April 20, 2016: Inventing an unreal world.

One of the old stunts in a journalist's bag of tricks to get a party leader to criticize his own party. It's so old that even the slowest-witted of politicians usually know enough never to fall for it. But Dominic Cardy walked right into it as loudly and proudly as if he were leading a circus parade when he was questioned by the Irving press.

Much of the press across Canada - and Maclean's Magazine -  has been shedding crocodile tears over the quarrel within the NDP. But one should notice that not one of them has supported the NDP, not ever, not in its whole 50 plus years of existence. So why are they so mournful now?

They aren't mourning.  They're quite delighted. But crying over the split is useful for putting a nail in the coffin of a left-wing party that isn't owned by the corporate bosses who also own most of the news media. And Cardy certainly spit out all the nails the Irving press could ask for. If Cardy has any integrity at all, he should quit the NDP, and join whatever Irving party his heart has always longed for.
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A reader sent me an interesting story that has, like so many interesting stories, been missed by the Irving press. The story is from a Russian source, RT. But I've also seen some reference to it in the mainstream American press. As well, RT is certainly pro-Russian. But I have not known it to lie.

This is about the Saudi role in the 9/11 attack on New York; and, in fact, there has long been strong suspicion about such a role ( though it probably does not go up to the level of the king.) This time, Obama hints that there is a story in this.

http://on.rt.com/7al5

And note the cute reference that Obama makes to suggest that the U.S. has the right to influence neighbours like Mexico - and Canada.

Remember the rule. There are no friends between countries.  In two wars, especially in World War Two, the U.S. worked very hard to destroy the British and French empires overseas - so the U.S. could take them over. That's how it got its present day foothold in the middle east.

It also deliberately destroyed British economic power to establish itself as the great, western power.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, that country has a strong attachment to the ideals of ISIS. That's why it has been supplying ISIS. And that's partly why the U.S., itself, has not been vigorous in fighting ISIS. Similarly, the once seemingly close friendship between the U.S. and Israel is showing decided signs of wear. There are no friends between nations.
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500 refugees are feared to have drowned in a shipwreck over the weekend. That wasn't important enough to be mentioned by the editors of the Irving press. They needed the space for a really important story that PEI will balance its budget this year.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/shipwreck-mediterranean-500-dead-1.3544394
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I included the following site because it's a break from all those God bless the royal family mags that we see at checkout counters in the supermarket.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/20/queen-reign-failure-monarchy

There's no doubt that Charles has inherited the low intelligence which has so often been a feature of the Windsors. And I suspect there are moves afoot to encourage him to decline to accept the throne.
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Many Americans - perhaps millions - believe that in the American revolution, the British troops forced civilians into a church, then set fire to it, burning those civilians alive. They believed that because such a scene appeared in a Hollywood movie. (There was such an incident in World War 2. But it happened in Europe; and the soldiers who did it were naziis.)

Much of the history of Canada and the U.S., much of our image of  people of other nations and of ourselves, is derived from movies, poetry, history books, TV... They are all powerful propaganda tools.

But, despite the lessons from poetry, the Acadians were NOT expelled by British troops. Paul Revere did NOT ride through the country shouting, "The British are coming."  Hollywood invented an American west that never existed. How many movies have you seen with black cowboys? In fact, a high proportion of cowboys were black. Texas began, after all, as a slave state; and cowboys were cheap labour. Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, was not a brilliant general. In fact, he was one of the most incompetent officers ever produced by the British army.

American film makers had a deal with Hitler. They would not make films critical of him; and he would keep the large, German market open to American films. When Charlie Chaplin broke that agreement, he was widely condemned in the U.S.

And countries which don't have, say, a popular film industry often find themselves with no history at all. I wonder how many Canadian have heard of Sir Arthur Currie? He was a very amateur soldier who led the Canadian army in World War 1. Despite his inexperience, he emerged as an outstanding general,  far superior to most of the British leaders, and infinitely superior to the American, General "Black Jack" Pershing.

All of this propaganda is still going on. Some of it is deliberate propaganda. Some is based on a distorted national pride. In Korea, the UN troops, dominated by the U.S. army, fled in terror when blocked by Chinese troops. But the news media didn't say that. They said this was a strategic withdrawal. Hollywood joined the pack with a  film "Retreat. Hell". It's final scene was a gallant, American soldier standing defiantly and saying, "Retreat, Hell. This is a strategic withdrawal."

In the 1920s, North American women swooned at the thought of being carried off by a Muslim arab. This started with a  film, "The Sheik" starring the very handsome Rudolph Valentino. More recently, Hollywood and TV destroyed the joyful image of the sheik in his robes who,  "At night, when you're asleep, Into your tent I'll creep..."

Here's an outline of the process. It includes two more sites at the bottom of the page.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2015/08/valentino-ghost-150816121213605.html
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The editorial is about the community centre being planned for North end Moncton. The problem is it's not really an editorial. It's an ordinary news story; and it's twice as long as it should be.

Norbert Cunningham has a good column on priorities for our river and our connections to the other side of it.

Brian Cormier has another pointless, little story, this one about garage sales. Again, it's a long story that has nothing to do with anything.

The guest editorial is by the owner of a private college. He thinks the province should make free tuition available to students In what he calls private colleges. The column is more than a little glib about this, and it seems to deliberately avoid precise numbers.  As well, the only source he names is The Atlantic Institute of Market Studies. And a couple of his 'statistics' make no sense at all. In fact, if true, then they defeat much of his argument. This isn't a column. This is an ill-informed and self-serving rant.

Alec Bruce also writes about the new, free tuition policy. He likes it, but has concerns it may get bogged down in administration. That's a reasonable fear. And there's a bigger problem.

Universities have to start thinking seriously about what their role is as educational institutions. So far, they haven't. And I have never seen the slightest desire on their part to do so. Educationally, the universities are relics of the dark ages.

Oh, Mr. Bruce... The compliment for a well-written line is "Hear. Hear." not  "Here. Here." The latter is for bars - you know - where people who drink go.
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The Canada and World  section is it's usual, vapid stuff. A story on the last page is about how Fidel Castro gave a public speech to say that he will soon die. It's from American Associated Press, and a good example of how our news media use 'news' to spread propaganda.

Half of the story, at least, has nothing to do with the speech. It's about the failure of Castro to bring more wealth to Cuba. There is no mention of the U.S. embargos on Cuban trade, embargos that have caused the poverty. There is no mention of the wretchedness of Cuba life before Castro, when it was controlled by a U.S. imposed dictator who ruled by terror. And no mention of the American capitalism that created that situation. Nor is there any mention of the enormous strides in education made by Castro with free tution for all from K to university. Nor does it mention a medical care system available to everyone, and far more efficient than the private system of the U.S.

This isn't news of any sort. This is pure propaganda.
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And, for a world that is perilously close to world war with all that implies, there is not a damn word on any of that. Nor is there word on the destruction of Haitian society by the U.S. Nothing on the stunningly wasteful spending of U.S. government money on corrupt defence contractors. Nothing on the American mining company that is suing a Latin American government for billions of dollars because that government has created a national park to save its rain forest that the mining companies are destroying. This is important for us to know because that kind of overruling of our elected governments is exacly what the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal is about. This is going to happen to us.

