E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Poem on the 2-1 Loss to the USA by the Canadian Men's Hockey Team In The Gold Medal Game at the 2026 Winter Olympics

2026-02-22T16:29:00.007+00:00

On The Game

For a moment, while they played,

my father was alive again,

roaring at the TV -

come on! come on! -

and then, that overtime brutality -

a millisecond of pain

that smashes a dream -

and there I am, facing a screen -

defeat instead of uproaring joy -

reminding that puck and luck rhyme -

losing in overtime, Jack Hughes

the nation-killer extreme -

I sit there, facing the scarred ice,

just me, and my father gone

back to where the dead don't play,

or watch, much hockey.

February 22, 2026, by Todd Stanley Swift

Playboy of the Western Hemisphere

2026-01-04T16:04:00.008+00:00

Exceeding all expectations for ruining a new year so quickly, Trump and his band of useful idiots, seemingly avoiding any of the constitutional checks and balances, enacted precisely the sort of decapitation attack on a sovereign nation to take control of power and resources that was aimed at Ukraine a few years ago... although this time the pretext was the soon-to-be infamous Donroe Doctrine, which, frankly, simply states that anything the Americans want in the Western Hemisphere (which includes Mexico, Cuba, Canada and Greenland) they can take... just because. It's a very ugly self-serving doctrine from a time when the USA was an underdog fighting off imperial powers from Europe; now, it is the basis for the law of the jungle, otherwise known as might makes right. The biggest Silverback wins.

There's so much contradiction and risk of blowback here, it's astonishing if unsurprising that a sociopath would go against decades of their anti-quagmire anti-nation building rhetoric to announce the "running" of a separate foreign nation of about 30 million people, the size of Germany more or less. The main complaints from the list of many critics of the actions, includes it is illegal; it will embolden China and other superpowers; and that it is impossible to take control of Venezuela without long-term US military commitment, and great expense; not to mention it is venal, unethical, and a blunt expression of power politics.

Trump has stripped the thin veneer off Western moral exceptionalism (not for the first time) - we're all just animals fighting with tooth and claw, and anyone who follows laws or morality is a sucker.

THE SWIFT REPORT 2025

2025-12-31T20:59:00.007+00:00

Had this year been only about good songs, TV shows and movies, plays, concerts, seeing friends, swimming, reading and holidays, it might rank among my top ten favourite years since I was born. However, three major factors make me consider 2025 one of the worst years in my personal experience, and probably one of the very worst years of the past century geo-politically.

1. My mother died. I won't write more here about this, but as you can imagine, this has been the saddest and most upsetting personal life event since the death of my father.

2. Trump, the war against Ukraine, and war and suffering in the Middle East, not to mention other wars and tragedies and terror attacks, led to a geo-political instability "at home and abroad" - with American democracy being undermined as perhaps never before, not even during the Nixon period.

3. The environment. Without even considering the existential risk to all humanity from nuclear weapons, bio-weapons, nanotech, a new pandemic like avian flu, or an anti-human superintelligence - each of which could destroy the human race in the next few decades - the climate catastrophe IS going to kill off many humans and animals, and ruin our civilisations, in the next few decades, probably. Bleak stuff.

If one adds aspects of local and national politics in the UK (a weak prime minister, the rise of extreme right populism), 2025 was for many people often depressing, scary and shocking. No wonder so many took refuge in entertainment, escapism, games, with mental health challenges on the rise.

***

Absurdly, perhaps, in the midst of many difficult moments, I had a few holidays, especially to Madrid and France, this year, and saw some good friends again.

I also published a new poetry collection.

And went to some excellent concerts in London and Brighton.

My health remained mostly stable.

And, I somehow managed to keep the small indie press I direct a going concern for one more year. I was very proud of the excellent titles we brought out, in our poetry, non-fiction, fiction and crime lists.

I have little to say at this time to encourage anyone. I suppose love and friendship, and art and conversation, prayer and good walks, swimming and lovely animal friends, can help. Good luck everyone.

The Best of 2025 In Popular Culture

2025-12-31T20:35:00.009+00:00

As readers of my Swift Report 2025 will see, when it is posted, this was not what I'd consider a "great year" - for me personally, or for the world, ecologically and politically. However, just as 1941 WAS a great year for movies from Hollywood, in the depths of WWII, so too, 2025 offered some of the best popular/indie music, TV shows, and movies of the century so far. I won't be discussing theatre, opera, art, orchestral, or other works here, nor books.

