Embedded Files
Happy Canada Day and Summertime Thereafter. If you ever joined a summer reading club here's your chance to join mine.
From time to time, I have given over my blog space to writers I admire and who have said "what oft was thought but n'er so well expressed". I do so now partly because Beverly and I are going travelling for much of the month of July, and I will suspend my blogging, although I'll still be reading the texts and listening to the podcasts of my mentors.
If you want direction, here are substantive items to inform a position on some critical world affairs. I have given both an easy access link in highlighted text and the full url. We do not live the historical perspective; we move with the current event, the rhetoric of the loudest reporter, and though we shrug in the direction of acknowledgement of our biases, we still inhabit them more fully than we know.
And so, these of course, are my selected items, informing my opinion on affairs that I believe are critical. There are many other global situations which you may consider at least as significant. The Palestinian genocide, the invasion of Ukraine, the civil slaughter in Sudan are not less in importance, as my selected nouns must show, but they already occupy much of the daily media content. Thank you for attending to them to whatever degree you do.
Islamic Republic's war on Iranians
Imagine you are a woman in a city in Iran. You have seen friends shot on the street. You know the government troops are present at the demonstration. You take off your head covering. You hold up the hair you have cut off and you shout, "Woman, Life, Freedom!" Death could come instantly from the bullet crashing through your skull or slowly from the beatings you will endure after arrest. Trump's war has been the uninformed posturing of an idiot scrabbling at the edges of a geopolitic beyond his dangerously infantile comprehension. If the regime in Iran, which the US and Britain created for their oil companies, ever changes, it will happen because of those women facing down the guns on the streets.
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/964572
And if you believe any of the trumpeting about the US having effected a "regime change" in Iran, this item from Stanford University's Journal of Democracy should give you an alternate view;
The balance of power within the Islamic Republic of Iran has changed significantly. The regime that existed before the war—with its uneasy mix of Shia Muslim clerical authority, elected institutions, bargaining factions, and armed agencies of coercion—is no longer functioning as it did. A different configuration of power is emerging.
This has not, however, been the kind of regime change that many Iranians have been hoping for. It is not a transition toward democracy, moderation, or a more responsible and accountable government. Instead, it is the culmination of a long internal transformation: The core of the regime's coercive apparatus, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has become the primary institution through which the Islamic Republic survives, governs, represses, and wages war.
Over the years following its founding in 1979, the IRGC went from being a militia to being a full-fledged military force, then an ideological-security cartel, and then a parallel "state within the state." Now, under the pressure of war and a succession crisis, the IRGC has become something close to the state itself. Each phase of the Guards' institutional expansion and encroachment into the state came about due to an internal or external crisis facing the Islamic Republic; every crisis gave [End Page 23] the IRGC a new mission, each mission brought new resources, and each resource the IRGC gained control over gave it more autonomy. Over time, the IRGC moved from protecting the Islamic Republic to shaping it, then from shaping it to commanding its most important functions. The current moment only makes visible what has been developing for decades.
Populism & the People
In the early years of the 20th century, fascist regimes were repressive and relied on the force of their co-opted militaries to enforce compliance. Today, allegiance is stategically bought or financially coerced, but it is just as effective at concentrating power, especially in a controlled media with aggressive, multi-platform sources to spread selective misinformation, the application of which is critical in either scenario. Do not be complacent, Canadians. It's here and hard at work. The very terms, "democracy" and "liberalism" are being redefined as divergent elements.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n10/jan-werner-mueller/populism-and-the-people
Canadian Sovereignty
Charlie Angus, a former MP gives a detailed study of the national, continental (US) and international (UK and Russia) forces operating to destroy Canada (yes,"destroy") starting with Alberta and its puppet premier. I and others have written and asked our government to at least expel Pete Hoekstra and Kristi Noem, the unapologetic political enemies of our nation.
https://charlieangus.substack.com/p/canada-is-not-ready-for-our-brexit
Tanking
Remember cigarette times. Ashtrays everywhere, heroic cowboys with Marlboroughs dangling, happy camels, emphysema, 9 out of 10 doctors onboard. Don't you wish you had that kind of advertising clout for your graduating grandkids? Big Oil has it as the fossil fuel industry enters its end game and our Charlie says so. They're the new bully on the block. Stop them.
Monopoly Games
And right here at my home town and yours, prices in many outlets are controlled, not by competition but by the lack of it. If you can ignore the law or slide around it and your company can ban all possible competitors from setting up shop anywhere near you, your surveillance pricing can set your profits high. It's worth a read:
And if you see two little old people being arrested on a street in Paris, look for the little Canadian flags on their lapels.
Google Sites
Report abuse