Gee. Just like the rifle that killed three of our police.
That's from and ad insert in yesterday's paper. And - 1,500 rounds of ammunition for only $279.What's it useful for? Well, you really don't need it for hunting. You would need it in the woods only if you're suddenly attacked by six or seven deer. And the semi-automatic feature makes it very dangerous in the hands of a sloppy gunner because it means the gun can go off with just an accidental touch of the trigger.
But, sometimes, you may want to kill a policeman, and at short range. For that, there's a quite powerful pistol called the Sauer in .32 calibre or 9 mm. Only $679. It's very little use for hunting or target shooting, but great for killing people at short range.
And let's not leave the kids out. For them, there's the Ruger 22 which looks exactly like a military submachine gun. It's semi-automatic - great for kids. And, you it know, looks just like a real, military weapon. So it develops real macho in kids. And you can even get it with a 122 round magazine. With a little practice, a kid could learn to empty that in two minutes - anywhere.
Want something for your child to play with on the street? Well, there's the Crossman BB air pistol that could take an eye out. And it looks EXACTLY like a real pistol.
This is all at Cabela's, the new story in Moncton that was greeted with something like a imperial Triumph in the streets of ancient Rome..
It's now over a year ago three police in Moncton were killed by a person of mental problems who had been able to buy macho weapons. The people and the newspapers of Moncton mourned, laid flowers, are promoting a memorial. They have done everything ---- except to ask why this happened, and what should be done so it won't happen again.
Many police have requested transfers out of this district. It seems to have to do with the behaviour of police management. Nobody's telling. And nobody's asking.
Then we have the question of why it was possible for anyone in this city to buy what is essentially a combat rifle. And we have the question of why the Harper government has been so eager to destroy the long gun registry so the police have no way of knowing what's out there.
And Moncton says it thanks its police, and it mourns those who died. I don't believe Moncton. I don't believe the people, the newspapers, the local governments or the provincial government. If they cared, they would do something more than wail their grief. They would be taking action to find out exactly why all this happened, and they would be working on means of reducing the risks for our police - and us.
____________________________________________________________________________
Section A news is, as usual, a gathering at the village pump for gossip.
The editorial is a pointless one about the zoo. It closes on a bizarre note, "It will be years, if not generations, yet before new energy alternatives can help solve issues like climate change." If the editor had the slightest interest in this, he could have easily found the figures at which species are going extinct. That rates of disappearance have been rising and the pace increasing at stunning rates for over a century. We don't have generations to find alternatives. And we're not doing a whole lot to look for them.
After all, some people make a lot of money out of oil. And, duh, it creates jobs.
Norbert has a good column about the nearing federal election, and the dangers of jumping to conclusions about who will win. In parts, he sounds even rebellious in his denunciation of the ultra-rich. Indeed, this is close to a reversal of what he and his newspaper have always stood for.
I disagree with him only on small points. The terms small-l liberals and small- c conservatives are meaningless. Both parties have always been the agents of big business. I am not a small l liberal of any sort. The word liberal means minimal government. I have never thought that made sense. The ones who claim to support it are usually what we call small-c conservatives. Like all real liberals, I believe that people should have as much freedom as possible. Like all real conservatives, I believe a society needs a strong government and social structure.
By the correct definition, the Irvings are liberals,sort of - though they believe in such freedom only for themselves.
And I don't agree we've had 35 years of extreme conservatism. We've had 35 years of extreme greed and lack of any moral structure. That's not liberalism or conservatism. It's mass murder, mass theft, and indifference to the needs of anybody except the very rich.
And I would certainly not place Mulroney as a classic conservative. Mulroney is a man who devoted his life to making the rich even richer so they would make him rich, too. He cheated, lied, embezzled, and abandoned every moral principle so he could live in a mansion, and his wife could shop daily for new dresses. He was in the same closet as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. That's why he was Reagan's ally in pushing for North American Free Trade.
