Sept. 6: The problem of New Brunswick...

It's all summed up on page 1. "Support rises for Grits, poll suggests." New Brunswickers, who kicked out the Liberals in the last provincial election are poised to vote them back in for the next one. Why? The Liberals have shown nothing in leadership or policy. They are financed by much the same money that finances the Conservatives. That means that for all practical purposes, Liberals and Conservatives are the same party. And both are simply fronts for the Irvings and big business in this province. Both have exactly the same policies. There is something very, very dumb about all this. How can such nonsense happen? 1. Most of the news New Brunswickers get is trivia and propaganda. And they have now found a "columnist" in Kurt Peacock who can write both trivia and propaganda at the same time. 2. New Brunswickers have almost no open discussion of the news and, certainly, no open discussion of the interference of big business and the domination of big business in government. Why not? Because they're scared. They've been running scared for generations. And so long as that lasts, there is no hope whatever for this province. If this is the future, I would certainly advise all young people to get out of a province dominated by a greedy and ruthless business leadership, a servile government, and a general ignorance of politics fostered by a hopelessly unethical press and a population lacking the courage to insist on its rights. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Meanwhile, the rest of section one is typified by a story of a donation of $9,000 to a youth group. I applaud the donors. But this is not a half-page news story. Read all of section A closely. Notice how you're going brain-dead? Oh,though the TandT seems not to notice it, a certain railway has decided to resume freight train services with two-man crews, the system that the regulations used to call for. That railway is the MMandA, the one that killed 47 people in Lac Megantic. Aren't they sweethearts to be so generous and thoughtful? And it's only been two months since it happened. Boy. Talk about fast thinking. Now... ...that seems to still leave ine place the old regulation requiring only one driver. Why hasn't government moved to deal with that? Isn't Mr. Baird outraged by 47 deaths? And where's the big investigation? And where's the tough Irving news team to dig up the story of whether Mr. Irving is still running crude oil into this province and, if so, under what safeguards? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The TandT has found a real gem of a propagandist and idealogue as a sort of columnist for the NewsToday front page. He's Kurt Peacock - and he makes the editorialst look like an anti-Irving revolutionary. He preaches a propaganda line with a sincerity which suggests to me he really doesn't know any better. He quotes a former president of Atlantic Institute of Market Studies just as if he didn't know that AIMS is a propaganda front for big business. (Though, surely, he can't be that dumb.) He constantly quotes highly biased sources, ignores all others, then uses sloppy logic to come to conclusions. This is the kind of malignant, kissup crap that makes Rod Allen's columns seem almost intelligent. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The same page also has a story that a Christian village with two of the world's oldest, Christian monasteries was attacked by "rebels" (more accurately listed by the US as a terrorist group)who also killed people in the streets. They didn't use gas, though. So Mr. Baird isn't outraged. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Not a bad editorial on Via Rail. But the editorialist has an unclear picture of the ownership of Via Rail, and where the power is. Much of Via Rail's problems arise from the fact that private industry and conservative governments have been pretty hostile to it. Mpt a bad column on Syria by Norbert. Just a couple of qualms... 1. There is evidenceas Norbert say, that gas was used. There is no evidence who used it or on whom. The only side that gains from the use of gas is the "rebel" side because it now gets added support from the US. It is, of course, terrible that civilians, including women and children, were killed. Odd, though, that so many are shocked by that when, in fact, civilians, including women and children have been the major casualties in just about every war of the last century. That was true of both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan - and Syria. Amazing how selective our outrage is. Chemical weapons are horrific? Norbert - could you write us a list of weapons that aren't horrific? He also suggests that people are getting fed up with a region that cannot get its affairs in order. Maybe so. But almost all the turmoil and killing in middle east is the result of over a century of our constant interference in and abuse of that region. Indeed, the first ones to use poison gas on civilians in that region were the British about 1920. The gas bombing of Kurdish villages was ordered by Colonial minister Winston Churchill, supported by Colonel Lawrence - the same one who appeared in film as Lawrence of Arabia. These quibbles aside, this is a pretty good column which ends in a quite justified pessimism. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Alec Bruce contributes a column that leaves us in the dark - or maybe the light - or... well...he doesn't come to any conclusion. But he does raise a troublng question. Cole Hobson writes on the regulations for mixed martial arts fighting (a variation on throwing Christians to the lions in Ancient Rome). My uncle was a boxing coach, director of amateur boxing for Canada, and an Olympic coach. His daughter was Canada's first female boxing judge - and also judged at the Olympics. I had lots of free tickets to the fights going back to my childhood. I saw what boxing does to the fighters as they get older. Mixed Martial Arts is worse.The only regulation I would ever vote for is one to ban it. Brian Gallant, our Liberal leader, writes a column that any politician of either could write (and which most have written.) His ideas are vague. They touch on none of the crucial questions. And we know he'll be an Irving stooge just like the Alward and his predecessor and his.... And this is the man New Brunswickers are picking as the leader in the polls.