Bizarre

Good Grief!   How on earth did I get on the White House Christmas Greeting list?  I actually received a Year in Photos email  from the White House. Many years ago, when I was a student, I worked in the Gifts and Exchanges Department of the Butler Library at Columbia U. One of the "gifts" we received was a collection of propaganda from the Third Reich. There were books of  photos of Hitler kissing babies and accepting bouquets from Aryan maidens. This message was redolent of those books.

Just for the helluvit, I sent the following to the White house awhile back:  I wonder how the minions interpreted it as benign.  I got the definition of Anger Projection from Google's AI . It is interesting to receive the propaganda straight from the very font of it. 

 

 Merry Christmas, President Trump

I feel sad for you.  You are a very angry man.  It does neither you nor your country any good.  You are feeling back what you yourself project to the world.  No wonder your citizens are angry. What you are experiencing is your own projected  anger reflected back at you.  This does not make them your enemies.   Unfortunately, history is full of men like you. 

What Is Anger Projection? 

Projection is a natural, often subconscious, coping mechanism the mind uses to tolerate emotional distress and protect the ego. It typically occurs when a person finds it difficult to admit they are feeling angry, perhaps because they view their anger as irrational, "bad," or unacceptable

Here are some excellent maxims from some wise men. I try to keep them in my own heart - and on my wall.  I send them to you as a gift. 

    "Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured." – Mark Twain 

    "You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger." – Buddha

    "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." – Buddha

    "Between stimulus and response lies our power to choose." – Viktor Frankl

    "Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." – Ambrose Bierce

    "The greatest remedy for anger is delay." – Seneca 

 

Ford's "Irony" welcomes the Support of ICE

 

Dear Premier Ford

‘Fantastic news’: Ford welcomes ICE plan to order Ontario armoured vehicles” (Global News - Isaac Callan & Colin D'Mello Posted December 3, 2025)             

“I know it’s ironic, but that’s alright,” Ford said. “We’ll take orders anywhere in the world and thank goodness that the Americans are ordering it off us.” 

That is NOT irony. Look it up in Webster. Neither is it “alright” except in the eyes of the greedy and immoral who value profits over life. You are thanking “goodness” that American citizens must watch precious tax revenue, that could be used to better life in the USA, to inflict so much cruelty on other human beings because they have been duped by a lying demagogue  obsessed with inventing enemies and emergencies.

Do you want your grandchildren to learn that you aided and abetted a rogue nation in destroying families and hope,  breaking laws and committing crimes against humanity? Most are guilty of nothing but being the wrong colour. They have fled or been driven from other rogue states where their lives have been ruined or placed in danger in the name of profit for corrupt governments and their cronies. Many are fleeing from the effects of environmental destruction.

I have known the descendants of Nazis who did not learn about their parents’ crimes until it was all over. They, too, have been damaged.

How long must this go on? The great German, composer, Kurt Weill wrote a song with that title in 1944 after he escaped from Europe to the US.  Everything is connected.

  

Truth and Reconciliation Day

 Open letter sent to Premier Tim Houston

It was beyond embarrassing to be a Nova Scotian reading this article on Sep 30, 2025:
"On Truth and Reconciliation Day, the Houston government prepares to criminalize Indigenous land protectors"

So you want to criminalize people who protest on Crown lands which should be protected and used in sustainable ways for all Nova Scotians to benefit, not just private equity. We already have legislation in place. For whom is this additional proposal targeted?

And you want contribute further to an issue that was identified during the Truth and Reconciliation process and became Call to Action #30 

We call upon federal, provincial, and territorial governments to commit to eliminating the overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in custody over the next decade, and to issue detailed annual reports that monitor and evaluate progress in doing so.

Canada has made progress on some calls, and stalled on others, but when it comes to Call #30, we have made the situation woefully worse than it has ever been.

From the Canadian Justice Department study

Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Canadian Criminal Justice System: Causes and Responses

Ten years ago, Indigenous adults, 5% of the total population in Canada, made up a shocking 27% of adult admissions to federal prison. Today, that proportion is 30% for Indigenous adult males, and an inconceivable 50% for Indigenous adult females. At provincial jails, the numbers are even more bleak. In Manitoba, Indigenous persons make up 18% of the general population, yet they comprise 77% of those being held in provincial jails. Indigenous youth make up 8% of Canada’s population, yet they account for 40% of all admissions to provincial and territorial jails. Female Indigenous youth make up a staggering 70% of all female youth in jails.

