14 IV 2024: Frauds

In the Age of Trump, the U.S.A. has grown accustomed to, indeed, has come to expect frauds. The latest AARP Bulletin is devoted to frauds wrought on the elderly, though the giant letters on the cover “FRAUD 2024” made me think, at first, that the entire issue was devoted to Donald Trump.

Another kind of fraud is being perpetrated by people who busy themselves about libraries, about forcing removal of books that they find offensive. They remind me of Prof. Harold Hill’s great sales pitch in The Music Man. With a slight alteration it could be adopted by these bookburners: “You’ve got trouble. It begins with T, and that rhymes with B, and that stands for BOOK.”

3 IV 2024: Stop funding Israel’s aggressions

Israel has become a rogue nation. We must stop funding Israel and stop backing Israel up in the U.N., for we are, and have been for years, the main enabler of Israel’s disgraceful conduct.

From its founding, Israel has been conducting a constant program of ethnic cleansing, driving out Palestinians and denying the rights and impairing the lives of those who have remained. Israeli zealots will not rest until only Jews live in an enlarged Israel.

The world is expressing outrage at the latest murder of aid workers. Israel promises to investigate. That’s like Russia promising to investigate. No, Israel will not stop murdering and starving and dislocating civilians until it has annexed Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli forces may engage in fewer criminal acts, like rape and torture, than the Nazis, the Russians, and other amoral regimes, but their overall behavior is just the same.

The war on Gaza is ripping off Israel’s mask of righteous victimhood. No longer will Israel and its supporters be able to dismiss criticism of Israel as antisemitic. Israel is being subjected to the same international disgust and disdain as other rogue nations. And it’s time for the U.S. to stop pretending and enabling.

14 III 2024: Parents’ role in preventing child abuse via Internet

I saw a good article on CNN about New Mexico’s Attorney General, Mr. Raul Torrez. In addition to prosecuting child abusers, he is paying attention to entities in social media that may facilitate dangerous persons’ access to children. He has sued Meta (Facebook, Instagram) for, the article reports, “creating a ‘breeding ground’ for child predators and exposing young users to sexually explicit material.” I hope he succeeds.

Though denunciations like this of social media have become routine, one rarely sees much concern about parents’ supervision of children who are allowed to go online and have access to social media. I think the cellphone, the internet, and social media have become babysitters by default in the way that television used to be. 

Of course, it is true that there are various apps that are claimed to inhibit young peoples’ access to dangerous stuff on the internet. But kids are far more resourceful than their elders at finding their way to what they want on the internet. Parents who worry over harmless books in school libraries might better spend their time worrying about harmful images and interactions in their own homes.

13 III 2024: Demand a refund from the House of Representatives

I read an article on Politico about how Republicans in the House have not wholly given up on their dream of impeaching President Biden. But just in case, they have worked up backup plans for investigating the President. 

These are shameless little people who find real service as congressmen so boring that they have to dream up an alternative life that is fictional and more theatrical. But their imaginations are rather limited. They are unable to think of anything new, so they do reruns of what Democratic house members have done in the past.

One fellow says they have to impeach Biden because “the base” expect it. Oh the contempt and corruption in this remark!

3 III 2024:  Forget about a ceasefire

I think the current government  of Israel does not really want a ceasefire in Gaza at this time. Israel will not permit a ceasefire in Gaza until they have either taken it over or have made it like Hiroshima or both.

I also think that Israel was to a degree complicit in the vicious Hamas attack. They knew it was coming, took no steps to prevent it, and have used it as a respectable casus belli. So Israel is enlarging its borders, and expelling the unwelcome, in two ways: in the Westbank by infiltration and colonization, in Gaza by invasion.

So I anticipate that Israel will continue to raise objections to a ceasefire until it is satisfied that it owns Gaza.

28 II 2024: Whose crime family?

Rep Boebert left a tweet on X [sic] in which she denounces “the Biden Crime Family.” Like her leader, Donald Trump, she projects her own sins and failings onto others. Shortly after her tweet, her son, Tyler, was arrested on 22 separate charges, including four felonies. Nor, it seems, does the apple fall far from the tree, for earlier this year her quondam husband, Jason, Tyler’s father, was arrested for trespassing, obstruction, and disorderly conduct.

These men accord well with the character of Rep. Boebert if one considers her disorderly conduct at the Beetlejuice performance and the fact that she is a scoff-law and marathon-MAGA liar.

21 II 2024: Catholics and fascists marching forward together!

It is reported that in a harangue in Iowa Trump declared that “Marxists and fascists” are “going hard” against Catholics. I think Trump was a bit mixed up here. Yes, Marxists have always had it in for Catholics, and fascists have in the past persecuted some Catholics. But nowadays reactionaries in the American Catholic church and American fascists seem to be allies, much in the same way as Pseudoevangelicals and the Republican Party.

20 II 2024: Trump a Russian Mole

Disinformation has always been an important weapon of Russia’s KGB and its successor institutions. Calder Walton, in his excellent book Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West, provides this list of the goals of Russian disinformation campaigns conducted against the United States: 

“… to discredit its government, 

delegitimize its institutions, 

disorient or polarize its society, 

and cast doubts on the true account of events. 

undermine the U.S. government’s functioning as a democracy, 

as well as discrediting Western alliances like NATO.”

No Russian spy or mole hidden in the intelligence community has done more than Donald Trump to achieve all of these goals. It does not matter whether he has attacked America and its institutions at the bidding of Putin & Co. or simply because he envies and disdains democracy and the rule of law. The catastrophic results of his disinformation campaigns are the same.

He is a Russian mole planted in the midst of American politics.

19 II 2023: Establishment Catholicism disgraced

The Catholic establishment in New York is throwing a fit because the funeral of a trans activist, Cecilia Gentili, was conducted in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cathedral authorities had been told only that Ms Gentili is a Catholic, so they allowed the funeral to take place. 

Now higher-ups are howling. Here’s a bit from a statement by the Cathedral’s Rector, Rev. Enrique Salvo:

“That such a scandal occurred at ‘America’s Parish Church’ makes it worse; that it took place as Lent was beginning, the annual forty-day struggle with the forces of sin and darkness, is a potent reminder of how much we need prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy to which this holy season invites us.”

The coverage goes on to report:

“Rev. Salvo added that the cathedral offered a mass of reparation at the direction of Cardinal Timothy Dolan to atone for the funeral”.

Fr. Salvo is right, “we need prayer, reparation, repentance, grace, and mercy,” because of Fr. Salvo and the wanna-be-pope-politico Cardinal Dolan who have much more to do with “the forces of sin and darkness” than with any authentic church.