Jan. 17: Harper, and the biggest blunder.....

...since native peoples asked Jacques Cartier to stay for supper.

(I'm starting this one on the evening of Jan. 16 because there's something I skipped yesterday to fit in the bit about that Business magazine in the TandT.)

The purpose of Harper's grand and well-publicized tour of Israel is simply to help him nail down the Canadian Jewish vote in the next federal election. That's how he sees it. Now let's see it as Americans will see it.

The US, which has given Israel virtually its whole defence budget for decades, is now in crucial negotiations to avoid a war with Iran that is unnecessary and, in fact, wrong-headed. These are the negotiations with Iran which are really a product of American paranoia because a)there is no evidence Iran is working on a nuclear weapons programme. Even US intelligence tells us it does not have any such evidence.

Obama knows that a war with Iran would not only be bloody but would destabilize most of the world for years, and might very well touch off nuclear wars involving the US, Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Israel - all of whom have a stake in this.

Israel, the country that lives on US aid, is openly doing its best to wreck the negotiations and set off a war. Saudi Arabia is on the Israeli side for this one.

So far,  Obama has had a hard time from Israel - though Israel is the nation that has lived off the US for decades. Israel openly is trying to wreck the negotiations. For Harper to go on a grand tour, pledging his eternal love for Israel and unwavering support for Israel at a time like this, is a public slap in the face of Obama.

If I were Obama, I'd take the US back to where it left off in the War of 1812.

At best, Obama faces a situation in which he might be able to avoid an Iran war by giving Israel its wish to destroy and occupy Palestine. But I'm quite sure that even that will not satisfy the Israeli government. It wants absolute dominance in the region - and that means the destruction of Iran. It's possible, even likely, that Israel will launch the war itself, using the nuclear weapons it doesn't admit it  has. (They would need the nuclear weapons because Israel cannot beat Iran with conventional weapons - and it knows Iran has no nuclear weapons to shoot back with.)

Harper has interfered in a situation that, at best, could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. At worst? Well, think of all those nuclear bombs in the US, Russia, China, Pakistan, India - and Israel.

And why is Harper taking this desperate risk?

Because the most important thing in the world for him is to get himself re-elected.  What a pack of brainless scum we have for a federal government!
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Well, the big pitch is on, and quite obviously with the approval of the Irving leadership. It held its first meeting yesterday - and today it was front page, written up by, I'm sorry to say, by Cole Hobson who could have been a good journalist but seems to have decided he'd rather be Brent Mazerolle.

Moncton's 2014 economic summit is on, with a gala dinner and speeches by prominent businessmen, the ones who are going to decide on our "One Region - One Vision" (the vision approved by our social betters.) This is really contemptible in a democracy, a repeat of Irving's conference so he and his buddies (and toadies) could plan the future of New Brunswick.

There were lots of speeches, all of them saying exciting and insightful things like "we must move forward".

There was a pretence this all  had something to do with community and with people but, in fact, the words that appeared again and again were "business leaders", "most prominent leaders". "Community leaders" were mentioned but, obviously, by people who have no idea what the word community means.

None of us unprominent people was there, just our lords who will decide our futures.

Look. Business leaders want Moncton to make money in the same way the owners of Walmart want Walmart to make money - for themselves. Yes, in good times they will hire - but they will hire as few as possible and as cheaply as possible.

But I did not read of anyone there who spoke about working conditions, social environment, income levels, security, of social services. Where are the spokesmen for income levels? Usually, you find these among union leaders. I saw no mention of union leaders at that conference. No. Any income levels will be decided by the "socially prominent".

The seem to have no qualifications whatever to do the planning they claim. They don't even seem to understand the meanings of many of the terms they use.

This is precisely the kind of planning by the kind of people we have seen in control - most notably for the last twenty years.  The result in much of the world has been the corruption of the money institutions causing terrible hardships for millions while the corruptors get their taxes cut and ours raised. And in many countries, we lower classes got hit with the tab for paying off the corruption of the rich.

It has meant the cut of social services just when they are so badly needed, but millions in bonuses for people who make more in a day than most of us do in a year. It has meant that because of the greed of the upper levels of big business, millions of Americans are suffering terribly in a suffering whose effects will be felt for generations. And that suffering will come to us in even greater measure than it has so far. The dominance of big business making decisions where it should not be making then has us, quite seriously, on the edge of economic collapse.

Yes, our futures will be decided (one vision allowed) by 300 strutting poseurs with little if any qualifications.

And our mayor took part. Not surprisingly, he seems to be unfamiliar with the meaning of the word "democracy".

Mr.Mayor, a society is made of a wide range of people who have very different social situations and very different views of what they need. There is no such thing as one vision for any region. Mr. Irving's vision of this region appears to be one in which he is very rich and so has a special right to influence people, and a right to interfere in politics.

It's been done before. It doesn't work. And because of that sort of arrogance, we have people who go hungry, people do not have the opportunities of others. That way lies disaster.

That's why we have democracy - to involve everybody, not just the social elite, not just the self-defined leaders of society.

Then, Cole Hobson did a kiss-kiss. Having written the story, he then wrote an op-ed column on it which repeats the tone of the story.

Too bad. When I first read Cole Hobson's work, I thought he could become a real journalist.

Oh, when you read his column, notice how often he refers to business. Not community. Not people. Just business. That's typical of the Irving press. Government is entirely about business. Life is entirely about business.

