Oct. 12: An angry day

A couple of nights ago, I caught the last scene of the film "A Tale of Two Cities". This is Dickens' view of the French revolution  , a view in which the dignified members of the French aristocracy are led to public execution by beheading - while the ignorant poor watch in laughter and jeers.

The last man to die in the film is Sydney Carton, a young Englishman who had devoted himself to saving those dignified aristocrats from the ignorant mob.  "I go to a far, far better place than I have ever been...."

The story is more than a little one-sided.

The French aristocracy had long been devoted only to their own lives of mindless pleasure. The kings, beginning with   Louis XIV, insisted on their presence at the Versaille Court where they were required to  live high, to constantly party , to spend.... It was his way of ensuring they would always be under his control.

The peasantry had to support that high living with constant labour to earn foul housing, little food, extreme punishment, no education,  and short lives.

So why are they the peasants and working class the  bad guys in A Tale of Two Cities?

It's because that tale, quite unconciously, was written as a piece of propaganda. And propaganda is easy because it's often based on what people want to believe.
The French revolution was a threat to the British aristocracy because it might encourage a similar (and well-deserved) rising in Britain. It was also a threat to the business leaders of Britain who were closely associated with the aristocracy. The French peasantry and working class, then, were evil. Yes, they were. And the aristocracy were dignified. Yes, they were.

All this was mixed together by a British writer, Charles Dickens, who had not been born into wealth, and had usually been critical of the wealthy. But there was another factor at play.

The French were, well, French, and therefore inferior to the English. That made the French peasantry and working class inferior to the English one and, by easy transfer, made the French aristocracy more like the fine model of the English aristocracy.

Here was a propaganda that caught on because it was what people wanted to believe. Here was a model for the American election campaign of 2016.
Here was a model for modern news media owned by billionaires.
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I have also been watching a similar case in TV news of Haiti in its storm damage and deaths. Over a thousand have died - and there will be many, many more as cholera spreads. Of course, so many have died. Look at those fragile,  tin sheds they live in. Look at those crowded "residential" areas where there are no fresh water systems. And the cholera? Well, most of those places have no sewage, either. These are ghettos of filth and poverty.  They have been for centuries of western looting that deprived Haiti of living salaries, of education, of health services - and it has been particularly dreadful since the U.S. took over control about a century ago, allowing American, Canadian, European business aristocrats to exploit the poverty of Haiti.

All of this was controlled by U.S. appointed dictators who tortured and murdered anyone who objected to living in filth and hunger and hopelessnes. And who often tortured, murdered, raped for the fun of it.

Then Haitians held an election, and overthrew the the dictators, and democratically elected their own president. American politicans and business leaders were furious. They denounced the new president as evil, evil, evil....
The propaganda was easy  to spread in the U.S. because Haitians were black. It was an interpretation that, like all good propaganda, the average American wanted to believe. So it was easy for the U.S. government, with Canadian help, to overthrow the president while pretending to help Haiti, and to reinstall a just pretend democracy.

In the earthquake that coincided with the American overthrow of the president of Haiti, The U.S. sent lots of aid - very little of which ever reached Haiti because it got stuck in the pockets of American contractors. The same thing seems to be starting to happen this time, too.

The same was done for the same reason to Cuba. When Castro overthrew the dictator, he was instantly evil, evil, evil.... He was so evil, he made free schooling freely available to everyone all the way through university. He established the health care that Cubans had never had before.

 But there was still severe suffering because the U.S. virtually killed Cuban trade with  sanctions. (Sanctions, by the way are an act of war. The U.S. did not declare war. Nor did it have a legal reason to declare war. That means the sanctions were war crimes. But the U.S. and Canadian media never mentioned that.)

Now, check out the death toll on the American seaboard. It's not a thousand. No. It's 33. And that's odd. After all, the American population in that region is twice that of Haiti. So why the more than 35 times as high death toll in Haiti?

Look at those tin shacks in Haiti built by centuries of exploitation by the wealthy, and made worse by American business interference Think of what lack of drinking water and of sewage mean. Surrounded by big talk, the relief will be very limited and slow.

And it's not going to change. And we aren't going to do much about it. Our private news media will make sure of that, feeding us the propaganda version we want to believe.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/haiti-hurricane-matthew-focus-1.3800244

The US has no trouble raising trillions to kill Syrians and Libyans and Iraqis and Afghanis. But not enough to be of much use to help an island just off its coast.
And if the CBC investigages too noisily, the Trudeau government will punish it.
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The irvinig press? Today's burning issue for the editorial is whether the public should share in choosing a name for the events centre. Then there's the usual propanda piece from the Fraser institute. The rest is worse than trivia.

Oh, and there's nothing about the CBC news story of yesterday that further studies of the Bahama papers reveal that thousands of Canada's wealthy hide their profits there - with the close help of leading Canadian banks.  Every year, we are robbed of tens of billions of dollars (at least), not to mention the gifts our  governments hand out to the wealthy. That's one reason we can't house the homeless or feed the hungry. That's why we offer an unlivable minimum wage. That's why the Liberals in Ottawa plan to cut health services.  But not a word about it in most of our news media.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bahamas-offshore-data-leak-canadian-banks-1.3773041

We aren't going to get much more news about it. Dominic will be called in to his real master for a chat to get  his marching orders on this. And that will be it.

Oh, and the chambers of commerce will hold more, expensive dinners honouring 'philanthropists', and going 'Clap, clap, clap...'
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Now, here's an interesting article about wealthy 'philanthropists'. "Clap, clap, clap", say the the chambers of commerce.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/san-francisco-homeless-proposition-q-tech-investors
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Here's a British story that looks like news. But is it?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/11/we-needs-deeds-not-words-bombs-rain-down-on-aleppo-as-mps-debate-syria

The Americans and the British created the war in Syria. They have been supplying ISIS and other "terrorists' who have been murdering Syrians. Russia has been concentrating on bombing the  ' terrorists'.

So why is Russia the evil one - and the US and Britain the great humanitarian states? Shouldn't that question be part of the story?
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Where have the virtuous Obama and Hillary been in all these years that Bill Clinton has been groping women? News should be the whole news.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/11/obama-trump-groping-remarks-unfit-for-president
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Here's another example of a Guardian news story which is really a propaganda story. All of its sources are unreliable - and it ignores the killing by the U.S. funded and supplied Jihadists.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/reality-check/2016/oct/12/reality-check-are-us-led-airstrikes-on-syrians-as-bad-as-russias

Americans don't deliberately kill civilians. No. Never. The carpet bombing of cities, the use of Agent Orange and napalm, the cutting off of almost all food and medical aid to all Syrians - no. That's all aimed at the military only.
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And here's one of a former Canadian P.M. who bravely speaks out about the sins of Donald Trump, but who served happily under one of Canada's most provenly corrupt prime ministers - and neither she nor her party (nor Liberals) have ever mentioned it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/kim-campbell-canada-ex-prime-minister-trump-sexual-predator

A prominent Montreal news commentator actually built his career on being a booster for Brian Mulroney - and was very careful to dance around the corruption issue.
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I would suggest reading all of Information clearing house for today. It leans, of course, to criticism of the U.S. What else can it do? It's not the whole news. It's filling in the news our regular media don't carry - and to the lies they tell.
It also had this light one on Obama the Pure and lewdness. It's a video of him displaying an erection to entertain female jounalists.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/video-resurfaces-of-obama-showing-off-his-erection-to-giggling-female-reporters-hypocrisy-on-trump-much_102016
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Karl Nerenberg is one of the best journalists in the business. Here, he criticizes Trump for his ignorant attacks on Canadian medicare.

