July 18: A very bad day in the news.

Of 33 metro regions in Canada, St. John holds down position no. 33 for its poverty rate among single income families. And, before you raise a cheer for Moncton, it stands at 31.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/saint-john-poverty-federal-assistance-1.3683402

No, I didn't find this story in the irving press.  (In fact, I couldn't find any story in the irving press abut anything for the past Saturday and this Monday.) If it were carried, the story would be just a moan that these are tough times - or that poor people are too lazy....  Anything but the truth.

The truth is that, in New Brunswick, greed rules. The wealthy get low taxes - and whether they pay even those is unclear. Then there are the rip-offs - like a hundred million dollar 'events centre'. Then there are those news media, owned by the very wealthy, that tell us nothing except to pump out the gospel of the wealthy - that rich people create jobs and make us wealthy. (If that were true, St. John would be rolling in money - rather than in poisonous fumes.) But enough people believe this to vote in government after government that gives away millions to the wealthy, and doesn't ask questions about their taxes.

In Canada&World, the headline is "Premier says talks going well for regional register of lobbyists". And what will that do? Well, people who ask for the multi-million dollar gifts and tax breaks - or contracts at inflated prices, will have to register.   And what will that do? Nothing whatever. People who have been getting special access to the government will now have to register.

But the problems is not that they aren't registered. The problem is that there are people who have access to government to get special favours. In fact, any of us could name several of them as it is. The story says this will make the practice transparent. No, it won't. They'll still have access. They'll still be a corrupting force in a provincial government that exists largely to be corrupted.
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The attempted coup in Turkey made the Irving press on Saturday and Monday - on the last page! And there's no hint of what that coup could mean. No, the big, front-page headlines  were about the drop in the price of beer and about nothing happening on the question of booting cars.

What does it all mean? I don't know. But there are suggestions worth thinking about.

Given the character of Turkey's leader, Erdogan, it could mean that Turkey will now become, effectively, a dictatorship. Or - well - there's a question of who was behind this coup. Was it just a few, top army officers? Maybe, but not likely.
Could it possibly have something to do with Russia or the U.S.? Or both?

Turkey is close to Russia, economically, in general trade and in oil. Is it possible that Erdogan was moving too close to Russia? Is it possible that the U.S. paid for what it likes to call a 'regime change'. After all, this is something the U.S. has been doing at quite a pace for over a century, now.

Or is it possible Russia was behind this?  Possible. But, if so, how could the U.S. not know about a plot in a NATO coutry involving thousands of people? If the many U.S. and allied espionage agencies did not know about this ----- no, it's not possible.
A reader sent this to me from The Saker. This is by a Russian who now lives in Iceland. Yes, there is a possiblity of bias - but no more so than in almost all the western news media.  Generally, I've found The Saker an honest and reliable source - and this analysis of what might have happened in Turkey makes sense - as most of the others do not.

http://thesaker.is/failed-coup-in-turkey-a-few-initial-thoughts/

The item below, quoting Kerry, suggests (unintentionally) that the U.S. was behind it. Otherwise, diplomacy alone would have made Kerry's reaction overdone.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-18/john-kerry-threatens-turkey-nato-expulsion

Whatever the case, this could mean a major change in world politics, with Russia taking a very strong position in the middle east. Most of the Muslim world has no enthusiasm for Russia - but it has even less for the United States.
And here's one that gives a general picture of the whole mess the world is in. I agree with it  - except for the final paragraph which, I think, is off the wall.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2016/06/firing-elites_28.html#more
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I haven't spoken ot the irving press for Saturday and Monday. How can I? There's nothing in it.

On the Faith page, Brett Annington comes very close to  having something to say with,  "When the rich young man came to Jesus to ask what he might to do inherit eternal life the answer was quite straightforward....Give everything you have to the poor."

But readers need to be taken a step further than that. They need an example not from 2,000 years ago in another land, but from now - in New Brunswick.  In the long history of this province, can you name a single rich man who has given all he had to the poor? Do you think this is a regular topic for discussion at board meetings of Irving Oil? Or from the rent-a- revs who preach at the Irving Chapel?

In fact, this statement is based a concept that is contrary to the whole structure of our society. If Jesus said this at a dinner of the Chamber of Commerce, He'd never be invited back; and His picture would be removed from its place in the Chamber's hall of fame.

There is simply nothing in this paper. We have been told that the editor-in-chief of the irving press has a master's degree in journalism. I've taught journalism at the Bachelor's level where students were taught to write well, to avoid triviality, to avoid bias. I guess the Master's level is where they learn to put readers into a collective stupor.
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I have spent many hours, now, plodding through every source I can think of for an analysis of the failed coup in Turkey. Everything I find is speculation. The Saker one makes sense - but it's still speculation. The Guardian really has nothing (which is somewhat more than the Irving press has.)  So here's Gwynne Dyer, though even he is less than his usual self.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45125.htm

My sticking point is that we are asked to believe that in a Turkey, crawling with international spies and with electronic espionage as well as its own s[pies,   was unaware of a plot involving at least 6,000 people. (Incidentally, Turkey is also home to a stockpile of U.S. nuclear weapons.)
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Then we have the political chaos in Britain. The new prime minister, Theresa May of the Conservative Party,  looks like the kind of person who could trigger some severe violence.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45128.htm

Nor is there much reason to look to the Labour Party. It was destroyed by the treachery and self-serving policies of Tony Blair. And it's nowhere close to recovering.
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In the U.S. there's been a tremendous growth of charter schools. These really are private schools - and they're based on the Norbert Cunninham delusion that private ownership is always better than public ownership.

