Sept. 16: Climate change and mass murder for profit.

Big headline. Moncton is to get a new hotel which will be part of a $100 million dollar project. And it will be right near the new 'events centre'; so that's a sure sign the events centre is attracting development.

Well, actually, it's not. That piece of land the hotel will be on is the only vacant lot left in downtown Moncton. So where else could it be be put? And, again, we're getting a development that will provide mostly low-paying jobs,  with most of them short term.

From there, we go to a big story (with photo) in which a man who had a fire gives us the word that it's important to have a fire alarm. Who could have guessed?

Justin Ryan has a column on how Japanese have an education system is that based heavily on memorization. I'm   quite sure he's right. I had the same experience in China. Why is this worth a column?  (In fact, university education in Canada is heavy on memorizing, too.)

Most disappointing is Alec Bruce's column. He, too, has become a cheerleader for the Energy East Pipeline. He even  quotes the Fraser Institute - though he must know that it is funded by the sort of people who want pipelines.

He tells us that during the first twenty years of operation the pipeline could create over 3,000 jobs across Canada. Duh. We're going to continue using fossil fuels for twenty years - and more? We are on the brink of irreversible climate change now - and we're going to continue it for twenty years and more?

Yes. I know we need it for our cars and trucks. But there's a reality out there. I have no doubt, for example, that exploding all our nuclear bombs would create lots of reconstruction jobs. But the trouble is we wouldn't have anybody left to hire. Destroying our environment has the same effect. Within twenty years, the effects will have caused massive food and water shortages, huge migrations of people, wars over water and land. As it is, the oil wars have cost millions of lives, tens of millions of refugees, and  trillions of dollars.

And all that is nothing compared to the chaos that is to come as starving people flood the world. You think the immigrant tensions in Europe are bad? They're barely a glimpse of what's to come. And the whole world will be affected by it.
To all writers at the irving press, try to understand the crucial fact. We cannot go on using fossil fuels. I know we need them for our cars and our trucks and our aircraft and for people who own oil companies. But we can't have them, C-A-N-N-O-T. And we have damn little time to replace them.  (This is like dealing with a crying child who wants his very own canister of poison gas.)

We could create jobs with a massive programme of developing alternate energy. In fact, that would create a hell of a lot more jobs than building a pipeline would. (I would also have the programme run by government rather than by private business which has created and maintained the energy crisis we face.)

I don't want to hurt Mr. Irving's feelings. But it is a clear and simple fact.If we continue to use oil, we exterminate ourselves. And we thank Mr. Irving for all he has done for us, and for the use of his lovely Chapel with its 'special music' and coffee and discussion in the barn.  I'm sure Jesus thinks highly of it. But Mr. Irving is not the man if we want to avoid the turmoil and suffering that has already begun and that promises to get a thousand times worse.

Yes, Alec Bruce. It is "Time to  rise up in anger". So how about leadinig the way by getting up off your knees?
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Section B is filled with brainless drivel. In this world on the edge of the nuclear war, with the Christians of the U.S.,  U.K. (and Canada) helping Saudi Arabia to murder and starve the people of Yemen, a front page story is about a moose who washed up on the PEI shore.

Coverage of the U.S. election is the usual drivel about how the US presidential candidates look and act. Could we possibly have a word or two about what their policies are? And hasn't one of the brilliant editors checked out the Vice-President candidates? They are both extreme right-wingers of the type called neo-cons. In other words, both Democrats and Republicans are really the same party.

Section B, as always, is six pages of nothing.
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What is happening in Yemen, with  close support from Britain, the U.S., and some from Canada, is a deliberate slaughter of civilians and destruction of hospitals and schools. It's a type of war that has its roots among both sides in World War Two.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/third-of-saudi-airstrikes-on-yemen-have-hit-civilian-sites-data-shows
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And the people of Moncton, for all their mawkish sentimentality, have yet to raise even a whimper about the availability of guns to kill police in the province and this country.

https://www.theguardian.com/international
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The next item ignores the good news. The war against civilians in  Yemen has been wonderful for the arms industries in Britain, the U.S., and even in Canada.

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/repeated-airstrikes-take-toll-on-yemeni-civiliansstory
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And here's another of those silly stories about climate change that the irving press pays no attention to. (Any thoughts on this one, Alec Bruce?)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/16/arctic-sea-ice-shrinks-to-second-lowest-level-ever-recorded
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Eisenhower was right about the war industries. Is it too late to stop them?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45481.htm
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But, duh, it creates jobs.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/16/the-rise-of-the-right-and-climate-catastrophe/
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The language of this item is strong. But it's well-deserved. The U.S. showers weapons and money on Israel even though no country in the region is in a position to attack it. (Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons.) Of course, that money has to be spent on the U.S. arms industry.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/16/obama-hands-israel-the-largest-military-aid-deal-in-history/
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Big oil runs our governments. It runs the government of Canada. We all know it runs the governments of New Brunswick. Anyone, at this point, who supports the continued use of fossil fuel is either a fool - or a murderer for profit.

Any journalist who is still an advocate of fossil fuel is either brainless or gutless.
In the struggle for fossil fuels, we are already engaged in mass murder and inflicted misery, the destabilization and destruction of whole societies. And it's going to get much, much worse with many more millions of displaced people, with elevated levels of hatred and racism, and elevated tensions between nations -  including Canada and the U.S. What do you think the U.S. will   do to us as it runs into food and water shortages? (In fact, it has already begun doing it.) We haven't begun to look at the impact of  climate change - let alone planning for it.

 Nor will we with most of the politicians we elect and with the newspapers we read.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/sep/14/trump-and-the-republican-party-are-doing-big-oils-bidding
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Here's a strong sign of the rot in US politics.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/fec-republicans-kill-attempt-to-block-foreign-money-in-u-s-elections/
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There's a film out on Edward Snowden, the former CIA agent who turned against it to reveal the truth about behaviour of such agencies. Naturally, this makes him an enemy of the state. So don't expect to see a review in the irving press
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https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/new-film-tells-the-story-of-edward-snowden-here-are-the-surveillance-programs-he-helped-expose/
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In the US, as in Canada, prisons do little to rehabilitate prisoners. Things are gentler in Canada.  But still, prisoners come out worse than when they went in.  In the U.S., things are pretty good if you're Conrad Black convicted of stealing millions of dollars - but no so good for criminals who aren't rich. Very often,  they have to work as forced labour, and at very low wages; there's wide use of solitary confinement which can drive a person insane; training is very limited.... The U.S., in particular, is noted for havinig the largest prison population in the world - a population it releases even worse than they were going in.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/the-largest-prison-strike-in-u-s-history-enters-its-second-week/
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This is an interesting article for people fed up with the childishness of the irving Faith Page on Saturdays and the irving chapel with special music on Sundays. It shifts attention from belief to the more important question of how that belief affects (or should affect) our behaviour.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/09/its-bad-enough-when-your-reverend-heretic-what-if-shes-atheist
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Here's one that questions the news media. I think it's too kind.

