March 7: Yes. It can get worse.

On this day, the blazing headline on page 1, more important than anything else that is happening in the world, is the big news that hunting and fishing licences will soon be available online. I couldn't wait to read it.

Also font page news is "FIFA Women's World Cup Canada expected to empower girls." Sure. In fact, women have been playing sports for a century -and they were men's sports because before that all sports were for men. If that empowered girls, it was very, very slow in doing it. The first Canadian woman to write a sports column was Myrtle Cook almost a hundred years ago. That empowered women? Really? So tell me about all the women we now see on TV discussing hockey with that guy with the high collar?

Then there are the usual stories from the courthouse. That's always an easy and cheap way to fill empty spaces. And there's a story about a guy with a guitar who will play country music at the Casino. He is, of course, a country legend. They all are. He'll also do a gospel collection. That should inspire all of Moncton's Christian gamblers.

The high point of the editorial and op ed pages (the ONLY high point) is a letter to the editor "Bilingualism's end game is equality at no cost".

I'm really not sure what the editorial is about - though, as usual, it has a focus on money, i think.

Norbert Cunningham has read a recent poll about the provincial government, has nothing to say about it, but says it anyway. The villains are doctors and unions who will try to protect their 'Entitlements'. Well, Norbert, all people are entitled to be able to live decently. All people. Unions? If it weren't for unions, we'd still be working in rickety and dangerous factories for a dollar a day.

You want to criticize people for 'entitlements' Norbert? Then how about having the integrity and guts to criticize your boss and his social circle.? You know -the people who are entitled to earn more in a morning than their employees do in a year - and often many years. The people who are 'entitled' not to pay taxes like the rest of us. Norbert, you love ranting at people  who have to work damn hard just to survive; and you really don't give a damn about those who have no food to eat and/or no place to sleep. I guess that makes you think of yourself as some sort of superior person.

Norbert, today's column is trite. It's ignorant. It's heavily biased. And, like all of  your newspaper, it lacks the courage to even mention the people who really run this province.

As well, there's a topic he and his paper could have covered - but never will. Under forestry licences 6 and 7 (which means most of this region of the province), the forest we virtually gave away to J.D.Irving for the next 25 years are his to use as he likes no matter how it may affect us. He wants to use an insecticide that will kill wildlife? Hey. Feel free kddo. He wants to cut ways that will destroy wildlife in the region? Feel free. It's open house in New Brunswick? Pollute water? Sure.

And just in case we get fancy ideas about passing regulations to protect our forests and our waters and our land, son't even think about it. J.D.Irving, under the terms of this deal, can almost certainly sue the pants off the province he loves. He's entitled. Wanna dump on him, Norbert, the way you dump on the poor, the hungry and the homeless?

Op ed has another comment on the universities, and again by a university administrator. Look, a comment is opinion presented by an informed and independent observer of a field. What appeared yesterday and today on universities are not comments. These are letters to the editor. That's all they are.  And both are dedicated to preserving the status quo - which means ignoring profound problems facing the universities.

And both are badly written and boring.

Bill Belliveau, like Norbert often does, discusses our economic future without mentioning the central problem we face.

We are living under an uncontrolled capitalism that is not capitalism at all. And it's the major players in that capitalism who run this province, not the people we elect. The only life purpose of the uncontrolled capitalist is to make money for himself.  There will never be any change or any coherent planning in the province until we deal with that central fact.
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Then to Canada&World news. Almost half the front page of Canada&World, is the fast-breaking story that the New Brunswick NDP has sold its campaign bus.

There's also a big story that two people charged in a mass murder plot are getting a new court date. Thank you. I'll have to rearrance my calendar for that.

B2 has a big, big story about a New Brunswick women who escaped from her burning house - OVER TWO WEEKS AGO.  Wow! Talk about world news.

B3 has pictures of children sliding on the snow. I have no idea why.

B4 brings us all the way to Ottawa - for a real story. Canada's federal Privacy Commissioner says Harper's anti-terrorism bill goes much too far in handing personal info to our secret police. That puts in the same position as unprecedented numbers of former Liberal, Conservative and NDP leaders, retired Supreme Court justices, current Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Green party leaders, prominent lawyers and others have denounced this bill.

It's no overstatement to say that this bill is the death-knell of what's left of  Canadian freedom and democracy. And I have never seen such widespread condemnation at such high levels as we are seeing this this bill. We, in Moncton, are lucky to have Mr. Goguen, MP, who has a long record of speaking out in defence of his people.

Canadians are sleep-walking into this.

Not until B5 do we crack our eggshell to discover a foreign country. It's a big but largely uninformative story about Iraq.  Then, as if frightened at stepping  too far from home, it reverts to stories about Canada, none of them worth reading.
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Sadly, "Whatever" (the section written by students) seems to be down to just one contributor. Too bad. That was one of the few sections worth reading.

The sermonette by UNB chaplain Brett Annington is, for the first time in this paper, worth a read and is thought-provoking, especially the second half of it. I've never met him; but I like this guy.
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So let's spare just a bit of time for things that didn't make this paper.

On March 5, a Canadian returned from a Caribbean vacation,  landing at Halifax. Canadian border agents demanded he give them the passcode for his smartphone. He refused, saying it was his, personal information. This could lead to a charge carrying a year in jail and a fine of up to $25.000. That's the way it is now in the "true north strong and free".

That's a contrast with General Petraeus who liked jogging with his mistress and telling her about his life. (She must have been bored silly). In the course of it, he slipped quite a few national secrets to her. When a congressional committee questioned him about it, he lied under oath. He also lied to investigators. That's it. No penalty. Not even a slap on the wrist.

Edward Snowden, who released Wikkileaks as a matter of conscience - to show that the government was lying to the people - faces a possibility of 30 years in prison for having a conscience and being honest.

Too bad Snowden isn't a general.

We aren't  told anything about Venezuela, We know that just weeks ago, there was an attempt to overthrow the elected government, and the evidence is strong that the US organized it. There is also evidence that Canada was involved through an RCMP officer who helped the US. But barely a word in any Canadian news medium. And all the American news media say is that Venezuela is evil.  What's going on?

Well, Venezuela has oil. That's good. But the government and people of Venezuela think it belongs to them. That's bad. And the government nationalized the oil fields. That's evil,. The government says it's intention was to benefit the people of Venezuela. And that, in the opinion of the American government, is worse than evil. It's socialism.

This has been going on for some years now, with US attempted coups, US-financed riots and support of far, right wing parties, US special ops.... As recently as his latest State of the Union address, Obama has indicated the US has to deal with this threat to its values.

