July 11: just annoyed. that's all..

It's late Friday night. I should be in bed doing crossword puzzles. But It's been a bloody annoying day -  starting with a CTV "news" report on Palestine. And once annoyance after another came to me mind that I must write about some day. Not tonight. Tonight is just about things I should write about - and I thought maybe it might get you thinking, and sending in things that have always bugged you.

1. The CTV news on Palestine was so biased and ignorant it was painful to watch. These TV news bits with there exquisitely coiffed women news readers, and the men, usually men, who claim to offer analysis and insight. (I guess the thinking is that women aren't smart enough to do that.)

The news they spread is not only horribly slanted, and designed to create even more hatred and killing, but it's stunningly ignorant of the background of the events and the causes. In the newscast I saw, Israel was completely in the right, had no choice and the Palestinians - well, they're just evil. That's what they are. It's the classic good guys against bad guys.

The trouble is this has nothing to do with good guys or bad guys on either side. Jews and Arabs lived together in that area in peace for centuries. The trouble with those reporters and analysts is that their
 knowledge of history goes back only to last week.

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians caused the hatred and suffering and killing. The cause was - us --notably Britain, the U.S. and Canada. And, in fact, Europe in general. We are the causes of all the hatred and killing in that region.

2. Then there are the provincial and federal elections coming up. For all you Norbert's out there, you should understand that running a government is not the same as running a business. A business exists to make money. Nothing else. A government exists to serve the needs of the people who elected it. Yes, it needs money to do that - but it's the service that the money is for.

Business looks at poverty and sees cheap labour. Government looks at poverty and sees a responsibility to alleviate it. Business looks at education and sees something it can make money out of. Government looks at education and sees profits out of getting control of it. That's why education is being privatized all over the US and Britain with disastrous results. The same things is true of health services.

Harper and the big business he serves are looking at designing a society that will serve to make the rich richer. Government is looking, or should be looking, at designing a society in which human needs are met.

In fact, though, if you read any news about government or business in the Irvng press - and most other papers -  it's almost exclusively about making money - events centres, cutting services, lowering taxes for the rich. yes, of course we need money to provide services. But the starting point is to know what kind of society we want, what services we fell are needed - the starting point is people. Then you plan the money.

We live in a society that thinks only of the money with no sense whatever of what kind of a society we want.

There is almost no sign in the province of planning for people. It's as though people are in the way, and the only important thing is making money  - which most people will never see.

3. The political parties are just as bad. I have no idea of what general principles any of the parties, federal or provincial, stand for. They have 'neat' ideas; they call each other names; But what kind of society any of them is working toward is a mystery -  as much to them, I suspect, as to me.

Yes, the Greens have some focus on human needs. But it's narrowly on the condition of the environment. it's important. But you can't plan for a whole society just on that, not any more than you can plan for a whole society by building a hockey rink at public expense for billionaires.

Do any of the parties believe in equal opportunity? If so, exactly what does it mean to them? What does it call for? Does anybody out there seriously believe we have equality of opportunity now?

Does any party believe we need to, at least somewhat, close the gap between rich and poor? What's happening now is that it's widening out  of control. And when that happens, the poor get poorer and the Norberts of this world write articles about how it's all the fault of the poor so they now have to lose services and get even poorer.

And it's going to get much, much worse. The only institution we have to take us to the society we want and need is government. Business doesn't give a damn for us any more than it does for the millions it has pauperized and even murdered all over Latin America and Africa. And I suspect (I know) we are really going to get our noses rubbed in it when we see the details of the trade deals Harper is working out with the Pacific region.

Political parties should be about principles. I  have seen no serious attempt by any party - except, to a degree - the Greens - to offer any clear principles at all.

4. On quite another note, I've received several posts complaining about the quality of the CBC. Here's what has happened. Harper has put the CBC on a slow starvation budget from the start.. To simply destroy it would cost him votes. So he makes it ineffectual to turn listeners and viewers away from. Once he gets enough people blaming the CBC for all that, he'll privatize it.

If he wins another election, you can count on him doing the same thing to health care.

The society we are building is one of opportunity, health care, education, decent living standards only for the rich and their flunkies. In the process we have thrown away democracy, and let the agenda be set by a biased, lying and ignorant news media.

Meanwhile, I see no sense in the fields of politics and media that our futures are being thought of at all. Like big business, we all live only for the financial profit of the moment with no thought of the future.

Now, I'll do a crossword.

July 10: What a jackass! it has

I'm beginning this on the evening of July 9 so that tomorrow I can write, "I told you so".

The federal justice committee is interviewing social workers, people in the sex trade, etc. to work on legislation to cut down on the sex trade,and to help people caught in it. Today, a quite dreadful incident in the questioning was reported by news media across Canada - but not in the Irving press. Tonight, I'm gambling to say the Irving press won't have it tomorrow, either. It involves Conservative MP Robert Goguen of Moncton (the city that is strong, and will recover.)

My impression when he was elected was that he was a person of no discernible intelligence or principles. His one, notable act was to distribute party pamphlets with a distinct racist slant aimed at native peoples. Obviously, the Conservative party doesn't think highly of him, either. I mean, if the best appointment a man can get to to be secretary to Justice Minister MacKay, he must be low on the list of the gifted.

The news reports were that Goguen, a member of the justice committee was questioning a witness who had been caught up in the sex trade. An immigrant, she was gang-raped by three thugs, who then put her to work as a prostitute.The committee's job was to find ways to protect women in her position. Then Goguen made his contribution to the effort.

"If the police had broken in and stopped the rape, would you feel that the police were violating your civil rights..."

He seemed to find that question both valuable and amusing. The correct answer to him should have been, "Gee, I don't know Mr. Goguen. Would you be annoyed if police broke in to stop three men from having an anal sex rape of you?"

In the two or three days since that incident, neither the prime minister nor the justice minister has apologized. Neither has Goguen. Some political hack told the press it's okay because the witness said it was okay.

But that's not the point.

The point is that Goguen made a stupid, coarse, immature, and insensitive comment - and one that really had nothing to do with the issue. In the news media I checked, I found nothing but outrage at Goguen. And from the Irving press, only silence.

So far, there is no reason to believe the Harper government has any intention of helping victims of the sex trade. They're too busy giggling over Goguen's wit.
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There's really nothing in Wednesday's paper at all. Well, for the third or fourth edition in a row, there's a story about the great RibFest which, like the earlier stories, tells us nothing. It also has a nice picture of the event. To bad it seems exactly the same as the picture they had on, I think, Monday.

NewsToday has a propaganda story on the Israeli bombing of Palestinians in retaliation for rocket attacks from a Palestinian group. I call it a propaganda story because the wording of the story strongly implies that a Palestinian group called Hamas is the cause of the problem, all of it. Poor little Israel is just defending itself.

