March 23: no title.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-nerenberg/2016/03/trudeaus-first-budget-about-direct-investments-not-tax-gimmick#.VvHqAjZs8NA.gmail

Above is a balanced analysis of the federal budget plans. It is neither for nor against. It tells us what is in the budget; and it tells us what the risks are. Now, compare this to the story in the Irving press on B2 "Experts skeptical Liberal plan will have desired  effect." And who are these experts?

There are two, count them, two. Both of them represent big money, and one of them is also a fraud. The first is an economic planner for a major bank. The other works for a big business propaganda "think tank", the C.D.Howe Insitute. Apparently, these are the only two experts in the country.

As well, a news editor should know that the purpose of a story is to tell us what happened - in this case, what is in the budget.  A judgement of what happened is an opinion. And that's what opinion columns are for.

Of course, the national budget wasn't big enough to make it the headline story. That was reserved for the announcement that the provincial education department hasn't decided yet what to do about French immersion classes. Another big, big story in Canada&World is that the provincial hasn't yet decided what to do with some empty government garages.

Yes, they do have the story on the Brussels bombing - but I'll come to that later.
__________________________________________________________________________
The front page story is also about the federal budget. I have no idea why since its news is essentially the same as that in the story that appears in Canada&World.  However, the front page story, by Adam Huras, legislative reporter for the Irving press, is far, far better told And, unlike the Canadian Press version, it's honest journalism without propaganda snuck in.

The editorial is nothing much of anything. But it does slip in a kiss-up line that we will have a brilliant future if the oil pipeline deal goes through - and fracking. Damn right, ed. I mean, only a fool would believe our climate is changing. After all we just finished our warmest year since records have been kept, and it's been warming at the greatest rate in millions of years. The climate's not changing. It's just getting better.

Norbert Cunningham tells us he has some  qualms about the journalistic quality of the CBC.

We'll just let that one sit there and smell for a while, then throw it out. The CBC is not what it used to be. But it's still light years ahead of the Irving press.

He then says that newspapers have evolved over the years, mostly for the better. Norbert, I've known many journalists and professors of journalism and historians of journalism. I've never known one of any stature who would agree with your statement. Newspapers have been propaganda sheets from the start. That was true before the invention of modern printing some hundred and twenty-five years ago. And it got much worse with the the cheap newspaper that developed from that. There's a  very fine history of that called "The First Casualty" which deals with  press lying and propaganda about war from the Boer War to Vietnam. And for an example of how this goes back to the earliest days of the modern newspaper, check out the film "Citizen Kane".

Then there's a "commentary" by the CEO of an oil company about how we really, need to develop the oil and natural gas industries.

Hump Cormier has his usual pointless little story. It still announces that he is a communications professional. I have never heard of such a title. Nor have I ever heard of a  university department called "School of Professoinal Communications".  Where does this title come from? And what does it mean?
I have written for newspapers and magazines, have done thousands of radio broadcasts, and hundreds of TV ones. I've also been a consultant and, occasionaly, a voice-over or a performer for film documentaries and TV.   And I have never met or heard of anyone who called himself a communications professional.

Alec Bruce, again, has a well-written column that says nothing.
________________________________________________________________________________
Now, back to Brussels.  (I'm not sure I'll ever get to my usual format of the news of the day. There's an awful lot I have to explain about the Brussels tragedy.
The West (meaning the U.S. and its puppets) has lost the middle east.
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and their like are using the Brussels attack to boost American hatred and fear of Muslims. It will almost certainly work. But, think about it.

Think what the planners of that attack expected the reaction to be. Of course. They expected it to get get anger and threats. The planners of the attack wanted that reaction. Extremist groups like ISIS exist BECAUSE the west has been reacting in that way for a century. Let's take a long look at it.

Most of the nations of the middle east are not nations at all. They exist because the west created them during and after World War 1. Befoe that, most of them were part of the Ottoman Empire. In effect, they were subjects of Turkey.
Britain and France became very interested in the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth century - for its oil. But first they had to destroy the empire, then divide the remains among themselves. A key figure in that was Lawrence of Arabia, the tall, handsome man who led the 'revolt in the desert' - to get rid of Turkish rule.  (In fact,  he wasn't tall and handsome. He was, though, a remarkable liar, which is why the film about him is mostly false.)

The British and French then divided the countries up to loot their oil.  (notice how many boundary lines in the middle east are straight lines? These were nations created with a ruler.) Royal families were made out of desert bandits. No democracies were permitted. Suddenly, arabs found their social order destroyed - with nothing replacing it.

The second world war brough a partial awakening to the region. Iran moved to democracy, and elected a government. Egypt got rid of its imposed king through a military coup. (I had the pleasure once of seeing the belly dancer advertised as the king's favourite. She called herself Fawzia Amir, and she was certainly worth watching. She became the mistress of a top rank Montreal mobster, and lived in a very toney suburb. You know, the right sort of people that one can find only in toney suburbs.)

Iran became a democracy.

Britain and France were not pleased at the changes. They threatened control of the Suez Canal, and control of the oil of Iran.

The Iran case came to a head when the elected leader of Iran (named Mossadegh) demanded to audit the books of British Petroleum ( as it is now known). He also moved to nationalize Iranian oil. That was not suprising. The British had been arrogant and brutal, even murderous and racist in their treatment of Irainians. It had also taken huge profits from Iranian oil while paying very, very low fees to Iran.

The British response was to invade, with the help of France and the CIA.
Mossadegh was imprisoned as a traitor for three years of solitary, then was confined to his home for the rest of his life. And, with CIA help, he was replaced as ruler by a ruthless dictator named The Shah of Iran. So much for the American love of democracy.

Then Britain and France, with Israel, turned on Egypt when its military rulers decided to nationalize the Suez Canal  (another resource that British capitalists were getting rich on while paying little.) But this time, the U.S. government was furious at Britain, France and Israel. President Eisenhower now realized that American capitalists wanted their turn at looting the middle east. So the invaders had to back off.

Then, in 1948, the western powers gave most of Palestine to European Jews. This had nothing to do with western love of Judaism. It was a way to get rid of a problem.  Jews in most European countries wanted to get out after the horror of the holocaust. But nobody, including Britain, Canada or the U.S. wanted them. We were all anti-semitic.

So the western powers decided to dump them in Palestine.

It was not Judaism that offended the arabs in this. There already was and always has been a Jewish population in Palestine - as in other arab countries. Judaism had nothing to do with the arab reaction. They saw this for what it was - a theft of arab (and Jewish) land by Europeans. Indeed, many of the Palestinian Jews felt the same way.

For fifty years and more, Europeans (mostly British and French) had looted middle east oil, paying little for the privilege, treating workers (and  everybody else) with a contempt and brutality that included poverty and murder. These had been years of eploitation and humiliation as bad as any period in history. Then,  in the 1950s, U.S. capitalists joined with the French and the British.

Somehow, life staggered on in these nations that actually were not nations, with traditional societies that had been destroyed and nothing to replace them, with growing poverty even as their oil made foreign billionaires richer. Somehow, life went on in these conditions -- though there must have been burning hatred of Britain, France and the U.S.

Then the U.S. invaded Iraq.

 The reason for that invasion, a reason that never appeared in our press, was that Saddam Hussein was willing to sell oil to Russia. Bush and Blair were and are liars and war ciminals. Many of the people of Iraq loathed Hussein - but the brutality of the invasion of Iraq, like that inflicted on Vietnam, killed well over a million people - they're still dying of illegal US weapons like cluster bombs, mines, artillery shells  made of radioactive material. Basic supply systems for water and and electricity were destroyed, and have not been fixed to this day. Of the billions of dollars assigned to contractors to make repairs, almost all went into the pockets of Americans who were, as Norbert would say, 'corporate citizens'. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed in the carpet bombing.  Millions of children were orphaned, crippled, mutilated.

A few blogs ago, I mentioned an excellent book "The War on Truth" by a Canadian journalist who tells what he saw, of American soldiers who laughed at the sight of an Iraqi girl who was burning alive

You think the killings in Brussels were terrible? ISIS could learn from the U.S. military what real terrorism is like.

Perhaps Bush should not be blamed for this. He was just the retarded son of a family which had, for a hundred years, made its fortune out of  doing murders and other dirty jobs for American government.  (I know he had an MBA from an ivy league university. But that was almost certainly  bought. He didn't have the grades to get into the programme. He was heavily into booze and drugs at the time. It's not possible he could have earned that degree. But, if you're the son of a rich family, you can get any degree you want, even from the most respectable of ivy league schools.)

That may explain why the only corporate jobs he ever had were set up by his father.

The real president was Dick Cheney. And the effect was disastrous. Coupled with the Afghanistan war, it inflamed the already smouldering hatred of the arabs and of most Muslims, for the US - and its toadies, notably Britain.

The final touch, if any were needed, was the attack on Libya, and the murder of Ghadaffi who, for all his faults, had done a pretty good job of keeping Libya stable. Now, the British and French and some Americans are there fighting a war against an ISIS which did not exist until the U.S. created it.

The problem in the middle east is not ISIS. The problem existed long before ISIS. The problem is what created ISIS (and al quaeda) and all the others. The problem is that the United States is far the biggest terrorist organization in the world. But one should not blame the American people for that.

Blame a lying news media. Blame politicians who are owned by some of the greediest and most ruthless people, the ones (most of them) who are leading capitalists in the oil industry. American foreign policy is not set by the Clintons or Bushes or even the Donald Trumps of this world. It is set by the few, the very few, who own the politicians.