That's been a threat throughout US history as it has constantly been attacked by those awful Latin American countries like Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala. In the 1920s and 30s, it was forced to attack one of the smaller ones some 19 times. Oh, they''re evil, those latinos. Read any American history book.

But an open attack is no longer a good idea because it gives the impression that the US is, you know, aggressive and greedy. Presidential assassinations are probably out, too. They've been used too often. So maybe this time they'll do what they did to kick out the elected government in Haiti. They'll send peacekeepers. Yeah. That's it. Peacekeepers. And Harper will join them. Just like in Haiti.

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Big business has enormous power to influence public thinking, to create fears and hatred, to control government policy  (including  the power to make war). Unfortunately, it has no competence to exert that power in way that is responsible and beneficial, incompetent even, in the long run to benefit even itself.
A war against terrorism sill not kill terrorism. In fact, all our experience is that it will create more terrorism. It also creates more fear and hatred all over the world, and that is manipulated to create more killing.

All of this is happening as the result of governments controlled by oligarchies of the very rich. These are precise duplicates of the aristocrats who made Europe such a murderous and miserable place for centuries. They are precise even to being based on inheritance, a system guaranteed to give power, very frequently, to the feeble-minded, the unbalanced, and the power-mad.

Add to that the failure that America's foreign policy and its military have been for generations now. The way we are going can produce only more suffering, more misery, more poverty and much, much more killing - all without achieving anything. And, some day, it will produce nuclear war. What it will never produce is one country ruling the whole world. It will never produce anything that can be called victory.

We have to arrive at settlements without using force, or drones, or killer special ops. We have to let other countries run themselves as they choose to. And above all, we h ave to counter the biggest evil facing us - the power of the very rich and very greedy to dictate how the world shall behave.

The is no other option.

March 6: Guns, guns, guns....

recently, a gun strore has been putting illustrated ads in the Times and Transcript. I'm quite dismayed to see what can legally be sold in Canada. One of the ads is on page 6 of the ThisWeek section of the TandT for Thursday, March 5. A photo at the bottom of the page caught my eye.

The CSA Combat Scorpio is designed to look like a submachine gun (close range combat). It has a large, combat-style magazine holding, perhaps 20 shots. It's useless for target shooting, useless for hunting. And, in fact, its .32 cartridge is on the feeble side for killing people. Its cost is $779. All it has going for it is a macho style. Now, think of who would want to buy such a gun. Do you think it's a good idea to have something like this on the market? For somebody immature enough to want it?

On rhe second line from the bottom are the Chiappa and the Ruger, both low-calibre copies of the Colt .45 of cowboy movies. You know, the ones for the quick draw shoot-out on main street at high noon. (Actually shut shoot-outs never happened. They were invented for movies.)

Now, the Colt was a good design some 150 years ago. So were the bustle and the hoop skirt. But just about any modern revolver beats it. So why would any one buy it? Cowboy macho. Do you really think a person like that should have a gun?

On the same line is the Bond, a powerful gun, but with a barrel so short that's it's very inaccurate,  useful only if you're a western gambler playing against cowboys who might shoot across the card table at you.

Fourth line up is the Suomi 9 mm carbine which comes with three magazines for a total rapid fire of some 60 shots.  The 9mm is really a pistol cartridge which has almost no use in hunting. And any hunter who needs 60 shots to hit anything should not be allowed in the woods.

On the line below that is the Winchester Extreme Defender, a 12 gauge shotgun Think 'Extreme Defender'. Is that how you would describe shooing ducks? Then notice the pistol grip. That's a characteristic of a military gun, not a duck gun  And notice the odd shape of the butt. It closely resembles the butt of the German MG34 medium machine gun of WW2. Gee. I wonder what kind of person would be attracted to a gun like that? And why?
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Page 1 of  March 5 has its usual pitch to get rid of the moratorium on shale gas exploration., this time because Nova Scotia's shale gas potential is way below early estimates - estimates churned out by the same people who now predict huge reserves in New Brunswick. And, as always, the person who is interviewed and quoted is someone from the industry.

This a story with a strong note of panic for fuel costs in the future. And that should raise some panic in general - but not because of the fuel cost. We have all known from the start that fossil fuels were going to run short. Nothing is forever. We have all known from the start that falling supply would mean rising costs.

We have also known that climate change is happening as a result of these fuels, and that sea levels are rising.

So where the hell has all the planning been for the future? How are we going to deal with what is surely happening? And how come the fossil fuel industries who should have been leading this planning have instead been crooning lullabies? And how come nobody at the Irving Press has seen this coming?

It is a very, very big mistake to allow big business to be your government. I don't know whether it's stupidity or greed or some combination of the two, but big business thinks only of its own profit margin, and never of people, And, unlike elected government it never has to answer to anybody but itself.

Capitalism is a system of economics. It is not a system of government. Nor has it shown any talent for government (or, for that matter, for economics.) And, in any case, what we have is not real capitalism, and it is not compatible with democracy.

Gallant, there's a bigger question here than even the question of fuel supplies. Do you think your party has the ability to produce a real plan for our future?

No. I didn't think so.

The whole first section of the paper is trivia - a local chef gets a promotion. And, in case you missed it, the story is repeated on p. 1 for March 6.  A barber is shearing hair to put tattoos on heads,, (it's trendy, and that will make Moncton a leading force in trendiness). Who could possibly care?
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Editorial and oped are up and down. The editorial is on schools - of which the editorial writer knows nothing, and so, really, says nothing.

Norbert has a quite decent column that should provoke thought.

Rod Allen has a column on the late Marc Chouinard. It's quite touching in a couple of spots; but it really tells us almost nothing. In fact, m. Chouinard isn't mentioned for the first half of the column. Rod Allen always lets  hi love for adjectives and adverbs and 'wittiness'  get in the way.

Jody Dallaire  has a good column - as usual. Someday, she might take a look at the status of women in Christian history. It's very similar to what we now call extreme Islam. Until very, very recently ( and often still today) men take off their hats in church and women keep them on because, according to the apostle Paul, man's hair is a glory unto God, and woman's hair is a snare and a delusion.

The Bible is full of references to the need for wife-beating, to the inferiority of women, and to the superior nature of men.. Under Canadian law, a wife could legally be beaten by her husband until the early twenties.  In the late nineteenth century, a women was supposed to look incredibly pure and innocent, and incredibly sexy at the same time. Thus the clothing that covered her from neck to toe, combined with the bustle to give her a huge rear end, the girdle to give her a Barbie doll waist, and falsies to give her a huge bust.

