Journalists, MPs are missing the real Bill Morneau scandal

The so-called “Morneau Scandal” has been a farce in many ways, with mainstream media failing to recognize the real scandal plaguing the government’s financial control system.

First, the tempest in a teapot. While he wasn’t legally required to do so, Finance Minister Bill Morneau made the mistake of not putting his financial holdings, which may run to $40-million, into a blind trust.

The office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner  didn’t object to the fact that Morneau didn’t put his fortune in a blind trust.

Nevertheless, the jackals saw an opportunity to embarrass and possibly bring down the Trudeau government’s Number 2 man. 

“This finance minister used a loophole to keep himself invested in a financial company which he regulates,” Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said in the House of Commons, “all the while going across the country calling honest plumbers and farmers tax cheats.”

National Post columnist Brian Platt criticized Morneau for not being in Parliament all week, and instead travelling out-of-province to make announcements on the government’s small business tax reforms.

But this was a case of Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists being so hungry for blood that most of them ignored the truth about blind trusts and never looked for the bigger issues behind the story.

BLIND TRUSTS "A SHAM"

Here's why YOU need to give climate groups a 'kick-in-the-butt'

Introduction:
   This article is for the many thousands of individual Canadians who give $-millions each year to environmental and conservation groups. 
   When it comes to fighting climate change*, you’re not getting your money’s worth. I’ve monitored the environmental movement for five years and draw the conclusion that the biggest and wealthiest groups are seriously letting down the Canadian public with weak and disjointed campaigns.
   Unfortunately, groups are never held accountable by institutional donors or media. It’s now up to concerned Canadians to see if you can influence them to do a better job. 
(See the bottom of this article to find out how you can help.)

   Note: * I’ve decided that the term “climate change” no longer describes the devastation the earth is experiencing. From now on I will use the term “ecological collapse.”


When I wasn’t paying attention, another environmental group – Blue Dot  – came into existence, joining the many other large Canadian groups claiming it has the right strategy to help save Canada from environmental devastation.

An initiative of the David Suzuki Foundation, Blue Dot says it “focuses on building a ground-swelling of support to convince Members of Parliament to introduce “a gold-standard federal environmental bill of rights.”

Blue Dot also urges municipalities to adopt a pro-environmental position, and it hopes to pressure Parliament to amend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to include environmental protection.

Hey, this shouldn’t be hard! Just kidding. A dozen or so other groups have been working on the same goals for at least a dozen years with little success.

With only 115,000 individual members – but still growing – and modest funding, I don’t see how Blue Dot can be more effective than any of the others in fighting ecological collapse.

(NOTE: Please support independent journalism. Subscribe button at the end of this article.)

Canada is seriously failing to meet its carbon emission reduction targets. Moreover, a government that claims to be fighting ecological collapse supports development of the tar sands.

“Canada, which represents one half of one percent of the planet’s population,” writes an angry 350.org head Bill McKibben “is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget.”

Scientists say that if the world is to hold global warming to below 2 C this century every bit of fossil fuel should remain in the ground. A two-degree increase could spell catastrophe, scientists warn — through drought, ocean rise, crop failure, wildfire, flooding, and disease.

Faced with this frightening information, you would think that the environmental community would be well organized and have effective strategies in place.

Not so.

Angry CBC listeners demand fewer mindless personal-story programs

Note from Nick: Because I worked with CBC for more than 25 years and have great loyalty to quality public broadcasting, I regret that I need to take CBC Radio One management to task in an aggressive manner. But when considerable damage is being done to the network and managers refuse to answer basic questions, I feel I have no alternative. 

Long-time CBC Radio One listeners upset over summer programming that featured a dozen shows about personal concerns and peoples’ problems will be listening carefully this fall to see how many of those kinds of programs are in the line-up.

Hundreds of traditional Radio One fans strongly agreed with my blog of two weeks ago, in which I blasted CBC management for broadcasting the mindless and banal programs.

Hmmm ... then why are people turning it off ?

More than 75 people took the time to write protest letters to CBC management and more than 400 people registered their concerns on social media. CBC Audience Services has always said that one protest represented the views of perhaps 1,000 people, so it’s likely that many thousands of regular listeners are opposed to the personal-oriented programming.

