Nov. 7: little - again - in the Irving press

There's an interesting development in the fighting in Syria. Both the U.S. and Russia have assigned fighter jets to the region. And that's a little odd. Some fighter jets are equipped to carry bombs as well. Jets like that are called fighter bombers. But others are equipped to fight only other aircraft. Russia and the US are both sending pure fighters.

Now, ISIS has no aircraft. Syria has an airforce equipped with fighters and, as they have been for decades, they are all Russian, though many are outdated. (Gee - could that relationship with Russia explain why the U.S. wants to get rid of Assad?)

So why are the U.S. and Russia now sending fighter jets to Syria? Who are they intended to fight? Each other, of course. We're stretching bluff to a dangerous degree.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/03/u-s-brings-dogfighters-to-counter-russians-over-syria.html

The Irving press didn't have room for this story. It needed room for a BIG story on how important Dominic Leblanc is.
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Section A has two new stories worth reading.

One is about a legally blind photographer who has an international reputation for his photos of the night skies. The other is really an opinion piece; but it appears as the headline story of the day. It's about Canadian Peacekeepers, and remembering them on the Remembrance Day.

Founded by PM Lester Pearson, they brought a world respect to Canada for its international efforts to avert wars. And it was dangerous. The Peacekeepers could not initiate violence - but they had to respond to it. There was a high risk in that delayed response.

Up to the 1990s, their missions brought wide admiration and respect for Canada on the international stage. Then we blew it.

When the U.S. army invaded Haiti to overthrow the only honestly elected government that country has ever had so that American billionaires could go back to bleeding it, it asked Canada to pretend this was peacekeeping, and to send peacekeepers to make this seem legitimate. Since then, Canada has been simply an American poodle. And its international reputation promptly went down the toilet.

We should certainly remember the peacekeepers on Nov. 11. They did us proud.
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The only column worth reading is the one by Jo-Anne Moore. It's a poignant column about Nov. 11; and it broadens the list of those we remember by including police.

Then there's one about the glorious building of the CPR, 130 years ago. It's by Pat Murphy who admits he's not an historian. He sure isn't. (Nor was Pierre Berton, the writer he often quotes. Pierre didn't even do the basic research for those books. And they were written to make money, not to tell the truth) Apparently, Pat Murphy never heard of the thousands of native peoples we deliberately starved to death to build that railway. Or of the metis we killed. He mentions that Chinese workers were used on the dangerous work of   dynamiting. He doesn't say why. Wanna guess? Nor does he seem to know about the terrible way we treated the surviving Chinese for at least a century after the building of the railway.

The major figures in building the railway, he says, were George Stephen, Donald Smith, and William Van Horne. --- uh,well, they were certainly the beneficiaries. (I've often been in the mansions of both Stephen and Van Horne, and they are stunning.) The Van Horne Mansion was demolished by a very wealthy speculator. The Mount Stephen is now a club for the wealthy.

But they weren't really capitalists. The borrowed the money on very good terms. And the reason they could get the good terms was because Canada  guaranteed repayment of those loans. We are the ones who took the risk. But they are the ones who got the mansions.
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Again, there is no world news (or news of any importance)in the Canada and World section. Well, there's an amusing story that Republican candidate Ben Carson lied when he said he had earned a West Point scholarship.

I do not understand how the editors of this newspaper can miss all the big stories when anybody with a computer could find four or five just while having a coffee. They can't be as clued out as they appear to be. There must be a reason for this. It has to be deliberate stupidity. But why?
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On the Faith Page, planned church activities seem to be largely of the sort that lead to burping. The sermonette makes the mistake that most Nov. 11 sermonettes do. It glorifies war. Those who went to war did it to defend freedom, and fought out of love and hope. It was all glorious.

But that's just  not the way people think or behave. I remember the boys from my father's scout troop visiting to say goodbye. They were 17, 18, most with grade 9 education - tops. They had no idea what the war was about. My uncle joined to get away from his wife and family. For the rest of his life he talked about nothing but the war - not about Dieppe or D day  (he was at both). All he talked about was the dances and parties he went to and the girls he met. My father joined, I think, because it was his last chance for adventure. Many, many joined because it was a depression, and they couldn't feed their families. But once the war economy picked up, the rate of enlistment dropped.

I was too young for Korea, but old enough to know many of the kids who joined up for it. I can't remember one who did it out of a passion to defend Korea or to bring it democracy (and, in fact, we did not bring democracy to South Korea.)

Those who did go to defend freedom and democracy were betrayed. Both Britain and France refused to let their empires go free. The U.S. did not introduce freedom and democracy to a single country. In fact, since 1945 it has fought almost every year to impose or to support puppet dictators - which is why it invaded Canada, then invaded Mexico to take its land, carried out a holocaust against its native peoples, and invaded almost every country in South America.  It destroyed democracy in Egypt. The U.S. and Britain now support a new Turkish leader who openly plans to make himself a dictator.

And we didn't fight the war to defend Jews against mass murder. In fact, we refused to give them the slightest help. Same with the U.S.

Our leaders lied to us. When Congo tried to establish a democracy, the western powers killed it. It took a very long time to bring freedom and equality to South Africa -- and when it did come, it was largely Black South Africans who brought it. The U.S. now claims, with no objection from us, the right to impose its will on the whole world. What does this have to do with freedom and democracy?

We owe our veterans and peacekeepers. We owe them the right to know why they risked death. We owe them the responsibility to ensure that if another war comes, we will take the trouble to study why they should go - before sending them. (We also owe full medical treatment for the damage they have suffered.)

What we don't owe them is a glittering parade of lies that make war glorious.
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I have some news items. In particular, it is worth wondering why the U.S. and Britain are so eager to spread word that the Russian airliner that crashed in Sinai was destroyed by a bomb. However, it's getting late, and I want to get in another bit about the rise of the super-capitalists, and their sense that they are a superior group who are entitled. And just to be quirky, let's start with the sweater of a hockey player for the Detroit Red Wings.

It has a crest with an automobile wheel that has wings. Makes sense. When they adopted that crest in the 1930s, Detroit was the automobile city. But it's actually a modified copy of the crest of what began as a bicycle club for the wealthy of Montreal. It was called the Montreal Winged Wheelers, dating back to the days of bicycles with huge front wheels, and tiny rear ones.

