July 17: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Life is heck....

I've been all day fixing my computer. (So I got my son to fix it.)

So this is a very late blog - possibly a short one.

A reader wrote to suggest that perhaps I should not be so hard on the TandT staff. After all, they know they have to obey the boss if they hope to keep their jobs.

I would go along with that so far as junior reporters are concerned. After all, theirs are probably first jobs in the field - and they don't yet know the game. (Though I do wonder what journalism school is teaching - or not teaching - them.) But it's a different matter for staff writers and editors.

They've chosen to stay on though they know the Irving Press is a house of ill repute. They know the lying they do hurts and victimizes people. Unless they are very, very stupid or self-deluding, they know that what they're doing is unethical.

There is a tremendous responsibility that rests on journalists. The good ones take pride in telling the truth, no matter who dislikes it. But those at   the Irving papers have committed themselves to lives of lying and of hiding the facts. In that, they have done one hell of a lot of damage to this province. I don't feel at all guilty about calling them what they are.

Big  story on page 1? A retail shop on Main St. is moving to George St. Wow! Doesn't the owner know that Main St. is going to go wild when it gets a new hockey rink for just over 100 million (or just over two million? Whatever.

There's also a big picture of firemen standing on a roof and look at a hole in it. This was a banner day for lovers of photos of firemen standing on roofs looking at holes in them. Quick, go to page A8. There are two more pictures of firemen standing on a roof looking a a hole in it. Same firemen, same roof, same hole.

NewsToday is better than usual. Page one has a story, well-supported, that Harper has sent a list of people, including top civil servants, who are the 'enemy' because they don't kiss up to the boss enough. Well, that's no surprise. It's long been obvious that Harper is a man obsessed with power and control.

In a related sort of story, Harper seems to be backing a proposal for the US to extend drug patent rules in a way that would be extremely damaging to the poor countries that desperately need those drugs.

Of course, Harper will support it. Harper is obsessed with power. Getting and holding power means being a loyal servant to the very, very rich. (In this context, I always think of a former premier of this province who became a wealthy man by being useful to the very, very rich.)

The pharmaceutical industry is the sweetest racket every invented. (And please don't make me cry by telling how much research they do to develop new drugs.) Their big money goes to profits, lobbyists, advertising, and sales reps. In Canada, the sales reps alone, the ones who visit the doctors to get them to prescrive their stuff cost, on average, over $60.000 per year per doctor.

And their lobbyists make sure that foreign aid which delivers drugs to poor countries is paid by the taxpayer at the full, retail rate - which means that millions of people who should be getting drugs aren't getting them.
________________________________________________________________________________
There's another, quite sick story about how Canadian government scientists used aboriginal children and adults to conduct nutrition experiments. And, no, I don't mean it conducted experiments to see which foods were best for them. Commonly, the subjects were deliberately deprived of certain foods (like milk) and of essential vitamins for periods of two years and more. This is a story that deserves a follow up. (But we're not likely to see one.)

Then there's a story on the same page (C4) about how Canadian was involved in the torture practiced by its good friends in other countries.

These are stories that call for opinion pieces by editors and staff writers who have enough inegrity to see how important they are, and enough brains to do a bit of research and writing on them - to show why these stories are important to us.  Unfortunately, Brian Cormer couldn't do it because he had a big story on why it's not nice to text while driving. Staff writer Eric Lewis needed his space to say that we can't talk about a recent shooting because nothing in known about it yet. Well, okay. But one sentence would have done that.

Norbert Cunningham, as he so often does, gives us a condensed version of some story he read, heard or saw. This one is from BBC.

The editorial is a rant at city council for making a fuss over a recent report on spending to build the stadium. The writer swears at council, accuses them of trying to make a case out of nothing, and says all that was in the report was printed in the TandT several years ago.

I have no idea whether the editorial writer (is it Al Hogan?) is functionally illiterate, mentally unwell, a liar, or just stunningly stupid. But that's our range of choice in judging that editorial.

The TandT published that whole report years ago? How could they when it hadn't been prepared yet?
It touches only minor details? Okay, let's assume that 3.8 million over budget is a minor detail. But in fact, the report did NOT say it was only 3.8 million. That latter was only the second part of going over budget. So the real figure was much greater than that.

The report has only minor supporting details? Gee, Mr. Editorial writer, you must be a real, cool kinda guy to say that a huge absense of receipts and a lack of any record of where large sums of money went constitutes "minor supporting" details.

I can understand that. Somebody gives me a million of taxpayers' money. He's a friend. So I don't give a receipt. That's what friends are for.

And we certainly don't want the people spending our money to have to jump through "bureaucratic hoops" to get a few million when some deserving workman has earned it. So, of course, you don't keep records.

And, as the writer says, you can't complain about overspending by a few, piddling millions if you "want this city to progress." I mean, we'll never attract contractors if they aren't allowed to cheat.

Then he appeals to the heavens that critics are trying to pin the blame on city staff. Come off it.That's a false appeal to sentiment. City hall staff did not walk off with millions of dollars, and nobody has said they did.

The problem with Moncton, as with the rest of New Brunswick, is that corruption in politics and in business is all in a normal day. In this case, for example, you have to wonder what the mayor was doing while estimates were rising, and receipts disappearing.

"Digging up years old stadium spending does no good....", storms the editorial writer.  Damn right. There should be a statute of limitations on this sort of thing. Any crime committed four years ago or more should be automatically forgiven.

What a turkey!
______________________________________________________________________________

In a piece of news that didn't and won't make the TandT, our military has special ops troops for highly planned missions. There are very similar to such US units as the SEALS - and, indeed, are very, closely connected to American special ops.

But we're not allowed to know anything about them, not what they do, or why, or where.... Just like US special ops.

No big deal? They need to be secret? well....

US special ops give Obama groups of highly trained thugs who can be sent into countries the US is not at war with to carry assassinations and other destruction. Those are acts of war. But the American constitution says that only congress can approve war.

Implication for Canada? If it's all secret, that means Harper has his own gang of thugs that he can committ to an act of war - and that, as in the US, in contrary to our consitutional practice. Only the Canadian people, acting through parliament can approve of a war.

This was important enough so that Canada in 1939 delayed declaring war on Germany and Italy for a week until parliament could be summoned to vote on it. The importance of that is it was given, in many a Nov. 11 speech, as a leading reason why Canadians died in World War One - so that only our representatives could declare war.

You think that's irrelevant? Okay.

US special ops have been widely used by American big business operating in poor countries. In thiese countries, American (and Canadian) big business frequently use brutal methods, beating, starvation wages, theft of land, coerced labour- and pollution on a such a massive scale that large portions of Africa and Central American today will not support human life. People object to all that. So the companies have security guards, hired to  intimidate, murder and rape. But sometimes they need something bigger. That's when the special ops are sent in.

Remember the slaughter of a quarter million native peoples in Guatemala? The one that Clinton publicy apologized for but was ignored by most of the North American Press?  Much of it was done by Guatemalan troops with US special ops leadership - and special ops training in useful things like torture.

But Canada would never do such a thing. Canadians respect their constitution. They would never send troops into a country without parliament first approving it.

Well, actually, it already has. Canadian special ops were in Afghanistan from the first day - well before Canada announced it would be sending troops. Both Liberal and Conservative prime ministers know that because they did it.

There was almost certainly special ops sent with our "peacekeepers" in Haiti - an operation that was a complete fraud.  The real purpose of that invasion was to overthrow the democratically elected government of Haiti and install an American puppet. I don't think that's what our soldiers in World War One died for.

But, anyway, Canadian big business would never mistreat its workers in foreign countries. Would it?

Guess again. Canada is big time in the mining business with extensive holdings in Latin America and Africa. And the Canadian mining business is known as brutal and coercive and environmentally murderous as the worst.

But we wouldn't send in special ops, would we?

Well, you could ask Mr. Harper. But he won't say.



 

July 16: burned yesterday, power lost, no air conditioner all night, no sleep, still no power...

working on a (very) strange computer, lots of aches, depressed, annoyed...THE WORLD MUST PAY ATTENTION,

Among lesser issues, the TandT has yet another letter from  George (Skip) Wallin. He writes quite a few on the glories of shale gas. And today, he's honoured as letter of the day. And he's really smart , like, y'know. Like - he reads newspapers like The Spectator. So, y'know, he, like, knows.

Like today, he tells us how the American economy is recovering, and how all those offshore jobs with cheap labour  are being dropped to bring good times back to the US. And it's all because of cheap shale gas.

Well, gee goshwillkers  Mr. Skip sir, what recovery? What jobs?

Certainly U.S. big business is doing great. But US poverty has never been as high. 22 million children in the US live in families below the poverty line. (23,550 for a family of four).

And offshore jobs are coming onshore? Well, sort of. The US now has 17 million workers from offshore and poor countries. They're working dirt cheap. But that's 17 million jobs Americans don't have.

As well, of the very few new jobs opening up for Americans, almost all are minimum wage and/or part time.  Some recovery!

Things are moving in the same direction here. The jobs that, under blessing of free trade  we have exported at two dollars a day, no benefits, no environment rules  (thank you Mr Mulroney) are going to stay exported.

Free trade gave big business huge profits by exploiting the poverty of the world's poorest people. And, by creating unemployment here, it has allowed big business to lower wages for us. That pattern has impoverished Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland Britain, the U.S. Shale gas has not changed that anywhere. And it's not going to

Incidentally, the word 'quotes' is a verb, not a noun.. The word you were searching for is 'quotation'.

Oh, be sure to tell all those in the U.S. living on food stamps - and the homeless - and the unemployed - and those who lived in ghost towns like Detroit - and the 22 million children who live in poverty. It would make them feel so much better.

And it's so wonderful to read a letter to the editor by an eddicated man like you.
________________________________________________________________________________
There's nothing much in the whole paper today. Alan Cochrane has a penetrating and thought-provoking article on what is's like to sit in a Chevry Silverado pickup that goes vroom, vroom. Wow, with all that, who needs sex?

Gwynn Dyer has a chilling opinion piece on the case of Edward Snowden, the young CIA analyst who faces three choices - assassination, years of torture, and life in solitary.  Perhaps we shall get a learned letter from Super Skip on how he deserves it for betraying his country. But he didn't betray his country.

His 'country' is the American constitution and  American law. Snowden is a patriot who defended those.  The man who betrayed his country was Obama and, before him, Bush. Between them they shattered the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the constitution. They illegally jailed people without charge or trial, they gave themselves the power to order assignations. They destroyed everything the American revolution was about.

And the ones who call themselves patriots, the gun nuts of the National Rifle Association, stood around with their faces hanging out.

Now, Obama has broken both the constitution and international law with his mass spying.

Yet, many people see Snowden as the betrayer and Obama as the patriot. Well, at least we can now understand why so many Germans rallied around Hitler as a patriot.

