Below are four stories from Monday's CBC news. Note that all of them are important to know about.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-executive-compensation-1.4052533
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/trudeau-message-to-refugees-1.4051008
http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/unproven
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ai-machine-learning-employment-future-1.4047837
Next are 'major' stories from today's Brunswick News here in New Brunswick.
A4 (local news) has a big story about how to judge champion goose callers.A5 has over half page story about now New Brunswickers are becoming connnoisseurs of fine alcohol beverages.There's no evidence for it, of course. The story is really just a boost for the alcohol industry.
There's a story that that the cost of moving the Moncton library will soon be announced. Well, if it were not going to be announced, that would be news. This isn't. Besides, the paper ran the same 'story' just a few days ago.
Almost all of the news is trivial. Almost none of it is about community social needs.
World News? For sure. A Tornado flipped a mobile home in Georgia. Another state is fixing a bridge. In a hotel in Michigan, somebody died from a carbon monoxide leak.A man in Australia was rescued after sharks attacked his kayak. The number of grizzly bears in Wyoming is increasing.
This is a newspaper designed to keep its readers in ignorance of what is going on around the world, and even what is going on in New Brunswick. It also favours lowering the voting age so more teenagers can vote because, it says, they are ready to vote.
That's absurd. How can anybody who relies on the Brunswick News be ready to vote? This is a paper which never mentions even the basic concepts of what voting and government should be about.
In the view of Brunswick News, the purprose of voting and government is to install policies which grossly favour the wealthy, and make them richer. In turn, so the thinking goes, that wealth will trickle down to all of us.
That isn't true. It's never been true. Great wealth is normally made by creating great poverty. At the height of the British Empire enormous wealth was made on exploiting (and killing and starving) people all over the world. And even at the peak of the empire, millions of British lived in the deepest of poverty, without basic, essential services. And the soldiers and sailors who fought for that empire did it for pennies a day - if that much. And when they were too old to serve any more, they were simply dumped in the streets
.
The American empire has gone the same way, creating massive poverty, notably in South America, Africa and the middle east - and now spreading poverty in the U.S. itself.
Government should be about directly improving the lot of the whole community. The Liberals and Conservatives are not about that, and never have been. That's why Dominic Cardy will be happier as a Conservative.
The Greens are about the whole community - but don't begin to see the breadth of the problem. The NDP was about the whole community ; but has wimped out for the last 40 years. However, the departure of Cardy means there could be hope for it.
But nothing is going to happen until the people of New Brunswick get the news - the real news.
______________________________________________________________________________
This one scares the hell out of me.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/02/donald-trump-north-korea-china
If Trump uses force on North Korea to make it give up its nuclear weapons, that will almost certainly create a world war. North Korea borders both Russia and China.
The U.S. has been provoking tensions for some years by moving up to the Russian border in Europe - and moving up missile weaponry. (And before you say the Russians are overreacting, think back to John F. Kennedy when he brought us to the edge of nuclear war when Russia tried to deliver nuclear weapons to Cuba.)
Yes. The rest of the world is evil. But God blesses America, so it's allowed to have nuclear weapons and to move them up to foreign borders. And it's also allowed to invade and kill by the millions for no clear reason.
And, yes,North Korea seems to be led by a nutbar. But so is the U.S. And that's not unusual in the western world. It has centuries of experience of politicians who murdered all over the world by the millions. Bush was just a sample of what us westerners have produced.
And it's important to remember why the western powers fought in the Korean War. It had nothing to do with defending democracy in South Korea. (There was no democracy to defend.) The purpose of that war - or the hope - had been to place western military forces on South Korean borders with Russia and China. Most of us don't know that because our news media never told us. But Russia and China saw that. That's why China attacked the UN forces as they got deep into North Korea. And that's why the Korean War was not a victory for us; it was a loss.
I can't think of a better way to trigger a nuclear war with Russia and China than for the U.S. (with its faithful British and Canadian and other folllowers) to invade North Korea. (What would the U.S. do if Russia and China invaded Mexico?)