http://rabble.ca/news/2016/09/amy-goodman-corporate-media-needs-to-be-fourth-estate-not-state
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Wondering why Harper resigned in seat in parliament? Harper has gone to his reward. And it's better than heaven.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2016/09/stephen-harper-ready-to-cash-controversial-legal-firm-hired-n
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A computer problem prevents me from sending a report from Haaretz that senior military figures in the U.S. have issued a report that climate change will soon be causing serious problems for the U.S. military. Yes, it will. And it goes beyond the problems the military refers to. It will spark a great many wars, and create stunning problems of dealing with climate change refugees.

But don't worry. You can always read just the irving press, then close your little eyes and sleep the sleep of the truly ignorant.

Sept. 15: Hold Onto Your Hats!

Wow: Section A of the irving press has breaking news under the page 1 headline. Some NB  license plates on cars sold in 2009 are showing signs of peeling. And hide page 2 from children and the faint-hearted.  It has a disturbing photo of a peeling licence plate.

Page 3 has a big story on how Brunswick News Inc. has donated a  scholarship for journalism students. It's to encourage talented journalism students to stay in this province, students highly trained for the gritty work of reporting peeling on 2009 licence plates. We also need ace reporters who dig out the facts on big stories like the one on page 3, 'Moncton Barber shop open in new location'. And, of course, there's the usual cheap and easy (and usually unimportant) stories from the police and court beat.  "Woman found not criminally responsible for stealing money from her employer."

The editorial is a blatant kiss-up to irving and the Energy East Pipeline. It sees nothing wrong public hearings that were corrupted by members of the energy board, and wants us to plunge ahead on the pipeline without hearings. After all, people opposed to the pipeline are just being silly.

Then there's the usual commentary of leaden humour about nothing in particular from Rod Allen. And the usual propaganda from the Fraser Institute. Even Alec Bruce is something less than inspiring when he sees the great issue of the day as being the failure of banks to lend money to the marijuana business. Meanwhile, the more generous NB government has given $990,000 of our money to Organigram so its capitalists can fearlessly risk our money to go into the pot business.

On the last page, we find that the irving press talented reporters have discovered that a man in Prince Edward Island got jailed for drunk driving.

Of the six pages of Canada and world, two an a half are devoted to New Brunswick trivia. World news is almost non-existent. The only story worth reading is one that a U.K. parliamentary committee has slammed the British P.M. for taking Britain into a war with Libya without taking any account of the foolishness of the plan. Apparently, none of the talented journalists at the irving press knows that Canada did the same. We sent bombers with no thought given to what the consequences might be.
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The U.S. is very lucky. It has so many billionaires who are happy to make it possible for Americans to get the best governments that money can buy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/14/corporate-cash-john-doe-files-scott-walker-wisconsin
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/sep/15/climate-change-marshall-islands-global-warming

Where is the news about the effect of climate change where we live? Where is the news of what we shall have to deal with - and how we plan to deal with it?
Oh, I know that an oil pipeline will create jobs. But oil pipelines won't be a whole lot of help when land floods, when agriculture fails for lack of rain....  Why aren't we hearing about this? Why aren't we seeing action by governments? Why are people who want to know about this denounced as fools or worse by the irving press?

Can you imagine that there are people so brutal and ruthless that they would insist on allowing the climate to change even though it will be the greatest killer in history - and perhaps the last one? Well, it shouldn't be that hard to imagine. There have been such people for centuries who commit mass murder for profit - and there are still such people killing all over the world.
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Oil billionaires wouldn't dream of doing anything to  hurt us? Read this.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2016/sep/15/dirty-diesel-from-european-companies-fuels-pollution-in-africa-in-pictures
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And here's the kind of story we have created all over the world by interfering with societies and destabilizing them. But these stories rarely make our news.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/sep/15/fear-forces-refugees-dadaab-kenya-worlds-largest-camp-return-conflict-zones-human-rights-watch-warns
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Times are getting really good for the very rich. This, in Britian, applies as fully to how we distribute wealth in Canada and the U.S., and many another country.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/15/british-firms-paid-out-record-44bn-bonuses-last-year
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Here's another item the irving press missed - though it will have a harsh effect on families around the world. Yes, including New Brunswick.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/15/monsanto-and-bayer-why-food-and-agriculture-just-took-a-turn-for-the-worse/
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Capitalism creates wealth for everyone? Like hell it does.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/15/an-asteroid-called-peak-oil-the-real-cause-of-the-growing-social-inequality-in-the-us/

Greed in the U.S. is heading that country for some very serious violence - soon. The fact that much of American voter feeling is based on blind anger is a warning of what is going to come.
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And here's an interesting point. Why are we hearing only about two parties in the U.S. election. There are four parties running. Why aren't the other to invited to the big debate. How can voters make an intelligent decision when they don't even know what the choices are?

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/12/76-want-four-person-debates-why-are-establishment-elites-preventing-it/
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As you read the item below, think of how much trillions of dollars would do to raise living statndards all over the world. Instead, it has gone into the pockets of those few who dominate the military/industrial complex.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/latest-estimate-pegs-cost-of-wars-at-nearly-5-trillion/
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And this one is just too cute to leave out.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/beer-pot-ballot/
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The following is not another '9/11 plot theory'. The American response to 9/11 has effectively destroyed the U.S. constition, killed a at least a couple of million or so, has cost many trillions of dollars, has destabilized the middle east. Such a cost for what happened has never been justified by any result. The attack on Afghanistan (which almost certainly had nothing to do with 9/11) is now the longest war in American history with no sign of an end in sight. The attacks on Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which certainly had nothing to do with 9/11, have destroyed those countries, but with no noticeable advantage to the the U.S. This has all been fifteen years of lying and blundering.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article193284.html
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There have recently been three demonstrations in Toronto of a hundred or so people each to protest a pipeline going through native territory. No, that's not many. But the cause has no direct connection with Toronto - or Ontario or Canada.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It's in North Dakota. And thousands of native peoples and others are demonstrating against a pipeline to be run through their territory.
Haven't read about it in the Irving press? No. I guess not. That's because the irving press and other news media are ignoring it. They're more in line with the editorial writer of today's irving paper who has no concern that Canada's National Energy Board, which is supposedly studying an even larger proposal for Canada has some pretty unethical members who seem to be patsies for the oil industry.
The irving press has carried almost no news of that, either. But I wish well to  the editorial writer. He/she will no doubt move up as a talented member of the irving press with a stellar future of kissing the boss' ass.