In fact, government is about people. And far from leading us and planning our lives, the proper role of business is to serve us and our needs.
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The first half of Alec Bruce's column enraged me. He agreed with a report of The Fraser Insitute. That alone had me yearning for a musket over the fireplace. The report was against minimum wages because it says they discourage employment. For a start, that sounds extremely simplistic.

There are a great many countries in this world that have no minimum wage - Haiti, Guatemala, Congo... I can't think of one of them that is noted for high employment.

Then Bruce's tone changed. He talked about the realities of the employment problem, and did a very good job of it. Then he went to propose a more intelligent solution though - as he says - it is not likely to be achieved in our political climate.

And I'm afraid I very much agree with him on that.
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The editorial speaks strongly against municipalities borrowing money unless, of course, they have some exceptional project like, say, an events centre. Then you can borrow like crazy, even with the world in danger of financial meltdown.

Luckily, we also have columns by Suzuki and Gwynne Dyer.
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The banner news for NewsToday is that Prince Charles and Lady Camilla will visit the Maritimes in May. Isn't that wonderful?

Well, it wet my pants.

Jan. 16: The idiot story of the week...

In NewsToday, "Prime minister (Harper) to visit Israel."

He's going to tell Israelis how much he loves them and is on there side for ever and ever. That's the sort of letter I regularly get from my four-year old granddaughter.

He's not actually going to do anything for Israel. He never has. But he's on Israel's side. (clap, clap).
Then he indulges in a touch of racism. He says that Israel is a light of democracy and freedom
 in a region of darkness.

Oh, really?  Israel operates prisons of torture. Those  Palestinians who are also citizens of Israel are not permitted to walk on certain streets or to live in certain districts. They can be kicked out of their homes at any time, and their neighbourhoods demolished. And it happens. Often.

Indeed, Palestinians who live in Palestine are kicked out of their homes and off their land routinely so the land can be (illegally) given to Israeli "settlers". The Israeli government is doing that right now as part of its attempt to wreck the Israel/Palestine peace talks. I think it will succeed. More than that,  I expect Israel will soon take over all of Palestine, sending off all its people as refugees.

Sharon, the former president who just died was found guilty by the UN of the deliberate murder of Palestinians, men, women, and children who were his prisoners. It was about that time he said he wanted to kill every Palestinian baby he saw.

Israel defied world opinion to get a nuclear bomb over fifty years ago. It also - illegally - tested that bomb off the coast of South Africa. In fact, It offered to sell nuclear weapons to a South African government which, at the time, was a White supremacist government.

And the arab world is a "region of darkness? Well, Saudi Arabia certainly fits that description. But it is an ally of both Israel and us. Ditto for the emirates. Ditto for Jordan.

You don't like Iran? Well, Iran used to be a quite acceptable democracy. But Iranian democracy was destroyed by Britain, France and the US. It was the West that made Iran, for years, a brutal and thieving dictatorship. And it was the West that forced Iranians into the arms of the ayatollahs.

Oh, incidentally, Jews live in Iran. And they don't get kicked off their land or discriminated against. I taught several Iranian Jews who didn't see Israel as a democracy or a place to admire in any way.

Incidentally, if Harper would (or could) read a little  history, he would find out that Jews were terribly prosecuted for over a thousand years - IN EUROPE - ALL OVER EUROPE. NOT JUST GERMANY.

AND NO WESTERN COUNTRY WOULD GIVE THEM HELP, NOT IN EUROPE, AND NOT IN THE AMERICAS. THEY WERE GENERALLY NOT PERMITTED TO ENTER CANADA FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 1930S UNTIL SEVERAL YEARS AFTER THE WAR.

We and the others supported the creation of Israel, but not in support of the Jews. We and the US and the Europeans did it so the Jews wouldn't come here. They wanted to get rid of the Jews. Historically, the people who persecuted the Jews were us and our ancestors.

The people who did NOT persecute the Jews through all those years were the arabs. So now, ignorant and/or self-righteous frauds like Harper are punishing arabs for things that they never did - but that we did.

And, while we're speaking of Harper as an ignorant and self-righteous fraud, there are Europeans, the Romas, who have also been persecuted across Europe and the West for centuries. Romas, too, were Hitler's targets in the death camps. Romas, too, were gassed and incinerated. They suffered a holocaust. They still are persecuted across Europe.

And now, almost eighty years later, Harper still refuses to let Romas into Canada. What a great guy!

A professor at UPEI says Harper's visit will make the world sit up an take notice.

No, it won't because the whole world will know what the Canadian press hasn't figured out.

This visit is the opening move in our next federal election. Harper needs the money and the support of Jewish voters. Many Jews do NOT support Israel. They are offended by its abuse of other peoples, it's brutality, its lack of democacy. But Jews in Canada have pretty well been rounded up and branded by the pro-Israel movement. For those of us who grew up in Jewish circles, it's saddening to see the principles of Judaism being destroyed in this process.

When I first encountered Jews, I was drawn to them because their Judaism was more Christian than any Christianity I had known (or have come to know). Now, the Jews I admired are cut off in their own communities.

Oh, and Harper will be taking 200 people along with him. As well as the usual aides and reporters, there will be a large contingent of "prominent Jewish leaders in Canada". So that's jet seats (of the better sort) and accommodation and meals for 200 people for 2 weeks. Your tax dollars are work. Several millions of them.

Just to make sure Harper gets the Jewish vote in the next election.

Where is Mike Duffy when we need him?