But don't worry. The Liberals and Conservatives will protect us - as they always have. You tell 'em, Mr. Cardy.
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And I have a blunder to admit to. I have, at least once or twice, referred to professor Donald Savoie as the author of Over the Cliff?, a book I have no respect for. But the author - mia culpa - is professor Richard Saillant.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kpmg-canada-revenue-agency-receptions-conferences-1.3540285

The story above appeared yesterday  on CBC news. It has not yet appeared in the Irving press. No story. No commentary by Norbert. (and this goes well beyond lattes. Take a look at those menus. Take a look at the booze.) And all for our income tax people to have a mutual kissup with millionaire tax-avoiders and their buddies in the 'tax industry' - which means non-tax paying.

This has been going on for at least five years. And, right now, a  kiss up tax settlement is being worked out with millionaire tax avoiders so they can still keep most of it. Where's the indignation, Norbert? Where's the scorn?

If you got caught at an Irving station stealing a tank of gas, you could face prison. So don't do that. No. Steal billions with the telp of tax havens. No penalty. And you get to go to some really great parties with Canada Revenue Agency.

These tax havens are well known. And the lost tax means less for education, less for health, less for help for those who need it. It means loss of opportunity for children born into the wrong families. It means the homeless are still homeless - and hungry. It means lifetimes spent (and commonly cut short) by jobs at a lousy minimum wage.

And everybody in the world of politics and journalism has known about this for decades. They have known that our 'elite'  philanthopists have been common thieves, stealing huge sums from us for years. Every politician in my lifetime has known it. Justin Trudeau knew it. His father knew it. Stephen Harper applauded it.

Norbert Cunningham, if he didn't know it, must be the only journalist in Canada who didn't know it.

A big help for the tax evaders has also come from free trade and Canadian ownership of mines in countries that have relaxed tax. environmental and safety regulation. These are all over Latin America, Africa, Asia. They also offer the attractions of the world's cheapest labour, most relaxed safety rules and, in many cases, child labour.

In Canada and the U.S., this has increased poverty, destroyed hope. Indeed, the U.S. is running up record numbers of people who live on the sidewalks, even more who cannot get food stamps because so little tax money is coming in, and that which does c ome in is needed for the highly corrupt war industries.

And very soon, we will be hearing more about the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership which, I'm quite sure, Trudeau will support; and which will open us up to even worse conditions. (But the wealthy will be okay. So don't worry.)
And none of this is going to come out in the Irving press. You can count on it.
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The editorial is a stirring call to support the idea of a bridge to Riverview and keep water in the river clean. It's safe topic. I haven't heard of anyone who wants to cut Riverview adrift or poison the river.

Norbert Cunningham writes about native affairs as though its simply a matter of spending money and being more friendly with each other. But it's far more than that. It's a matter of     returning much more control over how and where they live, and to make it possible for them to thrive without being just copies of us.  I won't even pretend to have an answer to that. We began the damage centuries ago. We're not going to fix it just by raising allowances and being friendly.
There's a good cmmentary on housing and the elderly in Moncton. This issue is a good reason why Moncton  council has to give some informed thought to city planning. Most certainly, it is not something to be left to the real estate developers. What we probably need for the future is a fairly dense form of housing in the Main Street area (which, by the way, is a good reason not to move the library). But it should not be the boxy apartments shown in the photo with this column. It should provide outdoor space (including the roofs) for socializing, gardening.

The guest commentary is a propaganda pitch for fracking.  It comes from the Atlantic Centre for Energy (called Atlantica centre on the web) which is run by - surprise, surprise - a product of Irving executive circles. Gee. I wonder who puts up the money for the centre.

Has it ever occured to the editor of this page that it might be unethical to run free ads for the owner of the paper while pretending they are real commentaries?

Then there's Alec Bruce. He rewrites Norbert's column of yesterday on the NDP and its Leap of Faith Manifesto. His writing is better than Norbert's. But it tells us nothing that Norbert didn't. And it makes the same, ranting blunders as Norbert did. There's the talk of latte, the quoting of of the wisdom of Dominic Cardy who says "The problems that face the NDP across the country...has to do with the purpose of the party."

Quite so. And that purpose is something alien to the thought of Cunningham and Bruce and Cardy.

The purpose of the Liberals and Conservatives is to get elected. That's it. That's why both are essentially the same party. Broadly, they accept the status quo, and see no reason to change it. That's why, though all of them have always known about about tax havens, but have never mentioned them.

As for the candidates, they have many reasons for running. Some actually want to be of service to their constituents. I always think of Warren Allmand in this respect. He served in the Pierre Trudeau cabinet. Devoutly Christian  (Roman Catholic of the Catholic Social Action Movement) he saw political life as a way of providing service to people. And he did it very well. (Nor did  he play favourites. He once gave me quite a grilling before a house committee.)
But I met very few Warren Allmands in the Liberals and Conservatives. Pierre Trudeau ran for the Liberals because, I think, it was something to do. (Many of his political views were closer to the NDP).

Many ran for the paycheques and the pensions. Many, especially lawyers, did it to expand their contacts and, therefore, their marketability. Politics was their key to making money after the political days were over. Think hard. You might be able to think of some politicians in New Brunswick who followed this path.
The CCF was a movement with strong religious motives based on Christian principles. The major figure in the early days of the CCF was J.S.Woodsworth, a Methodist clergyman. Then, of course, there was the Baptist Tommy Douglas. In fact, many CCF candidates and mps have been from the clergy.

Their purpose was not simply to get elected or simply to make the right connections. It was to address the problems caused by the power of the wealthy in Canadian life, a power that was used to impoverish Canadians, to deny essential services,  to live by greed in denial of all other purposes.

Most living Canadians have no idea how brutal it was to live under the thumbs of the very wealthy. There was, for most, no medical care. People injured on a job were simply fired on the spot. With no medicare, death at a young age was common. There was no employment insurance. As a child, the school nurse was always after me to see a dentist. It wasn't possible. I never told my parents because I knew it wasn't possible. Finally, the nurse set up a free appointment for me at the dental school. I never went, and I never showed the note to my parents. I knew they would be humiliated to be thought of as needing charity. Most people had jobs that did not have pension plans. Tough on them - because there were no government pension plans. (Well, a sort of plan was introduced in the 1920s. But a condition to get it was that you had to will your house to the government. Anyway, most people didn't own a  house.)

Anybody who objected to any of the above could expect pretty rough treatment from the police, and even the army.

This eased with World War Two, and even more so in the years after it because Canadians demanded something better. The war had led them to expect something better. That had, after all, been a morale-boosting theme of the war years.

This made the Liberals and Conservatives alarmed at ideas which could shift votes to the CCF. The answer was for the Liberals and Conservative to accept and pass some of those ideas (employment insurance, pensions, medicare), but just enough to keep the CCF at a distance.

That was when the CCF made a big mistake. It put getting elected ahead of determining and convincing people about what was needed. The reason seemed a good one at the time. The Liberals and Conservatives had piles of money, gifts from big business. The CCF didn't. So it entered every election with almost no money to fight, and facing the opposition of most Canadian news media because they were owned by the wealthy.

That's when the CCF invited the support of the unions. But ----

The big unions had ideas close to those of big business. And they put a price on their support. That price was changing its name to NDP,  and dropping their emphasis on human need in order to win.

What over fifty years have proven is that the big unions were wrong. Becoming Liberals did nothing to help the vote. Worse, fifty years that could have been used to make people aware of the problems they faced (after all, the news media weren't going to tell them), were wasted. They became simply another Liberal/Conservative party. And so we now have the Irving press telling us what a great leader Dominic Cardy has been when he hasn't achieved anything. That's why they think he's great. He  hasn't done anything.

