July 06: Sieg Heil!

The news media, for the most part have treated Trump's hymn of praise for the military as a triumph. Our Heroes.

It was no such thing.

We've seen this appeal before. It was developed by an Adoph Hitler who was trying to create the kind of heroes he wanted for the Germany he would create. And so the army became the highest expression of German pride.

I am really dismayed at the ignorance displayed by almost all of our press in not seeing this. The army becomes the model for the nation. And it's soldier's become saints.

In the first place, all of Trump's history was bunk. The American army through out history was driven by high motives? Doesn't he know that from 1776 to 1900 the American army happily slaughtered the men, women and children of it's native peoples? And at a time when the land was legally there's - and later when it was illegally taken from them? To tidy things up, toward the end, when there were still a lot of women an children to dispose of, the army drove them to the edge of extinction with the rapid fire of the gatling gun.  (How do you think they killed all those children after they had murdered their parents?)

In fact, almost the whole of American history consists  of slaughter and theft. So much for "our brave lads." Since the late part of World War 2, the U.S. has concentrated on mass murder of civilian sand children. That began at Dresden - then on to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Korea which experienced the the worst terror bombing - deliberately aimed at women and children - in history. The U.S. has mass murdered women and children in Afghanistan - though it has no right to be there in the first place. The same is true of its invasion of Iraq.  ( In fact, the U.S. lied about its reason for being in that war - and had to invent another lie about 'weapons of mass destruction' that didn't exist.) And by far, most of the people killed in that war were women and children.

Splendid chaps. Some of them are based in Washington. Yes. And they get up in the morning to face the traffic and go to work for the days killing. Each will go into a room with an aircraft cabin. Seated in there, one can control the flight of aircraft a world away - the drone bombers. The American news media rarely mention this, but these are the ones who murder children in school, wedding parties, any gathering.

Trump calls these patriots and heroes. They are in fact, murdering bastards.

Then there were the 200,000 plus of Mayan people murdered by the CIA in Guatemala.  That has never even made the news.

The U.S., from its earliest days, has been a nation of murderers and thieves.

So let's forget this crap about the purity of their army.

By the way -  when was the last time the U.S. had an enemy on its soil?

It was the war of 1812. Nobody has attacked  the U.S. in over two centuries. So what's that big army for? It's to conquer the world for American billionaires, to impoverish the world for them. You want to cheer for that?. Go somewhere downwind..

Lavish parades of these hired killers are disgusting. And this display was to honour American democracy? What democracy? Americans are being plundered by their own business leaders and politicians.

And where does this take the rest of us?  It takes us back to Hitler. to the invention of enemies and, as we saw yesterday, this year's Hitler.

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Ah, yes, the American army may be making it's big play in  Iran.

The U.S. has forbidden Iran to sell oil to China. Sounds reasonable? Then you'll love the war this is taking us to. The U.S. has no  right, none, zip to tell Iran or  anybody else who it can trade with. None. Nada. Zip. It had no right to tell the British to 'kidnap' an Iranian oil ship. That's illegal. But they've done it.

Britain no longer rules the waves. No. Now, it just kisses the American ass - and waives the rules.

The same is true with the situation in Venezuela. The U.S. has no right to dictate who Venezuela can sell oil to. But we are all going to get screwed on this one.

Remember the pictures of Trump's parade yesterday? The people in that are the ones    who will kill us if we don't do that the oil barons say..

Yes. They will be demanding American control of Canada.

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Sieg heil!

The new Nazis are waiting.

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/05/we-are-climate-emergency-america-anchorage-hits-90-degrees-first-time-recorded
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/07/trump-laying-path-new-nuclear-arms-race
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2019/07/military-parades-bands-tanks-some-thoughts-independence-day-and
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My computer is being bad. A large section has just disappeared. I have to take it in for - whatever.....
So I shall end here for the day.

July 4: The Final Delusion

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/journalism-doctor/2019/07/cartoonist-fired-after-trump-cartoon-goes-viral

In New Brunswick, where I lived for some 18 years, the Irving family is a name of contempt. They control - and abuse - just about everything in the province - and are utterly without any sense of obligation to the people of New Brunswick.
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_http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/david-suzuki/2019/07/we-can-resolve-climate-crisis

Yes, there is a    climate change crisis. Ever notice that most of those who say there isn't  are people with no research qualification whatever.  They are billionaires who make money out of oil . And they are slimy politicians of no qualifications whatever who have sold out to the oil billionaires.  Well, selling out is the only thing they're good at.

