July 21:What is (or should) voting be about?

Here's a story that didn't - and won't - make the irving press. (I usually start with The Guardian. It's not as intelligent and impartial as it used to be. But, with El Haaretz, it still leads the pack of the commercial news media.)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/21/defending-earth-violence-murder-activists-land-corruption

Note that it's not the usual villains we read about that they're fighting. It's the villains our news media never mention - mining companies, factory farm corporations, corporate polluters.... And yes, some prominent ones are Canadian.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/21/us-immigration-baby-did-not-recognise-parents-after-five-month-separation

This is quite a contrast with the irving press idea of a major story. As I write this, the big, lead story for world affairs in the irving press is about the death at 77 of U.S. foreign affairs officer who quit his job to live openly as gay. The news YOU need to know.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/israel-adopts-controversial-jewish-nation-state-law

I know I mentioned this story in my last blog. But there's another element to it. What Israel has done to arabs is what Naziis did to Jews in the 1930s and 40s. But before we condemn Jews for doing this, let's remember the real cause of this horror.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the western countries, including Canada, were as anti-semitic as most Naziis. They quite deliberately refused to help the Jews in any way. Any Jews who escaped the holocaust and tried to flee to the west were promptly sent back to die. Jews also are well aware that the reason the West created Israel was to get rid of its own Jews. Israelis were well aware they had no friends. They were well aware that we had, in effect, created and helped Hitler's death camps and his murder of over five million Jews.

Not surprisingly, the Jews who went to Israel were bitter, angry and even murderous. Their experience - with Hitler and with us - made them racist. And they know that the only reason the West helps them now is that it helps western oil giants to plunder the Middle East.

Israel has become a racist and murderous nation and a contradiction of Jewish principles because of-----us.
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Trump is not alone as a peddler of hatred. Nor is he alone in attracting the support of "Christians".

http://rabble.ca/news/2018/07/suffer-all-ye-ontario-children

Canada is as wide open to a Trump as the U.S. is.
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/21/from-the-promised-land-to-the-land-of-betrayals/
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The U.S. has tortured and is still torturing thousands all over the world. Nobody has been charged with these murders and  torture. Julian Assange broke the story to the world. Julian Assage now faces a brutal life of imprisonment by the very Christian leaders of the U.S.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/21/ecuadorian-president-arrives-in-britain-as-julian-assanges-fate-hangs-in-the-balance/
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Our irving press never mentions Sanders in its stories of US politics. But he is the only, real alternative leader.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/20/there-hope-progressive-movement-bold-message-economic-justice-sanders-and-ocasio
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49893.htm

This is very likely correct.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49890.htm
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The US and Saudi Arabia are today's naziis in Yemen. And I note that most of our western news media are not reporting on their naziism just as they didn't report on Hitler's treatment of Jews.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/19/pbs_report_from_yemen_as_millions
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The attempt to settle the U.S. quarrel with Russia is perhaps the only intelligent decision that Trump has made. But, as I feared at the time, American big business will wreck it. There is no good reason to hate Russia - except to cripple the Russian economy and give American big business a free hand to plunder the world. And, as I said in my last blog, I think Trump will lose this one.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49880.htm
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For those very wealthy Americans who are plundering the American economy and the American people, it is essential that Russia be evil.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49882.htm

(And it may be evil. But certainly no more evil than the U.S. is).
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49888.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49887.htm

In effect, Israelis have decided that Judaism is a race And that is exactly what Hitler said of them.

Jews are not a race. The whole concept of race is rather a silly one. But this one is worse than silly. The Jews of Europe are quite different from those of Israel up to the 1940s. In fact, the two groups don't even look like each other and don't much like each other.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/20/meanwhile-about-those-other-issues-at-the-summit/
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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/peace-or-armageddon-take-your-pick/
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If we want to see evil, we only have to look in a mirror.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/no-liberal-rallies-yet-for-the-children-of-yemen/
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/imperial-conquest-americas-long-war-against-humanity-3/5647841
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-billionaires-become-billionaires/5612125

Billionaires are leeches who feed off the rest of us. And this is why they just love capitalism.
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Another story the irving press had no room for.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/tiny-house-warriors-pipeline-indigenous-protest/
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-administration-aims-wrecking-ball-at-endangered-species-act/5648064
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https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/20/democratic-institutions-10-lessons-from-history-that-will-destroy-your-trust-in-the-cia/
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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180718-israel-weapons-found-in-daesh-arms-depot/

This is no surprise. The U.S. and Israel have been supplying weapons to Muslim terrorists in Syria for years.
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That nice Mr. Trudeau who has done nothing for native peoples since he was elected, though he has given huge sums to billionaires to run pipelines native lands.

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/
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https://www.facebook.com/WeAreNativeAmericanOfficial/videos/pcb.670922796572466/670918423239570/?type=3

The murder of native peoples in the US and Canada was carried out at the wish of capitalist leaders. They were killed to make some Americans and Canadians rich from sale of the land and from the discovery of resources. Think of it. 100 million murdered.

We are still murdering millions all over the world. But the the number of 100 million still stands as a world record. And, like all the big records of this sort, it's held by Christian nations.

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http://www.voltairenet.org/article202015.html

The reality is that Russia is not the evil power than can conquer Europe. It is not a great economic power at all. And it's population is far less than that of western Europe. It has a nuclear force probably equal to that of the U.S. But using it on Europe would mean a retaliation from the US, Britain and France that would vaporize Russia. The Russian 'threat' is very much overrated. In fact, the biggest threat to the whole world isn't Russia. It's the United States.

The Russian 'threat' is very much what it always has been, a myth created by western capitalism - and very much supported by the U.S. military-industrial complex which, itself, is a greater threat to the U.S. It is very likely that its greed will destroy the American economy.

Our news media and business leaders (same people) have trained us to hate and fear Russia just as, during World War 2, they trained us to love and admire it.
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Many, many times during elections I have met people who say, "I always vote Liberal (or Conservative) because my parents and grandparents did." These are sad cases because these are people who really do believe that Liberals and Conservatives are different from each other.  It's sad. It's worse than sad. It's destructive to the well-being of all of us.

For New Brunswick readers, the Moncton Times and Transcript July 20 has the sort of confidently ill-informed and propagandistic commentary that it's editors and owners like. The topic is 'Who will you consider on voting day?'  It is, surprise, surprise, written by a Conservative candidate; and it cheers for the Conservative party.

The commentator advocates voting for the Conservatives because they have a high proportion of candidates with business experience. 20 of them are business owners  That she writes, means they have the experience to know how to run a government, and she writes that people with business experience have a deep commitment to making life better for everybody else.

This is not true. Business leaders are NOT equipped to run a government. This is drivel. It's commonly said and commonly believed. But it's a view based on ignorance.

People in business have a long history of exploiting others. That's why we have massive poverty. That's why large parts of the world suffer dreadful poverty, exploitation, abuse, starvation.... That's why western empires have been plundering the world for over 500 years, and  have murdered many, many millions.

Capitalism is not about helping people. It's about getting as much as possible out of them - and keeping it. It does that even when a business dies. That's why, when Sears closed, it simply dumped its thousands of employees with no thought for them - but gave lavish bonusses to the already wealthy members of its board of directors.

We get better salaries than we used to? That didn't happen because of the spiritual or social values of our business owners. They caused poverty and hopelessness. The beat up, fired, killed people who tried to improve things. It was unions that did improved salaries and working conditions. And that's why many of our business owners now prefer to employ people in Latin America, Africa, The Phillipines where they can work them long hours in terrible conditions at low, low pay with no pensions - just like they used to do to Canadians and Americans - and as they still do whenever they can.

As well, business  owners completely lack any sense of what government needs to do.

The article says these Conservative candidates with their business experience will clear up issues of health and education.  Oh, really?

If it were up to them we wouldn't have health care or education. Medicare was not brought to Canada by business owners. In fact, if it had been up to them, we'd still be dying long before our time. It was brought to Canada by Tommy Douglas - not a businessman but one generally concerned about the Canadian people, all of them.  And he was a clergyman.

Business, if anything, would love to kill medicare as it has in the U.S., and put us back in the privately-owned medical care that most of us couldn't possible afford.

And education? That was brought to Canada by churches, too. Business had nothing to do with it. Later, as businessmen did get involved as members of boards of education, their major interest was in keeping teachers' salaries in the basement. Our schools were horribly run and horribly under financed until at least the 1970s. And business participation, in my years in education, was never helpful.