____________________________________________________________________________
I include the following (and lengthy) item because it talks about climate change and the future. In Canada and the U.S., the news media rarely mention the future in this context. They're happy with - "Shucks, nuthin' to worry about. I mean, if you can't trust your oil billionaires, who can you trust?"
For a great many politicians, there is no future. There's only now.Trump is good example of that. But he's far from being the only one. As for the world of corporation bosses, the future is limited to three months at a time. That's why the probabilities of the future and our planning for it, is rarely found in the Brunsick News - and pretty rare in most North American news media. Like business, the news media usually see the future as meaning the next quarterly report.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/02/seven-things-that-need-to-happen-to-keep-global-temperature-rise-below-2c/
__________________________________________________________________________
Here's a pretty accurate look at journalistic and political morality.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/03/fake-news-in-the-u-s-endangering-russian-ties-while-corruption-pays-off-big/
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Washington Post, which recently dismissed many of the sources I use as "fake news" It should know. The Washington Post is a leader in pumping out fake news.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46785.htm
________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who hasn't realized this for a long time is lost in space.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46787.htm
_______________________________________________________________________________
I have trouble agreeing with this next one. I have no doubt that major powers are eager to form alliances with each other - for financial reasons. After all, big money is what their wars are about. Anybody who thinks we fight wars to save democracy or punish evil people or protect ourselves is living in a dreamland.
It's possible that Putin would want an alliance with the U.S., just as its possible the U.S. would want one with Russia - in both cases, to protect the wealth of their very wealthy class. But somehow, I can't quite see it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46779.htm
__________________________________________________________________________________
There are many false stories in our news media. Here is one of those stories.
https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/why-has-trust-in-media-collapsed-look-at-actions-of-wsj-yahoo-business-insider-and-slate/
_________________________________________________________________________________
This one is its own explanation.
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/01/europe-keeps-its-rescue-ships-far-from-the-coast-of-libya-where-thousands-of-refugees-have-drowned/
______________________________________________________________________________
Groups like ISIS developed decades ago. It was during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The American CIA was (unofficially) there. It developed, trained and equipped the Afghanis to fight the Russians. But the people of Afghanistan, a great many of them, understood that the U.S. was a at least as big an enemy Russia was. So, after the Russians were expelled, groups like ISIS turned against the U.S. They may have been simple tribesmen, but they had the common sense to realize that the U.S. was as big an enemy as Russia.)
But the U.S. chose what must have seemed a good idea at the time - use ISIS and other groups to fight Syria. And so, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia supplied ISIS with money, training and equipment. (And we commoners never asked the obvious question. ("where did ISIS get the money and training and weapons for years of warfare?" War, after all, is an expensive game.)
Now, in the fighting in Mosul, U.S. governments are proving they can be just as brutal as the Russians, maybe more so. But most of our news media aren't watching.
http://thesaker.is/the-mosul-massacres-the-banality-of-evil-revisited/
__________________________________________________________________________________
Despite popular impressions, Canadian and American Jews are not at all united in support of Israel's behaviour. The pressure on all Jews, coming from organizations like Canadian Jewish News, B'Nai Brith and others to support all behaviour by Israel is powerful and well-financed. But many Jews are highly critical of Israel, though you would never know it from our news media.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/2017-03-31t000000/canadian-jewish-news-shows-its-chutzpah-justifying-censorship
"Chutzpah' is a Yiddish word for courage or nerve. Yiddish is a blend of German and Jewish.
It's a great language for swearing at people you don't like - also good for shouting sheer joy at a party.
____________________________________________________________________________
Read this, then ask yourself, "How can a nation that sees itself as moral or intelligent be doing what the U.S. is doing to Yemen?" And, if they are either moral or intelligent, how can national leaders in politics and business being doing this?
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/27/warning-trump-about-make-worlds-biggest-humanitarian-crisis-much-worse
Think of the scale of destruction since 1945. Think of the dead who must by now be at least 20 million. Think of the families broken, the millions of refugees. the destroyed cities Why?
