Saturday, March 16, 2013
March 16: Trivia day
There isn't much to say about the TandT today because there isn't much in it. So let's start with an editorial blunder on p. A1.
Imagine a headline which said "Nuclear bomb to strike Moncton tonight". Can you imagine the reaction? the panic?
Then, as you read the story, you find out that the headline should have read, "Mentally ill man warns that nuclear bomb will strike Moncton tonight". There's a difference between those two headlines. There really is. And the editor who writes the headline should know that. (and I suspect he or she does know that.)
Now read the front page headline in today's paper. "It's time to act on events centre". But the story is about a man who said that. Whether it is time to act is a matter of opinion, not of fact. There's a difference. And that difference makes this story not a news story at all but a piece of propaganda puffery, written by the TandT's resident expert of puffery, Brent Mazerolle.
The only story worth reading in section A is on p. 2. The Horizon health network will be cutting jobs. Of course. That's what the restructuring was all about. The government is in debt, largely because of concessions to the very wealthy. Now, the rest of of us have to pay for it.
There's nothing in NewsToday - except for a lead story in Your Business. "Business leaders named to hall of fame." I can understand halls of fame for athletes, many of whom are desparate to be admired and lauded. I well knew a retired football pro who so lusted for attention that he organized a roast with himself as the guest of honour. Here, the need for love and applause seems to be rife among business people.
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Norbert has a point to make in his column. Too bad he doesn't tell us what it is until almost the end. There's a general point about the need to be tolerant. It's a good point, but for the first three quarters of the column it's abstract and vague. That kills reader interest.
The real point is the fuss over local sales of horse meat. Okay. Worth thinking about. So put it up front. Give the column a focus. Get people interested. Then blend it in to some general thinking about tolerance.
(I've had horsemeat. It's - well - it's meat. No big deal. I was offered kitten in China. Kitten and chicken feet. But I wasn't hungry.)
Bill Belliveau offers and not-very-well-informed piece of puffery for the events centre. (What a coincidence this is also a page one feature!) Every city, he says, has a heart, a destination that brings all the people together.
Really? I can't think of one such city offhand, despite living in Montreal and spending considerable time in Los Angeles, New York, London, Toronto, Amsterdam, Tunis, Rome, Hong Kong and Charlottetown.
He offers some useful suggestions to enliven downtown Moncton- but then leads us right to the point of his column - that an events centre is essential. This is pure nonsense. Despite a gushy story on this some weeks ago by Brent Mazerolle, there is no evidence that an events centre would draw significantly more business and shopping into our downtown. Indeed, experience all over the world is that there is little chance an events centre would even pay for itself - ever.
Could the T and T be a little less obvious about who it's working for? I could also live without the constant reference to public/private partnerships such as are in Belliveau's column. Government and big business are not partners. Nor should they be. With the use of PPP, big business gives the deliberate impression that it is equal to government. It is not equal - or it certainly shouldn't be. In a democracy, power comes from the people who delegate it to government. In a democracy, business is not a partner to the government. It is a subordinate.
Of course, if one prefers fascism over democracy, then PPPs are a great idea.
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There's only one letter to the editor. But it's worth thinking about. It deals with our love for violence in certain sports, and on such TV shows as Gerry Springer. The writer says this indicates a sick society. And I think the writer is dead on.
If you watch such shows as the Jerry Springer show, you see violence - but violence itself is not the major attraction. The big draw to a gleeful audience is watching others get humiliated. Humiliation. That's what the shows in the Roman Colosseum were about. They were the outlets for a Roman society in which most people were socially degraded and useless - and they knew it. Thus their joy at watching the humiliation of someone even lower than them.
This is a letter worth thinking about.
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Read the sermonette on the Faith page about no sex or living together before marriage. Then check out the fashion advice for high school girls on the front page of Section F. Notice particularly the short skirts. (Actually, these seem stunningly modest compared to mid-teen girls I have seen in Moncton. Some look like the lower-priced hookers at a Mexican resort.)
I don't take either side in this. It's just that I find it hard to connect the message of the sermonette with our early sexualizing of teens.
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Finally, let's take a look at the coming budget cuts in New Brunswick.
We are told that it's good when companies make high profits because they then invest that money and make the economy even stronger. So, in a recession, we should cut government spending, and ease up on taxing the wealthy so they can bring back prosperity.
And what we're told is nonsense that has never been true in human history. The depression of the 1930s saw ten years of suffering and misery and dropping incomes. In those ten years, big business did well because it was able to cut wages, evade paying pensions, increase working hours.
Governments of the great depression at first responded as ours is responding now, by cutting spending and raising taxes. And it didn't do a damned thing. Of course not. If business isn't spending and government isn't spending, of course most of the population will suffer.
What got us out of the depresssion was government spending, usually on infrastructure and welfare, and then on war.
Big business in Canada and the US has been having immensely profitable years. In fact, North American profits are at their highest level in sixty years. So where's the recovery? No, it's not here, and it's not just around the corner. In fact, it's not going to be, not under present policies.
This is not just a recession. This is part of a massive transfer of wealth from most of us to the very wealthy. Nor do the wealthy feel the slightest urge to invest their profits here. Why should they?
The whole purpose of free trade has been to free the wealthy from any obligations to their own countries. That's what globalization really means. It also means that the wealthy operate in those other countries without controls, doing as they please to inflict even more poverty.(We're going to get a taste of this ourselves when Harper gets around to announcing his trade deal with China.)
What is happening is not a recession. It is a massive robbery committed by the wealthiest people in the world who want to pile up even more wealth without regard for the consequences. They also want to pile up power.
They want to control schools, universities, hospitals, newspapers, radio and TV so they can make money out of them, and so they can control thought. That's what the Horizon staff cuts are all about; and the literacy programme set up by Jamie Irving. And that's what Alward's next budget is going to be about. That's why the budget cuts are going to be in essential services for us, not in luxuries and gifts for the very wealthy. That's why any increase in taxes will hit us, not the very wealthy who have been making their biggest profits in history.
It's a short-sighted policy that will destroy itself, probably in wars (as it is doing). But even without the wars, the system is self-destructive. You can't go on robbing when there is nothing left to rob, and nobody to sell it to.
But power in business, as in almost anything, breeds arrogance and irresponsibility. And. alas, the ability to make money does not necessarily indicate intelligence. (Check any speech by Donald Trump.)
In short, real power in this province is wielded by people driven by greed, ego, social irresponsibility, and mediocre brain power.
And that's what Alward's budget will be all about.
______________________________________________________________________________
Tomorrow, perhaps a few thoughts about why the world is in so much chaos these days.
Friday, March 15, 2013
March 15: Today's winners?
The editorial and op ed pages are the winners. In fact, the news pages are so far back, they have yet to cross the finish line.
Look, I yield to none in my interest in the new pope. But three pages is a bit much - especially when they have nothing to say. It seems he went to his hotel, and personally paid his own bill. Wow! What humility! (That is slightly tarnished by a photo of the entrance to his hotel. A glance at that photo, and humility is not the word that springs to mind.)
B5 has a story on what happened during the voting in the Sistine Chapel. It seems the cardinals prayed, and wrote names on ballots. Well, it was worth reading a half page to learn that.
None of this is a criticism of the church or the pope. It's a criticism of a newspaper which was too lazy or too cheap to do any research on the the new pope's background in Argentina, and his role in both church and public affairs. So it published a lot of celebrity page gush.
Fortunately, Norbert Cunningham offers a column that is more thoughtful and thought-provoking on the challenge the pope faces - notably, the challenge of shrinking church membership, and the decline of church attendance. Here, Norbert points out what many have not - that this is a general problem for Christian churches in the western world. Norbert's column is one that is worth reading and thinking about. I would add just one point to it.
The problem may not have arisen from something the churches were doing. And the relative rise of fundamentalist churches may not indicate we're getting back on track.
The reality is consumerism and materialism have triumphed. These so encourage and seemingly justify the lack of morality and ethics in our society that churches are far removed from having any real influence in our lives.
We now accept torture, assassination as normal political behaviour. We accept greed and exploitation as
normal and even laudable economic behaviour. We accept mass murder in foreign countries so our billionaires can pillage them. We have a government in this province that has not a trace of morality or ethics in its behaviour.
And the Irving press has played no small role in encouraging those attitudes.
Meanwhile, the churches have either failed to recognize the death of morality, or have abandoned the bulk of Christian teaching to focus on the very unChristian goal of getting their members into a heaven in the clouds so they can enjoy watching the sinners go down to hell. (That is the essence of the reason for condemning gays.)
The only other story with the potential to be interesting is the one on Mali on B1. Alas, it still gives no clue as to what the French invasion is all about. To bring democracy and justice, etc.? Not bloody likely. France has a long history of making sure that countries like Mali never get democracy or justice. And if the troops are sent in, it's a safe bet that the French economic elite have something they want in Mali.
The editorial makes a point which is a good one (on the need for an RCMP presence in New Brunswick.)