And that, surprisingly, is connected to the revival of the modern Olympics as amateur games, and to medieval knights who jousted. And it's part of a tradition that was brought to the Americas by the British army.

The British army was officered by men of the upper classes who believed that their skills in organized, amateur sports were what gave them a right to command. Thus the fox hunts and polo. Sports -organized sports - were what created gentlemen of leadership and honour.

Of course, the common soldiers could not be permitted to take part because they would be neither leaders nor gentleman. All they needed was muscle. So they were encouraged to box and wrestle. In colonies like India, the British sometimes set up native regiments. These might have a few native officers who were permitted to play polo with British officers ( but were not permitted to join the British officers at meal times because they really weren't gentlemen.)

There are still reminders of this in Britain. Cricket originated as a game of the upper classes only. It, too, built character and the finer qualities of leaders required of those in the upper classes who were born to be leaders and to exercise authority over common people. They were born superior to the lower classes, and with that superiority came privilege. Over the years, as cricket professionalized, it became possible for the lower classes to play for money. But the class distinction remains. I well remember passing a cricket stadium with two entrances. One was labelled "Players", and the other, "Gentlemen".

This attitude to sport is very old. Knights jousted. Any peasant who took it on himself to joust would soon be dismissed. The same was true of fox hunting, hawking and other sports that "built character." A later one, prized by elite private schools as a character builder, was rugby. There were no written rules because a gentleman grew up knowing the game, and did not need instruction.

The new, capitalist class in Britain and the colonies took up these ideas of class and status and privilege with enthusiasm. That's why rugby became an early fixture in the universities that wealthy parents sent their children to. (That created a problem in North America, though. because the North American capitalists had not grown up in aristocratic circles. So it was hard to play a game with no written rules. So the Canadians wrote rules, inadvertently creating the game we now call football. In Rugby, for example, there was a player called a quarterback who played a quarter of the way back in the field. Montrealers made him into the man who would receive the ball from snap. We also invented downs.)

The capitalists played these sports in expensive clubs. It was important to keep out the poor and middle class out because, as my mother used to say, "They would be reaching above their station."  Making the clubs expensive took care of that. (of course, every club wanted to win, and sometimes, they were tempted by athletic poor people. So they would let them join free, and even give them a sort of fictional job working for one of the wealthy members. That's how my father could play football for the Montreal Winged Wheelers.)

The worship of organized sport ( but only if played by amateurs) blossomed with the re-recreation of the Olympic Games in 1896. Their revival had everything to do with building a leadership class of the better sort of people. So they were strictly amateur, designed to keep out people who had ever dirtied their hands by playing for money. The games were controlled by the most arrogant and privileged of the very wealthy. (Olympic games gradually professionalized in the 1980s because it improved TV revenues.)

My this is turning out to be too long.

In short, amateur sport was taken up by leading capitalists in order to give themselves aristocratic rank. It was quite deliberate. Like the aristocracy, they see themselves as born with a right to exercise authority, to command obedience, to be arrogant, and to see most people as being here to take orders from them. They see themselves born to talents that we can never possess. They also, like the aristocracy, create dynasties with power passing from father to son, always assuming the father has brains and the son, too, has them by birth.

And some people buy that. Read most of Norbert Cunningham's columns.

Oh, where do women fit in to all this? They don't, though they have  been forcing their way in lately. Women, going back for centuries, might play tennis, but just lobbing the ball and giggling - while wearing full dress, corset, etc. And, once a year (even into the twenieth century), they might be permitted to use a golf course - but just once a year for lady's day.

After all, women, even aristocratic ones, were not born to command.

Nov. 6: (almost) the bottom of the bucket...

There really is almost nothing to say about today's Irving press. Even the letters to the editor were pretty...unpretty. What was worth reading was, at most, the continuing story of the vanishing of our salmon, and the columns of Norbert Cunningham and Alec Bruce. (And even Alec Bruce had little to say - and too much of that little was made up of cheap shots at people he doesn't agree with.)

And that's it. This is pretty much what we might expect of a village monthly. So we have to look for our own news.
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A very big story is that in having troops on the ground and in bombing Syria, the U.S.  is breaking both international and national law. To attack a country that is not attacking you is against international law. To do so without declaring war and without the vote of congress is against American law.

Russia is there legally. The government of Syria asked it to be there. The US is not, and this is no small matter.

American governments now routinely break the law, both national and international, and they break the Constitution itself. In recent  years, it has invaded countries by drone, by special ops, with troops on the ground. It has detained thousands of people illegally. It has tortured them. It has never prosecuted anyone for committing torture. The only people who face long prison terms and even murder are the ones who told the American people what was going one.

Police and domestic spies have made mockery of the very idea of freedom. American police kill American citizens at rate that would make any dictator jealous. Some of those police killings are investigated, but very few. Still fewer police are convicted. And those have received almost no punishment worse than firing.

We are watching a collapse of American society at the highest level, and a collapse of almost all the American revolution was supposedly about. We're also watching a collapse throughout the whole  society as a result of racism, and of pseudo racism encouraged by the government and the news media.

The U.S. should not be worrying about its enemies. It should be worrying about itself.    

Then, there isTurkey's new president, Erdogan, who is proposing consititional reforms that would, in effect, make him a dictator. But that's okay because he's on our side. And he's been approved by our side as Britain is now treating him as an honoured guest with a ride in the coronation coach.

The latest statistics on death rates in rich countries  (about thirty of them) is that life expectancy has risen by ten years, just in very recent history.  The U.S. did not do so well. In fact, it was close to the bottom of the list. Odd. After all, the U.S. is lucky enough to have a private  health system, and the most expensive one in the world.
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China is dropping its policy of one-child per family. Some girl babies were adopted (giving me a lovely, Chinese granddaughter). But it also meant millions of Chinese baby girls who were killed. And that has resulted in millions of men who will never find wives.

