...for Dec. 14. Too bad it didn't make the Moncton Times and Transcript. The European Court of Human Rights found Moslem terrorists guilty of holding an American citizen prisoner for almost four years, sodomizing him, beating him, torturing him. And it was all a case of mistaken identity.
Oops - typo there - It did happen. But the man was a German citizen. On the request of the CIA who thought the man might be a terrorist, and with the connivance of the German government, Macedonian police arrested him, beat him severely for a couple of weeks, then handed him over to the CIA.
The CIA immediately gave him "capture shock" which began with shackling, blindfolding, beating and sodomizing. There was more of the same until the CIA realized this was a case of mistaken identity. So the man was was again blindfolded, shackled, taken to Albania, and dumped on a roadside.
For nine years, American courts refused even to hear the case. And the US, Germany, and Macedonia all inisisted it never happened. Now, the European Court of Human Rights has found the CIA guilty. It made world news. But not much in North America, and certainly not in the pages of The Moncton Times and Transcript. Of course not.
The editors of the TandT just take the standard handouts, and publish them at random. Nobody there knows enough about world news, anyway.
However, if it had been done to an American citizen by Moslem terrorists, can you imagine what the headlines have been right across North America.
It's just lucky certain other countries weren't involved in this case. Countries that have been known to cooperate with the CIA in the illegal torture of "suspects" are Britain, France, - and Canada with its very own CSIS.
Oh, here's another big story for the TandT. The CIA has chaplains. I guess the agents need a round of spiritual refreshment and reflection between sodomies.
________________________________________________________________________
The front page headline for today is about plans to spend $2.5 million for highway work. As usual, the story simply repeats official statements from a few people. There are no questions, though it would nice to know who much of this money is going to private contractors, and how much work will be done by the province. Is there any pattern of this over the years? How do costs compare between the two sectors? Is there evidence that going to private contractors is cheaper? If there is a difference in costs - either way - why do we maintain two systems? Reporters are supposed to ask question, not to simply hold up recorders.
That's it for section A, unless you really, really, give a damn for a full page story about a bridal shop opening in Shediac.
______________________________________________________________________
For foreign news, don't waste your time with NewsToday. You can get more and better on Google news - and you would have had it yesterday. There is, though, an intriguing story that isn't foreign news.
When Atcon needed a 50 million dollar loan from the NB government, it had to, reasonably enough, give a statement of its assets to the government.
It got the loan, went broke anyway; and on p. C3 we learn that Atcon exaggerated its assets - by over $35 million dollars. Now, let's just suppose Atcon did that deliberately. If so, this would be fraud, theft, a criminal offence.
Despite lengthy quotations from politicians, all we get from them are political games. There is not a hint of investigation for laying a criminal charge. The general tone is let's forget it, and move on.
Well, no.If you or I defrauded anybody for 35 mil, we'd be looking at spending the rest of our Christmases in jail. This is a question which seems not to have occurred to the reporter. In fact, no question seems to have occurred to the reporter. Will there not be any criminal investigation? Was the government in any way complicit in this? Will our provincial government just throw 50 million at you if you tell them you have millions and millions? Don't they check? If a welfare recipient gets overpaid in error by, say a hundred dollars, he or she is hounded for years for repayment with interest. In fact, there's a case like that going on right now. (Of course, it didn't reach the pages of the TandT).
Let's get th is straight. A company got 50 million out of the government, and did so by giving faulty information. And nobody at the TandT or in the government even asked whether there might be something wrong here? Nobody suggested an inquiry? Nobody wondered at the gross incompetence or, possibly, the corruption of two political parties that treat this so lightly? (Or, in fairness, we have to consider that both parties may be composed largely of people who are morally defective due not to greed but to sheer stupidity).
And it never occurred to an editor that questions should have been asked. And the editorial writer is so out to lunch that he or she thinks the great question of our time is whether we should be better organized in giving out turkeys and toys one day a year?
Oh, and just to rub these lessons home, read the second editorial, "Minister does right". There's the kind of tough-minded attitude we need. An overpayment of welfare is ----a crime. It goes on to say that if you ask any victim of a crime, he or she will tell you that.
Now take a look at the laid back attitudes of our political and media leaders toward a false statement from Atcon for which we were victimized to the tune of 50 million dollars.
Why to I have an urge to right ignorant, fatheaded, self-righteous, incompetent ass?
_________________________________________________________________________
Alec Bruce gives fair, even kind treatment to the F-35 mess. I would just add it's a bigger mess than it seems because there has never been an analysis of what we will need it for - or even what the world will be like during the F-35 service life. Just a few factors:
1. Development is already well along for unmanned fighters to be controlled, like the drones, from remote stations as if war were a computer game. Since they don't have to consider the limitations of the human body, they can fly at higher speeds and tighter turns. And they will be in service BEFORE we get even our first F-35. In other words, the F-35 is already obsolete.
2. According to a report by US intelligence, the American empire is closing down. The American century is over. By 2030, it says, the Asian economies will be bigger than all of western Europe and North America put together (Guess why Harper is so eager for trade deals with China.)
Trade has a good deal (a great deal) to do with who our enemies are, and what we need to fight them. Any reading of Canadian history will show that. 2030 is not far off. Any government that committed us to such a deal without getting some idea of future needs is wildly imcompetent.
3. The F-35 deal was arranged without competitive bidding. A government that does that is usually very stupid or very corrupt. And it's certainly very arrogant.
______________________________________________________________________
David Suzuki has a column that sounds just sweetly gentle. But it's a lot more than that. It's not just true. It's so profoundly true that its meaning can take a long time to sink in. Our minds are so cluttered with complicated lies that that its hard to understand a simple truth. Suzuki suggests a new way of looking at things that is not only better than we do now. It's essential.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Several days ago, when Harper very apologetically announced his oil deal with China, he made a very revealing comment. He said he was very opposed to dealing with state companies of any sort. Essentially, he said that only business has a role in the economic life of a society. That tell us all we need to know about Harper. It even tells us why we are watching the fall of the US.
Today's blog is too long to fit this in. I'll try to remember it for a slow day.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Dec. 13: how different, how very different from us...
North Korea has launched a rocket carrying a satellite into space. The UN Security Council is furious. Why? The leading members of the UN Security Council all routinely launch satellites into space.
Oh, but such a rocket could be developed to fire a nuclear bomb at the US or Russia or Britain. So?
Members of the Security council have thousands of nuclear missiles which could reach North Korea.
Well, yes. But North Korea could be irresponsible and and use such a missile. So?
The US has already been irresponsible and used two nuclear bombs. And almost all members of the Security Council have threatened to use theirs.
We have to attack Iran because it might be developing a nuclear bomb. Oh?
The UN inspectors, who are admitted to Iran, say there is no evidence that Iran is developing such a bomb.
Meanwhile, Israel, which refuses UN inspection, is known to have some 250 nuclear bombs. So when do we invade Israel?
Iran is under punishing sanctions, partly because it is willing to accept payment for oil in other than American currency.
Oh? The US has a right to tell countries what currency they are allowed to accept in their own business dealings?
We have tough laws against terrorism. In the US, these permit imprisonment (with torture) or assassination of American citizens with no charge or trial. In Canada, we can imprison without charge or trial, too. And we also hand over, without charge or trial, Canadian citizens to be imprisoned and tortured.
Our side has killed thousands of innocent people in Asia and Africa by drone attacks. Our side killed 300,000 innocent people of all ages in Guatemala, Isn't that terrorism? Terrorists blow up airplanes? So they do - as for example, a terrorist employed by the US (now living as a hero in Florida) blew up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing all aboard. Carpet bombing, drone attacks, special ops attacks are all acts of terrorism. (Except, apparently, when our side does them.)
Our side killed at least a million innocent people in Iraq -and created millions of cripples, orphans, widows,refugees. There is no count of the murdered, starved, raped, and maimed in Afghanistan. And we will never see one.
Mao killed 35,000,000 (probably many more) in China. So did our puppet, Chiang Kai-shek. In our press, Mao was, reasonably enough, a villain. But Chiang was a Christian gentleman.
Moslem terrorists have killed thousands. You can read all about it. You can even read learned articles about how Islam creates terrorism.
Christian terrorists have killed in the millions But it's different. Isn't it?
It's remarkable to read through the daily newspapers, almost any of them, and see the double standard for judging human behaviours, and how quickly we accept whatever we do without much thinking about it.
When I was a child, the horrible thing about the Naziis was their use of torture. We were disgusted by it. It was the final proof that Naziis were evil. Today, the US and Britain and who knows how many others practice torture on a massive scale. American courts, now, even accept evidence obtained by torture. And do not kid yourself that our CSIS does not dip its fingers into, at the least, cooperation with the torturers.
Our news media routinely present the news as good (us) vs. evil (them). It is an extremely effective propaganda.
All of this occurred to me as I read the news in section C, p.1 about the North Korean rocket launch, and a Supreme Court hearing on our terror laws. Isn't it a little bit strange that people who try to scare us are terrorists, and that's illegal. But when we try to scare others (which is pretty much what war is about), we are not terrorists.
__________________________________________________________________________
In A4, there's an outline of our new bus routes that's worth reading. And that's it.
__________________________________________________________________________
On C 2,there's a story that Joe Oliver, our federal Natural Resources Minister, says that the pipeline route across Canada to the east coast is a "business" decision. Really?
Us common people have no voice on where a pipeline should or shouldn't go? So why do we bother to elect a government?
On C3, more pipeline, this one with a photo of Alward looking stunned, but with his mouth open. Presumably, then his boss has pushed the button to turn his mouth on.
