Author: The Cat Herder General

aka Dennis Moser — Citoyen du monde: Peregrinator, photographer, retired librarian/archivist/academic, musician, teacher of English to foreigners, and sometime writer... Due to bureaucratic nonsense, I have left Europe. I DID not return to the US, I took a left turn at the Calgary airport and am a refugee trying to learn to understand, and maybe speak, "Jouai" over here amongst the Quebecois.

16:58 EST

Sharing this here so others can find the news… FaceBook doesn’t like it when I link news stories from here in Montréal — so here from the Guardian’s reporting:

Trump suggests he’s not prepared to invoke Insurrection Act, saying he doesn’t think events in California are an ‘insurrection’

Asked if he’s prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act, Donald Trump told reporters in New Jersey: “It depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”

Asked if he thinks there is one, Trump replied: “No, no, but we have violent people and we’re not going to let them get away with it.”

In response to another journalist’s question, Trump said: “I think you’re going to see some very strong law and order.”

“Insurrection”

Tonight in Los Angeles — sharing this link so my friends can see this from outside of Canada, where I cannot post news stories.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/07/immigration-raids-los-angeles

The Trump administration will deploy the national guard to immigration protests in Los Angeles, border czar Tom Homan said on Saturday, as an immigration crackdown in the area erupted into mass protests with police in riot gear deploying teargas at bystanders.

“We’re already mobilizing. We’re gonna bring national guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law,” Homan said in an interview with Fox News.

#ViveLaInsurrectionDeLosAngeles #TheWholeWorldIsWatching

Just a placeholder

Countries A, B, C, (and others) have been in conflict for years now.

Country B invaded and seized land of Country K, who now been conducting a campaign of major initiatives for several years now. Country K carries out a highly asymmetrical attack against Country B that takes out over a third (about 2/5, actually) of B’s nuclear-capable air force, which had been used against K for some time. Country A and Country C have been duking it out with trade and not hardware, but the noises are being made constantly. Country A shares a close working relationship with Country B and has been repeatedly accused of helping B fight against K.

The press was gob-smacked, tho’ some of the lesser lights of the media pointed out that the idea has been around for several years.

The asymmetry of it all is what people need to be paying more attention to, and while a strategic issue has been raised (as it should be), we need to be focusing on other scenarios that benefit from such asymmetries.

Consider:

The Country C’s current regime has been slashing funding for agencies responsible for data and information gathering and analysis, counter-cyberwarfare, and meteorological data gathering and analysis and forecasting. So they miss the chatter taking place of an assault that takes advantage of the chaos of a government that is having issues passing budgets, cutting vital defensive services including the prediction and surveillance of their well-known summer storms. Given the increasing average severity of these storms, it is highly likely that any storm in the next season will be more than usually catastrophic.

But then if you no longer support the tracking and surveillance programs that the rest of the world is using, then you won’t know. But your enemies will and if they’ve been following along the past 15 years or so, they very well may have laid preparations. But you no longer have the intelligence-gathering capacity that you used to have because you’ve alienated all your previous allies.

Country K’s brilliant attack was some 18 months in the making…

Here’s a “Look! A squirrel!” moment to wash that previous away —

Unprocessed phone capture, near the Quartier des Spectacles, on a recent sojourn.

The Whole World Is Watching…

… and it would seem that the US (almost said “we”, but I hardly feel that way anymore) is headed for the wrong side of history. How that course could be changed is subject to debate, but the following offers some ideas.

“This is a summary of what citizens can do to dislodge an oppressive dictator. It focuses entirely on nonviolent action, because the state almost always has overwhelming superiority when it comes to the use of force. Violent opposition most often leads to prolonged stalemate or prolonged civil war.”

~~ from the text of the link below:

How to Get Rid of a Dictator
https://citizenshandbook.org/get_rid_of_a_dictator.html

“… that which once was.”

I’m getting really tired of Suckerburg’s tiff with Canadian news sources… while I didn’t particularly notice while in Europe, now that I am here, it is a constant annoyance. I have taken to obfuscating the URLs, but this has meant that images, which are always more potent, were also unable to be displayed. So it looks like the blog will be getting a workout… today’s treat follows.

Take some time to drift through the images of Palestine before the nakkba of 1948. It reminds me of the stories of an earlier time further to the west, of Alfonso el Sabio.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/5/15/palestine-before-the-nakba-in-100-photos

Image of Druze family members in Palestine.

“The Hubris of The DAW”

So another release on Bandcamp just went live this afternoon. Messing about with Wotja as a generative source for MIDI sequences, playing with a stochastic sequencer (I’d forgotten how much fun THAT was), a bit of live performance on the Seaboard and a lot of long delays with a touch of Valhalla reverb.

I continue to find Arturia’s Pigments and Roli’s Equator 2 to be good tools to work with, especially when using Plogue Bidule. They all play nicely together.

So here’s a link and I hope you enjoy:

https://audiozoloft.bandcamp.com/album/the-hubris-of-the-daw

… you might recognize the artwork :).

“The concept of privacy is completely different when you enter the United States.”

And so the Canadians are warning, not just Canadians, but Americans returning to the US. Here’s a link to a CBC article interviewing several immigration lawyers and consultants about travel between the US and Canada —

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadians-travel-to-united-states-advice-1.7498326

In the meantime, a bit of sky.

Rabbit, rabbit

Wherein, a day we dare not trust what we read…

April has come. And with it, perhaps a little warming, altho’ here it is snow broadcast for tomorrow. 

I once read that sheepherders hate April, for that is when the lambs are usually born and the weather is usually so unpredictable that there is a great risk of them being born “in the wild”, not found, and freezing to death. A terrible month of extremes, especially for sheep.

And then, of course, the pranks of April Fool’s Day — I learned of a new one: wrapping the toilet with clear plastic wrap, then leaving the seat down. Surprise!

With this, we enter the second quarter of the regime’s madness. Tomorrow promises to be interesting, although perhaps no more so than the previous two and half months have been. In like a lion and out like a lamb?

All I know for sure is be sure to check the toilet first.

 

On Reading Orbital Operations by Warren Ellis

Writer Warren Ellis publishes a weekly newsletter called “Orbital Operations” and I do recommend it, if you have any interest in writing, reading, comics, the wider world at large. It offers a small window into the creative mind of a writer who has been involved in a number of multi-facted projects, ranging from traditional story-telling and comics (“NORMAL”, “Transmetropolitan”), televisions (“Castelvania”) and radio drama podcasts (“The Department of Midnight).

Here’sa referral link to get the newsletter, every Sunday:

https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=FhPBjOzXlm 

… and here’s a recent image to amuse in the meantime!

Université de Montréal publishes travel guidelines for students, staff heading to the U.S.

Quoting part of the story so my friends can read it on Facebook — due to the spat the Zuck has with the Canadian government, it isn’t possible to directly link to “real” news stories. Which is pretty interesting as to what their algo defines as a “news story”.

“Université de Montréal has issued a series of guidelines to students and staff who will be travelling to the United States for academic purposes.

Rector Daniel Jutras says the guidelines were issued on Thursday in response to numerous questions from students and staff about U.S. travel concerns amid a number of reports of detentions and denial of entry into that country in recent weeks.

Jutras says while there’s no specific incident involving the university community, it felt the need to respond to concerns raised.

The university advises students and staff to tell the institution when they are travelling and discuss potential risks before leaving to the U.S.”

Link to the full article here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/udem-guidelines-travel-to-u-s-1.7497089?cmp=rss