Too bad Canada has a prime minister, a Conservative opposition (and many news media) whose views resemble those of Trump.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-nerenberg/2016/10/trump-smears-canadian-health-care-here-are-some-facts
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I should think Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, and Stephen Harper would make a happy combo.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/hillary-clinton-privately-pitched-corporations-on-really-low-tax-rate-for-money-stashed-abroad/

And their commentator could be Norbert Cunningham who probably believes the nonsense he writes about how billionaires create wealth for all of us.
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The creation of death.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article193595.html
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There's lots more but this is enough for a day. Bin thinkin' about Saturday. Maybe a good day to discuss the Faith Page, and the role the churches have played in all this. Can you think of a commandment that says "Thou shalt be patriotic"? Why isn't there one?

Oct. 10: It doesn't matter whether they're named Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Clinton or Trump

It took me two minutes to  read today's irving press. It was all, typical  holiday coverage - with the exception of a commentary by Steve Malloy which is well worth a read. The big story in Canada and World news took me all the way to New York where some Girl Scouts are raising money to erect a statue of a woman in Central park. The story is mostly pictures of people walking in Central Park.

The lead story  was about the most childish leadership debate ever. So let's turn to that.
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The United States has created monstrous problems for itself and the whole world. In the midst of this, it has also created the two most hateful presidential candidates it has ever had. Neither has yet announced any significant policies to deal with the problems. Nor has it said what the problems are. The American people are so dazed by the myth that they think their history really is, by a brainless patriotism that shuts out judgement, by a lying propagandizing news media, and by billionaires who own all the above, that all they can do is hate and fear   - and even those in only a vague sort of way.

What are the the real aalternatives they have to consider? Nobody knows because there is no free discussion of alternatives. You just put your hand over your heart, and murder and loot anybody you're told to murder and loot. And that makes you a patriotic hero.

What are the problems the U.S. faces? Well,

1. how about the shambles it has created with history's clumsiest and most brutal wars and most ineffective ones in the middle east. These wars have also been illegal under international law which means they are war crimes. When the Naziis did it, we tried them and hanged them. When American leaders do it, billionaires pay them off.

2. Trump says he's going to crush ISIS. Is he crazy? The U.S. created the ancestors of ISIS  (including Osama bin laden, training and equipping them to fight the Russians when the latter invaded Aghanistan a couple of generations ago.  The ISIS Jihadists in the middle east are trained, financed and equipped by the U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia.....  The reason the U.S. is mad at Putin is because he's been attacking ISIS. Everybody knows that except, apparently, Donald Trump and the American people.

3. As a result of all the above, we are on the edge of nuclear war with Russia and China. That is not rhetoric. The U.S., for some years, has been moving up its missile sites to Russian and Chinese borders, and has been staging very provocative military exercises in those regions. That's why puppet Canada has troops in latvia, Iraq and Syria - even though our Canadian private press has little noticed that. Just hold your hand over your heart, and praise your country.

4. The U.S. and Canada are way behind on dealing with climate change. And it may be already too late to deal witih it. That's because oil billionaires don't want it dealt with. It can murder millions - maybe billions - but, duh, it creates jobs.

5. The U.S., with the help and approval of Britain and Canada and others. has created the biggest refugee problem in history. That, combined with the effects of climate change, will create growing chaos and misery for generations - if we have generations left.

6. The shift of money from the poor to the rich has reached epidemic levels. And it's made worse by newspaper approval and support of tax havens for them. Nobody knows how much of our poverty comes directly from that. That money is certainly bigger than any national budget.

And clap, clap, clap responds the Chamber of Commerce at its dinners in worship of billionaire 'philanthropists'.

7. The result has been a rapid growth of poverty for the rest of us. And those who suffer worst from it are single mothers. So why hasn't Hillary, the defender of womenfolk, said a word about that?

Instead of hearing about answers to these problems (or even mentions of them), we got a debate so juvenile it would have embarrased an elementary school debating club. And it wasn't just the debaters that were juvenile. It was the moderators, the audience, and anybody out there who could stand watching for more than two minutes.

Is Trump crude and sexist? Oh, yes. So were Kennedy, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson,   Clinton....And some of those with a special taste for adolescent girls. He's certainly unfit to be president. So is a mass murderer like Hillary who has spent her life kissing up to people who want wealth and power no matter what it does to others.

There is no choice. Neither of them is better than the other. The U.S. faces dangerous times no matter who it elects. In either case, it gets what it has been getting for many years - a Hitler - the person who was the model for modern government.

What can Canada do? Not much. But we have to, somehow, have the courage and pride and integrity to break our connection to the new Naziis. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have shown any sign of doing that.

Yes. That will be hard. No, I haven't seen many Canadians ready to do that. Canadians, after all, are served largely by the same kind of news media that feed the fear and hatred in the U.S.

When you think about what is really happening and what a newspaper should be reportiong,  it's possible to read the irving press in two minutes.
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The Guardian had many, many stories about the  debate - all of them as childish as the debate. They were all about a debate that said nothing, and none about the issues it should have raised.

And a lead story is about Yemen, a country the U.S. has been murdering and starving for years with the help of its friends. And you know what The Guardian saw as important in all this? Some of those terrible people in Yemen shot back at a poor, little, helpless U.S. destroyer.

https://www.theguardian.com/world
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This next story is a good example of how the U.S. has created instability throughout the middle east. A whole, new world is in the making and continual breaking there.  That is not likely to go away.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/08/iran-iraq-syria-isis-land-corridor
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American police have, this year, killed  827 people. That's well on track for a new record. I'm  no expert on whose fault this is. But it suggestsa  tendency to greater violence within the U.S. as it continues to manufacture poverty, hatreds, fears.

://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
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And here's a story you won't see in most of our private news media.

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2016/828-media-silence-over-deadly-sanctions-from-iraq-to-syria.html
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3827529/Russia-builds-forces-Syria-Reuters-data-analysis-shows.html

The U.S. has been very, very aggressive all over the world. Russia and China have obviously reached the point at which they can no longer back down.
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John Kerry says, "Russians do not care about international law, but we do"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45640.htm

In fact, breaking international law has been openly advocated by every American government since 2001 - including by Kerry and Obama.  That's what American Exceptionalism" means. And it's been openly stated by both of them. The U.S. gives itself the right to invade any any country it wishes to with no regard for any law.

The wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the drone attacks on more countries than we ever hear about, the mass murders have all been illegal under international law. But our private news media never mention that. That's what the website, "Project for the New American Century" is all about. It's no limits warfare for world conquest, and more countries that U.S. billionaires (and some of their lacky billionaires) can loot.

 So put your hand on your heart, praise God, sing God Bless America, and become a hero.
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There is no climate change. Don't worry. Be happy.

http://rabble.ca/news/2016/09/this-canadas-shame-maude-barlow-and-sarah-harmer-discuss-canadas-impending-water-crisis

Much of the U.S. is suffering water crises, too. Guess what that means for Canada.
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Much as I like Haaretz and think it's one of the best and most courageous papers in the world, it's a tough source for a blog. First, you have to pay for a subscription. That's reasonable,  of course. But, when you do have a subscription, it becomes almost impossible to transmit any story because the audience usually just gets a headline and an ad for a subscription.
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Here's the best way to discuss the presidential debates. Don't talk about them. Talk about reality.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/10/janus-faced-on-banking-and-finance-hillary-clinton-economic-world-view/
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Here's a good antidote to John Kerry's nonsense that the U.S. respects international law.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/u-s-and-u-k-continue-to-actively-participate-in-saudi-war-crimes-targeting-of-yemeni-civilians/
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This is an interesting comment by a reader of The Guardian. The boy in the picture heading the story (the one that spread around the world) shows him as he really was, a victim of a war who is being manipulated for propaganda news.

https://off-guardian.org/2016/10/04/what-community-standards-did-this-comment-breach12/
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Here is a very solid and reasonable account of what is going on in the Middle East, and what to watch for.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article193570.html
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We are facing a world that has  happend before - many times.

