April 22: The Big Picture

There was a time when the greatest dream of North American women was to be swept up by an arab riding on a galloping, white steed that would take them far into the desert to his tent. The arab was such a symbol of wildly romantic love that in the 1920s and later, a handsome and well-dressed young man in North America was called a "sheikh".  Indeed, the most popular men's contraceptive into at least the 1960s carried the brand name Sheikh.

In 1921, the big, Hollywood hit starring heartthrob Rudolph Valentino was "The Sheikh".  And, in the same year, that gave rise to what may have been the longest running hit song in modern history. Decades later, when I was in high school, everybody still knew the song.

I'm the sheikh of Araby.
(can't remember this line)
At night when you're asleep
Into your tent I'll creep..

And adolescents all over North America spiced it up by adding to each line "With no pants on."

These romantic notions were heightened in World War One by the publicity given to Colonel Lawrence of the British army whose organization of Arab guerrilla forces to fight the Turks added tremendously to the air of romance and excitement. All that was heightened by very romantic account of his mysterious personality in a book called Lawrence of Arabia.. (It held me spellbound when I was ten.) Then, in 1962, there was the film with Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, arguably the greatest  epic film ever made.

For the best part of a century, the West adored arabs. So what happened to make them turn into madmen and terrorists?

Well, that, too, began with Lawrence - in fact, even before him.

European interest in the middle east in modern times goes back at least to Napoleon. But it really took off when Britain saw it as the solution to shorten the sea distance for its huge trade with Asia. A canal through Egypt would do the trick. Thus the Suez Canal was begun about 1860.

But that canal was so important to British capitalists it was important that they control all of Egypt. So, though the Egyptian monarchy remained, it was the British who ruled Egypt through a High Commissioner. And that was the beginning of a pattern.

In World War One, the British, thanks to people like Lawrence of Arabia, took up a wider control of the middle east. This time, it was for oil. And, as in Egypt, they protected their interest in maintaining effective control of the oilfields by keeping obedient governments in power. As well, they freely created new nations as it suited them.

Shortly after the war, for example, the British created the state of Saudi Arabia,  placing it under a monarchy. And where did they find the monarch? Well, he was a leader of the desert bandits whom Lawrence had recruited. This made him useful to Britain which ensured that the oil industry, which gave little to  his country but which gave the king so much wealth that he was agreeable to doing what he was told.

The Saudi kings, by the way, were and are the most extreme Muslims in the world, the most severe dictatorship, and among the most brutal in the use of capital punishment. They're our friends.

The same was done with Iran, an arrangement that guaranteed British and then Americans access to oil at low cost and high profit. Despite the stories about how capitalism creates wealth for all of us, this was even less true in the middle east than it is in New Brunswick. The British even forced Iran to fuel the whole, Royal Navy for no charge at all for several decades. Capitalism exists to to take money, not to give it. And it took the money from the oil states without a thought for the needs of their people.

What the West, largely Britain and the US, created countries simply by drawing lines, permitted them only governments that were subservient, and made adjustment to the new world virtually impossible. They created, very suddenly, a new world with no history, and no hope for a future. That is the great mistake that now has us up to our ears in wars.

The Second World War weakened British power and control. It lost its compliant king of Egypt and then lost the Suez Canall. Iran chose a democratically elected government which had the dangerous idea that Iran oil belonged to the people of Iran, and should benefit them. So, for a cut of the oil, Britain got the US to help it overthrow the elected government, and install a dictator under whom Iran suffered for many years. Then Iran kicked him out, and elected its own government. The US has never forgiven Iran for that.

(The government overthrow of elected government by the US was also tried in Venezuela, and for the same reason - oil. The overthrow failed. So now Venezuela is in the gun sights. Funny how our news media have barely mentioned Venezuela - especially since Canada seems to have been involved in the overthrow attempt.)

It was probably the case of Iran that ended the years of "The Sheikh of Araby". From then on, people had to learn to hate and fear Arabs and Muslims in general. And so our news media began what is now a very sophisticated campaign to make us fear and hate. And what has followed has been years of wars against Arabs. There was the war the US paid Saddam Hussein to fight against Iran. Then they had to fight Hussein as he began to show signs of being indepdendent - and so they used lies to justify a particularly brutal war with enormous civilian casualties. The same has been true of Libya and Syria.

It's hard to say what the purpose of the current wars might be. US foreign policy has not, as it was supposed to, given the US world domination. It most certainly has not stopped Middle East unrest. It has also done the opposite of stopping terrorism. It has not brought democracy - as was once claimed. In fact, it destroyed the brief democracy that Egypt had by installing the army back in power. That's why we've lately seen pictures of the last, elected leader of Egypt, Morsi, in prison.

My guess is the objective in the Middle East now is simply to destroy, to so shatter almost every society in the region so it can no longer function at all. to kill, to impoverish, to de-culture....  That may well be in the cards for much of Latin America, too - to destroy, to impoverish in order to make our oil and mining stockholders happy.

And I really don't think it will work.

As to Israel, it is surely odd that the two countries who are the most ardent defenders of Israel (Canada and the US) are the same two who refused to accept Jews who sought refuge here from 1933 to 1948 - the year when they both voted to recognize the state of Israel.. Why the sudden change to concern for the Jews?

There was no change. The west was still largely anti-semitic, and would remain so. They voted to create Israel for two reasons.

1. It would take the pressure off them to accept Jews and, indeed, would encourage their own Jews to move out to Israel.
2. It would give the West a powerful presence in the region to maintain its dominance.

Even street kids in the arab world knew that. Jews knew that. (That's why some aren't nearly so grateful to the West as we might expect.) Anyway, we have never known this because our news media never reported it.  Muslims didn't object to Jews living among them. Jews and Arabs had lived together for thousands of years. They objected to what they saw, correctly, as the west kicking them our of their homes to create an essentially European state in the Middle East.

You think that's okay? Well...

Imagine the great powers had decided to give the region from Sussex through Moncton alll the way to Shediac to Jews as an Israeli state. Suppose the current residents of that region had to leave their homes to live in a new state (with no money, and no control over its own affairs) running along a narrow strip by the shore from Shediac to, oh, Murray Corner. And suppose the government of the new Israel decided, almost every year, to annex a bit more of your land, kick your people our of their houses, and tear them down to build new, Israeli settlements.

The creation of Israeli was a disaster. And we can't fix it. The general creation of new states in the Middle East in this century, the support of dictators, and the horrible toll on civilians killed, wounded, orphaned, impoverished was always a vast one, and hugely enlarged in the last fifteen years or so. And we can't fix that, either. On the contrary, we have made it worse.

We have also made it expensive. The US has spent some 2 trillion dollars, at least, on middle east wars in less then fifteen years. And that's not counting the regular maintenance of the world's most expensive military.
It would be cheaper, far cheaper, to give the oil billionaires several billion dollars each, and to do it every year, to go away. It is not possible for oil to be worth the real price we are paying for it in  money, in human life, and in government and big business corruption..

We are also swiftly increasing the odds in favour of a world, nuclear war..

Harper's posturing on Israel does nothing to help that country or Canada. All he is doing is pumping up the fear and hatred on both sides.

This is what happens when we let our countries be run by big business which, as it has shown many times, has neither the intelligence nor the moral values to do anything helpful..

