Feb. 7: Still lost in the middle of moving.

Well, my household move is   (almost) complete. So here's a try at a blog.

The news media are still coming down hard on Trump. I've no doubt he deserve it. But in coming down on Trump, they have vastly overestimated his role in all this, and they have lost any sense of what really is happening.

Trump did not create this mess. He did not plant military and missile basess right on the Russian and Chinese borders. He did not sponsor an overthrow legal and democratric Ukraine government out of power. He did not invade 70 countries. He did not kill millions of Vietnamese, Afghanis, Iraqis, Syrians, Guatemalans, Libyans. He did not overthrow the only real democrracy Haiti ever had  (and call it peacekeeping.) He did not introduce the drone bombers that kill innocent people every day.

Trump did not create the problems of this world. He did not create poverty and homelessness in the U.S. He did not begin the supply of cluster bombs for Saudi Arabia to use in Yemen. All that goes back to Obama, Bush Jr., Bill Clinton, to Bush Sr., back all the way to John F. Kennedy and even before him - back even to the brutalizing empires of Britain and France and Spain, and every step of it applauded by capitalists whose only moral value has been greed.

Trump (like Clinton) is the result of a corrupt and vicious political and economic system  - not the creator of it. This is what a crashing empire looks like.

The American public has almost no sense of that. It is kept hyped with delusions of American patriotism and goodness - the old hand on heart stuff with the pledging of allegiance to the flag. Those who go to war to murder civilians in poor countries, to bomb  hospitals and schools and homes so that American capitalists can steal their resources are cheered as heroes. And Canadian capitalists are the dogs who run beside them, yapping for a share -  as with our mining companies in South America, Asia, and Africa.

Canadians and Americans have no sense of the horror, destruction and poverty  they spread - any more than our British, French, Spanish ancestors did in their day of   racial 'superiority'  Americans and Canadians will be horrified at the death of one or two or twenty North Americans or Europeans at the hands of Muslims. Automatically, all Muslims are labelled as killers.

Meanwhile, the west kills Muslims, men, women and children by the millions and refugees by the tens of millions. We've been doing it for a century or more.  But we're good Christians. Yes, we are.

Trump has inherited a foreign policy based on racism and greed - just like the old days. And, just like the old days, this new imperialism will crash - soon. It's not just Trump. It's control by the grreediest, a control justified by racism and, internally, by the social snobbery of a very tiny part of our population.

The crash has begun. Expect no leadership from either Canada's Liberals or Conservatives.
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Israel has been stealing Muslim (Palestinian)  land and homes since its founding in 1948. (How is that different from what Christians have been doing all over the world? Well, Christians do it with no feeling of guilt at all. Jews are more likely to be informed and to be opposed to this behaviour.)

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/07/israel-passes-law-to-legalize-theft-of-private-palestinian-land/
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The following article on the destruction of democracy in the U.S. is true enough - but it ignores a reality. The destruction of democracy in the U.S. is not new. It's been going on almost since 1776. And it has been gathering speed since President Reagan.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/07/make-america-ungovernable/
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Donald Trump, in company with the world's oil billionaires, has assured us there is no such thing as climate change happening. (A billion dollars beats brains every time.)

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/07/checkmated-onthe-climate-pause-the-mistakes-scientists-make/
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This problem of climate change denial is  common to all the world,  of course. Note that the biggest deniers are the ones who have built their fortunes on fossil fuels. And, here in Canada, they obviously have enough muscle to influence Justin Trudeau.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/07/in-australia-and-the-us-sound-climate-policy-is-being-held-hostage-by-vested-interests
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In the reporting on the killings at a mosque in Quebec cities, the Canadian news media have been quick to emphasize their support for the victims and their families. And that's more than a little misleading.

Canada has a long and vicious history of racism - against African-Canadians, Ukrainians, Jews, orientals, of French against English and English against French. Until recently, Montreal apartment buildings commonly had signs that said "select clientele only". That meant no Jews, no African-Canadians, no orientals......

In the last federal election, the NDP lost most of its Quebec strength because it was sympathetic to Canadian Muslims. I grew up in a Quebec of intense hatred between French and English and betweenn both of those and anybody who was different. Canadians should not kid themselves. They are still racists.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/31/quebec-city-mosque-shooting-canada-far-right-politics
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Here's an interesting look at the impact of the oil industry. in fact, there's nothing new about this. Most wars have had some link, and usually a major one, to  money-making.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46398.htm
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Very reluctantly, I have to agree with the anger below at the failure of the left wing of North American politics to be on the left. We've seen it here in New Brunswick with the leader of the NDP actually becoming a member of the Stone Age Conservative parry.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46387.htm
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The western press unfailingly speaks of Iran as a villain. And this is a good example of how our news media lie to us and propagandize us. Iran was a country being bled dry by Britain which took out huge quantities of oil without ever paying for it. When World War 2 ended, Iranians took the opportunity to make their country a democracy, and to elect a government. And it started to charge the British for the oil they were stealing. The British were furious, but could no longer handle such a conflict alone. So they called in the U.S. to help.
That made it easy to overthrow the government of Iran, and end the democracy by imposing an extremely brutal dictator on the country. After years of brutality and poverty,  Iranians managed to kick out the dictator, replacing him with an elected government.