But here in Ontario, we don't pay any attention to the world's leading scientists. No. We listen to Premier Ford who is a high school graduate.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dc-fourth-july-parade-1.5199533

This may well be the most honest July 4 parade ever. The American revolution was never about freedom and democracy. From the start, it was about military force and mass murder and conquest. Years of peace of peace have been very, very rare.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/04/royal-marines-gibraltar-tanker-oil-syria-eu-sanctions

This was a ship carrying on a perfectly legal trade. The fact that the U.S. forbade it's doing so is irrelevant. The U.S. has no right to make such a statement. But the days of the British Empire are long over. And Britain has to kiss up to American will. As does Canada. (as in our kiss-up interventions in Afghanistan, Korea, Libya, Venezuela and Haiti - with more to come.,)

By this very foolish act, Britain has committed itself to join the U.S. in a war against Iran.
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The ruler of Brazil is one of the most destructive men in the world.And Trump just loves him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/03/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-first-six-months-right-dismayed
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_https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/03/hong-kong-death-fighters-young-protesters-with-nothing-to-lose_

There is a desperation in this Resistance I would never have thought possible. And I see  no chance of it winning.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/04/boat-with-dozens-of-migrants-capsizes-off-tunisia-coast

A  hundred million people ae starving or in severe danger. And it's going to get much worse.Our earth has a catastrophe of death by starvation, by murder. We 've never seen anything like this before. Much of the tragedy has been caused by us and our capitalists. And, for the most part, we have refused to accept them - even as we hear of them drowning at sea. And this is going to get much, much worse.

But most countries, including Canada, are refusing to help them.  There's a wide range in the possibilities of help. There's help in escaping the lands where they are dying. There's help in rebuilding their existing societies. But we are   doing absolutely nothing - or as close to it as we can get. Why is that?

It's called racism.

And we've barely begun to see the horror of it.

(By the way, we all like to kid ourselves we are superior people. I took pride in my status as English. That was until I learned that my family was French. And before that it was Spanish. And, from  very early, I have the genes of an East Asian savage. Forget the crap about racial superiority in your blood.)
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/07/trudeaus-climate-plan-dangerous-fraud

Read this one.  carefully....
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/linda-leons-blog/2019/07/deconstructing-conservative-partys-climate-plan

Will we make changes in time to say out planet and us? Not without far, far more vigorous action than I've seen.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/07/03/citing-69-trillion-price-tag-2100-moodys-warns-central-banks-far-reaching-economic
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https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/03/jingoistic-military-fetishization-is-as-american-as-bald-eagle-mcnuggets/

Like I said above.
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https://countercurrents.org/2019/07/july-4th-flag-is-a-bloodstained-symbol-of-falling-bombs-napalm-horrible-death-for-millions
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https://countercurrents.org/2019/07/democracy-is-a-sham
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/06/28/Andrew-Scheer-Real-Bad-Climate-Plan/

Time is very short. There is no possibility that either the Conservatives or the Liberals will produce a useful plan to deal with climate change. That part is game over. Neither of them has done anything. Neither will do anything.

Our only hope is that the Greens and the NDP have to become a lot more aggressive than they have been. Well - and the necessary hope that the Canadian public will become far, far more aggressive and demanding.

We don't have until  2100 to deal with this. We may not have even until  2040 or so.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51862.htm

As I and many others have said many times.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51863.htm

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I watched most of Donald Trump's July 4 parades. It was pretty ghastly stuff. The theme, I suppose was that this was  a recognition that the US armed forces are what made American great.

Well, yeah. There's some truth to that. But he missed all the outstanding examples of it.

The U.S. army, mostly in the 19th century, murdered all but a tiny group of native peoples.  (Actually, it had no right under international law to do that. The native people were killed on their own territory. It was not part of the U.S. But Trump probably doesn't know that. In the end, the U.S. killed all but a few thousand - men, women and children - but the parades didn't mention that part, either.

Then the U.S. at the turn of the century murdered 3 million largely helpless people of The Philippines.

Then there was its empire-building across  Latin America where it murdered an unknown number. It admitted to killing 200,000 of the Maya people in Guatemala alone - and the numbers, which included Catholic priests, nuns, missionaries could have been twice that. And it murdered thousands in other countries - Cuba, Haiti, just about every country in Latin America.

To that, add the thousands  (at least) of babies starved to death in Yemen, to the million and a half most ly civilians murdered in Iraq.... Indeed, looking at sections of the parade, one could get the impression that most of the American military was made up of giggling housewives waving homemade flags.

Most of what American has to be proud of is murderers?

But none of these was reflected in Trump's parade of American heroes. The most bizarre one was a soldier wearing a red tunic and a bearskin hat. No American soldier EVER has warn such a uniform. In fact, this was simply a copy of the red tunics and bearskin worn by the guards at Buckingham Palace.

Militarily, the U.S. has been one of the most murderous nations in history. But none of that showed in Trump's parade of clowns. Nor was there anything to remind us of the primitive savagery in the mass murders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  But to Trump, these are outstanding figures of American history.

So much for its scientists, its medical people, its public school teachers (who are being dumped on anyway)....But that's where any greatness of America lies - not at the end of a bayonet sinking into the body of a child.

Well, it doesn't matter,  anyway. In a very short time, perhaps in as little as 25 years we might well have destroyed ourselves.









                                                               

July 2: My tragedy.

