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    Friday, May 3, 2013

    May 3: A cranky start...

    I'm actually beginning late on the night of May 2. I'd really much rather look at old movies on my IPad. But sometimes I get so damn mad, I just have to write.
    1. I received a media advisory today that a group in St.-Louis de Kent is giving instructions on non-violent protesting and obstruction to stop local shale gas drilling. Good for them. There's nothing illegal about being non-violent. But you and I know what will happen.
    Most of our news media have either lied or ignored all the information they had promised to give us about shale gas. The companies don't give a damn what we want. And the government will kiss up to whatever the companies want.

    So, when a protest comes, will the provincial government send in the police to protect the company? Or will they be sent  to give non-violent protestors protection against an abusive company? You can bet on the first choice. They will be sent to protect the company.

    In the view of governments and corporations, the police are not there to uphold the law. They're there to protect the rich and powerful. That's what's called a police state. And a police state is what we already have. The feds decided that when they used police and intelligence services to spy on environmental groups, then report their activities twice yearly to groups of CEOs.

    It's not the fault of the police. It's the fault of abusive big business, and of the political rot that runs so deep in this province.

    2.  That caused me to think of the remarkable case of a cash-strapped province giving Jaymie Irving 2 and a half million dollars to teach reading skills to children - and this to a man who has not the slightest qualification to run any such programme. We learned about it in half a sentence in the TandT. And this in a province which is firing 400 and more of its health workers to save money.

    Since then - nothing. Exactly what is this reading programme that Jaymie Irving is forcing on our children and our schools? What qualification does young Jaymie have to even judge whether it's any good? What are we getting for two and a half million? Why couldn't the schools, which are full of people who actually know how to teach, administer such a programme on their own?
    We haven't been told a damn thing. And we're not going to be.

    My guess is that it's one of those Mickey Mouse programmes based on statistics instead of the human beings who need the learning. My other guess is that this is a con game to cut the Irvings in on getting a piece of our tax money out of the educaton budget and into their pockets. If so, it's probably the beginning of a scheme to copy the privatization of public schools that has been such a disaster in the US - and which is also based on an improper use of statistics.

    So how come that miserable collection of wimps we call MLAs just handed over two and half million dollars of our money, not to mention our children, without stooping to tell us anything about it? Shouldn't we at least hear something from the Minister of Education? We haven't so far. And we aren't likely to.

    3. Health Minister Fleming is obviously trying to get doctors fighting with each other over his cuts to health care. (This is also the government that showed absolute contempt for medical opinion by ignoring our Chief Medical Officer's warning about shale gas development.)  The corporations and the government have both shown utter contempt for the opinions of New Brunswickers in general. A reader asked me which side I though New Brunswickers would take.  And that took my mind to point..........

    4. I have no idea that they will take any side at all. They rarely have in the whole history of this province. I have never seen such a passive society. The whole province is like a one-street village in which nobody thinks about anything because they're afraid to.  They're afraid that if they don't think like everybody else (which means not thinking at all), then everybody else might gossip about them.

    They have two major parties, both owned by the same man, and both made up of vacant heads with so far as I can tell, no trace of principle or policy in any of those heads - and people vote for each of those parties by turns, as if it matters.

    Oh, as an aside - I mentioned that the TandT ran its story puffing up the views of Health Minister Fleming with a big headline on page one. I've just noticed that the Telegraph-Journal ran it in exactly the same spot. What a coincidence! What an unethical, trivial and manipulative press this province tolerates!

    Damn.

    And so to bed.
    _____________________________________________________________________________

    The only news worth reading today  is a chilling story about Obama moving closer to sending arms to the Syrian "rebels" - most of whom are not Syrians at all, and of whom a high proportion have Al Quaeda sympathies.

    Why? To bring democracy to Syria? Get real. The Arab states that support the rebels all  have two things in common. 1. They are closely allied too the US and the oil industry. 2. They are dictatorships - with, possibly, two exceptions.  Morocco has an elected parliament - but it has no real power. All power is in the hands of the king (dictator); so it's something like New Brunswick.  And Libya has no functioning government at all.