Too bad the editorialist has already written that same editorial as least twice before. The rest of the editorial and op ed pages are well worth reading. (Generally, I agree with what Steve Malloy says about hunger strikes. I would only add there are some that are quite serious, and with deaths almost certain. We have seen them with Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and there is now a hunger strike by at least a hundred inmates of Guantanamo - neither of which has been noticed by the editorial staff at the Tand T.)
And I note that the Tand T has still not mentioned the public health conference for PEI and NB that was held two days ago, and that focussed on the medical dangers of fracking.
______________________________________________________________________________
I said yesterday, I'd write a bit about the TandT approach to city news. What should the TandT be reporting in city news? We'll start with a small but important item.
1.From March 22 to April 2, there will be a display of art by Palestinian schoolchildren at the Aberdeen Centre. I want to see this. And I want my children to see this. I expect it will be striking introduction to the real world, and how constant violence and hatred affects children.
I'm sure the TandT will advertise it in its events section. But that's not enough.
Whenever a new act comes to the casino, it gets a story in the TandT to encourage customers. It may be (it often is) something as intellectual as a man who plays a harmonica by blowing through his nose. It may be a coffee shop that has opened. Today's B1 features almost half a page on a new, fast food outlet.
The TandT's interest in Moncton seems largely confined to anything that makes money. But living in a city, a real city, means more than access to nose-blowing harmonicists or fast food. It means exposure to other cultures within our city and beyond it. It means intellectual development. It provides stimulus to the mind. Moncton is not strong in these latter qualities. Surely, an exhibition of Palestinian children's art deserves at least as much attention as a new fast food. It deserves full coverage as news.
2. We know that the land under Highfield Square is polluted quite badly. So...
a) why don't we know what sort of danger these pollutants pose to us?
b) did the owners of the land, as required by law, report the pollution to the provincial government?
c) did the government order the owners to clean it up? Why not?
d) what is the full area that is polluted? It surely doesn't stop at the boundaries of Highfield Square.
e) What medical dangers does that other polluted land expose us to?
f)How many polluted areas are there in the city?
g) Where are they? (Good luck on that one. A series of requests through Access to Information just put me on a merry-go-round.)
3. What, exactly, is the grand city plan for development over the next two decades?
a)first, some idea of what the planners expect to affect the city in the next two decades - the price of gas and heating oil, for example.
b) Does the city intend to continue to encourage urban sprawl - a sprawl that makes our dependence on the car inescapable, and drives up the cost of infrastructure?
c) What steps has the city taken to encourage denser housing while maintaining some distinction between denser and over-crowded?
d) how is this coordinated with a plan for mass transit to work and shopping areas?
e)how does encouragement of urban sprawl (as in the case of Royal Oaks) have any relation to any urban plan?
f) Exactly what is the urban plan?
4. This is the city of the main chance, always eager to invest money into any scheme that will make a fast buck (maybe) - the events centre, the CFL.....
a) Can we get some precise figures on exactly how much these events cost - including all incentives?
b) Can we get some precise figures on exactly how much of the return actually comes to us - as opposed to how much comes to rest in the pockets of people who live far away and whose pockets are already pretty full?
5. When it is not looking for magic schemes to bring in tourist money, does the city council give any thought at all to the social and intellectual needs (and opportunities) of a city?
These are just a few of the questions that the Times and Transcript is not asking. I don't expect the Times and Transcript to be fully open about the answers to these questions. For example, there is a strong smell about the events centre as essentially being the gift of a hockey rink to a rich man, and an overpriced land sale to the city at land that nobody else would want to be.
The move of Moncton High certainly smells of land deals, too. It's easy to see the advantage of it for land developers, less easy to see it for any educational or social reason.
But the truth about land deals in this province is something we are never going to get. So I'll settle for answers to the points I have raised above.
Look, I yield to none in my interest in the new pope. But three pages is a bit much - especially when they have nothing to say. It seems he went to his hotel, and personally paid his own bill. Wow! What humility! (That is slightly tarnished by a photo of the entrance to his hotel. A glance at that photo, and humility is not the word that springs to mind.)
B5 has a story on what happened during the voting in the Sistine Chapel. It seems the cardinals prayed, and wrote names on ballots. Well, it was worth reading a half page to learn that.
None of this is a criticism of the church or the pope. It's a criticism of a newspaper which was too lazy or too cheap to do any research on the the new pope's background in Argentina, and his role in both church and public affairs. So it published a lot of celebrity page gush.
Fortunately, Norbert Cunningham offers a column that is more thoughtful and thought-provoking on the challenge the pope faces - notably, the challenge of shrinking church membership, and the decline of church attendance. Here, Norbert points out what many have not - that this is a general problem for Christian churches in the western world. Norbert's column is one that is worth reading and thinking about. I would add just one point to it.
The problem may not have arisen from something the churches were doing. And the relative rise of fundamentalist churches may not indicate we're getting back on track.
The reality is consumerism and materialism have triumphed. These so encourage and seemingly justify the lack of morality and ethics in our society that churches are far removed from having any real influence in our lives.
We now accept torture, assassination as normal political behaviour. We accept greed and exploitation as
normal and even laudable economic behaviour. We accept mass murder in foreign countries so our billionaires can pillage them. We have a government in this province that has not a trace of morality or ethics in its behaviour.
And the Irving press has played no small role in encouraging those attitudes.
Meanwhile, the churches have either failed to recognize the death of morality, or have abandoned the bulk of Christian teaching to focus on the very unChristian goal of getting their members into a heaven in the clouds so they can enjoy watching the sinners go down to hell. (That is the essence of the reason for condemning gays.)
The only other story with the potential to be interesting is the one on Mali on B1. Alas, it still gives no clue as to what the French invasion is all about. To bring democracy and justice, etc.? Not bloody likely. France has a long history of making sure that countries like Mali never get democracy or justice. And if the troops are sent in, it's a safe bet that the French economic elite have something they want in Mali.
The editorial makes a point which is a good one (on the need for an RCMP presence in New Brunswick.)
Too bad the editorialist has already written that same editorial as least twice before. The rest of the editorial and op ed pages are well worth reading. (Generally, I agree with what Steve Malloy says about hunger strikes. I would only add there are some that are quite serious, and with deaths almost certain. We have seen them with Palestinians in Israeli prisons, and there is now a hunger strike by at least a hundred inmates of Guantanamo - neither of which has been noticed by the editorial staff at the Tand T.)
And I note that the Tand T has still not mentioned the public health conference for PEI and NB that was held two days ago, and that focussed on the medical dangers of fracking.
______________________________________________________________________________
I said yesterday, I'd write a bit about the TandT approach to city news. What should the TandT be reporting in city news? We'll start with a small but important item.
1.From March 22 to April 2, there will be a display of art by Palestinian schoolchildren at the Aberdeen Centre. I want to see this. And I want my children to see this. I expect it will be striking introduction to the real world, and how constant violence and hatred affects children.
I'm sure the TandT will advertise it in its events section. But that's not enough.
Whenever a new act comes to the casino, it gets a story in the TandT to encourage customers. It may be (it often is) something as intellectual as a man who plays a harmonica by blowing through his nose. It may be a coffee shop that has opened. Today's B1 features almost half a page on a new, fast food outlet.
The TandT's interest in Moncton seems largely confined to anything that makes money. But living in a city, a real city, means more than access to nose-blowing harmonicists or fast food. It means exposure to other cultures within our city and beyond it. It means intellectual development. It provides stimulus to the mind. Moncton is not strong in these latter qualities. Surely, an exhibition of Palestinian children's art deserves at least as much attention as a new fast food. It deserves full coverage as news.
2. We know that the land under Highfield Square is polluted quite badly. So...
a) why don't we know what sort of danger these pollutants pose to us?
b) did the owners of the land, as required by law, report the pollution to the provincial government?
c) did the government order the owners to clean it up? Why not?
d) what is the full area that is polluted? It surely doesn't stop at the boundaries of Highfield Square.
e) What medical dangers does that other polluted land expose us to?
f)How many polluted areas are there in the city?
g) Where are they? (Good luck on that one. A series of requests through Access to Information just put me on a merry-go-round.)
3. What, exactly, is the grand city plan for development over the next two decades?
a)first, some idea of what the planners expect to affect the city in the next two decades - the price of gas and heating oil, for example.
b) Does the city intend to continue to encourage urban sprawl - a sprawl that makes our dependence on the car inescapable, and drives up the cost of infrastructure?
c) What steps has the city taken to encourage denser housing while maintaining some distinction between denser and over-crowded?
d) how is this coordinated with a plan for mass transit to work and shopping areas?
e)how does encouragement of urban sprawl (as in the case of Royal Oaks) have any relation to any urban plan?
f) Exactly what is the urban plan?
4. This is the city of the main chance, always eager to invest money into any scheme that will make a fast buck (maybe) - the events centre, the CFL.....
a) Can we get some precise figures on exactly how much these events cost - including all incentives?
b) Can we get some precise figures on exactly how much of the return actually comes to us - as opposed to how much comes to rest in the pockets of people who live far away and whose pockets are already pretty full?