Oh - for those who say I'm anti-semitic, read some  history. Most Jews are not semites. The Palestinians, however, are semites. Then such people might well google Jews for Peace in the Middle East, and get a little more of the truth.
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TandT editors should listen to CBC news more. Yesterday, it had a story the Irving press still doesn't have.  Nobody is permitted to visit the land that is being cleaned up after the train wreck at Plaster Rock. (Crews are testing for contamination, and have already removed some soil for disposal).                                                                                                        .

Okay, okay. Work is going on. Can't have people there. Okay.

So can we get a report on what it is they're finding? Sorry. Government ministers and civil servants have no time to talk ot anybody because they are terribly, terribly busy watering the ducks.

In short, us peasants aren't allowed to know what contaminants there are, how much there is, how dangerous it might be.

Couldn't they at least get professor Lapierre to look at it?
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Nothing on the editorial page. Alec Bruce, sadly, buys the idea that in a democracy a self-selected group, largely of business people, has the right to plan our civic future for us.

The op ed, luckily, has Beth Lyons. Rod Allen seemingly cannot resist being cutesie. But this time it isn't bad.
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Picking through the garbage, I came across Atlantic Business, a magazine that regularly comes with the Irving paper. It  is, according to its cover, smart, sophisticated, provocative, powerful. That alone, I guess, should be a warning.

The cover story is about the Richard Oland murder mystery. And I wondered. What the hell does this have to do with business news?

Then there's an interview "The World According to John" an extraordinarily arrogant exchange in which "a billionaire seafood baron" says that business, not government, must lead Atlantic Canada to prosperity.

Way to speak up for democracy, John. But, say, haven't billionaires controlled Atlantic governments for generations? So how come we're not prosperous now?

The editor writes a column about her boss, as though she were twelve, and  he was Justin Bieber.

There's an almost incoherent article on Obamacare and health care. I think it's about how we should allow private business a bigger piece of the health care market. Gee! If that is the point, then it's kind of dumb to start off with the failings of Obamacare. Most of its problems and inefficiencies are precisely because of private business involvement.

Most of the articles are either trivial or ignorant so that as I read it, I thought "Irving press" because it's the same style as the TandT.

Like the TandT, this is essentially a propaganda sheet. My guess is that it's aimed at small businessmen; and the point of it is to kid them that they have the same interests as big business. It's a magazine that tells people what they want to believe no matter how silly it is.
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You know. Like Don Cherry

Jan. 15: Well, we don't have to think about it anymore.....

.....because the Harper government isn't going to do anything about oil tankers on our railways. We're not going to hear any more about the police raid on Irving offices. The Transport Safety Board has no intention of doing anything serious. That was  all clear in yesterday's reports. And there's no follow-up today, no questions, no explanation, no opinion.

Eric Lewis, on he opinion page and Brian Cormier had nothing to say about it. Lewis had a more important issue to deal with, a crisis in how many time pop groups are allowed to play at an East Coast Music Association Week.

Brian Cormier had a "stop the press" item about what it's like to have a cold.

The bottom line? Harper is so eager for Europeans and others to start ripping off our resources, he doesn't care what investors do to this country. Effectively, there are not going to be any environmental rules to get in the way, and no investigation of any accidents, no matter how many people get killed.

Harper's thinking is typical  of that of the big business he serves. There is no future. There is only now.

He is not only the worst prime minister Canada has ever had. He is also the most dangerous. If he gets another term, the damage would almost certainly be permanent.

It may be permanent now.
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The lead story on p. 1 is about the "Summit", the New Brunswick version of citizen involvement. It's a meeting of "300  leaders from different sectors . This meeting is called "One Region - One vision".

Who decided that these people are leaders? Well, they did. The core of this leadership is largely self-appointed and represents business. There are some other groups there, though even they seem focussed on the business element of their work.

Not that it matters what they think. All of them, after all, were chosen by that leadership core of business - and it shows throughout the story. There will be a few people from "culture" and "arts"; but it's a safe bet they'll be there as potted plants.

The whole tone of their statement is about the business future. And it's arrogant. And it's juvenile.

Where is the evidence that these people have any competence to plan the development of a city? Where is there any sight they have the support of the citizens of this democracy? Aren't we all supposed to  have an equal voice in the future of this city?

There are serious issues to deal with in the condition of housing now and in the future, the influence of big business in city affairs, issues of the homeless, the hungry, of mass transportation, of facilities for chidren..... This list could go on and one; and running a pizza parlour or a hockey team or even a big business.

"These people talk to others, so we selected those because they are leaders." Huh?

I talk to others. Does that make me a leader? And shouldn't we decided who our leaders are? After all, it is our city.

But, no, what we are getting here is a gathering of medieval barons who see only the economic side - and even for that side see only their own interests. Like Mr. Irving's famous conference to plan New Brunswick's future,  this is anti-democratic, largely ignorant, heavily biased, arrogant, and just plain silly.

The most arrogant part is the conference title "One region - One vision." Yep. They'll  develop the vision. And that'll be it. One Region - One Vision. Their vision.

Heil.


This isn't a news story. It's simply a press handout from the organizers. I saw no evidence the reporter asked a single question of them or anybody else.
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In NewsToday, environmental experts are readying to test the water, soil, etc. at Plaster Rock for contamination. I don't see why.Within hours of the train accident, before anybody could get to the site, Mr. Alward said it was fine.

There's also a big, big story about how Justin Bieber threw eggs at a neighbour's house. So there wasn't room for the story that Israel may be close to launching a war on Iran, a war that could draw in nuclear powers, a war that Canada has pledged to support on the side of Israel no matter who starts the war or why.