As well, female clergy are a quite recent development.

In accordance with Christian practice, women could hold only the most menial jobs, such as household servants, and were commonly victims of the master and sons of the family -well into the twentieth century. Any difference in this respect between Christian and even 'extreme' Muslims is very, very recent.

And Alec Bruce has a zinger about the mayor of Fredericton. It's called "King of the dip-twits".
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Canada&World is mostly a mish-mash of whatever gets dumped on the editor's desk.

However, B2 has an interesting story that there will soon be an online database of classified information on American government surveillance. This is important to Canadians as our government develops the same gestapo methods as the US. Edward Snowden, the man who leaked the documents showing improper behaviour by government authorities faces 30 years in prison if the US government gets hold of him. There is no penalty for oil barons who kill millions and destroy whole nations to increase their profits.


Another item on government crime is on B3. Harper seems to be cracking down on charities that don't cheer for him and his political friends. He uses Canada Revenue to put them through expensive and, probably, biased audits.

In other big news, Prince William has urged china to do more against poaching. Well, that should change the world.
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March 6 features big, breaking stories about how we don't yet know the date for a provincial budget, maple sap producers anxious to get going, a second and bigger story about the Moncton-born ehef who got a promotion, milking machines are on display at a show that has already been reported on at least twice, a new car store is opening, And that's about it. Lord, this is one, lazy newspaper.

The only item worth reading on the oped pages is a letter to the editor, "Nobel winners: dumber than our government?)

Norbert doesn't think there is any other intelligent life in the universe.  So?

Cole Hobson thinks daycare is great for children. I agree. But we differ in our conclusions. He believes it should be only for those who can afford it (and, therefore, we should give owners the rules that they want.)
I believe that all children should have equal access to educational opportunities. The objective is to help the children, not to make profits.

The president of U de Moncton has a column on the importance of university research. It is not only both vague and boring ( I have heard these words many, many times while sitting on stage in a front row seat that denied me the escape of sleep.)

Yes, research is important to universities (though not so often as they think). But just once, I'd like to hear or read a university president who thinks teaching is important, who wants to do something to improve it, and who actually knows something about it.

It would also be nice to find a university president who can write something readable.

Alec Bruce lost me in  his first paragraph. He actually seems to think there is a difference between liberal and conservative parties. The reality is that very, very few people even know what those words mean.  There is  no great difference between liberals and conservatives in Canada. There never has been since, oh, 1890 or so. Justin Trudeau is not on the left of anything. (and liberal doesn't mean on the left, anyway.)

Both Harper and Trudeau are opportunists who are servants of big business. Harper is a smarter opportunists (trickster). Harper also has a marked distaste for democracy. And neither being a trickster nor an anti- democracy freak has anything to do with conservatism.

Let the games continue, indeed.
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Section B is as lazy as Section A with stories seemingly just picked at random out of a pile. For example, there's a big story on how the mother of a Manitoba girl who was murdered 30 years ago was surprised to hear that the man accused at the time, but released,will now be tried.

And there's yet another story on the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013. Really, there are more important things happening in the world.. But only two made it into this world news section.

One is that the federal government is probably going to continue its combat mission in Iraq, and for the long term.

Look. There isn't gong to be a winner in this war. Winning (or defeating terrorism or whatever) isn't in the plan. Nor do we care about terrorism. If we did, we wouldn't be playing a role in spreading it.

The purposes of all the wars in the middle east are to get control of all the oil for American billionaires, to destabilize most governments in the region so they cannot challenge US oil control, to destroy governments which have the delusion that their countries are independent (this is what the wars on Iraq and Libya were about, this is what the American-sponsored "civil war" in Syria is about. this is what the fuss over Iran is about).

The wars are about crushing any Muslim independence by getting Musliims to fight and kill Muslims. Divide and conquer. ISIS is at once an American enemy and an American creation.

Oh, a a side effect our news hasn't mentioned the killing of Christians in the middle east, particularly the Syrian Orthodox Christians. They and Muslims have lived there in peace for, in the case of Christians, two thousand years. This region is the birthplace of both religions - which are actually quite similar to each other. But now, the Christians are suffering for the oil greed of billionaires, most of them Christians. Gee. That might make a good sermon when I get invited to lead the service at the Irving Chapel.

As for freedom, the US government helped the army to destroy freedom in Egypt, and topple the elected government. Far from spreading freedom, the US has been the world leader in destroying it, and imposing dictators. Its closest friend in the Muslim world is Saudi Arabia, the most extremist Muslim and most brutal and least free country in the world.

Why don't we get news about the massive interference and violence of US constant interference and killing in Latin America, it's imposition of poverty and suffering in Central America, its destruction of democracy in Guatemala and Cuba where the US (and Canada) destroyed the only democratic government Cuba ever had.

Why is this never in the news?

The other story worth a look is about the decline of job quality in Canada -  quality in terms of pay, stability, choice. Oh, it's great if you're rich. The rich have been on the rise in job quality. Not so the rest of us. And it's going to get worse. And neither Harper nor Trudeau will change that.

The rest of the world? There's two stories on ebola.

There is news worth reporting, but which didn't make the cut. The people of Ukraine are now being forced into permanent poverty by world bankers. Getting those bankers into power is a major reason why the US organized the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.

The European Union is increasingly worried about American aggressiveness. As well, its trade patterns are shifting toward Asia - and with that, expect alliances to change.

Most noticeable is that the world is notably and insanely without any form of law and order. The UN was supposed to provide that. But it never did because the major powers destroyed its ability to do much of anything. The US answer? It's been said openly, but rarely reported. The US answer is 'American exceptionalism'. The US will rule the world. Why aren't we getting news stories about this? It was the policy of Bush, and it's the policy of Obama. Both have said so.

In reality, rule by the US would mean rule by a handful of billionaires. And we've already seen the damage they can do. They have no competence to rule anything. They have no morality. They have no philosophy of anything except making money.

Even if they could succeed in ruling the world without a nuclear holocaust, they could only maintain order with massive armies of hired thugs.

Could we please get some real news, and some comment of substance?

The TandT idea of big news is on B8, seven full colour photos of shy people holding up  giant-sized cheques.

Bloody awful papers. And tomorrow is Faith Page day. Whoopee!

I wonder if the sermonette will talk about our role in destroying Christianity in the region of its birth?
Nah. It'll be another Tweety Bird bedtime story.