Any western news I have read about it is full of words like cruel, ruthless, barbaric. And, of course, there's always a mention of the brutality of Mao. But Mao, though he could be brutal - like any national leader I have ever heard of - didn't enact the one-child law because he was evil. There is a terrible problem here  (and in many other countries), and  a two-child solution is no help.

The Guardian missed the problem. But the letters to the editor didn't.
  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/04/in-china-or-in-the-uk-population-growth-is-an-issue-we-cant-dodge

You've never been in a crowd until you've stood on a beach in China.
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You trust big, oil (and fracking) companies to obey regulations and to act responsibly? Check out the story below.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/10/leaked-videos-suggest-chevron-covering-up-amazon-pollution.html
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Things worth watching for.

The war in Yemen is expensive, even for Saudi Arabia. The king has also been spending heavily to buy the support of the people of Saudi Arabia. This could mean chaos on the oil market.

Many parts of the world are rethinking who they want to be friends with. A notable example is Iraq which has been seeking closer relations with Russia. And some European countries are rethinking their dependence on the U.S. Even Saudi Arabia has been moving to better terms with Russia.

All of this  is going to get worse with the increase in refugees to Europe. The number of refugees now is causing strife; and estimates are there will be at least four times as many of them in coming year. And it is most unlikely that either Canada or the U.S. will do anything significant.

There is no telling who friends and enemies will be in the coming year.
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And back to the rise of capitalism.

In early days, the exploitation by the European empire-builders was controlled by the monarchs to enrich themselves. The common people gained little, very little.  (And that would remain true to this day.) But the kings were  able to enhance their powers, building armies and navies and personal wealth out of their empires.

But they couldn't forever do it by themselves. And the aristocracy, accustomed to trivial pleasures, was no help. That created an opening for the small middle class to get involved in the trade, a trade that soon made some of them very wealthy, indeed.

Meanwhile, the aristocracy, very noticeably by the 19th century, were declining in wealth. Their solution was to seek out the daughters of the rising capitalists, and marry them. Winston Churchill's father lived in magnificent palace on  a huge estate, but had only a small income. So he married the daughter of a very wealthy miner from the U.S. (Usually, both man and wife knew the marriage was all about money. So both commonly had many. many affairs. It was a distinguishing mark of the Victorian age. Churchill's mother is said to have had at least 200 affairs. His father died of venereal disease.)

With all this, there was created a new class of wealth and aristocratic connections with all the sense of privilege and sense of social superiority of the aristocracy. That led to political power. And it was picked up in the U.S. in the form of a social class which felt that wealth implied personal superiority to the common folk. In fact, most of the fathers of the American constitution were people of that sort. The rise of democracy would simply, in time, open the way for the very rich to see themselves as a privileged class even without the necessity of marrying into it.  And they produced dynasties just as the older monarchies and aristocracies did.

George Bush Jr. became president because his father had been, and was also very rich. Young George could avoid Vietnam service because his father could fix it. The only two jobs he ever had were jobs arranged by his father. (His first job was as president of an oil company;  It went broke under his leadership.) Then daddy got him a similar job which required him to do nothing. So, when that ended, he naturally went into politics. Canada has plenty of business families like that.

It was a great situation because capitalists soon became the de facto leaders of countries. They could build empires with all the ships and soldiers and sailors to conquer it provided by the tax payer. They could create countries to broaden their wealth. The British colonies of 1867 were not joined because of mutual love. A prime factor was that British capitalists needed a large union to give them a guarantee of the money they would have to borrow to build  a railway across the colonies.

Why does the U.S. require such a massive defence budget with at least a thousand bases all over the world?  That's so American capitalists can dominate economies all over the world. This makes huge profits for them - but it's others who do the dying and the paying for it. It's a great arrangement.

But is it fair to say the very wealthy have inflated opinions of themselves and their importance? And a sense of privilege that comes with being wealthy?

The quick answer is the one I learned from every date I ever had with a daughter of a  wealthy family. And it's something they learn from their parents, and their private schools. But let's suffer through a longer answer that I'll give tomorrow.

It may seem off the point. But it isn't. It's about the modern Olympic Games, early hockey in Canada, why football is such a major sport in universities. It's about why women were allowed to golf only once a year, and why the Stanley Cup and  the Grey Cup are "for amateur sport only.."




                                           

Nov. 5: Dominic Leblanc named House Leader! says Irving news.

Gee! Who woulda guessed. And what does Dominic Leblanc stand for? Who knows? But this almost certainly will make him the bagman for New Brunswick, the boy who picks up donations from you-know-who. I feel so reassured.

The series on the salmon crisis continues. And, of course, the daily heart-pounder on the Oland trial. And bi-lingual busing of students remains a burning issue. ( In high school, I travelled every day on buses in which almost everybody else spoke French. It left no permanent scars.)
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Norbert tells us that some people make business deals under the table, and so avoid taxation. He points the finger for this quite firmly at the "average joe" (thereby ignoring the right of women to be equal.) He also makes it quite clear he blames the working class for much of this. He even manages to blame the education and health systems for unfairly demanding more money.

Norbert, when are you going to have the integrity to name the big cheaters? You could start in a small way with the bargain sale of our forests.

Rod Allen's romance with the words I, me, and my continues. As does his ponderous, high school wit. Alec Bruce, as so often, is the only columnist worth reading.
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Canada&World consists largely of speculation and trivia about the federal cabinet. There's not a word about anything outside North America. This is the world as the Irving press sees it.
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In the real world, the TransPacific Trade deal has been released. The appraisal of it below has more that a touch of hysteria about it. And I don't see how anybody could have so quickly read all two thousand pages of it, and reached a conclusion. But the general tone of concern is valid.