In the U.S., capitalists are now destroying public education, and replacing it with schools that make capitalists even richer, but whose costs exclude most of the population.

I started teaching in the public schools at less than a dollar an hour. When things got better, it wasn't because of business leaders. It was because we formed a union to fight the bastards.

Later, as a professor at a university, I found the businessmen who sat on the board were there only to make the university a tool for them. Thus the rise of the Bachelor of Commerce degree - a quite different beast from other university fields.

Capitalism simply is not about helping people or educating them. And businessmen are the last people I would expect to do anything about public needs (unless its done as that PR called 'philanthropy' in which the business leader will give back a very small portion of the tax he won't pay to get the PR of a fawning chamber of commerce to cheer his generosity and a boot-licking newspaper to praise him.)

And the local Conservative pledge to increase taxes on big business? If they wanted to do that, they've had close to a hundred years to do it. Why the delay? I note, too, that this 'pledge' isn't specific. It says just 'taxes'.  It does not say 'billions of dollars in taxes avoided by major, New Brunswick capitalists by hiding their money'.   No. The reference  seems only to refer to handouts to new companies. Yes. But those handouts to new companies should be cut. But they're not the big drain.  The big drain comes for the big, local companies who don't pay any taxes at all.

And this is the pattern all over the western world. We lose billions of dollars every year and we pay high taxes BECAUSE our wealthy won't pay a cent - though they're always quick to ask for favours.

Blaine Higgs, leader of the Conservatives in New Brunswick, SAYS he would make business pay taxes. But I notice he makes no mention of those billions that New Brunswick business steals by hiding its money from taxation.

Then the writer goes completely off the point by raising issues concerning the quality of our schools. But she gives not the slightest idea of what the Conservatives would do about that.  And she shows she has no understanding of the subject by blaming the schools for illiteracy. That's not the fault of the schools. It's the fault of the parents. It's the fault of this whole province for it's indifference to education and it's indifference to any intellectual activity whatever.  And it's the fault of a newspaper chain that prefers public ignorance. Schools cannot educate children whose parents and society that don't give a damn.

 This is a commentary that raises questions - but gives not the faintest hint of what a Conservative government would do.

Then she cites Blaine Higgs, Conservative leader, as a man made for the job because he held a senior position at Irving. In fact, holding a senior position in any business has nothing to do with the task of serving the needs of a whole society. If it did, then Donald Trump would now be the greatest president in American history.

This is a remarkably shallow, silly, and even ignorant commentary.

There is no sense whatever of the general philosophy of the Conservative Party, of its social values, of the principles on which it bases itself. In this respect, it  is morally and intellectually bankrupt - and in that it resembles everything I have seen from the Liberal Party.

The reality is that there is no significant difference between the two. Both parties are in the service of business, especially big business, with no interest whatever in the needs of the general public. ( What is their policy on dealing with poverty, on feeding children at school, on privatizing (or otherwise) health care, on dealing with the gross theft of our money by business leaders who don't pay income (or property) taxes.  Nor do I see any sign of any commitment in the closing words of the commentary to 'making life better for everyone in our province.' There's not even any sense of what 'better' means.

Indeed, this is much the same sort of Liberal/Conservative doubletalk that New Brunswickers have heard for as long as they have had elections. And I wouldn't touch either of those parties with the fag end of a bargepole. These parties have been robbing the people of New Brusnswick blind for well over a century.

Wake up!

So far, I have read only two parties, the Greens and the NDP, which have any grasp of what an election is really about, which have a philosophy of what government should be,  which have a genuine concern for the people of this province. But, alas, they are splitting their vote by running as separate parties.
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July 19:Do you know what a bagman is?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/18/sweden-calls-for-help-as-arctic-circle-hit-by-wildfires

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/18/canadas-high-arctic-glaciers-at-risk-of-disappearing-completely-study-finds

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-change-heat-waves-1.4751633

Now think for a moment. What can be the mentality be of billionaires who insist we must keep producing and using fossil fuels? (Yes, I know Trump is on their side. But he's only one of many billionaires who feel that way.) What can be the mentality of newspaper editors who don't think these stories are worth publishing? What can the mentality be of a Conservative party in New Brunswick that doesn't talk about it - but plans to develop fracking? What can the mentality be of voters who think that this destruction of the planet is good  because it 'creates jobs'.

And no. We can't put this off. The reality is we don't know how much (or little) time we have to deal with this.

But no; the irving press doesn't think it worth mentioning.

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Here is an example of what is called social principle in a political party. You would never find this in Canada's Liberals or Conservatives or in the U.S. Republicans and Democrats. And,  certainly, you would never find this story in the pages of the irving press. (It sets a bad example.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/16/mexicos-president-elect-to-take-60-per-centpay-cut
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Many, many years ago when we were both on radio at CBC, I used to see Conrad Black every week at the studio. I thought him an unspeakably arrogant and foolishly opinionated man with no ethics at all. Apparently, he hasn't changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/18/conrad-black-trump-book-support-pardon

The American people are financially better off because of Trump? That's what Trump says, too. But the figures show a steady increase in poverty. The only ones better off are the Trumps of this world.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/17/israeli-parliament-votes-to-ban-state-and-army-critics-from-schools

This kind of censorship forbidding students from learning freedom of speech is nothing new. It's been a big factor in Canadian education from the start.
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One Israeli in five is an Arab - and Muslim. They, like Jews, have lived there for thousands of years. But they have never had equal rights since Israel was created in  1948. They weren't even allowed to live in certain areas and streets, and had to sit apart from Israelis on busses. They are citizens of Israel, but inferior ones as were blacks in South Africa's apartheid regime.

Now their second-class status is official. It reminds me painfully of separatism in Quebec - and of certain English groups in New Brunswick. Oh, and of the history of enforced inferiority of Jews in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. until very recently. And, yes, this is racism.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/israel-adopts-controversial-jewish-nation-state-law
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Something to think about.....

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/19/donald-trump-despised-by-europe-despises-europe/
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/19/israeli-sniper-deliberately-killed-medic-razan-al-najjar-investigation-finds/
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Here's an article in support of Trump's behaviour in his meeting with Trump. It makes a lot of sense  - sense that I haven't seen in our news media.

https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-amid-trumps-bluster-lurks-a-couple-of-truths

In short, the U.S. is just one more exponent of several centuries of mass murder, enslaving and plundering of nations all over the world. We are trained to hate Russia - while far outdoing it in conquest and plunder. Does Putin have something on Trump? Quite possibly.

Certainly, and despite its relatively small economy and very limited military power, Russia's Putin has completely outplayed the far wealthier U.S. on the world stage.

Nor is there any reason to see hope in the Democrats. Despite some rebels like Bernie Sanders, the Democrats are still not much different from the Republicans.

Trump's visit to Russia might make sense. Accounts of it still come to us only in broken and confused pieces, and Trump himself has been more than a little erratic in his announcements.

Watch for more confusion from our news media.
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Here's an opinion sympathetic to the one above.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49870.htm
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Capitalism needs an enemy. Fear and hatred are what make the American people  willing to live in poverty so that more money - and more - can be spent on the 'defence' industry.  I never thought that Trump would be the one to challenge this idiocy. But he's done it - and this is going to hurt his party in election funding.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49877.htm
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Trump undoubtedly has problems with ego and a lack of intellectual depth. But few American presidents deserve reputations for  wisdom and social conscience.
What is happening now seems to be collapse of American morality, a collapse of any political wisdom,  and a rise of (wealthy) American greed that has been going on with scarcely a break since President Truman.

Whatever Trump's faults might be, his has been the first attempt to rebuild the peace we thought we had won in 1945. It has been an erratic attempt, to say the least. But there has been an attempt. So expect a Republican/Democrat attempt to unseat him.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49869.htm

Mind you, Trump is no president of 'the people'. He has taken a big step to avoid the most destructive war ever.  But he has done - and will do - nothing of social value for 99% of the American people.

I don't think Trump is anywhere close to being all that a president should be. But he comes closer than Bush Jr., Obama - or Hillary Clinton - ever would. I never thought I'd have a kind word for him. But I do in this case.