Why should Canada join in such a war? Because that promise means that Harper gets the organized Zionist vote in Canada.

You want time to discuss that? Sorry. The promise has already been made. Remember that next Nov. 11 when you are told how our soldiers died in two world wars to protect our right to have parliament decide
 for or against war.
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The editorial is the one you might expect on the university strikes. The profs are, they say, "Out of Touch" and "Universities must cut costs, emulate business world."
1. A university is not a business.
2. There is no evidence that cutting costs helps in a recession. In fact, the opposite is true.
3. To equate cutting costs with cutting other people's salaries is just a teeny bit simple-minded.
Business has cut its costs by lowering pay and laying people off. However, it has maintained even bigger costs by maintaining its record profit margins, and its obscenely high salaries to executives.
In short, business has not really cut costs at all - and seems to only if, like the editor, you play with words or don't know what they mean.

There is, indeed, "...a disconnection with reality here."  But it's the editor who needs to be plugged back in.

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The shocker is Alec Bruce's column.

This is pure, gutter journalism. It tries to dispute Neil Young's criticism of Alberta's oil sands by a series of irrelevant and personal attack on him. I am not a lover of rock music or of stars of any sort. (I leave that sort of thing to the editors of the TandT who devote at least a page of the paper each day to that form of worship.)

But simply ridiculing Young personally is really Norbert's style rather than Bruce's.

Bruce even quotes the Harper government on this one. Imagine that, quoting the government which has shown nothing but absolute contempt for the environment, and has demolished most of our environmental protection to make a buck for billionaires.

And to suggest we cannot live in a world without oil is absurd - as absurd as the notion that we can abuse our atmosphere, our oceans and our soil forever without causing any harm.

Eventually, we will run out of stuff. I look forward to Bruce's column on that when he rants at the gods for not planting enough oil  Or maybe he'll just get mad at the oil for not being there.

Actually, the problem will come before that. World supplies are running low. Yes, there are other supplies, perhaps in the Arctic. But they're more expensive to get out. And they will soon be getting much, much more expensive, so expensive that heating a house or driving a car will be a ruinous cost.

The reason there are so many wars in Africa and so much danger of more of them in tast is precisely because supplies are running down just as more industrial countries, like China, are emerging.

We can't live in a world without oil? Tough. We're going to have to. That should be a lesson from every childhood. There are some things we cannot have.

Jan. 14: a flurry of snow.....

NewsToday has two, big stories on oil train derailments - and put together, they add up to zero.

In the case of Plaster Rock, the Federal Transportation Safety Board says it will focus on the broken wheel.  Right. Fires are caused by broken wheels. Yeah. Everybody knows that.

Look, guys, if you want to see how important  (or unimportant) broken wheels are in this, there are lots of crashes in Canada and the US similar to the Plaster Rock one. So why not just get somebody to look at the records of those crashes to see how many involved broken wheels?

A spokesman for CNRail is quoted as saying about the DOT 111 tankers cars themselves, "Our CEO has called for a phase-out of these (cars), but it's an industry-wide issue, not just a CN issue."

Oh, well then, we won't waste any time worrying about that.

Another story says there's no quick-fix for the safety problems of DOT 111 cars - and the problem goes back for  decades.

Gee. Then if our safety board and rail companies and oil companies (and federal government had started working on the problem decades ago, we wouldn't have a problem now - and 47 people in Lac Megantic would still be alive. Obviously, they have  not lifted a finger to deal with it - or even to notice it - and they still don't intend to do any heavy lifting.

Where are all these super-smart executives that I read so much about, the ones so skilled they are worth millions of dollars a year? (The reality is they get that money because they are working for the oil and rail companies. They aren't working for us. And that includes the government agencies.)

A government spokesman says the government will soon introduce "new and tougher" standards. In fact, as the article says, those standards are not from the government. They were adopted two  years ago, voluntarily, by the rail industry. All that's going to happen now is that Mr. Harper is going to make a speech saying the rules are now official - which changes nothing whatever.

And, in any case, those news rules do not seem to  have prevented any accidents in the two years they have been in effect.

In other words, these two stories, together, say our government (yawn) intends to do nothing except in many years from now. Maybe. -except to announce its tough, new standards that aren't really new, and we'll get fliers in the mail about it with Robert Goguen's familiar smirk on the cover.

Meanwhile, the oil industry will be running its death trains across the country.
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Generally, there's little news in any section of the paper. There is a lot of trivia, instead. That's because the whole purpose of the Irving press is to keep people in ignorance. The only important news in Section A is about the faculty strike at UNB, and the one looming at Mount Allison.

I supposed the Irving press will soon openly come down against the strikers. I mean, paying millions of dollars to execs and billionaires   (which is also our money) makes sense because - well - it makes sense.

But the problem is really worse than that - and some of it is the fault of the universities. They are absurdly expensive for students in a democratic society. They place far too great an emphasis on research to the neglect of teaching - and that's expensive as well as being a waste of time in a great many courses. And they are rapidly falling under the control of big money, thereby serving big money - and not us or their students.
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I have no idea what Norbert's column is about. I think it's a rant about how he hates environmentalists. But it somehow becomes a "when I was kid". "Often," he says, "we used stairs because there wasn't an elevator or escalator in every building."

Wow, Norbert. You had stairs?