And there's worse, much worse, that we don't yet know.
____________________________________________________________________________
Not much of the Snowden story ever reached the TandT, of course.  Nor has much attention been paid to the middle east.  So here's a quick tour...
Syria - the US is arming Syrian "rebels" though knowing that most of the weapons will get to those "rebels' are really Moslem jihadists - the ones defined in US policy as terrorist, the ones the US is supposedly fighting a war on. But the US has also delayed its supplies. So what's going on? Does the US want the rebels to lose?

Yes. But it doesn't want the government to win, either. A win for the rebels would create a Moslem, fundamentalist state next door to Israel. But a win for the Syrian president would maintain a Syria hostile to American interference in the region. The solution?

Make sure neither of them wins.. Let them fight a long and bloody war until Syria, as a nation, is destroyed. This could kill hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians - including virtually the whole Christian population. Hey. Them's the breaks.

Meanwhile,  he is supplying aid to the Egyptian army, even though it overthrew an elected government. Again, Obama is breaking American law. And he's setting up another civil war.

Then you have Israel, illegally bombing Syria - and using bases in Turkey. The people of Turkey are not going to be thrilled by that.

Then there is the coming Israeli attack on Iran - all of thesis   part of an American attempt to make its dominance of the middle east and Africa absolute - something China, Russia and India might feel that cannot accept.

It's all become quite insane, out of  control, and loaded with possibilities for nuclear war.

But, hey, how about that op ed piece on the thrill of riding in a Chevy Silverado pickup?

july 15: The asking of questions....

Picture an Irving Press reporter asking Joseph Stalin, "Were you nice to Ukrainians Mr. Stalin?"

Stalin smiles and nods, and the Irving reporter scampers back with the next day's headline. "Stalin nice to Ukrainians".

But a real reporter would look around, then ask a question."If you were nice to them, how come so many million of them died under your rule?"

Questions are important. Irving reporters never seem to ask them. But they are important. So let's flash to the present, and to Lac Megantic where 50 people died.

On that day, Premier Alward assured the legislature that such trains in New Brunswick were safe.

Well - the train that destroyed Lac Megantic had been due in New Brunswick the day he said that. Nobody - not the reporters, not the official opposition had the wit to ask him how it could be true that train in NB are safe. It would be the same train, and with the same, one engineer, operating under the same, federal regulations or lack of them.. How could it kill fifty people in Quebec but become perfectly safe when crossing the New Brunswick border?

And there are other questions.

That railway company had a bad safety record in the US. Its president was well known in railway circles as one who created risk by pinching pennies and cutting corners. Didn't Irving executives check the record of the company they were consigning such a large and dangerous shipment to? Didn't they check the record of the railway president?

It shouldn't have been hard to find out. After all, Irving oil has some pretty intimate ties to the railway industry.

Then there's the question of the removal of the requirement that such trains could NOT travel with just one engineer aboard. That not only put the lone engineer in grave danger of an accident through fatigue or lack of attention or from illness; it also meant a huge shipment of volatile cargo was left untended every night - with the engine running.

All of that constituted one hell of a risk - and fifty people paid the price for that risk.

Weren't all those High paid Irving executives asking those obvious questions? If not, why are such incompetent asses making hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of dollars a year?

If they did ask - or if they knew - why did they hire that company as the shipper? Let me guess.

Maybe it was cheap. Maybe they didn't give a damn whether people might die. It that's the case, there should be a charge of criminal negligence - perhaps of manslaughter.

And, oh yes. Why did Harper change the regulations to permit only one engineer? Is it possible that someone asked him to do it? Who?

Of course, none of these questions will be addressed in any enquiry set up by governments in Ottawa, Quebec or---well, there won't even be an informal discussion in new Brunswick. The Irving press should be running an editorial that Alward lied to the legislature.But be assured that none of this will happen, and no questions will be asked.

Note, though, that all the major figures involved are people who have been assuring us that fracking for shale gas is perfectly safe.

There was, I'm sure, a prayer for the dead and bereaved at the Irving Chapel service we were all invited to yesterday. Prayer is good. It eases guilt, erases responsibility, and keeps mosquitoes away.

I had a letter from a right-wing apologist saying New Brunswickers should be happy the accident happened in Lac Megantic, and not in downtown St. John. I thought that was remarkably perverse reasoning. He also thinks shale gas is harmless.

Mind you, if it had happened in downtown St. John, Premier Alward would still have said our railways are safe.
__________________________________________________________________________
No news in today's paper. There's a story on Lac Megantic. But it simply rehashes what we already knew, and adds trivia. It raises no questions.

For reasons unclear to me the Your Investments page has a big story on how the outgoing commander of the Canadian army says we need to spend more money on it. Well - maybe he's about to retire, and join the other generals who hold executive offices for defence contractors. Just like in the US.

There is not a word about the long confrontation between shale gas opponents and SWN, not a word on what may well be the most important movement ever to develop in this province.

However, there are two, full pictures of antique cars (well, most of them are just old, sort of). Most of them, in fact,  look like modern cars except they're often longer, uglier, burn more gas, and have engines treated to go vroom, vroom. So it's like, you know, important.  And then there's a whole page of people walking down the middle of the street in Shediac. Wow!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The editorial says nothing - which is a big improvement on the something it usually says.

Norbert makes the point that some people lie to make  their case on some issues. Okay. Some do. But why does he pick women who claim to be rape victims? Even Norbert admits that most such claims are true.

Why didn't he pick on premiers who say our trains are perfectly safe? or on billionaires who say that shale gas won't hurt anybody?

Because they'd spank his little bum if he did. That's why.

Even the headline on the column is a giveaway. "Want to change the world? Stick to the facts!"
Let's see. Who does one think of with that sentence coming from Norbert? Why, protesters. That's who. Always trying to change things. Not like those nice, corporate bosses who want to keep things just as they are - low to no taxes for billionaires, shale gas no matter what it does to us, trainloads of crude oil under dangerous conditions... Yeah. We need more sensible people like that.