5. When it is not looking for magic schemes to bring in tourist money, does the city council give any thought at all to the social and intellectual needs (and opportunities) of a city?
These are just a few of the questions that the Times and Transcript is not asking. I don't expect the Times and Transcript to be fully open about the answers to these questions. For example, there is a strong smell about the events centre as essentially being the gift of a hockey rink to a rich man, and an overpriced land sale to the city at land that nobody else would want to be.
The move of Moncton High certainly smells of land deals, too. It's easy to see the advantage of it for land developers, less easy to see it for any educational or social reason.
But the truth about land deals in this province is something we are never going to get. So I'll settle for answers to the points I have raised above.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
March 14: There are no depths......
...to which the Moncton Times and Transcript will not crawl in obedience to the the wishes of its master.
It was bad enough when it butchered a report of a talk by the province's chief medical officer, Dr. Cleary, on the severe damage likely from shale gas development. Then it featured, in gushing prose, a speech disputing her - by that outstanding expert on medical questions, and friend of anybody with deep pockets, Frank McKenna.
Check out the big stories for today. The lead is about Jackson the puppy, probably the third or fourth time we've had this story on page one. Then there are several stories on the new pope, none of which has anything to say. There is even one on Cardinal Ouelette of Quebec, who didn't make the cut. That one is headlined "Ouelette's mother relieved he wasn't chosen". With a headline like that, should it be on the same page as "Liam Hemsworth,Miley Cyrus split?"
Yesterday, there was a major conference sponsored by The Public Health Association of NB-PEI featuring a speech titled "The Chief Medical Officer of Health's Recommendations Concerning Shale Gas Development in New Brunswick". That must surely be more important than the story that no charges will be laid in the case of Jackson the puppy. But there is not a word about it in this whole, wretched paper.
(You can check the conference out for yourself at http://services.choruscall.ca/links/cphanbpei.html ).
Here is a case where the chief medical officer has said there is severe risk of danger to health and even to life - not to mention the danger to the environment for generations to come - in shale gas development. She is supported by most of the medical profession. The industry people, a big-time political hack, and a professor who used to teach something else say there's no problem. Tell you what, messrs. Irving and and McKenna et al, bring your families down here, and set up home in the shale gas fields or, perhaps, in the place they intend to dump billions of tons of toxic waste.
This incident proves once again that the Irving press is designed to keep New Brunswickers in ignorance of what is going on, and to encourage stupidity. The only possible excuse for the editors of these papers is that they are themselves, among the stupid. Well, it is not a possibility I would dismiss out of hand.
New Brunswick is dominated by people who don't give a damn whether we live or die. If we were all to die tomorrow, well, there would still be lots of places where people will work for peanuts and put up with abuse.
The case of the Chief Medical Officer highlights another aspect of the abuse. What it pleases the Irvings to call 'the private sector' (but which really means them and their friends). has mounted a major assault on our institutions - interfering with them by imposing administrative structures that are damaging to them, and interfering with their work.
The interfering comes from imposing Sigma Six business administration structures on health care, the civil service and schools. That's what the restructuring of our health care system is all about.
The interference with schools, which began with standardized testing (which not only interferes with the freedom of teachers to teach, but is also educational nonsense.) - and now we have a hopelessly unqualified son of one of the favoured who has no qualification whatever to teach reading (or anything else) who has now been given two and half million by our spineless government so he can interfere with real teachers who know how to teach reading.
All this is leading to two disasters.
One is the gradual privatization of health and of education. We already know about the privatization of health. In the US, it has produced the most expensive health system in the world - that is also one of the least effective health systems in the world.
The same has been true in the privatization of education in the US. American education is now probably the worst in the developed world. (Forget about saving Canadian universities. They've already been bought, and already are following business practices. The most notable result has been what we've seen in business - a stunning rise in the salaries and perks of university administrators with no noticeable improvement in teaching.)
The other effect is that of running health and education and the civil service as if they were business institutions. They aren't. Imposing business structures on them will demoralize them and destroy their effectiveness.
The leaders of the big business world are made stupid by greed. They design systems that reflect such stupidity. We should be very cautious about following their leadership in anything.
____________________________________________________________________________
As always, Alec Bruce is good - though I can't help noticing his column today uses statistics to praise Canada. I think it was just yesterday he wrote a column that was critical of the use of statistics.
The editorial is much better than usual. It is so much improved that it might reasonably be called nothing worse than trivial. Norbert Cunningham and Beth Lyons both produce excellent columns on the treatment of women. Norbert's is a particularly gruesome read - but a very effective one.
Rod Allen continues to kid himself that he's a master of sophisticated humour. I recommend him to high school teachers who want their students to learn what awkward sentences and stilted language can do to writing.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I know I said I would write something on how reporters should be covering municipal affairs. I'm sorry. I simply felt I had to say all I did about the assaults of "the private sector" (meaning a few very rich and very greedy people) on our institutions. These are incompatible with democracy and, in fact, have already destroyed most democracy in New Brunswick. They are also profoundly damaging to our schools, our health, and to us.
We either face that very soon; or we write off New Brunswick as a place to live. And, no, I don't think electing the Liberals is the answer.
I also apologize for being late with the blog. I had to take my son for his last trip to the orthodontist for his braces. Just two more children to go, and then I get a free cookie from the orthodontist.
It was bad enough when it butchered a report of a talk by the province's chief medical officer, Dr. Cleary, on the severe damage likely from shale gas development. Then it featured, in gushing prose, a speech disputing her - by that outstanding expert on medical questions, and friend of anybody with deep pockets, Frank McKenna.
Check out the big stories for today. The lead is about Jackson the puppy, probably the third or fourth time we've had this story on page one. Then there are several stories on the new pope, none of which has anything to say. There is even one on Cardinal Ouelette of Quebec, who didn't make the cut. That one is headlined "Ouelette's mother relieved he wasn't chosen". With a headline like that, should it be on the same page as "Liam Hemsworth,Miley Cyrus split?"
Yesterday, there was a major conference sponsored by The Public Health Association of NB-PEI featuring a speech titled "The Chief Medical Officer of Health's Recommendations Concerning Shale Gas Development in New Brunswick". That must surely be more important than the story that no charges will be laid in the case of Jackson the puppy. But there is not a word about it in this whole, wretched paper.
(You can check the conference out for yourself at http://services.choruscall.ca/links/cphanbpei.html ).
Here is a case where the chief medical officer has said there is severe risk of danger to health and even to life - not to mention the danger to the environment for generations to come - in shale gas development. She is supported by most of the medical profession. The industry people, a big-time political hack, and a professor who used to teach something else say there's no problem. Tell you what, messrs. Irving and and McKenna et al, bring your families down here, and set up home in the shale gas fields or, perhaps, in the place they intend to dump billions of tons of toxic waste.
This incident proves once again that the Irving press is designed to keep New Brunswickers in ignorance of what is going on, and to encourage stupidity. The only possible excuse for the editors of these papers is that they are themselves, among the stupid. Well, it is not a possibility I would dismiss out of hand.
New Brunswick is dominated by people who don't give a damn whether we live or die. If we were all to die tomorrow, well, there would still be lots of places where people will work for peanuts and put up with abuse.
The case of the Chief Medical Officer highlights another aspect of the abuse. What it pleases the Irvings to call 'the private sector' (but which really means them and their friends). has mounted a major assault on our institutions - interfering with them by imposing administrative structures that are damaging to them, and interfering with their work.
The interfering comes from imposing Sigma Six business administration structures on health care, the civil service and schools. That's what the restructuring of our health care system is all about.
The interference with schools, which began with standardized testing (which not only interferes with the freedom of teachers to teach, but is also educational nonsense.) - and now we have a hopelessly unqualified son of one of the favoured who has no qualification whatever to teach reading (or anything else) who has now been given two and half million by our spineless government so he can interfere with real teachers who know how to teach reading.
All this is leading to two disasters.
One is the gradual privatization of health and of education. We already know about the privatization of health. In the US, it has produced the most expensive health system in the world - that is also one of the least effective health systems in the world.
The same has been true in the privatization of education in the US. American education is now probably the worst in the developed world. (Forget about saving Canadian universities. They've already been bought, and already are following business practices. The most notable result has been what we've seen in business - a stunning rise in the salaries and perks of university administrators with no noticeable improvement in teaching.)
The other effect is that of running health and education and the civil service as if they were business institutions. They aren't. Imposing business structures on them will demoralize them and destroy their effectiveness.
The leaders of the big business world are made stupid by greed. They design systems that reflect such stupidity. We should be very cautious about following their leadership in anything.
____________________________________________________________________________
As always, Alec Bruce is good - though I can't help noticing his column today uses statistics to praise Canada. I think it was just yesterday he wrote a column that was critical of the use of statistics.
The editorial is much better than usual. It is so much improved that it might reasonably be called nothing worse than trivial. Norbert Cunningham and Beth Lyons both produce excellent columns on the treatment of women. Norbert's is a particularly gruesome read - but a very effective one.
Rod Allen continues to kid himself that he's a master of sophisticated humour. I recommend him to high school teachers who want their students to learn what awkward sentences and stilted language can do to writing.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I know I said I would write something on how reporters should be covering municipal affairs. I'm sorry. I simply felt I had to say all I did about the assaults of "the private sector" (meaning a few very rich and very greedy people) on our institutions. These are incompatible with democracy and, in fact, have already destroyed most democracy in New Brunswick. They are also profoundly damaging to our schools, our health, and to us.
We either face that very soon; or we write off New Brunswick as a place to live. And, no, I don't think electing the Liberals is the answer.
I also apologize for being late with the blog. I had to take my son for his last trip to the orthodontist for his braces. Just two more children to go, and then I get a free cookie from the orthodontist.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
March 13: The reason why...
It was never clear why the US launched a war on Afghanistan. After 911, the Taliban offered to surrender Osama bin Laken to an international court. That fully met its obligations under international law. There was no evidence (and still is none) that Aghanistan had anything to do with 911. So why did the US launch a war on Afghanistan? And why did NATO, including Canada, join it?
NATO has played a heavy price in lives, not only in killed but in those wounded in the many ways that war can wound, and wound for the rest of their lives. We also have inflicted one hell of a price on men, women and children in Afghanistan with mass killing, torture, widespread poverty and starvation.
Why?
While in the Far East, I was caught up in the romance of the great trade routes that centred on Afghanistan. Before the rise of the sailing ship, Afghanistan was the economic and strategic key to that vast area called central Asia. Five hundred years ago and more, it was trading minerals, spices and silks to western Europe overland on "The Great Silk Road". (Hands down, all those who thought globalization was something new.)
Afghanistan still has an enormous wealth in minerals. Estimates run between one trillion and three trillion dollars. It is also still a strategic centre for control of resource industries in the whole region.
It's not surprising, then, that the call to invade Afghanistan came not after 911, but a good five years before 911. Nor is it surprising that it came from a group of very powerful business men who had established a plan for American dominance of the world called Project for the New American Century. This is the group that came to power with George Bush. 911wasn't there reason. It was their excuse.
NATO was invited to join to give the operation an air of legitimacy, and because the US would need help with wars both open and secret, and more that were planned. Many NATO businessmen were eager to join so they could get in on the exploitation of Afghanistan resources. That's why Canada joined. Harper got out of the fighting part when he saw the political dangers of a large butcher's bill. But he kept a finger in by offering troops as training instructors.
On Nov. 11, remember our dead who died for big business in Canada. (Big business is very good at making money for itself. It would be nice if it stayed there. Instead, it rushes into areas in which it is hopelessly incompetent - education, health care, foreign policy... It is our equivalent of the old, European aristocracy which for centuries insisted on ruling, long after it had proven itself hopelessly doltish.)
Watch the news for mention of "The New Silk Road" initiative. It's the latest Washington buss term. Big business recognizes it can't win the war it fought with our lives and money. So NATO will be working out business deals with Afghanistan. That means we shall be talking turkey with, almost certainly, the Taliban whom we were once told were terrorists.
This story did not and will not appear in The Moncton Times and Transcript.
______________________________________________________________________________
On the "life's little comedies side", I sent a complaint about an editorial that appeared last week's TandT. I accused the editorial writer of extreme bias; and I sent the complaint to the Atlantic Press Council, a body appointed by the press to investigate itself. (Something like drug pushers appointing some of their members to report on drug pushers.)
When contacted, the managing editor of the TandT replied that I was criticizing their opinion - and that was criticizing freedom of expression. I truly hope the managing editor of the TandT will not be involved in the school literacy programme. You see, opinion and bias do NOT mean the same thing. Sometimes an opinion is the result of bias. Sometimes it is not. But the two words are not interchangeable. Fighting down an urge to form a group to teach literacy to Irving press editors (and applying for a 2 and a half million dollar grant from the government, I communicated my response to the Atlantic Press Council.
And I got another word game. They would examine other articles in the paper on the same topic as that editorial to see if any offered another opinion. If they found such an article (and in hundreds of articles, it would be easy to find one that could be argued into looking like a different opinion).
The trouble with all that is that my statement had nothing to do with the rest of the paper going back over the years. It had to do with one editorial that was biased. Finding another editorial or story that was not biased has nothing to with whether that editorial was biased.
So much for the "watchdog of the press" in the Atlantic region.
____________________________________________________________________________
As you might have guessed by now, there's nothing much worth reading in today's TandT.
I was pleased to see the picture on A1 and the story on A3 of an elementary school breakfast programme. This is a worthwhile investment in the future, one that really will pay off - even more than an events centre.
There's no other news worth reading. Reporting on the the Vatican election is particularly trivial - though it occupies lots of space.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The editorial expresses the opinion that the Tidal Bore is not a huge, tourist draw. Well, that took only a century or so to figure out.
Good cartoon of Justin Trudeau - though I suspect we're stuck with him.
Alec Bruce nicely puts the skids under statistics - and rightly so. Journalists just love statistics, and will claim they prove all sorts of things. In fact....well, read Bruce's column. It puts it very well.
Norbert has a good day - a very good day.
On the op ed page, Eric Lewis delivers a virtuous but particularly bland and boring sermonette.
Brian Cormier is Brian Cormier, and probably beyond hope.
The Letters to the Editor have some of the best insights and writing in the whole paper.
___________________________________________________________________________
In the last few days, I've been shifting the focus of this blog to deal more fully with specific topics. That's because I could go on forever just giving details of why this is a stinking newspaper. So I'm thinking now of giving more time to what the paper should be doing. I may start that tomorrow with an outline of the kinds of questions the paper should be asking about municipal affairs, and what kinds of information we should be getting.
NATO has played a heavy price in lives, not only in killed but in those wounded in the many ways that war can wound, and wound for the rest of their lives. We also have inflicted one hell of a price on men, women and children in Afghanistan with mass killing, torture, widespread poverty and starvation.
Why?
While in the Far East, I was caught up in the romance of the great trade routes that centred on Afghanistan. Before the rise of the sailing ship, Afghanistan was the economic and strategic key to that vast area called central Asia. Five hundred years ago and more, it was trading minerals, spices and silks to western Europe overland on "The Great Silk Road". (Hands down, all those who thought globalization was something new.)
Afghanistan still has an enormous wealth in minerals. Estimates run between one trillion and three trillion dollars. It is also still a strategic centre for control of resource industries in the whole region.
It's not surprising, then, that the call to invade Afghanistan came not after 911, but a good five years before 911. Nor is it surprising that it came from a group of very powerful business men who had established a plan for American dominance of the world called Project for the New American Century. This is the group that came to power with George Bush. 911wasn't there reason. It was their excuse.
NATO was invited to join to give the operation an air of legitimacy, and because the US would need help with wars both open and secret, and more that were planned. Many NATO businessmen were eager to join so they could get in on the exploitation of Afghanistan resources. That's why Canada joined. Harper got out of the fighting part when he saw the political dangers of a large butcher's bill. But he kept a finger in by offering troops as training instructors.
On Nov. 11, remember our dead who died for big business in Canada. (Big business is very good at making money for itself. It would be nice if it stayed there. Instead, it rushes into areas in which it is hopelessly incompetent - education, health care, foreign policy... It is our equivalent of the old, European aristocracy which for centuries insisted on ruling, long after it had proven itself hopelessly doltish.)
Watch the news for mention of "The New Silk Road" initiative. It's the latest Washington buss term. Big business recognizes it can't win the war it fought with our lives and money. So NATO will be working out business deals with Afghanistan. That means we shall be talking turkey with, almost certainly, the Taliban whom we were once told were terrorists.
This story did not and will not appear in The Moncton Times and Transcript.
______________________________________________________________________________
On the "life's little comedies side", I sent a complaint about an editorial that appeared last week's TandT. I accused the editorial writer of extreme bias; and I sent the complaint to the Atlantic Press Council, a body appointed by the press to investigate itself. (Something like drug pushers appointing some of their members to report on drug pushers.)
When contacted, the managing editor of the TandT replied that I was criticizing their opinion - and that was criticizing freedom of expression. I truly hope the managing editor of the TandT will not be involved in the school literacy programme. You see, opinion and bias do NOT mean the same thing. Sometimes an opinion is the result of bias. Sometimes it is not. But the two words are not interchangeable. Fighting down an urge to form a group to teach literacy to Irving press editors (and applying for a 2 and a half million dollar grant from the government, I communicated my response to the Atlantic Press Council.
And I got another word game. They would examine other articles in the paper on the same topic as that editorial to see if any offered another opinion. If they found such an article (and in hundreds of articles, it would be easy to find one that could be argued into looking like a different opinion).
The trouble with all that is that my statement had nothing to do with the rest of the paper going back over the years. It had to do with one editorial that was biased. Finding another editorial or story that was not biased has nothing to with whether that editorial was biased.