Today, I spent at least 6 hours writing this blog. Then, in some accident I don't understand, I lost it all. I've done that before - but this time I just don't have it in me to do it all over again. Yes, I am seriously retarded as a computer user.

But I'll just redo this bit. 

We'll never know how many were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We'll never know because no American government ever has or ever will tell us what it knows about that attack. The statements we get  have always emphasized the power of the explosion, with no sense of it's human impact.

Hiroshima were almost certainly, the greatest mass murder in history. It was probably also the greatest murder of innocent civilians in just two attacks in history.

Well, of course it was. But you'll notice that most accounts of the attack stress the power of the bombs - not the impact on the people.

The US, like Britain, has a long history of murdering innocent civilians. When it attacked the Philippines in 1900, it killed at least 3 million - with no distinctions between men, women, children. It  had just finished the mass murder of its native peoples - men, women, children, babies.  Then Churchill picked up this mass murder of civilians in the 1920s, sending the RAF to bomb undefended Kurd villages. (There were no soldiers to defend them.)

Hitler picked it up in bombing civilians in the Spanish civil war. Then, Britain, the U.S. and Canada bombed the German city of Dresden which had almost  no defenses - and few military targets.

From that, the sky was the limit. In the Korean War, the U.S. deliberately bombed civilians and children on a scale never seen before. It followed that with its assaults on Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq.... Women and children were the deliberate targets.

But the nuclear bombs really opened the door. And the U.S., for obvious reasons, has never told its people why killing of women and children in those cities was deliberate. Why?

No. It wasn't to force a Japanese surrender and save American lives. There was no doubt about it. The surrender was  coming very, very soon. Japan knew it. The U.S. knew it.  So why that massive destruction?

It was because the Japanese were in deep trouble in China. Russian troops, freed from the German war, were ready to move on China, the great and profitable source of British wealth. But U.S. billionaires wanted Britain's China. That - and not Pearl Harbour -  is why the U.S. got into the Pacific war in the first place.  

How to speed up the surrender?  - a massive killing of Japanese civilians (in two cities that had no military clout)

And ever since then, the U.S. has been vague about the butcher's bill for those two targets - and it never, never mentions the women and children who died there.

Could the same thing happen to Iran? Almost certainly. For all it's size and military power, the U.S. has not distinguished itself in war since 1945. (One thinks here of Vietnam and Afghanistan.)  And Iran could well be a tough target. 

June30: Our Christian world? Get real.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-election-poll-1.5188097
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/insulin-prices-united-states-canada-caravan-1.5195399

There is nothing new about this U.S. (and Canadian) plundering of the rest of us by the very rich.

In their imperial days, wealthy British built their fortunes by plundering the rest. At the peak of empire when the wealthy were building vast fortunes, the children of the poor were being sent to work at the age of 5 or 6 - for fifteen hours a day, 6 full days a week - and sometimes 7. The Royal Navy took the women on board its ships as servants. They slept on the floor of the gun deck - with the sailors. And when a woman bore a child, the captain entered the child's name as 'son of a gun'. Then the child would be dumped in an orphanage -  until they were ready at five or six to work. Soldiers of the British Empire got high praise, but little else. Their pay came in pennies. And very few pennies because they had to make payments to buy their own rifles and uniforms - which they had to buy from the colonel - on his terms.

In a typical event of the late 1800s, a teen age child working at a factory in Canada lost his arm to a machine. Immediately, his pay was stopped and he was fired. And how he was to get home was entirely his problem.

In the U.S. (or Canada) today the rate of poverty is very high - this despite the fact that profits are probably the highest in history.

And in the U.S., medicines essential to life are wildly overpriced. Any American who hopes to live longer had better be rich.

I went to school in a very poor district. The rich kids could get private schooling with tutoring, and the rich knew, in any case,  they would grow up rich - not because they had more brains than the poor ones but because they grew up in a world which taught them the rich were winners. (Private schools are NOT better than public ones. The difference is that kids in private schools grow up in a world of different expectations. Donald Trump is not a man of unusual intelligence. If born into a poor family, he would now likely be a pimp.)

And our empires are simply even worse examples of our abuse of fellow humans. People of Latin America are starving not because of laziness or tough markets. They are starving because the American empire is deliberately starving them to make its profits higher. The people of Guatemala did not die because they were lazy. They died because the agents of American capitalism murdered them.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/30/tragedy-is-inevitable-if-we-fear-migration-rather-than-celebrate-its-benefits
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http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2019/06/trudeau-government-will-do-anything-keep-donald-trump-happy
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The only people who have a right to fear immigrants as destructive are our native peoples.
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https://www.commondreams.org/

I've been called an anti-semite for saying the same thing. Now maybe we'll understand that Israelis are this world's anti-semites.
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/30/saving-lives-not-crime-captain-refugee-rescue-ship-arrested-italy-faces-10-years

Sorry. But in the world we have shaped, people who murder children and civilians are heroes. And saving lives IS a crime.
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And, for be good to a billionaire week.....

