Nov. 14: Taking up where Nov. 13 left off.

This is my second attempt to use up all the notes I have on current events. And, before I even start, I must admit I forgot an excellent book for those who want to get a sense of what it's like to be in a war.  It's Farley Mowat's  "And No Birds Sang' It's about the little heard of, but very difficult, struggle to push Hitler's armies out of Italy.

Now, we go to stories the Irving Press missed  ( partly because it used up so much space showing pictures of "entrepreneurs" getting hall of fame awards).

 KM oil (Kinder-Morgan Oil) is suing environmental protesters. Well, it has a good reason. You see, KM wants to build a pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C. for export. It means, among other things, blasting a tunnel through a mountain in the Rockies, and loading very large numbers of ships on our Pacific coast with the world's dirtiest crude oil.

Some people in Burnaby thought this might not be a good idea. So they went to a public park and held up placards - which, so far, has been legal in a free country. There was no fighting. No blocking. Just holding up placards.

 KN is suing for 5.6 million in expenses plus 88 million per month for lost revenue. Oh, and they also want to lay assault charges on the grounds that some of the protesters gave them dirty looks.

Just in case Alec Bruce finds out about this and writes a column about how stupid the protesters are and how safe oil pipelines are, consider a few points, nothing bleeding heart, nothing gullible, just obvious to anyone.

1. Climate change is happening. There is not the slightest doubt of it. We see it in changing weather patterns. We see it (or rather don't see it) in the ice that covered the Arctic for a million years or more.
2. Further climate change will, among other things, destroy vulnerable food producing areas - like California. It will also kill animal life - including us.
3. Oil companies (and news media like the Irving press) have long sponsored denial campaigns, arguing that it's all perfectly safe - despite the fact that they know points 1. and 2. very well, and have known it from the start.
4.We have very little time left to slow the change down so as to get breathing space to develop new energy.
So far, we have wasted a quarter century of that little time. The oil companies were behind much of that wastage of time. The reason the time is so limited is that there comes a point when the change cannot be slowed down or stopped. We don't know when that point is. But we know it's soon.
5. If we cut down on using oil, but export it, then it still gets burned and still changes the climate.
6. To build a pipeline takes time and money - especially if it requires a tunnel through the Rockies.
Then it takes time to make all that money back, plus a profit. In other words, the oil industry expects to keep making trillions of dollars for years to come - and well past any estimate of the deadline to slow down the use of fossil fuels.

So let's forget the blather about tough regulations or how drilling has been proven safe. Let's even forget about the question of where to dump all the trillions of litres from shale gas drilling.

The people who run the oil industry - and other fossil fuel industries - have, most of them, been born to the idea that they can have whatever the want. But the reality is that none of us can have whatever we want. People who are born very rich often have a sense of arrogance and greed and entitlement. And the commercialization of our world encourages that sense in a great many of the rest of us. Even Nov. 11 has become commercialized in poppy-covered ads for private business -as in "Free Remembrance Day Buffet at Moncton Casino".

But arrogance and greed and entitlement can turn humans into fools. The KM pipeline is not a short term deal. Like New Brunswick shale gas, corporations will keep drilling and pumping out greenhouse gasses long past that little time we have left to deal with the problem.

Meanwhile, we will see very little of the profit from it all. As it is, the drift of money has become a torrent from us to the very rich, and is intensifying all over the world. Much of the money ends up in shady banks in remote islands or tiny states like Luxembourg that offer great deals to avoid taxes.

Take what you want. By all means. Take anything you want. But be ready to pay for it. And the price here will be human lives and whole cities - and perhaps even the decay of the hallowed halls of fame lined with the pictures of proud entrepreneurs.

Since the Irving press will never admit any of this, try
              www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/an-unethical-bet-in-the-climate-casino-1.1997048
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Israel has extended its laws to cover land it has taken for settlements. That's illegal. That's not legally Israeli territory. Israel has kicked out the Palestinians who lived there and has settled Israelis on it. But, legally, that land is still Palestinian. And Israel has notified Palestinians living in another 3,000 acres of Palestine that they have to leave their homes so Israeli can move in more of its settlers. That makes it pretty obvious why Israel has never wanted peace with Palestine. It intends to create a greater Israel which will include Palestine and, quite possibly Lebanon, and then other states. The people kicked out of their homes and their countries might throw rocks at Israelis and shake their fists. If so, they will be called terrorists and killed.

Then, check informationclearinghouse.info/article40210.htm
This is a video about Israeli troops routinely beating jailing, sexually abusing, torturing and even killing Palestinian children. And it's been condemned for this by the UN. I'm careful in using information clearing house because I don't trust all of that site's sources. But this one is a video by Australian Broadcasting Corporation which is pretty good as news media go.
Meanwhile, nothing about any of this has appeared in the Irving press.
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There's another interesting and VERY important story which appeared on CBC, but not in the Irving press. For as long as I have known, the US has be able to force the rest of the world to use the US dollar as the standard medium in international trade. But no more.

Canada has signed a deal with China to use the Chinese remnibi and the Canadian dollar in trade. Many other countries in Europe and around the world are doing the same. Given the huge American level of foreign indebteness, this is becoming a very serious blow to the value of the American dollar. For a fuller explanation, see www.informationclearinghouse,info/article40210.htm
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I have often spoken of how Bush and Obama have destroyed the US constitution. I may even have mentioned that the US intervention in Iraq is illegal.  It is a illegal under American law and international law; and its the kind of thing we hanged Naziis for.  Yeah. I know. I'm just a radical. So check out the following opinion from Senator Rand Paul who is both a Republican and a far right-wing one, even by Republican standards.

(He loads the blame on Obama, though Obama is just a continuation of Bush, and both were creatures of the very, very wealthy.

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40180.htm
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The Irving press has been (sort of) covering Canada's role in WW1. In that context, I may have said I found it remarkable that they missed the outstanding performance of Canadian troops in the last hundred days of the war - and they missed the remarkable man who commanded the Canadian army in France. (This is the same press that babbles on Nov. 11 about how patriotic it is, and how it honours our veterans on Remembrance Day.)

The remarkable man was General Arthur Currie. Most generals in World War 1 were career officers of long experience and, often, with battle experience before the war. Currie entered the war with only the very limited experience available to a young school teacher who became a businessman. He joined the militia which met once a week for drill, and was largely a social affair. He started as a private.  I know of no other general in World War One with so little military background.

When war was declared, the Canadian government chose this most obscure and inexperienced man to be its field commander. His superior. British officer was General Haig, a lifetime soldier and a pompous ass who, though he threw lives away by the hundreds of thousands, kept his post throughout the war. After it, he was rewarded with an earldom and a fortune.

Currie had a shaky start. He was one the least experienced men ever to become a general of any army. But he had a good role model in his immediate British superior, General Byng (who later became governor-general of Canada. And Currie was a man with a marvelous ability to learn on the job. He became one of the few generals on either side in that war capable of original thinking, of phenomenal attention to detail - traits that brought enormous successes while, at the same time, saving the lives of many of his soldiers.

After the war, the British prime minister confided that he had intended, if the war lasted longer, to fire Haig, and to put Currie in command of all Imperial troops in Europe. It's a unique and quite amazing story. But I guess none of the "rememberers" of the Irving press ever heard of this amazing Canadian soldier.

The Irving press also never told us why WW1 was fought in the first place. In fact, many historians have by now concluded that there was no good reason to fight it at all. Yes, we are always lied to about the reasons for war; and the real reason often is sheer stupidity and incompetence.  BBC did a docudrama on this one. It's called "37 Days". It's still available, but only on the web, so far as I know, and for a price. It's at itunes, and Amazon.U.K.
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Now, it's late. And I'm tired. And I have to rest before the intellectual challenge of reading tomorrow's Moncton Times and Transcript.

And so to bed.

Just a little bit about the Irving press...

...because there's nothing in it... not even yet another picture of Robert Irving accepting yet another award from some hokey hall of fame.

Thursday's headline is about how the provincial Liberals seem to have been caught preparing to give our tax money to, - you know - good people, like Liberal contractors looking for government contracts. I was so shocked that this could happen in New Brunswick. I mean, this is a place where we don't really have contractors; they're "entrepreneurs", and they get into halls of fame for their goodness.

We're so lucky that our super-entrepreneurs have never indulged in such a thing. I mean, if they had, the TandT would have told us all about it.