Very few government in this world have even been ruled for the benefit of the people who live in them.  They are commonly ruled by some sort of aristocracy. Through most of world history that has been an aristocracy  by birth which set the rules to benefit itself. That has been true of Britain until well into the twentieth century, even as that aristocracy had long been proven to work only for itself, to justify its greed as something ordained by God, aven after it began to produce generation after generation notable for incompetence - and even with a  high degree of insanity and perversion. Someday, there could be a really interesting book about the British aristocracy.

The American revolution was not really a change. The constitution was designed by wealthy men to meet the needs of wealthy men. Women were inferior. The poor were inferior. blacks were inferior, native peoples were just for murder of for planting them on land the wealthy didn't want. That has changed much less than one might think.

Much of the world turned to rule by a news aristocracy by birth, but, in the nineteeth century, to an aristocracy defined also by wealth - the Rothchilds, the Rockefellers - and you can fill in some of the others.  P olitical parties, news media are simply fronts for them. Almost all wars are fought to satsify the greed of the wealthy.  A government that rules for the people has been extremely rare.
The wealthy get away with killing, impoverishing and exploiting the rest. The rest commonly react in one of two ways. One is to admire the wealthy - and maybe get jobs at the irving press. That kind of reaction is called fear.

The other is to hear nothing, think nothing, say nothing. And that's another reacion called fear. Most of New Brunswick has opted for the second reaction. And that means things can only get worse.

Nobody is going to stand up for us unless we stand up for ourselves. New Brunswick has a weak record in that respect, perhaps the weakest in Canada. it doesn't have much time to grow some courage.
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Oh, an afterthought...  I heard news today that after the Events Centre is built the land around it will be cleaned of its layers of dangerous railway yard usage. That is not was the law says. I know this because of personal experience.

My ancestral home in Canada was a farm in what became an urban district in the late nineteenth century - with a large railway yard replacing the house and the land around it. The law required that land had to cleaned of all the railway soil before putting up a hospital on it. In the process, contractors discovered the old Decarie basement of 1655 or so. Global TV asked me to visit it, and to do an interview about it. That was my first expereience of what such a clearing was.
It involved hundreds of trucks making thousands of trips for a year or so to dispose of a good three meters of infected topsoil over a huge area. It was so toxic that street cleaners followed the trucks down the street. All that HAD to be done BEFORE even thinking about building.

Oh, and it had to be trucked hundreds of miles to find some region foolish enought to allow the trucks to dump it there.

Even if Moncton now does such a job of clearing poisoned soil, it's too late. It can't ever clear out that large part under the new centre.  And most of the city councillors didn't care.

The events centre was never intended to benefit the people of Moncton. It was intended to benefit hotel chains and hockey owners because they are what our governments serve.

Over a hundred million dollars. That could have done a lot for the people of Moncton. Now, it won't. Not ever.

Don't waste your time on politicians who have "neat ideas". Look for the ones who only want to serve the people they claim to represent. After all, you can also create jobs without giving most of the money to very wealthy people.
__________________________________________________________________________________Soon, I should publish a list of the sites I use every day. And I'm alway looking for more to add.

But not today. Donne-moi un break.

April 8: A real editorial in the irving press? (not great. But real.)

As usual, there is nothing in the irving press.  How can there be? Climate change isn't happening. So there's no point reporting on it.  The wealthy of New Brunswick are all paying all their taxes right on time. And writing about an oil pipeline or fracking is a waste of time because most people don't understand them. So let's leave it to the wealthy to make those decisions. In the whole paper, which also pretty much skips foreign affairs because they're just about - you  know - foreigners, there's only one item worth reading.

That one is, annus mirabilis, the editorial. It's about fluoridation of our water supply. It's not brilliant. But it does at least make sense.
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Usually, the tone the irving press is that capitalism is the highest form of economics ever developed. Of  course, the press never calls it capitalism. That sounds hard and crude. So the word it uses is  'entrepreneurship'. That word conjures up visions of irvings in their boxing trunks  doing battle against the forces of socialism and welfare and other such evils.

The message is that government interference with the entrepreneurs who do battle to make us all rich is bad. Yes, it is. Capitalism - sorry, entrepreneurship - makes us all rich.  Government such gets in the way of our enterpreneurial angels.

Too bad it's not true.

Canada and the U.S.are both entrepreneurial societies. Both are rich in natural resources. Foreign invasion has been rare. The major exception to that was the invasions by European settlers. Apart from those, the only invasions of significance have been in the distant past - the British in Quebec, the American invasion of Canada in 1812,  (The attack on Hawaii was not an invasion of the American land mass.)

Indeed, we have been in a position to make money out of war by selling weapons. In fact, American profits in selling weapons to Britain in two, world wars, and in taking over British assets in the U.S. in those wars is what has made the U.S. a superpower. Canada did well out of it, too. And, as a result, the ordinary people of the U.S. and Canada are the wealthiest people on earth.

Right?

Wrong.

Canada and the U.S. rank about 27th in the world in distribution of wealth.
It's something of a chore to get accurate figures on this because our governments are not eager to tell the truth about it. That's why real unemployment figures are usually considerably worse than reported. The same is true of poverty.

Even using official U.S. and Canada figures, and even in a U.S. and a Canada which have suffered much less destruction  than others from war, U.S. and Canadian living standards are ranked 17th in a list of the world's 29 wealthiest countries. We have, by the kindest of measures, some 15% of our people living in poverty. It's actually worse in the U.S. which has a far lower standard of social services.  (Americans, for example, can get some medicare help - but it's very limited. And even those who get it often cannot afford the prescribed medication.  It's also extremely hard on taxation day - especially as the wealthy commonly do not pay any taxes.)

And to make it measurably worse, both Canada and the U.S. have 1 in 7 of their employed people working in 'precarious' employment - jobs that could end any day.  And the proportion of those with children who live in poverty is even higher. Of course. Four people need more money to live on than one does.
For a great many Canadians, that means living in what can kindly be called 'substandard' housing, and eating what can be called substandard foor and too little of it. It also produces an attitude on the part of parents and children that this is a good as it can ever be for them. Growing up in poverty creates more poverty.
And the proportion of elderly in poverty is high. Anyone trying to live on government pension plans has to live on short rations, indeed.

And the situation is NOT improving. Thanks, among other things, to offshore tax havens, most of us are seeing a steady decline in our incomes. But the wealthy are rising in spectacular fashion.

Mind you, when our capitalists (sorry, entrepreneurs) go into South America or Africa or the middle east, it gets much, much worse. Poverty, as in Haiti, Guatemala, soars. Productive land is destroyed. And anybody who doesn't like it has a strong chance of being killed. It's like that but even worse with Canadian and American mines in places like Congo that drive whole nations into poverty.
And in the middle east? Tens of millions are murdered, crippled, starved, driven into the horrors of refugee camps with their millions of children who will never have a chance to beanything but poor.