Hundreds of people said they no longer listen to Radio One, while other said they turn the radio off as soon as they hear one of the selfie-like programs.

CBC Radio badly off track with too much personal storytelling

During CBC Radio’s 81 years  the public broadcaster has been the country’s most important life-line, unifying the nation and helping us understand each other and the important issues of the day.

I am lucky to have worked at the CBC for more than 25 years. I held several positions, including Canadian Editor of The National, working as an investigative journalist, as a radio documentary producer, and as an editor with National Radio News.

Today CBC Radio is more important than ever. With newspapers failing to do their job, journalism in Canada is in crisis. Media organizations are failing to provide communities with news and analysis that is necessary for democracy to function properly.

(Note: If you too disapprove of what’s happening to CBC Radio, I’ve provided emails at the end of this article where you can send your protests.)

CBC Radio is proud of the success of its podcast, Someone Knows Something which explores cold cases after people have disappeared. 

As always, I’ve been listened to Radio One this summer. My favourite programs, which include The Current, As It Happens, The Sunday Edition and Ideas, are doing a good job.

However, I’m puzzled and dismayed by most of about a dozen new summer programs. A couple of them – the Doc Project and Now or Never  – provide some interesting stories told from a personal point of view.

Too much “personal issues” radio

Otherwise, the remaining 10 new programs are not the kind of shows that should be so prominent on the CBC. Too many dwell on the sad stories of people who have had a difficult life. People ramble on about their feelings. There’s lots of talk about “human connections”, and advice for people with problems.

Here is a sampling:

• Love Me with with Lu Olkowski. “Deep down we all just want to be loved, so why is it one of the toughest things to get right?” says the program description. “Love Me is a podcast about the messiness of human connection.”
• Road Trip Radio, both a podcast and on Radio One, is described as “a family friendly podcast celebrating all things Canada!” Produced by the team behind CBC Radio’s This is That, most of the episodes have been humourless and an embarrassment. 
• Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay. The program claims to tackle one timely subject each week with “energy, wit, and journalistic rigor.” A recent episode: “Hair Care: Shaving, waxing, threading, plucking, sugaring, electrolysis.”
• Sleepover with Sook-Yin Lee. “In each episode one stranger takes the spotlight and presents a problem from their life. The other two offer advice and bring up related experiences from their own unique perspectives.”
• Seat at the Table with Isabelle Racicot and Martine St-Victor. “A weekly talk show where the hosts bring you honest conversations with guests shaping pop culture.” One episode featured an interview with Laura Wasser, Hollywood's divorce lawyer.  

Do you know a community that might like a new newspaper?

(Note: Please forward to any folks that might like to look into setting up a paper.)

News outlets in Canadian communities are falling like bowling pins.

At least 171 media organizations in 138 communities closed between 2008 and this January, says the Local News Research Project, a project led by Ryerson School of Journalism.  By comparison, only 51 new outlets opened.

The loss of media is so severe that a special report submitted to the House of Commons Heritage Committee was entitled: “Local news poverty in Canadian Communities.” 

“Local news poverty, we argue,” project co-ordinator April Lindgren writes, “is greatest in communities where residents have limited or no access to timely, verified news about local politics, education, health, economic and other key topics they need to navigate daily life.”

Small communities such as Markdale, ON and Canmore, AB lost their local papers while cities Guelph, ON and Nanaimo, BC were among the largest centres to be hit.

Newspapers have been crucial for the development of Canada for more than three centuries.  But “free” news from for-profit papers is coming to an end.

Corporations are beating us up; can we develop a more just system?

Aggressive capitalism is kicking the crap out of us,  so we should see if we can start a public conversation about the need for an alternative political and social system.

It’s shocking that capitalist businesses have become so dominant. They literally rule the world.  In Canada, the low-profile Canadian Council of Chief Executives is all powerful when it comes to influencing government.

We see corporate greed all around us. Four out of 10 Canadians – many of them earning around $11 an hour – can’t pay their bills but Canadian corporations are sitting on at least $630-billion in cash they’re refusing to invest in the economy.