Now, there's nothing wrong with private schools - except   that these are supported by a massive campaign of propaganda. In many regions, unless you send your children to a charter school, they are dead in the water so far as any future is concerned. The result is huge numbers of parents going into debt for a system which is in  no way superior - but is very, very expensive, and which also gets money from the government. And the offshoot of that is savagely reduced budgets for the public schools which are now the schools of  the poor.
Again, there is nothing wrong with private schools. But there's somthing terribly wrong when the growth of public schools is destroyed by budgetting, and the only choice of the poor - and much of the middle class - is to attend the schools of the poor  to train for a life of being poor.

http://www.alternet.org/education/charter-school-expansion-having-devastating-impact-public-school-finances
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And here's a cheery one to get you through the evening.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/trumps-co-author-speaks-donald-sociopath

Not that it makes any difference. HIllary Clinton has her own devils. If fact, she's one of them.
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And here's one to squelch any notion that British prime minister Theresa May  is intelligent.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/16/new-uk-pm-theresa-may-shuts-climate-change-office/

Even the irving press has come to accept that climate change is real. However, it has also decided we should not do anything about it because it creates jobs.
We have yet to realize that there are things we cannot have no matter how much we want them.
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This has been a profoundly disturbing day. We have been fighting wars or preparing to fight them for over 70 years. And despite the impression one might get from the news, we are not fighting to bring anybody democracy or to protect ourselves from all those poor and small countries that we are told are a threat to us. It's all being done to make hundreds of millions poor so the rich can get much richer.

So, if you're poor, good luck on asking a rich New Brunswicker to give you his money.

As for the world, we appear to be on the edge of the crisis of greed and indifference to others. It's happening all over the world and we, believe it or not, are part of that world. What makes it worse is that the greedy and indifferent are also remarkably stupid. They have been destroying whole societies, whole nations around the world.  They have created over 25 million refugees. They have murdered millions.

Can you seriously expect a better world out of this? And Canada is wrong, dead wrong, in playing a role in this orgy of greed and mass murder.

July 15: More me than news.

The good news is that there will be no blog this weekend. I feel the call of sand and salt water.

The bad news is that I am now about to annoy some (most? all?) readers.
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I remember October of 1962 quite well. I was teaching, and I arrived at school to see students in terrified groups at the front of the school. Many were in tears. I had just caught the news myself as I left home. Russian ships were carrying nuclear weapons to Cuba, just off the coast of Florida. President Kennedy warned them that American ships were on their way to intercept them.

World nuclear war seemed a certainty within days. For almost two weeks, one could feel the universal tension, horror and fear. Then it suddenly broke as the Russian ships turned back.

Now, it is the U.S. that is planting   nuclear weapons even closer the Russian border than the Russian weapons would have been to Florida. And we are sending a thousand Canadians to the region as sacrificial lambs.

Where is the tension, the horror, the fear? In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis was the main  feature of the news every day it lasted. In 2016, this American-caused missile crisis has attracted so little news that the crisis doesn't even have a name.
How is it that the western public has become so stupified that it knows nothing about the crisis, wants to know nothing, and really doesn't give a damn? In 1962, this was the greatest crisis in world history and, oh, the Russians were evil for causing it.

In 2016, it's also the greatest crisis in world history. But nobody cares. And the American leaders are not at all evil for what they are doing.

I  can't pretend to know the whole reason for that. Part of the reason is,  probably, that the western news media are essentially racist in their world views. They usually portray anything done by the west as good - like the mass murder in Iraq. The western world has been carrying out mass murder all over the world since 1492. Nobody will ever know the scale of murder, torture, starvation, slavery, theft, social destruction  carried out by our God-fearing Christians.

And deep down, we justify it by our racism. The great heroes of western history have, for the most part, been racist butchers - the Clives, the General Gordons, the Custers.

We did not turn against Hitler because of his treatment of Jews. In fact, Hitler had considerable support throughout the western world. Britain and France, for example, turned against him only when he was becoming a threat to Britain and France.

The Chilcot Inquiry, mild though it was, revealed Bush and Blair and liars and murderers on a grand scale. But our press has paid very little attention to it. In fact, the American press has almost ignored it. And Bush is still a welcome member of his very Christian church.

But, of course, the people he butchered were not real people - not like you and me.

Our news media, as they always have, encourage a racist view of the world. Even Russians are treated as if they are a race, and one naturally ridden with evil. Racism is a tool that's been used by our political leaders to justify our killing.
But I'm afraid it goes even deeper than that. Even a leader like Hitler did not invent racism. It is a tool that lies deep in all of us. The Hitlers and the Blairs and the Bushes  (yes, and the Obamas) just pick it up and use it on us.

The attacks of radical  islamists did not start all by themselves for no reason at all. But the line we are getting from our news media and from goverment is that it all began for no reason at all. It was just crazy people attacking us when we hadn't don't anything wrong. And that is what has led us into believing we can fight a war against it.

The reality is that that is not what caused it. And other reality is, probably, that we cannot end it by fighting a war.

Radical Islam arose out of a century of bullying, mass killing and theft by oil billionaires who used us and our governments to do their killing for them. In fact, radical Islam was created by us. Any 'war' to defeat it will cause huge casualties , destroy whole nations  (as it is already doing), and amost certainly become a world war complete with nukes.

And the only possible reason to go that route is to protect the profits of the oil industry.

The only way to end Muslim terrorism is to end oil industry terrorism. At that, it may already have gone too far to be ended. Certainly, there is no possibility that the U.S. will adopt a peaceful solution with  either Trump or Clinton. In fact, it may have gone too far as long ago as 1953 when the U.S. and Britain overthrew the elected government of Iran to impose a dictator - as a service to their oil industries. And it was made infinitely worse by the invasion of Iraq.
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The biggest news yesterday and almost certainly for days to come is the attack in Nice, France, that killed over  85 people. (I am not going to call it a terrorist attack. ALL attacks are terrorist, whether they are caused by Muslims or Christians or billionaires. The worst terrorist attacks of the last fifty years have been caused by Christians.  By all means have sympathy for the victims in Nice. They didn't deserve to die. Then, while you're at it, think of the French record of murder, torture, theft in Africa - notably in Algeria. Think of the slaughter by the French in Vietnam, something that barely made our news.. Us humans, all of us, have taken part in massive slaughter without even thinking about it.)