He will - surprise! - support the pipeline. So - surprise! - will the Liberals. And there are no problems at all. Nothing can go wrong. Everything is perfect. Nothing damaging can happen. There's nothing to study. No questions to be asked. We'll all get rich (though nothing as crude as numbers is mentioned).
Obvously, there's not even any need to "consult" us on this one. Funny. I wonder why other places are refusing to permit pipelines. I guess they're not smart like Mr. Alward.
_________________________________________________________________________
The editorial writer, who seems not to give a damn about the poor and children most of the year, urges us all to make sure there is a toy under every tree and a turkey on every table for one day of the year. Yep. That's what the message of Jesus was all about- a turkey and a toy one day a year - and the hell with them for the other 364.
There's also a ga-ga, gush-gush editorial about the pipeline. Of course. Huge benefits. Thousands of jobs. A new era. And everybody will be coming to Moncton for entertainmnt and shopping. Quick. Get the events centre up. Again, there are no numbers. But those would just confuse people.
Is there any possible downside? No. Don't even ask.
___________________________________________________________________________
Norbert has a good, if grim column. Pay special attention to his final paragraph "The Last Word".
Alec Bruce hits a grim mood, too, on a very similar topic. Both are thoughtful, well-informed, and well reasoned.. Both touch on the role of religion - and the state of it.
Now, I have no faith in a goody-goody, clap hands for Jesus sort of religion.I don't expect (or want) to spend eternity dancing naked (or in a white gown) on a cloud and shouting, "Let's hear it for God." But religion, almost any religion, is essential to provide some moral basis for a society. And no society lasts without some moral basis.
Look around you - at our provincial government, at Harper, at the world of big business. Where is the moral basis of any of them? And I'm afraid putting a toy under every tree and a turkey on every table is not going to change that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jody Dallaire has a dynamite column on legislation affecting young drivers at night. Sounds boring? It isn't. She takes the trouble to look at the whole process, at procedures followed by the government, at scientific evidence, and includes a few statements that sum up the idiocy of Alward's "consultation" policies", and the lack of any consistency on the part of his government. All of this should have happened in TandT news reports. But didn't.
_____________________________________________________________________
Rod Allen has nothing to say in his column. That's because he doesn't need to have anything to say. He's an editor for the Irving press..
Oh, but such a rocket could be developed to fire a nuclear bomb at the US or Russia or Britain. So?
Members of the Security council have thousands of nuclear missiles which could reach North Korea.
Well, yes. But North Korea could be irresponsible and and use such a missile. So?
The US has already been irresponsible and used two nuclear bombs. And almost all members of the Security Council have threatened to use theirs.
We have to attack Iran because it might be developing a nuclear bomb. Oh?
The UN inspectors, who are admitted to Iran, say there is no evidence that Iran is developing such a bomb.
Meanwhile, Israel, which refuses UN inspection, is known to have some 250 nuclear bombs. So when do we invade Israel?
Iran is under punishing sanctions, partly because it is willing to accept payment for oil in other than American currency.
Oh? The US has a right to tell countries what currency they are allowed to accept in their own business dealings?
We have tough laws against terrorism. In the US, these permit imprisonment (with torture) or assassination of American citizens with no charge or trial. In Canada, we can imprison without charge or trial, too. And we also hand over, without charge or trial, Canadian citizens to be imprisoned and tortured.
Our side has killed thousands of innocent people in Asia and Africa by drone attacks. Our side killed 300,000 innocent people of all ages in Guatemala, Isn't that terrorism? Terrorists blow up airplanes? So they do - as for example, a terrorist employed by the US (now living as a hero in Florida) blew up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing all aboard. Carpet bombing, drone attacks, special ops attacks are all acts of terrorism. (Except, apparently, when our side does them.)
Our side killed at least a million innocent people in Iraq -and created millions of cripples, orphans, widows,refugees. There is no count of the murdered, starved, raped, and maimed in Afghanistan. And we will never see one.
Mao killed 35,000,000 (probably many more) in China. So did our puppet, Chiang Kai-shek. In our press, Mao was, reasonably enough, a villain. But Chiang was a Christian gentleman.
Moslem terrorists have killed thousands. You can read all about it. You can even read learned articles about how Islam creates terrorism.
Christian terrorists have killed in the millions But it's different. Isn't it?
It's remarkable to read through the daily newspapers, almost any of them, and see the double standard for judging human behaviours, and how quickly we accept whatever we do without much thinking about it.
When I was a child, the horrible thing about the Naziis was their use of torture. We were disgusted by it. It was the final proof that Naziis were evil. Today, the US and Britain and who knows how many others practice torture on a massive scale. American courts, now, even accept evidence obtained by torture. And do not kid yourself that our CSIS does not dip its fingers into, at the least, cooperation with the torturers.
Our news media routinely present the news as good (us) vs. evil (them). It is an extremely effective propaganda.
All of this occurred to me as I read the news in section C, p.1 about the North Korean rocket launch, and a Supreme Court hearing on our terror laws. Isn't it a little bit strange that people who try to scare us are terrorists, and that's illegal. But when we try to scare others (which is pretty much what war is about), we are not terrorists.
__________________________________________________________________________
In A4, there's an outline of our new bus routes that's worth reading. And that's it.
__________________________________________________________________________
On C 2,there's a story that Joe Oliver, our federal Natural Resources Minister, says that the pipeline route across Canada to the east coast is a "business" decision. Really?
Us common people have no voice on where a pipeline should or shouldn't go? So why do we bother to elect a government?
On C3, more pipeline, this one with a photo of Alward looking stunned, but with his mouth open. Presumably, then his boss has pushed the button to turn his mouth on.
He will - surprise! - support the pipeline. So - surprise! - will the Liberals. And there are no problems at all. Nothing can go wrong. Everything is perfect. Nothing damaging can happen. There's nothing to study. No questions to be asked. We'll all get rich (though nothing as crude as numbers is mentioned).
Obvously, there's not even any need to "consult" us on this one. Funny. I wonder why other places are refusing to permit pipelines. I guess they're not smart like Mr. Alward.
_________________________________________________________________________
The editorial writer, who seems not to give a damn about the poor and children most of the year, urges us all to make sure there is a toy under every tree and a turkey on every table for one day of the year. Yep. That's what the message of Jesus was all about- a turkey and a toy one day a year - and the hell with them for the other 364.
There's also a ga-ga, gush-gush editorial about the pipeline. Of course. Huge benefits. Thousands of jobs. A new era. And everybody will be coming to Moncton for entertainmnt and shopping. Quick. Get the events centre up. Again, there are no numbers. But those would just confuse people.
Is there any possible downside? No. Don't even ask.
___________________________________________________________________________
Norbert has a good, if grim column. Pay special attention to his final paragraph "The Last Word".
Alec Bruce hits a grim mood, too, on a very similar topic. Both are thoughtful, well-informed, and well reasoned.. Both touch on the role of religion - and the state of it.
Now, I have no faith in a goody-goody, clap hands for Jesus sort of religion.I don't expect (or want) to spend eternity dancing naked (or in a white gown) on a cloud and shouting, "Let's hear it for God." But religion, almost any religion, is essential to provide some moral basis for a society. And no society lasts without some moral basis.
Look around you - at our provincial government, at Harper, at the world of big business. Where is the moral basis of any of them? And I'm afraid putting a toy under every tree and a turkey on every table is not going to change that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jody Dallaire has a dynamite column on legislation affecting young drivers at night. Sounds boring? It isn't. She takes the trouble to look at the whole process, at procedures followed by the government, at scientific evidence, and includes a few statements that sum up the idiocy of Alward's "consultation" policies", and the lack of any consistency on the part of his government. All of this should have happened in TandT news reports. But didn't.
_____________________________________________________________________
Rod Allen has nothing to say in his column. That's because he doesn't need to have anything to say. He's an editor for the Irving press..
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Dec. 12: My apologies....
As a reader pointed out to me, I missed an important story in yesterday's Moncton Times and Transcript.
So here it is.
Briefly, Irving oil wanted (guess what) an increase in petroleum prices. But they didn't take their case to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board which is supposed to deal with such requests. Instead, they took it to a lawyer who was hired by the government not to negotiate such deals, but to act as an intervenor in the public interest in such cases.
Now, let's get this straight. Irving Oil, which has more lawyers than a dog has fleas, and after all these years in the business, didn't know who it was supposed negotiate a price increase with?
Another lawyer, hired by the government to protect consumers, negotiated a deal that he didn't know was improper? What mail-order school do they get these lawyers from?
It was, as I remember, a couple of months ago that I saw in the TandT an ad for the Irving Chapel. It invited us to come to the chapel, there to sit in the Lord's presence, and to reflect. Wonderful idea. I commend it to the Irvings and their lawyers. And to the public intervenor.
Don't expect any quick decision on the case. We're told this can take a couple of months - not counting reflection time. Lots can be fixed in a couple of months.
But - credit where credit it due. The Times and Transcript did run the story. But, oh, there were some big stories it didn't run. For example.....
________________________________________________________________________
1. Testifying in Montreal, the retired CEO of a tobacco company said tobacco CEOs knew long, long before the general public did that smoking was a major cause of cancer. They knew that people were dying from their product. And they didn't say a word.
2. A giant British bank, HSBC was fined 1.9 billion dollars in a U.S. court for laundering money, much of it for Mexican drug cartels. Now, if you or I had done that, there would not be a fine. That's a very serious criminal offence; and we'd be in jail or, at the least, doing a life sentence of reflection in the Irving Chapel. The people who laundered that money are criminals. So why aren't they doing time? Well, you know, it's - like - well - these are important people- and - well......
Bear in mind that the drug cartels represent something like a third of the Mexican economy. It's a safe bet that lots of other banks are laundering their money - as well as laundering money that should be going to taxes.
