May28: "Metro employers tolerant of tattoos"

That's front page news for the Irving Press. I cannot think of any serious, half-serious, or even comic newspaper carrying such a story on any page. But the Irving Press does this routinely. Why? It wants you to be trivial, to be uninformed, to be uncaring. That makes things so much easier for the boss.

For that matter, I was a little dozey yesterday. I didn't notice that a big story was missing. On Saturday, there was a demonstration at city hall to draw attention to the threat posed by Monsanto. It has become the big kid on the block in gettiing control of the agriculture market all over the world - with seed whose effect on existing plant life is unknown, with extra costs for farmers...and this in a world which is approaching a food crisis. (Hey! Why be coy? We are in a food crisis now. And Monsanto has us by our necks.)

The demo, by some 250 people, took place just a three minues walk from the TandT office. But I guess all the reporters were busy getting the scoop on tattoos.

C3 (NewsToday) has more sweet talk on the pipeline from Alberta to BC. One is a story about how tough the government will be on regulating the line. The other is all about a Senate committee which will be investigating the pipeline to be sure it's safe. In the case of the Senate committee, it's obvious from comments by the senators that their minds are made up. The investigation is just a travelling road show. And the story on pipelines really says nothing at all.
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The editorials continue their relentless pimping for the events centre - with an interesting suggestion. The city, it says, should buy Highfield Square immediately - whether or not it plans to built an events centre.

Why? Are other buyers just waiting to sneak in and buy that valuable piece of contaminated land? And, if such plotting exists, shouldn't we let them buy it, let them put up something to revive the site, and let them pay for it?

This project has always had a strong smell of a deal to get the present owners off the hook, to sell worthless land at a healthy profit, and to do it before land prices fall.
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On the editorial page, Alec Bruce and Norbert Cunningham offer opinions - and well-argued ones.
On op-ed, Alan Cochrane felt that the most important thing he had to tell the world was a cute story about a racoon. Is it really possible that the TandT staff-writers for op ed are as vacant as they seem to be?
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Meanwhile, the US government is considering the idea of murder courts which would meet in secret to approve presidential requests to assassinate foreigners and Americans without charge or trial. Iraq, where the US and Britain killed over a million people to save them from Saddam Hussein, is still in ruins, is in a virtual civil war and on the edge of complete collapse. The war in Afghanistan, now over a decade long, will officially end soon though, in fact, UN and British troops will remain for at least another ten years while the country is run by a government which is the most corrupt in the world, will get billions in secret payoffs from the US, and encourages the world's largest opium production.

Nobody seems to have any idea why Bush started that war in the first place. Certainly, ten years of fighting have resulted in no progress whatever in establishing democracy or women's rights.

The NATO countries have agreed to supply weapons and money to the Syrian "rebels", most of whom are not Syrians. But a great many, including the strongest elements militarily, are those whose organizations are ones the US has labelled as terrorist. Brilliant.

And the US is making it a condition of peace talks that President Assad must leave. That will be tricky. Most expert opinion is that Assad has far the greatest popular support in Syria, and would win an election hands down. So -NATO is supporting what it has called the terrorist side against a moderate Moslem president, thus laying the groundwork for a severely moslem and militant Syria next to Lebanon and Israel.  Brilliant.

This will be a nice, matching bookend for Libya, where we killed people to establish a democracy, and where the real result is a country of high levels of violence, and no real government at all.

The US is now hinting at direct military intervention in Syria. Great! After all these years of George Bush's "war on terra-rism", "terra-rists" are more numerous, more organized, and militarily more powerful than they ever have been. And it has just become worse under Obama Bush. When will it occur to somebody that we are encouraging Moslem "Terrorism" with our century of Christian "terrorism".

Meanwhile, China and Russia have quite realized the purpose of all this - to control as much as possible of world oil supply, to monopolize the resources of Africa, and to establish a military dominance over the world (including China and Russia). And, obviously, China and Russia have decided to draw their own lines in the sand. It's now or never. And Syria is the flash-point.

You know, that could affect even Moncton. Luckily, we have established an atmosphere of toleration and good will to help us deal with any fallout. Moncton tolerate tattoos.

 (Does that include Crandall University?)