And the disaster gets bigger. The huge cost of a corrupt. "defence" industry and its wars, combined with big business control of government, has spread poverty in the US (that we don't hear about). It has sparked social unrest which is going to get very bad. And it is turning our armies, police, and intelligence services into agents of oppression that have effectively destroyed freedom and democracy in the US - and may well do so very soon in Canada.

And all that is what isn't in the news today.
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There is no Moncton news in today's paper to speak of. That's because the Irving press is too cheap to hire enough reporters to cover anything, really. And if there were, they still wouldn't be allowed to tell the truth.

It does have one, infuriating story on A1.  "Dorchester school to stay open". It's not the good news it sounds. And it includes a disgusting warning from the Anglophone East School council that if Dorchester wants the school to stay open, the locals have to figure out a way to make it economical.

(I don't believe I've ever read of any government agency making such a warning to the Irvings.) This one also misses the point.  The problem is not that rural schools don't have enough students. The problem is one that the school council, of all people, don't seem to even notice. The problem is that these schools are essential to the communities. So how do we do that?

This is a complex question that calls for high levels of expertise in both learning and social development. It means rethinking what education is,and how it can be modified to meet these needs for rural News Brunswick. For all its babble about the problems of rural New Brunswick, I  have never seen an article in this paper about meeting the needs. This calls for some very expert thinking. You're not going to get that from a school district council that is largely ignorant of what education is. And I have seen no sign of expert thinking in the Gallant cabinet. (or any other.)

Precisely what must be learned? Precisel, what is it the community needs from the schools? Must the schools operate as they do now to meet those needs? What are alternative structures?

For the government and the council, you are not elected simply to set budgets and keeps things as they are. If anything, this province needs more teaching, not less, in rural areas to include the parents. And it needs serious thinking about the impact on children of hours on a bus every day. Nobody in council or government seems to have any understanding about what human needs are -or gives a damn.

The editorial seems promising on the danger of oil train  accidents in New Brunswick. But it wimps out at the end.  I think they trust that nice Mr. Irving.

Norbert has a decent column on prayer before the conduct of public business. Too bad he wrote much the same one several days ago.

Then.it continues its disgusting practice of carrying a commentary by a CEO on a matter in which he has a large business interest - a column largely full of business myths about how it creates jobs, etc. This isn't a commentary. This is a free ad. Are the Irvings now too cheap to hire commentators?

Alec Bruce has an engaging article about Harper's new slogan for Canada - Strong. Proud. Free.
I wonder how much we had to pay for a committee of promotion geniuses to figure that out. A more accurate one might be - Not as weak as I could be. I'd five out of then on proud. And freedom isn't everything.

B5 has an evocative account of the Canadians caught in the first gas attack at Ypres in 1915. It's the only news worth reading in the whole section.

April 21: Justice Triumphs

Three minor figures in the Lac Megantic train disaster have been criminally charged in the case of the oil train explosion that killed 47 people in Lac Megantic. One is the driver of the train who had to drive it alone from Alberta to the coast. Apparently that villain, thinking only of himself, thought he should stop the train at night, and should sleep before driving another day. He had no-one to stay with the train overnight because the Irvings have a Christian respect for money that does not permit them to waste it on frills. Thus the firing of all photographers at Irving press. Thus the insistence that reporters and other staff members have to write columns they aren't qualified to write, and to do it in addition to their reporting and editoring work.)

The train driver and the minor railway officials face possible sentences of life imprisonment.

Irving Ltd., as always motivated by a sense of compassion, made a generous contribution of some 75 million to settle lawsuits from the case out of court, thus saving us taxpayers a good deal of money. And that, no doubt, will lead to another star on the Irving files at the Philanthropy Hall of Fame.

There is  no mention of the person at Irving head office who signed a false affidavit which misrepresented the dangerous nature of the product being shipped. There is no mention of why Irving Ltd. contracted the shipment to a railway company notorious for its dangerous, cost-cutting measures.

This will, no doubt, be a summer of joyful worship at the Irving Chapel. God, indeed, is kind to His servants.

(Don't look for the story about the police charges in the Irving Press. After all, it can't afford to cover stories that happened so far away. You have to go to a news source that just throws its money away. I found the story at Google News.)

There's an important point to remember, here. Commercial news outlets, with rare exceptions, do not exist to tell the news. Like other commercial enterprises, they do not exist to create jobs. They exist to sell advertisements. And, since the start, they have existed to lie for the benefit of their owners. The Irving press is simply a gutter example of the common breed.

Also not in Brunswick news, but well represented on the web is the imminence eviction of up 20,000 people in Detroit for non-payment of property taxes. For a sense of what that means, take a look at Detroit on Youtube. Get a good look at the filth, decay, and violence. As well, water is being shut off to some 3000 people per week.

Some years ago, I was in Detroit, and you could go from white heaven to black hell just by crossing a street. Today, it's far worse. This is a city that has gone from prosperous to filthy, decaying and very, very dangerous in just thirty years. And where will the thousands of evicted people go? Some to the streets. Some to abandoned office buildings controlled by armed gangs.

Detroit is a decaying, rotting city in a decaying, rotting country. But in that country, the richest 1% now have 90% of all the wealth, much of that wealth coming from wars to get control of oil in the Middle East and Venezuela, of minerals in Congo and Latin America. And the 1% have plenty of money to give Hilary Clinton 2.5 billion for her presidential campaign - and at least as much to her Republican opponent.

This is what social collapse looks like.
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I regularly receive copies of The Brief, a one-sheet newspaper out of Fredericton. You can reach it at nbmediacoop.org     And it's well worth a read.

The current issue has a story that a company called Forest Products Ltd. which is owned by companies like JDIrving has been spraying cut areas with a chemical that causes cancers in humans and, presumably, in wildlife.  Local people have been protesting against it.

Well, we certainly can't have dangerous things like that going on. So the police arrested three of the protesters.

Alward, in his last months as premier gave much of our crown forest (at bargain rates) to Irving Ltd. to  have fun with. In the sale terms, it is mentioned that in a short time, Irving will be exempt from any change in environmental regulations. Wasn't that sweet of Mr. Alward?

Yep. Mr. Irving works within the law. That's because he makes the law in the first place.

The paper also has some news I must have missed in the Irving press. It's on the front of the paper, just under the words IN BRIEF. It's about an investigation into the police handling of the anti-shale gas demonstration near Rexton.  There were 20 formal complaints about police actions at the protest. (I must have missed the report of that, too, in the TandT.) The head of the investigation has now announced there are reasonable grounds for the complaints. One was that native peoples were treated much more harshly than non-natives. Another was that though the police were told that an SWN truck had hit three native women, they refused to take action. (I might have just missed that. I was there with a person who recognized an SWN truck driver as a neo-Nazi. He had a big grin as he drove toward the protesters, giving them the finger.)
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No. I haven't come to today's TandT. I'm killing time because there's not much in it.. Lets start with the editorial page.

There's a big project on to raise the level of a street in Dieppe so it won't flood. That's nice. But I have no idea why it's worth writing an editorial about that. Norbert Cunningham has a decent column about how silly it was for premier Gallant to give a very misleading speech about the wonderfulness of the New Brunswick economy - and to do it with an audience that wasn't nearly naive enough to believe it.

Well, it's true. Gallant is a lightweight leading a party of featherweights. But, alas, Norbert is no better. His economic solution is to dump the whole blame for the recession and for the deficit on the middle class and poor.