What we need are more chapels - for reflection.
3. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the world's most respected scientific organizations. A year ago, at one of its conferences, a research team from the University of Texas presented a paper showing that fracking has no effect on drinking water. The report caused a sensation. Then---well, there was a certain amount of embarassment for both the university and the AAAS.
It seems the chief of the research project was employed on the side as consultant to a gas company - at a salary that had six zeros in it.
There are lessons in all this. The most dangerous thieves and killers in our society are not the unshaven louts who hide in doorways. The really dangerous ones wear expensive suits, get honoured at banquets, employ "consultants" from the most respectable of institutions. They kill and steal and corrupt and lie without mercy. They do it all over the world and, yes, even in New Brunswick to you, your children and your grandchildren - as long as you let them.
___________________________________________________________________________
Another missed item - The American Civil Liberties Union is launching case against the American government, taking it to an international tribunal because American courts have refused to deal with it.
In 2002, George Bush (a devout Christian) ordered an American citizen to be imprisoned in a US navy prison in South Carolina. There he was held - on US soil, mostly in solitary, for 43 months of torture. No charges were ever laid. And there was no trial. American governments are refusing to apologize or even to answer questions about it.
In lesser news, many American cities are now putting devices into public transit to record all conversations.
Somehow, I'm not sure that all this is what George Washington had in mind.
_________________________________________________________________________
The TandT has still not carried a word about the language situation in Quebec. The Parti Quebecois has hugely increased the budget for its language police, and is concentrating solely on stirring up hatred of the English, and fear of an attack on French - an attack which does not exist. In one of the latest moves, it intends to establish that a very high competency in French, and impossibly high one, will be a requirement for graduation from any English high school. The intent is obvious - to destroy all English institutions, and to drive the remaining English out of Quebec.
But who gives a damn? Right?
The only effect it will have in this province is to cause its English bigots to act like the French bigots of Quebec.
___________________________________________________________________
There are only two, important stories in Section A. One in the report of the New Brunswick Health Council. What caught my attention was that the story was never clear on just what the council is and, more important, who picks it. So I checked the act that created the council. It's mostly bafflegab about consultation. There is no indication of how the council is chosen - or by whom. After all, I cannot imagine anything independent being set up by the New Brunswick government. Remember the choice of a U of Moncton professor to report on shale gas?
The other big story in A6 "Metro retailers have plenty of toys and gifts for pampered pets". Way to tell it like it is.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Lots of stuff in section C on the proposed pipeline from Alberta to the east coast. All is joy, prosperity, no problems. Why, there's even a hint that laying the pipeline though Quebec and NB could create as many as 6.000 jobs. Yes, and no doubt all of Quebec will stand up and clap hands at the chance to employ 6,000 New Brunswickers to build the Quebec section.
And what would the 6,000 do after the pipeline is built? Hey. It's jobs. Something will come along after. New Brunswick's economic planning, like Moncton's city planning, seems to be based on the premise that the world will come to end about 2015. And they might be right.
Generally, numbers are absent in these gushing stories. Nor is there any mention of problems with having such a pipeline. There's no mention of why it isn't taking the shorter route to the West coast, or why Americans are not cheering a similar pipeline from Alberta to Texas, or why a Texas judge has ordered a stop to construction.
Anyway, what this world really needs is for us to get more people to burn more fossil fuel to warm up this chilly Earth of ours.
______________________________________________________________________________
Norbert is so excited over the pipeline (without giving us a single piece of information about it) that he wants Mr. Alward to stand right up in favour or it. As if that would be some sort of act of courage. Anyway, relax, Norbert. Alward will say he's in favour just as soon as the boss tells him to say it. The key in his back is all wound up. But you have to wait for the boss to push the button before his mouth moves.
Always one with difficulty in sustaining a thought, Norbert deals with (count them) four topics in today's column without saying anything about any of them.
At that, he beats the op ed page which has no thought to sustain, even if its writers could sustain one. A point in one of them caught my attention, though. It was an appeal to remember the needs of Christmas food banks. I quite agree, but....
.....how can we tolerate a society that spreads its wealth so unevenly and unfairly, that so many people can expect to get a good meal only once a year?
___________________________________________________________________________________
So here it is.
Briefly, Irving oil wanted (guess what) an increase in petroleum prices. But they didn't take their case to the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board which is supposed to deal with such requests. Instead, they took it to a lawyer who was hired by the government not to negotiate such deals, but to act as an intervenor in the public interest in such cases.
Now, let's get this straight. Irving Oil, which has more lawyers than a dog has fleas, and after all these years in the business, didn't know who it was supposed negotiate a price increase with?
Another lawyer, hired by the government to protect consumers, negotiated a deal that he didn't know was improper? What mail-order school do they get these lawyers from?
It was, as I remember, a couple of months ago that I saw in the TandT an ad for the Irving Chapel. It invited us to come to the chapel, there to sit in the Lord's presence, and to reflect. Wonderful idea. I commend it to the Irvings and their lawyers. And to the public intervenor.
Don't expect any quick decision on the case. We're told this can take a couple of months - not counting reflection time. Lots can be fixed in a couple of months.
But - credit where credit it due. The Times and Transcript did run the story. But, oh, there were some big stories it didn't run. For example.....
________________________________________________________________________
1. Testifying in Montreal, the retired CEO of a tobacco company said tobacco CEOs knew long, long before the general public did that smoking was a major cause of cancer. They knew that people were dying from their product. And they didn't say a word.
2. A giant British bank, HSBC was fined 1.9 billion dollars in a U.S. court for laundering money, much of it for Mexican drug cartels. Now, if you or I had done that, there would not be a fine. That's a very serious criminal offence; and we'd be in jail or, at the least, doing a life sentence of reflection in the Irving Chapel. The people who laundered that money are criminals. So why aren't they doing time? Well, you know, it's - like - well - these are important people- and - well......
Bear in mind that the drug cartels represent something like a third of the Mexican economy. It's a safe bet that lots of other banks are laundering their money - as well as laundering money that should be going to taxes.
What we need are more chapels - for reflection.
3. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the world's most respected scientific organizations. A year ago, at one of its conferences, a research team from the University of Texas presented a paper showing that fracking has no effect on drinking water. The report caused a sensation. Then---well, there was a certain amount of embarassment for both the university and the AAAS.
It seems the chief of the research project was employed on the side as consultant to a gas company - at a salary that had six zeros in it.
There are lessons in all this. The most dangerous thieves and killers in our society are not the unshaven louts who hide in doorways. The really dangerous ones wear expensive suits, get honoured at banquets, employ "consultants" from the most respectable of institutions. They kill and steal and corrupt and lie without mercy. They do it all over the world and, yes, even in New Brunswick to you, your children and your grandchildren - as long as you let them.
___________________________________________________________________________
Another missed item - The American Civil Liberties Union is launching case against the American government, taking it to an international tribunal because American courts have refused to deal with it.
In 2002, George Bush (a devout Christian) ordered an American citizen to be imprisoned in a US navy prison in South Carolina. There he was held - on US soil, mostly in solitary, for 43 months of torture. No charges were ever laid. And there was no trial. American governments are refusing to apologize or even to answer questions about it.
In lesser news, many American cities are now putting devices into public transit to record all conversations.
Somehow, I'm not sure that all this is what George Washington had in mind.
_________________________________________________________________________
The TandT has still not carried a word about the language situation in Quebec. The Parti Quebecois has hugely increased the budget for its language police, and is concentrating solely on stirring up hatred of the English, and fear of an attack on French - an attack which does not exist. In one of the latest moves, it intends to establish that a very high competency in French, and impossibly high one, will be a requirement for graduation from any English high school. The intent is obvious - to destroy all English institutions, and to drive the remaining English out of Quebec.
But who gives a damn? Right?
The only effect it will have in this province is to cause its English bigots to act like the French bigots of Quebec.
___________________________________________________________________
There are only two, important stories in Section A. One in the report of the New Brunswick Health Council. What caught my attention was that the story was never clear on just what the council is and, more important, who picks it. So I checked the act that created the council. It's mostly bafflegab about consultation. There is no indication of how the council is chosen - or by whom. After all, I cannot imagine anything independent being set up by the New Brunswick government. Remember the choice of a U of Moncton professor to report on shale gas?
The other big story in A6 "Metro retailers have plenty of toys and gifts for pampered pets". Way to tell it like it is.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Lots of stuff in section C on the proposed pipeline from Alberta to the east coast. All is joy, prosperity, no problems. Why, there's even a hint that laying the pipeline though Quebec and NB could create as many as 6.000 jobs. Yes, and no doubt all of Quebec will stand up and clap hands at the chance to employ 6,000 New Brunswickers to build the Quebec section.
And what would the 6,000 do after the pipeline is built? Hey. It's jobs. Something will come along after. New Brunswick's economic planning, like Moncton's city planning, seems to be based on the premise that the world will come to end about 2015. And they might be right.
Generally, numbers are absent in these gushing stories. Nor is there any mention of problems with having such a pipeline. There's no mention of why it isn't taking the shorter route to the West coast, or why Americans are not cheering a similar pipeline from Alberta to Texas, or why a Texas judge has ordered a stop to construction.
Anyway, what this world really needs is for us to get more people to burn more fossil fuel to warm up this chilly Earth of ours.
______________________________________________________________________________
Norbert is so excited over the pipeline (without giving us a single piece of information about it) that he wants Mr. Alward to stand right up in favour or it. As if that would be some sort of act of courage. Anyway, relax, Norbert. Alward will say he's in favour just as soon as the boss tells him to say it. The key in his back is all wound up. But you have to wait for the boss to push the button before his mouth moves.
