Hello Alphabet Overlords! Time to take stock

It's been over 19 years since I created this account, and I am grateful.

You have provided a platform that has allowed me to reach out to all the world.

This was a crazy idea to me at the time. Who was I to merit such a broad audience? As soon as I hit that big, beautiful Publish button, any tripe I felt like spewing out to the world was placed upon a platter, and thrust out to whomever might wander into it, be they critical thinkers of advanced schooling, or babes in the proverbial woods, ready to be led down any candy-strewn path I artfully laid out. What fun!

O what fun indeed.

How devilishly we could now bypass all the gatekeepers carefully put in place by governmental agencies designed to keep at least a second, accountable, pair of eyes between any silly idea I might have, and the masses of media consumers.

I quickly learned that despite having completed a BA in journalism and communications at Concordia University, wherein only third-year students got to dip their toes into opinion writing - with learned professors guiding our neophyte hubris into responsible conjecture, anything I posted here was at an even keel with anything anybody else felt like posting here. All any of us needed was an email address, free for the taking on (take your pick) hotmail, yahoo, gmail, aol, and many others. 

This was not normal; in fact, it was revolutionary. Before this platform existed, we had to either suck up to The Man (you must always capitalize the T and the M in that construction if you want to get ahead) and sell our souls licking enough bums to get up to the "column-writer" floor, or go punk rock to make our voices heard. And that required at least learning a handful of guitar chords and organizing a couple of people to supply a rhythm section and a PA.

So yes, thank you, Blogger (long ago acquired by "Do No Evil" Google, before they went public and eventually dropped that motto, because a little evil never hurt, right?) becoming Alphabet, much like Facebook and Instagram are now part of Meta, so it goes.

I recall in my 1988 interview with the Concordia Journalism heads, that I made a case for the need for journalistic copy to have entertainment value, in an age where television ruled and the general public was drawn more to the sensationalism and emotive reach of that medium than to the sanguine realm of the written word. 

Today, I seek the written word still in my news-hounding habits, preferring the written account on cnn.com or globaltv.com or aljazeera.net to their YouTube videos or snippets on other platforms. I have no idea how many of the Websites in this blog's sidebar remain relevant, and I actually prefer to keep it that way, as some kind of modern relic to a past that changes and folds in upon itself too quickly for me to even attempt to keep up. And our legacy news media are becoming increasingly degraded by money and foreign ownership by outfits with dubious and sometimes nefarious ambitions. They are prey to the behemoth of "lost eyeballs" to newer, online-only (and largely unregulated) media known harrowingly as "influencers" despite their needing no more credence to the title than the same access to online publishing as any of us have, disastrously.

Only the non-profit LaPresse seems to have found a model of online journalism that is sustainable, and that is likely impossible to recreate outside of Quebec's distinctly French-speaking media market bubble.

Looking back, I have certainly failed to garner much of an audience on this platform, as well as on my Twitter, Bluesky and Youtube accounts, perhaps because I lack the savvy and fastidiousness of others; or perhaps because I haven't kept posting regularly; never spent any money to buy followers; never sold out to Russian or other foreign interests; never said anything here that wasn't purely from the heart, or easily read off my tattered sleeve, as it were.

But today I am in a different mindset than 19 years ago. Today I worry that too few of our younger generations give any credence to the written word. It is so hard to convince my 11 year-old daughter or her older brothers and sister of the joy and growth they can experience with reading a goddamned book once in a while. Or even getting their news from sources that parlay the facts, eschew bias and refuse to "go to print" with single-sourced information they haven't yet corroborated. 

The editorial function is vital to keeping the general public informed without prejudice. And an ill-informed public has a crippling effect on democracy. And if we lose our democracy, we will live in a state of misery only past generations of Canadians, long since passed from this mortal coil, have known. I want better than that for my family. We must get everyone reading, and thinking critically, and demanding factual, second-source-verifiable information, before making a decision.

Today, I seek out these sources for reliable information:

juancole.com

aljazeera.com

bsky.social

therover.ca

thetyee.ca

ricochet.media

lapresse.ca (Quebecois French)

radio-canada and cbc news (avoiding much of the opinion stuff)

 

And do make a habit of reading books, gentle reader, always. I recently finished Sarah Kendzior's They Knew and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and I am now in the throes of Crosses in the Sky by Mark Bourrie. I am re-reading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, who in particular, writes so beautifully it lifts me to heights I never before imagined. 

Again, thank you, Alphabet, for the platform. I hope I haven't contributed too much to the crapfest of stupidity, despite needing to be my own editor. As we say here in la Belle Province, c'est plat.

 - 30 -

The end of American democracy

[This ruling] ...creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now "lies about like a loaded weapon" for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation… The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune…

 

The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.

--Dissenting opinion of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor

 

Earlier today - Canada Day for us Canadians, now even prouder so than e'er before, given how much we tend to define ourselves in relation to our southern neighbors (you no longer rate the British "u" in this neighbourhood, bro") - the American republic effectively self-immolated.

 

As the British would say, that's a wash. As in, when Richard M. Nixon, post-resignation, said in the famous 1977 Frost interview, "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."

 

For my whole life, since learning US history from Saturday morning US of Archie cartoons on American network TV, I have been told of the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution. It used to matter. All pols used to declare their steadfast allegiance to that document, to its principles, above all else. But that's all gone now.

 

I'm talking about the whole American experiment with democracy. That thing that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and a few others got going back in the 18th century that was all built on the concepts of the Age of Reason and a Declaration of Independence.

 

Oh, it was a nice bit of theater for a quarter-millenium, but in the end, the concept of three co-equal branches of government fucked itself over. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States of America gave carte-blanche to completely immasculate itself to one of the two other branches (the Executive one, the President).

 

This is all a scam, of course, to help foster criminal immunity to Donald J. Trump, that rascal of rascals, who has crimed his way to the very top of an international crime syndicate masquerading as a government, as U.S. journalist and author Sarah Kendzior so bluntly ascribed this cabal of the omni-rich plutocracy/autocracy/kleptocracy (basically, if it ends in ocracy and isn't prefixed by "dem" you know you're one of the chumps on the outside looking in).

 

Meanwhile, the sometimes-coherent current President of the United States, Joseph Robinet (that means "sink faucet" in French btw) Biden decried this judgment as "a dangerous precedent… The only limits will be self-imposed by the president."

The presidency is the most powerful office in the world. It's an office that not only tests your judgment; perhaps even more importantly, it's an office that can test your character.

Because you're not only faced with moments where you need the courage to exercise the full power of the office of the presidency. You also face moments where you need the wisdom to respect the limits of the power of the presidency. This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. Each of us is equal before the law. No one is above the law - not even the President of the United States. But (with) today's Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. For all practical purposes, today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a President can do. This is a fundamentally new principle. And it's a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even and inclucing the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the President.

 

I watched this 73-second performance a few times while transcribing it. It leaves me more bereft than hopeful.

 

Like his steadfast support for the Zionist project of Israel in the Levant, where the worst proclivities of the ruling class render him a worldwide laughingstock while Netanyahu's racist and autocratic government continues its brutal assault on the Gazans and West Bank Palestinians in what will surely be seen in years hence as a classic and particularly heinous crime against humanity, Biden's outrage on this quintessential and existential crisis in the American project lands deflated of the gravity deserving of the matter at hand, regardless of how expertly-coined his comms team has so painstakingly crafted each word for his oh-so-forgiving teleprompter.

 

Ironically, it was just last year, just before the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, that the Israeli Supreme Court (as a branch of a governing structure greatly inspired by the American model) found itself forced to affirm its own sanctity within the political structure, thwarting the dictatorial impulses of the wily President. 

Like a good disciple of US President George W. Bush, Bibi knows well the self-preserving balm furnished by being a "War President" prosecuting an esoteric war of unattainable goals. Until All Terrorists Against the USA Are Completely Destroyed, meet: Until All of Hamas Is Completely Destroyed - in both cases, creating more enemies among the survivors with each coldly-calculated war crime. So to perpetuate the state of endless war, and the need to seek refuge in the Great, Strong Protector-Leader Who Will Keep Us All Safe™

(that is Fascism, folks. That scourge that cost some 61 million lives between 1937-45)

 

Biden obviously doesn't know what he is doing. On one hand, he is trying to uphold the concept of the integrity of the nation-state against naked aggression (Russia's invasion of Ukraine), while on the other, he unquestioningly supports the Israeli-Zionist cause as it follows the worst examples of Nazi Germany in dehumanizing the Palestinians whose only real crime is being in their way (of total domination of some of the most precious real estate in the world).