Norbert. Can you spell I-R-V-I-N-G -S? How much tax do they pay? What are their profits? What do they get from us in lavish gifts every year? What does supporting them and their friends cost us? Is it possible they own the Gallants of this world? Is it possible they own you? What percentage of all the money in New Brunswick is held by the Irvings?

How many children in New Brunswick live in poverty so we won't have to tax these people? How many schools have to close, and how many children will have to ride buses for hours a day, and how many classrooms will be overcrowded? How many people will have to live on ten dollars an hour so the Irvings and their friends can live on ten dollars - and even more -  a second?

Louise Gilbert has an interesting column on the interaction between seniors and youth - and how they can benefit each other. This deserves a follow-up.

Alec Bruce has an excellent one about our recent visitor, prime minister Modi of India. Modi is, as our press releases have not mentioned, a thoroughly ruthless bastard, and a sell-out to big business. No wonder he and Harper liked each other.
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Canada&World has little worth reading about either Canada or the world.

Apparently, the Irving press still hasn't heard about the murders of opposition leaders in Ukraine's Kyiv government (the one on our side.) Nor has it heard about the anger at US bullying in Latin America. Or about the stunning increase in poverty in the US.

B3 does have an interesting story from the deputy minister of the RCMP. He has been forced to reassign over 600 police officers from organized crime and other essential work to deal with terrorism. Give that some thought.

How many Canadians, living in Canada, have been killed by terrorist attacks in this country? The only ones I know of were the two recent killings that seemed to have more to do with mental derangement than with international terrorism.

How many get killed, quite routinely, by organized crime? Nobody really knows that because organized crime is tidy, and usually places the body out of sight, perhaps by wrapping it in chains and dropping it in a lake.. (There was even a case in Montreal in which the police helped the killer by picking up the body and dumping it out on a remote road.It's in a book about the history of nightclubs in their Montreal glory days. I have forgotten the name of the book, but could find it quickly enough since it was written by a colleague of my teaching days.)

We have been manoeuvred  into a position in which we are now throwing away all democracy and all freedom  because of an anti-terrorism bill to protect us against something that hasn't happened, while at the same time transferring police from threats that are very serious indeed, and which happen daily.

And we're doing it all to defend that same freedom and democracy that we're destroying with it.

You want to know a good way to stop terrorist attacks? Just lay off from attacking their countries. We'll never stop terrorism by creating it.

Meanwhile, B5 has two heart-warming stories.about how the king of Saudi Arabia, arguably the richest man in the world, is killing people in Yemen which is arguably the country of the poorest people in the world - and also the ones who have had uncounted and unreported civilians killed by US drones over the years.

The King, who is also perhaps the most extreme Muslim in the world - and our good friend  - has been bombing Yemenis with bombs supplied at high profit by the US defence industry. US ships have also been firing along the shore - being careful, of course, to kill only those people carrying signs saying "I am a Yemen terrorist."

But, no...this is too big a story to start here. I'll do it tomorrow because there probably won't be anything worth talking about in the Irving press. In fact,it goes way back to 1918 - to an international hero, and a popular song, and a madman..... And it's a story about you and me. Tomorrow.

April 20: How could they be so stupid?

Early yesterday, a major news story broke in plenty of time to make today's newspapers. But, apparently, nobody at Irving press realized it was important.  As usual, all the world news stories seem to have been chosen by a toss of the dice. But this story has consequences to think about.

A boat carrying refugees, almost a thousand of them, sank in the Meditteranean, killing all or almost all aboard.

Why is that so important? The reason goes back to a conference in Evian, France way back in 1938. Millions of Jews were desperate to get out of Germany. I knew two of them. Bernard and Evi, his wife. They told me that they were seated near the front of the Sports Palatz when Hitler gave a speech on  his plans for Germany. Rioting arson, thefts, beatings, murders, arrests aimed at Jews were already happening. And Hitler said there was more, much more, to come.  That's when Bernard turned to Evi, and said, "I think it's time to leave."

But there was no place to leave for. No country, including Canada, the US, and Britain would accept Jews - even though all countries knew what was happening to them. Fortunately, Bernard was a wealthy man at the time. And he spent it lavishly, almost all of it, on corrupt customs officials and politicians of several countries. Canada was the one that proved most buyable. And so it was that I met his wife, by then a very elderly woman, and a student in my history class. And so I was invited to enjoy many an evening with her and Bernard.

US President Roosevelt was under pressure in that period to do something about the Jews of Germany. So he called a conference in Evian to discuss giving refugees shelter in Europe and the Americas. Hitler did not attend, but he announced that he would release any Jew, even all of them, if they had a guaranteed destination.

But the conference failed because none of the countries, including Canada and the US, would agree to accept Jews. Thus, the holocaust.

US, British, French - and now Canadian - interferences in Africa and the Middle East have sent uncountable millions fleeing in terror. Iraq alone has produced millions of refugees. A livable country even under Hussein, it was destroyed for all but oil billionaires by Britain and the US. Ghadaffi was certainly not a nice person. But Libya was functioning under him. Now, helped by Canada, the US has made Libya a furnace of horror. The Syrian "civil war", provoked and financed by the US and Saudi Arabia, has created millions more dead or hungry and homeless -and terrified. We're now doing the same thing in Yemen. The whole region is collapsing - and largely as a result of a US foreign policy established by the very, very rich.

There's no secret about it for anyone who can read and think. And it's not something that happens because they're Muslims. If that were true, the whole Muslim world would have died centuries ago.

No, they have been killed in their millions as their world, their society, their nations, were smashed to make some very, very rich people even richer. Thus the one-legged child alone and lost and friendless sitting in the filth of the street and dying of starvation. Thus the father standing dazed by the disappearance of his family that he will never see again..

Those who can move and who have money can cross to Italy and, from there, across Europe to survive. The voyage will cost them every cent they have; and they know well that the chances of rickety and overloaded boats sinking are very, very high. But to stay is almost certain death.

And so they flee in their hundreds of thousands, even millions, to a Europe that doesn't want them - just as it didn't want Jews in 1938. Will that callous hatred fade? I doubt it. With so many European - and American and Canadian leaders shouting hatred for Muslims as they once shouted hatred for Jews, we can expect serious violence as refugee numbers rise. Nor is there the slightest chance that Canada and the US will do anything useful.  Quite the contrary, Harper has been scoring political points by encouraging hatred and fear of Muslims.

Yes, it was just one boat that sank, and just a thousand or so who drowned. But there will be many millions in the greatest holocaust this world has ever seen. And we are very largely to blame because we destroyed those societies so that our billionaires could steal their resources.
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The other big story for Canada got missed, too. B4 has the story of a meeting of the Arctic Council at which Canada intends to criticize Russia for its  "Ukraine aggression". Now, that may seem like an odd thing to say at a meeting about Arctic development. It sounds, again, like Harper using this as a chance to boost his Ukrainian-Canadian vote for the next election. And it is that. But there actually is a Ukraine connection, a real one.

You may remember that earlier in the Ukraine crisis, Marshal Harper rode into a national conference with his loaded popgun on his hip, rode right up to Putin, and said, "ah'm given ya till midnight to get outta Ukraine."

And that brings us to another big story the Irving editors missed.