Unfortunately, even when many people know about the damage caused by capitalism, they feel a totally alternative political system is such a distant possibility, that they don’t bother discussing it.

Of course powerful people fearful of the threat of a social upheaval have demonized the words socialism and communism. This scares the hell out of many people.

Mainstream media are owned by corporations that seldom, if ever, report on alternative political systems. If ideas aren’t laid out before the public, they really don’t exist.

PEOPLE ARE FED UP

Despite the lies and badgering that comes from corporations and the wealthy, people in several countries are fed up with traditional politics. They’re fighting back against corporations and governments that are joined at the hip.

Here's why papers don't deserve support; money should go to committed Internet sites

News Media Canada – formerly the Canadian Association of Newspapers – has submitted a proposal to Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly for a whopping $350-million a year to prop up the journalism of the country’s struggling 105 dailies.

The publishers are asking for:

• $175-million of our tax dollars per year to subsidize the first 35 per cent of the salaries of hundreds of journalists who are paid $85,000 or less, including luminaries such as the Globe and Mail's  columnist Margaret Wente, who creates her own reality, and the National Post's right-wing reporter Christie Blatchford. 
• And $90,000 a year to help each of these newspapers improve their presence on the Internet – a request that comes 18 years after Kijiji and others began grabbing their classified ads. This reveals their ineptitude to successfully get on the Internet themselves. 

I’m against this proposal for a number of reasons, including the fact that the self-important papers want to be the only ones getting government support. They apparently never thought of approaching the dozen or so small digital media groups that have worked hard over the past few years to establish themselves.

But I have a more fundamental problem with the newspaper industry.

Liberals take first small step toward rebuilding the CBC, but there are many miles to go

The federal government has taken the first step on a long road toward what hopefully will be the restoration of the CBC as Canada’s most important public interest and cultural institution.

For nearly 10 years the Harper government forced the CBC off track from its original goals of promoting culture and the arts, providing quality news, and facilitating a national discussion.

Harper refused to adequately fund the Mother Corp. In one fell swoop in 2012, the Harper government cut the CBC budget by $115-million over three years.

Harper very likely would have wanted to sell off the CBC but that would have caused a national backlash. Instead, he appointed seven Conservative lackeys and donors to the CBC Board with the idea of keeping the broadcaster in check.

But now, with the world pretty much in a state of chaos and false news coming at us from many directions, a strong CBC has never been more important.

On Tuesday Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly announced the government is ending the long-time practice of appointing friends of the government to the CBC Board of Directors and, instead, introducing a new system.

Joly named nine prominent Canadians with various backgrounds from across the country who will recommend people they feel capable of serving on the Board to the government.

Currently three positions are vacant on the Board, and the second term of CBC President and CEO Hubert Lacroix expires at the end of the year.

Ineffective 350.org divestment campaign should give way to direct corporate actions

Students at Dalhousie University in Halifax are a determined lot. Campaigning against the burning of fossil fuels, they have occupied the office of school president Richard Florizone.

The students also created a six-foot-high dinosaur to signify that investing in pollution-causing industries is a skeleton in the university’s closet.

Divest Dal is one of at least 34 academic-based campaigns across the country pressuring administrations to divest holdings in fossil fuels on ethical grounds.

However, the Dal effort suffered a setback when the Dal administration announced it would not sell off an estimated $20.5-million in fossil fuel holdings.

“We did not accept the Board’s no vote . . . .” says Laura Cutmore, a Divest Dal organizer, in an email. “We will continue to campaign towards divestment for as long as it takes.”

Students at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS) protesting.

Divest Dal works with the support of 350.org  by far the largest group in the world involved in campaigning, and they have a lot of faith in 350.org’s leadership.

350.org, which operates gofossilfree announced with considerable fanfare that the campaign urging institutions, mostly universities, churches, and pension funds to divest their endowment holdings in fossil fuels is working well.

Canadian 350.org organizer Cam Fenton wrote in an email: “In a matter of years it has grown from a student led campaign on a few campuses to something that is impacting some of the largest political and financial institutions on the planet.”