Was Guatemala going to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons? Was Afghanistan going to invade Alaska?
And why did we send Canadians to die (and to kill) in some of those wars? Why is Canada so involved even now in Latvia and Iraq and Syria? And you can bet we'll be asked to join in more wars - and the Canadian government will agree. We will for the same reason we killed Dutch settlers in the Boer War. We were a colony of Britain then, so we fought British wars - which usually meant wars to make wealthy British more wealthy. Since 1945, we have been an American colony. So we fight American wars.
And in both cases we fight those wars essentially to protect the wealth of our wealthiest. We fought in the Boer War to protect the relationship of the wealthy with the wealthy British on whom our economy depended. We now fight American wars for the same reason.
And take a look at the result. We live in a wildly unstable world, an instability created largely by us. And the world is not getting better. Starvation, exploitation are getting worse Many millions are routinely added to the impoverished millions thanks to 'enterprisers' like the Canadian mining companies around the world.
We are getting poorer, too, thanks to the power of the wealthy to divert huge sums into their own pockets, and keep them there. But you won't find stories about that in the Brunswick News.
______________________________________________________________________
Oh, my. I have rambled on, and it's getting late. But first I'll go to Haaretz. I almost always end with it because it's such a pleasure to read a commercial news medium that's honest and intelligent.
Here's a story about the subway bombing in Russia. It speculates that the attack happened because of the Russian assault on Aleppo. That's quite possible. The U.S., Britain, France have been killing Muslims for over a century. Russia has been killing them for at least forty-five years.
The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, Canada and some others share a belief in capitalism, and the greed that goes with it, and the limited intelligence.
http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.781278
______________________________________________________________________
And can you imagine U.S. or Canadian commercial news media being critical of U.S. treatment of other countries? Israel's Haaretz is often critical of Israeli behaviour.
That's hutzpah. And intelligence. And morality. And it's damn good journalism.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.781093
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bombardier-executive-compensation-1.4052533
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/trudeau-message-to-refugees-1.4051008
http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/unproven
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ai-machine-learning-employment-future-1.4047837
Next are 'major' stories from today's Brunswick News here in New Brunswick.
A4 (local news) has a big story about how to judge champion goose callers.A5 has over half page story about now New Brunswickers are becoming connnoisseurs of fine alcohol beverages.There's no evidence for it, of course. The story is really just a boost for the alcohol industry.
There's a story that that the cost of moving the Moncton library will soon be announced. Well, if it were not going to be announced, that would be news. This isn't. Besides, the paper ran the same 'story' just a few days ago.
Almost all of the news is trivial. Almost none of it is about community social needs.
World News? For sure. A Tornado flipped a mobile home in Georgia. Another state is fixing a bridge. In a hotel in Michigan, somebody died from a carbon monoxide leak.A man in Australia was rescued after sharks attacked his kayak. The number of grizzly bears in Wyoming is increasing.
This is a newspaper designed to keep its readers in ignorance of what is going on around the world, and even what is going on in New Brunswick. It also favours lowering the voting age so more teenagers can vote because, it says, they are ready to vote.
That's absurd. How can anybody who relies on the Brunswick News be ready to vote? This is a paper which never mentions even the basic concepts of what voting and government should be about.
In the view of Brunswick News, the purprose of voting and government is to install policies which grossly favour the wealthy, and make them richer. In turn, so the thinking goes, that wealth will trickle down to all of us.
That isn't true. It's never been true. Great wealth is normally made by creating great poverty. At the height of the British Empire enormous wealth was made on exploiting (and killing and starving) people all over the world. And even at the peak of the empire, millions of British lived in the deepest of poverty, without basic, essential services. And the soldiers and sailors who fought for that empire did it for pennies a day - if that much. And when they were too old to serve any more, they were simply dumped in the streets
.
The American empire has gone the same way, creating massive poverty, notably in South America, Africa and the middle east - and now spreading poverty in the U.S. itself.