Recently, Russia has been massing troops and equipment in its part of the Arctic. Why? It's almost certainly Putin's way of giving the finger to marshal Harper. Well, we'll show him. We'll send up an icebreaker from the Irving shipyard - just as soon as it's built.
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B5 has a large story on how two statues, one in Ottawa and one in Guelph, are being installed in honour of Lt. Col. John McCrae who wrote  "In Flanders Fields".  As the story says, it's an excellent poem. I memorized it as a child; and I still remember every word. But people should think while reading it - because it is not - as it is so often used  on Nov. 11- a poem in mourning the sacrifice of our dead. Think of the lines...

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

That's not mourning our dead. That's glorifying war. And, if you read the newspaper story, it's clear that McCrae was, himself, a man who glorified war. A better example of war poetry by a Canadian might be Robert Service, "Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man". Some of them have more range and depth that In Flanders Fields does.

A small point - the story says that McCrae died near the killing fields he immortalized.  Please. Fields cannot be immortalized because they were never mortal in the first place.
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The only story in section A worth reading is that the bat population of New Brunswick is down from 7,000 (already a low number) just months ago to 20. Just 20.
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The editorial, again, is unspeakably silly. It suggests we solve the rural school closure problem by selling the schools to private business to operate them as nursing homes. Right. Just what we need - giving more of our health care over to the private sector.

Worse, the solution has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is to sustain the influence of the school as a major factor in community life. Making them into nursing homes is not going to do that. Nor will it do anything to solve the problem of students spending hours in a bus to travel to more distant schools...

One of the worst things about New Brunswick is how people will sit back and watch their children being maltreated so that the very rich won't have to pay taxes. This province needs a lot of thought about what its children need, what education is all about, why the literacy rate is so low (and it's not because of the schools, and it's not helped by those idiot reading marathons that IrvingLtd. sponsors.) If parents want their children to read, THEY have to read. I learned to read books and poetry because my father read them. Poor as we were, there were always some used book in the house.

This government has to put more money into the education system, not less, and more teachers, not fewer to encourage reading. I'm astonished that parents will allow a government to treat schools and children as it does just to please billionaires who don't pay taxes.

Norbert gets a gold star for a well-reasoned, balanced, and intelligently written column on the Gomeshi affair at CBC. This is really good stuff.

On the opposite page, Commentary, Craig Babstock has a decent article. But it's on the same topic that Norbert discussed, and offers the same opinion. Why on earth did the editor of these pages (Rod Allen?) allow that?

Still, on this best of all possible days, Steve Malloy has a serious, well-written, and sometimes very funny commentary on parents and spoiled brats. It's well worth a read.

Alec Bruce has a good column on the case of Senator Mike Duffy. It includes some most enjoyable quotations - and also asks the question, "who cares?" That question is neither trivial nor cynical, but symptomatic of how disillusioned we have become about our political leadership.

On the whole, a good day for editorial and op ed pages, with the only loser being the eternal.

This paper also needs a commentary writer who can deal with a broad range of matters. News is not understandable when it;s reported simply as news. The reader needs the stimulation of commentary to give the news meaning - and that means at least one person who is knowledgeable on a broad range of topics. The very occasional columns by Gwynne Dyer or David Suzuki don't fill the gap.

And it could be made easy and relatively cheap by having someone write such columns for all the Irving papers.  But that won't happen.

The Irving are too cheap. That's why they so often use staff people to write the commentaries in addition to their regular work.

April 19: A short one...

....I hope.

There are two sites I use a good deal for news. Neither is perfectly reliable. I've never even heard of a news source that is perfectly reliable. If  you think there are some, then read a book on war reporting from the early days of mass media in the 1890s to today. It's called "The First Casualty".

I worked for a time with a journalist who had served in the Canadian army in World War Two. His job was to make sure that in photos the press sent home, any photo that showed a Canadian soldier looking tired or discouraged was scrapped. Later, teaching military history to an advanced class made up largely of military officers, I assigned World War 2 newspaper readings to them. They were astounded at the obvious slanting of the news, and the outright lying. Our news media in WW1 and WW2  and in every war since are no different from those of Hitler's Dr. Goebbels.

It hasn't changed - though it's become more subtle with the use of loaded and misleading words. That's why I rely more  on the very few news media I know to be honest and intelligent - and also on 'rogue' news outlets put out by people fed up with the lying.

One of these is Information Clearing House, easily found on google. I use it with caution because it can be biased. But, at its worst, it is far better and more honest than the regular, mainstream news media.

So go to informationclearinghouse, scroll down to April 17 for "US Murdered First Elected Prime Minister of Pakistan." This goes back some 65 years; but it's tied to events in Iran today.

After World War One, Britain took control of the Iranian oilfields and their profits. They also forced Iran to provide oil fuel for the whole, Royal Navy absolutely free.

But as soon as World War Two ended, Iranians elected a government that took control of its own oilfields.
Britain, with its whole empire turning against it, didn't have to muscle to deal this, so it invited the US to join in for a share of the loot.

The US first attempted to get the newly elected prime minister of Pakistan to intervene, and convince Iran to hand over control of its oil fields to US companies. He refused. So the US hired a contract killer from Afghanistan to shoot him.

Shortly after, the US organized the overthrow of the government of Iran, and took over the oilfields, placing the country under the rule of a dictator who handed over the oilfields to American capitalists. When, after many years, Iranians got rid of the dictator and re-established a democracy, the US was furious, and sponsored Saddam Hussein to wage a bloody war against Iran. But it didn't work; and the people of Iran kept control of their oil fields.

That's why the US imposed sanctions on Iran. That's why Obama recently set up talks to get Iran to close a nuclear bomb programme that doesn't exist. That's why Congress wants a war with Iran; it wants that oil turned over to American capitalists on their terms. Now.

And we have to look at sources like informationclearinghouse and, in this case, Pakistan Today, because in some 65 years, our mainstream newsmedia have never told us about it. And they never will.
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There's also an interesting story in The Huffington Post. The URL is so long, I couldn't even get the whole thing into my search box. So, just google Huffington Us Post April 17. Scroll past the opening paragraph, and you'll find a column by Ralph Nader (which actually appeared on April 15 - go figure).  It's "Stop Corporate Welfare Kings and Tax Escapees from Strip-Mining America."

It lists several individuals and companies that make billions in profits, take billions in gifts from government, and pay no taxes at all. I understand there are some people like this in New Brunswick, too. But they don't make the pages of the TandT - except when it tells us how talented they are and how they create jobs.

That's why we have to close schools, fire teachers, make young children spend hours on a school bus every day. and forget about going to university. Tell you what.

The Irving press tells us that the .Irvings are wonderfully talented. Okay. I'll buy that. And that means we  have to develop their talent by giving them greater challenges. So....

Let their children ride on a bus for a couple of hours a day so they can sit in an overstuffed classrooms in a school lacking facilities they have in those nice, private schools. Then, make them borrow money on their own, putting themselves through university. Than, ban them   from being employed by  one of daddy's companies. Put them in starting jobs in small companies so that they can show their god-given talent in working up, and making those small companies into big, rich ones.

And, like the rest of us, make them pay taxes every damn step of the way.

Incidentally, it might also be inspiring for us peasants to know what the academic qualifications of these talented people are. I know I was at Acadia shortly after two of the Irvings were students there. However, there seems to be no record of them graduating.

Maybe some of the Irving press' hard-digging journalists could find the answer to this while they're searching for figures on how much the various Irvings made in the 2014 tax year, and how much is hidden in offshore banks, and how much they paid in taxes.

I would guess that this province is poor because of the greed of these people. I would guess this province is kept ignorant of what is happening because of the press these people own. I would guess many new Brunswickers go hungry and homeless (or live in substandard and dangerous housing) because of these people. I would guess the provincial failure to discuss issues openly is because of the fear of these people.

