To John Wayne Fans Everywhere

Apparently, the screen hero had the proverbial feet of clay. There is no context that can justify these indefensible views, expressed in a 1971 Playboy interview:







H/t Brian Karem

UPDATED: With Age Comes Wisdom

But clearly, only for some:



UPDATE: Trump tweeted out the above video, despite the 'white power" proclamation at its beginning. He later withdrew it, claiming he hadn't heard the offending phrase.

Hmm, about as believable as his Sgt. Shultz-like assertion that he 'knew nothing' about Russia offering the Taliban a bounty on the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, eh?

UPDATED:Theirs Is Not To Reason

Owen's blog post today discusses how the world sees the United States as a nation to be shunned, one of the reasons being its entirely inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Clearly, its refusal to confront this peril in a responsible, mature manner means that its citizens have become a deadly threat to other countries. My hope is that our country keeps our border closed to them indefinitely.

Last night, NBC Nightly News devoted the first six minutes to the surge of cases in various states. To say the least, the situation is dire. That was followed, as you will see at the 5:50 mark below, by a report on how the wearing of masks, an effective method of reducing transmission of the virus, is still a highly contentious, highly politicized matter in the Benighted States of America.



UPDATE: If this unmasked woman were infected, I wonder how far her viral droplets would travel, given her highly agitated state:

It’s funny how some people assume people that wear a mask *must* be on the left.

Because only the left doesn’t want to spread disease? 🤷‍♂️

pic.twitter.com/LQZ0dv2tsC

— Stephen Punwasi (@StephenPunwasi) June 27, 2020

An Alternate Reality

With a pathological liar as its president, it probably does not come as a shock that many Americans live in an alternate reality. Promoted and cultivated endlessly by Donald Trump, their master, and spread wide by pernicious social media and house organs like Fox 'News' and One American News Network, it is a version of things that until recently would have been deemed credible only to the uneducated, cognitively challenged, or the completely unhinged. Sadly, many more appear to be regularly drinking from these poisoned waters.

Bruce Anderson writes:

Knowledge of the world seems to be deteriorating in America, abetted by a president—ignorant of the world himself—whose formula for political success depends on more people becoming less informed.

Despite all that has been responsibly reported about Russian interference, Trumpian malfeasance and his daily record of gross incompetence, a recent Abacus poll yielded some disheartening results:

If Trump loses, most Republican voters say they will believe the election was rigged. If he tries to stay in office after losing, they wouldn’t want the military to enforce the election results. In other words, their trust in or need for him is so powerful they don’t stop to think what sort of precedent it would set to leave the country in a state of impasse.

As many Americans think Russia is America’s best friend as think France, Italy or Germany is. This despite America having spent decades in a military alliance with France, Italy and Germany to protect against Russian military ambition, despite proven Russian use of cyberwarfare to disrupt American social peace and elections.

It would appear that those polled have little insight into their country's relations with the rest of the world:

Under Trump’s time in office, Republicans are four times more likely to say relations with Canada have improved (41 per cent), than think they have worsened (8 per cent). This is mindless partisanship—the facts of the last few years were almost constant tension around NAFTA, dairy subsidies, steel and aluminum tariffs, the idea of Canada as a security risk, the G7 Charlevoix summit friction. But for Republican voters everything seems to be going swimmingly.

Less than 12 per cent of Republican voters think U.S. relations have soured with Great Britain, France or Germany. This despite almost constant friction in these relationships, on topics from trade to NATO to climate change to refugee and immigration policy. Trump has by all accounts a terrible relationship with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. He was on bad terms with U.K. Conservative Prime Minister Teresa May and launched scathing attacks on London’s Mayor.

In a time when the world sees the U.S. for what it has become, 80 per cent of Republicans think Trump has made America greater.

Canada has good reason to worry about living next door to an unhinged giant:

Half of Republican voters would go along with abandoning NORAD, roughly a third would support building a wall and putting troops along the Canadian border. Happily, most Americans are against invading Canada to get at our resources. But stop and think about the fact that only 56 per cent of Americans strongly oppose the idea.

As children, almost all of us indulged in fantasies of one kind or another. It now appears that many Americans have entered a second, much darker childhood.

Let us not be in any hurry to reopen our borders to such a diseased nation.

Just In Case The Blood Of The Lamb Doesn't Protect You

... these pastors have a backup plan:

Dream City Church, the north Phoenix megachurch set to host a Donald Trump rally on June 23, claims it has solved the pandemic problem in its auditorium, making it safe for anyone who wants to attend.

In a video posted on Sunday, Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Chief Operations Officer Brendon Zastrow announce happily that the church has installed a new air-purification system that kills 99.9 percent of the coronavirus. The technology, they say, was developed by members of the church.

A megachurch is hosting Trump's rally on Tuesday in Phoenix. These two con-men falsely claim they've installed a system which kills 99.9% of COVID-19.

Arizona's Coronavirus numbers are surging. Madness...pic.twitter.com/6mgM8BLhO9

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 22, 2020

Despite their evangelical fervour for this technology, caution is clearly warranted. Consider first what the fine print of Clean Air EXP, the company behind this marvel, says:

"COVID-19 REPORT: Lab tests confirm that CleanAir EXP eliminates 99.9% of coronavirus from the air in less than 10 minutes.*"

The footnote states, "* Biosafety lab analysis performed on active coronavirus 229E test surrogate."