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/29/im-not-willing-do-trump-says-he-wont-take-climate-action-because-it-would-threaten
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This could be overdone. But it also has a good deal of truth.

https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/usa-if-it-cannot-be-loved-it-will-rape
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https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/the-lie-of-the-century

Smart businessman, Kushner. Though sent to the middle east by his daddy-in-law in an official capacity, he has managed to make some millions of dollars for himself out of the trip.
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https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/capitalism-vs-the-world
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51839.htm

The death of Christianity.....

Christianity has never been good at being....you know.....Christian. Almost from the start, the church devoted itself to the state in war. (I can remember in my own childhood during the war with the pulpit draped in a Union Jack. I can still remember the popular song about the American chaplains, "Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition". (Hard to think of any Bible passage that could be joined with.)

German clergy certainly knew about Hitler's treatment of Jews. But I've never seen an example of German clergy criticizing it. Nor did any of our churches have a word to say as the U.S. murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people, children, babies at Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

And as capitalism rose, impoverishing millions to enrich a few, how did that fit into Christian thinking? Where were the churches when the Americans slaughtered almost the whole indigenous population of the U.S., when the British Imperial armies slaughtered millions in Asia and Africa, when Americans imported slaves..... Where was it when American Christians slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, courtesy of that Christian gentleman George Bush Sr.?

Our Christian churches have always been offering a sort of slobbering praise to whoever our leaders are. And that's never been more evident than in the U.S. right now. We want to starve Yemen babies to death? Sure. What the hell.... We wanted to murder over a million innocent Iraqis? to plunder the lives of Latin Americans? The U.S. wants to let people die if they can't afford exorbitant health care? Say the churches why not?

Christians cheer for Trump. 'nuff said.

I'd rather go to hell as an atheist than to spend eternity in a heaven stuffed with Christian hypocrites.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/26/opinion/mythical-oil-markets-shovels-ground-debunking-trudeaus-claims-trans-mountain

And it's still not clear to me why all Canadians should be paying for a pipeline which is surely something that the oil company should be paying for.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/21/opinion/serious-70-billion-climate-plan-youve-heard-nothing-about
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/17/news/faith-leaders-rally-declare-climate-crisis-toronto-photos

Well, the good news is that some Christians are okay.
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And some aren't.

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/28/migrants-detail-conditions-texas-border-patrol-stations/
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Well, this view of the chances of war between the U.S. and   Iran is a cheering one. I'm not sure it's right. But I hope it is.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article206827.html
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I had a couple of passages that were longer than usual. That's because it seemed to me that today's news was a little brief.  Of course. It's a Saturday, so some of the usual sources don't publish. And so I added some of my own.
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June 29: we are a disaster waiting to happen.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-fighters-buzzed-regina-asterix-east-china-sea-1.5193149

Why is Canada sending warships to the East China Sea? Have the Chinese threatened some Canadian interest? Are they going to attack Canada?

No. We're just acting as bumboys for our American masters.

Oh, I know. Why not send our ships to Venezuela to tell the Americans to bug off? Or we could send aid to Guatemala where the U.S. murdered at least 200,000 Guatemalans.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/28/france-on-red-alert-as-heatwave-forecast-to-reach-record-45c

Naw. Ain't no climate change. If there was, we got some real smart oil executives and Doug Fords and Twit Cheneys who'd tell us.
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Hey, we need more pipelines.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jun/28/what-is-causing-the-european-heatwave
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/europe-italy-migrants-sea-watch-1.5193677

Are us humans racists? You bet we are. We have to get over this idiocy and arrogance that some humans are more deserving than others - according to where they were born. We have only this one world. We have to do something we have never learned to do - to live together.

As an historian, I am dismayed by our failure to see all people as one and  equal. Alas! Our school history books fill us with nonsense about how different we are from each other. (Was it praiseworthy for British soldiers to serve the monarch? Okay. Then it was also praiseworthy for German soldiers to serve der fuhrer. Was der fuhrer a mass murderer?  - Well, yeah. So were all the British monarchs.) And mass murder has been an American characteristic for much of its history.


Did George Washington create a nation of equals?  well, actually, Washington never believed all people were equal.  Did American rise in the civil war to free the slaves?  Uh - no. Actually that isn't what the civil war was about.

a day later----

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/europe-italy-migrants-sea-watch-1.5195218

We are all one people. And we have very little time to learn that. But our survival depends on us learning that.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/28/california-mussels-cooked-heat

Nah. It ain't happenin'.  High school graduate Doug Ford,, premier of Ontario, will tell you that.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/27/yemen-refugees-usa-trump-asylum

God bless America. Mind you, they could have saved some of the tens of thousands of children that they preferred to starve to death.
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Trump has heaps of praise for the most backward ruler in the world. Well, yeah. He buys heaps of American weapons to murder innocent people at home and abroad.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/29/trump-praises-saudi-crown-prince-for-doing-spectacular-job-g20

