The New CBC

The CBC has been a canadian institution. A source of truth in an ever-deceitful world. They got it wrong on many occasions, but they didn't appear beholden to the large corporate behemoths who controlled the dispersion of media events, and also appeared as an 3rd party source unfettered by government or corporate control.

Unfortunately that is no longer true and I mourn their passing. I just sent this message to the CBC newsroom in the somewhat vain hope that some there might try and ressurect their once proud tradition. even if it is in the form of a blog. There are many extremely capable journalists out there and few canadian blogs reflect that.

Here is a note of protest sent to that audience. I hope even one CBC journalist responds to it.

What on earth is happening to CBC. It's as if the news department has turned into Fox Broadcasting, that notorious US adjunct to the US State department. Similarly the CBC echo's many of the right-wing positions uncritically. Has the CBC simply become an adjuct of the ruling government of the day, a shadow of the controlled press they critisize ?

Aside from the abysmal set-up program on the National which tried to convince canadians to join the war on mid-east people by using local arabic quislings to present the case, the CBC has more and more simply thru local programming shown the obvious that canadians oppose the war and our role in the occupation of Afghanistan. Despite that the National and CBC hiarchy has presented programming which glorifies our role in Afghanistan as peacekeepers rather than occupying troops of an army headed by the USA. Each pronouncements by a canadian General lusting for bloody glory has been uncritically transmitted and propaganda worthy of the KGB about supporting our "boys" has occupied the news, including long newsclips showing the families back home.

But the body bags and injured soldiers keep increasing, as we learn the hard way as others have in the last century, including the British, Russian, and our own soldiers, that the Afghani ar ungovernable.

What is different is that the fundamentalist Taliban with it's Al Qua heda intelligentsia as set up and supported by the US in order to embarass the Soviet Union has now assumed a life of its own and the US supported Northern warlords are just as bad. The US has become the greatest creater of strife in the middle east (including it's uncritical and opportunistic support of the theocratic state of Israel.), surpassing even the British in it's clumsy attempt to aghieve domination of oil supplies.

The US designs are not very subtle yet CBC insists on presenting it in the US mold, Canadians are in Afghanistan to achieve a democracy implant.(whether Afghanis want it or not).

It seems however that CBCs news-room is a capture of the Harper right.

So stories about the attempt by the conservatives to abolish the Wheat-Board are presented as a fight between the MONOPOLY wheat-board and the free traders. Despite the fact that without the wheat-board small farmers would be at the mercy of the big corporations like Cargill or Agricore. In every newscast the conservative touchword MONOPOLY appears, despite the fact that corporate monopolies are what the farmers banded together to oppose in the 1930s.

In Manitoba the brain-addled or Donald Blenhem influenced newsroom ran with the Fraser Institute press release which showed that Manitoba ranked first in charitable donations in Canada. It was however 27th as compared to the Maryland, US first. The press release also didn't mention whether that included corporate donations, which can give considerable tax release to corporations.

An additional news-release statement from the right-wing Fraser institute (who wants to privatize any government institution, from the provincial hydro. phone companies and medicare) implied that the fault was with the social welfare institutions who gave the impression that the poor were taken care of. (The logic being to do away with these impediments to charity by the wealthy). Their logic flies in the fact that Manitobans elect a government which despite it's faults plays to the support of those less fortunate.

However the machinations of the Frase Institute didn't even impinge on the news report of the fearless, eagle-eyed denizens of the CBC news-room. Yellow jounalists, complacent collaborators, reduced to the status of government mouthpieces as in Latin America ? Certainly not what I would expect from canadian jounalists or the journalists being defended from death by PENN. Simply careerist slime.

As an old friend of mine, a reporter for the Montreal Gazette, Nick Auf Der Maur would say, "there are swine, and then there are journalistic swine. They simply shadow the editor, who's also a swine."

Whoa Suzanna.

Letter to My American Neighbours

These are terrible times. The US has become the state that many of us feared they would become without the counterweight of the Soviet Union. Not that the Soviet Union was a force for democracy or justice, but that they contended for the approval of the world's people.

