Sept. 2: You can't go home again...

I was born, and lived most of my life in Montreal. My ancestors from France settled there about 1651. The old road that connected the Decarie farms is still in use - as the six lane, jam-packed Decarie Expressway. But,oh my, it's changed. Culturally, it's diverse than ever - and that's enjoyable. But I found the jamming of high rises in the city centre crushing and ugly - and then there are miles of bland suburbs and dreadfully ugly apartment buildings. And everything is far away. The Parti Quebecois government is playing on this fear of change with a bizarre piece of legislation called the Charter of Quebec Values. In effect, Quebeckers will in future be told what their values must be. And wearing a turban or a veil isn't one of them. There are a great many Moslems and Hindus in Montreal now - and Africans and Orientals. And they are now being told how they must dress and act. As if there is any such thing as "Quebec values"... Like the days the PQ spoke of culture, the whole idea is absurd. No society has its values or it's culture molded in concrete. Culture and values are constantly changing. They're supposed to. There are great differences between us and our grandparents - and greater still the further you go back. In its culture days, the PQ brought in some excellent social programmes - which had never existed in Quebec. It changed the culture. It also severely reduced the power of the Roman Catholic Church - though its power had been the outstanding feature of Quebec culture for over two centuries. But the PQ has run out of useful political ideas. So now its playing pure fear and hatred of anybody different. It will probably work in rural Quebec. Fear and hatred are they have have left. And it's in province in which both French and English have a stunning history of bigotry and hatreds and racism. Quebec now has lost all sense of political direction. All that's left is fear and hatred and racism. It was nice to get back to New Brunswick - and home. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Speaking of fear and hatred, Obama has picked up where Bush left off. The US has fought war after war with no good or even legal reason. For a long time it was driven by speeches and news stories that preached or implied hatred and fear of communism. That was good enough kill or sicken or poison uncounted millions of Vietnamese. It also came in handy when a gang of US mercenaries overthrew the elected government of Guatemala (even though it wasn't communist) and instal a de facto dictatorship very friendly to US big business - especially Dole. Now, our politicians and news teach us to hate and fear Moslems. That has justified the theft of Iraqi oilfields and the murder of over a million Iraqis. It has also justified the greatest mass torture in history, the holding of prisoners in violation of international law, the suspension fundamental rights in the US, the use of Drones for indiscriminate slaughter (also in illegal attacks). Now, we get almost all our news from North American sources. It's all slanted. Sometime the slant is planned - as in Iraq and Syria. And sometimes it's just reinforced by the prejudice of the reporters. And, yes, reporters are prejudiced. How could they help it? We all have prejudices. It's very human. Added to that, the publishers and editors of private news are heavily leaned on by big money. Indeed, the owners of most private news systems ARE big money. Brunswick News is not different - it's just contemptibly worse. The best and most honest news media in Canada are CBC. But it, too, comes under heavy pressure to follow the governmentand big business line. YOu've seen reference to terrorist Moslems. How about terrorist Christians? (Yes, there are such things, and Bush and Obama have been two of them.) You hear of Syrian rebels constantly - though very few of those people are rebels. You hear of the US wanting to establish democracy through the rebels. IN fact, democracy is the last thing most of the rebels have in mind. And the last thing the US has in mind. To be a rebel, you have to be a subject of the country you are fighting in. But the majority of the "rebels' are, ,in fact, foreigners hired by Saudi Arabia and the emirates - all of them crushing dictatorships. When we speak of the terrible things the Syrian government has done to those nice, democratic rebels they are, most of them, tied to what we otherwise call terrorist groups. When we speak of the US going to war to bring democracy, that's bullshit. The US allies in this war are Moslem dictators, Britain, and France. And neither the US nor its allies have any wonderful record of bringing anything but dictatorship and pillage and sometimes starvation. The US spent the whole of the 20th century installing dictators in Latin America - and it's still doing it. (In fairness, I refer to the US, not to the American people. They are caught up in a history that is almost entirely fictional - rather like Harper's idiot depiction of the War of 1812. And they are stuck with news sources that can come close to the stink of Brunswick News.) So what is going on in Syria? 1. US big business wants imperial control of Africa and the Middle East. 2. Britain and France follow the US lead and support it because they badly miss the loot from their old empires. So they support the US hoping to get a slice of the pie. 3. Syria's independence from American power and its alliance with Iran (which American big business also wants) is in the way. 4. Whatever Saudi Arabia wants out of this is not democracy - and it's certainly not religion freedom. The Saudi kings and the emirs are the severest dictatorships in the world. And they, our allies and very good friends, hold religious views at least as strict as those of Saudi Arabia. 5. I don't know whether it's true that Syria used poison. If so, it's not clear to me why western intervention with all the death and destruction it's going to cause is any remedy. Nor do I see why a nation which tortures, uses cc-chemical weapons (agent orange and depleted uranium and has killed millions of innocent people is the one that should be sitting in judgement. 6. Obama is reluctant to make more than a symbolic punishment because - look the the record - the American military has been stunningly ineffective in these wars for the last fifty years. In consequence, it has destroyed more than it has won. But the interest may not be in winning. After all, winning with those rebels means an Islamic state hostile to US interference. What Obama might be thinking of is heavy use of missiles to destroy and survival of Syria as a coherent state - which is roughly what was done in Libya and Iraq. Our problem in understanding all this is the prejudice and bias (very human) and the deliberate propaganda of most of our news services. that's why it's bad to rely as we do on North American news services. We need also to look at rogue services and news from foreign services like Al Jazeera. After all, at its worst Al Jazeera completely outclasses Fox News, National Post, and, most certainly, the Irving Press. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ I hope this tablet sends mail in paragraphs as I wrote it.