Liberals and Conservatives are about winning elections. They always have been, even through the dirtiest and most brutal years of Canadian history.

The CCF was not about that. It was about studying the problems, proposing solutions, and encouraging Canadians to think before voting. Yes,  they want to win election.  But there's no point in winning in order to continue doing the damage that is now being done by the Liberals and Conservatives. And that's what The Leap Manifesto is about.

Incidentally, Mr. Bruce, if you are going to dump on the manifesto, shouldn't you have explained it first? Like Norbert, all you do is call it names. Maybe you've been following Donald Trump too closely.

And, Mr. Bruce, would you dare to write such a critical column about the wealthy New Brunswickers and tax havens? And if the Leap Forward is impractical,  what would you call it to allow billionaires to bleed this province?
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Well, that's a lot of time spent on one issue. But short answers commonly explain nothing at all.

Anyway, I'll skip the news in the Irving press. There isn't much to skip, anyway. I will, though, recommend the student column by Jana Giles. Her school was locked down recently. So they all had to stay in the room. And they had to give up their cellphone/androids. They could speak only to real people in the room. And it was a startling experience.

It's important to think about that because how we communicate can change our lives and our world. We rarely look at that. The modern, mass circulation newspaper, for example, gave enormous propaganda power to its owners. Indeed, they could and did create wars. Then, radio  brought an intimacy to communication, almost equivalent to a human conversation. It also became a central force in daily life, so much so that many movie theatres shut off the film to play a popular radio show that customers wanted to hear. Later, radio would kill the evening service in most churches. TV was more devastating, crippling not only the churches but the big city night clubs whose performers could now be seen for free. It was also the most brainless and least stimulating communication form ever developed.  Now, its the cellphone/android which has largely replaced human interaction.

Communication can be a very powerful force - for good or bad - so it's important to understand what it does to us.
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Here's a story that didn't make the Irving press. It's about refugees stranded in camps. But who gives a damn? Right? The irving press needed the space for a really big story that lots of people don't want Prince Charles to be king. (Not to worry. He's not likely to be king.)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/19/refugee-babies-milk-supplies-greek-detention-centre-chios
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I pay attention to Paul Craig Roberts. He's not only intelligent and honest; he's seen what he talks about. That's because he worked at the highest levels in the American government.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44508.htm

There's much to be understood in connection with this. As Roberts points out, the U.S. did not rise to become a great power. Until World War Two, its conquests had been small ones. Lots of them, but small - Cuba, Haiti, Peurto Rico, etc. The US became a major power by default - when the European empires destroyed themselves in two world wars. But by then, China had evaded the U.S. grip, and the U.S. could not have beaten Russia in a conventional war. And a nuclear one would have been mutually suicidal. For all its military spending and display, and for all the propaganda-inspired praise of the U.S. military, it has not been impressive in its last 60 or so years of war. It has to be careful even in the middle east where another American invasion would be a gift from heaven to ISIS in the shape of a spread of support of ISIS in the Arab world, perhaps even beyond its Sunni following, and beyond the Arab world.  The current western intrusion into Libya may well have the same effect.

But there are those who, for their own narrow and short-term interests. are prepared to ignore all those risks, and to go for American  Exceptionalist dominance of the world.

Trump and Clinton have made it clear that they support American Exceptionalism and world dominance.
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Within weeks of the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., it was obvious that Saudi Arabia had a hand in this. There was Osama bin Laden, of course. There was also the large number of Saudi terrorists who had taken part in the attacks. The Saudis are allies. They aren't friends. It's important to remember that there are no such things as friends between nations. And it's important to remember that the Saudis share the same, extremist view of Islam as ISIS follows. Today, Information Clearing house has several articles on this. In fact, today's is the best edition of ICH I have ever seen. I would recommend reading all of it.
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And here's a story you haven't (and won't)   find in the irving press.

http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/boeing787/
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And for a fascinating look at the aircraft industry with its hands constantly in the pocket of Canadian governments, google the site below.

Canada budget 2016 bombardier

Lots of entries. Lots of secrecy. Billions of dollars vanished. That's the story of Bombardier and of other  aircraft industries in Canada. It's not just shipbuilders and forestry owners who rip us off regularly. And that's what's called the 'spirit' and 'initiative' and 'willingness to take risks' that is our model of capitalism.
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April 18:"National NDP Should Heed Cardy...

Armchair Socialism Won't Fly."

 Wow!

I saw that headline on Norbert Cunningham's column and thought, oh, I can have fun with this. But no such luck.

Norbert not only doesn't know what he's talking about; he doesn't even know the meaning of capitalist, socialist or pragmatic. In fact, his column is nothing but and ignorant rant and second-hand drivel.

For openers, Norbie, capitalist does NOT mean someone who avoids taxes by putting his money in a tax haven. And it does NOT mean someone who spends his life sucking at the government teat for bailouts, interest-free loans, and other gifts. That's not a capitalist. That's a greedy sponge.

Nor are socialists bearded radicals with outlandish ideas. And when Tommy Douglas introduced medicare, he was not being pragmatic.  In fact,  he was defying the pragmatic thinking of the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Pragmatism means to use common sense. But common sense is not always a good idea  because it keeps us forever where we are. That's why Jesus was not pragmatic. If he had been, he would not have been crucified. Instead, he  could have been a highly esteemed rabbi, and on good terms with the Roman authorities.

The NDP has been basing itself on 'pragmatism' for over fifty years. It hasn't worked. And to choose Dominic Cardy (a loser) as a triumph of pragmatism is absurd. Pragmatism is the choice of the person who doesn't want to do anything - just get elected. We already have two  pragmatic parties in the Liberals and Conservatives. Their pragmatism consists of kissing the rear ends of the rich. And none of them, by the way, knows the meaning of Liberal or Conservative.
(Oh, Hitler's mass murder of Jews was a pragmatic one for a fuhrer who wanted to conquer Europe.) Please learn what words mean, Norbert.

As to socialism, it is a common and accepted feature of large areas of Canadian life. A police force is a social institution. So it our public school system. So is medical care. So is the military. So are most public transit systems. So are universal pensions. Almost all the social legislation we have comes from a socialist party that created a demand for it - as reluctant Liberals and Conservatives to pass it - in the smallest possible doses - to get through elections.
Then Norbert gets into rant mode on the 'Waffle', the  group that opposed the NDP when it moved to the centre. Far from Norbert's portrayal of them,  they   were not 'academic dilletantes' who sat around drinking high priced  latte. That would probably be more characteristic of the Irvings that you kiss up to. (Kissing ups is pragmatic.)

I knew many of the 'waffles' very well in my student days. In fact, I was one of them. None of us had the money for $12 lattes. I knew David Lewis who supports the Leap Forward Manifesto. He's brilliant, but not a latte kind of guy, and he's never lived in an ivory tower. In fact, he's spent much of his life in senior positions at the UN dealing with poverty and disease, especially in Africa. Is there an Irving who's done much of that?

Then he quotes Mr. Cardy at length - in excerpts that suggest Norbert cribbed a good deal of this column from Cardy.

He ends, "It's not in Canada's DNA to swing that far left." Apart from being a racist statement, that's also absurd. Just a year ago, the U.S. looked like the most right-wing country in the world. Today, the politician coming out top of the polls for president is Bernie Sanders, a socialist.

