Hot off the press. A restaurant that closed is going to become a pizzaria. That's on A 9, and it reflects the quality of almost all the 'news' in Section A. The one story worth reading is on A6. "Moncton charity seeking homeless resource centre".
The Humanity Project has helped 180 homeless families in Moncton, Dieppe and Rivervew since August with shelter, food and clothing. (Yes, that's families.) And I think we should all be grateful to the project for that, and we should help it. However....
I can't help remembering this is a city in which we're being urged to pay for a $100 million dollar events centre, mostly so a wealthy man can get a new hockey rink for his team. This is a province which pays our tax money if some some 70 million every year to 6 large lumbering companies to cut responsibly - something they should be doing, anyway. And at that, our government doesn't even bother to check what they're doing.
We give 250,000 to a local businessman ((plus other goodies) to open an office here - (and he says he never even asked for it. How sweet!)
The purpose of government is to serve the people. All of them. But what we do is elect governments which serve the rich - and which assume (if they think about it at all) that the rich will then serve the people. That is nonsense. The rich will NOT serve the people. We do not benefit when the rich get richer. It does not happen. It has never happened.
In order the serve all the people, government has to control the economy, and they have to control the rich.. There is no other way to do that. Our governments don't do that. Instead, they allow the rich to control the economy and to control the government - and the hell with what all the people need.
Any government which allows that is not a government at all but just collection of stooges who run for election on the hope that they will get some nice reward at the end (like becoming a senator or becoming Canadian consul in, say, Boston.)
A politician is not simply a business hack. And a government is not a business. That's why a political party should (must) be based on principles, a sort of moral code. The policies then come from the principles. The Liberals and the Conservatives have nothing that could be called a principle of any sort - and they certainly do not begin with any intention of serving the people who elected them. If they did, we would not have homeless and penniless families, and children with no hope ever of a better life.
Now, there's topic for an editorial. But don't ever expect to see it in the Irving press.
____________________________________________________________________________
Norbert has a good column on the province and its handling of a snow removal contract. It cancelled its nearly complete deal with a Quebec company to give the contract to a New Brunswick contractor. He's quite right that the contract should have gone to the lowest bidder - the Quebec company. But, oh, the column is muddled with shallow thinking.
He opens with paragraphs critical of New Brunswickers for being insular, parochial, lacking in any sense of a world beyond their belly buttons. But, gee, Norbert. Why do you think they're like that? For a hint, read your newspaper. Section A is almost all local news - and mostly trivial, at that. Read the editorials. Read your own columns. And that continues into Section B which is grandly called Canada&World News but which has little of either.
Then Norbert says we should not interfere with " the marketplace, which remains the best arbiter of who survives and who doesn't." Come off it, Norbert. The market place is controlled by big business which gets freebies from government, doesn't have to pay taxes, can take our forests for a song,and it's all being tied together with "free trade deals" to make life even better for the rich. There is no free market.
And, for that matter, there shouldn't be. There should be rules to limit damage, for example. In Norbert's article he looks at opposition to shale gas as interfering with the market. Well, yes, Norbert. And for the same reason as driving a powerful car down Main St. at 200 ks is interfering with the market - for the same reason as discouraging tobacco sales is interfering with the market, for the same reason as monitoring rules for the forest industry is interfering with the market, for the same reason as forbidding the sale of submachine guns and rocket launchers is interfering with the market. Lots of markets need interfering, and there are far too many not getting it.
Rod Allen's column is a kiss-up to Mr. Booth, a rich man who got a forgiveable loan for $250,000 from a province that leaves feeding the hungry up to charities. (By the way, isn't giving a company a quarter million interfering with the marketplace?) At least, though, we're spared Rod Allen's laboured attempts at humour.
The bottom commentary is from, again, a very far right-with "think-tank" that grinds out studies that spread propaganda for big business and the very rich. They always have statistics - and I've almost always found their statistics to be misleading or even lying. This one 'proves' that a very high proportion of poor children become rich. And I know from long teaching experience and life experience that that simply is not true. Rich kids are guaranteed to stay rich. Look at the success stories of the Irving offspring, one of whom became VP of Daddy's newspapers very early in his career. What an inspiration to poor children everywhere!