Can it be sustained? Probably not. Americans have been saturated in hatred and fear and in a sense of their God-ordained right to rule the world. This event could turn into a violent, domestic chaos. Certainly the military and the war industries must be furious at what Trump has done. Nor can we expect that  prominent Republicans (like John Bolton) will support what he has done.
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I'm very much in favour of refugees coming to Canada - but I do draw a line at fanatical and murderous terrorists. How could our irving press miss a story like this?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/western-governments-seek-to-evacuate-white-helmets-from-syria-resettle-them-in-canada/5647893
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The Church of England has refused to bless the U.S. of nuclear bombs. What is it thinking of? Our churches have always blessed wars and mass murder.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/mainstream-media-silent-as-the-church-of-england-fails-to-bless-the-bomb/5647996

(Perhaps the irving chapel could be approached for its blessing.)
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Few Canadians know it, but Canada was once part of a western invasion of Russia. It was there to defend a corrupt and incompetent monarchy and its aristocracy that was being a attacked by communists. We, quite improperly, intervened in a war that was none of our business. Was it to help the Russian people?  No. Western big business feared that a successful revolution might benefit the people of Russia - and set a bad example for all the rest of us who suffered from a very brutal capitalism.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/18/when-the-u-s-invaded-russia/
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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/trans-mountain-pipeline-tar-sands-canada-us-kinder-morgan/

For all the talk, recent Canadian governments have done virtually nothing about their treatment of Canadian native peoples. A basic thing that should have been done a long time ago was to give them control of their own lands. If respect for people means anything, that control is essential. Instead, whenever there's an issue of rights being infringed by big money, Canada sends riot police and snipers to protect big money. New Brunswick should remember that in connection with an invasive mining company some years ago.
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This next one is simply an item that brings a memory to me. Adding it here is just a self-indulgence.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202020.html

When I was working in China, I once passed a high rise building that included a Christian church. The sign puzzled me as it suggested a unique sort of holy place. The sign said, "Heap Gay Church".

I wonder.  Was that the one in this article?
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In the irving press of July 17, there was a rarity - an excellent political commentary. It was written by Jennifer MacKenzie, leader of the NDP. Most such commentaries just tell us about what the party is going to do. There's no sense of the social values of the party, in fact just a list of 'neat' things that, individually, don't tell as much at all. But this commentary is different.

It's what the NDP would do in the context of its social values and its priorities. And it's well done.

The only reservation I have is about its failure to address a problem that New Brunswick MUST solve. The wealthy of this province steal huge sums of money from us every year by not paying taxes. As well, the wealthy, as we all know, buy the Liberals and Conservatives. If voters ever hope to see this province prosper, it has to tackle the greed and illegitimate power of the wealthy.

The NDP platform isn't perfect. But it's the best I've seen since moving to this province.

There's also, today, a commentary by David Coon of the Green Party which speaks of having a social policy, but provides much weaker evidence of it.

There's also a good commentary by Hebry Srebrnic of University of PEI.  It's an important one. Events in the Middle East show the U.S. in decline as an imperial power. Now, we're seeing a rise of Russia and China in that region. And Israel seems to be moving to new friendships with Russia and China.

Tod Hill of UNB has an excellent commentary responding to an earlier one by a professor Herb Emery. (I have found Emery's columns to be heavily biased and, in the case of this one, almost unintelligible.  Three cheers for professor Tod Hill.)

The rest of the irving press is its usual, ghastly self. They had the start of good story about local boy Dominic Leblanc moving within the federal cabinet. However, it doesn't mention  the big  job for a federal Liberal from this province. Who is the one who gets the job of being bagman for the Liberals in New Brunswick? Who is the one who visits irving and other wealthies to get election funding? And who is that then takes back to Ottawa the orders for what irving and others tell the government to do for them? I  have a strong suspicion I know who it is. Do you?

And this is properly called corruption of the government.
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Then there's this piece sent to me by a reader. It's not really a news  item, I guess. It should have been when the story broke a good sixty years ago. But it was smothered.

It's important to read this for an understanding of what humans are like and what wars are really like.

http://whale.to/b/bacque1.html

Almost all of our news media have never reported this. But can you imagine what would have happened if a German general had murdered a million allied prisoners? The news media would have been aflame with rage and with editorials declaring Germans were genetically evil; the German general would have been tried at hanged at Nuremberg.

But our media ignored the story. And General Eisenhower went on to be president of the  U.S. (admittedly one of the more intelligent ones.)

Wars are always presented to us as good on our side and evil on the other. In fact, there's usually plenty of evil on all sides. In my student days, one of my friends was an African American who had served in the American army in the Pacific. He told a lot of stories of American troops murdering  prisoners - including by dropping them over the Pacific from aircraft.
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Finally, another word about Trump.  I was slow to understand Trump's visit with Putin. It was clumsy - and even more clumsy as he spluttered through his responses to criticism.

And, in his other roles as president he has been the destructive agent serving America's billionaire class, and largely a dead loss for the American people.

But he was right to do what American presidents should have done a century ago - mind their own business in dealing with other countries. Too bad it's not likely to happen.

July 17: Wealth and Greed.

This will be a short blog - if it ever gets finished at all. My computer has been going strange on me. Sites that I need don't respond. A full day of writing I have done has disappeared - twice! I was hoping to get this off on Monday night. But it will be shorter than usual because the part I'm sending has already disappeared twice - so I'm not going to temp fate more than I have to.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/global-warming-risks-1.4748225

Gee! Who woulda thunk it?

In fact, the risks are immense - and final. So why have the fossil fuel kings refused to pay any attention to this?

Part of the answer is that they are very, very greedy. The other part is that their greed has added stupidity to them. That combination is not unusual in world history, I'm afraid. And every day they delay dealing with climate change is a terrible loss for our chances of surviving what is happening - and for their chances.

And these very greedy people own most of our news media. That why the irving press is not likely to print the above opinion.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-nelson-mandela-lecture-1.4749819

I don't know what to make of Trump's meeting with Putin - and I find that our news media don't know what to make of it, either. And to read Obama's speech is just to read another example of hypocrisy.

Americans respect human rights??? Like bloody hell they do. Nor, in living memory, have they ever respected them. And they have, since 1945, been the world leader in aggression, mass murder, torture. Nor did Obama ever break that pattern.

As to Trump's meeting with Putin, it is possible that the objective of it was to loosen Russia's ties to China. For American big business, Russia is not the great threat of the future by  domination of the world markets. China is.
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Countries with oil deposits have produced enormous wealth. But it all goes into the pockets of billionaire westerners who have stolen their lands. And any country that resists the billionaires (like Venezuela)  soon find our news media  accusing them of being evil. And that can be followed by invasions by American 'heroes' fighting for their God and country.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jul/16/nigeria-poverty-stricken-families-struggle-survive
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-trumps-confrontation-unlikely-to-change-china
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Here is a sample of the capitalism that the irving press says makes us all rich.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/17/bezos-becomes-richest-man-modern-history-amazon-workers-mark-primeday-strikes
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Despite the nonsense published in the irving press, billionaires are not our friends. The situation reported below in the U.S. is worse than that in Canada. But Canadian billionaires are working to change that.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/07/16/wages-poverty-america
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It is essential in a democracy for young people, all of them, to have equal access to education. That is a major part of the answer to New Brunswick's problem - a massive social level trapped into illiteracy and poverty. (Well over a century ago, we had met that problem with public education from Kindergarten to high school.  But that was a long time ago and the world is a much more complicated place. Universities are still private, and so expensive as to exclude the majority of children. - As well, universities have not advanced in teaching methods since ancient times.)

And the education crisis is now getting worse in the U.S. as it encourages charter (private) schools.
The results so far show no significant improvement in education. But they do show tremendous damage to the majority of children by allowing government to starve the public school system. And pressure is on for similar changes in Canada.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/16/how-billionaires-are-backing-charter-school-push-ap
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This didn't make the irving news.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/17/us-backed-iraqi-government-guns-down-protesting-workers/
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/26/incompatibility-of-capitalism-and-life/
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49858.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49855.htm
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Here's a view of the Trump-Putin summit you are not likely to see in any of our mass media. Why is it terrible to meet with Putin? Would it be better to begin a nuclear war?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49847.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49855.htm

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Here is what the American demand that we spend more on defence is really all about.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-trump-arms/trump-ready-to-help-some-nato-states-buy-us-arms-idUSKBN1K22US
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Our failure - forced on us by the fossil fuel industry -  to deal with climate change is a stupidity our children will pay for. Already, over much of the earth, nations are suffering severe crop failures because of climate change. And that's not just very foreign places where our racism allows us to not give a damn. It's also happening in large areas of the U.S. and in Europe.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/17/trump-kills-science-nature-strikes-back/
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Large deposits of gas and oil have been found in Argentina. And that's bad news for the people of Argentina.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/17/oil-underground-in-neuquen-argentina-and-a-new-us-military-base-there/
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We are all immigrants. My family was Scots, French, and further back, Spanish and, even earlier, west Asian barbarian. My public school was English, Italian, Syrian, west European..... (It did not accept Jews, blacks or orientals.) But my high school classes had Jews who would become the major social network for most of my life. My father had a Chinese scout troop that I  helped with (and enjoyed). One of my best high school friends - and still is today - was Japanese. Blacks would later be friends in teaching and in community work that I did.