The British and the Americans were furious. (So much for this drivel that Britain and the U.S. have spread democracy all over the world.)

Through all the years that the Shah of Iran robbed and brutalized that country, the western news media never breathed a word of criticism of him. But  when an elected government replaced the Shah, then Iranians became evil and dangerous and cruel. Iran still  has lots of oil; and the oil billionaires want it - free. That's why Trump (like Obama, like Bush and other presidents) is threatening war with Iran.

And if the U.S. does send troops and bombers, they will  come home as 'heroes', having massacred huge numbers of innocent people, and they'll be welcome in Christian churches to stand with hands over hearts to sing God Bless America.
In fact, in the two thousand years since the birth of Christ,  and especially in the last century, Christians have been among the worst mass murderers in history, with their pews filled with row on row of self-righteous hypocrites. It's not a coindidence that Trump did well among devout church-goers.
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If you want information about how corrupt and abusive the Israeli government can be, don't waste your time on the western news media. Take a look at Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper that is the most honest and intelligent newspaper I know of.

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.770102

By the way, please don't waste time by sending me a note that I am anti-semitic. Most of the Jews of Israel are NOT semites. But all of the Palestinians are.
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Contrary to myth, there is a wide variety of opinion among Jews about the behaviour of Israel - and that includes Jews who live in Israel as well as in other countries.

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.770325
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The U.S. has been following policies very similar to those of Trump for most of its history. What Trump has added to this as a result of his business experience in which the boss is, quite literally, the only person with power. He's not a leader. He's a bully. That is going to create serious conflict within the U.S. The 'You're fired" act that served him so well on TV is what will make him a dangerous president. Divisions within the U.S. will get much worse.

And - the real clincher for disaster - Americans don't have any sense of an alternative. They are held back by the their own, largely mythical, belief in their history, and by a sense of racial superiority that has been the curse of every empire in history.

Other than that, his policies have not varied greatly from those of several decades of American presidents.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/
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The above is disorganized. Give me a break. I'm still shoving furniture around.

Sticking my neck out.

The is just a short one. I've finished my packing with my computer the last item to be unplugged. But first - a thought that's been on my mind for a long time. It's a little dangerous as thoughts go. It's critical about how we recognize Nov. 11 Armistice Day, the rememberance of those who have served in the military. It's also critical of the Canadian Legion, Canada's organization  for veterans.
Some years ago, I appeared before a very, very political Canadian government committee.  It had been assembled in response to complaints from veterans about a film series from the National Film Board - "The Valour and the Horror".  Veterans were furious about it. The film showed the bombing of Germany, for example, when allied bombers deliberately targetted civilians in what can only be called terror bombing. They were also angry at the suggestion that Canadian troops murdered prisoners.
So they put the heat on the Harper government to conduct hearings. The hearings would show, of course, that Canadians never, ever did anything wrong; and they were as good as choir boys in church. So I volunteered to give testimony.
Murdering prisoners? EVERY army in world war 2 murdered prisoners on a grand scale, often by the millions. I spoke to a Canadian general who had seen German prisoners being marched over a bridge. He later saw their bodies floating down the river.
As for the deliberate, terror bombing of civilians, Every air force in World War 2 did at as a standard practice. Perhaps the leading pioneers of this were the British who conducted raids on defenceless Kurd villages in 1920. The Germans used it  in the Spanish Civil war of the 1930s. Everybody did it in World War 2. And the leading exponent of it was the RAF. Since the war, the U.S. has become far the biggest killer by such terror bombing in history.
None of this should be taken as a criticism of the veterans. It's a criticism of all us humans. But the Legion sees it as its role to proclaim that all Canadian military were and are without fault.  And it becomes much worse than that.
Every Nov. 11, we read and talk of nothing but how we owe it to our military to remember them and their sacrifices. So we should. But that is not all we remember. And the legion, of all organizations, owes it to those who served to remember WHY they died.
In World War 2, we were constantly told that this was a war aimed at bringing a permanent peace, equality, democracy  to the world. That was why the UN was formed. But the peace never happened.
The worst offender, by far, in creating wars has been the United States. Officially, it has invaded some 70 countries since 1945. In reality, counting drones, assassination squads, the number is higher. We have not criticized one of them. In fact, we have sent troops, at the request of the U.S., to wars that had nothing to do with us.
That's why Canadian died in Afghanistan. It had nothing to do with serving Canada. In fact, there is no evidence that AFghanistan had any connection with 9/11. (Almost all the known villains were from   those good friends of the U.S. in Saudi Arabia.)  We bombed and killed people in Libya who had nothing to do with us. For a time, we committed troops to Syria and now to Iraq. We have them on what could well be a suicide mission to Eastern Europe at the request of the U.S. None of this has anything to do with defending Canada. We have become an obedient colony doing what our imperial masters tell us to do.
On Nov. 11, we should hear about - and the Legion ( not to mention the clergy) -  should be eager to tell us about what we told of soldiers of World War Two they were dying for. I'm quite sure it was not so their grandchildren could fight wars for American oil billionaires.
We are now in an extremely dangerous situation. We have allowed ourselves to become a colony of the U.S. We have abandoned everything we said we fought for in World War Two. We have betrayed those who died for us. We are now going to be under increasing pressure to follow the U.S. with its extremely dangerous and murderous policies.
By all means, remember those who died. But while doing it, remember why they died. It was surely not to follow a nation that has come to bear a strong resemblance to all those things we fought against in World War Two.
It is particularly dangerous to do this for a mentally disturbed president.
And to the Legion, you owe that to those who went before you.