Always one with difficulty in sustaining a thought, Norbert deals with (count them) four topics in today's column without saying anything about any of them.
At that, he beats the op ed page which has no thought to sustain, even if its writers could sustain one. A point in one of them caught my attention, though. It was an appeal to remember the needs of Christmas food banks. I quite agree, but....
.....how can we tolerate a society that spreads its wealth so unevenly and unfairly, that so many people can expect to get a good meal only once a year?
___________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Dec. 11:And the biggest story of the day is...
...the Atlantic Lottery Corporation has its eye on the future. This is a full page story about an interview with a member of the staff of The Moncton Times and Transcript. Why? I have no idea. The story says nothing about anything. How could it? The CE0 of the corporation has nothing to say but pretentious gab. And this is the TandT's idea of a big story.
The Atlantic Lottery Corporation is a very old type of business, almost as old as prostitution. It used to be called the numbers racket, back in the days when you bought your ticket from small-timers in the mob who hung out at factory gates, lunchrooms....
For Canada, the big move that squeezed mobsters out of the racket, and made them settle for drug-running and buying politicians came with the Montreal Olympics of 1967 when Mayor Drapeau made a pitch for government sale of lottery tickets to pay for the Olympics. Then the game was truly begun. Governments had been looking for a way to raise money without taxing the rich. And here it was - lottery tickets whose major buyers would be the desperate poor and the lower middle class. (Billionaires are not big buyers of lottery tickets.) But the TandT story says nothing about this.
As I read the CEO's statements, I thought of a kid I knew in school. His father sold tickets for the mob. "Hey!", he would say. "It's a legitimate business."
_____________________________________________________________________________
I looked for something on shale gas. You may remember this is the one the government and the TandT so long ago promised to tell us all about. But the great silence continues. However, one has to be fair. Maybe it's hard to get information. So I went to google, and entered "fracking dangers".
Up popped four milliion three hundred and ninety thousand sites. I wonder whether the TandT has an editor who knows how to use a computer.
__________________________________________________________________
However, a smart editor who knew how to use a radio might have learned from CBC that Chinese who want to come to Canada temporarily to work as miners are paying up to $16,000 for the chance. Arriving here, they would work at low pay for long hours as non-unionized workers. This is, of course, wonderful news for Canada since we don't have any unemployed people looking for work, and there are no miners at all in this country.
In related news, there is a rush in many states to pass "right-to-work" legislation. The right to work. Sounds nice doesn't it? Actually, it means the right of employers to make people work for such low wages that they need government food stamps to be able to eat. Walmart forever! And it's coming your way. But not in the pages of the TandT. It's not nearly as important as a chat with the CEO of the numbers racket.
______________________________________________________________________________
The TandT has also been pretty silent on the sale of a major oil sands developer to China. And even more silent on the next blockbuster announcement he has to make - about the deal with China to encourage Chinese companies to buy up Canadian companies - especially in resources.
No big deal? Well, it is. Under it, we would effectively lose our right to change regulations should the operations prove dangerous to the Canadian environment or even to the health or lives of Canadian people. In other words, Harper is about to approve a deal with people who are just as greedy and rapacious and indifferent to our lives and our futures as our current home-grown billionaires are. However, we would have even less power to control the newcomers than we do to control our home-grown greedy and rapacious.
This has all been drawn up in secret, and without discussion by the man whose contempt for democracy - and for us - has long ago been made clear. We are the new Third World. I guess it's true. What goes around, comes around.
_________________________________________________________________________
And here, in our gossip section, is a story I heard from a federal MP recently. The Bloc Quebecois plans to introduce a private-member's bill. It's not meant to pass. It's meant to put the NDP in a very embarrassing position, perhaps splitting on the vote. I won't go into any detail beyond that.
The NDP could come out of this one with flying colours - if it shows just a little courage and integrity.But will it?
________________________________________________________________________
There's really nothing else to talk about in today's paper. (Well, even most of what I've written isn't in today's paper.)
NewsToday has a story that Canada's new investment rules will be so strict that a deal like the Chinese move into the oilsands would not have happened under them. Right. We will pass lightly over the obvious implication - that such a statement means that Chinese government entry into the oilfields is a bad move. The fact is that given our tangle of obligations under free trade treaties - and the extra deal with China that Harper has to announce soon - our investment rules don't matter a poop.
NewsToday also has nothing to say about the big news in the middle east - the concentration of US military power around Syria, and the involvement of Britain and France. However, there is a picture of a man with a gun crouching behind a tree in what could be Syria - or anywhere else it hasn't been snowing lately.
Section C, p.3 is the first report I've seen that gives a hint of what has been happening for a long time under Israeli PM Nethanyahu. "Israeli PM accuses world of 'deafening silence'.
The reality is that the world is fed up with the behaviour of Netanyahu. When he visited the US during the election campaign, he publicly insulted Obama - a move that brought him a standing ovation from Republicans in congress. Then, when the UN voted overwhelmingly (despite the votes of Canada and the US) to recognize the state of Palestine, Netanyahu petulantly ordered the forcible taking of yet more Palestinian land and building yet more illegal settlements on it. This, too, was a personal and public blow at Obama, despite all the financial and political aid he has given Israel.
Netanyahu has lost support all over the world, including to my knowledge, large numbers of Jews in Canada and the US - many of whom are Zionist but have lost any trust in Nethanyahu; and who profoundly distrust the direction that Israel is moving in. But you're not likely to read that in the TandT.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The editorial is trivial.
Norbert thinks the PM of Australia is smart because she can tell jokes and stuff. He also saw a TV programme that figured out how high you could stack lego blocks before the bottom one broke; he also talkS about the history of zero. Obviously, this is a real party animal.
Alan Cochrane is, alas, Alan Cochrane. Even Alec Bruce is a little off form - though his topic has possibilities.
Louise Gilbert has a touching and useful column about how seniors can deal with Christmas. Too bad it's too late for me. I opted just to be grumpy all year round. My hobby is to heat up pennies in a fry pan, then throw them to eager children.
The Atlantic Lottery Corporation is a very old type of business, almost as old as prostitution. It used to be called the numbers racket, back in the days when you bought your ticket from small-timers in the mob who hung out at factory gates, lunchrooms....
For Canada, the big move that squeezed mobsters out of the racket, and made them settle for drug-running and buying politicians came with the Montreal Olympics of 1967 when Mayor Drapeau made a pitch for government sale of lottery tickets to pay for the Olympics. Then the game was truly begun. Governments had been looking for a way to raise money without taxing the rich. And here it was - lottery tickets whose major buyers would be the desperate poor and the lower middle class. (Billionaires are not big buyers of lottery tickets.) But the TandT story says nothing about this.
As I read the CEO's statements, I thought of a kid I knew in school. His father sold tickets for the mob. "Hey!", he would say. "It's a legitimate business."
_____________________________________________________________________________
I looked for something on shale gas. You may remember this is the one the government and the TandT so long ago promised to tell us all about. But the great silence continues. However, one has to be fair. Maybe it's hard to get information. So I went to google, and entered "fracking dangers".
Up popped four milliion three hundred and ninety thousand sites. I wonder whether the TandT has an editor who knows how to use a computer.
__________________________________________________________________
However, a smart editor who knew how to use a radio might have learned from CBC that Chinese who want to come to Canada temporarily to work as miners are paying up to $16,000 for the chance. Arriving here, they would work at low pay for long hours as non-unionized workers. This is, of course, wonderful news for Canada since we don't have any unemployed people looking for work, and there are no miners at all in this country.
In related news, there is a rush in many states to pass "right-to-work" legislation. The right to work. Sounds nice doesn't it? Actually, it means the right of employers to make people work for such low wages that they need government food stamps to be able to eat. Walmart forever! And it's coming your way. But not in the pages of the TandT. It's not nearly as important as a chat with the CEO of the numbers racket.
______________________________________________________________________________
The TandT has also been pretty silent on the sale of a major oil sands developer to China. And even more silent on the next blockbuster announcement he has to make - about the deal with China to encourage Chinese companies to buy up Canadian companies - especially in resources.
No big deal? Well, it is. Under it, we would effectively lose our right to change regulations should the operations prove dangerous to the Canadian environment or even to the health or lives of Canadian people. In other words, Harper is about to approve a deal with people who are just as greedy and rapacious and indifferent to our lives and our futures as our current home-grown billionaires are. However, we would have even less power to control the newcomers than we do to control our home-grown greedy and rapacious.
This has all been drawn up in secret, and without discussion by the man whose contempt for democracy - and for us - has long ago been made clear. We are the new Third World. I guess it's true. What goes around, comes around.
_________________________________________________________________________
And here, in our gossip section, is a story I heard from a federal MP recently. The Bloc Quebecois plans to introduce a private-member's bill. It's not meant to pass. It's meant to put the NDP in a very embarrassing position, perhaps splitting on the vote. I won't go into any detail beyond that.
The NDP could come out of this one with flying colours - if it shows just a little courage and integrity.But will it?
________________________________________________________________________
There's really nothing else to talk about in today's paper. (Well, even most of what I've written isn't in today's paper.)
NewsToday has a story that Canada's new investment rules will be so strict that a deal like the Chinese move into the oilsands would not have happened under them. Right. We will pass lightly over the obvious implication - that such a statement means that Chinese government entry into the oilfields is a bad move. The fact is that given our tangle of obligations under free trade treaties - and the extra deal with China that Harper has to announce soon - our investment rules don't matter a poop.
NewsToday also has nothing to say about the big news in the middle east - the concentration of US military power around Syria, and the involvement of Britain and France. However, there is a picture of a man with a gun crouching behind a tree in what could be Syria - or anywhere else it hasn't been snowing lately.
Section C, p.3 is the first report I've seen that gives a hint of what has been happening for a long time under Israeli PM Nethanyahu. "Israeli PM accuses world of 'deafening silence'.
The reality is that the world is fed up with the behaviour of Netanyahu. When he visited the US during the election campaign, he publicly insulted Obama - a move that brought him a standing ovation from Republicans in congress. Then, when the UN voted overwhelmingly (despite the votes of Canada and the US) to recognize the state of Palestine, Netanyahu petulantly ordered the forcible taking of yet more Palestinian land and building yet more illegal settlements on it. This, too, was a personal and public blow at Obama, despite all the financial and political aid he has given Israel.
Netanyahu has lost support all over the world, including to my knowledge, large numbers of Jews in Canada and the US - many of whom are Zionist but have lost any trust in Nethanyahu; and who profoundly distrust the direction that Israel is moving in. But you're not likely to read that in the TandT.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The editorial is trivial.
Norbert thinks the PM of Australia is smart because she can tell jokes and stuff. He also saw a TV programme that figured out how high you could stack lego blocks before the bottom one broke; he also talkS about the history of zero. Obviously, this is a real party animal.
Alan Cochrane is, alas, Alan Cochrane. Even Alec Bruce is a little off form - though his topic has possibilities.
Louise Gilbert has a touching and useful column about how seniors can deal with Christmas. Too bad it's too late for me. I opted just to be grumpy all year round. My hobby is to heat up pennies in a fry pan, then throw them to eager children.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Dec. 10: I see nothing, hear nothing.....
Perhaps the biggest story of the day is that a monkey wearing a diaper got loose at an Ikea store in Toronto.
There is no shale gas news (despite numerous reports of serious problems and serious discontent about shale gas in the US), no mention of doctors meeting to demand that the government become more open and honest in its shale gas policy... In this latter area, I'm on the side of the government. It has been quite open in its policy. It intends to encourage shale gas development no matter what the evidence of its dangers, without paying the slightest attention to critics, without giving a damn about what the public wants. And it can rely on the Irving Press to lie, misrepresent or, more commonly, to play the three monkeys that said and heard nothing.
The front page carried a big story (continued for almost another page with photos on p.4 on how people in Riverview are making gingerbread houses - a must read. There was also, it's true, the story of a bus accident that, luckily, did not kill or even seriously harm any members of a hockey team from Cap Pele. But it was a much smaller story thatnthe one about gingerbread houses - and there were no photos.
P.5 has a big story that Alward will be showing his funny side on This Hour has 22 Minutes. One of his killer lines will be " The best part of Christmas in New Brunswick is you can cut down your own tree and nobody cares."
Not suprisingly, this is a a story that runs out of things to say early in the game. But it goes on - and on - anyway.
On, there is also a shocking story for those who are easily shocked, that Christmas trees are selling well. Who would have guessed?
Oh, and speaking of Christmas, there's a big ad that some copies of Ralph Costello's The Price of Honesty are still available for sale. God is kind to his servants.
The lead story in NewsToday is that jolly old Stephen Harper is permitting civil servants to have Christmas decorations in their offices. I was so worried about that. God bless you Mr. Harper.
I was intrigued to see that a mafia boss, Emilio Cordeleone, was found dead in a street of my childhood end of Montreal. (Mafia leaders are still fond of that rather scruffy end of town.) He had died suddenly of an overdose of bullets. Thankfully, we'll never see a significant mafia in New Brunswick. There's nothing to steal after our business and political leaders get through.
The business page tells us that Via Rail is dumping all but its very profitable passenger services. The result is to leave regions like the maritimes without adequate rail service - many of them with no service at all. There's a history behind this.
As travel by air and by car increased, Canadian Pacific Railways became anxious to get rid of the unprofitable passenger services that it had been required to provide under terms of assistance given to it by taxpayers over the years. It did so by providing increasingly unsatisfactory service until the federal government permitted it to drop passenger service. In place of the CPR, the government created VIA Rail as a crown corporation to maintain basic passenger services.
But Harper doesn't like crown corporations. He believes in private ownership only, and he believes in it as firmly as any child (or exceptionally retarded adult) believes in Santa Claus. So he has been cutting funding for VIA, and telling it to operate as if it were a private business. In short, to hell with the needs of people who don't live in dense, passenger regions.
Back-bencher Conserative MPs are complaining. They will have no success whatever.
The editorial writer shows a touch of humour - or maybe he's just dumb. Anyway, the story is that too many groups are running charities at Christmas time. And some are quite perverse. One, for example, gives children gifts that they can give to their parents. This is wild, rampant communism. Another wants to give winter clothes to children. Are they mad? Then there's the one that wants to give help to storm victims in the US. And - this one you won't believe - there is a group of perverts raising money to help out with registration costs for minor hockey players.
Then - get this sentence. "But in the end in comes down to a competitive environment that in our view is not well suited to the spirit of season."
This is the newspaper which praises corporations because, it says, they compete with each other. (They don't. But what the hell, that's what they say). Now it says that competition goes against the spirit of the (Christian) season.
In other words, our corporate bosses every day of the year behave in an unChristian fashion.
Well, maybe the editorial writer is not so dumb as I thought. But, if competition is against the spririt of the season, why does the TandT carry ads of competing stores?
Anyway, enough of this rush to help people at Christmas. It goes against all the spirit of the season. Get with it for the true spirit of this time of year. Read page D 1 on how to mix drinks.
Even Norbert shows a spark of humour.
He tells us that a leading professor of genetics says that there is no proof that a gene causes alcoholism. Norbert follows that with "The professor is correct." I'm sure the professor will be thrilled at that endorsement.
Then he examines a claim that genes can determine our political views. Yes, says Norbert, there is a link - once again reassuring professors that they can get some things right. He adds that this holds true whether you are Conservative, Liberal, or on the extremes. Yessir, Even them there extremists like - well that there Tommy Douglas who cursed us with medicare or that Stephen Harper who puts a hundred bills that have nothing to do with the budget into the budget so that nobody has time to discuss them or even know what they are. Than you got that there extremist Alward (or something) who claims a report saying we should not go ahead yet on shale gas meanswe should go ahead on shale gas.
Norbert, do you have the foggiest idea what the words Liberal, Conservative, extremist mean? Wasn't George Washington an extremist? William Lyon Mackenzie? (ever heard of William Lyon Mackenzie?) You want extremism? Read the platform of the Conservative party in 1935. Read the law that gives Obama the right to imprison or even assassinate Americans with no charge of trial.
On the op ed page, Craig Babstock continues his unbroken string of columns that say nothing in particular. Allen Abel continues to tell irrelevant stories about daily life among ordinary people in Washington. I have no idea why.
It was tough to write t his one today. You see, this paper has only two speeds. One is to lie so that we don't know what's happening. The other is to be trivial - so that we actually become trivial, ignorant of the world around us, ignorant politically,so we ourselves become as trivial as (D p. 1) the co-star who thinks Benedict Cumberbatch's voice is as sexy as Barry White's. Who could possibly care?
Today, it's in trivial mode. And that's quite deliberate.It and its boss don't want you to know or to think anything. - except the lies they tell. To anyone who reads newspapers, this one makes it plain it has utter contempt for us. Sometimes, that's bearable. It's not bearable when it comes from the likes of Norbert Cunningham, Rod Allen or Craig what's-his-name.
It would be interesting to hear what the journalism school at UNB thinks of all this. I hear that it's a good school. So I wonder. Where do they send their students for on the job training? Surely not to this contemptible paper.
Oh, US military and air forces are poised off the coast of Syria. So are the French troops that have been moved to Turkey. As in the case of Iraq, the excuses are being lined up - in particular, that Syria is about to use chemical weapons - a charge believed by nobody with any knowledge of the situation.
Where does this take us? Probably to a permanently broken Syria, ditto for Lebanon, then for Iran, a profound risk of a much wider war - and even of the big one. But don't worry about it.
Instead, watch for the next big story on making gingerbread houses.
There is no shale gas news (despite numerous reports of serious problems and serious discontent about shale gas in the US), no mention of doctors meeting to demand that the government become more open and honest in its shale gas policy... In this latter area, I'm on the side of the government. It has been quite open in its policy. It intends to encourage shale gas development no matter what the evidence of its dangers, without paying the slightest attention to critics, without giving a damn about what the public wants. And it can rely on the Irving Press to lie, misrepresent or, more commonly, to play the three monkeys that said and heard nothing.
The front page carried a big story (continued for almost another page with photos on p.4 on how people in Riverview are making gingerbread houses - a must read. There was also, it's true, the story of a bus accident that, luckily, did not kill or even seriously harm any members of a hockey team from Cap Pele. But it was a much smaller story thatnthe one about gingerbread houses - and there were no photos.
P.5 has a big story that Alward will be showing his funny side on This Hour has 22 Minutes. One of his killer lines will be " The best part of Christmas in New Brunswick is you can cut down your own tree and nobody cares."
Not suprisingly, this is a a story that runs out of things to say early in the game. But it goes on - and on - anyway.
On, there is also a shocking story for those who are easily shocked, that Christmas trees are selling well. Who would have guessed?
Oh, and speaking of Christmas, there's a big ad that some copies of Ralph Costello's The Price of Honesty are still available for sale. God is kind to his servants.
The lead story in NewsToday is that jolly old Stephen Harper is permitting civil servants to have Christmas decorations in their offices. I was so worried about that. God bless you Mr. Harper.
I was intrigued to see that a mafia boss, Emilio Cordeleone, was found dead in a street of my childhood end of Montreal. (Mafia leaders are still fond of that rather scruffy end of town.) He had died suddenly of an overdose of bullets. Thankfully, we'll never see a significant mafia in New Brunswick. There's nothing to steal after our business and political leaders get through.