Everyone should read the op ed piece, "Health care can be fixed with new ideas, not new money." Essentially, it's an attack on those (like insurance companies) who want to "improve" care by privatizing it, bit by bit.

Expect to see more pressure to privatize. Corporations will not be happy until they get all our money. The is no limit to their greed, no matter what it does to the rest of us. The opinion column points out that there is no need for privatization - and huge improvements can be made simply with better organization.

Good column.
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Seems I have a bit more space here - and there's something I've been meaning to talk about. Harper spent 30 million on his "War of 1812" year. (just like he also spent some 2 million advertising a government programme that actually doesn't exist. But don't worry. He made up for it, saving hundreds of thousands  by scrapping years of environmental research. Our Stephen doesn't waste money.)

At the end of the 1812 do, he cited how Canada and the US fought their war - but have been friends ever since.

Drivel.

From 1815 to 1903, almost all US presidents at least threatened Canada. After the American civil war, Irish veterans of the war acquired weapons and set up training camps near the Canadian border in a public preparation to invade Canada. They were thoughfully protected and supplied by the American government.

They then launched a series of attacks (passing American customs with no questions asked) on Canada called The Fenian Raids.

When the Canadian government spoke of sending troops to the new Canadian West, it was warned by the US government that it would be offended by such a move. The US had thousands of troops in the American west. But it would be offended if Canada did the same.

That's why when Canada sent an army. It wasn't called an army. It was called the Northwest Mounted Police. Mustn't offend our "friends".

President Theodore Roosvelt threatened to use US troops to settle the question of the border between Canada and Alaska. It worked. the British government, which had been negotiating on the issue, gave way to the US claim.

God bless the king, our British friend.

Presidents since then haven't spoken of invasion, but they have spoken of union of Canada and the US. And guess who would be the very junior partner in that.

They also desperately wanted to possess Newfoundland after World War Two. And they almost got it.

The US is and always has been the leader in challenging Canada's right to the Arctic. It routinely sends ships through the region in defiance of Canadian law.

Mr. Harper is full of it. As he well knows, there is NO SUCH THING as friends between nations. Americans and Canadians, as individuals, might be friends. But they don't run the country. That's done by - well, in North America, it's done by big business - and it is neither friendly nor sentimental.

It took the US three years to enter World War One, and almost three to enter World War Two. Why so long? The US, from the start, claimed to favour the British side for its values, and to be all for it. So how come it just watched?

Because it didn't give a damn what happened to Britain.

By 1942, the British had taken a terrible pounding, both military and civilian. The war was lost. Churchill knew it. He wrote it. He wrote that he had even thought of making a deal with Hitler by giving him part of the Empire.

The US didn't lift a finger, apart from selling supplies. In fact, it was not the US that declared war against Germany. It was Germany that declared war on the US, a month AFTER Pearl Harbour.

So why didn't the US do more to help Britain?

Well, for a start, there were important people in the business world (like Henry Ford) who thought Hitler had the right idea. But, more important, US business would have been happy to see Britain lose because then - ah, then the US would be able to scoop up all that empire, and make money out of it as Britain had.

Indeed, much of its time after the war was taken up with trying to get the old, European colonies -like Vietnam. During the war, Roosevelt warned the Free French not to send ships to liberate its colony Vietnam. When France did, its ships were bombed by American aircraft - quite deliberately.

Ever since the war it has been trying to pick up all those pieces of empire that Europe lost after 1945. That's why the US helped destroy democracy in Iran. And that's what the wars in Africa and the Middle East are all about to day.

This is not a criticism of Americans or even of American governments. All countries behave that way. There are no friendships, except of convenience.

Very few people seem to understand that. They fall for the political talk about friends and enemies. It's talk that manoeuvers us into ridiculous situations (like invading Afghanistan).
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Oh, a small item that didn't make the Irving press. Russia has, apparently, pretty solid evidence that the terrorist attacks aimed at upsetting the Olympic Games were organized and financed by Saudi Arabia.
Russia has vowed retaliation.

Now, Saudi Arabia is "friends" with us, Israel, the US...and it's an enemy to Iran. Those countries could almost certainly be drawn into it. At least three of them have nuclear weapons.

And I'm not at all sure that China could afford to sit and watch.

But you can be sure of one thing. Nobody will be making any decision on the basis of friendship for anybody.

Jan. 13:You, me, and all of us....

All us people can be terribly insensitive. This is something I should have mentioned regarding the front page of Leisure and Travel on Saturday.

The story is about a family that visited Haiti as part of an enormous shipload of moneyed holiday-seekers. They saw, according to the writer, the real Haiti. "The real Haiti", it seems, is not poverty-stricken, has little crime, and wasn't touched by the earthquake. No, "The real Haiti" is a beach, a remote part of the island, and a monster pleasure ship that provides accommodation and excellent restaurants.

The local people are permitted on the beach only when invited to entertain the sun-bathers or pour drinks. But you can see them if you go to their "quaint" village. The article doesn't say so, but quaint means the villagers have no medical facilities or school or plumbing. It means they will die much younger than the tourists. It means they earn less in a year than a tourist might spend on the ship for supper and a half-decent wine.

The writer notices that the rest of Haiti has high rates of crime and poverty. But doesn't say why.

The why is that Haiti has been pillaged for two hundred years by  France, Britain and the US. For most of the last hundred years, it has been under the control of brutal dictators appointed by the US government. They have murdered, robbed and raped at will. That's why Haiti is the poorest country in the hemisphere. That's why big business makes big money out of fruit plantations, and clothing sweatshops where workers are lucky to earn 2 or 3 dollars a day. That's why Haiti has no plumbing or education system or medical system to speak of.