The 350.org website claims that “our movement is strong and the fossil fuel industry is fighting for its life.”

Whoa! Not so fast.

We shouldn't weep for broke but lying mainstream media

What a difference some 50 years has made in one of Canada’s most important and powerful industries!

Back in 1970, the Senate of Canada called an inquiry to investigate the exorbitant profits made by Canada’s handful of media barons.

Skinflint media mogul Roy Thomson had declared that owning a radio or television station was like having a license to print money. He added that owning a newspaper was even better, because a license was not required.

The Senators hummed and hawed, and made some recommendations that were mostly ignored by the powerful media owners, who continued to make big profits.

How times have changed. 

A report from the Public Policy Forum of Montreal released on January 26 says the Canadian news industry “is reaching a crisis point as the decline of traditional media, fragmentation of audiences and the rise of fake news pose a growing threat to the health of our democracy.”

Whereas the 1970 report was entitled “The Uncertain Mirror”, the new appeal for support is called “The Shattered Mirror.”

Now mainstream media are unable to sell enough advertising to provide the amount and quality of news coverage that once seemed routine. So the giant corporations are humbly appealing to the federal government to provide support for various media and make adjustments to the media landscape.

The report does not provide a specific prescription to bring corporate media back to health. Nothing in the report could even begin to provide the billions of dollars that would be needed to restore newspapers to what they were say 10 years ago. That was before corporations fired more than 10,000 journalists. 

I'll bet you didn't know you own billions of dollars in coal stocks

Sometimes huge issues just slide along under the radar until, all of a sudden, they blow up. The shock can come from a brown envelope slid under a door, a “scoop” in the media, or an opposition politician discovering a serious failure in government.

I’m waiting for an explosion to occur at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This organization has assets of $287-billion and provides pensions for the 19-million Canadians who pay into it.

The Investment Board is dangerously gambling and putting our future in danger by investing billions-of-dollars in risky fossil fuel companies. Moreover, the Board is knee deep in unethical investments in the coal industry.

Coal sludge from a North Carolina site mined by Duke Energy.

The collapse of a huge cooling pond dam at a coal mine in North Carolina during Hurricane Matthew last month didn’t cause a stir in Canada, but it should have. The facility in question is owned by Duke Energy – perhaps the most vilified energy company in the United States – and the Pension Fund Investment Board is heavily invested in Duke.

Earlier, a Duke pond leaked dirty effluent into a North Carolina river.  The company paid a $102-million fine continues to face numerous law suits while it is involved in a $3-billion clean-up. The loss had an impact on the Canadian investments.

Why are our environmental groups supporting weak climate targets?

Canada is far behind many other countries when it comes to meeting its carbon reduction targets. We have an “inadequate” ranking on the international mechanism tracking carbon emitters, says Climate Action Tracker.  Many other countries/regions, such as Norway, the European Union, the United States and China, are well ahead of us.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s recently announced that all Canadian jurisdictions must adopt a carbon pricing scheme by 2018 with a minimum price of $10 per tonne. The price must rise to reach $50 per tonne by 2022. The goal of reducing emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 will not get Canada anywhere close to its promises to the United Nations.

The Canadian targets are “nothing short of a disaster for the climate,” says Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

Canadians probably believe that our major environmental groups are busy lobbying and pushing the federal and provincial governments to do much more. But no, this is not the case.

Strangely, while many individual groups carry out excellent and productive projects, the country’s environmental community is doing very little to pressure governments to do a better job.

No group criticizing the government

A survey of the top 20 or so environmental organizations shows – from what I could find – that not one group is conducting an ongoing, strategic campaign lobbying the federal government for not doing more.

Young people on Parliament Hill protesting pipeline construction, but when it comes to fighting climate change, environmental groups have decided not to campaign against the Liberal government. 

Some groups have made one-off statements criticizing the government, but these do not constitute a campaign.

Greenpeace’s Keith Stewart did say that “thirty per cent by 2030 isn’t good enough. We have to go farther.”  But it does not seem that the organization will be lobbying governments re carbon levels.

