last night, I made a list of stories I felt sure the Irving press would not carry. I acted as if I were news editor for the TandT, selecting those stories important enough to print. It took less than an hour - so editors do not appear to face a demanding task.
But imagine my shock when one of them actually appeared. Dean Del Mastro, a rising star in the federal Conservatives, and due in the near future to become a cabinet minister, has been been dropped from the Conservative caucus.
Well, he really had to be. It seems he way overspent on his campaign for election, way over collected what he could legally collect for a campaign fund, way underreported all of the above, and lied about it all to the investigating committee.
The story was buried on p. C15, but at least it was there.
Too bad they didn't use the opportunity to mention a couple of other incidents they didn't notice at the time. When Harper's Chief of Staff loaned $90,000 to a certain pudgy senator, he did not do it - as Harper claimed - on his own. Harper told him to do it.
And Pamela Wallin? The Irving Press has never mentioned that Harper claimed several months ago that he had personally audited ms. Wallin's expenditures, and found them perfectly reasonable and in order.
And there are lots more stories we never get.
The TandT has, for example,has run a week of stories about an attack on a mall in Kenya.That was certainly terrible. But, in Congo, people are being killed at the rate of 45,000 a month. The score since 1998 is estimated at 5.4 million. As well, rape is considered a weapon of war in Congo. This, with torture, brutal working conditions, and low pay has been going on for over a cenutry with, almost certainly, over a hundred million deaths. And it is all a result of western intrusion and brutality, especially in the mining industries - and with Canadians as prominent players.
I have never seen a story about Congo in an Irving paper - and rarely in any other paper.
For THE big Canadian story of the day, how about the Montreal Mafia chief who just got a refund of some $400,000 from Revenue Canada. Isn't that sweet? This would, of course, be only for what he reported as legitimate income And what generous terms must Revenue Canada have to give a rebate of that size!
Wouldn't it be a useful for our newspapers to print such incidents involving our corporation bosses. How much do they report? How much do they get in rebates? Who much do they actually pay in taxes. Wouldn't this be an important thing to know?
And, yesterday, there was a parliamentary report on how Canada, due to its aging population and declining work force faces a crisis very soon in old age pensions and health care - a situation Harper has made far worse by dumping so much of those costs on the provinces.
The report might have added that the situation will also be made worse by the shift of Canada's wealth to a few families - and those families paying zero to very little tax.
And how will New Brunswick deal with it? You have to guess? It will cut all those services, thus increasing the suffering and the rate of poverty. And the corporation bosses will charge in with plans to privatize all those services so that those who need them can't get them.
You don't think that will happen? It already has begun.
On Iran, the fix is in to ruin the peace talks, and to set up wars with Syria and Iran. The fix is coming from the major agent of Israel in the US and Canada, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is enormously influential in Washington and Ottawa (far more than you are); and Israeli leaders want a war to make them the dominant power in the regiom. amd to assure they can continue seizing other people's lands and settling Israelis on them. But don't take my word.
Google AIPAC News Hub for Sept. 20. (Don't ask the Irving editors for help. They've probably never heard of it.) The plan is to set get the US Senate to set such insulting terms for a peace agreement that no country could ever accept them. Then they'll blame Iran for wrecking the agreement.
Then there was Obama's recent speech to the UN assembly in which he stressed something called US exceptionalism. The US, he said, is exempt, from all international law. It is the only country in the world that is free to invade other countries, with or without cause. It is the only country permitted to torture, to overthrow governments it doesn't like....It is the only country entitled to murder people anywhere in the world with no charge or trial.
That's been the American government view since 1945. It even has an official name. It's called US exceptionalism; and it all has something to do with the US being the world's leader, and a nation under God, and all that. This is real. But I've never seen a story on it in the Irving press.
Recently, we have learned that the NSA has been bugging India's officers at the UN in New York, and even bugging the Indian embassy in Washington - including the hard drives on its computers. That's illegal under international law. Indeed, it's an act of war. But, hey, read the paragraph above on American exceptionalism.