And the earthquake relief? The US has never given the amount it promised. And most of it went to big time promoters who put it in there pockets, charged it to consulting fees, then deposited it in offshore banks.

When Haiti did insist on on election and chose a priest who actually introduced all those things the country wanted and needed, big business got mad, staged a fake invasion, and the US government sent in troops to "protect" Haiti - and whose first act was to deport the elected president, and install an American puppet once again.

They called it "peacekeeping", and Canada, to its eternal shame, took part by sending troops and police.

That's why Haiti is poor and has a high crime rate, little plumbing, and no safe water.

But we don't have to see that. We can go to a lovely beach with an excellent restaurant on board ship, and we can visit the "quaint" village. That's the "real" Haiti.

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The news is so little and so trivial that I at first saw nothing worth mentioning. Then a headline at the bottom of the last page of section A caught my attention. "Train's need stronger wheels: CN Rail".

Yep, I thought. That's the problem. It's all them there steel wheels breaking off and bursting into flames that's the problem. Then I read the story.

It doesn't mention wheels. The story is about how the old, DOT:111 tank cars need to be replaced with tankers built of stronger steel. The world "wheels" does not appear. So how did it get into the headline?

Well, as a rule, a paper's editors write the headlines. So why write one that draws attention to the wheels and not to what the story says?

Well, Lac Megantic was caused by the old, DOT:111 cars. That was an Irving shipment. Plaster Rock was caused by the old DOT:111 cars. That was an Irving shipment, too. A reader wrote in to say I was picking on Irving, and it's the railway that's responsible, not Irving.

On that,  we still don't have a final report for the first accident on whether Irving had mislabelled its shipment. For the second, I'm quite sure that Irving has enough clout with CNRail to demand what sort of tankers are to be used. And with 47 deaths not far behind them, I would wonder about the intelligence and/or humanity of executives who did not do so.
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I don't disagree with Alec Bruce's column on the need to plan for NB's future....well, I sort of do disagree ......

In New Brunswick, all planning seems to begin with economics and to confine itself narrowly to economics. All solutions are confined to jobs. It's a model that has never worked. Almost invariably, what you get are projects great for big business but with little impact on the province.

New Brunswick isn't just grand economic schemes. It's people. The people and what we want to achieve for them is an essential part of the planning process.  All we ever seem to discuss are quick fixes like the events centre, and the prosperity which will, maybe, arise from them. And our track record is bad.

We need to include people in the mix. What do they need (besides jobs)?  How do combine drawing investment with meeting those needs?

Steve Malloy has a thoughtful column that is well worth a read. it's about railway accidents and pipeline projects. He has a nasty mind, does young Steve. But he could be bang on.

Craig Babstock's column proves that Craig Babstock doesn't understand statistics. Not his fault. Journalism schools don't teach nearly as much as they should on this topic.

He quotes a poll showing that three-quarters of New Brunswickers don't approve of protests that break the law. Well....

1. the poll was taken, obviously, in the midst of interest generated by the shale gas protest, largely of native peoples. That will affect the results. Those in favour of shale gas won't approve of protests - because they don't approve of that particular one.
2. Racism is not unknown, not even in New Brunswick. The identification of a group as a protestor will draw general condemnation of protest.

Now, consider this...
1. it is the year 1777. Americans are polled on the issue of whether they support protests that break the law. How do you think that one would come out?
Or a similar one in France after the king was deposed?

2. Polls were taken at the time when the Arab Spring was raising great expectations of change in the arab world. There were protests, many protests against dictators. There was lots of violence on both sides. What poll results  would you have got on that from a North American sample? (We don't have to guess. They supported the protests.)

3. When the US invaded Iraq, it did so illegally under international law. In this, the US government was carrying out out a highly illegal and bloody protest against...something. Do you think a poll of Americans would condemn that? I rather doubt it.

Statistics sound scientific. They aren't. It's a general rule that you can use statistics to prove whatever you want. In fact, you can use  the same set of statistics to prove either side of just about any issue.

In the case of Rexton, it was made worse by bad reporting, and by Alward's hysterical cry when a very, very few guns and knives were found, "It's an armed camp."  Hell, I can show him far bigger "armed camps" in every village of New Brunswick.
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John Stockwell was a very high placed official in the CIA up to the 1970s. In fact, he was often in charge of whole wars, the wars the US never talks about, the ones carried out by "special forces", the usually illegal wars that the news media rarely mention. According to John Stockwell, his thirteen years at the highest levels of this organization saw some 6 million people killed by such "wars". There were probably more people killed in those illegal and secret wars than in all the other wars of the time.

He has testified to this quite openly before Congress. But the news media paid little attention.

In one of his wars, the purpose of the action was to help the  whites of South Africa put down the rebellion against their rule There was very, very little reporting on this one. But the US took a full hand in supplying, leading, and and assisting the white government to kill its black population. Oh, yes, it also hired white mercenaries to help out South Africa's white rulers.

Cuba sent troops to help Mandela's followers (Mandela was in jail). But the press never mentioned that, either.

In 1978, Stockwell released a book, published by W.W.Norton "In Search of Enemies" that talked about the brutalities, the torture, the indiscriminate killing - and the utter uselessness of those wars. (Perhaps you saw the review in the Times and Transcript - or perhaps not). The book became a world best-seller.
The government would have loved to jail him as a traitor a la Snowden. But it's a little tough to put a man of his record of government service on trial.

