June 7: Sensationalism vs. news

Much of today's news is about the killing of three police officers, about public sympathy, and the arrest of a man charged with the killings. But for all those pages of print, it tells us almost nothing.

Most of it is just sensationalism. People want to read anything they can get on a story like this, so journalists churn out page after page of irrelevant information - and even of invention. On A2, the mayor says Moncton's  spirit is not broken. Is it really possible anyone thought it would be? Terrible as this was, cities all over the world experience this on a a regular basis.

We have sent troops to other countries to kill - and locking the doors doesn't help against them. And the trauma is not for a couple of days but for months and even years. Our closest Allies kill millions and want us to join in. Imagine what it is to live in Syria these days with American paid 'rebels' raining death.

There, they cannot hide in their homes. They have to flee by the millions, leaving behind the elderly, the sick, and the injured.

On A9, a wildly overwritten story tells us that Moncton business and health communities have revived. Come off it. They were closed or limited for a day and half. Compare that to business and health communities in Vietnam, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan that got bombed out of existence.

There are stories expressing sympathy for the police and their families - as there most certainly should be. but must of the stories are just empty sensationalism - excitement for the sake of excitement.

It does not seem to have occurred to any reporter to ask the obvious questions. For example - none seemed to notice that the accused's reasoning on Facebook was drawn heavily from US sources. The idea of a right to keep and bear arms is a concept in the US constitution, not in ours. The idea of a militia, in the sense of being voluntary groups of independent citizens, is also American.  Both ideas are peddled by the National Rifle Association in the US - along with generous doses of hatred and fear.

Canadian gun groups are somewhat more reticent - though a leading one managed to blend bad logic with bad taste in timing when it said the Moncton shootings proved that gun regulation doesn't work.

It was, of course, a hell of time to make such a pronouncement. As for logic, one could as well say that the existence of drunk driving accidents is proof that laws against drunk driving don't work, and should all be repealed.

Incidentally, did no-one ask where the killer got that combat rifle he was waving?

The one story that has real news rather than sensationalism in it is by Chris Morris on D3, "Analysts concerned over media impact".  This one is well worth reading for its profile of the typical rampage killer. He's white, young, a failure, and possibly inspired by the media attention that rampage killers get.

I think we might also consider the roles of our politicians and news media in spreading rampage hatreds.
We have all our lives been trained by propaganda. We used to hate Germans and Japanese and Italians. But now they're all good. Then it was Malayans and Vietnamese and Algerians, and anybody else who tried to break away from the old empires.

Then Moslems became evil, with an evil that came straight from their religion. So it became okay to kill them by the million - but terribly evil for them to shoot back.

Listen to the speeches by Obama, Kerry, and little Stephen on Ukraine. They are pure hatred and threats - and all that reflected in the tone of reporting in most of our news media.

At the local level, read the editorials, some of the columnists and the news reporting, and you'll see hatred - of shale gas protestors, of a provincial health officer who is personally attacked, hatred of anything the Irvings do not approve of.

We live in hatred and fear. We see everything in the world through glasses that see only hatred and fear. The man who killed those police officers was created by our politicians and our news media - and us.



On the op ed page, Brent Mazerolle says nothing at all.

Below him, Gwynne Dyer writes about D-Day. It is the best column I have ever read in the irving press - and one of the best in any press. And it's all based on common sense - and without a trace of fear or hatred or propaganda. You must read this one for yourself.

The student columnists do their usual, good job. I'll just add a piece to Mike Elliott who talks about the transition from high school to university.  When you get to university you will meet people who (deliberately) give you the feeling that they are very,  very clever  - and you aren't. Some will be students. Some will be professors.

Pay no attention to them. They are suffering from a common university disease. They were always there, from my first class in night school to my last year as a teacher. Their arrogance can really hurt you. Ignore them.
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The lesson of recent days in Moncton? We live in a world shaped by fear, hatred, propaganda, self-interest and greed. This has become stronger in the past century though the control of mass news media by a small number of monopolists who represent the world of big business. They, and their media flunkies, are the ones who have made this an increasingly dangerous world.

Oh, and for over a century, the Christian churches haven't said poop about it.

June 5: A day of silence in Moncton....

After killing three policemen and wounding two, a gunman escaped into heavy woods that press into Moncton, often almost into the downtown area. And those woods are connected to the even heavier forest beyond the city.  But the police seem to have done a very good job of containing him.

I have no doubt the city should and will organize memorial service for the victims of the shooting. I would urge it also  to go to great lengths to offer comfort and practical help to the families of the victims.
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I don't have much to say about  today's Times and Transcript because there was no delivery   (presumably because of the danger of exposure.) The only news item I know of - besides the shootings - is that selected New Brunswick teachers  will be going to China this summer to establish contacts with education professionals in China. They're in for some big surprises.