Oh, and he keeps women in their place.
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https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/9367698-on-iran-no-one-is-in-charge-gwynne-dyer/
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/29/im-not-willing-do-trump-says-he-wont-take-climate-action-because-it-would-threaten
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/28/2019-predicted-be-among-planets-hottest-years-frances-114o-heat-absolutely

Nah. It ain't happenin' Just ask any Conservative politician in Canada. (The Liberals admit it's happening. But they don't intend to do anything about it.)
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/19/pipeline-will-not-be-built-indigenous-and-climate-leaders-tell-trudeau-after-canada
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/18/trudeau-approval-tar-sands-pipeline-say-critics-would-make-absolute-mockery-climate
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http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/06/despite-government-reset-fords-main-problem-remains

Very seriously, Doug Ford is a hopelessly incompetent ass. His whole political history proves that. So how could be win an election in a large, prosperous,  and well-educated province?

This is a  serious question. If people like Ford get elected, it is frightening to think of the "values" and thought processes of the people of Ontario. This must be a province of people who start every sentence with 'duh'.

In general, most of the news services of this world encourage ignorance. And it's quite deliberate. We are way, way behind the level of thinking and information that is required if we are too survive. Here, in the capital of the province of Ontario, the only newspapers are propaganda sheets, That has always been the curse of journalism. And we're about to pay one hell of a price for that.

Oh - and if the Conservative party could pick such a dead head for leader, what does this tell us about the party?
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Israel has been the opposite of everything that Judaism means. Indeed, the worst thing about Israelis is that they are acting like Christians.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/independent-jewish-voices-canada/2019/06/independent-jewish-voices-canada-condemns

Real Jews - and I have known many - are not at all like Israelis.
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https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/23/patrick-lawrence-accelerating-imperial-decline/
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https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/the-lie-of-the-century
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/06/28/Andrew-Scheer-Real-Bad-Climate-Plan/
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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/06/26/Experts-Evaluate-Party-Climate-Plans/
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Our best friends and allies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51836.htm

You won't read much about this in the Canadian or U.S. press. That's because they are powerfully influenced by The Israeli Lobby, a group designed to squash any criticism of Israel.

I shall always treasure the memory of a day when I was speaking at a Jewish Library. I had been speaking there once a month for 14 years to audiences of  300 or so. As a headed for the platform, the library director (a new one I had just met) said she wanted to speak first.

"Of course", I thought. She wants to thank me for 14 years of talks. She took the mike....."Wait till I tell you who your next speaker is. You're going to forget all about Graeme Decarie".

The next speaker was, of course, the local head of the Israeli lobby. (But he only lasted a few months.)
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51839.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51840.htm
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51841.htm
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https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2019/06/24/israel-u-s-engage-in-attack-simulations-preparing-for-war-against-iran/
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https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/26/18750566/nuclear-war-polling-americans-support-civilian-deaths

Hey! What's a million more? The U.S. has already killed more than 20 times that since  1945.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/26/opinion/climate-pollution-us-military-and-albertas-oilsands-industry-reports
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https://theantimedia.com/us-threatens-to-sanction-any-nation-that-imports-iranian-oil/

Yes, Trump can tell the whole world what it is allowed to do. God wants Americans to rule the world. That is broadly understood to be in true in much, perhaps most, of the U.S.

The world really has to do something about American history text books.
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https://truthout.org/articles/washington-meddling-in-haiti-neglected-by-u-s-press/

Canada  had a hand in this story. The U.S. , always eager to control its empire, threw out the elected president of Haiti. Canada, as always, wagged its tail at a chance to help the U.S. So it sent "peacekeepers" to  help out.
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https://thesaker.is/russia-india-china-will-be-the-big-g20-hit/

India was an American ally. Now it is a part of a triple alliance that faces the U.S.
And, like China, it has rapidly been climbing to world power.
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If the U.S. goes to war against Iran, will Canada join it?

It's quite possible. Australia which, in the old days, fought British wars, now fights them for its new master. Canada, once it was obvious British wars were no longer worth fighting, has already fought wars for the U.S. - Korea, Afghanistan, Libya and others. And it, quite improperly, supports the U.S. in Venezuela. Fighting for the master is one of the things an imperial colony does.
And the Canadian Legion, which should be defending our military and urging Canada to stay out  will, as always, wimp out.
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As a history prof, I'm also interested in how governments and schools use history to give us a false opinion of ourselves. In the U.S., for example, the civil war is seen as a war to free the slaves. (In fact, it was not - the issue was not even raised until that war was a year old.) Then there's the gospel that George Washington fought to bring democracy. But it's not true. Washington, like many others, was big on expanding the US into indigenous lands so they could make money out of selling some, getting some on the cheap  - Washington was a big-time farmer, and perhaps the wealthiest American of his time. Nor did he think all people equal. Certainly, women were not. But so also were the poor dumped on. Poor farmers, for example, had no right to vote.

Similarly, the British praised themselves for their building of an empire. In fact, it was responsible for centuries of enforced labour, of deliberate starvation, and of mass murder.  But it was called 'serving the king" or queen.