This column is from The Fraser Insitute. And like everything from the Fraser, it's pure propaganda for suckers.
Alec Bruce's column is well-written, has some potential for saying something - but never makes it.
____________________________________________________________________________
B1 actually has a real story. "Dutch government ordered to slash greenhouse emissions". For the first time a court has set a strict deadline for cutting the emissions - which could lead to such legal action in other countries. Canada springs to mind. Yes. It will be difficult. Yes. It will be inconvenient. Yes. It may mean greater changes in our lives.
But there is one hell of a bigger change that is likely if we don't act. And I have seen no sign that any government will act unless it is ordered to.
As it is, those who don't care about what climate change will do are in charge of the show. The oil companies (seriously) don't care abut the changes and destruction. Greed does that to them. As it is, they have killed millions in order to get control of all oil, with more millions to come. They have driven well over sixty million refugees out of their homes. They are starving millions more even as I write this. The have spent billions to lie about climate change. They are now fighting wars (well, we do the fighting and the dying for them) to get oil, even risking nuclear war for it, as they are eagerly building new pipelines and searching for new oil - and making the point that they do not intend to stop pushing oil - not ever.
Greed is a leading cause of stupidity.
With the exception of the story about the Dutch court, we are still in New Brunswick on B3. Now, that's a newspaper with its nose in its own bellybutton.
B7 has the story of how the US has been spying on French governments for years. Big surprise. The US government spies on everybody, including you and me. Including, I'm quite sure, the Canadian government.
There are no such things as friends among national governments.
Lower on the page is the story that the Queen will become a refugee forced to flee her townhouse, Buckingham Palace, as it gets a 237 million dollar upgrade. At taxpayer's expense. That's an expensive family. The British taxpayers also pay for over 150 servants for Charles -probably more since Camilla. Then, various family members need frequent trips to their various golf courses around the world - accompanied by armies of servants.
And isn't it exciting about the royal babies?
In Yemen, (B8), many more have been killed or forced to flee as our good friends in Saudi Arabia deliberately bomb civilians with bombs supplied by our good friends in the US and Britain . (God save the Queen.) The number of people needing medical care and food has now reached 31,000,000, thanks to Saudi refusal to allow food or medical supplies to reach the country. And this follows years of indiscriminate bombing by US drones, killing innocent people of the world's poorest country. (God bless America).
That kind of indiscriminate killing is intended to create terror. It's terrorism. But it's only actually called terrorism when it's done by the other side.
And why is this happening? Our leaders haven't bothered to tell us. Why are Canadian pilots killing people in Syria and Iraq? We haven't been told that, either.
Nor has it been pointed out that all of this was caused by the US government - with help from Britain and France. Resistance movements such as we're seeing in the middle east don't come from nowhere.
Oh - yes, I know those people are evil and cruel and don't shave. But these resistance movements didn't exist until European and American oil companies moved in. And some of the large ones were even funded and supplied by the US and Britain. The US and Britain with occasional help from Canada have created the horror that is now the middle east. How come our newspapers never explain that?
And remember how Canadians opened their arms to help Americans after 9/11? So where is our sympathy for the tens of millions of refugees we helped to create in Africa and the Middle East and who are suffering far, far more than Americans did in 9/11?
Finally, on B8, a US commander says he has irrefutable evidence of a Russian military presence in the Ukraine. Maybe. Maybe not. George Bush and Tony Blair said they had irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Remember?
And, in any case, there is also irrefutable evidence 1, that the US staged the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government to bring to the present gang to power. 2. that there is an American (and European Union and Canadian) presence in Ukraine,
So, Mr. U.S. commander, your point is....?
__________________________________________________________________________
The Irving press hasn't mentioned it, but the Harper government has just stacked the National Capital Commission with Conservatives to be sure it approves the building of a huge and very expensive memorial to all the people killed by communism all over the world. It would be right in front of our Supreme court. Great idea.