http://rabble.ca/news/2016/09/indigenous-resistance-grows-standing-rock-solidarity-actions-continue
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And I don't recall seeing an irving press story on this one.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/penney-kome/2016/09/sugar-industrys-massive-deception-proves-once-again-free-market-h
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Here's a useful background to the war in Syria.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45472.htm
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And here's a good summary of why the U.S. wanted to invade Libya and to kill Ghadaffi, another war that was a foreign affairs disaster.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/14/getting-fooled-on-iraq-libya-now-russia/
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Ford is closing down its small car making in Detroit - and moving it to Mexico. Workers are cheaper there. That's the nice thing about free trade deals.  So sing me another song about how capitalists create jobs and prosperity.
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http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2016/09/14/mexico-ford-shiftng-us-car-production-mexico/90355146/
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There's an interesting question I've not yet seen discussed in any news medium. What will be the effect of Putin's intervention in Syria. Will this make Russia a permanent force in the middle east? is this a major blow for the American ambition to rule the world?

China is moving in, too, in its relations with Iran. We could be at a turning point in history. Or this could all trigger even bigger disasters.

Meanwhile, there is every possibility the U.S. is in for some real violence. Poverty is rising. A sense of victimhood is rising, especially among young people, as capitalists plunder the U.S. just as they plunder the rest of the world.
Neither Clinton nor Trump show any sign of understanding how to deal with this. Or even of recognizing it.

Oh, a small thing to watch for. As our climate changes, parts of the U.S. are suffering severe droughts. That's especially  true of the western U.S. The city of Los Angeles, for example, has a very serious water problem. So guess what the U.S. will do.

It will demand the diversion of Canadian water. And if Canada doesn't comply, the U.S. will take it. There's already been an incident involving the Great Lakes. Watch for more. And don't expect a whole lot of leadership from Justin.

Sept. 14: A Touch of Truth

A belief peddled by propaganda rags like the irving press is  that private business is more efficient than government ownership. In fact, even the most casual studies prove the opposite. Canada's government health care system is far, far more efficient than the private system of the U.S. In fact, we can actually get health care. Millions of Americans can't. Worse, even those who are eligible for Obamacare aren't getting much of a deal because Obamacare simply uses their tax money to subsidize private health care insurance plans at scandalously high prices to pass on to hospitals that operate at scandalously high prices.

https://www.newint.org/features/2015/12/01/private-public-sector/

Ever wonder why tiny and poor countries like Cuba can offer medical care and higher education for everybody? And the rich United States can't?

Ever wonder how much the irvings and friends cost us taxpayers every year?

Ever wonder why these super-efficient corporations require incentives and gifts to come here? Ever wonder what's efficient about letting them escape taxes by taking our money and hiding it overseas?

And now they want a pipeline all across the country. Now, think hard. At a time when we know we have to deal with climate change, we are going to spend billions to create more greenhouse gas emissions. And, by the very cost of such a pipeline, we will have to cut down on the development of cleaner forms of energy.

Duh, I know a pipeline would create jobs. But, duh, so would serious work on alternative energy. And, done by government, it would be cheaper because governments don't need to make profits and hide them in overseas banks. Governments also don't need administrators who get paid thousands of dollars an hour for their work.

There is something wrong with our values. I've been thinking of that ever since a wealthy man who has extracted billions from us - and for whom I have seen no tax receipts - gave a teeny, tiny portion of his wealth to a worthy cause - and was celebrated for his saintly qualities with a special dinner sponsored by our chambers of commerce and worshipfully covered by the irving press.
Are the editors at the irving press fools or hypocrites? It has to be the latter. Nobody can be that foolish.

Large corporations are being permitted to plunder New Brunswick just as they are being permitted to plunder the world. We are watching pure greed on the loose. That has led to violent reactions all over the world. It has created the anger that is really the major issue in the current U.S. election campaign.

And since that greed affects us as much as it does those angry people we go to war against, there is reason to expect greater violence to come in North America.
Governments have to learn - and we have to learn - that we elect governments to meet the needs of all of us, not just to kiss up to billionaires.
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The only thing worth reading in all of today's irving press is Alec Bruce's column. Section A is brainless and  trivial.  Section B, Canada and World, never gets out of North America, and barely gets out of New Brunswick. It, too, is pure trivia.
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Democracy in the U.S. - and not just the U.S. - is dead. Political parties that win do so witih big money from wealthy people. This is a story the irving press could have carried - but there is no way it ever would.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2016/sep/14/john-doe-files-scott-walker-corporate-cash-american-politics
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You won't ever see the story in the irving press, but the big leaders of the pharmaceutical industries are among the most heartless pirates in the world. They routinely charge full, retail prices for drugs purchased by our governments to be sent overseas to countries that desperately need them. That's full retail prices for purchases of billions of dollars of drugs. They also charge all the market will bear for drugs sold domestically - which is one reason why the cost of Obamacare is so high.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/sep/14/un-united-nations-calls-on-big-pharma-reduce-cost-life-saving-medicines
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There was never any need for a U.S., UK, Canada war on Libya. It was one of the few, relatively stable nations in the regions. But the U.S. wanted a war to get fuller control of it. So Canada saluted,  and said, "Ready, aye ready." And so Canadians bombed Libya.

Why did we bomb it?  To make our American masters happy. And we bombed it with no thought of the consequences - which include all the innocent dead, and a destroyed nation now suffering constant civil war.  The war was unnecessary for anybody except American oil billionaires. But Canada never asked why. Nor did it give a thought as to the effect such a war would have. It was a war that did no good for anybody except, possibly, for jihadists.

But we were told to bomb. And we bombed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/14/mps-deliver-damning-verdict-on-camerons-libya-intervention
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And another story that wasn't important enough to make the irving press.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/14/the-native-american-the-palestinian-a-spirited-fight-for-justice/
Yes, there are problems with pipelines. But, duh, they create jobs.
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The distinguishing feature of this American election campaign is that there are no issues. It's all a vaudeville act of low-level comedy and slapstick. Empires are like that.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/14/cutting-the-cords-of-empire-the-spectacle-of-us-elections/
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The title of this next one reminded me of the irving press. And of what it has made of us.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/14/indifference/
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The following item, about the intrusion of private business into public education deals with a practice still in its early stages in Canada. But the purpose is clear - to treat education like chocolate bars or perfume as something that exists only for private profit.