And our media have lied about that. As I kid, I saw a  film about the foreign legion, Beau Geste. It was a wildly successful film - in the west. There were all those legionnaires marching over the desert, some of them English gentlemen of the highest sort, fighting valiantly for - something....

In fact, they were hired killers who volunteered because of the chances of loot, rape, torture, and because they liked killing. In other words, they were identical to the foreign mercenaries the U.S. now rents from Blackwater to do its dirty work.  Understandably, the people of Africa, the Middle East and Vietnam don't  remember them as nostalgically we we do.

But we seldom hear about that - and we certainly don't hear it from our news media. In fact, most of the 'rebels' fighting against the government of Syria are referred to in our press as 'moderates'. That's to distinguish them from the 'extreme terrorists'. And that's one hell of a simple minded distinction.
First, the 'moderates' are mostly foreigners, and they are mercenaries who would kill for whoever pays them. Like the old legionairres, they have no political objective of their own, no loyalty to anybody and, like the'extreme terrorists', kill lavishily to inspire terror. For that matter, the allied and German airforces both adopted extreme terrorism in bombing in World War 2. The U.S. has used that same extreme terrorism in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Guatemala - and Syria.

There are no moderates in war. So why does our press use these terms? That's just part of the propaganda that news media accept from our governments. A novel of some 70 years ago called it 'doublespeak', the use of words that meant the opposite of what they seemed to mean. The book was a forecast of the future. The future is here.

Almost all our news is couched in words that mean the opposite of what they seem to mean.
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Just quickie on section A of the irving press. The front page headline story on climate change actually has some information in it. So it's worth a read.
Also exciting is the news that the irving chapel will have special music from FOUR (count them, four) people - two reverends and their two spouses. And there's a third reverend as preacher. Boy, this sure beats the sermon on the mount.
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The opinion and commentary pages have two items worth reading.  One, by Ammar Al Asmi is on the integration of Syrian refugees into Moncton. The other, by Alec Bruce, raises the possibility that many of the American tourists this year may be hear to look over New Brunswick as a place to move to.
I'm not sure that's good. Do we really want people from a country that cannot produce anything better than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for leader?
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Canada&World has a story on Nice. It also has a story on the climate change ( that isn't happening, of course ), but is destroying kelp beds in Nova Scotia waters. That reminded me of a recent day wading the almost empty waters Northumberland Strait at low tide. And I remembered my first day in that water fifty years ago when the shores and waters were alive with tiny fish, crabs, clams.
At low tide now, the dunes are simply damp deserts. And the shore birds have largely disappeared.

B4 has a story of John Kerry talking doublespeak. He's willing to cooperate with Russia, but only if it stops bombing the 'moderate' rebels who are, in fact, hired killers. Kerry says Russia has to bomb only 'extremists' (who are the ones the U.S. and the Saudis were helping just months ago.)

 In fact, if you look at the body count, the worse extremist in the world for decades has been the U.S.

There's also a big story about how Americans are scared of their presidential options. They might well be. The two options are the result of a collapse of American democracy, especially out of control since the 1960s. They are also the products of a nation that has used a largely false history to give Americans a skewed view of the world and their role in it. Either of the candidates will almost certainly lead to increased violence in the U.S. and around the world.
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The Guardian has several stories on the Nice attack. What makes it different from other sources I have seen is that the attack may not have been set up by radical Islam. Apparently, there's a great deal we don't know yet. And this is not a good time to leap to conclusions.
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The following writer is one I have found to be reliable. He's certainly a maverick - but he's an intelligent and well-informed maverick. And note what he sas about the fascism that he claims is being forced on Europe. That's not just throwing out nasty names. It is fascism, the real thing, the force that we remember our veterans for saving us from every Nov. 11. I hope that we will some day have a real Nov. 11, one in which we honour the dead for what they fought for, and apologize to them for how we have betrayed what they fought for.

Fascism was the system designed by Mussolini. People of wealth had the right to be personally represented in government without getting elected. In effect, it was an election system based on social class, with guaranteed seating for the very rich.

New Brunswickers should know about that. It was in the December of about three, provincial elections ago that the owner of the newspaper had an opinion column published in his papers, that he had decided to be in a coalition with the government. (To be in coalition means to be a part of the government - and in this case, without getting elected.) In that same column he announced that he would be forming a group of university presidents, prominent business people, all the usual stooges, to plan the economic  future of the province.

But that is precisely what we in the general public had elected a government to do. But, Hey. Forget about the general public. What do they know?
This is exactly the fascism that Mussolini designed, and that Canadians died fighting against.

It's being imposed now on Europe, Canada, the U.S. and other countries through trade agreements.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45106.htm
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250,000,000 children are suffering for the greed of the wealthiest people on this planet.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/15/unicef-report-reveals-250-million-child-victims-of-war/
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And finally, this item.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/07/chilcot-report-delusions-western-democracy-160710065914647.html

This one reminded me of three things.

1. It took Blair and Bush only days to hang Saddam Hussein. But Blair and Bush, who were worse than than Hussein, will never be hanged - and probably never be charged.
2. We have betrayed all the principles we said we were fighting for from 1939-1945.
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July 14: There was a world that was.

But that world isn't any more.

Ah, let's see now. What's the big story of the day In Moncton?

Wow! The New Brunswick Liquor board is going to sell beer at Quebec prices. Hey, climate change is a solved problem. We just drink more beer in the summer.
And a Mercedes-Benz dealership is opening in Dieppe. What a great chance for temporary, minimum wage jobs! And Timmie's Ice Capp is now available in stores. It's a full life.

