March 15: Too much news.

A big story has so far been missed by Brunswick News which which effectvely has a monopoly on print news in this province. It's a response to a complaint against CBC  (Canada's radio and TV news service which is owned by the Canadian people)  filed by the owner of Brunswick News. Funny how the eagle-eyed editors at Brunswick News missed this.

http://www.ombudsman.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/complaint-reviews/2017/two-twitter-accounts-one-reporter-it-s-dangerous/

And what will be the reaction to this? Well, one possibility is that there will be pressure on the federal government to cut the CBC budget.
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Meanwhile, the big news is that a roofer is going to jail for cheating clients. Above it is a big picture of the law courts building. Two pages later are two more stories of small-time crime. They, too,  have a picture of the law courts for readers who have forgotten what they look like. (That picture of the law courts must have appeared thousands of time over the years. And why not? It's cheap; and it fills space.

The big news is in the second section, Canada &World. Here we learn that a woman in a neighbouring city charged a man with taking photos of her in the washroom. And, to  clarify the story, it has a big photo of the courthouse in that city.

On the next page, a cab driver  in a nearby city who had been charged  (and acquitted) of sexual assault has lost his taxi license.

For more news of the greater world, a university in Ontario has removed the  weighing scales in its gymn.  (No. I'm not kidding. That is the news WE need to know.)

There are only four stories from the rest of the world - none of them of any importance. And there are none of those yukky stories about war or starvation or refugees. Millions of children are dying of starvation? That's too yukky poo for Brunswick News.

This is newspaper chain designed to keep people ignorant of what's happening around the world - and even around the corner.
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This story is an example of what was not considered important enough for the Brunswick News.

In fairness, I'm a little uneasy about it. As UN reports commonly do, this one takes pains to assure us that Americans don't do these terrible things. In fact, the U.S. has been one of the pioneers in bombing civilians and civilian institutions like hospitals. Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed everything. The carpet bombing of Laos and Cambodia was the heaviest bombing in history - and almost all the casualties were civilian. Bombing in North Korea stopped only when every building had been destroyed. And, yes, of course that included schools and hospitals.

Chemical wepons were widely used by the U.S. in Vietnam.  Depleted uranium shells were used in Iraq. The U.S. has been using cluster bombs for decades - and cluster bombs are not precision instruments - and they lie in wait for uncounted years. It is also blockading Yemen to keep out food and medical supplies.
Every major power has used terror weapons aimed at civilian populations for eighty years and more. There are no good guys. And The Guardian must know that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/syria-conflict-study-condemns-weaponisation-of-healthcare
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I can well remember Sundays in Hong Kong. Every park would be filled in hundreds, even thousands, of women. They were like clouds of colourful birds in mass migration who  had settled all over the city to rest.

There were, and are, many domestic servants in Hong Kong. They are very low paid; and they work very long hours for six days a week. Sunday is their only day off. Many are there to earn money they can send home - often to places like The Phillipines where poverty is common. And, sometimes, a cut of their money has to go to a dictator for allowing them to go to Hong Kong.

Is this an evil inflicted on those women by evil orientals?

Well, no. The practice of exploiting these women was begun by Christian gentlemen from Britain, Germany, Portugal, the U.S.....and reaching back into the nineteenth century. Most of them had utter contempt for anyone who was not Christian and white like them. They still do.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/10/sunday-sit-in-inside-hong-kong-weekly-domestic-worker-resistance
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I send this next one on mostly because I can't imagine an opinion column like this ever being permitted in Brunswick News. (In fact, I  find it hard to picture it in any North American newspaper.)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/15/employers-strong-unions-good-for-business-taxpayers-alliance
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Brunswick Press missed this story, too, though it sounds like an excellent model for New Brunswick.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/13/quebec-supermarkets-food-banks-donation-waste
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I include this next one to encourage a sense of reality about war, and American power at war.

Just consider - for all images of TV and movies and  over-excited news sources, the U.S. has NEVER fought (and so never won) a war against a country of it's own size and wealth. For the size of its military, the only war it has won in the last seventy years was against a small, Carribean island - Grenada.

Only a minority of its soldiers today are Americans. Instead, it is an extremely expensive army of hired killers, mercenaries from all over the world. They are not likely to perform well in a major war.

And Trump is going to boost the navy's carrier fleet? Cute. But nobody can be sure how a weapon will perform in any war. In World War 1, Britain and the U.S. based their naval power on the battleship. Later, they added a variant called the Battle Cruiser.

They kept building them throughout World War Two. In fact, the last British battleship was completed in 1945. But both Britain and the U.S. had missed a nasty reality that they should have seen even before the war.The battleship was a floating antique. And the battle cruiser was close to useless.

The carrier was decisive in World War Two. It can still be decisive in a small war. But in a major war? Who knows? I rather doubt that it will be.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/15/trumps-military-nostalgia-or-victory-at-sea-all-over-again/
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Amazing how much Trump policies look like those of Obama and Bush.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/15/trump-administration-secretly-resumes-cia-drone-assassination-program/
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The Fraser Institute, a propaganda house for the very wealthy which pretends to be a gathering of deep thinkers, is a great favourite of Brunswick News. It, along with other such "think tanks", frequently appears on the commentary page. And, like The Atlantic Institute of Market Studies and the CDHowe institute are treated with similar respect and obeisance.

I've known a number of people who do 'research' for these outfits. Some are opportunists kissing up to the rich. Some are quite sincere. Rather like evangelicals, they believe that their Their god is the only true god. They believe.  And because they believe, they don't have to  understand anything at all.

http://rabble.ca/news/2015/02/economics-journalists-fraser-institute-biased#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=58c9707f8f9b5c51&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=1&at_tot=5

Okay. Maybe we shouldn't expect a reporter to know all that. But an editor must.
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I thought all of the following worth reading. The U.S. is acting as if it were something it clearly is not. It is not the dominant power in the world. And there is no possibility it can be such a power. Contrary to what movies tell us, the U.S. has not performed brilliantly in war, not even against small countries. And the effort to be what it is not and cannot be creates an uncontrolable and, probably, brief future for all of us.

The excuse, of course, is that other countries are the aggressors - powerful and murderous countries like Grenada and Syria Afghanistan and Libya. The U.S. is following a course made necessary by the greed of a very few. And it is an insanity.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46656.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46655.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46657.htm

Re the following item, watch Justin Trudeau closely. He'll be quietly scrambling to find a way to please the U.S. by refusing to accept refugees fleeing the U.S. And, I regret to say, we will see plenty of Canadians on the racist side.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46654.htm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46658.htm
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The U.S. has long since gone all the way to being a police state. The only questions left for Canadians is 1. How far has our intelligence service gone with spying on Canadians? 2. How much is the Canadian intelligence service in bed with U.S. intelligence and the CIA?

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/
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Another story missed by Brunswick News.  There was a time when almost all North Americann News Media were anti-Jewish. Now, it's reversed so if your want the whole story about Israel, you have to go to an Israeli paper, Haaretz.

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/
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Canada can fall in line behind Trump. Or it can follow a much more independent path. There is no in between. You can count on Trudeau to fall in line behind Trump. That's the way big business in Canada wants it.

Unlike those who try to get off a sinking ship, Canadians have a long history of lining up to get on. And the U.S. is very much a sinking ship.