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/talking-radical-radio/2016/09/defending-public-education-canada-and-throughout-americ
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No comment needed. This is what the wars are about. They aren't about spreading democracy or dethroning evil rulers. They're about greed, pure greed.

https://theintercept.com/2016/09/14/donald-trumps-not-anti-war-just-wants-u-s-military-focus-stealing-oil/
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Here's a Trudeau who sounds more like his father. And he's right. We have become an American colony. I think prime minister Lester Pearson saw this coming. That's why he tried to extablish the Canadian military as a peace-keeping force.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alexandre-trudeau-follower-nation-1.3761033
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Some closing thoughts.

 Governments are elected by the people to serve the needs of the people. But that is not happening. Instead, corruption by the wealthy and propaganda by their news media created the notion all that has to be done is to attract investement - at any price - and we will all benefit. (Note that the irving press constantly talks about the need for investment, but almost never about the needs of the people of this province.)

It won't work. It never has. The starting point of capitalism is greed, nothing but greed. It will, therefore, work for its bosses. It won't work for the rest of us. It has to be severely controlled. Without severe controls, it will destroy all of us - and itself.

Private business is not efficient. If it were, it would pay its taxes and reduce the salaries of its higher level officers.  As well, there are many services we must have as a society - services that do not thrive as business practices. Health care, for example, is one. Education is another. (A major impact of the business world on universities, for example,  has been the colossal salaries and perks offered to university administrators. There is no evidence that this has in any way raised the educational quality of universities. Business  has also interfered with professors to get some who will produce propaganda for it. I once had an excellent offer for this from an oil company.)

Several centuries of uncontrolled capitalism have been monstrously destructive all over the world. Communism in China, for example, did not arise because "Mao was a bad man." It arose because western capitalism had destroyed the existing Chinese society, spread profound poverty, murdered uncounted people, starved millions (yes. I didn't make that up.)

Sadaam and Ghadaffi became dictatorial leaders because nothing else would hold their countries together after decades of interference by western capitalism - mainly in the oil sector.

The world faces enormous problems of climate change, mass poverty, starvation, loss of the social cement that holds societies together -----but there's no money to deal with these problems because the wealthy don't give a damn. So they prefer to see the money spent on weapons, oil, chemical sprays and private profits.
The wealthy really don't care about what a society needs in order to survive. That's why they insist that they and only they will decided what workers are worth. And that will go from $10 an hour here to a couple of dollars a day in less fortunate countries.

We have to start with people and with what they need. One can get quite sick of irving press editorials that babble about attracting industries to New Brunswick. There are resources here. We don't have to give away our forests to the irvings. They're our forests, and lots of people know how to cut down trees.

If private business isn't interested in developing alternate sources of energy, we can do it - and we can do it cheaper than private business will.

We have to make our politicians understand that they are not simply shills to attract the rich. Hell, if attracting the rich made a society wealthy then Iraq and Libya would have been rolling in wealth for almost a century. Guatemala would be a paradise rather than a land of poverty where people get murdered for being environmentalists.

Greed does not work. And kissing up to the greedy doesn't work, either.
Inevitably, the corruption and greed we tolerate is enormously destructive - as we should have seen just from the body counts of the last seventy years.  It has also led to the breakdown in American democracy that we can watch every night on TV.

The greed means we cannot afford to deal with problems we MUST deal with - like climate change.

It also means we are laying the groundwork for violence against each other. The Trump phenomenon is an early example of that. So is the general violence of American society.

Sorry, folks. Newspaper photos of grinning idiots holding up charity cheques isn't enough. Nor are philanthopists who get feted by the chamber of commerce for their 'generosity'.

We have to do better than that. And we don't have much time.

Sept. 13: The destructiveness of greed.