Most newspapers lie to people with skilful propaganda. But nobody at the irving press knows how to do that. So they just stupefy us with brainless trash.
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The editorial and commentary page are a  wipe-out. The editorial writer thinks the biggest issue facing Moncton is that we need to get more athletes into the Canadian Olympic team.

Norbert thinks we have to do 'something' about our electoral system - and then offers a something that will change nothing. Norbert, what's wrong with our electoral system is a) it is financed  (and therefore controlled) by the very wealthy. b) And the major source of political news in this province is and intellectually and morally bankrupt chain of newspapers owned by that same big money.

Until New Brunswickers face those realities and deal with them, ain't nothing going to happen in the province. And chanting Resurgo won't help.

Rod Allen's column has less than his usual dose of ponderous humour. I'm not sure what it's about, though.  Over half seems to be about Pokemon, and the rest about our zoos.  Then there's our weekly political speech by Bruce Fitch. Then, sadly, a remarkably trivial one by Alec Bruce.

The only virtue of this section is that it's cheaper than taking a sleeping pill.
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And, on this day when Canadian troops are being mustered for assignment (in hopelessly small numbers) to a highly dangerous posting with the  potential to start a nuclear war, the Canada&World section has nothing to say about it.

 Indeed, almost the whole section is trivia.

The one story worth reading is that the Conservation Council of New Brunswick   (a government body) says we need to spend millions to fight climate change - and now. Well, that's silly. As professors Saillant and Savoie will no doubt tell us, the province can't afford that spending. Why to raise that money, we'd have to tax the fairy godmothers who create jobs for us.

This is just the kind of story we need more reporting  (and more investigative reporting) on. It's also the kind of story the irving press is never going to give us reporting on.
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The  item below is, I think, more than a little  naive. There's nothing wrong with its suggestions. The problem is that the Christian churches have not been notable for opposing anything that the rich and poweful want. And that has been true throughout history.

In the U.S., some Christian clergy have taken courageous stands against racism. But they have been, for the most part, by black clergy. Canada, though most Canadians don't realize it, has a wretched history of racism. But Canadian churches have scarcely been prominent in the fight against it. Indeed, they have participated in that history.

If Jesus were here, would He have something to say about our playing with nuclear war in eastern Europe? About the U.S. and British mass murder in Iraq? I think so. But if He did, it would never appear in the irving press. And you can be assured that no mention of anything like this will appear in Saturday's Faith Page. Nor will it be mentioned from the pulpit in the Irving Chapel.
http://creation.com/race-reconciliation#.V4d1MSasrIo.email
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In my teaching days, I commonly had Business Administration students in my classes. I can't remember one of them who had any concern for anyone in society but himself. This, in the U.S. at least  (and I'm sure in Canada as well) has created a skyrocketing economic inequality.  The figures in this article are for the U.S. But my experience is that Canadian figures are similar.)

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-business-school-driving-force-americas-increasingly-unequal-society
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Netanyahu seems to be getting  deeper into trouble over corruption.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.730801?utm_content=%24sections%2F1.730801&utm_medium=email&utm_source=smartfocus&utm_campaign=newsletter-daily&utm_term=20160714-09%3A07

I have to confess a certain joy over that. Not only do I think his policies destructive for Israel and  the whole, middle east. I also have a personal dislike for him that goes back to a riot that he set up.

It developed on the street outside my office. So I went down to talk to people milling about. They were there to protest  that Netanyahu was scheduled to give a speech in the university building across the street from my office. The crowd had been gatheriing for over an hour; and the atmosphere was dangerous.

I wondered where the police were. There surely had been lots of time for them to get there. So I checked neighbouring streets. Norhing. Then I spotted the school busses in the lane behind my office.  They were full of riot police, just relaxing.
I went back to the demonstration. it was getting wilder. Then, not twenty metres from me, there was a tremendous crash of glass. I saw a mob fighting to get in, and a mob inside fighting to keep them out. Then, only then, did the riot police appear to smash into the crowd.

It was soon over but, where, I wondered, was Netanyahu? It turned out he had never come for his meeting. In fact, he had set up the riot so he could make the 6 p.m. news.

He originally wanted to hold his meeting at McGill. But McGill, with its downtown location, knew this would set up a riot. So it refused. Then Netanyahu turned to nearby Concordia - which refused - for the same reason.

However, Concordia had another campus well removed from downtown - and next door to Montreal's largest, Jewish communities. But Netanyahu turned that down. He didn't care who turned out because he had no intention of being there. What he wanted was a riot so he could appear on the news as persecuted.  Tremendous pressure was put on Concordia.

And Netanyahu got the riot he wanted.

I shall weep not for whatever happens to Netanyahu.
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If you want to understand Trudeau, don't waste your time on North American news media. The following story (by a Canadian) is from India.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/14/trudeau-following-harpers-footsteps-in-foreign-policy/
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And here's the Brazil that the irving press can never find anything to report about.

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/13/billionaires-in-brazil-understanding-how-extreme-wealth-and-political-power-overlap-everywhere/
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How come we are not seeing any news about the gigantic trade deals our government is preparing to approve? Aren't we allowed to know what's in them? Aren't we allowed to see and hear a range of opinions on them? You think Trudeau is better than Harper? The only real difference is that Trudeau is a sharper dresser.

Why aren't we hearing more about the grand strategy of creating a nuclear war against Russia? We are actually dealing with the two greatest crises in    world  history - at the same time. Well, in fact, we aren't dealing with them. And the irving press rarely has anything to say about them - nuclear war and climate change.

Then we have a very dangerous situation with the U.S. American democracy has collapsed so far that the majority of American voters don't want EITHER Trump or Clinton. In practical terms, that means all power in the U.S. is now in the hands of billionaires who really don't give a damn about the American people or any other people.

Forget the world you were brought up to believe in. It no longer exists..
Is peaceful change possible? I hope so. But I really don't know. The very wealthy have the power to use violence. And they have proven they are willing to use it with no limits. The police and the snipers turned out in force against native peoples at Rexton. Have you ever even heard of police and snipers being turned out against corporate bosses?

