Readers outside New Brunswick won't understand the pain of this. In today's Irving press, among the front page stories are 1. a man driving his truck through the ice crashed into shallow water. 2. A local man who gave teen age girls gifts and cash for sex served 20 months. That page is continued on page 2. On page 3, a man got jail time for assaulting a girl in her early teens. And a man has been arrested for alleged threats to our premier. then there's even more stories from the court. Then there's a whole page of pictures of young men on a curling rink. I have no idea why.
This is followed by an editorial on one of the great questions of our time. Do we need laws on our roads? No, says the editorial writer. We need to pay more attention to our road safety. Who needs traffic laws? Right? Aristotle couldn't have said it better. Norbert Cunningham's column says much the same.
On the commentary page, we have a commentary about health care in a province some 800 miles away - in case, I suppose, we want to drive 800 miles and back for a medical appointment.
In Canada&World, the lead story is that prime minister Trudeau made secret stops when he visited this province. For example - this is serious, now - he once went to the washroom. (The news YOU need to know.) The section also has word of the court cases for prison leave and for murder that are happening two thousand and more miles from here, and have nothing to do with us.
The irving press runs on the cheap and trivial. And it runs on a sort of reverse propaganda by NOT telling us much of importance about the province and the city we live in. It's a newspaper designed to keep us in ignorance of what's happening by avoiding real news and serving up cheap thrills. It reminds me of a scandal sheet headline I once saw in a supermarket scandal rag- "Dope-crazed preacher attacks six-year-old boy"
.
Essentially, its purpose is to keep us ignorant of what's happening in the world and, often, to do it with the cheapest sort of sensationalism. And that is true, to varying degrees, of all major North American newspapers. In that respect, it's similar those awful hollywood scandal mags and that dreadful one that gushes about the Royal family and how terribly cute Prince George is.
There are crises facing us - the impact of tax havens on our lives, for example, the increasing power of corporations over whole nations and national governments, the dreadful slowness of action on climate change, the increase in poverty (which is worsening), the endless string of wars, the assumed right of the U.S. to attack countries with no reason (except, sometimes, racial and religious bigotry), the determined effort to make democracy irrelevant by privatizing everything.
Most notable is the lack of information about human needs. The Liberals, Conservative, Democrats, Repulicans all concentrate on economics, usually for the benefit of business. But a society is made up not of money but of people. The major role of a political party should be to determine and serve the needs of people, all of us. Yes, you need money for that. But it's the people who should come first in the planning. Instead, and one sees this all the time in the irving press, the emphasis is the money - often on the absurd idea that if you make the rich even richer, then the money will trickle down to all of us. (as in using tax money to build an entertainment centre.)
It won't trickle down. It never has. We are following the path of Rome in its declining years, as the wealthy got all the money, and as the poor (the mob) were left to beg and to starve, to die, and to be buried in their thousands in great pits around the city - pits that a researcher described as being full of some thick and malodorous fluid.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The following is included just for laughs. As our oil billionaires assure us, there is no such thing as climate change. And, like, I mean, people like oil billionaires know things. I mean, if those scientists are so smart, how come they aren't billionaires? Right?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/18/2016-hottest-year-ever-recorded-and-scientists-say-human-activity-to-blame
_______________________________________________________________________________
And one that needs no comment. But you'll never see it in the irving press.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/19/climate-change-affect-all-urgency-trump-brexit
____________________________________________________________________________
In Latin America, it a dangerous business to be an environmentalist. They are murdered by illegal exploiters of the land - and by major corporations owned by the most respectable people, including, probably, Canadian companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/18/isidro-baldenegro-lopez-killed-goldman-environmental-prize-mexico-berta-caceres
________________________________________________________________________________
I don't want to harp on the subject. But it's rather an important one - though not important enough to make the pages of the irving press.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/2014-was-hottest-year-ever-recorded-then-it-was-2015-now-its-2016/
Our oil billionaires don't accept this. And that takes quite a combination of greed and stupidity.
_____________________________________________________________________________
In the U.S., possibly in Canada, patriotism is the highest form of virtue. That makes it dangerous. Patriotism is what drove Americans to believe it was okay to kill Vietnamese, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, in fact many, many more than that over the last centuries and now even none of those people were any threat to the U.S. And the soldiers who went to murder people they knew nothing about were heroes. Yes, they were. Patriotism makes killers and international thieves out of us.
It trumps religious beliefs, moral ones.... Nothing scares me more than a patriot talking with hand on heart.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/scoundrels-of-patriotism-the-freeing-of-chelsea-manning/
________________________________________________________________________________
This one is a gem. Trump's choice as Pentagon Chief in his government is a general who thinks Russia and China and Iran are dangerous aggressors. In fact, Iran has not attacked anybody (except, with the approval of the Syria government) Jihadists. China has taken over Tibet - that's it for some hundreds of years in which the U.S. has been constantly aggressive. Russia has attacked Afghanistan. And, with the approval of the Syrian government, Jihadists.