Young activists win 'badge of honour' with civil disobedience in Ottawa

Ninety-nine young environmental activists achieved their goal on Parliament Hill on Monday by carrying out acts of civil disobedience. The boisterous group climbed over restricted-area police barricades near the Peace Tower.

Those arrested were part of a group of 200 protesting the possible construction of the Alberta to B.C. Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

Some carried a giant banner reading: “Climate Leaders Don’t Build Pipelines.”

The 99 arrested were taken to a police station where they were issued citations and told not to appear on Parliament Hill for three months. They will not have criminal records, but police took their personal information. It’s unclear whether the information will go into a police database.

Protest spokeswoman Amanda Harvey-Sanchez, a third-year University of Toronto student, told media that pipeline approvals are a deal-breaker for many younger voters who helped propel the Trudeau Liberals to a majority government in last October’s general election.

One of the 99 protesters arrested in Ottawa. 

Fully intent on breaking the law, many of the 200 protesters on the Hill had been schooled in what they should and should not do during their law-breaking task. Called Climate 101, the protest was specifically for young people. It was organized by 350.org, a leading climate change fighting group.

Facing protesters on Parliament Hill is a routing activity for police – some 25,000 people were on the Hill a year ago to oppose climate change.  http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/organizers-say-over-25-000-at-ottawa-rally-for-climate-change-1.2679364

But for most of those arrested, Monday’s experience was their first brush with the law. When police officers placed a hand on their shoulder, there is no doubt their stomachs were churning.

However, it’s likely that many of those arrested will be ready to take part in future aggressive actions to protect the environment and slow climate change. They’re angry that the battle to slow global warming is being lost.

They don’t trust Trudeau 

First of all, environmentalists do not trust the Trudeau government to do the right thing and stop approving fossil fuel related projects. A go-ahead for Kinder Morgan is their biggest fear.

Will Harper protect Canadian secrets at "the Donald Trump” of law firms?

Former Conservative Prime Minister  Stephen Harper apparently isn’t satisfied with having destroyed a lot of wonderful and important things in Canada. Now he has signed on with Dentons, the world’s largest elite law firm, to spread his dark viewpoints around the globe.

Dentons proudly announced Monday that Harper – who does not have a legal degree – and his new consulting company will work from its Calgary office.

For Harper, the appointment is his reward from the corporate set for many years of stalwart service. He will now be able to stuff his pockets with greenbacks and 76-cent Canadian dollars.

The recently resigned Calgary MP will no doubt stick a Canadian flag on his suitcase as he peddles his anti-social ideology. Hopefully, this will be Harper’s final insult to our national pride.

Dentons is like an octopus. It has more than 7,200 lawyers in over 50 countries, and seems to be constantly expanding.

In easily translatable jargon, Dentons  said Harper has teamed up with the firm to provide clients with “advice on market access, managing global geopolitical and economic risk, and maximize value in global markets” – i.e. postulating himself based on the credibility he gained during none years as PM.

The Donald Trump of the legal set

“Dentons is the Donald Trump of the legal vertical,” writes legal expert and columnist Mark A. Cohen. “The firm is brash, bigger-than-life, and something entirely different. It receives a disproportionate amount of press because it is always doing something that drops jaws.”

The firm surprised the legal/business world by forming a partnership with a huge Chinese firm closely tied to the Communist Party. They employ more than 6,000 lawyers that are working on hundreds of projects, both inside the country and internationally.

As Mansbridge Exits: Does the CBC have the courage to build a TRULY GREAT news program?

The latest water cooler chat among many Canadians this week is speculation about who will replace Peter Mansbridge as host of The National, CBC-TV’s flagship news program. He announced earlier this week that, after 30 years as host of  the program.

The long-time anchor seemed to be trying to give his departure considerable significance by announcing 10 months ahead of time that he is leaving. Also boosting his own importance, his departure also coincides with the occasion of Canada’s 150th birthday.

One wonders if Mansbridge expects an honorary star-studded tour hosting The National from CBC stations across the country, much like the retiring New York Yankees’ star shortstop Derek Jeter was honoured in every ball park during his last year.