This is a farce that has been going on for too long. Israel has treated the Palestinians like animals from the start. They have killed them - even children - and, during "peace talks" - have shown their contempt by purposely expelling Palestinians from their own land, annexing it, and building Israel settlements Israel doesn't want peace. It has made that very clear.

It has also become intensely racist even within Israel. Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are routinely kicked out of their homes, discriminated against, threatened.. And God help the black African refugees who look for safety in Israel. It deliberately keeps Palestine poor and restricts the flow of medicine to that country. It jails and tortures Palestinians on thin to no charges.

The news reports don't mention the brutality and  violence inflicted on Palestinans when Israel sent in troops to look for three Israeli teenagers kidnapped by Hamas. They had the full cooperation of the Palestinian Authority in their search - something most of our news outlets don't mention. In the course of the search, Israelis killed ten Palestinians,beat up many more, arrested and jailed 500 "on suspicion" (undoubtedly to be beaten and tortured.) And now, as punishment, they are bombing Palestinian civilians who had nothing to do with the kidnappings - or with rocket attacks.

Israel plays at being poor little Israel. In fact, it is well armed free of charge by the US, and it has a massive, nuclear arsenal. (which, incidentally, is an illegal arsenal). Israel gets US support because it is a major ally to help the US control the region. It gets Harper support so Harper can win the next election.

Yes, what Hitler did to the Jews was horrible beyond words. And what WE didn't do for the Jews when they needed us was horrible. But that's no reason why Palestinians - who did nothing to the Jews - should now face all the suffering.  Israeli hatred and anger at the world has itself become hateful and quite racist..

And, unlike Iran, it has a nuclear arsenal. We are playing political games in a region that could well explode into nuclear war - and with no-one able to predict the consequences. Funny how our news media fret about an Iranian nuclear arsenal that doesn't exist - but never mention the very large, Israeli one.
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With all this, the most important thing the editor can find to write about is the Shediac Lobster Festival. Eric Lewis and Brian Cormier still don't know anything worth writing about. And I have to disagree strongly with Alec Bruce on his vision of Canada as a resource extraction country. It's not as simple or as good as it sounds.

Indeed, countries  that live on resources extraction are among the most miserable in the world. And there is one hell of a problem with the spread of free trade agreements. Increasingly, they favour the super-rich, destroy any hope of democracy or even the idea of the existence of a nation, and destroy the future.

I'll have to write on this sometime soon.
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Now, it's Thursday; and I was wrong. The TandT did carry the Goguen story. It's very, very short and hidden on A6. But it is there.Oh - a strange thing. The story has a note at the end that it comes from the Canadian Press. but the byline (the source listed under the heading) says its from Times and Transcript. Why wouldn't it say The Canadian Press?

Probably - because Irving press dumped the full Canadian Press story, and doctored it into a very short report with much of the nasty part taken out. All other reports I've seen on this were much  tougher on Goguen.
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Anyway, in most papers, the big news is on the first page.Page 6 is a bit late. So - front page is given to something really important. Today, it's a photo of the biggest lobster roll in the world being assembled in Shediac. We saw the roll in a photo yesterday, too. But, hey, you can't get enough news about a big story.

Below it is another big story. Some women like cars. Wow! Who would have guessed?

Another big, front pagge story is that closing Main Street for a party needs planning. Another big story is on A11. Apparently, people often leave things behind in taxicabs - you know, combs, cell phones......The news YOU need to know.

In Afghanistan, there is a rise in civil disorder leading to a high rate of civilian murders - another triumph for the trillion dollar wars of American big business.

Though the world is in very serious trouble, it's not noticed in the editorial and opinion columns. The hot item for the editor is that tax payers should not pay the bill for a lawsuit against the government. Way to speak out fearlessly, ed.

Rod Allen tells another pointless story about his uninteresting self. Alec Bruce has an uneven column about the need for a better education system. He starts by claiming that the quality of Canadian education is a national discgrace - and everybody knows it.

Nonsense. It's true that a few countries rate as the best in the world. - and Canada has never been best. But it has consistently been among the top two or three percent in the world. If you want to see an education system that's a national disgrace, take the US. It consistently ranks at the bottom of the developed world - much of that due to the interference and greed of big business. Britain is going down the same tube and for the same reason.

That interference of big business is important but Alec Bruce is writing his column as a defence of the Canadian Council of Executives because it wants our system to produce more skilled workers to make billionaires richer.

"Everybody knows about it,...", says Bruce.

Nonsense. Everybody 'knows" no such thing. All they know is what they see in our news media which, across Canada don't have enough journalists with even a passing knowledge of education to make a decent poker game.

And even Bruce seems ill-informed. His column is written as though education is only about skills training. In fact, it's not. It's about developing minds. Imagine that? Education is really about brains. It's not just about learning the skills of reading, for example. It's also about learning to understand what is read. It's about organizing in your mind what you have read. It's about making judgements about the value of what you have read. It's about organizing and expressing your own ideas. It's about logic.

History is not about producing patriots. History is, or should be, learning to be crtical of many of the things we believe to be true. It's not about learning that MacDonald and Tupper were "great men". It's about learning how to judge for yourself what they were. (And I wouldn't apply "great" to either of them - particularly Tupper.

Yes, it's important to learn skills. It's also important to learn how to think and to make judgements. And the trouble with looking to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives is that they aren't big on thinking. Thinking people could be a nuisance to them. In any case, they aren't thinkers themselves. They are skilled workers, largely lacking any capacity for thought - and even hostile to it - who have conned us into believing their limited skills are worth far more money than every else.
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Jody Dallaire's column was the only oasis in a vast desert of lies, propaganda and trivialities.
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Oh - you'll notice there's no news about Ukraine. But, gee, what's happening might be kind of important. The government of Ukraine is carrying on a fierce offensive against Russian speaking Ukrainians. It  has shown very little interest in talks.

Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians have a profound hatred of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Many approve of killing as many Russian-speakers as possible. This puts tremendous pressure on Putin to intervene on behalf of the Russian speakers.

Putin quite obviously does not want to do that because such an intervention would almost certainly be a disaster for Russia. It would give the US the excuse it wants for a nuclear attack on Russia. But as the killing goes on, Russia faces an enormous loss of prestige and, more important, influence in the world.

This is one hell of a dangerous situation. But don't worry about it. The day after it happens Rod Allen will have a hilarious column about his wife no. 1 and other, great jokes.

July 8: Wow! Big story! Nothing happened....