Coronavirus 229E is one of the viruses responsible for the common cold that's often used in virus studies.

But even if the technology can eliminate the surrogate virus in 10 minutes, such studies are done in controlled laboratory settings. They don’t necessarily apply to something like the interior of a megachurch. How much air a system can process in a set time would play a role. Clean Air EXP's website states that its home system takes a few hours to purify the air: "Most homes see a 90% reduction of particulates and contaminants within 4 hours, and 99.8% reduction in 6 hours or less."

A larger, commercial system can purify more air than a home unit, presumably. But it's hard to see how 99 percent of COVID-19 could be eliminated from the church auditorium before people arrive. Also, saying attendees would be "safe and protected" when they come to the rally overstates the ability of any air-purifying system to prevent transmission by infected people in a crowd.

Faith, it has been said, can move mountains. As of this writing, it remains to be seen if faith in an unproven technology can conquer Covid-19.

A Unified Theory Of ....

I'll leave you to supply the appropriate term to reflect this gentleman's 'insights':

These are the type of people who should be pepper sprayed, not peaceful protesters pic.twitter.com/hibwzJfLh1

— Rob Gill (@vote4robgill) June 20, 2020

Boogie On Down To The Rally Tonight

I do believe this young lady captures a certain reality and ethos quite effectively:

do — Courtney Jaye (@TropicaliJaye) June 20, 2020

Not sure if the youngsters below would agree, but they do validate the above, don't you think?

They Indict Themselves

A wealth of words, many of them scathing and acrimonious, have been written about Donald Trump and those who continue to support him; I have nothing to add except an indisputable observation: one of the ties that bind them is their refusal/inability to confront reality.

That fact is on full display in this short video about some disciples eagerly awaiting their master's upcoming Tulsa rally:

Heroes No More

The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? Things like corporate greed, for example.

The public was much heartened when grocery store magnates granted pay boosts to front-line line workers as an acknowledgement of the risks they were facing during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. However, that corporate 'largess' has now ended.

Despite soaring first-quarter profits ... Loblaw Companies Ltd. president Sarah Davis said stores and distribution centres are experiencing a “new normal,” now that COVID-related safeguards have been in place for several months.

“With this stability and with economies reopening we have decided the time is right to transition out of our temporary pay premium,” Davis said in the note.

The Metro, Sobeys and Walmart chains are following suit in this retrenchment, a retrenchment that seems especially cruel given that Covid-19 is by no means conquered, and an effective treatment continues to elude the world. In other words, those same front-line workers lauded as heroes but a short time ago continue to be at risk as they perform their crucial work.

The Toronto Star expresses its disappointment in people like Galen Weston by reminding us of his words when he enacted the wage premium:

“Supermarkets and pharmacies are performing well ... And the leaders in our business wanted to make sure that a significant portion of that benefit would go straight into the pockets of the incredible people on the front line.”

Loblaw Companies Ltd. saw its first-quarter profits soar to $240 million, compared to $198 million in the same quarter last year. No doubt expenses have increased because of COVID-19 safeguards, but it’s hard to fathom how these stores are no longer benefiting financially, as Loblaw claims.

Star readers also weigh in on this shameful reversal. Herb Alexander of Thornhill writes:

Galen Weston is quoted as saying now “is the right time to end the temporary pay premium we introduced at the beginning of the pandemic.”

I wonder which information source led Weston to this conclusion. I just checked; COVID will be not be ending soon.

So it seems this is not the time to be pulling money out of the pocket of his staff, who continue to make him richer by working on the front lines in his stores.

Weston, said to be the scion of the third-richest family in Canada, is quoted as saying he “would support any government effort to establish a living wage.”

This tells me two things about Galen Weston: First, he concedes that he is currently not paying a living wage. Second, he will only pay a living wage if government forces him to.

And Wesley Turner of St. Catharines, Ont. offers this:

Major grocery chains Metro, Loblaws and Walmart, in the early days of the pandemic, awarded their hard-pressed employees an extra $2 per hour to continue working in what were dangerous conditions.

Their work inevitably exposed them to many possible sources of infection from COVID-19, and workers who had to use public transportation faced even more sources of infection.

They were frequently described as “heroes” for maintaining an essential service, providing food and other necessities to all.

So have they ceased to be “heroes?” Has the danger of catching COVID-19 ended? Are all safe to travel and work in grocery stores?

It would seem so in the eyes of their employers who can now lower labour costs and gain more profits. It looks like this increase in wages was no more than a gesture, motivated not by generosity, but by fear that employees would not come to work at the risk of their lives.

That danger remains and so should the wage increase. Indeed, a permanent wage increase would show that those companies really do value their “heroic” employees.

The response to the Covid-19 pandemic has offered many moments when the best of human nature has shone forth. However, the actions of Galen Weston and his fellow-travellers are also a stark reminder that only rarely do the better angels of our nature prevail in the corporate world.

What Manner Of Man Is This?

The short answer is that he is not a man at all. A man, as opposed to a raging narcissist/sociopath, would never do what Donald Trump is planning as he gets ready to put tens of thousands of his loyalists at risk at his upcoming Tulsa ego-fest.

Note the series of lies and boasts that issue from the demented one's mouth in the following:



None of this is surprising, but I still find myself puzzled over how Trump's disciples steadfastly refuse to take the true measure of this monster.

Strange Fruit

H/t Michael De Adder

Those who say the police are just doing their job are just not paying attention.