'Entrepeneurship' works well on a small scale. On a larger scale, the record is obvious. It creates and sustains massive suffering, ruthless killing and, as we are watching, the insanity of ignoring all scientific advice on what we are doing to the earth we have to live on.
.And it encourages the dregs of humanity to run for political office. Thus the rise of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the banality of almost all New Brunswick politicians, and a whole world collapsing into destabilization. (That destabilization is what has created the pit we are sinking into in the middle east.) And it's happening very, very quickly.

It's greedy. It's immoral. It's insanely stupid. Raise these questions at the irving chapel. (But don't interrupt the special music.)  
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The Guardian, again, is beginning to resemble the irving press. However, it has one story, though necessarily weak on details at this point, to raise doubts about mining 'entrepreneurship' by Canadians and Americans in poor countries.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/07/eritrea-gold-mine-abuse-case-canada
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Then there's the big, big story that Trump should drop out because of evidence that he used coarse, sexual language and groped women. With the whole world on the edge of nuclear war, this is the big issue in an American election?
Hell, in the past, including the recent past, groping women has been a requirement for the presidency. Franklin Rossevelt had a lifelong affair with his secretary. John F. Kennedy groped everything that moved. Clinton had a passion for any female who was young - sometimes very, very young. In fact, it can be difficult to find a president in U.S. history who wasn't a groper.

When are we going to get serious news instead of gossip about this election?

://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/08/donald-trump-tape-quit-republicans-lewd-comments
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Now, here is real news that, for the most part, we're not getting.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/08/climate-change-defense-spending-fighter-plane-climate-change-defense-spending-fighter-plane-program
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I never thought I would list a story from the South China Morning Post. This was a British-owned paper in Hong Kong which is now, I believe, owned by the Chinese government. i haven't followed the Chinese-owned version. But I remember the British-owned one as a real stinker.  I taught journalism to some of its British reporters. They were arrogant racists, but not impressive.)  One day, it carried the story of a man who invited his neighbour in for tea. Then he raped her. The headline?

"That was some cup of tea."

This one seems better journalism - and, whatever one thinks of the current ruler of The Phillpines, it is notice of a serious challenge to American power in Asia. The U.S. conquered The Phillipines about 1900 in a very brutal war against a primitive people. It then ruled it with an American dictator for over 40 years - until Japan captured it. After the war, the U.S. resumed rule through 'just pretend' elections that were really dictatorships.

However, the new president is running his own show. He's brash, murderous on the issue of drugs - and he's made it clear he has no intention of being an American puppet. In his view, the future lies with China.

And he has lots of popular support. Flilipinos, in general,  have had enough of American dictators and puppet rulers. And they, too, see their future with China rather than with the U.S.

This is a serious challenge to the future of the American Empire.

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/diplomacy/article/2025726/america-has-failed-us-foreign-secretary-yasay-explains-why
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I have never understood why the U.S. decided to invade Libya, and to kill Ghaddafi. This story of it makes sense. And be sure to play the clip below it by Hillary Clinton.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/05/the-dreadful-chronology-of-gaddafis-murder/
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Noam Chomsky is always worth a listen.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45636.htm
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In the most trivial election the U.S. has ever seen, Paul Craig Roberts has a comforting truth. It doesn't matter which of those two clowns win. The U.S. will go on being run by the billionaires who have always run it.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45629.htm
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http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/4-reasons-the-paris-agreement-wont-solve-climate-change/

But, duh, a pipeline and fracking will create jobs. Anyway, I feel so much better knowing that people like the irvings are in charge.
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Here's a problem that Canadian governments have not moved on for 18  years.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/cathycrowe/2016/10/eighteen-years-ago-we-declared-homelessness-national-disaster

Hey. Be reasonable. Why, if we start building housing for people who need it (and that's a lot more than just the homeless), we'd have have to charge Mr. Irving full tax on his refinery lands in St. John. Then how would pay the rent on his own little nest?

On that same theme, why doesn't city council in Moncton give some thought to housing that not only fills a need for decency and affordability but would respond at least a little to climate change?

Hint - bungalows spread widely over large area won't work.

If fact, has council considered climate change at all? Has it considered the problems created by city designed to sprawl - and therefore to place huge demands on transportation, the cost of excessive lengths of sewage, of roads and sidewalks and maintenence....?
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How soon we forget. The war in Afghanistan is still on. It is now quite likely the most expensive war in history. And there's still no end  (or even purpose) in sight. Canadians were killed in that war. We have never been told why Canada got involved in that war. Nor have we been told why we suddenly quit.
 And all that money could have gone a long way to fight climate change, to build decent housing. Instead, the profit  (and, yes, huge profits have been made) have all gone to the wealthy and the corrupt.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/destruction_is_all_we_have_to_show_for_15-year_war_in_afghanistan_20161007
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The irving press has said virtually nothing about this. But it's heading this way. It the Greed Express.

http://truepublica.org.uk/eu/ttip-corporations-continue-push-rights-sue-governments-public-interest/
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This is good news about what seems to be a decline in ISIS support. But be sure to read the last sentence.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/08/can-the-ongoing-internal-feud-draw-the-end-of-isil-nearer/

The U.S. does not want ISIS to fail.It has been financing, arming and training ISIS for years. The reason it's angry at Russia is because Russia IS fighting ISIS. But you won't read that in the irving press. In fact, you won't read much of anything in the irving press.

Oct. 7: Insanity

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/california-drought-new-normal-1.3789627

This is rather an important story. If a heavily populated state like California - not only with a large population but also an important producer of food - runs out of water, the U.S. is going to demand water from, say, British Columbia. And if Canada says no.........

For education on that, check out the story of the Alaska Bounday Dispute of the very early 1900s.  That was the dispute in which Canada resisted the American claim to the finger of land that juts down the coast from Alaska. The U.S. threatened war.  Britain intervened to support the American claim. Britain did it because feared it would be required to defend Canada. And it didn't want to do that. This is the same Britain that, just a decade later, would call on Canada to fight for Britain in World War One.
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Of course, the irving press doesn't have the California drought story. Nor does it have the story that the U.S. and Russia are sending anti-aircraft missiles to Syria to shoot down each other's aircraft. And guess what will happen if they start doing that.

The irving press doesn't have this story, either - though this would take us over the edge into a war between Russia and the U.S., a war that would certainly become  nuclear. What is this insanity all about? The irving press has never carried that story, either. So here it is.

In World War 1, the European powers -notably Britain, France and then the U.S. - moved into a middle east which had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire. When that empire collapsed, the Europeans and Americans moved in to create artificial nations out of the empire, giving each other control of countries that had resources - mostly oil.

Democracy in such countries was impossible. They weren't, in any sense, real nations. These were make-believe countries created by drawing lines on a map. In any case, the western powers weren't interested in democracy - and they made no pretence of caring about it. They wanted the oil. The people had to be kept quiet and obedient. So the western powers either ruled directly or established dictators. The western powers created and supported the Saudi family,and people like Hussein, Assad......

Trouble began when the people of the region and their dictators began acting as if their oil was - well - theirs. So they wanted to sell it to all available customers.
The first nation to do that, shortly after World War 2, was a democracy. Yes, Iran established a democracy to sell its oil where it wished - not simply to allow it to be looted (often without payment of any sort) by the British.

So Britain called on the U.S. for help. They overthrew the elected government and installed - a dictator. (So much for those who claim the U.S. is fighting to spread democracy.) But, after dreadful years, of dictatorship and looting, the Iranians chased out the dictator, and reestablished democracy.

And that's how Iranians became an evil people in our news media.

With the election of George Bush Jr., the U.S. made the leap to 'American Exceptionalism'  (the right of Americans to invade, kill, conquer whoever they wished to) and to conquer the world. The middle east was a prime starting point because of the huge profits to be gained from oil. And the first target in that region was Saddam Hussein of Iraq who had once been a prime stooge for the U.S., but was now acting as though Iraq was an independent country.