That's why the powerful U.S. has not been able to defeat the 'terrorists' despite fiteen years of fighting and monstrous spending. The U.S. is not run by people are are caring or principled. It's run by people who are some of the greediest and cruelist in world history.

So what happens next? Watch Europe. It's cracking under the strain of the refugees created by oil billionaires. One result is a distinct move toward the very far right - something like naziism or fascism. There is also a great unease that American billionaires also treat their countries just as they do arab countries. It's also worried about the U.S. moving up its forces and weapons to the Russian border. Any war on that border means the end of Europe.

European countries ( such as Greece) are also being driven to the financial wall by western bankers. It is quite possible they will consider it wiser to be satellites of Russia rather than of the U.S.

We have long ago stepped over the line to insanity. The American leadership races reflect that.  I have never seen political debates with such lack of substance, with such refusal to seriously look at dangerous conditions that have been created all over the world - and within the United States.
_______________________________________________________________________________
So what should we do? Well, first, we have to get out of the middle east. We can still get the oil. Gettinng oil isn't the problem. The problem is that big oil is taking immense profits, abusing the people of the region, and using our tax money to keep on abusing them.

We might defeat ISIS. But such victories haven't solved the problem for over fifty years. And they won't. If we destroy ISIS, new versions will spring up - and will spread around much of the world.  The problem is not that Muslims are attacking us. The problem is that we have been attacking, abusing, starving, cheating. killing them for a century. We haven't won that way. We son't win that way. And I cannot believe there is any way we can help the muslim world except to get out of its face. Nothing in the last century indicates that we can help them or that we will help them in any other way.

We have to get out of the middle east.

Or we can all prepare the way to hell by screaming insults at Muslims, electing governments that are the puppets of 'corporate citizens'.  accusing others of being 'terrorists' when the biggest terrorists in the world are us.

It is terrible that so many people in Brussels died. It's even more terrible to think of the millions who have died over the last fifty years and more because of us.
What we are watching - and doing - is insanity.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Well, Canada made the opinion columns of The Guardian with the death of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. It helps to explain why I have never liked Toronto.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/23/canada-justin-trudeau-rob-ford-donald-trump
_____________________________________________________________________
And just before supper, here is a reaction to the Brussels bombing that I'm quite sure could be called a Christian one.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-nerenberg/2016/03/trudeaus-first-budget-about-direct-investments-not-tax-gimmick#.VvHqAjZs8NA.gmail
Above is a balanced analysis of the federal budget plans. It is neither for nor against. It tells us what is in the budget; and it tells us what the risks are. Now, compare this to the story in the Irving press on B2 "Experts skeptical Liberal plan will have desired  effect." And who are these experts?
There are two, count them, two. Both of them represent big money, and one of them is also a fraud. The first is an economic planner for a major bank. The other works for a big business propaganda "think tank", the C.D.Howe Insitute. Apparently, these are the only two experts in the country.
As well, a news editor should know that the purpose of a story is to tell us what happened - in this case, what is in the budget.  A judgement of what happened is an opinion. And that's what opinion columns are for.
Of course, the national budget wasn't big enough to make it the headline story. That was reserved for the announcement that the provincial education department hasn't decided yet what to do about French immersion classes. Another big, big story in Canada&World is that the provincial hasn't yet decided what to do with some empty government garages.
Yes, they do have the story on the Brussels bombing - but I'll come to that later.
__________________________________________________________________________
The front page story is also about the federal budget. I have no idea why since its news is essentially the same as that in the story that appears in Canada&World.  However, the front page story, by Adam Huras, legislative reporter for the Irving press, is far, far better told And, unlike the Canadian Press version, it's honest journalism without propaganda snuck in.
The editorial is nothing much of anything. But it does slip in a kiss-up line that we will have a brilliant future if the oil pipeline deal goes through - and fracking. Damn right, ed. I mean, only a fool would believe our climate is changing. After all we just finished our warmest year since records have been kept, and it's been warming at the greatest rate in millions of years. The climate's not changing. It's just getting better.
Norbert Cunningham tells us he has some  qualms about the journalistic quality of the CBC.
We'll just let that one sit there and smell for a while, then throw it out. The CBC is not what it used to be. But it's still light years ahead of the Irving press.
He then says that newspapers have evolved over the years, mostly for the better. Norbert, I've known many journalists and professors of journalism and historians of journalism. I've never known one of any stature who would agree with your statement. Newspapers have been propaganda sheets from the start. That was true before the invention of modern printing some hundred and twenty-five years ago. And it got much worse with the the cheap newspaper that developed from that. There's a  very fine history of that called "The First Casualty" which deals with  press lying and propaganda about war from the Boer War to Vietnam. And for an example of how this goes back to the earliest days of the modern newspaper, check out the film "Citizen Kane".
Then there's a "commentary" by the CEO of an oil company about how we really, need to develop the oil and natural gas industries.
Hump Cormier has his usual pointless little story. It still announces that he is a communications professional. I have never heard of such a title. Nor have I ever heard of a  university department called "School of Professoinal Communications".  Where does this title come from? And what does it mean?
I have written for newspapers and magazines, have done thousands of radio broadcasts, and hundreds of TV ones. I've also been a consultant and, occasionaly, a voice-over or a performer for film documentaries and TV.   And I have never met or heard of anyone who called himself a communications professional.
Alec Bruce, again, has a well-written column that says nothing.
________________________________________________________________________________
Now, back to Brussels.  (I'm not sure I'll ever get to my usual format of the news of the day. There's an awful lot I have to explain about the Brussels tragedy.
The West (meaning the U.S. and its puppets) has lost the middle east.
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and their like are using the Brussels attack to boost American hatred and fear of Muslims. It will almost certainly work. But, think about it.
Think what the planners of that attack expected the reaction to be. Of course. They expected it to get get anger and threats. The planners of the attack wanted that reaction. Extremist groups like ISIS exist BECAUSE the west has been reacting in that way for a century. Let's take a long look at it.
Most of the nations of the middle east are not nations at all. They exist because the west created them during and after World War 1. Befoe that, most of them were part of the Ottoman Empire. In effect, they were subjects of Turkey.
Britain and France became very interested in the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth century - for its oil. But first they had to destroy the empire, then divide the remains among themselves. A key figure in that was Lawrence of Arabia, the tall, handsome man who led the 'revolt in the desert' - to get rid of Turkish rule.  (In fact,  he wasn't tall and handsome. He was, though, a remarkable liar, which is why the film about him is mostly false.)
The British and French then divided the countries up to loot their oil.  (notice how many boundary lines in the middle east are straight lines? These were nations created with a ruler.) Royal families were made out of desert bandits. No democracies were permitted. Suddenly, arabs found their social order destroyed - with nothing replacing it.
The second world war brough a partial awakening to the region. Iran moved to democracy, and elected a government. Egypt got rid of its imposed king though a military coup. (I had the pleasure once of seeing the belly dancer advertised as the king's favourite. She called herself Fawzia Amir, and she was certainly worth watching. She became the mistress of a top rank Montreal mobster, and lived in a very toney suburb. You know, the right sort of people that one can find only in toney suburbs.)
Iran became a democracy.
Britain and France were not pleased at the changes. They threatened control of the Suez Canal, and control of the oil of Iran.
The Iran case came to a head when the elected leader of Iran (named Mossadegh) demanded to audit the books of British Petroleum ( as it is now known). He also moved to nationalize Iranian oil. That was not suprising. The British had been arrogant and brutal, even murderous and racist in their treatment of Irainians. It had also taken huge profits from Iranian oil while paying very, very low fees to Iran.
The British response was to invade, with the help of France and the CIA.
Mossadegh was imprisoned as a traitor for three years of solitary, then was confined to his home for the rest of his life. And, with CIA help, he was replaced as ruler by a ruthless dictator named The Shah of Iran. So much for the American love of democracy.
Then Britain and France, with Israel, turned on Egypt when its military rulers decided to nationalize the Suez Canal  (another resource that British capitalists were getting rich on while paying little.) But this time, the U.S. government was furious at Britain, France and Israel. President Eisenhower now realized that American capitalists wanted their turn at looting the middle east. So the invaders had to back off.
Then, in 1948, the western powers gave most of Palestine to European Jews. This had nothing to do with western love of Judaism. It was a way to get rid of a problem.  Jews in most European countries wanted to get out after the horror of the holocaust. But nobody, including Britain, Canada or the U.S. wanted them. We were all anti-semitic.
So the western powers decided to dump them in Palestine.
It was not Judaism that offended the arabs in this. There already was and always has been a Jewish population in Palestine - as in other arab countries. Judaism had nothing to do with the arab reaction. They saw this for what it was - a theft of arab (and Jewish) land by Europeans. Indeed, many of the Palestinian Jews felt the same way.
For fifty years and more, Europeans (mostly British and French) had looted middle east oil, paying little for the privilege, treating workers (and  everybody else) with a contempt and brutality that included poverty and murder. These had been years of eploitation and humiliation as bad as any period in history. Then,  in the 1950s, U.S. capitalists joined with the French and the British.
Somehow, life staggered on in these nations that actually were not nations, with traditional societies that had been destroyed and nothing to replace them, with growing poverty even as their oil made foreign billionaires richer. Somehow, life went on in these conditions -- though there must have been burning hatred of Britain, France and the U.S.
Then the U.S. invaded Iraq.
 The reason for that invasion, a reason that never appeared in our press, was that Saddam Hussein was willing to sell oil to Russia. Bush and Blair were and are liars and war ciminals. Many of the people of Iraq loathed Hussein - but the brutality of the invasion of Iraq, like that inflicted on Vietnam, killed well over a million people - they're still dying of illegal US weapons like cluster bombs, mines, artillery shells  made of radioactive material. Basic supply systems for water and and electricity were destroyed, and have not been fixed to this day. Of the billions of dollars assigned to contractors to make repairs, almost all went into the pockets of Americans who were, as Norbert would say, 'corporate citizens'. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed in the carpet bombing.  Millions of children were orphaned, crippled, mutilated.
A few blogs ago, I mentioned and excellent book "The War on Truth" by a Canadian journalist who tells what he saw, of American soldiers who laughed at the sight of an Iraqi girl who was burning alive
You think the killings in Brussels were terrible? ISIS could learn from the U.S. military what real terrorism is like.
Perhaps Bush should not be blamed for this. He was just the retarded son of a family which had, for a hundred years, made its fortune out of  doing murders and other dirty jobs for American government.  (I know he had an MBA from an ivy league university. But that was almost certainly  bought. He didn't have the grades to get into the programme. He was heavily into booze and drugs at the time. It's not possible he could have earned that degree. But, if you're the son of a rich family, you can get any degree you want, even from the most respectable of ivy league schools.)
That may explain why the only corporate jobs he ever had were set up by his father.
The real president was Dick Cheney. And the effect was disastrous. Coupled with the Afghanistan war, it inflamed the already smouldering hatred of the arabs and of most Muslims, for the US - and its toadies, notably Britain.
The final touch, if any were needed, was the attack on Libya, and the murder of Ghadaffi who, for all his faults, had done a pretty good job of keeping Libya stable. Now, the British and French and some Americans are there fighting a war against an ISIS which did not exist until the U.S. created it.
The problem in the middle east is not ISIS. The problem existed long before ISIS. The problem is what created ISIS (and al quaeda) and all the others. The problem is that the United States is far the biggest terrorist organization in the world. But one should not blame the American people for that.
Blame a lying news media. Blame politicians who are owned by some of the greediest and most ruthless people, the ones (most of them) who are leading capitalists in the oil industry. American foreign policy is not set by the Clintons or Bushes or even the Donald Trumps of this world. It is set by the few, the very few, who own the politicians.
That's why the powerful U.S. has not been able to defeat the 'terrorists' despite fiteen years of fighting and monstrous spending. The U.S. is not run by people are are caring or principled. It's run by people who are some of the greediest and cruelist in world history.
So what happens next? Watch Europe. It's cracking under the strain of the refugees created by oil billionaires. One result is a distinct move toward the very far right - something like naziism or fascism. There is also a great unease that American billionaires also treat their countries just as they do arab countries. It's also worried about the U.S. moving up its forces and weapons to the Russian border. Any war on that border means the end of Europe.
European countries ( such as Greece) are also being driven to the financial wall by western bankers. It is quite possible they will consider it wiser to be satellites of Russia rather than of the U.S.
We have long ago stepped over the line to insanity. The American leadership races reflect that.  I have never seen political debates with such lack of substance, with such refusal to seriously look at dangerous conditions that have been created all over the world - and within the United States.
_______________________________________________________________________________
So what should we do? Well, first, we have to get out of the middle east. We can still get the oil. Gettinng oil isn't the problem. The problem is that big oil is taking immense profits, abusing the people of the region, and using our tax money to keep on abusing them.
We might defeat ISIS. But such victories haven't solved the problem for over fifty years. And they won't. If we destroy ISIS, new versions will spring up - and will spread around much of the world.  The problem is not that Muslims are attacking us. The problem is that we have been attacking, abusing, starving, cheating. killing them for a century. We haven't won that way. We son't win that way. And I cannot believe there is any way we can help the muslim world except to get out of its face. Nothing in the last century indicates that we can help them or that we will help them in any other way.
We have to get out of the middle east.
Or we can all prepare the way to hell by screaming insults at Muslims, electing governments that are the puppets of 'corporate citizens'.  accusing others of being 'terrorists' when the biggest terrorists in the world are us.
It is terrible that so many people in Brussels died. It's even more terrible to think of the millions who have died over the last fifty years and more because of us.
What we are watching - and doing - is insanity.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Well, Canada made the opinion columns of The Guardian with the death of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. It helps to explain why I have never liked Toronto.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/23/canada-justin-trudeau-rob-ford-donald-trump
_____________________________________________________________________
And just before supper, here is a reaction to the Brussels bombing that I'm quite sure could be called a Christian one.