I was good friends of a man who was one of the star candidates who ran against Mulroney for the Conservative leadership. He was an owner of what was then Canada's largest law firm. He had a commanding presence, and spoke superbly. We were at many, many meetings together, and I soon learned that he was a man who could not lie. Once, visiting him for supper, I mentioned I had just bought a painting that was in my car. He was interested, and asked me to bring it in. I did. He looked at it, placed it by his chair, and began talking to someone else.
I knew why. He didn't like the painting. But we were friends, So he couldn't say he didn't like it. But he couldn't lie, and say it was nice. It was very embarrassing for him,, But he couldn't even tell a white lie.
He withdrew from the leadership campaign half-way through it - though he was doing quite decently in the polls. So I asked him why he had withdrawn.
"Graeme, I had to quit. I just couldn't lie like those other people."
Brian Mulroney could - and did.
Two of the commentaries have nothing much to say.
The third is by Jason Limongelli, VP of Woodlands for Irving. It reminded me of Brian Mulroney. But it's not nearly as glib as Mulroney because Limongelli can't write worth a poop. It's so wordy and bureaucratic that few will read it - and most of those won't understand it. It's also heavy on jargon and bafflegab. If I were Irving, I'd send this guy back to the minors.
As usual, all the columns are about New Brunswick. Talk about gathering at the village pump for gossip!
_______________________________________________________________________________
B4 has an amusing story that the leaks by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have hampered the work of secret agencies in both Canada and the US. Well, I should hope so. The leaks show that those agencies have been lying to us, have been spying on millions of innocent people, and on friendly countries. They have even, in both Canada and the US, been creating "terrorist" incidents using mentally ill and/or isolated and very poor people, manipulating them into committing a terrorist act, paying them for it, supplying them with bombs, and showing them how to use them. Then, just before the act, our valiant defenders step in to arrest them.
They spy on every one of us. We have no idea who gets all that information about us (though we know that in the past, such information has been handed on to big business.) . They spy on friendly countries right up to the highest levels of government as they did in France and Brazil; and I expect, they spy on each other.
We Canadians and Americans spend billions on these clowns. And we hardly ever hear of them catching a terrorist. So why do we have them? Why have we surrendered all our constitutional rights and privileges? I especially wonder that about Canada because terrorists have little reason to attack Canada.
Yes, if terrorists attack, it's for a reason. The attacks of 9/11 were expensive and costly in time. So why did they happen? (Think hard. Terrorists don't do things just because they're evil.) Terrorists commit terrorist acts for a reason. We have to guess at this because our news media seem not to have thought of this question.
It wasn't done just to attack the US. There is no way that even an attack as big as 9/11 would destroy the US. There was no way it would make the US surrender or even cause any significant damage. For an attack that size, you need to be the US with the power to kill people by the millions - as in Vietnam and Iraq. Bin Laden was rich, but scarcely in that league.
So why the attack? On a guess, it could have been to egg the US into an over-response so destructive and murderous that it would spread extremism all over the middle east. In the long run, that would be a foreign policy disaster for the US.
If so, bin Laden got exactly what he wanted. There are reasons these things happen. (And they're far less likely to happen in Canada because there's nothing to be gained by an attack on Canada. It's irrelevant on the world stage.)
Harper decided we needed spies - not to spy on terrorists, but to spy on all of us - for his purposes, and for the purposes of big business. And we pay for it with our taxes.
_________________________________________________________________________
There really isn't much worth reading in section B. - just the story above, and one, sad one on B7. Greece might accept the bankers' terms on settling the national debt. If they do, it means the people of Greece will be so impoverished it will never recover. The debt will last and grow forever - like a payday loan. But humans don't matter in our world. Only money matters. Having fed off the blood and lives of the rest of the world for 500 years, The European and American rich are now feeding off their own people
________________________________________________________________________________
I won't comment on the Faith page today. It's still the usual drivel; but I want, tomorrow, to focus on why it's such drivel. I'm not going to get religious on you. I want to talk about morality - not as a religious concept, but as an essential for the survival of human societies. I want to talk about the collapse of morality, the role of many, many of the churches in encouraging that collapse, and the consequences of the collapse.
(I was raised to renounce the Roman Catholic church and all its works in the best Calvinist fashion of the Scottish highlands. But I'm finding Pope Francis one of the few leaders in this world to admire.)