So much for the "watchdog of the press" in the Atlantic region.
____________________________________________________________________________
As you might have guessed by now, there's nothing much worth reading in today's TandT.
I was pleased to see the picture on A1 and the story on A3 of an elementary school breakfast programme. This is a worthwhile investment in the future, one that really will pay off - even more than an events centre.
There's no other news worth reading. Reporting on the the Vatican election is particularly trivial - though it occupies lots of space.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The editorial expresses the opinion that the Tidal Bore is not a huge, tourist draw. Well, that took only a century or so to figure out.
Good cartoon of Justin Trudeau - though I suspect we're stuck with him.
Alec Bruce nicely puts the skids under statistics - and rightly so. Journalists just love statistics, and will claim they prove all sorts of things. In fact....well, read Bruce's column. It puts it very well.
Norbert has a good day - a very good day.
On the op ed page, Eric Lewis delivers a virtuous but particularly bland and boring sermonette.
Brian Cormier is Brian Cormier, and probably beyond hope.
The Letters to the Editor have some of the best insights and writing in the whole paper.
___________________________________________________________________________
In the last few days, I've been shifting the focus of this blog to deal more fully with specific topics. That's because I could go on forever just giving details of why this is a stinking newspaper. So I'm thinking now of giving more time to what the paper should be doing. I may start that tomorrow with an outline of the kinds of questions the paper should be asking about municipal affairs, and what kinds of information we should be getting.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
March 12: on a positive note----
---let's start with how foreign news in a newspaper should be handled, starting with a few principles.
1. Reporting them as is done now is largely a waste of time. We get one incident at a time - but trying to understand anything in that way is like looking at a dozen pieces of a dozen crossword puzzles, and trying to guess in each case what the completed forms of those puzzles would look like.
Today's paper tells us North Korea is making aggressive noises, and that Karzai of Afghanistan is mad at NATO. But what does it mean?
Is North Korea really threatening a war? or is it doing what it has done before - using the threat of war to get money or food or some other concession out of the US? Or is it simply acting out of a reaction to US-South Korea war games that are obviously aimed at it? Which of these crossword pieces is really a part of the puzzle at all?
2. By the time a newspaper gets its crossword puzzle pieces out, the news is already old. Radio and TV commonly beat the newspapers by a full day.
3. Few international news services can be trusted. That includes, for example, Associated Press, Reuters, Postmedia.... It's always been that way. They hold back news that their owners don't want to get out. It has been that way for over a century. The story about US torture in Afghanistan was revealed with photos taken by a non-journalist, and circulated on Youtube. In fact, the media knew about torture long before Afghanistan. The US army had a manual on it some 50 years ago. Waterboarding goes back over a hundred years to the US invasion of The Phillipines.
In today's TandT, section C 5, the lead story on Venezuela says that the US has long wanted to repair relations with Venezuela but has made little headway. That line, from The Associated Press is, quite simply, lying. The US has been hostile to Venezuela ever since Chavez raised the fee for oil extraction in order to improve the desperate conditions in which most Venezuelans had to live. US oil execs then put the heat on the US government to get tough with Venezuela - including attempted assassinations. I note, too, there is no mention that Chavez has been supplying the poor in some American cities with very cheap heating oil.
The report refers to Venezuela as being deeply divided. Well, Chavez has won 15 of the 16 elections he ran in; and, just before his death, he won his last election some 20% ahead of his rivals. Not bad for a deeply divided country.
What are the weaknesses of radio and TV in presenting the news?
1. Radio, especially private radio, is limited to short "sound bites". It is happiest with news stories of ten to twenty seconds. You can't get much in that.
2. TV is pictures. Viewers don't focus on the story. They focus on the people on the tube, and sometimes only on the shifting camera angles.
Result - both radio and TV, though quick to get the news out, are generally shallow in their presentation of it.
The strength of a newspaper is that people concentrate on the words - and, unlike radio and TV - they can re-read any bit that they didn't quite understand the first time.
So how should foreign news be treated in newspapers? Well, skip it as news. Present it as commentary. For example, today's commentary on Afghanistan by Gwynne Dyer doesn't just give details, it explains so we can understand the big picture. It's not just a piece of the crossword puzzle; it's all the pieces fitted in.
One Gwynne Dyer column each day would be far better, far, far better than the scattered bits of crossword puzzle we now get.
(Yes, I know lots of newspapers would spoil the whole thing by hiring bigots and propgandists as their commentators. I didn't say the change would be perfect. I said it would be better.)
___________________________________________________________________________
The biggest story of the day in Today'sNews is that Cardinal Ouelette is surprised at his rise to papal candidate. That makes as much sense as a story on what colour socks he intends to wear during the voting.
In fact, the whole paper is so trivial today that its triviality is the reason I decided to write on how foreign news should be dealt with.
__________________________________________________________________________
As to editorial and op ed....
The editorial is pretty silly. It's about taxes. It says, "Normally, Liberal governments spend more....." In fact, they don't. I don't say this to defend the Liberals. It's simply a matter of fact. Throughout Canadian history, Conservative governments have been the big spenders. Liberals come second. (NDP have generally been best at keeping costs down.)
This isn't just a minor point. That casual statement about Liberals spending more is a sign of both ignorance and prejudice on the part of the editorial writer.
Then he says that Alward should stick with Conservative principles. Okay.
What are Conservative principles? And, for that matter, what are Liberal principles? I have often seen editors toss those words around as though they actually mean something. I have never seen an editorial that says what those principles are. I doubt very much whether the editorial writer has a clue what those words mean. - though I have no doubt he has a bundle of prejudices on the subject.
At the end of the editorial, he says that higher taxes are harmful to employment. That is pure rubbish. Higher taxes have been used, and quite successfully, to encourage higher employment.
Here is an editorial on taxation by a person who shows a fundamental ignorance of economics, and who uses other words with no idea of what they mean.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Alec Bruce's column deserves a serious read, and a lot of thought. On another slow day, I'll write a part of this blog on the abysmal lack of planning at any level in New Brunswick, on areas we should be looking at, and on questions the news media should be asking.
_________________________________________________________________________
Norbert chose to write a column about an interview that few New Brunswickers ever heard with a woman even fewer ever heard of.
I have no idea why he chose that topic.
_____________________________________________________________________________
On op ed, Alan Cochrane presents us with a sermonette more suited to the Faith page. It's on the meaning of life - a topic guaranteed to produce shallow writing.
___________________________________________________________________________
Gwynne Dyer is solid, and a good example of what a useful news page could be.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Oh, the federal government has released a report on what it spent (in tax money, not Conservative campaign contributions) on government advertising last budget year. It was $78 million dollars. Well, costs are high when you create political ads to appear on shows like the Super Bowl and The Oscars.
Harper responds that the Liberals spent even more. (Actually, one year, the Liberals did. But, in general, both have been piggies at the same trough.) Funny how the eagle-eyed editors of the TandT missed this story.
1. Reporting them as is done now is largely a waste of time. We get one incident at a time - but trying to understand anything in that way is like looking at a dozen pieces of a dozen crossword puzzles, and trying to guess in each case what the completed forms of those puzzles would look like.
Today's paper tells us North Korea is making aggressive noises, and that Karzai of Afghanistan is mad at NATO. But what does it mean?
Is North Korea really threatening a war? or is it doing what it has done before - using the threat of war to get money or food or some other concession out of the US? Or is it simply acting out of a reaction to US-South Korea war games that are obviously aimed at it? Which of these crossword pieces is really a part of the puzzle at all?
2. By the time a newspaper gets its crossword puzzle pieces out, the news is already old. Radio and TV commonly beat the newspapers by a full day.
3. Few international news services can be trusted. That includes, for example, Associated Press, Reuters, Postmedia.... It's always been that way. They hold back news that their owners don't want to get out. It has been that way for over a century. The story about US torture in Afghanistan was revealed with photos taken by a non-journalist, and circulated on Youtube. In fact, the media knew about torture long before Afghanistan. The US army had a manual on it some 50 years ago. Waterboarding goes back over a hundred years to the US invasion of The Phillipines.
In today's TandT, section C 5, the lead story on Venezuela says that the US has long wanted to repair relations with Venezuela but has made little headway. That line, from The Associated Press is, quite simply, lying. The US has been hostile to Venezuela ever since Chavez raised the fee for oil extraction in order to improve the desperate conditions in which most Venezuelans had to live. US oil execs then put the heat on the US government to get tough with Venezuela - including attempted assassinations. I note, too, there is no mention that Chavez has been supplying the poor in some American cities with very cheap heating oil.
The report refers to Venezuela as being deeply divided. Well, Chavez has won 15 of the 16 elections he ran in; and, just before his death, he won his last election some 20% ahead of his rivals. Not bad for a deeply divided country.
What are the weaknesses of radio and TV in presenting the news?
1. Radio, especially private radio, is limited to short "sound bites". It is happiest with news stories of ten to twenty seconds. You can't get much in that.