In that time, the U.S. has attacked almost everybody - including Iran which did not in any way threaten it. The attack was to let American and British oil barons take over Iran and destroy its democracy.
(I guess the general is a patriot.)
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/us-senate-panel-rubber-stamps-mad-dog-mattis-for-pentagon-chief/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Countercurrents is not a site for news. It's for analysis of the news, for commentary that helps us to understand the news. And it's the best source I have found.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/if-were-honest-we-all-know-trumps-america/
__________________________________________________________________________________
This is the thinking of the wealthy of what it is we need - and deserve. By her reasoning, we should not have public schools They should all be privatized. This is not at all unusual thinking in her social class - which is also the class that most avoids paying taxes.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/17/betsy-devos-an-heiress-bashes-tuition-free-college-theres-nothing-in-life-thats-truly-free/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Seal Team Six is a part of the American military that specialized in assassinations - usually under illegal conditions. They are killers. They are trained to enjoy killing. That makes them heroes. And patriots.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/18/seal-team-6-responds-to-the-intercepts-investigation-of-its-war-crimes/
_____________________________________________________________________________
Despite a long wait, the U.S. government has yet to produce proof of Russian hacking or interference in the election. Funny the irving press hasn't mentioned that.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/another_demand_for_russian_hacking_20170119
__________________________________________________________________________________
Here's an issue I had not understood until I read this article. (It hasn't even been noticed by our provincial press.) Very large numbers of people in India are facing starvation and death because of demonitization of their money. (In short, their money, regular issue paper money for India, has been declared worthless by the government that issued it. And this may well extend to other countries.
http://thesaker.is/india-crime-of-the-century-financial-genocide/
______________________________________________________________________________
Once more, as I read this story, i thought of the Palestinian student who sat in my office crushed by the thought he had to return to a Palestine where there was no hope, where Israel routinely stole land and bulldozed houses.
It doesn't make our news media much, though.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.766093
________________________________________________________________________________
Here's more - which also has not appeared in our provincial press.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.765957
The news we get of Israel in our news media is heavily influenced by the "Israeli lobby" a group of prominent Jews in the U.S. and Canada who consider any criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic. That's why we don't get much news about Netanyahu's corruption and cruelty toward Palestinians. If you want the full story on Israel, you have to go to the Israeli newspaper, el Haaretz.
In fact, a great many western Jews are very much in disagreement with what Israel has become, and how it has largely betrayed The Talmud and The Torah. (The writings of the law and the prophets.)
This is followed by an editorial on one of the great questions of our time. Do we need laws on our roads? No, says the editorial writer. We need to pay more attention to our road safety. Who needs traffic laws? Right? Aristotle couldn't have said it better. Norbert Cunningham's column says much the same.
On the commentary page, we have a commentary about health care in a province some 800 miles away - in case, I suppose, we want to drive 800 miles and back for a medical appointment.
In Canada&World, the lead story is that prime minister Trudeau made secret stops when he visited this province. For example - this is serious, now - he once went to the washroom. (The news YOU need to know.) The section also has word of the court cases for prison leave and for murder that are happening two thousand and more miles from here, and have nothing to do with us.
The irving press runs on the cheap and trivial. And it runs on a sort of reverse propaganda by NOT telling us much of importance about the province and the city we live in. It's a newspaper designed to keep us in ignorance of what's happening by avoiding real news and serving up cheap thrills. It reminds me of a scandal sheet headline I once saw in a supermarket scandal rag- "Dope-crazed preacher attacks six-year-old boy"
.
Essentially, its purpose is to keep us ignorant of what's happening in the world and, often, to do it with the cheapest sort of sensationalism. And that is true, to varying degrees, of all major North American newspapers. In that respect, it's similar those awful hollywood scandal mags and that dreadful one that gushes about the Royal family and how terribly cute Prince George is.
There are crises facing us - the impact of tax havens on our lives, for example, the increasing power of corporations over whole nations and national governments, the dreadful slowness of action on climate change, the increase in poverty (which is worsening), the endless string of wars, the assumed right of the U.S. to attack countries with no reason (except, sometimes, racial and religious bigotry), the determined effort to make democracy irrelevant by privatizing everything.
Most notable is the lack of information about human needs. The Liberals, Conservative, Democrats, Repulicans all concentrate on economics, usually for the benefit of business. But a society is made up not of money but of people. The major role of a political party should be to determine and serve the needs of people, all of us. Yes, you need money for that. But it's the people who should come first in the planning. Instead, and one sees this all the time in the irving press, the emphasis is the money - often on the absurd idea that if you make the rich even richer, then the money will trickle down to all of us. (as in using tax money to build an entertainment centre.)