The war was won and, at the same moment, it was lost. The democracy that was created was largely a fraud set up by the U.S.  Groups like the Kurds wanted, as they had always wanted, their own country, and wanted nothing to do with any Iraq government. As well, the war and the extraordinary brutality of it sent a wave of fear and hatred around the Muslim world. And that's where 'terrorist' jihadism comes from.

The Iraq war, though a victory on paper, was a dreadful failure, and worse than a failure. It achieved nothing useful in Iraq, and It destablized much of the world. So the U.S. had take a new approach with it's next, major targets - Syria. The president of Syria was becoming too friendly to the idea of trade with Russia. But what to do?  The U.S. didn't want a repeat of Iraq.

The answer lay in a method developed  decades earlier when Russia invaded Afghanistan. The CIA established ties with Afghanistan muslims. (The same Muslims we now call terrorists.) It supplied them and trained them.  And they won. That was the modern origin of al  quaeda and of ISIS. So the US  decided to try it again.

Assad of Syria is a muslim - but not very observant of the faith. So the U.S. recruited Jihadist groups, then armed and trained them to rebel against Assad. These were the same sort of people who had attacked the World Trade Centre. In that role, our press called them terrorists. But as 'rebels' against Assad, they became 'moderate rebels'.

And when they proved inadequate, the U.S. financed, armed and trained ISIS and other groups to help out.

In short, the U.S. finances 'terrorism' in Syria. It's fighting Assad. But ISIS is a U.S. ally, not an enemy.

Enter Russia. It could see where this was all heading - the cutting off of Russia and China from any oil trade with the middle east, the colonization of the region - and then the economic and, probably, military attacks on Russia and China.
So Putin asked Assad for permission to intervene - and got it, making his intervention the only legal one.

The war in Syria  is one of the Russians against 'terrorists' and the U.S. against Assad. it's next step, quite possibly, is the war between the U.S. and Russia and, quite likely, China.

And what it's all about  is that insanity called greed.

Think about that next time you're worshipping at the irving chapel.
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The irving press has its usual 'news'. Today, readers learn from the front page headline that the seats in the new Events Centre will be slightely wider than originally planned. Generally, it avoids lying in today's edition by reporting only trivia.

Oh, Canadian troops have been in action in Iraq, lately. But the irving press didn't have room to mention it. It needed the space for an important story about a fist fight between two British politicians.
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The Guardian has disappointingly pale stuff today.
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So let's go OffGuardian.

https://off-guardian.org/2016/04/24/is-obama-preparing-for-a-possible-war-against-russia/__________________________________________________________________________________
Here's an issue that, whichever side we are on, whatever prejudices we may have, is news we need. Alas! It wasn't in the irving press.

https://off-guardian.org/2016/04/24/is-obama-preparing-for-a-possible-war-against-russia/
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This is an interesting site. In the case of the story listed below, the source is a pretty good one.

http://truepublica.org.uk/global/ex-british-ambassador-makes-astonishing-speech-about-tony-blair-george-bush-war-and-profit/
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The tone of this one is a little over-excited - enough to make one suspect a strong, teeny-bopper excitement.  I'm not sure it's as glorious as it sounds. But it's a  credible possibility.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/04/the-eurasian-century-is-now-unstoppable-2/
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Here's the story that wasn't important enough to make the irving press.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadian-special-forces-have-been-in-gunfights-with-isis-general-says-1.3104637

What the hell are we doing in this war? When did parliament declare this war? Isn't the requirement for parliament to declare war supposed to be one of the things our veterans fought for?
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Yes, I know The Palestinian Information Centre is biased. But I know this story is true because it's been confirmed by many sources. Israel does not permit the Palestinians in Gaza to control their own coast. So Israel reacted with military power when a boat of unarmed womenn appeared. They won't be allowed into Gaza. The same thing can (and does) happen to food and medical supplies. Funny how the west does nothing about this. CAn you imagine the reaction if an arab nation were to block a ship trying to enter Israeli waters?

http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=81089#.V_TXW_hshAM.facebook
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American police have killed 824 people this year. That puts them on track for a new record.

http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=81089#.V_TXW_hshAM.facebook
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And, in case you haven't guessed that Hillary and Donald are the same old same old....

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/07/both-campaigns-enthusiastically-violate-ban-on-super-pac-coordination-watchdog-says/
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More than a little complex - but it's important to underst and this aspect of war.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article193474.html
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http://thesaker.is/russian-options-against-a-us-attack-on-syria/
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There can be no doubt about it. The U.S. is planning for the nuclear option, and has been planning for it for some years. That's why it has, as much as possible, scattered its launching siites and, as much as possible, surrounded Russia and China with them. All the promises made in 1945 were lies. Nuclear weapons were never a deterrent to war. Indeed, we have been fighting  constant wars ever since 1945.

Now, the ultimate nightmare has happened The other side has responded with a warning that it, too, is prepared to go nuclear. And the reason the very existence of humanity is at risk? It's to protect a resource which will destroy us if we keep using it. Greed and stupidity. On both sides.

Greed, stupidity and, of course, massive corruption. That's why there is rising poverty even in a rich country like the U.S. The trillions the U.S. alone spends on war would decently feed and house the whole world. But that will not be allowed to happen.

But there are plans for a better future here in New Brunswick. That's why today's big headline lead was the news that seats in the events centre will be wider than planned.

Oct. 5: the news we weren't told about.

 Just a brief review of the irving press, and what a newspaper should not be.
1. There's nothing in it worth reading. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

2. The front page headline is trivial - and it's grammar is below high school level. ("Fewer seats at events centre won't impact prices...") A  headline writer should know that impact is NOT a verb. In any case, we have never been told that the centre would have fewer seats than promised. Should we start with a story that there will be fewer seats - and not start with the excuse for why it doesn't matter?

3. Canada&World has no world. In fact, it never gets out of New Brunswick, though it does include a big, front page  story that will rock you, "Former Miramichi travel agent to stand trial next spring." Talk about staring at our own bellybuttons....

4. The Commentary page has the most digusting commentary I have ever seen. It's a plea for our very wealthy to be spared from the terrible burden of taxes they have to pay. It's by "The Fraser Institute", of course. And it's theme is we should shed a tear for the very wealthy who don't know where their next billion is coming from.

It's data is dreadful lying - and they must know it. First, it uses percentages not dollar figures. That's more than a little misleading since (you've heard of tax havens?) nobody knows how much money our wealthy have. And, says this propaganda column, high taxes discourage them from making money. Yeah. I've noticed that. Our streets are full of Irvings and Ganongs  who are fed up with struggling and have taken up panhandling.

Meanwhile,  those lazy louts on minimum wage just lie around collecting freebies like medical care. Oh - a great idea...if high wages make people more industrious and saving and investing as this article says, why not raise the minimum wage to hundred dollars an hour?
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I've watched little of the U.S. presidential debates, partly because neither of them shows any sense of what American society needs or what the world needs for survival. Both are there largely because they are wealthy and well-connected, and both serve the wealthy and well-connected. We are at a turning point in history that I would rather not watch.

American democracy has ended - partly because it never really got started.  Americans, even more than most others, are raised on propaganda and on an ignorance of what the U.S. is really about. As a consquence they have little sense of political options. All they have to rely on is a false history, and the propaganda of some of the world's most lying news media. It's a rot  that goes down through every level of government.

