It was 1989. I was in my office when I heard about Marc Lepine who had just entered a college and shot and killed 14 women, and wounded 14 men. There was shock. There was anger. There were questions, lot of them. People wanted to know exactly why this had happened. Journalists and police noted he was wearing a hunting cap.That told something about his motivation and his twisted view of women. We wanted to know why it happened so we could prevent it from happening again. But I cannot recall any panic, or stories about how Montrealers rallied from the horror their city had experienced.
I just looked at the famous photo of Justin Bourque. He was wearing a military camouflage shirt. Why? He had a wide, black band on his forehead. Why? He had two, high capacity, rapid-fire rifles, both designed to look tough-ass military. Where did he get them? Why are they legal for sale? Did he belong to a gun club? If so, did nobody think him odd?
But we, and most of our journalists, aren't asking any questions. Instead, we are turning this into melodrama, a melodrama in which the hero/heroine is Moncton. This isn't reporting of any kind. This is small-town boosterism. For a sample, read Mayor LeBlanc's speech on A1 as reported by Brent Mazerolle.
One day "...our world was turned upside down....Who can make sense of the senseless?....Yet, in a time of darkness and great sadness, we Monctonians did what we have always done....we pulled together...together we cried and comforted each other." "The generosity, the compassion,the resilience and the spirit of Moncton continues to shine brightly." He even manages to fit in a quotation from Martin Luther King.
And so the city itself has become the hero of a story of tragedy. Talk about spending our lives with our noses in our own bellybuttons.
"How can we make sense of the senseless?" We have to. Senseless things happen every day - drunken drivers, wars, the killing of millions for no clear reason...the piling up of ever more wealth by people who already have so much wealth, it can never be spent. And doing it at the cost of millions who are killed and millions more who live in poverty. It's all senseless.
The job of a newspaper is not to whine about how hopeless all this is. And it's not to tell us how wonderful we are when, in fact, we have done nothing. And we all of our private of our media, all of our politicians and, it seems, all of us.
The only reason to read section A is the big story on A8 that a hotel has changed its name.
Oh, yes. On A3, a photo tells us that HUNDREDS gathered at city hall for a ceremony honouring the three mounties killed. So I counted them in the photo, allowing for some who were under the trees. If that word hundred deserves an s at the end, it barely does so.
In all of this hoopla and ceremony, I could find not mention at all of anything anybody has done to prevent this happening again. And we've all had a year to think of something.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The editorial writer has nothing to say. So he discusses a burning question of the day - how to improve a trail for hikers and bikers.
Norbert has a column on helping native peoples - but obviously hasn't understood what this is all about. He says we have to include native people in our nation of Canada. Norbert - that approach is the problem. That's what the residential schools were designed to do. That's why they caused so much damage.
Whether native peoples wish to become Canadian should be up to them - not us. We need to give them full control of their own lives (and that means we have to give them something better than reserves that are economically unviable. It also means that must have full control of their own land. And that means we don't send police in camouflage outfits and with combat rifles to force them to accept a fracking outfit or a pipeline in their community.) It's not simply a matter of granting equal rights. We have to grant power. Then they, not we, can decided if they will join us. We have to give native people full control of their own lives and land.
And there is no way the corporations of this world are going to allow that.
Cole Hobson writes yet more of the tragedies of a year ago - and does it in the usual, small-town boosterism style. That's not his fault. He's a reporter. He should be spending his time seeking out news. But the Irvings have no interest in us learning about what's really in the news, and they're too greedy to hire commentators who are qualified to write commentary. So Hobson gets stuck with it as an unpaid, extra job.
Alec Bruce is excellent on the police state we have become.
____________________________________________________________________________
Page B1 is headed with a title for the hymn to Moncton we are turning events of last June into. "Moncton's Spirit Shines". Yes, that's what really happened one year ago. Moncton's spirit shone.
Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.
And so it goes all the way through B2.
B3 takes us to Senator Duffy and the question that has not been asked by anybody at the Irving press.
Why do we have a senate? And why is it appointed rather than elected?
Think of it. Democracy is supposed to mean that the people select who will govern them. So why to we have a senate that we didn't elect, but which can kill any legislation from the people we do elect?
Even if one buys the "sober second thought" nonsense, we could have even that by election of the senate.
Okay. Close your book on the life of the leading "father" of our nation, John A. Macdonald. Forget all the stories of confederation you have ever heard.