July 13: Don't forget to attent the Irving Chapel.

The preacher there will tell you all about how greedy and destructive the wealthy can be. Maybe.
Or maybe not.
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What's happening in eastern Europe is very strange. If Russia is planning an attack on eastern Europe, why send only 4,000  troops to block it? After all, there is no possibility that 4,000 troops could stop a major invasion from a country the size of Russia.

And where is the evidence that an invasion is being prepared? All we have been told is a vague statement that Canadian intelligence says Russia is preparing for war.

Well? So is the U.S. And it is spending more on war preparation than all the rest of the world put together. For that matter, Britain is preparing for war. So are France and Germany. So is Israel. So is Canada.

Does Canadian intelligence have evidence that Russia is planning an invasion of eastern Europe? If so, why not tell us? After all, if Russia is planning for such an invasion, it probably knows it. So we wouldn't be giving away any secrets.
Western Europe seems remarkably unconcerned about the chance of such an invasion. Does it not believe Canadian intelligence?   (Obviously, it doesn't. It also know that in any such war  Europe will be destroyed.)

In fact, this is the only occasion I have ever heard of in which NATO or anybody else is preparing for a war solely on the basis of Canadian intelligence.

Speaking of war, Russia does not have troops on the American border. It is not preparing missile sites for first -strike capability against the U.S. It has not sponsored the overthrow of an elected government in either Mexico or Canada. Its ships are not patrolling off the American coast.

But NATO does have ships patrolling off the Russian coast. It has troops on the Russian border. And the U.S. sponsored the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. Gee. That sure looks like preparing an invasion.

Obama took a very tough approach to NATO leaders. They wanted to discuss the British exit from the EU. They wanted to discuss the refugee crisis. Obama cut that off from the start when he slapped down Greece for raising those points.
Why would Russia want to take the almostly certainly fatal risk of invading eastern Europe? I haven't been able to find a single word about that. It must be because Russians are evil. Yes. That must be it. Russians are evil.

And why is the U.S. planning to do this? Well, it's just possible that three factors enter into this.

One is American Exceptionalism which preaches that, unlike all other countries in the world, it has the right to ignore international law and the UN, and to kill whoever it wants to.

The second is the Project for the New American Century that the U.S. should rule the world, especially in economic terms. That was the policy advocated by the supporters of Bush, and it has been followed to the letter by Obama who has publicly endorsed American Exceptionalism. And Russia has created quite a roadblock to that policy in the midde east.

The third is Afghanistan. Obama, in effect, has recently admitted that the U.S. has lost the longest war in its history. He's keeping a relatively small number of troops in the country, and he's sending money. But it's over. And it's lost.

The Taliban is actually stronger now than it was at the start. Once again, as it has happened so often over the past 70 years, the U.S. has proven it cannot beat even a small and backward country in a conventional war. And in Afghanistan alone, that lesson has cost over a trillion dollars added to the staggering U.S. debt.

And that debt takes us  back to the situation in the U.S. All these wars, coupled with a massive shift of wealth from everybody else to a small group of the very rich has not only created a debt that can never be paid; If has created high levels of poverty made worse by free trade deals that move American jobs to cheap labour countries. That shift has been hardest on Americans of the wrong colour and religion. Police killings have sharpened the profound racism of the U.S. But they're not the cause of it.

This may explain the sudden thrust for a war with Russia. The human base (and the economic one)  of U.S. power is collapsing. If American big business is going to conquer the world, it's now or never. Who knows? A first strike now with nuclear weapons close enough to reach major Russian cities.....

But would they be so brutal as to kill millions of people? We don't need to guess. They've been doing it almost since Christopher Columbus. And it's been non-stop since 1945.

So why was Trudeau asked (told) to send troops?

Because a trap needs bait.

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The only story in section A worth reading, and worth thinking about, is that 128 flags will fly in Riverview to honour 128,000 fallen Canadian soldiers. This is sponsored by Veterans' Voices of Canada. It's a good idea.

But, like most such ventures it honours the fallen without remembering why they died.

For example, Its list includes the Boer War. Why did Canadians die in that war? So that wealthy British could steal the gold of South Africa.

Why did Canadians die in Afghanistan? So wealthy Americans could control an economically strategic region.

Why is there no mention of Canadians who died in the War of 1812? In the Fenian raids from the U.S.? While killing native peoples and Metis in the west? Not to mention the many who died in British service in imperial wars. (William Hall of Nova Scotia won the Victoria Cross in 1857 while serving in the British navy.   He was black so, on returning to Canada, he would have been forced to live in a black ghetto, and forced to stay out of restaurants, etc. that were for white folks, only.)

It's important to remember those who died. But it's also important to remember why we sent them to die. And there are some whose deaths should make us ashamed that we sent them.

As well, while we should remember the dead, we should be ashamed that we have done so little to achieve what they died for.
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Canada&World news is a waste of time.
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The editorial is a "something must be done" one.

Norbert's column is sentimental drivel about how Canadians and Americans are all family. Our families are connected to teach other. Yeah. They're also connected to families in France and Britain and Poland and Germany and Spain and Africa and Asia and South America. But I don't see any slobbering sentimentality from Norbert when the U.S. commits mass murder and social destruction in those areas.

As well, our good friend has invaded us once, sponsored an invasion once, and threatened attack several times. It also refuses to recognize our jurisdiction in a substantial part of the north. And our good buddies did not join us in World War 2 until almost three years into the war, and then only when Hitler declared war on it.

And the U.S. has suffered horrifying violence? Gee. That's not at all like those happy people in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Venezuela Vietnam..... I must have missed Norbert's slobberinig columns on their suffering.
Then we have the usual column from the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies. The province spends too much money.