Could we also have a monument to the millions of people all over the world killed by capitalism? You know - the Chinese tens of millions killed by Chiang kai Shek (our boy), the tens of millions in Africa, Asia, North America (you've heard of native peoples?) killed by British, Canadian and American capitalism, the millions killed by Spanish capitalism in South America. the millions killed by American capitalism in Latin America, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... then there are the millions killed by France in North Africa, French Indo-China.... Actually, it should be a much bigger monument than the one to victims of communism because capitalism killed a whole lot more.
And we could have a monument to the native people deliberately starved to death on the prairies.
ooooo - And how about one to the Canadians killed by Americans in the invasion of 1812?
Of course, communism is evil. And capitalism is good. Just like Islam is evil. But Christianity is good. Christians would never kill people.
Too bad we don't have any Christians, not even on the Faith page.
_______________________________________________________________________________
There are some gaps in the news. Among them -
1. what happened to the Halifax beer heir who was being investigated for killing his father? That just disappeared from the news.
2. Where's the story explaining the seeming collapse of the talks about the Greek national debt? The debt was run up by corrupt politicians. And the banks knew that, even as they gave them more and more money. Now the Greek people are stuck as the banks hold them entirely responsible and intends to hold them all to live in hopeless poverty until the debt is paid - which means forever. (reminds me of New Brunswick.)
For those who don't care about the Greek people, this could have serious consequences for the European Union.
3. How come we still don't have a report on the cause of the civil airliner crash in Ukraine?
4. Why are we get such shallow reporting on racism in the US? There is a story about the confederate flag being taken down but, really, the shootings in South Carolina were not caused simply because of confederate flags flying.
Donald Trump is so far running on a very crude racist ticket aimed at hispanics. Why aren't we hearing more about this? There are indications of large sums of racist money going to the Republican party.
The incident in South Caroline is not the result of one, young man's bigotry. And taking down the flags won't change anything. Racism and racial hatreds are by no means limited to South Carolina. They could have very serious consequences. Why aren't we get fuller information about it?
The Humanity Project has helped 180 homeless families in Moncton, Dieppe and Rivervew since August with shelter, food and clothing. (Yes, that's families.) And I think we should all be grateful to the project for that, and we should help it. However....
I can't help remembering this is a city in which we're being urged to pay for a $100 million dollar events centre, mostly so a wealthy man can get a new hockey rink for his team. This is a province which pays our tax money if some some 70 million every year to 6 large lumbering companies to cut responsibly - something they should be doing, anyway. And at that, our government doesn't even bother to check what they're doing.
We give 250,000 to a local businessman ((plus other goodies) to open an office here - (and he says he never even asked for it. How sweet!)
The purpose of government is to serve the people. All of them. But what we do is elect governments which serve the rich - and which assume (if they think about it at all) that the rich will then serve the people. That is nonsense. The rich will NOT serve the people. We do not benefit when the rich get richer. It does not happen. It has never happened.
In order the serve all the people, government has to control the economy, and they have to control the rich.. There is no other way to do that. Our governments don't do that. Instead, they allow the rich to control the economy and to control the government - and the hell with what all the people need.
Any government which allows that is not a government at all but just collection of stooges who run for election on the hope that they will get some nice reward at the end (like becoming a senator or becoming Canadian consul in, say, Boston.)
A politician is not simply a business hack. And a government is not a business. That's why a political party should (must) be based on principles, a sort of moral code. The policies then come from the principles. The Liberals and the Conservatives have nothing that could be called a principle of any sort - and they certainly do not begin with any intention of serving the people who elected them. If they did, we would not have homeless and penniless families, and children with no hope ever of a better life.
Now, there's topic for an editorial. But don't ever expect to see it in the Irving press.
____________________________________________________________________________
Norbert has a good column on the province and its handling of a snow removal contract. It cancelled its nearly complete deal with a Quebec company to give the contract to a New Brunswick contractor. He's quite right that the contract should have gone to the lowest bidder - the Quebec company. But, oh, the column is muddled with shallow thinking.