We could use a Ralph Nader in the Irving press.
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Finally - and this is really a world-level story, there's the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court that governmental bodies cannot open meetings with prayer - that the state and church must be separate.
My first reaction was not to care because I have known many politicians, but very, very few whose political work had anything to do with any religions.

It wasn't always that way. In Quebec, up into the 1960s, the Roman Catholic church WAS the government. No government would dream of passing a law without first submitting it to the RC church for approval. The church insisted that all schools had to be either Catholic or  Protestant (Jews were forced to accept Protestant schools.) Catholic schools were run directly by the church, with nuns and brothers assigned to much of the teaching. Their salaries were paid to the church - with the teachers getting very little of it. The care of orphans, delinquents and the mentally ill worked in much the same way. It was a system that was corrupt, debasing, physically and mentally harmful, and an utter failure. Like the Irving press, it was a system designed to keep people ignorant and obedient.

As for the people we elect, the idea of them praying is close to obscene. In most of the politicians I have known, having high moral principles meant not peeking into the urinal of the man beside you..

Then I thought of Warren Allmand, solicitor-general under Pierre Trudeau and a Roman Catholic who lives his life based on his obligations as a Christian.

We need that in our political circles. I don't mean we need just Roman Catholicism or just Christianity. And I certainly don't mean we need formal religious intervention in the decision making of government.

But we do need a sense of the principles that are to be found in any religion I can think of. And that is very rare. We, like the US and Russia and China and Britain and many other countries have an economic system based on pure greed, and on no moral or social principles whatever.

To make matters worse, we have replaced churches interfering with government, only to give great prominence to the very, very wealthy interfering with government. In fact, in places like New Brunswick, they go beyond interfering to become the real government. They use their power to abuse others, run away with their money, then make relatively small gifts and put up their pictures in philanthropic halls of fame for us all to admire.

Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples should not be in government. But they should certainly be helping us to understand the role that religions should play in ensuring that society does not become simply a means for the very rich to abuse everyone else.

Now, look at that gawdawful, simple-minded and irrelevant sermonette on Saturday's faith page in the Times and Transcript. Someday I should certainly like to see one that is not just about how to cover  your own rear end so as to get into heaven. And I also would love to see such columns by Jews, Muslims and others to remind us that when it comes to social principles based on religion, we have a lot in common. And, oh, we need to share that in the world we're facing. Never kid yourself. We all stand to be victims now matter what our religion or lack of it.

A system based on greed means endless war - and that in a world of increasingly powerful and indiscriminate    weapons. Even without the weapons, economies based only on greed are self-destructive, even if we remain alive.. The weapons mean we won't remain even alive.

Your choice. If you're scared to talk because the Irvings and their kind might get you, bear in mind that they'll destroy you whether you talk or not.

April 18: 500 years in one post.

It was yesterday's editorial that put me in a bad mood - that smug, patronizing, asinine comment about how we mustn't tax the rich because if we do, they might go away. And it says they are very talented people. These are people who are here to get money, our money and our resources. In short, they are here for the same reason a bank robber goes to a bank. And the twit who wrote that editorial thinks we should keep them here?

And, for that matter, what talent? Who measures their talent? In fact, what measurement system is there? And how do you judge the worth of their talent compared to others? One and a half billion people on this earth survive, sort of, on $1.25 a day. How do we decide that some people on this earth are so hugely talented that deserve to earn far more than that in just a split second?

And what, precisely, talent does it take to buy governments, skip taxes, get handouts of public forests, and all sorts of goodies from government? What talent does it take to be greedy, to take everything, to leave nothing, and to give not a damn for what happens to the people of this province?

  And how come so many people born with the name Irving are so talented? In fact, precisely what talent has any Irving shown? Is it something in the genes? Do we have a super race here? We must. I mean, they all zoom to be senior officers in no time at all.

Even by Irving press standards, that was a disgusting editorial. And condescending. Up yours, Mr. editorial writer.
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And I really can't talk yet again about how stinking and incompetent this newspaper is. Today's section A has nothing worth reading. And Canada&World is really village news with only one story about the World - and even that one tells us nothing. It's simply about a memorial service for the Germanwings crash victims.There is not a word about the murder going on with American support and bombs Yemen - nothing about the severe crisis in Ukraine -or about the severe disorder in Kyiv - nothing about the attempts of American big business to overthrow the government Veneuela because its wasting money on feeding the hungry - nothing about the horror, poverty, and misery that the US has inflicted on Haiti (with the help of Canada) - nothing  about the stunning rise of hatred of the US around the world because it acts so much like the Irvings...

So, instead, lets talk about the last 500 years or so, and how they turned out to be such a disaster.
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A good start is a book by Pankaj Mishra, "From the Ruins of Empire", Anchor Canada. It's about the western conquests of China, India, the Middle East, and  how the conquered were utterly destroyed but then rose from what he had inflicted on them. This is where Mao's communism came from, Ghandi's Indian nationalism, and Al Quaeda and ISIL.  All of these were created by us.

This is one of the most intellectually exciting and most thought-provoking books I have ever read.

By Columbus' time, the western sailing ship made it possible for western powers to reach all over the world with ease. And it was a world with wonderful promises of exotic foods and gold and diamonds and cheap labour. The reaching out came eagerly from Kings and then capitalists.

What followed were centuries of greed, destruction, slavery, mass starvation, murder - all to create uncountable profits. The British and French and Dutch and Spanish and Portuguese killed by the millions to enforce their looting.  The British added an extra touch by stealing land from the people of India, then enslaving them to grow poppies on it and make opium. Then they fought a war against China to force the Chinese to buy a large quantity of that opium every year - or to make up the deficit in buying with a cash payment to Britain.

That is where the great homes of Britain  (like Blenheim Palace where Churchill was born, and Buckingham Palace) came from. Of course, most British never saw that money. While most British lived in filth and poverty often without clean water or even basic sanitation, and while the common soldiers and sailors who built the empire lived in wretched conditions and, with other, ordinary citizens, died young, the capitalists and aristocrats lived in the greatest spendour ever known.

And no doubt The Times had editors who wrote about how lucky Britain was to have such talented leaders, and how important it was not to tax them.

Despite the mythology we call Canadian history, it happened here, too. There was a genocide of native peoples that rivaled Hitler's holocaust - and even greater ones in the US and Latin America. Then, in both Canada and the US, we treated most European immigrants brutally - and most Canadians. Forget the stories of happy pioneers. Read a book by Terry Copp, "The Anatomy of Poverty" which deals with Montreal from 1879 to 1929. In fact, in North America generally, we had a move to good  times only from 1939 when the war started until sometime in the 1960s when big business resumed its control.

China, Asia, Latin America, Africa and, from the First World War, the Middle East knew nothing but poverty, shattered societies, starvation, slavery, intense and widespread brutality. We left nothing to eat, no sense of community, no sense of purpose. They had to struggle for a century and more to figure out a society to replace the one what was destroyed. That is what produced Mao's communism, and Muslim "terrorism".

Nobody can ever know how many we murdered to satisfy the greed of our "talented" CEOs.