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly called this state of affairs a crisis. It has declared that the Canadian government is complicit in creating the circumstances for this travesty, and has called on sentencing judges to take into account the impact of colonization: the attack on Indigenous culture, language, traditional practices; and the systemic racism and discrimination faced by Indigenous peoples and communities, including lack of access to clean water, adequate housing, and medicine, mental health, education, and family supports.

This comes only a few days after your government’s announcing:

 “The signature element of the bill is to build on the progress we have made to unburden*  the natural resource sector,” [Halman]  said ... added that he’s "proud of the progress the Nova Scotia government has made by lifting a ban on uranium mining, approving the Goldboro gold mine project and by updating its industrial approval process for metal mining — “but we can do more.”

I hope what “we can do more” is to criminalize any future industrial project developers who DO NOT CLEAN UP their hazardous refuse and remediate their sites when they are finished.

* my favourite bafflegab word of the week, at least when used in this context . I believe it may have come from environmental activism.

Open Letter to US Secretary of State - Destruction of life saving medical supplies for women

Dear Secretary of State Rubio

You recently made a decision to spend another $170,000 tax dollars to destroy between 9 and 12 million worth of medical supplies intended for women's health programs in low-income African nations paid for by American taxpayers, a large majority of whom support contraception, including many Roman Catholics, although your party is doing its best to make it more difficult for all woman to have affordable access. Alas for the planet, going forth and multiplying without question not sustainable. We've done that. We need to recalculate. My church has.

You will be accountable for the deaths and immiseration this cruel decision will cause. 

 According to the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition here is 

          THE TRUE COST OF DESTROYING LIFE-SAVING PRODUCTS

    Destroying $9.7M worth of contraceptives carries a human toll:

• 362K unintended pregnancies

• 161,000 unplanned births

• 110,000 unsafe abortions

• 718 preventable maternal deaths**

But the ripple effects within the supply chain are also devastating. When a woman’s first choice of contraceptive is missing, she may opt for a less-preferred product, which could lead to a stockout of that product if demand rises unexpectedly. When family planning stocks are compromised, the entire supply chain is at risk, requiring new funding, time, and coordination that cannot materialize at short notice. Saving $9.7M of contraceptives from being incinerated won’t solve the funding gap, but it can prevent further disaster.

This figure does not include the number of neonatal deaths where birth options are unsafe. I have a nurse friend who worked with women in Sierra Leone in her youth and dedicated the rest of her career to working for global improvements in women's health. In those days she was up against faith in witchcraft and ignorance of sterile conditions. Thanks to the efforts of fundamentalists of many flavours, I see the witches are returning.

According to a John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, worldwide use of contraception averted 272,000 maternal deaths, or 38 deaths per 100,000 women using contraception. The estimate is equivalent to a 44 percent reduction in maternal deaths worldwide. The decline in deaths for individual countries ranged from 7 percent to as high as 61 percent. The study authors further estimated that in the absence of contraceptive use the number of maternal deaths would be 1.8 times higher for the study period. I also note that they are currently engaged in studies on the effect of declining maternal healthcare in the USA.

The CEO of Doctors Without Borders in the U.S., called your plan a "reckless and harmful act against women and girls everywhere."

"Contraceptives are essential and lifesaving health products," she said in a press release. "[Our organization] has seen first-hand the positive health benefits when women and girls can freely make their own health decisions by choosing to prevent or delay pregnancy — and the dangerous consequences when they cannot."

I am a long time supporter of Doctors without Borders and the Stephen Lewis Foundation which lost USAID support for its programs for reducing AIDS in Africa and supporting families who care for children whose parents have died. I have increased my small donations but it grieves me to see what harm has been done and what little I can do. Stephen Lewis, a brilliant and caring Canadian, was our envoy to the UN and travelled extensively in Africa. His message: “I feel so strongly that the single most important issue on the planet is gender equality, nothing is more important  ...  until there is gender equality, all the other injustices of the world, most of which are outlined in the UN goals, will persist. He is right.

I stand with the Belgians. "Sexual and reproductive health must not be subject to ideological constraints." And the French: "The defence of sexual health and reproductive rights is a foreign policy priority for France." These countries are still civilized. I watch in horror as the current American government is steadily steering the US medical care toward some new kind of voodoo. Sooner or later, the harms we do in the world will come back to plague us one way or another. We are all connected.