Craig Babstock writes his usual column that says nothing, and is so boring it would stun a moose in heat.

Steve Malloy's column is not a great big stick of dynamite. But, oh, it's nicely written. There is, in his subtle way, something in there to think about. And he has won the heart of every woman in Moncton. If Mrs. Malloy isn't in tears by the end of that column - well - then she must be an executive for Irving.
______________________________________________________________________________
There are three, very impressive letters to the editor. "Protesters want their voice heard", "Greed in the face of poverty", "Pennsylvania hurt by gas industry". All three are on issues the Irving Press has avoided covering. So why do they publish the letters?

It's because people who want to complain about a newspaper go to what's called a press council. This is an organization set up supposedly to deal with complaints that the news has been biased or ignored or otherwise mishandled. It's supposed to discipline the press.

In reality, most press councils are really there to cover up for the press. And the Atlantic Press Council is a pime example of the species.                 

If you complain that the Irving Press has not covered the shale gas issue, you'll wait for a few days, then get a post...
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter that the Times Transcript has not covered the shale gas issue. However, we note that it did have a series on the issue by professor Savoie some weeks ago. As well, it has published letters on the subject. So we must reject your claim.
Thank you, and get stuffed.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
 
 

July 14:This is the making of history....

New Brunswick is, almost certainly, going through the  most important political and economic moment it has seen in a hundred and fifty years - and more. The corruption and the moral rot that has characterized its past (and present) is for the first time being openly challenged. And the TandT and the whole Irving press  haven't said a word about it.

I don't want to say they're all lying - though most of the editorial staff surely is lying. But we have to be generous and allow for sheer stupidity and journalistic incompetence - the twin devils whose dung we can see almost every day on the editorial and op ed pages.

As well, there are commonly huge gaps on the news pages. For example, a report commissioned by the city council recently showed that the city went over budget in building the stadium. And I mean big time over budget as an initial estimate of some 14 billion turned out to cost almost double that. Nor can it be written off entirely in incompetence.

For millions of dollars, there is no record of what the money was for or who got it. That's not just incompetence. That's robbery. And it's criminal. Some people, somebody was in collusion. Who can tell who it was? The moral rot in this province runs deep, and includes some of the best families.

Somebody in city government had to know what was going on - perhaps a person who is now encouraging us to spend over a hundred million on a hockey rink when we could renew the old one for a quarter of that. Well, it wouldn't be a quarter of that. The same people who filled their pockets on the stadium would do the same with the hockey rink.

But none of this was important enough to make the pages of the TandT.

Dr.Cleary, the Chief Provincial Medical Officer who warned about shale gas has just been given a major, natiional award for what she did. The government ignored her. The Irving Press butchered her report, preferring to accept a report from a man quite incompetent to make the report he did. Of course, that man has suffered for the wrong he did. Every day, he has to drop his pants and bend over for Norbert's kisses.

 And, of course, the Irving Press becomes one of the few in Canada not to mention Dr. Cleary's award.

In other health matters, somebody outside government is pushing for changes in health care that  would lead to privatization. The spiel is that privatization would be more efficient. And that is lying bullshit. Worse, it is murderous, lying bullshit.

The US has a private health system. It is far less efficient and far less expensive than our medicare. Indeed, it is far more expensive and inefficient that any health system in the developed world. And the expense and inefficiency kill.

Recent figures from the US show that under private health, the rich live longer than the poor. The time longer is in the range of 10 to 20 years. (It's a saving, in way, because the very poor die at 63, so you don't have the burden of paying pensions to them.) That's not efficiency. That's deliberate murder to satisfy greed.

But don't worry about that report. It hasn't appeared in the Irving Press; and it's not going to.

Then there are the "business" committees. What the hell is going on in this province? Can you imagine the storm if a union were to form a committee to 'advise' the provincial government or city hall? If the homeless were to decide to do so? If the poor did so? If small storekeepers did so? If teachers did so?

But Mr. Irving, contrary to Canadian consitutional practice threw together a committee of business buddies and administrative tarts from the universities to plan the economic future of New Brunswick - something us common people had just elected a government to do.

Then he had the astonishing nerve to name himself a member of the government. -though nobody had voted for him or asked him. Then, premier Alward, a man who makes a jellyfish look like a body builder in comparison, allowed this intruder to plant his puppets officially as advisers to the Minister of Finance.

The Irving press noted nothing of this extraordinary and anti-constitutional behaviour.

More recently, another Irving presented himself as a chairman of business group to advise city council (the one WE had elected to make decisions) on matters like the events centre/hockey rink.) Not only is that presumptuous, it also gives people with a stake in the hockey rink (including the chairman) an unelected role in getting it built - and perhaps profiting in the construction themselves.

This has a real stench about it - as does the mysterious appearance of a billboard group called Business Inc. This is a denial of democratic rights for most of us, and highly improper intrusions by business into government. But the Irving press clamps a great, clothespin on its collective nose, and treats it as if this were normal behaviour in a free society.

And no doubt they will some day find a professor to write a series on how good this all is for us.

Oh, and the Canadian government spies on our phone calls and e mail. But there won't be  room for it in the paper. It has a big story on somebody nobody ever heard of and who has done nothing for a whole lifetime.

And, of course, there is no room for the story of how Harper is deliberately destroying the only public broadcaster we have. and the best news source in the country - counting radio, TV and the press. What he wants is something brainless, and something completely under his control. He plans to sneak it through under a big pile of legislation with no time for debate. Luckily for Harper, he has a Governor-General with even less spine than Alward has. (Of course he has less; he was once a university president. If you think that suggests a certain contempt for university presidents, you're right. I'll write about it some day.)