When the European powers drove themselves broke in two world wars, then the US stepped in to replace them. That's why the US took its time to enter both wars.It promised in World War One to make all people equal and free. But it didn't free anybody. Nor did any of the Imperial powers. Roosevelt fought Japan - not because of Pearl Harbour. He needed an excuse for war. He knew Japan desperately need oil to fight in Asia. So he cut the oil off, knowing Japan would have to retaliate. He wasn't expecting a Pearl Harbour - but it served the purpose. The US really entered that war to get China for itself, and pick up all he pieces of the European empire he could.

The purpose was the same as that of the European empires -  to steal resources, to get cheap labour, and to dominate most of the world's economies - all for the benefit of fat corporations and their 'talented' CEOs.

Churchill and Roosevelt both announced that the purpose of that war was to bring freedom and equality to all nations. We'll hear all about that every Nov. 11. In fact, as soon as the war was over, they went right back to business as usual.

The change over the last 40 years or so has been the destruction of whatever democracy there was in the western world, to put corporations in real charge of government.That's as true here as it is in Chna. New Brunswickers should know all about that. The corporate bosses have also taken almost complete control of all news and entertainment media in the western world. Thus the Irving press (one of whose top execs is a very talented guy who worked his way up from being a cub reporter to being a top dog for the whole chain in a remarkably short time. His name is Irving.)

It's going to get worse. Big business has freed itself from any pressure to behave. Free trade did it. And they're using their ownership of governments to make trade deals that are going to hurt us as we have hurt other countries in the imperial past.  Big business no longer needs even to pretend that it has any concern for us.

So the editorial writer of the TandT tells us not to tax the rich. They are such talented dears. And they might leave us if we're not really, really nice to them. That's why we have to close schools and fire teachers. That's why we have to stuff our children in oversized classes. That's why we have to cut social services just when they're most needed. That's why we have (some) professors willing to write books about the "fiscal cliff". That's why the newspaper columnists beat the drum for more cuts - and never, never give a hint of what the Irvings and other corporations cost us, and how much of that deficit is theirs.

Significantly, the Irving press almost never talks about people - their needs, the role of government in our lives.... All it talks about is money, the need to develop fossil fuels whatever the risks might be, the need to build an events centre (it would be convenient for the owner of a hockey team). The same is true of the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Where does that take us? Almost certainly to violence. That's why the US is militarizing its police forces with armoured cars, tanks, machine guns....  That's why the US army now carries out exercises on how to control cities in an uprising.  That's why Canada has special RCMP groups wearing military camouflage outfits and carrying combat rifles. That's why the RCMP keeps tabs on native peoples who attend protests about resource extraction, for example, and gives full reports to the capitalists who are doing the extracting.  That's what CSIS is about, too.

I was, long ago,  pistol instructor for a police force; so I got to know many of the police quite well. Those were days of protests against nuclear weapons. My police friends talked to me eagerly about getting a change to swat anybody wearing a beard or carrying a sign. Yeah. They'd straighten them out, make em get in line. These police weren't bad guys. They also weren't stupid. They well understood that their bosses wanted people who protested to be 'disciplined'.

That's why you can bet the RCMP and CSIS will never, never spy on Irving Ltd.

And that's what Bill C-51 is about. It's only marginally about terrorists. It's the final stroke against democracy, the one to be used against all of us to keep us in line for the talented CEOs to exploit us.Like Asians and people of the Middle East, we, too, now live in the ruins of empire..................and, in that, we will be creating our own 'extremists'.

Well, the editorial writer thinks the CEOs who have been behind five centuries of mass murder and impoverishing of peoples are very talented.

Odd. I grew up being taught that people like that were scum of the earth.

April 17: Another stinker.

But, to start on a happy note, read section C4, 'Big Sister Shares Open Letter with Words of Advice for Little Sister'. This is by Isabelle Agnew, one of the student columnists whose columns now appear, one a day in the Life section.

And to really get the flavour of this, imagine you are the little sister who is turning 15. And imagine this is appearing as a birthday card to you. Anyone who can read this without being touched has a heart  made of pig iron.

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The rest of the paper is business as usual. Remember yesterday's big, lead story about how the local hockey team would have to play a 'home" game in Fredericton because the Moncton hockey rink had been double-booked? Well, hold your hat. Today's big news is that the city will work to avoid such conflicts in future.

I mean, who would have guessed?

Then there's a front page story that a regional high school class in environmental science has been using drones to study the countryside around it. Sounds great! And I'm sure it is a great experience for the students.

But then the paper tells us it also teaches entrepreneurship.  Why? How is entrepreneurship training linked to environmental science?

Well, this is a fact of life in New Brunswick. Entrepreneurship has to be linked to just about everything, even though only a small proportion of New Brunswickers will ever live by it. And, in fact, the proportion is declining. (Just think of how many small entrepreneurs are displaced by a Walmart.) Why is entrepreneurship always portrayed in the Irving press as something not only desirable, but something to be admired, even idolized?

Well, it's for the same reason Norbert always pours contempt on government employees. The great myth to be peddled is that entrepreneurs are to be placed on a pedestal as symbols of what real men are And there's even a sustained campaign to make small entrepreneurs feel like that. Entrepreneurs are leaders - yes they are. Our future depends on them. Yes, it must. Government just gets in their way and hurts all of us. Yes, it does.

In the end, the beneficiaries of this campaign are families like the Irvings. They create our prosperity. Yes, they do. That's why we don't charge them taxes. If we did, they might go away.

The fact, of course, is that people like the Irvings do not create prosperity. Even now, as we are in hard times, the Irvings are prospering. And they aren't hampered by the government. They own it. And they aren't even entrepreneurs because there's no risk in what they're doing. If our usefulness to them declines, they can simply move their money elsewhere. And, of course, they can use their hidden assets to buy into companies like mining that produce big profits simply by exploiting the resources of some of the poorest and most brutally treated nations on earth. If they are entrepreneurs at all, it is only in the sense pirates are entrepreneurs.

That's why they prefer to be labelled by a word that has dignity and  status to it - entrepreneur. And that's why the word appears almost a chant by the faithful in the pages of the Irving press.

A3 has a more useful story about the need for organ donors. People need reminding because such a donation requires permission well in advance from the donor. This is a useful news story.


Then there are all the items of court news because it's cheap and easy to get - and fills space.

The editorial is the usual one about cutting government spending. Not once does it mention human need. It's all money.  Well, it does mention human need once. It says that taxing the wealthy is a bad idea because they'll go away. After all, it says, we have many "highly paid (and talented) CEOs and directors" who might leave if taxed.

The writer cannot be that stupid. People at that level have seen their incomes rise by factors of ten and more in the last twenty years. Some now earn in a morning - even in a coffee break - more than most of their employees do in a year.

What miracle has made them so much more talented in such a short time? And what a coincidence that so much talent seems to come as a gift from the baby fairy for people named Irving!

Have the rest of us become lazier and more stupid?

We are living in a world in which salaries rise spectacularly for the very rich even as they fall for everyone else. Has it occurred to the editorial writer that there will be consequences to that?

And, of course, we need natural gas. Gotta have it. All those highly paid and talented CEOs who think only of us say we need it.

But ya gotta give the Liberals credit. They're going tough, and cutting spending for all those children we waste education money on when they aren't highly paid and talented like kids named Irving.

What a disgusting and ignorant editorial!


Norbert had another column of ranting and name-calling.He gives no evidence or argument for what he says. He just raves like drunk on a main street corner at midnight.  And of course, he slurs the CBC. Of course. That's because Irving doesn't own it. Someday, Norbert, tell us about the wit and wisdom that flows from Irving radio. You know, the ones who have announcers that say clever things like, "Hey, gang, now stay tuned to YOUR station for the tunes YOU like to hear."