The fathers of confederation did not believe that most people should have a real voice in their own government. They did not believe in democracy. (The same, as I may talk about on Sunday, was true of the founders of the US.) No, Confederation was something that very wealthy investors (mostly in Britain) wanted - and they wanted it as something they could make money out of. The premiers who met at Charlottetown well knew that. And the last thing in the world they wanted was for ordinary people to interfere with the right of the very rich to make big money.
The idea of the Senate from the start was to fill it with appointed flunkies who were there to be on guard in case Canadians should ever elect a government that would really represent them. It was to make sure that Canada would NOT be democratic.
To meet senators and to see what brainless puppets most of them are is a scary experience. And that's been especially true with the lot appointed by Harper.
There is virtually no world news in B section. And I could find only one item worth reading at all. "NB liquor CEO pushing for change." Yep. You're not cultured unless you're stoned..
As is becoming almost the rule, the best column, along with Alec Bruce, is the student one on C3. Isabelle Agnew wants to do an honours degree in English. So people say, "So what do you plan to do with that?" And that shows up a big weakness in our universities.
The original intent in teaching people 'disciplines' like English and History and Biology was to teach people how to think, how to be critical, how to analyze - in short, how to really understand. But what they have become is centres of job training for students, and for research for profs.. That's quite a change because job training has nothing to do with thinking or general capacity to understand.
One reason for this is that that most professors have no training in teaching, and no idea how to do it. So classes just become the memorizing of information that will be forgotten when the exam is over.
The research part happens because that's where prestige and status for profs lie. In consequence, many profs view teaching as a nuisance, do as little as possible of it, and even hold good teaching in contempt.
Then there's the influence of the big donors and big business leaders who dominate boards of governors. All they understand is making money. They don't understand education at all. What they do understand is training people to be useful employees. As a result, universities become something like dog training school - with the difference that dog trainers know what they're doing.
What's needed is for universities to give some serious thought to a suitable blend of teaching and job training. It would also save them a lot of money.
_______________________________________________________________________________
In general, however, the Moncton Times and Transcript for today is an expression of Irving contempt for the people of New Brunswick.
And the people of New Brunswick just take it. It's all symbolized in the flag of New Brunswick which features what appears to be a ship made of the rear ends of two ships so it doesn't know which direction it;s going in.
And that goes with the provincial motto, Spem Redux. (Don't rock the boat.)
I just looked at the famous photo of Justin Bourque. He was wearing a military camouflage shirt. Why? He had a wide, black band on his forehead. Why? He had two, high capacity, rapid-fire rifles, both designed to look tough-ass military. Where did he get them? Why are they legal for sale? Did he belong to a gun club? If so, did nobody think him odd?
But we, and most of our journalists, aren't asking any questions. Instead, we are turning this into melodrama, a melodrama in which the hero/heroine is Moncton. This isn't reporting of any kind. This is small-town boosterism. For a sample, read Mayor LeBlanc's speech on A1 as reported by Brent Mazerolle.
One day "...our world was turned upside down....Who can make sense of the senseless?....Yet, in a time of darkness and great sadness, we Monctonians did what we have always done....we pulled together...together we cried and comforted each other." "The generosity, the compassion,the resilience and the spirit of Moncton continues to shine brightly." He even manages to fit in a quotation from Martin Luther King.
And so the city itself has become the hero of a story of tragedy. Talk about spending our lives with our noses in our own bellybuttons.
"How can we make sense of the senseless?" We have to. Senseless things happen every day - drunken drivers, wars, the killing of millions for no clear reason...the piling up of ever more wealth by people who already have so much wealth, it can never be spent. And doing it at the cost of millions who are killed and millions more who live in poverty. It's all senseless.
The job of a newspaper is not to whine about how hopeless all this is. And it's not to tell us how wonderful we are when, in fact, we have done nothing. And we all of our private of our media, all of our politicians and, it seems, all of us.
The only reason to read section A is the big story on A8 that a hotel has changed its name.
Oh, yes. On A3, a photo tells us that HUNDREDS gathered at city hall for a ceremony honouring the three mounties killed. So I counted them in the photo, allowing for some who were under the trees. If that word hundred deserves an s at the end, it barely does so.
In all of this hoopla and ceremony, I could find not mention at all of anything anybody has done to prevent this happening again. And we've all had a year to think of something.