In fact, it was serving some of the cruelest and most murderous people in history - the British upper class. And, like today's American upper class, they really served only themselves while driving others into poverty and early death.

We get false impressions of ourselves from our history books. And we are led into making bad decisions from those impressions.

Oh, in the U.S., the belief that God wants Americans to rule the world is so widespread that there is a 'think tank' actually devoted to that topic - Project for the New American Century. It's available on the web. And, yes, they're for real.

Yep. God wanted the U.S. to nuke Hiroshima, to massacre Iraqis, and God wants them to obliterate Iran.

Of course, if you look at the political thought and behaviour of the North American Christian churches, it would make sense that God is as indifferent to killing and greed as they are.

June 27: Damn fools - all of us

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/europe-heat-records-1.5191106

Gee. Can you imagine how bad it would be if there was a real climate change going on? Aren't we lucky there's no such thing?
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/will-migrant-photo-salvadoran-father-daughter-change-minds-1.5191462

Too bad nobody at the U.S. border patrol knows how to spell precaution.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/26/credit-line-to-be-announced-to-ease-eu-and-iran-trading

In my last blog, I reported an accusation that The Guardian is not always honest. And that makes this story a little troublesome. Iran has to ease the crisis?
Come off it. Iran never caused the crisis. The U.S. is the one that has been bombarding Iran with threats and with economic sanctions. The U.S. and Britain are the ones who destroyed democracy in Iran by putting the Shah in power. Even now, Iran is more democratic that many of the U.S. allies.

And Iran is a danger because of the Americans believe it is producing nuclear weapons?  Israel, which is threatening Iran, has nuclear weapons. How come the U.S. has never complained about that?

In any case, nuclear weapons are not the major issue here. The major issue is the U.S. determination to get control of the Iran oil fields for American billionaires.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/26/a-young-family-left-el-salvador-for-a-better-life-their-tragedy-focused-the-immigration-crisis

Why are these people fleeing their homelands? Contrary to the Trump line, it is not so they can murder Americans and sell drugs. It's because they have been forced into poverty and hopelessness by an American empire that, like every empire that ever was, exists to  degrade, abuse and exploit the people it conquers. And it does so to enrich American (and Canadian) capitalists operating in those countries.

That was what the Roman, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British empires were all about.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/27/jamal-khashoggi-warned-moroccan-journalist-before-his-arrest-says-wife
So where are the big stories about this one in our news media?
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/27/yemen-refugees-usa-trump-asylum
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/25/trump-saudi-arabia-toadyism-richard-wolffe
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/18/mike-pompeo-saudi-arabia-yemen-sudan-child-soldiers

Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?
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https://www.thenation.com/article/iran-media-alterman/
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https://www.thenation.com/article/dilley-texas-immigration-detention/
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This is what we - all of us - have come down to.
This sort of savagery is the history of the world. It's the savagery of the rich and powerful which, in our society, has reached the level of the savagery of the Roman Empire.

This is what we have to defeat - and we  have very little time to do it.

https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/image-of-drowned-father-and-daughter-sparks-global-outrage-against-us-anti-immigrant-rampage

The US has not yet reached the level of Hitler. But it's working on it.
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Most sadly, the horror that Hitler unleashed no lives on in the horror of Israel. We are all, it seems, vulnerable to it. Jews are people with long traditions of concern for others, of charity, of caring. I say that have lived the greater part of my life among Jewish friends. I kid you not. Christianity is pretty pale stuff compared to Judaism.

But the horror of the death camps changed that. The Jews who survived them and fled to Israel are a people as vicious as any this world has seen. These are the products not of Judaism, but of Nazi racism. Hitler won. And, oh, they have fit into our Christian greedy and murderous society.

Am I being anti-semitic? No. I am mourning Hitler's destruction of Judaism - as reflected in the behaviour of Israel. - and the behaviour of us Christians who have always been murderous.

https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/a-hackneyed-betrayal-of-gaza
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Funny how this never made our news.

https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/ny-times-admits-it-sends-stories-to-u-s-government-for-approval-before-publication

This is the final betrayal of what we like to call a free press. Now, we get news on the Nazi system - whatever is approved by the state.
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https://thetyee.ca/News/2019/06/27/Urban-BC-Wildfire-Threat/
And this will have to other villages, towns and cities across Canada.
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https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/06/26/Experts-Evaluate-Party-Climate-Plans/
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/06/21/Trudeau-Climate-Policy-Inadequate/
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A climate change report from the UN will almost certainly not appear - Saudi Arabia doesn't approve of it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/un-climate-talks-in-bonn-saudi-arabia-15c-ipcc-rejects-a8970481.html

There is an emergency here folks. We may have as little as ten years to deal with it. This is one hell of an emergency - and we're seeing almost no action at all. Indeed, the Conservative party is committed to doing nothing - this to please its very rich friends.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/27/when-trump-did-the-right-thing-twice/
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Watch for this one.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/the-post-millennial-journalism-conservative-advocacy-1.5191593
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Canada's Christian neighbours.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51826.htm

What centuries of war have done to the U.S. - the most warlike nation on the planet.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51825.htm
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/arms-dealers-and-lobbyists-get-rich-as-yemen-burns/

God bless America.