Be warned. Both of these videos are hard to watch:

This is Fucking nuts! How is this even a reasonable thing to do by police. This was murder. https://t.co/HxKHVOhnaB

— Rick Barnes (@queerthoughts) June 15, 2020

And lest we feel smug in thinking that violent, corrupt and racially-biased policing is just an American blight, Clyde McDonald of Bracebridge, Ont. sets us straight:

Heartbroken and conflicted: Canada’s Black police officers open up about George Floyd’s death and anti-racism protests, June 7

Sorry, I am not buying the “Ninety-nine per cent … are good men and women police officers” and the “few bad apples” excuses.

The ninety-nine per cent continually protect the bad apples, so they are accomplices, and just as guilty as the bad apples.

Officer Cartright says he is being pulled in both directions.

Why?

There is only right and wrong.

There is nothing to wrestle with.

The Toronto Police are a disgrace. Phone video showed Consts. Piara Dhaliwal and Akin Gul lied about Abdi Sheik-Qasim’s arrest. Toronto Const. Robert Warrener had “deliberately fabricated” the drug transaction — “inexcusable deceptive conduct” in a case against Pankaj Bedi. The Star has had many, many other articles on corrupt police officers, most of whom are still employed by the force.

Despite all of the scandals and shootings, Toronto Police Association President Mike McCormack has never met a bad officer.

McCormack defends them …, even when there is irrefutable video evidence.

He does not recognize that keeping bad officers on the force tarnishes the reputation of all of the other officers.

If the ninety-nine per cent truly wanted to protect their reputations, they would vote McCormack out of office.

It is their own reputations that are at stake, and they should be proactive in wanting the bad apples removed.

The fact that they actually protect and defend the bad apples speaks volumes about these supposed “good men and women police officers.”

You can criticize the Americans all you want, but when they have bad cops caught on video, they fire them.

With A Humble Heart

These past many weeks have been difficult ones. We have been largely confined to our homes; social ties we have nurtured for years are under stress, if for no other reason than our inability to be in the presence of those we love and care about. Compounding our sense of helplessness, the racial ructions in the United States have confronted us with some unpleasant but oft-ignored truths. The public spectacle of George Floyd's murder caused deep anguish for all right-thinking people.

The fact that his murder was a spectacle made it easy to feel horror, outrage, and deep sadness. The hard part will be sustaining those reactions and demanding that constructive, structural changes be implemented. In that, we all have a role to play, and that role begins not with the shedding of more tears, but educating ourselves deeply about the daily truths people of color and other minorities confront.

And that takes work, and it takes commitment. In some of my forthcoming posts, I would like to share some of the things I have watched and some of the things I have read that may help bring us closer to a real understanding of, even some empathy for, the daily lives of others. I tried to do that recently in a post about black parents having "the talk' with their kids, as well as a followup post about former Argo player Orlando Bowen and his traumatic encounter with Peel undercover cops back in 2004. As well, I reposted on the murder of Emmett Till.

Below is something culled from NBC Nightly News. If you advance to the 18-minute mark, you will see a story about ow systemic racism affects both the physical and mental health of its victims, many of whom are collateral ones.



It would be both supremely arrogant and supremely naive to suggest that my small efforts can make a difference in the larger scheme of things. The real lesson here, for me, is to approach the learning with a humble heart, fully acknowledging that as a white person, I can never truly know what it is to be in the skin of another, but to make every effort to understand, to bear witness, and to support changes that will improve people's lives everywhere.

Putting Things Into Perspective

Few people do it as well as Robert Reich. And there are lessons here for Canada as well:

I don't know who needs to hear this, but refusing to disclose the corporations receiving $500,000,000,000 in taxpayer-funded bailouts is the real looting in America. pic.twitter.com/jg5kkDSGUh

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 12, 2020

A Free Lesson

Something for the discerning amongst us:
H/t Linwood Barclay

This is how it’s done. https://t.co/NT0haqXu5x

— Linwood Barclay (@linwood_barclay) June 11, 2020

When In The Wrong, Go On The Attack

Here is a how-to lesson:

“Everybody’s trying to shame us.” pic.twitter.com/T1ISTiZpEe

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 9, 2020

Not A Pleasing Reflection

Yesterday's post revolved around the painful reality of Black people having to tell their children, often at a very young age, the harsh facts of racialized life and the things they must do to protect themselves from state violence. Truly heartbreaking, but it would be a mistake to believe this onerous responsibility falls only to American families.

Dave Feschuk very ably disabuses us of that notion in writing about the violence Orlando Bowen experienced at the hands of police back in 2004 when he was celebrating having signed a contract with the Hamilton Tiger Cats. It is an experience whose lessons he now imparts to his own Black children.

Waiting for friends in his car in the parking lot of a Mississauga night club, on the way to toasting the new contract he had just signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the story goes that Bowen was approached by two men who asked him if he had drugs.

When he brushed them off, they persisted. The men, it turned out, were plainclothes officers from Peel Regional Police Service. An altercation ensued. And in one frightening instant, a night that was supposed to be a celebration of Bowen’s professional success turned into a fight for his survival. The way he remembers it, he eventually found his bloodied face pressed into the asphalt, a knee driving into his back, a forearm pinning his neck.

“I was convinced I was going to be killed,” Bowen said. “I just kept thinking in my mind, ‘Oh my God. This is how my life is going to end.’”

The scenario is familiar to anyone who has seen the murder of George Floyd, but with one crucial difference - there was no video evidence of the encounter,

... which might speak to why, for a long time, Bowen was the one on trial for assault and drug possession (Bowen says police planted cocaine on him during their altercation). After months of personal turmoil and legal entanglement, Bowen was eventually exonerated of all charges after one of the officers was charged and later convicted of a drug-trafficking offence that led to his resignation from the force and a judge ruled the testimony of the officers was “unworthy of belief.”

Bowen sued Peel police for $14 million, a matter that was settled out of court. Still, the officers were never charged in relation to the interaction; a Peel police spokesperson told CTV in 2018 that two internal reviews found “no misconduct in relation to Mr. Bowen’s incident.”

Beyond the emotional trauma, there were physical consequences to the encounter.

The concussion he suffered, which he says still occasionally gives him trouble with his balance, led to his retirement from the CFL.

Now the father of three boys, Bowen makes sure they are well-prepared for the world they must live in:

Always keep your hands where the police officer can see them if you’re ever stopped, lest there be any misunderstandings of your intention. Never wear your hoodie with the hood up, especially when you’re out and about in the United States, lest you be perceived as a threat.

“They’re important things. I never want my sons to come back to me after something painful happens and say, ‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me?’” Bowen said. “We would be doing everyone a disservice if we weren’t honest with them. Painfully honest, sometimes. But honest.”

If you get the chance, read Feschuk's entire piece, as Bowen's life, while marked by that incident in 2004, has not been defined by it. He has accomplished much, and he even eventually wrote a letter forgiving the officers for what they did,

not to absolve his transgressors but to help himself move past the trauma.

“Forgiveness is not for them, it’s for us,” he said. “It’s for us to know that we don’t have to hold onto things that have pained us. We can let go.”

No matter our country of residence, we all need to look in the mirror. In doing so, we should be prepared to see something other than just a pleasing reflection.

A Lesson In Empathy

In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch famously tells his daughter Scout, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

That statement, that call for empathy, may sound obvious, but far too many of us have a hard time seeing, really seeing, what others see, and feeling, really feeling, what others feel.

I find the following quite powerful; although I have watched it more than once, it continues to break my heart. People, especially those who are parents, will find a hard time not being moved by the painful reality that black children must learn about far, far too early in their lives.

Repost: The Blood of Emmett Till

Almost two years ago I wrote a series of posts on racism, starting with the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy horribly tortured before his death. Here is that post, and if you would like to read the entire series, you can click here



From this tragedy large, diverse groups of people organized a movement that grew to transform a nation, not sufficiently but certainly meaningfully. What matters most is what we have and what we will do with what we do know. We must look at the facts squarely ... The bloody and unjust arc of our history will not bend upward if we merely pretend that history did not happen here.
- Timothy B. Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till

As a species, we are terrible students of history. Although its tools have become much more refined over the years, its lessons seem all too frequently lost on many, either because we prefer comforting illusions or we see them through narrow ideological lenses. Refusing to confront ugly truths ensures their longevity.

One of the most emotionally difficult books I have read in a long time is The Blood of Emmett Till. This excerpt from a NYT review sums up the murder of Till, the 14-year-old black lad from Chicago who, in the summer of 1955, was visiting relatives in Mississippi:

On a Wednesday evening in August, Till allegedly flirted with and grabbed the hand of Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who worked as the cashier at a local market. According to recovered court transcripts released by the F.B.I. in 2007, he let out a “wolf whistle” as she exited the store to get a gun from her car. Bryant later informed her husband and his half brother, who proceeded to uphold a grim tradition: Till was abducted, beaten, shot in the head and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. A 74-pound gin fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire, with the hope that he would never be found.

Despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt, his murderers were, in the Southern tradition of the time, found not guilty. Despite the absence of justice, Till's mother, an indefatigable woman, changed the course of civil rights history by insisting that the horribly mutilated body of her son rest in an open coffin, of which photographs were published in prominent magazines, while an estimated 240,000 filed by his casket.

The purpose of this post, however, is not to revisit the horrific details explored in the book that go well beyond the murder of a young teen. Rather, it is to draw parallels between the language and justifications of the racists of Till's time with those of the contemporary white supremacist movement. While over 60 years separate the two eras, the echoes of history are evident for all who care to look.

The most obvious parallel evolves around efforts to discredit the veracity of events. Examples of this 'strategy' abound in the book:

The editor of the Picayune Item snarled that a "prejudiced communistic inspired NAACP" could not "not blacken the name of the great sovereign state of Mississippi, regardless of their claims of Negro Haters, lynching, or whatever [emphasis mine].

Sherriff Strider, a racist who was friends with the accused, sought to constantly undermine the evidence and question whether or not the body was, in fact, that of Till's, telling reporters the following:

"The body we took from the river looked more like that of a grown man instead of a young boy. It was also more decomposed than it should have been after that short a stay in the water."

Soon after, Strider told reporters, "This whole thing looks like a deal made up by the NAACP."

During the trial, Strider was happy to share his racist view with reporters, disguised as questioning the evidence:

"It just seems to me that the evidence is getting slimmer and slimmer. I'm chasing down some evidence now that the killing might have been planned and plotted by the NAACP."

Of course, there was no such evidence. Just as there was no evidence to support a convenient claim that Till had been spirited out of Mississippi and was now living in Detroit, again part of the larger effort to cast doubt on the evidence and the integrity of the NAACP.