I have read a bit of the deal, and look forward to reading more. From the bit I have read, this is a business deal designed by large corporations to benefit themselves. The worst part is that if gives corporations the right to challenge laws (like environmental restrictions) if are changed after this trade deal  is signed. In other words, if we discover that a certain corporation is carrying out work in Canada that we discover to be hazardous to Canadian life, it can sue us for unlimited billions - and the suit would be heard not in a Canadian court but in an international one controlled by corporations. In short, we lose control of our own country.

http://commondreams.org/news/2015/11/05/full-text-tpp-released-public-and-its-horrible
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Then there's this account from The Guardian, which speaks in more measured - and more frightening - tones. (There is also a fuller version of this in the Nov. 4 copy of The Guardian. But I can't yet access it.

   http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/financial-crisis-corporate-power-george-monbiot

The story has appeared on CBC news as well, but with no analysis yet.
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  Speaking of CBC it has another story (in fact, lots of stories) not mentioned by the Irving press.   One concerns how Bombardier, a fearless defender of risk-taking capitalism has nicked the Quebec government for a billion, and is now hitting Ottawa for another billion. It's just amazing how risk-taking capitalists can build up an economy.
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The follow item drew my attention because it's by a professor from the U.S. who is now at St. Mary's University in Halifax. It's a pretty good account of how most of our news media operate.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43324.htm    
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If you're a Harper lover, you just can't disagree with the writer of the next site. I mean, he was a senior official of the CIA, and he writes for  "The American Conservative".

  http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-pentagons-unholy-alliance-with-missionaries/ 
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There's a story in the Guardian  (and many other papers but not in the Irving press) that George Bush Sr. has written a book that his son, George Jr. was not responsible for the disaster of the Iran war - and Afghanistan.

Of course not. George had no power as president. He was a puppet for Dick Cheney who was a front for the oil industry and other corporations. That was always obvious - except in the news media. In fact, the Bush's have done well for several generations out of being fronts, themselves, for large corporations. Bush senior, as head of the CIA was a killer on a grand scale to benefit big oil and big mining. So the interesting question is why did daddy write this book?

It might have something to do with the possibility that George Jr. could be facing war crimes charges, particularly for the war in Iran. And ditto for Tony Blair.
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Think you've seen it all with the 800,000 or so refugees who have fled to Europe?  Hold your hat. The EU is expecting 3 million more in the coming year.
(Their landing point on the island of Lesbos  (Greece) is so overwhelmed with them now, it has no space left to bury the dead.  They're putting them in freezer cars.

Can Europe handle them? No. It can't handle what it's getting now. There's already been a great deal of violence and racism. In fact, the strain of this could dissolve much of the European Union. Can Canada and the U.S. give significant help?

Yes. But they won't.

But don't even think about it. Just read the Irving press.  There, now.

There are lots of other issues. Why is the U.S. sending major warships to the middle east?  Is it to create another crisis with Russian forces? Is it to enforce the starvation of Yemen?

I don't know. I only read the Irving press.

Then there are our aircraft that are coming back from Iran. When are we going to  hear what they've been doing?

Oh, and Russia is sending warships to drill in the South China Sea with the Chinese fleet. And this while the Americans are still asserting the right of their fleet to operate in those waters.

 (The U.S. is also contesting Canada's claim to the Northwest Passage. It's done it  for decades by ignoring us, and sending its ships through. How is this different from what it says China is doing in the South China Sea?)

The reality is there are issues that cannot be solved by flexing muscles or killing people either ourselves or through  proxies. Among those issues are the South China Sea, the many wars in the middle east, Ukraine....  Shoving each other and threatening has created this mess. More shoving and threatening will create a nuclear war. There won't be a winner.

As well, the U.S. has no right to be the world's policeman. These are all issues that can be settled only by diplomacy among the nations directly involved or, perhaps, through the U.N.

The U.S., by committing intself to violent solutions,  is laying the ground for its own collapse. Among other mistakes, it has committed itself to a level of defence spending which is steeped in corruption, and which is placing impossible strains on the American economy.

So much ground to cover - New Brunswick schools....the series I was doing on our current imperialism...  but the sun is setting... For now, just  a few words about capitalism for tomorrow's episode of imperialism.

Capitalism is a system in which people can, if they wish, risk their own money in economic ventures. Small businessmen can be safely called capitalists.

Big business likes to kid small business that they're all really capitalists together (entrepreneurs if it sounds better). One of the functions of Chambers of Commerce is to convince small business of that.

Big business and small business owners are also, like the rest of us, subject to the law and to regulations.   But big business doesn't like that. It prefers Mussolini's fascism that made big business a partner of government - and that's a term one often reads in the New Brunswick press.

Big business has, at best, only a slight resemblance to capitalism. It commonly acts outside the law - sometimes legally if only in a technical sense, sometimes illegally.  And it's leaders prefer to think of themselves  not  as citizens, but as "partners" with government. This has had a profound effect on the rise of empires since Columbus.

And that's where I'll start, tomorrow.                  

Nov. 4:http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/nov/01/election-blow-canada-postmedia-stephen-harper

Now, the above is a story I didn't see in the Irving press. Actually, it's many stories in one. As it begins, it's about how most of the Canadian press supported Harper in the election. It suggests, too kindly, that the Canadian press has lost touch with its readers. Less kindly, I think it shows how much the Canadian press is under the thumb of big money.

It is also about the decline of the newspaper business, how it has been losing readers for some years now. Many newspapers are losing money. And wealthy owners hang on to them only to spread propaganda useful to their business empires. That wouldn't happen in New Brunswick, of course. Just in other places.

Then, of course, there's the problem of functional illiteracy which, in New Brunswick means a newspaper operates from a starting point of only half of the adult population.

And we have to get this story from a British paper because few Canadian papers let us know this story of thing.
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The only Secton A story of importance is the continuing one of the rapid extinction of wild salmon.
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The editorial, as always, reminds me of an elementary school teacher who talked down to us kids from a self-righteous height on subjects of which she knew nothing. And it has the usual, trite observations such as "Rural New Brunswick continues to offer a good life for families." What a sweet (and trite) thought!

But does it really? In fact, it offers children very little sense of the range of opportunities in this world. It does little to provide intellectual stimulation for anyone. It permits almost no perception of differing values within a community, and no sense of differing cultures. And now, no schools.

Oh, and the editorial says gas exploitation could give them a second chance. Gas is good for you. And if you develop gas, that could give more varied community activities like....you know...like pancake breakfasts at the church.

The editorial writer has neither the information nor the logic to have the faintest idea what these communities need. Rural areas suffer from a lack of community activities, of intellectual stimulation, and contact with the experience of cities. The last thing they need is to have their major community stimulation taken away from them - to save money.