Other examples of US exceptionalism are the Drone killings in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan not to mention the invasion of Iraq that killed a million and a half people. And what has all this gained?
Well, Iraq is destroyed, impoverished, and a virtual civil war is killing up to a hundred a day, every day.
Billions of dollars of weapons were left behind after the Iraq War (and now in Afghanistan), most of which end up in the hands of terrorists. And the great US embassy in Baghdad? The biggest and most expensive and most fortified embassy in the world? It's now mostly empty, just a few years after it was completed.
And all that was accomplished with just over a trillion dollars, a million and a half killed, and millions orphaned, widowed and crippled - all for the lie that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But the US is allowed to do that. That's what US exceptionalism means.
Almost none of this has ever appeared in the Irving press. Nor has another story that you should check out in the New Yorker. Go to google, Write Sarah Stillman, New Yorker, "Taken". You will find a series of stories in August, quite stunning ones.
American police and other agents are using a new rule called civil forfeiture. The can confiscate whatever you own, including your house if they "suspect" it is being used for any illegal purpose. There is no need for them ever to lay a charge or to give reason for suspicion. They can just do it.
Recently, an elderly couple (the husband being seriously ill), lost their home to the police on suspicion (no proof) that their son (who does not live with them) MIGHT have sold somebody marijuana on the front porch.
The police are then entitled to take the confiscated property, and give it to anyone they like - as, for example, themselves. Some have been known to receive "bonusses" of 40,000 and more as a result of such civil forfeiture..
In one state, police arbitrarily stopped over a thousand cars, demanding to search them. One man had .just taken some 3,000 out of the bank to buy a used car. The police found that suspicious, and confiscated it for themselves. Of the 1,000 cars they stopped, almost all were driven by African-Americans or latinos.
That is one hell of an example of what the US has become - and what Canada can expect. And not a word of it has ever appeared in the Irving press.
It's not big deal to find this stuff. I got it in less than an hour, and using only credible sources.
The big news lead in NewToday to the TandT is that two teens have been charged with prostitution.
It may well be that the Irving news editors are lazy, sloppy, and profoundly ignorant. Or it may be that they and their boss just has a profound contempt for us.
But imagine my shock when one of them actually appeared. Dean Del Mastro, a rising star in the federal Conservatives, and due in the near future to become a cabinet minister, has been been dropped from the Conservative caucus.
Well, he really had to be. It seems he way overspent on his campaign for election, way over collected what he could legally collect for a campaign fund, way underreported all of the above, and lied about it all to the investigating committee.
The story was buried on p. C15, but at least it was there.
Too bad they didn't use the opportunity to mention a couple of other incidents they didn't notice at the time. When Harper's Chief of Staff loaned $90,000 to a certain pudgy senator, he did not do it - as Harper claimed - on his own. Harper told him to do it.
And Pamela Wallin? The Irving Press has never mentioned that Harper claimed several months ago that he had personally audited ms. Wallin's expenditures, and found them perfectly reasonable and in order.
And there are lots more stories we never get.
The TandT has, for example,has run a week of stories about an attack on a mall in Kenya.That was certainly terrible. But, in Congo, people are being killed at the rate of 45,000 a month. The score since 1998 is estimated at 5.4 million. As well, rape is considered a weapon of war in Congo. This, with torture, brutal working conditions, and low pay has been going on for over a cenutry with, almost certainly, over a hundred million deaths. And it is all a result of western intrusion and brutality, especially in the mining industries - and with Canadians as prominent players.
I have never seen a story about Congo in an Irving paper - and rarely in any other paper.
For THE big Canadian story of the day, how about the Montreal Mafia chief who just got a refund of some $400,000 from Revenue Canada. Isn't that sweet? This would, of course, be only for what he reported as legitimate income And what generous terms must Revenue Canada have to give a rebate of that size!
Wouldn't it be a useful for our newspapers to print such incidents involving our corporation bosses. How much do they report? How much do they get in rebates? Who much do they actually pay in taxes. Wouldn't this be an important thing to know?
