Category: Uncategorized

Walking with Janus…

This is more of an announcement than reflections on the beginning of a new year. Where once when I was young the “holidays” held excitement, I have grown less and less sanguine about them and my noting of their passing has become increasingly less celebratory. So this is more about the “how” of the passing of 2024 last night and the release of the fruits of the efforts thus spent.

I took part in the electro-music.com 2024-2025 New Year’s Eve live stream and here, in the link that follows is the result of my performance there. No guitars were harmed (my two favs are in Houston, Texas being cared for until my arrival there, sometime in the coming months), but a couple of synths were definitely involved!

As always, any day is a good day to support the efforts of living artists, especially those you may follow on social media such as here —

“Walking with Janus, Ever Forwards, Ever Backwards“

Enjoy and share!

They Thought They Were Safe

Lots of comparisons being made between the current situation and emerging oligarchy in the US and what happened to Germany in the 1930’s. Some people are claiming that the Germans didn’t know what was happening. Consider, though, that Adolf was LEGALLY appointed as Chancellor in 1933. It is hard to claim that some didn’t know. What is troubling is that there were so many who thought it wasn’t a problem, since it was legal.

I encourage you to take a look at the link below… it’s a very slippery slope we are on.

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm

Remember, those events didn’t happen in a vacuum: Mussolini as legally elected in 1923 and by 1925 had declared himself dictator in what he called a fascist government…

Enough With the Substack!

Seriously — you should know better. And yes, there are alternatives that will allow you to monetize your content without financially supporting a publication platform that supports racism and fascism. Don’t believe me or know how to do it? Start by reading the following linked article:

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/substack-announcement-bari-weiss-free-press

“I hadn’t planned to write about Substack again, but part of me knew there was a rake somewhere just waiting to be stepped on. Despite the United Nations-worth of red flags, respected journalists, historians, creative writers, and others remain on Substack, sharing 10% of every paid subscription with the company—and now with a share for Bari Weiss. Subscribers can be easily exported to another platform, and people who monetize their newsletters will get a larger share of the revenue elsewhere. But Substack has managed to convince some that there is no life for a newsletter beyond them. This is simply untrue.

Since I left Substack for beehiiv in January, I went from making a little bit of money to actually making a living as an independent journalist with my own publication. I didn’t need Substack’s Twitter-esque Notes feature or its recommendation network to grow; I used social networks—mostly Bluesky—to successfully promote my work. That personal engagement created, I believe, deeper relationships with my readers than passive subscriptions via an algorithm. Most importantly, I’ve remained committed to producing work that I’m proud of, and publishing it via a platform that doesn’t force me to compromise my values.”


In the immortal words of Bob: STOP IT!
https://youtu.be/aAhA7KfbJgg?si=J2iK31Ldhs3li-4

On the border

A report from Bloomberg , found on Chuck Darwin’s Mastodon account (@cdarwin@c.im), is pretty chilling.

MANY years ago (1972?), we were stopped somewhere between Eagle Pass and Austin, TX, for no apparent reason… this will be much worse.

https://c.im/@cdarwin/113541904712837850

Here’s what Chuck said:

In the “border zone,” different legal standards apply.
🆘Agents can enter private property, set up highway checkpoints,
have wide discretion to stop, question, and detain individuals they suspect to have committed immigration violations
—and can even use race and ethnicity as factors to do so.
That’s striking because
❌ the border zone is home to 65.3 percent of the entire U.S. population,
and around 75 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population,
according to a CityLab analysis based on data from location intelligence company ESRI.
This zone, which hugs the entire edge of the United States and runs 100 air miles inside, includes some of the densest cities
—New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
It also includes all of Michigan and Florida, and half of Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a prior rough analysis by Will Lowe, a data scientist at MIT.
(Border Patrol considers the boundary of the Great Lakes to be the “functional equivalent” of the border, per government documents revealed in an ACLU lawsuit.
Elsewhere, too, the agency interprets the international boundary in a way that concerns the ACLU.)
🔥“It really is kind of a constitution-free zone,”
says Patrick Eddington, a policy analyst who has been compiling data on border patrol’s internal checkpoints at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank.
🆘 “I guess the best way to phrase it is that in this area, [border patrol agents] are being allowed to nullify people’s rights.”
According to critics, checkpoints and other internal operations in the 100-mile zone aren’t serving their intended purpose:
Just 2 percent of CBP’s total arrests of deportable non-citizens happened at checkpoints.
And since 2010, far more people who had legal status and weren’t eligible for deportation were arrested this way.
Meanwhile,
💥individuals in this zone
—citizen or otherwise
—are at risk of having their Fourth Amendment rights violated by border patrol, critics say.

Note well that last paragraph. We were a carload of four Anglos, and we got stopped.

#Persist
#Resist
#StopSayingMandate
#TrumpEtAliaDelendaEst

Donors Choose…

If you live in the USA, you’ve probably heard something about the situation that teachers there face every year when it comes to support in the classroom.

So here’s something you can do about it —

https://www.donorschoose.org/donors/map.html

There ya go.

#Persist
#Resist
#StopSayingMandate
#TrumpEtAliaDelendaEst

American Health… Care?

And this is what awaits me in the next phase of my journey…

“How Lincare Cashed In on the Disastrous Recall of Philips Breathing Machines — at the Expense of Patients”

… longish read, but eye-opening. Once again, it all comes down to money.

#Persist
#Resist
#StopSayingMandate
#TrumpEtAliaDelendaEst

Act 3, scene 2 … it’s curtains time

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks…“

I voted for Joe and Kamala. I voted for Kamala

But I did so knowing that we might wind up on the wrong side of history if the US continued to pursue its policies towards Palestine and Israel. What is outrageous is that Americans, in particular, do not understand the difference between being anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.

For that matter, my experience living in Germany taught me that they, too, have a similar problem. And now the EU has a problem.

No, Joe, what is outrageous is what the slaughter and genocide that the US continues. And we aren’t doing nearly enough to stop it.

#Persist
#Resist
#StopSayingMandate
#TrumpEtAliaDelendaEst