April 20: May I lick your boots, Mr. Rogers?

The second editorial dumps all over the bus drivers of Moncton who have the nerve to ask, like Oliver Twist, for more. I have never, in the years I have read the Irving press, never, ever seen a comment in favour of any union on any issue. They will kiss the rear ends of people who earn $25000 and more an hour, who make more in that hour than thousands of harder-working people make in a year (and who pay a higher percentage in tax. More than that, they will demand we give those people billions in loans, resources, tax breaks, gifts - and then refer to those who rip us off as philanthropists.

But bus-drivers who would like to earn one-thousandth much as our masters are dumped on.

Even the most hick of billionaires gets paid more than all the world's political leaders put together (except for the most corrupt ones.) Is it tougher or more important to run a shipyard than to govern hundreds of millions of people?

Now, switch to page one to read Brent Mazerolle's column on the Rogers parking lot. (Be careful not to touch it. It's soaked in slobber.) It seems the president of Rogers Communications for the Atlantic region (Wow! I bet he gets more than $25 an hour). Anwyay, it seems this worthy is hurt by reporting about the parking lot of the company he loves. Yes, that's the heart-rending word - loves.

I shall not raise the obvious queston about his mating habits. But read the column that falls all over itself apologizing to the important one.

Meanwhile, who gives a damn whether bus drivers can support a family on $25.00 an hour - especially when they have to pay high taxes to make up for those wealthy people who don't?

There's nothing else in section A, unless you really, really care that the Rexton village office is going to move across the street.

The next big story is in section D. Blake and Ryan are looking for a house in Connecticutt. There's even a picture of them standing there. Looking. At something.

Norbert Cunningham writes an incoherent column on David Suzuki as an ideologue. Norbert, pick up a good dictionary. There are at least three, quite different, meanings to 'ideologue'. Moreover, there is probably not one person in a thousand who knows any of those meanings. (Even you, apparently, only know one of them.)

And, contrary to what you seem to think, it is quite common for a scholar to be an ideologue in one or all of the senses. Even you, Norman, are an ideologue - and in the most negative sense of the word. That's the meaning you list under the heading IDEOLOGY in your column. (You're also wrong - or at least misleading - in your bit about the concept of the "noble savage". I have taught on this topic. Would you like me to drop off some of my notes?)

Norbert also claims he is a real environmentalist. Oh? Care to make a book of your columns critical of fracking? or of the foresting practices of your owner? Or of the air pollution problems around the refinery in St. John?

Tell you what, Norbert. Come to my current events group at the Moncton Library - May 1 at 7 pm. I'll give you all the time you like to tell people why you're right, and I'm wrong.

I hope I misunderstand the point of the de adder cartoon. If I do understand it, it is actually loathsome in its bad taste - and I would dare him to draw a similar cartoon about anybody named Irving or Ganong or McCain.

Unlike the story about the Rogers parking lot, this cartoon is an item that deserves a front page apology - with lots of slobber.

The only important story in NewsToday is about the disaster that Harper is shaping up in our penal system.

Well, there is a story that NB will partake in a hydro-fracking study. But that is scarcely a confidence-building statement. Worse, it's being led by the federal government. (Yes, the same government that is cutting review times to let environmentally damaging projects go ahead as quickly as possible.)

Almost the only foreign news is the usual propaganda from Reuters.

Alec Bruce has a column to take very seriously. There are some very ugly and scary changes occuring in the ways we conduct war. (We means the whole world, not just our side.) One of them concerns computers. China is way ahead of us on this; and we are not likely to catch up.

We are facing yet another brick wall. War no longer works. It never worked well. Now, it hasn't worked at all for almost seventy years. Trying to make it work has so disordered spending in the US, that it now has to starve its poor (cutting off foodstamps, medical care, education) to pay for robot weapons and mercenaries because its own citizens in the 'land of the brave' won't service in the military. At that, it still can't beat even small and poor countries.

And we threw away all those years from 1945 to now when we could have built some alternative.

The consequence is the US is heading for a social breakdown - and the only response any American government has shown has been to deny basic rights, to spy on everyone, to arbitrarily arrest and imprison, to build police forces of combat strength, to encourage hysteria. The constitution is close to being a dead letter.

Expect violence, and don't expect the results to be pretty no matter who wins. (Or, just read the news pages of the Irving Press, and you won't even know it's happening.)

Good column by David Suzuki who doesn't seem to realize he's a dissillusioned ideologue.

Two, excellent letters to the editor, 'Cheap food bought with hidden cost' and 'Hunger striker deserves support'.

There is also a self-serving piece of propaganda on the events centre. It, of course, gets the place of honour among letters to the editor - with a border around it.