Jan.28: Our ignoring of the United Nations

This will probably be a little short as I face the horror of packing for a move.

We are into preparations for the last, possible stage of imperialism. In recent history (the last few hundred years), the world was ruled by European powers - notably Britain, France, The Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United States. All of them were murderous and exploitive of their colonies. Most of those empires ended after World War 2.

The British empire, in particular, was brought down by the U.S. It used World War Two, for example, to put Britain deep into debt, refusing to extend to it the aid it extended to other countries that had suffered in the war. And so it was that Britain, like Canada, Australia and New Zealand became a colony of the U.S.   And now, Britain, as an American colony, obediently fights American wars. (That's why it was in Iraq.) Already in control of South America and The Phillipines, and soon adding most of the middle east, the U.S. used new institutions like NATO to create American colonies all over Europe. (Supposedly, NATO is a defensive organization for Europe and North America. It isn't, and it never was. It's part of the American empire.)

We were not told about any of that in 1945. We were told there would be a new  world order dedicated to peace and international cooperation. It's central institution would be the United Nations.  But American corporation bosses were never fond of it. It could get in their way of making the whole world a collection of U.S. colonies. It could get in the way of the U.S. ruling the world. So the U.S., from 1950 or so on, increasingly was hostile to the UN, and disdainful of it. And now, Donald Trump has announced he will cut 40% off its financial support for the UN.

This comes very close to killing the organization and the kind of world that we were told we had fought for in World War Two. (Remember that next Remembrance Day.) And that's why scientists have moved the nuclear clock to within two and half minutes of midnight.

We needed the opposite of all this. In wars of the last few hundred years, capitalists have used them to advance their wealth. We are patriotic. We kill, and we die. And the nation-state is a wonderful  tool for that. Capitalists use their money to buy governments on the understanding that governments will go to war to benefit capitalists, and ordinary people will fight and die- to benefit the capitalists. That's why scientists have moved the nuclear clock to within 2 and a half minutes of midnight.

There's a lesson here. The lesson is that the nation-state has reached the end of its usefulness. The world needs cooperation - not threats from the Trumps of this world.

I  can't pretend to know how best to do that. Certainly, the nation-state as it is, controlled by the wealthiest 1 percent, is making the 1% richer, the rest of us poorer, and driving us into the final war. To create a one-nation world under a sort of UN is a nice thought but, oh, it's a very long-term one. (We've been working at it for some seventy years without getting anywhere.) So, for now, we need massive change to our democracies to end ownership of them by the very wealthy. We also need to reconsider our access to news.

The private news media, most of them,  have NEVER been honest. They have ALWAYS spread propaganda. We need to address that. We'll never have a democracy until we have honest information and an informed public.
And we have to address the weakest link of all in our political system - us. It was an educated Germany that produced Adolph Hitler. It was an educated United States that produced two, hopelessly unfitted people for the presidential nomination. There is very little reasoned or intelligent or open discussion of politics in any society. New Brunswick is by no means the only one like that.
The result is that political thinking, for most people, is simply an expression of anger and/or of prejudice.

And we can't afford that at two and half minutes to midnight.
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Canadians beware. Trump will be putting the heat on to get colonies like Canada to play a bigger role in his imperial wars.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/28/trump-orders-military-to-prepare-for-war/
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We get almost no news of Latin America. But after a century of domination by the U.S., South America is changing itself.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/28/communes-in-venezuela-experiments-in-direct-democracy/
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So far, most of the Canadian press has treated the US/Mexico wall as simply a political issue. It's actually much bigger than that.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article195093.html
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Here's a story that hasn't made most of our news services. (take time, take lots of time to look at the picture.)

http://truepublica.org.uk/global/u-s-world-population-control-programme-revealed-war-famine/
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I don't entirely agree with this next one - but I certainly agree with part of it. We don't get much criticism of Canada. We should.

http://journal-neo.org/2017/01/21/what-s-wrong-in-canada-s-halls-of-power/
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Haaretz has this opinon on Trump's refusal to accept Muslim refugees. I  have only one quarrel with it. It asks what would have happened if  countries had refused to accept European Jews in the Hitler years. We know what happened. Both Canada and the U.S. refused to accept them, a refusal that was not removed until well after the war. And what happened is that they were murdered by the millions.

