May 15: I'm starting this blog on the evening of May 14 because....

...tomorrow looks like another day of more activity than I like. So I thought I'd write something general about news for the opener.

Japan is building up its armed forces.  No reaction?

It is building, in particular, around offensive weapons. Still no reaction?

Well, you're not likely to see the story in the Irving press because nobody there would understand the significance of the story.  And even if somebody did, all you would get is the two statements I wrote above which tell you nothing.

In 1945, Japan was forbidden to build armed forces with any offensive capabilities. It had, after all, invaded China in an invasion that was brutal even by the very brutal standards of the time. Accordingly, the Japanese forces were formally labelled Japan Defence Forces. Weapons were to be of a type essential for defence of the homeland. Nothing else. And it was strictly monitored.

Today, Japan is again building weapons with offensive use as their leading characteristic. It's doing it because the US has quietly given it the green light. Why? Who would Japan attack? Why would the US want it to attack anybody?

The why and the who is China.

The US is preparing for a war with China and, this time, Japan would be on its side.  Chinese borders are already crammed with American bases. The US navy is largely designed for the Pacific - where the only likely enemy is China.

Now, China has no capacity to launch a war against the US. (Well, yes, it could fire nuclear rockets - but that would simply guarantee the destruction of China.)

That's why there's another piece of news that has sort of been mentioned in papers - but without any connect the dots explanation.

China, Russia and Iran are negotiating an alliance. To attack the US? No. All three could not launch an attack on the US. The logistics alone would be hopeless. It's because they expect the US to attack them. And that's where it all connects with Ukraine.

When rioting broke out in Kyiv, it was obviously long planned, organized by people who knew a thing or two about creating chaos. Were they Russian?

Not likely. Russians would scarcely have picked the government that seized power. An international banker?  Nazi cabinet ministers? Not likely. But let's not fuss about that part. Let's look at the next part. That's when the European Union, with the US,  immediately recognized the government that had illegally seized power.

The speed of that recognition was more than a little strange.

Then the news media immediately hopped on board the train to paint the war as a Russian plot. There was not even an attempt to figure exactly where that coup came from. Nor did they tell us about all the fascists in the new government. In fact, most news stories were speculation bordering on gossip.

The western response was not to seek a peaceful solution. Not at all. From the start, it did nothing but accuse and make threats - a process in which Canada's chief braying ass was prominent. So far, the only urging for a peaceful solution has come from Russia. It's not because Putin is an angel, of course. It's because Ukraine is not worth the risk of a war.

The West has taken a line, and deliberately so, to humiliate Russia - possibly to make war on it. And for those same reasons, Putin cannot possibly allow the West to do that. He also knows there are influential people in the US who want a war with Russia.

Then, all of a sudden, China and Iran are working on an alliance with Russia, and have announced plans to scrap the US dollar as their trade currency. Well, of course.

China knows it is next on the list - unless the US gets Iran first. The US has been threatening Iran for years over a nuclear bomb programme that almost certainly does not exist. In fact, the US and Britain have been after Iran ever since it booted out the murdering dictator the US and Britain imposed on it so they could loot Iran's oil.

A new cold war? No. Worse than that. The US is a power in decline. If it is going to dominate the world, it  has to do it now. And the news media are doing their usual job of brain-washing us to think this has something to do with defence and democracy.

And it will get worse. If the US were to manage to dominate the world we would be in for war after war after  war to preserve that domination.
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Oh, and there's another story you probably won't see in the Irving press. I got it from a very interesting news sheet put out by volunteers in Fredericton. It's called The Brief, and you can reach it at
info@nbmediacoop.org

It's about Escobar in Guatemala, a mine owned by two companies called Goldcorp and Tahoe Resources. The region is overwhelmingly opposed to mining. A girl of 16 was murdered, and h er father severely wounded by gunmen. That's not unusual. She and her father were both active in the environmental movement - and things happen to people like that in Guatemala. Should we care?

Well, those companies are both Canadian owned, and mining companies (with the cooperation of the governments of Guatemala and the US)  have killed people in Guatemala by the hundreds of thousands - to keep them in line.

Why, you might even know one or two of the major owners.

It's worth taking a look at the rest of the world. The Irving press doesn't do it because it's mission is to keep you with your nose firmly stuck in your own bellybutton. But the rest of the world has a profound effect on us; and sometimes it can get terribly close to home.
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Harper visited a town in New Brunswick, today. As always,  he did not mention that his family is from New Brunswick.

On C11, Ukraine is holding a peace conference. But the Ukraine government didn't invite the other side. Well, at least there won't be any arguing.
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Norbert writes about voting, a subject on which he has nothing to say that would add anything new to hundreds of thousands of editorial writers over the past century.

Alec Bruce writes that "Moncton deserves downtown events centre." It would generate between 12 million and 15 million in spending. (Predicting the future is always dangerous. I wouldn't bet the farm that the events centre would generate anything, given the states of the world economies.)