I taught university in China for  three summers. In that time, no student missed a class. Not one. Nobody was ever late. No assignment was ever late. If I mentioned an article was interesting, everyone would have read it by the next day - even though I had not required reading it.

Many of them followed me back to Montreal to complete their degrees. There, they studied as hard as they had in China. One boy was even took pills to stay awake all night so he could study. I got him to stop only by threatening to hospitalize him if it continued. (He is now an extremely wealthy man - so what do I know.)

It's not the school system that does that to the children. It's the society. There is enormous respect for parents and relatives in China. To do badly in school would be to disgrace the whole family.

There is also enormous respect for books and learning. When I told the class they had to write a criticism of a certain article, they were aghast.  "Oh, no, sir. This is an article by a wise man. We must read it carefully and memorize it. We cannot criticize it."

It was all quite a lesson in how the attitudes of a society shape learning. And no amount of business methods or statistical analysis will change that. It's also a lesson in why our occasional bursts of activity have produced virtually no improvements in literacy.

It's not the fault of the schools we have to change. It's us. All of us.
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Finally, I'll add a little to what I said about war with Russia and China.

1. It's not the American people who are looking for a war. Most wars are economic. This one would be exception - a war to make the very rich even richer. (Yes, that was a motive on both sides in World Wars One and Two.)

2. The rest of the people can be propagandized to favour war - with propaganda heavily loaded to produce hatred. Ever notice that Moselms became hateful only AFTER they began to resist western intrusions into their societies. That's when we began to see newpaper columns about how Islam was hate-filled and backward and how murder was built into the faith.

(There was no mention of how, if Islam was so murderous, that the biggest killers on the world stage were commonly Christians. Nor was their mention of how, if Islam was so terrible, our greatest friend was the strictest Islamic state in the world - Saudi Arabia.)

Is their a campaign to spread hatred of Russians? Just read the speeches by Kerry or Obama or, by the king of Russia haters, Stephen Harper. In the US, especially over the last 40 years, virtually all news media have become controlled by a handful of billionaires. That even includes the "quality" press.

For a sample of this at its worst, try Fox or CNN TV.

Much the same has happened in Canada.That's why we have propaganda papers like the Irving press.

Americans have shown signs of having enough of hate and propaganda as their "news". But the big money boys, their bought politicians, and their propaganda sheets will probably run over them. Ditto in Canada.

3. The US strategy for years has been to surround Russia and China and anti-missile sites - thousands of rockets designed to shoot down Russian and Chinese nuclear missiles aimed at the US. These have been set up progressively closer to Russian and Chinese borders  They have now been moved into Poland - and you can expect Ukraine to be on the list. (I'm not sure I'd care to live in any of those countries. It might not be a really good idea to have nuclear missiles getting hit and exploding over your country.)

These anti-missile missiles are what now make it possible (if insane) for the nuclear missiles of American billionaires (let's not kid ourselves about who owns them) to attack Russia and China, and then to (mostly) block any Russian-Chinese response.

What would be the effect of all these nuclear explosions in mid-air? Nobody knows. But, hey, I'm sure we can invent something to fix it.

4. Why would American big business want to do such a risky thing?
Because it's earlier moves, like free trade and deregulation, have put the US in a serious decline that is not going to get better.

But big business wants to dominate world trade. (That's where this "American exceptionalism" comes from - the belief that the US has the power and the right to ignore international law - but other countries don't.)
But it doesn't have much time to do it. The US, like Britain and France and Spain, is about to become a failed empire. It  has to make its move now or never.

The move is extremely dangerous (in addition to being vastly murderous).

It doesn't matter. The people behind this are at least as immoral as any in history,and greedier than any in
history. This is where the system we wrongly call capitalism  has taken us.

If this works, it will make some hundreds of super-rich even richer. It will kill Russians and Chinese by the millions. It will make the rest of us poorer.

But it probably won't work. And nobody knows what the effect of that will be.







  

June 3: Walking on the edge of insanity....

(I had not intended to write today, but there have been developments....)

..You would never guess it from a reading of the Irving press, but we are close to war with Russia - which would now be also war with China and war with Iran - at least. No, it's not Russian aggression or a Russian threat to world peace. I looks as though Obama is the one who wants a war.

The coup in Ukraine was financed, organized and equipped by the US government. The coup was well-financed, highly organized, and the western powers, contrary to all, normal diplomatic behaviour immediately recognized a new government- which just happened to be led by an international (western) banker, and to include neo-Naziis.

There is no possible reason why Russia would encourage such a coup. On the contrary, US asst. secty. of State Nuland has been openly taking credit for staging the coup.

So it was an American aggression that staged the coup, not a Russian one.

 Ukrainians who speak Russian are resisting the coup - not because they are being helped by Russia but because Ukraine has a long history of intolerance, brutal treatment, and mass murder of Jews and Russian speakers.