Without contestation, the US has become the new Romans. They support and impose their majesty on any nation that impedes their imperial aims. With "Democracy" as their war-cry they invade any nation that will not bow to their aims, which is not democracy but subservience. Their "New World Order" is simply a catch-phrase for imposing an imperial regime on the world. They stand for the impoverishment and subservience of all peoples for the enrichment of the US. The decimation of Lebanon by the theocratic terrorist state of Israel, maintained economically and militarily supplied by the US is only the beginning. Syria is the eventual target by the most powerful military regime in the mid-east, which also has atomic bombs, Israel.

The only thing that has impeded US imperialist designs is the heroism of the Afghani and Iraqi people. Had they achieved an easy victory oil-rich Iran would have been an easier target, sandwiched as it is between Afghanistan and Iraq. Close by is also the repressive US client-state of Saudi Arabia. But puppet states are not easy to establish.

And of course there is also the countries such as Venezuela, the 3rd largest supplier of oil to the US who is using oil revenues to help their people, rather than enriching big US oil corporations, not to mention Cuba which has been a thorn mainly because they defied American might because the people supported the government, nor Bolivia which has defied the US and would use oil revenues to raise their people above impoverishment. These people can thank the Iraqui insurgents, otherwise they would likely be invaded, like Guatamala so many years ago. Or Grenada, or Haiti, or the Dominican Republic, or Chile under the supervision of the CIA, or Nicarauga by Olier North, and so many other countries. The "Empire" is getting short of troops for it's nefarious ventures.

Hopefully because the american people are waking up and are no longer willing to fight for the profits of corporations cloaking themselves as patriots. "The Rights of Man"by Thomas Paine, one of the great fathers of the American Revolution should be a required readings in schools to counter all the crap that now seems endemic and accepted across this once great country. Lack of dilligence was why Hitler gained power in Germany. Forgetfullness of the values which formed your country is why the US seems destined to the same fate.

Since at this time the US is embroiled in an imperial war, which like in Viet-Nam they will not win and there is an immense deficit of $3 trillion, one can only imagine a bad outcome which WILL affect the American people. A collapse of the US and world economy. Hopefully the US populace will wake up before this happens and somehow manage to turn things around.

As a canadian, whose parents were born in the US, and will also suffer from this US folly, I can only hope that the original beliefs of the constitution of the US will once again resurface and reject the birthing of a fascist America.

I haven't posted much lately. Perhaps the "Shock and Awe" policies of western governments have rendered me speechless in the absence of any meaningfull response from the populace. I've also had consideral personal events to deal with. Mea culpa. Depession at the general world situation is no argument. Strangely I've also noticed a falling off in the posts of many articulate leftist bloggers. Perhaps my general malaise is shared.

Nevertheless I must continue, if only not to view myself much like the old gentleman in my village who would holler loudly and expond righteously in answer to the Sunday religious radio broadcasts. I find myself at times responding to some CBC broadcast with angry curses and cries of "Bullshit", "effing Fascist", or "yellow journalist doing a rotten spin".

So if anyone actually reads these missives I have a vehicle that says I'm not an insane antagonist ranting about nothing.

My intentions are to give an alternate view to the common responses to the issues that bedevil us.

Instead of just cursing the idiots that plague us I hope to advance what I think are rational ideas. We'll see if my intentions are followed up with my present resolve.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives may have bit off a bit more than they can chew. Even in Staunch "family values" territory like the prairies support for his $100 a month proposal which scrapped the liberal proposal for establishing a Public Childcare program based on the lauded Quebec one has less than passing grades.
For those working parents desperate for childcare with few affordable options it is a slap in the face.

Neither G8 nor Live8 Will Ease 3rd World Poverty

Monday, July 25, 2005

It's like a circus. While the G8 meets to determine how to dissect the body of the world, a world-wide celebration holds court on your local television screen decrying 3rd world poverty.

Wowee !! A big extravagaza uniting all the wealthy rock stars and their fans in an effort to mitigate collective guilt by having fun, as Geldorf once more unleashes his minions in an attempt to ressurect his faded career and the entertainment industry makes $millions. He and the other poster children still can't comprehend that charity won't ease the suffering of the impoverished of the world. Only throwing off the yoke of neoliberalism will.

That means opposing the G8, WTO, the IMF, and all the phony aid organizations who simply extend justification for the rape of 3rd world people. The genecide of the people of Dhafur won't end no matter how much aid is given. Only a concerted effort which also includes aid but more importantly UN troops to stop the genecide and relocation policies of the Sudan government can. While hands are wrung over how horrible the Ugandan massacres were, and why the west didn't step in, another genocide is taking place which the world more or less ignores.