And it will be a place 'where culture triumphs'? Can anyone seriously believe that this region has 12,000 people who are dying for anything that could be called culture? If so, they have kept their secret well.

If the events centre is such a sure thing financially, can you seriously believe for a minute that the wealthy of this province would allow us common folk to build and own it?

In this province, as in most, the only government concern is raising money.. They give the excuse that they need the money to serve the people. But I know of no government  (apart from Robichaud's) that has had any philosophy of what the needs of the people are. They almost never discuss what our society needs. The society itself never discusses what we need. Nor do our newspapers. All we get is "nifty" schemes to make money.

We need a government that has some profile of what people need. Then you look for ways to raise the money.

Frankly, I don't think any reasonable list of human needs can be met with an economic system that has long since rotted to a pool of corruption and greed.

I do know that before I would spend a cent on an events centre, I would take a hard look at what this society needs to be healthy and to offer opportunity. And I doubt very much that an events centre would come out very high on that list of needs.

Rod Allen offers us another column of his transcendant wit as in "wife no.1."  Incidentally, Rod, we don't have a "current king and queen". Just a queen. Some normally sharp editor must have been so helpless with laughter at all the wit that he missed that one.

Jody Dallaire has an excellent column on how commercialization has done enormous damage to the spirit of Mother's Day - and she suggests alternatives. In short, Mother's Day now is a reflection of our political approach - something largely just to make money. It could, and should, be something to meet human needs.

The first letter to the editor is "Honour all our Afghan casualties".

And it's a good one.

May 14:New Brunswick Passenger Rail.....

A1 has a story well worth reading. It's about the decision to repair the passenger railway track in northern New Brunswick. In short, it's a statement by a national railway consultant who says this looks like just a band-aid. He says Via Rail made the decision almost certainly because we're into an election year - and a little largesse could swing some seats to the government.

What's needed,  he says, is a long term plan to boost ridership. Otherwise, the line will simply die, anyway, and the repair bill will be wasted.

He's being gentle.

The current federal government's planning (and not just the current government) is heavily opportunistic and based on re-election strategy. This, after all, is the government that is planning to boost oil consumption until every drop has been sucked out of our soil. It does that even as the Antarctic ice shelf is disappearing.

Despite years of warning, Canadian governments have ignored the threat of climate change. They have made no significant attempt to develop alternative sources of energy, or even to use the oil we have with greater efficiency.

The development of rail traffic is not a solution to the problem. But it is a hell of a lot better than our heavy reliance on roads, trucks, cars and aircraft. Alas! The only kind of long term planning of which Harper is capable is destroying environmental protections to attract more resource industries.

A4 has a story worth reading about. "More arts, culture programmes needed in province" I don't know whether it's the lack of such programmes, but New Brunswick has, in general, the intellectual life of a cheap bar at closing time. And that has a savage impact on the quality of public discussion of just about everything.

I think much of it is part of  a village mentality, a desire not to be different, a fear of being seen as different, that afflicts this province. But anything that can help to break that pattern would be useful - and arts and culture could play a role.

And then we wouldn't have any more Alward governments..
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In NewsToday, nothing much happened anywhere in the world. So it could all be covered in one and a half pages of  which most are New Brunswick news.

In what is for the Irving press a hot and controversial story, the president of St. Thomas University told graduating students to be courageous and take risks.

I don't know. Being a coward and always wearing rubber boots on damp days has always worked for me.
The story also tells us who got awards - you know, all that grad stuff. And that story counts for one-fifth of all that is going on in the world.

In a slightly smaller story, we get largely incomprehensible and one-sided news of what is going on in Ukraine. Considerable space is given to those who blame Russia. For the cuter touches, read C1, paragraph 8 of "Ukraine soldiers killed in ambush."

According to it, the old, Ukraine government was "ousted". That's nice word. It could mean simply that they lost an election. So there was no coup, no violence. It was just "ousted".

And the new government is just a "caretaker" one.  That's a nice word,too. There is no hint it had anything to do with the violence and the coup. Why, no. They're caretakers. Just like nurses, really. Our news media play that game all the time.
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Not much on editorial or op ed pages.

The editorial is, yet again, on the events centre and how profitable it will be. But that gives me an idea.

A prime user of the events centre would be the owner of the hockey team. In the spirit of entreprenurship, why don't we let him build and operat. the events centre?

I mean, we all know from the writings of the editor and Norbert that politicians are incompetent at running anything, and that entrepreneurs are much, much smarter.

And what a thrill for the owner of the team. Why, this will give him the chance to take the risks that entrepreneurs just love.  Looks like a win-win to me.

And Norbert has the answer (again) to deal with our provincial financial challenges. We must - and he is crystal clear on this - we must do something.

Clap! Clap!  Well said, sir.

And since Norbert still refuses to recognize the role of the super-rich who control this province, there's only one remedy he can think of. Cut services and raise taxes. In other words, make the poor pay.

You will note he has yet to give a single example of where that has been tried and has worked.

Think harder, Norbert.

Alec Bruce has an interesting column. The problem is that the writing is aimed at an intellectually more sophisticated audience than New Brunswick has.

On op ed page, Eric Lewis offers dieting advice. It's not useless - but surely specialist advice like this should be coming from a dietician, not from a reporter.

Brian Cormier writes on how there aren't enough women in politics. Alas! He doesn't seem to know a whole lot about the topic. Specifically, he needs to look more closely at why men seem to be highly combative and cave-man in politics than women are. He needs to think more - not about how women have a right to be in politics  (that, after all, should be a given), but what it is that keeps them out. That might explain why some of the women we do get in politics are remarkably similar to the men we get. (Margaret Thatcher springs to mind.)

May 13: You say tomahto and I say tomayto....

When the current government came to power in Ukraine, it was by an act of violence that is properly called a coup. But that word was rarely used in North American reporting of the affair. Why? Because coup raises unpleasant images in our minds. Without even realizing, most people automatically think of violence, of attack on a legitimate government, of a cunning and illegal assault on law and order.  Which it what it was.

But most of the papers called it an overthrow, a gentler word that suggests people fighting for freedom. That choice of word was one of the first indications that the American government had a hand in it. News media actually employ people who know how to manipulate words to manipulate us We're seeing another example in New Brunswick.

Entrepreneur is a nice-sounding word. It has touch of French sophistication, too, like maitre d'  - or - madame. That's why you see it so often in New Brunswick papers (but much less often in the rest of the world.) That's because it's part of a very big propaganda campaign in the Irving press.

Entrepreneur is used to denote businessmen because 'businessmen' has the wrong connotations. It's harsh, sexist, unpleasant. We could call them capitalists but that's even more yuckie-poo. But capitalism is a harsh word, and conveys an image, again masculine, and fat and bald and greedy and ruthless.

Entrepreneur is so much nicer, so much more sophsiticated. It depicts a person of energy and alertness.

Unfortunately, none of those nice words is what entrepreneur means. Funny how Norbert, our word scholar, seems never to have noticed that. An entrepreneur is a person who owns and operates a business - AND WHO TAKES UNUSUAL FINANCIAL RISKS TO DO SO.

That last part about taking unusual risks is the key to the meaning of entrepreneur. And especially note the word UNUSUAL. If there are no unusual risks, there is no entrepreneur.

Small business owners might well be entrepreneurs. They often have to take  unusual financial risks. But big business? Please. When you can get a whole forest by forcing a sweetheart deal on a premier you own, there ain't no unusual risk. This province, like all of them, is a welfare state for big business.

The newspapers are using a word they don't understand because they're not in the business of selling news. They're in the business of spreading propaganda for the boss. And the key to their message is that capitalism is good, that big business people are the only ones who know what they're doing, that big business creates wealth (nicely ignoring the fact that it was a record of spreading poverty and destruction wherever it goes.)

Well, it does create wealth - for itself. That's why we have a recession (part of the fallout from giving hundreds of billions to automakers and bankers who had driven themselves broke by incompetent and even criminal behaviour.) But taking billion dollar handouts from government is not what I would call taking an unusual financial risk. Nor is invading Iraq to steal its oil. Nor is murdering a quarter million Guatemalans to keep the rest as cheap labour..

Capitalism has the wrong image. So the propaganda sells the image it wants by using the word entrepreneurship. They've even taken it into the schools with their programme on entrepreneurship. The intention of the propaganda campaign and the use of schools to spread it? To cement the idea that capitalism is good and exciting and adventuresome - no matter what your eyes may tell you.

So we are beginning the wastage of a half hour a day every day of thirteen years of school to propagandizing our children. And this is cheered on by newspapers who also say our schools should get back to basics.

There's nothing basic about propaganda. What we have to do is to get our journalists back to basics so they know what words like 'entrepreneur' mean.
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As usual, there's nothing much in section A - though there is an excellent photo of me with my samurai sword on A4.

A 6 has a worth-reading story "Service dogs provide valuable help for PTSD sufferers."  That's good news because our veterans certainly aren't getting much help from our federal government. It's somebody else's service dog.

C1 has a must read "Final vote today on elections overhaul". This is a Harper bill which strikes a death blow to democracy in Canada. It changes election rules to markedly favour the very, very rich.

Harper's contempt for democracy is so great that it amounts to a frenzy. Add to that his absurd public skirmishes with people who don't agree with him (as in his public tizzy fit when the Supreme Court would not permit a ruling he wanted) and we have to consider the real possiblity that we have a mind unbalanced at the head of this country. He's backed by sheep like our local mp (who can't say b-a-a, but who makes for it with an inane smirk.) And this man still has some time before an election.

C7 has a not very informative story on those who want to separate from Ukraine, and to join Russia. So far, the only man urging a peaceful solution to this is Putin. He has now, several times, advised them to hold talks with Kyiv, and to stay in Ukraine.  All the threats of violence are coming from our side.