This column is a dreadful display of ignorance of history, of politics, of the meaning of words. it's an ignorant rant tarted up with long worn-out wit, like "ivory tower, armchair socialists, latte..."

As well, he  sees, politics as nothing except a place to get elected to. Getting elected is the whole ball of wax. And I just don't see it that way. I see it as a process of seeking out what needs fixing, figuring out how to do it, then convincing people of that.

Incidentally, Norbert writes a whole column damning The Leap Forward. But he never tells readers what's in it.

Norbert, when are you going to have the guts to connect the name Irving to something like, oh, tax havens? Have you heard of tax havens?
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To round out the editorial and commentary pages, the editorial is another piece of local boosterism.

Craig Babstock writes about the recent lockdown in our schools, but really has nothing to say about it. It portrays the lockdown of schools as typical of the 21st century. In fact, in the twentieth century, it was common for American schools to lockdown and for the children to hide under their desks. This was in case of a nuclear war. As well  (and I'm not exaggerating) many schools required children to bring sheets to school - to be used to cover their dead bodies.

Steve Malloy has a more useful commentary on the lockdown.

Alec Bruce has an important, if worrisome, column about some very serious health problems - not just among the elderly, but among children and young adults in New Brunswick. This has both life and economic consequences. Got a capitalist solution to that, Norbert?

As usual, there's nothing much in the way of news in section A. But one story is intriguing. The NB government is preparing to spend millions to buy and   operate a failed shipyard in Caraquet. (Norbert alert. This is socialism.) It claims this is a really good business proposition. Well, if it is, why is our latte swilling, socialist premier not leaving it as a private busines?. And why weren't capitalists rushing in to buy it?

By the way, if you google CBC news, then click New Brunswick on the bar that lists provinces,you'll get far more (and more up to date) news about this city and this province than you will in the Irving press._____________________________________________________________________________
For Canada&World, well, it's not the fault of the Irving press that nothing is happening in the world. There's just no wars, no refugees starving or being deported or shot or drowned, no tax havens...
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Tom Feeley, though still recovering from a stroke, is back in business at Information Clearing House. He has the following story about the city of Fallujah in Iraq which must have suffered more bombing over the last 15 to 20 years than any other city on earth. This time it's victimized by both the U.S. and ISIS. As well, its soil is polluted by the depleted uranium shells that the U.S. used against it during the Iraq war.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44497.htm
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When I was a child, I was taught that Japanese were evil. And they certainly were evil in any movie I saw them in. And we were told how our soldiers had died to defend Canada against the evil Japanese. (In fact, Japan never invaded Canada. The only war-like attacks on Canada were the balloons designed to cause forest fires, and the shoot-up of a lighthouse by a submarine.)
Now, the major western powers are urging those evil Japanese to re-arm so they can fight the Chinese (who were  good, but are now evil.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44493.htm
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I'm a little heavy on information clearing house today, perhaps because it's so good to see it back.

I remember the first election of Obama well. I said on air there was no substance to him. His only policy was "We can do it". His greatest advantage was he was black.

Neither of those made him any different from Bush as president. Hillary Clinton may well win the presidency (presuming the Democrats find a way to get rid of Sanders). But Hillary's record is at least as bad as those of Bush and Obama. But she might well win, somewhat as Obama did, because then she would be the first woman president.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44495.htm
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And one more, a story that escaped the eagle eyes of Irving editors. No-one knows how much of this earth has been and is being polluted by nuclear radiation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the only bomb sites. In fact, well over a hundred nuclear bombs have been exploded, many of them much more powerful than the early ones. The U.S., alone dropped them for over a dozen years in and around the Marshall Islands and even in the U.S. And how long will the radiation last?

Forever.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44496.htm
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Here's a story that will upset Norbert. The Netherlands plans to put an end to fossil fuel cars by 2025. By then, it's to be all electric. Gee, Norbert, and  you got yourself all in a tizzy because the NDP Leap Forward document called for an end to fossil fuels by 2050.

I bet all those Dutch politicians just sit around drinking latte. (Actually, I lived there for half a year, and never once saw anybody drinking latte.)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/netherlands-parliament-electric-car-petrol-diesel-ban-by-2025
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And here's a question the world is going to have to face very, very soon. But New Brunswick won't. Mr. Irving and friends will toss bones to their editorial dogs, and we'll never even hear about it.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/18/solution-everything-working-less-work-pressure
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A footnote on Canada's military.

For something over a hundred years, Canada has not had a defined purpose for its military. Before that, its functions had been to displace native peoples and to play some role in case of an American invasion. But, in the latter case, Canada would need to have British support - something Britain had long ceased to have any interest in.

We fought two world wars, neither of which posed a threat to Canada. Okay, Canadians insisted on going to the help of a Britiain which would not have returned the favour. But those two wars finished Britain as a major power. So Canada found itself fighting wars for the U.S. But at no point has it fought a war in defence of Canada since the Fenian raids of over 140 years ago.
Instead, Canada has, in effect, become part of the American empire, with its armed forces increasingly modelled on the U.S. mijlitary and fighting American wars - as the Korean War, Libya, Afghanistan, in Iraq against ISIS, and now with combat/non-combat troops in Syria.

In effect, our military is a branch-office for Washington's military.

Lester Pearson took the view that the Canadian military should fight wars that were in Canada's interest to fight, not wars the  empire wanted us to fight. That's why he established the peace-keeping role for our military. It made sense. There was no war that was to Canada's interest. It was to Canada's interest to tone down the existing wars. Thus Canada the peacekeeper, a role it played well and usefully until it was used to do the U.S. a favour, helping it kick out the elected  president of Haiti in order to install an American puppet   government, thus returning Haiti to its status as one of the poorest countries in the world and, therefore, a happy hunting ground for US big business looking for cheap labour.
The Harper  government happily dismantled what  was left of peacekeeping. It's business supporters wanted Canada to maintain close relations with the U.S. because it was beneficial for them. Today, Canada has little training or equipment necessary for peace-keeping. So, instead of fighting British wars, we fight American wars. That's not much of an advance over the centuries.

This policy continues under Trudeau. The sending of troops to Syria - for whatever excuse - is not only a bad move for Canada. It's a move that ISIS is probably cheering for. It's recruitment and growth depend on western hatred and western intrustions into the arab world. That's what it's terrorist attacks are all about.

Canada needs to do some serious thinking of what its interests are, and what it is we send our soldiers to risk their lives for.

Peacekeeping was in Canada's interest not only in shutting down wars, but in building an impressive image of itself in the eyes of the rest of the world. As it is, we have lost that status because the world can tell when it's looking at just another colonial flunkie.

April 17: Pot-pourri

Ah, Sunday, a day to sleep in without shame. Then, I went through pile of old papers to find one I had forgotten about - though it's kind of important.

A small group of Israeli 'businessmen' have, for some time, been buying up large quantities Palestinian land which they sell to Israelis who then use it to creat illegal settlements The paper I discovered is a print-out from Haaretz by Chaim Levinson, dated Feb. 1, 2016. The headline is

"Almost all West Bank land deals for illegal settlements forged, investigation finds."

 It seems that whenever the Israeli government tried to evacuate Israelis who had settled illegally on Palestinian land, a company called Al-Watan would present papers that it had bought the land from Palestinians who lived on it. Now, after some years of this, a police investigation has found that the ownership papers were forged.

