The Moncton Times and Transcript of Feb. 10 has a superb journalistic example of lying proganda. And it's right up front on page 1.
It all began several days ago when the government announced it was handing over hospital food services to a private company. On that same day, the editor and Norbert Cunningham both almost wet their pants with joy, writing columns in praise of this decision. (I think it's a very safe guess that neither the editor nor Cunningham knows anything about the subect.)
On Feb. 10s first page, there's a big story with the headline that the premier has dismissed questions about this that were raised by the CEO or the province's health services. Whoa! Hold on. If there's a complaint about this privatization, shouldn't that be tne main topic of the paragraph? And then the premier's response?
But no. The Times and Transcript starts with a headline that emphsizes the response of the government, not the complaint of the CEO. That effectively destroys the real story from the start. In fact, Half the story is not about the CEO. It's about the premier's response.
Why is that terrible? It's terrible because a) large numbers of people never read past the headline and the first paragraph and b) the headline sets a mood which destroys the impact of the CEO's complaint and c) since over half the story is about the premier's response, the real story is effectively buried.
This is bad journalism. This is lying journalism. This is propaganda journalism. And, no, don't blame the reporter. The form used in a story and the printing of a story is up to an editor, not othe reporter. So all we know about this issue is a brief criticism from the CEO, plus more than two and a half columns devoted to drivel about how privatizing will save money.
Come off it, you twits. Privatizing hospital services almost invariably raises costs. We now have to pay not only for the food and its preparation, we also have to pay for the private company's profits. Worse, that private company will almost certainly hide its profits from any taxation. So that becomes yet another cost for the rest of us.
For all the juvenile babbling and kissing up by the editorial writer and Cunningham and from the paper in general, this a just one more stepping up of the attack on our health system by some very greedy people.
There is just no limit to the degree the Times and Transcript (and the liberal premier and the conservative party) will prostitute themselves for the greedy.
Today, February 11, the TandT has a cartoon and an editorial attacking the provincial government for running up a deficit. It doesn't even look at the possibility that the wealthy of this province have created the deficit by hiding their money from taxation. But there's no way anybody at that paper would have the integrity or guts to say that.
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It's going to be worth following the story of pipeline resistance at Standing Rock. This could shatter the traditional tone of American political thinking.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/11/standing-rock-army-veterans-camp
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Just this week, news media carried the big story of the Syrian government's slaughterhouse where at 13,000 syrians were hanged while others died or torture. As I wrote at the time, even the most simple-minded cub reporter should have questioned that story. The sources were small in number, were in no position to keep such a detailed record, and were usually biased. Journalists should have realized that. But they ran the story. Now, Amnesty International, which announced the story, is admitting it has NO evidence. None. Nada.
That's fake news. And it didn't come from social media. It came from our professional media - like our local Times and Transcript. Will they now print the correction?
Of course not.
https://off-guardian.org/2017/02/10/amnesty-international-admits-syrian-saydnaya-report-fabricated-entirely-in-uk/
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The man who attacked a mosque in Quebec and murdered Muslims at worship was, of course, a terrorist. He was also, nominally at least, a Christian and a Canadian citizen. The news media have not paid much attention to that part of the story. Nor have they seen the meaning of it.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-expressed/2017/02/quebec-mosque-attack-victims-spent-their-lives-vilified-terro
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Here's news of a war which has been a more than usually terrible one but which has received almost no attention from western news media.
http://www.alternet.org/world/one-nastiest-wars-recent-history-raging-yemen-and-us-heavily-involved-it
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Here's another story on the war our world largely ignores.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/10/the-plight-of-18-8-million-war-torn-yemenis/
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Here's a war we should have learned from. But our news media barely ever mentioned it.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/08/a-deadly-legacy-cias-covert-laos-war/
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And we have the real terrorists....
http://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/interview-andre-vltchek-western-terrorism/
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I became impatient and annoyed going through the day's news. It is obsessed with Donald Trump. Why am I annoyed?
Yes, he's more than a bit of clown. But his policies are not very different from those of Obama or Bush or Bill Clinton. (No, they aren't. Indeed, many of them would have been quite acceptable to George Washington. He wants to build a wall to keep out Mexicans? Heck, one of his predecessors invaded Mexico, murdering its people so speculators could steal half the country. In all of North America, no country has escaped American aggression and greed. Canadians recently observed the hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812. But the Canadian government and the news media made it all seem cutesie.)
The U.S. has a long history (very much like that of Britain and France and Spain) of killing and plundering. It has a long history of hysteria in suppressing free expression. (Have we all forgotten the Senator Joe McCarthy witch hunts.) It has murdered millions to fill the pockets of the wealthy.
Trump will deport refugees? Who do we think created those refugees in the first place? Who was it that made their countries into hell-holes?
The problem is not Trump. He's a clown who makes it all obviously bizarre; but the behaviour of U.S. governments has not changed since 1776. It's increasingly brutal in its killing; but it's been killing for over 240 years.
And it's been doing the killing to please the very wealthy - those bloodsuckers who cling to the flesh of all of us. That's the problem. It's not Trump. Replacing him with Hillary Clinton would change nothing. Replacing Republicans with Democrats would change nothing.
And the capitalists don't even know how to conquer effectively. American foreign policy has spread death and ruin over much of the world to satisfy the greed of its banks and oil companies and other destructive forms of capitalism. But even in financial terms, the return for the American people has been far, far less than the cost.
Trump has certainly attracted opponents. But so what? Many, perhaps most, of those opponents are the people who cheered and have been cheering for 70 years as the U.S. air force has dropped countless tons of bombs on civilians, hospitals and schools. It dropped more bombs on Laos alone, deliberately targeting civilians, than it had in all of World War Two.
Propagandized by years of hyper-patriotism, holdings hands on hearts, and asking God to bless America as it murders and exploits all over the world - including in the United States itself - the U.S. has failed to develop alternative political and economic systems. That's why it clings to a political system that gives all power to billionaires, the power that enables them to loot not only the most helpless of nations, but the United States as well.
The rot runs deeper and wider than Trump. It runs even to the most self-righteous of Christian churches whose followers massively supported Trump. (And Canadian churches give little sign of being any better.)
Enough news about Trump the clown. The real problem is to be seen all over North American and Europe. The problem is all of us.
And we don't have much time to solve it.
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