And we are now seeing the insanity part.

Secty. of State Kerry has given a speech in which he said the world could no longer allow nations to invade others at the point of a gun.

Wha?  Russia didn't invade Ukraine. It's the US that's been invading and killing all over the world.

Obama says we must create a world in which little girls will not be murdered. Putin hasn't murdered any little girls. Obama has. In fact, he's currently the world champ at murdering little girls.

He also stated his belief in American exceptionalism - the belief that the US is above the the law, it answers to no-one; it is entitled to invade countries. In short, he believes the US should rule the world.

Harper has been particularly vicious, and says Putin has been worse than the communists - which is a neat way of stirring up hatred  and fear of Putin by linking him with communism. In fact,  Putin is president of a Russia that is not only capitalist - but the same form of perverted capitalism as ours. And to suggest that he is worse than Stalin is not only absurd, but an obvious attempt to stir up unreasoning hatred.

As the crisis has developed, the European Union, the US, and Canada have deliberately made the crisis worse with nothing but accusations and threats Putin, in fact, is the one who has been avoiding provocative statements, and has worked for a peaceful settlement.

Meanwhile, the new Kyev government has been doing the dirty work for international money-lenders - privatizing social services, cutting pensions in half, and generally condemning Ukrainians to poverty so their money can be exported to the bankers.  Ukraine is in for one hell of a time.

Why would the US want a war with Russia and China? Because time is running out. American big business needs the US to rule the world so it can control all the world's trade terms - to the benefit of American big business.

Will this run the risk of nuclear war? Damn right it will. And there will be a  high butcher's bill even without nuclear weapons. But big business is utterly without morality. It's only moral rule is that it doesn't have any moral rules. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq and the massacres in Guatemala - and many others - killed millions for big business.

And big business owns Obama and Kerry, and even yapping puppy Harper.

Either US business gets control of the world in the next decade or so - or it never will. That's what this is really all about.

Take a look at those recent statements by Kerry and Obama. ....only the US is entitled to invade countries...we have to make the world safe for little girls (when did Putin threaten little girls?)/....Putin is a communist and so is evil (unlike the US which just gave out candies in Vietnam, Guatemala, Iraq, Syria,....)

These comments by Obama, Kerry and Harper are so absurd, so aimed at building an ignorant hatred that they are walking on the edge of insanity.

Is it possible that North Americans have been kept so ignorant by their news media that they believe this nonsense? And are they so conditioned to hate on command that their hatred can be turned on like a light switch?

If so, our leaders are walking on the edge of insanity, and we are over it.

June 2 oilpipelines are perfectly safe...

So don't you even bother looking up the recent one in Alberta which broke, spilling a half million liters into a nearby river.  But it was a human error. So it doesn't count. Anyway, the owner of the pipeline got a heavy fine. Oilmen also say the follow "the highest standards in the world". So everything is okay.

That's the problem, though, with those who discount the hazards of oil (and shale gas). They point to two or three articles they've read, and call themselves experts. They quote some oil executive who says, "We have the highest safety standards in the world."  And, anyway, climate change isn't happening.

Gee. Obama says it's happening. And he's taking that seriously enough to embark on some pretty expensive initiatives to slow it down. (Note - to slow it down, not to stop it. He can't stop it. It's gone too far to be stopped.)

Then the nay-sayers tell us it's still a long way off. The long way off, however, which usually means about 2100, means the time by which the full blow comes down. That doesn't mean we can wait until then to start changes. Even with changes now, we can only slow it, not stop it.

In fact, it is quite possible, even likely, that we are seeing those changes across California and Texas, where drought conditions are appalling. That means a disastrous harvest season - and that means higher food prices - and it also means serious food shortages.

Some forecasters suggest Canadian farming will benefit from the change. Maybe so, but....

Picture a situation in which Canadian agriculture is doing great, but the US farmland is running short; and the US cannot feed itself. What would happen?

Think War of 1812 that we celebrated just over a year ago - because farmland is much of what it was about. (Of course, Harper would defend us. Good luck on that one.)

Yesterday, the Irving press reported on a speech by Archbishop Tutu in which he referred to the Alberta oil sands as filth, and warned of spills from pipelines. Oil executives responded with the usual citing of "toughest regulations in the world" (But we dealt with that at the start of this column.)

Some newspapers attacked the archbishop as someone who knows little about the technical aspects of oil and shale gas drilling. Very true. He's a theologian. That means he does know something about morality. Oil executives, like executives of most sorts, don't.  In fact, the fundamental beliefs of modern capitalism denies any moral code whatever.

All that counts is profit.

That's why people of the Congo have been murdered and abused in the their millions for over a century. That's why millions were killed in Vietnam, Guatemala, and Iraq. That's why Obama provoked a civil war in Syria. That's why Africa is crawling with American and French troops, operating to destabilize countries for yet more killing. The same thing, minus the French, is happening all over South America. (Funny how the Irving press never reports some things.)