For a speech by him about his work, I don't have a proper URL, but google informationclearinghouse.info America's Third World War.

Jan. 11: Thank you to a reader who sent me....

....an announcement by Reuters, made on January 8.

The five oil cars and four propane cars that went off the rails were carrying oil and propane at the request of Irving. It was going to an Irving refinery. That leads to two questions.

How come the Irving press seems not to know about this?

And why is it wasting time babbling about a broken wheel? The damage at lac Megantic wasn't caused by a broken wheel. It was caused by antiquated oil cars that burst open and burst into flame. Were the oil and propane carriers at Plaster Rock of that same vintage?

Having been involved in the Megantic disaster and at heavy cost of life, wouldn't you think Irving Oil would be super careful in later shipments?  Apparently not. Apparently getting the job done cheaply is the only factor. We're just lucky that train jumped the tracks before it got to, say, St. John.

And, as in the case of lac Megantic, Irving spokesmen haven't yet said as much as "excuse me".

Then, in the same bulletin (Jan.8), our rubber duckling premier announced that the fire and spill had caused minimal environmental damage. That statement came within less that 24 hours of the accident. That means Alward said it long BEFORE fire crews could get close enough to the fire to fight it.

But RD Alward was confident there was no environmental damage. Lucky us. Apparently, we have a premier who can see around corners.

By now, Irving Press has given more space to this most recent accident  than it did to the lac Megantic disaster - and told us even less than it did of the earlier case. It has made no mention of the Irving role in both, and very, very little of the problem of old oil cars. Nor have we had any solid news of the RCMP investigation into lac Megantic.

The latter point, however, probably doesn't matter because the Harper government didn't  care about an exploding train that killed 47 people, (none of them rich). It is most unlikely to care about a train that exploded without, by pure luck, killing anybody. And he is certainly not going to allow such accidents to get the way of his pitch to give away Canadian resources to foreign countries.

A front page story today is that we need a new, alternate rail line in the province. That changes the subject nicely. We can all enjoy arguing whether we need a new line. That way, nobody will ask the real questions.

Why did a company that was involved in 47 deaths just months ago send us another train that was obviously as dangerous - or even worse depending on where it exploded? Did it have anything to do with paying as little as possible - and to hell with the safety of the people of New Brunswick?

The big story in NewsToday begins with a photo of the fireball rising about the train wreck. The stories that accompany it again tell us nothing. (ooooh ooooh, look at the big fireball.)
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Lots of other stuff that didn't make the Irving Press.

U.S police forces, as well as being militarized in their weaponry, were given 165 armoured personnel carriers last year. What for? Well, it wasn't for chasing speeders. In fact, there's only thing they are good for. These are offensive weapons for use against large groups of enemy soldiers - or American civilians.
Welcome to the police state in the US of A.

Meanwhile, Canada has an intelligence review committee to oversee spy agencies, and to ensure they operate within the law.

As it happens, much of their spying does go against the law.

As it happens, much of it is spying on environmentalists who are nasty to oil companies and so are considered by some people to be dangerous to Canadian security.

As it happens, the spy agencies report twice a year - to the oil companies.

The review committee has five members.

As it happens, three of the five members are lobbyists or propagandists or board members of oil companies. One is an old and close friend of Harper's who shares Harper's regard for oil companies.

One member, only one, is not a hack for the oil industry or for Harper. But her term will be up in a few weeks.

One them, incidentally, is a New Brunswicker. Denis Losier is on the Board of Directors of Enbridge NB.
Don't that make you proud?

Welcome to the police state in Canada.
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For a biased headline, B7 has a headline saying "liberals trying to drag Peter Mackay into Senate scandal." Note the word 'drag'. That implies the Liberals are doing something shoddy to the Minister of Justice. And the editor who wrote that surely knows that use of the word is to encourage bias.

Hey. MacKay is Minister of Justice. The Liberals are asking him to ensure that the law is enforced in the handling of the Senate affair. Is it evil to enforce the law? Is it wrong to ask the Minister of Justice to enforce the law?

(Well, yeah. Asking MacKay probably is wrong.)
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The editorial is just brainless. It refers to a poll which shows that some three-quarters of New Brunswickers support the police action in Rexton. And one-quarter do not.

From this, the editor concludes that a quarter of the population does not support law and order.

What a twit!

The question was not simply about  law enforcement. It was also about force being applied appropriately as well as legally. I would have real trouble with the three-quarters of the population who think it was applied appropriately.
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That leads us into a related point, the lack of any serious discussion of politics and, therefore, the lack of any understanding of them in this province.

A US poll shows that the American TV audience for news is down by 50% in less than a generation. Newspapers aren't much of a replacement because most have heavy bias. So political discussion usually means little more than idiot "catchphrases" - like shovelling money out to big business is  good because it trickles down again. In fact, it doesn't. If it did, North Americans, all of us, would now be rolling in wealth. Big business has been making huge money in places like Haiti, Guatemala, Congo  for a century and more. And all of them remain mired in poverty, bad health, no education.

There's a letter to the editor that showcases this kind of thinking. "Fomenting chaos is not 'right thing'. It is, according to the writer, anarchy.

Um, well, it's been called fighting for democracy and equality. But I suppose the writer would still say that George Washington should have been hanged. Also Martin Luther King. And Nelson Mandela.