There's a big picture on the front page of police in bullet-proof vests, and one of the them carrying a rifle. The big story? Nothing. There had been a false alarm about a robbery in Moncton.

Wow! Nothing happened. Get a reporter and a photographer on this fast.

So page A 3 has a whole page of six, big colour photos and a news story about something that never happened. That's what's called sensationalism. A real newspaper would have given it one, brief  paragraph with no pictures.

But, to look on the good side, it's the most important story in all of Section A.

NewsToday has more than the usual news - three and a half pages, substantially less and later than you can get on Google. And, again, those pages have lots of non-news. There is, for example, the story that the defence in the trial of Pistorius winds up today. That's it. You don't really need a story for that. The headline is the whole story.

Then there's the big story that the experience of our December ice storm helped NB Power crews deal with tropical storm Arthur. Yeah. So? In fact, it's not even a story. It's the usual, self-serving PR statement from an official. The "reporter" just copied down his statements, and wrote "he said" before them.

The best news I saw was on C3, "Orphanage survivors in Halifax celebrate legal win". It brought back a day many years ago when I  was a student at Acadia driving along the shore highway out of Halifax. Out of curiosity, I turned off onto a side road running through forest. There, in a clearing, I saw a grim building with a big sign on it - Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children. There was no sign of life.

You could feel  the evil of the place. I remember thinking the sign could have read "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

At that time, Montreal was noted for its racism, but the Nova Scotia of those days carried me back to the viciousness I had seen from Washington and south of it in the US. I had also seen intense racism in Nova Scotia - and that "Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children"  summed up all the vileness of it

But the story, from Canadian Press, captures none of that. The word racism, in fact, appears only once, and then in quoting a lawyer for the victims. This is bad reporting. The story means nothing without setting it in the context of Nova Scotia racism.

Another important story made pointless is on C10 "Lac Megantic remembers rail disaster one year later".
There is not a word about the failure of the federal government to take any corrective action in a whole year. Nor has there been any open investigation. I don't expect the Irving press to have a reporter named Clark Kent who can fix everything. But it must surely have someone with the wit to know what kinds of questions should have been asked - and what should have been a lot more open than it has been.

So far, the investigation into a accident that killed 47 people has been kept a secret from us. Get a reporter who can, at least, tell us what the blank spots are, and can alert us to the kind of investigation we are not getting.

There is little foreign news, and that little gives no hint of the turmoil in this world, and how uncertain and dangerous it makes our lives. Most of the world is preparing for wars foreign and civil. We will be expected to support decisions for insanities which have been growing for the last 70 years. And, relying on most of our media has left us ignorant of what has been happening in the world, and even here in New Brunswick.

There is the usual nothing much in editorial or op eds. Norbert has a useful topic about Facebook allowing scientists to manipulate posts of members without telling them. Quite so. And our spy agencies have been doing the same and worse for years. So how come Norbert has never attacked our spy agencies?
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Monday's  paper wasn't as good. It had yet another feature story on the Rotary Ribfest. And yet again, more pictures for those who don't know what people who eat ribs look like. There was even a big photo of a plastic pig for those who don't know where ribs come from.

The only other thing in Tuesday's paper worth reading is Norbert's column. It is easily one of the most thoroughly disgusting columns I have ever seen. And it shows the utter contempt of this toadie for almost all of us.

Norbert's world-vision is that of liveried and snobbish doorman in one of the great homes of an aristocrat in Victorian England. Servile to his master, he has the pride of feeling he is at least attached to the better sort of people - the aristocracy. Though really only a commoner himself, he has contempt for all those other commoners.

My mother was born into a Scottish working class family a decade after the death of Queen Victoria. It was then still the world of commoners and aristocrats. We were very much commoners. I remember she would sometimes refer to someone as coming from "...a very good family." By the time I was six or so, I knew that meant rich (by our standards). A bad family was invariably a poor one (which left us pretty much in the cellar.)

The rich had every right to demand whatever they wanted. Us commoners didn't. That meant the rich had a right to 'entitlement'. We didn't.

Norbert's column is about "our culture of entitlement". He uses the term that is condescending, even sneering, in reference to  health care, education, pensions..... (He also shows his ignorance of the meaning of entitlement by suggesting that shale gas opponents are not entitled to oppose anything.)

Norbert is the ultimate Victorian butler.

In no case does he mention any limit on the entitlements of the very rich - to lower taxes, to government grants, to  private meetings with their head  waiter Mr. Alward. Yet, they are the ones primarily responsible for our economic problems. They, not Mr. Alward, determine our budget. They, not Mr. Alward, set taxation breaks.

There's a reason we don't have as much money as we should in circulation. For a good twenty years,    the rich have been getting richer much, much faster than us. They have funneled the money into their own pockets.  That, apparently, is their entitlement. Say it with a sneer, Norbert. See if you dare.

All over the western world most people are getting poorer while the rich are soaring to levels never before reached. That is what has caused an economic crisis all over the world. (Yes, Norbert, there is a world beyond New Brunswick.) The very rich have, by their greed, created a disaster - and they intend the rest of us to pay for it.

And, as I can guess from the readings you supply us with, you read books on economics only if they were written by people anxious to please the Irvings - and all those other butlers, footmen, carriage drivers. waiters and personal dressers who work for our "good' families.

I don't suggest we spend money wildly. We're doing that now by throwing it at the rich. What we need are honest politicians with some brains, and fewer journalists who spend their lives asking the rich to bend over so they can kiss them better.

Norbert ends by saying we have refused to face economic reality. In fact, Norbert, you have refused to look at it. You see only what you want to see - and you don't want to see anything that would displease t he rich. Your approach to our economic problems is to make them even worse. And that will take us straight to a real disaster.

Around the world the rich are creating profound suffering and hardships. That is going to lead to severe internal violence. That is why many police forces, especially in the US, are being armed with military weaponry. That is why we have massive and secret spy agencies here and in other countries. The US, in particular, is getting close to a breaking point.

Look, as you say, at reality, Norbert. And be a mensch.

Are we entitled? You're damn right we are. We are all of us entitled to respect as human beings. We are all of us as a society entitled to build a society which can ensure we can meet basic needs. There was a long time ago a world that Norbert still lives in. It was a world of aristocracy and commoners in which only the wealthy were entitled to education, medical care, basic needs, equal opportunity. It was a world that created nothing but  massive suffering and rage.

I'll bet Norbert thinks the Russian revolution was caused by communists. Not at all. Communists had been trying to create revolutions for over half a century - without luck. What caused the Russian revolution was an arrogant, brutal, greedy aristocracy. What emerged as the communist government was, not surprisingly, an arrogant, brutal and greedy communist government.

To change anything through violence is one hell of dangerous exercise - and usually a failure.