The oil people are putting on the big push with ads. P. A6 has a half pager in full colour about how the Energy East pipeline makes sense. Then flip to A9. There's a full page of a beautiful blonde woman who is happy, happy, happy because she's a pipefitter and the pipeline would  give her a chance to have a career, and put down roots.

Both ads are from EnergyEastPipeline.com, and I'm so happy to see them speaking out, and giving such a helpful hand to the feminist movement. All over New Brunswick, there are beautiful, young women who have always wanted to be pipefitters. Energy East is so good to us.

The only readable part of that days' section A is Jody Dallaire's column. The rest is trash and trivia.

Section B, NewsToday, has nothing. There's a story that the US and China are setting new goals to cut gas emissions. That doesn't mean a damn thing. There's no way Congress will approve that. It would hurt oil profits.

In Your Business, PremierGallant has been meeting with oil execs to get their opinion of developing natural gas. If they say so, we'll know it's safe.
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The Wednesday edition's page one is mostly telling us that the day before, Tuesday, had been Remembrance Day. Well, Some people might not have known it. There's also a story about a dog getting a swimming pool. I'm always happy for pay for a paper to learn things like that.

There's not a damn thing worth reading in the whole of Wednesary's section A - and that includes even Gwynne Dyer. Most disheartening is a letter to the editor "Terrorism generates curious reactions." It's about how we don't hate Muslims enough. It's a bit frightening to see in those letters how little some people know about what's really going on in the world.

Newstoday was 2 and a half more pages of mostly photos of Remembrance day.

The only story worth reading is on B5, "Pop Culture  shapes memories of war". Very true. As I've said before, our idea of war and of Canadian military history is based heavily on American films and TV - and of course, the story also blames the "flash-bang" of social media. (I don't know where they get the social media bit. I've never seen much there on war Even Youtube doesn't have much - and most of that is trivial.) -

Why doesn't the story mention our newspapers as part of the blame?  How much about Canada's military history have you ever seen in the Irving press? Even in the weeks of remembrance day prep and this year of remembering 1914, I haven's seen a damn thing about precisely why Canada has gone to war, or about what has caused wars, or any coverage of what our military accomplished - though the accomplishments of our military in both world wars were impressive by any standard.

And, as I read through many newspapers, the major sources they talked about were some absurd John Wayne flicks. Does the Irving press have anybody who knows anything about where we can learn this? Does the Irving press know even who to talk to about it?

And let's not forget the Legion. It's an organization that did its best to suppress a series of excellent films from our own National Film Board on World War Two.

But don't blame the schools. Any teacher in our schools who told the whole truth about anything in Canadian history would be fired on the spot.
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I'm sorry to have wasted so much time on the utter crap that calls itself the Irving press. But I also have some excellent stories from the web.

First, there's www.theguardian.com/com/commentisfree/2014/nov/10/us-voter-turnout-vs.world-election-day-holiday

The Guardian is one of the few, good news sources left in the world. This one is an excellent opinion column on the meaning of the recent mid-term elections in the U.S.  These were elections that might well have a deadly meaning for the whole world. But only 36% of voters bothered to turn out. For voters who were young and/or poor the turnout was 20%.

Even in decent elections, the US usually ranks 120th in the world in voter turnout. IN THE WHOLE WORLD. America, America, the country that tells us it invented democracy and freedom - and it kills people all over the world to make them free---almost two-thirds of the US didn't vote in a very, very important election.

It gets worse. Most American voters have no clue what any election is about. Seriously. Polls show they commonly don't even know who their senate representative is. God bless America (somebody has to do it.)

Those who do know what it's about often don't vote because they also know it doesn't matter who they elect. The Congress and the president are all bought by election rules which guarantee that only those chosen by the very, very rich can get elected. In the US, billionaires and huge corporations can give as much as they like to the party of their choice.

(Canada is almost as bad, and getting worse under Harper; but we have rules at least a little tighter.)

The US has long, very long, in fact from the start, been deeply soaked in the vilest corruption, made worse by a lying and manipulative (and often damned ignorant and childish - think Fox News) news media. If you like New Brunswick, go live in the states.  You'll really, really love it.

Under Bush and Obama, the constitution was effectively destroyed. The president has become something close to a dictator (though taking his dictation from big business) who can declare war all on his own, imprison Americans on no charge, keep them there as long as he likes, torture anybody all over the world, violate constitutional rights with secret police (just like Canada)...

The American presence in Iraq and Syria is illegal under American law. It's supposed to be Congress, and only Congress, that can approve a war. But the due date has expired; and Obama hasn't yet even asked for approval. That makes him a criminal under American law - and a war criminal for that and other reasons under both US and international law. He and Bush and Tony Blair should long ago have been tried and hanged - as we did to Saddam Hussein. (Instead, all three are getting very, very wealthy.)

Democracy in the US is history. And where does that take us?

It takes us straight to violence. There is no possibility, none whatever, of honesty in US politics or news media. Nor do I see any possibility of a peaceful outcome of all this. The US cannot form an alternative philosophy for its society because the general public is in hopeless ignorance of what the alternatives might be. What we are likely to see is pure, raging violence, vicious and destructive, a tantrum more than a rebellion. And it's made worse by a wildly corrupt and greedy corporation world that is sucking in all of the money in the whole country.

This is well known to American governments. That's why police are getting machine guns, armoured cars, drones, camouflage suits, even tanks. And it's not all that different in Canada. Remember the armoured car our police got? Remember the RCMP special squad we saw with camouflage outfits and rapid-fire combat rifles?

But we still have a bit to go. I don't think it will start  here. It will start in the US. And there are strong possibilities of a similar melt-down in Europe.

Capitalism is based on self-interest and greed. That's why it cannot operate properly without close regulation. When it becomes corrupt and powerful, as it has in both Canada and the US, it allows its greed to overcome any brains that might be lurking. And it destroys itself. And it destroys a whole society with it.

Part of the destruction process begins with news media that teach us to hate and fear  - oh, say Muslims. The idea is to get us to ignore the theft of our money and of our rights by the very wealthy, Hitler played the same game, using Jews.

Ask the Irvings to mutter a prayer about that next time they do God a favour by going to their Chapel.
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Wow! This is long. And  I've covered just a tiny part of my notes. I'll post this one as is, and continue it tomorrow.

Nov. 11: Avoiding the news....

Monday's edition, page A1, has a classic of model of how to tell the news without really telling anything, and putting readers to peaceful slumber at the same time. "Derailment cleanup continues at Moncton's Gordon Yard". It's a very soothing piece of writing that reports a dangerous situation without ever mentioning the dangerous part.

We had a derailment of sixteen cars. But only only six were oil cars, loaded with oil sands crude; and only one had a "minor dripping leak" which spilled 40 gallons of oil which were immediately cleaned up

In short,. nothing to see here. Keep moving, folks.

Oh, and the nearest buildings were several hundred metres away. That's nice. It must be a policy that all trains with crude oil have accidents only when far away from buildings. Anyway, there were brisk winds so that lessened the danger of fumes.

And why did the source who tells us that says that it was 40 gallons of oil? We went metric, remember?
Well, it was probably 40 gallons because the man who said that was a regional manager for public and government affairs - in other words. someone whose job is to make sure people never get the whole story. And the use of the term "40 gallons" was used probably because it sounds less than 185 litres.

We are never directly told who contracted the train. We are simply told that news of it had been e mailed to Irving Oil.

Go ---to----sleep---my---baby......z-z-z-z-z---

It's a well-written story. BrentMazerolle, as I said last time, is a good writer. But this isn't a news story. This is a typical, Irving coverup of a story.

How could a train go off the tracks in a rail yard where it is moving very slowly?  And how could that knock the wheels off it?  Were those cars, by any chance, the older and more fragile type that destroyed Lac Megantic?  Are they still in heavy use? Are they cheaper to hire than the safer cars? How many such trains go through Moncton every day? Do you ever get the impression that the maintenance of our railways (or the absence of it) is making them much more dangerous? And to you ever get the impression that the Department of Transport and the oil companies don't give a damn?

Ask questions, Brent. Do some research. Better still, get away from Irving press. You're too good to be wasted on it. As I read that "news story", I pictured you many years from now, sadly crooning to the Irvings that old, tear-jerker from the Vaudeville stage.....