STOP THE DHARFUR GENOCIDE NOW !

The parable of the hatchet or the nonsense of nation-building in Afghanistan

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Robert Newman: It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

Time to redefine ties with U.S.

I am continually amazed by the "inyerface" pronouncements of Loyd Axworthy, present head of the Univerity of Winnipeg and former Foreign Minister of the Liberal government. (see a previous article in good newsclips.)
I had assessed him as a waffling "liberal" when he occasionally came out with media-warranting positions during his tenure at a US college. He was as dissappointing as John Kerry is to centrist Democrats.

But suddenly LLoyd has become a tiger. I have to wonder if he is trying to do a Diefenbaker. Presenting a populist alternative to the waning Martin forces. But he is coming out too true, too passionate to simply be a "contender". Whatever his motives he's speaking with a straight tongue and I applaud him.
Here's his Toronto Star article. Just click on the header.

AlterNet: Darfur as a Resource War

As the deaths mount from the Dharfur genocide in Sudan, the seemingly senseless depopulating of the region is played up in the international press as a fight between opposing theologies, and also as a welcomed example in the west of the ruthlessness of Islam. "The poor people of Africa" is once more ressurrected and western youth are brought to tears by the sight of a starving baby attempting to receive nourishment from the unresponding paps of it's starving mother. Live 8 becomes a rockfest to divert western youth from righteous anger and oligarchy-threatening real analysis and activism, and accepting a "gods will" explanation of the tragedy which can only be answered by "charity and good will".

The increasingly evident reality of our age is that OIL RULES. From the Iraqui war and the Afghanistan venture propelled not by democratic or anti-ben Ladin motives but by the push to get a pipeline across Afghanistan for Uzbekistan oil as US and Euro corporatiopns vie for dominance.

US client states in Afghanistan and Iraq on each of Iran's borders also constrain the Iranian Theocracy. As the US and it's allies continously strip the Soviet Union of it's old components thru the use of powerful internal agents and propaganda, it will undoubtably encounter more opposition from China. China, as it's burgeoning economy expands it's imperialist (capitalist) economy is also contending for oil in these regions, which are closer to them than the western powers. Japan is also in competition for needed oil resources and US complacence as to Japan's loyalty should not be taken for granted.

Some of the new front-lines in the OIL-WARS might well be in the Gulf of Guinea, but the sad reality is that the oil-crunch is rapidly approaching as most scientific researches have shown. That more oil is being used than is possibly able to be produced. Many of the scientists prognosticating this scenario feel that the world isn't listening, but I believe that the world powers are well aware of it and just getting into jockeying positions.

The article linked to, presents a different take on the commonly accepted view of southern Sudan.

Somehow, Canada Got It Right

I'm not usually a fan of the appointments of the US and corporate-friendly Martin government, but someone in the vast Liberal apparachnic has got it right. From the appointment of the previous Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson who did so much in presenting our country, to the new appointment of Michelle Jean, it does make me proud of being a canadian.

But really, a black female Haitian quebecois journalist as the (admittedly token) head of state ? Damn !! Hallelu'jah !!

Maybe I've already died and this is only a fantasy projected by the gods. Or else possibly I smoked too much dope in depression after I dreamed Martin had appointed Ernest Manning as Gov-Gen and I haven't yet awakened to reality.

Hopefully it will also lead to an awareness of the present shameful actions in Haiti of Canada acting as a junior surrogate of US repression in one of the first nations historically to successfully rid itself of colonial rule(French)in the Americas. The masquerade of corporate interests appearing as benefactors but in reality the architechs of the impoverisment and starvation of the Haitian people must end. And Canada's complicity as a surrogate police force for US corporate interests is not what we pride ourselves on in appointing Michelle Jean as G-V.

Revamping This Blog

I have moved all the previous content of this blog, which had become a repository of my own and other writings to " Writings From Out Here".
My original concept was to give a focus to the concerns of prairie people to events , local, national, and international which are not served by the general media. Hopefully I'll have the energy to produce regular rants and commentary which will reflect our concerns and might also interest people from other regions of this ever-contracting world.