2. TV is pictures. Viewers don't focus on the story. They focus on the people on the tube, and sometimes only on the shifting camera angles.
Result - both radio and TV, though quick to get the news out, are generally shallow in their presentation of it.
The strength of a newspaper is that people concentrate on the words - and, unlike radio and TV - they can re-read any bit that they didn't quite understand the first time.
So how should foreign news be treated in newspapers? Well, skip it as news. Present it as commentary. For example, today's commentary on Afghanistan by Gwynne Dyer doesn't just give details, it explains so we can understand the big picture. It's not just a piece of the crossword puzzle; it's all the pieces fitted in.
One Gwynne Dyer column each day would be far better, far, far better than the scattered bits of crossword puzzle we now get.
(Yes, I know lots of newspapers would spoil the whole thing by hiring bigots and propgandists as their commentators. I didn't say the change would be perfect. I said it would be better.)
___________________________________________________________________________
The biggest story of the day in Today'sNews is that Cardinal Ouelette is surprised at his rise to papal candidate. That makes as much sense as a story on what colour socks he intends to wear during the voting.
In fact, the whole paper is so trivial today that its triviality is the reason I decided to write on how foreign news should be dealt with.
__________________________________________________________________________
As to editorial and op ed....
The editorial is pretty silly. It's about taxes. It says, "Normally, Liberal governments spend more....." In fact, they don't. I don't say this to defend the Liberals. It's simply a matter of fact. Throughout Canadian history, Conservative governments have been the big spenders. Liberals come second. (NDP have generally been best at keeping costs down.)
This isn't just a minor point. That casual statement about Liberals spending more is a sign of both ignorance and prejudice on the part of the editorial writer.
Then he says that Alward should stick with Conservative principles. Okay.
What are Conservative principles? And, for that matter, what are Liberal principles? I have often seen editors toss those words around as though they actually mean something. I have never seen an editorial that says what those principles are. I doubt very much whether the editorial writer has a clue what those words mean. - though I have no doubt he has a bundle of prejudices on the subject.
At the end of the editorial, he says that higher taxes are harmful to employment. That is pure rubbish. Higher taxes have been used, and quite successfully, to encourage higher employment.
Here is an editorial on taxation by a person who shows a fundamental ignorance of economics, and who uses other words with no idea of what they mean.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Alec Bruce's column deserves a serious read, and a lot of thought. On another slow day, I'll write a part of this blog on the abysmal lack of planning at any level in New Brunswick, on areas we should be looking at, and on questions the news media should be asking.
_________________________________________________________________________
Norbert chose to write a column about an interview that few New Brunswickers ever heard with a woman even fewer ever heard of.
I have no idea why he chose that topic.
_____________________________________________________________________________
On op ed, Alan Cochrane presents us with a sermonette more suited to the Faith page. It's on the meaning of life - a topic guaranteed to produce shallow writing.
___________________________________________________________________________
Gwynne Dyer is solid, and a good example of what a useful news page could be.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Oh, the federal government has released a report on what it spent (in tax money, not Conservative campaign contributions) on government advertising last budget year. It was $78 million dollars. Well, costs are high when you create political ads to appear on shows like the Super Bowl and The Oscars.
Harper responds that the Liberals spent even more. (Actually, one year, the Liberals did. But, in general, both have been piggies at the same trough.) Funny how the eagle-eyed editors of the TandT missed this story.
Monday, March 11, 2013
March 11: Not a bad day for the TandT.....
----boring, bland, lots of nothing about nothing. But not really, actively bad. Probably the biggest story of of the day is that Eva Longoria (a famous person of whom I have never heard) is "...still longing for true love." Everything else is just nothing, one way or the other.
The big item is section A is a full page of pictures of people being outside, something that will certainly attract any reader who has never seen a person outside.
Foreign news ( anything outside New Brunswick) occupies one page of Section C. There is a pointless story about how papal candidate Marc Ouellot's family will miss him if he becomes pope (he won't). There's also a story that Harper is signing over control of natural resources in the Northwest Territories to the people who live there - though it's not at all clear that is really what he's doing. And Afghan's leader, Karzai, is mad at the US again. The report isn't sure why. And that's pretty much it for the world.
None of this has much substance. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, the key question is why is NATO fighting that war in the first place? There is no evidence that the government of Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11. Here is a war that has cost over a trillion dollars, that Canadians have died in, a war that is long lost - and nobody seems to know why it's being fought.
Even Harper could figure this was a dumb war to fight. It was the Canadian Council of CEOs that pushed us into the war - because it was good for business. Harper soon realized it was also a loser. That's why he was the first NATO leader to pull his troops out of combat, and confine them to a training role.
So, precisely why this war is being fought would surely be something useful to know. But I have yet to see a single item in the TandT that answers this question - or even asks it. This is a common failing of news services, especially in foreign affairs.
Why is France fighting a war in Mali? Because Mali has invaded France? Because France wants to spread democracy? Donne-moi un break. Why are France, Britain and the US training Syrian "rebels" (most of whom cannot be rebels since they aren't Syrians in the first place); and why are they supplying the "rebels" with weapons? In fact, Britain, France and the US have been saturating Africa with weapons, many of them powerful and sophisticated. And they're soon up for grabs to anybody who wants them. Is this really a brilliant idea?
Why is there fighting in Syria in the first place? Because Assad is a bad man? Well, most informed opinion is that Assad would win a majority in any election. Besides, when did in the West get all virtuous about bad guys. Assad, Ghadaffi and Hussein were all bad guys, always. But we supported them for years.
And what game is Saudi Arabia playing in backing the "rebels" with money and weapons? Is Saudi Arabia trying to encourage democracy? Not likely. It's the most anti-democratic government in the world. It's also the world's most theocratic government. That is, it governs by the strictest interpretation of Islamic teachings. And it's our good buddy. So what's this all about?
The whole of Africa and the Middle East is being pushed into disintegration.And it's going to get lots worse if there's an attack on Iran. In the latter case, there would be no predictable outcome.
And I shall be very surprised, indeed, if there is not a "struggle for freedom" in Venezuela. What is this all about?
Well, mostly it's about corporations that have grown far too big for anybody's health, and are trying to create a world which exists for no reason but to make a profit for themselves. It is not a coincidence that Libya and Venezuela have oil. It is not a coincidence that the US government began to see Chavez as an "enemy of democracy" when he raised charges for the oil companies, and then spent the money on useless things like houses and hospitals and schools.
But one would never guess any of this from reading NewsToday in the Moncton Times and Transcript.
There is no mention that there is a hunger strike spreading through the concentration camp/torture centre at Guantanamo Bay. Funny how the TandT could miss that. Perhaps one reason for the hunger strike is that just over half the prisoners at Guantanamo were cleared for release BACK IN 2010. Cleared for release. That means they were never enemy combatants in the first place. They've been imprisoned and tortured for all these years. Now they've been cleared for release because there is simply no evidence to charge them even before a military court. But they aren't released. They still sit there, anyway, in the prison Obama said over four years ago he would close.
The other prisoners haven't been cleared. But most haven't been charged, either. That means there's no evidence against them to support a charge. But they still sit in their cells.
Some should never have been there, anyway, not under international human rights legislation, because they were too young. Omar Khadr was such a case. I know lots of people don't like Omar Khadr. The facts remain - Khadr was a child under international law; and the Canadian government didn't even whimper when the US put him on trial as an adult. In fact, Canada was the only NATO country not to demand that prisoners - children and adults - should return to their own countries for whatever measures were necessary in dealing with them.
We are being sucked ever deeper into wars that are being fought primarily for the benefit of big business. And these are wars that risk the final conflict.
But the important news in the Tand T is that Eva Longoria is still longing for a true love.
The editorial page is decent - not great, but decent. The editorial is reasonable Alec Bruce's column is well-written, as always, but very much on the light side. Norbert shows a talent for dialect that I had never suspected.
On op ed, Craig Babstock makes a good point about how we deal with prisoners in our jails - (or don't'e deal with them.) Allen Abel, as usual, is irrelevant and to say the least, lightweight.
Generally, it's hard to say much about a paper that doesn't itself have much to say, not in any category.
The big item is section A is a full page of pictures of people being outside, something that will certainly attract any reader who has never seen a person outside.
Foreign news ( anything outside New Brunswick) occupies one page of Section C. There is a pointless story about how papal candidate Marc Ouellot's family will miss him if he becomes pope (he won't). There's also a story that Harper is signing over control of natural resources in the Northwest Territories to the people who live there - though it's not at all clear that is really what he's doing. And Afghan's leader, Karzai, is mad at the US again. The report isn't sure why. And that's pretty much it for the world.
None of this has much substance. In the case of Afghanistan, for example, the key question is why is NATO fighting that war in the first place? There is no evidence that the government of Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11. Here is a war that has cost over a trillion dollars, that Canadians have died in, a war that is long lost - and nobody seems to know why it's being fought.
