Nov. 11: Avoiding the news....

Monday's edition, page A1, has a classic of model of how to tell the news without really telling anything, and putting readers to peaceful slumber at the same time. "Derailment cleanup continues at Moncton's Gordon Yard". It's a very soothing piece of writing that reports a dangerous situation without ever mentioning the dangerous part.

We had a derailment of sixteen cars. But only only six were oil cars, loaded with oil sands crude; and only one had a "minor dripping leak" which spilled 40 gallons of oil which were immediately cleaned up

In short,. nothing to see here. Keep moving, folks.

Oh, and the nearest buildings were several hundred metres away. That's nice. It must be a policy that all trains with crude oil have accidents only when far away from buildings. Anyway, there were brisk winds so that lessened the danger of fumes.

And why did the source who tells us that says that it was 40 gallons of oil? We went metric, remember?
Well, it was probably 40 gallons because the man who said that was a regional manager for public and government affairs - in other words. someone whose job is to make sure people never get the whole story. And the use of the term "40 gallons" was used probably because it sounds less than 185 litres.

We are never directly told who contracted the train. We are simply told that news of it had been e mailed to Irving Oil.

Go ---to----sleep---my---baby......z-z-z-z-z---

It's a well-written story. BrentMazerolle, as I said last time, is a good writer. But this isn't a news story. This is a typical, Irving coverup of a story.

How could a train go off the tracks in a rail yard where it is moving very slowly?  And how could that knock the wheels off it?  Were those cars, by any chance, the older and more fragile type that destroyed Lac Megantic?  Are they still in heavy use? Are they cheaper to hire than the safer cars? How many such trains go through Moncton every day? Do you ever get the impression that the maintenance of our railways (or the absence of it) is making them much more dangerous? And to you ever get the impression that the Department of Transport and the oil companies don't give a damn?

Ask questions, Brent. Do some research. Better still, get away from Irving press. You're too good to be wasted on it. As I read that "news story", I pictured you many years from now, sadly crooning to the Irvings that old, tear-jerker from the Vaudeville stage.....

You made me what I am today.
I hope you're satisfied.
You dragged and dragged me down until
The soul within me died.
You shattered every hope and dream.
You fooled me from the start.
And thought you're not through,
I still love  you.
That's the curse of an aching heart.

Oh, Dale Hobson repeats this "news story" the next day, also on A1. The headline looks more promising. But it's actually the same story, and the same slant.
_____________________________________________________________________________
A6 and 7 for Monday are two pages of commercial and political ads pretending to be remembrances. Someone should really have chat with Robert Goguen about the dreadful smirk he wears for the cameras. It seems particularly inappropriate for the sadness of Remembrance day. Ditto for Sherry Wilson.

Then there's a copy of  'In Flanders Fields". Read it. Then think. It's a fine poem. But think.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch.......

What quarrel did we have in 1914?  And at this point somebody will pound the computer and shout. "We fought for freedom."

No, we didn't. Nobody was threatening our freedom in 1914. In fact,   our allies were France and Britain, both of them the rulers of vast empires which did not allow freedom in most of them. Nor was there the slightest chance of Germany invading Britain given the dominance of the Royal Navy at the time.

US President Wilson talked a good game about fighting for freedom - though he had an empire ruled by dictators in Central America and the Caribbean.  And neither he nor his successors made the world any freer after the war.

World War Two was made necessary by World War One. And we had less choice, really, in entering In World War Two though, again, the US had no problem is staying out till very late. And we were promised, in World War Two, that the purpose was to spread freedom, human equality, and a world centre for peace and order in the UN.

But we were lied to.

Britain and France gave up their empires, but only after years of trying to suppress freedom. Meanwhile, the US took up the old game of conquest and suppression all over the world.

To say that the people of this world are more equal than they were in 1939 is utterly absurd.

And the UN was, immediately after its creation, made powerless by the big kids who either vetoed majorities, or just ignored them.

All of us kids in wartime followed the news very closely, partly because so many of us had father who were away. I was too young to remember Dunkirk, But I vividly remember the shock and horror of grown-ups at the fall of Singapore. On the day Germany surrendered, I was sent home from school for repeated lateness. I didn't know the war with Germany was over. But my mother took me to downtown Montreal where we were swept up in the mobs of rejoicers. Everywhere, I saw the wartime posters that said V..._   (The dots and the dash were morse code for V.) V for Victory. Yeah. we had won. It was delirious. Then, I saw a new poster

"We've won the war. Now we've got to win the peace." I couldn't understand it. We had won the war. We had won freedom and peace for everybody. How could you win a peace?

Not many years later, that seemed confirmed when Canadians fought to bring freedom and peace and democracy and all those good things to South Korea. We were certainly told that was what they were fighting for. And, again, our governments and journalists lied to us. When we entered South Korea, it was ruled by Syngman Rhee who was, sort of, elected by the assembly with 92% of the vote. In fact, he operated as a dictator with the support of the army. People who disagreed with him or annoyed him could expect to be tortured and/or killed. He ruled throughout the Korean War.

He was followed, after a brief interlude,  by Park Chung-Hee who was installed as dictator by a military coup. He had been a World War Two collaborator with the Japanese, and lived on as a brutal dictator until 1979. South Korea was a dictatorship when we went there, and a dictatorship when we left. So much for fighting for freedom.

And what Canada's warring in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq and, probably, Syria, has to do with peace or freedom, I cannot imagine. Yes. The ISIL gang is quite terrible. That's because of a world we created by murdering and exploiting Muslims for over a century. Whole societies fell into disorder and horror. Whole countries, like Iraq, became failed and impoverished states. Many of the victims are turning to religious extremism because that's all they have left. More killing is not going to fix anything. The wars in the Middle East are driven by  pure greed and the brutality and horror of pure greed - from our side.

We should certainly remember those who died - and those who lived, but were mentally and physically scarred. But we should certainly also remember us. We're the ones who sent them. We're the ones who so often accepted lies - and who never took the trouble to figure out the truth. We're the ones who debase remembrance with ads like the Moncton Casino's  "Free Remembrance Day Buffet."

And our government is one of many that is using this day to manipulate us -  to build a false patriotism and a fear and a delusion  which will make it easy for another generation to be sent to kill and to be killed.
____________________________________________________________________________
Nothing much to speak of on the editorial and op ed pieces. To my surprise and delight, I found myself in agreement with Norbert's column for Nov. 11. "Lest we forget, remembrance includes confronting ourselves.  It's very well written, and very insightful. The quotation at the end is from Sun Tzu, "The Art of War". Sun was a brilliant Chinese military leader of long ago, and his "The Art of War" is standard reading for generals-to-be. It's a very short and easy read and, after all these years, still a thought-provoking one.

Alec Bruce wants Premier Gallant to hurry up and make a decision about shale gas. Not to worry. The fix is in. It was in a long time ago. Gallant will make some face-saving measure to approve shale gas. And, if New Brunswickers get mad, they'll just show him. In the next election, they'll vote for the Conservatives.

Louise Gilbert advises us to get a sense of the meaning of war by watching films (good idea) - but most of the ones she cites are American films with war heroes like John Wayne and Don Sutherland????? I've noticed the same tendency in many newspapers. I've never seen a John Wayne film that gave any sense of war. They're all the same as his cowboy flics, all about John Wayne being John Wayne. "The Dirty Dozen" with Don Sutherland is a good film - but it gives very little sense of what war is like.

Much better is "Bridge on the River Kwai" which, if not about Canadians, at least gives some sense of what Canadians captured at Hong Kong had to endure. And two excellent films about the effects of war are German. One is "All Quiet on the Western Front" - about World War One - and "Das Boot" - about U-boat service in World War Two.

And where are the Canadian films on the wars? There are lots of them, many available free on the web, from our National Film Board. For example, there's the excellent series called "The Valour and the Horror". If you look at it, you may be offending the bosses at the Canadian Legion. But that's okay. It's called freedom of speech.

And the NFB also has many, many more films about the war that the Legions bosses agree that we can look at.   Google NFB Canada At War

Generally, the Irving press scores close to a zero for telling us about the Canadian accomplishments in any war. I could read all of their pages without learning that we had a navy, and that it played a decisive role in winning World War Two. There has been nothing about our army in the last hundred days of World War One.  Our air force in both wars seems to have consisted of just a few ace fighter pilots (but not Buzz Buerling who was our leading ace in WW2). In fact, our air force, especially in World War Two, was quite large and, in both cases, suffered terrible casualties. It was also highly effective - not just for the protection offered by its fighters, but for the formidable performance of its Lancaster bombers. Some of the specialized Lancs carried a heavier bombload than the much-touted US Superfortress. (We also had a fighter ace in Korea).