God wants our military heroes to kill children.
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https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/23/us-to-impose-fresh-sanctions-on-iran-following-escalating-tensions

I think it almost a certainty that the war in Iran is going to happen. Gee! this world has a lot of civilians and children that God wants the U.S. to kill.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/

How could this ignorant lover of billionaires and sneerer at everybody else have been elected by the people of Ontario? They must be really, really stupid.
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I've run the next one before. But it's worth repeating. How could the people of Ontario have voted for the complete ass and servant of the very rich. This isn't a man of even normal intelligence - except, possibly, in Ontario.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/07/news/heres-everything-doug-ford-government-cut-its-first-year-office
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/new-york-climate-emergency/
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https://thesaker.is/the-saker-interviews-a-b-abrams-about-the-geostrategic-developments-in-asia/
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Critics of "America the Beautiful" have, for some time, been operating their own anti-media gang. The intention is to discredit them, the ones we can social media, and then put on pressure to get them removed from the web.

Sounds reasonable? Clean up the news so we'll get the truth?

That would be nice. But what we'll get is a truth as defined by Adolph Hitler - or a Donald Trump.

It not just social media who might lie with the news. It's also our mainstream commercial news media. Almost all of them are liars. And so they have been for some 150 years. But the people who want to destroy the social media have no interest in attacking them. Quite the contrary.

For forty years, I dabbled on the side as a news critic for radio, newspapers and TV. I did thousands of broadcasts and columns . And I   could make a very long list of those liars who call themselves reporters and commentators. And I have known the orders to come from top management. (With great affection, I should mention a Gord Sinclair who I worked for some thirty years. Note - he was not the Gord Sinclair of Canadian TV fame - who was a pompous ass. He was the son or that one - and a journalist's journalist.)

But the good ones are few. And I have noted that in the last couple of days, CBC news in Canada seems to have dropped its campaign to examine climate change. That's the sort of thing I would expect of top management at CBC and of it's private news competitors.______________________________________

To everybody, wake up. Europe is experiencing it's highest temperatures in history. The ice at both poles is disappearing. And the exposed land, much of it, is proving dangerous to human use.

Yes. Climate change is happening. It is already, in these early days, killing people. We face the greatest challenge in human history - and we have very, very little time to deal with it. But none of our political parties or our news media have paid much attention. Instead, we get high school dolts like Doug Ford to tell us it isn't happening.

The reality is that it IS happening.  And we have let it go for so long it may well be too late. But if we are going to do something, it has to be now, and it has to be a massive effort all over the world. But this isn't happening because our oil barons don't what it to happen. What can we call people who are that stupid?
This could be a good newspaper quiz.

Oh, I might as well get a lot off my chest. WE, the Canadian people, are paying for the oil companies to get an oil pipeline. That will cost 4,3 billion dollars of our money.

Why the hell are WE paying for a pipeline for oil billionaires? Shouldn't companies pay for their own expenses?

June 25: Let's get real. Let's get angry.

https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/inourbackyard/

Again, the CBC is doing what all of our news media should have been doing for the last 30 years. Get used to it. But most of your news media lie to you - and always have. CBC has taken a brave and intelligent stand.
_https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/confronting-carbon/

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http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/guardian-propagandistgatekeeper-state-mouthpiece

Well, yes.  As I've said before, The Guardian has weaknesses. But even at that it far outclasses most of the journalism world.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/25/climate-apartheid-united-nations-expert-says-human-rights-may-not-survive-crisis

That's an important story that you ain't never going to see in most of our news media.
And, indeed, human rights are not surviving it.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/after-secularism-law-women-ask-what-now-1.5187806

Quebec is racist. But don't just blame the French. I lived most of my life there - and there was profound racism directed at Blacks, Orientals, Jews and others. And it came from both French and English. Indeed, I don't know of any province in Canada that is not racist.

http://rabble.ca/news/2019/06/new-generation-quebecers-resists-legaults-discriminatory-law
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Nah. There ain't no climate change.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/25/highs-of-45c-expected-in-france-as-heatwave-scorches-europe
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I'm not surprised by this news. But I fear the results for my students and friends in Hong Kong.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/25/we-have-no-other-choice-as-china-erodes-democracy-hong-kong-citizens-prepare-to-leave

I have not heard from them lately. And I fear for them.
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This next item is several weeks old - but still timely.

https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/iranian-war-is-unwinnable.html
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https://www.thenation.com/article/dilley-texas-immigration-detention/
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https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/06/21/Trudeau-Climate-Policy-Inadequate/
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Paul Craig Roberts always sounds extreme. But he is very, very knowledgeable.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51813.htm
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One often hears Americans who have the impression that the U.S. has been the leading force in bringing democracy to the world. In fact, It's been a leading force in destroying democracies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51816.htm
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I don't what to say about this next one.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/22/guar-j22.html?view=print