None of that hurt me. In fact, each group opened worlds to me. Nor were they any inferior to my 'Canadian' friends - who were mostly semi-literate and illiterate  street gang French and English. Indeed, the Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Syrians,  blacks, Europeans enormously enriched the life of this street kid.

Canada is a nation of immigrants. We were built on them. And the only immigrants who did damage to this land were the French and English who destroyed the native peoples.

(I lived in Quebec through the separatist years which were - and still are - a variety of racism. The separatists destroyed my communit(ies) by insisting that all must live in French because the French were there earlier. It never occurred to them that if earlier arrival was the deciding factor, everybody in Quebec should now be speaking the language of the real early arrivals - the Iroquois and Cree and other native peoples.)

Get all the immigrants you can. Every wave has been of benefit to Canada.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/how-immigrants-benefit-society-trump/

Alas! Here in New Brunswick we have our own racists who insist the only language should be English.

Oh, there are Canadians who say we  have to protect our values. What values? Americans are particularly vocal on this point. Christian values? Hell, Christian values disappeared here a long time ago - if they ever were really here. The U.S. has been murdering people since its founding. It has murdered millions just since 1945. This is a Christian value? Billionaires keep employees in the gutter at minimum wage while hiding their own money from taxation. This is a Christian value?
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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/17/us-travel-ban-yemen-djibouti/

Alas! Trump doesn't like immigrants. He'd rather force them to stay home where American billionaires (you know, people with American values) can work or starve or poison them to death.
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The site below has lots of stories on the Trump-Putin meeting. I don't think we know nearly enough about that meeting to come to a decision. But, if you're a big fan of whatever - check out this site.

http://theantimedia.com/
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https://truthout.org/articles/the-limits-of-green-energy-under-capitalism/
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In any judgement of Trump's behaviour, one needs to remember his objectives. He doesn't care for anybody outside the U.S. Within the U.S., he doesn't care about the American people. His only concern is for the happiness of a small group of multi-billionaires of whom he is a member.

The only reason he has concern for any other part of the world at all is because American multi-billionaires want the profits that can be drawn from the rest of the world.

Well, yes. He also has a great concern for his own ego. All of the above is why I'm slow to react to his meeting with Putin. We have no sense at all of what this is really about.

https://thesaker.is/is-president-trump-a-traitor-because-he-wants-peace-with-russia/
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The following item is a long one. But I urge you to read every word of it. We get very little news of the countries we (the U.S., Britain and, sometimes, Canada, fight.)  We need to get a sense of how brutal and vicious they are - and why we are fighting them

Of all the 75 or so U.S. wars since 1945, only one was legal. (Korea - it was approved by the UN.) In not a single case was the U.S. defending itself from a threat. Not even Afghanistan. That war was fought to add Afghanistan to the American empire.  9/11 was a handy excuse. That's all. But there is no evidence Afghanistan had anything to do with 9/11.  In fact, it readily agreed to hand over Osama Bin Laden to an international court. In fact, the reality is that the country most implicated in 9/11 was that good friend of the U.S., Saudi Arabia.  But the U.S. wanted that war because it wanted Afghanistan.

What the US fought those wars for was not defence. It was for strategic control and for the plundering of natural resources by American capitalists - with a bit of the scrapings for a Britain whose imperial days were over after centuries of British brutality and mass murder for the same reason. These were all wars of capitalist greed, pure greed.

The military who went were propagandized with the notion they were 'fighting for their countries'. And what a load that was. They were bombing men, women and children - killing mostly civilians - in some of the most destructive wars this world has ever seen. Some heroes!

They gassed, mined, poisoned, slaughtered whole nations. And their poisons and mines they left and the disease and the destruction of hospitals and the starvation they left are still killing people all over the world today. Mass poverty, orphans, schools reduced to rubble, nations driven to starvation are the legacies we left. (And Canada did its bit with the bombing of Libya, invasion of Afghanistan and with offering  training to terrorists in Syria.)

Latin America is a continent reduced to dreadful poverty, low, low wages, shattered education, destroyed nations, destroyed democracies. And all of this was done to meet the insatiable  greed of American (and Canadian capitalists.) Cuba has been held down in poverty by American diktat. Haiti's brief taste of democracy was destroyed by American troops. So think about it.

How did Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, Grenada, Brazil, Chile, and all the others threaten the U.S.?

They didn't.

Nobody knows how many millions of people have died in these wars, how many families broken, how many live in misery and poverty and starvation because of them, how many are dying even in the time it takes to write this.

And what's it for? Let's get serious about this. If it were   simply to get,  say, oil, it would be much cheaper and infinitely more sensible to buy it from them. But that's not good enough for the murderous thugs we call big business.

The wars are very, very expensive for us, too. But our big business doesn't worry about that. They don't pay taxes. None. Not a penny. We're the ones who pay for all the destruction and mass murder.

In fact, in the latest version of making us do the dirty work, we are under pressure to greatly increase our military spending. (We are given the absurd line that we need this to protect us from North Korea. The reality is that the country most likely to start a nuclear war is the U.S. And, frankly, any such war would be so destructive, it wouldn't matter what defences we had. We'd all be gone.

The only purpose of increasing our military spending is to fatten the very corrupt  'defence' industries. And to take government spending away from things like medicare. But big business doesn't give a damn about that part. It's bosses, unlike the rest of us, can easily pay for their medicare.

We, most of us, don't really grasp the horror of what we are taking part in. Our big business leaders are murderous thugs no different from Hitler's 'final solution' thugs - except for being even greedier and more destructive. The U.S., with its passion for the biggest prison population in the world, has no problem with putting the poor into prison. But the biggest murderers and thieves in today's world are not people who make minimum wage. It's people who are the leaders of our largest corporations.

As you read the site below, think of the greed that drives our biggest business leaders into mass murder and horror. And think of how we pay for their greed. And remember. They have never shown that they are particular about who they kill.

(Yes. I know this sounds exaggerated. I wish it were.)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
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I'll close with just a few words about our very own, New Brunswick source of silly news. One of today's features is a column by a candidate for the provincial government election. It's the People's Alliance and, for it, the big issue seems to be balancing the provincial budget.

Well,  yes, that should happen. But why doesn't the candidate mention that we can't balance it, not when the wealthy make billions, but don't pay taxes? Nor does she seem to have the slightest idea of what our essential services are or should be.

Indeed, this party, like the Liberals and Conservatives, seems to think that running a province is like learning to ride a bike. But it's much more than that. It's about the fundamental principles of what we think government is for. It's not just for balancing the budget or encouraging fracking. It is or should be shaped on social values and the rights of people. I see less than I should of that in the Greens and NDP, but none whatever in the Liberals, Conservatives or People's Alliance.

The Greens are too narrow in their objectives. The NDP is still the wimpy offspring of a socialist party, the CCF which was a party of real, social principles that gave us medicare, among other things. I think there are some social principles in the NDP but, oh, one has to look hard.

Norbert Cunningham has a column suggesting we don't need parties at all. Members should just elected, then discuss things reasonably. He says this worked fine in early 19th century Britain.

Well, duh, through that whole period British elections were corrupt, were effectively controlled by the very wealthy. And those who voted the wrong way could expect to lose their jobs. (That was true in New Brunswick, too.)

Worse, this reflects the view of the People's Alliance that government is like a business, and running it is like running a convenience store. But that's one hell of a shallow view.

It's not just about looking for a candidate who will vote for fixing your local road. It's about looking for a party which has social values that you feel you can share. I have never voted Liberal or Conservative. That's not because they never had people with good ideas. I was a friend and great admirer of Warren Allmand, Pierre Trudeau's Attorney-General. I even knew a couple of Conservatives who were quite decent. But the key to voting is to find a party which has values you share. And most parties don't have any values except collecting election money from the rich.

A rare, good column is by the President of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. She wants national pharmacare. Now, that's a social value.

Most of the rest of the paper was the usual mindless and useless trivia. The whole reading of the Moncton Times and Transcript took less than five minutes.