As for law and order, it was well enforced in the USSR under Stalin, and in China under Mao. But if you look them up in the dictionary or any book, I can't imagine that form of government would be described as anything desirable.

As for accusing the native people of fomenting chaos, I didn't realize they had done that. Was it native people who began digging up land to endanger SWN head offices?Was it native people who tried to force police officers off their land? Sounds to me as though SWN was at least equally guilty of fomenting chaos.

The rules for how we should behave should not begin with the state. They should begin with the welfare of the people as expressed in their governments. But here, as in so many places in the "free" world, we don't have any expression through our governments. Instead,laws are made by the very rich to benefit the very rich.

And if you check that in a dictionary, it isn't called law and order. It's called dictatorship.

Jan. 10: Okay. I don't understand it.

Yesterday's Times and Transcript had a full page of revolution with its editorial and two of its opinion columns yesterday. They accepted the reality of climate change.

Now, in Canada and the US, corporations, largely oil corporations, have been spending huge sums of money to deny climate change. They insist it isn't happening. (And one can understand that because it is happening largely as a result of our use of oil. Any serious action to deal with climate change would cost the oil companies uncounted billions.)

In the US, scientists studying climate change are under constant pressure from oil billionaires, especially through law suits which few scientists can afford, but are small change for big oil. In Canada, Harper is a step ahead of the oil industry. He fires climate and environmental scientists (5000 in just the last few years), closes their libraries, and scraps their books and research papers. He also closes down research and monitoring stations crucial to our keeping track of what is happening. (Alec Bruce deals with this behaviour in today's column.)

The TandT has almost never questioned this or even reported it. And, yesterday, the editor and two senior columnists admitted it was happening.

Norbert modified his stance slightly today. In an almost incoherent column, he decided that the change is happening. But we'll get used to it. Sure. We'll get used to massive destruction of farmland, severe shortages of food, severe destruction of animal life (including people), and massive flooding.

But the people of New Brunswick have been well trained in how to respond to this problem. Even now as we have this admission that climate change is real and its consequences are real and it's caused largely by burning oil, you can still hear the murmur across the province, "duh, but oil will create jobs."

That's three columns yesterday and two today that I never thought would appear in the Times and Transcript.

Something is going on. We can only wait for the other shoe to fall.
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Meanwhile, it's business as usual with other projects, notably TandT pimping for the events centre.

The editorial slobbers all over the boots of a developer (resident in Toronto, but born in Moncton) who is going to build a housing and shopping area next to the events centre. In its daily We Say pomposity, the editorial claims "Moncton roots, big city experience great combination for developer."

Why should it make a combination of any sort? Before we get our heartbeats out of control, let's remember that even people born in Moncton will rip us off. It's been done before. At the least, there are sure to be special deals for the developer at our expense. As for big city experience, Rob Ford has that. Maybe we should give him a call.

The news stories follow the same line, seeing a link between a (former) Monctonian as  having some meaning for the events centre. Frankly, the connection is not clear. Visitors are not going to rush to an events centre simply because it has housing nearby.

Then there's the curious part. The events centre will be hugely successful, we are assured. Okay. So how come we're being allowed to build and own it? How come big business isn't swooping in to get all those big, fat profits?

The reason is there aren't going to be any big, fat profits. The world is in a gargantuan financial crisis which is a long way from ending. The US may very well be into a terminal financial collapse.

Great timing to build a hockey rink that's supposed to attract tourists from all over!
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NewsToday is almost all about the train derailment and fire at Plaster Rock. It has pictures, too. But the pictures, like the story, tell us nothing. There are simple questions that a real reporter would have asked, such as..
"Whose oil and propane was that? Who was the shipper? Where was it bound for? Was that the same, very volatile oil that killed 47 people in Lac Megantic? We have now had at least five, dangerous train accidents involving oil. Does that not suggest anything to anybody?"

In that whole, two pages, there is not a word that tells us anything but trivia about the accident - "there are a lot of people who are frustrated and some who are upset." "My boyfriend's  dog has separation anxiety really bad...." and even more that's just as informative.

Authorities are advising people to test their wells before drinking any water. But we know better. Thanks to the TandT, we know that oil (and shale gas with its poisons) doesn't affect wells at all.
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The news on the train derailment was pretty thin stuff. But at least it made the paper. Other kind of important news didn't.

1. In December, Canada lost 46,000 jobs.

2. The Canadian dollar has plunged to some 92 cents US.

3.With three people for every job opening in the US, and with children raised in poverty the major group in American schools, with many, many more people who have simply given up on ever finding a job, the US Congress has been cutting food stamps and unemployment benefits.
Meanwhile, the very rich are making record profits and being given almost total "tax relief". As in New Brunswick, the rich created the recession. But it's the poor who are being blamed for it.

4. Iraq, thanks to the chaos created by the American and British invasion for reasons we still don't know about, is collapsing into a civil war compassionate congressmen, the ones who cut food and other help to poor Americans, are demanding the US set aside large sums of money to supply lots and lots of weapons for an Iraq civil war, just like the weapons they send for Syria.

5. In the midst of peace talks with Palestine, the Israeli government has authorized 1,400 housing units for Israeli Jews in East Jerusalem and West Gaza - on land taken from Palestinians.
Goodbye, peace talks.
Thank you, Mr. Harper, for pledging our support to Israel in a war no matter who starts it.

6.10,000 Nigerian refugees temporarily in Israel rioted because of Israeli racism directed at them. Israeli government leaders now want to deport all of them.
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