Oh! Oh! Oh! I know the answer. Look at my hand, Mr. AIMS, I know the answer. Stop giving gifts to corporations, and start hitting the wealthy to pay their taxes.

No. AIMS thinks we need to nail the poor. The poor are the ones wasting good money on food, education, medical care.... And AIMS is right. None of the people in those categories know what they doing as well as the irvings do. So, next time you're sick, call an Irving.

Hump Cormier is an embarassment to journalism.

The only column worth reading is Alec Bruce's.
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This story is funny. It also has a serious message about the qualities and priorities of many of the people we elect.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/13/bad-hair-days-for-francois-hollande-over-10000-coiffeur-bill
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The following story is of no importance. I include it only as a contrast to our lack of grief of even caring about the millions our side has killed, displaced, drowned,  of whole nations destroyed to make a few people very rich. And, really, we don't give a damn.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/13/dallas-police-funerals-protest-shooting-brent-thompson

That sort of thinking is what made it easy for Hitler to kill Jews.
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Here are several stories on the crisis in Venezuela, the one the irving press doesn't think it worth mentioning. Is it possible this ignoring of the crisis has anything to do with Irving ties to Venezuela?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36771022
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This is a long one, but worth the read. It's about the stunning number of deaths caused by a health system run as private business. Apparently, the American health system killed more American soldiers than the Vietnam war did.
The basic requirement for success in big business is greed. Canada and the U.S. are dominated and run by greed.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45092.htm
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This one doesn't really have an answer to the violence problem in the U.S.  But it does suggest useful steps to deal with it.

In the U.S. the police have been militarized in both equipment and mentality.  (And there are signs of this in Canada.) The result of this has been a spectacular rise in both imprisonment and killing. (The U.S. spends three times as much on prisons as it does on education.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45088.htm
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The next one sounds very extreme, indeed. And it scares the hell out of me because I think it's right.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45089.htm
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The following writer has a bias. But I  have always found his opinions to be well founded.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45091.htm
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The following is a letter from an old friend whom I have always found to be knowledgeable, peaceful, and compassionate.

Democracy in the U.S. is recoverable but it will take real change on the Supreme Court.  At present millions of probable Democratic voters are excluded from voting by legislatures.  Thus, cons. and ex-cons, mostly people of color are excluded in many states.  Those who have not voted in six years are struck from the rolls. So-called proper i.d. cards are required in many states to "exclude fraud" but there has been no massive fraud.  On and on it goes.  So gerrymanders prevent change in the House of R., money insures the hold on the Senate, etc.  In other words the electoral process is rigged as commentators continue to prate about the beauties of American democracy.  I hope that change can take place peacefully and have little optimism about the revolutionary process.

    On foreign policy I agree.  Putin, the Chinese, NATO, and the U.S. are now playing the greatest game of chicken in world history.  Hillary's hawkish record does not inspire optimism, unless as a caution to those who would face her down.  I expect that early on she will make one of those moves to "enhance American credibility," and we will have to keep clean underpants nearby
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The same friend sent me this one I had missed in The Guardian. What it says is true of Britain - and of Canada and, most certainly, of the U.S.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/13/billionaires-bought-brexit-controlling-britains-political-system
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And here's something the irving press didn't tell us about the Dallas police.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/militarized-police-have-gone-way-overboard-baton-rouge-arresting-200-non-violent
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As for the story below, Yes, it affects us right here in Moncton, even if it didn't happen on Main St.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/13/britains-scramble-for-africa-the-new-colonialism/

Just over a century ago, Canadians died to made a few British rich in the Boer War. And that sort of war still happens.
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Enough. There's a lot more material, none of which will ever appear in the irving press. But, oh, it takes a long time to collect it - and Thomas the Tank Engine will soon be on TV.

July 12: Nearing the End Game?

Canada is sending a thousand troops into Latvia in move which could well trigger a world war - a nuclear world war. But that wasn't a big enough story to reach the pages of the irving press. The big, world news story is that Trudeau won't say whether Canada will continue to train soldiers in Ukraine. The headline, alone, tells the whole story - which, really, isn't much of a story. But the irving press took a half page to say it.

There is virtually no news in the Canada and World section. There is nothing on the chaos that is gripping South America, nothing on the murders there to maintain high profits for Canadian and American stockholders. There's nothing on Syria, Yeman,  nothing on Africa except for a brief and uninformative story on Sudan.

And, of course, there is no  commentary on any of the above.. But there is a big story in section A on how two, dumped kittens were found in the woods. We let people go homeless; and few seem to care about that. But kittens? Stop the presses.

The editorial touches, in a confused sort of way, on how Irving Oil forced the city of St. John forced the city to grant it extremely low taxes for  25 years  on a piece of land. But it says Irving only once, and then in a nice way. Then it goes off track to babble about how the province should make this up to the city with a grant   eqivalent to the lost taxes.

Oh? And exactly whose money would pay for that grant? Well, that would be us  taxpayers. Thanks, ed.

I have a better idea. Could the intrepid staff of the irving press do some work to find out how much money Irving gets from us taxpayers every year? How many grants? How many tax breaks? How many favours? How many sweetheart deals? And could we find out what taxes irving pays in return? The personal taxes could be really interesting.

Oh, I know. The irvings create jobs. And they are saintly philanthopists. But the lords giveth and the lords taketh away. And the essential rule of capitalism is that the lords taketh more than they giveth.

Norbert rants, accurately enough, that the provincial government is mishandling health care. Quite true. And he says the answers are already out there. Well, Norbert, wouldn't it have been a good idea to give us a hint what those answers are? Was firing our Chief Medical Officer one of them? Whose decision was that, Norbert? And why?

And you know who and why, you little rascal. Don't you?

Louise Gilbert has a commentary that is almost poetic.

Below it is a column by a professor and it's about - damned if I know what it's about. It's a quite pointless thing, neither fish nor fowl nor good, red wine. It says the Fort McMurray fire was terrible.  ( I think most people already know that.)