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I've done it! I got to the end. There were lots of wacky problems on the way - but I made it. All I have do now is to spell-check and send this out. Will the computer get me now?

July 14: Making Canada a better place for billionaires

I was puzzled as I wrote the July 11 blog.  What was Trump doing with his attacks on allies? But a day of thinking it over made me realize nothing has changed.

1. Trump wants more spending on the American defence industry -spending by allies as well as by Americans. The purpose means nothing for defence itself. It's purely to stuff the pockets of American defence billionaires. And that sort of thinking has been common for most American presidents after Eisenhower who saw this coming, and who warned against the 'military-industrial' alliance.

2. As for his criticisms of Canada and Europe in NATO, this is a glimpse of the truth. Canada and NATO were never 'partners' of the U.S. They have always been subjects of the American empire. British business realized that early, as it lost its empire but has since tried to hang on by kissing up to the U.S. and  happily sending Brits to get killed in American wars.

The U.S. intends to rule the world and, right now, Trump is the emperor. He ignores international law. He invades countries illegally. He continues the illegal use of torture. He has, despite his tweets, increased poverty for all but billionaires in the U.S. He gives himself the right to invade nations for no obvious cause. He treats Latin America as a series of slave states - thus the flow of refugees to Texas.  He gives himself the right to dictate who other nations are allowed to trade with. All nations serve only to enrich American billionaires. That's not really a change of anything.

This is really an old pattern - but perhaps made more obvious.
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Here's the real story on what spending more on defence would mean to Canada.

In reality, this is all nothing more than a scheme to put more money into the pockets of U.S. weapons billionaires.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/armstrong-military-spending-trump-1.4743967

Remember - Our service people did not fight and die in World War Two to make American weapons billionaires richer.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/greenland-iceberg-innaarsuit-1.4744782

Don't worry. If climate change were any problem, our oil billionaires would tell us.
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Making some sort of sense out of the Trump-Putin meeting.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mueller-indictments-trump-putin-summit-helsinki-concessions-1.4746871
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/heatwave-sees-record-high-temperatures-set-around-world-this-week

Funny I haven't seen this story in our irving press.
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The irving press is not the only medium that sensationalizes.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/07/world-rallies-around-thailand-children-yemen-and-us-also-deserve-help

One might wonder, too, about the failure of ANY New Brunswick government to meet the intellectual development needs of our children. There is a  high rate of illiteracy in this province which means a serious lack of essential skills and the destruction of opportunity.  And its not the fault of the schools. It's the fault of parents who don't care and governments that don't care.
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The wealthy hate the idea of governments being able to limit their powers. But they pay big bucks to governments that limit the powers of their workers.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/nima-malekis-blog/2018/07/power-concentrated-wealth-vs-working-people
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/14/delusions-of-u-s-hegemony-trump-visits-europe/
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The Naziis are back - big time. When the U.S. organized the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a pro-American government, it also restored the power of a Nazi movement that is over a century old in Ukraine.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/13/meanwhile-in-ukraine/
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And this next is just a break. In the Montreal of the 1950s and 60s, I used to occasionally drop into a bar while looking for a church. The bar was called, I think, the Sahara - and it featured a belly dancer named Fawzia Amir who was billed as a favourite of Egypt's King Farouk. (She was the mistress of a leading Montreal gangster. And the word was that she was Jewish.) But now I see that was not  unusual.

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/egypt/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-secret-identity-of-the-egyptian-twin-belly-dancing-stars-1.6267295
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Quick. Update your Bibles for the REAL truth.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/jesus-wasn-t-a-refugee-in-egypt-trump-s-spiritual-adivser-1.6267111

Actually, this is old stuff. The Christian churches abandoned Christian principles long ago. For the last several hundred years, they have been the servants of the wealthiest and most murderous people in the world. Think of that while listening to the sermon this Sunday. (It almost certainly won't be about our obsession with killing and greed.)
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49840.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49835.htm

By the way, into the 1950s - and later - Jews were required to live in ghettos in North American cities as well as in European ones. In Montreal, I can remember the signs on apartments that said, as late as the 1970s, 'select clientele only.' (That meant no Jews, no orientals, no blacks.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49837.htm

I have further comments on this later in this blog.
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Gee! Funny how the  irving press missed this story.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/13/dark-money-new-documentary-offers-close-and-harrowing-portrait-how-secret-corporate

Democracy died a long  time ago in the U.S. Gee. It's a good thing our billionaires in Canada would never corrupt or in any way interfere with democracy.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/13/carefully-calculated-strategy-slash-safety-net-underway-white-house-claims-war

Yep. Trump has eliminated poverty in the U.S. So pay no attention to those silly reports that 40% of Americans live in poverty.
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How the U.S. has brought peace and democracy to Latin America.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/school-of-the-americas-training-torturers-secret-police-for-us-backed-dictators-since-1946/5647471

Latin America is not being developed by Canadian and American capitalists. It is being plundered. That's why refugees flee to the American border. It's the only possible escape for them. If the U.S. were to treat Latin Americans with decency, there wouldn't be any refugees in the first place.
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/climate-change-americans-believe-record/

Don't worry about this. If it were true, Mr. Irving would be the first to tell us.
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Another disaster that's going to hit us. And we certainly aren't getting (and won't get) any leadership on this from our billionaires.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/robot-workers-lead-to-trafficking/
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US big business impoverishes, murders, exploits men, women and children all over the world. Then it blames them for becoming refugees.

https://greedmedia.com/new-tougher-guidelines-for-migrants-seeking-asylum-in-the-united-states/
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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/13/separated-children-hunger-strike-immigrant-detention/

God bless America. God bless American (and Canadian) billionaires. And God forgive Christians for being such a cowardly lot.
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The July 20 edition of our beloved irving press has an item on the commentary page that is pretty awful stuff even by irving press standards. It was written by a podcaster (that's something resembling a blogger like me, but it operates on the web). And, like us bloggers, podcasters require no training and may well have no brains at all. (This podcaster, Bruce Dowbiggin, has won two gemini awards. Big deal. I've won journalism awards too and, trust me, they don't mean a damn thing.)

The title of this gem is "Canadians take U.S. military protection for granted." Aren't we lucky? In fact, since the battle of the Plains of Abraham, over 250 years ago, the only country Canada has needed protection from is the U.S. It maintained schemes to invade Canada at least into the 1920s - and probably still does have them.

And the reality is that the only country likely to attack Canada today is the U.S. as it runs into serious climate problems.

But, says Mr. Dowbiggin, Canada is cheating on its military spending, letting the poor U.S. carry the burden. In fact, the only major military spending we have needed in recent years is fighting American wars in Afghanistan, Libya, and training terrorists in Syria. Those were also wars that were illegal under international law and  had nothing to do with Canada.  Oh, yes. And we also sent 'peacekeeping' troops to Haiti to help the U.S. look respectable while destroying democracy in Haiti.

Nor does Mr. Dowbiggin seem to be aware that the reason the U.S. is pushing for defence spending is to open the door for an astonishingly corrupt American government and military to give lavish contracts to the American defence industry which, as General Eisenhower warned, was a threat to American democracy. (many billions of dollars have gone unaccounted for and the American defence industry has been the major supplier to Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and Asia.)

The U.S. defends us? Anyone who thinks that is either stupid or naive.

Then he goes on to tell us that American military, police and intelligence protect Canadian wheat ships from pirates in Asian waters. Yeah, sure, Bruce.

In fact, most piracy in Asia happens in the territorial waters of Singapore. And those waters are not patrolled by the U.S. They are patrolled by local navies.  As well, the pirates have no interest in Canadian wheat ships. Their targets are oil tankers.

The U.S. navy patrols international waters. And the pirates don't attack those because 1. most of their ships are too small and too lightly armed for work in international waters and 2. the time required to get back into hiding from the open sea would be fatal for the pirates.

Then Mr. Biggins quotes, of all people, The Fraser Institute, Canada's most notorious propaganda outfit financed by billionaires. (Not surprisingly,  the irving press just loves The Fraser Institute, too.)

Biggins quotes from it to 'prove' that Canada's health system isn't working, so Canadians are flocking to the U.S. for medical treatment. Come off it, Mr. Biggins. 99% (or more) of Canadians couldn't possible afford US health care. And U.S. health simply isn't available even to the majority of Americans.

And the reason the U.S. can't afford medical care for its people is because 1. Wealthy Americans DON'T pay more than a trillion dollars of taxes every year and 2. because so much money goes to what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. The U.S. is destroying itself by the greed of its billionaires and the corruption of its politicians. The real danger we face is that it will take us with it.