You made me what I am today.
I hope you're satisfied.
You dragged and dragged me down until
The soul within me died.
You shattered every hope and dream.
You fooled me from the start.
And thought you're not through,
I still love  you.
That's the curse of an aching heart.

Oh, Dale Hobson repeats this "news story" the next day, also on A1. The headline looks more promising. But it's actually the same story, and the same slant.
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A6 and 7 for Monday are two pages of commercial and political ads pretending to be remembrances. Someone should really have chat with Robert Goguen about the dreadful smirk he wears for the cameras. It seems particularly inappropriate for the sadness of Remembrance day. Ditto for Sherry Wilson.

Then there's a copy of  'In Flanders Fields". Read it. Then think. It's a fine poem. But think.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch.......

What quarrel did we have in 1914?  And at this point somebody will pound the computer and shout. "We fought for freedom."

No, we didn't. Nobody was threatening our freedom in 1914. In fact,   our allies were France and Britain, both of them the rulers of vast empires which did not allow freedom in most of them. Nor was there the slightest chance of Germany invading Britain given the dominance of the Royal Navy at the time.

US President Wilson talked a good game about fighting for freedom - though he had an empire ruled by dictators in Central America and the Caribbean.  And neither he nor his successors made the world any freer after the war.

World War Two was made necessary by World War One. And we had less choice, really, in entering In World War Two though, again, the US had no problem is staying out till very late. And we were promised, in World War Two, that the purpose was to spread freedom, human equality, and a world centre for peace and order in the UN.

But we were lied to.

Britain and France gave up their empires, but only after years of trying to suppress freedom. Meanwhile, the US took up the old game of conquest and suppression all over the world.

To say that the people of this world are more equal than they were in 1939 is utterly absurd.

And the UN was, immediately after its creation, made powerless by the big kids who either vetoed majorities, or just ignored them.

All of us kids in wartime followed the news very closely, partly because so many of us had father who were away. I was too young to remember Dunkirk, But I vividly remember the shock and horror of grown-ups at the fall of Singapore. On the day Germany surrendered, I was sent home from school for repeated lateness. I didn't know the war with Germany was over. But my mother took me to downtown Montreal where we were swept up in the mobs of rejoicers. Everywhere, I saw the wartime posters that said V..._   (The dots and the dash were morse code for V.) V for Victory. Yeah. we had won. It was delirious. Then, I saw a new poster

"We've won the war. Now we've got to win the peace." I couldn't understand it. We had won the war. We had won freedom and peace for everybody. How could you win a peace?

Not many years later, that seemed confirmed when Canadians fought to bring freedom and peace and democracy and all those good things to South Korea. We were certainly told that was what they were fighting for. And, again, our governments and journalists lied to us. When we entered South Korea, it was ruled by Syngman Rhee who was, sort of, elected by the assembly with 92% of the vote. In fact, he operated as a dictator with the support of the army. People who disagreed with him or annoyed him could expect to be tortured and/or killed. He ruled throughout the Korean War.

He was followed, after a brief interlude,  by Park Chung-Hee who was installed as dictator by a military coup. He had been a World War Two collaborator with the Japanese, and lived on as a brutal dictator until 1979. South Korea was a dictatorship when we went there, and a dictatorship when we left. So much for fighting for freedom.

And what Canada's warring in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq and, probably, Syria, has to do with peace or freedom, I cannot imagine. Yes. The ISIL gang is quite terrible. That's because of a world we created by murdering and exploiting Muslims for over a century. Whole societies fell into disorder and horror. Whole countries, like Iraq, became failed and impoverished states. Many of the victims are turning to religious extremism because that's all they have left. More killing is not going to fix anything. The wars in the Middle East are driven by  pure greed and the brutality and horror of pure greed - from our side.

We should certainly remember those who died - and those who lived, but were mentally and physically scarred. But we should certainly also remember us. We're the ones who sent them. We're the ones who so often accepted lies - and who never took the trouble to figure out the truth. We're the ones who debase remembrance with ads like the Moncton Casino's  "Free Remembrance Day Buffet."

And our government is one of many that is using this day to manipulate us -  to build a false patriotism and a fear and a delusion  which will make it easy for another generation to be sent to kill and to be killed.
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Nothing much to speak of on the editorial and op ed pieces. To my surprise and delight, I found myself in agreement with Norbert's column for Nov. 11. "Lest we forget, remembrance includes confronting ourselves.  It's very well written, and very insightful. The quotation at the end is from Sun Tzu, "The Art of War". Sun was a brilliant Chinese military leader of long ago, and his "The Art of War" is standard reading for generals-to-be. It's a very short and easy read and, after all these years, still a thought-provoking one.

Alec Bruce wants Premier Gallant to hurry up and make a decision about shale gas. Not to worry. The fix is in. It was in a long time ago. Gallant will make some face-saving measure to approve shale gas. And, if New Brunswickers get mad, they'll just show him. In the next election, they'll vote for the Conservatives.

Louise Gilbert advises us to get a sense of the meaning of war by watching films (good idea) - but most of the ones she cites are American films with war heroes like John Wayne and Don Sutherland????? I've noticed the same tendency in many newspapers. I've never seen a John Wayne film that gave any sense of war. They're all the same as his cowboy flics, all about John Wayne being John Wayne. "The Dirty Dozen" with Don Sutherland is a good film - but it gives very little sense of what war is like.

Much better is "Bridge on the River Kwai" which, if not about Canadians, at least gives some sense of what Canadians captured at Hong Kong had to endure. And two excellent films about the effects of war are German. One is "All Quiet on the Western Front" - about World War One - and "Das Boot" - about U-boat service in World War Two.

And where are the Canadian films on the wars? There are lots of them, many available free on the web, from our National Film Board. For example, there's the excellent series called "The Valour and the Horror". If you look at it, you may be offending the bosses at the Canadian Legion. But that's okay. It's called freedom of speech.

And the NFB also has many, many more films about the war that the Legions bosses agree that we can look at.   Google NFB Canada At War

Generally, the Irving press scores close to a zero for telling us about the Canadian accomplishments in any war. I could read all of their pages without learning that we had a navy, and that it played a decisive role in winning World War Two. There has been nothing about our army in the last hundred days of World War One.  Our air force in both wars seems to have consisted of just a few ace fighter pilots (but not Buzz Buerling who was our leading ace in WW2). In fact, our air force, especially in World War Two, was quite large and, in both cases, suffered terrible casualties. It was also highly effective - not just for the protection offered by its fighters, but for the formidable performance of its Lancaster bombers. Some of the specialized Lancs carried a heavier bombload than the much-touted US Superfortress. (We also had a fighter ace in Korea).

For Nov 10, a full page (one-quarter of the NewsToday) is photos of dogs. I have no idea why.

Nov. 11 NewsToday has two items worth reading. Remember how I started this with Brent Mazerolle's "news" story on the rail accident in Moncton?  Now read NewsToday, page 1, for Nov. 11. "Tories cut transport safety spending". That includes both rail and air safety. The federal Conservatives say that safety is well looked after - but they won't tell anybody where the cuts are. Perhaps we should contact that Irving spokesman to get a fuller understanding.

On B2, "Aboriginal Affairs - short of cash for education, social problems - document",  Harper's boys and girls insist everything in Aboriginal Affairs is going great. But they won't give any information.

Hint - unlike most of our politicians and newspapers, we should start with human needs, and work from there to a budget - not the other way around.

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On Sunday, I expect our churches bombarded heaven with prayers in remembrance of Canadians who sufffered and died in war - as they should have.

But were there prayers for the other sides? (And before anybody jumps in to say that the other side was evil, millions of those killed or crippled and mentally shattered were innocent, and many of those millions were children, even babies, in Germany, Italy, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America.. As well, millions of those "evil ones" who died were Christians. So I wonder where the "right to life" crowd are on this day when we know that millions of unborn were killed in our wars - and, in Vietnam, are still being born but just for a little while because they have no mouths and no ears and only one eye for the centre of a forehead. That's a gift from the tons of Agent Orange dumped on that country. How come I never saw any placarding right to life Christians when I passed the hospital today?

Well, the important thing,  I'm sure, is that going to church to remember our dead was a gratifylingly self-righteous thing to do.

What the hell. Kill them, as US leaders said of the Vietnamese. And let God sort them out.

