Jan. 15: Hits and misses for the TandT in the coming week.

1. A sure fire story to appear in the TandT is that Canada'a gallant Foreign Affairs Minister spoke out to demand the US get tough on Syria. Gee. That's strange for the member of a government which supports US action, but has refused to take any part in it. Why would he do that? a) Israel wants an attack on Syria. By his unconditional support for anything Israel wants, Harper has won over the greater part of the Jewish vote which used to be NDP and Liberal. Talking big and doing nothing has worked wonders. Or - b) Baird is being a stooge for American big business which wants to destroy Syria on its way to wars against Iran - and then to move in on China. You can read all about it in a web document called Project for the New American Century. Despite its benevolemnt wording, it is a document advocating American military conquest of the world to bring "American values" (American control of trade) to it. That's what Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and Somalia and Yemen are all about. It was prepared by people close to power - such as Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. But neither a) nor b) will appear in the TandT story. Even Baird may not appear if the need the space for a picure of Mr. Irving receiving yet another award. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Domestic violence inflicted on women costs Canada 7 billion dollars a year. Only one in ten charges of sexual assault get reported. Of those reported, only 1 in 100 is convicted. (You might see this in the weekly women's column - just where men most in need of smartening are least likely to read it. 3. Aside from low taxes and cheap labout, the reason the very, very rich are getting richer in the recession is that there is a huge market for money-lending, on their terms. That's the major reason we're seeing such a tremendous rise of profits in the midst of poverty. And much of that debt is government borrowing from banks. Yep. The major banks who caused the recession not only got paid for it, but are still making money out of it. 4. One reason the US has the highest prison population in the world is because the poor who are out of jobs are of no use to big business. But in prison, the poor work as unpaid slaves for corporations, generating corporate profits of $30,000 to $40,000 a year. Of course, the Conrad Blacks of this world get to spent time in more attractive prisons. Privately-owned prisons do especially well on this system, and corporations in general put pressure on judges to assign longer sentences. 5. Finland, whose schools are NOT modelled along business lines and do not suffer interference from billionaires "with a passion for learning" and forbids fee-paying of any sort, And it consistently has a system that outperforms most of the world - including Canada, though Canada is one the the higher ranked ones. It way outclasses recent US changes which have made US education a disaster area, the worst in the developed world. (The American system is what Mr. "passion-for-education" is promoting.) Nos. 2, 3, and 4 will not appear in the TandT. Too bad. Because the source of them also has some pretty revealing stuff about the Lac Megantic disaster. The source is http://www.politicalalternatives.ca _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Another good source for stories the TandT won't have room for is Information Clearing House. It's easy to find on google. For example, Libya and Iraq both gave up their internationally banned weapons (more vaguely called WMDs) at the demand of the US But both were invaded, anyway. Israel, which is next door to Syria and which desperately wants to destroy Syria, has stocks of illegal poison gas and of nuclear missiles. Not only does it refuse to give them up, it won't even allow UN inspection of them. It has also annexed Syrian territory over UN objections. But Mr. Baird is not outraged by that. There is also an excellent study of how economic inequality as it gets greater, not only has an effect on lifespan and health, but also destroys the whole society. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ There's a whole, new world beyond the trivia, propaganda and lies of the Brunswick Press.