He then contradicts himself by concluding that we should note that we have excellent health care only because the U.S. pays for Canada's defence, and Canada doesn't.

Puh-lease. The U.S. protects our borders? Against???? The only country to threaten our borders has been the U.S. And you can bet that it will soon be threatening them again as the U.S. demands our water and our land. (In fact, the demand for our water has already begun.)

The reason we are strapped for cash is because our billionaires - just like the American ones - don't pay taxes. Would you consider a column on that, Bruce?

No. I didn't think so.

This is a remarkably shallow, ignorant,  madly biased piece of journalistic garbage. It is not possible for anybody to win a major war today. We would all be wiped out within hours. Defence spending is largely money wasted. The day that wars became impossible happened in 1945. And spending more on tanks and bombers won't change that. We have wasted all the years since 1945 in the absurd dream that we could end war by buying more and more powerful weapons. We haven't.  We can't.

And an irving press editor approved this trash column as the latest thing we HAD to know.

Why am I not surprised?
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The irving press maintains its high standard with its big, front page story of the day. "8 year old boy buys SPCA a new lawnmower".

Yes. It's cute. Yes. It's admirable and it's touching. But it's also a partner of the old sob story. It tells us nothing we need to know about this city. It tells us nothing about what problems we must deal with. The SPCA story should be in the paper. But it should not be the big, front page story.
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The irving press, July 14, and more journalistic garbage.

The big news is that a man who drowned 21 years ago has not yet been identified. We needed to know that.

Also in the need to know category are "New bar opens in familiar spot" and  "N.B. pizza joint expands to news city".  The news YOU need to know.

But the real stinker appears on the commentary page again. This one comes from an outfit called Canadian Global Affairs Institute. I don't know how many such institutes there are. Almost all of  then are far right wing propaganda houses financed by the very wealthy.  And newspapers eat them up as of they were real sources of information.

Typically, the intellectual pimps who write for them are given the title of 'fellow' - as if that means something. And some of these 'fellows', I regret to say, are professors.

I first ran into this in my early teaching days when I was approached by oil people to write nice commentaries about what sweethearts they were. Like most professors, I pointed them to the door. But, alas, some professors can be bought. (Without trying, I can think of one or two from New Brunswick.)

This commentary gem is "Experts support joining missile defence system". This system is why Trump wants Canada to expand its defence spending. So, like, we might be helpless if attacked by North Korea.

Get real. Kim Jong is weird. But he's not an idiot. Any such attack could not reach beyond our west coast. And such an attack would certainly get a response from the U.S. stockpile of 6,000 or so missiles. Kim Jong may look weird. But the idea he would initiate such an attack is absurd.

An American nuclear attack on North Korea is far, far more likely. In fact, Trump has already threatened it.

Then the good prof posts the kind of source he believes in. It's the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. In fact, that's just another of the billionaire-funded propaganda outlets that curse this country. And he quotes that the experts interviewed by this propaganda outfit were 90% in favour of creating a ballistic missile defence system for Canada. Of course they were. They were picked by the institute.

Get real. Any missile attack on anybody would be almost certain to trigger a nuclear war. And nobody could win that one. A BMD system would give us no protection at all. It would. though, cost us heavily, having a severe effect on spending for health care, education, social services. And it would mean a massive tax crunch. But not to worry. Our billionaires don't pay taxes.

So why is Trump urging it on us?

Think military-industrial complex. That's what Trump is really pushing. It has nothing to do with defence. It has to do with massive profits for American war industries. That's also the reason he's pushing hugely increased defence spending in Europe. It has nothing to do with strengthening Europe against a Russian invasion.

As it is, the U.S. is destroying American society with its massive military spending. But it's not enough. Nothing is ever enough to satisfy the military-industrial complex.

And why do the editors of the irving press publish this sort of mindless crap? It's because the only function of the irving press is to make this a better world for billionaires.
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July 12: Lots of news. Little sense of its meaning.

I hurried back from the shore to find the irving press its usual self. It had a big story of course on the 12 boys in Thailand who were saved from a cave. Okay. It's an emotional story.

But there is still no reporting of the hundreds of thousands (at least) of civilians including many, many thousands of children who are being deliberately starved to death by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. So who gives a damn? Right?

I was also struck by a typical irving press commentary from a propaganda house for billionaires - The Frontier Centre for Public Policy. It's a pitch for us to get all excited about natural gas obtained by fracking. This, it says, is cheap, and 'not as bad' as oil. Maybe so. But it still produces carbon dioxide emissions - and there is no evidence this reduction can come anywhere close to dealing with our climate change problems.

Of course, the irving press has told us nothing at all about what the climate change problems are. It's not just a matter of it getting a little bit warmer. It's a problem of mass declines in water for food production, for the grazing of  herds, for drought that destroys cities and countryside of whole regions. (The U.S. is already scrambling hard to deal with drought in much of the country, in forest fires that now threaten whole cities (like Los Angeles), in droughts that already threaten food supply and human survival and create millions of refugees (in addition to the many millions created by western greed) with horrible results as desperate people flee their lands to find some place where they can survive - and finding themselves almost always unwanted.

Expect many, many more millions of refugees as a result of climate change and wars for greed. And expect monstrous chaos from the reaction.

This is putting pressure on Canadian water resources as Americans demand more access to them. We are also likely to face military pressure from the Trumps of this world.

Then there's the disappearance of much plant and animal life as a result of even a small climate change. That's why scientists are now filling massive warehouses with the DNA and other reproductive factors of plants and animals we cannot afford to loose.

Climate change is the biggest and most complex threat this world has ever seen.  And no. Switching to shale gas is not going to help a whole lot. However, it is the largely silent issue of the current election in New Brunswick. Most parties have said they won't permit shale gas development. The Conservatives will.

So guess which party will get the most financial help from the wealthy of this province. It is not a coincidence that the irving press is critical of the Liberals on matters like government spending; but has never bothered to tell us that the Irvings and other very wealthies don't pay income tax and do get sweetheart deals on property tax as well as lavish handouts. It is not a coincidence that the irving press cartoonist lately always makes fun of the Liberals but not any other party.  It is not a coincidence it runs half-wit propaganda columns from billionaire-financed think tanks like 'Frontier Centre for Public Policy'.

(I see no reason to admire the Liberal party, either. It has only rarely attacked this province's fundamental problems. If you owed a couple of hundred dollars in taxes, for example, you would get nasty phone calls from Ottawa. But if you're rich it's okay to hide tens of millions of dollars every year.)
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/greenland-glacier-calving-1.4742691

Of course, we know that climate change isn't really happening. It's all just those
ignorant scientists. But I'm smart. I get all my opinions from the irving press. Irvings are real smart.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-nato-1.4743670

Why is Trump so eager to spend more money on 'defence' when the world can already destroy itself with just its nuclear arsenals? That's because the world's biggest manufacturer of weapons is the U.S. And it's a stunningly corrupt and profitable business.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/12/trump-administration-eligible-small-children-reunited

How generous. Only 2,000 more to go.
In fairness, Trump is continuing the mass murder of the children of Yemen.
(I wonder if the hired minister for the week at the Irving Chapel will mention this.  Nah.)
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Another huge problem our governments aren't even thinking about. And it's going to happen here, too.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jul/12/robot-workers-will-lead-to-surge-in-slavery-in-south-east-asia-report-finds
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/how-did-quebecs-nationalist-movement-become-so-white

In fairness, I have to say that Quebec, whether French or English, has always been racist. (Just like the rest of Canada.)
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/06/syrian-seeds-could-save-us-wheat-from-climate-menace
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/11/pietro-bartolo-lampedusa-doctor-migrant-deaths-mediterranean-slaughter-innocents

Yes. This will happen in Canada, too. The western powers have created these refugees, and now abuses them for the mess the west has created.
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The big children story is of the Thais saved from a cave. Let's get real.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/07/world-rallies-around-thailand-children-yemen-and-us-also-deserve-help
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I'm not convinced communism is possible. But I am quite convinced that capitalism, uncontrolled, is quite impossible and ultimately destructive. Socialism may be the best ground.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gengler/2014/08/ten-reasons-to-smash-capitalism#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=5b478f4502265d05&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=1&at_tot=5
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2016/10/justin-trudeau-continuing-proud-liberal-tradition-betraying-i#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=5b4790a61c96b18f&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=4&at_tot=5
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/12/on-the-flooded-thai-cave-and-the-hiroshima-deluge/