Nov. 8, maybe 9

For a start, take a look at Al Jazeera. It's easily available on the web, has a very wide range of news, a very wide range of  opinions, and in all categories is far superior to Canadian Press and Associated Press, and all the others in our daily diet. It's worth regular reading.

And if you are suspicious because it's an ay-rab paper, and so can't possibly have the great minds like the Irving press does, note that its reporters and commentators are from all over the world - including Canada.
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And, as we approach Remembrance Day, we should learn more about Canadian military history  - you know, so we can learn exactly what it is we are remembering. For the general reader, and very readable, is The Tools of War 1939/45,, published by Reader's Digest.

For more advanced reading, google "Canadian Military History Journal". And, for a forgotten war, read
Laughton.ca/documents/ww1/pub7/pdf     It's one of an excellent series by Laughton. This one is about our forces (rarely mentioned on Nov. 11) that we sent to Russia in the late days of World War 1. The first group was sent to protect Russia (just turned communist) from a German/Finnish invasion. Nobody is sure why the second group was sent - but it was probably to shoot at the communists we had just been protecting from Germany and Finland..

Laughton concludes with a comment that, I think, is quite correct. World War 1 never ended. The partners change; but the dance is never over. World War 1 was probably a cause of the Japanese attacks of World War Two on China and the USSR - as well as the cause of the rise of Hitler and Naziism.

World War Two meant the end of Britain after its centuries of building the biggest and one of the most brutal and looting empires in history. Alas! It also meant the rise of the US, striving for even a bigger empire and even more brutality and looting. (There's much more to say on that. But I'll save it for another day.)

For World War Two and Canada's role, google the NFB film series "The Valour and the Horror", by Brian and Terrence McKenna. The Legion hated it and joined other extremists to trying to discredit and even to ban the film. (I guess banning films was one of the freedoms we fought for). That pressure led to the appointment of all the drooling half-wits in the Senate (or, rather, all the drooling half-wits who were also Conservatives), to do a hatchet job.  I testified at that hearing. Not one of them had a clue of what he was talking about.

As well, for pre-Remembrance Day reading, I would suggest talking a look, a good, long, thinking look at the poem, "In Flanders' Fields".

"......
Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you, from failing hands we throw
The torch. Be yours to hold it high.

The poem is not about remembering. It's about hating and killing. It's about world war that never ends. Our partners change. We have danced with Russia and China and Arabs. We have killed Arabs - and looked forward to killing Russians. We have killed Japanese and Germans and Italians. And now we dance with them. The partners change; but the dance of World War 1 goes on.

And we have fought to spread freedom and equality for over a century. Of course. So tell me, in over a hundred years of killing and dying,  and suffering, where is there more freedom? And where, oh where, are all people equal? We don't approach equality, not even here in North America.

Remember the dead. Remember them because they did die at our command. Remember that they died because we sent them to die. By all means, let us remember what is now the hundred-year war of our time.
Remember our responsibility in past wars and wars yet to come. But don't glorify it.

If you do think it's glorious, go to www.informationclearinghouse.@info/article40158.htm  The article is "All My Friends are Dying". Below it is a sign, In War, There are no Unwounded Soldiers.
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I'm afraid I have neglected the Irving press. So we'll hit the high points.

For Friday's section A, there is no news worth reading.

NewsToday has yet another story (with photo), the third day in a row, about our social betters getting business hall of fame awards. And yet another story pimping shale gas "Moratorium lowers chance for growth - APEC CEO".  And we'll just forget all these rumours that the price of oil is crashing so that shale gas is running out of a market.

B3 has a cute story about Australian PM Tony Abbott. He says he's going to have a tough talk with Putin about making sure investigators can have access the Malaysian crash site in Ukraine. Relax, Tony. We already know all about it and who did it and how. It appeared in MacLean's Magazine last July. Remember?

We don't come to anything worth reading until the last page, B4. (Yeah, that's it. Four pages for all the news about New Brunswick and Canada and the whole, wide world.) This story is "Israeli force many have committed war crimes: court."  In international waters, Israel gunboats and troops illegally stopped a group of small ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and, also quite illegally, killed quite a few people on those boats. But, what the hell,, says the court, boys will be boys.

So some ships were attacked in international waters. So people were killed. Hell, the international court never bothered with the case some years ago of Israel deliberately attacking USS Liberty, killing dozens of American sailors, some of them machine-gunned in lifeboats. Nor did it intervene when an American cruiser in the same waters shot down an Iranian passenger plane, killing all aboard. Hey, everybody makes mistakes. But none of these stories made MacLean's Magazine. So who cares?

The editorial, as always, is trivial and it's about money. That seems to be characteristic of editorials and politicians in New Brunswick. A society is about people. But they rarely talk about (or think about) people. The first question is - or should be - what does our society need? They don't ask it. The money is, we are told, for out benefit. So shouldn't editorial writers and politicans ask first what is needed for us people?

Alec Bruce is in great form on the subject of our out-of-touch (and unspeakably uncaring) governor of the Bank of Canada. This is the man who said young people who can't get jobs should work for free.

Norbert is much better than usual on the issue of sexual assault. Cole Hobson is, well, as trivial as usual. As for Justin Ryan, there is often a lack of any clear meaning to his columns. He writes on immigration. Good. We have a lot to learn about it, some of which should be appearing in this column.  For example, our department of immigration now runs on a heavy diet of bigotry imposed by PM Harper.  For example -

We have well over 500 applicants for immigration we are keeping in prisons - the worst, most violent and dangerous prisons - the maximum security ones. They are there without charge or trial or oversight. They are there because they are from countries that Harper doesn't want - either for unclear security reasons or to please those Canadian voters who share his bigotry. The average stay is  three months, quite long enough to be beaten and/or raped many times Our jails are also notoriously overcrowded - so you don't get to choose your roomie.

The Canadian Red Cross has had a tough fight to be allowed to see them, and to check their condition. It still doesn't have free access to most of them. One man has been there for ten months while our immigration department takes its own sweet time to decide whether to give him a hearing. He's from Iran. And that's bad. When they first tried to deport him to Iran, he slashed his wrists - and for good reason. He's a convert to Christianity. That's a crime in Iran, with an automatic death penalty.

So, we've kept this dangerous Christian in a violent and overcrowded prison for ten months at the price of $250 a day. This year, Harper has given $20,000,000 just to Ontario prisons for room and board for people charged with ----nothing.
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Section A, which is largely local news, has an exciting story about a local man who saved his five year old daughter from a kidnapper. (Well, it didn't actually happen right in Moncton. It happened in a Moncton suburb called Salt Lake City.) The story is from The Associated Press - so I guess the TandT bought it at a clearance sale.

Beside that story, also from AP,is something rare for section A, a story all the way from Paris about cruise ships all over the world. Maybe it was a two-for-one sale.

Seriously, guys and gals, most newspapers clearly divide their stories into the appropriate sections.

A3 has the story that the jobless rate is dropping - but not because the economy is better. It's because people are leaving. That's interesting. Now, could we please have the whole story? How come, all over the world, big corporations and very, very rich people are making more money than ever before while the rest of us are going downhill? Don't  you know a guy named Irving? Ask him.
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The editorial is about the coming financial crisis of New Brunswick. There is no mention of Mr. Irving or any corporation in it, and not a word about what they cost us.  It does mention Dr. Savoie and it quotes him. But Dr. Savoie doesn't talk - not like us peasantry. Dr. Savoie offers a "discourse."

Pompous ass of an editorialist.

By the way when the Allward government got elected, a man named Irving made a big noise about how he and his buddies were going to plan the economic future of NB. He even, as I remember it, appointed advisors to the minister of finance. So that must mean Mr. Irving has been the one in charge of our spending and taxing for four years going on five, all of them years of "edging ovwe the cliff".

Could Dr. Savoie offer us a "discourse" on that one?

Bill Belliveau has a long list of new ideas for the economy - like making health care more efficient and cheaper, and improving literacy.  (Well, they were new ideas, once upon a time.) Next week, he'll tell us how it could be financed. I tingle with anticipation.

Brent Mazeroffe has a brilliant column about Remembrance Day. It's intelligent; it's insightful; and it's well-written. I take back all the unkind things I  have said about Mazeroffe. You don't write  something like that without having both talent and intelligence.

But, oh, he should get out, and find a publisher who wants people of talent and intelligence.

Then there's a column by James  (but he calls himself Jim because he's that kinda guy) Irving. It's an attack on Enbridge, the natural gas supplier for NB. So, we have a man financially connected to the newspaper writing a column attacking for reasons closely connected to his own financial interest.