And what will the Israeli government do?   There has been no word on that. And I suspect there won't be.
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A friend from my teaching days sent me a copy of his university magazine ( U.of Chicago). It was devoted to a very clever idea about the teaching of history. It began with the railway shops where Pullman cars were built. Many of the shop buildings still exist, and with the old machinery still in place. So classes take place in the form of visits to them so that students get a real sense of what factory life was like back in the late 1800s.

Pullman was notorious for  low wages, extremely dangerous working conditions, and the slums its workers had to live in. In fact, that all led to one of the most violent strikes in American history. It's one thing to read about that, quite another to actually see the horror of such factory for yourself. (I once worked in one like that.) The hours were long the Pullman shops, the pay low, the machinery dangerous, and serious injury a daily occurence. The most  seriously injured were given rudimentary patching. Then, if the injury was serious enough - like the loss of an arm - their wages ended on the spot, and they were sent off to look after themselves.

Some of their 'housing' can still be seen.

This is a good way to really learn history - and it can be expanded so that students learn about history by seeing the houses that people lived in, the furniture, the clothing...by being IN history.

This could be done in Moncton, for example, starting with what is left of the docks, then the railway age with its engine repair shop still standing, homes of the period  (and what the styles tell us about the people who lived in them.) There are also (or were) remains of a railway roundhouse.

It's also a learning experience to get a sense of the social class of districts in various periods. What districts had the big churches? What denominations? What does that tell us?

Done  properly, such an approach could also be a group tourist draw with a period meal at one of the older houses.

http://thecore.uchicago.edu/Winter2016/features/chicago-city-syllabus.shtml?msource=SHORTLIST&tr=y&auid=16621394
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 Here's a different feeling about Attawapiskat, the native community that is experiencing a holocaust of suicides
.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/left-behind-in-attawapiskat-1.3538466
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Gee! Funny how professor Savoie didn't know about this when he wrote his book about the trouble the New Brunswick economy is in. And funny that Norbert hasn't mentioned this in his columns. You know, Norbert being such an expert on the economy and everything.

http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/massive-offshore-tax-haven-account-leak-includes-names-of-450-wealthy-canadians

And doesn't professor Savoie read Financial Post? Or he could go to google, "Canada tax  havens".

The amount of our money in tax havens is estimated to be least 200 billion. Some estimates are higher. The tax on that would balance a lot of  government budgets.
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And here's an interesting story from CBC news on April 16. The New Brunswick government is planning to spend some $38 million dollars in tax money to buy a bankrupt shipyard, pay its debts and renovate it. The idea behind it is the usual, pious one - to create jobs.

But, gee, I thought the gospel in New Brunswick is that private business creates jobs. And read Norbert. He says that government doesn't know how to do anything. Only private business (like the one that went broke in this case) knows how to run a business.

And, if this is such a hot deal, why has no private business offered to buy it?
And won't this take money away from areas that need it - like education and  health - and that also create jobs?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-naval-centre-1.3539203
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And, to stick my neck out, here are my predictions on the U.S. leadership races - and the general election.

1. The Republican brass will not allow Trump to win. Such a win would destroy the Republican party. And, in any case, Trump would almost certainly lose a presidential election.  The party will almost certainly go for Cruz - who, like Trump, is very unlikely to win the presidency.

2. Sanders would be the person most likely to win a presidential election.   But the Democrat brass will never let him get the nomination.

3. The Democrats will, almost certainly, choose Clinton who has virtually the same policies (and the same lack of ethics) that Cruz has. And Clinton can almost certainly beat Cruz in a  presidential race. But -

4. I wouldn't bet on any of the above. There's a big scandal hanging over Clinton's head - in fact, two big scandals. One concerns her illegal revelation of state secrets. If her name were Assange, she'd now be in a prison somewhere. Will the government press charges against her? It probably won't. I can't see Obama allowing any charge against the only person that the owners of the Democrats have who can win and who they want to win.

The other scandal is the very expensive speeches she's been giving to Wall St. honchos. She has received tens of millions of dollars (at least) for these speeches, all of them unreported. If they get out,  and there are demands for them to be made public, that could finish her.

Lurking under this is an even bigger question.

The connection between American voters and their government, whether Democrat or Republican, has broken. The myth that the U.S. is a democracy is now believed only by a minority. That's why we have two men who are polar opposites leading the in the races. Trump is the man for people who are disillusioned by the Republicans but haven't figured out why. He would be a disaster as president because the only alternative he offers is anger.

Sanders offers an alternative. The problem is that neither he nor Trump represent the fronts for big business that the parties have become.

Trump or Cruze or Clinton  could win on a very low turnout, with millions of permanently alienated voters staying home.

Sanders could win on a strong turnout, and maybe even on something less than that. But he would be a president without really having a party.

In any of these cases, the U.S. is facing the most important election in its history. One way or the other, this election will change the meaning of the nation to its people. And that could turn into something very violent and dangerous, indeed.
The greedy always overdo it. - and that reminds me.

Watch out for the TransPacific Trade Deal. Public debate on it is scheduled to begin soon. And don't trust Justin on this one.
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April 16: Sometimes you have to make a choice.

For its Saturday edition, the Irving press always has a Faith page. After all, the ownership of the paper is guided by its religious principles. That's why it proudly offers Christian services at its very own church. And that's why there's always a big Faith page in section C every Saturday.

Except this one. It needed five pages of section C to list all the candidates for school council and Regional Health Authority elections. (I don't know whether this was paid for by the government. I suspect it was. If so, there was big money involved, too.)  A tough choice would have to be made. Something would have to be cut.

The column on wine? No. Wine is too spiritual to cut.

Heloise on how pets need  sunscreem too? Certainly not.

The Lovescope - a column on finding a mate? No. People need that.
OOH- The Daily Horoscope. That's a big space. No. Without that, I wouldn't know that I should get together with friends today, or that love is on the horizon.
What had to go was the page of least importance.

 Of course. The Faith page. It's an understandable choice. We don't live in a Christian society. We never have. There is little trace of any religious principle in either the Liberals or the Conservatives. Christianity and capitalism are dead opposites. Like the United States and most of the western world, we talk about religion. But I see little evidence that we take it seriously.

What we need is a church that does horoscopes.
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Gwynne Dyer has a new book about ISIS and related groups. It's called 'Don't Panic', and it's about ISIS, terror and the middle east. I won't kid you. Three quarters of this is a really tough read with pages of people and place names I have never heard of, and  cannot pronounce. But it pays off in the final quarter with simpler language that puts all the pieces together.

Briefly, ISIS is one of many extreme, religious groups who use terrorism at home and abroad to build their following. But they are, and will likely remain, a small proportion of the  Muslim world. These groups are also divided against each other. The real problem that Muslims  (and us) have to worry about is corporate bosses in the U.S. (and Russia).
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So far, U.S. police have killed 298 people this year. That puts them on track for a record year of killing. And, as usual, the proportion of blacks being killed is some five times that of whites.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings
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And here is one of the best accounts I have seen of Canada's crisis among its native peoples.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/canada-first-nations-suicide-crisis-attawapiskat-history
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And Pope Francis continues give some real leadership in a refugee crisis most of us prefer to ignore.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/16/pope-francis-flies-to-lesbos-to-highlight-humanitarian-crisis-in-europe
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The U.S.invasion of Iraq may well go down in history as the worst foreign policy decision ever. The U.S. shattered what had been a stable country. It created a country with over a million war dead, millions of refugees, utilities like electricity destroyed - and still destroyed, with money supposedly for reconstruction of hospitals and schools ending up in the pockets of American contractors, with an American-chosen government made up of thoroughly corrupt people, and a population religiously divided and in despair. And beyond the borders of Iraq, that war became the trigger for destabilization and chaos in the whole middle east.