Forget the debate over climate change. It's over. Climate change is happening. Anyway, the debate from the start was fueled largely by the amoral propagandists of the oil and shale gas business. It's over. Obama says the change is happening, and Obama, despite absurd stories I have heard is no socialist. In fact, he has remarkable similarities to the George Bushes.He also has access to the opinions of the best scientists in the world.

More important, Obama absolutely depends on the financial support of big business. When a man in that position decides that climate change is a serious threat, when a man of archbishop Tutu's background   says that further development is immoral, that it will do immense damage to he planet and all those who live on it, this has to be taken seriously.

In New Brunswick, incidentally, our provincial government seems to lack any concept of moral behaviour. Instead, it operates on the most vicious principals of business management. Nor have the churches in the province taken up the slack.
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As to world news, what can I say about a paper that has only 2 1/2 pages of it?

Harper is going to a summit meeting to give tough speeches about Putin. That should do a lot to ease tensions. He set the stage before leaving with a speech that compared Putin to communism. (Hint, Steve baby), Putin isn't a communist. In fact, he's just like you. He runs a government dominated by multibillionaires
of no moral principles whatever. Anyway, we know these speeches are the get the Ukrainian vote in the next election.

I wonder whether he'll say a few words of criticism of the most aggressive nation on earth - the US. And perhaps he might say a few words about Obama's recent statement of belief in 'American exceptionalism'. That means that the US is the only country in the world to have the right to ignore international law, and to 'police' the whole world.  It's the only country allowed to murder on a scale of millions, to torture, to spy on the whole world, and to decide who's allowed to pretend to be the ruler of each country.

Great. So why do we need a UN?

NB announces it has a (vague) climate change plan.  Shale gas and deforestation will be kept as things that are good for us.
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Alec Bruce has an excellent column on the need for early childhood education. The second to last paragraph is a gem.
".....Canada...chooses to spend the money it hasn't promised to return to taxpayers on prisons, military aircraft that don't fly and staged commemorations of wars it may or may not have won two centuries ago."

On op ed, Alan Cochrane has a pretty meager list of MHS traditions that should live on in the new school. Alan, schools are not good preservers of traditions. Not their fault. They just aren't. I went to a school where I sat in the very same room as Christopher Plummer had in his school days. Down the hall, was the former classroom of Oscar Peterson.

It certainly had no effect on my life - or on anybody else's that I ever heard of.

Then there's "Why universities shouldn't function like the private sector" - by Geoff Martin who teaches politics, international relations and Canadian Studies at Mount Allison U. Everyone in this province should read this one. And someone should explain it to our government and business leaders.

Capitalism - or whatever this system we live under is called - is not a religion. It is not ordained by God. It does not bring universal benefits. And, except for making money out of them, it doesn't give a damn for people.

A university is largely about people - about human behaviour, about stimulating independent thought and understanding. It's an entirely different game.

There was a time when university administrators recognized and encouraged that. But it has changed. Businessmen on university boards have inserted business methods into institutions that are not businesses. So, where once we had educators, we now have have administrations (especially at the top) packed with careerists and opportunists.

That's why we have university presidents who jump up like trained poodles when Mr. Irving 'invites' them to serve on one of his conferences on how the province should be run.

Some years ago, I was offered the job of university president. The previous president had been fired. He had been fired because he was the sort of careerist so interested in his own welfare that he really didn't give much of a damn for the university. He had been the first of our super-paid presidents. (We'd had some excellent ones before we switched to the corporation model of highly paid incompetents.)

In the course of discussions, I did not meet with faculty at all. The interviewing was done entirely by businessmen from the board and by lawyers. Nobody asked me a single question about education.

The terms were stunning - not only very high pay, but lavish benefits for the rest of my life.

I refused it. It was obvious that the real bosses would be the wealthier members of the board. It was equally obvious they were not interested in the only aspect of the job that interested me - the improvement of our education methods.

Big business is destroying our universities. In the case of presidents, you get careerists largely ignorant of anything to do with education, but are willing to be lap dogs for big business if the price is right. Meanwhile, the quality of university teaching, never up to kindergarten teacher standards (which are, in truth, quite high), deteriorates.

The interference of big business in education at any level, in hospitals, in social services does not work. These are not businesses. Not only are they quite different from business, they are also - as business is not - dedicated to the service of people - and service to the people requires a morality. Business doesn't have that.

This is an excellent column, the sort of column we should see on on op ed page.

May 31: May is such a wimpy month - glad it's over.

Unless you get all excited by beer festivals and obvious but useless statements from politicians (A15. St. John MP Rodney Weston - a good, half-page of wasted paper to tell us that if we boost the economy, gas sales will go up and therefore produce more money in taxes. Obviously, this is a man who can see through walls.)........Well, if you get all excited at drinking beer in a big room and reading about uninteresting people, you'll love section A of today's paper.

There is only one story in the section worth reading - A3, "Shale gas protesters begin three-day march."

It's about 75 people marching from Elsipogtog First Nations Kopit Lodge. They left yesterday, and expect to arrive at Moncton courthouse tomorrow to present letters of protest to SWN Resources.

Before anyone hollers for more police in camouflage outfits, there are some points to consider.

There is a native society which is different from ours.  Ours has become a use and throw-away society. Perhaps the best example of that is the daily newspaper. And we will throw away clean water and healthy soil without a thought for the future. Native people maintain a respect for the land. Long ago, we signed treaties with them to respect the difference between our societies. But we've never honoured them.

As well, it is their land that will be affected. A reserve is not a suburb. It is native land. They have every right too protect it. If anything, we should be calling out the men in camouflage suite and combat rifles to point their weapons at our politicians and SWN executives.

The land is not ours. We have no right to sign agreements with developers for the land when native peoples oppose those agreements. Neither SWN nor our governments have made any attempt at such negotiations. (I know it's not all directly on their land. But their land will certainly suffer.)

These people are not wards of the state. They have rights in law. They have a right to have and preserve their own institutions. They have a right to their own land, a right far stronger than the right a simple landowner has. Just about every leading politician in Canadian history has ignored those rights, and treated native peoples as if they were just children without parents.

Harper, with his passion for developing resources whatever the damage to this country has been deliberately heading on a collision course with native peoples.

The marchers that arrive in Moncton tomorrow are in the right. So let's hope the people of Moncton respect that right. The day is close when they Monctonians will need respect for their rights against those people who see New Brunswick only as if it were a piggy bank to be broken and robbed.
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NewsToday gives no sense of the extent of violence and suffering in this world. Syria gets a casual mention - though I can't recall the Irving press ever admitting that the US started that war and has provided money and support for the Al Quaeda mercenaries who our papers refer to as rebels.

Millions have been displaced. Millions are starving. Hundreds of thousands are crippled or orphaned in a land that has no resources to help them.Syria did nothing to the US. It has never threatened to attack the US. So why is the US attacking it? Two reasons stand out.

1. the national leader, Assad does not always do what the US government tells him to do. That was why they attacked Libya, too - and why Canada joined in to kill people with air strikes.

2. The US wants Syria as a nation to be destroyed, partly because this will help Israel to be the dominant power in the region. For this, millions will die or be crippled or displaced. Almost all those who survive will be impoverished.

So tell me more stories of how evil Hitler was, and how Obama is a good man.

In a related case, Conservative and former British p.m.John Major is pressing for the release of conversations  between George Bush Jr. and Labour leader Tony Blair. Actually, everybody knows what's in them - but this would make it official.

Blair and Bush lied about the reason for invading Iraq, murdering over one and a half million. There was no connection with 9/11. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Iraq was to steal the Iraq oil fields.

The killing of one and a half million, the crippling of millions, the millions of orphans with no means to look after them, the impoverishment of a nation, an impoverishment  which still persists - all of this was done to satisfy the greed of American and British oil billionaires.

That invasion was illegal under international law. Bush and Blair are war criminals. We freely hanged people after world war 11 who had done less criminal things that that. But we made Bush and Blair extremely rich men. And Christian clergy all over North America pranced up to the pulpit to thank God for helping to save democracy.

So - tell me more about Hitler.

Nor does NewsToday give any indication of the flooding of Africa with American troops, including very large numbers of mercenaries, on assignment to carry out murders and destabilize governments. In fact, the US depends so heavily on these hired thugs (sorry - 'contractors') that very large number have been posted to Afghanistan.
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The editorial is stunning hypocrisy. It says doctors should keep their noses out of politics. It particularly refers to Dr. Cleary, Chief Medical Officer. It grossly misrepresents the meaning of her report of a year ago. Then it was "Leave the Politics to the politicians."

The thought that occured to me was 'thou hypcrites". But that fell short. So I thought, "thou ignorant, vicious, ass-kissing bastards."

They would not dare say such a thing about business interference in politics - though the level of that interference has been gross and even unconstitutional.

And doctors should not speak about economic issues, but leave it to the experts? Really?

Are our politicians experts? Are our business leaders experts? If they are, why is this province such an economic mess when they've been running the show for generations?

In fact, who the hell are the editor of Bill Belliveau or Norbert to write about economic and political issues daily? They write about this sort of thing constantly though with so little evidence of intelleetual ability I suspect than none of them could find his own belly button using both hands.

That editorial is ignorant, coarse, and so illogical it must be deliberately lying./ And, being unsigned, it is cowardly.

What a disgusting, lying, ignorant, servile, trivial paper!
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On the Faith Page, we learn that Dundas Baptist Church is breaking new ground for the faithful by having a spaghetti supper AND bazaar. Jesus is alive and well in Moncton.

/Today's sermonette is all about how some people misquote The Bible. I think I see a theme to  this Faith Page now.

The sermonette never has anything to do with the full meaning of faith. The same is true of church activities like spaghetti dinners and bazaars.

Y'ree, the big thing in to be saved. Once you're saved, you're home free. Just jump up and down, say "I believe" several times, and perhaps get dunked. And that's it. You go to heaven where you sit naked on clouds and look down on sinners being tortured by nasty animals - or you walk on gold streets, and praise God all day. (The Bible is contradictory on the precise details.)

The rest of The Bible doesn't matter. Like, Ya got yer ten commandments, parables, stuff like that - skip them. The trouble with those other parts is that they wont let you do things you want to do - like, you know,  ignoring or condemning other people.

We live in an astonishingly  unChristian Canada. A major theme in our newspaper and among the wealthy is that greed is good. Yeah. Greed is good because it creates wealth. Times are tough? Then dump on the poor and the  homeless. But keep giving money to the rich. Then someday, maybe, some of it will come down to us.

Send medicine to Africa to cure Aids. But when you send a million boxes over, make sure our drug companies get full retail price (80% profit) for each box.

Don't let the poor move into subsidized housing in your neighbourhood. It interferes with God's plan for you to keep property values up.

Kill lots of people all over the world. Most of them are poor, anyway. Yuckie-poo.

Never discuss any of this bad stuff. You are a Christian.  That means you're been saved. So all you have to do is live in a good neighbourhood, wash frequently, get dressed up on Sunday to listen to a sermon guaranteed not to offend anybody, And attend dinners with spaghetti and a bazaar.

Oh, and pray for the poor. It doesn't cost anything. And you don't have to meet any of them.

On a larger scale, the Christian churches with only rare exceptions have led the way in patriotic cheering for the government - no matter how vicious it might be. Our churches cheered for the slaughter in Iraq. We joined the one in Afghanistan - though you'll have a hard time finding any justification of it in the teachings of Jesus.

(The clergyman who spoke at Harper's parade for those who died in Afghanistan (just those on our side) was fatuous enough to babble about how they died to save our democracy. Christian churches on both sides have usually supported their own countries. (Well, maybe they all have different versions of The Bible.).

The churches has smiled on the very rich even as those rich have created poverty here and around the world, and even as the newspapers of the rich print the gospel of how greed is good.

It's been like that for centuries. The Christian churches led in European slaughters of Jews, just as they now, if quietly. support the slaughter of Moslems.

As I read those sermonettes, all seem to be about topics that are oh so safe. You're saved. Clap hands. That's it.

It must make Jesus wonder why he wasted his time..

May 29: painful...

Norbert, the master of saying nothing, outdoes himself today.

We have a provincial financial disaster looming. His answer? "If our politicians won't lead us, should other citizens step up?"

Norbert, in a democracy, it's other citizens who elect the politicians - based on the full information and informed opinion  spread by the news media. When other citizens step up to take over that role, it's called a revolution.

And those "other citizens" are likely, very likely, to be the people with money and clout and influence who don't give a damn about the economic survival of the province - but do give a damn about the state of their own finances.

As well, there is no reason to think these other citizens have any more brains or expertise than the government does.

Anyway, in a democracy, it's hard to imagine anything more thoughtless and irresponsible than encouraging "other citizens" to step up and take over from the government. If fact, it probably comes very close to being illegal.

Nor does Mr. Cunningham's contempt for democracy end there. He also feels all the parties should work together on a non-partisan plan to deal with this crisis.

Norbert - the whole idea  of a democracy is that the opposition parties are there to find weak points (or weak concepts) in the govenment's plans, not to clap hands for them. To do otherwise is to reject the right of large numbers of voters to have any opinion at all, and to deprive them of the right to have a voice in their own futures.

And that, I might add, is based on the simple-minded view that there is one, right way to solve this problem. So no others can even be discussed.

Of course, according to Norbert, there is no choice of what must be done. We must tax the poor, cut their services, and cut taxes to the rich - among other things.

For those of wisdom, he suggests that whose who step forward should be the city mayors. I can't even imagine why that would be a good idea. Or credible business leaders (as opposed to incredible ones). Or academics.

Has it not occurred to you, Norbert, that such a collection might disagree with each other? So - poof - there goes your revolution as the revolutionaries disagree with each other.

Fundamentally, what Norbert is saying in his strikingly simple-minded column is that the solution, the only possible solution to our economic problem is obvious. All we need are rebels to enforce it. Sounds like Russia in 1917.

Norbert - don't you know that big business has been running this province from the start. (read a little bit of history). Our politicians and academics never have run it. It's been our "credible" businessmen who have dictated spending and taxing policies. Mr. Irving even appointed the the government's economic advisors.