Many Canadians might well have voted for a Trump - or a Hitler - in that period.

http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.767557
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And now the horror of moving.
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Three cheers for the irving press!

On Jan. 26, it included a column on the editorial page by Gwynne Dyer. I met Gwynne many, many years ago when we were both commentators on a CBC  radio show. It was obvious that he was one of the best in the business of analyzing military and foreign affairs. And based on the column I just read, he still is. And  he's recognized all over the world for the quality of his journalism.
Naturally, that means most Canadian newspapers have dropped him - and the irving press dropped him over a year ago. But there he was on yesterday's editorial page. And I hope this is a sign of a permanent return.
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Yesterday, I (briefly) watched Trump on television. In a long speech, his statements were  mostly one-liners. There were no broad pictures, no statements of social values. Muslims have to be killed because they cut off people's hands. Well, for centuries, Christians have cut off heads, hanged people, murdered, crippled and starved millions of innocent people - the latter just in the past 70 years. Our closest Muslim ally, Saudi Arabia, cuts off hands every day.

Therefore, we should kill all Muslims overseas, and deport the ones who are in the U.S.

At the end, he called on God's blessing for his intentions. (The is no record to indicate that Trump has the slightest interest in Christianity or any other religion.)

What struck me the most was the brevity of his policy statements, and the lack of any general, philosophy of what a society should be. And that's when the obvious hit me.

Donald Trump is playing the only role he knows. He's back in his TV show, The Apprentice. And he's over and over reliving the scene in which he stormed into a contestant's presence to say, "You're fired."

His speeches are really a series of tweets. They reflect no general sense of values and, commonly, make no sense at all. For example, he talks much of what he'll do for the working class. But one of his first moves will be to cut off their health care. Nor will his taxing of Mexican-built cars so much to help American employment. The job losses of recent years have more to do with automation in factories than with Mexican-built cars.

Our news media have had little say about automation. But it has drastically cut employment- and will cut it much more in the next generation.  So far, corporations have had a free hand to deal with what is a major social problem. We urgently need to get the bloodsuckers out of the way, and deal with this in a humane and intelligent manner.

But Trump doesn't even recognize it's happening. He deals in the crisp, one-liners that are the popular image of the business executive. Results to look for?  - severe trade dislocations, a drift of many nations,  especially in Asia, to China, serious dislocation of economies and politics in Europe, a  strong possibility of violence in South America, severe damage to education and to access to education in the U.S. For Canada, it will mean openly becoming a colony again. It will also mean an insistence that Canada send more of its troops to die for the American Empire as their great-great-grandfathers died for the British Empire in South Africa. And depend on Justin Trudeau for nothing.

Leading a government is not at all the same as running a business. And it is nothing at all like delivering one-liners on TV. The whole world is in real trouble.
Nor is there anything to look for in the Democrats. Of all the developed nations in the world, the U.S. is the one with the worst record of social services - and one of the worst of regulating business. We have to get used to the idea that it was the failures of Bush and Obama that gave the stage to Trump.
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Here's rather an important story that I didn't see in my irving newspaper. Strange.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jan/27/canadian-scientists-lend-support-to-muzzled-us-counterparts

This is even worse than it appears. We have, increasingly in recent years, been drifting into government interference with our basic freedoms. We  don't call it that - but the west is drifting steadily into naziism. In the U.S., the position of Muslims is dangerously close to that of Naziis toward Jews in the 1930s.
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American governments, which happily kill innocent people by the millions, take a stern view of abortion because, you know, it's terribly unChristian. In fact, their view is so stern, they are enforcing it on much of the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/27/global-gag-rule-neocolonialism-abortion-donald-trump-women-developing-world
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New Brunswickers stopped worrying about pesticides like glyphosate (which kill people).  The government silenced a complaining doctor. Problem solved.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/27/the-british-government-has-colluded-with-monsanto-and-should-be-held-accountable-in-the-international-criminal-court/
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Canada sent troops over a century ago to fight for the British in South Africa, and 270 of them died there. Why? South Africa was no threat to Canada or Britain. But the Canadian newspapers (the anglo ones) loudly beat the drums for war.

That's because the war was fought so wealthy British could loot the gold of South Africa. And wealthy Canadians - who owned the newspapers -  depended on the support of wealthy British for much of their market.

Australia's history is much the same as Canada's. The only change since the Boer War is that both Australia and Canada depend on American markets so, of course, the U.S. expects them to fight its wars for its billionaires.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/27/australia-day-is-invasion-day-will-australia-join-a-trump-us-war-on-china/
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Climate change? Not to worry. Mr. Trump says it isn't happening. And if we don't believe Mr. Trump (and all our oil barons), who can we believe?

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/27/antarctic-tipping-points-for-a-multi-metre-sea-level-rise/
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I could sympathize with those 'Christians' who oppose abortion if it were really because they oppose killing. But they don't. They cheer for our starvation, slaughter, abuse of millions all over the world. They even say  "God bless our bombers." "God bless our soldiers who killed over a million Iraqis - including babies."