I think that is what, in the journalistic world, is called unethical. It shows his contempt for us that he didn't even try to disguise what he was doing. After all, he could have followed the route of publishing it, but having is posted under the name of one of his hack writers in Irving press.

It's unethical. And forget the ombudsperson.  I have never seen any evidence of the ombudsperson making a decision, anyway - and the paper should routinely be reporting that.

Norbert, write one of your indignant columns about it. Write something that will make your moustache wiggle.
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NewsToday, B 1 and 2 has a great read ""Finding Private Billy MacNally of St. John." It's a story about New Brunswick poet Alden Nowlan; and it includes his poem "Ypres 1915"

I met Nowlan many years ago when I was teaching at UPEI. He came to talk to us, and to read some of his poetry.  I was fascinated by the poetry and by the man and his wife - brilliant, approachable.... it was quite wonderful. And this is quite a wonderful story, and quite a wonderful poem.

B3 has a very, very short story that the Afghan army (the ones on our side) lost over 4,600 killed in just this year. Soon, it will take over all the fighting as NATO pulls out. That's why is has taken so many dead in the past year. Then there are the Canadians who died, the British, and uncounted tens of thousands (at least) of Afghan civilians in 13 years of war.

If you're not impressed by the body count, then consider that the war has cost over a trillion dollars, much of it, perhaps most, going to corrupt US defence corporations, corrupt Afghan leaders (on our side), and corrupt politicians in the US.  American governments will allow a trillion dollars of corruption, but threaten to jail a clergyman and an elderly veteran for giving food to starving Americans.

So why are the US and NATO pulling out? Because they lost. It's over. The US and NATO are staging a dignified retreat - handing the mess over to a government and an army that can't deal with it. Something like the last days of the Vietnam war.

Why did they start the war? I'm damned if I know. They said it was because Afghanistan had planned the killings of 9/11. There is not the slightest evidence it did. Even the FBI has long ago admitted that. In fact, not a single one of the terrorists of 9/11 came from Afghanistan. Most were from our good friends in Saudi Arabia. Nor was the planning done in Afghanistan; it was done in Europe. As for Osama bin Laden, he was from Saudi Arabia. And the Taliban offered to turn him over to an international court - which is the correct way to handle such a case. The US refused, demanding he be turned over to US justice, which would certainly be rigged.

For that matter, we now know the war was proposed several years earlier by a group representing big business and far right politicians. It was called The New American Century, and a leading figure was Bush Jr's vice-president, Dick Cheney. And even they never said what the point of the war was.

We sent troops - also without knowing why. We sent Canadians to die for----what? To help little Moslem girls go to school? We probably killed,starved, crippled far more than we ever sent to school. That's not the fault of our soldiers. It's the fault of us. So, if you're attending a Remembrance Day ceremony and find yourself feeling all self-righteous and patriotic, think about what we, all  of us, agreed to when we sent troops to Afghanistan. That was OUR decision. So, maybe next time, we shouldn't send people to kill and be killed just because it's the brainless, patriotic thing to do. (Actually, we've already done it again - in Iraq.

Remember the words of Pogo, some sixty years ago. "We have met the enemy. And he is us."

What is happening in Afghanistan today is an historic disaster caused by greed and hypocrisy and callousness. And caused by the failure of us "democracy loving" people to take the trouble to find out what it was all about.

And the Irving press gives it a tiny column, much less than what I have written above, which tells us almost nothing. Is it possible that the Irving press doesn't have an editor with brains enough to realize that this is a major story? And that it's time to tell the whole story?

B8 has the bizarre story "Canada intends to buy four F-35s". Wow! We'll be the terror of the skies. One for the east coast, one for the west coast, one for the Arctic, and one for spare parts. And why that aircraft in particular? We don't know. I doubt whether the government knows. This the aircraft that experts in the military and in economics have strongly advised us not to buy. This is an aircraft from an industry notorious for overpricing and gross corruption. And all the dealing has been going on with no information for the Canadian people, and no discussion in parliament.

duh. I'm in favour of it because I'm real patriotic.
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On the Faith page, the sermonette looks, even more than usual, like something written by Tweetybird.
On Remembrance Day, it says we remember our soldiers for protecting our right to freely worship, choose where we live, whom we love..... Now, let's think hard. Which war was it we fought for freedom of worship, of where we live, and whom we love? This is just mindless twaddle.

Oh, and we will be grateful we aren't going to bombed at night in our homes or forced to flee to refugee camps. No. We haven't  had to worry about that since the War of 1812 when the US did it to us. Actually, though, a lot of people have been bombed in their homes or forced to flee to refugee camps because of us. But they're foreigners. And Jesus, like most of us, was white and spoke English. It's in The Bible.

As Dorothy Parker said of a similar peace of slush, "Baby fwowed up."

On C 14, Isabelle Agnew has an excellent column "Society's Views and Reaction to Sexual Assault are Skewed."

C15 has a summary of what sounds like an excellent show coming to The History Channel. It concerns the experience of a young, Dutch girl (now living in Canada) whose family had to hide from the Nazi death squads because they were Jewish. It's like the story of Anne Frank, but with a happy ending. They were given shelter by Christian friends. It sounds excellent and worth watching. But keep a sense of perspective.

Most Dutch Christians did nothing to help the Jews. Anne Frank was almost certainly betrayed by neighbours. Tens of thousands of Dutch men volunteered to serve in Dutch units recruited to serve with Nazi forces, including the ones that rounded up Jews.. After the war, when surviving Dutch Jews got out of the camps, the governments of Dutch municipalities immediately sent them property tax bills for the time they were away.

When I taught in The Netherlands, the village neighbouring my home was the site of a major holding camp for Jews on the way to the death camps. Everyone I met knew the site well. It was really just a huge vacant lot in the middle of the village -with a railway siding running through it. Older people remembered the children, so blonde and fair-skinned that they looked just like Dutch children. But I never heard a word of sympathy for them - unless I count a comment by my landlady.

"They shouldn't have done that to OUR Jews."
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Sorry this is so long and so late. there was a lot of ground to cover.

Nov. 7: Miscellania

This is not one of the regular blogs. It's one I've started just out of frustration at the lying and corruption that characterizes so much of our news media. I have a little list of items to demonstrate that.

First, MacLean's is Canada's largest news magazine. It can afford to hire the cream of the crop as its editors and writers. So go to Google to check out Maclean's Magazine, July 24. You will find there an article on Putin by Michael Petrous, who is a sort of pit bull of the lying world that journalism has become. (Yes. I know he has a doctorate from Oxford U. Don't fall that that "great name" university guff. Some of the most incompetent (and arrogant and bigoted) professors I ever met graduated from Oxford and Cambridge.)

In this article, Michael Petrous tells the world that the passenger plane which crashed in Ukraine was shot down by Russian-made missiles fired by pro-Russian rebels on the ground. And Putin knew all about it when he caused a crisis by invading Ukraine.

Petrous is lying. He's quite deliberately lying to create fear and hatred.

His article is dated July 24, 2014. At that time the experts appointed to study the wreckage and determine what shot it down had not submitted any report. In fact, they still haven't.  The editors at MacLean's may be unethical; but they aren't stupid. They knew the information for that story does not yet exist. And they certainly knew it on July 24, 1014.

By the way, all the sources he quotes to "prove" that Putin and Russia shot that plane down are US government. He also completely distorts the story of how the Ukraine crisis was caused - even though an agent of the American government is on record as saying she spent over five million dollars to create the mob that overthrew Ukraine's elected government in the first place.

This is not an act of ignorance or incompetence - as one might expect of the Times and Transcript. This is deliberate lying. The effect it will have, almost certainly has had, is to create the kind of hysteria that has been used to suck Americans into disastrous war after disastrous war, and to accept the increasingly abusive police state at home.
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Second, and unnoticed in most of our news media, is a story from Fort Lauderdale in Florida. A clergyman and a 91-year-old veteran were recently charged with--------giving food to homeless and hungry families. They broke the law by doing it in public. (Well, where the hell else would they look for homeless people?)
They have been warned that if they do it again, they will be jailed for two months.

The veteran said he's going to do it again. So, probably, will the clergyman.