And, yesterday, there was a parliamentary report on how Canada, due to its aging population and declining work force faces a crisis very soon in old age pensions and health care - a situation Harper has made far worse by dumping so much of those costs on the provinces.
The report might have added that the situation will also be made worse by the shift of Canada's wealth to a few families - and those families paying zero to very little tax.
And how will New Brunswick deal with it? You have to guess? It will cut all those services, thus increasing the suffering and the rate of poverty. And the corporation bosses will charge in with plans to privatize all those services so that those who need them can't get them.
You don't think that will happen? It already has begun.
On Iran, the fix is in to ruin the peace talks, and to set up wars with Syria and Iran. The fix is coming from the major agent of Israel in the US and Canada, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC is enormously influential in Washington and Ottawa (far more than you are); and Israeli leaders want a war to make them the dominant power in the regiom. amd to assure they can continue seizing other people's lands and settling Israelis on them. But don't take my word.
Google AIPAC News Hub for Sept. 20. (Don't ask the Irving editors for help. They've probably never heard of it.) The plan is to set get the US Senate to set such insulting terms for a peace agreement that no country could ever accept them. Then they'll blame Iran for wrecking the agreement.
Then there was Obama's recent speech to the UN assembly in which he stressed something called US exceptionalism. The US, he said, is exempt, from all international law. It is the only country in the world that is free to invade other countries, with or without cause. It is the only country permitted to torture, to overthrow governments it doesn't like....It is the only country entitled to murder people anywhere in the world with no charge or trial.
That's been the American government view since 1945. It even has an official name. It's called US exceptionalism; and it all has something to do with the US being the world's leader, and a nation under God, and all that. This is real. But I've never seen a story on it in the Irving press.
Recently, we have learned that the NSA has been bugging India's officers at the UN in New York, and even bugging the Indian embassy in Washington - including the hard drives on its computers. That's illegal under international law. Indeed, it's an act of war. But, hey, read the paragraph above on American exceptionalism.
Other examples of US exceptionalism are the Drone killings in Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan not to mention the invasion of Iraq that killed a million and a half people. And what has all this gained?
Well, Iraq is destroyed, impoverished, and a virtual civil war is killing up to a hundred a day, every day.
Billions of dollars of weapons were left behind after the Iraq War (and now in Afghanistan), most of which end up in the hands of terrorists. And the great US embassy in Baghdad? The biggest and most expensive and most fortified embassy in the world? It's now mostly empty, just a few years after it was completed.
And all that was accomplished with just over a trillion dollars, a million and a half killed, and millions orphaned, widowed and crippled - all for the lie that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But the US is allowed to do that. That's what US exceptionalism means.
Almost none of this has ever appeared in the Irving press. Nor has another story that you should check out in the New Yorker. Go to google, Write Sarah Stillman, New Yorker, "Taken". You will find a series of stories in August, quite stunning ones.
American police and other agents are using a new rule called civil forfeiture. The can confiscate whatever you own, including your house if they "suspect" it is being used for any illegal purpose. There is no need for them ever to lay a charge or to give reason for suspicion. They can just do it.
Recently, an elderly couple (the husband being seriously ill), lost their home to the police on suspicion (no proof) that their son (who does not live with them) MIGHT have sold somebody marijuana on the front porch.
The police are then entitled to take the confiscated property, and give it to anyone they like - as, for example, themselves. Some have been known to receive "bonusses" of 40,000 and more as a result of such civil forfeiture..
In one state, police arbitrarily stopped over a thousand cars, demanding to search them. One man had .just taken some 3,000 out of the bank to buy a used car. The police found that suspicious, and confiscated it for themselves. Of the 1,000 cars they stopped, almost all were driven by African-Americans or latinos.
That is one hell of an example of what the US has become - and what Canada can expect. And not a word of it has ever appeared in the Irving press.
It's not big deal to find this stuff. I got it in less than an hour, and using only credible sources.
The big news lead in NewToday to the TandT is that two teens have been charged with prostitution.
It may well be that the Irving news editors are lazy, sloppy, and profoundly ignorant. Or it may be that they and their boss just has a profound contempt for us.
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