The same is true through much of the western world. That's why, for centuries now, power has generally been in the hands of few, and it comes to them by birth. For a long time, the powers of position were held by aristocrats who were aristocrats by birth. They could be, and often were, village idiots. But they ruled.
Over the last couple of centuries, they have been displaced by an aristocracy of those, largely, born to wealth. (Guess what the last name will be of the next irving ltd. president. ) The new aristocracy  has a close similarity to the old one. That's why the U.S. has had two presidents named Bush, and will now almost certainly have a second one name Clinton. (It's surely remarkable that a nation of hundreds of millions should just happen to produce such closely related presidents.) Similarly, we have a prime minister in Canada named Trudeau - and it's largely because he is named Trudeau.

We have not achieved equality of opportunity. We're nowhere close to it. Our opinions are not all treated equally. We do not all have equal  power and influence.

We need to start all over again on building democracy. That's more than thinking just politically. It means, somehow, creating honest news media. It means rethinking our notions of patriotism to take out the hysteria parts of it. It means an education system that is allowed to teach students to think, and not just to conform.

And it means a population that has the guts not to conform.
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For many, many years, I was involved in the struggle against Quebec separatism. So I was well aware of the separatist claim that separation from Canada was essential to preserve the French culture of the province.  And, as I watched, I was amazed to see that they were destroying the culture.

One of the characteristics of Quebec was its attachment to the Roman Catholic church.  But one of the results of the movement was that the church was reduced almost to irrelevance. Another characteristic was that the wealthier Frence sent their children to expensive private schools. And those children tended to become most of the political and business leaders of the province. Ordinary French kids had to attend very, very inferior public schools. Now, that was a cultural trait that could well have been lost. But it was preserved. And, though the public schools have been  improved, the general pattern remains. The rich get superb private schools and grow up to lead. The private ones are much inferior.

What was also  noticeable was that nobody, including separatist scholars, had any idea what the French Quebec culture was.  That was driven home to me at a meeting of French scholars to discuss their culture. Nobody knew what it was. The Chair snapped him pencil in frustration, "We must define our culture." But it has never happened.

All societies are like that. People fuss about their culture, their values, their traditions....but nobody knows what they are. So this Guardian item caught my eye.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2016/oct/05/akala-the-propaganda-of-british-values-is-a-distortion-of-history-video
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And for those who think  that climate change is phony, here's what scientists have to say about climate change, - and hurricanes.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/climate-change-hurricane-matthew-sea-level-rise

Incidentally, Haiti never did get all the promised help after its earthquake of six years ago. The U.S.,  in particular, preferred to give the money to contractor friends of the US government - who then spent most of it on 'reports'.
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While we're on Haiti, I include this story about it - not for the text but for the pictures of what the people of Haiti have to live in after amost a century of direct, U.S. control.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/hurricane-matthew-leaves-haiti-facing-humanitarian-crisis-un

The U.S. has actively supported corrupt and murderous governments. It destroyed the only democratcally elected government Haiti has had since American control was imposed a century ago. It has actually been robbing the poorest people in the western hemisphere for a century to produce bigger profits for families like those nice Doles, the descendants of missionaries who now carry their Christian mission further by selling canned pineapples.

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I include this next one despite  (or maybe because of) its unusually spicy language. And, yes, I know the source is Russian and so we can't trust it. But we also can't trust it if it's American or Canadian. However, on the basis of this - and of statements and actions by the U.S. government, it's hard not to believe that the U.S. is preparing to make war on Russia.

http://russia-insider.com/en/not-drill-nyt-editorial-board-lays-groundwork-war-russia/ri16758
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45610.htm
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Question. Is Russia legally at war in Syria?

Answer - yes. It was invited by the Syrian government. Under international law, Russia has a right to be there.

Question - Has the U.S. been legally at war in Syria?  In Iraq? In Libya? In Yemen? In its use of drones in many nations?

Answer - No. it has commonly gone to war without legal sanction. That's called American Exceptionalism.

Funny how most of our news media never mention that.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45615.htm
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It was almost seventy years ago that the UN took a land in which Jews and Muslims had lived together for over a thousand years. It gave the Jews (mostly Europeans) the best part - with a lesser part for the Muslims. Not that it mattered who got what because  Israel has been allowed to take whatever land it wants, and to kick the Muslims off.

Israel also has the right to control the borders of Palestine - thereby controlling it's trade, and even basic necessities such a medical supplies.

Was this done out of love for Jews? No. The major countries involved - like the U.S., Britain, France, Canada - had a long history of passionate hatred of Jews. Creating Israel was simply an easy way to get rid of them. Then it also became a valuable ally to the U.S. (for a price).

Canadians and Americans have long since forgotten that they refused to help European Jews before the war, during it, and even after.So did most countries.  Many a prominent Canadian and American thought that Hitler had the right idea. And we have long since forgotten the rioting against Jews in the Toronto of the 1930s, and the marches of Nazi Brownshirts in the streets of Montreal. Jews in Canada were hated, as were blacks and orientals. And that lasted into the 1970s, at least.

Our virtue is recent. So I wonder whether we will see the following story in the irving press.

http://english.palinfo.com/site/pages/details.aspx?itemid=81089#.V_TXW_hshAM.facebook
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Don't worry. Be happy. The irving newspapers probably won't run this story, either.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/05/point-of-no-return-earth-reaches-400ppm-threshold-permanently/

Besides, duh, fossil fuels create jobs.
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Another story that the irving press will have no room for.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/04/enough-of-cias-enough-project-in-africa/
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Just in the last 15 years, the U.S. has spent trillions  (and killed millions) on war. Far from curing any problem, each war has made the problems worse as nations hit by those wars have not been able to recover and, indeed, whole regions are collapsing into disorder.

And what have all those wars had in common? Oil and/or pipelines. Even if one could claim mass murder and starvation as justifying the  chaos for the sake of oil, this would be insane. In financial terms, there have been no gains for us, and there aren't going to be any.

So why are we putting out all this money? Well, we have to. After all, we wouldn't want the oil billionaires to have to pay for their own wars.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/05/new-group-think-for-war-with-syriarussia/
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President Obama says something sensible. But he's scarcely the one who should say it.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/03/obama-worries-future-presidents-will-wage-perpetual-covert-drone-war/
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This definitely will NOT make the irving press. The TTP is a trade deal designed to please the greediest of corporations and to destroy our control over our own country. And what will Trudeau do?

I think he'll support it.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/04/kaine-pence-trade/
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There's also a story that the U.S., particularly in the west, is in for many, many years of drought. So guess whose waters it will be looking for. And guess what it will do if Canada says no. The game has already started. with a demand for Great Lakes water.
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I have lots more. But tomorrow.

It's hard to have to write every time about how the world has become dominated by the greediest, most immoral, and most stupid people in world history.

Oct. 3: The biggest world story in the irving press is that......

Boston might be counted in the same time zone as Monton, New Brunswick.
Be still, my heart.
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http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/poll-canadians-multiculturalism-immigrants-1.3784194

 What a wonderful idea! Of course, make immigrants  conform to our ways, speak only our language, dress as we do....  Our native peoples would be much better off today if they had followed such a policy toward our immigrant ancestors.

The possibilities are endless. Chinese could be forced to  operate restaurants that serve only  hot dogs. Pizza would be a thing of the past. Music would be restricted to that which can be played on a guitar and sung through the nose.  Africans would be required to rub white cream  all over themselves. Japanese cars would be prohibited.

Let's get over it. What will happen is what has happened for centuries. The immigrants will change us and we will change them. Then they will join us in insisting the next group of immigrants should be forced to conform.