Bush and Blair should have been hanged for that invasion. But it's also true that this was an invasion wanted by U.S. corporate bosses who own both the Republicans and Democrats. And those same people are the ones now supporting Cruz and Clinton.

Isis in Iraq may be defeated in a year or so. But Iraq as a nation will likely never recover.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/reach-point-repair-160411130748965.html
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Then there's this fascinating article on the trillions in American dollars held in tax havens. There's also a stunning chart comparing how much (little) American corporations pay in taxes to how much they collect in government gifts, loans, etc. I expect the proportions would  look much the same in Canada.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-corporate-tax-cheats-hiding-1-4-trillion-in-profits-in-offshore-accounts/5520326
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Here is an old story - the theories of why Hitler developed such a hatred for Jews. What it comes down to is that Hitler's hatreds don't need any exotic reasoning. It was exactly the same sort of reasoning that was taking shape in the Europe of his time, in Britain, in the U.S., and in Canada. Hitler didn't invent it. All us Christians did.

When Canada's prime minister Mackenzie King visited Hitler, he well knew Hitler's attitude to Jews, and his persecution of them. His comment on that meeting was, "Hitler's eyes reminded me of Joan of Arc."

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2.209/why-did-adolf-hitler-hate-the-jews-1.2618
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Section A of today's Irving press has an important story. Some thirty protestors gathered near the Champlain Mall in Monctonto to demand a fifteen dollar minimum wage. It would certainly be easy to raise that money. Just get the wealthy to pay their taxes.

It's a very small story. Facing it is one equally important in the judgement of the editors "Moncton Poutine Festival sells out in less than an hour."
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 The editorial is another "in memoriam". I don't doubt that the person being remembered was an outstanding citizen. But that is not what an editorial is for.

Norbert has a column he writes every week or so. It's about fossil fuels and public consultations. He's opposed to have government committees study these things. I'm not.

 I think  government should study what they plan to do before they do it. I also think the idea of public consultation is always a con job. Real public consutation is what happens on election day after the candidates have told us what they intend to do. Then one party gets elected to do it, presumably following principles it has outlined during the election campaign, principlies which we could read about if the Irving press would ever print them.

We don't elect a government so it can ask us what to do. As well, the people of New Brunswick are poorly informed by most of their news media, so most have no capacity to make such decisions. Why this NB fuss to have consultations in a society which is afraid to discuss political issues publicly in the first place?

Murphy's Law is about the top five issues for the municipal elections. Two problems. All five are economic issues - as if the city were a business. It's not. But this also column reads like a business report in another respect. All the problems it does touch on are short term ones.

Moncton needs a  population that is NOT conformist, that is free to think and to speak publicly as it sees fit. What should the city do to encourage that? (Hint, a library is not just a storage place for books. It needs adequate funding to encourage intellectual activity in the community. And no, I do not mean colouring books for adults.  Moncton desperately needs to break out of its village conformity.)

It needs work on sewage treatment, flood planning,  river restoration, yes. It also needs some long term planning that should have begun twenty years ago on public transit and urban planning.

Where  can it get that funding? Well, that would call for finding out what tax money we aren't getting from the wealthy of this province. It would call for naming names, and urging the federal government to be more inquiring than it has been.

And Alec Bruce? This column is  a nicely written little story. But that's all it is.

Look, we have a province with a minimum wage of $10.65. We also have a few people who make $10.65 in the time it takes to stifle a yawn. And we have some who make a lot more than that. They aren't job creators. They're looters. And it seems that some of them, at least, while collecting big money gifts from government, do not pay taxes. If we keep following that path, we are destroying ourselves, and our own children. And soon.

This is the big issue that we should be reading about in this paper.

The guest column is a useful one of the practical requrirements of any law regarding physician-hastened death.
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On the front page of Canada&World is a big story that journalists at a sister-paper in the Irving press have been nominated for a prize. Big deal. The world of journalism is full of  awards. It's like  having a birthday every day. I won several for radio and and at least a couple for print. Nobody got excited. Today, I can't even remember what I got them for. (To make it worse, the radio plaques were given to the station, and hung up on its walls. I only got to look at them.)

None of the Canada&World news says much about anything. Most of it is ads. Then there's Canada in second place, a couple of U.S. stories....

The only story worth reading (in its own, peculiar way) , is "Mississippi governor signs law allowing guns in church."
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I think we may have to wait quite a while before Trudeau has anything to say about Canadians and tax havens. For the full meaning of 'wait a while', think of 'eternity'.
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In my general annoyance with today's paper, I forgot to mention an excellent column by Amanda Cormier, a student columnist now studying at Mount Allison. It's about the government  announcement of free tuition for some New Brunswick students. Everyhing she says is quite right. - though I would add a point.

 For a person who is poor, the very idea of university is simply not a part of that person's world. In the minds of their parents, their social circle, in their own minds, university is an alien concept. They've grown up in  a world in which success and ambition  mean having a job, any job and, if lucky, a steady job. And there is a very dark veil between them and the rest of the world.

One of ms. Cormier's statements did confuse me, though. She says students in universities experiment with their sexuality. Now, I was a university student for eight years; and nobody offered to experiment with my sexuality.

Do you have to sign up for it?

April 15: The next, American revolution.

The Irving press hasn't said much about The Leap Manifesto by the NDP. We get a never ending series of commentaries by Liberal and Conservative politicians, none of them with anything useful to say. But rarely, if ever, a  commentary from any other party. In fact, The Leap Manifesto is about a series of quite necessary issues we have to deal with. (Of course, it's possible these are issues Mr. Irving does not care to deal with.)

Anyway, The Globe and Mail, not having the high standards of the Irving press, has published a commentary on it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/sorry-pundits-of-canada-the-leap-will-bring-us-together/article29629853/
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Last night, while watching one of the endless discussions of the US party leadership races, it dawned on my why they were all irrelevant. They don't see the impact of Bernie Sanders.

Clinton and Cruz are standard stuff - both owned by big money. Really, they are just carbon copies of most leadership candidates of the the last century and more. Trump has no coherent policies on anything. He is simply appealing to all people to pay attention to him. It's an extension of the sense of inadequacy that caused him to buy such a dreadful wig.

Sanders is something very different. He uses the word 'socialist' - and in a favourable way. Since 1945, at least - no American politician would have dared to use that word. In fact, it was usually blended with communism as "unAmerican". There was in those years a panic that swept the U.S. It was called McCarthyism, named for the senator who dominated headlines with his unAmerican Activities Committee. He destroyed lives. He destroyed careers by labelling people as unAmerican. Major hollywood stars like Gary Cooper licked his boots to escape censure. Since then, nobody has dared to mention socialist measures. That's why the U.S. has the world's most expensive (and one of the least effective) medical systems in the developed world.

Public education has been attacked by people who call it socialist. (Which, in fact, it is.) And that has led to a strong campaign for the last fifty years to privatize education, an endeavour that has managed to create a sort of hybrid public/private system which is one of the weakest -( and most expensive) in the developed world.

Sanders has changed that. The word 'socialism' is back in the American vocabulary. And it's back with a surprisingly large following. This is a stunning reaction to generations of right-wing propaganda; and it could well mark the re-birth of a socialist movement in the U.S.