My it's hard to get back into form for writing a blog after being off for a week. it's especially hard because I now have such a backlog of material. So let's start with a very brief look at today's irving press.
The headline story is that a former premier of New Brunswick is in favour of the Energy East pipeline to be built across Canada and into New Brunswick. Is he an expert on pipelines? No. But he's a former premier who got along well with Mr. Irving. So that's better than an expert.
This isn't a news story. This is propaganda.
Inside, there's a story that Moncton is one of the ten most business friendly places in Canada. What makes it friendly? Well, that's because it has legislation that is gentle to business, and because it doles out money to business, and offers cheap labour. Being named business friendly is somehing like telling chickens that they are among the top ten birds for tastiness.
The commentary page has a couple of items worth a read. Steve Malloy is critical of the province's new    education plan for being sketchy.  That's a fair criticism - though it's not the schools that are to blame - and not entirely the government, either.
New Brunswick, in general, simply doesn't care about education.   It's related to a general lack of interest - even a hostility to - learning and thought. New Brunswickers are conformists - 'n' thinkin' and readin' and discussin' just get in the way of conformin'. This is not an atmosphere that encourages intellectual development.
And very interesting is an article by Carmel Higgins on religion. She challenges common forms of religious belief. This is far more intelligent than anything I have seen on the Faith Page.
There are six pages of Canada&World News. The first three are set in New Brunswick. A  fast-breaking story is that a suspect has been named in a piano vandalism case. Over a half page is photos of smiling people holding up cheques.
The only news from outside Canada and the U.S. is that there is a ceasefire in Syria. There is no mention of the slaughter and starvation going on in Yemen, no mention of the U.S. helping the slaughter with its blockade of food and medical supplies, no mention of the Saudi use of cluster bombs on civilian targets, no mention that the U.S. is supplying those bombs, no menion of what cluster bombs do, no mention that they are illegal under international law.  (I have more on this further down.)
There's not a word about the chaos and instability South America is falling into - largely because of constant U.S. interference and imperialism. There is only the usual gossipy stuff about Clinton and Trump. There is nothing about the problems  facing the U.S.  (growing poverty, homelessness, social violence, vile prisons), and no analysis of the failure of either Clinton or Trump to deal with these problems.
And behind that is another problem. The newspaper as a news medium has had its day. For most news, radio and TV are far superior - and timelier. All over the western world, newspapers are having to cut costs. The irving press has always been run on the cheap. But we're seeing big cuts in newspapers all over the western world. After a little more than a century, an age has ended.
TV? No. Not only are private TV networks as bad as newspapers for their propaganda. But TV is pictures. It does not engage the mind. That's why we know exactly how Trudeau looks in a suit - but nothing of what his policies - if any - are. And that's why we get an American election that's a vaudeville act.
Probably the best choice would be talk radio with both news and discussion of it. But most private stations find it cheaper and more profitable just to play the top fifty on the charts - over and over. And over.
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The Brief, a news sheet by nbmediacoop.com has an excellent - and frightening - story of what people with names like irving doing to our forest in New Brunswick.
Our forests are now undergoing a destruction that was forecast 25 years ago. Thanks to overcutting and to sprays like glyphosate, the forest is shrinking, and wildlife is disappearing with it.  Hunters got over 31, 000 deer in 1985. In 2015, they got just over 4,300.
Clear cutting and sprays have largely destroyed our wildlife. And we humans are just as vulnerable as the deer are.    (But it does not seem to be a matter that is causing Mr.  Irving to lose any sleep.)
And not only did our government sell the right to cut wood  for an outrageously low price;  but the added cost to taxpayers for (mis)managing the forests has been seven to ten million dollars per year.
Get used to it. The wealthy and influential are not here to create jobs. They're here, and have been throughout history , to loot us. That is pretty much the history of the world. The capitalists of Britain murdered and plundered all over the world. None of them gave a damn about the suffering they were causing. The capitalists of today don't give a damn, either. They have happily murdered millions; they have tortured; as I write this, they are droppinig cluster bombs on some of the poorest people in the world, bombs that will go on killing for decades.
This is the nature of human greed. It is a brutality that goes beyond the Hitlers of this world. And the Frank Mckennas of this world will always kiss up to babble about how it creates jobs. And no part of this story has ever appeared in the irving press, and no part ever will.
If we stand still, they'll just keep ploughing us. And there's not place to run because that's the way things work all over the world.  We have to learn to stand up to these pillagers and killers.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/13/edward-snowden-why-barack-obama-should-grant-me-a-pardon        
Laws are sometimes passed for the good of the people.  And they are sometimes passed to benefit the wealthy and influential. When Edward Snowden released government doctuments on state spying in the U.S., he did it because a free people needed to know what their government was doing to them. And they certainly wouldn't find out from the news media. (I think we could use an Edward Snowden in Canada.)
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Here's another story about the climate change that we've been told isn't happening. And, of course, it's a story that didn't make the irvingn press.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/13/august-was-another-hottest-month-for-the-record-books/
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Remember that photo of the five year old boy in Syria - the photo that made the news around the world? Here's some more information about it.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article193091.html
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Exciting news for Europe. The U.S. is placing more nuclear missiles in various parts of Europe. These would force Russia to use part its nuclear force against European targets. What an honour for Europe!
http://www.voltairenet.org/article193232.html
The full American effort appears to be on war, and a war so destructive it really wouldn't matter who got bombed the most. The U.S. has, for  years, ignored the UN and its intended role to prevent wars. The U.S. isn't looking for peace. It wants war. Greed does that.
When, on November 11, we thank those who served in our wars, we might think for a moment about how we have abandoned all we told them they were fighting for.
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Here's a story about how 50 groups have demanded Trudeau postpone the Energy East pipline hearings until it deals with the very questionable and probably corrupt dealings of the investigating body.
http://canadians.org/media/more-50-groups-urge-trudeau-stop-pipeline-reviews-and-overhaul-neb
(The Irving press didn't carry the story because it has a much more important one about how Frank McKenna thinks the deal should go ahead.
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/09/why-canada-opposing-global-efforts-to-eliminate-nuclear-weapons_
I think I can explain why Trudeau has backed away from limiting nuclear weapons. It's because he has no political philosophy. He has been elected the leader of an American colony. And he is the friend of the wealthy. Expect nothing from him.
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Ralph Nader provides an interesting account of the indifference of big business to human life in matters where profits are involved. This is not just a wild accusation. We have centuries of proof of it. That's why, contrary to the views of the Norbert Cunninghams of this world, we need close regulation of business - especially of big business.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/federal-regulation-saves_b_11940904.html?
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Israeli leader Netanyahu insists that land taken by force from Palestine and made into Israeli settlements will never be returned. He adds that Palestinians who want their own land back are guilty of ethnic cleansing.
Haaretz refers to Netanyahu's position as 'chutzpah' - a good yiddish word meaning that Netanyahu. who stole that land in the first place and ethnically cleansed it by kicking  Palestinians off it, has one hell of a nerve..
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.741275?utm_content=%24sections%2F1.741275&utm_medium=email&utm_source=smartfocus&utm_campaign=newsletter-daily&utm_term=20160910-20%3A09
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Only a fool could think that Obama is a 'nice man'.   In fact, his policies have been as brutal and bloodthirsty as those of George Bush Jr. As a sample, here's a story that you won't find in our press.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/07/what-obama-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-uzbekistan/
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Well, it's getting late - and we should give a little thought to where the the U.S. goes after the election.
Where the leadership wants to go is obvious. It wants to go for world conquest - and the sooner the better because its strength as opposed to China's goes down every year.
The usual method for American governments has been to stoke American fears of foreigners. To listen to American politicians, one would think that the U.S. is daily under attack from foreign countries.   (In fact, U.S. soil has been attacked only twice since 1776. The British - and Canadians - attacked Vermont and Wahington and bits of the north in the War of 1812. But they were responding to an American invasion of Canada. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. That's it.) The innocent little USA that everybody picks on has invaded almost every country in the Americas, some many times - and it has imiposed brural dictators. The same pattern holds in much of Asia and the Middle East.
But American governments will work on that old, reliable fear that Americans believe others are always picking on them.  That will be used to justify wars with Russia and China. Clinton will certainly follow that pattern. And, if Trump gets elected and doesn't do that, he'll be assassinated.
But whoever gets elected will have to move fast because the U.S. is one desparately unhappy country. That's why we're getting a baggy pants vaudevil act and calling it an election. Neither candidate has given any suggestion of a domestic policy to deal with some very serious problems. The electorate, while angry, don't really know what they're angry at or what it is they need. Nor is there anything in their understanding of their own propaganda-saturated history and present to help them find a direction.
The result of all that anger but no sense of direction is likely to be violence on an increasing scale. The U.S. is already the most violent of developed countries in the world. Police killings, for example, should reach 1200 or so this year. Forget whether this is caused by the police or by the people. The important fact is that the violence is happening.
The U.S. also has the biggest prison population in the world - and some of the vilest prisons.
It's social services are below the standards of most of the developed world. There is a steep rise in the amount of deep poverty - with no sign of any improvement  or of any intention of dealing with it.
It's torn by racism.
It has the most heavily armed population in the world.
And that sets the stage for high levels of violence that have no purpose except to express disiullusion and anger and hatred - and hopelessness.
Will the big business that controls U.S. government be able to deal with this? Probably not. It is, as always, too greedy to care about any suffering and too self-obsessed with itself to do  anything to relieve it.