For Nov 10, a full page (one-quarter of the NewsToday) is photos of dogs. I have no idea why.

Nov. 11 NewsToday has two items worth reading. Remember how I started this with Brent Mazerolle's "news" story on the rail accident in Moncton?  Now read NewsToday, page 1, for Nov. 11. "Tories cut transport safety spending". That includes both rail and air safety. The federal Conservatives say that safety is well looked after - but they won't tell anybody where the cuts are. Perhaps we should contact that Irving spokesman to get a fuller understanding.

On B2, "Aboriginal Affairs - short of cash for education, social problems - document",  Harper's boys and girls insist everything in Aboriginal Affairs is going great. But they won't give any information.

Hint - unlike most of our politicians and newspapers, we should start with human needs, and work from there to a budget - not the other way around.

___________________________________________________________________________

On Sunday, I expect our churches bombarded heaven with prayers in remembrance of Canadians who sufffered and died in war - as they should have.

But were there prayers for the other sides? (And before anybody jumps in to say that the other side was evil, millions of those killed or crippled and mentally shattered were innocent, and many of those millions were children, even babies, in Germany, Italy, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America.. As well, millions of those "evil ones" who died were Christians. So I wonder where the "right to life" crowd are on this day when we know that millions of unborn were killed in our wars - and, in Vietnam, are still being born but just for a little while because they have no mouths and no ears and only one eye for the centre of a forehead. That's a gift from the tons of Agent Orange dumped on that country. How come I never saw any placarding right to life Christians when I passed the hospital today?

Well, the important thing,  I'm sure, is that going to church to remember our dead was a gratifylingly self-righteous thing to do.

What the hell. Kill them, as US leaders said of the Vietnamese. And let God sort them out.

Nov. 8, maybe 9

For a start, take a look at Al Jazeera. It's easily available on the web, has a very wide range of news, a very wide range of  opinions, and in all categories is far superior to Canadian Press and Associated Press, and all the others in our daily diet. It's worth regular reading.

And if you are suspicious because it's an ay-rab paper, and so can't possibly have the great minds like the Irving press does, note that its reporters and commentators are from all over the world - including Canada.
_______________________________________________________________________
And, as we approach Remembrance Day, we should learn more about Canadian military history  - you know, so we can learn exactly what it is we are remembering. For the general reader, and very readable, is The Tools of War 1939/45,, published by Reader's Digest.

For more advanced reading, google "Canadian Military History Journal". And, for a forgotten war, read
Laughton.ca/documents/ww1/pub7/pdf     It's one of an excellent series by Laughton. This one is about our forces (rarely mentioned on Nov. 11) that we sent to Russia in the late days of World War 1. The first group was sent to protect Russia (just turned communist) from a German/Finnish invasion. Nobody is sure why the second group was sent - but it was probably to shoot at the communists we had just been protecting from Germany and Finland..

Laughton concludes with a comment that, I think, is quite correct. World War 1 never ended. The partners change; but the dance is never over. World War 1 was probably a cause of the Japanese attacks of World War Two on China and the USSR - as well as the cause of the rise of Hitler and Naziism.

World War Two meant the end of Britain after its centuries of building the biggest and one of the most brutal and looting empires in history. Alas! It also meant the rise of the US, striving for even a bigger empire and even more brutality and looting. (There's much more to say on that. But I'll save it for another day.)

For World War Two and Canada's role, google the NFB film series "The Valour and the Horror", by Brian and Terrence McKenna. The Legion hated it and joined other extremists to trying to discredit and even to ban the film. (I guess banning films was one of the freedoms we fought for). That pressure led to the appointment of all the drooling half-wits in the Senate (or, rather, all the drooling half-wits who were also Conservatives), to do a hatchet job.  I testified at that hearing. Not one of them had a clue of what he was talking about.

As well, for pre-Remembrance Day reading, I would suggest talking a look, a good, long, thinking look at the poem, "In Flanders' Fields".

"......
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you, from failing hands we throw
The torch. Be yours to hold it high.

The poem is not about remembering. It's about hating and killing. It's about world war that never ends. Our partners change. We have danced with Russia and China and Arabs. We have killed Arabs - and looked forward to killing Russians. We have killed Japanese and Germans and Italians. And now we dance with them. The partners change; but the dance of World War 1 goes on.

And we have fought to spread freedom and equality for over a century. Of course. So tell me, in over a hundred years of killing and dying,  and suffering, where is there more freedom? And where, oh where, are all people equal? We don't approach equality, not even here in North America.

Remember the dead. Remember them because they did die at our command. Remember that they died because we sent them to die. By all means, let us remember what is now the hundred-year war of our time.
Remember our responsibility in past wars and wars yet to come. But don't glorify it.

If you do think it's glorious, go to www.informationclearinghouse.@info/article40158.htm  The article is "All My Friends are Dying". Below it is a sign, In War, There are no Unwounded Soldiers.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I'm afraid I have neglected the Irving press. So we'll hit the high points.

For Friday's section A, there is no news worth reading.

NewsToday has yet another story (with photo), the third day in a row, about our social betters getting business hall of fame awards. And yet another story pimping shale gas "Moratorium lowers chance for growth - APEC CEO".  And we'll just forget all these rumours that the price of oil is crashing so that shale gas is running out of a market.

B3 has a cute story about Australian PM Tony Abbott. He says he's going to have a tough talk with Putin about making sure investigators can have access the Malaysian crash site in Ukraine. Relax, Tony. We already know all about it and who did it and how. It appeared in MacLean's Magazine last July. Remember?

We don't come to anything worth reading until the last page, B4. (Yeah, that's it. Four pages for all the news about New Brunswick and Canada and the whole, wide world.) This story is "Israeli force many have committed war crimes: court."  In international waters, Israel gunboats and troops illegally stopped a group of small ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and, also quite illegally, killed quite a few people on those boats. But, what the hell,, says the court, boys will be boys.

So some ships were attacked in international waters. So people were killed. Hell, the international court never bothered with the case some years ago of Israel deliberately attacking USS Liberty, killing dozens of American sailors, some of them machine-gunned in lifeboats. Nor did it intervene when an American cruiser in the same waters shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing all aboard. Hey, everybody makes mistakes. But none of these stories made MacLean's Magazine. So who cares?

The editorial, as always, is trivial and it's about money. That seems to be characteristic of editorials and politicians in New Brunswick. A society is about people. But they rarely talk about (or think about) people. The first question is - or should be - what does our society need? They don't ask it. The money is, we are told, for out benefit. So shouldn't editorial writers and politicans ask first what is needed for us people?

Alec Bruce is in great form on the subject of our out-of-touch (and unspeakably uncaring) governor of the Bank of Canada. This is the man who said young people who can't get jobs should work for free.

Norbert is much better than usual on the issue of sexual assault. Cole Hobson is, well, as trivial as usual. As for Justin Ryan, there is often a lack of any clear meaning to his columns. He writes on immigration. Good. We have a lot to learn about it, some of which should be appearing in this column.  For example, our department of immigration now runs on a heavy diet of bigotry imposed by PM Harper.  For example -

We have well over 500 applicants for immigration we are keeping in prisons - the worst, most violent and dangerous prisons - the maximum security ones. They are there without charge or trial or oversight. They are there because they are from countries that Harper doesn't want - either for unclear security reasons or to please those Canadian voters who share his bigotry. The average stay is  three months, quite long enough to be beaten and/or raped many times Our jails are also notoriously overcrowded - so you don't get to choose your roomie.

The Canadian Red Cross has had a tough fight to be allowed to see them, and to check their condition. It still doesn't have free access to most of them. One man has been there for ten months while our immigration department takes its own sweet time to decide whether to give him a hearing. He's from Iran. And that's bad. When they first tried to deport him to Iran, he slashed his wrists - and for good reason. He's a convert to Christianity. That's a crime in Iran, with an automatic death penalty.

So, we've kept this dangerous Christian in a violent and overcrowded prison for ten months at the price of $250 a day. This year, Harper has given $20,000,000 just to Ontario prisons for room and board for people charged with ----nothing.
______________________________________________________________________________
Section A, which is largely local news, has an exciting story about a local man who saved his five year old daughter from a kidnapper. (Well, it didn't actually happen right in Moncton. It happened in a Moncton suburb called Salt Lake City.) The story is from The Associated Press - so I guess the TandT bought it at a clearance sale.

Beside that story, also from AP,is something rare for section A, a story all the way from Paris about cruise ships all over the world. Maybe it was a two-for-one sale.

Seriously, guys and gals, most newspapers clearly divide their stories into the appropriate sections.