Fort Lauderdale is not an exception. Such laws are becoming common in the US.
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In Brazil, Cuba, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Finland --and Slovenia, university education is free. (I believe it is also free in The Netherlands; it was when I taught there.) Canada and the US are richer than most of those countries. They are certainly richer than Slovenia and Cuba. So how come Canadians and Americans who want to get a full education have to put families and students into debt and hardship to get that education?

It's understandable in the US. It has to support a corrupt military-industrial complex whose cost runs to some 700 billion dollars to a trillion dollars every year. Where is Canadian money going?
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US and Canadian news media are full of stories about how the economy is recovering, and unemployment is down. And that's a crock.  First, those lucky few who are getting jobs are getting them at low wages. Secondly, both Canada and the US cook their unemployment figures. People who have given up after months and even years of looking for a job are simply dropped from the unemployed list. That's it - a scratch of the pen is enough to make unemployment officially go down.
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Then there's our political liars - Harper and the Conservatives. Their latest lies are about refugees and health care. Speaking in the House of Commons, a Conservative minister recently said that refugees to Canada are getting full access to medicare. Other Conservative leaders went further. They called it gold-plated medicare, far better than Canadians are getting. The Harper government also pats itself on the back for its saintliness in opening our doors to some of the millions of refugees created by wars -- which were themselves created by the west.

In fact, Canada is one of the least welcoming countries in the world. Harper turned down Romas from Hungary, a country in which Romas live as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. In fact, Hungarians in general have a tough time getting into Canada. However, Harper did relent to let a Hungarian in quite recently; he's Jewish.

He's also down on Syria because of the violence that our side has created, pays for, and equips in that country. Many Syrians, in fact, are Christians, something which seems to have gone unnoticed by Moncton churches. I would advise all Syrians to convert to Judaism. That way they'll get into Canada and the US right away.

Harper's thinking has nothing to do with religious faith. It has to do with getting votes The Jewish vote is very important to him. That's why he loudly defends Israel - even as he does nothing for it. Canada also has a substantial voting bloc of bigots and racists - and Harper's their boy.

As for the refugee burden on out medicare system ---it doesn't exist. Harper has effectively closed off medicare to most immigrants. He even denied it to a man who had escaped Africa after having a leg cut off by terrorists. For those who break into the magic circle and qualify for medicare, our cost per person for refugees has been much, much lower than the cost per person for born Canadians.
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There's a fuss in Montreal over naming a new bridge after Maurice (the Rocket) Richard. The disturbing note I have seen in some news media is that it's being done because Richard was the inspiration for the separatist movement. That's nonsense.

I knew Maurice Richard and talked with him on several occasions. (It's no big deal. We weren't buddies. It was just that my uncle was his boxing coach.) Maurice would have a horror of anything being named after him. Unlike those who reside in New Brunswick's many halls of fame, Richard was the most humble, self-effacing, and modest of men, and a profoundly devout Roman Catholic. With just a first step onto the ice, he became a real rocket, and the whole auditorium seemed charged with megawatts of electricity. But off the ice, he was quite the opposite.

In the very early days of separatism, some separatists made much of his suspension by Clarence Campbell, league commissioner, the affair that led to a night of spectacular rioting in Montreal. It was the classic Quebec myth, the true Quebecois French-speaking hero against the rich and evil anglo maudit cochon.

In fact, Richard was dreadfully embarrassed by the riot, and never retained any hatred for anybody that I ever heard of.

As for separatism, he tried desperately hard to join the army early in World War 2; but was rejected because of a disability.  And trying to join the army was a most unseparatist thing to do. In later years, he was never a separatist, and never supported the movement.
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As we know, the price of gas has been dropping spectacularly I'm surprised most news media haven't looked more closely for the cause. Is it possible that the price is dropping because our good friends in Saudi Arabia are cutting their price?  And could that possibly be in order to destroy the profitability of shale gas in North America?  Perhaps, too, we could have some research into the claims that New Brunswick's future lies in the development of shale gas.
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Speaking of shale gas, Amherst, Nova Scotia is competing against Dieppe for the thrill of having waste water from fracking - 30,000,000 litres of it -  dumped into its sewers. New Brunswickers will have to fight for this one. Dumping wastewater in New Brunswick is the kind of thing we have to build on for the future. Heck, we have lots of lakes and rivers. Let's go, New Brunswick.

Oh, sure, there's a small risk. We don't actually know what's in that water. I mean, originally it had been full of toxic chemicals; but the gas companies have the right to keep the names of those chemicals secret. Nor do we know exactly what "cleaning" that water means. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has Mr. Gallant called in any scientific experts to study the matter.

Of course, even if the contract to dump 30,000,000 litres does go to Amherst, we in New Brunswick will still get some of the benefit from it. It will be dumped into Amherst sewers and then gaily float merrily, merrily, merrily - into the Bay of Fundy.  That's the nice thing about pollution. In the end, we all share and share alike.
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As I write this, Remembrance Day will come in just four days.We shall - as we most certainly should - remember those who died and those who suffered. But our mistake, every Remembrance Day is to stop there.

They did not die just on a whim. Nor did they all die out of patriotism. (Check enlistment figures. In both world wars, there was a burst of enrolment early in the war, and then a tapering off. Of course. Both wars began in a sea of poverty and unemployment. But once the war industries got going, that tapered off. Similarly, in World War 1, we began with high unemployment AND with a high proportion of young men born in Britain. Check the records. Note the high rate of volunteers in Ontario and the prairies. Of course. They were the ones with high migration from Britain. Then note the lower rate of volunteers in the Maritimes.)

In fact, let's cool it on the patriotism stuff in general.  Most of those who volunteered were pretty young and, in the two world wars, had very little education. Patriotism was just a word that most didn't understand. I still remember as they came to our flat - the boys from my father's Boy Scout troop - to say goodbye - Jack who got blown off the bridge of HMCS Sackville on D-Day, and wounded again in hospital when the naval magazines blew up across the harbour. I remember a kid named Bibewell who went down in mid-Atlantic with HMCS St. Croix.

Worst, I remember a severely retarded 16-year-old name Bertie who played with me because he was really a six year old mentally. He joined late in the war, stealing his draft-dodging brother's conscription papers to join. He joined because he loved taking orders, and he loved walking in boots that clicked on the pavement.
His mother said it was terrible, and she would tell the authorities he was just sixteen.

But she never did.

Six months later, in the last weeks of the war, he was killed in his first action when he jumped to his feet. And a machine gun cut him in half.

A man who was with him told me, "I was with him as we lay in the mud, with him crying and shaking. Hey, he was a kid. He was sixteen. And then he jumped up and, craziest thing, he was screaming for his mother."

Patriotism is not something to worship. The German Naziis and the Italian facists were as patriotic as they come. But I have never felt an urge to worship them.

No, patriotism is something politicians and news media and various enthusiasts play on to make us stop thinking, and to do what we are told to do. That was the lesson of the murder of two soldiers in St.-Jean and Ottawa. We treated it to inspire irrational hatreds and fears across the country. And we called it patriotism.

What we should focus on for Remembrance Day is that WE SENT THEM TO SUFFER AND TO DIE.
Sometimes, we have to do it. And sometimes we don't.

Why, under the Liberals did we send so many to die in Afghanistan? Was Afghanistan a threat to Canada? I thought of that every time I saw the hearses on TV driving along the Highway of Heroes - in true, unthinking, patriotic style.  Why did we send them?

And, if they were there for some.  urgent Canadian need, why did Harper pull them out less than half-way through the job?

Did we do it to help Afghanistan? How did it help Afghanistan? The government is still weak and hopelessly corrupt, and the Taliban is still a power. Now, after losing many more soldiers than Canada did, the US is desperately looking for a dignified way out.

We sent our soldiers there to die - and to kill.  Why?

We now have six aircraft busy killing in Iraq - and increasingly at risk themselves in a weapons-rich area. Why? Is it to protect Iraqis from being killed by ISIL?  Well, if we're so concerned about Iraqi lives, why didn't we send help for them when the US was killing far more of them than ISIL has?

Remember those who died and those who suffered life-long trauma. By all means, remember them, and be grateful to them. But go beyond remembering that. Remember that we sent them. And remember it the next time a government sends our people into war.

Let the patriots cheer. That's all they're good for. But we Canadians should put the cheers aside until we've done some thinking. Any fool can look sad and hold a hand over his heart. What we need, and what we are going to need terribly for unforeseeable years is people who think.
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Nov. 6: The big push is on...