They are prime examples of the hypocrisy that showed itself in Christianity almost from the start. You can get samples of that hypocrisy's most wimpy form every Saturday on the Faith Page of the irving press.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/27/texas-is-leading-the-right-wing-crusade-against-planned-parenthood/

The reality is that whether doctors do them or not has no effect on the rate of abortions. Canadian newspapers of a century ago carried plenty of ads for "female weakness" medicines that were designed to encourage abortions. Even worse were those carried out by terrified women on themselves. But the anti-abortion crowd, like Trump, prefer one-liner solutions

Hint to the self-righteous. Think of something to deal with this that does not  involve simply pointing a self-righteous finger.
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Here's a detailed look at what's been happening with the anti-pipeline protest at Standing Rock. This is the leading reality of American political life. The legal authorities automatically take the side of the wealthy.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39243-missile-launchers-at-standing-rock-weaponized-law-in-action
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The American news media are not noted for being critical of the wealthy and powerful in the U.S. The certainly weren't critical of Clinton. That doesn't mean that they were honest about her. It just means she represented the kind of power they were used to praising. The private news media have happily published lies and propaganda for over a century without breaking a sweat. It may well come to terms with Trump

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39243-missile-launchers-at-standing-rock-weaponized-law-in-action
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And here's a story you won't find in most Canadian newspapers.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2017/01/canadian-newspaper-industry-advances-on-ottawa-hands-out-awash-r

So, we readers in New Brunswick can expect some of our tax money to go to the irving press so we can get breaking news on who got fined for drunk driving and .
The real problem - or problems - are two.
1. Newsprint no longer makes sense for most news. We can get more of it, and more quickly, on radio, TV and by the internet. What a newspaper could do is to supply us with commentary so we can understand what the news means. (But that has not been a strong point of the irving press.)

2. It could provide us with important local news based on investigative reporting. But the irving press has never done that, either.
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One of the outstanding concepts for the brave, new world that our soldiers had died to create after World War Two (so we were told) was an institution to prevent conflicts and to work together for peace. They called it The United Nations. But  American governments worked to destroy it almost from the start. Trump is just the latest to do so.

The current excuse is that the UN wants to recognize Palestine as a state.  But the Israeli lobby in the U.S.  won't allow that. Since 1948, Palestine has been a prison camp more than a state. The warden is Israel. it controls Palestine's (limited) economy. It keeps Palestine poor. It routinely invades Palestine, stealing its land, kicking its people out of their homes and destroying them, and annexing the land to Israel. And it intends to keep doing that.

The U.S. has always supported Israel no matter what. And why? It's not out of sympathy for Judaism. In fact, the U.S., like Canada, has a long record of fervent anti-semitism. No. It's because U.S. oil billionaires need to control the middle east. But almost every nation in the region hates the U.S. That's why it needs Israel as a friend - a very expensive friend.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46313.htm
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I seldom quote Los Angeles Times editorials. But this one makes a lot of sense.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-trump-immigrants-refugees-20170126-story.html
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The western news media, almost all of them and almost always, refer to many of Syria's rebels as "moderate rebels". This means the ones who get funding and supplies from the U.S. In fact, those rebels are not moderate in any sense. And most are not even Syrians - so they can't be called rebels.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46312.htm
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I long ago decided  that al jazeera (despite some bias) is one of the most underrated newspapers in the world. Here is a warning from it to be taken very, very seriously. Note, particularly, its comment on Jerusalem as a Jewish city.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/01/trump-embassy-move-jerusalem-destructive-170124082119524.html
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I have mixed feelings about the following statement. It is true that the American 'left' has deserted the working class, just as it is true the Canadian 'left' has largely abandoned it. But I could wish the writer had given some indication of an alternative to this.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46314.htm
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Oh, I know. This is from the Russia Insider. So we can't trust it like our own, dear irving press. But, well, it's been known for years (except to western news media) that the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government had nothing to do with Russia. It was planned, organized and financed by the U.S.)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46314.htm

(Thanks to a reader for forwarding this to me.)
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And here is a model of commitment to medical care that no U.S. government  (not even Obama) has ever followed. The U.S. medical system is run on greed - greed of drug companies, of hospital owners..... And Canada has the usual suspects who want to do the same to us.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-nader/george-h-haddad--unsung-e_b_14372978.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
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And I always have something from Haaretz because it's the most honest and intelligent newspaper in the world. This one is on Jewish American support for Muslim immigration.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.767482
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Life is chaos right now because I am moving on Jan. 30. I don't know whether I will have time to write something before then. Nor can I know how long it will take me to get organized in my new home. So please be patient.
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There's a small, New Brunswick news sheet that appears monthly called The Brief. It has stories like how our forests are being destroyed by the people who own our newspapers  (which may explain why this story does not appear in our newspapers), how our police are being militarized with armoured cars, and an account of students rallying to demand free education. I know the feeling. I graduated with eight years of debt that it cost half of my teaching career to pay for.

You can get a brief look at it below...

http://nbmediacoop.org/

Jan. 25: Thank Justin for tax havens for the rich.