Sorry, all you Obama lovers. But all the evidence is that important people in American government want a war with Russia- and Ukraine is their excuse - just 9/11 was their excuse for Iraq and Afghanistan. And they have lying news media to support them..

On C8, "Antarctic ice sheet beginning to collapse". Worse, it many have passed the point of no return which means, for one, disaster for coastal and low lying areas like New York.

I want the thank all those oil billionaires who spent so much money to tell us that there is no such thing as climate change.
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On the editorial page, Norbert supports the idea of docking cabinet ministers  part of their salaries if they go over budget.  Norbert, you can give them tattoos inked on by sadistic amateurs and make them run through the streets naked on a winter day; it will have no effect on the situation.

Minimally, you have to take a hard look at the effects big business has on us. (which you refuse to do do.) And even that wouldn't do it. The whole world is in an economic crisis that was not caused by the New Brunswick budget. And fiddling with the New Brunswick budget won't change that. What would help is some honest (and intelligent) reporting by the Irving press.

Alec Bruce has a thoughful column. It doesn't yet see the bright, new future. But he does see the present very clearly indeed -the real present - and that's where we have to start from.

Alan Cochrane has a column demoted to Andy MacDonald who died recently at 96. If you knew Andy and his dummy farm and his stories, you'll love this column. If you didn't know him, you're the big loser. It must be over forty years ago that I first turned into his farm; and we talked for hours.

Well, Andy talked. I listened. And I loved it. I still remember that day well, though it was so many years ago. And I still feel honoured to  have met him.

The library must have his books. They're second-best to Andy. And that's good company to be second-best in.

He was one of a kind.

Louise Gilbert has kind words and useful insights into a mock city council meeting that was held on a recent evening. I think every word she says about the benefit of the affair and the invitations extended to students is dead on as is her insight into how youth and age can work together, both part of the same community.

And this isn't just my opinion. My teen-age sons were there, and they loved it.
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Was there anything newsworthy that was not in the paper.?

Well, beginning soon, all cars made in the European Union will be required to be equipped with little black boxes which will emit messages telling where the car is at all times. The reason given is that this will make it easy to get rescue vehicles to the scene quickly in case of an accident.

Yes -

And I'm sure nobody was even thinking of how easy it will make it for domestic spies to have a complete record of where every car owner has gone. Of course, no domestic spy agency would dream of such an invasion of privacy.  Except..........

The US already does it, though awkwardly through licence plate photos.

Watch for a little  black box on your next, new car.

I was not surprised that the whole blame for the Lac Megantic disaster has been dumped on three, relatively minor figures. But it does seem odd.

Surely, Irving had some responsibility to ensure that its oil was being moved as safely as possible. And Irving certainly has people who know something about railways. So why did they choose a railways with a terrible reputation for safety? Why did they accept the use of a train with only one crewman? Why did they accept antiquated and dangerous tanker cars? What did they pay for moving that oil? What would the price have been for a railway with a better reputation?

Is it possible that a company would deliberately make such a risky deal to save a bit of money? Doesn't a shipper have any responsibility for the safety of his shipment?

Forty-seven people were killed. Hey! let's get that engineer who was assigned to drive a train alone over half a continent. Yeah! It's all his fault.
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Tomorrow will be a crowded day. So I may be late in getting a column done.

May 12: Time for a change of focus?:

There's nothing much in the TandT today. But, then, there never is. And what's there is  not very useful.
But one can say that only so many times. That's why, some months ago, I began writing about the news as much as about it's quality in the Irving press. It may be time to add a new element - how we think about the news - because we, all of us, have peculiarities and inconsistencies in how we think.

For example, 200 school girls were kidnapped in Nigeria. Now, there's lots of talk of sending in troops to save them.

Our side killed hundreds of thousands of school girls in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala. So where was the call for troops, for assistance....? For the most part, it wasn't even mentioned in our news media.

Why the difference.

Essentially, the reality doesn't matter. Our side is, by definition, good. The other side is, by definition, bad. That's a very natural way to think And our politicians play on that weakness in our thinking. It might be worth taking a look at this from time to time.
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There really is nothing whatever in Section A. The second to last page had pictures and story of TandT staff who received Atlantic Journalism Awards. It quite surprised me.

In major newspapers and other news media such awards are rarely even mentioned. I feel jealous.  I won national awards for both print and radio journalism. The newspaper I won a couple for gave them one line. The radio station never mentioned them. In fact, I never even got the trophies. The radio station got them.

It really doesn't matter because the truth is those awards really aren't worth a poop. I don't know anybody in the business who got ahead in it by winning awards. But, predictably, in the maritimes where most of the newspapers are pretty awful, it's a big deal with a ceremony. something you have to wear a necktie and shoes for. And it's really all just self promotion for the papers.
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NewsToday has the story that Iran and the West (mostly the US) will resume talks about shutting down Iran's nuclear bomb programme. That's cute.