That's from and ad insert in yesterday's paper. And - 1,500 rounds of ammunition for only $279.What's it useful for? Well, you really don't need it for hunting. You would need it in the woods only if you're suddenly attacked by six or seven deer. And the semi-automatic feature makes it very dangerous in the hands of a sloppy gunner because it means the gun can go off with just an accidental touch of the trigger.
But, sometimes, you may want to kill a policeman, and at short range. For that, there's a quite powerful pistol called the Sauer in .32 calibre or 9 mm. Only $679. It's very little use for hunting or target shooting, but great for killing people at short range.
And let's not leave the kids out. For them, there's the Ruger 22 which looks exactly like a military submachine gun. It's semi-automatic - great for kids. And, you it know, looks just like a real, military weapon. So it develops real macho in kids. And you can even get it with a 122 round magazine. With a little practice, a kid could learn to empty that in two minutes - anywhere.
Want something for your child to play with on the street? Well, there's the Crossman BB air pistol that could take an eye out. And it looks EXACTLY like a real pistol.
This is all at Cabela's, the new story in Moncton that was greeted with something like a imperial Triumph in the streets of ancient Rome..
It's now over a year ago three police in Moncton were killed by a person of mental problems who had been able to buy macho weapons. The people and the newspapers of Moncton mourned, laid flowers, are promoting a memorial. They have done everything ---- except to ask why this happened, and what should be done so it won't happen again.
Many police have requested transfers out of this district. It seems to have to do with the behaviour of police management. Nobody's telling. And nobody's asking.
Then we have the question of why it was possible for anyone in this city to buy what is essentially a combat rifle. And we have the question of why the Harper government has been so eager to destroy the long gun registry so the police have no way of knowing what's out there.
And Moncton says it thanks its police, and it mourns those who died. I don't believe Moncton. I don't believe the people, the newspapers, the local governments or the provincial government. If they cared, they would do something more than wail their grief. They would be taking action to find out exactly why all this happened, and they would be working on means of reducing the risks for our police - and us.
____________________________________________________________________________
Section A news is, as usual, a gathering at the village pump for gossip.
The editorial is a pointless one about the zoo. It closes on a bizarre note, "It will be years, if not generations, yet before new energy alternatives can help solve issues like climate change." If the editor had the slightest interest in this, he could have easily found the figures at which species are going extinct. That rates of disappearance have been rising and the pace increasing at stunning rates for over a century. We don't have generations to find alternatives. And we're not doing a whole lot to look for them.
After all, some people make a lot of money out of oil. And, duh, it creates jobs.
Norbert has a good column about the nearing federal election, and the dangers of jumping to conclusions about who will win. In parts, he sounds even rebellious in his denunciation of the ultra-rich. Indeed, this is close to a reversal of what he and his newspaper have always stood for.
I disagree with him only on small points. The terms small-l liberals and small- c conservatives are meaningless. Both parties have always been the agents of big business. I am not a small l liberal of any sort. The word liberal means minimal government. I have never thought that made sense. The ones who claim to support it are usually what we call small-c conservatives. Like all real liberals, I believe that people should have as much freedom as possible. Like all real conservatives, I believe a society needs a strong government and social structure.
By the correct definition, the Irvings are liberals,sort of - though they believe in such freedom only for themselves.
And I don't agree we've had 35 years of extreme conservatism. We've had 35 years of extreme greed and lack of any moral structure. That's not liberalism or conservatism. It's mass murder, mass theft, and indifference to the needs of anybody except the very rich.
And I would certainly not place Mulroney as a classic conservative. Mulroney is a man who devoted his life to making the rich even richer so they would make him rich, too. He cheated, lied, embezzled, and abandoned every moral principle so he could live in a mansion, and his wife could shop daily for new dresses. He was in the same closet as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. That's why he was Reagan's ally in pushing for North American Free Trade.
I was good friends of a man who was one of the star candidates who ran against Mulroney for the Conservative leadership. He was an owner of what was then Canada's largest law firm. He had a commanding presence, and spoke superbly. We were at many, many meetings together, and I soon learned that he was a man who could not lie. Once, visiting him for supper, I mentioned I had just bought a painting that was in my car. He was interested, and asked me to bring it in. I did. He looked at it, placed it by his chair, and began talking to someone else.