This could not have been done without the connivance of Canadian governments.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/investigates/panama-papers-canada-tax-haven-
1.3950552

Guess what this tells us about who really controls our governments.
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A recent CBC broadcast featured a panei which discussed how Russia was an aggressive nation with a long history of invading other countries. I didn't know that. The only aggression I know of came in the Stalin regime, and then in the invasion of Afghanistan.  (The Russian intervention in Crimea was in reponse to the American overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine. That's hardly 'Russian aggression'.) The tone of the discussion was that Russia was danger to the world because of its aggressions. The panelists avoided the topic of American aggression.

The official list of American invasions since 1945 is 70. Almost all of these were illegal under international law. Uncounted millions have been killed. Tens of millions are refugees, and more are starving.  (The term invasion, apparently unknown to the panelists, includes drone bombings, assassination squads.... When the U.S. 'freed' Haiti, it was actually invading it to depose and elected leader that U.S. business didn't like.)

In fact, Canada has more aggressions since 1945 than Russia has. Canada has troops taking part in the war against the Syrian government. Theoretically, they are just training Syrian rebels. That's not quite true - but it doesn't matter. Canada has no legal right to have troops in Syria. And, anyway, they have been exchanging fire. Canada, illegally, had fighter bombers in Libya.  Canada's 'peacekeepers' in Cuba were a fraud. In reality, they were there to make the American overthrow of the elected president look like peacekeeping. Canada had troops in Afghanistan.  Canada sold armoured cars to Saudi Arabia even though that was against Canadian law. And we're going to see much more of this.
Why do we do this? Because the U.S. tells us to. And Canada is a colony of the American empire just as, in the Boer War, Canada was a colony of the British Empire. We fought in the Boer War to make British wealthy wealthier. Now we fight to make the American wealthy wealthier.

Prime Minister Lester Pearson saw this coming back in the 1950s. He saw Canada would be fighting wars, and dying, for an aggressive U.S. That's why he tried to rebuild the Canadian military as a peacekeeping force. But the prime ministers since him have been increasingly weak. And the weakest is Justin Trudeau. Note how he is now clapping hands for Trump's dumping of the environment to build a pipeline. He's Trump's parrot. Squawk - ' a pipeline will create jobs.'

Canada has allowed itself to become tied to the most aggressive nation in history. O Canada, we shall not be standing on guard for thee. The last time we did that was when the U.S. sponsored attacks on Canada (the Fenian raids) just after the American civil war.
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Trump is also going to crack down on the fake news that appears in places like Facebook and Youtube. Good idea - except that most of the fake news appears in government handouts and in our private news media. We're in trouble when governments decide what news is real and what news fake.
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Democracy is broken - and not just in the U.S. It's broken almost  everywhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/25/democracy-broken-distrusted-trump-brexit-political-system
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Trump is the man who was going to serve the American working class. Remember?

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/24/trump-uses-executive-orders-to-impose-hiring-and-regulatory-freezes/
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Seymour Hersh is an oustanding journalist with a long record of honesty and courage - in a field that commonly has neither. And he knows where the real fake news comes from.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/25/seymour-hersh-blasts-media-for-uncritically-promoting-russian-hacking-story/
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Where is Trump leading the U.S.? Almost certainly to violence.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/24/get-ready-for-the-first-shocks-of-trumps-disaster-capitalism/
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Here's an idea that sounds far-fetched. But it may be essential to our survival.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2017/01/we-need-to-work-less-to-live-better
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In New Brunswick, as in most of the world, a forest is just something to be destroyed for quick profit. And there is a quick profit. But that is not the only consequence.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dramatic_acceleration_in_loss_of_wild_forest_20170125
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Almost all the news I found today is about Trump. There's no doubt that Trump is a living symbol of the horrors George Orwell forecast would come. But it's not just Trump. Much the same sort of thing was happening under Bush and Obama and even earlier - and it would have happened under Clinton. Much the same sort of thing is happening all over the western world - including Canada.

Replacing Trump would not be any great improvement. He is just the latest, diseased face of a decaying society. We need to learn that making money is not the highest aim of human life. And making it so will destroy human life.
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The U.S. and Canada have been sending troops to Eastern Europe - a move that makes no sense to me,  It is highly provocative, and has no use whatever for any defence of anything. Here's an article about it.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article194958.html
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Here's an intelligent look at what 'fake' news is - and who uses it.

http://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-labels/laitman/1.765618
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Oh, the singer, Madonna, has been banned from a Texas radio station because she's 'unAmerican'. (She was publicly critical of Trump.) The station manager said it was a 'matter of patriotism' to ban her.  (That's not unusual. Managers of private radio stations are not among the great thinkers of this world.)

Jan. 23: I couldn't escape Trump today.

The Guardian had much of little to say about Trump. This difficulty may continue for a time because Trump has no  political philosophy. EVen before he got elected, he was backing off from some of this promises.  Will he move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? Don't bet on it. He's already changing his mind. What does he think the average American needs? Well, it could be whatever the average American wants at the time Trump is speaking.