Our World is Not For Sale

I think even more important in my view, is the fact that across the world, no matter where you are, you can be in Canada, you can be in India, citizens are coming to the same common conclusion. Everywhere people are saying our world is ours to shape and make.

Our world is not for sale.

We will not have five companies controlling water.
We will not have three gene giants controlling seeds
and pharmaceuticals and medicine and killing us for
their profits. We will not have two or three grain
traders destroying the rightful livelihood and earnings
of hard working farmers around the world and selling
junk food and hazardous food to the consumers.

Dr. Vandana Shiva


After many years of living in cities, I've retired to my natal area in central Manitoba. My father was a grain elevator agent for the now-conglomerated United Grain Growers and I remembered a somewhat bucolic place where people lived a simpler and healthier life. Game and fresh farm produce were cheap and plentiful, and people were helpfull and friendly.

What I returned to after more than 50 years was sadly, and perhaps understandably, a different world. Like the outports of Newfoundland and the Gaspesian settlements so promoted by the church and Duplessis in Quebec, the western prairies are abandoned cultures. Dying towns struggle to survive while the rural populace is more and more forced into city ghettos.

The young leave to find jobs which are unavailable locally and the older people remain in houses that have lost their value but which they are loathe to abandon. Half-way from my village and the regional center is a town that 40 years ago was a thriving community with 5 implement dealers and the usual complement of stores and services. It is now reduced to 30 people and no stores. They must drive 20km to buy a loaf of bread or a bottle of aspirin.

During the depression years of the 30s rural people fought back against the banks, grain cartels and large corporations, and they established institutions like the Cooperative movement, Pool elevators, credit unions, marketing boards, and political parties like the Progressive Farmers, and the CCF (social democrats).

They forgot to teach their children that the wolves are always there.

I returned to a desperate countryside where farms had been reduced to 1/3 of their former number, implement manufacturers and grain buyers had been onglomerated, and the protective organizations had been institutionalized(castrated). Aid to farmers was a cash cow to the agricutural corporations who receive millions while the struggling small farmers receive a pittance.
Similarly in the recent BSE crisis the ones that benefited were the few large packing plants still remaining, while ranchers received a fraction of the prices beef was sold for in the supermarkets.

Ranchers had been convinced by large corporations that sending beef on the hoof to the US for processing was more cost-efficient and Canadian packers and Slaughter facilities dwindled to a few large corporations. The largest being US-owned Tyson and Cargill who control about 75% of US and Canadian beef production.

Meat processing has become more or less continentalized. Many eastern canadian consumers and fast food outlets were using US beef while canadian ranchers were in crisis. Politicians and other public figures like Alberta's Ralph Klein (who's never seen a corporation he didn't like)urged the populace to support the ranchers and Canadians rallied to their beef producers. Unlike other countries who had a BSE crisis, consumption of beef was largely not affected. Prices in the supermarkets remained fairly stable. The ranchers on the other hand had excess cattle and the packers made out like bandits, buying low and selling high. An auditor-general report, forced out of the corporate-friendly Alberta government showed their profits burgeoning almost 300%. They made $79 a head before to $219 after BSE. To add insult to injury they also received massive government financial aid since they own extensive cattle herds.

Meanwhile farmers have been forced into specialized crops and production, and their one-time independence from market vagaries by mixed farming has been compromised. This also means that their self-sufficiency has become a memory and they have neither the home garden, the dairy-cow, chickens, nor other food production to take them thru difficult times.

Their frustration has resulted in an increasing number of suicides and family breakdowns.
A recent study found most family farmers earning a negative farm income, which could only be augumented by outside labor.

Just casualties of progress and a changing world ?

NO !!

These were deliberate policies initiated by all levels of government in the 60's and continued to this day by governments of all stripes. Policies of "efficiency" promoted by large corporations with their own agenda. Their victory will leave a bleary landscape interrupted only by an occasional urban center.

This has, like most macro-economists dreams, proven to be a hell visited upon local economies. Profit and Loss doesn't include the quality of life inflicted by their one-sided accounting, nor the social costs attendant upon them.

A mythology about the benefits of scale has infused agriculture since the sixties.
Mindlessly transferring the efficiency of mass-production to farming practices, economists and their corporate mentors convinced the various levels of government to acquiess to the dismantling of the family farm economy causing devastation to rural communities though-out North America. Canada followed suit and a blind eye was turned to the plight of the small farmer. Various methods were put in place to mitigate the effects but the overall policies were codified by the 1969 "Federal Task Force on Agriculture report, Canadian Agriculture in the Seventies" and all political parties accepted the wisdom of this new reality.
It propounded a 2/3 reduction of farmers and a move to mass agricultural production.

Like video lottery machines, mass agriculture was the solution to provincial short-falls. The farmers would adjust or leave the land and eventually a new balance would emerge. We are now seeing the effects of this misguided policy as evidenced in the "crisis in agriculture".

It has only grown worse since then and western Canada is filled with dead or dying towns where real estate values have plummetted or evaporated, and in the villages that still survive the population is aged and dying. The children that remain can only impatiently wait to be of age to depart to the cities where they join the ranks of the urban poor. They express their rage and boredom with vandalism and ape the urban dress and customs of what they see on TV.

"Yo", "bro", and "ho" as well as wearing backward caps and baggy pants are part of their culture. It would be amusing if it wasn't so sad and so self-destuctive as they graduate from "booze" to "crack", to show how "cool" they are, like their urban counter-parts.

Meanwhile distress help lines are set up in most communities to deal with the mounting pressure on farm families. Suicide, marriage breakdowns, and child delinquency problems are endemic in the heartland. Seemingly prosperous farmyards hide a massive debt-load and declining income. A recent report shows farmers in a negative-income return situation. But the agricultural mega-corporations are making out like bandits. The move to privatization and the "new agriculture", dovetailed with the increasing mergers in the corporate world, has been very profitable to a few wealthy investors and corporations.

While drought and the BSE crisis have had an major impact, the problems go much deeper than that. Even without these setbacks most small to medium-sized farmers would still be struggling. As one local farmer expressed it "Even if you get more land you still can't make a decent living." Most survive by having a secondary job or business to cover the negative income part of farm life.

At one time farmers were an example in self-sufficiency. They grew different crops according to demand, they had fall-backs and supplied their own needs and sold the surplus products, from dairy to poultry; beef, pork and sheep; hay and feedgrains. But the demands and government regulations of modern farming have changed all that. Now they specialize, and most buy their milk and eggs at the nearest supermarket as well as most all the other foodstuff they used to grow or rear themselves. One of the largest dairy-farms in Manitoba is just 17 km away but the milk sold in my town is supplied by Parmalait and Dairyland, and shipped here from 200 km away. Poultry is twice the price it is in major cities. Beef can only be obtained reasonably if you buy bootlegged cattle. Quotas and packing regulations rule. 80% of pork production in Manitoba and Saskatchewan is controlled by the McCains subsiduary Maple Leaf Foods. Corn in my local store 'on sale" was shipped from Ste Catherines, Ontario. Vegetable prices are double or more that of the city.

The National Farmers Union is an organization which supports family farms and sustainable agriculture. They produced a recent study showing the fallacy of the big is better myth and also the static prices paid to farmers as compared to the return to the food conglomerates.

While farmers retained (in net income) about one dollar out of every two that they generated in the late 1940s, today farmers retain just one dollar in ten. While new technologies and inputs have helped farmers increase production by about $18 billion (from about $17 billion in the 1940s to about $35 billion today), the corporations that sold those inputs and technologies to farmers swallowed up not only the entire $18 billion in increased production revenue, but an additional $8 billion as well driving farmers’ net income down. Farmers increased their output and gross revenue, but input and technology makers captured 144% of that additional revenue. Over the past fifty years, for every dollar that new technologies and inputs have contributed to farmers’ revenues, farmers have been made to pay $1.44.

There is a apocolyptic war going on. I'm not talking of the aggressive war on mid-eastern people to control oil reserves nor the actions to maintain US hegemony over latin america. It is not centered in any area like traditional wars. It is a war for global control of the very basic lifestock of our existence. Our foods. The main protagonists are USA/Euro supported multi-national corporations, and traditional family farms.

It is usually characterized by the macro-economists as resistance to "better" farming practices. Irrational resistance to the productive "bottom line".

The problem is that the bottom line in finance has little
revelance to the "bottom line" in human social relations
and existence. It ignores culture, conditions of living, and
the very existence of societies and human life. It ignores
the penalties suffered by the very people it is a subset of.

I need not invoke the many farmers in areas of India who were forced to use Monsanto products after thousands of years of traditional farmimg only to find they could not afford all the cojunct chemicals needed. When they lost their family properties, over 300 committed suicide in protest in one district and the shame of losing the family lands. And now international corporations are also patenting seeds that peasants took 1000s of years to produce.

The shameful effects of the policies of Nestles and other neoliberal supported corporations are bankrupting 3rd world countries and driving their people into desperate poverty. The policies of the WTO, IMF, and other neo-liberal organisations policing agricultural policy in the third world ignore the heavily subsidised agricultural policies of the main powers. This puts the 3rd world at a disadvantage in competing for market.

So what has that to do with us? Why should I worry about what is happening in the 3rd world?

Because it is happening here and the "bottom line" is that you are going to be held ransom to massive corporate food-suppliers like ADM, Cargill, Tyson, the canadian potato megalith McCains (who own Maple Leaf Packers, the primary pork suppliers in Canada) and others that control all your foodstuff and determine the prices that you pay in your markets. They are closely allied to Monsanto and other corporations that control the seedstock , "enhance" our foods, and sell the final product to us. A monopoly of our foodstuff and their prices will have a greater effect on our lives than housing costs, mininum wage, or health-care.

The incidence of the increase of cancer, which is overwhelming if one looks at the statistics and which has been linked irrefutably to food additives and chemically-enhanced products, is part of this, but if one looks seriously at the influence and control of the "bottom line" multinational food corporations it is enough to make an ordinary paranoid catatonic.

Virtually all your cooking oil is controlled by agribusiness. That means that whether you use the "healthful" non-saturated oils like corn, soya, or canola, they are grown from genetically-patented seeds from the major suppliers like Cargill and Monsanto. Control of virtually all our food, from meat and fish, to fruit and vegetables, and grains and flour is in the hands of a rapidly diminishing, through mergers, corporate few.

Coupled with the corporate-friendly policies of the Bush administration you are a target for world-wide control even if EU anti-gm seed initiatives should escape US sanctions. All large western nations have instituted neo-liberal policies.

Factory farming is bad for your health. That hasn't escaped the conjecture of most thinking persons. Just like humans, too many animals in congested areas contribute to easier transferrence of disease. Like the rapid infection of vast numbers of chickens in the Fraser Valley crowded into enclosed areas, or the effect of disease on salmon farms and the transfer to wild stocks, not to mention the feed cannibalism causing BSE infected beefstocks.

Pig-farms have sparked many fights over thier pollution of local water resources and the unsustainability of the practice, so that the multi-national producers now have problems finding areas which will accept them. Not so in Canada, where the Manitoba government welcomed a huge pork-producing operation in the Brandon area, claiming that the plant would be a plus for the community in jobs and economic fall-out. When the plant had problems retaining workers due to low pay and oppressive working conditions, they received permission to import workers from latin america, holding forth citizenship status for those workers who stayed on the job a certain length of time. A released worker would be deported. No unions there. An old form of slavery. The city council of Brandon, Manitoba lauded the development and welcomed the latinos as contributers to the local economy and a tribute to multi-culturalism.

All of this has an effect on our country. All of this has an
effect on our health. The urban dweller can no longer
ignore the crucial issues which will determine much
more than the lack of daycare, gender rights, equal
housing, or racism.
We are in a fight for survival against the rapacious
conglomerates who want to control the very source of
our being, what we eat and drink.

Our food, our water, the very air we breathe, are under
attack, and we no longer have the luxury of being
disengaged if we care about our children, our families,
our country, our world.

A Chomski, Suzuki, Nader, Sting, or Bono can not save
our ass without a massive entry of ourselves into the
social equation.

Or we could simply "be cool" and watch reality shows
or film clips as it all winds down.



Some links:

John Ikerd

Stop the Hogs

Beyond Factory Farming

New Farm

Needed; A Rural Strategy

The Meatrix

I strongly recommend :
Studs Turkel the great American social commentator who wrote movingly in 1988 about the plight of the farmer in his book "the Great Divide" . He chronicled the hardships and betrayals that had befallen the "heartland of America" and the people who remained. It has only grown worse.

This article was published in Montreal Serai