And that brings us to why this is a great moment for New Brunswick.

From it's early days, this province has been dominated politically and economically by a handful of robber barons who held power because they controlled access to the only paid employment available. To say one word of criticism of them meant stigma and, probably, poverty for life.

To this day, most New Brunswickers are afraid to express anything but the most loutish opinions in public. I encountered more freedom of speech in China than I have in New Brunswick - and that's not an exaggeration. You will find that fear of open expression all the way down to school committees, churches, even coffee klatches...  People are scared.

Now, for the first time, we're seeing an open and public challenge to the old dominance. Thanks largely to the courage of native peoples with support from others among us, we're seeing people stare down the robber barons.

It's happening on route 116 where peaceful protestors faced by police who are not always peaceful have been facing SWN, a fracking company that is exploring for shale gas in the region. And, as we all know, this exploration is to be followed by many more across the province.

It takes courage to stand out there in the open. And in this heat it takes suffering and endurance. But they've been out there day after day with scant shelter or water or conveniences of any sort. They're out there for all of us. They're out there to challenge the vultures who have fed off this province for generations.

But there's no word in the TandT about the sacrifice and the hardship it means to be out there all day every day, remaining patient, remaining orderly, but demanding our human rights be respected. Mind, should anything happen that could be blamed on the protesters, it will instantly make front page, with a flaming editorial by whoever the half-wit is who writes editorials, and a moustache-twisting rant by Norbert.

For years, the Irving Press has either ignored the issues involved in fracking - or it has lied about them. The Irving Press is the face of the moral rot that characterizes the political and economic leadership of this province. For the past few weeks, its strategy on the current protest has been to ignore it. We have had more news on old cars and strawberries than we have had on this crucial moment in New Brunswick  history.

The economic leadership of this province has nothing but contempt for you, for your children, for your prosperity, for your  health, even for your life.

And now, for the first time, the apprently God-given right of that leadership is being challenged. It's happening on route 116 with a leadership from us that has shown intelligence, hard work, and excellent organization. Indeed, everyone who is there can fairly be called a leader. We owe our support and our thanks to all of them.

This is a mile post in our history. And that history is not likely to be kind to the vultures of the          world of big business, or to the journalistic maggots of the Irving press.


 

July 13: On renovating your mansion in the correct style

You'll find this useful article in the Home and Garden section, p. 1. It features Bill Clinton's home (Georgian style), along with multi, multi million dollar homes in Gothic Revival etc. And it's just packed with useful information on redecorating.

For us peasants, there is one picture of a bungalow such as one might hope to find in Moncton. The priceless advice on it? You might need a few extra lamps in it. Wow, and here we've all been going along holding candles.

This page is a fine example of lazy and sloppy editorial choice with no thought at all of who
the readers are.
Cheap, though.

___________________________________________________________________________
The front page is taken up with trivia about all the old cars in town. (Do you really care whether "couples come to Atlantic Nationals to socialize"?) And the rest of the first section is just as good.
Apparently, for example,  "Downtown scattered with edible plants".
Let's make it a supper date.
__________________________________________________________________________
Newstoday has a story on Edward Snowden the whistle blower who is taking sanctuary at Moscow airport. This is the man who crime is that he showed that President Obama was breaking the law and the constitution  with his massive spying on the private lives of almost all Americans (and everybody else). He's hoping to get sanctuary in Russia. But he probably won't.

There's no percentage for anybody in offering him shelter. If he's lucky, he'll get assassinated. If not, he'll he'll spend years of solitary and torture in the sweet land of liberty. Then he'll face a rigged trial, and spend the rest of his life in solitary.
________________________________________________________________________________
The editorial is trivial and brainless - a great improvement over a column that is usually obnoxious and brainless.

Bill Beliveau offers of column full of stuff we already knew. Hint, Bill.......

The oil involved in the Megantic disaster is Irving's. He chose to move it on a railway owned by a man notorious for cutting corners to save money, and one who has a bad safety record in the US. Our federal government loosened its railway safety regulations a year ago for people just like him.

Gee. Isn't Mr. Irving involved in the railway business, too? Isn't it possible he knew all about the risks of the railway he was using? Isn't it possible he chose it BECAUSE its practices made it cheap as well as dangerous?

And at whose request did Mr. Harper loosen the regulations so that such a train could run with just one human on it? Surely, it wasn't done just at the request of an American railway that was a small player on the Canadian scene.

A town is destroyed, and over 50 people are dead. We will now have a long, long enquiry. But however long it may be, we can be sure that some names will never come up in it.
__________________________________________________________________________
Norbert - go back to ranting. Your attempt at a serious analysis of the Egytian coup is contemptibly ignorant of both democracy and history.

If a democratically elected government becomes unpopular the military is entitled to overthrow it? Okay. So when to we get to tell our army to overthrow Alward and Harper, and replace them?

Then he compare the coup to our attack on Hitler.