Then there's a letter that government should be run like a business. Actually, it is run like a business. That's what's wrong with it. Business is run to make a profit for the owner. It has no other purpose. Government is supposed to be run for the benefit of the people. It's not the same.

However, if the writer is such an admirer of business and thinks it cheaper, I recommend he get his next operation in a US hospital.

I could find no reason to read anything on the commentary page. Cole Hobson has a worthwhile topic in volunteerism, but really has nothing to say beyond local boosterism. Reading it is like trying to swim in a puddle. Alec Bruce, again, has nothing to say. And I find this habit of giving column space in which politicians talk political twaddle a distasteful one for a newspaper. I note, too, that so far it is only for Liberal and Conservative politicians. I notice, too, that none of its contributors has ever mentioned the word I-R-V-I-N-G.
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Then there's Canada&World.

B1 has "On the front lines of the war against Ebola". It's about Dr. Cleary,  New Brunswick's Chief Medical Officer, who has been playing a leading role in Sierra Leone fighting Ebola.  She's up in the morning at six and doesn't finish her day until 10, and with the danger of infection and death a constant companion.

Gee. I bet she must get paid almost as much as one of those talented CEOs working for Irving.

What's surprising is that we have heard so little of her in the Irving press. I mean, if she had appeared on American TV blowing tunes on a comb and tissue paper - and they announced she was born in Moncton - we'd have pages about her.  But, no. She's the one who wrote the report they didn't like about shale gas.

Still, it's a wonderful opportunity for her. She might even meet some of the many talented members of the Irving family who have given up their big salaries to work as volunteers fighting Ebola.

There's another so what? story, this time on B3 about the visit of India's PM, and how much he and Harper like each other. There are two, good reason for that.
1. India's economic growth is close overtaking China's. (The whole world is changing. Get used to it.)
2. The two PMs have a lot in common. Both are strong believers in kissing up to whatever big business wants - no matter what damage it may do to their own people. The Indian PM is not at all a successor in the Ghandi tradtion.

And there are big stories about the Supreme court outlawing prayer at meetings of legislatures. This will be good news in heaven. It must be embarrassing to look down and see the Harpers of this world at prayer.

The only World news is on B6, most of it trivial.

One story, though, would seem to be critical of the Kyiv government (our side) in Ukraine. Some 80,000 to 200,000 Ukrainian children who are homeless, orphaned, abandoned or disabled, are being held in what are really human warehouses, cut off from any community, subject to physical and sexual abuse, rented out for the sex trade - and most of them there for life - and this from a government made up largely of billionaires who are stripping the country of anything of value - including its best farmland.

Remember how, quite recently, a Russian opposition leader was killed in Moscow - and most our news media were screaming "Putin did it"? Well, in recent days, three leaders of the opposition in Kyiv have been murdered in what look like contract killings. But not a word appears in the Irving press. How is that possible.? Don't their editors even read what is easily available on the web?

And when Canada recently sent troops to join with US troops in training the Kyiv army, there was a condition that wasn't mentioned in the Irving press story. US and Canadian troops were not to train the army of irregulars created by the Nazi party in Ukraine. That's nice but - they will, presumably, be allowed to train the many, many soldiers of the regular army who are Naziis.

Funny how nobody mentions the presence of a large Nazi party in that country whose 'democracy' we are defending.

There's a story about Putin from Associated press that has some suggestive wrinkles. It's about a four hour TV appearance by Putin. It says the show was 'carefully' choreographed. That may look like a small point - but it sets a tone for the story - be careful; Putin is treacherous. It could have just been choreographed - or well choreographed. But carefully? That carries a hint of manipulation and even treachery.

Then, while Putin looked at ease for most of the show, he seemed uneasy when asked about the opposition leader who was killed near the Kremlin. Here, the reporter puts his own interpretation based on, I suppose, facial expressions that might mean anything - but the effect of the reporter's choice is to imply Putin did it.
In fact, there is no evidence he was uneasy. A reporter should report what he sees and knows - not what he maybe fancies he sees.

Then it was "...the slickly produced show..."  Why slickly? If the Pope appeared on TV, do you think the press would say it was slickly produced? More likely, it would say well produced Slickly is used because it implies something crooked or dishonest about it. This is a very slickly written piece of reporting - and it has become the norm in most of our news media.

Putin also spoke of normalizing relations with the West. That's interesting because Obama has mostly dealt in threats, in sending forces to Russian borders, in supplying military training (as he accuses Russia of doing), in carrying out provocative overflights.... Putin has not made such statements or make provocative moves. But they are most of what Obama has said and done.  What does that mean?

It means Obama wants war. His Republican opposition which controls Congress has even more openly demanded war, with some openly threatening nuclear war.

Not a very good idea.

Putin is not going to back down. Nor are the Russian people. And remember, it was the Russians far, far more than us who beat Hitler. Nazi armies took 90% of their losses on the Russian front. D Day would not have been possible if so much of the Nazi army had not been in Russia. And the Russians lost at least 12 million dead. And still kept fighting. Invading Russia is not like sending bombs to the Saudis to kill Yemenis, the poorest people on earth.

Then you you have the problem that going to war against Russia almost certainly means going to war against China. And there is surely no possibility on earth that the US, which only barely handled Iraq and couldn't handle small and backward Afghanistan at all could conquer both Russia and China. Nor, given the levels of corruption in the American government and the defence industry, is it possible the US could economically survive such a war.

Such a war would destroy the US economy. The scale of military spending and corruption has already made a start on this; and the consequent crumbling of American society is evident for anybody who looks..

Nor is there anything for anybody but a very few to gain. The whole purpose, whatever our news media tell us, would be to give a handful of American capitalists control of the Russian and Chinese economies. It's a repeat of the old, British Empire in which a very few British made fortunes while most of the rest lived in poverty.

Not that it matters, anyway. Such a war would almost certainly mean a wide use of nuclear weapons, not only by the US, China and Russia, but by Britain, France, Israel, possibly India and Pakistan (though we can't be sure who the latter two would shoot at.)

Any such war would be the Hail Mary pass of a dying US empire in the last seconds of the game. It's more than evil. It's insane.

But the editors of the TandT should rejoice. This is how capitalist oligarchs in the US, Russia, and China do business. In a world run by big business, this is how it is run.  There are no people. Just profits.

April 16: The worst yet....

....I didn't think it possible.

The big story is that premier Gallant gave a speech to big business leaders at Canadian Club in Toronto - and he spoke from the very same platform that Hilary Clinton had spoken from - and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and even NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.  What an honour! I hope we put his shoes on display at the Resurgo Museum. It would be a big draw in tourist season.

I'm sure the corporate bosses in his audience were captivated by his message that our economy is great. I mean, how else would they know?

A3 has a must-read report that Spring is a good time to change your tires, a point driven home by a photo of a man changing a tire. On the same page, a fast-breaking story about a man facing trial for harming a dog. And it even gives the name of his lawyer. And so it goes on for eight pages.

Then we hit editorial and comment pages. The editorial writer has his knickers in a twist because the Moncton Wildcats will have to play an "at home" game in Fredericton. Heart-wrenching. He manages to tie this to our essential need for a $105 million dollar events centre. Damn right. Our society can't afford mistakes like this.