New Brunswick needs very badly to rethink the basics of how to bring education to rural areas, and how to use the schools to educate and socialize adults as well as children. If this province can afford to give tens of millions to a company like Atcon, and millions more in other favours to corporations and spend a hundred million on an events centre and have stunningly low tax rates for the very rich and give away our forest at bargain prices, (and, perhaps, not bother to collect taxes from the very wealthy), it can surely do more to stimulate and revitalize its rural population.

So far, I've seen no imagination on this and no intelligent thought about it. Somehow, that doesn't surprise me in a government which spends less per capita than any other province  on libraries.

Norbert! All is forgiven. Norbert has a magnificent column today. A must read.

Brian Cormier is Brian Cormier. The guest column is a political speech.

Alec Bruce's is a superb column.  But....in this province which don't read real good and which thinks a performer who sings in a nasal voice while coloured lights flash is a cultural event...ain't many who are going to understand what a stoic is or who Seneca and Epictetus were. Gotta write for your audience, kid. Check the editorial for a  model.
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Canada&World is its usual nose in its own bellybutton self. Of six pages, less than one is world news. At that, the only one worth reading is that Pope Francis is cracking down on corruption in the Vatican.
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For a real story, note the one below on poverty in the U.S. Note that the sources are largely official - as UNICEF, U.S. Census, etc.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43320.htm

Then there's this one about our good friends in the sugar industry.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food
Gee! Why did that make me think of our oil industry?

The the TransCanada pipeline is dead? Check this CBC story.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/keystone-xl-obama-alberta-transcanada-politics-1.3302205

Then there are places in Canada where living conditions are appalling. One of them is in the world news - but hasn't made the Irving press. It's particularly important because we  have yet to see any action about the report on reconciliation with our native peoples - except, of course, when we send in the boys in camouflage outfits with their combat rifles. And I don't think we're going to see any action until we get a government that's willing to stand up against those mining and oil interests that like the present reserve system the way it is.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/29/homeless-family-housing-crisis-hits-canadian-territory

The Brief, a New Brunswick news sheet that is not owned by Irving Ltd., has a November issue that is superb. There's a big article on how J.D.Irving is the cause of our falling deer population through its use of poisonous sprays. J.D. is also cutting wood at an unsustainable rate - and all this on a giveaway deal that cost us millions. There's also a quite surprising story on the employment benefits of renewable energy.

Niether of these stories is likely to appear in the Irving press, so contact
info@nbmediacoop.org

All of this is easily available to editors at the Irving press. So why do we get only the thin gruel that the Irving press dishes out to us? Are the editors lazy? Are they incompetent?  I suspect it's something worse than that.
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I left off the last blog with a mention of the brutality of the western empires since 1492. I presume there has always been brutality as the root of imperialism. But that since 1492 has been strongly marked by racism.

Columbus, no doubt an observant Christian (like all the leaders of western empires), could yet not only use mass-killing but add the indiscrminate terror of using vicious dogs that tore apart not just warriors, but women, children, babies.

How could he do that and remain a Christian? No problem

He saw those 'other' people as racially inferior. They were sub-humans, inferior to western Europeans morally, intellectually, physically. In fact, they weren't really people. Every modern empire I know of  has worked on that basis. Hitler was not expressing new ideas in Mein Kampf. And Mein Kampf was mostly an expression of attitudes that Germans already had - and British and French and Americans and Canadians.

Racism became the magic solvent at least as early as Columbus. It cleared anyone of the responsibility for mass murder, looting.... George Washington, John A. Macdonald, Sir Winston Churchill were all racists. That's the origin of the anthem to the Queen "Make her victorious, happy and glorious...."  Killing was good. Killing was glorious.

To this day, Christian missionaries often carry a baggage of racism. Many of them have a  dislike of those to be converted, and a have a conviction that they are inferior. I have known more than a few of the type. They have an attitude that they represent a superior society.

I noticed the same in British government officials and business people in Hong Kong (before China took it back.) When I taught journalism there to working journalists, my students were both Chinese and British. One of the less intelligent Brits in the class worked for the major newspaper, The South China Morning Post. Most of my Chinese students showed more ability than him. But he was the highest paid journalist in the class. All the administators at the Morning Post were Brits. And we all knew that the slow Brit in the class would soon be an editor. And the Chinese knew they would never be editors.

I was related by marriage to one of the most powerful men in the colony. He was just below the governor in rank. He was born working class British. But in Hong Kong he had all the arrogance and the contempt for the people that one might have expected from a Duke of the realm. The people were beneath him except, of course, for the wealthy whites he associated with at The Fleet Club.

It rather reminds me of the attitude the very rich have to the rest of us.

Hitler didn't invent anything. Racism and brutality were characteristic of westerners centuries before Hitler was born. Hitler, if anything, put racism a little out of style. So we now murder and starve and make refugees of people who are 'evil'. And you can tell they're evil from their skin colour or religion.  It's really the same old game of racism.

Tomorrow, I'll take a look at empires and the rise of 'capitalism'.

Nov. 3: Very light on the irving press.

There are just two stories worth reading. On A1, the series on the decline of the salmon fishery continues. (The big headline by the way is that a man who murdered three police officers a year ago may not get parole. Who woulda guessed?)

A3 has the story that our brand, new Moncton High School can be reached on foot only by walking a considerable distance on the steep shoulder of a very busy road. While most students travel by school bus, many also use that road. This is a high school many years in the planning and building. And city council and the provincial government and the anglo east school district seem not to have noticed this problem. Now, there's a subject for an editorial. (But we're not likely get one).
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Norbert Cunningham takes a very sober look at the world refugee crisis. And he's quite right to say this is a world changing event. Here's good example of how an opinion column can tell us more about events than a whole section of news can. It's a world-changing event that is having an impact on a lot of us even here in Canada.  And there's a hell of a lot more to come.

Louise Gilbert and Alec Bruce are also worth a read.
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There is simply nothing in Canada and World news that tells us anything we didn't know. So I'm going to suggest some sources (and to it with minimal comment). The comment is minimal because I need to get started putting all this in context. And I'd like to start that today.
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CBC News has the story that Bombardier, after getting a billion dollars from Quebec, wants another billion from Ottawa. Fearless and independent capitalism in action.