 

Letter to Doug Ford on "Narrative Softening"

 

Dear Premier Ford

Here is a fine exemplar of "narrative softening" from the Grand Master

 

National park to remove photo of enslaved man’s scars:   The Trump administration is ordering the removal of information on slavery at multiple national parks in an effort to scrub them of “corrosive ideology.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/15/national-parks-slavery-information-removal/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

 

I hope you are not reading from his playbook with the John A statue.

Let us not turn to this corrosive example of how to undermine true history 

 

From Aniston to ICE – how my brain processes Vanity Fair

As each Vanity Fair arrives, the little imp on my shoulder scolds: "Why do you subscribe to this rag with its glossy ads for Rolex and celeb profiles that you pretend you don't want to read 🤥"? "Go away, humourless, überwoke imp!  Reading gossip in the tub is only a venial sin. 

The September cover features Jennifer Aniston and her elegant bottom.  Not mentioned is her new contract with Coca Cola shilling Smart Water. I minds the first time I saw her promoting this non-essential and polluting product in 2007. I try to avoid bottled water. Where I cannot, I buy the stupidest brand available and re-use the bottles for few months. Spinal issues make carrying heavy bottles unpleasant. In a world where universities make big bucks by signing "exclusive pouring rights," with Coke or Pepsi and you find yourself parched by the vending machine, three floors from the water fountain at midnight, or in Morocco where you cannot drink the water, choices are limited. My bottled water of choice is Earth Water a Canadian product bottled in light weight reusable aluminum bottles. I’ve kept some for two years.

Aniston has done well for her elegant bottom line flogging Aveeno products, manufactured by a multinational company whose corporate transparency has been subject to criticism on occasion: “No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson" by Gardiner Harrison. I boycott all products flogged by spokesmodels. No product will give me an elegant bottom. No tears for Ms. Aniston. Bless her, she seems a good soul who supports worthy causes, pays her income tax and is offended by VPOTUS as much as I am.

Also useful reading:  investigative stories about obnoxious rich people like Bernie Madoff, or Canadian fashion mogul, Peter Nygård. When they published The Battle of Lyford Cay by Eric Konigsberg in 2016 about Nygård’s "ruining the neighbourhood,” he was not yet under investigation for longtime sex offences, for which he was recently imprisoned. I boycotted his shops after the article. Thank you, VF. You know a sleveen* when you see one.  

 * sleveen -  a delicious Newfoundland word for an untrustworthy or cunning person

The person narratives are usually interesting.  Some may recall, with horror - or applause depending upon their gullibility - the abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk, Tufts University PhD student in March by masked ICE operatives. Her crime:  she co-authored with three other student, an op-ed piece in the Tufts Daily March 26, 2024, calling on the University President to apologize for remarks he made about the current Israeli-Gaza situation  and labelling all Palestinians as terrorists, without acknowledging the 75 year persecution of those who chose not to “self-deport” in 1948. There were about 700,000 or 85% who left.  The Hamas’ attack was horrible – and stupidly suicidal - - but it did not spring from a vacuum. Israel’s vengeance springs from longer lasting horrific experiences. The Hammurabi code is alive and well and on steroids.

Öztürk, upon release, was quoted in the NY Times: “America is the greatest democracy in the world. I have faith in the American system of justice.” Coming to the US from Erdogan’s Turkey before the current regime, that might have had some credence. I feared she might have been tortured. What would it take for such words to escape my lips?  As they say in Newfoundland “..she’s gone b’y, she’s gone.”

Öztürk ‘s VF article "Even God Cannot Hear Us Here” What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison"  is a shorter version of a longer piece that appeared in the Tufts Daily in July.  I read thoughtful words by young woman with admirable life goals, who suddenly found herself in an incomprensible  situation, and made it life-affirming by bonding with the women with whom she was imprisoned. May she finish her dissertation quickly and bring experience and wisdom to the wider world. I remember a book by a younger woman, with so much to offer, who wanted a career as a writer, and didn’t get that chance.

The stealthy abduction was observed. There was public outcry. The ACLU took the case. Thousands are not as fortunate. ACLU needs all help it can get right now. I have supported our Canadian equivalent for years. We are not immune to injustice.

The brutality Öztürk describes makes clear that the statement issued to Vanity Fair by GEO, the private company contracted by ICE for detention purposes is rubbish. GEO claims its “support services are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards.” If so, one suspects that ICE standards have taken a chapter from the SS.  GEO's website is enough to make one vomit.

To follow the myriad abuses of the United States Private Prison system:
The Marshall Project
Propublica.  
NPR