Sept. 12: Not quite back in form yet.

Many years ago, while doing research on the Women's Christian Temperance Union in Canada, I came across a speech by its leader. It was delivered during World War One; and its message was, "We shall win this war because the Lord Jesus Christ is our commander-in-chief."
That's the way us humans think. And so we have had days of media reporting on the recent anniversary of  9/11. It is a day to remember because 3,000 innocent Americans died. No doubt, there were prayers in the churches for their souls
But few, if any churches, offered up prayers for the souls of the millions of innocent men, women and children murdered, crippled, orphaned,  tortured, made refugees by our side. Of course not. After all, if  you think about it, the Lord Jesus Christ is stil our commander-in-chief. So it's okay.
In the same way, we sympathize with France for its suffering of Muslim attacks. But nobody seems to remember the record of France's brutality and butchery in Vietnam, North Africa, and the middle east.
It's important to understand the religious basis for this distinction because it assures us that whatever we do, no matter how brutal is may seem, is ordered by God.  And there's a hint of that understanding in our news media.
Recently, the CBC carried a story about Syrian rebel forces fighting against Assad. Now, these 'rebel'  forces are largely made up of mercenaries, hired killers who will fight for anybody for a price. Commonly, they are particularly brutal because - well, they choose to hire themselves out to anybody. They like killing as a career. Many of them collect body parts of their victims as souvenirs. Women's breasts, for example, make excellent tobacco pouches.
Uusually, people like this are called terrorists. But the CBC didn't call them terrorists. It didn't even call them rebels. No, they were - get this - activists.
Activists. That's a nice word. It reminds us of charity workers, of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, of  environmentalists.  But what an odd word to describe hired killers. Why not call them what they are? Or why not at least call them rebels?
But our news media don't like words that convey a sense of anger, violence, murder.... not when the killers  are on our side. So we need a nice word. Activists is a nice word. (Those Syrians fighting on Assad's side are activists, too. But they are never called that. That's because they're not nice people like the ones on our side.)
This use of words to convey hidden meanings is common in our news media. That's why an American Muslim who kills is a terrorist. But Americans who kill millions of Muslims and make refugees of tens of millions are heros.
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In the ten days I've been away, the irving press has not improved.Nothing in section A news is worth reading unless you really, really care about a soap box derby or anecdotes about who is living a happy life. There are, however, three items worth a read on the Commentary page.
One is on the very high cost of university education in New Brunswick, and across Canada. The problem is getting much, much worse as incomes rise steadily for the   very wealthy while declining for everybody else. And much, much, much worse as the very wealthy escape paying their share of taxation.
Then there's the effect of running universities as if they were businesses - a practice that has gone wild as university boards of governors are dominated by business leaders who know nothing of education. One result of that is the sky-rocketing cost of university administrators, a scandalous waste that reflects the effect of this same phenomenon in private business. (I know a good deal about this because I was once offered such a position. I realized as I read the terms that they were so high, I was not being offered anything; I was being bought. So I turned it down.)
The universities also have to learn how to teach. They have to learn that students are paying to learn, not simply to sit in the sunshine of pompous asses who think it a privilege for students just to see them. They need to learn how to design courses that make educational sense. Professors also need, at the undergraduate level, to put more time into teaching. That would save a lot of money.
There's a good column on the virtues of having two, official languages in New Brunswick. I spent twenty years on a committee to preserve two, official languages in Quebec. Both sides lost. The result was that hundreds of thousands of anglos simply left Quebec. The francophones who supported separatism said they did so to preserve their culture. But the most notable feature of Quebec that I noticed on a recent visit is that their traditional culture has largely ceased to exist.
New Brunswick has system to be pleased with.
Alec Bruce has an excellent point to make in his column but, In New Brunswick fashion, the point is almost hidden until the last, few sentences. So I'll put it a little more bluntly.
New Brunswick is being robbed blind by a handful of its wealthiest citizens. Everybody else is suffering as a result. And the process  has been getting worse. This, and not kiss-up books from academics about how we need to cut back, is the crisis facing New Brunswick. And we're not alone.
The big push is on for world domination by the very, very wealthy. The war isn't just against the middle east or China or Russia. It's against us. And, no,  voting Conservative next time won't help.
And world news in the Irving press? Get real.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/teens-america-hunger-food-poverty
Norbert Cunningham's columns are full of praise for big business, and full of contempt for government. Now, it's certainly true that New Brunswick governments generally deserve contempt. That's the fault of voters - and it's the fault of  newspaper chain that never tells the truth about what is going on in this province. And it's the fault of all of us for tolerating the above.
Despite Norbert's ranting columns, big business does NOT create prosperity - except for its owners. And giving those owners bigger profits and tax relief just makes it worse.
For centuries, the British Empire produced monster profits for the very wealthy. Meanwhile, most of the British people lived in filth and poverty. Much the same has been true of Canada and the U.S.
Contrary to myth, the bulk of immigrants to Canada and the U.S. did not walk into suburban bungalows and lives of ease. They were horribly exploited by our wealthier ancestors with low pay, filthy living conditions, and dangerous working conditions.
The Montreal district I grew up in was abysmally poor. And it was no accident that most of my classmates were the children of immigrants from Italy, Poland, Syria....  The same was true of blacks, Chinese, Jews - who suffered the added punishment of being forced to live in racial ghettos. and were discriminated against in jobs.
The closest we ever came to wider prosperity and opportunity was in the second world war and a few decades after it. And that was not due to anything done by big business. It was the result of strong government controls over business, especially big business.
It was also the result of government social services - like health, being made available to all of us. (I come from a generation which still remembers the impossibility of getting medical care, no matter how great the need. That came from government. But it had to be forced on the federal Liberals by public demand, a demand forced by the example of the NDP government of Saskatchewan.
You won't find much about this in history books. But both Canada and the U.S. were marked by dreadful slums, dangerous working conditions, lack of opportunity, inferior health until the benefits of government action began to be felt after the war.
For what improvment we have now, we owe nothing to big business or to capitalism.
But that has been changing.     Big business has been fighting back with its owndership of news media and of politicians. The result has been a steady growth of poverty even as the wealthy get obscenely wealthier. Worse is yet to come as governments make up for unpaid taxes from the rich  by closing down health and schools.
As well, capitalist-controlled governments are murdering people by the millions all over the world.   They are, to put it gently, destroying the stability of whole nations - as in Syria and Iraq and the whole middle east.
We are well into an age of murderous and unlimited greed. That is really what the world news is about every day. Uncontrolled capitalism is doing what it has done before - creating terror and poverty and hopelessness.
Discuss that over coffee in the  barn of the Irving Chapel.
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Meanhile, our good friends in big business who only want to help us all are being harrassed in some countries by pesky environmentalists.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/02/environmental-activists-still-under-threat-in-honduras-six-months-after-berta-caceres-killing
Does the U.S. government know about these killings? Well, yes.  Its hero special ops troops carried out at least one of them - probably many more. The mine and land owners who must be behind such a scale of killings are largely American and Canadian. But I''ve yet to see our RCMP special camouflaged and combat rifle-armed troops surrounding the home of any mining company owner.
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This next one illustrates the key issue of our time - the ability ot big business to dictate our priorities.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/
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The American government has, for some years, been spying on the phone conversations of anyone it chooses.  More correctly, anybody who wants to spy on anybody for any reason can do it through friends in government, local or federal, or police forces.
This doesn't keep people safe. It simply controls them. The U.S. is a police state. You cannot have a country that is both a police state and a democracy. I should think it very likely that Canada has a similar system.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/long-secret-stingray-manuals-detail-how-police-can-spy-on-phones/
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North American companies have been financing elections for a very long time. That's a major way they control who gets elected. Now, in the U.S., we're learning that foreign companies have a share in buying American politicians. That's part of larger trend of international corporations acting as though they, not governments of any sort, control the world.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/foreign-spending-on-u-s-elections-threatens-national-security-fec-commissioner-says/
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This next one is similar. It's about the TTP, a huge trade deal that would allow companies to sue any government which interfered with its profits in any way. For example, any attempt to deny a company permission to open a mine, even it is proven that opening it would be a serious healthy hazard for the region, would lead to a lawsuit against the government denying that permission.
And, just to make sure, the suit would be tried by an 'international tribunal' composed of flunkies of the wealthy.  (Our news media  have been very silent about this. though Justin has informally approved it.) What it means is that we would no longer control our own countries, and big business would effectively take over government.
https://theintercept.com/2016/09/08/obama-promises-lame-duck-tpp-push-despite-uproar-over-pro-corporate-provisions/
__________________________________________________________________________________I'm nowhere close to finished with all the material I have. But I'm already very late in finishing this one. I guess it takes time to get back to the schedule after a break.
So here's a summary.
Capitalism, like any other human concept, cannot be allowed to operate without controls. Even Norbert Cunningham should be able to figure that out.
A prime reason it cannot be allowed to operate without controls is that it is based on greed. (Call it competition. Call it entrepreneurship. Call it ambition. Call it whatever you like. The reality is that the core of capitalism is greed. Left to itself, greed will destroy itself and us.)