A3 has the story that the jobless rate is dropping - but not because the economy is better. It's because people are leaving. That's interesting. Now, could we please have the whole story? How come, all over the world, big corporations and very, very rich people are making more money than ever before while the rest of us are going downhill? Don't  you know a guy named Irving? Ask him.
______________________________________________________________________
The editorial is about the coming financial crisis of New Brunswick. There is no mention of Mr. Irving or any corporation in it, and not a word about what they cost us.  It does mention Dr. Savoie and it quotes him. But Dr. Savoie doesn't talk - not like us peasantry. Dr. Savoie offers a "discourse."

Pompous ass of an editorialist.

By the way when the Allward government got elected, a man named Irving made a big noise about how he and his buddies were going to plan the economic future of NB. He even, as I remember it, appointed advisors to the minister of finance. So that must mean Mr. Irving has been the one in charge of our spending and taxing for four years going on five, all of them years of "edging ovwe the cliff".

Could Dr. Savoie offer us a "discourse" on that one?

Bill Belliveau has a long list of new ideas for the economy - like making health care more efficient and cheaper, and improving literacy.  (Well, they were new ideas, once upon a time.) Next week, he'll tell us how it could be financed. I tingle with anticipation.

Brent Mazeroffe has a brilliant column about Remembrance Day. It's intelligent; it's insightful; and it's well-written. I take back all the unkind things I  have said about Mazeroffe. You don't write  something like that without having both talent and intelligence.

But, oh, he should get out, and find a publisher who wants people of talent and intelligence.

Then there's a column by James  (but he calls himself Jim because he's that kinda guy) Irving. It's an attack on Enbridge, the natural gas supplier for NB. So, we have a man financially connected to the newspaper writing a column attacking for reasons closely connected to his own financial interest.

I think that is what, in the journalistic world, is called unethical. It shows his contempt for us that he didn't even try to disguise what he was doing. After all, he could have followed the route of publishing it, but having is posted under the name of one of his hack writers in Irving press.

It's unethical. And forget the ombudsperson.  I have never seen any evidence of the ombudsperson making a decision, anyway - and the paper should routinely be reporting that.

Norbert, write one of your indignant columns about it. Write something that will make your moustache wiggle.
____________________________________________________________________________

NewsToday, B 1 and 2 has a great read ""Finding Private Billy MacNally of St. John." It's a story about New Brunswick poet Alden Nowlan; and it includes his poem "Ypres 1915"

I met Nowlan many years ago when I was teaching at UPEI. He came to talk to us, and to read some of his poetry.  I was fascinated by the poetry and by the man and his wife - brilliant, approachable.... it was quite wonderful. And this is quite a wonderful story, and quite a wonderful poem.

B3 has a very, very short story that the Afghan army (the ones on our side) lost over 4,600 killed in just this year. Soon, it will take over all the fighting as NATO pulls out. That's why is has taken so many dead in the past year. Then there are the Canadians who died, the British, and uncounted tens of thousands (at least) of Afghan civilians in 13 years of war.

If you're not impressed by the body count, then consider that the war has cost over a trillion dollars, much of it, perhaps most, going to corrupt US defence corporations, corrupt Afghan leaders (on our side), and corrupt politicians in the US.  American governments will allow a trillion dollars of corruption, but threaten to jail a clergyman and an elderly veteran for giving food to starving Americans.

So why are the US and NATO pulling out? Because they lost. It's over. The US and NATO are staging a dignified retreat - handing the mess over to a government and an army that can't deal with it. Something like the last days of the Vietnam war.

Why did they start the war? I'm damned if I know. They said it was because Afghanistan had planned the killings of 9/11. There is not the slightest evidence it did. Even the FBI has long ago admitted that. In fact, not a single one of the terrorists of 9/11 came from Afghanistan. Most were from our good friends in Saudi Arabia. Nor was the planning done in Afghanistan; it was done in Europe. As for Osama bin Laden, he was from Saudi Arabia. And the Taliban offered to turn him over to an international court - which is the correct way to handle such a case. The US refused, demanding he be turned over to US justice, which would certainly be rigged.

For that matter, we now know the war was proposed several years earlier by a group representing big business and far right politicians. It was called The New American Century, and a leading figure was Bush Jr's vice-president, Dick Cheney. And even they never said what the point of the war was.

We sent troops - also without knowing why. We sent Canadians to die for----what? To help little Moslem girls go to school? We probably killed,starved, crippled far more than we ever sent to school. That's not the fault of our soldiers. It's the fault of us. So, if you're attending a Remembrance Day ceremony and find yourself feeling all self-righteous and patriotic, think about what we, all  of us, agreed to when we sent troops to Afghanistan. That was OUR decision. So, maybe next time, we shouldn't send people to kill and be killed just because it's the brainless, patriotic thing to do. (Actually, we've already done it again - in Iraq.

Remember the words of Pogo, some sixty years ago. "We have met the enemy. And he is us."

What is happening in Afghanistan today is an historic disaster caused by greed and hypocrisy and callousness. And caused by the failure of us "democracy loving" people to take the trouble to find out what it was all about.

And the Irving press gives it a tiny column, much less than what I have written above, which tells us almost nothing. Is it possible that the Irving press doesn't have an editor with brains enough to realize that this is a major story? And that it's time to tell the whole story?

B8 has the bizarre story "Canada intends to buy four F-35s". Wow! We'll be the terror of the skies. One for the east coast, one for the west coast, one for the Arctic, and one for spare parts. And why that aircraft in particular? We don't know. I doubt whether the government knows. This the aircraft that experts in the military and in economics have strongly advised us not to buy. This is an aircraft from an industry notorious for overpricing and gross corruption. And all the dealing has been going on with no information for the Canadian people, and no discussion in parliament.

duh. I'm in favour of it because I'm real patriotic.
________________________________________________________________________
On the Faith page, the sermonette looks, even more than usual, like something written by Tweetybird.
On Remembrance Day, it says we remember our soldiers for protecting our right to freely worship, choose where we live, whom we love..... Now, let's think hard. Which war was it we fought for freedom of worship, of where we live, and whom we love? This is just mindless twaddle.

Oh, and we will be grateful we aren't going to bombed at night in our homes or forced to flee to refugee camps. No. We haven't  had to worry about that since the War of 1812 when the US did it to us. Actually, though, a lot of people have been bombed in their homes or forced to flee to refugee camps because of us. But they're foreigners. And Jesus, like most of us, was white and spoke English. It's in The Bible.

As Dorothy Parker said of a similar peace of slush, "Baby fwowed up."

On C 14, Isabelle Agnew has an excellent column "Society's Views and Reaction to Sexual Assault are Skewed."

C15 has a summary of what sounds like an excellent show coming to The History Channel. It concerns the experience of a young, Dutch girl (now living in Canada) whose family had to hide from the Nazi death squads because they were Jewish. It's like the story of Anne Frank, but with a happy ending. They were given shelter by Christian friends. It sounds excellent and worth watching. But keep a sense of perspective.

Most Dutch Christians did nothing to help the Jews. Anne Frank was almost certainly betrayed by neighbours. Tens of thousands of Dutch men volunteered to serve in Dutch units recruited to serve with Nazi forces, including the ones that rounded up Jews.. After the war, when surviving Dutch Jews got out of the camps, the governments of Dutch municipalities immediately sent them property tax bills for the time they were away.

When I taught in The Netherlands, the village neighbouring my home was the site of a major holding camp for Jews on the way to the death camps. Everyone I met knew the site well. It was really just a huge vacant lot in the middle of the village -with a railway siding running through it. Older people remembered the children, so blonde and fair-skinned that they looked just like Dutch children. But I never heard a word of sympathy for them - unless I count a comment by my landlady.

"They shouldn't have done that to OUR Jews."
___________________________________________________________________________
Sorry this is so long and so late. there was a lot of ground to cover.

Nov. 7: Miscellania

This is not one of the regular blogs. It's one I've started just out of frustration at the lying and corruption that characterizes so much of our news media. I have a little list of items to demonstrate that.

First, MacLean's is Canada's largest news magazine. It can afford to hire the cream of the crop as its editors and writers. So go to Google to check out Maclean's Magazine, July 24. You will find there an article on Putin by Michael Petrous, who is a sort of pit bull of the lying world that journalism has become. (Yes. I know he has a doctorate from Oxford U. Don't fall that that "great name" university guff. Some of the most incompetent (and arrogant and bigoted) professors I ever met graduated from Oxford and Cambridge.)

In this article, Michael Petrous tells the world that the passenger plane which crashed in Ukraine was shot down by Russian-made missiles fired by pro-Russian rebels on the ground. And Putin knew all about it when he caused a crisis by invading Ukraine.