So if our western world is to survive, people like Norbert have to stop acting as if they were servants to the Tsar and his aristocracy. As it is, our Norberts and the Irving press cater to the most dangerous revolutionaries of our time, people who lack a good deal of brain, and who have no moral principles whatever. You know, the "good families".

Like you said, Norbert, align your expectations with reality.

We commoners are entitled. We're entitled to our opinion even when we criticize shale gas. We're entitled to a fair share of the opportunities and a fair share of the wealth our society produces. We're entitled to expect that our politicians represent us; we're entitled to news media that tell the truth. Tell your master that, Norbert. You'll be doing him a favour.

And he'll fire you.

And that will be doing us a favour.
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There is an important letter to the editor in the Monday, July 7 edition. It's from a retired RCMP officer; and it demands that the inquiry into our recent killings should be public, not simply internal. If you really have sympathy for those who died and respect for those who lived, you will loudly demand that it be public. This is far more important than crying of pictures of a dog that has lost it's mater.  It's far more important than putting up signs saying Moncton is Strong. Our police (and us voters) deserve an open and public inquiry into what happened, and why it happened as it did.
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As always, there were important stories that did not appear in the Irving press - and probably won't.

The Globe had two, interesting stories about Alberta oilsands.
1. Oilsands is not crucial to the Canadian economy. It is only 2% of our gross national product.
2, A major study carried out by university scientists and the Canadian government has produced an alarming report about the pollution resulting - not just in the oil region itself, but carried downstream all the way to the sea. And it seems the estimates of the damage have been way off.

What the study showed is high levels of arsenic, mercury and heavy metals that are destroying plant, animal, and human life. The major human victims are native peoples who traditionally depend on hunting. They, too, are being sickened by the poisons, and are generally showing poor health.

Lord know how bad it must be in the oil field, itself. Or how many centuries it will last. And when you think of the profits, think of the centuries of losses.

Funny how the oil companies never noticed that pollution.

July 5: Bad taste? Ignorance?

Page G8 of Saturday's TandT  has a full page titled "Five free things to see and do in Detroit".I'm sure that will attract the full attention of those many New Brunswickers who plan to go to Detroit for their summer vacations.

At it's best, some twenty or more years ago, Detroit was not an attractive place. Just crossing the street from a white folks' district to a black ghetto was like crossing a border between heaven and hell. Now, much more of Detroit is hell as free trade has allowed billionaires to get away from all those auto workers and their unions who had the silly idea they should be paid enough to live on. Effectively, the billionaires closed Detroit down to rot.

Though the TandT didn't notice, the city of Detroit has been cutting off water and sewage to tens of thousands of families who can no longer afford it. (Clap hands, Norbert. None of this silly, entitlement crap for those people.) The number of people without water to drink, to wash the dishes or clothes, to wash themselves, and to flush their toilets is expected to rise, and soon, to 300,000.

Imagine the stench of all those unwashed bodies in their unwashed clothes. Imagine the stench of human waste in dumped in halls, alleys, behind bushes, in fields... Imagine the health risks of that and of food served on plates that are never really clean

Remember how hot it's been here? It gets hot in Detroit, too. Imagine all the above on hot days and nights. When you live in those cheap apartments and flats, the most terrible times are those nights you cannot sleep for the heat and the stuffiness. I remember them well with people hanging out their  windows for air at 3 a.m. I still remember the cockroaches crawling down the wall, so well that I still have nightmares about them. And that was in the small, two-storey flats in Montreal. The huge and overfilled cheap apartments in Detroit must be even worse.

But, if you visit, take care not to get sick. Americans are too proud to accept entitlements like health care so, it they can't afford it, they proudly get sick and die.

By the way, when you look at the pictures in the TandT, you'll notice a distinct absence of black faces - this in a city with a huge black population.  Guess who most of the very poor in Detroit are.

Note, too, the almost obscene picture of the lavish use of clear, cold water for a fountain in this city that cannot afford water for it's people to drink, to wash with, or to flush their human waste.

Enjoy your Detroit holiday.
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On July 3, we were blessed with a story headed "Poll suggests support for forest strategy".

For a start, the use of the word 'strategy' is a lying, propaganda word. What it refers to is a deal which J.D.Irving forced on Chief Wimp Alward. A strategy would mean a plan for preserving the forest. This is simply a plan for exploiting it for the profit of Irving. The use of the word strategy here is deliberately misleading.

A polling firm commissioned by forestry and environmental professors at UNB showed New Brunswickers were 60% opposed to the deal, and only 20% in support of it. So, hall of fame philanthropist J.D.Irving,. always anxious to be sure NBers are fully informed, conducted his own poll.

Quelle surprise! His poll, through a polling firm he has relied on before - Corporate Associates Inc. -, shows a majority in support of the 'strategy'. Some of the questions were a little odd, though.

Apparently,people were asked whether the new "strategy" would protect the sustainability of our forests. Now, why would they ask such a question? Even if they knew what the 'strategy' is, how many would have the expertise to know what effect it would have?

The story does not mention how many people didn't respond to some questions. That can be, and usually is, important in judging poll results. So we have a question. Is is possible the "I don't knows" were simply disregarded in concluding majority support?

Then the pollster launched into a speech about  how we can trust J.D.Irving to protect our forests because, well, he's just that kind of a guy. I have never seen such a kiss-up from a pollster - and it surely raises doubts about his credibility.

When you have two polling companies coming to such contradictory conclusions, something dishonest is going on.

The reporter does not seem to have asked a single question about all this. He just took notes and wrote the story as Mr. Irving would want it. This isn't reporting. This isn't journalism. This isn't a news story of any sort. This is pure propaganda.
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Saturday's headline story is yet another free ad for the Rotary Ribfest. Is this, at last, the end? No. My guess would be one more story on Monday. This one actually takes two pages, complete  with pictures for those who don't know what a rib roast looks like.

The only other important story is that Atlantic Canada has had hurricanes in the past. Who would have guessed?
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Section D has a long story on Lac Megantic. It tells of the severe suffering and  fears that still exist a year after the rail crash. It talks about how governments have done virtually nothing to help, and have taken no action to do anything - even as much of the town lies in ruins with many buildings still standing, but still  too heavily contaminated to allow people to enter them.

Harper, incidentally, has had no money to spare to help Lac Megantic. But he did recently have at least a couple of million out of the budget to take 200 of his closest friends for a free holiday in Israel.

The story says nothing whatever about why the whole blame is being laid on three people -with no mention of who made the decision to keep using such dangerous tank cars, who decided to hire a company with such dangerous tank cars, who mislabeled the cargo as being much less flammable than it was, who decided to send such a long train such a long distance with only one engineer, who decided to hire a rail company that used only one engineer.