As a publisher that always seems awkward. Though I am on record as praising the posthumous collection by Irish poet Kevin Higgins from Salmon as a necessary book. And I found If anyone builds it, everyone dies a brilliant and thrilling propaganda work, sort of like The Communist Manifesto meets Terminator:2. If it is even 25% true, as the authors put it, the world will likely be destroyed by superintelligent AI (ASI) by 2047, maybe even in the next 3 years. If accurate, the book is maybe the most important one ever written by humans since the Middle Ages.

Anyway... here is a for now rough first draft, as you will see.

Best Songs of 2025

This year it would be entirely plausible to present a top ten list of albums and/or songs by only women performers, or bands with women as the singers and main songwriters for their groups. But the top two, tied are:

Lily Allen, 'Pussy Palace' - a work of brilliant savage satire, mixing dark humour and sadness perfectly.

Florence + The Machine, 'One of The Greats' - a performative song that establishes the singer Florence Welch as precisely that - confession, dark raw power, and wit converge with tremendous memorable potency.

It's a measure of the greatness of these songs that they beat also brilliant tracks by, in no order, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Little Simz, Rosalia, Wolf Alice, Alison Goldfrapp, CMAT, Tate McRae, Bria Salmena, Sharon Van Etten, Debbii Dawson, Robyn, Addison Rae, Yonaka, Wet Leg, Olivia Dean, Annahstasia, Hayley Williams, among others (basically the top women performers I mentioned above, kif you wanted a top 20 of the year).

I may type out later a few of my other favourite songs of the year.

Best TV of 2025

While some may prefer The Pitt, or Stranger Things, or Such Brave Girls - all superb in their way, there seemed to me to be five frontrunners for the best TV series of the year:

1. Pluribus, season 1 - great concept, superb acting, taut direction, from a master creator, Vince Gilligan.

2. White Lotus, season 3 - as funny and suspenseful and satirical as ever, with Parker Posey stealing the show, perhaps.

3. Severance, season 2 - hard to imagine the perfect first season could be bettered, but it was, with a final episode of sheer genius.

4. I Love LA, season 1 - no show is more attuned to the influencer-age and what it's like to be a Gen-Z-er (one supposes) with sitcom situations as absurd as I Love Lucy's - except now they can be far more sexually indiscreet.

5. The Last of Us, season 2 - Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal - acting giants - Ellie and Joel - amidst the fear and violence there was so much love and hate to work out; drama of the highest order.

Other excellent shows to round out a top ten list would include Alien: Earth, with its infamous eyeball monster and superb filmic cinematography; Task an existentially rich series about a former priest turned FBI agent played by Mark Ruffalo; and a new season of Slow Horses, once the best how on TV, still with world-class performances. And, a stylish and well-acted mini-series, Apple Cider Vinegar, that showed the power of influencers to destroy lives with fake health cures. Finally, Adolescence, in hindsight perhaps overly-praised, but still astonishingly well-acted.

Best Film of 2025

I need to see a few more before I can say for sure... at the moment, Sentimental Value seems to be one of the best... to be continued.

A statement about my mother who has died

2025-10-23T18:36:00.022+01:00

It has been 2 weeks and 2 days since my mother died.

Such is the nature of mourning. Every day counts. Each days brings us farther from the incalculable mystery of when they were still alive, and able to communicate with us.

There are few key messages to give to a parent, when there are few minutes left.

I love you, or I am sorry - or maybe, I forgive you - but always, finally, I love you, and thank you.

I want to write more about my mother, but she was very private.

I will say, now, as Halloween nears - she was the kind of mother who would sew elaborate costumes for my brother and me. I once went as Kanga with Roo in my pocket (in fact of course my Roo was a Kanga doll).

My mother was born in the Eastern Townships, Quebec, Canada, in a rural setting, though her parents were teachers. She had 3 sisters and one brother, and was the eldest sibling, which early on established her take charge approach. She spent some summers on the Gaspe peninsula, in Port Daniel, where her uncle and aunt owned a large farm with sweeping views of the bay. She grew up loving animals and outdoors. She loved to hike and ski (cross-x) and swim. As a teenager, she was an excellent track and field competitor. She became a vegetarian later, to underline her love of animals.