Alec Bruce has a good one on those refugees who are settling in New Brunswick. It bothers me in just one respect. It's about how refugees are beneficial to us.
Now, those people have come through terrible suffering, and many many more are still going through it. And it's a suffering that has been imposed by the greed of business leaders in our Christian world.

The refugee presence here is beneficial to us. But shouldn't we be talking more about them? About what they've gone through?  (sometimes with our involvement). Shouldn't we be talking more about what we can do? And less about how we can make money out of them?

This isn't a criticism of Alec Bruce. The reality is that many people dislike anyone who is different; many people are given to racism and hatred. To avert that, we have to speak of this as an economic deal which is to our advantage.
As a person who grew up in a very mixed society, I think it is to our advantage - both economically and socially. I think to extend help to people who have suffered so terribly speaks well of the potential of our moral qualities. And I think we can develop that potential by asking questions about why such a disaster happened in the first place.

We could begin by asking why Trudeau has sent Canadian troops to train "Syrian" rebels. Or we could ask why Harper sent Canadian aircraft to bomb Libya.
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Some very disapppointing news from the U.S. leadership campaign.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/12/bernie-sanders-supports-hillary-clinton-president

There isn't going to be a choice for the Democrat leadership. And Hillary Clinton has proven herself, long since, as the most loyal friend of American big business. Automotically, that means more wars, more corruption, and even less for the American people.

Sanders, running as an independent,  could have given the American people a choice. Even if he lost, he would have given some sense of an opposition to what the Trumps and Bushes and Obama and the Clintons have done to their country.  But, by endorsing Clinton, he has sold out every principle he claimed to stand for.

The American people now have no, real choices left. And that could mean some real trouble  - soon.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/south-china-sea-ruling-may-increase-risk-of-conflict

All that it says is quite true. But note how it's all China's fault for "cherry-picking"   which international rules it will follow and which it won't.
The U.S. does that all the time. It ignores the UN. It claims (and often exercises) the right to ignore international law. There's even a term for it. It's called "American exceptionalism". And it means the U.S. is the only country in the world which has the right to ignore international law and courts. Incidentally, the term is widely used in the U.S., including by both Bush and Obama.

Britain has done the same. So has France. So, quite possibly, has Canada. And the irving press hasn't mentioned it. But if a war develops because China has done it, count on the irving press to beat the drums.
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Canada is a tolerant country?  It never has been. And it still isn't. Historically, Canada has been profoundly racist - but always polite about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/canada-black-lives-matter-indigenous-people-muslims

Actually, this account doesn't come close to the whole story.
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And Canada has been sucked into a deal to send your tax money to one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in the world. I wonder if this world has small tax havens for us ordinary people.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45083.htm
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Tony Blair and George Bush lied in order to murder over a million people in Iraq in a war that has plunged us into more wars, millions of refugees, and into the worst crisis this world has ever seen.

Funny how that news story just died in our news media. We're tougher on shoplifters than we are on the Adolf Hitlers among us. In fact, the irving press has carried more stories on poor little Dennis Oland than it has on the horrors turned loose by Blair and Bush.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45076.htm
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The next one, on NATO and Russia is long - but it has to be for lack of information in the western press.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/11/nato-summit-plans-escalation-against-russia-in-eastern-europe-middle-east/

Big business in the U.S. may be feeling the pressure  to dispose of Russia before the situation in the U.S. gets worse. Almost 10% of the U.S. population is in prison. That's very profitable because privatization of the prison system has meant big profits for private business. It can force prisoners to work for corporations for as little as seventy cents a day. However, those in the newest prison won't be able to work. Their prison has 1,900 cells, all of them solitary confinement. Most are long term.

I have a vivid memory of a prisoner who had been in solitary for only a week. He was sitting on the floor, eating his own body waste. What are the chances that a person serving 20 years of solitary would come out of it rehabilitated?

The U.S. is coming unglued. The presidential election could begin the final phase. Government by greed doesn't work. That's one reason why so many New Brunswickers leave the province.
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And here's a story about glyphosate which, you may recall, is being sprayed on our forests.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/glyphosate-sprayed-gmo-crops-linked-lake-eries-toxic-algae-bloom

But Mr. Irving says its prefectly safe. So there.

June 11:

Two political science professors, one at Wheelock College in Boston, the other at University of New Brunswick, have a a book on the market. But you won't find in the irving press.

If the book were by Professor Savoie or Professor Saillant at Moncton, Norbert would be slobbering wet kisses all over it. We'd have editorials, headlines. But it's not. And it says terrible things like, "In the best of times, capitalism tends to produce unemployment, it tends to produce poverty, it tends to produce war, environmental degradation..."  If anything, the book puts it gently.

The book is called "The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada". It's by Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman. (I don't know whether it will be permitted in the city library. That will be interesting.) Perhaps it could be a sermon topic for the irving chapel, with an opportunity for coffee and discussion in the barn.

An article on this book appeared in The Brief, a sheet out of Fredericton - and a very good one. By e-mail, it's info@nbmediacoop.org. Its website is nbmediacoop.org

It's nice to read acholars who aren't for rent.

This issue also has a couple of stories of murders,  rapes, beatings, environmental destruction carried out by Canadian mining companies in South America. It names the companies. That should make it easy for the irving press to check board of directors and other company lists for Canadian and, possibly, New Brunswick involvement. One is Tahoe; another is Hudbay; and there's Goldcorp.
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I made a short list of events that have had only brief and shallow coverage in our news media.
1. Coverage of Dallas and Orlanda shootings has certainly been long (if only by repetition) but frivolous. Killings by police in the U.S. have certainly reached outrageous levels. But that is not anywhere close to what the current demonstrations are about.
The U.S. is still a slave nation. And it is as intensely racist as Europe was in the 1930s. Killings of blacks by American police have certainly turned loose a rage. But any full understanding of what is happening has to take into account the degradation, exploitation, poverty, discrimination of blacks ever since they were 'freed'.
In a U.S. where the wealthy are making themselves wealthier at the expense of everybody else, it's blacks who suffer most with dreadfully neglected schools, lack of jobs, low pay, loss of social services, the world's largest prison system, and one designed not to rehabilitate but to provide cheap labour for the very wealthy  - as well as pofits won by destroying prison services.