Norbert is pure rant today. And I mean pure.Anybody who worries about climate change is a fool. Anyone who is concerned about our reliance on oil and our development of shale gas is a fool. No reasons are given for why they are fools. They are just fools. Politicians are all fools.

Careful, Norbie, almost all those politicians you call fools were bought by the same person who bought you. This is all pure rant with not a piece of evidence or logic in it. It's like a like a conversation with a chronic drunk.

Or is it that Norbert has contempt for democracy?  And, perhaps, contempt for all of us who would prefer to live under it?

Rod Allen begins as if he has something to say. But it's really just a confused mix of pitching for shale gas, telling us about his college days for no obvious reason and, of course, a call for the events centre. There is no focus to this, no logic.  Presumably he, like Norbert, doesn't think there's any such thing as climate change.

Alec Bruce really has nothing to say at all.

To this point, the editorial and commentary pages are their usual selves, focusing entirely on money, and kissing up to the gluttony of the boss. To this point, there is not a word about people - what they need, what a society is.... To this point, both editorial and comment pages are worthless and ignorant.

Then - there is Jody Dallaire. She talks about people, real people, real life. She talks about relationships between people, and how we should develop our attitudes and behaviour toward each other. This is a rose growing in a dung heap - coubly welcome as break from the stench and decay that surround it.

With the welcome exception of Jody Dallaire, the whole of section A is the worst I have ever seen in a daily newspaper. And it gets worse in section B..
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Section B, Canada&World, pretty much ignores the world. The big, boffo headline is the exciting story that the provincial Liberals caused NB's economic problem. Now, I have no wish to defend the Liberals but, really...  The absurd statements come from Interim Conservative leader Bruce Fitch and Finance critic Higgs. And they must think we're all really, really stupid. The financial problem stems from a world economic crisis which neither of those parties causesd - certainly not their New Brunswick branches.  It's caused by the failure of the very rich who pay little, if any tax, who hide much of their income, and who suck heavily at the public breast. And that has been assisted by both the Liberals and Conservatives since the founding of this province. The corporate bosses have become so powerful that parties like the Liberals and Conservatives are irrelevant.

The Liberals and the Conservatives are, in fact, the same party. To make this crap into the lead story for a whole section suggests that the editors are as bad and as bought as the Liberals and Conservatives.

A more important story is beside it "Province told to put kids ahead of bottom line. This is one of the very few occasions I've seen when this newspaper had a story about people, and not just money. It also, if you think about it, shows a dismaying truth about the Liberals and the Conservatives. The fact that it's about people, by the way, has nothing to do with the editors. It has to do with people in education offering their opinions.

Neither party has ever announced a platform about the people of this province. It's always about vaguely defined "policies" which are usually about money. Money is the only priority. That's why we're hearing about these draastic cuts in spending. The only people the Liberals and Conservatives care about are rich ones. And it never,  never cuts back on them. But children - what the hell? Screw 'em. So it is that we are going into a period of severe cuts with no thought whatever of what people need or of what our priorities are.

It's the same in most of the editorials and commentaries in this paper. The only person whose 'needs' have to be met is Mr. Irving.

B2 and B3 have nothing worth reading unless you really need to know how long Mike Duffy's trial will be. (Actually, the story is nobody knows. Wow! a stop the presses scoop.)

B4 has a long story about our Minister of Veteran's Affairs making up excuses for the dismal record of the Harper government in its treatment of Veterans. I can see no reason to make that a big story with a big photo of the minister. Now, if Mr. Harper were to take a tough stand with billionaires....but why even talk about it?

B5 has a big story that this is the first anniversary of a multiple killing in Calgary. That's sad. But we're on B5, and still not out of Canada.

B6.s largest story is still in Canada - and it's scarcely news. It's the story of how Abraham Lincoln's assassination was planned in Montreal. That's news? I learned that in my first university class long, long ago.
At that, the story has a big mistake. It says that Abraham Lincoln's government was anti-slavery. That's a common belief. But it's not true. He went to war with the confederate states to prevent them from separating. Slavery was used by the press to stir up support for the war. But it was never the cause of the war. It was really a struggle between an agricultural south and an industrial north. For all the preaching, most northerners didn't give a damn about the slaves. They've been proving that ever since.

It's rather like the story that we're at war in the Middle East and close to it Ukraine because our government is defending freedom and democracy. Like hell we are. Like hell the US is. Nobody fights wars for freedom and democracy - except for those few who want them.

Every war the west has fought since 1945 has been to make the rich even richer. And we don't bring democracy. In fact, we commonly destroy it. Think Egypt. Think Guatemala.

The other story at last gets us out of our own bellybuttons to look at the Mediterranean where record numbers of people from Africa at the middle east are  fleeing to Italy, usually in dangerous ships. 400 died recently when their boat capsized, In one month, 10,000 were rescued from the sea. Last year, at least 3,500 were drowned.

And why do they still flee at such risk? Because if they stay, they will likely be killed by bombs and machine guns and land mines made by our side. Because their own societies, governments, food supplies, schools  have been shattered by our killing and looting for over a century. And why do we send such weapons and why do we help in killing so many?

Well, that's so our nice billionaires can make even bigger profits out of oil and other resources using labour so cheap it amounts to slavery. And nice billionaire weapons manufacturers can make more billions selling weapons and gettiig American tax money which is freed up by cutting off food for the American poor.

But don't feel bad. Our news media will explain to us how the victims are the evil ones because they don't have the same religion we do. (Suddenly, it makes sense that Hitler was a Christian.)

Then there's a "must-read" story about how this is the second anniversary of the Boston marathon bombings. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

And that's it. That really is it. Nothing has happened in most of the world. This is worse than those magazines about how the prince and Kate look so nice.

I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that this paper publishes propaganda.. Today's edition is simply mindless crap designed to push us into a stupor. I really don't understand how anyone could work for this paper, and still have a scrap of self-esteem.

New Brunswickers are not allowed to think or to know. If they did either, they would never buy this drivel about the great importance of an events centre. That is nowhere close to a priority. For a start, go to the corner of Main and Enterprise. Look at the house there that was burned out. It's a horror of construction and materials. Take a good look at the plywood extensions tacked on. It's an obvious fire hazard. And it looks horrible. How it is possible that was permitted to happen? I grew up in slum housing. But it was far, far superior to that.

This is a city full of fire traps and decaying housing. Is there no plan at all for dealing with this? We have large numbers of people living in unhealthy and dangerous conditions. Large parts of Moncton are shacktown. We're closing schools which are actually understaffed. And we're doing it with no serious study of the consequences of closing them, and no examination of alternatives. And our municipal priority is an events centre?

We have a city that can never have an effective mass transit system because the older part is too scattered with farm-style houses, and the newer parts designed for the 1950s world of the automobile. The sheer area makes effective mass transit impossible, and the maintenance of services extremely expensive. Any priorities there?

Culturally, this is a city whose idea of culture is listening to some guys in need of a bath and haircut singing while jumping up and down with coloured lights flashing in their navels. I don't blame the people for that. I blame a province which wants a population of robots, and which discourages intellectual curiosity and discovery. That's why it's a priority to spend 105 million on an events centre while we're closing schools and firing teachers.

It's a city of no discussion and no debate because neither is encouraged by the news media or by any government agency.

The eyes of the world will be on us if we build an events centre? Maybe. But that's a good reason not to build it. You really don't want the eyes of the world on Moncton now.