Even Harper could figure this was a dumb war to fight. It was the Canadian Council of CEOs that pushed us into the war - because it was good for business. Harper soon realized it was also a loser. That's why he was the first NATO leader to pull his troops out of combat, and confine them to a training role.
So, precisely why this war is being fought would surely be something useful to know. But I have yet to see a single item in the TandT that answers this question - or even asks it. This is a common failing of news services, especially in foreign affairs.
Why is France fighting a war in Mali? Because Mali has invaded France? Because France wants to spread democracy? Donne-moi un break. Why are France, Britain and the US training Syrian "rebels" (most of whom cannot be rebels since they aren't Syrians in the first place); and why are they supplying the "rebels" with weapons? In fact, Britain, France and the US have been saturating Africa with weapons, many of them powerful and sophisticated. And they're soon up for grabs to anybody who wants them. Is this really a brilliant idea?
Why is there fighting in Syria in the first place? Because Assad is a bad man? Well, most informed opinion is that Assad would win a majority in any election. Besides, when did in the West get all virtuous about bad guys. Assad, Ghadaffi and Hussein were all bad guys, always. But we supported them for years.
And what game is Saudi Arabia playing in backing the "rebels" with money and weapons? Is Saudi Arabia trying to encourage democracy? Not likely. It's the most anti-democratic government in the world. It's also the world's most theocratic government. That is, it governs by the strictest interpretation of Islamic teachings. And it's our good buddy. So what's this all about?
The whole of Africa and the Middle East is being pushed into disintegration.And it's going to get lots worse if there's an attack on Iran. In the latter case, there would be no predictable outcome.
And I shall be very surprised, indeed, if there is not a "struggle for freedom" in Venezuela. What is this all about?
Well, mostly it's about corporations that have grown far too big for anybody's health, and are trying to create a world which exists for no reason but to make a profit for themselves. It is not a coincidence that Libya and Venezuela have oil. It is not a coincidence that the US government began to see Chavez as an "enemy of democracy" when he raised charges for the oil companies, and then spent the money on useless things like houses and hospitals and schools.
But one would never guess any of this from reading NewsToday in the Moncton Times and Transcript.
There is no mention that there is a hunger strike spreading through the concentration camp/torture centre at Guantanamo Bay. Funny how the TandT could miss that. Perhaps one reason for the hunger strike is that just over half the prisoners at Guantanamo were cleared for release BACK IN 2010. Cleared for release. That means they were never enemy combatants in the first place. They've been imprisoned and tortured for all these years. Now they've been cleared for release because there is simply no evidence to charge them even before a military court. But they aren't released. They still sit there, anyway, in the prison Obama said over four years ago he would close.
The other prisoners haven't been cleared. But most haven't been charged, either. That means there's no evidence against them to support a charge. But they still sit in their cells.
Some should never have been there, anyway, not under international human rights legislation, because they were too young. Omar Khadr was such a case. I know lots of people don't like Omar Khadr. The facts remain - Khadr was a child under international law; and the Canadian government didn't even whimper when the US put him on trial as an adult. In fact, Canada was the only NATO country not to demand that prisoners - children and adults - should return to their own countries for whatever measures were necessary in dealing with them.
We are being sucked ever deeper into wars that are being fought primarily for the benefit of big business. And these are wars that risk the final conflict.
But the important news in the Tand T is that Eva Longoria is still longing for a true love.
The editorial page is decent - not great, but decent. The editorial is reasonable Alec Bruce's column is well-written, as always, but very much on the light side. Norbert shows a talent for dialect that I had never suspected.
On op ed, Craig Babstock makes a good point about how we deal with prisoners in our jails - (or don't'e deal with them.) Allen Abel, as usual, is irrelevant and to say the least, lightweight.
Generally, it's hard to say much about a paper that doesn't itself have much to say, not in any category.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
March 10: Those whom the gods would destroy...
...they first make mad.
It happens to all of us. Whenever by good luck or by birth or by our living at the right moment in history we are doing well, we make two assumptions.
1. We did it all by our own merits and efforts.
2. And that god planned it that way, choosing us above others.
The British Empire was built on that thinking. Read British nineteenth and even twentieth century authors and you find the unconscious assumption that the British people were superior to all other. John Buchan, for example (former Governor General of Canada and author of The 39 steps) clearly saw Jews and Africans, at least, as people more primitive than the English and, therefore, quite justifiably under British rule. That was clearly God's will.
To do something against the imagined moral code of the British was to do something "not British". For a tribesman of the Sudan, therefore, to kill an English soldier was "not British". But for a British soldier to slaughter the people of the Sudan with the Maxim machine gun, well, that was just one more proof of British moral superiority.
Read Kipling's justification for the British pillaging of Asia and Africa in his advice to the US as the US began its exploitation of "lesser breeds". It's in a poem called The White Man's Burden. According to the poem, they were really taking the gold and diamonds of South Africa, using cheap labour in India to produce opium which they forced China to buy, and forcing the lesser breeds to work in dangerous conditions and at low pay. No. They were taking up god's command the British to serve those inferior people who would, of course, never be grateful.
So it was with all the European empires, and with the American one that followed them. American imperialism's major difference was that the sense that god had chosen America was and is stronger than it was in most of the European countries. The assumption that god has chosen the US to rule the world has permeated the US officer corps as much as it has many of the churches. And so chaplains pray with young men and women as they go out to kill and burn and torture.
God is convenient because the concept converts the world into two, simply defined groups. The good (us) and the evil (everybody who objects to us killing them.) If you want examples of that sort of thinking, read any news report in any North American newspaper. The choice of words almost always suggests that we are good, and they are bad. That is what has made it possible for the US government to create a police state. For Obama to break the law, to discard human rights. To kill and to torture is okay because "they" are evil, and we are the chosen of God. And that's why the police state has been spreading to Canada.
The form that madness takes gets worse with the power of those who control us. In the western world, that generally means big business. The pattern of madness that affects all of us affects them - but with more destructive results because of their greater power.
Fascinating to talk to such people. Their feeling toward fellow citizens of lower wealth is exactly the superior feeling that the empires had for their colonies. If you're poor or just middle class, you are obviously inferior to them. You're scum. You're lazy. You have no gumption. (Many years ago, I dated the daughters of some of those families. It was a real lesson in madness, hatred and ignorance.)
They assume that all their wealth is owing to their own brilliance and qualities of character - and they did it all by themselves. That's why they can get furious at any mention of taxes. That's THEIR money. They made it all by themselves And that was part of god's great plan.
They are superior. God intended that. And,therefore, they should rule. That's why you sometimes hear talk of one government for the whole world, with one dominant nation forcing its culture on all others. And the leaders of this world would be, of course, bankers and similar worthies.
That's the sort of arrogance that's a sign of the madness. It's the sort of arrogance that inspired Jim Irving to publicly announce a couple of years ago that he, though unelected, was declaring himself a member of the government. And Alward wimped it through.
I wish big business were as wise and as inspired by God as they often claim. Alas! Their criminal behaviour in banking has created the biggest economic crisis we have ever seen. Their madness in foreign affairs has led us from one disastrous war to another for some sixty years. ( and yes, those wars were very much fought to satisfy big business.) As for their greed in interfering in education (why does Jamie Irving spring to mind?) it has plunged American education back into the dark ages.It has just been announced that eighty percent of high school graduates in New York cannot read or do basic math well enough to handle courses at community colleges. So they first have to go through remedial courses.
The privatized public school (what the Irvings might like to call Public/Private/Partnership) have not only failed to perform for their own students; but their need for profit has forced governments to cut budgets for the real, public schools. It's a disaster for everyone.
That madness, manifesting itself in greed and incompetence, is what is bringing on the police state.
What is a police state?
It's a state in which the function of the police is not just to enforce the law, but to enforce the wishes of those that are power whether or not those wishes exist in any law. It manifests itself in spying on everyone -to control them. Even those who are simply exercising free speech find themselves coming under the power of the police state.
In the US, for example, at least a million people, probably many more, are not permitted to fly on the airlines. They have not committed any crime. But somebody, perhaps vindictively, sent in their name - probably anonymously, with an allegation without evidence.
I'm on at least one such list, Campus Watch. This is a group which publishes the names of anti-semites at universities. Their names and the names of their universities are collected by the government, and also supplied to corporations and the wealthy, advising them not to contribute to universities which have tainted people in them.
There is normally no evidence to the charges, and the person who makes the accusation is not reported. There is no crime, and no evidence of one. But it becomes something to be punished, anyway.
(I'm on the list because a friend of mine, a conservative and observant Jew who taught with me, was reported to Campus Watch as an anti-semite. I wrote to them, as I thought every professor in North American should have, to condemn what they had done. So they posted my name as an anti-semite, saying I had admitted it to them. - I don't worry about them. I'd be ashamed of myself if I had not written. There are some lists we should be proud to be on.)