Why the attacks on the NAACP? Besides trying to sow doubts about the murder, it was part of a pattern of extreme resistance to school integration and voting rights that Hodding Carter wrote about in The Saturday Evening Post:

Whites considered the NAACP "the fountainhead of all evil and woe," and the factual nature of most of the NAACP's bills of particulars ... doesn't help make its accusations any more acceptable. "The hatred that is concentrated upon the NAACP surpasses in its intensity any emotional reaction that I have witnessed in my southern lifetime." This reflected the NAACP's demands for voting rights and school integration as much as it did their protests over the Till case.

Any fair-minded person who reads The Blood of Emmett Till cannot emerge from the experience without a deep sense of outrage over the horrible injustices meted out to Black people over the years, as well as a profound admiration for those extraordinary souls who, countless times, braved both physical and economic reprisal in their long battle to be treated exactly as they were: American citizens demanding their full rights.

And the battle continues today. In Part 11 of this post, I will look at the tactics employed by white supremacists today, tactics that eerily echo those of a much earlier time as the racists among us seek to turn back the clock and once more subjugate those they deem their inferiors.

A More Apt Comparison

I'm sure you have heard about White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's utterly shameless extolment of Donald Trump's prop walk with The Bible the other day.

McEnany claimed during a White House briefing Wednesday that Trump had “wanted to send a very powerful message that we will not be overcome by looting, by rioting, by burning, this is not what defines America” and that the stunt was “a very important moment” to show “resilience,” as other presidents and world leaders have previously done.

“Like Churchill, we saw him inspecting the bombing damage, it sent a powerful message of leadership to the British people,” she boasted.

This was all too much for Anderson Cooper who, I think most people would agree, draws a far more apt comparison/contrast between the Moron-in-Chief and Winston Churchill:

"Burned out church, a Bible in his hand, the country divided, and he couldn't think of anything to say except to ask a bunch of other white guys…to stand around him and just take a picture," says @andersoncooper, on the WH comparison of Pres. Trump to Winston Churchill. pic.twitter.com/I4JVRqEfkR

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 4, 2020

And the beat goes on.

A Modern-Day Prophet

If you know anything about Old Testament traditions (and I confess to knowing only a little about them), you may be aware of the role played by the prophets. Contrary to popular belief, their main function was not to predict the future but rather to serve as a conduit for God's messages. And those messages were often rebukes of the people of Israel.

As with the prophets of old, people like Cornel West and Chris Hedges today offer up critical mirrors to society; their messages are harsh, unsparing, and uncompromising. The following indictment of the U.S. by West, the link to which was sent to me by my dear friend Dom, amply demonstrates this:

As thousands across the country and around the world took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black community members, professor Cornel West says it signals the implosion of U.S. empire, "its foundations being shaken with uprising from below." He says the U.S. is a “predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money,” and says the uprisings are a direct result of a system that prioritizes profits over people both domestically and abroad. While the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, protesters came out in droves to verbalize their discontent. "What we need is … a fundamental transformation of this American Empire," says West.

As in days of old, modern-day prophets are often ignored, ridiculed and despised. Now more than ever, however, we ignore them at our collective peril.

Obvious? Perhaps

But apt nonetheless.

H/t Theo Moudakis

A Plague Nation

I wonder if Americans realize that is how their country is seen by the rest of the world, in no small measure thanks to their having elected a raging racist psychopath as their president.

The following video takes a few seconds before beginning to play:

"The System Can't Reform Itself"

So says the always fearless and indefatigable Cornel West. As I watched the following, I couldn't help but think that if one feels dismissive of, threatened or outraged by what he has to say, a long and unsparing look in the mirror is likely in order.

America's Broken Contract

Trevor Noah certainly has a way of putting things into perspective.

H/t Marie Snyder

(2/2) Trevor on George Floyd and the Minneapolis protests:

“If you felt unease watching that Target being looted, try to imagine how it must feel for black Americans when they watch themselves being looted every single day. Police in America are looting black bodies.” pic.twitter.com/oO6s8sNY44

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 30, 2020

An Abysmal Nation Led By An Abysmal Racist

Whenever I post something about racial injustice, I feel some unease. By what stretch can I, as a white person who lives a comfortable existence, truly feel the murderous oppression that others experience? What right do I have to comment upon something that I will never experience? It is not as if aggregating and commenting upon such egregious crimes will make any difference in the world.

Is writing about it from my position simply something I do to feel better about myself?

I don't know the answers.

But I also know that the inaction of silence can never be the preferable alternative.

The repercussions of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police continue to unfold. Pouring fuel on the flames that have erupted, Donald Trump, true to form, unleashed an abysmal dog-whistle Tweet heard loud and clear by his baying, salivating followers:



He knew precisely the origins and implications of that Tweet:

Twitter said early Friday that a post by President Donald Trump about the protests overnight in Minneapolis glorified violence because of the historical context of his last line: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."

The phrase was used by Miami's police chief, Walter Headley, in 1967, when he addressed his department's "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums," according to a United Press International article from the time.

Headley, who was chief of police in Miami for 20 years, said that law enforcement was going after “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign. ... We don't mind being accused of police brutality."

Miami hadn't faced "racial disturbances and looting," Headley added, because he let word filter down that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

The phrase was considered to have contributed to the city's race riots in the late 1960s, according to The Washington Post.