However,
1. Hitler's Germany was not a democracy.
2. We did not go to war on Hitler to stage a coup against Hitler's rule. On the contrary, most of the western world, especially big business in Canada and the US supported Hitler. They supplied the money for his rise. They insisted the Berlin Olympics go ahead, though popular opinion was against them. Holllywood producers collaborated with Hitler in the 1930s to make films that served the Nazi propaganda machine. They were also big financial donors. In gratitude to Henry Ford, Hitler kept an enormous portrait of him over his desk. Early in the war, American oil companies continued to suppory Hitler with oil. Even in 1941, and almost a month after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the United States did NOT declare war on Germany. In fact, it was the other way around, Germany declared war on the US.
3.You say if people believe in human rights, they have a right to overthrow an elected government?  Okay. Then the American people have a right to overthrow Obama for his unconstitutional infringements of human rights.
4. There is a polarization on the issue of human rights between Islamists and democrats? Bullshit, Norbert.The world has a great many countries in which human rights do not exsit. You will find such dictatorships all over central America, and all of them created by the "democratic" US where the government spies on everybody, and where the president can jail people without charge ot trial.
Islamist Iran WAS a country with democracy and respect for himan rights. It was the US that overthrew it and installed a brutal dictatorship. When the US left South Korea after the Korean War, it left a dictator in charge. The US intervened in Haiti to destroy a democratically elected government which had popular support.
5. The army is going to bring democracy to Egypt? Norbert - it was the generals who kept democracy out of Egypt. It is the army that has ruled Egypt since King Farouk left. And the generals did it through all those years with heavy Americn support - not to say bribes.
6. You don't like Morsi?  I don't like Morsi, either. But Egyptians elected him in a legal election. Democracy means the people shall have the right to decide who will government them. Whether you or I like them, Norbert, is irrelevant. It is their decision, not ours. And not the army's. and not the US's.
7. Norbert, if you had the brains of a sparrow you would realize the US organized that coup in Egypt. The generals depend entirely on American aid.

The reality is that the US will not tolerate any democracy that is not a puppet for it. It has put economic pressure and military pressure on any South American government that has attempted to establish democrcacy. It helped overthrough an elected president in Vietnam, and install a series of dictator generals. But it happily bundles up with friendly dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Guatemala (where a US invasion destroyed another democracy that had popular support.)

To call the US a democracy is absurd. It has only two parties, both financed and controlled by billionaires. Both parties, like NB's liberals and conservatives, are the same party. Obama, like it or not, is Bush.

And the US, though no doubt chosen by God, does not have much of a record of spreading democracy, and it does not have a God-given right to interfere in other countries.

Norbert, your column is a crashing example of ignorance and bigotry in just about every sentence. I would love to debate you publicly on this. But we knew that won't happen.

And you were editor of the Times and Transcript.

For an intelligent comment on the situation in Egypt, read Gwynne Dyer on the op ed page.
______________________________________________________________________________

On the Faith Page, the Lord's work goes on.. Church of the Nazarene is holding a community barbecue.

The day's sermonette is that preachers often endure the dreadful ordeal of being criticized by people who didn't like the sermon. Pastor, I don't want to trivialize the pain you must feel on those occasions - but this sort of rudeness is a daily experience for waitresses, bartenders, office boys, teachers...and so the list goes.

Imagine what it would be like if you were preaching real Christianity as Jesus did, and getting chased by soldiers, tried by a mob, abused in public, and executed.

On balance, you shouldn't get your knickers in a twist over the occasional persoon who says he didn't like your sermon. Indeed, there might be better reason to worry about the ones who liked it.

June 12: "Iwalked in the garden alone....

"While the dew was still on the roses..."
My father, a mechanic, loved to sing hymns, putting all 250 pounds of him into it. And, from the age of eleven, I was his piano accompanist. "And he walks with me and he talks with me...."  It all came back to me as I saw the ad on p. A3 of today's Times and Transcript.

We are invited to attend Irving Memorial Chapel in Bouctouche, and "Enjoy the beauty of God's creation throughout the grounds..." Of course, God didn't really do a great job in the first shot at it. The grounds needed a lot of expensive work by Mr. Irvinig before it could meet  holy standards. But there's no worry about time in the wilderness here because at The Irving Chapel, you can walk along the "...lovely ivory silk lilac path."

And there's none of your sittin' on the ground under a hot sun and chewin' on loaves and fishes. No sir. The Irving Chapel's got coffee fellowship in "The Barn".

And there's none of your standin' around listenin' to a  guy in sandals and a bunch of fishermen. No sir. The Irving Chapel's got one of them there Reverend Doctors all the way from Moncton.

Come and capture the spirit of the Irving Chapel. Learn how Our Father gave us shale gas that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Listen to tales of the holy work of offshore bank accounts. Feel The Spirit as it moves through the pages of the Irving Press, into the halls of government and the disciples of Business Inc. in Moncton.  Shout hallelujas for the events centre.

Enjoy, knowing that at The Irving Chapel, you are with the right sort of people, the ones who never get crucified.

Or, if you'd rather, check out the ad next to it for the casino. (The Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. All we need now is a temple to the whore of Babylon.)


______________________________________________________________________________
The Times and Transcript continues to ignore the confrontation between the SWN and anti-shale gas protesters. Well, they do carry the story of some trees cut down. But that's only so they can hint it was done by protesters.

They haven't written a word about the coming together of so many people in such difficult conditions (you try standing day after day under a hot sun with limited water or conveniences of any sort.) They're suffering for what they believe in. They're suffering not just for themselves but for everybody in this province.  There's an important story there for a real newspaper.

This is the biggest story for New Brunswick in years. The outcome of it is going to mark this province for a long time to come - not just in the impact of shale gas itself, but in the trust and cohesion essential for any society to survive.

________________________________________________________________________

NewsToday has a big story on Lac Megantic. It's over a day old but, what the hell, it's the spirit that counts. I am still puzzling over the response of premier Alward and the silent stupor of his Liberal opposition.

Alward said that the railways in NB were safe. In response, Mr. Gallant seems to have sat there with his face hanging out. But consider this...