But I haven't seen such a response in, say, the very Christian newspapers of the Irvings. Nor to I expect to see one on the Faith Page.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/22/islamic-state-brussels-jihadis

_________________________________________________________________________
And now to a (late) supper.

March 22: Good news!

It didn't make the Irving press, but....

Dozens of millionaires in New York have told the government their taxes should be raised substantially, and  the money used to help the poor. This request  comes from members of the top 1% in income.

This is important for New Brunswick because Hall of Fame philanthropist J. D. Irving is certain to follow suit, and demand that his taxes and those of all his executives and directors should be on the table, too.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/raise-our-taxes-combat-poverty-say-dozens-new-york-millionaires-1550866
________________________________________________________________________
A reader pointed out to me that he could not get Bishop Spong on the long, long URL I sent yesterday. So here's a shorter version that does work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Kkt8uewew
_________________________________________________________________
Then, I felt terrible guilt about a source of commentary I haven't used nearly enough.  It's a Canadian source, dealing primarily with Canadian issues. And the commentators are among the best available. One of the best is Karl Nerenberg who raises questions about the perception we're being fed that Justin Trudeau is a progressive and modern thinker who works from principle. That's not Nerenberg's impression - or mine.

My impression is that he's a smooth operator - with good advisors who know how to look  progressive while not doing anything. For example, he has appointed economic advisors of whom the majority are women. The Canadian news media gets all excited at his forward-looking ways. But if you check the women he appointed, you find they're not very different from the men that Harper appointed.

Trudeau, like Hillary Clinton, is a 'practical' politician. 'Practical' doesn't mean he does what works for the country. It means he knows how to look as though he's making big improvements when he isn't. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives are 'practical in that narrow sense. But neither of them has any great interest in what the society needs. They are ' practical' but without principle.

As an example of his failure of principle, the Trudeau government has refused to stop $15 billion of  arms sales to Saudi Arabia. That's very practical because he knows most news media won't pay much attention it it, and most Canadians don't care. But it lacks principle because:

1. Saudi Arabia is using those weapons to pursue an illegal war against a very poor country.

2. Canada has signed an international agreement not to sell weapons to countries with bad human rights records.

3. Saudi Arabia has one of the worst human rights records in the world.
But, gee - I bet that weapons manufacturer will give a healthy donation to the Liberal party. And that's practical.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-nerenberg/2016/03/morneau-goes-corporate-his-new-advisory-council

Then there's this one about why the federal deficit should be even larger that it is. Norbert would panic at the thought; but that's also the opinion of leading economists.

Incidentally,   guess how much the Canadian government gave away to the rich with much, much lower taxes, with special tax breaks last year - and not counting hiding money in overseas bank acounts -- $200 billion dollars. Gee! Wouldn't it be interesting if the Irving press did a story on that - naming names? Funny how professor Savoie missed that in his much-praised book about how our provincial government is spending too much.

Then there's the old, practical/principle subject.  Should a party be 'practical', meaning should it base its programme simply on getting votes? (If you think it should, then your ideals should be Trump or Clinton - or Hitler. All of them are/were practical politicians.)

Or should a party operate on the basis of principle?  There's a column that favours the latter.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/03/why-centrist-ndp-not-option
______________________________________________________________________________
You might guess from all this time given to Rabble.ca that the Irving press doesn't have a whole lot in it today. And you would be right.

The opening headline is a real story. There are 2,000 Moncton families on the wait list for subsidized housing. Worse, there are a thousand or more in this small city who are living in the streets.

There is nothing else worth reading in the news for section A.  Worse, on the pages for commentary and opinion there is not a single word about our lack of caring. Instead, these pages are what they're usually about. Nobert talks about our sick economy without once writing the word Irving. No, it's all because of the politicians. They aren't providing leadership.

No, they aren't Norbert. That's because he whose name you never mention, whose name your paper never mentions unless he's being inducted into another hall of fame, tells both the Liberals and the Conservatives what to do. He even wrote in your paper that he was a member of the government. And you still didn't say a word.

And the people of New Brunswick keep voting Liberal and Conservative even though they know that. And you and your paper have never had the integrity to provide either the news or the leadership that this province needs.
Norbert's cheery note is that good, corporate citizens are stepping forward to take the leadership.  Norbert...

1. What the hell is a corporate citizen? Are there separate rules for these people? Are they special kinds of citizens? Are they better than us slobs?

2. What gives them a special right to take the leadership of the province?

3. At least one of those 'corporate  citizens' attends meeting of the Bilderberg society.  Do you know what that is, Norbert? (hint - he was a premier of this province.)  Do you know what kinds of people join Bilderberg conferences?
Essentially, it's an anti-democracy body which believes that the very wealthy should control the world. And, of course, that fits in with the fascist views that characterize your columns.