As a result of this greed, we have been fighting wars since 1945, almost without a break. While millions of Americans go hungry, the war industries are having a great time. And all the wars, while pimped as being battles for freedom and democracy, have been mass murders to enhance profits. They are capitalist wars.
And the result of all this has been a steady destabilization of societies all over the world.
There is no point in telling the world's billionaires that they have killed millions, destroyed nations, created an overwhelming  and destructive flood of refugees. The billionaires don't care. And, like all the obsessively greedy, they cannot understand (or refuse to understand) that their greed will ultimately destroy them, too.
There is no political party of any reputation in Canada that is ready to head this off. Both Liberals and Conservatives have proven themselves since 1867 to be the agents of the wealthy. The Green's programme is too narrow to deal with the central issue - the power of capitalism. And the NDP has wasted over 45 years in telling people what it thinks they want to hear instead of telling them what they need to hear.
And New Brunswickers have wasted generations in fearing open discussion and challenging the way things are. And we really don't have much time left.
The biggest problem the world faces is uncontrolled capitalism. That is the major cause of wars. And, as the greedy have proven over the years, they are not a very bright bunch.
Nor, incidentally, are the Christian clergy. How else to explain that they have never noticed that greed, capitalism, and mass murder are not Chistian concepts?

Sept. 10: Home again - and the final part of U.S. imperialism

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/what-the-us-bombing-of-cambodia-tells-us-about-obamas-drone-campaign/273142/

http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/

http://thevietnamwar.info/how-many-people-died-in-the-vietnam-war/

The above are figures for those killed in American imperial wars. As they indicate, there are no reliable figures. Official ones  (the sort you will find in Wikkepedia) are very, very cautious - and almost certainly great under-estimates.

When I last wrote,  I promised to look at the American Empire from World War 2 on.

The U.S. was slow to get involved in World War 2. That was because, in the eyes of U.S. corporations, this presented a golden opportunity - but not in Europe. U.S. corporations could not have cared less about the Jews or the Naziis or Britain or Europe in general. No. The declaration of war in 1939 opened the way for what U.S. corporations had long wanted - a collapse of European empires, especially in Asia, so the U.S. could move in.

France and Britain at war with Germany and Italy could not possibly defend their empires in China, India, French Indo-China  (Vietnam). Japan was already moving into the vacuum created by European weakness. The U.S. had been preparing for a war with Japan since 1919. That was particularly noticeable in its development of aicraft carriers. They were built for long-range abilities, important in the great spaces of the Pacific.

But it would have to find an excuse to make American public opinion support a war. So, late in 1941, it cut off oil supplies to Japan. Japan had no oil reserves, and oil was essential to its invasion of China. it was essential for tanks, aircraft, for supply ships to bring food to Japan, and oil for its large fleet of warships. Oil was the key to Japanese survival. The U.S. knew Japan would have to respond.
The attack on Pearl Harbour was a desperate move. It was the Japanese copy of a British attack on an Italian naval base. It might have been effective if the Japanese had an army to hold Hawaii, and if the U.S. aircraft carriers had been in harbour at the time of the attack. But neither of those was true. So the result had no lasting effect on American military power. And it made it possible for the U.S. to claim  a need to go to war in its own defence.

Even the churches (as always) were brought into enthusiastic cooperation, and "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" became a best-selling pop song. This, at last, is what U.S. corporations had been looking for ever since the conquest of The Phillipines just 40 years earlier. (The U.S., by the way, had been 40 years under an American dictatorship. The dictator in 1941 was General Douglas MacArthur. The American empire has never been fond of democracies.)
It worked like a charm, with the Japanese no match for American numbers and production capacity. Even worse for Japan, it was an island nation without the oil to maintain its military needs or its food needs. The U.S. could also supply its China dictator of choice, Chiang kai-Shek, with weapons and even more direct help. The U.S. was on the edge of its great dream - the absorption of China and French Indo-China into the U.S. empire. But there were two hitches.