March 5: My Times and Transcript delivery.....

...., not for the first time, is some five hours late. So I'll begin with a topic I only touched on yesterday. This is for school boards and for high school teachers.

Do not teach any national history in elementary or high school. There are two reasons. One is that any national history is such a broad subject that it can be taught only as memory work (rote learning), and it is a waste of time because rote learning is soon forgotten.

The other reason is because the only history you are allowed to teach in the public schools is "feel good" history. If, in particular, you try to teach Canada or the US - and to be truthful - you will get fired. School boards see history (wrongly) as a way to teach patriotism. Anything that doesn't do that is "unCanadian". It's even worse in the US where almost all  history, at any level, is pure hokum. The reality is that there is much in Canadian history - as in any national history -  to be ashamed of.

One of them is Columbus and all that "the world is round stuff". Columbus didn't prove the world was round. That was as well known in 1492 as it is today, and had been known for  thousands of years - by everybody. Nor did he discover America. The discovery happened at least 70,000 years ago when people from Siberia crossed into the Canadian north and spread southward. And there were other "discoveries" of America by Pacific islanders, possibly by black Africans, by Phoenicians and, as Columbus and most of Europe knew, by Vikings.

Nor was there anything savage about the native people he saw here. They had all the characteristics of civilization. They had advanced religions. They had forms of government quite superior to Europe which was government largely by rich fools who were the sons of rich fools. They were also far, far ahead of Europeans (and of us even today) in the status of women. They were far less warlike and cruel than Europeans. Their health was far superior. It was common for native people to live to be grandparents - but very rare for Europeans in the time of Columbus.

Columbus, on the other hand, was a thorough bastard. He murdered people who had welcomed him and helped him[. His armies were well-equipped with dogs trained to kill,  and he used them freely. He slaughtered thousands, destroyed native nations. He demanded natives produce gold and silver for him with a quota set for each person. Anyone who failed to meet the quota had both hands chopped off.

Oh, and there's a strong possibility that native people learned about scalping from the Europeans. It was an old, Scandinavian cusrom.

I did not learn any of the above in high school.

Anyway, you don't want to use history just to pump information into heads. After all, there is no "truth" in history, not even in the sense that science is truth.  Every day, there is new research to question what we thought we knew as fact. It's not about information. It's about how to think - and that has a general use for the rest of a student's life.

A good way to start is with what the students see around them every day.

For example - who was Beatrice McNaughton? Why is a school named after her? What did she do? (And good luck in finding anybody on the schoolboard who knows.)

Why does a school named after her have a symbol that is a raging, MALE, Scottish warrior? She must have been one, tough bird. Indeed, so far as I've been able to tell, all the schools have symbolic MALE figures for their school team names - including girls' teams. Why?

Don't tell the students all this. Tell them how to get the information. Once they have it, then lead discussions on what this information means.

Oh, while at BMHS, and perhaps others, check out the pictures in the hall of graduating years. For the early years(about 1960) the students will surely notice the absence or scarcity of female grads. What does that suggest? Perhaps students might check out the registration records to see what they tell us. (Surely,  the school board has such records.)

The school board should also have copies of contracts for teachers in, say, the 1920s. Get a look at the forms and the terms, especially for women. What does that tell you about the perceived role of teachers, and the social status of women?

Then there are the street names in Moncton. There is a Church St. with some very expensive churches on it. Notice when they were built. Notice the Capital theatre, a most impressive (and expensive building, and also built in the same period as the churches. Notice some of the older houses in that area. What does all that tell us about the history of Moncton?

Then there are the street names the children see every day. I once got a whole year of broadcasts out of that in Montreal. Who and what are they named after? (City hall should have these records.) Why do we have a Highfield? Why so we have a street called Mount Royal where there really is no mountain? Or anything royal?  And the same for Westmount St.

(hint - I think both those names were taken from Montreal. If so, why would Montreal street names be in Moncton?)

Why do we have a Falklands St.? I would guess it originated about 1960, at which time the only thing worth knowing about the Falklands was that they are Islands near which a sea battle was fought in World War One. It  had no connection whatever with Moncton.  City hall records might be useful here.

The first point is to let children learn the historical meanngs of things familiar to them. That gives meaning to things that they see every day, and gives them a sense that history is all around them.

The second point to to help to students to know how to get this information - and to actually get it - from computers, school records, city hall.....

The third point is the thinking part, judgement about the sources,  (how reliable are they? how complete are they?), and the discussion of what they tell us. Here, the teacher should lead - but not lecture. Let the students deal with the thinking process.

All business wants out of the schools are trained robots, not original thinkers. All government wants is unthinking patriots. All school boards want is history that won't annoy business, governments, or parents.

And what children need is to have something they will remember, that will make them aware of history and, above all, develop their ability to make judgements and to think.

There are all sorts of areas to look at. A high proportion of pro hockey players come out of high school. A high proportion of pro football players come out of university.  Why the difference?

The Stanley Cup and the Grey Cup are supposed to be for amateur champion ships. Why?

When did the first shopping centre in Canada appear? Why did it appear at that time? (It was about 1948).

National histories are a waste of time. They can only be taught be rote - memorization - and that's a waste of everybody's time. In case, school boards have never allowed the truth to be told about national histories - and I see no sign of that changing.

So, teach the history of what has meaning to things the children see every day. And, most of all, teach what history is all about - finding information, making judgements about it, and thinking.

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I apologize to readers who were expecting a blog about the news. I had intended to do that with the history part written this morning. But the day turned chaotic just about noon; so I couldn't finish. I'll be a good boy tomorrow.

March 4: "You f---ing peasants"

"I am going to f---ing kill you. I will f---ing kill everyone on this flight. They are all f---ing peasants. I could get you all fired in five minutes. I know your boss. My father will pay this out. He has before." Then he went really wild, getting violent with the flight crew, and smashing his fist against the fuselage to threaten them.

Luckily for the speaker, he wasn't an arab on a flight from Ottawa to Washington. If he had been, he'd now be in a secret prison wondering which torture was coming next. But he isn't an arab, or black, or even hispanic. He's a young, white man. More important, he's a young, white man with one hell of a rich family. He is Conrad Hilton, a descendant of the founder of the Hilton Hotel chain. So he didn't really do anything wrong. His lawyers say it was a sleeping pill that upset his little tummy.

Take a look at  his statement again. (Do it here, because you won't find this story in the Irving press - though it does appear in other papers, including even the dreadful National Post.