The business page tells us that Via Rail is dumping all but its very profitable passenger services. The result is to leave regions like the maritimes without adequate rail service - many of them with no service at all. There's a history behind this.
As travel by air and by car increased, Canadian Pacific Railways became anxious to get rid of the unprofitable passenger services that it had been required to provide under terms of assistance given to it by taxpayers over the years. It did so by providing increasingly unsatisfactory service until the federal government permitted it to drop passenger service. In place of the CPR, the government created VIA Rail as a crown corporation to maintain basic passenger services.
But Harper doesn't like crown corporations. He believes in private ownership only, and he believes in it as firmly as any child (or exceptionally retarded adult) believes in Santa Claus. So he has been cutting funding for VIA, and telling it to operate as if it were a private business. In short, to hell with the needs of people who don't live in dense, passenger regions.
Back-bencher Conserative MPs are complaining. They will have no success whatever.
The editorial writer shows a touch of humour - or maybe he's just dumb. Anyway, the story is that too many groups are running charities at Christmas time. And some are quite perverse. One, for example, gives children gifts that they can give to their parents. This is wild, rampant communism. Another wants to give winter clothes to children. Are they mad? Then there's the one that wants to give help to storm victims in the US. And - this one you won't believe - there is a group of perverts raising money to help out with registration costs for minor hockey players.
Then - get this sentence. "But in the end in comes down to a competitive environment that in our view is not well suited to the spirit of season."
This is the newspaper which praises corporations because, it says, they compete with each other. (They don't. But what the hell, that's what they say). Now it says that competition goes against the spirit of the (Christian) season.
In other words, our corporate bosses every day of the year behave in an unChristian fashion.
Well, maybe the editorial writer is not so dumb as I thought. But, if competition is against the spririt of the season, why does the TandT carry ads of competing stores?
Anyway, enough of this rush to help people at Christmas. It goes against all the spirit of the season. Get with it for the true spirit of this time of year. Read page D 1 on how to mix drinks.
Even Norbert shows a spark of humour.
He tells us that a leading professor of genetics says that there is no proof that a gene causes alcoholism. Norbert follows that with "The professor is correct." I'm sure the professor will be thrilled at that endorsement.
Then he examines a claim that genes can determine our political views. Yes, says Norbert, there is a link - once again reassuring professors that they can get some things right. He adds that this holds true whether you are Conservative, Liberal, or on the extremes. Yessir, Even them there extremists like - well that there Tommy Douglas who cursed us with medicare or that Stephen Harper who puts a hundred bills that have nothing to do with the budget into the budget so that nobody has time to discuss them or even know what they are. Than you got that there extremist Alward (or something) who claims a report saying we should not go ahead yet on shale gas meanswe should go ahead on shale gas.
Norbert, do you have the foggiest idea what the words Liberal, Conservative, extremist mean? Wasn't George Washington an extremist? William Lyon Mackenzie? (ever heard of William Lyon Mackenzie?) You want extremism? Read the platform of the Conservative party in 1935. Read the law that gives Obama the right to imprison or even assassinate Americans with no charge of trial.
On the op ed page, Craig Babstock continues his unbroken string of columns that say nothing in particular. Allen Abel continues to tell irrelevant stories about daily life among ordinary people in Washington. I have no idea why.
It was tough to write t his one today. You see, this paper has only two speeds. One is to lie so that we don't know what's happening. The other is to be trivial - so that we actually become trivial, ignorant of the world around us, ignorant politically,so we ourselves become as trivial as (D p. 1) the co-star who thinks Benedict Cumberbatch's voice is as sexy as Barry White's. Who could possibly care?
Today, it's in trivial mode. And that's quite deliberate.It and its boss don't want you to know or to think anything. - except the lies they tell. To anyone who reads newspapers, this one makes it plain it has utter contempt for us. Sometimes, that's bearable. It's not bearable when it comes from the likes of Norbert Cunningham, Rod Allen or Craig what's-his-name.
It would be interesting to hear what the journalism school at UNB thinks of all this. I hear that it's a good school. So I wonder. Where do they send their students for on the job training? Surely not to this contemptible paper.
Oh, US military and air forces are poised off the coast of Syria. So are the French troops that have been moved to Turkey. As in the case of Iraq, the excuses are being lined up - in particular, that Syria is about to use chemical weapons - a charge believed by nobody with any knowledge of the situation.
Where does this take us? Probably to a permanently broken Syria, ditto for Lebanon, then for Iran, a profound risk of a much wider war - and even of the big one. But don't worry about it.
Instead, watch for the next big story on making gingerbread houses.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Dec. 9: faith and foreign affairs....
....like....what the hell... it's Sunday.
The top-of-the-page sermonette for this Sunday turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The first two-thirds of it was well-written, engaging - and made a point that had everything to do with faith without hitting the reader of the head with it. The final third, alas, slipped into the sort of conciously pious language that loses all but those who already have - or think they have - faith. Still, two-thirds good sense and plain speaking is far better that one sees in most faith page columns - or any TandT columns. It's a nice change.
There are also two innovations on the page, two articles by somebody called David Yount who, we are assured, has written 14 books. I can well believe it. There's a big market for people who write this sort of pious blather, people who sound impressive in grand and sweeping statements but who don't stand up to any thought at all. It's full of statements that sound scholarly, like "Historically, critics believed religion to be an obstacle to human freedom and progress.
What's wrong with that? Well, historically, many if not most of the critics of religion were people who didn't give a damn about freedom and religion. As well, people who called themselves religious HAVE often been opposed to human freedom.
Then, he says it is because we replaced faith in God with faith in man, we got two world wars, the gulag and the holocaust. Lord love a duck.
Hitler publicly and frequently declared himself a devout Catholic. Overwhelmingly, church-goers in both Germany and Italy supported fascism and all its works. The American bombs and napalm with which millions of Vietnamese were killed were dropped by observant Christians, supported back home by most of their churches and clergy. Cardinal Spellman blessed the bombs that were dropped on Cuba. As I write this, ardent Christians are pushing for a war in the middle east so they can go to heaven while the rest of us go to hell. If Mr. Yount really wants to know something about genocide, he might read The Bible - the part where God insists on carrying one out, and is angry when His followers don't complete the job.
He also contributes a column on job burnout among clergy which, again, sounds grand but does nothing to explain it.
The world is full of blather writers like this who church out piously grand statements that have no connection whatever with the reality of our lives.
Now - if they had a column on the morality of pouring money into the pockets of the rich while some people go hungry, or one on whether an economic system based on greed can really be Christian, or whether a newspaper that routinely misrepresents and/or hides the news is behaving in a Christian way, it might be worth reading.
These columns aren't about faith. They're about putting up a big wall between faith and the way our society really behaves. It's like the mindlessly cutesy signs I see outside a local church. The current sign is something like, "The wise men saw Jesus. Will you?"
If that is what Christianity is about, then Jesus wasted his time preaching. He could have made a fortune as a writer of half-wit slogans for bumper stickers. Worse, a sign like that does nothing to encourage faith among doubters. On the contrary, it encourages any thinking person to avoid any place that would put up such a silly sign.
And, please. Christianity is not the only faith in Moncton.
______________________________________________________________________________
And then there's the Middle East and Africa.
Remember - until some 65 years ago, there as scarcely such a thing as a democracy in that whole area. It was all ruled directly by European powers, or ruled through their puppet kings and dictators. European rule slackened only after the weakening of western power after 1945. However, western influence never disappeared, notably in oil and mining countries. In this retention of power and interference, the US played a major part as it sought to pick up those parts of empire the Europeans had to drop. Notable was the American role in overthrowing the elected government of Iran in the early 50s, with a deal that gave the US a major cut of the oil fields.
What has followed has been over 65 years of poverty, political chaos, starvation and exploitation of Africans. (Canadians, especially in the mining sector, have not been innocent bystanders.) Nobody knows how many millions have been murdered or have died of hunger and disease as a result. The
only concern of the West in that period was the possible spread in Soviet influence in the region.
But then the Soviet Union collapsed.
That led a group of prominent Americans like Jeb Bush (brother to you know who), Donald Rumsfeld (the man who arrranged for chemical weapons to be given to Saddam in his war against Iran, and secretary of the army under Bush), Dick Cheney (who would be V.P. under Bush) to plan for the future. The plan was to maintain economic dominance over the world. That economic dominance would be maintained through military power.
(Oh, course, they didn't call it exploiting or setting up dictators or anything not nice. they called it spreading American values.)
In the 1990s, they produced a proposal called Project for the New American Century. (you can still see it via google.) Its starting point was that the collapse of the Soviet Union had given the US a chance for world dominance. But that chance was a window of opportunity that would close if a new world power should arise (read China). So the US had to act quickly to "spread American values" by military force.
An area of special importance was Middle-East- Africa. This area had important resources - but parts of it (Syria, Libya, Iraq) had been flirting with the Russia that had succeeded the USSR. This had nothing to do with communism, simply with markets.
That's why, when terrorists from Saudi Arabia attacked New York, Bush invaded Iraq and then Afghanistan.(The charges of Saddam having weapons of destruction were phony. As were those against Afghanistan. There is no evidence whatever that Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11.) Not a word has even been said about Saudi Arabia, the country the terrorists came from.
The tactic since then has been to create "rebellions", either intervening directly in the rebellions or by supplying mercenaries and weapons.) thus we have seen troubles in Libya, Syria, will see them in Lebanon, and possibly in Iran. All were countries that were showing rather too much independence in their relations with Russia. That's why drones (quite illegally) are killing people, usually innocent ones, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
But there are complications in Obama's way.