The guest column is by Bill Whitelaw, President and CEO of  some oil company. I'm glad they told me that. From his gushing, melodramatic writing style, I though he was a thirteen year old schoolboy who  was writing about how much he was in love with his teacher.

It's a pitch for pipelines and more oil, and it's so silly and pre-adolescent, I really don't know what to say about it.   He writes as though he's never heard of climate change. He doesn't deny it. He simply doesn't recognize it. Now, it's not possible to be that dumb. But he writes with such a sense of tragedy. I can only conclude that he is that dumb.  

Alec Bruce, as always, is a good read. But I've noticed that, lately,  he avoids saying anything.

However, compared to section B (Canada&World),    section A is a treasure house of information and wisdom.

The Vice-President of the Irving press has, I understand, a master's degree in journalism. (and his name is Irving, so we know he must be real smart.) That means he must know these newspapers are trivial, heavily biased, and are newspapers whose sole purpose is to keep people in ignorance of what is happening here and around the world.
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The Guardian, in a story on yesterday's terrorist attack on Belgium, said, "Terrorism has become a global problem."

In fact, terrorism has been a global problem  since the invention of the sailing ship in the fifteenth century.  That's when some European countries got the ability to commit mass murder, slavery, and looting all over the world. Nobody will ever know how many people they slaughtered, enslaved, abused and looted as they carried out their terror in the Americas, Africa and Asia The slave trade in African alone took at least 60 million lives. And it destroyed the living and passes down its inheritance of abuse to the present day.

Add the dead in India, China, the native peoples of the Americas, of Africa, many of whom still live lives of desperation, povery and early death, and the numbers are in the hundreds of millions. One of the leading countries in that murder and brutality was little Beligum which was given Congo to loot and abuse
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None of this is to suggest we should not feel sorrow for those who died yesterday. Of course, we should. Just as we should feel sorrow for the native peoples and the South Africans that our Canadian ancestors terrorized and murdered. And, for that matter. We should remember the ones our ancestors from all over the world, almost all of them, terrorized and murdered.
But what should we do?

We should not do what Republican leadership candidate Ted Cruz is advising. We should not step up police intrusions in Muslim neighbourhoods here  (or anywhere else.)

For a start. Islam did not cause those killings. Take a deep breath.

If Islam is to blame for those killings, then Christianity is to blame for killing hundreds of millions both overseas and at home. And Judaism is responsible for killing and stealing the land of Palestinians and also killing to steal it thousands of years earlier, too.  (Oh, I know. It's okay because God told them to. But save it. Tell it to the judge.)

Certainly, there are 'religious' people who are killers - big time. The U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq, even more than that in Vietnam. But I wouldn't blame Christianity for that - or for the native peoples our ancestors killed. In fact, I don't know of any major religion that advocates killing. (Well, a long, long time ago, Judaism did with its advice to stone some people to death. But I haven't seen that on the Faith Page for quite a while.)

No. Religions don't kill. People do. And they often do it for selfish reasons. Why are we in Iraq? It's to get control of the oil. Why did the U.S. cooperate in the mass murder of Guatemalans? To protect American and Canadian mining companies from demands for decent pay and for environmental protection. Why did we kill Germans? Because they were killing Jews? No. We were as anti-semitic as Germans were. In fact, western big business supported Hitler right up to the start of the war - and some even for  several years later.

Some Muslims are shooting at us because we've been shooting them for a century and more. Groups like ISIS don't just spring up like daisies. They appear as a reaction - and there can't even be guesses about how far such a reaction could sink all of us. We need a more intelligent response.

P.S. Belgium was and still is one of the world's great mass murderers ( in Congo). That's not to say those who died yesterday were guilty of anything. They almost certainly weren't. What is does say is that if we want to end terrorist bombs and killing, we gave stop doing it ourselves.

And note all the righteous outrage we're hearing about this from western politicians. Notice we never heard outrage from them when the U.S. was slaughtering Iraqis and Libyans?___________________________________________________________________________
South America is routinely ignored by the Irving press. That's because capitalism has made much of it a very dangerous to live  - especially if you're an environmentalist or a labour organizer. Mining companies and farming outfits like Dole don't like people who fuss about the environment or working conditions. It's bad for profits.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/20/development-banks-human-rights-crisis-honduras-agua-zarca
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This story is three  months old. But I think it very relevant today. I'm afraid we're going to learn that Trudeau is mostly smoke and mirrors. And his policies are more 'practical' than principled.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2015/dec/03/trudeaus-climate-rhetoric-is-riveting-so-what-about-the-reality
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It looks as though the U.S. is close to officially losing the war in Afghanistan. It was one of the most expensive wars in history,  fought by what is (supposed to be) the most powerful military on earth against a small and poor country.
The U.S. has consistently lost wars for over fifty years. All of them,  so far as most of our news media were concerned, were justified wars against evil people. The U.S. we were told, was forced into all those wars. And those Americans who died gave up their lives to save freedom and democracy. (Funny how nobody got any freedom or democracy out of the wars. (That includes Iraq which has a   government of  U.S. puppets.)

Curious how US freedom is always under attack, even though it hasn't been invaded in any sustained way since the British surrendered to Washington. Since then, there have been no wars in the U.S., only raids. There was Pearl Harbour which was never intended to be more than a raid. There was 9/11 which, terrible as it was, was not an invasion.

And there was that ugly incident in the war of 1812 when the British set fire to the White House.

 Because of it's geographic position, the U.S. has been invulnerable to anything but raids. However, it has been possible for the U.S. to invade its neighbours, and it has done so with wars against Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, almost every country in South America and, of course, Canada.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/afghanistan-taliban-won-talk-winning-pakistan-isis-160322054137025.html

This seems a long blog, though I still have a lot of material. But enough. Time for supper.

March 21: Texas mother puts child in oven.

Two days ago, the CBC carried a story of some importance to Canada - and the world. Naturally, the Irving press has not picked it up.

The U.S. government is giving permission to oil companies to drill for oil off the north coast of  Alaska -  in waters that Canada has long claimed. Trudeau will let them do it, of course, just as we allow them the treat the Northwest Passage as American, though it has historically been Canadian.

All this kerfuffle goes back to the days when the U.S. bought Alaska from Russia. The land had never been surveyed; reliable maps didn't exist; and a military President Theodore Roosevelt was determined to take all he could. He even threatened to invade Canada in 1903 over a disagreement about the boundary line.

Canada was determined. Britain was not. It thought it a good idea for colonies to fight British wars - as in South Africa. But it had no intention of returning the favour. So it brokered a deal that gave the US the long strip of Pacific coast called the Alaska panhandle.

Eleven years later, though, it called Canada to fight a British war. But Britain remained determined not to fight for Canada again. That's why our independence was extended in the  1920s and  30s. However, as we would learn, Britain was still determined that Canada should fight for Britain - whenever that was convenient for Britain.

 But there's also another warning in this oil-drilling invasion.

We are seeing a flurry of oil exploration, and of pipeline ambitions. All of these require heavy investments that take years, even decades, to recover. And there is only one conclusion to be drawn from that.

The oil industry doesn't give a damn about climate change and the effect it will have on us   (and, yes, even on the mightiest among us.) And that means for all the smiles and handshakes on TV of Obama and Trudeau, we are not going to see any lively response to the challenge.

Big oil has been opposed from the start to taking any serious action. In fact, it has spent a great deal of its big money on denying that climate change is happening. That's why the Irving press has been so late and so tippy-toed in its comment on climate change.

I don't know whether big oil is insanely greedy or just stupid. But it doesn't matter which it is. Climate change is happening. That why the Arctic is warming, and warming several times faster than we thought.

Norbert, of course, will blame big government for whatever happens. The reality is we don't have big government. The only big we have in most of the western world is big business. After all, if we had big government,  we'd be able to collect taxes from big oil. The west is governed far more by big business than it is by big government - and I suspect that is largely true all over the world.

If we ever want get loose of this stranglehold of greed and irresponsibility and arrogance, we have to break the power of big money by getting back control of our governments. We're past the point at which fiddling with social programmes or discovering new taxes is of any use. Either we control our lives - or big money does.
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The Irving press doesn't have this story - or any other, really. But if you like scandal mags, you''ll love the story on B4, "Texas mother accused of putting baby in oven".

The only story worth reading at all (but not much) is on Obama's visit to Cuba. The story has big holes in it, and could give a false impression of what this is all about. It's a good example of why news requires commentary. The story itself commonly gives a false impression. We need commentary to give the story context and to fill in the blanks.

This story is a  pretty bland account - and misleading. It has a paragraph about how the U.S. is concerned about human rights in Cuba, for example. This is a US where the president can and does imprison people or even execute them without charge of trial. This is a U.S. which is probably the greatest torturer in history. This is a U.S. with the biggest spy network in history that spies on everybody.
It's concerned about human rights? It's the only country in the world to give itself the right to break every international law and agreement in the book. They call it "American Exceptionalism". This is the country that uses special ops to murder people all over the world, and uses drones in the same way. This is the country that is helping Saudi Arabia to kill by bombs and starvation the people - men, women, and chldren - of Yemen.