Kill, peasants, fired, I know your boss, my father will pay this out... Where did he learn that? Where did he get his class superiority, his arrogance us peasants? Well, I have known more than a few Conrad Hiltons. And they learn their obnoxious behaviour from their parents and social circle. That's why you'll hear comments from the very wealthy like - "This recession is all the fault of those people who are too lazy to get rich. Instead, they lie around and soak up social welfare." (In fact, nobody soaks up social welfare like the very wealthy.)

With few exceptions, the very rich, the people who control our governments, think this way. Of course, it's always been this way with empire builders. They have to justify their brutality and greed by giving themselves a sort of racial sense of their own intellectual and spiritual superiority to us "peasants".

And Conrad Hilton will never be poor and lying around waiting for his welfare cheque. No, he'll have a prominent executive position in one of his daddy's companies at many millions of dollars a year, and the Norberts of this world will write flattering columns about him, and  how he's so much smarter than those civil servants we overpay.

We see this sort of arrogance every day. But we don't draw the obvious conclusions from it. These are not just arrogant incompetents. They are dangerous, and they are the cause of massive suffering and deprivation.
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Netanyahu gave the expected speech. "You cannot trust Iran to keep an agreement." I mean, this reminds me of the time to major powers agreed to dismantle a certain proportion of its nuclear weapons. Russia carried out the agreement. George Bush Jr. did not.

How soon we forget!

Israel agreed, years ago, to srop taking over Palestinian lands,  kicking out the Palestinians, and installing Israeli settlements. But it never even slowed down. It promised to accept international aid for Palestine, and to pass it on to Palestinan authoritites. It's not doing it. While Palestinians are starving, Israel is refusing to hand over money that it agreed to h and over.

For that matter, Israel's whole nuclear armament system is against international agreement, and is illegal. And the US was behind much of that. Israel has broken so many agreements that the majority of UN members turned against it long ago.  All that keeps it from being hauled into court for that and for war crimes is the US veto. (And Harper's blessing.)

And did Netanyahu propose an alternative to a nuclear agreement with Iran? Nope. So - what do we do?
All that's left is to go to war with Iran. - which is what Netanyahu has always wanted in the first place. He wants the destruction of Iran. He always has. It has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It has to do with Israeli dominance in the region.

And that poses the very, very high risk of a nuclear war because Russia, China, India have been forming relationships with countries like Iran to counterbalance the spread of American economic imperialism (led by people in the social circle of Conrad Hilton.)

All of this should (but doesn't) highlight the real problem. We simply cannot afford to keep nuclear weapons.
None. Not by anybody.

At this moment, we are facing two situations that could go nuclear. Oh, I know. It won't happen, yadayada. People have talked about it for years.. And it hasn't happened. It's like driving drunk. I mean, lots of people drive drunk. They do it all the time. And most of them have never killed anybody.

Right now, we're driving drunk in ten countries. Maybe nobody will get hurt. Maybe the odds are against it. I hope. But if we do it long enough, it's almost certain that one time, it will happen. And it only needs one time.

Of course, if it does happen, the billionaires who own American politicians will get to control all the trade in the world. Much good it may do them.
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There's nothing much to talk about in the Times and Transcript. Yesterday, for example, was the Netanyahu speech to Congress which is likely to be, for all its silliness, one of the most important speeches in history, and the most insulting one ever to a leader of a country by a leader of another country delivered in the other's government building. The TandT does not have a single commentary on it. Of course. Nobody at the paper has the ability to comment on anything of significance. (Brian Cormier writes about shovelling snow.)

The editorial is about student loans, and really says nothing because the editorial writer obviously knows nothing. There are profound problems with the university system. Nobody at the TandT has a clue about them. For example, It didn't occur to the editorial writer to wonder why, in countries poorer than Canada, university students don't need loans because it's free.

I often got interviewed on matters of education, and often knew the reporters covering education stories in Montreal. I never met one who had any experience of teaching or who knew anything about education. And, really, that's the rule all over North America. The Irving papers cover a whole province, giving them the circulation of a newspaper in a fairly large city. Can't they hire one person who knows something about a topic as important as education? We need insight into what the options are - and we sure aren't getting that from the TandT - or from the anglophone east school board.

Norbert rants about how the government is not doing anything about the economy. But he does so without a word about the corporation world in this province even though it seems to profiting magnificently enough to pay monstrous salaries to executives, and even though one of them effectively controls the province.

"Outsiders". Norbert writes, "will decide our fate."  That's just dumb. Our fate is decided by insiders, one of whom said, without criticism, that he would be a member of the government  (though nobody ever elected him.)

In fact, corporate bosses have ALWAYS run the economy of New Brunswick. Norbert, how can you say the economy is in crisis without once mentioning them? And that is true of every writer at that paper.

Alec Bruce has another column on fracking for shale gas. Of course. If he didn't, the TandT wouldn't publish it - or him.

The Alward and Graham government had done no reliable research on fracking. Under public pressure, and only because of public pessure, Gallant is doing some. No, says Bruce, even without research we know it's perfectly safe. The oil companies have told us it's safe. I mean, poison chemicals are good for the soil and the water. Everybody knows that. Anyway, we need cheap shale gas. It'll make lots of profits, and some it (if not much) will come down to us in low-paying jobs.

And, anyway, nobody understands climate change - so let's keep plunging ahead. And if that kills people, well, maybe we'll invent something.


B3 has an interesting story based on a report from CSIS about the rise of ANTI-Islam sites on the web in Canada that encourage hatred and violence against Muslims. That's certainly true. I've seen many of them, including one called Blazing Cat Fur which, from the ignorance of its commentators, would seem to be an organization of louts, some of them from Moncton whose comments are usually one-liners like, "he's stupid", "That crazy", "Muslims are pigs". I know some are from Moncton because one of the organizers of the site has a real hatred for me, has mentioned me, and has published comments from readers whose pseudonyms I recognized from comments they had sent to this blog - usually one-liners that I don't publish because they're in the profanity of a Conrad Hilton.

However, Harper will not act on this CSIS report. After all, he's planning to win on the votes of people like that.

B5 carries to stories on the Netanyahu speech, both of them quite decent journalism. But they missed the best comment of all. Noting that Congress gave the speech 19 standing ovations, a respected (Jewish) commentator wrote, "It's the biggest blow job ever received by a Jewish man." (You have to know a little about Jewish humour to get the full effect of that one.)

March 3: Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and New Brunswick...