My mother was highly intelligent - she attended one of the best universities in Canada, McGill, entering a year younger than nearly everyone else, and studied for a teaching degree, taking courses in psychology with Dr Hebb, still one of the greatest neuroscientists of all time. As an aside, she had excellent handwriting.

She was beautiful - tall, blonde, athletic and slim, and was a department store model until she gave birth to me when she was in her early 20s. When she visited Hollywood when she was 18, it was said by my uncle Jack she was offered movie contracts, and turned them down, for she was already in love with my father, Tom E Swift, who was a top-20 recording artist with Decca records, in Canada, in the early 1960s; he did rock and roll. My mother and father were in love from the day they met until the day she died (he had died young in his 60s, too many years before her). They met at a skating rink at the teaching college for McGill.

My mother loved gardening; my mother loved to cook, and no one made cookies (biscuits), vichyssoise or other delicacies like she did. She also made the best macaroni and cheese, usually mixing in freshly sliced tomatoes, or tuna. She loved to dress up and go to movies or a meal or dancing with my father. She loved cinnamon gum, pearls, and lipstick.

My mother took me horse riding; she took me to James Bond movies when I was a kid. She'd let me stay home from school if a good Bogart film was on TV. When young she was a lot of fun. She liked to play Scrabble, eat cashews, sip Canada Dry. She enjoyed wine with her meal.

My mother did not like comedy, or cruelty, and she hated war. She despised the Flintstones because Fred lied to Wilma, and Hogan's Heroes, because it trivialised war.

She was greatly affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and some of her uncles had fought in WW2; her father, a crack shot as a country boy, had volunteered and been rejected on the grounds he had "bad eyesight" - an absurdity that perhaps saved his life.

My mother read a few books a week, her entire life. She read all the Canadian classics. She was a huge fan of Leonard Cohen, and took me to see him once in concert; I also went to Madonna with her. When I was younger, she used to plan long trips, across the USA or UK, and we'd drive for weeks, and see everything. She once went on a round the world trip just with my father, and they visited China extensively, when it was still a mostly-closed country (in the early 80s).

My mother studied our family tree, and was an expert on family history, going back centuries. She was very proud of our ancestors, some of whom were shipbuilders, admirals, and aide-de-camp to Viceroys. One of them once hosted a Royal Visit to their home (a Great House) and then went promptly bankrupt! So extensive was her genealogical knowledge that, at a banquet at Pembroke College, Cambridge, she found herself seated beside one of the world's leading Genetic Scientists; they ended up deep in conversation for half an hour after everyone else had retired to the next room for dessert wines by the fire.

She knew much about English, Scottish, Irish and Canadian history. She always voted Liberal, and admired Pierre E. Trudeau.

My mother was the most stubborn person you'd ever meet. My mother had zero interest in money, or business, or greed. She considered materialism a lesser state of being.

I was encouraged to be a poet by her. She used to read me poems all the time, and some she recited from heart. Her favourite poets were Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, and Frost, after Cohen. She used to recite "we are the hollow men" in a deep ominous voice, which made me laugh as a little boy.

My mother was not cuddly; she was not a physically warm person - she came from a family background that was stern, puritanical, and kept emotions unexpressed. She didn't like to hug, and rarely used the L word. But she was one to say when she enjoyed something: "that's really neat!"

She met personal and family tragedies with laconic stoicism. She went to her own death with little complaint, and no publicly stated metaphysical views on an afterlife. She was probably agnostic, though she belonged officially to the United Church of Canada, a bland and undogmatic denomination.

My mother's Achilles heel was handling negative aspects of her family's experiences - shadow sides of things. These were invariably swept under the carpet. Other than this aspect - which I have learned to contextualise - she was a wonderful mother. The lack of engagement with some major childhood traumas, including my own mental health challenges - strained to breaking sadly, sometimes - our trust bonds - because she was a sunnier person, who preferred to see life with its rose-tinted glasses on.

People who met her met a brilliant, stylish, culturally-interested person with the charisma of a slightly acerbic movie star. She liked to wear leather jackets and sunglasses into her late 70s. She loved the songs of Meatloaf.

...