This is the country that overthrew the elected government of Iran to install a murderous dictator. This is the country that has maintained dictatorships all over South America for over a century. One of them was the murderous Fulgencio Batista. His job, for his American masters, was to keep labour cheap, to keep Cubans in poverty, to give them virtually no social services, not even education.
 After all, there was a reason why Cubans joined Castro to overthrow this man.
The U.S. was hostile from the start because, the news story tells us, it feared Castro would spread communism throughout the U.S. But Castro didn't start as a communist. The truth is that Castro first approached the US for help in modernizing Cuba. And the U.S. refused. In fact, it sponsored an invasion of Cuba. Then it tried to impoverish Cuba by cutting off all its trade with just about everybody. It also blew up a Cuban civilian passenger jet, killing all aboard, laid bombs in Cuban hotels, and tried many times to murder Castro.

Anyway, it's no business of the U.S. what government any other country chooses.
What the U.S. really feared was that other South American countries would rise against their American-imposed dictators, and do terrible things like raising wages or providing schools.

Castro, for the first time, established a  Cuban public education system that offered free education from grade school to university. It produced so many doctors that they became a major presence in Latin America and Africa. He also established a medicare programme that dramatically raised the health of Cuba above American levels.

But what has happened  is that the U.S. (illegal) trade sanctions have kept Cuba poor.  What wealth there is has been far better distributed; but those trade sanctions have done their damage after half a century. Cuba can  now expect itself to be under pressure to back away from its 'unAmerican' policies on education and health.

You won't see any of this in the story. That's why we need commentaries on foreign news. Of course, if the Irving press were to hire such commentators, they'd get the castoffs who had proven too reactionary and racist for even The Post or The Mirror.
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The editorial is unspeakably trivial. All the commentaries are decent enough. But none of them takes us much past our own bellybuttons.
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Just for balance, here's a commentary on Cuba and the U.S. that I don't agree with at all. I particularly disagree with. I am especially puzzled by the reference to some "...distinction  between capitalist economy and one-party socialist politics..." I can't even understand what that means. A capitalist economy does not need to operate on democratic politics, and usually it doesn't. The two parties in the U.S. are essentially the same. As well, there are capitalist dictatorships all over the world that have no pretence of democracy at all. And there is no reason why socialism requires only one-party politics.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/cuba-rapprochement-future-160321074938199.html
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Here's an interesting one comparing Sanders and Clinton. Sanders, it says, represents the politics of principle.  Clinton represents the politics of the practical. The only problem is that the commentary misuses the word practical.
First - principle. My own feeling is that this is where politics should start. We should start from a position of moral principal that seeks out human needs, and proposes ways to meet them.

Practical, as the word is used here, doesn't really mean practical. There is nothing either practical or moral in Clinton's views. The world 'practical' here is used to mean her views are the ones that will get here elected, regardless of what effect they have on the population as a whole, and regardless of whether there is any morality in them.

'Practical' politics of the Clinton variety is the history of New Brunswick. That applies to both the Liberals and Conservatives - and, more than it should, to the NDP.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/elections-hillary-clinton-millennial-dilemma-160320072702578.html
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And here's a story guaranteed not to appear in the Irving press, though it comes from a most reputable news agency.

http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL5N16Q2FD

Still think it's a bright idea to drill for oil in the  Arctic and to build oil pipelines and encourage fracking? Still trust Obama and Trudeau to lift a finger on this? Still think it makes sense to open sprawling suburban developments that make cars necessary?

But, hey! If you can't trust JDIrvingLtd, who can you trust?
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And here's a kind of important story that the Irving press missed. In  fairness, they may have decided the more important story was about the Texas mother who put her child in the oven.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/russia-demands-urgent-action-combat-syria-violations-160321102229084.html
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Finally, a reader sent me this video of an interview with Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop Spong. It's titled there is no hell. And it's a far better read than I have ever seen on the Faith Page of the Irving press. (It's also the longest URL I've ever seen.)

label=youtube%5F20160317%5FRC0&cl=117421681&cr=CA&debug%5FvideoId=SF6I5VSZVqc&fexp=9407156%2C9416126%2C9420053%2C9420452%2C9422342%2C9422527%2C9422596%2C9423661%2C9423662%2C9424560%2C9425347%2C9427603%2C9427902%2C9429653%2C9431012%2C9431118%2C9431621%2C9431675&debug%5FplaybackQuality=small&plid=AAUulCcybbANa%5FZx&cplayer=AS3&debug%5FsourceData=&h=555&iframe=1&framer=https%253A%252F%252Fca%2Evideo%2Esearch%2Eyahoo%2Ecom%252Fvideo%252Fplay%253Fp%253Djohn%252Bshelby%252Bspong%252Bheaven%252Bhell%2526vid%253Dc4ec01782559773dc628c761a3a13cf2%2526turl%253Dhttp%25253A%25252&videoFps=29&debug%5Fdate=Mon%20Mar%2021%2016%3A32%3A31%20GMT%2D0300%202016&el=embedded&ei=O0zwVqLcB4LXuQKkto%2DoCw&debug%5FflashVersion=WIN%2018%2C0%2C0%2C203&afmt=140&stageFps=10&fmt=133&nsiabbl=93510&md=1&hl=en%5FUS&nsidf=6&tspne=0&cbrver=11%2E0&tsphab=1&hasstoryboard=1&cosver=6%2E1&audiofactor=0%2E9594005640941549&tspfdt=30&w=740&tpmt=12&cos=Windows&cbr=IE&cfps=29%2E41176470588235&next%5Fid=SF6I5VSZVqc&eurl=https%253A%252F%252Fca%2Evideo%2Esearch%2Eyahoo%2Ecom%252Fvideo%252Fplay%253Fp%253Djohn%252Bshelby%252Bspong%252Bheaven%252Bhell%2526vid%253Dc4ec01782559773dc628c761a3a13cf2%2526turl%253Dhttp%25253A%25252&screenw=1280&screenh=1024&ldpj=%2D14&pixel%5Fratio=1&nsivbbl=297133&playerw=964&playerh=585&scoville=1&pd=0&cver=1%2E20160317&of=wkfgdomkCpbR%2DWzb1vBAfw&mos=0&cpn=0lWqF6libhRN%2DBf6&vm=CAEQAA&ptk=youtube%5Fnone&lact=%2D1&rendering=accelerated&vis=0&decoding=software&autoplay=1&droppedFrames=6&idpj=0&volume=100&c=WEB&vq=auto
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Oh, a reader also sent me this. It's an article critical of an article that appeared in this blog. I can't find the original, though I do remember it.( I think I had been critical of it, too, though that might be a self-delusion to save my pride.) Anyway, here it is.

You might wonder whether Russia Insider sounds like a good source. Well,  all countries are full of news media that publish lies and propaganda. Russia Insider, in my experience, doesn't lie. It's not at all like the Irving press (or The Post). It has a bias, and that will cause it to leave out some stories. But it doesn't lie.

http://russia-insider.com/en/media-criticism/twisting-offer-threat-how-natalie-nougareyde/ri13452
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March 19: Making America great again.

Yesterday, I mentioned that we seldom learn the truth of the history of Canada  (or any other country). Then, I happened to find the item below on our first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. I don't entirely (but do mostly) agree with it. In fact, he was a good deal worse than this article suggests. That's why he and his maritime partner, Sir Charles Tupper, died wealthy men. (No, they didn't do it by brown-bagging it for lunch ever day).

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/jesse/2015/01/10-crimes-john-macdonald#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=56ed73cec5ca5a01&at_ab=per-4&at_pos=1&at_tot=5

Tupper, by the way, was popularly known as "The Cumberland ram". Guess why.
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Using the above story to open the blog suggests there isn't a whole lot to talk about in the Irving press. The only real news item in Section A is that New Brunswick schools are running into severe problems because they are forced to accept students who, for mental or social reasons, are disruptive and even dangerous in the classroom.

Alas! There was no comment on this from our resident education expert, Norbert Cunningham.

Such students cannot be handled in a large class no matter how skilled the teacher might be. It is not possible to give adequate attention to even one of them, let alone four or five, in a class of 25. (I vivdly recall being a student in a class so filled with disruptive students - of whom I was one - that we made teaching virtually impossible for all but the most powerful and violent teachers.)
Norbert has said we need fewer teachers. And that's just ignorance. Disruptive students cannot be taught in large classes without ruining the class for everyone else. A school is not like a factory assembly line stamping out graduates like cookies. They require different approaches for some students - and that means we need MORE teachers, not fewer.

The editorial is a gushing ad for the Greater Moncton Home Show.
Norbert has nothing to say about Heritage Buildings. But he says it, anyway.
Still on the Heritage theme, there are two columns about a purpose for the old Moncton High School.  Both, with some reason, criticize the bungling that has characterized this issue.

Alec Bruce's column on the collapse of Elephant Rock is well written. But it has nothing to say.
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Canada&World, again,  appears to be made up of stories picked at random by an editor wearing a bliindfold. There are some hugely important stories out there. Europe may well be facing an economic collapse, or a social one, or a rise of Naziism. Or all three. But not a word about this in the Irving press. A new war in Libya has already begun. Labour organizers in South America are routinely murdered, presumably by the order of corporate bosses. Children in South America and the middle east and Africa are growing up without education, without food, in great environmental damage, children whose only hope in life can be an early death. Child refugees, in their millions, are living the same, hopeless experience.

But there is nothing in Canada or World news to tell us this, and no commentaries to help us develop a perspective on this.
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The Faith Page is - strange.   It has dropped all church notices. Why? Do they really need to save the space for a hearing aid company ad? And almost every sermonette is by a fundamentalist evangelical whose only concern is for salvation.

Now, I have no idea whether there is a heaven or hell. Nor is that an issue that much concerns me.