...and Spain and Portugal have something in common. All were subject to wild speculation by banks and investors. As well, the banks and investors were using questionable and perhaps illegal  practices to increase their profits. Then the recession hit, and the bottom dropped out.

No problem. The rich just used their control of governments to get bailed out. Result- the taxpayers had to take the hit. One way to do that was to cut social spending in order to be able to give more money to the people who had caused the recession. The blame on social spending and government programmes was planted in news media like the Irving press. Heavily funded "think tanks" got into the show, too, with guarantees that their propaganda would be swallowed whole by the Norbert Cunninghams of this world.
That's why the Irving press has been beating the drums of cutting social spending, and treating the book "Over the Edge" as if it were a new gospel.

There's nothing new about any of this. It's been a characteristic behaviour of uncontrolled capitalism for centuries.

The rich did the same thing in the 1930s, messing the economy - and blaming the poor and ripping them off to make the rich ever richer. That's why the rich have been getting massively richer since the start of the recession. And I guess that's why the TandT never mentions it.

And the result of cutting government spending is producing the same result that it did in the 1930s - increasing unemployment, increasing poverty, making cuts in education, cuts in health.

Business does not exist to create jobs or fund services or create prosperity (or to be philanthropic).
It exists solely to make money for itself. To so so, it murders, loots, dehumanizes people by the millions. Making money for the rich was what the British Empire was about It's what Russia is about. It's what China is about. It's what the American wars, hundreds of them since 1776 have been about. It's what the "War on Terror" is really about. It's what Vietnam was about.

For a good look at how this works, check out a web site sent to me by a reader.

http://fpif.org/turning-european-debt-myth- upside
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Another site sent by a reader is http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/01/3960

This is the kind of site I treat with caution - just as I would treat, say, Voice of Liberty, But both often tell the truth (if it's to their advantage); and this story rings true.

Western governments and bankers have promised very large loans to Kyiv. The is the capital of a country that is flat broke, and with no prospect of ever being anything but flat broke. Now, governments and bankers are not Santa Claus. If the US, for example, wanted to help a country sunk in poverty and misery, it could extend help to Haiti - just offshore, and the country with the worst malnutrition in the world despite a century of US control.

So, hoe come all the concern about  Kyiv and none about Haiti?

According to this story - and it would make sense with any government or banking system in the world, To get the loans, Kyiv has to turn over all its fertile land to Ukrainian Oligarchs (uncontrolled capitalists) and to international seed companies. And it is not a coincidence that those oligarchs are well represented in the government that the US has foisted on Ukraine.

Could it happen here? You bet it could. It wouldn't happen in a real democracy because in a real democracy we would control out governments. But we don't control ours. In New Brunswick, for example, it would take a prime fool to believe that the Liberals or the Conservatives represent us in any way. And, yes, across this country we  have oligarchs, just like Ukraine and Russsia and China and the US.

If New Brunswickers ever want to be free and in a democracy, we have to stop listening to political speeches and "programmes". The first requirement of any party in this province has to be to restore democracy. The money of the wealthy cannot be permitted to buy elections. Governments have to become answerable to us. Without that, nothing else will change except to get worse.
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SWN, a company which specializes in drilling deep, deep holes and forcing down huge quantities of water laced with poisons. is threatening to sue us because of the moratorium in drilling. I can see  its point. I mean, sure, it could kill people and poison land and waters. But a contract is a contract. (I'm sure that's in The Bible somewhere.)

Not surprisingly, the editorial writer for the TandT agrees with SWN. But it does get tough at the end. It says the industry has to do more to explain the potential risks to us, without PR. Yeah. Up front and honest. The shale gas industry has been good at that. If fact, I've often thought it should be writing the sermonettes on the Faith Page.

On this day, one of the most critical days we have ever seen, the day Netanyahu has addressed the US Congress with a message that could change the whole world -  Norbert has a column on how to prevent a cup of coffee from sloshing.  However, there is an interesting letter to the editor, "Do Trudeau Liberals hide political time bomb". It's actually much more important than that title makes it sound.

Alec Bruce has a very solid column on education. It begins with university education, but actually has more to say about education before university; so I'll take the opportunity of adding a bit about the problems of university education.

The most important things a university student can learn are how to read with understanding and with critical judgement, and how to organize and present ideas. Essentially, it's about learning how to think. Some of the best fields of study for that are (are should be) sociology, political science, history.... And these are precisely the fields that are losing students.

That's because they're boring. And the professors make them boring. Very few professor have any training at all in teaching. All they understand is lecturing (usually with no gift for lecturing). And the lecturing is almost entirely information (facts, they say) to be memorized. So you cram the stuff, recite it in the exam, and forget it within a few months.

My experience is that a large number of professors aren't interested in teaching, don't like it, know nothing about it, and don't want to learn about it. Their proudest boast is that their information is "up to date".  Who bloody  cares when it's going to be forgotten, anyway?

Worse, I remember the horror of sitting in first year classes of hundreds of  students, The only thing I remember from that is that if you mate a black rabbit with a white rabbit, and you get four baby rabbits,  one will be white; one black, and two both black and white. (I think). No wonder I never get invited to parties.

The field that is booming is business administration studies. Not only does that have all of the faults of the humanities, but it's even worse because it's essentially just job training - and most of that training has little to do with thinking. We've now had generations of graduates of graduate with no special ability to think beyond their own subject - or even within it.  Perhaps that might explain why so many business leaders are utterly without conscience or understanding when they interfere in public affairs.

These are problems the universities have to face. But they won't.
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Page B3 has the story of our own John Baird speaking to AIPAC, the richly endowed Israeli lobby for Canada and the US. Netanyahu was there. of course.  And Baird was there to support Netanyahu in order to score electoral points for Harper.

Mummy, teach me how to lie like John Baird does.

He says he's leery about Iran's human rights abuses. What a liar. If he were worried about human rights abuses, he would surely have mentioned the unjustified mass murders and mass tortures by Blair, Bush, and Obama. He'd be worried about Israel's abuse of Palestinians which most of the UN is against. But Israel is protected from criminal proceedings only by the US veto.

Nor does Baird mention the human abuses by our good friends, the rulers of Saudi Arabia who are daily guilty of the worst human rights abuses in the world.

And, oh, he's so worried about Iran's development of a nuclear bomb. He's lying. And he knows he's lying. Both American and Israeli intelligence have many times reported that Iran is not developing a nuclear bomb. It is impossible that a man at his level of government did not know about those intelligence reports.

Oh, and Iran is friendly to Syria. So? Aren't countries allow to be friendly to whoever they want to be friendly with?