Petrous is lying. He's quite deliberately lying to create fear and hatred.

His article is dated July 24, 2014. At that time the experts appointed to study the wreckage and determine what shot it down had not submitted any report. In fact, they still haven't.  The editors at MacLean's may be unethical; but they aren't stupid. They knew the information for that story does not yet exist. And they certainly knew it on July 24, 1014.

By the way, all the sources he quotes to "prove" that Putin and Russia shot that plane down are US government. He also completely distorts the story of how the Ukraine crisis was caused - even though an agent of the American government is on record as saying she spent over five million dollars to create the mob that overthrew Ukraine's elected government in the first place.

This is not an act of ignorance or incompetence - as one might expect of the Times and Transcript. This is deliberate lying. The effect it will have, almost certainly has had, is to create the kind of hysteria that has been used to suck Americans into disastrous war after disastrous war, and to accept the increasingly abusive police state at home.
______________________________________________________________________________

Second, and unnoticed in most of our news media, is a story from Fort Lauderdale in Florida. A clergyman and a 91-year-old veteran were recently charged with--------giving food to homeless and hungry families. They broke the law by doing it in public. (Well, where the hell else would they look for homeless people?)
They have been warned that if they do it again, they will be jailed for two months.

The veteran said he's going to do it again. So, probably, will the clergyman.

Fort Lauderdale is not an exception. Such laws are becoming common in the US.
___________________________________________________________________________

In Brazil, Cuba, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Finland --and Slovenia, university education is free. (I believe it is also free in The Netherlands; it was when I taught there.) Canada and the US are richer than most of those countries. They are certainly richer than Slovenia and Cuba. So how come Canadians and Americans who want to get a full education have to put families and students into debt and hardship to get that education?

It's understandable in the US. It has to support a corrupt military-industrial complex whose cost runs to some 700 billion dollars to a trillion dollars every year. Where is Canadian money going?
____________________________________________________________________________
US and Canadian news media are full of stories about how the economy is recovering, and unemployment is down. And that's a crock.  First, those lucky few who are getting jobs are getting them at low wages. Secondly, both Canada and the US cook their unemployment figures. People who have given up after months and even years of looking for a job are simply dropped from the unemployed list. That's it - a scratch of the pen is enough to make unemployment officially go down.
________________________________________________________________________
Then there's our political liars - Harper and the Conservatives. Their latest lies are about refugees and health care. Speaking in the House of Commons, a Conservative minister recently said that refugees to Canada are getting full access to medicare. Other Conservative leaders went further. They called it gold-plated medicare, far better than Canadians are getting. The Harper government also pats itself on the back for its saintliness in opening our doors to some of the millions of refugees created by wars -- which were themselves created by the west.

In fact, Canada is one of the least welcoming countries in the world. Harper turned down Romas from Hungary, a country in which Romas live as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. In fact, Hungarians in general have a tough time getting into Canada. However, Harper did relent to let a Hungarian in quite recently; he's Jewish.

He's also down on Syria because of the violence that our side has created, pays for, and equips in that country. Many Syrians, in fact, are Christians, something which seems to have gone unnoticed by Moncton churches. I would advise all Syrians to convert to Judaism. That way they'll get into Canada and the US right away.

Harper's thinking has nothing to do with religious faith. It has to do with getting votes The Jewish vote is very important to him. That's why he loudly defends Israel - even as he does nothing for it. Canada also has a substantial voting bloc of bigots and racists - and Harper's their boy.

As for the refugee burden on out medicare system ---it doesn't exist. Harper has effectively closed off medicare to most immigrants. He even denied it to a man who had escaped Africa after having a leg cut off by terrorists. For those who break into the magic circle and qualify for medicare, our cost per person for refugees has been much, much lower than the cost per person for born Canadians.
_________________________________________________________________________

There's a fuss in Montreal over naming a new bridge after Maurice (the Rocket) Richard. The disturbing note I have seen in some news media is that it's being done because Richard was the inspiration for the separatist movement. That's nonsense.

I knew Maurice Richard and talked with him on several occasions. (It's no big deal. We weren't buddies. It was just that my uncle was his boxing coach.) Maurice would have a horror of anything being named after him. Unlike those who reside in New Brunswick's many halls of fame, Richard was the most humble, self-effacing, and modest of men, and a profoundly devout Roman Catholic. With just a first step onto the ice, he became a real rocket, and the whole auditorium seemed charged with megawatts of electricity. But off the ice, he was quite the opposite.

In the very early days of separatism, some separatists made much of his suspension by Clarence Campbell, league commissioner, the affair that led to a night of spectacular rioting in Montreal. It was the classic Quebec myth, the true Quebecois French-speaking hero against the rich and evil anglo maudit cochon.

In fact, Richard was dreadfully embarrassed by the riot, and never retained any hatred for anybody that I ever heard of.

As for separatism, he tried desperately hard to join the army early in World War 2; but was rejected because of a disability.  And trying to join the army was a most unseparatist thing to do. In later years, he was never a separatist, and never supported the movement.
______________________________________________________________________________

As we know, the price of gas has been dropping spectacularly I'm surprised most news media haven't looked more closely for the cause. Is it possible that the price is dropping because our good friends in Saudi Arabia are cutting their price?  And could that possibly be in order to destroy the profitability of shale gas in North America?  Perhaps, too, we could have some research into the claims that New Brunswick's future lies in the development of shale gas.
______________________________________________________________________________
Speaking of shale gas, Amherst, Nova Scotia is competing against Dieppe for the thrill of having waste water from fracking - 30,000,000 litres of it -  dumped into its sewers. New Brunswickers will have to fight for this one. Dumping wastewater in New Brunswick is the kind of thing we have to build on for the future. Heck, we have lots of lakes and rivers. Let's go, New Brunswick.

Oh, sure, there's a small risk. We don't actually know what's in that water. I mean, originally it had been full of toxic chemicals; but the gas companies have the right to keep the names of those chemicals secret. Nor do we know exactly what "cleaning" that water means. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has Mr. Gallant called in any scientific experts to study the matter.

Of course, even if the contract to dump 30,000,000 litres does go to Amherst, we in New Brunswick will still get some of the benefit from it. It will be dumped into Amherst sewers and then gaily float merrily, merrily, merrily - into the Bay of Fundy.  That's the nice thing about pollution. In the end, we all share and share alike.
_______________________________________________________________________________
As I write this, Remembrance Day will come in just four days.We shall - as we most certainly should - remember those who died and those who suffered. But our mistake, every Remembrance Day is to stop there.

They did not die just on a whim. Nor did they all die out of patriotism. (Check enlistment figures. In both world wars, there was a burst of enrolment early in the war, and then a tapering off. Of course. Both wars began in a sea of poverty and unemployment. But once the war industries got going, that tapered off. Similarly, in World War 1, we began with high unemployment AND with a high proportion of young men born in Britain. Check the records. Note the high rate of volunteers in Ontario and the prairies. Of course. They were the ones with high migration from Britain. Then note the lower rate of volunteers in the Maritimes.)

In fact, let's cool it on the patriotism stuff in general.  Most of those who volunteered were pretty young and, in the two world wars, had very little education. Patriotism was just a word that most didn't understand. I still remember as they came to our flat - the boys from my father's Boy Scout troop - to say goodbye - Jack who got blown off the bridge of HMCS Sackville on D-Day, and wounded again in hospital when the naval magazines blew up across the harbour. I remember a kid named Bibewell who went down in mid-Atlantic with HMCS St. Croix.

Worst, I remember a severely retarded 16-year-old name Bertie who played with me because he was really a six year old mentally. He joined late in the war, stealing his draft-dodging brother's conscription papers to join. He joined because he loved taking orders, and he loved walking in boots that clicked on the pavement.
His mother said it was terrible, and she would tell the authorities he was just sixteen.

But she never did.

Six months later, in the last weeks of the war, he was killed in his first action when he jumped to his feet. And a machine gun cut him in half.

A man who was with him told me, "I was with him as we lay in the mud, with him crying and shaking. Hey, he was a kid. He was sixteen. And then he jumped up and, craziest thing, he was screaming for his mother."

Patriotism is not something to worship. The German Naziis and the Italian facists were as patriotic as they come. But I have never felt an urge to worship them.

No, patriotism is something politicians and news media and various enthusiasts play on to make us stop thinking, and to do what we are told to do. That was the lesson of the murder of two soldiers in St.-Jean and Ottawa. We treated it to inspire irrational hatreds and fears across the country. And we called it patriotism.

What we should focus on for Remembrance Day is that WE SENT THEM TO SUFFER AND TO DIE.
Sometimes, we have to do it. And sometimes we don't.

Why, under the Liberals did we send so many to die in Afghanistan? Was Afghanistan a threat to Canada? I thought of that every time I saw the hearses on TV driving along the Highway of Heroes - in true, unthinking, patriotic style.  Why did we send them?

And, if they were there for some.  urgent Canadian need, why did Harper pull them out less than half-way through the job?

Did we do it to help Afghanistan? How did it help Afghanistan? The government is still weak and hopelessly corrupt, and the Taliban is still a power. Now, after losing many more soldiers than Canada did, the US is desperately looking for a dignified way out.

We sent our soldiers there to die - and to kill.  Why?

We now have six aircraft busy killing in Iraq - and increasingly at risk themselves in a weapons-rich area. Why? Is it to protect Iraqis from being killed by ISIL?  Well, if we're so concerned about Iraqi lives, why didn't we send help for them when the US was killing far more of them than ISIL has?

Remember those who died and those who suffered life-long trauma. By all means, remember them, and be grateful to them. But go beyond remembering that. Remember that we sent them. And remember it the next time a government sends our people into war.

Let the patriots cheer. That's all they're good for. But we Canadians should put the cheers aside until we've done some thinking. Any fool can look sad and hold a hand over his heart. What we need, and what we are going to need terribly for unforeseeable years is people who think.
________________________________________________________________________________

Nov. 6: The big push is on...

I was a little surprised that the Irving press published the story of the UN report on climate change and fossil fuels. But they're making up for that single and lonely act of honesty. Since then, it's been a blizzard of stories about how fossil fuels are good for us. And not a single one reporting the other side.

Page A1 for Nov. 5 -  "Shale gas boss confident government will  'come around'."

I have no doubt that it will. I was sure Gallant would come around when he first announced his "moratorium" during the election campaign. And if anybody objects, we'll see the new gestapo in their camouflage outfits with combat rifles to protect billionaires from the peasantry.

A3 has a half-page story with a full colour BIG photo of Bruce Fitch looking, unfortunately, exactly like Bruce Fitch.  They story is that Gallant should consult on energy with former premiers such as Frank McKenna and  Shawn Graham.

Why? We elected Gallant. We did. We didn't elect McKenna or Shawn Graham. If Gallant is going to consult anybody, he should consult us voters. He should also be consulting world, scientific authorities.  Anyway, don't worry, Bruce, baby. Gallant will some around - just like the others.

But there is worse, much worse, to come.
________________________________________________________________________________

Alec Bruce defends shale gas, fossil fuels, St. Donald Savoie (who never met a billionaire he didn't like), the wisdom of Bill Belliveau and Norbert Cunningham, then drowns himself in maudlin self-pity that his is just one voice in the wilderness of ideas - and then he invites the vilification that he says will come to him.

Oh, yeah, and he who writes for the Irving press (of all media) denounces bloggers for being uneven in their coverage.

I don't vilify you Alec. I won't vilify you because your column is beneath contempt; and it's sad to see a first rate journalistic talent going down through the hole in the seat of that outhouse we call the Irving press.

There are a couple of other little problems, too.

He quotes St. Donald as saying globalization is here, and we can't stop it. Oh?

Globalization not a force of nature. It is man made. We live, or claim to live, in freedom and democracy. If so, we have the right to change anything that is man made. It will certainly be difficult to change globalization (which means giving billionaires rights that the rest of don't have to rule the world. It means handing over virtually all government powers to a very small, very arrogant, and very greedy oligarchy.)

And we can't change it? Way to fight for democracy, Alec. I bet it took courage to say that.

He is also wrong to say that natural gas is proven to be safe. Despite what your friends may tell you, there have been successful suits against natural gas companies - and there have been out of court settlements.

As well, and as  you should know, it doesn't matter if it generates less pollution. It still generates it. And, as the UN report emphasized, we are running out of time. (Of course, what do all those UN hacks and most of the world's scientists know compared to the wisdom of Norbert Cunningham?)

Oh, Alec sees a future in which New Brunswick universities will set the world standard for energy safety and renewability. That's a nice thought. Two problems. One is that there are many universities in this world that are many times bigger than all the universities in New Brunswick put together. The other is that we have worrying evidence that some professors in New Brunswick may not be as devoted to the truth as they should be.

The op ed page is just trivial - as usual.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The NewsToday section leads with most of two pages saying nice things about oil companies.

B4 has a big headline: "Islamic state militants accused of torturing children."'  It's quite possibly true. In just about every war I have ever heard of, both sides have tortured, raped, starved, shredded children. The US tortured and imprisoned and crippled and starved to death and murdered children in Iran, Guatemala, Iraq and  Afghanistan. Ever hear if Omar Khadr? He was imprisoned and tortured by the US. But by international law, that was illegal because of his age. So - Harper steps in and puts him in maximum security - not only illegal  under international law, but the vilest and most vulnerable condition to put a young person in.

Oh, but them there radical islamic state militants behead people. Right. They do. So do our good friends in Saudi Arabia - even more so. But if you want to find the real beheading enthusiasts, you have to go to the "rebels" in Syria. You know, the ones on our side who get money and weapons from God bless America.
They have beheaded men, women, and children by the thousands - including Syrian Christians. Funny how that never makes our news - or even our awful Faith page on Saturdays. And we won't even mention the frequent killing or imprisoning (or starvation or withholding of medicines) of Palestinian children by Israel.

The don't report it because the prime purpose of our news media is to stir up hatred and fear  (which we then call patriotism).
________________________________________________________________

Page D4 has yet another Big, Big story on yet another inductee to yet another business hall of fame.
More on this when I get to the Nov. 6 issue.
________________________________________________________________________________

The editorial for Nov. 6 is another moan about poor literacy in New Brunswick - and the need to look at literacy in the home. Quite right. A good start might be to look at the trivia and propaganda that the Irving press shoves into our homes every day. New Brunswick needs an intellectual awakening. What it gets, instead, is a journalistic sleeping pill.

Good column by Alec Bruce on the approaches of the federal Conservatives and the NDP. I think he's right, and both parties are wrong. I don't expect anything from the Conservatives except scattered proposals to attract votes. And I think it's been a big mistake for the NDP to drift in the same direction.

Norbert is still off on his rant about life imprisonment being a "good thing".  He notes that putting a person into one of the hell-holes that we call prisons has been a great success because it cuts down on crime.
Oh - a couple of problems, there, Norbert.
1. The decline in crime in Canada began BEFORE Harper toughened the sentences.
2. The longer a person is kept in one of our appallingly violent prisons, the more likely he or she is to return to crime. If long sentences and death sentences deterred crime, the US would be the safest country in the world. It has more people in prison than any other country. And they have some of the worst prison crowding and violence in the world. But, no, the US doesn't lead the world in safety.

On op ed, Rod Allen is Rod Allen. Cut it out for the kitty litter box.

Beth Lyons is Beth Lyons. So that's a worthwhile read.
________________________________________________________________________
With a world in greater uncertainty than we have ever seen, NewsToday  devotes a full page (shared on B1 and B2) of photos and story to somebody who bakes donuts.

Any world news  (and there is very little) is heavily biased in favour of the good guys on our side. If you want to understand what's happening, there's no point in reading the Irving world news.

There's also a story on the humiliating defeat of Obama's democrats in the US mid-term elections. The story says almost nothing. But the reality is it doesn't really matter. It's like New Brunswick. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are owned by the same people. The only thing that might change is that the Republicans are probably a little bit more crazy.

The basic problem is still there. American democracy is just a word. You have a whole population running on fear and  hatred propagandized to them by their media. (This is the country where a nation cheered for the George Bush 2 who send thousands to die while killing over a million in a war that had no reason except to make money for big oil, a man who loved to swagger for the cameras in his bomber jacket when, in fact, he had spent a previous war as a draft-dodger - with daddy's help. General Eisenhower, who had a hell of a lot more right to a uniform that Bush ever did, never wore his uniform when he was President,)

The big problem for congress now is - should they try to kill medicare? That's a tough one.
Almost all Republicans hate medicare on principle. They believe everything should be for private profit only.
But -

The type of medicare Obama put in was a very, very expensive type that is FOR private profit. It gave tax money to medical insurance companies -at their full rate - and all from the taxpayers. That's why it's so ruinously expensive. So here's a case where the government isn't actually running medicare. Instead, it's being patriotic by handing out billions to private companies for very excessive private profit. Gee, what's good Republican to do?
________________________________________________________________________
Then there's the Your Business page. This time it's a tough-hitting story by ace reporter Brent Mazerolle who forces Robert Irving  (another appointee to the hall of fame) to tell the truth about what a great guy he is.