Now CBC executives say they are going to usher in “the next phase” of The National. 

Jennifer McGuire, the General Manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News, told The Globe and Mail she sees Mansbridge’s departure as “an opportunity to reimage the program.” She said the CBC will look at increasing the digital delivery of The National.

Finding a new host for The National should not be the CBC’s main goal.

CBC should address the fact that neither The National nor any other CBC news program is trusted very much by the public. The content of CBC News programs is just like programming at mainstream media, and the public doesn’t like either.

A Statistics Canada General Social Survey of national opinions for 2013 and 2014 revealed that only 40 per cent of Canadians had confidence in media.

Canadians don’t like mainstream news because they believe it lacks balance and that it reports lies.

The public is much smarter and more skeptical when digesting the news today than it was back in the 1960s when CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite was believed to be only second to God when it came to telling the truth.

One of the reasons people mistrust programs such as The National is because we have access to excellent upstart news sources on the Internet. Many sites are run by talented journalists who have fled the mainstream.

Olympic groups wasting $-millions while athletes struggled to get to Rio

Dozens of athletes from Canada and thousands from developing countries have had a difficult time raising the money needed to train and take part in the Olympics Games in Brazil.

In Canada, more than two dozen world-class athletes were so hard up for support that they resorted to launching crowdfunding campaigns to supplement the money they receive from government and perhaps corporate sponsors.

On the tiny Pacific Island country of Nauru, judo participant Judoka Uera  had to hold barbecues and knock on doors to get the funds he needed Getting to Rio fulfilled Uera’s lifelong dream.

However, hundreds of other athletes who had the same dream and could have qualified for Rio were unable to attend because of a lack of support.

Given the financial difficulties faced by athletes, you would think the Canadian Olympic Committee  (COC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would provide every dime possible to sports bodies to provide funding.

Not so.

In fact, both the COC and the IOC are guilty of greedily spending millions of dollars on themselves while struggling athletes scrambled for a few bucks to get to Rio.

COC spends $10-million-plus on office

The Canadian Olympics Committee’s main task is supposed to be fostering Canadian participation in the Olympics. So it’s a bit of a shock that it is spending $10-million on a new office – Olympic House  – in Montreal. Included in the grandiose facility is a $2.9-million board room, called the “Lausanne Room” – a tribute to the international masters which have their headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

An artist's rendering of the stylized LED-light Olympic flame that will 'burn' outside the Canadian Olympic Committee offices at Olympic House in Montreal. 

In addition, hundreds-of-thousands of dollars are being spent on a spectacular outside lighting system for the office. To top it off, the Committee spent more than $1-million on a launch party for its new headquarters.

Will World Social Forum become leader the Left needs?

The annual gathering of the World Social Forum  (WSF) – the left’s response to the elitist annual Davos World Economic Forum  – is in session  in Montreal until Sunday, August 14.

More than 1,000 self-managed sessions  have activists discussing and creating progressive alternatives to traditional political, economic and social policies that they will take back to their own countries.

While as many as 100,000 people have attended sessions some years in some developing countries, perhaps 10,000 are taking part in Montreal.

Participants from the South found it too expensive to travel to Montreal. In addition, hundreds of activists from some countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Iran, Nigeria, Haiti and Nepal, were being refused visas.

WSF Meeting - Senegal

Montreal was selected this year because it has been the site of strong social and political activism over the last few years.

Meanwhile, the federal government seems to want to censor free expression at the WSF. It has distanced itself from the gathering following complaints that its programming included anti-Semitic content. According to news reports, the WSF was told last week to remove the Canadian government logo from its list of partners after two Liberal MPs expressed disgust over what they called a “blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon” on the event’s website.

The Forum is an exciting event writes John L. Hammond of City University of New York: “The scene bursts with energy as people who work on particular causes at home—feminism, the environment, indigenous rights, economic justice, human rights, AIDS treatment and prevention and many more—compare notes and strategies.

Networking, discussing key issues, and building alliances are the main activities at Forum sessions. The Forum can best be described as a “process”, an incubator facilitating new visions and ideas.
The activism bred at the WSF has supported change and revolution in several countries.