Don't worry about a thing. Our oil billionaires tell us climate change isn't happening. And they'd know.
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/12/vladimir-putins-basic-disagreement-with-the-west/

Well, Russians have been guilty of imperialism, too - if not nearly so much as Britain and the U.S.  I'm afraid people are like that. That's why capitalism has to operate under much more serious controls - and with far, far less political power.
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The future that big business is planning. And it's not something for us to cheer about.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/09/agrarian-crisis-and-climate-catastrophe-forged-in-india-made-in-washington
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The Saudis and United Arab Emirates have always tortured. So it's no surprise they're U.S. allies.

http://theantimedia.com/amnesty-calls-for-probe-of-uae-forces-torturing-detainees-at-secret-prisons-in-yemen/
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https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/dyer-trumps-confrontation-unlikely-to-change-china
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A Kennedy assassination theory that makes sense.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49828.htm
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It hasn't been noted in our news media but the U.S. has become a country with a very high rate of poverty and with a very few super-wealthy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49817.htm
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Here's an interesting summary of what  has happened to capitalism, and what that  is doing to us.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49820.htm
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Trump just loves tweeting about how much he's done for the working class. In fact, he is making them worse off than ever.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/11/rigged-new-report-details-how-combined-51-trillion-tax-cuts-bush-obama-and-trump
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The U.S. spends more on weapons than any nation in history. And it is very generous in distributing them to the people they call terrorists.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/even-more-us-made-anti-tank-weapons-are-turning-up-in-isis-hands/5647173
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And here's an alarming story about Canada - a story that never has and never will make most Canadian newspapers.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/hassan-diab-nothing-less-than-a-public-inquiry-will-do-canadas-complicity/5647155
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The denial of climate change is strongest among those of conservative leanings - like American Republicans - and those who have a big stake in  the oil industry. (seemingly, greed and ignorance go  hand in hand.). Here's a long but interesting discussion of the issue.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/12/the-sinister-underbelly-of-climate-change-denial/

It's real. And we don't know how quickly we need to address this problem. But instead, the oil barons whose greed limits them to short term planning have determined that instead of coping with the profound and numerous issues facing us we need to fight more wars and sell more weapons at high profits.

In 1945, we were told we were embarking on a new world of democracy, brotherhood.... Instead, our billionaires have placed us on a treadmill of war and plunder. We have done virtually nothing that we told our soldiers, sailors and airmen they were fighting and dying for. And, at this rate, there is no way we can deal with the monstrous issues of climate change in time.

Thank, among others, your local oil billionaires.
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Dr. Roberts is one of the world's more intelligent news analysts.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/12/the-view-of-russia-in-the-west/
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Here is some useful background reading.

https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/09/how-the-u-s-government-lies-about-syria-ukraine/
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An evil target of our western 'heroes'. And it's all for the good work of feeding billionaires.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/syrian-baby-malnutrition-crisis/
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/humans-destroyed-83-of-wildlife-report/

I'm sure that if we all pitch in we can destroy a hundred percent in no time.
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Another story not important enough to make our irving press.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/tiny-house-warriors-pipeline-indigenous-protest/
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When the irving press published its gushing commentary about the joys of fracking for natural gas, it didn't mention this story.

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/07/eliza-griswold-book-excerpt/
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Given the existence of so many nuclear stockpiles, I doubt that it makes very little difference whether any army is better than others. American news media speak of nothing but the magnificent record of American armies though, in fact, the American performance, for all its weaponry, has not been impressive over the past seventy years.  And in World War 2, it was mostly the Russians who defeated Hitler.

https://thesaker.is/book-review-losing-military-supremacy-the-myopia-of-american-strategic-planning-by-andrei-martyanov/
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It has not been a good day for me in reading the press. Much, like Trump's ultimatum to Europe and his sudden interest in meeting Putin, isn't really understandable yet. Indeed, I often found myself at a loss to determine what the news was really all about.
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...the oldest and earliest empires.

Many thousands of years ago, the first of the societies we call civilizations needed some form of government. But they didn't get to choose it. No. That power was seized by the strongest fighters who made themselves kings and emperors, and made the next down the line aristocrats.

From start, the kings, emperors and aristocrats followed the same track. They assumed that they were a superior breed. The rest? They were good only for cheap labour and paying taxes.

Rome was typical. As the empire grew, profits flew into the pockets of emperors and aristocrats. Their feasts were magnificent. But the people of Rome came to live in the most terrible poverty, begging for scraps of food and, when dead, dumped in huge, mass pits with a stench that can still be detected.

And the power was eternal. Even the most stupid of sons could become an emperor or an aristocrat - and usually did.The same was true of the kings and aristocrats of the medieval age and later. 

And 'democracy' changed nothing.

Its kings and aristocrats were the products of a new age whose wealth was based on commerce and industry. It was called capitalism. The rules were simple. Capitalists made - and kept - as much as they could. That was their only purpose.

Samples of such wars?  Iraq. Syria.World War 1. World War 2. Korea. Afghanistan. Throughout history, almost all wars have been fought to benefit kings and aristocrats. Our news media tell us they're fought because the other side is evil. But that's because our news media are mostly owned by our kings and aristocracy of capitalism.

Wars have always been fought to satisfy greed.The added danger today is that the wealthy don't pay taxes. (In the U.S. that's a loss of over a trillion dollars every year.)

(And no, World War 2 was not fought because Hitler was evil - though he certainly was but, in fact, big business in the western world had largely supported Hitler until the end of the 1930s when he became a threat to their profits. 

Like the aristocracy of Rome, the aristocracy of big business see themselves as superior to the rest of us, though a high proportion are billionaires simply because they were born that way. Think Trump.The Rockefellers have been super wealthy for well over a century. And no family produces uniform babies of intelligence over that span.

This arrogance and self-interest is the greatest danger facing our world. Capitalism can work for the benefit of all of us if, like all systems should be, it is controlled by us through law and democracy. But it's not.  And without that popular control it is mindlessly greedy, murderous and destructive.

This is not something that might happen. It has happened. And it's the outstanding social  challenge of our time.

July 7: A hurried job....

I am  having a terrible time on today's blog. Twice I have erased all I had written. And I don't even know how it happened. I also lost a very lengthy piece I had written about the greatest danger we face - the crushing of democracy by big business such as oil. These are the new aristocracy - a privileged and monstrously greedy group whose only purpose - like the old aristocracy - is wealth and power.

It's a pattern that has run throughout recorded history - a group whose only concern is itself, it's sense of privilege and superiority, and it's contempt for all the rest of humanity.

The U.S. is now governed entirely by that group with the result that American poverty, now at  40% and rising is the highest in the developed world. And basic services - like education and health - are being destroyed. Canada, alas, is run by much the same breed.

Alas - it also happens on the day when I have  to go the shore for my annual family reunion. So today's may be a short blog. (I wrote the part about our new aristocracy last night, and got up early to add the part that, with the part about our news aristocracy, was meant to be today's blog. - Yes. I am crying.)

So today's blog may be short.

Damn!

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/07/khan-al-ahmar-west-bank-bedouin-village-facing-destruction
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/canada-heatwave-montreal-deaths

The death count for Quebec is actually 52. And this heat wave is happening all over the U.S. and around much of the world. But, hey! Not to worry. If this were any sort of danger our church-going oil bosses would certainly deal with it. Yes. Trust our new aristocracy.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/06/britain-heatwave-worse-to-come-water-climate-chan

Wow! If we didn't have the leadership of our oil bosses and of the politicians in the Conservative and Liberal parties that they own, I'd be worried.
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/07/what-misogyny-looks-when-you-wear-hijab
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/07/trumps-family-separation-policy-inflicts-pain-and-fuels-hate
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The Israeli lobby is a very, very powerful force in Canadian and American politics. Though Jews in North America are becoming increasingly critical of Israel, the Israeli lobby makes sure we hear nothing about it.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2018/07/trudeau-hesitates-funding-solar-panels-gaza-hospitals

And if Palestinians have to die for lack of hospital facilities - though luck.
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Despite the promise, Latin American children are being held apart from their parents and in prison condition - and this will go on for a long time. This is what is called, among other things, racism. Hitler would have understood it perfectly.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/07/trauma-continues-for-immigrant-children-in-us-detention/
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/07/mediterranean-sea-the-largest-graveyard-in-modern-history/