This sort of thing is a standard, propaganda feature is almost every issue of the Irving press. It's to make us worship at the feet of private business. But they almost never call them businessmen or businesswomen. They say "entrepreneurs". That sounds so much more sophisticated.

It's the same with that NewsToday story(with photos) about a baker and, also on B1, the story about this same awards ceremony

The message is clear. Business people are wise and good and they give to the poor, and think of nothing but our welfare.  As I read the sacred words of Robert Irving talking about his selflessness and "giving back to the community" I thought that it must have been like this to be at the Mount of Olives when Jesus addressed the multitude.

Mr. Irving, it seems, thinks of nothing but us and giving to us, never thinking of himself.  I'm so glad that someone was kind enough to give him a necktie to wear for his photo.

The purpose of this propaganda  (and it often works) is to convince people that entrepreneurs have abilities - economic, political, charitable, social - us common folk lack. They keep the focus wide to include small entrepreneurs as much as the biggest. That's to encourage the myth that big and small entrepreneurs  are all of the same, sterling qualities. Their point is that the way for any society to go is "private for profit". From that, and only from that comes progress.

It's rubbish, of course. Small entrepreneurs have an important role of course. They are not, as this propaganda suggests, the key to prosperity for New Brunswick. But they provide useful services, and certainly deserve what they earn. Even better, they don't buy off politicians, and they don't risk our lives and health to make themselves rich.

As Mazerolle tells us,big entrepreneurs just give and give and give. (Perhaps Mazerolle can some day give us the big story on how they take and take and take and take some more. It's surely an insult to readers to call us to worship at the feet of the wealthy at a time when the rich are getting richer every year and the rest of us getting poorer because the rich are getting richer.)

Enough of this propaganda crap.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go out and do what so many of the rich have built they success and goodness on. I'm going to find me a rich father.

Nov. 4: I didn't think they'd publish it.

When the UN published its report on climate change, it said that a) it is almost entirely man-made b)it's largely a result of the burning of fossil fuels c) if continued, it will destroy all life on this planet c) the time we have left to stop it is shorter than earlier realized - in fact, very shortly after the completion of the Moncton Events Centre d) this is the unanimous opinion of most scientists all over the world. It's not just David Suzuki.

I didn't think the Irving press would even publish that story. But I guess it was too big to ignore. (Of course, it's not too big to lie about. I note that PM Harper has reacted by saying Canada has made huge advances in cutting down on fossil fuels. In fact, it's not even meeting the very modest objectives of 20 years ago.)

Well, I  thought, I must check the opinion pages. This is a huge story, and right on the nose as a New Brunswick issue. So I turned to the editorial page first.

The editorial was about cleaning hospitals. Norbert was about the sex scandal at CBC- and was really just a Norbert rant about CBC in general.  Craig Babstock was on the same topic - much more civilized than Norbert, but not particularly informative. And Steve Malloy was on the same topic - but Malloy was at least far more civilized than Norbert was, And far more insightful and original than Babstock was.

With Malloy, the only other column worth reading is by Alec Bruce who raises some very uncomfortable questions about the Toronto mayoralty election - and about the surprisingly high support for Bob Ford (who had no platform in particular and who is connected to the most scandalous period in Toronto political life.)
We might well wonder exactly what the "Ford nation" is, and what it's existence warns us about the future of Canada.

Othewise, Secton A was quite wonderful. The headline, yet again, was about Moncton's wine expo. And there's a whole page of colour photos of people drinking wine so readers can know what people drinking wine look like.

Anyway, I thought, Tuesday's issue would surely give more space to the UN warning about climate change.

Nope. The banner headline on A1 was "McKenna endorses idea of second pipeline". Yes, that's our McKenna, the old shill.  This time, though, he forgets himself, and admits on A6 that the environmental position is a sound one but "...we can't go on being the only Boy Scout in the world saying we aren't going to exploit our province........we are going to continue to have a need for fossil fuels well into the future....we should continue to extract the maximum amount of money available to the Canadian economy."

I have rarely come across a more foolish, stupid, illogical and irresponsible statement

Almost all scientists and the UN say that climate change is happening, that it's happening because of fossil fuels, that we have very little time to stop it. And McKenna agrees with that. Then he concludes that though it is destroying the world, we have to continue using it WELL INTO THE FUTURE because it will make money for us. Duh.

That's exactly the sort of statement I had in mind whenever I wrote about how big business is both greedy and stupid.

But, hints McKenna, we won't be using much of that oil in the Eastern Pipeline. No, we'll be exporting it for profit.

Oh. Gee.

And just what will our customers do with it, Frank baby? Burn it? You hit it on the head, kid. And what do you think will happen to the carbon dioxide that will produce? Do you think it will go straight up in the air but stop at their borders? So only they will suffer climate change?

Almost all the delay in dealing with climate change has been due to the unwillingness of the blockheads in the oil industry to recognize that we cannot go on using fossil fuels. And what they have done is to throw away decades when we should have been working on this problem.  They spent billions buying politicians, setting up "think tanks" to spread lies and propaganda, and using the news media they control to put the whole world at risk for their profits - which will be quite useless even for them on a lifeless planet.

What has happened is that the oil industries which call environmentalists crackpots have turned out to be the biggest crackpots in the world. and the ones who have enraptured all the little crackpots who think they know better than almost all the scientists in the world. (Incidentally, our spy service protects us by investigating environmentalists as possible terrorists, and it reports on them twice a year to big business. Hey! It's our tax money. Couldn't we tell CSIS to investigate McKenna and the Irvings? And report to us?)

So I turned to the opinion pages to read words of wisdom on this issue, the outstanding issue of the week.

No luck. Norbert is still caught up in the sex scandal. Alec Bruce looks more reasonable; but what he offers is just another pitch for shale gas. As for the op ed page, one column is a reasonable one on the federal government's proposed family tax sharing plan. The other is by a hack  (Senior Director of Natural Resource Policy Studies) at the far, far right wing Fraser Institute which is funded by the oil industry and other big business leeches.

Look, folks. the most eminent scientists in the world are telling us that climate is changing, that can kill billions of us and maybe all of us. Time is running out. It may already have run out. To ignore that, to refuse to even suggest what we should do to  get off fossil fuels  is worse than evil. It is stunningly moronic.
___________________________________________________________________________
So I turned to Your Business for the big scoop of the day. And it's about yet another businessman being inducted into yet another Business Hall of Fame.

Who could possibly give a damn?
_______________________________________________________________________
Somewhere in these papers I saw a note that the US recession is over. Well, yes, it's over for the very rich. But it was never on for them in the first place.It has not ended for most Americans - and it's not likely to. Lower unemployment figures are coming out only because so many of the unemployed have accepted the hopelessness of it all, and have dropped out. So they don't count as unemployed any more. For those who do get employed, it's happening at lower salaries that were too low at the start.  The levels of poverty and suffering in the US never seem to make our news media.  For a look at what's going one, try this site -  www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40116.htm
It's called "The American Dream, Gone"
____________________________________________________________________

On a more interesting note,  I found a site on World War 1 that looks good. I've read only one entry so far - but that one, at least, was well done.  The site is:

www1.canada.com/after-the-war/how-the-last-gallipoli-gunboat-was-saved

What follows is way off the blog topic. But one sometimes needs a change.

The gunboat referred to is a quite small steamship of very little speed that mounted a gun designed to attack shore positions. It was also used as a minesweeper - quite unsuccessfully in both cases - as should have been expected.

Gallipoli is a peninsula of Turkey that Britain (plus Australia and New Zealand)  attacked in World War 1 in an attempt to end the war quickly. It turned out to be one of the greatest disasters in British military history, with 50,000 Empire troops killed and many times that wounded for no gain whatever.

It was a remarkably dumb idea. It was Churchill's idea. It's too bad the site doesn't go into that.

Churchill grew up in the shadow of his brilliant military ancestor, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. In a lonely childhood with a father who only once spoke to him, he became convinced that he, too, had a brilliant military mind. Combined with that, he had a crashing arrogance, and a contempt for anybody who didn't recognize his military skills.

After the dreadful failure of Gallipoli, Churchill left the War Council of the government (to everyone's relief) to go to the battle lines in France. He was not pleased that he was sent only as a colonel. He thought he should have been made a general.  In France, he proved to be a man of almost suicidal courage, and was much admired by his troops. That courage would become the outstanding feature of his character.

But a great military mind? No.

Churchill is often praised for his wish to go to war with Hitler when the latter invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 - and Prime Minister Chamberlain became an object of contempt for not stopping Hitler. In fact, Chamberlain was right and Churchill was wrong. France was not willing to go to war in 1938 and, even with France, going to war would have been insane since neither Britain nor France was prepared for war. They still weren't prepared in 1939 when Chamberlain did declare war in 1939. That was proven in the dreadful retreat to Dunkirk.