The US has a massive domestic spying operation, tracking millions of citizens, perhaps tens of millions. Uncounted thousands of spies take material from their computers, check their mail, follow them, attach tracking devices to their cars, eavesdrop on their phone calls. All over the US, police forces are militarizing with heavier firepower. They exist not simply to enforce the law. Those people they're following haven't broken any law. The police are there not to enforce the law, but to impose the will of those the gods have made mad.
And some laws, some constitutional rights that protected freedom, have simply been scrapped. The president can now imprison and even order the assassination of people with no charge and no trial. That's a long way from the principles of the American Revolution.
It's been happening in Canada, too, for decades. The RCMP conducted years of investigation of Tommy Douglas, a Baptist clergyman and politician, though there was no possible reason to believe that he had ever broken a law in his life. But, worse than breaking a law, he had introduced medicare.And big business was not amused.
As you read this, CSIS and the RCMP are spying on environmentalists (occasionally using the word "terrorist" in connection with them.) This is worse than being an expensive idiocy. The RCMP and CSIS also meet with corporate polluters twice a year to tell them who the environmentalists are and what they're planning. That's not enforcing any law. That's giving control over Canadian society to big business. CSIS has also been know to cooperate with US officials in the torturing of Canadians.
And it's going to get much, much worse. Obama and Harper will be meeting soon to "coordinate" homeland defence. Coordinate. That means making Canadians, along with Americans, the most spied on people in the world. We can expect more secret lists, more spying on anyone who doesn't agree with the government and big business, and more American agencies moving some of their controlling apparatus up here.
This isn't something that's going to happen. It has happened. We, like Americans, are becoming prisoners in our own world. And to justify this destruction of democracy, our news media will continue to bombard us with stories of us (the good) and they (the evil, which means anybody in the way of western big business making even bigger profits.) And we will be taught to fear and hate the evil because the wealthy of this country will need our hysteria of fear and hatred as their excuse for throwing the rights of democracy out the window.
In this 21st century, everybody's a suspect - except the very wealthy who really run our governments.. And they, as they have already proven, are both incompetent and mad.
It happens to all of us. Whenever by good luck or by birth or by our living at the right moment in history we are doing well, we make two assumptions.
1. We did it all by our own merits and efforts.
2. And that god planned it that way, choosing us above others.
The British Empire was built on that thinking. Read British nineteenth and even twentieth century authors and you find the unconscious assumption that the British people were superior to all other. John Buchan, for example (former Governor General of Canada and author of The 39 steps) clearly saw Jews and Africans, at least, as people more primitive than the English and, therefore, quite justifiably under British rule. That was clearly God's will.
To do something against the imagined moral code of the British was to do something "not British". For a tribesman of the Sudan, therefore, to kill an English soldier was "not British". But for a British soldier to slaughter the people of the Sudan with the Maxim machine gun, well, that was just one more proof of British moral superiority.
Read Kipling's justification for the British pillaging of Asia and Africa in his advice to the US as the US began its exploitation of "lesser breeds". It's in a poem called The White Man's Burden. According to the poem, they were really taking the gold and diamonds of South Africa, using cheap labour in India to produce opium which they forced China to buy, and forcing the lesser breeds to work in dangerous conditions and at low pay. No. They were taking up god's command the British to serve those inferior people who would, of course, never be grateful.
So it was with all the European empires, and with the American one that followed them. American imperialism's major difference was that the sense that god had chosen America was and is stronger than it was in most of the European countries. The assumption that god has chosen the US to rule the world has permeated the US officer corps as much as it has many of the churches. And so chaplains pray with young men and women as they go out to kill and burn and torture.
God is convenient because the concept converts the world into two, simply defined groups. The good (us) and the evil (everybody who objects to us killing them.) If you want examples of that sort of thinking, read any news report in any North American newspaper. The choice of words almost always suggests that we are good, and they are bad. That is what has made it possible for the US government to create a police state. For Obama to break the law, to discard human rights. To kill and to torture is okay because "they" are evil, and we are the chosen of God. And that's why the police state has been spreading to Canada.
The form that madness takes gets worse with the power of those who control us. In the western world, that generally means big business. The pattern of madness that affects all of us affects them - but with more destructive results because of their greater power.
Fascinating to talk to such people. Their feeling toward fellow citizens of lower wealth is exactly the superior feeling that the empires had for their colonies. If you're poor or just middle class, you are obviously inferior to them. You're scum. You're lazy. You have no gumption. (Many years ago, I dated the daughters of some of those families. It was a real lesson in madness, hatred and ignorance.)
They assume that all their wealth is owing to their own brilliance and qualities of character - and they did it all by themselves. That's why they can get furious at any mention of taxes. That's THEIR money. They made it all by themselves And that was part of god's great plan.
They are superior. God intended that. And,therefore, they should rule. That's why you sometimes hear talk of one government for the whole world, with one dominant nation forcing its culture on all others. And the leaders of this world would be, of course, bankers and similar worthies.
That's the sort of arrogance that's a sign of the madness. It's the sort of arrogance that inspired Jim Irving to publicly announce a couple of years ago that he, though unelected, was declaring himself a member of the government. And Alward wimped it through.
I wish big business were as wise and as inspired by God as they often claim. Alas! Their criminal behaviour in banking has created the biggest economic crisis we have ever seen. Their madness in foreign affairs has led us from one disastrous war to another for some sixty years. ( and yes, those wars were very much fought to satisfy big business.) As for their greed in interfering in education (why does Jamie Irving spring to mind?) it has plunged American education back into the dark ages.It has just been announced that eighty percent of high school graduates in New York cannot read or do basic math well enough to handle courses at community colleges. So they first have to go through remedial courses.
The privatized public school (what the Irvings might like to call Public/Private/Partnership) have not only failed to perform for their own students; but their need for profit has forced governments to cut budgets for the real, public schools. It's a disaster for everyone.
That madness, manifesting itself in greed and incompetence, is what is bringing on the police state.
What is a police state?
It's a state in which the function of the police is not just to enforce the law, but to enforce the wishes of those that are power whether or not those wishes exist in any law. It manifests itself in spying on everyone -to control them. Even those who are simply exercising free speech find themselves coming under the power of the police state.
In the US, for example, at least a million people, probably many more, are not permitted to fly on the airlines. They have not committed any crime. But somebody, perhaps vindictively, sent in their name - probably anonymously, with an allegation without evidence.
I'm on at least one such list, Campus Watch. This is a group which publishes the names of anti-semites at universities. Their names and the names of their universities are collected by the government, and also supplied to corporations and the wealthy, advising them not to contribute to universities which have tainted people in them.
There is normally no evidence to the charges, and the person who makes the accusation is not reported. There is no crime, and no evidence of one. But it becomes something to be punished, anyway.
(I'm on the list because a friend of mine, a conservative and observant Jew who taught with me, was reported to Campus Watch as an anti-semite. I wrote to them, as I thought every professor in North American should have, to condemn what they had done. So they posted my name as an anti-semite, saying I had admitted it to them. - I don't worry about them. I'd be ashamed of myself if I had not written. There are some lists we should be proud to be on.)
The US has a massive domestic spying operation, tracking millions of citizens, perhaps tens of millions. Uncounted thousands of spies take material from their computers, check their mail, follow them, attach tracking devices to their cars, eavesdrop on their phone calls. All over the US, police forces are militarizing with heavier firepower. They exist not simply to enforce the law. Those people they're following haven't broken any law. The police are there not to enforce the law, but to impose the will of those the gods have made mad.
And some laws, some constitutional rights that protected freedom, have simply been scrapped. The president can now imprison and even order the assassination of people with no charge and no trial. That's a long way from the principles of the American Revolution.
It's been happening in Canada, too, for decades. The RCMP conducted years of investigation of Tommy Douglas, a Baptist clergyman and politician, though there was no possible reason to believe that he had ever broken a law in his life. But, worse than breaking a law, he had introduced medicare.And big business was not amused.
As you read this, CSIS and the RCMP are spying on environmentalists (occasionally using the word "terrorist" in connection with them.) This is worse than being an expensive idiocy. The RCMP and CSIS also meet with corporate polluters twice a year to tell them who the environmentalists are and what they're planning. That's not enforcing any law. That's giving control over Canadian society to big business. CSIS has also been know to cooperate with US officials in the torturing of Canadians.
And it's going to get much, much worse. Obama and Harper will be meeting soon to "coordinate" homeland defence. Coordinate. That means making Canadians, along with Americans, the most spied on people in the world. We can expect more secret lists, more spying on anyone who doesn't agree with the government and big business, and more American agencies moving some of their controlling apparatus up here.
This isn't something that's going to happen. It has happened. We, like Americans, are becoming prisoners in our own world. And to justify this destruction of democracy, our news media will continue to bombard us with stories of us (the good) and they (the evil, which means anybody in the way of western big business making even bigger profits.) And we will be taught to fear and hate the evil because the wealthy of this country will need our hysteria of fear and hatred as their excuse for throwing the rights of democracy out the window.
In this 21st century, everybody's a suspect - except the very wealthy who really run our governments.. And they, as they have already proven, are both incompetent and mad.
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