The next site is good, though I think it is wrong to say that capitalism in the U.S. began the destruction of democracy in America (and Canada) only in recent times. In fact, by the time we moved to democracy, capitalism had already made democracy impossible.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43306.htm

Is it possible to spend 43 million dollars to build a gas station?  That price was over 120 times more than the estimate. But - this was a gas station in Afghanistan built by an American contractor with friends in the U.S. government.  And this kind of spending has been routine for the U.S. Defence Department and other business in government contracts of all sorts. It's happened in Iraq, in Haiti, in Afghanistan. The level of corruption in the U.S. military/business/government alliance is the reason why so many Americans are homeless, living below the poverty line, and suffering from a  collapsing education system. That's also why development of the F-35 jet has been such a disaster.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-spent-43-million-afghanistan-gas-station-sigar-report-n454036

November 11 is NOT a day to glorify war. It's a day to remember war - all of it.
Don't remember just those TV parades of coffins of those who were killed in Afghanistan. Also remember the 59 veterans of Afghanistan who have committed suicide since the war. Remember the 6 who committed suicide while in Afghanistan. Remember who sent them - all of us. And then see if you can remember why we sent them - and why we sent the air force to Libya and Iraq. Be patriotic, by all means. But don't be maudlin.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/at-least-59-canadian-soliders-died-by-suicide-after-afghanistan-war/article27075997/

I loved teaching university. But I developed a profound dislike for their quality of teaching, and for the way they are run on a business model. I was especially shocked at the extraordinarily generous salaries and perks offered to administrators. Apparently, the U.S. is the same.

http://www.bravenewfilms.org/professorsinpoverty

I enclose the following site because it gives a hint of the complexities of alliances and wars in today's middle east. And the futility of it all.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-in-syria-air-strikes-pose-twin-threat-to-turkey-by-keeping-assad-in-power-and-strengthening-a6712626.html
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Norbert Cunningham was quite right to way that the refugee crisis is a major change for this world, a change that will affect us for generations to come. So let's take the time to see how this change started, We have to understand its origin and its growth to get even a vague understanding of what is happening, and how it affects all of us. And this is a crisis that's been developing since the 15th century.

Nations, tribes have fought each other for all of recorded history. (And Christian societies have been at least as warlike as others.)  Usually, the motive is conquest to take land or resources. But the history books seldom say that. They tend to get caught up in the glory of it all. No, the usual purpose was and is economic - which is a nice way of saying greed.

Greed is why Rome conquered ancient Britain. Greed is what carried Europeans to North America. But the wars were limited by the size of army that was possible. That's why the Vikings had to back off from the Beothuks of Newfoundland; they were greatly outnumbered and, just as important, had weapons no more effective than those of the Beothuks.

Incidentally, the Vikings came here not for adventure. It was money. There was a strong market for exotic creatures like falcons and polar bear cubs in Europe.

Distance was a problem, too. Troops moving long distances on land were from difficult to impossible to supply or to keep at full strength. And long distances at sea were impossible in the ships of the time. The Vikings could manage to get to Newfoundland only because they could build bases on the way. Our native people could get here only because they lived in an ice age in which it was possible to walk from Siberia over land and ice. (It is also possible, though, that some South Pacific islanders could reach the Americas by raft or sailing canoe. And there is speculation that the early Phoenicians may have been able to sail here - one way.)

The crucial change came in the 15th century. It was the European development of a sailing ship that could cross an ocean without stops, and carry a sizable number of warriors.

But why cross an ocean?

Forgive me. This reminds me of an incident when I was nine. My mother had decided to coach me for my geogaphy exam. She read to me, "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Now, what did Columbus sail in fourteen hundred and ninety-two?"

"....the Santa Maria?"

"Go to bed. Now!"

We were taught that Columbus wanted to prove the world was round - and that he wanted to reach China. And that's absurd.

Everyone knew the world was round and had known it for thousands of years; and they knew it was so big that an ocean voyage to China was unlikely to get there. Anyway, Columbus also knew there was a continent in the way. The Vikings had learned that some 500 years earlier, and they still had settlements in Greenland that every sea captain knew about.

Columbus was looking for loot. That's why the king put up some money for him. When Columbus landed, most of the natives he met seem to have been friendly. But he soon made them enemies. He learned they had gold. Every native in the region was assigned a quota of gold to hand in each month. Those who missed a payment were tortured or killed.  (On a later voyage, he brought over a load of trained killer dogs to turn loose on groups that turned hostile.) Nobody knows how many people Spain slaughtered in South America - but numbers were certainly in the millions.

This was the beginning of the age of western empires, of almost constant war, of destabilization of most of the world, of genocide, and it is, almost certainly, an age that is now well into a severe change.

As a result of the killings and the terror, whole societies, whole civilizations collapsed - which is what is now happening in the middle east. (And it may be happening here.)

Now, the Spanish were presumably like most people in the world. They had families they cared for. They had friends. With the exception of events like the inquisition, most people did not spend their days in murder and torture. It would have been quite possible and profitable, to trade with native peoples for gold and silver. Why such extraordinay brutality?

We'll take a look at that tomorrow.

Nov. 2: Let's deal quickly with the Irving press...

It's really hard to come up with something in a newspaper that says nothing. Today, the big,  front page news flash is that a local politician has refused to tell reporters whether he expects to be in the new, federal cabinet. Reporters asked "Can you tell us?"  He said, "no".

Are you wondering how the reporter could get a full story of that? The answer is, she couldn't. Nobody could. Most of the story is actually about a provincial government meeting. The story tells us that the conferees sat around a table, and had their pictures taken. That's it.

There is a good story, part of a series, on the endangered salmon fishery. And that's pretty much it for the city news.
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The editorial is nice. It's an ad for a worthy cause. And that's nice. But this is not the kind of analysis and opinion an editorial is for.

Norbert has a column that looks good. It criticizes health care workers who are nervous about proposed changes the the health care system in this province. What he doesn't mention is the other side - the government board that is making the changes. Is it competent? Is it unbiased? Is it motivated solely by the best interests of the people of this province? How come we've had no analysis of that group?