And he sat down to thunderous applause from Netanyahu and his wealthy buddies.

I feel so proud to be a Canadian.

There was a time, years ago, when a Canadian Press report would have added the information I have written  above.  But those days are long gone.The result is a news story that is simply propaganda.

Netanyahu wants a war. He wants Iran destroyed. Netanyahu has wanted this for at least ten years. It's been that long and more since Netanyahu has been saying that  Iran is just six months from having a bomb. And there's still no bomb. Obviously, reporters need a quick course on how many months there are in a year.

Poor little Israel. It  has only 200 or so nuclear bombs - all obtained illegally and with US help.

This is one hell of a dangerous time. Nethanyahu has made it clear he wants a war. The US Congress wants a war. And Netanyahu is quite possibly the most dangerous man in the world..

As a Canadian, I want to thank Mr. Baird for kissing Ntanyahu's rear end (somebody has to do it, and making the crisis even worse. Oh, and thanks to Canadian press for not giving the whole story. And thanks for Norbert Cunningham for his insightful column on how to stop coffee from sloshing.

March 2: A page 1 story and headline that make sense!

A plant that incinerated medical waste in this city has suffered a "devastating" fire. The headline tells us that this poses no environmental danger for us. Okay. That's an important story, and the headline focuses on what it means to us. That's a real, front-page headline story.

And that's pretty much it for Monday.

Well, editorial cartoonist Adder has a pretty good one of Harper listening as one of his cronies reads a newspaper sentence to him. "An open and fair opportunity giving Canadians a reasonable chance to make an informed opinion about each of the candidates."

The crony adds, "There's a political strategy we haven't tried yet."

Good one. But it's the only star in the editorial/oped sky.

Half of the editorial is about the weather. The other is about the Frye Festival - which would, more suitably, be a news item. Of the rest of the editorial, much is not about Frye at all. It's the old obsession with how this festival "brands" Moncton and makes it a centre of world attention - just like the concerts at Magnetic Hill.

Norbert writes a confusing column about young girls and women running off to join ISIS. Um-m-m. Norbert, it's not as if they're flooding our streets and heading to the airport. Far more young women, far, far more get drawn into the sex trade in this, our Christian, world. (And Norbert admits that.)

The point of his column seems to be is the girls who run to join ISIS are all the fault of their parents though he presents no evidence for that.

A more likely problem is that our children are growing up in a world of intense and unreasoning fear, hatred, ignorance and uncertainty. And all of those are encouraged by news media like the Irving press.

Didn't get enough about the weather in the editorial? Then you'll love the commentaries. All three, ALL, are about the cold and the snow. None of them has anything significant to say about them. The person who allowed them to do that and  allowed it to be printed is the commentary editor - who specializes, himself, in a weekly column that says nothing whatever.

That's not an accident. The Irving press has two roles as a news medium. One is to spread propaganda for big business. The other is to keep New Brunswickers - how shall I put it? - ignorant.
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In Canada&World, the biggest story of the day didn't make top spot in today's TandT. That was saved for an even bigger story that's a pitch for shale gas. The head of orridor says, roughly,  we must develop shale gas in NB or the province will die and the whole world will suffer. Apparently, it doesn't matter if it destroys the local environment and contributes to climate change (I mean, what do scientists know? You want to learn what you need to learn? Ask an oil executive.) Yep. We have to end that silly moratorium right now.

The other big story is an important one, particularly from a local perspective. UNB scientists are playing a major role in understanding storms that occur in space - and which can create serious problems on earth. And it's okay to report that because only scientists who talk about climate change are stupid.

This is a 'feel good' story. But it's also a deserving one. Good for UNB.

In the rest of the world, the big story is the murder of former Russian opposition leader Boris Nemstov. But before I can talk about that, I have to tell a little vignette. Bear with me. It's actually important.

When I was very, very young (and a darling little child), I was in love with Vera Lynn. She was a British singer who was the darling of the western, allied armies. Her voice was magnificent. And I'm still in love with her. You can get her on Youtube. One of her greatest and most inspiring songs was " There'll always be an England".

There'll always be an England
And England will be free
As long as England means to you
What England means to me.

(Oh, you really have to see this and hear it on Youtube. It still gives me goose pimples when I hear it.)

But read those lyrics again. So you see the irony in them?

"And England will be free"

This magnificent hymn to freedom was to England - the country that had destroyed freedom for more people and more countries than any other country in history. And it kept killing people who wanted freedom for years after the war, with fighting in Africa and Asia.

There's a thrill to this day in hearing her sing, and a thrill in her call for freedom - even though none of the leading powers have ever been interested in spreading freedom. To this day, the British Empire rouses echoes of glory -but not of any reality. We think of glory,  not the uncounted hundreds of thousands and probably more who died, not of the looting and impoverishing of countries, the destruction of cultures. No, it's glory, glory, glory all the glittering way, ("The town was mad, A man was like a boy... the person who guesses the name of the poet who wrote that should be reading better poets.)

The same is true of God Bless America. The US record of murder (and torture and looting and destruction of freedom) has surpassed even that of Britain. In fact, the only times Canadian have had to stand on guard for thee were the American invasion of 1812, and the American-sponsored Fenian raids of the 1860s. To this day, the only country that ignores Canadian title to the Northwest Passage is the US. But we "just pretend" that isn't happening.

Most people at least have heard of these things. But they seem to let them rest in tiny, locked rooms in their brains.

And that takes us to the murder of Boris Nemstov and to Putin.  If you follow most western news stories about it, and there's no doubt about. . Putin had Nemrov murdered. Read the associated press story in today's TandT. The news media have no evidence whatever. But - o-o-o-oh. it was that awful Putin.

Both Obama and Kerry demanded an immediate investigation, and certainly implied it was an inside job.
(We'll pass lightly over the fact that it's almost unheard of for leaders of one country to make any such demand of another country. It's highly insulting to do so and, I suspect, deliberately insulting. Can you imagine Harper's tizzy fit if Putin were to make such a demand of him?  But we don't see it when our side does it to somebody else.)

Well, like anybody else who's telling the truth, I have no idea who the killers were. So let's get back to Vera Lynn and the irony of "and England will be free".)

Vera Lynn sang of freedom for an England that had usually destroyed freedom. The US sings of its gift to the world of freedom, when, in practice, it destroy freedom almost wherever it goes.  (Anyway,  the US is not the world's first republic. It's, at best, fourth, with the oldest one more than a thousand years older than the US.)