Government should be about directly improving the lot of the whole community. The Liberals and Conservatives are not about that, and never have been. That's why Dominic Cardy will be happier as a Conservative.
The Greens are about the whole community - but don't begin to see the breadth of the problem. The NDP was about the whole community ; but has wimped out for the last 40 years. However, the departure of Cardy means there could be hope for it.
But nothing is going to happen until the people of New Brunswick get the news - the real news.
______________________________________________________________________________
This one scares the hell out of me.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/02/donald-trump-north-korea-china
If Trump uses force on North Korea to make it give up its nuclear weapons, that will almost certainly create a world war. North Korea borders both Russia and China.
The U.S. has been provoking tensions for some years by moving up to the Russian border in Europe - and moving up missile weaponry. (And before you say the Russians are overreacting, think back to John F. Kennedy when he brought us to the edge of nuclear war when Russia tried to deliver nuclear weapons to Cuba.)
Yes. The rest of the world is evil. But God blesses America, so it's allowed to have nuclear weapons and to move them up to foreign borders. And it's also allowed to invade and kill by the millions for no clear reason.
And, yes,North Korea seems to be led by a nutbar. But so is the U.S. And that's not unusual in the western world. It has centuries of experience of politicians who murdered all over the world by the millions. Bush was just a sample of what us westerners have produced.
And it's important to remember why the western powers fought in the Korean War. It had nothing to do with defending democracy in South Korea. (There was no democracy to defend.) The purpose of that war - or the hope - had been to place western military forces on South Korean borders with Russia and China. Most of us don't know that because our news media never told us. But Russia and China saw that. That's why China attacked the UN forces as they got deep into North Korea. And that's why the Korean War was not a victory for us; it was a loss.
I can't think of a better way to trigger a nuclear war with Russia and China than for the U.S. (with its faithful British and Canadian and other folllowers) to invade North Korea. (What would the U.S. do if Russia and China invaded Mexico?)
____________________________________________________________________________
I include the following (and lengthy) item because it talks about climate change and the future. In Canada and the U.S., the news media rarely mention the future in this context. They're happy with - "Shucks, nuthin' to worry about. I mean, if you can't trust your oil billionaires, who can you trust?"
For a great many politicians, there is no future. There's only now.Trump is good example of that. But he's far from being the only one. As for the world of corporation bosses, the future is limited to three months at a time. That's why the probabilities of the future and our planning for it, is rarely found in the Brunsick News - and pretty rare in most North American news media. Like business, the news media usually see the future as meaning the next quarterly report.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/02/seven-things-that-need-to-happen-to-keep-global-temperature-rise-below-2c/
__________________________________________________________________________
Here's a pretty accurate look at journalistic and political morality.
http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/03/fake-news-in-the-u-s-endangering-russian-ties-while-corruption-pays-off-big/
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Washington Post, which recently dismissed many of the sources I use as "fake news" It should know. The Washington Post is a leader in pumping out fake news.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46785.htm
________________________________________________________________________________
Anyone who hasn't realized this for a long time is lost in space.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46787.htm
_______________________________________________________________________________
I have trouble agreeing with this next one. I have no doubt that major powers are eager to form alliances with each other - for financial reasons. After all, big money is what their wars are about. Anybody who thinks we fight wars to save democracy or punish evil people or protect ourselves is living in a dreamland.
It's possible that Putin would want an alliance with the U.S., just as its possible the U.S. would want one with Russia - in both cases, to protect the wealth of their very wealthy class. But somehow, I can't quite see it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46779.htm
__________________________________________________________________________________
There are many false stories in our news media. Here is one of those stories.
https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/why-has-trust-in-media-collapsed-look-at-actions-of-wsj-yahoo-business-insider-and-slate/
_________________________________________________________________________________
This one is its own explanation.