Actually, we all desperately need to change - and the time is short.
Keep a close eye on the American election. The future that only a few want to happen is crashing in on us.

The American political system has always been designed to favour the rich. That goes all the way back to the beginning of the U.S. when, in many states, the poor were not allowed to vote.

There were always programmes for the rich.  The so-called Indian wars were fought to steal land for wealthy land speculators. The civil war was fought (no - not to free slaves) to enable the manufacturing north to keep out competition from British manufacturers. The American imperial wars - South America, The Phillipines, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Libya, Iraq, Syria - have been fought - no, not to spread democracy and not because their leaders were 'bad men'. They were fought so wealthy Americans could get control of their resources and their cheap labour - and get even wealthier.

In recent years, there has been an added touch for the rich. Those wars to benefit the rich are fought - and paid for - by everybody else but the rich. That's becuase the rich get to avoid taxes by hiding their money in tax havens.

Finally. elections cost money, the kind of money that can come only from the wealthy. That's why it took  the U.S.  almost 200 years to introduce any significant social legilation. At that it's been minimal and, like Obama care, designed to provide profits for the rich than it is to help the poor.

All of that is why the U.S. is now suffering massive problems in health care, education, poverty, and the biggest budget deficits in human history.

And that's why this hopelessly corrupt system has now produced the two, worst and most disliked presidential candidates in American history. One is an egomaniac for whom everything has quick and simple solutions  (which won't work.) The other is openly corrupt and the servant of the very wealty.
And Canada is not nearly so different as we might like to think.  (Indeed, some Canadian governments (New Bruswick springs to mind)are close to the Trump/Clinton model.

Canadians have to make large changes - and soon. And we won't get them by reading or watching most of the news media. We have to do it ourselves.
The starting point has to be the Green party and the NDP because those are the only ones left. But both are dreadfully whimpy and naive. Both need fires lit under them. The change we need is a huge one. The wealthy have to pay taxes like the rest of us. They also have to be weaned away from government handouts in the form of loans, super-lush contracts, grants.... All of these are simply legalized theft.

Sounds like too much to do? It might be. But the alternative is a continuing shift of all money into the pockets of the very rich, and a level of abuse that neither we nor our environment can survive.  In short, we need a government that serves us, not just the irvings and their hangers-on.
And the time is very short.
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Or, if thinking hurts your head, read Norbert Cunningham's column. It's all about how we have to cut government spending because we're getting too deep into debt.  Alas! Cutting spending won't help because then the people with big money will just steal even more.
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Justin is not his father. He is simply an old style political hack who does what big money tells him to do. Expect nothing from him on climate control.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/canada-pacific-northwest-lng-natural-gas-pipeline-british-columbia
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And here's a related story that the irving press did not consider a major one. Just a hint of irving's complete coverage of all levels of government.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/canaport-deals-help-irving-oil-earn-millions-on-lng-plant-1.3095901

The oil business is showing no interest in pursuing a means to end fossil fuels. And it always has a "duh, it creates jobs." Yes. Killing Syrians creates jobs, too. Killing native peoples created jobs. (But none of t his creates taxes. It's the rest of us who have to do that, and to pay the taxes that the wealthy and influential don't pay  but who need our tax money to pay for their wars.
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Here's a story chose I because it's good example how to write propaganda while pretending to write news. It begins with a few lines of Putin warning the U.S. not to intervene in Syria. That make sense because a)it's illegal for the U.S. to be in Syria and b)it raised the strong possibility of a U.S./Russia confrontation. And, by the way, Russia does have a legal right to be there.

But after just a few lines, the story is mostly about how the Russians are the cause of all the trouble. It comes, of course from The Associated Press.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/10/01/us-intervention-in-syria-will-lead-to-terrible-consequences-warns-russia.html

Actually it's even worse than Putin says. The U.S. illegal wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria almost certainly mean that these regions and their neighbours will not see peace for decades, if ever. The wars have destabilized them so that we can expect rebels to continue their interventions for as far as we can see into the future. The invasion of Iraq, sponsored by that ass, Bush, has laid the groundwork for World War Three.

In an election dominated by the issues of whether Hillary has pheumonia and whether Trump owes taxes, there has been no serious or informed debate over the situation created by Bush and made worse by Obama. But it's far the biggest issue facing the world. (Well, not the biggest. No. That's the new, Boston time zone.)
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The next one is long, but excellent stuff. It's by a man who was, for  27 years, an anaylst for the CIA and a chief advisor to the very conservative president Reagan. He examines the case of the downing of an airliner in Ukraine, and suggests the account we're getting of it is a lie. He also sees what most of our news media do not - deliberate provocation of Russia by, for example, sending Canadian troops to Latvia.

There are leading people in the U.S. who want a war with Russia. And they don''t care if it's nuclear.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/30/russia-baiting-and-risks-of-nuclear-war/
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Then there are other countries getting involved in the war in Syria on the American side. And being on the American side means supporting jihadist 'terrorists' just as the U.S. does. Yes. The U.S. which poses as fighting terrorism actually supplies and trains it.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-france-and-britain-scrap-united-nations-diplomacy-embrace-terrorism-against-the-people-of-syria/5548644

Is it possible that nobody at the irving press knows that? All those editors and commentarists - and nobody knows about it?

No. It's not possible they don't know. So it's obvious. The boss doesn't want that news in his paper. And, like everybody else in this province, they kiss up to the boss.
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There is a war going on in South America. It's been going on  for over fifty years. It's a war against American (and Canadian) corportations that have been exploiting the people of South American countries and their people for over a century. It's a war in which thousands have been tortured, killed, or just disappeared in recent years. The torture and killing have been under American guidance, and sometimes by American agents.

Does the Canadian government know about this?  If it doesn't, it must be one of the few governments in this world that doesn't know.

The irving press never mentions the story.   (Perhaps it's shy.) But never kid yourself. The people who support this exploitation and murder would quite as happily do it to you.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45588.htm
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Here's another story that hasn't been important enough for the irving press to mention. This time it's the danger of war between India and Pakistan. And you don't care because it's not happening in New Brunswick? Well, consider this. They're both nuclear powers.

I can remember many years ago sitting at many meetings of the nuclear disarmament movement. Only the U.S., Britain and Russia had nuclear  mombs at that point. But most people were pretty relaxed about it. After all, these weapons were so devasatating that we were assured the world would phase them out.

Now, the nuclear club is much, much bigger. And we  can no longer believe that our politicians  will come to their senses.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/03/india-pakistan-tension-continues-to-mount-after-terrorists-attack-indian-army-camp/
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We have helped to create the tens of millions of refugees in this world. But we have done very, very little to help them.

That raises a question that I note never gets asked in the 'jump for Jesus' section of the irving press Faith  Page.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/dennis-gruending/2016/10/globalization-indifference-helping-world-ignore-its-refugee-
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Newspapers are running into hard times. So they want governments like the Canadian government to bail them out.  Of course. These newspapers, most of which pimp for their wealthy owners, daily chant the enterprise of what they like to call entrepreneurs. They criticize ordinary people who want better wages so they can afford to live, better housing, better food, more education.... And, if they do, the papers depend on a Norbert who will tell them they should take risks and word hard - like our entrepreneurs.

But if the entrepreneurs get into trouble? Read this.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/john-miller/2016/10/memo-to-newspapers-bail-yourselves-out
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The U.S. government says that the CIA no longer carries out  torture. I would be very surprised if that's true. Certainly, no-one has ever been punished for torturing, even though it was illegal under American law even as it was carried out. So far, the only people who have been punished are the ones who revealed what was going on.