How much money was saved by the above arrangements? Who got the profits?

Watch your TandT for the answers.
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With the world undergoing what are probably the greatest changes in history, Friday's TandT has almost no world news, and none at all worth reading.
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And Norbert - well today is a Norbert rant against people who consider themselves entitled - especially those who get a very tiny share of this world's wealth. Norbert's good at name-calling. Tell you what, Norbert. About three years ago, J.D.Irving wrote a column in your paper announcing he had declared himself a member of the government.

Other people have get elected. But Mr. Irving is entitled to call himself a member of the government. He doesn't need your votes.  He's entitled because he was born rich. So how about a column on Mr. Irving's sense of entitlement?

Give him hell, Norbert.
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After the first paragraph, I looked forward to the rest of Brent Mazerolle's op ed column on R.B. Bennett.

Like Mazerolle, I  have a lot of admiration for  Bennett, Canada's prime  minister for the first half of the great depression. He was by no stretch a great prime minister. In fact, he became hated for his arrogance and his brutality A very wealthy man, he was the popular symbol of greed and of contempt for the poor- and most of his time in office reflected that.

But Bennett was a far better man than his image. He was rich. But he wasn't born that way. He knew well what suffering meant, what it was to be hungry. to seemingly have no hope. As prime minister, he seemed to be  uncaring and arrogant. And he was certainly arrogant. But he never forgot his New Brunswick childhood.

As prime minister, has almost daily got letters of appeal from parents who needed financial help for their children - for an operation, for a boy scout uniform, for a Christmas present.... He replied to almost all of them, and usually with a gift of his own money. And he didn't even make his toadies nominate him to a place in the philanthropy hall of fame for New Brunswick.

When he visited a factory (Eddy Match in Ottawa), he met a girl of 14 or so who worked at a menial job there. On invitation, he visited her home, and met her family. And he was appalled at the dreadful conditions he saw.

Very gradually, the compassion he had learned in his own youth told him that all the handling of the depression - cutting services, cutting the taxes of the rich, allowing the rich to run up high profits and open a tremendous wage gap between rich and poor simply didn't work. (And yet, that is exactly what we are doing all over the world right now - and with the same result, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.)

Unlike Harper, Bennett could learn. In the closing year of his term, he laid the foundations for a real economic recovery. It was too late. He lost to Mackenzie King, a man who always whined about his concern for the poor - and always served the rich.

But the spirit of Bennett's reforms lived on to become a major factor in the success of reviving the Canadian economy in World War Two - and for some years after.

Alas! New Brunswick has not produced any Bennett's since. Just Irvings.

So I read Mazerolle's column. There is nothing in it. It was full of babble that he's giving a speech on Bennett - and then line after line about how his notes are dusty, and how they were written with an old-fashioned typewriter. Couldn't someone at that paper sit down with Mazerolle and tell him what an opinion column is?


Gwynne Dyer has an excellent column on the fighting in Iraq, and the blame for it that lies on the heads of two war criminals, George Bush and Tony Blair. The consequences of this we can only guess at - but they will almost certainly be quite horrible.

Still, the world's most dangerous trouble spot is Ukraine. It is the one that opens the prospect of world nuclear war. In our news media, the Russians have been aggressive, though for reasons for claiming that are unclear. In reality, it is the US that has created this situation, and it is the west which has been heavy on issuing threats. Putin is no sweetheart. But he's the one who's been the moderate looking for a peaceful solution. All the signs are that Obama is the one who's looking for a war.

Why has Dyer not written on this?
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The religion today sermonette is.......  Well,we live in a world in which our leaders murder, starve, exploit, brutalize whole nations in all their millions. The sermonette doesn't mention any nasty things. But it fearlessly states we should share things with each other - a beer, a meal, a conversation.

I was taken back to my childhood when, I sat through a sermon in which the minister was preaching about being nice. He referred to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a rallying cry to all Christians. "Wouldn't it be better if people were just nice to each other?"

July 3: The exceptionalism of Exceptionalism.

Obama has recently and publicly stated that he believes in American Exceptionalism with "every fibre of his being". In fact, that can be said of almost everyone in the American government - and the Canadian government. It such a strong belief that it's rather remarkable that few in the news media know have explained what it means.

In fact, without knowing what it means, a very high proportion of Canadians seem to believe in American Exceptionalism.

In brief, it means that the US has the right to do anything it likes to other countries. Laws, whether domestic or international, do not apply to the US. No other country has that right. In short, the US has the right to rule the world, and to impose it's will on others. Nobody else has such a right.

No, I am not making that up. That is really what it means - and those who use the term usually know what it means. So far as the US government is concerned, law does not exist.

Another term for that might be world dictatorship. This one is driven by the greed and arrogance of big business - and partly by the American religious background - and partly by racism.

For religious fundamentalists, it is common to see the US as an expression of God's will,  a nation destined to rule the world as God wishes it to be ruled. Then, very close to the religious aspect,  there's the racism.

Almost all empires in history have been built on racism. And, indeed, almost all social structures are based on something very like racism.

The British Empire was based on an assumption that the British were what Hitler would have a called a "super race". They were justified in conquering other peoples,in murdering them,  in stealing their resources, in abusing their people, even enslaving them because they, the English-speaking people, were racially superior. Any reading of Rudyard Kipling or almost any other British writer of a century ago or even more recent will confirm that.

Those were the days of British Exceptionalism. Hitler's notions of German racial superiority were nothing new when he embarked on his wars.

And I suspect that Canadians generally agree with these racist ideas.
 For evidence, take a look at today's A2 of the TandT. "Document questions Khadr charges"

Khadr was fifteen when he was charged with a war crime. It is illegal to charge a person of that age with a war crime.
Khadr was put into Guantanmo. That was illegal, too.
He was charged for killing a soldier. The military court that tried him said that for a civilian to kill a soldier is illegal. In fact, no such law exists. Worse - the US routinely uses civilians to kill soldiers (and civilians). The CIA routinely murders -and the CIA is civilian. Drone "pilots" fire rockets at anything that moves -soldiers, civilians, children....and many of those pilots are civilians.

Harper accepted Khadr, because he was a Canadian citizen, and put him in a Canadian prison to finish his eight years. Harper knows quite well it is illegal to hold what was a child soldier. He also knows that it was illegal of the US to invade Afghanistan in the first place. He still sent Canadians there to die, anyway - which, incidentally, underlines that Canada's presence in Afghanistan was illegal, too.

Yet Harper has hasn't lifted a finger to help Khadr. He does, though, heap praise on the current government of Ukraine - though it is illegal. Nor does it bother him that the government of Ukraine features prominent leaders of the neo-Nazi party.