Baton Rouge police fumble mass shooting; procedures, racial attitudes must change.

Baton Rouge police respond to shooting of fellow officers.

On Sunday July 17, his birthday, a black man, former highly-regarded U.S. Marine Gavin Long, shot and killed three Baton Rouge police officers and injured three others.

The murders, following the killing of five officers in Dallas, also by a black man, increased racial tensions and hatred in the United States beyond the crisis level of the 1960s, when black people were attacked and beaten across the South during their fight for civil rights.

Gavin Long’s attack on Baton Rouge police was calculated and brutal. Nevertheless, an analysis of Long’s actions, and the response of the Baton Rouge police, reveal the failure and poor procedures of the policing system that almost certainly exist in many American communities.

Had police acted differently and if policing techniques were more sophisticated in Baton Rouge, fewer police might have been killed – or the deadly confrontation might not have occurred at all.

The militarization of local police forces across the U.S. made Gavin Long, and no doubt many like him, fear and mistrust police. Many police departments now behave more like a military force, sometimes abusing people rather than acting like a community service with the goal of protecting all citizens.

We must win back democracy, even if it takes Hedges' revolution

While the banks, elites, and the super-rich have been scrambling to try to hold onto their billions following the UK’s shocking vote to exit from the European Union, the anger expressed by the leave side was another emotional cry to end the control that corporations and the elite have over everyday people in many Western countries.

The day after the vote, panic and fear struck at the hearts of money gamblers as their bets turned sour and markets lurched downward. The wealthiest people lost $120-billion.

On the other side of the equation, people in most part of the UK except Scotland and Northern Ireland expressed their anger over their inability to have more control over their lives. They blame the EU for the disastrous performance of the economy since the 2007-08 financial collapse. They also fear the idea of “ever closer union”, moving toward a United States of Europe, which would lessen their control over their lives.

Meanwhile, the same anger is present in several Western countries. People have seen economic policies that favour corporations and the rich that destroy their jobs, businesses and communities. Citizens began to lose control of their governments in the early 1980s when Thatcher in the UK and the Reagan in the US – without consulting the public – adopted a series of neo-liberal policies.

Multi-nationals, elites and banks firmly control Western governments through neo-liberalism, financial integration, and globalization. In 2011, a research group at a Swiss institute studied a database of 37-million companies, and identified a “super-entity” of 147 tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in a huge network.

Angry over EU membership, neo-liberalism

In the UK, millions of people feel they have suffered because of both their EU membership and neo-liberal policies.

Many well-paying jobs have disappeared due to neo-liberal policies. UK corporations have shipped their production to poor countries to maximize profits. When Thatcher came to office in 1979, manufacturing accounted for almost 30 per cent of Britain’s national income and employed 6.8 million people; by 2010, it accounted for 11 per cent and employed 2.5 million.

Mainstream media sucked in, report whatever politicians, GM say.

Note: In journalism school students are taught to report
not what people say but what they do!

All the big newspapers and TV networks breathlessly reported word-for-word what they were told at a recent joint political-General Motors newser:

The Globe and Mail: 
“For decades, the splashy, job-creating announcements in the auto sector in Canada have been about manufacturing jobs.

“General Motors of Canada Ltd. went in a different direction Friday, announcing the hiring of 700 to 750 new engineers who will work on the automobile of the future – vehicles that are battery-powered, connected to the wired world much more closely than they are now and will eventually drive themselves.”

CTV News reported what Prime Minister Trudeau said, just as though the comment came from an official news release: "We know that to create good jobs ... we have to be on the cutting edge," Trudeau said. "This investment by GM in jobs that will support their operations all around the world shows we're succeeding in that regard."

How exciting! How futuristic!

But wait a minute. Here’s a bit of interesting background:

GM does not have to hire Canadian engineers for the 700 jobs. In fact, they are going to go to Silicon Valley to recruit them.

And there’s more:

If the reporters had bothered to scan through their archives, they would have discovered that the auto industry in Canada is doing very little compared to what it was like a few years ago, when many thousands of people were employed with excellent wages.