Don’t be a Traitor to Canada

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As I write this, Canadian news media are racing to cover and explain the story that the racist felon fascist president, Donald Trump, has imposed 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. This is a concerted effort to cause their economies to collapse, and in Canada’s case, to bully us into submission and allow our nation to be subsumed into his empire. As I have written on social media in the past, he is following Hitler’s playbook: his Rhineland move is to send troops into … click below for more ↓

The New Fascists Have Arrived. American Democracy is Dead.

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I get no satisfaction from saying ‘I told you so’ and ‘I warned you about them.’ But I did, over and over. So did many, many others, all of them far more informed and experienced in politics, reporting, and history than I. They warned about fascism. They warned about racism. They warned about criminal behaviour. They warned about the oligarchs. They warned about Project 2025. But millions of Americans ignored them and elected a convicted felon, a blatant grifter in cognitive decline who openly lied … click below for more ↓

The Rise and Fall of Self-Checkout

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I refuse on moral, ethical, and simply human grounds, to use a self-checkout at any local store where they are installed. My initial reaction to them was outrage: this is how big retail chains get rid of employees and reduce their staff and thus human costs. This is how people at the lower end of the wage scales get unemployed but CEOS and executives get bonuses. It also means the customer is forced to play the role of cashier without any monetary benefit from doing … click below for more ↓

Normalizing Fascism: The Paradox of Tolerance

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The Brexit campaign succeeded on a platform that cultivated anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Donald Trump’s campaigns have succeeded twice on platforms that increasingly cultivated anger, fear, misogyny, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation. Pierre PoiLIEvre, head of Canada’s now far-right MAGA-mimicking CONservative Party campaigns on a platform that cultivates anger, fear, conspiracies, and racism based on lies and disinformation in the hope of succeeding as the next Prime Minister. If Canada’s electorate is ignorant enough, and has … click below for more ↓

Enemy of the State

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It was very clear from his first presidential campaign that Donald Trump was adversarial to the very notion of the USA, to its Constitution, to its judiciary, laws, courts, police, military, schools, to its free speech, its allies and trading partners, and its media. It was very clear from the outset that he intended to be a dictator, not a president, and he cared nothing for established processes, laws, and institutions. He intended to rule by himself, for himself. And he did, for four years. … click below for more ↓

Why Are People Leaving Xitter En Masse?

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The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. That’s the headline for a piece in today’s Guardian newspaper. People and corporations are turning to other social media platforms because of what Xitter has become since Musk bought it and started using it as his own platform to spread racist hatred, lies, disinformation, and AI fakes, while enabling the far-right extremists to spread their own propaganda. Anyone surprised that users and advertisers are fed up with … click below for more ↓

Class Struggle, Slavery, TV, and Trump

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Long before Blandings, long before Downtown Abbey, long before Upstairs, Downstairs (both the 1971 original and the short-lived 2010 remake), even long before The Duchess of Duke Street, there was a popular TV show about class, servitude, and servants. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t British (or more properly, English): it was American. That show was called Hazel and it ran for five seasons from 1961 to 1966. It was so popular that it spawned a short-lived competitor on a different network, Our Man Higgins, featuring the … click below for more ↓

Atheists Beware: Trump Will Come For You, Too

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While women and immigrants will initially be the main target of the Talibangelists in the upcoming Trump theocracy, they will not be the only victims of Trumpist repression. Among the many targets of his vindictive agenda of vengeance and punishment will be both believers of other faiths and non-believers. Perhaps the main difference in treatment will be that women will be repressed, their rights and careers taken away, and expected to be baby factories, while others will be arrested, put into camps, jailed, and in … click below for more ↓

Democracy or Fascism?

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We are, today, watching the most momentous decision that Americans have had to make in the entirety of their — and my own — lifetimes. Compared to the choice between Harris and felon Trump, all other elections seem almost inconsequential. That’s because never before was the whole fabric of democracy at risk. Never before has an openly racist, misogynist, totalitarian, cognitively-addled felon come so close to winning the presidency. Never before has the entire American experiment been on the scales. The choices are stark: between … click below for more ↓

Imagine There’s No Heaven…

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The title above is how Imagine, the iconic 1971 song by John Lennon, begins. It is still being played and sung, more than 50 years later. Wikipedia tells us it is “one of the 100 most performed songs of the 20th century.” The song was re-released as a single in 1980 following Lennon’s murder, reaching number one on the UK charts. It was re-released in 1988 and again in 1999. For some listeners, myself included, that first verse was an opening to an atheist anthem … click below for more ↓

How Did Democracy Come To This Sorry State?

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My wife and I are members of the Boomer generation. That means our parents, their families, and their friends, their neighbours and their communities were impacted by World War II. In our family, our parents  — British and Canadian — fought against the Nazis, fought against fascism, fought to keep the world safe for democracy. They endured six years of hell and deprivation so Susan and I could live a normal life. Many millions who fought for our freedoms died, often in horrible, lonely, and … click below for more ↓

Meta Doesn’t Like Me

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. That’s how Edward Fitzgerald translated the 51st quatrain of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in his first edition of his book (1859). Fitzgerald might have done that translation differently had he known of our modern social media. Social media firms can “wash out” not just words, but posts, threads, and even … click below for more ↓

Trump: America’s Mussolini

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While Trump’s racist, misogynist running mate, JD “Shady” Vance, in 2016 called Donald Trump, “America’s Hitler,” (before he became a Trump sycophant) it was really a dictator too far. Trump, the racist felon and serial liar candidate for the US presidency, is far more like Benito Mussolini than Hitler in many ways. Of course, I realize their political careers are not parallel and that Trump has not yet managed to be the dictator he so clearly plans to be if re-elected (a dictator only on … click below for more ↓

A Time for Political Optimism at Last

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After many dreary months of the relentless, pounding negativity, insults, accusations, lies, deflections, racism, and rage-farming of a convicted felon, tax cheat, and serial liar Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, we now have a significant counterbalance to give us — including those of us outside the USA — hope for America’s political and social future: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Wow. What a change. Instead of the vituperative MAGA firehose of lies, insults, slurred and mispronounced words, cognitive slips, more lies, racist and misogynist insults, sleazy … click below for more ↓

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