Craig Babstock's column looks like something written by an overexcited pre-adolescent. He just can't wait to see the latest "Star Wars" movie.

Good column on education by Alec Bruce.
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Canada&World opens with a big story that's both brainless and useless. "Rookie Liberals bring diversity to caucus." For a start, any group of 127 people will have diversity. Then, as an example of the incredible diversity, the story gives us a woman who is a  lawyer and who has given some lectures at UofT. Wow! Talk about diversity, I'm sure we've never had an mp like that before.

Some guy in Toronto likes the BlueJays so much he got a tattoo of one of them on his leg.

There's little of most of the world. There's no analysis of the meaning of it. Most of the stories are worth 2 sentences, at best.

That makes it a pleasure to turn to other news sources.
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Haaretz has a story about a news source; but it's really about almost all news sources in the world. The owner of Israel's largest news sources (and of many other things including the telephone landline system) pumps out nothing but praise for Netanyahu and his whole family.  In return, Netanyahu uses his position as both President and Minister of Communications. to help the news man get richer.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.683677

There's an important sentence in this story. "A robust democracy cannot permit a major news agency to be used by a magnate for regulating favours." Wow!" It's a good thing New Brunswick doesn't have to worry about that sort of danger.

Of course, the reality is that most of the commercial news media in the world exist to lie, to hide the truth in order to please their wealthy owners. That's why Harper (and Martin and Chretien) so disliked the CBC. It has a pesky habit of offending billionaires that the Liberals and Conservatives like. Both parties have a bad track record of treatment of the CBC.

Both parties will be angry at the CBC story below about how there is considerable evidence that Enbridge Oil corrupted some people at the University of Calgary. Funny how the Irving press missed this story. I suppose it's because this sort of thing never happens in New Brunswick.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/university-calgary-enbridge-sponsorship-1.3286369

The Canadian privately-owned news sources probably won't defend the CBC. For that, you have to go to al Jazeera.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2015/11/independent-journalism-future-cbc-151101085623421.html

In fact, read that whole issue of al Jazeera. It makes the Irving press look like a newspaper put out by a junior Sunday School class.

Then there's a story about the ebola plague, and how it started. It's at the site below. This explanation is more than a year old. It  blames it all on bats - though  without evidence. But even if it started with bats, this isn't the whole story. (Forgive me for not giving the source for the more recent explanation. I've lost it, and can't find it.)

http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/12/bat-filled-tree-may-have-been-ground-zero-ebola-epidemic


You'll note that in the above story, the village was in an area that had been deforested. Now, the bats in this region are forest dwellers. But the forests have largely been destroyed by logging, clearing for agriculture, and for mining.

Running out of habitat would force the bats to live among human populations. Thus - ebola.

Our planet evolved over millions of  years to become something that is habitable for us. Changing that  environment as we are doing now, makes it something that is not habitable for us.

This is happening all over the world, especially in the Americas, Africa and much of Asia where "developers" are interested only in immediate profit. That's why we have a massive fire in Indonesia, whole countries in Latin America destroyed by mining and deforestation. That's why large parts of Alberta have become dangerous for wild life and people. Oil wells not only pollute the land; they leak poison gasses forever.

And I guess that's why none of this ever gets reported in the Irving press.

Oh, and meanwhile there are now over 700,000 refugees in Europe. Most of them are living in the open. And winter is on us. Many more of them are going to come. And many more are going to die. What has created all this?

Some day soon, I'll have to cram over five hundred years into one blog to explain that.

Nov.1: Try, try again.

Justin Trudeau has just chatted with Japan's prime minister Abe. both have agreed that the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership is essential. That's Justin's first stamp of approval on a major Harper programme. Among other things, it means we can't deal with environmental threats. Any company that invests in an industry in Canada will be permitted, under the TPTD, to sue Canada for hypothetical losses in the billions if we change any law which affects it. And it will probably NOT be tried in a Canadian court.

Thank you, Justin and Stephen, for destroying our control over our own country and our own lives. And thank you all you Canadians who helped Justin and Stephen to play musical chairs.
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Yesterday's disaster of a blog was mostly NOT about the Irving press. The emphasis was on news from around the world - none of which appeared in the Irving press. I'll write first about that. Then I'll finishing looking at the house of horrors that is the Irving press.
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The Huffington Post now also contains The World Post. Together, they offer an astonishing range and number of stories and opinions from all over the world. There's even a special Canadian section. This looks like a winner.

In the site below, it suggests the U.S. is either creating a world crisis over the Chinese claim to additional terrorital waters in the South China Sea. Or it is riding for a humiliating defeat in trying to bluff China by sending warships into those waters.

My uninformed guess is that China is at least partly in the wrong. But this should be decided by a court, not by the U.S. playing the Lone Ranger. In fact, the case will be heard ( no thanks to the U.S. or China) by the international court at The Hague.

And only in an insane leadership - of there is evidence on both sides - could believe this is worth risking a nuclear war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hugh-white/us-china-island-dispute-price_b_8401570.html?utm_hp_ref=world
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The site above, like many of those that follow, was sent to me by readers. And, oh, that makes life easier. This story is from a reporter for The Guardian where it appeared on Oct. 30.

Indonesia is being destroyed by a forest fire that is 5,000 kilometres long. People are choking and dying on the city streets. It's killing so many animals that whole species are disappearing.

The cause? Generations of western companies who have developed factory farms that have drained the soil, killed much of the original vegetation, and spurred production along with regular brush fires. This fire, in just three weeks,  has pumped more pollution into the air than Germany does in a year.

There are similar horror stories from the forests of South America. But they don't make our news, either.

http://www.monbiot.com/
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The Japanese government has told its universities to close down its Humanities and Social Science faculties. These would include Sociology, History, Literature,  Political Science....the ones that train people how to use their brains, how to understand the world they will live in, how to make judgements....  Instead, the government wants all students to concentrate only on useful subjects, the ones that tell you how to do things  without thinking. Like - you know - accounting, organizing an office, that sort of thing.

The university was originally about thinking - thinking feely and doing it based on a capacity to understand, to organize understanding and organize analysis.  But, in Japan, thinking is not a social need. Accounting is.