There is strong reason to believe that a factor in this accident was that the engineer was alone, one many driving a long train across a continent. He had no relief, no breaks, nobody to take over should be become ill.  Think of it. Isn't it amazing that a train could, any day, be racing along with only a dead man at the controls?). Aren't there regulations to cover that?

Well, there used to be. But the railways didn't like them. They thought it was too expensive to have two or three engineers on a train. So Mr. Harper changed the regulations to require only one engineer.

And that may well be why a town was destroyed and fifty people are dead.

If Mr. Alward did not know what the regulations were, then he was a fool to make a statement in the legislature that all was safe. If he did know, then he was a scoundrel.

In any case, what possible justification did he have to say an accident that happened in Quebec could not happen here? We have the same regulations in New Brunswick that applied in Quebec.

The leader of the opposition seems to have been equally ignorant. It was simple enough to find out. A phone call to Ottawa would have done it. I got it simply off the web.

Oh, well, every penny saved can go to projects like making the gardens at The Irving Chapel ever more lovely.
___________________________________________________________________________
There is no news story on Edward Snowden, the whistle blower who revealed that President Obama is illegally spying on virtually all Americans - their letters, their e-mails, their credit cards, their phone calls. The information is also being handed over - illegally - to anybody who has the connections or money to get it.
And, most certainly, there is no story about how our own Mr. Harper is doing the same thing to us.
There is no story that a great many Americans who see the danger of all this to constitutional rights and to freedom itself are on Snowden's side.
Meanwhile, Obama is determined to get Snowden - to put him in a military prison for a long period of torture to be followed by a rigged trial, just as was done to Private Bradley Manning.
______________________________________________________________________________
The editorial is on a subject the editor knows nothing about - as usual. It concludes with a drool that the debate over shale gas is irrelevant; it is happening only because some people don't like shale gas; and it should go ahead because the government is willing to take the risks.
If you think this is a rational statement, then read it again, changing the words shale gas to Nazi death camps.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Alec Bruce and David Suzuki are the only two items worth reading in the whole paper. And both are VERY worth reading.

Michael Sullivan continues to show a strong talent as a communicator. He writes this one to say it's silly to change licence plates just because the letters on it may be a racial slur. I don't agree with him. After all, it's easy to say we should ignore such things when you belong to a group that doesn't get slurred.

However, the fact that I don't agree with him doesn't mean this is a bad column. It's well written. It's clearly argued. It far outclasses the staff-written columns and the editorials. I just can't see it as a big enough issue to write about. Mr. Sullivan has talent. He shouldn't waste it.
________________________________________________________________________________

Generally, there is no sense in this paper of the enormour and dangerous change we are living through. The nature of world economies, the decay of democracy, the rise of government by a new aristocracy, the wildly out of control imperialism of the US, the tremendous chaos this has caused all over thw world, the weakening of our social cohesion with all the implications that has for our survival - none of t his is reflected in the Irving Press. And there seems to be only one writer at thos papers who has the brains to see it.

As a very small example of what is happening, take a look at what is happening with the shale gas issue. This confict has arisen largely because New Brunswick governments have been dishonest from the start. And they are dishonest because they are controlled by business leaders who have unlimited greed and arrogance and utter contempt for democracy.

As a result, New Brunswickers now find themselves bitterly divided against each other. Worse, a very large number have become divided against our police. The RCMP, once a universally admired force, is now seen by some not as an enforcer of the law but as an oppresser under the almost direct control of those who want to exploit us.

It is even worse in the US, much worse. Across North America, we are losing trust in politicians, in police, in the law itself. The rules, trust in the rules, trust in those who make the rules, trust in those who enforce them - all these are the glue that holds a society together. But all these trusts have been discredited. And behind it all is the realization (often unadmitted but still there) that democracy no longer has a meaning.

Either we repair what we had or we slip wholly into the chaos that was the twentieth century for most countries. If we don't recover the democracy that we once had (and improve on it), then we slide over the cliff.

One slide, the one led by big business takes us into fascism. That is what is now happening in Canada and the US. That is why I have reacted so strongly to Mr. Irving's arrogance in declaring himself in coalition with the government.

The other slide takes us into the communism of Mao and Stalin.

Add to that the witch's brew of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and robot killers at our disposal -and we are living in the most dangerous times this world will ever see.

And the Irving Press, far from being any help, is the front line of fascism. (Yes, I know the editorial staff of the Irving Press is too stupid to know what fascism means. But their ignorance of what they are doing does not do anything to find sanity.)
 

July 11: journalistic scumbags..

...that's a lower category than presstitutes.

1. A reader has informed me that Dr. Cleary, our Chief Medical Officer whose advice those twits in Federicton ignored when she warned about the dangers of shale gas, is getting a major, national award today. The Canadian Institute of Public Health Inspectors is giving her the Environmental Health Award. The Toronto Star carried the story yesterday.

But there's not a word in the Irving Press. Guess why.

And Norbert, who wets his pants whenever Prof. Savoie and Prof. Lapierre issue statements on subjects they know nothing about, will certainly say nothing about this award.

There is a profound rot in this province that runs through the Liberals, the Conservatives, city councils, and the newspapers. We would actually be better off if we had the mafia here.

2. Premier Alward, who can always be trusted to say something dumb in any emergency, assures us that our railways are perfectly safe. Oh, really? Does he know that the railway which burned down Megantic connects with New Brunswick. Does he know it has a bad safety record in the US?

He feels safe with a railway that has one engineer, working alone, who drives a 73 tanker train of oil across the continent? He has to drive all day, every day, no breaks, stay alert, then leave the train alone every night. So exactly what does our fearless leader base his confidence on?