Carl Bernstein on CNN, earlier today: Multiple sources tell him that there have been at least 15 occasions in the last year and a half “where the president has appeared like he did at that horror show (his debate performance).” Bernstein reports that in the last six months sources have told him that there has been a marked incidence of cognitive decline. He says that his sources have gone to Ron Klain in the last year to express concern about the President losing his train of thought and not having the ability to pick up where he left off.

If this is the most powerful man in the world, one must ask, why does he appear so desperately weak?

 

As history shows us, it is the perfect recipe for an authoritarian with the very worst impulses to come up and assume power.

 

Biden must step down. Or the United States is over. And that leaves the world in a very unstable place.

 

 - 30 -

Further reading:

https://www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org/

Gaza genocide: We can stop this if we all push

Today in Montreal, the courts ruled in favour of the students camped out in support of the Palestinian people against the overblown Israeli government's genocidal response to the Hamas attack of last October.

McGill University had sought an injunction to forcibly remove them, but ultimately was thwarted by the Quebec Superior Court and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (ahem, Mr. Anthony Housefather).

When I was in school (alas, decades ago), I was introduced to the Clash and like them, I studied how the CIA destroyed the Chilean socialist govt of Allende (the Chilean 9/11) and what Nixon and his Sec. of State Kissinger did to Southeast Asia, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas), El Salvador and on and on, so I have no illusions of the USA being the good guys (but as Canadians, we are kinda' geographically stuck being their international lackeys).

In this case, with how events are spiraling out of control in the Middle East, it seems bigger. It seems like a real point of no return is happening here.

Anyway, I am currently reading a book called They Knew by Sarah Kendzior. She is a 40-something US investigative journalist and she has all the receipts about the corruption between Bibi, the Saudis, Modi, Putin, Trump, the UAE (and many other powerful US pols, Republican and Democratic), and yes, Stephen Harper and his patently anti-democratic, Orwellian-named group, the International Democratic Union, that is working hard behind the scenes to put autocratic dictators in power everywhere they can. 

Meanwhile, I see Egypt joining with South Africa in calling on the ICJ to prosecute Israel for genocide, breaking with a truce they've had with Israel since I was a little boy (also surely breaking former US President Jimmy Carter's 99 year-old heart - although I can almost picture him silently nodding in resigned accord).

But at the same time, we must be encouraged by these student protests.

When I was a young college student, I watched the Berlin Wall fall - the Iron Curtain as well -  and the pressure people all over the world put on the Afrikaaners, Botha and later deKlerk, to free Nelson Mandela and eventually end Apartheid in South Africa. 

Yeah, no way would you catch us playing Sun City.

Mandela's ANC was a "terrorist" and "communist" organization, as our news outlets pointedly reminded us at every opportunity. It isn't without irony that Hamas and Hezbollah are listed as such today. 

Now, they are both surely ruthlessly brutal in their methods (Hamas especially, as we saw on October 7, 2023), but when a people have been put in a position where they see no other way to survive, what else should one expect?

As even the untrustworthy Israeli government attests, the Palestinians in the West Bank (including their leaders) had nothing to do with the October attack, despite the fact that for decades, their physical environment has been forcibly shrunk. Lately, their homes have even being torched or stolen by Jewish "settlers" (at the pleasure of the Israeli justice system) with no recourse. 

Meanwhile, this current starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza is a Bibi-made horror. 

Essentially, Joe Biden is making this horror story possible with his almost maudlin, unwavering support of this Israeli government, sealed with the kiss of UN Security Council vetoes and endless shipments of bombs and arms. Clearly, Biden must stop Bibi and the Likud and the cabal of Kahanists and their other dehumanizing rightwing allies currently in charge of Israel, and he should have done so months ago.

So I made a small donation today to UNRWA to help alleviate the Gazans' suffering. And I put my moral support behind the protesting students, and I wish to remind you all that at least one time in my life, we witnessed a change that came about from the steadfast pressure common people put on South Africa to end Apartheid, and it actually worked.

And maybe, just maybe, we can do it again.

If we all push.

PUSH!

- 30 -

PS: please go to wikipedia.org or juancole.com or aljazeera.com or cbc.ca for supporting links not provided. Or better yet, get yourself some hard copies of what's going on now. The links might not last forever.

PS 2: shameless addition of self-aggrandizing video but hey, it's also a gol-dang catchy song: 

Keep your feet planted, folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJoX95fK_N8