This is the main and perhaps the only signficant feature of these leadership races.
And there's a bad side to it. Expect another rise of McCarthyism with its fears and hysteria about unAmericanism. And expect the America state to become more obsessed with domestic spying and destruction of  freedom supposedly in defence of the freedom it is destroying..

And, quite possibly, expect all that to lead to some pretty severe social disorder.
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And here's a story the Irving press didn't have room for because it needed the space for a big, front page story on new  rules for sport fishermen. And, no, it had nothing in the way of an editorial or a commentary on this subject.

The world average temperature has gone up every month, setting new records for heat every month for the last eleven months. So, let's hurry and get those oil pipelines built before it gets too hot to do it.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/15/march-temperature-smashes-100-year-global-record

Hasn't it occured to anybody in the oil industry that any money now spent on producing fossil fuels is an investment that cannot pay off? These projects are hugely expensive, so they take a long time to pay off. Any money we have now should be spent on developing alternative energy, not wasted on projects that can only be destructive.

Even blinded by greed, and even though sometimes lacking in intelligence as a result, even oil execs must have figured that out. But they're pushing ahead, anyway.  It can't be just greed and stupidity. It has to be greed - and some other angle they've dreamed up.
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Then there's this story about thousands of refugees who are fleeing ISIS, but  being shot by Turkish troops when they try to get into Turkey. But that's not big enough to make the pages of the Irving press. It's headline story on word news is a breaking story that New Brunswick is asking for a New Brunswicker to be appointed to the National Energy Board that discusses really serious issues like pipelines. I mean, we're on a roll with boosting temperatures; so let's keep going.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/thousands-of-refugees-flee-for-turkish-border-after-surprise-isis-attack
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And here is a range of reaction from around the world to the Panama Papers, the story the Irving press is still ignoring. Are you thinking about it, Norbert?Careful.  Puppy will get slapped if he barks.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/if-only-ordinary-citizens-pay-tax-there-will-be-a-revolt-panama-papers-reaction
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This one should be required reading for everybody at Irving press.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
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And here's a story that never got much coverage in North America. And it's about a type of incident that has been repeated since then - many times.

http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2016/815-kunduz-killers-go-free.html
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Did you know that Syria recently held a national election? It certainly didn't make the Irving press. But here's a commentary about the election held just two days ago.

Assad is no sweetheart. But Syrians don't have a whole lot of choice at this point, do they? They certainly don't want the kind of people respresented by the so-called 'rebels' who are financed by the U.S.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/14/syrian-elections-prove-again-that-washington-and-its-presstitutes-lie-through-their-teeth-paul-craig-roberts

Of course, the election  would not have been a democratic one like the U.S. where the winner is whoever gets the most backing from billionaires.
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And so to the Irving press.

In Section A, the only news of significance is that the province will offer free tuition for lower-income students.

The editorial is largely about a Father McKee and his record of compassion for the poor. Well, yes. People should know about that. There should be a page for columns like this to remind us of our past. And Father McKee sounds like a person who should be remembered.

But this is not what an editorial is for. It is not for local boosterism.  It is supposed to explain the position taken by the newspaper on a major issue of the day - and the reasons for taking it. (Actually, I've never been crazy about editorials because, really - how can a newspaper have an opinion? Only people can do that. Does this mean everybody at the paper agrees with this? Or all the editors? Or all the editors and columnists?) The editorial belonged to an age when newspapers were openly biased, propaganda sheets. They still are, of course. But they really should now pretend to be honest. So skip the editorials.

Norbert's column, again, is not on a topic I know much about. But it sounds reasonable.

The guest commentary is by somebody who seems to sit on a lot of committees. I don't think I would care be on any of them. This is someone who has nothing intelligible to say, and can take a long time in saying it. Roughly, his message is,  'we must have hope. we must build a better future. And brush your teeth twice a day.'

If Alec Bruce has any fault, it's in his very long and wordy commentaries that could say all they have to say in one paragraph. In this case, the opening paragraphs are about dog training - and that theme keeps interfering through the whole column. Please. This is a province with, at best, a low literacy rate. Mr. Bruce needs to use language which is bluntly informative rather than fussily decorative.

GWYNNE DYER is back, at least for today! He has an excellent column on a topic the Irving press has largely ignored - The possible breakup of the European Union, almost certainly to be followed  by a Scottish secession from Britain. It's even worse than Dyer tells it in this column. We are looking at far more than a break-up of Europe. We're looking at the rise of an extreme right. We've seen it - well, we haven't if we just read the Irving press - but it's happening with the Naziis in the part of Ukraine that's on our side, with Poland and other countries, with strong support from the very right-wing press that dominates Europe and North America. This is very similar to Hitler's Germany of the early 1930s.
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Canada&World, again, barely puts a toe out of Canada - except for a 'who cares story' about Trump's campaign manager, a story about Ireland and - the only one worth reading - a major earthquake in Japan. (Since then it has suffered an even more severe quake.)

The only major story in the section is that Ottawa has at last returned land that it took from a native people's reservation some 75 years ago. That's nice. But it's the tiniest possible step to what is needed.

Once again, the editor for this section shows no sense of what news is important in North America, and  shows, largely, an indifference to the rest of the world.
The world is on the brink of several wars and plots that could lead to a nuclear war. I can only assume the Irving editors think that if it happens, it will start on Main St., Moncton, NB, probably with an attack on the events centre.

April 14: The greatest story never told...

The top fifty American coporations have 1.3 trillion dollars stored in tax havens. The governments of Canada and New Brunswick, and even the eagle-eyed journalists of Irving press seem not to know that. But the CBC got it from Oxfam which also named the corporations.

That's not just - ooh, gee, what a lot of money! That's money that does not get invested in the home country of the corporation It's also tax money we don't have for education and health care. It's  money we don't have for our police and our firemen.

How often have you read that corporate profits create jobs? The reality is they don't. Anyone who has looked at Africa, Latin America, the middle east for the last century and more should know that. Corporations exist to get money for themselves. Nothing else.

And these are only the top fifty in the U.S. Can the Irving press find out who the top fifty in Canada are? Then there are all those corporations in China, Russia, Britain....

There's a reason we're in financial trouble. There's a reason why the income gap has been growing.

If somebody is caught talking on a   cell phone while driving, or a drunk breaks a window, we get big stories about it from the court house. That's cheap and easy and trivial gossip news. Then there's been this story of trillions of dollars stolen from us, and it got a total of two, vague stories, then was dropped cold. We got over ten times more on Dennis Oland than we have on the greatest robbery in history.

And we got no commentary on it. Instead, we got bed time stories, and a stirring appeal to put up a stop sign at a dangerous intersection.

We, all of us, have suffered an enormous theft by  people the Irving press prefers to refer to as phil-an-thro-pists. It's not only a massive theft. It means loss of lives around the world, profound suffering, severe social disorder....

This is  hugely important story. CAN YOU READ THIS, NORBERT?

Oh, I know the wealthy work hard for their money. But so do we. And we pay our taxes - so the government can   give grants and forests and that sort of stuff to corporations.

Is there anyone at the Irving press who has integrity? It was on CBC news, right here in Moncton.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a society which calls itself Christian - or Jewish or Muslim - but which tolerates this open greed and indifference to others.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tax-haven-oxfam-1.3535305

Where is  your book on this, professor Savoie?
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There's a petition going around about Revenue Canada's gentle handling (to say the least) of the wealthy. It also has a list of CBC stories about what has been going on. It would seem the Canadian government is a very happy partner to the very rich in their tax evasion.
google change org.
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And here's a case of bad journalism from The Guardian. Russian aircraft flew provocatively close to American  warships in the Baltic, creating the possibility of an accident. That much is quite true.