Nobody has even shown that Iran has or ever had a nuclear bomb programme. The major charges have come from Israel  (which does have an illegal nuclear bomb programme, and some 250 nuclear bombs) and from the US - which also has a nuclear bomb programme.

UN inspectors have been checking Iran's  nuclear development - and they have never found evidence of a bomb project. Even US intelligence officials have admitted in the past there is no such programme.

Nor has Iran threatened anybody. In fact, Iran must be the only country in the world that has not attacked anybody in over a century. The only war it has fought in modern history has been one against Saddam Hussein of Iraq -who was supplied and aided by the US.

Nor has Iran threatened anybody. It has been threatened by the US. It has been threatened by Israel which has make it clear it wants a nuclear attack on Iran ASAP. Israel has been publicly saying that for years.

But the game of sanctions and demands goes on, anyway. And most of our press is never honest in reporting. Nor does our press report that Iran was a pioneer in democracy in it's region right after World War 2 - and our side overthrew the democratic government, and installed a dictator.

None of this is in the news report.
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On the same page is that story that Canada's justice research budget has been cut to save 1.2 million dollars.  Actually,  it won't save anything.

Harper is cutting back on the research because he has already decided on get tough, lots of jail time policy - even though our crime rate is down, and has been going down for decades - and though even the' get tough on crime US' is recognizing that lots of jail time has no useful effect at all.

So Harper has saved 1.2 million by cutting research. But he will now spend many times more than that in building more prisons, and providing free room and board and guards to all those extra prisoners.

Harper is an ideologue. He lives in a world in which his prejudices reveal all to him. He doesn't like experts, especially the ones who tell him he's wrong.

C3 has an interesting, related story, '"Canada, U.S. diverging on crime"' It shows why the US - which DOES listen to experts on crime - is giving up the vengeance approach to dealing with crime.

C4 has an important but sad story 'First Nations education remains an uncertainty'.The major reason, it seems, is that most First Nations leaders don't trust Harper.

Well, who does?

The big story of the day is on C1. Pro-Russian rebels have won the first referendum on rejoining Russia. And that's bad news. For a start, in that highly polarized society and the chaos, it is most unlikely that the vote was an honest one. (But who in the national government has credibility to challenge it? After all, the national government itself is an illegal one that took power by force. And it has yet to hold an election, honest or dishonest.

And then there's the missing story. According to German news media, some 400 highly trained and ruthless mercenaries hired by the US  from it's favourite thug merchant, Blackwater (now renamed Academi) have entered Ukraine.

They specialize in assassination, undercover work, impersonating people on the other side (like the pro-Russian groups, and, in that guise, carrying out public murders for the western press to take pictures, and show how evil Putin is.)  They're also used as assassins and trainers in Latin America, very useful in maintaining mining profits by murdering and/or raping employees who want raises, stuff like that. But he'll be under pressure to intervene.

It also poses quite a problem for Putin. Russia almost certainly does not want eastern Ukraine. It's an economic mess; and it's certainly not worth risking a war. However, I'm very much afraid the US does want a war, The decision has been made.
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The editorial and Norbert are, once again, simple-minded about our economy. Our problem - or one of them - is that the very rich are gobbling up the wealth of this province. There is no limit to how much they want. The wage gap is real. We are going to suffer as a result. Balancing the budget will do nothing whatever to deal with that problem.

This is happening all over the world. Like it or not, we are caught up in a revolution in which the very, very rich are creating a world in which only they have power and money. That's what the "American" domination of the world advocated by The New American Century is all about.

And it's not the American people who are doing it. In fact, they have been among the first victims. We are moving to a world in which big business is free to ignore government, free to ignore national obligations, and free to ignore human needs altogether.

That's why we  have seen almost constant warfare for fifty years. And we will see it for fifty more, and fifty more and fifty more - if we are very, very lucky. Stupidity and greed are in the saddle. Such a system can be sustained only by greed, stupidity and constant violence and suppression.

But the New Brunswick budget has nothing to do with it.
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Some day, I must write something about the TandT's use of the word entrepreneur. Notice they hardly ever say "small business owner"? (Actually, it doesn't mean "small business owner" -but the Tand T uses the term almost exclusively for them.)  It's cute. It's one way the news media select words to spread a propaganda message.

May 10: How not to be an editor...

...First, though check out the the comments at the bottom of this page. There is a post there telling where to find  platform statements of the two candidates for city council. And, no, they aren't in the Irving press which pays professionals good money to write news stories about nothing. They're in the Moncton Free Press.ca - which is run by volunteers.

Now - The banner headline on p.1, the story of the day, is "Brush fire season heating up"  Get it? Brush fire -   heating up. chuckle. chuckle.

One of the first lessons in journalism school is that you don't make a joke out of a serious story. And especially not a cutesy, corny joke. Brush fires destroy forest, destroy homes, kill people. They aren't funny. A professional editor should know that.

Then, next to it, but in smaller print and downgraded to second place is "N.B. rail line saved"' Now, we know that brush fire season is coming. It happens every summer. It's not a flash. The saving of our rail line is quite different. We didn't know it was coming. And it's important for the future of this province. As gas prices rise - and they will - we might be very, very grateful to have that rail line for people and goods. This is the big, New Brunswick story of the day.

Then, and on the same page, there's "Mom's are every woman's best friend". Possibly so. But that's not a news story; it's an opinion. This is what we should be reading on the opinion page, the op ed. Instead, we usually get irrelevant and self-indulgent opinion on the op ed page. And an opinion disguised as a news story on the front page.

That's three, major and amateurish bloopers by one editor, and on one page. They'll probably name him editor of the year for Atlantic Canada.

Then, on page A6, there's an obituary. Okay. That is the obituary section. But it is written as a news story. Okay, a well-known person dies, so you write that up as news. But this is not about a well-known person. This person, like you and me, lived a largely unknown life. I don't doubt she was a lovely person. I don't doubt her children loved her. But that is not a news story. It's an obituary. Read it. It's pure obituary. There is no news in it.

I cannot understand how any editor could be so dense as not to know the difference. Indeed, in many years of reading newspapers, I have never seen anything like this.

On A5, we get the stunning news that organizers of the FIFA soccer event have chosen a slogan. "To a greater goal".  Whoopee! They have even decided it has a deep meaning. I will inspire people to reach greater goals in life - and that is what the soccer tournament is all about me. Yeah.

And silly me. I thought it was about making money for the organizers.
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Newstoday has a page of pure bilge about the day of  honour for Canadians who served in Afghanistan. Harper gave an absurd speech that said, among other idiocies, that they died to make Canada safer and stronger. A chaplain said they died in the interest of justice and hope for Afghanistan. Yeah. We killed people to give them justice and hope. And we sent Canadians to die because we were oh, so concerned that the people of Afghanistan should have justice and hope. Right. Of course, you can pay a clergyman to spout any sort of propaganda.

They made Canada stronger and safer? How? Were the Taliban planning to attack us? Somebody said that Afghanistan was sheltering terrorists. There is no evidence it was. Never has been. In fact, the US is sheltering more terrorists by paying them and arming them to fight in Syria. Pakistan is sheltering terrorists, lots of them. So is half the world. In a century of invasions, killing, enslaving, exploiting people of Africa and the middle east,  the west has created terrorism all over the world.

In fact,  the government has never explained what that war was for - that's why we get these damn fool stories it was to bring justice and hope to Afghanistan. We sent people to die and to kill. Why did we do it?

Hint - it had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush was planning the invasion of Afghanistan BEFORE 9/11.

And the government that says we owe those veterans much - as we do - is too cheap to honour its promises of medical care for soldiers who now pay the price in profound mental suffering and suicide. - and this from a prime minister who had no trouble to find millions of dollars to fly Canadian Zionist leaders to Israel to hear him giving a speech to the knesset which will have no effect but to buy him the Zionist vote in the next election.

The ceremony in Ottawa was disgusting and self-serving. It's major purpose was to get Harper re-elected - just as were his trips to Israel and Ukraine.

We put our soldiers in danger to please the US. Ever since then the government has neglected the survivors. And our clergy were all there in their fluffy gowns to assure us that this is what Christianity is about.

Then there's a story about Finance Minister Flemming bragging that the health department is $44 million under budget. If I were CEO of a factory announcing being under budget, I'd expect cheers. But a medical system is not a factory or a business of any sort. It's effectiveness is judged by its results, not it's budget savings.

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On the editorial page, Belliveau and Cunningham are still talking about the economy. And they're still doing it without a mention of the very rich and influential or the wage gap. In other words, they're just babbling.

Brent Mazerolle is angry, justly so, and he expresses his anger well in the case of the missing schoolgirls in Nigeria. What I say next is a criticism of us, all of us, not of Brent.

Hundreds of school  girls in Nigeria were kidnapped by a leader we can all agree is an animal.

So how come there is no indignation when our side rapes and murders schoolgirls by the hundreds of thousands as in Vietnam, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?  Obama is very upset when a Nigerian does that. So how come it doesn't upset him when Americans do hundreds of times worse?

How do you feel about it, Brent? I"m not attacking you here. Not at all. It's very human. We see evil quite readily in people branded as evil. But we never see even greater evil when practiced by "good guys".

Another good column by Gwynne Dyer, this one on the realities of how politics works.in real life.
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The sermonette on the Faith page is harmless, will challenge no-one, and is the standard greeting card smarm for mothers' day.
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What didn't make the news in the TandT -

1. There is a conference today at U de Ottawa on the threat posed by government spying on our personal lives, and their sharing it with big business. There will be a report - but I doubt that we'll be told about that,  either, in the Irving press.

2. For the best article I have seen on the idiocy of our Harper/Obama approach to Russia and others - by issuing threats and forcing confrontation - check out today's Globe and Mail for the article by Dave Saunders. To save money, google 'Doug Saunders globe and mail'. It should be the first one to come up in, of all papers, an English paper in Kyev.
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It's a pretty miserable paper today. But far the worst of it is that shabby "day of honour" page.with The Canadian Press writing two stories of sheer propaganda and lies. They know damn well the Afghanistan war had nothing to do with protecting Canada - or helping Afghanis.

Nowhere in this paper is there a word of what the war was really about. Nowhere does it say the Afghanistan invasion was planned before, well before, 9/11. Nowhere does it say this is a war that had nothing to do with Canada.

After World War 2, we hanged political leaders for doing less than that.

Worst of all was the spectacle of prancing clergy doing their "God is on our side'" act.

This is a paper that is nothing but lies, triviality, propaganda and professional incompetence. But that, alas, does not make it a whole lot different from the rest of the North American press.

May 9: Mike's Bike Shop facelift nearly complete

As soon as I saw that as the big story (half page with photo) on the front page, I knew there wasn't going to be much to  say about today's TandT. I was right. I'll talk briefly about the paper - then go on to some outrageous truths that didn't make the TandT.
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NewsToday has the story that East Ukraine is going to vote on joining Russia, despite Putin having asked them not to until things settle down. I think Putin is quite right, and the pro-Russians who seem in control of East Ukraine  are wrong. First, it's a foolish move because if the pro-Russian group loses the referendum, it will create chaos. If they win,  nobody will believe (probably correctly so) that it was a fair vote. Either way, we get a dangerous mess..

The last page of NewsToday has five, formally posed photos of five completely unrelated events. I have no idea why.________________________________________________________________________

Norbert has yet another column on balancing the budget, each of them sillier than the one before it. Look, Norbert....
1. About three years ago, Mr. Irving declared himself a member of the government.He did it in your wretched paper.
2. He had just presented the government with the report of a very phony council he had set up to plan the future of the province, and make it clear this was his report for the economic future of the province.
3. We were then told - in your paper - that Mr. Irving had appointed the official advisors to the minister of finance.

How can you assign blame to the politicians for our indebtedness when so much of our economic planning has been laid down by Mr. Irving?

Your closing quotation from Franklin Roosevelt  about how the president and congress don't rule the country; the people do; is pure hokum. Roosevelt knew that very well. Quoting something doesn't make it true.

Alec Bruce has a biting column on the silliness of the Alward government's latest scheme to control government spending by fining cabinet ministers who go over budget. It's a scheme that shows no understanding of provincial economics at all, and no sense of a solution to our economic situation.

The TandT seems to be in a process of changing its op ed page columnists - for the worse. Today's offerings are, to say the least, trivial.
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Now, let's look at three items that aren't in the paper.

1. When are we going to learn the platforms of the candidates for a city council seat? Isn't that kind of basic to a democracy?

2. The US has agreed to allow the International Criminal court to investigate war crimes in Syria. But it specified it could not investigate any war crimes committed by Israel in that region - or by Britain and the US.

3. Imagine that I have tapped into Mr. Irving's computer. I have also had people following him to record his every move. I investigate his family life, his friends. I get copies of his tax records and his bank accounts. I learned those many secrets that all of us have about our personal lives.

Then I hand over a  thousand of pages of material to people who want to damage Mr. Irving.

How long would it be before I found myself in court and, likely, in jail?

That sort of thing happens every day in Canada. But not to Mr Irving. In fact, he is almost certainly on the receiving end of personal information, often illegally gathered, about us and our wives or  husbands and our children and our friends.

Few Canadian have ever heard of Commnications Security Establishment Canada, a vast 'intelligence' operation that snoops into every corner of our lives, often quite illegally. It gathers everything - fingerprints, childhood information, where you car is spotted so it can look for reason why you are there, how you vote, your presonal mail, your TV viewing habits.

It claims to be protecting us from our enemies. In fact, it is our enemy.

And all of that information about you and me is passed on to big business, so if big business wants to crucify you,, they have all the data they need.

All of that personal information about you and me also gets passed on to its American counterpart, the NSA. Indeed the NSA and th CSEC are really the same organization. Don't kid yourself that American spy agencies aren't looking at you. They are; and it's not even a secret.

And you are suspect if, for example, you are an environmentalist. That automatically makes you a potential terrorist. You are suspicious  if you don't like Harper. You are suspicious if you don't like your boss at work.
And all he power to make you pay for that is simply handed over to big business.

To put it gently this is incompatible with democracy, freedom, right to privacy , all those good things we say we believe in. It given government a power it should not have to control us. It gives big business a power it should now have to control us. It gives big business a place in politics which it should not have.

In a democracy, we have the power and we have the right to use it. But this isn't democracy. A spy system like this kills democracy. And allowing big business to share in this highly improper form of government is not democracy. It is what is called fascism.

And that's where we are. We live in a police state. I don't say that for drama. I say it because that is what we live in.

This system is vicious, anti-democratic, anti personal freedom. It is hateful. Is outrageous. We have been betrayed by by the Harpers of this world who owed us for our trust. We have been betrayed by our economic leaders  whose greed has led them to intrude on our government and on our private lives in ways that severely  damage us.