He'll give people a reality TV show - because that's what he knows how to do.  The only human need he understands is getting a job. The U.S. has had a long series of presidents with no sense whatever of what human needs had to be met. Trump takes it a step further with, in effect, throwing candy to the mob.

There is no other theme to Trump's victory, no objective to his presidency - except to make most people notice him and like  him. And the only way he knows how to do is to entertain them.
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Meanwhile, half a million Syrians are dead - to benefit whom? Eleven million are refugees with little or no access to housing, jobs, food or schooling. This was caused by U.S. interference in a local uprising, and U.S. supplies of money and weapons to terrorists (who the U.S. refers to as 'rebels'.)

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/21/how-meet-urgent-needs-11-million-syrians-fleeing-conflict
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The U.S. started and encouraged that civil war. The best news now is that it is closed out of the peace negotiations.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/21/peace-talks-syria-russia-astana-kazakhstan
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I include the following only because it is so naive. The U.S. has given no sign of moving to the left - or even understanding of what 'the left' means. If anything, it understands that the left is 'unamerican' - whatever that means. Unamerican is anything the wealthy who control the country dislike. Taxing the rich is unamerican. Murdering, refugeeing, starving  people by the millions is not.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/21/he-american-left-will-be-reborn-under-president-trump
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Here's a story about Trump's inauguration that did not appear in most news media. And I doubt whether it was so accidental as this story suggests.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/23/appearance-of-military-officers-during-trumps-inaugural-address-still-unexplained/
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The following item is long - but worth every minute of the time it takes to read it. And it may sound overdone. But it's not overdone. Trump says that Americans defend other countries, but don't defend their own borders. That is stunningly silly.

Far from defending other countries,  the U.S. has done nothing but invade them for the last seventy years. And in that time, nobody has attacked American borders.

Trump's statement might sound good on reality TV. It has no connection with reality life.

And calling on God to bless the United States? What possible reason would God have to bless the United States over other countries? Trump is the sort who might believe that God is white, male, and has a wig.
But the worst part is that for millions of Americans, Trump was talking common sense.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/23/trumps-inaugural-address-neoliberal-anti-christ-donald-trumps-america-first-trumps-jesus-love-thy-neighbour/
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I was not impressed by the various women's marches. They really added nothing to the debate over political purpose in the U.S. - and they argued on much the same level that Trump did.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/23/ignored-ironies-women-protest-and-donald-trump/

I also agree that the women's support for Hillary Clinton was absurd. She has done nothinig for anyone's rights.
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This next one is a book review. It's important because it's a dose of reality about war, and emprires, and  racism, and cruelty - and Winston Churchill. And the U.S. is, of course,  simply the last of centuries of western empires to inflict dreadful suffering on billions of people. And Winston Churchill, who first made me fascinated with history with his "History of the English-Speaking Peoples", was a prime example of racism, brutality, and indifference even to the suffering of the British people.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/23/busting-the-busts-of-churchill-why-reading-an-era-of-darkness-by-shashi-tharoor-is-necessary/
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And if you think it's only British and American empires that are destructive, take this look at the Canadian empire.

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/radio-book-lounge/2017/01/blood-extraction-canadian-imperialism-latin-america
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What I have not found so far is any analysis of why Trump wants good relations with Russia. Like most of his promises, this comes as barely a tweet with no explanation. But the explanation is surely obvious.

American corporations want a war with China. Within a generation, China could be the world's dominant economy. American corporations don't want that to happen. China is now on good terms with Russia - and the U.S., even with allies, probably cannot beat both China and Russia. Remember, it was Russia that won world war 2 in Europe. Germany could not beat back Britain, the U.S., Canada, the Free French because 90% of its military was tied up by Russia. And Germany had lots of European help in fighting Russia. Germany lost at least 5 million dead, and killed over 20 millions Soviet soldiers and civilians. No American government could possibly survive losses on that scale.

And to fight China at the same time? Out of the question. The China/Russia alliance has to be broken. That, I'm quite sure, is why Trump wants good relations with Russia - though I'm not at all sure it's a sane choice.
The U.S. would suffer prohibitive losses in a war with China. And the war would almost certainly  go nuclear - with results that would be nothing like the relatively mild one of Hiroshima.

We're playing, here, with the most severe insanity of greed.
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The following item is about propaganda that is dished out by the BBC. It's true enough. But tame stuff compared  to the propaganda and outright lies of almost all North American news media.

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2016/834-bbc-propaganda-watch-tell-tale-signs-that-slip-through-the-cracks.html
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Relax, patriots. Torture is coming back into style.  When Naziis and Japanese did it, they were hanged as criminals. When Americans do it, they're patriots and heroes, just like those air crews that kill civilians by the millions.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39175-state-sanctioned-torture-in-the-age-of-trump
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Oh, a small story, largely unkown in this part of the woods because the irving press has not reported it. In Israel, the police have been questioning Netanyahu for weeks on suspicion of high corruption. And now, it's more than a suspicion. But the irving press still hasn't mentioned it.  In fairness, they needed the space for some really big story - llke how a fast food oulet in Moncton has moved, And big headline story on how the leader of the provincial opposition is learning French.
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Jan. 21: No. I didn't watch Trump's inauguration.