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/01/europe-keeps-its-rescue-ships-far-from-the-coast-of-libya-where-thousands-of-refugees-have-drowned/
______________________________________________________________________________
Groups like ISIS developed decades ago. It was during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The American CIA was (unofficially) there. It developed, trained and equipped the Afghanis to fight the Russians. But the people of Afghanistan, a great many of them, understood that the U.S. was a at least as big an enemy Russia was. So, after the Russians were expelled, groups like ISIS turned against the U.S. They may have been simple tribesmen, but they had the common sense to realize that the U.S. was as big an enemy as Russia.)
But the U.S. chose what must have seemed a good idea at the time - use ISIS and other groups to fight Syria. And so, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia supplied ISIS with money, training and equipment. (And we commoners never asked the obvious question. ("where did ISIS get the money and training and weapons for years of warfare?" War, after all, is an expensive game.)
Now, in the fighting in Mosul, U.S. governments are proving they can be just as brutal as the Russians, maybe more so. But most of our news media aren't watching.
http://thesaker.is/the-mosul-massacres-the-banality-of-evil-revisited/
__________________________________________________________________________________
Despite popular impressions, Canadian and American Jews are not at all united in support of Israel's behaviour. The pressure on all Jews, coming from organizations like Canadian Jewish News, B'Nai Brith and others to support all behaviour by Israel is powerful and well-financed. But many Jews are highly critical of Israel, though you would never know it from our news media.
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/2017-03-31t000000/canadian-jewish-news-shows-its-chutzpah-justifying-censorship
"Chutzpah' is a Yiddish word for courage or nerve. Yiddish is a blend of German and Jewish.
It's a great language for swearing at people you don't like - also good for shouting sheer joy at a party.
____________________________________________________________________________
Read this, then ask yourself, "How can a nation that sees itself as moral or intelligent be doing what the U.S. is doing to Yemen?" And, if they are either moral or intelligent, how can national leaders in politics and business being doing this?
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/27/warning-trump-about-make-worlds-biggest-humanitarian-crisis-much-worse
Think of the scale of destruction since 1945. Think of the dead who must by now be at least 20 million. Think of the families broken, the millions of refugees. the destroyed cities Why?
Was Guatemala going to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons? Was Afghanistan going to invade Alaska?
And why did we send Canadians to die (and to kill) in some of those wars? Why is Canada so involved even now in Latvia and Iraq and Syria? And you can bet we'll be asked to join in more wars - and the Canadian government will agree. We will for the same reason we killed Dutch settlers in the Boer War. We were a colony of Britain then, so we fought British wars - which usually meant wars to make wealthy British more wealthy. Since 1945, we have been an American colony. So we fight American wars.
And in both cases we fight those wars essentially to protect the wealth of our wealthiest. We fought in the Boer War to protect the relationship of the wealthy with the wealthy British on whom our economy depended. We now fight American wars for the same reason.
And take a look at the result. We live in a wildly unstable world, an instability created largely by us. And the world is not getting better. Starvation, exploitation are getting worse Many millions are routinely added to the impoverished millions thanks to 'enterprisers' like the Canadian mining companies around the world.
We are getting poorer, too, thanks to the power of the wealthy to divert huge sums into their own pockets, and keep them there. But you won't find stories about that in the Brunswick News.
______________________________________________________________________
Oh, my. I have rambled on, and it's getting late. But first I'll go to Haaretz. I almost always end with it because it's such a pleasure to read a commercial news medium that's honest and intelligent.
Here's a story about the subway bombing in Russia. It speculates that the attack happened because of the Russian assault on Aleppo. That's quite possible. The U.S., Britain, France have been killing Muslims for over a century. Russia has been killing them for at least forty-five years.
The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, Canada and some others share a belief in capitalism, and the greed that goes with it, and the limited intelligence.
http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.781278
______________________________________________________________________
And can you imagine U.S. or Canadian commercial news media being critical of U.S. treatment of other countries? Israel's Haaretz is often critical of Israeli behaviour.
That's hutzpah. And intelligence. And morality. And it's damn good journalism.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.781093
.jpg)
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment