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Mainstream Media Toe the Government Line Even in Canada

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We’ve all heard the complaints about the “mainstream media” in the U.S. twisting their reportage to reflect the government’s positions on various events. I’ve always taken it for granted that Toronto’s mainstream media doesn’t do that. Certainly not in a city with four daily newspapers served by a bulging bullpen of the best and most sophisticated writers and editors in the world.

My chagrin was triggered when Russia understandably annexed Crimea. That was following a large majority vote in the historically Russian all-weather seaport that Stalin had assigned to Ukraine when it was no more Ukrainian than Moscow was and is. It was all Soviet Union back then. Ukraine, by the way, was invented by the German general staff prior to World War I in order to provide Germany a supply of wheat and eggs in the anticipated boycotts, barricades and battles to come.

The four Toronto dailies and their cohorts around our nation leapt to support Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his U.S.-inspired vision of America’s war machine NATO ruling the world and posting missiles on Ukrainian ground boldly targeting adjacent Russia.

I was shocked at how knee-jerk their editorial responses were. It makes one wonder whether it’s their corporate masters or some federal hanky-panky at play such as not designating them “traitors,” or maybe more advertising revenue or tax-break offers. The Harper regime spends countless millions of our tax dollars advertising itself to Canadians.

The Ukrainian situation is vastly different than we are reading in our media. That is, if you do what most people don’t do and seek credible alternative explanations on the Internet. That’s especially important to do soon on the off-chance that the Internet will be censored in the cause of fighting “terrorism” if Canada follows the U.S. route and becomes a police state as America surely is.

You aren’t to be blamed for not doing that. It requires researching and finding credible critics and authoritative sources.

So in that regard, I can help. I’ve been researching alternative viewpoints that don’t make the mainstream media and observations by informed academics, journalists, researchers and investigators.

There are many on the Internet, which so far is the most readily available source of complementary opinions that wander different paths than any the

Webster Griffin Tarpley. PhD

Webster Griffin Tarpley. PhD

mainstream trod. For audio and video commentary from all these, just search them on the Internet. They are all prolific, authoritative and informative.

For a good historical perspective and compelling current commentary on world events there is Webster Griffin Tarpley (www.tarpley.net), a PhD

historian who speaks a number of languages, travels often from his base in Washington D.C. and is a passionate progressive. His weekly World Crisis Radio report is not to be missed.

Another savvy historian and economist is Paul Craig Roberts, PhD, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Pres. Ronald Reagan, a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal (www.paulcraigroberts.org) and a devastating critic of U.S. hegemony and military-financial tyranny.

The light-footed, insightful and often-hilarious trends forecaster and publisher of Trends Journal, Gerald Celente (www.trendsresearch.com), operates

Benito Mussolini: father of fascism

Benito Mussolini: father of fascism

from an historic building in Kingston, N.Y., dances the boogie at the drop of a whim and tells the truth about “white-shoe-boy” bankers and big-wigs, as do the others. Only Gerald tells it  funnier.

 

Gerald tells the very unfunny tale of the ghost who is running the Harper government and most other Western allies: Benito Mussolini. He invented the term fascism which, as Gerald relates, means the merger of government and corporate power. Sounds like Canada, dont’cha think?

The most controversial yet intensively well-researched and authoritative film-maker/commentator of the U.S./British-based one-world tyranny is the unlovely Alex Jones (www.infowars.com). He has been at it for a couple of decades, has learned from his many mistakes and has come close to perfecting an alternative news operation that sniffs out the lies and deceptions of our rulers and mercilessly exposes them in front of an audience of scores of millions of listeners and viewers.

Waning CNN and Fox News must envy that success.

Alex is probably the world’s worst interviewer. A phone call from a listener is like a Rorschach slide for Alex who flies off in whatever mental direction it takes him, leaving most call-in listeners tongue-tied as Alex rants on, triggered by the first few words from the caller.

Paul Craig Roberts, PhD

Paul Craig Roberts, PhD

Rants are a key element of Alex’s teaching style. He can ramble furiously in whatever direction a keyword moves him until he runs out of breath or has lost the thread or has just had enough. “I’m ranting,” he declares, and moves on to another caller or another theme.

He is a skilled filmmaker, has a staff of skilled filmmakers, and is a threat to the “new world order” that the first bad Bush president threatened us with in a thousand-points-of-lights message that triggered images of Satanism.

That latter philosophy, by the way, is what Alex thinks drives the national elites and New World Order creeps who meet in a California woods that Alex infiltrated, recorded segments of and reported on in great, frightening detail, including the image of an owl they seemed to worship.

You’ll have to put up with his pitches for vitamin supplements and various nostrums Alex peddles to help finance his increasingly costly operation.

Alex Jones, Infowars.com

Alex Jones, Infowars.com

Needless to say he’s so controversial that, despite his massive audience, there are few major advertisers who would appear on his website and various Internet feeds.

Alex remains chubby, despite his efforts to shed weight. But probably his hyperactive work style and save-the-world-from-the-demons enthusiasm take that as their toll on the guy.

He promises to never commit suicide. So if he’s ever found with a bullet in his head, or his car wrapped around a tree, somebody killed him.

Frank Touby is editor of The Bulletin, Journal of Downtown Toronto

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How Canadian churches are helping their communities cope with the wildfires

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As wildfires burn across Canada, churches are finding ways to support their members and the broader community directly impacted by the crisis.

According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, as of June 13, there are 462 active fires across Canada – and 236 of them classified as out of control fires.

Whether it’s through phone calls or donations to community members, here’s how a few churches across Canada are handling active wildfires and the aftermath in their regions.

Westwood Hills, N.S.: St. Nicholas Anglican Church

In Nova Scotia, St. Nicholas Anglican Church and other churches in the area are collecting money for grocery cards to give to families impacted by the Tantallon wildfire. 

Right outside of Halifax, N.S., the Tantallon wildfire destroyed 151 homes. More than 16,000 people evacuated the area due to the fire.

The fire is now considered contained, but Tanya Moxley, the treasurer at St. Nicholas is organizing efforts to get grocery gift cards into the hands of impacted families.

As of June 12, four churches in the area – St. Nicholas, Parish of French Village, St Margaret of Scotland and St John the Evangelist – raised nearly $3,500. The money will be split for families’ groceries between five schools in the area impacted by the wildfire.

Moxley said she felt driven to raise this money after she heard the principal of her child’s school was using his own money to buy groceries for impacted families in their area.

“[For] most of those people who were evacuated, the power was off in their subdivision for three, four or five days,” she said. “Even though they went home and their house was still standing, the power was off and they lost all their groceries.”

Moxley said many people in the area are still “reeling” from the fires. She said the church has an important role to help community members during this time.

“We’re called to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and house the homeless and all that stuff, right? So this is it. This is like where the rubber hits the road.”

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Is it ever OK to steal from a grocery store?

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Mythologized in the legend of Robin Hood and lyricized in Les Misérables, it’s a debate as old as time: is it ever permissible to steal food? And if so, under what conditions? Now, amid Canada’s affordability crisis, the dilemma has extended beyond theatrical debate and into grocery stores.

Although the idea that theft is wrong is both a legally enshrined and socially accepted norm, the price of groceries can also feel criminally high to some — industry data shows that grocery stores can lose between $2,000 and $5,000 a week on average from theft. According to Statistics Canada, most grocery item price increases surged by double digits between 2021 and 2022. To no one’s surprise, grocery store theft is reportedly on the rise as a result. And if recent coverage of the issue rings true, some Canadians don’t feel bad about shoplifting. But should they?

Kieran Oberman, an associate professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, coined the term “re-distributive theft” in his 2012 paper “Is Theft Wrong?” In simplest terms, redistributive theft is based on the idea that people with too little could ethically take from those who have too much.

“Everybody, when they think about it, accepts that theft is sometimes permissible if you make the case extreme enough,” Oberman tells me over Zoom. “The question is, when exactly is it permissible?”

Almost no one, Oberman argues, believes the current distribution of wealth across the world is just. We have an inkling that theft is bad, but that inequality is too. As more and more Canadians feel the pinch of inflation, grocery store heirs accumulate riches — Loblaw chair and president Galen Weston, for instance, received a 55 percent boost in compensation in 2022, taking in around $8.4 million for the year. Should someone struggling with rising prices feel guilty when they, say, “forget” to scan a bundle of zucchini?

https://broadview.org/stealing-groceries/
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The homeless refugee crisis in Toronto illustrates Canada’s broken promises

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UPDATE 07/18/2023: A coalition of groups arranged a bus to relocate refugees to temporarily stay at a North York church on Monday evening, according to CBC, CP24 and Toronto Star reports.

Canadians live in a time of threadbare morality. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Toronto’s entertainment district, where partygoers delight in spending disposable income while skirting refugees sleeping on sidewalks. The growing pile of luggage at the downtown corner of Peter and Richmond streets resembles the lost baggage section at Pearson airport but is the broken-hearted terminus at the centre of a cruel city.

At the crux of a refugee funding war between the municipal and federal governments are those who have fled persecution for the promise of Canada’s protection. Until June 1, asylum seekers used to arrive at the airport and be sent to Toronto’s Streets to Homes Referral Assessment Centre at 129 Peter St. in search of shelter beds. Now, Toronto’s overcrowded shelter system is closed to these newcomers, so they sleep on the street.

New mayor Olivia Chow pushed the federal government Wednesday for at least $160 million to cope with the surge of refugees in the shelter system. She rightly highlights that refugees are a federal responsibility. In response, the department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada points to hundreds of millions in dollars already allocated to cities across Canada through the Interim Housing Assistance Program, while Ontario says it has given nearly $100 million to organizations that support refugees. But these efforts are simply not enough to deliver on Canada’s benevolent promise to the world’s most vulnerable.

The lack of federal generosity and finger-pointing by the city has orchestrated a moral crisis. It’s reminiscent of the crisis south of the border, where Texas governor Greg Abbott keeps bussing migrants to cities located in northern Democratic states. Without the necessary resources, information, and sometimes the language skills needed to navigate the bureaucratic mazes, those who fled turbulent homelands for Canada have become political pawns.

But Torontonians haven’t always been this callous.

In Ireland Park, at Lake Ontario’s edge, five statues of gaunt and grateful refugees gaze at their new home: Toronto circa 1847. These statues honour a time when Toronto, with a population of only 20,000 people, welcomed 38,500 famine-stricken migrants from Ireland. It paralleled the “Come From Away” event of 9/11 in Gander, N.L., where the population doubled overnight, and the people discovered there was indeed more than enough for all. It was a time when the city lived up to its moniker as “Toronto, The Good.”

Now, as a wealthy city of three million people, the city’s residents are tasked with supporting far fewer newcomers. Can we not recognize the absurdity in claiming scarcity?

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