Bastards.

No people who claim to be free can tolerate this police state - and it is a police state. That's not just a dirty word. That's the reality of what we live in. And it only gets worse.

Inevitably this will lead to serious violence as the masters of the wage gap drive us into deep poverty. But violence and rebellion seldom solve problems because of greedy and unprincipled people who get control of the rebellion.

No, if we are going to solve this, we have to make this an issue on the political stage.

But first, we have to wake up, develop a little bit of courage, let it sink in just how dangerous and outrageous this is - and make it THE political issue.

The alternative? To face more generations of being victims of greed and arrogance and stupidity.

May 8: Big news, today. I mean b - i - g

On page 1 of section A, summer is coming. Who would have guessed? On A3, preparations are in place for a Moncton byelection. I'm SO relieved to hear that. I was sure they were going to have it without preparations.  We know nothing whatever about what either of these candidates stands for - though one  says he want' to make Ward 2 a nice place. That's nice.

On A 7, we learn that we learn that there is a new restaurant opening at Parlee Beach - and there's even a picture of the new restaurant, and of its owner.

On A8, for mature readers only, their is a stunning photo of a portable toilet.

All this, and great car ads with pictures. Find your favourite chair, sit back.........

And close your eyes.
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NewsToday has a story on Farley's Mowat's death which I can say, even from my slight acquaintance with him. is pretty superficial. It gives only a mention that he served  in the Canadian army for the whole of world war 2 - and he served in the very difficult and costly Italian campaign. Out of that he became one of the few to write about fear - his own fear.

The book is "And No Birds Sang". Mowat knew fear, but he was a tough, cocky, swaggering (often annoying) little guy who wasn't afraid to say he was afraid - afraid to the point of terror.

C3 also has a atory on Ukraine "Putin softens over Ukraine". It really tells us very little, and that little is hidden by lots of hostile criticism from NATO - all of it with no evidence.

What is surely noticeable by now is that our yahoos like Stephen Harper have done nothing but issue threats, Putin has usually been the one looking for a peaceful solution. That surely must give a hint as to who it is that wants a war.

Then there's a bizarre, only in New Brunswick story on C3. "Spending legislation introduced". Under new legislation, if the government fails to reduce the deficit or fails to maintain a budget surplus, each of its cabinet ministers will be fined $2,500.

This is a childless pitch to those voters who are.........well....not very thoughtful. In fact, this is Hicksville stuff.

Running an economy is not a simple matter of balancing the budget or even reducing it. It's a matter of knowing what kind of spending is essential for the province. And it's about people, people and their welfare. It is NOT a business exists only to make money. It has responsiblities to all of us. Sometimes only a fool would balance the budget. Sometimes, extra, targeted funding is essential not only to present needs but for future growth..

As well, It's not just cabinet minsters who have a voice in the budget. In fact, I'm not sure at all. This province has A LOT of budget interference from big business. Will it face fines for overspending?

This looks like a typical move by some clown who wants to impress big business.

This is childish legislation. We need a government with some real understanding of economics and budgeting. We need a government that knows how to focus on human needs. We don't need a government whose idea of managing a province is to spank the naked bottoms of naughty cabinet ministers.

C5 has a story that TandT normally doesn't pay attention to. As is shaping up in Ukraine, there is a civil war in Syria. It is one savage and brutal war. The rebels,  most of whom are hired mercenaries from other countries and from terrorist groups, are armed and paid by the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and a few others. But the stories on the war never mention that. It looks very much like the civil war that's shaping up in Ukraine. But we won't mention that, either.

The purpose of the war is to destroy Syria as a nation. This is a war of pure slaughter and destruction. It is not possible to have any respect for a western world  which not only accepts this but leads it in its brutalities. But you'd never guess that from the (very few) Irving press reports.

So where are the demands from Harper and NATO to tell the US to bug off from Syria?
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The editorial reads as though it is meant to settle scores with somebody. It blasts city council for not being nice enough to a  builder, and for not saving Moncton High School. At the time, the Irving press never showed it gave much of a damn about Moncton High, and was light on ideas of how to do it.

I don't know what the greasy story is behind this editorial. But I'm sure there is one.
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Norbert is back to choppy writing on three topics at a time. But his story about Facebook is worth a read.

Alec Bruce is in great form on the wage gap. It begins with a book by one of the Toronto Globe's wackier writers. (Yes, Virginia. The Globe has some writers as wacky as the (almost) worst at the TandT. This column is an important one to read on a gap we have not taken nearly seriously enough.

Rod Allen continues his string of not very funny stories about his not very interesting life. This is a disgrace to appear on the op ed page of any newspaper.

Beth Lyons is what an opinion column should be about - an informed opinion on a matter of some importance to all of us. This one, about women who are marginalized in our society by income, violence, drugs, and so are isolated from help, takes a bit of thinking to understand - but it's worth the effort.