My mother loved discussing outrageous subjects at dinner, murders, politics, UFOs. But she hated comedy and didn't like to laugh at my father's bad jokes. She held great parties for my friends when I was young, and kept all my school and debating records, and all my early writings.

My mother was an excellent Grandmother to my brother's son Alex. She doted on him, and became his best friend. She was a big fan of my brother's music and bands and was very supportive of him.

I see my mother in the round, as a passionate wife, a dedicated mother and grandmother; her own career as a teacher she set aside.

When young she drove a red sportscar, purchased with her modelling money. When my father died, she bought a sportscar again.

She was so alive, so strong-willed, so smart, so actively engaged in following the news, in caring about people and events. I consider it a tragedy of my life she and I clashed more as she grew older, but we both loved to debate issues, and had strong views.

I see now my mother was so much more than me and being my mother - and her whole life, was, on the whole, full of event, travel, love, food, books, movies, music, nature, pets, family - except for the natural tragedies of human life and human nature, it was not so bad after all, and in many ways, a great life, though it could be mused that such a brilliant woman would nowadays likely have sought a more public career. But my mother was private and did not ever seek attention.

Indeed, she had no funeral or obituary, and wanted no notice or fuss made of her death. What an enigma. I am so devastated she has died.

Mother Mary

2025-10-10T15:57:00.000+01:00

My mother, Mary Margaret, has died.

Three days ago.

I'd like to write more now, but she was very private, and did not want public obituaries or death notices.

In time, when her memorial is on the horizon, or sooner but not now, I want to write something about her, in prose.

For now, I am simply devastated.

Terrible Ugliness Is Born

2025-09-17T18:19:00.002+01:00

Yeats was sometimes wrong. As maybe were The Old Masters. Not sure about them today.

But Yeats, yes - sometimes a terrible ugliness is born.

The last few months have seen ambassadorial resignations, assassination, slaughter of innocents, wars, aerial bombardments, mass arrests - while the West slips closer to authoritarianism, and the idea of democracy withers.

Meanwhile, global heating is inexorably killing life as we know it, on our planet.

This we know, yet we go to ballgames, TV awards, movies, clubs, restaurants, bars, and play away our cares, because, as Eliot another poet said, approximately, that too much reality is unbearable.

If this blog has not commented on every event, poems have been written, tears shed, hands wrung, and despair felt, rest assured.

Now Trump, our strange bedfellow, is here in the UK. The Age of Social Media is giving way to the Age of AI. Vast fortunes are about to be made, and millions made jobless. War and medicine, art and science, sex and religion, will change forever. As with the Atomic Age or the Age of Steam, good and evil will jostle for the upper hand, the rich get richer, and the world continue slouching towards Mayhem to be born, as Yeats' greatest poem almost goes.

2025-07-15T13:16:00.006+01:00

A poem for my mother, July 15

When she was dying

And I was in a different country

I dreamt I was there with her

Flying over the ocean very quickly,

And arriving in the room like a dream

And I was a dream, but the meaning was more

Than a dream has – it was a moving over time

And land, over water, to get love across

Fast enough, to be there, before she died,

To lean over the small, huddled figure,

In the dark, and without bothering her

Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air,

A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one,

And when I woke, none of this had happened,

She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.

In Praise of Liam Neeson movies

2025-07-14T20:48:00.004+01:00

This blog confesses to finding this a very challenging time in world history - a time of threatened democracies, threatened peoples and enclaves and nations, threatened ways of being human, threatened ecosystems and indeed the planet... it is perhaps the Age of Threats, best exemplified by the excesses of billionaire capitalism, big tech, and drone warfare. It is a tough time.

So, when Liam Neeson releases a new movie, we watch it. Simply for escapism. For the idea that someone can solve some of these problems, with their skill set.

Now, critical standards are important, when one is a critic, but less so when one is a consumer of an escapeway to another world.

Liam Neeson's "violent dad" movies are not for everyone. His Taken films are admittedly the gold standard of the Neeson genre. But we love his always the same but different characters, wherever they appear, in warm or blizzard conditions, especially when they start somewhat isolated or sad, and suddenly have a job to do, that only a very tall old guy can handle. It's preposterous, though ageist to argue so. Why not let an old man do some good for a change?

Most of these films are "bad" by the standards of Vertigo. They are B films, released to video, or streaming, after brief cinema releases. Some do well, others less so. But they come out once or twice a year. And whether they are camp, kitsch or just guilty pleasures, there are enough of them now to set up a whole film season, or drinking game.

Neeson is a good actor, and his best roles, including in Schindler's List, are A-list.

But in films like Ice Road: Vengeance (now available to stream), that's not the point. He just has to throw punches and leap a bit, and speak laconically. He exudes a kind of dignity.

Now, almost every review of this film has been cruel, almost gleefully so. And it is easy to dismiss a low-budget action movie like this. But this one actually has some quality to it.

Firstly, the writer-director, Jonathan Hensleigh wrote the screenplays for Die Hard: With a Vengeance (hence the word in the new title?), Armageddon, and Jumanji - three of the top grossing films of the 1990s. His The Ice Road with Neeson did well enough on Netflix to warrant this sequel.

The plot is a Western, in all but name, perhaps ironic as the setting is Nepal, on the edge of the rising roads to The Himalayan Base Camp for Everest. Instead of a stage coach, we have a bus coach, driven by a grizzled old Kiwi (who ends up actually being left to die with a gun, to "hold 'em off at the pass").

The hero, Mike, is an Irish-American who can drive large trucks expertly on ice roads, and is a fearless tough fighter who is also a skilled mechanic. Finding himself in Nepal on the coach, heading to Base Camp so he can scatter his dead vet brother's ashes there, his guide is the wonderfully beautiful female middle-aged "Sherpa" and ex-soldier, Dhani, played by Bingbing Fan. As the film progresses, it becomes clear she is a great martial arts warrior, and can use any object to punch and defeat villains. Also onboard the coach are a group of mainly secondary characters, including a well-meaning oddly ineffectual professor who knows the region, and his Instagram-obsessed teenage daughter.

Their enemies are, basically, the cattle ranchers who want to take the land from the humble farmers - or, as in the Japanese versions of this story, the peasants. I suppose the pitch was Speed meets Shane meets Seven Samurai.

Oddly, there is little to no mountain climbing in the movie (was a scene cut? The opening shows Neeson can climb!). The villains are exceptionally handsome corrupt Nepalese police officers, a handsome Nepalese industrialist/mobster, and Amelia Bishop playing Jeet, a preposterously kickass lithe assassin ninja motorcyclist out of a Bond film. Jeet basically fights Mike and Dhani a lot, while the bus keeps careening down very steep curving icy gradients, with doom on the margins, while people machine gun them. Sometimes it feels very Mad Max: Fury Road, in a good way.

The film is absurd but not most of the time, mostly, it avoids the pitfalls of ludicrousness but we could ask how does Mike manage to jerry-rig a whole pully system to lift and repair the bus in two hours? How do they expect to get away with shooting all these police officers?

We don't care. It's a funny, madcap romp of an adventure, with a very touching romantic ending, maybe one of the most romantic in Neeson's career. And there are some good lines, including near the end.

Good prevails. The vicious corrupt killers are defeated by the cowboys from out of town. The good farmers/villagers get to save their sacred river and generate electricity! And despite a lot of noble deaths, everyone seems happy at the end, as if it was all worth it.

It is getting one and two star reviews. It deserves three stars at least. It's entertaining. And the message is hopeful. It made me feel like I could change a big tire at high altitude fast.

7/7 20 Years On

2025-07-07T10:00:00.006+01:00

20 years ago, when blogging was a new past-time, and this blog had just recently begun, a major terrorist attack took place in London. This is what I posted that day, here, exactly 20 years ago:

"The thing we feared most has happened: Madrid-style, multiple terrorist attacks on the London Underground and bus routes in the heart of London, timed with surgical cruelty after London's Olympic win and the start of the G8 summit. It is an unsettling time, and there have been many casualties. So far, over 33 fatalities have been reported.

It is - weatherwise and ironically (as in New York in 2001) - a warm, sunny day now, with lovely blue skies. Tens of thousands of would-be commuters are slowly walking home early. With no underground system, some mainline services closed, and few buses in Zone 1, some will be walking for hours. The streets are eerily calm, punctuated by sirens.

The people of London, accustomed to such things, are brave and will endure, but this is a sad day for all who love London and live here."