I have felt that, on occasion, it was not honest. But generally, I have thought it the best of the dailies. Certainly, most of its news is honest. But does it stray?
I'm going to have to pay more attention to it.
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https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/06/18/opinion/think-canadas-politics-are-polarized-trumps-america-think-again

Well, that's good news. Now, if only we had candidates, somewhere, worth voting for.
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https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/
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https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/22/us-and-canada-back-the-white-supremist-minority-in-venezuela/
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https://off-guardian.org/2019/06/25/the-ongoing-restructuring-of-the-greater-middle-east/

The frightening (terrifying) part of all this is that Bolton and his friends are still running loose acting as though they are the presidency. They are the ones who almost started a war - without bothering to tell the president - and he let them get away with it and has kept them in power.

They are now consulting with Israel as a partner in their schemes. And Israel is one of the most dangerous nations running loose in this world Those are our friends in the region - an Israel which has been busy destroying Palestine: a Saudi Arabia, another vicious one that murders its own people is running loose..
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/climate-change-rich-poor-un-report-1.5189662
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/photo-drowned-migrant-daughter-rio-grande-us-mexico-border

Why are migrants fleeing their countries? In Latin America, it's largely because they are fleeing countries kept in poverty and even starvation by American and Canadian corporations.

Empires, almost by definition, are brutal, exploitative, indifferent to human need. And American empires are not different. God bless America? Get stuffed.

In Africa, the empires are the same - with the addition of bombing of civilians and of climate change - which is going to get a lot worse.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/25/trump-saudi-arabia-toadyism-richard-wolffe
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I have often said that most of the commercial news media deal in propaganda rather than news. I think of that whenever I pick up the paper in Ottawa, the city I live in. It's owned by a big-selling paper - The Last Post.

One of its items for the day is by Andrew Coyne, a columnist highly respected by intellectually challenged editors. Today, he takes on the issus of taxing the rich. Most research shows that the super rich walk away every year without paying taxes. But Andrew Coyne knows better.

Shucks, says Coyne, The amount would be so little, it ain't worth payin'. In fact, Coyne has no evidence for what he is writing - and it is, at best, vague. Roughly, he seems to say that the rich are poor. Right.

This is the kind of writer the  The Last Post just loves. The doesn't criticize the rich. And anyone who wants to do anything for the mass of the population is a crackpot.

And climate change? Forget it. Just read Rex Murphy's column. For a start, it's a big problem and Canada is too small to fix it. And any money the Liberals might spend on climate change won't matter because it's not enough. So what the hell.  Relax. burn all the oil you want.

This is typical Natonal Post fare.

I have never seen  honesty in these papers. That's because they are designed to be propaganda sheets. Long years ago, I was on radio at almost the same time as the founder of National Post, Conrad Black.  (He always closed his eyes in conversation because he just loved the sound of his voice.)

His thinking was extreme right wing. And that's what  his paper was - essentially a propaganda sheet. It has never done honest reporting on climate change, for example. Eventually, his sins caught up to him, and he was sent to jail for several years in the U.S. But he then kissed up to Donald Trump and was pardoned on all charges.

Delightful person.

Almost all Canadian dailies are branded with stinkership. But the National Post is the leader - perhaps surpassed only by the New Brunswick papers of the Irving Press.
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We face one hell of a challenge in dealing with climate change. We cannot trust most of our news media. Most are just propaganda sheets.

Canada is owned by the very, very wealthy, so wealthy they can buy politicians - notably those in the Liberal and Conservative parties. That's why Trudeau  promises to deal with climate change while at the same time  building a new pipeline that will last for decades, guaranteeing no significant action on climate challenge.

Let's be clear. Canada is NOT a democracy.  It cannot be a democracy so long as the wealthy have the power to buy our politicians - and so long as the Liberals and Conservatives hold their hands out - and so long our news world is so corrupt. And so long as Canadians are dumb enough to accept this corruption.

We cannot deal with world problems that have an effect on us so long as we and our politicians kiss the American rear end. At the end of World War Two, we were going to create a new world, a world to end wars. We didn't do it. And over 20 million have died because of our failure to do it.

The UN,  intended to end war was, almost immediately twisted into the American attempt to conquer China by way of Korea. And ever since then, the U.S. has fought wars entirely in its own commercial interest - and we have supported it. It has completely ignored international law  - as it is now doing in Iran. We became partners in greed and torture. Indeed, just about every war since 1945 has been a war for American corporations - notably in oil - to murder and steal, to murder children and civilians on a scale never before dreamt of.

Now, as we are faced with the strong possibility of the end of our planet, we are using all our time and resources to murder men, women, and children all over the world. And we have not lifted a finger to save ourselves and our world.

This is worse than stupidity. This is insanity.