But the New Testament is about much more that heaven or hell. And even more than about a heaven where we all spend eternity clapping hands for Jesus. There's a lot about Christian behaviour in there. There's a lot about everyday life, and how we should behave. Couldn't we, for example, have a sermonette on why capitalism is  (or is not) a Christian economic system? Shouldn't we have a discussion of why our faith does (or does not) support our sending aircraft to bomb the middle east? or, perhaps, a chat about whether a wealthy Christian should have a tax haven to avoid taxes.

And why don't we have sermonettes by representatives of the United Church, the Anglicans, Catholics,  Presbyterians...?   We also have numbers of Jews and Muslims among us.  Are we too sophisticated to need any introduction to their religions?

Religion is not just about eternal life. Some religions are not about eternal life at all. But ALL religions are about how we live on this earth.

And, you know, there's something wrong with people who are obsessed with making sure they get into heaven. The message of Jesus, if I have read it correctly, was that we should be thinking of others, not just of ourselves. People who are concerned only with getting themselves into heaven are not religious. They're just self-righteous. And I often think they preach salvation to others only to get brownie points for getting themselves into heaven.
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I really don't know what to think about this next story. It sounds possible. And Europe could well be on the block for major realignments. There's also the amusing but quite possible suggestion that Putin is courting the European far right. After all, Russia is a capitalist state, just like the U.S.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/putin-long-game-omens-europe-russia
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This next one suggests that we should NOT be staking our future on resource development. On the contrary, it might be far more profitable to concentrate to develop  things like renewable resources. (Of course, it would not benefit the owners of the oil industry.)

https://www.thefinancialist.com/spark/one-chart-why-are-jobs-growing-when-gdp-is-shrinking/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter&utm_content=Newsletter
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Can we reduce fossil fuel emissions to zero by 2050? Here's a man who says we can. And he's not a tree-hugger. He is a man who has run major utility corporations. Of course,  he's opposed by fossil fuel and nuclear bosses - and the latter are the people who buy American governments - and Canadian ones.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/building-a-renewable-ener_b_8870814.html
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And here's a stunning story that the eagle-eyed editors at Irving press missed. All government departments in the U.S. are, by law, required to be audited for their spending each year. The Department of Defence, which accounts for over half of all government spending has, for years, refused to permit an audit.  In fact, it keeps no financial records to be audited .

This is the U.S. Department of Defence, the biggest spending defence department in world history. This is the U.S. which cannot afford food stamps for a million of its hungry, and cannot offer full medicare to its people.

This is a must-read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/uncontrollablepentagon-an_b_9499050.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

The U.S. political and economic system has sunk so far into corruption that I'm  not sure there's any hope for it. I wonder how far we in Canada will sink. We may find out as we re-enter the search for a new jet fighter.
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Here's a vido interview on whether capitalism is encouraging climate change. It is, of course....but one should not leap to the conclusion that having a different economic system would change that. However, of course, it's true that capitalism is driving climate change, and capitalists are spending big money to make sure we do nothing about it. Capitalism needs to encourage climate change for the sake of some of its biggest profiteers. It makes its money out of the fossil fuels that have created climate change. That's why you'll never see a vigorous campaign about climate change in the Irving press. What you will see, though, is support for more oil pipelines and for fracking.

A large part of the problem is ----us. The major capitalists have become national dictators all over the world. And they have become dictators because we allow it. In the case of New Brunswick, the people of this province will never control their own lives until they take that control away from a small number of the very wealthy who own both the Liberals and the Conservatives. You need an NDP that's far more combative than the present one is. You need a Green Party that recognizes that environment, while important, cannot be the only issue for any party. Above all, New Brunswickers have to learn to speak openly about these issues.

It's no use shrugging shoulders and saying, "Don't matter none to me..." It does matter to you - and everyone. You have to face these people down. But I have seen little sign that the people of New Brunswick have the courage to do that.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2016/03/capitalism-driving-climate-change-160318152551036.html
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I found this next  article interesting because Hillary Clinton is fully as dangerous as Trump, and perhaps even more murderous. And almost certainly much more corrupt. Bernie Sanders, the only intelligent and honest person running for either party, will be blocked out by the party brass.

That leaves Canada as the neighbour of a thoroughly corrupt and murderous government owned by billionaires without conscience. And nice visits by Trudeau will not change that. We will be under enormous pressure join it in its drive for world conquest. We are also going to find our north getting a lot of attention from American billionaires - and Russian and Chinese ones. None of those give a damn about Canada's claims - or even about the existence of Canada.

There is nothing in it for us to be friends with Russia, China, or the U.S. We have some tough decisions facing us. We can't go on with our foreign policy of dancing in the dark.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44457.htm
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The following article gives us more cause to be worried about the next president of the U.S. - whoever it might be. (I exclude Sanders from my thinking because I doubt very much that he will be allowed to become leader of the Democrats.)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barack-obama-saudi-arabia-us-foreign-policy-syria-jihadism-isis-a6927646.html
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I note all the signs, especially among Trump supporters, about making America great again. Great. What does that mean?

Does it mean America bringing democracy to the whole world? Not likely. The U.S. has more commonly destroyed democracies than made them. And it has now destroyed its own democracy.

Does it mean bringing prosperity to the world?  The U.S. track record would not suggest that. In fact, it has created mass poverty all over South American, in the middle east, in parts of Africa and Asia and, as I write this, is increasing poverty in the U.S. Nor have the leadership debates suggested that this is a priority for anybody but Sanders.

No, to understand what the candidates mean by great, you have to go back to the humiliation of the Vietnam war. For most Americans, the tragedy of Vietnam was not the millions of innocent people they killed and crippled and orphaned. The tragedy was TV news of people lined up to reach the helicopters on the roof of the embassy to get away, of aircraft carrier crews in panic who were pushing empty helicopters overboard to make room for more, and the video of a North Korean tank crashing through the gate of the embassy.

America ended World War Two on the edge of world conquest. It began its big moves into control of the middle east and Africa....then it was stopped dead by Vietnam and by the defiance of the great prize, China. And it was dealt the first loss of a piece of its empire, Cuba.

America was great no longer.

Then came Ronald Reagan, the president who would restore greatness. (His absurd idea of the nature of  America's greatness can be found in a collection of speeches that create a myth of the wonderful things the U.S. had done for the world.)

https://secure3.convio.net/reagan/site/SPageServer/?pagename=Speech_Page_Redesign&gclid=CKup9ra_zcsCFQMQaQodUQYHWw

It was all myth, of course. The U.S. had not brought liberty to the world, none of that stuff. What it had done was to murder millions to make its billionaires richer. What established Reagan as the man who made America great again was a small, tourist island with an army, mostly part-time, of 1500 plus some 700 Cubans. It had no navy and no airforce to speak of. And no heavy weapons.
The whole population was 91,000.

But it was building a new airport with a runway that, it was said, could be used by Russian bombers. (Watch out. So does Moncton.)

Against that the US sent 19 warships including an aircraft carrier, and  7.000 troops heavily equipped with weaponry of all sorts. And by the courage and stubborness that Americans are noted for, those 7,000 troops (with heavy air cover) were actually able to defeat a largely amateur army of over 2,000.  You can see all about the heroism in a film called Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood who, alas, could not take part in the real war because of clashes with his schedule.

And a jubilant President Reagan rushed to announce on TV, "America stands tall again".

And so American greatness was restored.

To many people, probably most, American greatness means military conquest, power, world conquest as in American Exceptionalism. Thus the dissatisfaction with the slowness of evens in the middle east and Afghanistan.

I suspect the coming election will bring matters to a head. And, as a result, Donald Trump will be right. There will be serious social disorder. He's wrong only in thinking that it wouldn't happen if he won the presidency.

March 17: The Irving Press....

....required reading for those who don't know, and don't want to know.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/17/politics/us-iraq-syria-genocide/index.html

John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State has really made it big in the news with his statement that ISIS has been committing genocide. You can almost feel the shock waves circling the globe. I've watched solemn commentators on TV nod their heads and say, "Yes. This is evil. It must be stopped."  And one can imagine followers of the news shaking their heads, and asking what this world is coming to.

Too bad so few people understand what genocide is. Too bad so many journalists don't know what it is. The Irving press carried a big story on this. But, apparently, there was no staffer in the whole Irving press competent to explain the story.

Oh, genocide is certainly wrong - and evil - and despicable. But so is John Kerry. So why did he accuse ISIS?

In the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, the word was that Saddam had to go because he was 'bad'. He was bad, of course. So are most world leaders. So are lots of us. But we don't see ourselves as bad. And if you ask most people what a 'bad' leader means, they'll just say, "well, he's bad."

Bad has come to have an emotional meaning without any logical meaning. The same has happened to genocide. As soon as people hear the word, they think 'bad'. This makes it a very useful word for press conferences to stir up hatred.
Originally, genocide had a very clear meaning. It meant to classify people according to their imagined genetic qualities, and then to define them as inferior or evil because of their genes, and then to kill them to remove these inferior genetic types from the earth. A century ago and, in many cases much less than that, this sort of thinking was common in the best circles all over the world - including Canada and the U.S. Thus Hitler's genocide of the Jews.