Nor, it seems, do we know the extent of types of torture. As well, nothing has ever been done for those whose health and lives were destroyed for a  dozen years and more by foul conditions and torture - even though most have been released because there's no evidence they did anything wrong.

Tell me, again, what a sweeheart Obama is. Tell me again how we can trust our political and economic leaders to do the right thing.

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/03/former-cia-detainees-describe-previously-unknown-torture-tactic-a-makeshift-electric-chair/
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Tell me again how President George Bush is a born again Christian. Let's discuss this over coffee in the barn at the Irving Chapel. I assure you - it has the best God money can buy.

Liars in our news media

The story is on B6, the Canada &World section of irving press. It comes from The Associated Press, one of the biggest news agencies in the world, and one that appears routinely in almost all of the western press.

"Russian airstrikes killed 9,300 in past  year."

First, have you ever seen a story about how many people have been killed by American, British, or even Canadian airstrikes? How many have the Saudis and Americans killed in Yemen? How many has the U.S. killed with drones all over the world and with bombing in Syria? No. Of course we don't see those.

We are also told that tens of thousands were displaced. Gee. Could we get a figure for the tens of millions displaced  by U.S. bombs?

And where did The Associated Press get this information?  It got it from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Well, that's sounds impressive. But -

The Syrian Ovservatory for Human Rights is in Britain. It's run by a haberdasher who just happens to be a Sunni Muslim - the majority sect which also  happens to contain those muslims hostile to the government of Syria and friendly to what our news media call "terrorists". The haberdasher in Britain spends his time on the phone talking to 'rebels' in Syria who give him the numbers. Nobody checks them.

In short, all that information comes, unchecked, from groups like ISIS that we call terrorists - but that the US and Saudi Arabia also supply with money and weapons.

The observatory is, to say the least, heavily biased with a habit of counting rebel deaths as civilians.

It's touched off with a photo of little children peering out of  their ruined home. Of course, American, British and Canadian bombers would never bomb a house with children in it.

In journalistic terms,  this story is garbage. It's pure propaganda. But it gets half a page in the Irving press.   That tells you all you need to know about most of our western press.

Then we get a   shpiel about how brutal the Assad government of Syria is. It may well be. But it is not so brutal as the U.S. which has been  bombing Syrians and financing the "terrorists" who have killed hundreds of thousands. Nor does it mention that the U.S. has no legal right to be involved at all. It is illegal under international law. That makes it a war crime. You know what war crimes are - they're what we hanged Naziis for.

And that tells us all we need to know about the ethics of most  privately-owned journalism.
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Yesterday, I mentioned 'economic freedom' as the new propaganda buzz word of the day. Freedom. It sounds good - and sometimes it is good.

The story begins in 1941 when Roosevelt announced that World War 2 was to defend the Four Freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. The idea caught the popular imagination, and was used by the allied nations as an incentive to win - to make this a better world. We should remember that on November 11. That's what so many Canadians were told they were fighting for over seventy years ago.

Our record over those seventy years has not been impressive. Even Canada and the U.S., the most stable countries in that period have not, delivered on freedom from want in their own countries. And the U.S., at war for most of  those seventy years, can scarcely have been said to bring freedom from fear to South America, Africa, the middle east or Asia.

And freedom from speech? Most New Brunswickers don't want it. They think it wiser to blend in and not be noticed. But the word freedom certainly sounds good, doesn't it?

So why not 'economic freedom'?

Well, for that matter, why not urinary freedom?  (freedom to urinate on the sidewalk.) Shoplifting freedom? Freedom of assault?

Well, no. Some freedoms are not good. That why we have laws.

But now, economic freedom has popped up. It appeared recently in a propaganda column in the irving press. The idea is that business should have the freedom to pay no taxes, the freedom to have fewer regulations....  Yes. Then big business, particularly, would invest and create jobs, and we'd all be rich - just like all those lucky people in Africa, the middle East, South America, Haiti - who are rolling in money as a result of economic freedom

Expect to hear a lot more about this. Business, especially big business, already has the freedom to avoid taxes but the push is on for even more freedom. Yes. Let them be free to build pipeliness all the way to the moon. Get rid of minimum wage. Let business pay the poor the starvation wage that is all they are worth. Get those environmentalists off the backs of honest billionaires.

Expect to hear more, much more, about economic freedom. Expect it in columns from The Fraser Institute and the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies. And if someone talks to you about it, smile, and exercise your urninary freedom.
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Read this, and tell me how good the people of the western world are. Think of the U.S. which created most of the horror this story reflects - and think of how it  now refuses to lift a finger for those millions whose lives it has destroyed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/01/child-refugees-despair-calais-camp-close
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Here's an old story but it might, just possibly, stir some thinking about the use of chemical sprays on New Brunswick's forests.  (Yes. I know spraying creates jobs. So do drunk drivers and bank robbers by creating a need for more police.)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/16/insecticide-unacceptable-danger-bees
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Here's one that should  have made the irving press - but which didn't and never will.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/canada-pacific-northwest-lng-natural-gas-pipeline-british-columbia
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Contrary to what many people think, there is nothing odd about conspiracy theories, nothing quacky about them. We live in a world of conspiracies - governmental, commercial, journalistic..... Anyone who dismisses all conspiracy theories is simply an arrogant fool.

And that takes us to the great conspiracy theory of our time. the World Trade Centre. I know the planes that hit the centre were loaded with fuel - but....
Not far away from those buildings was the Empire State building. Shortly after World War Two, it was hit by a large aircraft (an American bomber). And that bomber, too, was freshly loaded with fuel. But the damage to the building was almost superficial, and there was none of the long-lasting, intense heat of the trade cenre attacks.

It's never a mistake to ask questions. It's often a mistake not to.

https://off-guardian.org/2016/10/01/why-did-john-gross-claim-he-had-no-evidence-of-high-temps-in-the-wtc-rubble/
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Did you know the U.S. has 70 military bases in South America?  That must be very conforting for American and Canadian owners of resource mining companies.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelas-Foreign-Minister-Says-70-US-Bases-in-Region-Must-Go-20160929-0018.html
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While claiming to be fighting ISIS and al nusra, the U.S. has been supplying and training them for years. But you won't find that in the irving press - or most other news media in the western world. The Russians have responded by taking part in the war - but to attack ISIS and al nusra.

Now - get this -----The US is supporting ISIS and al nusra. These are the same people it calls 'terrorist' Jihadists, and that it will not allow to enter the U.S. It wants the 'terrorists' which it now calls 'moderate rebels' to hold the city of Aleppo. But Russian bombing is blocking that.

So the U.S. is now planning to send anti-aircraft missiles to the terrorists (oops - moderate rebels - in Aleppo so they can shoot down Russian aircraft.
See any potential for trouble there?  - like - say - a nuclear war between Russia and the US and everybody else?

This war has been steadily moving to a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. It's a confrontation the world cannot survive. But we're now within inches of it.

So tell me what is that makes the destruction of all humanity worth while.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/29/how-the-us-armed-up-syrian-jihadists/
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Though Trudeau and others are talking about enforcing the already sagging Paris climate agreements, scientists say that those agreements are too little and too late. But I think all the scientists are wrong. If I want to know something about climate change, I don't talk to scientists. I talk to people who really know things - like oil billionaires. I mean, the chambers of commerce like and trust them. So that just goes to show you.

And they are devout Christians. I know some who even sponsor a chapel. Yes, they do. With free coffee. Onward, Christian billionaires.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/01/forget-paris-scientists-say-radical-change-only-way-to-stay-below-2-degrees/
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