    The last thing in the world they or the US wasnt to see in Syria is democracy. The so-called civil war in Syria is really an invasion by hired thugs and lots of jihadists. The purpose of the thugs is to rape, steal, and murder. The purpose of the jihadists it to create a strict, Islamic state.

    The US has been involved in this mess from the start. It has always been supplying the "rebels", especially with money, and shipping weapons from other countries. As well, the US now has troops in no less than 35 African countries. What's going on is the western reconquest of Africa in order to pillage a continent which has been suffering pillage and starvation for at least a century and a half.

    The pressure for military conquest comes from American (and British and French) big business which needs military control to give it economic control. The game plan in Syria is to destroy Syria as a nation, partly to establish American strategic domination in the region, partly to open it wide to theft of its resources, including oil. That's why tens of thousands, probably more, are being raped, murdered, starved, beatcn, and why millions are fleeing. Onward, Christian soldiers.

    Business pressure is what is forcing Obama to consider sending arms - which we all know will eventually end up in the black market that has made all of Africa and the Middle East a National Rifle Association wet dream.

    It's brutal beyond savagery, it's corrupt; it guarantees chaos in the region for generations to come; it takes the whole world to the brink of nuclear war. All to make billionaires richer. That's what happens when billionaires get control of government. It's not that they are born stupid and vicious - though one should not discount that possibility. But if they aren't born that way, their 'greed is good' philosophy makes them that way.

    The greatest threats facing the world today are not the ones we call terrorists. The greatest threats are the ones we put in business halls of fame. They are the ones who created the disasters that were Vietnam and Afghanistan (and Iraq, which is now in a civil war - but the TandT hasn't noticed yet.)
    Big business has interfered where it has no business interfering; and its record has shown it to be utterly imcompetent to use the power it has assumed.

    Can it happen here? It has. Watch NB and Canadian government budget policies. Guess who really makes them. Watch your health care. Watch your schools. Gotta give big business credit for arrogance, though.
    _______________________________________________________________________________
    The editorial, predictably, is about how the health care budget should be cut, and how doctors are wrong to resist it. It's about how Health Minister Fleming, despite the impression he gives of being a bullying lout is really a sweetheart who cares only about "the people". The hand that wrote it was the hand of the editorial writer, but the words came from the oracle of the temple of the god called Irving.

    Loved Norbert's column on all those motorcyclists who are 40 going on 12 , and who wet their pants with joy at the sound of a  noisy muffler.

    Alec Bruce's column is well written and well argued. I just can't agree that we have to work closely with the private sector to improve our economy. Working too closely with the private sector is precisely what has caused our relative poverty. It is an advantage to small business if New Brunswickers are prosperous. But it is against the interest of big business to see that happen. A prosperous New Brunswick just means higher wages, something big business is not fond of.

    Big business exists solely to make profit - for itself. One of the best ways to make profit is to rip off the people of a province like New Brunswick. Why on earth would big business want to make them prosperous? It can use their low wages, get the forests for nothing, plunder whatever resources there are, skimp on tax rates for big business - then make their profit selling what we had to other places that are prosperous.

    Close cooperation between government and business comes dangerously close to the system called fascism. And we are already beyond that into a system that can be called corporate dictatorship. We don't need to cooperate with big business. We need to control it. You know - what's called democracy.

    On op ed, Steve Malloy contributes a charmingly told but seemingly personal story that might seem like trivia. It isn't. It gets us started on something to think about, something almost all of us have to think about.

    David Suzuki is excellent.
    ________________________________________________________________________________
    Remember, the Current Events group meets on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Moncton Library. And there's a lot to talk about.

    On a personal note, Tuesday, May 7 may also be a very special day for me. It looks as though this blog should get its 100,000th hit on that day. It got off to a slow start, but growth has been spectacular since last fall, with most of the total hits coming since October.

    Naturally, I'm very modest about it, and never mention it. Certainly not more than three or four times a day.



     

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