Every day, the president of the United States approves a list of people all over the world, including some American citizens, are to be killed by drones (which commonly also kill children all  and quite innocent people all over the world.) There's also the killing list for special ops which work in many more countries, including most of South America. Obama is also the man who has so far failed to make any investigation or to lay charges for all the illegal torturing and killing during his terms and before. Compared to Obama, Putin is a softy.

"And England will be free..."

I don't know nearly enough to even guess who the killers were working for. But I do have trouble understanding Putin's motive for such a killing. Nemstov was no longer opposition leader. He was a declining figure in Russian politics. His day was over. Why bother killing him?

 Thousands in Moscow mourned him? Yep. But Putin has skyrocketing support in the polls at 80%. The opposition is split and, even in total , then, is only 20%. Nemstov was no threat.

Oh, and Nemtsov was killed right in front of the Kremlin. Way to keep a low profile, Putin.

Putin is cold and ruthless. So is Obama, who has a record of slaughter to prove it. Maybe Putin did it - but I don't see a motive, and letting it happen at Putin's front door seems---careless.

On balance, the only leader who gains from this killing is Obama. It creates confusion in Russia and, with the help of cooperative news media, it reassures the west that we are fighting evil people, people who aren't good, like us, not at all.

It also gives Obama a chance to provoke a crisis in Russia, perhaps to ruin the Kyiv truce talks  (which Obama never wanted in the first place), perhaps to scare Russia into accepting a dominance of American billionaires in the Russian economy.

And just to kick the can a little, he and Kerry both give public statements that might, if Putin doesn't back down, provide an excuse to go to war against Russia.

I think a lot of people in the European Union (who are more realistic than we are) are now very nervous.

March 1: What is an oligarchy? Words, words, words....

(It's Sunday. So I took a break from the daily news._

In political discussion, all of us frequently use words we don't really understand. The result is that the words come to have meaning only for the person speaking them - and that meaning is emotional, often with no connection with any reality.

A prime example is the word 'communism'. Most people (including most journalists and politicians) have no idea what the word means. To them, its evil. That's it. To them, Stalin was a communist. (He wasn't.)  Castro is a communist. (He isn't.) You even find people who call themselves communists when they aren't. I well remember the pompous ass of my student days who organized a communist party for students. In fact, his views more closely resembled fascism  (a word whose meaning is really confused.)

Karl Marx was a man who genuinely was devoted to improving our lives. He identified capitalism and dictatorships, quite correctly, as causes of human suffering. His solution involved working toward a society in which all had a voice and, most importantly, all would come to cooperate for the common good, and there would be no social classes.

That's not evil. I don't think it's practical. I don't think it can happen. But it's not an evil idea. But, oh, it was dreadfully evil in the eyes of capitalists who had no interest at all in the common good. That's why their news media associated communism with evil. And so communism became a sort of swear word.

That's why the US, Britain and Canada sent troops to Siberia in 1918. The rule of the Tsars, despotic, cruel, exploitive, had effectively destroyed Russia, and had caused what we now call the Communist revolution. So we sent troops to keep the Russian people under the rule of aristocrats. You won't find that in many history books.

What you will find in movies, articles, in folk memory is the terrible sadness of the killing of the Tsar and his family - especially the daughter, Anastasia. And so, to this day, in a war that had killed, impoverished, crippled, orphaned more than any previous war, we mourn the loss of a family that brutalized even more millions to make itself even richer.

Stalin, as we know, had none of the ideals or hopes that Marx did. He was simply a dictator. He called himself a communist; and our news media happily reported him as a communist. But there was nothing communist in his policies.

China has never been communist, and certainly is not communist today. In fact, the economic system of China today is thoroughly capitalist. Nor is there the slightest sign of any move to communism.

So - now the bad word is oligarchy. It sounds evil. Actually, it think it is evil. But oligarchy seems to be what this brave, new world is about. And it's simple enough. It means rule by the few. If  ISIS ever achieves an stable state, it will be an oligarchy. That is, its government will not be by the people but by the few - the religious leaders.

Through almost the whole history of the British Empire, Britain was an oligarchy. Real power was in the hands of the monarch, the aristocracy, and the rich.That's largely true today - except that the monarchy has become simply decorative - and expensive.

Russia is an oligarchy with all real power in the hands of a small number of capitalists. Ditto for China. Ditto for the United States. And that's very largely the case for Canada. And it's entirely the case for New Brunswick.

And the base for oligarchy is social class. In a society organized around social class (as ours certainly is), democracy is impossible. Despite all the fine words of 1776, all Americans have never been equal. (Thomas Jefferson, who wrote those fine words about all being equal, owned over 200 slaves. Only five of them were ever freed. But that's because they were his sons.) Women didn't get equality for 150 years - and neither they nor hispanics nor African-Americans have it yet.

To this day, in the whole western world, equality does not exist. For many reasons, the quality of education varies hugely by social class. The poor do worse than others in schol. In the US, part of the reason for that is that the poor get underfunded schools. But it's more than that. Working class children generally do worse in school. This has nothing to do with brains. It has to do with socialization. Indeed, I found that the whole process for me from grade one to graduate studies was a matter of being re-socialized at ever level - socialized to the manners and tastes and expectation of a working class kid then, in high school, the shock of becoming socialized to the values of lower middle class as I reached higher grades, and my old friends dropped out, then becoming socialized to the values and tastes of kids in undergraduate school, then to graduate school where values and expectations were much different and where I first learned about the importance of snobbery and arrogance.

The myth of North American history is that Canada and the US have been lands of opportunity where all have an equal chance to get ahead. It's not true. And it never has been true. There are expectations, of course, but the reality is and has been from the start, that children born into a social class will forever live in that class. The poor child will forever be poor, the rich one forever rich, the middle class one forever middle class. There are volumes of statistics on that.

There is no evidence that the rich work harder than the poor. In fact, quite the contrary. There is no evidence that the poor have less intelligence than the rich. There is lots of evidence that the rich feel themselves superior - almost racially superior - to the poor and the middle class. That's natural. That's the natural attitude of those who exploit and abuse others. The "others", like African slaves or native peoples or Chinese under imperial rule, are inferior. God created them to serve us. God bless America. Rule, Brittannia.

We live in an oligarchy. The oligarchy, the greater part of it, is made up of people who were born into it. That's exactly the same as medieval rule by aristocracy. And it is not possible for an oligarchy to be a democracy.

Other words to beware of - liberal, conservative, patriotism...