I knew why. He didn't like the painting. But we were friends, So he couldn't say he didn't like it. But he couldn't lie, and say it was nice. It was very embarrassing for him,, But he couldn't even tell a white lie.
He withdrew from the leadership campaign half-way through it - though he was doing quite decently in the polls. So I asked him why he had withdrawn.
"Graeme, I had to quit. I just couldn't lie like those other people."
Brian Mulroney could - and did.
Two of the commentaries have nothing much to say.
The third is by Jason Limongelli, VP of Woodlands for Irving. It reminded me of Brian Mulroney. But it's not nearly as glib as Mulroney because Limongelli can't write worth a poop. It's so wordy and bureaucratic that few will read it - and most of those won't understand it. It's also heavy on jargon and bafflegab. If I were Irving, I'd send this guy back to the minors.
As usual, all the columns are about New Brunswick. Talk about gathering at the village pump for gossip!
_______________________________________________________________________________
B4 has an amusing story that the leaks by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden have hampered the work of secret agencies in both Canada and the US. Well, I should hope so. The leaks show that those agencies have been lying to us, have been spying on millions of innocent people, and on friendly countries. They have even, in both Canada and the US, been creating "terrorist" incidents using mentally ill and/or isolated and very poor people, manipulating them into committing a terrorist act, paying them for it, supplying them with bombs, and showing them how to use them. Then, just before the act, our valiant defenders step in to arrest them.
They spy on every one of us. We have no idea who gets all that information about us (though we know that in the past, such information has been handed on to big business.) . They spy on friendly countries right up to the highest levels of government as they did in France and Brazil; and I expect, they spy on each other.
We Canadians and Americans spend billions on these clowns. And we hardly ever hear of them catching a terrorist. So why do we have them? Why have we surrendered all our constitutional rights and privileges? I especially wonder that about Canada because terrorists have little reason to attack Canada.
Yes, if terrorists attack, it's for a reason. The attacks of 9/11 were expensive and costly in time. So why did they happen? (Think hard. Terrorists don't do things just because they're evil.) Terrorists commit terrorist acts for a reason. We have to guess at this because our news media seem not to have thought of this question.
It wasn't done just to attack the US. There is no way that even an attack as big as 9/11 would destroy the US. There was no way it would make the US surrender or even cause any significant damage. For an attack that size, you need to be the US with the power to kill people by the millions - as in Vietnam and Iraq. Bin Laden was rich, but scarcely in that league.
So why the attack? On a guess, it could have been to egg the US into an over-response so destructive and murderous that it would spread extremism all over the middle east. In the long run, that would be a foreign policy disaster for the US.
If so, bin Laden got exactly what he wanted. There are reasons these things happen. (And they're far less likely to happen in Canada because there's nothing to be gained by an attack on Canada. It's irrelevant on the world stage.)
Harper decided we needed spies - not to spy on terrorists, but to spy on all of us - for his purposes, and for the purposes of big business. And we pay for it with our taxes.
_________________________________________________________________________
There really isn't much worth reading in section B. - just the story above, and one, sad one on B7. Greece might accept the bankers' terms on settling the national debt. If they do, it means the people of Greece will be so impoverished it will never recover. The debt will last and grow forever - like a payday loan. But humans don't matter in our world. Only money matters. Having fed off the blood and lives of the rest of the world for 500 years, The European and American rich are now feeding off their own people
________________________________________________________________________________
I won't comment on the Faith page today. It's still the usual drivel; but I want, tomorrow, to focus on why it's such drivel. I'm not going to get religious on you. I want to talk about morality - not as a religious concept, but as an essential for the survival of human societies. I want to talk about the collapse of morality, the role of many, many of the churches in encouraging that collapse, and the consequences of the collapse.
(I was raised to renounce the Roman Catholic church and all its works in the best Calvinist fashion of the Scottish highlands. But I'm finding Pope Francis one of the few leaders in this world to admire.)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment