked us to trust them.

Forced, at last, to give information, - they just didn't. And the Irving press cooperated fully.There were all those promises, We would get up do date information on shale gas. We would get both sides of the story.

And we got nothing whatever, except for the occasional lie.

When Dr. Cleary, so far the only qualified person ever appointed to speak on this issue, gave a speech the government didn't like, one that said it was too dangerous to go ahead. The government and the Irving Press buried it.

Then they hired a fraudulent professor to write a counter-report (on a subject he knew nothing about).
The Irving Press hailed him as a brilliant scholar of international fame. But he soon confessed he was a fraud. The news story of his confession of fraud was written by a pair of spin doctors to make him sound like a man who'd been mistreated by unnamed villains.

In fact, I believe that accepting money under false pretences is a crime. And I should think it a very serious one when it means playing games with people's lives.

So when does our RCMP arrest Professor Lapierre? No. Never. Whether you get arrested in this province depends on who you are, and who your friends are.

It's rather like the Lac Megantic disastter which seems to have been caused -or, at least, exacerbated -
by the behaviour and possibly the criminal lying of an oil company. The result was dozens of dead. So where's the investigation? Where is Robert "Smirky" Goguen with his fliers for your mail box?
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Then came the final touch.

Alward announced there would be discussion to reach a peaceful deal. What a nice man!

What a lying ass!

Reach a deal? How? The protesters at Rexton were not asking for a better deal. They were stuck with a huge, international company moving onto their land to do things they were never consulted on or even informed about. They weren't looking for a deal. They were saying no. How the hell do you reach a compromise with no?

And how are native peoples to accept a deal with governments that have betrayed them, impoverished them, brutalized them, and lied to them for centuries? And as a final touch, what the hell was any New Brunswick government thinking of when it gave away treaty lands without consulting the native peoples from the start?

As for SWN, the only acceptable compromise would be letting it go ahead with exploration - which is precisely what native peoples have said no to. And all the shale gas companies have made it clear they mean to go ahead no matter what anybody thinks.

The choice was yes or no. That was it. How could Alward be dumb enough to think it was possible to find a middle ground between yes and no?

It's possible that Alward was not being dumb - or smart. It's possible he was being sly. Setting up the discussion makes him look as though he's being moderate and reasonable. And if there is no moderate solution? Well, that might well provoke a reaction. But then the Irving press will be able to blame the native peoples for it.

Tell you what, Alward, I have a compromise suggestion. Tell SWN it cannot explore for shale gas on any native territory. Instead, it will be given a free hand in Rothesay.
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Who is responsible for what caused Rexton? Lots of people - going all the way back for centuries. It's been made worse lately by the greed of big business, the bought politicians who work for their masters - and who are the ones to pass the laws, set up courts to enforce them, and control the police.

By definition, then, anything they do is right. After all, it's the law (that they made) that's being enforced. Follow it closely. Because you're next.
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Take in the picture. This is a society in advanced rot. The economic and political leaders of this province don't lead. Instead, they lie; they manipulate; and they are stunningly ignorant. They are corrupt and corrupting.

The result is frustration and, sometimes, violence. Eventually, the whole society simply breaks down. That's where we're going.
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Norbert is off on another rant about civil servants and how stupid they are. Right. They ain't smart like that there Alward or Mr. Hemming who can't seem to find a collar in the right size. This time Norbert rants at the civil servants in education - a subject of which Norbert knows nothing at all.

In fact anyone with any experience on the field knows that civil servants are normally the most intelligent and skilled people in government. Indeed, and though big business likes to forget it, there was a period in the 1940s and 50s when big business normally sent its most promising executives to study the methods of the civil service.

Grow up, Norbert.