And we Canadians buy it all. Now, if Khadr were a Canadian Christian, it might be different. But he's one of them there moslems that we.ve been taught to hate by our governments and our news media. And, let's recognize the truth - we don't give a damn how long he spends in jail because he's not really a Canadian like us. He's really part of an inferior race.

You don't think we're racist?

Do you go to church? Remember 9/11? Remember the outpouring of sympathy for New Yorkers? I'll bet there were prayers in church for them, maybe even a sermon. In many cases, there were also offers of financial help, accomodation for stranded US air passengers......

Were there any prayers for the more than a million killed in the illegal invasion of Iraq? The US and Saudi Arabia are largely responsible for the hiring and equipping of mercenaries who have killed so many people in Syria. It's all hundreds if times worse than 9/11. So where are the prayers? the offers of help?

There aren't any because hose people are different from us. They're inferior - and we don't give a damn about them.
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The same process happens within a society. For centuries, Britain was ruled by the aristocrats who owned the land and the peasants on it. Over the years, a firm line was drawn. There was an aristocracy that had a right to rule. Its sons (usually the more stupid ones) had the right to enter the army as officers, and then to buy their way up to the higher ranks. That helps to explain the massive losses of the British army at the Battle of the Somme in World War One, under the command of Earl Haig.

It was understood. There were aristocrats who ruled because they were the children of aristocrats. They had a right to rule. By the eighteenth century, as land became less profitable, the aristocratic class sought out wealthy wives to help pay for their sagging estates. That's why Churchill's father was married Jenny Jerome, daughter of a hugely wealthy mining family in the US. (Jerome, Arizona is now a ghost mining town..

Most other people were commoners, a disparaging term whose use suggests they were regarded as inferior by birth - that is, they were genetically an inferior race. That's why, even as the aristocrats enlarged their magnificent homes and stuffed them with servants (aristocrat army officers were known to keep 50 and more personal servants, even in the field.), most of the inferior commoners lived in filth, got low pay, and died young.

Nobody cared. They were an inferior race.

That's why the British, much as they respected Churchill for his wartime leadership, voted him out as soon as the war was over. After all, their class had been killed, too. It was more than time that they got a share of the nation's wealth - in the form of medical care, improved housing,etc. - And they knew Churchill would never give it to them. Churchill was technically a commoner. But he was born to an aristocratic family - and he had nothing but contempt for commoners, just as he had nothing but contempt for all those inferior races of the empire.
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North America, short of aristocrats, made use of a rising capitalist class. Increasingly, it is a class born into what its members see as a superior race, with a right to rule us inferiors. How else can one explain the bizarre incident of J.D.Irving publicly announcing some three years ago that he, without  the need to get elected, was now a member of the government?

This is our aristocracy. And, like the old British aristocracy, it presumes the right to rule over us commoners - despite the evidence of their complete incompetence at anything except being born into the right family.

Incidentally, organizations close to the Irvings  - like AIMS - have been pushing hard to make changes in the education system. Might I ask what their training and experience in education is? I'm curious because I was at Acadia university just after the two,older brothers. They left without graduating; and I cannot find any record of their intellectual achievements.
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As the world has always done, we are repeating past mistakes. Democracy is close to extinct. We have permitted the rise of an aristocracy of wealth which is proving, as the British aristocracy proved, to give not a damn for us, and utterly incompetent for anything except taking more for itself.

In the process, these people, whom Norbert calls our economic leaders, have shattered the world's economies to benefit themselves, have operated banks questionably and even illegally, have cornered all the world's wealth they can gobble while leaving millions in poverty and even starvation,  An Earl Haig, who commanded the British at the Somme cost Britain some 200,000 lives for his stupidity.  Our Earl Haigs murder by the millions.for their greed.

Since we're really a part of it, we might do some serious thinking about American Exceptionalism, and its great leap back into the dark ages.
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There's not much in the TandT.

Norbert continues his harangues about how we (the commoners) have to pay for the budget debts so that our aristocracy, who created the debts,can walk away scot free. And, of course, he sneers at government bureaucrats. I have news for  you, Norbert. After ten years of recession in which the rich got richer and the poor poorer,  the Canadian economy was put under the control of bureaucrats. Under their control, Canada had the most reliable and successful economic system in the world. It's the return of control by big business that has us back in trouble.

Please, Norbert, learn a little bit about Canada before you start giving us all advice.

July 2 edition is mostly pictures.

There is news for both July 2 and 3 of turmoil around the world. Alas, the news, itself, is just a turmoil with little sense of why this is happening. Hint - much of the turmoil is caused by the wants of big business.. Almost all of the turmoil might properly be called societies in collapse.

And some t hings don't make it into the  Irving pres.
1. A year after 47 people were killed in Lac Megantic, nothing has been done. There are no plans for how to deal with a similar accident. No significant report on the police investigations. All we have is the whole blame being dumped on three, minor players.

2. They also missed the story of how Obama ordered the murder of an American citizen. The victim was in one of the world's trouble spots. He was suspected. Just suspected. Of doing - something. Obama had him killed. No trial. No charge. just killed.

It was contrary to both international law and the American constitution.

But it was faithful to American Exceptionalism.

3. There has been no reporting on the history of Ukraine - though it might explain a lot. Ukraine was a long history  of intense and brutal hatreds. It was a leader in the horrors of the slaughter of Jews. The Nazi party is still a force in Kiev's Ukraine, and in its government. It has a similar hatred of Russian speaking Ukrainians. That's why the fighting is so intense. Russian speakers fear being exterminated by the Kiev government. Indeed, Kiev encourages them to think that. It has announced that all property owned by Russian speakers who are killed or who flee to Russia will be confiscated by the government - then given to the government soldiers.

4. There is a report on the crisis between Israel and Palestine. But it's highly biased. There is no mention of the countless houses in Palestine broken into by Israeli soldiers, the beatings, the arbitrary shootings, the arrests and imprisonment of dozens of Palestinians on no charge and no evidence.

Netanyahu is quoted as calling Palestinians (just about all of them) terrorists. He should know. The founders of Israel were the ones who introduced terrorism to the middle east.

There's another story that the paper might pick up (I don't think) tomorrow. It's from today's Toronto Star.
Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto, called a press conference But it was in a tiny room with invited reporters only. And no questions were permitted.

In other words, this wasn't journalism at all. It was just free advertising for Ford. The Toronto Star accepted those terms. A Star columnist was furious. He pointed out that a journalist is not simply a stenographer to take down notes for free advertising for anybody. A journalist is an independent inquirer who questions, probes and digs for the whole, true story. It's an excellent column.

But I don't think you'll see it reported in the Irving press. It exists to avoid questions, to write what it's told to write, to churn out nothing but free advertising and trivia. And you certainly won't see one of their staff writers ever, ever criticizing that. It takes courage to write a column giving hell to the boss. The Irving press doesn't have an editor or staff columnist who has courage. Well, in fairness, some might. But they won't do it because they don't have the brains to know what real journalism is.

But then, the Irvings and their press are Exceptional.

July1: My old, high school song - and the future of NB education....

-----terrible mistake. When I finished my Saturday blog, I forgot to publish it. Just fixed that today.)

And now back to my high   school song...



(Tune:  The Caissons Go Rolling Along)

"Give a cry, give a cheer
 For the boys who drink the beer
In the cellars of Montreal High.
They are rough. they are bold
And the liquor they can hold
Is a story that's yet to be told......."

I still remember every word,  though I never even tried to memorize it. The same is true of Rudyard Kipling's "Gunga Din". I read it when I was eight, and fascinated by the wonders and glory (so I thought) of the British Empire. "You my talk of gin and beer
               When you're quartered safe out here
               Or you're sent to penny fights and Aldershot it.
               But when it comes to slaughter
               You will do your work on water
                And you'll lick the bloomin' boots of  'im that's got it."
When my parents had company, they would get me out of bed even very late, like 9:30, and I'd recite it.
I never even tried to memorize but, even though I haven't been asked to recite it for may years, I still remember it to the final lines...
"Thought I've belted you and flayed you,
By the living God that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

But in high school, I had to memorize Shakespeare's "Full fathom five thy father lies...." I did memorize it, and got an A on the test. But I've never since been able to do more than the first three lines.

It was the same in other courses. It was all to be memorized (rote learning, it's called). I memorized for algebra, geometry. trigonometry, history, geography. Occasionally I even passed an exam in one of them. But within a very few years, I had forgotten it all. When I had children, I couldn't even help them with their grade eight algebra.

University was much the same. I passed a BA, but can't even remember the names of most of the courses.
In the MA, I developed a system for memorizing. And I got straight As. But I can't point to anything I learned.   In the PhD, I had one teacher who knew how to teach. I've never forgotten him or what he taught. But he stands alone.

And that takes us to Mr. Alward's "brilliant" plan to improve our schools. He claims a new, business-inspired system will improve learning.

We are assured that literacy will improve. Ir probably won't. In fact, it will probably take us way back over the decades to my childhood school days.

Learning is about logic, structure, presentation of ideas, understanding, intellectual sensitivity. School is not so  much about subjects as about as about mental processes. Canadian history is not about memorizing events - many of which are not true, anyway. It's about understanding how people behave. English is about developing insight, organization of ideas, expression of them.

So how do you measure progress? It varies from subject to subject, but generally you measure it by reading written work. If it meets certain standards, but no more, it's a C. Normally, a C to a C plus would reflect that.

However, not long ago, I was asked to write a report on grades in my history department. I was surprised to find that many faculty reported 80% As in their classes - and occasionally a hundred percent. To make it odder, such courses that get a reputation for  high grades attract lazy students who don't like to study. They call them "bird courses". And they were getting As, too.

In the US, it's an epidemic. Straight As are common.  B can be regarded as an insult. That's part of the reason why a semi-literate bozo like George Bush could get a master's degree in business from one of the most prestigious universities in the US.

With a reality like that, you cannot measure improvements with any accuracy at all. And the very idea you can do it within 1 or 3 percentage points is laughable. A statistician needs numbers to work with.

So, what you do is give true and false tests. You're right or wrong. There's a number to work with.

Oh, but it's useless. The only way to prepare students for an exam like that is to teach them to memorize. And, if you do that, you aren't teaching them anything to develop their minds and their skills.

Yes, you will get a number at the end. It might be 1% improvement. It might be 80% improvement. But in either case, it won't mean a damn thing about how much they're learned, just what they've memorized and will forget after the exam. So why are we doing this to our children?

Because business and, notably, the Irvings and others are working to take over the schools for private profit. That's why began interfering with them, largely through the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies,
some years ago. That's why they've been assuming the right to rate schools, (using methods that show a towering ignorance of education.) That's why we're getting compulsory courses in entrepreneurship to be taught in all grades, from K to 12. That's why we're having people who have never studied education and never taught given authority to run schools (and hospitals) along business lines. The theory is that business methods work for everything. (Read Norbert's propaganda columns.)

They don't work for everything. They convert your children into dollar signs to benefit a very few who are greedy. They don't give a damn for the well-being of our children. I don't know whether they're evil. But they're certainly stupid.

In any case, I suspect the reading problem is not something to be fixed by the schools. Let's look at ourselves. This is not an intellectually active province. Thinking, learning, open discussion are not common activities. The only newspapers specialize in trivia, propaganda and outright lies. The only Canadian legislature of lower quality I have seen was in PEI. But, in fairness, that was over forty years ago.

Schools cannot cure that atmosphere. However, we should certainly be active in fighting the damage that greedy people are doing to our children. Alas! The only agencies we have in place to do the job are school boards of no great intelligence, and Home and School and Parent's Associations, who waste our time with chatty tea meetings, and with raising money for supplies that a government should be supplying.

God forbid they should do anything useful.
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As you might guess, there's little in yesterday's or today's paper to talk about.

Monday's paper has a back page opinion piece by the associate director of Fiscal Studies for the Fraser Institute (like AIMS, it's a propaganda house for big business). He pleads the case for to lower taxes for multi-millionaire hockey players. I wept as I thought the the hardships they must endure.

Tuesday's paper has an op ed by Pat Graham, the ombudswoman for Irving press. It's on news stories about tragedy; and it's well worth a read. (ms. Graham has a solid reputation as a journalist across Canada.) The only problem I have with it is that the sort of handling she talks about is not what I saw in the TandT on the recent RCMP shootings.

The same paper has Norbert's column in which he claims pride in our systems of EI, Medicare, mass university education and women's liberation. Think about it, Norbert. All of those were accomplished with no help from big business but, indeed, much opposition for it. In fact, it is actively interfering in at least three of them to weaken them.

Oh, and tell Norbert that peacekeeping for our military was abandoned decades ago when we became toadies for US foreign policy. The last use of "peacekeepers", in Haiti, was a fraud. It was used to cover the illegality of the American invasion of Haiti so they could deport a president who wouldn't take orders from Washington.

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And you must read the best letter to the editor I have ever seen."Few are happy on 'Turtle Island Day'". It's in Tuesday's paper - and it's a statement of the millions of tragedies we have caused around the word. And we never think of our responsibility for them - and rarely even acknowledge them.

The letter is about native peoples in Canada. But it could be about China or Africa or South America or the Middle East. For centuries, the west has murdered, destroyed societies, created chaos, taken slaves, plundered land. It began with hundreds of millions, and is now over a billion people whose shattered societies have left them with nothing but misery, chaos, violence and suffering.

Our history books give the impression we and our ancestors spread civilization. The reality is we destroy it. And, oh, the damage lasts for centuries.

And we blame them for it. Look at the mess that is Africa and the middle east. We created that. Look at the poverty and misery of much of South America. We did that - and we're still doing it. We blame our native peoples for their defiance when we should be blaming generations of Canadians for theft and abuse.

Anyway, take a look at the letter. The writer is Dan Ennis of Tobique First Nation. And if our children's education were controlled by people like him rather than Irving toadies, we might make some progress.

June 28: propaganda, cheap sensationalism and plain old trivia

Section D for June 28,has five - count them. five - full pages of pictures of grad dance couples. Apart from their parents, is it possible that anybody gives a damn?

Yes, it is possible for a province that has been been brainwashed by generations of lazy, commercial journalism practiced by unprincipled and, seemingly, untrained journalists.

They're still playing up the stunning courage shown by Moncton through its recent police shooting, and still marvelling at the incredible resilience which shows that Moncton "will rise again". This is really the cheapest sort of sensationalist journalism.

Yes, there was some worry about the shootings. There was, for good reason, sympathy, for those who were killed. But Moncton was never in danger of collapse. Nor has it shown remarkable strength in its reaction. Moncton Strong? London suffered years of bombing with tens of thousands killed. And no-one ever doubted it would recover. Nor were there headlines of "London Strong" or "London will rise again." Perhaps our reporters should spend a few weeks in Damascus or Iraq to see what these terms mean.

There was, certainly, reason for concern, sympathy, help. But it was all cheapened by the sensationalism of the Irving press. Meanwhile, it asked none of the questions that a press should ask. Why were police armed only with pistols sent to deal with a man who had a rifle? Was there at least one rifle available to the police? Why wasn't it made available? Whose decision was it to keep a police force so lightly armed? We are now told they are getting better equipment. That's nice. What is the equipment? (It's not as if we have reason to trust whoever makes these decisions.) What do we know of gun clubs in this region? How did the killer establish the contacts to get an illegal gun?
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So far, there has been no story about the horror that Detroit has become - thanks to those wonderful free trade deals.Much of the city is decay with not only houses but office towers left vacant. Those left in the city are dominated by the very poor - and by the masses of criminals who are the products of a collapsing society. That's what happens when you get rid of nasty unions that force honest billionaires to go somewhere else to make a decent day's pay for a billionaire.

But an alert city has taken a step to restore decency in Detroit. It has cut off water for all those who are too poor to pay their water bills. No water for laundry or drinking, or personal cleanliness. No water to flush toilets.

Well, that should certainly get Detroit humming again.
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Curiously,the Irving press seems to show little interest in dramatic changes at the CBC.

Let's start with Harper. He detests any public enterprise. He particularly detests the CBC because it is far the best news outlet in Canada; and it asks the awkward questions that the Irving press avoids so it can have more space for photos of high school graduates. So Harper has piece by piece been killing it with budget cuts.

The president of the CBC was no help. His announcement was mostly bafflegab. Most importantly, he showed no sense whatever that CBC was founded for people - to serve human needs.  (Canadians, New Brunswickers in particuar, need to learn that government is about people first of all - not about budgets, or get rich quick schemes. It's about people and human needs.)

The CBC is not a business. A hospital is not a business  (or shouldn't be) and it should not be run like one. Being a parent is not a business. (I have it on good authority that the family is not a business. According to one of our leading politicians, the role of a mother is to change diapers, and the role of a father to teach leadership - presumably just to the boys because girls don't need it for their role.)

The CBC was founded to put Canadians in touch with each other, to spread an awareness of what Canada is and how it got that way, to prevent us from being overwhelmed by the American sense of values, and by the American bias of news services.

To do so meant the use of documentaries and drama. It meant to encourage Canadian writers, musicians and actors. It meant putting together the biggest, and far the best, news service Canada (indeed, in North America.)

It is not at all clear how the president of the CBC intends to do that - or if he intends to do that. His statement was largely about improving CBC as a business operation. And it's not a business operation.

We have to learn that the first priority of government is not to save money. The first priority of government is to serve our needs. You prefer to live in a country in which the first priority is to make money? No problem. Just go live in Guatemala or Haiti or Congo. You'll love it. Human needs don't matter a damn.
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I'm glad to see that the Irving press is keeping up with the newest propaganda line on Ukraine.

Because of its small circle of ownership, it's easy to impose an official line in just about all commercial news media. An Alqaeda mercenary fighting in Syria is a "rebel". Nice word, rebel. But if he attacks westerners, he's a "terrorist". Very naughty. So far, it he's fighting in Iraq, he's a "militant". Kind of a neutral word.

Americans who kill millions are doing it do defend democracy. Yes, they torture. But only to get useful information. How that is different from why Hitler tortured isn't clear.

The latest propaganda buzz is one I saw this week in Googlenews. But, sure enough, it's popping up even in the Truthful Times and Transcript.  It seems the Ukrainian crisis was caused because Russia blocked a Ukrainian attempt to join the European Union.

Right. then, that his explanation was even noticed at the start. No. It was caused with Russia invaded Crimea. But that's not true either.

The Ukrainian government turned down EU membership because Russia offered it a better deal. The crisis came later, when American money and, probably, undercover agents,    equipped and organized mobs to stage a coup against the Ukrainian government. Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state (and close friend of Project for the New American Century) even took credit and gave the cost of the operation.

The coup was illegal. It was contrary to the charter of the UN. But Obama immediately recognized the new government. (He does not, though, recognize the government of Syria though it clearly has majority support, with the 'rebels' heavily dependent on foreign mercenaries, foreign money, and foreign weapons - with the word foreign mostly meaning Saudi Arabia and the US.

In the middle east, the game is to divide countries internally so as to weaken them, and to encourage sectarian srife.

In Ukraine? The US wants to push for a war in hopes that Putin might be forced to accept terms of US dominance of the Russian economy. Failing that? Well, the US probably cannot fight a conventional war against Russia; so remember - the mutual deterrent no longer exists. So, relying on its anti-missile defences, the US would probably open with a first strike.

And what would happen after that is anybody's guess.

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Friday's editorial columns are no thrill. There are three, pro-shale gas columns  (including the editorial).Then there's a column from a Fraser Institute propagandist which pretends to be about improving medicare, but is actually about privatizing it.

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