They use your newspaper (and you) for propaganda. They constantly interfere in government affairs. They constantly hold conferences to tell government what to do (with university presidents and other distinguished people present as potted plants.)

Mr. Irving has even declared himself a member of the government - something illegal, and something the Irving press never even noticed.

If this province is in economic trouble, it's big business that put it there. Those irresponsible looters are the last people I would choose to fix things. An   austerity programme will not create prosperity by firing people, closing services, raising taxes for the poor and middle class, lowering taxes for the rich, and encouraging people to drink more beer (which seem to be the main elements of NB political thinking so far.)

What we need is an honest and informed press to make us aware of the possibilities. Instead, we get an inarticulate cry to abandon democracy and call on our most distinguished citizens (who will be the usual suspects.)

If I were a suspicious person - and I am a suspicious person - I would guess that Norbert was told what to write. And I would guess that the distinguished citizens who are to step forward have already picked themselves.                                                                                                                                                  
Norbert's column today is crashingly ignorant. And dangerous.
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Rod Allen once more tells his only joke (wife no. 1) - and that has to carry the burden of a boring and irrelevant column.
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The columns for Jody Dallaire and Alec Bruce are stimulating breaks from the other bilge on the editorial and op ed pages.
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By the way, I wonder how many noticed a letter to the edtior a couple of days ago in which a reader referred to the bombing of 9/11 as an act of infamy. 3,000 innocent people were killed.

The United States government, without legal reason and often without warning, has killed innocent people, including babies, children, whole hospitals full of the injured - uncounted millions of them. In that company, 9/11 wasn't even a side show.

But I have never seen a letter referring to Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya as "acts of infamy". Of course not. We're conditioned to think that way. Those "other" people are evil. Our side is good. To kill North Americans is infamy. To kill millions of  Asians and Africans is - well - they aren't real people, are they?
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Good luck with the rest of the paper.

There's a good story on A5, "Drug plan is too costly". A 6 has a big story that a new beer is coming to New Brunswick.

In NewsToday, on C1, is a story about Romeo Dallaire that is well worth a read - if only to be reassured that this country still produces some very fine people - and infinitely superior to the "distinguished" citizens that Norbert calls forth.

May 22: predicting the future

Nobody, except the editors of Irving papers, can predict the future with certainty. But there are times when you can be pretty sure. . So let's take a try at the future based on today's sacred script by Norbert Cunningham.

New Brunswick is deeply, dangerously, in debt. Just as Norbert says, cuts will be made to social services, education - and there will be rises to taxation. We shall have to adjust, says Norbert, to at least 20 years of   "reduced expectations".

It's cute when it's put that way. I mean, "reduced expectations" makes it sound as if we've been pampered all these years, and now we have to pay for it. I mean, we can't go on forever throwing money to the winds with things like EI for seasonal industries. And hospitals and health care? Come one, folks. Reduce your expectations. Forget about living as long as possible. I mean, after retirement, you're just a drag on the economy. Think of others.

And schools? Way too expensive because the schools don't understand business methods. . We're spending over our heads. But there are cures for that. Norbert sees all the cures I have listed above.

He's even thought of industries to encourage, like the resource industry. Those will make us rich,( yeah like the way they've made the people of Congo and Central America rich. (He also doesn't mention the resource industries' dreadful record of environmental destruction but, hey, ya gotta beak eggs to make omelets.)

 He doesn't mention the events centre, either. Well, no. That's  something some rich people want - with us to pay for it. Unlike schools and hospitals, they say, it's a money maker  - unless.......

.....unless you notice that New Brunswick is not the only heavily indebted part of the world. The world of big business is so consumed by its greed, so lacking in any sense of morality except getting money, and so deficient in reasoning that it is getting close to destroying the sources of its wealth and, indeed, destroying itself. As a small side effect, there may not be a whole lot of people lining up the events centre box office to hear a country singer sing through  his nose.

The mess in the Ukraine began with a decision of international bankers that it had to adopt the sort of austerity budget that Norbert advocates for us. The same thing has already happened to Greece. It's happening in the US with cuts in employment, in food, and in schools.

It's happened in Ireland, and it's begun to happen in Britain. In fact, there are very few countries - maybe none -where it's not going to happen. And, yes. It will happen across Canada.

Gee, when y' stop an' think about it, that sorta suggests - well -either some force we haven't examined is causing this - or New Brunswick is the cause of debt problems all over the world.

But, no, New Brunswick is not the cause. The cause is a distorted form of capitalism collapsing under the weight of its own, unlimited greed - and political systems dominated by corruption and, really, the slavering servants of the very, very rich.

It's always been like that. But now it's been made infinitely worse by the deregulation of business under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - and by free trade which isn't free at all for those who have to live under it. The freedom is all for the major corporations to make maximum profits no matter what hardship that may cause for the people who have to live under it.