1. China and Russia are being forced closer together, though neither has much love for the other. They might well decide, and very soon, that they have to make military responses.
2. The US is broke. These wars have been ruinously expensive. That means:
a) the us may soon have to reduce its commitment to the middle east and Africa to concentrate its military power on China and, to a degree, on Russia.
b) war costs now absorb virtually all US tax revenue (partly because of the tremendous scale of corruption in the US.
c) The above, combined with unlimited free trade, has created stupendous levels of poverty in the US, with a real unemployment rate of 22%,and with even the employed often unable to buy basic necessities.
d) most of the American population is fed up with wars. But there are still many of them to go. Put b and c together, and you get a high rate of unrest. That means increased repression, domestic spying on a level never before seen or possible, erosion of human rights and the constitution, itself, and the gradual conversion of the police into an army of occupation.
f) the american dollar has value only because it is the recognized international currency. But, in real terms, the wild borrowing, the corruption of both business and political leaders mean the real value of the dollar is entirely artificial. It the world turns against the dollar as its major medium of exchange, then the whole house of cards collapses. That's a prime reason for the threats against Iran. It has flirted with accepting other currencies in place of the US dollar.( Gee. I wonder why Harper is so desperate to increase trade with China).
g) the old, west European empires like Britain and France, in particular, play along with the project for the New American Century because it is their passport to regain some part of the their former empires. France, for example,once ruled Syria. That is why it had made troops available to invade Syria. Britain has interests in Africa. (So has Canada.)
In the short run, watch for US intervention in Syria unless the "rebels" can win very soon. The excuse will be that Syria intends to use chemical weapons. Very few people believe that. And, for that matter, the US itself has scarcely been shy about using chemical weapons. It looks as though Lebanon will be next on the list, then Iran.
Added to that are events whose meaning is not yet clear. The Petraeus case is one of them. Sex is a very minor element in it.This has every sign of representing a struggle going on within the US leadership. Similarly, the American army has just formed its own foreign intelligence agency. Isn't that what the CIA does? This is starting to resemble all the separate, internal power blocs that one often finds in dictatorships. Nazi Germany springs to mind.
Long term predictions based on the above would be a fool's game. We know how we got to where we are. But the factors are so many - and changing - that I doubt whether even Obama can do more than guess where we will be six months from now.
There is, perhaps, one thing we can be sure of. The Project for the New American Century has been a disaster, economic and moral, for all of us.
Church is a refuge from this. The real sins, the great sins, that go on in the world are almost never discussed in church. It's so much nicer just to hear blather like the books of David Yount. (He's the one on the Faith page.)
Come to think of it, how can the Moncton Times and Transcript have a Faith page? It's like have a pimp for Sunday School teacher.
The top-of-the-page sermonette for this Sunday turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The first two-thirds of it was well-written, engaging - and made a point that had everything to do with faith without hitting the reader of the head with it. The final third, alas, slipped into the sort of conciously pious language that loses all but those who already have - or think they have - faith. Still, two-thirds good sense and plain speaking is far better that one sees in most faith page columns - or any TandT columns. It's a nice change.
There are also two innovations on the page, two articles by somebody called David Yount who, we are assured, has written 14 books. I can well believe it. There's a big market for people who write this sort of pious blather, people who sound impressive in grand and sweeping statements but who don't stand up to any thought at all. It's full of statements that sound scholarly, like "Historically, critics believed religion to be an obstacle to human freedom and progress.
What's wrong with that? Well, historically, many if not most of the critics of religion were people who didn't give a damn about freedom and religion. As well, people who called themselves religious HAVE often been opposed to human freedom.
Then, he says it is because we replaced faith in God with faith in man, we got two world wars, the gulag and the holocaust. Lord love a duck.
Hitler publicly and frequently declared himself a devout Catholic. Overwhelmingly, church-goers in both Germany and Italy supported fascism and all its works. The American bombs and napalm with which millions of Vietnamese were killed were dropped by observant Christians, supported back home by most of their churches and clergy. Cardinal Spellman blessed the bombs that were dropped on Cuba. As I write this, ardent Christians are pushing for a war in the middle east so they can go to heaven while the rest of us go to hell. If Mr. Yount really wants to know something about genocide, he might read The Bible - the part where God insists on carrying one out, and is angry when His followers don't complete the job.
He also contributes a column on job burnout among clergy which, again, sounds grand but does nothing to explain it.
The world is full of blather writers like this who church out piously grand statements that have no connection whatever with the reality of our lives.
Now - if they had a column on the morality of pouring money into the pockets of the rich while some people go hungry, or one on whether an economic system based on greed can really be Christian, or whether a newspaper that routinely misrepresents and/or hides the news is behaving in a Christian way, it might be worth reading.
These columns aren't about faith. They're about putting up a big wall between faith and the way our society really behaves. It's like the mindlessly cutesy signs I see outside a local church. The current sign is something like, "The wise men saw Jesus. Will you?"
If that is what Christianity is about, then Jesus wasted his time preaching. He could have made a fortune as a writer of half-wit slogans for bumper stickers. Worse, a sign like that does nothing to encourage faith among doubters. On the contrary, it encourages any thinking person to avoid any place that would put up such a silly sign.
And, please. Christianity is not the only faith in Moncton.
______________________________________________________________________________
And then there's the Middle East and Africa.
Remember - until some 65 years ago, there as scarcely such a thing as a democracy in that whole area. It was all ruled directly by European powers, or ruled through their puppet kings and dictators. European rule slackened only after the weakening of western power after 1945. However, western influence never disappeared, notably in oil and mining countries. In this retention of power and interference, the US played a major part as it sought to pick up those parts of empire the Europeans had to drop. Notable was the American role in overthrowing the elected government of Iran in the early 50s, with a deal that gave the US a major cut of the oil fields.
What has followed has been over 65 years of poverty, political chaos, starvation and exploitation of Africans. (Canadians, especially in the mining sector, have not been innocent bystanders.) Nobody knows how many millions have been murdered or have died of hunger and disease as a result. The
only concern of the West in that period was the possible spread in Soviet influence in the region.
But then the Soviet Union collapsed.
That led a group of prominent Americans like Jeb Bush (brother to you know who), Donald Rumsfeld (the man who arrranged for chemical weapons to be given to Saddam in his war against Iran, and secretary of the army under Bush), Dick Cheney (who would be V.P. under Bush) to plan for the future. The plan was to maintain economic dominance over the world. That economic dominance would be maintained through military power.
(Oh, course, they didn't call it exploiting or setting up dictators or anything not nice. they called it spreading American values.)
In the 1990s, they produced a proposal called Project for the New American Century. (you can still see it via google.) Its starting point was that the collapse of the Soviet Union had given the US a chance for world dominance. But that chance was a window of opportunity that would close if a new world power should arise (read China). So the US had to act quickly to "spread American values" by military force.
An area of special importance was Middle-East- Africa. This area had important resources - but parts of it (Syria, Libya, Iraq) had been flirting with the Russia that had succeeded the USSR. This had nothing to do with communism, simply with markets.
That's why, when terrorists from Saudi Arabia attacked New York, Bush invaded Iraq and then Afghanistan.(The charges of Saddam having weapons of destruction were phony. As were those against Afghanistan. There is no evidence whatever that Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11.) Not a word has even been said about Saudi Arabia, the country the terrorists came from.
The tactic since then has been to create "rebellions", either intervening directly in the rebellions or by supplying mercenaries and weapons.) thus we have seen troubles in Libya, Syria, will see them in Lebanon, and possibly in Iran. All were countries that were showing rather too much independence in their relations with Russia. That's why drones (quite illegally) are killing people, usually innocent ones, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
But there are complications in Obama's way.
1. China and Russia are being forced closer together, though neither has much love for the other. They might well decide, and very soon, that they have to make military responses.
2. The US is broke. These wars have been ruinously expensive. That means:
a) the us may soon have to reduce its commitment to the middle east and Africa to concentrate its military power on China and, to a degree, on Russia.
b) war costs now absorb virtually all US tax revenue (partly because of the tremendous scale of corruption in the US.
c) The above, combined with unlimited free trade, has created stupendous levels of poverty in the US, with a real unemployment rate of 22%,and with even the employed often unable to buy basic necessities.
d) most of the American population is fed up with wars. But there are still many of them to go. Put b and c together, and you get a high rate of unrest. That means increased repression, domestic spying on a level never before seen or possible, erosion of human rights and the constitution, itself, and the gradual conversion of the police into an army of occupation.
f) the american dollar has value only because it is the recognized international currency. But, in real terms, the wild borrowing, the corruption of both business and political leaders mean the real value of the dollar is entirely artificial. It the world turns against the dollar as its major medium of exchange, then the whole house of cards collapses. That's a prime reason for the threats against Iran. It has flirted with accepting other currencies in place of the US dollar.( Gee. I wonder why Harper is so desperate to increase trade with China).
g) the old, west European empires like Britain and France, in particular, play along with the project for the New American Century because it is their passport to regain some part of the their former empires. France, for example,once ruled Syria. That is why it had made troops available to invade Syria. Britain has interests in Africa. (So has Canada.)
In the short run, watch for US intervention in Syria unless the "rebels" can win very soon. The excuse will be that Syria intends to use chemical weapons. Very few people believe that. And, for that matter, the US itself has scarcely been shy about using chemical weapons. It looks as though Lebanon will be next on the list, then Iran.
Added to that are events whose meaning is not yet clear. The Petraeus case is one of them. Sex is a very minor element in it.This has every sign of representing a struggle going on within the US leadership. Similarly, the American army has just formed its own foreign intelligence agency. Isn't that what the CIA does? This is starting to resemble all the separate, internal power blocs that one often finds in dictatorships. Nazi Germany springs to mind.