France wanted control of Indo-China back. Britain wanted Hong Kong, the centre of the magnificently profitable British Empire in China. The U.S. ordered both of them to keep out because it had its own plans for both.

But the Free French, with only a few, small ships in the region, sent a destroyer to "liberate" Hanoi. U.S. aircraft bombed the destroyer heavily. The French, still determined, sent more ships and troops. It became to embarassing for the U.S. to continue killing it's European allies. So the French began their long Indo-China/Vietnam war to reclaim their Asian empire.

The British, too, were warned to stay away from Hong Kong. But Churchill was furious at the order - and the British fleet in the region was too big to be attacked with nobody noticing. So the British did take Hong Kong back.

The French, it turned out, could not hold Vietnam. That is why the U.S. took over that war. And, remarkably, the most powerful and richest country in the world, despite the greatest bombing campaigns in history and despite its use of illegal weapons such as napalm bombs and Agent Orange, could not defeat a third world country.

They lost despite dropping more bombs on tiny, neighouring  countries like Laos and Cambodia than all bombs dropped by all the allies in all of world war 2. One third of those millions of bombs have not yet exploded. In all those years of bombing, the western news media complletely ignored it.

The killing in Vietnam was largely of civilians, and quite deliberately so. They were burned to death by napalm, poisoned and starved by Agent Orange which also produced  (and still produces) horribly disfigured children who usually die in childhood. (They are commonly born with no mouths, with severe brain damage, without eyes.....)  But don't look for any of this in the irving press.
To this day, there are cluster bombs by the millions lying around in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia - all waiting for children to pick them up as playthings.
Nobody know how many civilians - men, women, children - were murdered in those wars. Official sources will offer estimates of hundreds of thousands. Scholars have placed the number at 4 million and higher. Then there are the crippled, the orphaned....

And in remembrance of that, Americans speak of the killers as "Vietnam war heroes" and,   with right hand over heart, sing  "God Bless America".
The British Empire lost Hong Kong (but more peaceably) to China.
All empires that I have known have been murderous, torturing, exploiting, looting bastards. And, in Hong Kong, I got a bellyful of the 'colonial administrators" that the ruling countries send out. They are arrogant, callous, racist and, for all their postuing, usually not very bright.

As well as all the above, empires are, commonly, destructive of national stability. We're watching that in the middle east where, beginning with the British after World War One, and continuing today with the Imperial U.S., artificial nations are created for the sake of, say, oil companies. They are so artificial, they can be held together only by dictators. But when the dictators are not obedient enough to the imperial power, they get invaded - like Libya and Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan - And then whole societies in them collapse.  That's what is now happening in the middle east.   We (including colonial kiss-ups like Canada) have created a turmoil we cannot settle.

Now, and ever since the release of Project for the New American Century, American corporations have decided to go all the way for mastery of all the world's economies. The rules (never popular with corporations) have ceased to exist. There is no scale of mass murder, of national suffering, of humiliation that is out of bounds. All that counts is corporate profits. And if that risks the destruction of all earthly life, so be it. Big business tells governments how to spend income taxes. Our job is to supply the taxes so governments can use them to feed the war machine.

And the corporate bosses, of course, don't pay taxes.

After all, corporations have already demonstrated their contempt for international threats like climate change. So why would they give a damn about nuclear war?
I said, in a previous post, that the next couple of decades are crucial. That's because U.S. power, relatively, is in decline. Indeed, its magnificently huge and well-equipped military was not able to defeat Vietnam. It has not been able to defeat Afghanistan in 15 years. It scored a military victory over Hussein, mostly because Hussein didn't have much of a military. Nor was the U.S. really successful in Iraq because it is still in a social chaos that is nowhere close to solution. The only clear victory since 1945 was Grenada - an island with almost no military, and which was not nearly such a tough war as Clint Eastwood would lead us to believe.

The American people are nowhere close to understanding what is happening to them.  Raised on an American history that is almost pure fiction, kept ignorant by their news media, and led by churches who believe that God is an American who wakes up every morning to sing "God Bless America", they have little sense that their country is really led by profoundly cruel and greedy corporation bosses who are indifferent to what happens to the average american or to anybody else.
That's why Americans will respond to Donald Trump's racial and religious hatreds. It's because they have no sense of the real cause of their problems. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is a contender because she appeals to the very respectable who don't want to think at all for fear it would make them unrespectable.

But why the two decades? Because within that time, China is likely to be the world's dominant economic power. Even as things are, the U.S. that couldn't beat Vietnam or Afghanistan, is not likely to beat China in a conventional war.
It's not even likely now to beat Russia in a conventional war. After all, the great lesson of the Vietnam war was that the American people will not accept large casualties among their own military. And any such conventional war would create huge casualty lists.

No. If U.S. corporation bosses are gong to rule the world, they have to do it very soon. And such a war would have to be nuclear.

The U.S. is on a track it has been on since 1776. Americans accept that track because the American revolution created a patriotism designed to cover all the cracks in their society -rather like Britian in its glory days. The problem today, as we see daily in the presidential campaigns, is that the track is a mess. But American patriotism has been so hyped over the centuries that Americans have no sense there are other ways to travel.
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As a sub-note to all this, Americans - like Canadians and all western peoples - share an ardent belief in the goodness of serving God and country. The reality is that you cannot serve both. We should have learned that from the Naziis.  They believed they were serving God and country. And the Nazi tanks and other weapons were blessed by the clergy. In fact,  clergy of all western countries have routinely blessed weapons of war. I well remember an old photo of Cardinal Spellman sprinkling holy water on a bomb that was to be dropped on Cuba.
Loving one's country, I should think, would mean helping those who live in it. Instead, we use it to convince our people that they should murder foreigners.
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Incidentally, the first use of nuclear bombs was on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course. Why those two cities? They were not significant military targets. So I'm not sure why they were chosen. It's possible the President Truman wanted the maximum dramatic effect  on the Japanese people - and killing civilians would do that. I know that was the reason for the massive fire-bombing of Tokyo a little earlier.

After the first bomb, the Japanese government knew it was all over. In fact, they had known it for at least a year. So why did Truman order a second bomb?
He wanted a quick surrender because the Russians were preparing to enter China. And the real reason the U.S. went to war in the first place was to get control of China.