Nothing more to be said, except now we know 52 died, and over 800 were injured, some very seriously. In interviews, we now know of immense bravery and kindness to the dying and injured from others on hand, including fellow passengers and first responders, and we also know that many who survived still think daily of this terrible event.

The world is not safer, or better, and there were other attacks in the UK afterwards; but London and its people have endured. Today, as an aside, is not warm or sunny, but cool and rainy.

As the poet Larkin once said: "man hands on misery to man" and in another context, "what survives of us is love". Between those two sentiments is the world, and its realities, and challenges.

6 weeks later...

2025-06-17T20:08:00.004+01:00

As the saying goes, a week in politics is a long time, and, as they also say, there are some weeks where it seems like years happen, and so it is, six weeks on from the last post, we now have an American (sort of) Pope, a new major war in the Middle East, and a US president behaving increasingly like Nixon in the late 1960s. Indeed, the current moment seems peculiarly like 1968: a criminal president, conflict in the Middle East, a major superpower war inflicted on a smaller country (then Vietnam, now Ukraine), and political assassinations, the national guard out in the streets of America, and nationwide protests. Probably the main difference is, there are fewer Maoists now, and we've lost John Lennon and Brian Wilson; but, broadly speaking, this is a hinge year and a hinge moment, and when it isn't feeling like '68, it is feeling like '39. Let us hold our breath and hope that peace comes to Iran and Israel, and Gaza, sooner, rather than later. A lot is going to depend on what Trump does in the next few hours, if he follows his MAGA doves, or his GOP hawks...

INS-AI-NITY

2025-05-05T14:09:00.001+01:00

The past few days have revealed that Donald Trump is possibly even more insane and out of control than previously imagined - or - worse - insane and perfectly in control. His potentially-blasphemous, and certainly poor-taste mockery of the recently deceased Pope Francis, in which he let his likeness be AI-modified (as above) and released by the official White House X account, with him dressed as the Pope, was simply weird, especially since Catholics make up a large voting block within MAGA-world (or did). Trump is also not a theological expert, or even a Catholic, and hardly the ideal candidate to wear the shoes of the fisherman.

Now for 4th May, he appeared as a Sith Lord (see the red light), incorrectly we assume.

More seriously, if that word applies, in a recent interview for a major TV channel, he claimed he would consider military force against Greenland (a NATO ally) to annex the land; ruled out invading Canada (thank you O mighty one!) - and yesterday also - decided to reinstate Alcatraz, that small island former prison (closed since 1963) famed in movies, as a major prison for the worst offenders in the nation. Perhaps based on the fact it was, even 62 years ago, deemed inhumanely cramped and awful.

Plus, he has attacked Hollywood, and slapped a 100% tariff/ tax on movies made outside of the USA and/or by non-Americans, showing he has no clue how movies are financed, or where they are filmed. This could be potentially disastrous for Pinewood Studios and other UK film studios, such as in Wales (for Havoc) but was likely aimed at ruining the Canadian film industry, where Montreal, Toronto and BC often stand in for US locations.

On top of which, Trump has continued his trade wars, his extreme immigration policies, and his baiting of judges and others who try to remind him of the US Constitution, which he recently stated he did not know if he had to uphold.

Meanwhile, he is planning a massive military parade in his honour for his birthday in June, and stated that America did more than everyone else to win the second world war, which seems to ignore the British empire, and the Russians.

This is actually almost funny, this bizarre madness coupled with ignorance, but in the tragic awful sense that despotism can appear ludicrous because so kitsch and petty sometimes. But it is actually just tragic.

The silver lining is that good Trump-opposing leaders were elected in the past week in Canada and Australia, proving Trump's effect is sometimes to cause a reaction in the equal and opposite direction.

CANADA NEEDS DEFENDING

2025-04-28T18:22:00.001+01:00

This blog, whose main editor and writer voted in the Canadian federal election, thinks the Liberals, led by Mr Carney, would form the best government to stand up to Mr Trump; but does not think any strong government that opposes Trumpism would be especially unfortunate. The main thing is to stand strong against Trump.

Trump, whose unbalanced (and recent, again) trolling online about Canada as the 51st State is, at the least, incredibly, absurdly rude, DESTABILISING, WEIRD, and undiplomatic; coming from a US president with nuclear weapons, and the army to conquer Canada, it is also provocative, and frightening, whether said in jest, half-jest or all earnestness. Probably Mr Trump doesn't know for sure himself.