Long term predictions based on the above would be a fool's game. We know how we got to where we are. But the factors are so many - and changing - that I doubt whether even Obama can do more than guess where we will be six months from now.
There is, perhaps, one thing we can be sure of. The Project for the New American Century has been a disaster, economic and moral, for all of us.
Church is a refuge from this. The real sins, the great sins, that go on in the world are almost never discussed in church. It's so much nicer just to hear blather like the books of David Yount. (He's the one on the Faith page.)
Come to think of it, how can the Moncton Times and Transcript have a Faith page? It's like have a pimp for Sunday School teacher.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Dec. 8: A bad day in Ottawa....
The Moncton Times and Transcript seems not to have considered it important enough to mention, but the 15 billion dollar F35 deal for our air force is off. Oh, I meant, of course, the 20 billion dollar deal - which went up to 30 billion, - and was most recently estimated at 40 billion.
Harper knew, long ago, certainly well before the election, that this was a non starter, and even a worse blunder than the dollar signs show. The deal was made back in 2006 with no study whatever of what Canada's defence forces would be like in the lifetime of the F35, no sense whatever of how the F-35 would fit in or what it would do. (That study still has not happened.) But the government hung in there even as the original price almost tripled, and as new problems with the aircraft appeared almost weekly.
This is a crashing blunder by Peter MacKay, encouraged by remarkable ineptness and delay on the part of Harper. Offhand, I cannot think of a bigger defence scandal in Canadian history. But it wasn't important enough to make The Times and Transcript. No, it needed the space for a much bigger story, "Moncton Tax Rate Holds Steady".
Nor was there the story of Lake Winnipeg, a lake so big that it would classify as a sea in some parts of the world. It has the worst algae problem of any large lake in the world. And that lake feeds 'fresh' water to much of our west and north. The algae result from years of dumping wastes - phosphate, sewage, garbage into the lake. And people downstream drink that stuff - because they have no choice. That may have something to do with their dreadful health problems.
And it can only get worse as Harper has "streamlined" rules on pollution, streamlining meaning he has eliminated most of them.
The TandT did carry the story of Harper approving a Chinese buyout of major holdings in the Alberta oilsands. But that one wasn't bad news for Harper. It was bad news for Canada.
The Chinese government is the buyer - but Harper insists that there will be tight regulations on environmental controls for a Chinese government that is notorious for ignoring them. And Harper made it a point of saying that there would be no such sales permitted in future - well, almost none,and only after careful review, and with due regard for human rights, and Canada would maintain strict control.......
That is worse than vague. It also completely overlooks legal aspects. For example, once the Chinese government owns a company in Canada, that company becomes legally Canadian - and can therefore buy more Canadian companies - without needing approval.
As for tough regulations to control a government that habitually ignores them, Harper can't. He has just destroyed most of our environmental regulations. Once the Chinese government invests here, the rules cannot be changed without risking a lawsuit for billions of dollars - a lawsuit that would be decided in secret - and probably in a Chinese court. And that doesn't even begin to look at the complications of a rat's nest of legal openings for other countries under the terms of free trade agreements.
And this is a bill that was part of the omnibus 'budget' bill. That's means parliament had no to time debate it, and barely any time to even read it. And the general public has had no information on it at all.
It also signals a shift from the US market to the Chinese one. There are implications to that it would take a book to explain. And - a point to think about--why would Harper be shifting our major trading partner?
Isn't Harper saying the future is not with the US? That the US is not going to recover? In that, at least, he may be right.
Speaking of stories that didn't make the news, some people connected with our provincial government are pushing for a gag law on medical doctors. That means that doctors would not be permitted to speak publicly on matters of government policy - shale gas springs to mind.
That would be convenient for our leaders. They and the Irving press wouldn't have to lie about what Dr. Cleary said, and they wouldn't have had to falsify their news stories.
Not to worry - shale gas companies would still have free speech, as would toadies from the university world. But medical doctors, the only authorities we have on likely health impact, would be muzzled.
Imagine, a doctor, knowing that a certain process has the potential not only to harm but to kill would be forbidden by our government to say so. As I read of t his, I could only think, "You bastards."
There is nothing that our intellectually and morally bankrupt leaders in the political and corporate world will not stoop to in order to rip us off. No democracy that even pretends to value freedom of speech can possibly allow such a gag order. I am astonished ( though I should not be) that those scum-bags would even have the nerve to suggest it.
Doctors are meeting, I believe, today, to discuss this. New Brunswickers must rally to support their doctors in this. Any society that would even consider such a proposal is beneath contempt. Alward, you must be one miserable wretch, indeed, if you have any connection with this. And an even more miserable one if you do not denounce it.
There's a story about Frank McKenna shilling for the eastern oil pipeline. Dear, lovable, --- smooth ---Frank. He's a fixer, and he's good at it. That's how he makes his bread. He knows just who to talk to, how to handle them, how to make it go over with the public. And he's big-hearted. He'll do it for anybody who has enough money.
The people opposed to the pipeline are, I guess, nice, too. Too bad they don't have enough money.
I haven't said much about today's paper. There isn't much to say. The only thing worth reading is a superb column by Gwynne Dyer on the op ed page.
Tomorrow, it being Sunday and all, I'll talk about today's gawdawful Faith page, and about what to expect in the middle east over coming months - and why to expect it.
Harper knew, long ago, certainly well before the election, that this was a non starter, and even a worse blunder than the dollar signs show. The deal was made back in 2006 with no study whatever of what Canada's defence forces would be like in the lifetime of the F35, no sense whatever of how the F-35 would fit in or what it would do. (That study still has not happened.) But the government hung in there even as the original price almost tripled, and as new problems with the aircraft appeared almost weekly.
This is a crashing blunder by Peter MacKay, encouraged by remarkable ineptness and delay on the part of Harper. Offhand, I cannot think of a bigger defence scandal in Canadian history. But it wasn't important enough to make The Times and Transcript. No, it needed the space for a much bigger story, "Moncton Tax Rate Holds Steady".
Nor was there the story of Lake Winnipeg, a lake so big that it would classify as a sea in some parts of the world. It has the worst algae problem of any large lake in the world. And that lake feeds 'fresh' water to much of our west and north. The algae result from years of dumping wastes - phosphate, sewage, garbage into the lake. And people downstream drink that stuff - because they have no choice. That may have something to do with their dreadful health problems.
And it can only get worse as Harper has "streamlined" rules on pollution, streamlining meaning he has eliminated most of them.
The TandT did carry the story of Harper approving a Chinese buyout of major holdings in the Alberta oilsands. But that one wasn't bad news for Harper. It was bad news for Canada.
The Chinese government is the buyer - but Harper insists that there will be tight regulations on environmental controls for a Chinese government that is notorious for ignoring them. And Harper made it a point of saying that there would be no such sales permitted in future - well, almost none,and only after careful review, and with due regard for human rights, and Canada would maintain strict control.......
That is worse than vague. It also completely overlooks legal aspects. For example, once the Chinese government owns a company in Canada, that company becomes legally Canadian - and can therefore buy more Canadian companies - without needing approval.
As for tough regulations to control a government that habitually ignores them, Harper can't. He has just destroyed most of our environmental regulations. Once the Chinese government invests here, the rules cannot be changed without risking a lawsuit for billions of dollars - a lawsuit that would be decided in secret - and probably in a Chinese court. And that doesn't even begin to look at the complications of a rat's nest of legal openings for other countries under the terms of free trade agreements.
And this is a bill that was part of the omnibus 'budget' bill. That's means parliament had no to time debate it, and barely any time to even read it. And the general public has had no information on it at all.
It also signals a shift from the US market to the Chinese one. There are implications to that it would take a book to explain. And - a point to think about--why would Harper be shifting our major trading partner?
Isn't Harper saying the future is not with the US? That the US is not going to recover? In that, at least, he may be right.
Speaking of stories that didn't make the news, some people connected with our provincial government are pushing for a gag law on medical doctors. That means that doctors would not be permitted to speak publicly on matters of government policy - shale gas springs to mind.
That would be convenient for our leaders. They and the Irving press wouldn't have to lie about what Dr. Cleary said, and they wouldn't have had to falsify their news stories.
Not to worry - shale gas companies would still have free speech, as would toadies from the university world. But medical doctors, the only authorities we have on likely health impact, would be muzzled.
Imagine, a doctor, knowing that a certain process has the potential not only to harm but to kill would be forbidden by our government to say so. As I read of t his, I could only think, "You bastards."
There is nothing that our intellectually and morally bankrupt leaders in the political and corporate world will not stoop to in order to rip us off. No democracy that even pretends to value freedom of speech can possibly allow such a gag order. I am astonished ( though I should not be) that those scum-bags would even have the nerve to suggest it.
Doctors are meeting, I believe, today, to discuss this. New Brunswickers must rally to support their doctors in this. Any society that would even consider such a proposal is beneath contempt. Alward, you must be one miserable wretch, indeed, if you have any connection with this. And an even more miserable one if you do not denounce it.
There's a story about Frank McKenna shilling for the eastern oil pipeline. Dear, lovable, --- smooth ---Frank. He's a fixer, and he's good at it. That's how he makes his bread. He knows just who to talk to, how to handle them, how to make it go over with the public. And he's big-hearted. He'll do it for anybody who has enough money.
The people opposed to the pipeline are, I guess, nice, too. Too bad they don't have enough money.
I haven't said much about today's paper. There isn't much to say. The only thing worth reading is a superb column by Gwynne Dyer on the op ed page.
Tomorrow, it being Sunday and all, I'll talk about today's gawdawful Faith page, and about what to expect in the middle east over coming months - and why to expect it.
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