He opens with paragraphs critical of New Brunswickers for being insular, parochial, lacking in any sense of a world beyond their belly buttons. But, gee, Norbert. Why do you think they're like that? For a hint, read your newspaper. Section A is almost all local news - and mostly trivial, at that. Read the editorials. Read your own columns. And that continues into Section B which is grandly called Canada&World News but which has little of either.
Then Norbert says we should not interfere with " the marketplace, which remains the best arbiter of who survives and who doesn't." Come off it, Norbert. The market place is controlled by big business which gets freebies from government, doesn't have to pay taxes, can take our forests for a song,and it's all being tied together with "free trade deals" to make life even better for the rich. There is no free market.
And, for that matter, there shouldn't be. There should be rules to limit damage, for example. In Norbert's article he looks at opposition to shale gas as interfering with the market. Well, yes, Norbert. And for the same reason as driving a powerful car down Main St. at 200 ks is interfering with the market - for the same reason as discouraging tobacco sales is interfering with the market, for the same reason as monitoring rules for the forest industry is interfering with the market, for the same reason as forbidding the sale of submachine guns and rocket launchers is interfering with the market. Lots of markets need interfering, and there are far too many not getting it.
Rod Allen's column is a kiss-up to Mr. Booth, a rich man who got a forgiveable loan for $250,000 from a province that leaves feeding the hungry up to charities. (By the way, isn't giving a company a quarter million interfering with the marketplace?) At least, though, we're spared Rod Allen's laboured attempts at humour.
The bottom commentary is from, again, a very far right-with "think-tank" that grinds out studies that spread propaganda for big business and the very rich. They always have statistics - and I've almost always found their statistics to be misleading or even lying. This one 'proves' that a very high proportion of poor children become rich. And I know from long teaching experience and life experience that that simply is not true. Rich kids are guaranteed to stay rich. Look at the success stories of the Irving offspring, one of whom became VP of Daddy's newspapers very early in his career. What an inspiration to poor children everywhere!
This column is from The Fraser Insitute. And like everything from the Fraser, it's pure propaganda for suckers.
Alec Bruce's column is well-written, has some potential for saying something - but never makes it.
____________________________________________________________________________
B1 actually has a real story. "Dutch government ordered to slash greenhouse emissions". For the first time a court has set a strict deadline for cutting the emissions - which could lead to such legal action in other countries. Canada springs to mind. Yes. It will be difficult. Yes. It will be inconvenient. Yes. It may mean greater changes in our lives.
But there is one hell of a bigger change that is likely if we don't act. And I have seen no sign that any government will act unless it is ordered to.
As it is, those who don't care about what climate change will do are in charge of the show. The oil companies (seriously) don't care abut the changes and destruction. Greed does that to them. As it is, they have killed millions in order to get control of all oil, with more millions to come. They have driven well over sixty million refugees out of their homes. They are starving millions more even as I write this. The have spent billions to lie about climate change. They are now fighting wars (well, we do the fighting and the dying for them) to get oil, even risking nuclear war for it, as they are eagerly building new pipelines and searching for new oil - and making the point that they do not intend to stop pushing oil - not ever.
Greed is a leading cause of stupidity.
With the exception of the story about the Dutch court, we are still in New Brunswick on B3. Now, that's a newspaper with its nose in its own bellybutton.
B7 has the story of how the US has been spying on French governments for years. Big surprise. The US government spies on everybody, including you and me. Including, I'm quite sure, the Canadian government.
There are no such things as friends among national governments.
Lower on the page is the story that the Queen will become a refugee forced to flee her townhouse, Buckingham Palace, as it gets a 237 million dollar upgrade. At taxpayer's expense. That's an expensive family. The British taxpayers also pay for over 150 servants for Charles -probably more since Camilla. Then, various family members need frequent trips to their various golf courses around the world - accompanied by armies of servants.
And isn't it exciting about the royal babies?