(Earlier, of course, we  had the genocide of native peoples all over the Americas, a genocide carried out by the 'heroes' of our history.) All imperialism has its moral basis in the belief in the genetic inferiority of certain nations which make it acceptable to kill them and abuse them in order to steal their resources. Churchill, raised in imperialism and racial superiority was furious when an inferior person like Ghandi appeared before his English superiors wearing rags.
After World War Two, genocide was made illegal - and also given a broader definition. Genes no longer have anything to do with the new meaning. It has to do with the mass murder or abuse or impoverishment or any treatment that harms any groups identified by skin colour, nationality, religion, income.... It includes the abuse of Central Americans by exploiting them to work for mines and factory farms owned by foreign capitalists.

And genocide, surely, is what John Kerry was doing  many years ago in Vietnam. Any Vietnamese person was eligible for killing - soldiers, civilians, men, women, elderly, children... It was the same in Iraq...

It's quite possible that the treatment of Blacks and Mexicans in many parts of the U.S. qualifies as genocide. The exploitation of the poor by the rich is under the modern definition of genocide.

Of course, genocide is wrong. Of course, it's criminal. And, of course, that's true no matter who does it. But it's useful at press conferences because so few know what it means that the only part listeners understand is that it's bad. And no journalist is likely to say, "But Mr. Kerry, aren't you Secretary of State for the most genocidal nation on earth?"
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While I'm on this note, I recommend a book about the Iraq war. It's by a Canadian journalist who was in Iraq before, during, and after the war. It can be a frustrating book because the author, a man of very wide knowledge, can suddently move into long stretches of the history of the ancient world, the evolution of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (by no accident, very closely related). Then there are long passages about meeting American soldiers - usually of poor backgrounds and of little education, and dehumanized by their experience, the horror of living under a rain of bombs and watching old friends around  you die.Then there's a final chapter on the total evil of war, the profound hatred it produced of Americans by Iraqis and the whole arab world, of the US making of Iraq into a puppet state diguised as a democracy - and of the Iraq War having been one of the greatest foreign policy disasters of history.

This is a much better description of genocide that John Kerry offers.

The book is A War Against Truth by Paul William Roberts. Some people will find parts of the book tiresome. I would still recommend looking at it if only for the first and last chapters.
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What's to say about the Irving press? It stinks. The news, local, Canadian and foreign, seems to have been chosen at random.

The editorial is reasonable enough.

Norbert tells us that the province's economy is in bad shape. I think most of us knew that.  Isn't it time we began to discuss the failings of both the Liberal and Conservative parties? Isn't it time we began to discuss what to do about the economic dominance of this province by a few people?

Cole Hobson's "commentary" is, gawd help us, a hockey story.

Then there's a guest column from an Alberta politician who tells us we have to work hard at developing our fossil fuel resources. This is pretty tiresome propaganda that keeps popping up on what is supposed to be a commentary page.

Alec Bruce is the only part of the paper worth reading as he makes the point we should encourage small businesses more than we do.
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Just as a hint, here are some topics the Irving press could usefully pursue.

1. What taxes do Irving industries pay? How much of the money they make here gets re-invested in New Brunswick? How much simply buys stock in abusive mining companies in South America and Africa? What is the real wage gap in New Brunswick? It is getting wider? (yes) What are the salaries of corporate bosses in comparison to ordinary workers?  How much money do Irving and others get out of the government every year, in cash and in give-away forests? Irving gives lots of money to Liberals and Conservatives. What to they give back? Why don't we hear more about the Irving plan to take over all of our crown lands?

Throughout the world we are watching a tremendous shift in wealth from everybody else to the very rich. And Canada is a leader. Why? How? This is a wild rampage that will come to a head with the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership - on which the Irving press is remarkably silent.

And can't you even do the simple job of finding out why Moncton High was not worth repairing a few years ago, but is now?

2. Could we please get some real world news. Brazil is in severe disorder, and could be heading for a revolution. Can't you at least get something from a news service?

3. Where are the stories about the impoverishment of European countries at the hands of international banks? Greece, Spain, Ireland, Ukraine and others have been hit hard. Ukraine, in particular, has been heavily plundered by the government that the West put into power. Indeed, Europe could be close to financial collapse. One indicator of that is a seeming rise of Naziism. Watch for the refugee crisis to make that much, much worse.

Why don't we hear more about how our gallant sailors are picking up refugees off the coast of Greece to force them back into the hell they were escaping from?

4. The U.S. is aiming for world conquest. That's not a rumour. It's been openly stated by, among others, Obama, under the label of "American Exceptionalism". This, among other things, is what has created movements like ISIS. But the U.S. can no longer win conventional wars - not even against much smaller countries. It has to rely on indiscriminate mass murder delivered by high technology. It is now threatening China and Russia, neither of which it can beat in a conventional war. It can only go nuclear.

Could you take a break from hockey trivia on the Commentary page to look at that?

Oh, and please drop that corny headline you have for every day of a hockey game. "Wildtown Catfight". It's childish.

5. In all these years that we've known of climate change, very little has been done to react to it. And the only reaction I've seen in the Irving press is, "Duh, we need jobs". Exactly what is Canada doing about it? What is New Brunswick doing about it? What is Mr. Irving doing about it? And is he still in coalition with the government?

6. When is the Irving press going to stimulate thought? When is it going to stimulate open discussion in this province that is so fearful of open discussion and honest opinion?

7. Oh, and the next time a Frank McKenna attends a Bildersberg Conference, would you do the readers the favour of explaining what that fascist group is all about?

8. Finally, I have no   doubt that ISIS is genocidal and that's 'bad'.  Now could we have some news about the much greater Western genocide? In that context, you could point out that our good friends in Saudi Arabia are at least as genocidal as ISIS? And that they have been supplying ISIS? And that they are carrying out a brutal and genocidal war in Yemen?

You might even find space for a little story about how the terrorists of 9/11 were mostly from Saudi Arabia. (15 of them out of 1919). There are no such things as friends between nations. And, certainly, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are not friends in any sense that means anything.

So how come the U.S. didn't attack Saudi Araba, but attacked Afghanistan and Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11?_______________________________________________________________________________
This interview with Noam Chomsky is not a cheerful one. What's interesting about it is that he shows some sympathy for North Korea. We are trained to see evil but only on the other side. We are trained to see good, but only on our side. We see North Korea's leader as both comical and vicious - which he is. We think it bad that he has nuclear weapons - which it is.

However, he's nowhere near as comical and vicious as George Bush was, nowhere near as vicious as Obama has been, nowhere near as insane as the current U.S. leadership candidates - and all of the latter have access to the largest nuclear  arsenal in the world. And at no point since 1945 has any U.S. leader shown any interest in reducing nuclear stockpiles.

As well, the U.S. has constantly been provocative in its dealing with North Korea. Right now, it is conducting large scale military exercises near the border with North Korea, training for an invasion of North Korea. As well, North Korea well remembers the Korean war in terms we do not. The U.S. bombed just about every inch of every city and town in North Korea, carpet bombing to deliberately kill massive nunbers of civilians.

The U.S. leadership candidates really scare me. Trump has loudly pronounced that if he is denied the Republican leadership there will be rioting in the streets. I can't imagine a better way to ensure there will be rioting in the streets.

Hillary Clinton is so callous and murderous that many observers think she is a sociopath. I suspect they're right. The U.S. has deliberately kept itself capable of destroying the whole world. It's not a deterrent. It's a threat. South Korea's can only be a deterrent - and there's reason for it to need a deterrent.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44455.htm
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I'm not the only person worried about the threat to the whole world if a Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz or Donald Trump should win. We are actually down to people who are more brutal and murderous than George Bush was and Obama is. We are also watching an America so consumed by hatreds and fears and anger that it could well dissolve into rioting - or worse.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/election-existential-threat-world-160317104221315.html
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Here's a sane look at the refugee crisis. And it's quite right. The history of the world is a history of refugees and migration. The number of refugees now in Europe and in the middle east is now estimated at 4,000,000. And we are, all of us, the descendents of refugees. And many of the most outstanding and productive Canadians have been the immigrants of the last century and more. No country, despite the howls of patriots, is made up entirely of one 'nation'. Canada, in particular, has been a blend of nations. And making that blend has proved to be a pretty good idea.

Canada's acceptance of 15,000 is nice, but meager. We can handle more. And I suspect it would be economically wise for us to do so.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/migration-leaders-david-cameron-refugees-libya-movement-of-people

For any desendants of my family (Decarie) still living in France, we're all actually Spanish. The name Decarie (in a couple of hundred spellings) is still common in Spain. (This blog has a large audience in France.)
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This next site had a special appeal for me. I've long felt that public  (and private) schools all over the world teach propaganda as history. Students are not encouraged to think about it, or to come to conclusions about its meaning.

This isn't the fault of the schools. It's the fault of parents who really don't want their children to think, and it's the fault of school boards for not supporting the teachers. So here's an example of what's wrong for our general knowledge of St. Patrick's day.

Ireland lost 4,000,000 to starvation in the mid-nineteenth century. In that time, its English landlords (that means capitalists) exported large quantities of food that was grown without problems. The disaster was that the potato crops were devastated by disease - and the potatos were the bulk of what the Irish peasantry were allowed to eat.

There was plenty of food in Ireland. But it was all exported to make profits for the landlords. And so four million were allowed to starve to death. Some were lucky enough to escape to Canada or the U.S. But many thousands of these died on the ships, and were tossed overboard. Others landed here - only to die of diseases provoked by starvation.