A British historian recently published a book on the forty greatest military disasters in British history. One of the forty was Galliipoli in WW1, and Dunkirk and Singapore were two more in World War 2. Churchill was closely involved n all of them. One could also add that by mid-1940, Churchill had lost World War Two. He knew it; and was trying to negotiate surrender terms through Mussolini to Hitler. (Italy would not enter the war until June of 1940). It is still not generally realized what a close-run thing World War Two was.

British military leadership was well aware of Churchill's faults. Throughout the war, it made sure to keep its most brilliant strategist in Britain. Viscount Alanbrooke stayed in Britain as Chief of the Imperial General Staff because he was such a good strategist - and because he was the only one who could keep a lid on Churchill's delusions about his generalship.

Nov. 3: an extra on Donald Savoie's vision of the future...and....

In his Saturday column for the Times and Transcript, prof. Don Savoie writes glowingly of the world of the future when globalization is complete.  Now, I am not an economist or student of government. But I am blessed with a normal intelligence with a normal capacity for seeing what is obvious - and that tells me Dr. Savoie is wrong.

First, the definition of globalization. It means the integration of peoples and governments of countries with an international system of economics.  In this case, the economic system is a perversion of capitalism called oligarchy. Roughly, that means all power is in the hands of a sort of aristocracy, usually an aristocracy by birth, just like the middle ages. It's a world that will have no boundaries between us all. Free trade is the prelude to it - aimed at no boundaries restricting the flow of investment and profit-taking. Oligarchy has become the ruling system of China, Russia - and the US and Canada much of the rest of the world.

Think of that because there is a huge gap Dr. Savoie doesn't mention.

Globalization means the weakening and, effectively, the disappearance of national governments. But governments are all we have to maintain law and order, to plan economies and social conditions, and to reflect the wishes of the people, one hopes, through democracy.

But there is no such thing as a world government.

The UN was first presented as a step to world government. But it never was because five major powers of the time gave themselves the right to veto any vote of the UN. Those powers still have that right - the US, the USSR (its veto now inherited by Russia), France, Britain and China. And they have used it to make sure the UN can never have the power to pass or to enforce any laws.

When I was a child, the standing joke was about USSR use of the veto. We said that nyet (no) was the only word in the Soviet vocabulary. But, decades ago, it became the US that was the world leader in saying no. Today, world leaders in breaking international law are the US, China, Britain, and France. And the reason that Israel has not been charged with violations of international law is because the US, in particular, has used its veto many, many times to prevent it.


The US, in particular, but other members of the five have commonly used their power to make sure the UN never becomes a world government, and never has the ability to enforce any law. That means that if we fully accept globalization, we will lose all rights and protections - except those that the super-rich are gracious enough to grant us.

That's no exaggeration. We're already well on the way as democracy is sliding in countries that once were pioneers of it.

As for Dr.Savoie's opinion that the power and efficiency of big business will be used to bring prosperity to the world, I can think of only two words - bull and shit.  We've been living under the rule of big business, and on a widening scale, for over fifty years. In that time, the world has not become more prosperous. Europe is an economic shambles. Africa is even worse off than in the bad old days of colonialism. Central America is held in poverty and near-slavery by the rule of big business. Even North America, as Dr. Savoie may have noticed, has been getting markedly poorer, partly from recession and partly from the greed of big business in ever-widening the wage gap. And it is not going to get better any day soon. In fact, it's not ever going to get better if the Don Savoie's have their way.

Business of any sort is not a social service. Nor should it be. Business exists to make money for itself. It has no higher purpose. That's okay. That's the way capitalism is supposed to work. But it's also supposed to be restrained and regulated (and to pay its share) by government. What Dr. Savoie is proposing is that the rich be allowed to stomp all over the world, exploiting people and resources without any control whatever.

So far as I know, there is no plan for a government for the whole world.  If it were to be a democracy, I can't even imagine how it would work. We would require a legislature of millions of MPs, most of them coming from countries that have never had an election.

But that doesn't matter because no election is planned. The history of the years since 1945 has been a history of the US trying to conquer the world. That's what Vietnam, Haiti, Guatemala, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan were all about. That's what thousands of drone attacks have been about. That's what special ops assassination teams and destabilizing of governments around the world are all about. Obama and many other US politicians speak of "American Exceptionalism".  They do it publicly on radio, TV and in print. But it rarely occurs to any reporter to ask what that means.

What it means is that it is God's plan for the US to rule the world. It stands above the law, any law, and has the right to invade, to kill, and to conquer as it wishes. That is not just my opinion. That is actually what the term means. Globalization will mean the triumph of - well - not of the US. The American people will suffer, already are suffering, under globalization. It will be the triumph of the very, very rich. who will then be free to knock off each other.

The world of globalization would (will?) be hell - a world of chaos, exploitation, terrible suffering. It would also be a world of towering violence - violence from the rich to keep control, violence from the criminal to survive, and violence from enraged populations that are already on the edge of rebellion. That's why we have seen the militarization of police forces and the destruction of civil rights, especially in the US but also in most western countries. That's why Harper is going to grab his chance to pass oppressive laws - And his excuse is that two, deranged Canadians became killers. He's playing on the fear that Bush and Obama played on to destroy democratic rights in the US.  It's a world we don't have to guess about. It's the world we have already entered and with worse, much worse, to come.

All that is obvious even to my simple mind. It's too bad that experts so often lose the ability to see the obvious.
______________________________________________________________________________

While I'm writing, I should touch on a story about MacLean's magazine rating Mount Allison as the best undergraduate university in Canada. In fact, there is no such thing as a best university in Canada, in the US or anywhere in the world. Until university ratings, most people judged universities on the basis of snobbery. If rich kids went to it, it was a "good" university. I attended three universities.

One of them, Sir George Williams (a YMCA school, mostly for evening students) was looked down on as vastly inferior to McGill, to Queen's,and just about every school. Acadia (for my MA) was off in the bush somewhere. Mentioning the name just got me blank stares. Then I hit the big time with Queen's. What a thrill!

But the teaching at all three of those universities was much the same. All of my teachers had exactly the same training in how to teach - that is, they had none at all. The one exception was Prof. Fred Gibson at Queen's. He had no teacher training - but he had an instinct for it. And he had a respect for students, and a real desire to help them to learn. And he was utterly without the arrogance and pomposity and intimidation I had found in so many professors - and would continue to find through my own teaching days. As well, in over forty years of university teaching, I rarely heard anyone discuss teaching - except keeping notes up to date and having a clear voice.

The fact is that most university teaching consists of having students memorize things they will forget very quickly because they have no use for them. I have never known a discussion on why, for example, we should place such an emphasis on memorization in history. Or why we should teach from the general to the particular. I spent years writing assigned papers. I never once had a teacher to actually taught us how to write them. I remember vividly sitting in a professor's office when a student came in to ask politely why he got a D on his paper. The professor waved him out, "It is not up to my standards."

What standards? What are the assigned papers supposed to achieve? Nobody, including most professors, ever think of that.

This "best university" rodeo is a scam to sell magazines for MacLean's. They make up various categories that they think represent quality in a university, get some statisticians to figure out ways to put numbers on them, and then run these numbers as marks of quality.

Sometimes, they don't even do that that. I was rated at least twice as one of the five most popular professors at my university. What a crock! In the first place, popularity has nothing to do with the quality of teaching. In the second place, it is not possible they could have rated the thousands of professors across Canada with their hundreds of thousands of students for popularity. How they came up with my name, I have no idea.. Nor do I care because it means nothing.

What is the best university for  you  depends on who you are, and what you want and what you need. It also depends on the luck of the draw in the professors you get. What is best has nothing to do with the universities because they're all much the same.   And that's true all the way up to the most famous universities in the world.

And don't fall for the line that some school is really good because it's professor publish a lot. Fred Gibson of Queen's was recognized by other professional  historians (who often consulted him) as one of the great ones. But he published very little.  And I can think of many historians who have published profusely - and who are the most personally obnoxious people and the worst teachers I have known.

Oh, the Maclean's rating praised Mount A for the high grades achieved by its students. Hey guys, according to your own magazine, Mount A has high entrance requirements. So, yeah. Of course it will have higher grades achieved. That's like praising a hospital that accepts only healthy people.

The MacLean's ratings have actually made Canadian universities worse. In years when they should have been working on improving their teaching (it was probably better in the  Middle Ages), they have been scrambling to win the approval of the editors of a magazine. I know of at least one, prestigious university that hired a MacLean's employee at a very high salary to teach it how to get top ratings. Imagine that - a university hiring a journalist to tell it how to be a university!