In Yemen, (B8), many more have been killed or forced to flee as our good friends in Saudi Arabia deliberately bomb civilians with bombs supplied by our good friends in the US and Britain . (God save the Queen.) The number of people needing medical care and food has now reached 31,000,000, thanks to Saudi refusal to allow food or medical supplies to reach the country. And this follows years of indiscriminate bombing by US drones, killing innocent people of the world's poorest country. (God bless America).
That kind of indiscriminate killing is intended to create terror. It's terrorism. But it's only actually called terrorism when it's done by the other side.
And why is this happening? Our leaders haven't bothered to tell us. Why are Canadian pilots killing people in Syria and Iraq? We haven't been told that, either.
Nor has it been pointed out that all of this was caused by the US government - with help from Britain and France. Resistance movements such as we're seeing in the middle east don't come from nowhere.
Oh - yes, I know those people are evil and cruel and don't shave. But these resistance movements didn't exist until European and American oil companies moved in. And some of the large ones were even funded and supplied by the US and Britain. The US and Britain with occasional help from Canada have created the horror that is now the middle east. How come our newspapers never explain that?
And remember how Canadians opened their arms to help Americans after 9/11? So where is our sympathy for the tens of millions of refugees we helped to create in Africa and the Middle East and who are suffering far, far more than Americans did in 9/11?
Finally, on B8, a US commander says he has irrefutable evidence of a Russian military presence in the Ukraine. Maybe. Maybe not. George Bush and Tony Blair said they had irrefutable evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Remember?
And, in any case, there is also irrefutable evidence 1, that the US staged the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government to bring to the present gang to power. 2. that there is an American (and European Union and Canadian) presence in Ukraine,
So, Mr. U.S. commander, your point is....?
__________________________________________________________________________
The Irving press hasn't mentioned it, but the Harper government has just stacked the National Capital Commission with Conservatives to be sure it approves the building of a huge and very expensive memorial to all the people killed by communism all over the world. It would be right in front of our Supreme court. Great idea.
Could we also have a monument to the millions of people all over the world killed by capitalism? You know - the Chinese tens of millions killed by Chiang kai Shek (our boy), the tens of millions in Africa, Asia, North America (you've heard of native peoples?) killed by British, Canadian and American capitalism, the millions killed by Spanish capitalism in South America. the millions killed by American capitalism in Latin America, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan... then there are the millions killed by France in North Africa, French Indo-China.... Actually, it should be a much bigger monument than the one to victims of communism because capitalism killed a whole lot more.
And we could have a monument to the native people deliberately starved to death on the prairies.
ooooo - And how about one to the Canadians killed by Americans in the invasion of 1812?
Of course, communism is evil. And capitalism is good. Just like Islam is evil. But Christianity is good. Christians would never kill people.
Too bad we don't have any Christians, not even on the Faith page.
_______________________________________________________________________________
There are some gaps in the news. Among them -
1. what happened to the Halifax beer heir who was being investigated for killing his father? That just disappeared from the news.
2. Where's the story explaining the seeming collapse of the talks about the Greek national debt? The debt was run up by corrupt politicians. And the banks knew that, even as they gave them more and more money. Now the Greek people are stuck as the banks hold them entirely responsible and intends to hold them all to live in hopeless poverty until the debt is paid - which means forever. (reminds me of New Brunswick.)
For those who don't care about the Greek people, this could have serious consequences for the European Union.
3. How come we still don't have a report on the cause of the civil airliner crash in Ukraine?
4. Why are we get such shallow reporting on racism in the US? There is a story about the confederate flag being taken down but, really, the shootings in South Carolina were not caused simply because of confederate flags flying.
Donald Trump is so far running on a very crude racist ticket aimed at hispanics. Why aren't we hearing more about this? There are indications of large sums of racist money going to the Republican party.
The incident in South Caroline is not the result of one, young man's bigotry. And taking down the flags won't change anything. Racism and racial hatreds are by no means limited to South Carolina. They could have very serious consequences. Why aren't we get fuller information about it?
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