August 13: Never push an erase button.

I sit here in tears. After several hours of reading and writing, I lost my blog when it was almost done. I shall try to remember....

There's no point in commenting on the irving press because the only item in it worth reading is Alec Bruce's column. World news is almost absent. And the sermonette on the Faith page is the usual "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam."
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Even The Guardian is pretty bland stuff. But it does have something worth noting.  All its American election stories were about Trump. I've noticed that in most North American coverage, too. And all coverage we are getting is trivial, personal, over-excited (especially with those 'analysis' twerps we see on TV.)
Neither Trump nor Clinton has presented any clear or coherent policy on anything. In fact, most issues facing the U.S. haven't even been mentioned. There is widespread and growing poverty. The income gap between the very rich and everybody else is out of control. Racism is running wild. American police are killing more Americans than get killed by terrorists and by war. The prison system is far the biggest in the world. Much of it is privately owned, and uses prisoners as cheap labour, then sends them out with no rehabilitation at all. The prisons also use torture. American education is a disaster. escapable only for those parents who can afford to send their children to expensive, private schools.  University is way out of reach for the majority. The police have become militarized - and brutal. The whole country has become a police state with government spies everywhere and, no, they're not just looking for terrorists. The U.S. is far the biggest employer of military thugs (mercenaries) in the world. Greed is sending the American economy over a cliff. The U.S. completely ignores international law and the U.N. - two things Canadians supposedly died for in World War 2. It also sponsors many of the terrorists of ISIS and other Jihadists. The country faces staggering climate change problems - surely noticeable in  the western states. The political parties are owned by billionaires.
On these and many other issues, I see almost nothing of policies to deal with them. Instead, we get obvious lies, senseless solutions, and exchanges of childish insults.

And the news media have joined the gang. After all, their billionaire owners have decided they want Hillary. How to make sure she wins? Ignore her because, in fact, she has nothing to say. So what they concentrate on is pointing out what an idiot Trump is.

Hillary is not going to win this election. Trump is going to lose it.

Why don't Americans demand policies that respond to all the real issues? Because they don't know what are the real issues. Their news media (like most Canadian ones) have lied to them for generations. They don't have a clue what's going on.

To make it worse, they are wrapped in myths from history, movies, TV that Americans are historically good and honest and free and equal....
No matter who wins this election, the only real winners will be the billionaires. Both candidates are utterly incompetent and dishonest. But Hillary is more compliant.

The choice? There is none. Both are disasters - and probably equally so. American society is crashing. And all the above is why we're seeing and hearing more news about  unbalanced Trump than about murderous and corrupt Clinton.
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And here's an item to show to your clergyman - though you might have to draw pictures if your clergyman is one of the ones who writes for the irving press.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45276.htm
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And here's something unusual, a new approach to teaching. I gather it could be very useful in our universities. That's why they'll never look at it.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/the-open-source-school-redefines-education-in-italy/
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And why, after years of subsidizing ISIS and other Jihadists to attack Syria, is the U.S. now bombing Jihadists? They're doing it because when their mercenaries  (the so-called rebels) failed to defeat Syria, and kill Assad, they  got Jihadists to do it. But Russia messed that up when it attacked the Jihadists. So now, the Americans have to do some more killing themselves.

They don't want to because the American public doesn't like American casualties. But Putin has forced their hand.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/08/13/us-military-prepares-new-offensives-in-syria-and-iraq/
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Then there's the role of the U.S. (and Canada)  in helping poor, little Saudi Arabia starve and massacre some of poorest people on earth. Note the role of the U.S. and Canadian war industries. Quite apart from their lust for killing, these are probably the worst economic destabilizers in the world.

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/11/lopsided-peace-talks-collapse-saudis-resume-yemen-bombing-and-u-s-sells-more-weapons/

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/16/worried-about-stigmatizing-cluster-bombs-house-approves-more-sales-to-saudi-arabia/

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/03/kerry-gives-saudis-a-big-pass-on-indiscriminate-bombing-of-civilians-in-yemen/

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/09/u-n-chief-admits-he-removed-saudi-arabia-from-child-killer-list-due-to-extortion/
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Here's a note about Trudeau's role in all this vileness.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/scott-vrooman/2016/08/trudeaus-bare-arms-and-armaments

I knew Pierre Trudeau. Justin is not Pierre. He's a rich kid of  no maturity and with no sign of ever maturing or ever developing any political philosophy that goes beyond smiling for the cameras. And the Canadian news media lap it up.
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This one speaks for itself - and for the failure of our news media and our politicians to ignore that greatest robberty in history. Perhaps the irving press will lead the way in breaking this story. Perhaps the editor? Norbert?  Rod Allen?

http://www.taxfairness.ca/en/news/whats-happened-panama-papers
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And that's it. There's more news and opinion. But not all that much of me left after writing this blog twice.