If all shooting of blacks were to stop today, the discrimination, humiliation, deprivation of black life in the U.S. would still be there. It would take generations to get past that. And there's no sign

The demonstrations are not just a temporary inconvenience. They are a part of the breakdown of American society. And the intensity of American racism is made greater by the racism that is inflicted on Latins and Muslims. In the case of the latter two groups, Trump's policies are identical to those of Hitler toward Jews in the 1930s.

The US, probably, is not going to get over this racism. The greed of capitalism won't allow it to.

2. The news coverage of the British vote to leave the EU has been just a shallow. New media owned by billionaires have given us a billionaire's of how terrible it is. And they have almost completely ignored what the EU is really all about, and why the British voted to leave.

The EU is, above all, a plan by the wealthy of the U.S. to spread the American economic empire to cover Europe. To that end, effective control over national economies is placed in the hands of an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels. It was unelected by the people. But it was appointed through the influence of the wealthy.

That has led, as it was supposed to, to the growing wealthy of the already wealthy, and the growing poverty of the already poor. That's why the English working class voted against it.

The history of the modern world is largely a  history of how the wealthy have used the poor of their country to murder millions all over the world with all the profits of the theft going to the wealthy, and their own poor maintained as disposaable, cheap labour.

There was a brief period of, perhaps, thirty years after 1945, when that reversed. We got medicare, increased putlic education, pensions....but that's over. The plundering that we falsely call capitalism has returned to its old ways. That's why we have soaring debts, both personal and at federal and national levels.

And that's why we're constantly at war. That's why we live in a world of tens of millions of refugees, and millions of dead from bombs and starvation.
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3. The latter point takes us back to 1945 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world raced to build more nuclear weapons by the thousands.
We were assured by our propaganda press that nuclear weapons were wonderful because they were so powerful , nobody would ever use them. And that would be a deterrent to war.

Well, if they were such a red-hot deterrent, how come the west, notably the U.S., Britain and France, have been fighting wars almost constantly since 1945? If they're a deterrent, how can it be that Russia is, we are told, preparing to invade eastern Europe despite the thousands of nuclear bombs aimed at it from bases in the US, on the Russian borders, and in missile-firing submarines?

Either it's a lie that Russia is preparing to invade. Or it's a lie that nuclear weapons are a deterrent.

Amazing how the editors at irving press don't notice these things.

For that matter, why on earth should Russia attack eastern Europe? There is no possible gain for Russia in that to justify the cost of a war. Putin may be unlikeable. But he's not crazy.

No. Russia is not looking for a war. The U.S. is. More correctly, U.S. big business is looking for a war; and the American government is owned by American big business. And almost all North American news media are owned by big business.

And Eastern Europe? It's already been conquered by American big business - in the form of the European Union and NATO. And by the effective destruction of the UN. That's why the U.S. can use the EU and NATO to spread the empire to the middle east.

Common sense should tell big business that if it continues to suck up most of the world's wealth, it will destroy its own source of profits. But I've never seen that common sense has any place in big business.

Incidentally, how on earth can a Christian clergyman possibly accept an invitation to  preach   (for pay?) at the irving chapel?
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There's not a whole lot to say about the irving press for today.

One story, on irving getting a huge tax break for one of its properties in St.John, is a journalism school lesson on how not to write a news story. We don't learn until half-way through the story that it's about it's about irving, and that irving has a $500,000 cap on its land tax for 25 years - a deal that costs St. John some 8 million dollars a year. (Year one - journalism school - most people don't read more than the opening parts of any story. So you make sure you open with the important parts - not with tedious detail that doesn't matter.)
Oh, we also learn, if too late, that the province might pick up the tab to spare the irvings anguish. That would be the 8 million. You and me would pay. Boy, isn't it terrible the way this province throws money and schools and at people  who are too lazy to work? Just ask Professor Saillant, or read Norbert's brilliant columns about his book on the provincial debt.
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I also have a number of good items sent in by readers - items the irving press would never touch.

Some day, we'll learn. Obama was a disastrous President, as bad as Bush.

http://atimes.com/2016/07/nato-summit-obamas-last-waltz-wont-last-forever/

Then, from Ralph Nader.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/vanishing-the-peoples-wea_b_10928616.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&

Then there's all the news from South American we'll never see in the irving press.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/06/22/ecuador-cia-agent-known-as-swat-plus-others.html

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/05/27/operation-condor-2-blow-against-venezuela.html

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/05/17/brazil-us-special-services-behind-the-turmoil.html

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/25/dominican-republic-first-stage-americas-rainbow-experiment-latin-america-i-html

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/05/the-us-media-war-against-the-leaders-of-latin-america-ii.html

And there's one on Trump, and where his money is coming from.

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-hidden-billionaires-behind-trumpthe-foreclosure-king-the-three-headed-dog-from-hell
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The item from The Guardian is about U.S. racism. But the reality is that racism in the US is not historically different from that of Britain or France or Spain - or Canada. To be anti-Jewish or anti-black or anti-oriental in these places as it was in Hitler's Germany. And it's thriving now in the U.S. because many U.S. politicians are using it exactly as Hitler did in the 1930s. To that list, both Canada and the U.S. can add their own native peoples. Then there were Irish-Catholics, Poles, Ukrainians and many others who had their day of being unacceptable in U.S. and Canadian society.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/11/white-people-racism-america
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Now, I have to stop because my computer is playing crazy games with me.