Headley, who died only a few months later in 1968 and had been denounced by civil rights leaders, was described in an Associated Press obituary as the "architect of a crime crackdown that sent police dogs and shotgun-toting patrolmen into Miami's slums in force."

And now America is led by a racist rabid dog intent on totally destroying whatever shreds of credibility remain in the first part of his country's name.

Requiescat in pace, oh moribund nation.

UPDATED: They Just Can't Help Themselves

Every time they speak, they show their absolute contempt for 'the people'. Who am I referring to? The British Conservation government. As a companion to yesterday's post about the hapless Dominic Cummings, please enjoy, or bear witness to, the witless Cabinet Minister Michael Gove's 'defense' of Cummings:



UPDATE: Is it just my imagination, or is Boris looking a bit more harried these days? But maybe showing such open contempt for public accountability will do that to a person.

So Painful To Watch

George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police is very difficult to watch. I suspect the aftermath will make for equally painful viewing, yet turning away can hardly be the answer.

Decide for yourself:

The Village Idiot

I suspect few regard British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as anything other than a village idiot. If you have been following the scandal surrounding his Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings, you will also see that like attracts like.

Boris has been twisting himself out of shape defending the hypocritical Cummings; after the grilling he has been facing from fearless British journalists, he may well need the services of a good chiropractor, when such is once again permitted (or not, given that the rules don't seem to apply to the likes of him and Cummings):

Being Black In America - The Story Is Always The Same

There is much more graphic video available online, but the following succinctly shows the horror of being black in the United States:

Facebook And The Unravelling Of Truth

At a time when access to accurate, well-informed and well-researched information is crucial, it is probably not surprising that there are bad actors who promote disinformation. After all, chaos, their preferred state, constantly needs stoking, and oh, what a friend they have in Facebook.

Earlier this month, the BBC exposed the internet giant for the amoral, greedy and even nefarious entity it is, one quite content to promote the ranting of the far-right fringe as it exploits the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is a sample of the posts regarding the virus gleaned from Mark Zuckerberg's baby:

"What if [they] are trying to kill off as many people as possible" reads one Facebook post.

"Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves" reads another.

A third: "Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon."

That Facebook willingly makes itself a vehicle (a very profitable one, of course) for hatred, prejudice and conspiracy theories comes as no surprise to me. A post I wrote almost five years ago shows why. Yet in our current situation, it can be argued that the stakes are even higher today.

Writing in The Markup, Aaron Sankind explains Facebook's tactics of open solicitation, i.e. prostitution, which openly contradict its promise to combat misinformation about Covid-19.

Facebook was allowing advertisers to profit from ads targeting people that the company believes are interested in “pseudoscience.” According to

Facebook’s ad portal, the pseudoscience interest category contained more than 78 million people.

This week, The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience, and the ad was approved by Facebook.

Interestingly, after posting it, Sankin writes that

an ad for a hat that would supposedly protect my head from cellphone radiation appeared on my Facebook feed on Thursday, April 16.

Concerns about electromagnetic radiation coming from 5G cellular infrastructure have become a major part of the conspiracy theories swirling around the origin of the coronavirus.

The social media giant's synergistic (some would say parasitic) money-making techniques are obvious here.

Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington studying how conspiracy theories spread online, said one hallmark of the ecosystem is that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to be convinced of other conspiracy theories.

By offering advertisers the ability to target people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories, she said, Facebook is taking “advantage of this sort of vulnerability that a person has once they’re going down these rabbit holes, both to pull them further down and to monetize that.”

Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and it appears that Facebook may talk the talk, but refuses to walk the walk:

Facebook has also said that it is cracking down on ads on products related to the pandemic. “We recently implemented a policy to prohibit ads that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. We also have policies for surfaces like Marketplace that prohibit similar behavior”...

However, earlier this month, Consumer Reports was able to schedule seven paid ads that contained fake claims, such as stating that social distancing doesn’t work or that people could stay healthy by drinking small doses of bleach. Facebook approved all of the ads.

Business is business would seem to be the only ethos Facebook lives by. And the consequences for a credulous public couldn't be more lethal.

An Accelerated Deterioration

With the exception of his mindless cheerleaders and coterie of sycophants, it is obvious to the world that Donald Trump has led the United States into a steep, perhaps irreversible, decline. His response to the Covid-19 crisis has only accelerated that process.

And the public record, unlike Trump, does not lie.

About his early response to the crisis, Edward Luce writes:

People often observed during Trump’s first three years that he had yet to be tested in a true crisis. Covid-19 is way bigger than that. “Trump’s handling of the pandemic at home and abroad has exposed more painfully than anything since he took office the meaning of America First,” says William Burns, who was the most senior US diplomat, and is now head of the Carnegie Endowment.

“America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

Trump's refusal to heed warnings about what was coming was nothing short of criminal, and will likely be apparent to all if and when a commission of inquiry into the pandemic response is struck:

The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.

“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

True to form, the Infant-in-Chief blames others for his manifest failures, China and The Who not the least:

A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”.

Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying.

Trump alleged the WHO’s negligence had increased the world’s death rate “twenty-fold”. In practice, the body must always abide by member state limits, especially the big ones, notably the US and China. That is the reality for all multilateral bodies. The WHO nevertheless declared an international emergency six weeks before Trump’s US announcement.

So where does all the blaming, the posturing, the incompetence of a depraved president lead to?

Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

It is the kind of simpleminded triumphal language that a nation weary of restrictions and given to uncritical acceptance of Trumpisms welcomes, but it doesn't change reality.

