Journalism or propaganda?

On Wednesday Global Affairs Canada issued a news release, in concert with the governments of Sweden, Ukraine and the UK, condemning Iran and demanding justice for the victims on flight PS752, the Ukrainian airliner shot down by Iranian missiles minutes after take-off from Tehran on January 8, 2020, resulting in the deaths of all 176 aboard. The news release runs a couple of hundred words. On Thursday The Globe and Mail reported on the news release. The story starts top left of the front page and gives you another dozen paragraphs on page 4. In a couple of thousand words it sheds no light on what may have transpired that day, but dwells on the suffering of the victims’ families and the odious malevolence of the Iranian regime. So what else was going on in Iran on January 8? While the Globe story doesn’t mention it, that was a dangerous day in Tehran. The Iranians had fired a barrage of cruise missiles at American military bases in Iraq that day, payback for the American assassination of Qasem Soleimani the previous week. That brazen hit, completely beyond the pale under international law, was authorized personally by America’s gangster-in-chief at the time, Donald Trump. So who can blame the Iranians for being a little jumpy? They were expecting imminent retaliation for the missile attack that killed no one but allegedly left over 100 US personnel with traumatic brain injuries. Shooting down a passenger airliner by mistake under those circumstances seems more than plausible. Oddly enough, that was also the excuse when the Americans shot down Iranian flight 655 in 1988, a passenger airliner, killing all 290 persons on board. These facts would have been considered essential in establishing context in the old days when The Globe and Mail used to do journalism. Now that they’ve re-invented themselves as a propaganda organ for American Exceptionalism, it’s become more important to avoid context.

Failed State Britain sees war with Russia as panacea for domestic collapse

Cameron and Hammond are gung-ho for war with Russia.

They're the only NATO bosses who talk a bigger game than perpetual war-mongers Tusk, Harper, and a couple of the Baltic pipsqueaks.

Not hard to see why the prospect of war is attractive to the dumbshits at Whitehall. Britain has been in a one-way death-spiral ever since the Thatcher era. It's a great place if you're a bond-trader in the City or a plumber from Poland or a beggar from Bulgaria, but not so great for those ordinary folks formerly known as "Brits".

In fact, somebody recently did the math and concluded that if Britain were an American state, it would be the poorest state with the possible exception of Mississippi, and there are a gaggle of Mississippi economists taking issue with that.

So with un-earned riches from North Sea Oil dwindling, an ossified political elite who believe in nothing other than their own privileges, and an exponentially expanding underclass that will only remain "under" for so long,
that elite is prepared to push the world into war just to avoid the consequences of the last forty years of governmental dysfunction and horrendously wrong-headed policies.  

Frack Off!

"Fracking", or hydraulic fracturing, is all the rage these days. Apparently it has breathed life into entirely dead economies in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Dakota, and beyond, by using "new" technology to tap hitherto inaccessible or exhausted oil and gas deposits.

The technology has been around for decades. What's new is its application on an industrial scale. All ya gotta do is pump mystery cocktails of toxic industrial chemicals into the earth under extreme pressure, and the laws of physics does the rest.

But wait? Isn't our water coming out of that same earth?

Hey, not to worry... the oil industry's scientists and engineers are all over it. They done figured out how to make it safe. What could possibly go wrong?

UK PM Cameron has gone all in for fracking. This is possibly the last move in the long-running campaign to destroy Britain once and for all.

From the union-busting of Thatcher to Tony Blair's squandering of the treasury on stupid and counterproductive wars, to the trebling of university fees, to the creation of a new underclass worthy of Dickens, they've sure buggered up their country.

Apparently they're not finished yet.