There's a reason why Detroit is a hell-hole of misery, with other American cities joining it.

This crisis was not caused by the working class and the middle class buying fine wines, luxury cars, and mansions. Nor will it be solved by pretending they did cause it, and punishing them.

Following that route is going to take us straight into violence That's why we suddenly need secret agents spying on all of us. We, all of us, are the enemy. We have to be controlled.

You think those armies of spies are there to save us from terrorists? Hell, drunk drivers kill more North Americans than terrorist do. No. The enemy is you.

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And how will big business help to solve this indebtedness problem? I thought you'd never ask.

It will privatize all those social services. In other words, the only people who will get social services will be those with enough money that they really don't need them. We'll see a creeping privatization of the schools. (In fact, it's already begun with big business interfering with testing and introducing  a useless, propaganda course on entrepreneurship.)

Next, we'll see see school fees slapped on select schools which will be the ones your children MUST go to if they want to get ahead at all) It's happened in Britain; it's happened in the US. And it's a disaster
Parents who can't afford the fee schools (most of them) have to stay in the regular schools which are deliberately underfunded and overcrowded. The US, in particular, has plunged in world education ratings.

Free public education with equal opportunity for every child is a foundation stone of democracy. We're going to sink it, and democracy in one shot.

We'll see the same creeping privatization of medicare. It's already creeping with business methods being forced on hospital administrations. Next, we will see the key, business method imposed - "if they can't pay, the hell with them." And that will move our life expectancy and life-long health  into the same, dark regions as the US.

This, and much more, is coming our way.

But surely big business wouldn't be so heartless as to do that to us?  Dream on.

Amost every war, with its horrors we can never imagine from news reports, has been economic. Our reports from, say Syria, hardly begin to tell the story. It's not just the dead or the crippled or the orphaned. Syria is ia country being systematically destroyed. The survivors will never recover what they go through. The lives of children, orphaned or not, will be twisted forever. And that war is being financed by big money from the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and the emirates. And do you think those with the big money stay awake at night thinking about what they are doing?

They don't give a damn. They didn't give a damn about the millions killed in Vietnam. They didn't give a damn about the million and a half killed in Iraq (and, probably, the destruction of that whole society). The mining company directors have never worried about the million killed so they could loot Congo on the cheap. They didn't care about the hundreds of thousands of civilians deliberately slaughtered in Guatemala. They didn't care about the poverty and wretchedness of Haiti, so when Haitians at last got rid of dictators imposed by the US and elected a president who tried to  help them, the US invaded, and deported him. And Canada sent "peacekeepers" to help lower the Haitians once again into hopelessness.

And for all the portraits of themselves the very rich may hang in 'philanthropic' halls of fame, they don't give a damn about you and me.

All they understand is taking.

Most of the world, including Russia and China, is under the same, twisted and uncontrolled perversion of capitalism. Most of it is ruled by oligarchies, groups of the very, very rich with politicians as decorative additions. Take your pick - Canada, US, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Ukraine - they are all the same, immoral and uncaring lot, completely absorbed in their own greed. (Notice that Ukraine's last government was led by an international banker who planned to submit Ukraine to the same austerity that Norbert speak of for New Brunswick. And the new one is led by a billionaire.)

Would such people reduce us to poverty? You bet they would. It's the only thing they know how to do.

We have to balance the budget? Okay. So let's do what nobody seems to have done. Let's find out where the money has gone. How much was lost through taxes that some people don't have to pay? How much was lost in welfare programmes for big business?

Contrary to what Irving press may tell you, it was not caused by the poor, demanding the right to earn as much money in a year of hard work  as an Irving might earn while having a morning coffee.

Surely, if you're looking for huge sums of money being spirited away for so many years, you look for the cause in the mansions and the overseas bank accounts, not in the sleeping nooks of the homeless.
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The process of looting New Brunswick has been going on for a long time. We're now at the crisis point.

If we continue like this, what you will see all over the world is violence, even chaos. It will be the war of a handful of the very rich against the rest, with the political and spying stooges and the hired thugs on the side of the very rich.

That would be tragic from every point of view. But you don't have much time to stop it. And I don't see a single party out there saying what needs to be said.

New Brunswickers need to get angry. And to do that, they first have to wake up.
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I didn't say much about the Times and Transcript because there just was nothing much in it. One piece of news of some importance which didn't make it is that the Canadian military command says that rape is NOT a part of Canadian military culture.

That rather conflicts with recent reports of amazingly high rates of rape in our armed forces.

(Actually, contempt for women is encouraged in many armies - including ones on our side.  It's believed to encourage aggressive instincts.)

Our military command has promised to study whether the rate is high. Personally, I find that I lack confidence in such a study by people who announce before the study has even begun that there is no problem.