There's a very good (if very big) book on this called The Social History of the Potato.

http://zinnedproject.org/2012/03/the-real-irish-american-story-not-taught-in-schools/

This comes from the Zinn Project, named in honour of an American historian, Howard Zinn, who wrote a history of the U.S. that you won't find in schools or movies or on TV. It's a superb book called A People's History of the U.S.

March 17: "I wish I loved the Human race;...

I wish I loved its silly face;
 I wish I liked the way it walks;
 I wish I liked the way it talks;
 And when I'm introduced to one,
 I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"

author   Sir Walter A Raleigh (1861-1922)
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Below is an item I picked up from CBC news- yesterday. Today, the Irving press doesn't have it. The story is not really that David Suzuki has turned 80. The story is that he says environmentalism has failed.

That's kind of important. Perhaps the Irving press missed it because it broke too late. But it's not too late to phone Suzuki, get more details from him on how and why it failed, and whether it was sabotaged by people who wanted it to fail. Will the Irving press have thisi tomorrow. I doubt it very much.

Let's say that Suzuki is overstating the case. Let's say climate change is not going to destroy the whole world - just most of it. That still leaves us spending trillions of dollars fighting wars for the sole purpose of pumping more greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere. The cost of this is so great that even the wealthy US faces rising numbers of its people who are sleeping on sidewalks, suffering malnutrition; and dying earlier. Those factors alone have killed more Americans in the last 15 years than ISIS, Russia, and China, and Syria have.

Watch for this to come to Canada, too, now that Trudeau has given way to American pressure to join the war in Syria. Forget all the garbage talk about how we won't be killing anybody. Once you're into a war, you're into it wherever it takes you. What's going on in the middle east is an open-ended disaster. And we, as we did in Afghanistan, have committed ourselves to going wherever the disaster takes us.

And why has nobody noticed that we have not declared war on anybody? According to the Canadian constitution, parliament is supposed to declare war. Mind you, according to the American constitution,  Congress is supposed to declare war. But the U.S. has for years fought wars without mentioning it to congress. All drone attacks, for example, are acts of war. So are missions by special ops. So is the American intrusion in Syria.

And Canada is likely to be drawn into a larger war that means nothing to Canada and will be costly both in lives and money. And if we don't care about the lives, then think about the money. Warfare fundamentally changed in the 20th century. Before that, one could sentimentalize it all the way Rudyard Kipling did - brave young lads, patriots, heroes..all that stuff. Now, war is simply about mass killing. In particular, it's about killing men, women and children without distinction.

Partly that's because our weapons are now so powerful, they cannot be  limited in the damage they do. Ranges are far greater and explosive power is non-discriminating. We cannot control who we kill.

Nor do we want to. We learned in World War Two that killing civilians, regardless of age or gender, was a winning strategy. You don't have much need for the "thin, red line" or the regiment of heroes any more. What you need is the biggest bombs and the most advanced weapons to fire them. The cost of keeping up to date on that weaponry, made worse by corruption, is demonstrated by the trillion dollar cost of the Iraq war. And the destruction of that weaponry is demonstrated by an Iraq which suffered casualties unheard of for such a short war, and such a massive destruction that drinking  water, electricity and schools are nowhere close to recovering.

Sending Canadians to Syria, even if it's officially just to help little children cross the street, means massive spending to re-equip our military - now - because it will be too late when the situation gets out of hand. And our aircraft, to pick just one example, are close to being museum pieces.

That means, even at this point, we have to spend huge sums (much of it on corruption) for the military. And that means cutting back on social services, poverty, infrastructure....just as the U.S. is doing. That's a high price to pay just so Obama will smile at our prime minister.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/david-suzuki-turns-80-cbc-the-national-1.3492707

Then there's a pretty  grim story about the shipbuilding industry in Canada. It seems the Canadian governments routinely give shipbuilding contracts on a cost plus basis rather than a fixed price.   That means ships routinely are completed at a cost well above the original estimate; but the contractor still gets his cost plus an agreed-on profit. And there is no competitive bidding. That's an open invitation to cost overrun and profiteering.

Norbert could read this with profit to learn that private business is not more efficient than government. In fact, it is often less efficient just in order to get higher profits.

And there's a disturbing note rather hidden in this story. It's based on an interview with the president of Canada's venerable and biggest shipbuilding company - Davies in Quebec. He was interviewed at his head office in - Monaco.

Gee. I wonder why a Canadian company would have its head office in Monaco.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/davie-shipyard-boss-canada-shipbuilding-plan-bizarre-1.3494460

I often check CBC News on google before reading the Irving paper. Invariably, of course, the CBC has far more news than a small-province paper. But, more telling - there is little overlap in the stories each chooses. The CBC stories are usually important. The Irving press ones usually aren't.
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Section A news, as usual, has nothing in it.

The editorial is, to put it kindly, shallow. A very large apartment building may be going up in a residential (bungalow) district of neighbouring Dieppe. Will it raise or depress  housing prices in the district? Ah, yes. That's the burning question of the day.

There's a vague mention of city planning. It has to be vague because vague seems to be what all city plans in this region are about. What are the plans for housing design in an age when evergy fuels have to be considered? What are the plans for density in an age when greater density may be essential to maintain public transit? And, in such a case, what will be the means of transit? And what form should that density take?   Do we really want a city that looks like rows and rows of   egg cartons standing on end? Are there other ways to build apartments? (There are.)

But all the editor talks about is house values.

Norbert has a quite reasonable column about the future of the Moncton High School building. And it's also reasonable to suggest we wait until nearing city council elections over, and let the new council decide. But -
-in this tangled saga of what to do with an old building, the tangling was done by the old city council. What expectation can we have that the new council will be any better?

Justin Ryan is,  as always, a welcome relief with a very readable piece on coming to understand the cultural mix this city is becoming.

Rod Allen has a bizarre column about the collapse of Elephant Rock. His point appears to be it might be due to climate change. But you won't find that out  until you get over three-quarters of the way through the article. He offers this gem of thought in one sentence, then uses his last paragraph to say he really doesn't know anything about the subject.

Alec Bruce writes a  whole column telling us that election polls may not be reliable. Uh - I think that's been well known for some time.

And that's it for section A.
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For several years now the Irving press has been pushing for the development of fracking in New Brunswick and the development of export facilities in St. John as the great hope for prosperity in New Brunswick. Today's headline in Canada&World is that it's no longer economically viable. But our provincial government is still pushing the idea as an investment in the future.
Let's seen, now. We know climate change is happening. The latest indications are that it is happening more quickly than expected. We know that continuing climate change will be disastrous. So, the provincial government wants to invest in a big project for selling more fossil fuels just in case they come back into style. "I wish I loved the human race..."

There's also a big, big story that Trudeau is working on a bid to get Canada elected to a seat on the UN Security Council. This might be very, very tough. There was a long period going back to 1950 when Canada could have such a seat just by asking for it. Those were the days when Canada was seen, with some good reason. as an honest broker. Since then, we've had Harper. Even worse, in a world of hardening alliances, Canada is now widely seen as a US puppet - and the U.S. is not a big friend-winner.

Foreign news in today's paper is two stories. Neither of them meaningful without context. And there is no context offered.
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While the Irving press occasionally mentions the refugees in Moncton (mostly through Justin Ryan's excellent columns), we don't read much about the disasters that are shaping up in Europe. Refugees and their children and their babies are camping out in their thousands in sodden fields - without sanitation, without enough food, without enough medical care.

Among the disasters that are closing in is massive death from disease and exposure, rage and maybe violence at the treatment they are getting from most of Europe, and these have profound implications for Europe, itself - and, probably, for the world. And the U.S., which has spent uncounted trillions to kill, dislocate and starve millions of people so that its billionaires can control the oil supply, is doing close to nothing to help.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/migration-crisis-idomeni-camp-greece-macedonia-is-an-insult-to-eu-values

But, in fairness, the billionaires are going their bit to help at home. One, for example, recently had a yacht built for him (with the cheap labour of a third world country) for three and a half million dollars. I mean, right there you have an example of capitalism creating jobs.
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Here is another item on Putin's motives in stepping back from the war in Syria. So far, it's the one I find most convincing. Partiularly telling is his thesis that what Europe fears most is a U.S. war with Russia, something the U.S. has been pushing for, would be the end of Europe.

Particularly interesting is the last paragraph which suggests the U.S. has not been able to put forward credible leaders for the coming election or for any election in the last twenty years. I would put it longer than that. But it's certainly obvious to the whole world that the current leadership debates are frightening for the low quality of political leadership they show.

We are watching the breakup of democracy. The U.S. has become an insane asylum which has been taken over by a group of the patients. It's a group of the patients who call themselves business leaders. This has been happening for many decades. But the pace picked up with the election of Ronald Reagan, and it's now rushing at very great speed.

The U.S. will not survive what is happening. The only question is whether the rest of us will.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44451.htm
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For a change of pace, here's what could be a piece of good news on the Syria situation.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/moscow-washington-syria-isis-160313072514575.html
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al Jazeera has an interesting section called "Investigations". It's a collection of investigations that have been carried out  by al Jazeera. One, for example, deals with informants who search out terrorists for the FBI. They commonly 'create' terrorists by setting up the feeble-minded to do something so that the FBI can arrest the 'terrorist' in the act - and before any damage is done. And it's not just in the U.S. that happens.
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Again, it's proved impossible in just one day to cover more than a tiny number of the stories that don't make the Irving press. And to try to cover some of the ground that should be on their editorial and commentary pages.  I have never understood why those papers have so many people to do so little reporting about such unimportant matters.