I was a little surprised that the Irving press published the story of the UN report on climate change and fossil fuels. But they're making up for that single and lonely act of honesty. Since then, it's been a blizzard of stories about how fossil fuels are good for us. And not a single one reporting the other side.

Page A1 for Nov. 5 -  "Shale gas boss confident government will  'come around'."

I have no doubt that it will. I was sure Gallant would come around when he first announced his "moratorium" during the election campaign. And if anybody objects, we'll see the new gestapo in their camouflage outfits with combat rifles to protect billionaires from the peasantry.

A3 has a half-page story with a full colour BIG photo of Bruce Fitch looking, unfortunately, exactly like Bruce Fitch.  They story is that Gallant should consult on energy with former premiers such as Frank McKenna and  Shawn Graham.

Why? We elected Gallant. We did. We didn't elect McKenna or Shawn Graham. If Gallant is going to consult anybody, he should consult us voters. He should also be consulting world, scientific authorities.  Anyway, don't worry, Bruce, baby. Gallant will some around - just like the others.

But there is worse, much worse, to come.
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Alec Bruce defends shale gas, fossil fuels, St. Donald Savoie (who never met a billionaire he didn't like), the wisdom of Bill Belliveau and Norbert Cunningham, then drowns himself in maudlin self-pity that his is just one voice in the wilderness of ideas - and then he invites the vilification that he says will come to him.

Oh, yeah, and he who writes for the Irving press (of all media) denounces bloggers for being uneven in their coverage.

I don't vilify you Alec. I won't vilify you because your column is beneath contempt; and it's sad to see a first rate journalistic talent going down through the hole in the seat of that outhouse we call the Irving press.

There are a couple of other little problems, too.

He quotes St. Donald as saying globalization is here, and we can't stop it. Oh?

Globalization not a force of nature. It is man made. We live, or claim to live, in freedom and democracy. If so, we have the right to change anything that is man made. It will certainly be difficult to change globalization (which means giving billionaires rights that the rest of don't have to rule the world. It means handing over virtually all government powers to a very small, very arrogant, and very greedy oligarchy.)

And we can't change it? Way to fight for democracy, Alec. I bet it took courage to say that.

He is also wrong to say that natural gas is proven to be safe. Despite what your friends may tell you, there have been successful suits against natural gas companies - and there have been out of court settlements.

As well, and as  you should know, it doesn't matter if it generates less pollution. It still generates it. And, as the UN report emphasized, we are running out of time. (Of course, what do all those UN hacks and most of the world's scientists know compared to the wisdom of Norbert Cunningham?)

Oh, Alec sees a future in which New Brunswick universities will set the world standard for energy safety and renewability. That's a nice thought. Two problems. One is that there are many universities in this world that are many times bigger than all the universities in New Brunswick put together. The other is that we have worrying evidence that some professors in New Brunswick may not be as devoted to the truth as they should be.

The op ed page is just trivial - as usual.
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The NewsToday section leads with most of two pages saying nice things about oil companies.

B4 has a big headline: "Islamic state militants accused of torturing children."'  It's quite possibly true. In just about every war I have ever heard of, both sides have tortured, raped, starved, shredded children. The US tortured and imprisoned and crippled and starved to death and murdered children in Iran, Guatemala, Iraq and  Afghanistan. Ever hear if Omar Khadr? He was imprisoned and tortured by the US. But by international law, that was illegal because of his age. So - Harper steps in and puts him in maximum security - not only illegal  under international law, but the vilest and most vulnerable condition to put a young person in.

Oh, but them there radical islamic state militants behead people. Right. They do. So do our good friends in Saudi Arabia - even more so. But if you want to find the real beheading enthusiasts, you have to go to the "rebels" in Syria. You know, the ones on our side who get money and weapons from God bless America.
They have beheaded men, women, and children by the thousands - including Syrian Christians. Funny how that never makes our news - or even our awful Faith page on Saturdays. And we won't even mention the frequent killing or imprisoning (or starvation or withholding of medicines) of Palestinian children by Israel.

The don't report it because the prime purpose of our news media is to stir up hatred and fear  (which we then call patriotism).
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Page D4 has yet another Big, Big story on yet another inductee to yet another business hall of fame.
More on this when I get to the Nov. 6 issue.
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The editorial for Nov. 6 is another moan about poor literacy in New Brunswick - and the need to look at literacy in the home. Quite right. A good start might be to look at the trivia and propaganda that the Irving press shoves into our homes every day. New Brunswick needs an intellectual awakening. What it gets, instead, is a journalistic sleeping pill.

Good column by Alec Bruce on the approaches of the federal Conservatives and the NDP. I think he's right, and both parties are wrong. I don't expect anything from the Conservatives except scattered proposals to attract votes. And I think it's been a big mistake for the NDP to drift in the same direction.

Norbert is still off on his rant about life imprisonment being a "good thing".  He notes that putting a person into one of the hell-holes that we call prisons has been a great success because it cuts down on crime.
Oh - a couple of problems, there, Norbert.
1. The decline in crime in Canada began BEFORE Harper toughened the sentences.
2. The longer a person is kept in one of our appallingly violent prisons, the more likely he or she is to return to crime. If long sentences and death sentences deterred crime, the US would be the safest country in the world. It has more people in prison than any other country. And they have some of the worst prison crowding and violence in the world. But, no, the US doesn't lead the world in safety.

On op ed, Rod Allen is Rod Allen. Cut it out for the kitty litter box.

Beth Lyons is Beth Lyons. So that's a worthwhile read.
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With a world in greater uncertainty than we have ever seen, NewsToday  devotes a full page (shared on B1 and B2) of photos and story to somebody who bakes donuts.

Any world news  (and there is very little) is heavily biased in favour of the good guys on our side. If you want to understand what's happening, there's no point in reading the Irving world news.

There's also a story on the humiliating defeat of Obama's democrats in the US mid-term elections. The story says almost nothing. But the reality is it doesn't really matter. It's like New Brunswick. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are owned by the same people. The only thing that might change is that the Republicans are probably a little bit more crazy.

The basic problem is still there. American democracy is just a word. You have a whole population running on fear and  hatred propagandized to them by their media. (This is the country where a nation cheered for the George Bush 2 who send thousands to die while killing over a million in a war that had no reason except to make money for big oil, a man who loved to swagger for the cameras in his bomber jacket when, in fact, he had spent a previous war as a draft-dodger - with daddy's help. General Eisenhower, who had a hell of a lot more right to a uniform that Bush ever did, never wore his uniform when he was President,)

The big problem for congress now is - should they try to kill medicare? That's a tough one.
Almost all Republicans hate medicare on principle. They believe everything should be for private profit only.
But -

The type of medicare Obama put in was a very, very expensive type that is FOR private profit. It gave tax money to medical insurance companies -at their full rate - and all from the taxpayers. That's why it's so ruinously expensive. So here's a case where the government isn't actually running medicare. Instead, it's being patriotic by handing out billions to private companies for very excessive private profit. Gee, what's good Republican to do?
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Then there's the Your Business page. This time it's a tough-hitting story by ace reporter Brent Mazerolle who forces Robert Irving  (another appointee to the hall of fame) to tell the truth about what a great guy he is.

This sort of thing is a standard, propaganda feature is almost every issue of the Irving press. It's to make us worship at the feet of private business. But they almost never call them businessmen or businesswomen. They say "entrepreneurs". That sounds so much more sophisticated.

It's the same with that NewsToday story(with photos) about a baker and, also on B1, the story about this same awards ceremony

The message is clear. Business people are wise and good and they give to the poor, and think of nothing but our welfare.  As I read the sacred words of Robert Irving talking about his selflessness and "giving back to the community" I thought that it must have been like this to be at the Mount of Olives when Jesus addressed the multitude.

Mr. Irving, it seems, thinks of nothing but us and giving to us, never thinking of himself.  I'm so glad that someone was kind enough to give him a necktie to wear for his photo.

The purpose of this propaganda  (and it often works) is to convince people that entrepreneurs have abilities - economic, political, charitable, social - us common folk lack. They keep the focus wide to include small entrepreneurs as much as the biggest. That's to encourage the myth that big and small entrepreneurs  are all of the same, sterling qualities. Their point is that the way for any society to go is "private for profit". From that, and only from that comes progress.