There was no need to. Some years ago, I saw a video of Hitler's inauguration. Why repeat myself?

Is it an exaggeration to compare Trump to Hitler? No. Hitler rose to power on fear and anger, and he focussed it on Jews, Gypsies, gays. There's nothing new in Trump except for his willingness to talk to Russia. But I suspect the kind of talk he has in mind won't help in the long run. American business has very little time to establish the world dominance it has been seeking for over a century. But fighting both Russia and China at the same time is not really a very practical idea. Enter Trump.

Russia and China share a long border. And they are not, historically friends. So - Trump   makes nice with Russia (for now) to defeat China. And there's only one, weak link in that chain of logic. Putin is nobody's fool.

Clinton's behaviour and policy would have been only superficially different. Like Trump, she is devoted to American conquest of the world. But she probably wants a direct and shorter approach to it - the policy that both Bush and Obama represented.

The mistake that is Trump is one that began a long, long time ago with the destruction of the native peoples, the invasions of South America, then The Phillipines and, after 1945, the growing hunger for world power and dominance by American corporations.

As for the killing of civilians, especially by bombing, that is something that began with all countries from the earliest airplanes. Our news media highlight the dreadful bombing of Aleeppo civilians by Russians. In fact, it's pretty pale stuff compared to the bombing of the civilians of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Libya, Iraq, Yemen and to drone bombing - all by the U.S.  That nice Mr. Obama has been one of the great killer-bombers of history.
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I came across an item on youtube that, unintentionally, tells us a lot about the image Americans have of themselves and their past. It's about the wild west, where men were men, and carried a pair of six-guns, and wore vest chaps as they roamed the plains.

Actually, none of that ever happened.

Cowboying was a lousy, low-paying job. So cowboys seldom wore fancy outfits. They wore anything they could find among other people's castaways.
As for the showdown at nigh noon and the quick draw, they never happened. The quick-draw duel was invented for the movies, (and the first actor to use it was a Canadian from Quebec.) In fact, shooting of any kind was rare. It was forbidden to wear a gun in any town - and that rule was enforced. Contrary to the stories, gunfights were almost unheard of - and shootings were far less common than they are in most of the U.S. today.

A  large number of cowboys were Mexican. Of course. The lived on their traditional land, the land that the U.S. had stolen when it invaded Mexico. In fact, it was Mexicans who had to teach American cowboys how to raise cows.
And a great many of the cowboys were African-American. (They seldom show that in the movies.) Texas had been a slave state, so when it lost in the civil war, its slaves were freed. And, like freed slaves in the rest of the U.S., they could get only  the worst-paid and most miserable jobs.

In fact, relatively few   cowboys were Americans of any sort. Large numbers of them were immigrants from Europe who, like the freed slaves had to accept low paying jobs.

It was nothing like the John Wayne movies. But those movies have been used to project the qualities that have 'made American great'. Trump is reaching out to those people who believe in movie images, and imagine themselves strollin' down the dusty street, a gun on each hip.
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Many nations, probably most, have images of themselves that are based on false notions of their history. The British Empire was not glorious. It was theft and murder on a scale unseen before in the world. To get from "Sea to shining sea", Americans had to murder (starve, infect) hundreds of thousands of native peoples. (I have trouble imagining any god blessing that.)

This gives us nationalisms that are based on myths. And we seem to be heading into an age of pronounced nationalism.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/21/president-trump-age-global-confrontation-nationalist-china
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And, as we know, climate change isn't happening.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/20/climate-change-frontline-disappearing-fishing-villages-bangladesh

Thank your local oil baron and most of your news media for not bothering with this nonsense about climate change.
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It's important to remember that the Democrats of the U.S. are not (if at all) very different from the Republicans. It all comes down to two parties owned by billionaires.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/21/democrats-lack-of-protest-under-obama-more-likely-an-expression-of-ignorance-than-hypocrisy/
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I don't exaggerate when I talk about the corruption and propaganda in most of our news media. I must give credit where credit is due, though. The irving press often avoids lying by saying nothing at all worth reading.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/19/how-the-nyt-plays-with-history/
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Here is a useful corrective for anyone who still thinks that the Obama regime was one of good intentions, and honest and open dealing.  (And if you think, as our news media say, that Russia invaded Ukraine, note John Kerry's one-liner on that subject.)

http://www.voltairenet.org/article194952.html
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Most of our news media have praised Obama. In fact, Obama was another eight years of Bushism.  Trump was a terrible choice - but the reality is that the U.S. has had nothing but terrible choices to make for many years.

https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/15/the-beatification-of-barack-obama/
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Most of the news I can find is heavily on Trump, and is critical of him. I don't think the fault is entirely Trump's. American politics have been corrupt and tightly controlled by the wealthy all my life. The U.S. has NO alternative parties.
I hope it  has another election some day, a real, democratic one. But I am not confident it will.