If Mr. Alward and his whole cabinet added up all their IQ scores and reached a number equal to the IQ of an average mongoose, they would surely realize there is something terribly wrong with railway regulation in Canada. A town is destroyed and fifty people are dead.. To respond that our railways are safe is inane.

Of course, it's the engineer who's going to cricified for this.

As for the railway president, he showed up in Megantic four days after the blast. The Canadian Press report noted that he showed a great sense of humour. I'll be he's a barrel of laughs at funerals.

3. On a related topic, I forgot in yesterday's blog to note a really dumb report in the TandT. Superficially about the Megantic disaster, it was really propagnda for an oil pipeline - and so it duly quoted an oil industry spokesman as saying we need a pipline for Canada to reach energy self-sufficiency in the next 25 years.

What?

Most of the world's scientists agree that using oil and gas is causing severe climate change which, in its turn, will inflict great damage on us. Indeed, we have been warned that we are rapidly approaching a point at which cutting back on oil and gas won't save us because the trend will be irreversible.

Reporter - "But if we're still using oil and gas 25 years from now won't it be pretty much game over?"

That's what a reporter should have asked. But he didn't. An editor should have pointed out the failure. That's what editors are for. But he didn't. (It has to be a 'he'. The Irving Press keeps female staff on a leash.)

The 'news' story became what was really a propaganda story for the oil industry..

A reporter is not simply a stenographer. He or she is supposed to be critical, to question. But it doesn't happen in the TandT, They're expected simply to report whatever propaganda they are given.

4. I came across all sorts of items that should have been in the paper, but weren't.
a) the military coup in Egypt was almost certainly planned and bankrolled by the US. The consequences of that are hellish as that whole region spins out of control, and as US foreign policy continues its 60 year run of disaster.
b) Of those Americans who have jobs, 53% get less than $30,000 a year. Boy,  that's some recovery. And those are our customers.
c)Big business in Canada and the US has been making huge profits.. I haven't found a record of small business in Canada, but in the US, small business is doing its worst in recorded history. However, in both countries, Big business maintains an illusion that it has everything in common with small business through clubs like Rotary, and invitations to dinner to hear inspirational speeches from the provincial biggies.
d) One American in six is livinig on food stamps. That's up somewhat from the one in seventy that was the case two generations ago.

That's important. When one group is allowed to run wild - as we have allowed big business to do - the whole society pays one hell of a price - and may well destroy itself.

e) There's a war (really, it's a mass slaughter) going on in Congo. Nobody knows how many millions have been killed; but it's the most killing we've seen since World War Two, and runs into many millions. Troops, led by a government controlled by big business, slaughter people at random, millions of women and children are raped by the soldiers. Children are forced to become child soldiers.

A friend, who recently returned from 35 years in Congo as a missionary told me about the wildness of it, and how to go outside after dark was suicidal.

This, with torture, no education, no hospitals, stunningly low wages has been going on for almost a hundred and fifty years as western companies (especially Canadians in the mining business) Have stripped that country of its resources and brutalized its people. The total of dead for all those years is in the tens of millions.

But, what the hell. It's Congo. Who gives a damn?

5. Editorial and op ed?
The editorial is the usual propaganda, this time for the hockey rink/events centre. (The TandT has yet to mention that the existing colliseum could be extensively  renewed and "event centred"  for a fraction of the cost of a new complex at Highfield square.)

The editorial slobbers all over a new group which has entered the struggle for an "events" centre that is essentially a wildly oversized hockey rink for a city of this size. The new group is called Business Inc. But who is Business Inc.?

Not a single name is mentioned. Is it possible it is made up of people who stand to make big money off this project - even if we get ripped off and maybe even driven broke by it? After all, in addition to all the other problems, the world is in one hell of an economic crisis. This is scarcely the time go into hock for an expensive project that may (and probably will) turn out to be a disaster.

Is it possible that Business Inc. is the same people who,  under our local Irving, formed a committee to "advise" the city council on development?

And why is this province so lousy with with business muscling in on government? This is nominally a democracy. We elect councillors to run the city. Mr. Irving, like the rest of us, gets one vote. What kind of city council do we have that let's him in on city government?

Another Irving did the same thing in Fredericton, announcing  himself as a member of the government, and inserting his flunkies as official advisors on economic planning.

In Quebec, the mafia akes ten percent, then goes away. It does not take over the government. Here, big business makes democracy a joke and, I suspect, takes a lot more than ten percent.

Alec Bruce's column on Hipsters is a good one, and quite true. However, I can't help noting that hipsters are an easy target and, in this province, not a very significant one. This ain't Toronto.

Norbert's column is bearable. That's a big step up.

Rod Allen begins well and, this time, writes less pretentiously than his usual cutesy style. But he seems to be incapable of having anything to say. This is a page for opinion and insight. Rod Allen is an editor, for Pete's sake. He's supposed to know something about what's in the news. And this is supposed to be a page on which he stiumlates our thinking. This column wouldn't stimluate a cat in heat.

Jody Dallaire's column this time is information rather than opinion. Ideally, it should have appeared as a news item. It didn't. But that's not ms. Dallaire's fault. She has given us useful information that we wouldn't otherwise have.  Thank you for that.

The last Letter to the Editor is an important one about the attitude of the new executives for our health networks. She refers to it as "bullying". So it is. And it's worse than that.

This new system is not only using hopelessly inappropriate methods to make judgements about the system. It's also the first salvo against the whole idea of medicare. What our business leaders want is  health care designed to make profits for millionaires. That's a human disaster wherever it's been tried. But who cares about humans?