It won't trickle down. It never has. We are following the path of Rome in its declining years, as the wealthy got all the money, and as the poor (the mob) were left to beg and to starve, to die, and to be buried in their thousands in great pits around the city - pits that a researcher described as being full of some thick and malodorous fluid.
_________________________________________________________________________________
The following is included just for laughs. As our oil billionaires assure us, there is no such thing as climate change. And, like, I mean, people like oil billionaires know things. I mean, if those scientists are so smart, how come they aren't billionaires? Right?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/18/2016-hottest-year-ever-recorded-and-scientists-say-human-activity-to-blame
_______________________________________________________________________________
And one that needs no comment. But you'll never see it in the irving press.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/19/climate-change-affect-all-urgency-trump-brexit
____________________________________________________________________________
In Latin America, it a dangerous business to be an environmentalist. They are murdered by illegal exploiters of the land - and by major corporations owned by the most respectable people, including, probably, Canadian companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/18/isidro-baldenegro-lopez-killed-goldman-environmental-prize-mexico-berta-caceres
________________________________________________________________________________
I don't want to harp on the subject. But it's rather an important one - though not important enough to make the pages of the irving press.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/2014-was-hottest-year-ever-recorded-then-it-was-2015-now-its-2016/
Our oil billionaires don't accept this. And that takes quite a combination of greed and stupidity.
_____________________________________________________________________________
In the U.S., possibly in Canada, patriotism is the highest form of virtue. That makes it dangerous. Patriotism is what drove Americans to believe it was okay to kill Vietnamese, Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, in fact many, many more than that over the last centuries and now even none of those people were any threat to the U.S. And the soldiers who went to murder people they knew nothing about were heroes. Yes, they were. Patriotism makes killers and international thieves out of us.
It trumps religious beliefs, moral ones.... Nothing scares me more than a patriot talking with hand on heart.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/scoundrels-of-patriotism-the-freeing-of-chelsea-manning/
________________________________________________________________________________
This one is a gem. Trump's choice as Pentagon Chief in his government is a general who thinks Russia and China and Iran are dangerous aggressors. In fact, Iran has not attacked anybody (except, with the approval of the Syria government) Jihadists. China has taken over Tibet - that's it for some hundreds of years in which the U.S. has been constantly aggressive. Russia has attacked Afghanistan. And, with the approval of the Syrian government, Jihadists.
In that time, the U.S. has attacked almost everybody - including Iran which did not in any way threaten it. The attack was to let American and British oil barons take over Iran and destroy its democracy.
(I guess the general is a patriot.)
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/us-senate-panel-rubber-stamps-mad-dog-mattis-for-pentagon-chief/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Countercurrents is not a site for news. It's for analysis of the news, for commentary that helps us to understand the news. And it's the best source I have found.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/19/if-were-honest-we-all-know-trumps-america/
__________________________________________________________________________________
This is the thinking of the wealthy of what it is we need - and deserve. By her reasoning, we should not have public schools They should all be privatized. This is not at all unusual thinking in her social class - which is also the class that most avoids paying taxes.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/17/betsy-devos-an-heiress-bashes-tuition-free-college-theres-nothing-in-life-thats-truly-free/
_______________________________________________________________________________
Seal Team Six is a part of the American military that specialized in assassinations - usually under illegal conditions. They are killers. They are trained to enjoy killing. That makes them heroes. And patriots.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/18/seal-team-6-responds-to-the-intercepts-investigation-of-its-war-crimes/
_____________________________________________________________________________
Despite a long wait, the U.S. government has yet to produce proof of Russian hacking or interference in the election. Funny the irving press hasn't mentioned that.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/another_demand_for_russian_hacking_20170119
__________________________________________________________________________________
Here's an issue I had not understood until I read this article. (It hasn't even been noticed by our provincial press.) Very large numbers of people in India are facing starvation and death because of demonitization of their money. (In short, their money, regular issue paper money for India, has been declared worthless by the government that issued it. And this may well extend to other countries.
http://thesaker.is/india-crime-of-the-century-financial-genocide/
______________________________________________________________________________
Once more, as I read this story, i thought of the Palestinian student who sat in my office crushed by the thought he had to return to a Palestine where there was no hope, where Israel routinely stole land and bulldozed houses.
It doesn't make our news media much, though.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.766093
________________________________________________________________________________
Here's more - which also has not appeared in our provincial press.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.765957
The news we get of Israel in our news media is heavily influenced by the "Israeli lobby" a group of prominent Jews in the U.S. and Canada who consider any criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic. That's why we don't get much news about Netanyahu's corruption and cruelty toward Palestinians. If you want the full story on Israel, you have to go to the Israeli newspaper, el Haaretz.
In fact, a great many western Jews are very much in disagreement with what Israel has become, and how it has largely betrayed The Talmud and The Torah. (The writings of the law and the prophets.)
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment