Tag: #persist

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.”

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 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.

Die weiße Rose/ The White Rose

On this anniversary of their murder by guillotine at the hands of the Nazi Volksgerichthof (22 February 1943), we reflect on the need for resistance to tyranny taking place in the US right now. It behooves us to read about “die weiße Rose” (The White Rose) and their efforts at resistance to the Nazis.

The US military (and many of the civilian public servants) swear an oath to uphold and protect the US Constitution, not to any other entities or personalities. It is one of the unique aspects of the operations of the US military.
Firing the people who make the judgements of what constitutes a “legal” order (the JAG, or Judge Advocate General’s Corps, basically high level lawyers for all the US military) is a step towards martial law, or worse. Such an actions allow all manner abuse by redefining what constitutes a legal order. After all, one of the unsuccessful defenses used by the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials was that they were simply following orders.

When an individual is running around claiming that “they are the law” and also happen to be the Commander-in-Chief of the entire US military (yep, got the finger on the nuclear button), one feels a certain amount of alarm concerning what is happening next — especially when it’s done on a Friday evening, at the end of the news cycle so it gets buried over the weekend. Mondays are a feint, designed to distract by presenting new crises to discuss over the rest of the week.

And that’s where we are. The mainstream media are systematically being overwhelmed by the actions of the coup leaders (yes, it’s a coup — no other way to talk about what has been happening since 20 January 2025), with the aim of frustrating any attempt at an organized resistance against them. But we must resist, even if it is only with the smallest gestures. We must not allow this to continue. It must not come to this:
A color-coded chart explaining the symbols used by the concentration camps by the Nazis in WWII

There are many ways in which to resist. I hope to be able to share more in the coming days and weeks. Let us hope that it will not be an exercise of months or years.

A clenched fist with the text "Resist"