On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

A Reminder re: Politics

2025-10-30T15:11:59Z

Putin has organized the automation of psychological warfare.

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Summation

2025-03-01T14:56:54Z

Now, we have three of the heads of government of the Permanent Five of the UN Security Council actively working to drive the rest of us humans to some form of autocracy if not feudalism.

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World Press Freedom Day 2023

2023-05-03T12:52:45Z

Noting that today matters, and this is one more of the reasons why:

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/press-freedom

Apparently, this is the 30th anniversary of the start of this practice.

https://rsf.org/en/2023-world-press-freedom-index-journalism-threatened-fake-content-industry?data_type=general&year=2023

https://j-source.ca/introducing-staying-alive-preserving-local-news-in-canada/

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Organized Anti-Trudeau Disinfo Ops on Twitter?

2022-09-29T18:42:47Z

I suspect that such is indeed going on.

https://twitter.com/HeatherMoAndCo/status/1575508432089751552

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Pandemic: Safety Barriers at Shoppers Drug Mart Removed

2022-06-25T19:57:00Z

And I found that out today on my way back from a trip to a long-term care facility.

How am I supposed to trust pharmacies of any affiliation during a Pandemic that's still in progress when they do stuff like this?

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And in case you're wondering?

2022-02-16T02:21:37Z

I am NOT living under "martial law", as the American far-right "news" services would have their audiences believe.

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Representation, Reconciliation

2022-01-08T01:12:57Z

I'm listening to this tonight as I type these words:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/connie-walker-on-how-lived-experience-can-help-indigenous-journalists-expose-truth-1.6307328

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Another January 6th

2022-01-06T12:31:18Z

What happened on this date a year ago is known too well by now.

Other anniversaries are still noted as well. But the Trump Insurrection - still underway - is the most infamous of them right now in North American and global small-d democratic-minded memories. I've read in The Globe and Mail, The Intercept, and elsewhere about the alarm bells still sounding. The looks by various authors to Rwanda and what used to be the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and how those places ought to have meaning for us all now.

I say this is not an anniversary to celebrate. It should be another "never again" moment. We know, also, that there are still too many who have sworn "forever again and again until WE win!" instead, because they've learned to see the real worlds through the kinds of lenses I call at best horrific. Because the will to cruelty remains persistent in too many human hearts.

The work to contain the will to cruelty continues for us all. Everywhere.

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I See Warnings

2021-06-06T20:01:50Z

Some of the heralds of the new fascist international apocalypse (whom, I suspect, would rather feel safe to cover other topics in their writings...but they don't, so...):

Sarah Kendzior
Jay Rosen
Timothy D. Snyder
Seth Abramson
Greg Olear
"Lincoln's Bible"
Rachel Maddow

So far.

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CBC/Ideas: Untold Stories of Ethiopa

2021-05-21T00:13:13Z

Listening to this programme as I type this entry. Per the title on the CBC page:

Maaza Mengiste on confronting the past without 'smoothing out the rough edges of history'
The writer turns to archival photography to explore how historical narratives are created

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/maaza-mengiste-on-confronting-the-past-without-smoothing-out-the-rough-edges-of-history-1.6033285

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In response to certain recent comments...

2021-04-06T14:49:31Z

...made about Ta-Nehisi Coates' run as writer of Captain America for Marvel:

I am sorry that my country let Jordan Peterson loose upon the worlds.

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To the Trans People of the Worlds

2021-03-31T13:49:41Z

I see you.

I hear you.

I recognize you.

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dewline @ 2020-06-26T19:30:00

2020-06-26T23:35:14Z

Thanks to twistedchick for pointing this essay out to me:

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-long-con-of-britishness/

Good on Laurie Penny for this. She's been good for sometimes brutal honesty about the worlds we live in - real and fictional - for a few years now. This is another aspect of that work of hers.

And this comes to mind in particular:

"If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by."

Canada's existence in its present form is another consequence of that long con, and the people living here are dealing with being consequences of that as well. Consequences for each other. We are a mess right now. We can do better. We can be better.

Whether we end up with balkanization back into what the Indigenous nations had before first contact with the European nations whose leaders wanted empires built upon the burned bones and spilled blood of the locals; into a mix of Indigenous and Settler holdings; the next conquest of the American Trumpist fascism if that survives this November upcoming; or something else hopefully unified by freely made choice and better for its struggles to accept our own ugly truths and better angels...?

I don't know yet.

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dewline @ 2020-06-25T18:01:00

2020-06-25T22:03:46Z

Masha Gessen on moral clarity:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-are-some-journalists-afraid-of-moral-clarity

Making a note to re-read at whatever leisure I still have.

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JOB SEARCH: Note to Employers

2020-05-20T13:19:46Z

I am likely to avoid answering your ad if I don't know whose ad I'm going to be responding to. You could be posting an opportunity for any of my "dream job" scenarios, but I won't take that chance.

Back to the search.

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WRITERS: Laurie Penny c. 2019

2019-09-02T00:24:21Z

I've seen her work in news services and on blogs.

She's still doing her work.

Here's one more of her stories. Or perhaps an update of one you already know parts of.

Thanks to the Mary Sue for pointing it out.

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Daring to note two anniversaries this week...

2019-06-03T02:38:03Z

...the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of pro-democracy protesters and activists by troops of the mainland Chinese army...

...and the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France.

Both events matter to human history for very different reasons. And yet, one reason unites them: human rights.

We must neither forget, nor be taught that remembering is toxic to social harmony.

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My alarm clock is off by two or three minutes

2019-03-25T09:52:30Z

And that was a mistake I made last night in the midst of a larger mistake of trying to go to sleep at 11 PM instead of 9 or 10 PM. Big surprise for me, right?

I don't believe Trump and Barr either.

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Those Worthy of Insult Demanding Impunity For Themselves...

2019-03-22T01:27:53Z

...such as Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-18/insulting-putin-may-now-land-you-in-jail-under-new-russian-law

He's done so much that's worthy of insult from the 1990's onward - and we wonder about his KGB career prior to that - that it's difficult to determine where to begin. Though many people have made efforts to figure out the best answer to that question, to be sure.

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WORDS: Disinformation and Misinformation

2019-01-08T11:09:24Z

There is a difference.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/163857/what-exactly-is-the-difference-between-misinformation-and-disinformation

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Truth vs. Bullhorns

2018-07-14T15:49:40Z

The idea that DT-45's bullhorn will always overwhelm the truth as told by anyone else is one that offends me. So, for some reason, I find myself putting these two links on the same weblog posting...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nato-brussels-trudeau-trump-1.4746424

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/14/the-death-of-truth-how-we-gave-up-on-facts-and-ended-up-with-trump

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Accountability and Town Halls

2017-01-14T13:42:35Z

For all the problems they're having with these town hall meetings, I can't help but consider these town hall sessions Mr. Trudeau - I no longer feel comfortable calling him "Trudeau the Younger", for several reasons - has been hosting as a good thing. He's taking hard questions directly from the public. The answers he gives are not always comfortable ones for him to give or for the audience to hear, but I get the sense that they are largely honest ones.

We'll see how things go.

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