North American is going the same way, and at an accelerating pace. Much of this is due to the prominence of the very wealthy in university boards of governors. Their only qualification is an ability make money (or inherit it). I've known very, very few with intellectual credentials to do much of anything. And in their world, only business methods exist - for hospitals, for schools. And so in education, in politics, in health care, as in journalism they assume control of things they know nothing about.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-decree
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The Middle East is being destroyed. It is not being destroyed to bring democracy. Millions have not been made refugees and are suffering terribly not so the world can be free. Millions have been killed, and the greater part of the murdered are civilians.

American taxpayers have paid well over a trillion dollars to bring misery and horror to the region, to kill children, to starve everybody in Yemen, to hire, equip and train thugs we call 'rebels'. Among our allies is the least democratic and cruelest country in the world - Saudi Arabia.

And the U.S. supports whoever it's convenient to support - the Syrian 'rebels', al Quaeda, Turkey and its genocide of Kurds, Iraq (which doesn't trust the U.S., and has asked Russia for help.)

It's monstrously expensive. It has produced no results in over a dozen years of tumult. It destroys whole nations - like Libya which, notably, is not a better place since the murder of Ghadaffi. Indeed, it is becoming possible that no country in that region will survive. And that's good -

-for American oil kings. The destruction of viable governments will put the whole region in their control. And that's all that it's all about. We are well into an age of profound greed. (But don't worry. If you go to most churches, you'll never even hear about it.)

As a product of this greed and savagery, Europe gives strong signs of coming unglued. But that doesn't matter any more. We don't need civil governments. International banking houses and free trade deals mean we don't need countries at all (except for things to be patriotic for so common folk can be counted on to do the killing for the very wealthy.)

The U.S. has no right to be in Syria - as it had none to be in Iraq or to bomb Libya. Those are illegal acts  under international law. (They're also illegal under American law. When did congress vote for all this? In fact, one of the governments that has effectively disappeared is the United States where politicians are now just decorative.)

Actually, the only foreign country with a right to be in Syria is Russia. The legal government of Syria asked Russia to intervene. The U.S. military entry into a foreign country without such an invitation is illegal. Its killing of people are acts of war crimes.

Its so-called 'special ops' troops are hired killers who are used all over the world, every day in a hundred and more countries. Their jobs is to destabilize governments that American big business doesn't like - especially if they are governments that want to do evil things like build schools or improve living conditions. They operate every day in most countries of South America and a great many in Asia. Some people put the daily average at 100 to 150 countries.

Countries don't really go to war any more. Big business goes to war. The rest of us just pay the cost - both monetary and human. The power of governments - and our control of them - has largely disappeared.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-28/us-ground-troops-syria-illegal-big-mistake-russia-warns-obama-unpredictable-conseque
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The next site starts off slowly and gently. But stick with it. And don't let the title scare you. The "Archdruid" is not a nut case. It's a senior rank in the Masons.

It's now generally admitted that, yes, our climate is changing. But we'll invent something. Yeah. except 1. We haven't invented anything significant since this problem was revealed decades ago. 2. It's not a matter of simply inventing something. It's a matter of us making fundamental changes in the way we live. 3.Even people at the Irving press who admit climate change is happening haven't seriously looked at points 1 and 2.

Moncton's recent purchase of eight million dollars worth of   diesel buses suggests city council hasn't done much thinking. Nor has it done so in tying up a very large bundle of money in an 'events centre'.

What are the dangers, what are the likelyhoods, what are the plans for Moncton? for New Brunswick? for Canada? Piddling around about renewable and non-polluting resources isn't going to cut it. We need to rethink the whole way we live.

Too bad the very wealthy who run this world never learned how to think. They just studied bookkeeping.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2015/10/the-patience-of-sea.html
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For what we can expect, here's an excellent column from The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2015/oct/20/the-four-horsemen-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction
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Now, I really must say something about the Irving press.

Page 1 of the October 31 edition of the Times and Transcript had a big story "Inaction no solution to fracking, oilman tells province." Yeah. Disregard all the above. Forget the scientists; forget the evidence we've seen in weather patterns; forget disappearing Arctic. I mean, if you can't trust the head of an Alberta gas company, who can you trust?

But there is a warning hidden in the fact that this story appeared in the Irving press. The oil people intend to frack. The provincial Conservatives support them. And I shall be very, very surprised if Gallant does not go along. All he needs is some misleading reports about the effect. And the repetition of this theme in the Irving press assures us that the boss is onside.

The frackers  will come. They will probably drill wherever they like, including private property. When people object, the police will be called out, including the ones in camouflage and carrying combat rifles. And the Irving press will defend all this as protecting democracy and freedom and law and order. We've been there, done that.

There's a good story on p.1 about the disappearance of salmon from our rivers.

A9 has a compelling tale that a women's active wear store has opened.  (I prefer my wear not to be active.)

The editorial is, as usual, about money. Norberts column is a rant about health care. But it's a vague sort of rant.The guest column is by a former mayor. It makes very little sense. Jo-Anne Moore has a useful column on how to represent yourself in court. Then there's Brent Mazerolle.

As usual, it's not really an opinion column. But, damn, this is one, fine piece of writing, and it's simple, and it's very touching. Only the worst of grouches would criticize it. And I'm not the worst. Not yet.  Loved it.
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Of eight pages of Canada and World news, only one and a half are about the rest of the world. And none of them is really news. However, I strongly suggest you look at the photo of a boatload of refugees on B6.

B2 has the story that a federal Liberal mp says that aboriginal affairs will be among our biggest political issues. I wish that were true. However, we have such a terrible situation that is not because of the aboriginals. It is a situation deliberately created to please big capitalists - like railways and land speculators. (Politicians like John A. and Sir Charles Tupper were as crooked as they come.  And today's Liberals are most unlikely to annoy big capitalists - like frackers.)

Justin will probably make a fuss over minor programmes, but avoid anything that would give native peoples real power and independence.
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By the way, Sir Charles Tupper liked women. I mean, he really liked them. It's not coincidence that  his nickname was "The Cumberland Ram".

See? That's why it's important to study history.