It's rubbish, of course. Small entrepreneurs have an important role of course. They are not, as this propaganda suggests, the key to prosperity for New Brunswick. But they provide useful services, and certainly deserve what they earn. Even better, they don't buy off politicians, and they don't risk our lives and health to make themselves rich.

As Mazerolle tells us,big entrepreneurs just give and give and give. (Perhaps Mazerolle can some day give us the big story on how they take and take and take and take some more. It's surely an insult to readers to call us to worship at the feet of the wealthy at a time when the rich are getting richer every year and the rest of us getting poorer because the rich are getting richer.)

Enough of this propaganda crap.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go out and do what so many of the rich have built they success and goodness on. I'm going to find me a rich father.

Nov. 4: I didn't think they'd publish it.

When the UN published its report on climate change, it said that a) it is almost entirely man-made b)it's largely a result of the burning of fossil fuels c) if continued, it will destroy all life on this planet c) the time we have left to stop it is shorter than earlier realized - in fact, very shortly after the completion of the Moncton Events Centre d) this is the unanimous opinion of most scientists all over the world. It's not just David Suzuki.

I didn't think the Irving press would even publish that story. But I guess it was too big to ignore. (Of course, it's not too big to lie about. I note that PM Harper has reacted by saying Canada has made huge advances in cutting down on fossil fuels. In fact, it's not even meeting the very modest objectives of 20 years ago.)

Well, I  thought, I must check the opinion pages. This is a huge story, and right on the nose as a New Brunswick issue. So I turned to the editorial page first.

The editorial was about cleaning hospitals. Norbert was about the sex scandal at CBC- and was really just a Norbert rant about CBC in general.  Craig Babstock was on the same topic - much more civilized than Norbert, but not particularly informative. And Steve Malloy was on the same topic - but Malloy was at least far more civilized than Norbert was, And far more insightful and original than Babstock was.

With Malloy, the only other column worth reading is by Alec Bruce who raises some very uncomfortable questions about the Toronto mayoralty election - and about the surprisingly high support for Bob Ford (who had no platform in particular and who is connected to the most scandalous period in Toronto political life.)
We might well wonder exactly what the "Ford nation" is, and what it's existence warns us about the future of Canada.

Othewise, Secton A was quite wonderful. The headline, yet again, was about Moncton's wine expo. And there's a whole page of colour photos of people drinking wine so readers can know what people drinking wine look like.

Anyway, I thought, Tuesday's issue would surely give more space to the UN warning about climate change.

Nope. The banner headline on A1 was "McKenna endorses idea of second pipeline". Yes, that's our McKenna, the old shill.  This time, though, he forgets himself, and admits on A6 that the environmental position is a sound one but "...we can't go on being the only Boy Scout in the world saying we aren't going to exploit our province........we are going to continue to have a need for fossil fuels well into the future....we should continue to extract the maximum amount of money available to the Canadian economy."

I have rarely come across a more foolish, stupid, illogical and irresponsible statement

Almost all scientists and the UN say that climate change is happening, that it's happening because of fossil fuels, that we have very little time to stop it. And McKenna agrees with that. Then he concludes that though it is destroying the world, we have to continue using it WELL INTO THE FUTURE because it will make money for us. Duh.

That's exactly the sort of statement I had in mind whenever I wrote about how big business is both greedy and stupid.

But, hints McKenna, we won't be using much of that oil in the Eastern Pipeline. No, we'll be exporting it for profit.

Oh. Gee.

And just what will our customers do with it, Frank baby? Burn it? You hit it on the head, kid. And what do you think will happen to the carbon dioxide that will produce? Do you think it will go straight up in the air but stop at their borders? So only they will suffer climate change?

Almost all the delay in dealing with climate change has been due to the unwillingness of the blockheads in the oil industry to recognize that we cannot go on using fossil fuels. And what they have done is to throw away decades when we should have been working on this problem.  They spent billions buying politicians, setting up "think tanks" to spread lies and propaganda, and using the news media they control to put the whole world at risk for their profits - which will be quite useless even for them on a lifeless planet.

What has happened is that the oil industries which call environmentalists crackpots have turned out to be the biggest crackpots in the world. and the ones who have enraptured all the little crackpots who think they know better than almost all the scientists in the world. (Incidentally, our spy service protects us by investigating environmentalists as possible terrorists, and it reports on them twice a year to big business. Hey! It's our tax money. Couldn't we tell CSIS to investigate McKenna and the Irvings? And report to us?)

So I turned to the opinion pages to read words of wisdom on this issue, the outstanding issue of the week.

No luck. Norbert is still caught up in the sex scandal. Alec Bruce looks more reasonable; but what he offers is just another pitch for shale gas. As for the op ed page, one column is a reasonable one on the federal government's proposed family tax sharing plan. The other is by a hack  (Senior Director of Natural Resource Policy Studies) at the far, far right wing Fraser Institute which is funded by the oil industry and other big business leeches.

Look, folks. the most eminent scientists in the world are telling us that climate is changing, that can kill billions of us and maybe all of us. Time is running out. It may already have run out. To ignore that, to refuse to even suggest what we should do to  get off fossil fuels  is worse than evil. It is stunningly moronic.
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So I turned to Your Business for the big scoop of the day. And it's about yet another businessman being inducted into yet another Business Hall of Fame.

Who could possibly give a damn?
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Somewhere in these papers I saw a note that the US recession is over. Well, yes, it's over for the very rich. But it was never on for them in the first place.It has not ended for most Americans - and it's not likely to. Lower unemployment figures are coming out only because so many of the unemployed have accepted the hopelessness of it all, and have dropped out. So they don't count as unemployed any more. For those who do get employed, it's happening at lower salaries that were too low at the start.  The levels of poverty and suffering in the US never seem to make our news media.  For a look at what's going one, try this site -  www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40116.htm
It's called "The American Dream, Gone"
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On a more interesting note,  I found a site on World War 1 that looks good. I've read only one entry so far - but that one, at least, was well done.  The site is:

www1.canada.com/after-the-war/how-the-last-gallipoli-gunboat-was-saved

What follows is way off the blog topic. But one sometimes needs a change.

The gunboat referred to is a quite small steamship of very little speed that mounted a gun designed to attack shore positions. It was also used as a minesweeper - quite unsuccessfully in both cases - as should have been expected.

Gallipoli is a peninsula of Turkey that Britain (plus Australia and New Zealand)  attacked in World War 1 in an attempt to end the war quickly. It turned out to be one of the greatest disasters in British military history, with 50,000 Empire troops killed and many times that wounded for no gain whatever.

It was a remarkably dumb idea. It was Churchill's idea. It's too bad the site doesn't go into that.

Churchill grew up in the shadow of his brilliant military ancestor, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. In a lonely childhood with a father who only once spoke to him, he became convinced that he, too, had a brilliant military mind. Combined with that, he had a crashing arrogance, and a contempt for anybody who didn't recognize his military skills.

After the dreadful failure of Gallipoli, Churchill left the War Council of the government (to everyone's relief) to go to the battle lines in France. He was not pleased that he was sent only as a colonel. He thought he should have been made a general.  In France, he proved to be a man of almost suicidal courage, and was much admired by his troops. That courage would become the outstanding feature of his character.

But a great military mind? No.

Churchill is often praised for his wish to go to war with Hitler when the latter invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 - and Prime Minister Chamberlain became an object of contempt for not stopping Hitler. In fact, Chamberlain was right and Churchill was wrong. France was not willing to go to war in 1938 and, even with France, going to war would have been insane since neither Britain nor France was prepared for war. They still weren't prepared in 1939 when Chamberlain did declare war in 1939. That was proven in the dreadful retreat to Dunkirk.

A British historian recently published a book on the forty greatest military disasters in British history. One of the forty was Galliipoli in WW1, and Dunkirk and Singapore were two more in World War 2. Churchill was closely involved n all of them. One could also add that by mid-1940, Churchill had lost World War Two. He knew it; and was trying to negotiate surrender terms through Mussolini to Hitler. (Italy would not enter the war until June of 1940). It is still not generally realized what a close-run thing World War Two was.

British military leadership was well aware of Churchill's faults. Throughout the war, it made sure to keep its most brilliant strategist in Britain. Viscount Alanbrooke stayed in Britain as Chief of the Imperial General Staff because he was such a good strategist - and because he was the only one who could keep a lid on Churchill's delusions about his generalship.