But, the Baltic is   right beside Russia. Why are US warships carrying out manoeuvres in the Baltic? Can you imagine the U.S. reaction to Russian ships carrying out manoueuvers in, say, the Caribbean? or Hawaii?
Then we are told that the tension in that region was caused  by the Russian annexation of the Crimea. - the Irving press might think so. But we expect better from The Guardian.

The trouble began when the U.S. organized and financed a coup in Ukraine, deposing the elected government which was friendly to Russia, and installing a government approved of by the U.S. The Crimea was a part of Ukraine; but it's population was Russian, and it wanted nothing to do with a U.S. sponsored government. (That has turned out to be wise as the new, Ukraine government has thoroughly looted the country.)

What the U.S. was attempting to do was to install a regime friendly to the U.S. in a Ukraine that included a region who's population was Russian Russian, and which had a major Russian naval base. That's when Russia intervened.
Imagine if Russia had organized and financed a coup in Hawaii. Would the U.S. just laugh it off?

As well, the U.S. has been moving troops, tanks and missiles up to the Russian border. How's that for being provocative?

It looks like one of two the things in happening.

1. The U.S. is desperate to stop Chinese and Russian development  before it's too late. The American empire is in decline. It can be held together even now only by massive and unsustainable military spending, and by illegal wars. It needs a war, and it needs it now.

or

2. The U.S. hopes to make Russia and China back off with threats, even if that means a high risk of war - and it does.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/russian-attack-planes-buzz-uss-donald-cook-baltic-sea
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Page 1 of the Irving press has a strange story. A resort called Larry's Gulch is a frequent meeting place for the provinces wealthy and powerful to  have talks on things like - oh, tax breaks, a government handout for the rich, that sort of thing. News agencies have a code of ethics (yes, they do) which prohibit employees from attending such affairs since they can be seen as an encouragement to collusion between the press and the wealthy. (Which they are.) Two editorial-level staff of Irving press attended, anyway, and arranged to have their names kept secret. This was an offence against the Conflict of Interest Act. Curiously, it was decided that though they committed an offence under the law, it wasn't.....you know....really an offence. Hey, I park without putting a quarter in the meter, and that's an offence.

A2 has the usual list of candidates for councils. And, as usual, none of them has a platorm, just a promise to do 'good things'.

A typical story is "Man accused of of voyeurism to remain in custody". This is scandalmag stuff. interesting, though, that he remains in custody while Irving news staff who were colluding with the wealthy are set free.
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The great, editorial issue of the day is that the lot beside the 'events centre' must be used for apartments and retail stores. Then people will go shopping before a hockey game, and dine after, and we'll have a vibrant Maint St.
Right. People always want to go shopping before a hockey game. Perhaps the editor can give us examples where this has happened. (Skip the home ice locale of the Montreal Canadiens. The only place that has opened up is a sandwich shop across the street.)

There's an interesting letter to the editor about how Jesus treated women as equals. Too bad it's not true. He was polite to them. He was gentlemanly. But He never said they were equal and, for over 2,000 years they were not equal in Christian churches. Changes to make them equal have been very, very recent and quite limited. Christiany, Judaism, and Islam have a good deal in common. All of them, for most of their histories, have relegated women to the back seats. And there's still a good deal of that in the Christian faith as in others.

Norbert has, I think, a quite decent column on reform of the municipalities act. But I can't even pretend to know that much about it.

Justin Ryan has an informative article on the very busy time he's been having - along with a great many volunteers -in settling refugees into our society. It's an important read. (I don't think it's really a commentary, though.)

The guest commentary is a free ad for the provincial Conservative party. I'm not crazy about these at the best of times. But, if we are going to have them, we should be getting a broader range of political opinion. We should be giving equal space to all the parties, not to just the two, Irving parties.

Opinions should have equal opportunity - whether represented in the Assembly or not. In fact, the Liberals and Conservatives are the least we need to hear from because they get lots of news coverage. How can voters make informed choices when the only opinions they ever hear come from just two parties, and both of them the same?

Alec Bruce has an important column. It deals with unemployment and says of it, "The root cause of this province's jobs crisis runs deep into social mores that have kept an unacceptably large proportion of New Brunswickers functionally illiterate..." - and on to other failures.

That's true. And it's true not just of the jobs problem. Something very noticeable in New Brunswick is a lack of intellectual activity - of open and free discussion, of a wish to learn, of intellectual activity for children. They go to the Y and the Mall - but just to hang out. What they need is groups that meet to talk about their writing, to debate, to discuss current affairs, to discuss books. But they grow up in an atmosphere that provides little opportunity for these and, one senses, even disapproves of such things. It's a society in which the most important thing is to conform, to fit in. And when that is  your only objective, a brain is a handicap.
Computers, used almost entirely for frivolous activities, have made it much worse.

And the Irving press is a major touch in creating a conformist, unimaginative society.

This is not a problem that can simply be dumped into the laps of the schools. Much of this the schools cannot deal with because they are limited by school bus schedules. In any case, it's a condition that begins in the society itself, that begins before school, that is encouraged in the home, and into adulthood.
It's a problem for the whole province. It may even be the province's greatest problem.
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The front page on Canada&World has two, big stories on things that haven't happened yet. Permier Gallant is going to give a speech to oil execs. A Moncton lawyer is probably going to annouce her bid for leadership of the Conservative party.

Look. If they haven't done it yet, there's nothing to tell us. Each of these stories should be a one-liner, at best.

And I must object to the paper's reference to oil execs as an 'elite'. Would we call successful bank robbers an elite? Successful polluters? What's elite about a gang who vastly overpay themselves and who send their money to tax havens?
New Brunswick municipalities are mad because police and firemen got good wage settlements. Gee. This will make other groups want more. I expect it will. And what the municipalities would prefer is bad wage settlements so we can keep everybody poor.

Spokesman Raymond Murphy says they should pay less to our police and firemen than the ones  in BC because it costs more to live in BC. Damn right.
So J.D.Irving and his execs should get paid less because it costs them less to live in New Brunswick. Anyway, a century and more of labour history has proven that employers always drive wages down as low as they can. And the effect of that is to bring out the Brian Murphys to demand that everybody's salaries should now go down. That's how the Rockefellers built their fortune - by making every else poor.

That leads to something reported on B6. A Montreal -based company called David's Tea requires its employees to phone in each day to see if there's any work for them. If not, there's no pay for them. Perhaps Mr. Murphy would suggest this cost-saving measure to the municipalities.

The only story in Canada&World woth readinig is on B6, "Attaawapiskat crisis has hallmarks of possible 'suicide contagion' experts say."

There is virtually nothing about the world. Well, there is a story about a small brewery in Rhode Island that wants to change the liquor laws a bit.

Much of what appears in Section B could be in section A - with the present content of Section A just dumped. (almost all of it is just trivial).

Section B could then be use for world news - but even that won't save it. Foreign news is usually useless without some commentary to encourage thinking about it.  (As well, foreign news, and far more of it) is more easily watched on TV.) What we need is commentary to stir our thinking about the meaning of it.

TV, for all the chatter, does not do much to stimuilate thinking. It's the no-brainer of the media world.