Well, it's their own fault. If they'd had the wit to be born western billionaires, the seas would be covered in yachts to save them.
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/26/incompatibility-of-capitalism-and-life/
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The U.S. puts trade bans on countries like Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela - and country that displeases American capitalists. The purpose is to impoverish them. It's also illegal - just like all the wars the U.S. fights. How do American governments justify this illegal behaviour? By the deep-rooted belief that America has the right to rule the world, the only nation in the world to have that right. This goes way back to a concept of America as God's favourite nation with a right to rule the world. It's called Manifest Destiny - and it's the justification for constant wars since  1945. Warning to Canadians - Canada is a part of America's Manifest Destiny.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/07/06/iran-wants-world-powers-to-fully-compensate-them-for-us-sanctions/
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Russia is setting the terms for peace in Syria! This is one tremendous blow at American influence in the Middle East.

http://theantimedia.com/syrian-rebels-deal-russia/
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https://medium.com/@inkind/costa-rica-becomes-the-first-nation-to-ban-fossil-fuels-a180691daae4

Costa Rica is the first nation in the world to ban fossil fuels? That can't be. We all know America leads the world in everything.
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We are living through the age of the big grab.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/05/global-1-seize-economys-gains-unprecedented-wage-stagnation-everyone-else
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It's a time of manifest destiny for the greedy.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/05/pruitt-gone-no-happy-ending-planet-coal-lobbyist-andrew-wheeler-takes-over-epa
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The American debt that will never be paid.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49782.htm
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-the-largest-cheap-labor-factory-in-the-world/5431349
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https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/04/america-celebrates-lateral-move-from-monarchy-to-corporate-rule/
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Capitalism moved into Congo about 150 years ago. Since then it has known nothing but mass murder, torture, starvation, slave labour, child labour, and utter indifference to human needs. It began as a Belgian horror which has since been joined by British, American and Canadian capitalists.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/06/congos-imposter-president-and-the-moral-depravity-of-the-west/

Think of that while you listen to the word of God (as explained by the most expensive clergy) at the irving chapel this Sunday.
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https://theintercept.com/2018/07/07/dupont-carneys-point-chambers-works-chemours/
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Sorry this has been such a hurried edition. In fact, I don't even have time to proof read it as my lift is  here.

And I've just had a flash of thinking about Jesus as a member of the Trump cabinet or, in Canada,  as a leader of the Conservatives or the Liberals. Yes, I can see it all now.......                                               

July 5: Bad News. Wimpy public

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mexico-president-lopez-obrador-security-1.4732452

The new president of Mexico is a brave man. I can't remember any American president of  the past century who has ventured in public without a mass of agents as guards.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/04/trump-suggested-invading-venezuela-report

Of course there's poverty and violence in Venezuela. The U.S. sanctions on Venezuela have created those conditions. And this decision may make it far as he now has a much more vicious cabinet. The U.S. has had a serious of murderous
governments since that Afghanistan and Iraq war. And it now has one more
murderous than them.
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And here's an idea you'll never see in the irving press.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/30/minimum-wage-maximum-wage-income-inequality

It makes a lot of sense. For almost fifty years, we have watched the salaries of the wealthy rise like a rocket. And the only place that can come from is the low salaries of everybody else.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/03/doug-ford-scraps-carbon-tax-plan-and-sets-up-climate-fight-with-trudeau

I can't help noticing that all the leaders who deny that climate change is happening are people of little scientific education. An example of the type is Kelly McParland, a columnist in today's irving press. He attacks the clergy for it's preaching about the dangers of climate change. And the reality?

 1.No such significant movement has occurred in our churches.

2. Even if it did, why on earth should clergy not have the right to take a position?
3. Mr. McParland, apart from calling people names, offers no evidence whatever that climate change is not happening.

I amazed that even the irving press which is surely one of the world's most contemptible could stoop to a column of such ignorance.
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http://gwynnedyer.com/2018/if-the-model-is-broken-fix-it/
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Poverty is on the rise. Super wealth is on the rise. So much for the irving press line that capitalists make us all rich.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/05/global-1-seize-economys-gains-unprecedented-wage-stagnation-everyone-else
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The situation in Canada is much the same as in the U.S. In both countries, governments help the very rich to plunder the nation.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/04/where-did-tax-benefits-trump-promised-average-americans-go-straight-big-oil-big

In Canada as in the U.S., the wealthy don't pay taxes. And they don't pay a penny for the wars we fight for them. Americans and Canadians often get all sentimental about our war heroes who risk their lives ---to make billionaires richer. Doesn't The Canadian Legion ever think about this? Do they think Canadians died in World War Two so that Canadians could die fighting a war for American capitalists in Korea? And Afghanistan? And so that heroic Canadian pilots could bomb a virtually defenceless Libya? Oh, and so Canadian soldiers could make the U.S. overthrow of an elected government in Haiti look like the creation of democracy?
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Here's a story that didn't make the irving press. (It needed the space for a really big story that the town of Shediac has just created the world's largest lobster roll.)

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/05/vowing-continue-fierce-opposition-protesters-end-35-hour-aerial-blockade-trans
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49783.htm
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It  looks as though the war in Syria is over. al-Assad, with the support of Russia, has won. Assad also clearly has majority support in Syria. Both the U.S. and Israel have had to back off. The U.S. has become a loser and Russia a major winner in the region.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49785.htm

And 400,000 Syrians have been murdered by Moslem terrorists with American help.
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This next column is not really a satisfactory read. I include it because it makes a little-known point. One important reason the American revolution was fought was to maintain slavery. The British Empire of the 1770s was drifting rapidly toward freeing the slaves. So it's not a coincidence that George Washington was the biggest slaveholder in America.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2018/07/independence-day-moment-canadians-recommit-being-different-us
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https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/05/trump-using-separated-children-to-force-voluntary-deportations/
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Somehow, this is not a surprise.

https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/05/israel-is-arming-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/
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Nor is this.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/05/corporate-medias-about-face-on-ukraines-neo-nazis/
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I know the Doug Fords and Donald Trumps and oil barons of this world say it isn't happening. But our climate is changing And that will affect food supply for all of us.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/india-might-have-to-stop-growing-rice/
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https://greedmedia.com/not-just-the-world-cup-all-time-global-heat-records-set-last-week/

The irving press which had lots of space for a half-wit commentary on Christian clergy who speak about climate change had no space for the article above.
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http://theantimedia.com/israel-annexation-west-bank/
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This next opinion will certainly meet criticism. But it does explain the failure of the most expensive military in world history to defeat even third rate countries - like Afghanistan, Vietnam, Syria.....

https://thesaker.is/book-review-losing-military-supremacy-the-myopia-of-american-strategic-planning-by-andrei-martyanov/
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Here's a story that goes way back. The irvings face serious charges of misbehaviour in their conduct of railway traffic.  Funny thing, though. The two-fisted reporters of irving press haven't said a word about it. Clark Kents they ain't.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/southern-railway-case-delay
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https://thewalrus.ca/the-historical-roots-of-trumps-anger-with-canada/

I'm not sure I fully agree with this one. But Americans do seem obsessed with the idea that they should rule the world 
and, in many circles, that it is God's wish that they should do so.
______________________________________________________________________________________


We've never seen this world so insanely dominated by greed. The major American defence -perhaps the only real 
American defence - And one is its nuclear arsenal. And that is the arsenal whose use would trigger many thousands\
 of nuclear attacks all over the world. And anyone who could think that killing several billion people  is the answer to 
anything is insane.

But there are people who believe that.

And there are people who are quite happy to risk the destruction of  our planet for the sake of oil profits. Whatever 
else capitalism might do it has destroyed rational thought in our major powers.

But none of this matters in New Brunswick. The population is effectively wiped out as a thinking body. Most of the
news media have taken care of that. Nobody who reads the irving press can have the faintest idea of what is
going on in  the world - or even in New Brunswick. That's why both the Liberals and the Conservatives are simply 
tools for the irvings and friends.

Nor is this the only wimpy province in Canada. Ontario has just elected a premier who is its Donald Trump. New
Brunswick has a Liberal leader who just lets the world flow by. And it has a Conservative leader who would and
will kiss any rear end for a buck. He would certainly introduce the fracking he is not talking about. (The irving
press has clearly been supporting him. And it doesn't support anybody unless the boss says so.)

Along with all of this, recent American behaviour is shattering its old alliances with the rest of the western world.
The U.S. is also losing its hold on Asia and Africa. And an America in such decline is going to be a very, very 
dangerous neighbour. And  yes, the effect of all this will be felt even in Little Upsyduck, New Brunswick.

For Christ's sake, New Brunswick, and for the sake of you and your children, wake up.