_____________________________________________________________________________
The editorial writer has nothing to say. So he discusses a burning question of the day - how to improve a trail for hikers and bikers.
Norbert has a column on helping native peoples - but obviously hasn't understood what this is all about. He says we have to include native people in our nation of Canada. Norbert - that approach is the problem. That's what the residential schools were designed to do. That's why they caused so much damage.
Whether native peoples wish to become Canadian should be up to them - not us. We need to give them full control of their own lives (and that means we have to give them something better than reserves that are economically unviable. It also means that must have full control of their own land. And that means we don't send police in camouflage outfits and with combat rifles to force them to accept a fracking outfit or a pipeline in their community.) It's not simply a matter of granting equal rights. We have to grant power. Then they, not we, can decided if they will join us. We have to give native people full control of their own lives and land.
And there is no way the corporations of this world are going to allow that.
Cole Hobson writes yet more of the tragedies of a year ago - and does it in the usual, small-town boosterism style. That's not his fault. He's a reporter. He should be spending his time seeking out news. But the Irvings have no interest in us learning about what's really in the news, and they're too greedy to hire commentators who are qualified to write commentary. So Hobson gets stuck with it as an unpaid, extra job.
Alec Bruce is excellent on the police state we have become.
____________________________________________________________________________
Page B1 is headed with a title for the hymn to Moncton we are turning events of last June into. "Moncton's Spirit Shines". Yes, that's what really happened one year ago. Moncton's spirit shone.
Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.
And so it goes all the way through B2.
B3 takes us to Senator Duffy and the question that has not been asked by anybody at the Irving press.
Why do we have a senate? And why is it appointed rather than elected?
Think of it. Democracy is supposed to mean that the people select who will govern them. So why to we have a senate that we didn't elect, but which can kill any legislation from the people we do elect?
Even if one buys the "sober second thought" nonsense, we could have even that by election of the senate.
Okay. Close your book on the life of the leading "father" of our nation, John A. Macdonald. Forget all the stories of confederation you have ever heard.
The fathers of confederation did not believe that most people should have a real voice in their own government. They did not believe in democracy. (The same, as I may talk about on Sunday, was true of the founders of the US.) No, Confederation was something that very wealthy investors (mostly in Britain) wanted - and they wanted it as something they could make money out of. The premiers who met at Charlottetown well knew that. And the last thing in the world they wanted was for ordinary people to interfere with the right of the very rich to make big money.
The idea of the Senate from the start was to fill it with appointed flunkies who were there to be on guard in case Canadians should ever elect a government that would really represent them. It was to make sure that Canada would NOT be democratic.
To meet senators and to see what brainless puppets most of them are is a scary experience. And that's been especially true with the lot appointed by Harper.
There is virtually no world news in B section. And I could find only one item worth reading at all. "NB liquor CEO pushing for change." Yep. You're not cultured unless you're stoned..
As is becoming almost the rule, the best column, along with Alec Bruce, is the student one on C3. Isabelle Agnew wants to do an honours degree in English. So people say, "So what do you plan to do with that?" And that shows up a big weakness in our universities.
The original intent in teaching people 'disciplines' like English and History and Biology was to teach people how to think, how to be critical, how to analyze - in short, how to really understand. But what they have become is centres of job training for students, and for research for profs.. That's quite a change because job training has nothing to do with thinking or general capacity to understand.
One reason for this is that that most professors have no training in teaching, and no idea how to do it. So classes just become the memorizing of information that will be forgotten when the exam is over.
The research part happens because that's where prestige and status for profs lie. In consequence, many profs view teaching as a nuisance, do as little as possible of it, and even hold good teaching in contempt.
Then there's the influence of the big donors and big business leaders who dominate boards of governors. All they understand is making money. They don't understand education at all. What they do understand is training people to be useful employees. As a result, universities become something like dog training school - with the difference that dog trainers know what they're doing.
What's needed is for universities to give some serious thought to a suitable blend of teaching and job training. It would also save them a lot of money.
_______________________________________________________________________________
In general, however, the Moncton Times and Transcript for today is an expression of Irving contempt for the people of New Brunswick.
And the people of New Brunswick just take it. It's all symbolized in the flag of New Brunswick which features what appears to be a ship made of the rear ends of two ships so it doesn't know which direction it;s going in.
And that goes with the provincial motto, Spem Redux. (Don't rock the boat.)
For some good news, read the item below.
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