And it doesn't change a truth recently uttered by George Conway, husband of one of Trump's chief promoters, Kelly Anne Conway, about the lamentably ill-equipped president:

“In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasize and lose any ability to think rationally.”

A terrible combination in the best of times. A literally lethal one is these worst of times.

I Rest My Case

Yesterday I offered, shall we say, an unflattering appraisal of the American 'character' and psyche. Further evidence supporting that assessment is to be found in the following video:



Perhaps those of similar disposition dying for a night out on the town should ponder this cautionary tale?

An Armchair Analysis

One of the benefits (and, to be honest, drawbacks) of having a blog is the freedom it confers on the owner. He or she can write on a range of topics which, in my case, is sometimes determined by the mood I'm in. And these days, that mood is often less one of outrage than it is of resignation. The belly fire that once drove me is now often but a vaguely uncomfortable feeling easy to ignore.

But I do soldier on, in fits and starts.

Since compelling empirical proof is hardly a requirement for blog opinions, I shall offer one today about the United States of America. It will hardly be a shattering insight, merely one I have been thinking about more and more during these days of confinement and reading.

The United States of America is an infantile nation.

Consider but a few examples. There is the violence incited by refusal to wear masks; there are the states reopening despite rising numbers of Covid-19 infections; there is fairly widespread defiance of state laws through protests and illegal re-openings of shuttered businesses. And, of course, there is their selection of the Orange Idiot to lead their nation.

Clearly, the United States lacks the kind of character that the world's current situation demands.

Recently, while watching a commercial during the American news, something else also occurred to me. They haven't always been this benighted and childish.

Allow me to illustrate with a few American Public Service Announcements.

The first one is from many years ago; those of a certain age will remember Perry Mason who, each week, bested District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the courtroom. The actor who played him, William Talman, made an anti-smoking ad in 1968 when he was dying from lung cancer:



You will notice that the tone is poignant as Talman invokes the powerful images of his family to show the terrible losses he is facing, urging viewers either not to take up smoking or to quit if they are already in its grips. No one could argue that such an ad is shocking or graphic in any way.

Contrast that restrained tone with what is on offer today:









Each of the above PSAs approach the viewer in a way far different than the Talman ad did, replacing reason and poignancy with what are guaranteed to reach a blunted, debased sensibility: fear and repugnance. If this won't get you to quit smoking, nothing will, eh?

What is my point? Only to suggest that those commercials can serve as a measure of the undeniable decline in the American character. Where once reason and basic sentiment might have served public discourse well, today fear has become the weapon of choice to influence people's behaviour.

And the use of that weapon is most evident in contemporary American politics. The Trump playbook, the one that serves him so very well, is a textbook example. Fear of the other, the Mexican rapists and drug dealers who must be held at bay by massive walls, the deep state conspirators, the Wuhan virus and so many more are all part of his abysmal arsenal.

And the Pavlovian dogs salivate.

Call The Libertarians!

Reader Brian sent this along to me this morning. Enjoy!

Though they've been a tad quiet during the CoVid 19 Semi-Apocalypse, all you need to do to get by is put your trust in the folks who can solve any problem:

The Libertarians!

This Puts Things Into Perspective

Don't cha think?

How to testing pic.twitter.com/y9iwLK0N12

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) May 9, 2020

Setting The Record Straight

If you watched Planet of The Humans, executive-produced by Michael Moore, like me you probably came away profoundly disillusioned. The film essentially says that the environmental movement and its advocacy for alternative energy sources is a house of cards and a big scam. From biomass to EV batteries to solar panels and turbines, the point is made over and over that they consume prodigious amounts of energy to produce, and the savings over the long term in greenhouse gas emissions are negligible at best.

Fortunately, there has been fierce rebuttal to the claims the film makes. One of them is by Bill McKibben, one of the patron saints of the environmental movement, in a lengthy Rolling Stone article, well-worth the read.

Another is by the always readable and always intelligent George Monbiot, who writes that the film is a gift to climate-change deniers who have for years been using discredited myths promoted in the film to justify their position.

Occasionally, the film lands a punch on the right nose. It is right to attack the burning of trees to make electricity. But when the film’s presenter and director, Jeff Gibbs, claims, “I found only one environmental leader willing to reject biomass and biofuels”, he can’t have been looking very far. Some people have been speaking out against them ever since they became a serious proposition (since 2004 in my case). Almost every environmental leader I know opposes the burning of fresh materials to generate power.

There are also some genuine and difficult problems with renewable energy, particularly the mining of the necessary materials. But the film’s attacks on solar and wind power rely on a series of blatant falsehoods. It claims that, in producing electricity from renewables, “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place”. This is flat wrong. On average, a solar panel generates 26 units of solar energy for every unit of fossil energy required to build and install it. For wind turbines the ratio is 44 to one.

Planet of the Humans also claims that you can’t reduce fossil fuel use through renewable energy: coal is instead being replaced by gas. Well, in the third quarter of 2019, renewables in the UK generated more electricity than coal, oil and gas plants put together. As a result of the switch to renewables in this country, the amount of fossil fuel used for power generation has halved since 2010. By 2025, the government forecasts, roughly half our electricity will come from renewables, while gas burning will drop by a further 40%.