I was lucky. Sir George Williams College with its library barely the size of a living room, and available to kids like me who had flunked high school, and who couldn't have afforded full time, anyway........in the words of our college song.....
"Put on your red'n'yellow sweater,
The dirtier the better
For it's not so gorgeous
That we go to Sir George's,.
But McGill won't have us
Anywhere."

And I'm grateful to Acadia for giving me a chance to go on despite a very weak record on my BA.

And, oh, I'm grateful to Fred Gibson of Queen's for being a fine teacher and a fine man.

But none of the above would have impressed the MacLean's reviewers.

Nov. 1: To the despair of my highland Scots ancestors....

....and the joy of my French Catholic ones, I read a newsletter from The Vatican. It's called Catholic News; and it carries a story of a talk given by Pope Francis to a convention of social activists. And it is brilliant. I recommend everyone read it. It's at www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1404449.htm

He urged his audience to struggle against the structural causes of poverty and inequality - lack of work, denial of social and labour rights, and the "empire of money". He said that financial speculation on food prices is to blame for the starvation of millions around the world. He added that we need peace and environmental protection which both are threatened by the global economic system.

Of course, this will never be reported in the Irving press. And I guarantee the Pope will never be invited to share fellowship and coffee in the barn at the Irving Chapel - or even to hear the "special music" it features.

Now, for contrast, read section B (Nov. 1 of the Times and Transcript) for the spiritless drivel that passes for a Faith page.

_________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile,  Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 have a news story and two op ed columns by Pope Donald Savoie. on how we have to embrace those very ideas that Pope Francis says are both immoral, and wrong even in purely practical terms.

Ever notice that Don Savoie has never publicly said a word critical of the very rich or of anything they want? And wasn't it his university that had another pope of great influence who had to be fired when it became known he was a fake?

Don't blame U de Moncton. The reality is that all universities have to kiss up to the very rich in order to get the money they need to survive. As well, their boards of governors are dominated by the very rich. That's why we've seen the rapid growth of schools of questionable academic fields like business. That's why an alcoholic and druggie like George Bush 2 could get a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the most prestigious university in the US even though his undergraduate grades were so bad he wasn't eligible for the programme.  And check the website of Acadia University for glorious kiss-ups of the Irvings. (In one of my summers at Acadia, I lived in the same student residence as K.C. had many decades earlier. Wow!)

You will notice that  few, if any, academics who disagree with big money and globalization, etc. ever are reported in the Irving press.

Now, take a look at Pope Savoie's first op ed on p. A11 for Friday. He points out the danger of powerful interest groups that threaten our future prosperity. And who are these dreadful groups? Well, Savoie isn't scared of them. He speaks right out. It's doctors, retired public servants, teachers....

Duh, Don, baby---chambers of commerce? shale gas companies? the very, very rich who pay very, very little tax? the Irvings who demand the gift of our forests and resources? And J.D.Irving who had the arrogance to claim to be a member of the government and to advise on the budget even though he had never been elected? Aren't they interest groups - and with a lot more clout than retired public servants.

And it's wrong for government to be spending money on infrastructure in hard times? Read some history , kid. The experience of the 1930's and early 1940s indicated exactly the opposite of what you say.

And we should just repair old infrastructure instead of building new? Has it occurred to you that the old infrastructure was built for the world of the 1950s? Is it your intention to make New Brunswick an open air museum?

Throughout his column, Savoie has nothing but praise for big business - it's marvelous charities (in which it gives much less than it should be paying in taxes, and has enough left over to open halls of fame for the saints who are its CEOs.  It's kiss, kiss, kiss for big business - and that's the pathway to academic fame, and publication in the Irving press.

His column for Saturday is much the same, though with a display of wit and originality of phrase as is "we have to put our shoulders to the wheel". (Talk about being vague).

We have to accept job losses, he said, to cut back on government spending. This is the closest Savoie comes to thinking of what is needed for the people of New Brunswick. Fire the bastards. Unlike the other Pope, Savoie does not think of people. All he thinks of is dumping them or cutting their salaries. People are just ballast. We have to be the most business friendly place in North America. Translation: we have to fire people, cut salaries of survivors to the bone, let the very rich escape taxes, say to hell with the environment and the future......... It's also a cause of the wage gap that has driven so many North Americans into poverty. In fact, it has cause massive poverty all over the world.

And, oh, we must embrace globalization. That means accepting what is happening now as big business is free to exploit the poorest countries in the world, to hide its taxable income, to operate free of any regulation whatever the damage might be to people, so in time we can become cheap labour, too, and then , like the people of Congo and Guatemala and most of the world, be enslaved to work for almost nothing on land long since poisoned - and getting murdered if we complain.

That is what globalization has done. It has deepened poverty and starvation and suffering all over the world.

Dr. Savoie, your economic formula has everything in it but people, and what they need in order to live.
__________________________________________________________________________
Friday's editorial is either silly or ignorant. (It can be hard to tell.) It says we should have a great tourist season next summer as the American economy recovers. First, the American economy is not recovering. The very, very wealthy are doing fine. But they always have. So, yes, we could tap into the billionaire market for those who want to see the tidal bore. But the average American is not heading into good times.

The sentencing of  Justin Chretien Bourque took up most of Saturday's section A. Most of it was pure sensationalism with no news worth reading. The one point that struck me was Bourque's statement that he did it because he believed the government and the crown were socialist. What a bizarre statement! Our government is closer to fascism than to socialism. (Yes, I know Hitler called his party National Socialist. But there was nothing socialist about it or about Hitler. And I can't imagine what is socialist about the Royal Family.)  The man is either extraordinarily ignorant or is living in a different world.

The reporting, at best, is sloppy sentimentalism. The editorial, on the other hand, is pure, ravaging, stone age beast.  Hang him! Hang him! Hang him! That will send a message to the public that you must not kill police.

Duh, Mr. Editor, I think the public already knows that. But no message will ever get through to a brain that thinks the crown and the government are socialist. And there's just a touch of uncertainty about the whole idea that we are sending a message of any sort.

The American government was behind the killing of 300,000 Guatemalan civilians, including a lay missionary from Buctouche. I cannot recall a single Canadian news medium than even reported it. And, certainly, the Canadian government never did a damn thing. US agencies torture people all over the world - and they have had the assistance of Canadian government officials. That never made the news, either. George Bush 2, with Britain and then Canada, illegally invaded Afghanistan after Bush and Tony Blair illegally invaded Iraq, killing people in numbers we never hear about and for a reason never explained. But George Bush walks freely into any upper level Chamber of Commerce dinner that can afford to pay him to give inane speeches and get standing ovations. And Tony Blair has become an extremely wealthy man serving the very rich. They (and we) broke international law. That means the leaders who did that could be arrested on Canadian soil. When will our editorials scream at us to hang them?

Given the judge's choices under our legal system, the decision for life with no parole was  really the only one possible  - to keep this man out of circulation. Many will accept that as a justifiable revenge. But there is no such thing as a justifiable revenge. And, in any case, the revenge does nothing for the sufferers and the general public.

We really need serious rethinking of our justice system to get away from the revenge and punishment concept to some options that will actually reduce crime.
__________________________________________________________________________

Bill Belliveau's column is worth a read. Norbert's Saturday column is back to normal, pimping for McKenna who's pimping for his wealthy friends in the shale gas business.

By the way, somewhere in this papers (I can't find it now) is a claim that in all  the years of fracking, there has never been a successful lawsuit by people who laid charges against it. That is simply a lie. There are cases that have gone to court, and in which frackers have been found guilty. There are also many cases that fracking companies have settled out of court.

For information on this, check LEC (Literary Review of Canada) for October 14. reviewcanada.ca (You're not likely to find it except in a very large book store, but the library should have it.)

It has an article by Jessa Gamble, "Perennial Temptation". It's a review of two books. On is "On Fracking" by C.Alexia Lane. The other is "The Case for Fracking" by Ezra levant. Lane is a water management specialist. Levant is a gutter columnist for Canada's leading gutter newspaper, The Sun (Toronto). He has no scientific training of any sort, doesn't believe that climate change is happening, thinks carbon dioxide is good for you, and is the kind of person much admired by people who read gutter newspapers.
_________________________________________________________________________

Finally, oh , how the world has passed me by. A page of columns by students is on C5; and Isabelle Agnew, now a student at St. Thomas University has a column "Living with one's significant other can work, even for a young couple."

In my undergraduate days, asking a girl to  have a cup of coffee was a big move.  I did it once in the library.(Then this neat-looking guy came over, pointed to the coffee shop, and said' "Hey, chick." And she giggled and went him while I melted into the floor.)