While Monbiot concedes the film's assertion that a good number of conservation groups take money from fossil fuel companies, he says its relentless attack on 350.org co-founder McKibben is misplaced, as he

takes no money from any of his campaigning work. It’s an almost comic exercise in misdirection, but unfortunately it has horrible, real-world consequences, as McKibben now faces even more threats and attacks than he confronted before.

Monbiot sees the film's 'final solution' as something of a red herring, snce it claims that only by seeing a mass die-off of an overpopulated world can there be any hope:

Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When wealthy people, such as Moore and Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, “it’s not Us consuming, it’s Them breeding.” It’s not hard to see why the far right loves this film.

No one can ever accuse me of having an especially sunny disposition or optimistic outlook. Nonetheless, I was heartened to read this piece by George Monbiot. In these terrible times, I will take good news wherever I can find it.

Simply Ghoulish

Vampire. https://t.co/oGRr8I2HhD

— Gord Perks (@gordperks) May 6, 2020

A Soul Soother For These Troubled Times

Baroque music AND a livestream of Venice. I return to this several times a day.

A Fairy Tale

Frank Sinatra sang that fairy tales can come true. One hopes he was right.



H/t Marie Snyder

A Tale Of Two Countries

Each night I allow myself a half-hour dose of news from an American perspective, usually NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. And every night I emerge from the experience immensely thankful that I live in Canada rather than the Benighted States of America. The chasm between our two countries is ever-widening.

In Canada, we have a variety of programs in place supporting a wide swath of Canadians. While none of the supports are perfect and can never replace the income provided by jobs, they have allowed the federal government and the provinces to prioritize public health and safety over the economy. Indeed, the expenditures to date open up a myriad of possibilities for post-pandemic Canada as citizens ponder the possibilities of a newer, better Canada.

Not so south of the border. There, the ugliness of Darwinian neoliberalism is in full view.

When watching the news from there, one sees the ever-strident demands of increasingly desperate people to re-open the economy. Indeed, by Monday more than 30 states, despite the fact that they are nowhere near flattening the curve of Covid-19 spread, will be open. In all the cases, posing as champions of the people, politicians are showing their willingness to sacrifice people to the demands of the economy.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the meat-packing industry. Despite their being repositories of Covid-19 disease and death, that master narcissist, Donald Trump, has mandated they remain open through executive order. Had Americans the capacity for critical thinking, they would realize that they are mere fodder for the economy worshiped and extolled by their neoliberal masters.

The Guardian reports:

The president invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to mandate meat processing plants stay open during the pandemic.

The move, which essentially labels meat production an essential service, also offers further measures to protect the industry from legal liability should more workers contract the virus.

If one reads the link, one sees that U.S. Labor Department refers to "guidance," not requirements, as to the safe operation of the plants during this pandemic. In other words, there are no penalties if that guidance isn't followed.

Those penalties instead will be borne by the workers by the requirement that they work in life-threatening situations for wages that are not even living ones.

The Tyson company itself seems to have played a major role in Trump's executive order:

The order came within hours of Tyson, a $22bn company and the world’s second largest meat processor, taking out paid adverts in major US newspapers, including the New York Times, to warn that recent closures of a handful of plants due to the virus could lead to “limited supply of our products”.

Prior to Trump's Hail-Mary pass to win votes, (after all, 'Muricans got to have their meat), death was already stalking meat-packing firms, in many ways making them slaughter houses within slaughter houses:

News of the first Covid-19 death at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, south-west Georgia, spread slowly.

“It was like they were keeping a secret,” said Tara Williams, a 47-year-old worker at the plant, as she described her account of management’s response to the death of her colleague Elose Willis. “It took them about two weeks to just put a picture up, to acknowledge she had died.”

Williams had worked alongside Willis in the “de-boning” section of the plant until she died on 1 April, aged 56. She had spent 35 years at the facility – five days a week, 10 hours a day, 100,000 slaughtered chickens a shift.

Willis was the first Tyson employee to succumb to Covid-19 at the Camilla plant, but two others would follow in short succession, a marker of the precarity faced by thousands of meat processing workers pushed to toil, closely packed, on the frontlines throughout the pandemic in plants that have quickly become coronavirus hotspots. At least 20 meat packing workers have died from the virus nationwide and 5,000 have become infected, according to union officials, as close to two dozen facilities closed – some temporarily – over past few weeks.

As per the corporate agenda, it is the worker who is obliged to make sacrifices, including the ultimate one.

For Tara Williams, who has worked at the Camilla plant on the overnight shift as a packing scanner for five years earning $13.55 an hour, Trump’s executive order and her company’s adverts were another blow in her fight for workers’ rights.

“I was devastated and I was hurt. Because now, to be truthful – and excuse my language – Tyson really aren’t going to give a fuck about us at all,” she said. “For us employees that work in production, we are treated like modern day slaves.”

Although there is much more to the Guardian article, which I would encourage everyone to read, it somehow seems apt to end this post with that stinging rebuke and indictment from Ms. Williams.

A Graphic Illustration Of Why Peter MacKay Is Unfit To Hold Public Office

As a Nova Scotian, I am outraged that Justin Trudeau is using our tragedy to punish law-abiding firearms owners across Canada.

As Prime Minister, I can guarantee to all Canadians that I will never take advantage of a tragedy like this to push a political agenda. pic.twitter.com/pWDAv4TiwN

— Peter MacKay (@PeterMacKay) May 1, 2020

A Glitch In The Machine

Watch the following, and you will understand.

Zen And The Art Of Gorilla-Watching

Try it sometime. You might like it.