The USA could dominate Canada more than it already does, militarily, economically, and politically.

Canadians, by a landslide majority, do not want to become Americans. And the entire history of the founding of Canada, as a settler colony made up of French and British competing empire interests, which tragically and offensively includes taking the land which actually belonged to the First Nations and their ancestors, is a history of rejection of American rule, up to and including fighting (and burning down the White House) to say so.

We stopped writing about Easter

2025-04-17T19:21:00.004+01:00

We stopped writing about Easter

When our tree ran out of gas;

The eggs warmed; the crosses burned.

Buns sued Maine. The bunny made ominous

Threats towards Greenland. The parade

Turned itself into a hatchet, and dug itself out

Of the grave. The land gave up its dead,

And not in a good way. Friday went backwards,

And the living died like they were in dubious prison

For the criminally bald. The mild weather

Spoke ill of old Europe, and the wind sang

About the merry days of ruination in the markets.

The cherry blossoms stopped at every border,

To pay for themselves with their own vanishing;

Fear went freelance like a befurred farrier,

The dangling promises hung themselves out to dry,

And no one woke to find anything sweet hidden

In plain sight, it was all very unclear where any

Of us were; and then Romans handed us nails,

Some non-Canadian wood, ordered us

To vote with our blows, which brought in a landslide

Of blood and flesh, pouring out of the human basket,

As if one of our fellow men was a grocery list,

Being pulled out of its own skin, to make pain

The national dessert, in the moment of golden praise.

Maundy Thursday, Easter, 2025

London

poem for my 59th birthday

2025-04-08T11:31:00.001+01:00

The currency I traded in

Is bearish now, at fifty-nine

My volatility index has squandered

Its lows and highs, is in decline –

The lyric force is muted by the times,

Which lie like bricklayers build brick

To brick – as that song went, another

And another – that was the image,

If I recall, from dark gyms, at fourteen

Or so, terrified to dance slow, or quick,

With those around me on the walls;

Music, that brings us back to ourselves,

Takes us out to sea as well,

Like a drug that can murder or revive;

What language can I use to defend a form,

A rhetoric, even, that has been designed

To crush whole peoples, sign by sign?

Tanks roll on, drones scour the air like hawks,

To hurt the ones below, but only poetry kills

By sound or fine-bonded lines. To me,

What’s serene or boundless in a poem thrills,

But it advances in English, crushes like a love

That will not slow dance to urgency in grade nine.

The world was bad in sixty-six, has always been,

One supposes, ruled by the maniac fixed on deformities

Of the soul, that no plastic arts can reshape to good;

But at this peak of my presence, albeit stumbling,

I can locate, as if to blow apart, on the unsafe ground,

A collective malice in the blood, like perfume,

Except an odour of varied virulent sprays, wafting

Over borders like a gas; what can we do, who mask

Ourselves with words, to play for better futures?

I have listened to the sleepless inkwell night,

And dipping into the inexplicable infinites of minus

Light, have understood a signal from the solar winds:

It says, in no language but of mathematics, or the divine,

As if Bach had been a hole that whorled back into sight,

Bring on the great floods, make the world without form again,

So in the weird stillness before creation a differing biology

Can think itself into manifestation on an open canvass,

Rebirth of all that struggles, fights knives out, without cease;

As kindness is a primary symptom of both love and peace.

April 8, 2025

THE END OF AMERICA

2025-04-03T18:57:00.013+01:00

The modern idea of America - perhaps the post-modern idea is a better way of putting it - was born in 1945. Or, as historians have been reminding us, 80 years ago.

This America had won the biggest war in history, from their perspective (the rest of the Allied powers know better) and now, could set the rules of the international systems that would rebuild world order from the chaos. The Germans were crushed, the British empire was gone or going, and in debt, and only Russia could arguably pose a growing threat (with China eventually kept in check by Nixon's triangulation).

So the Cold War began.

During that time - 80 years - the West was basically America, plus its allies. And as such, the world system, built to suit America, allowed the USA to prosper as never before.

Yesterday, Liberation Day for Donald Trump, the seemingly unstable, worst president in US history - the convicted felon no less, with mysterious empathy for the Kremlin - announced the end of the global system, built by America, to benefit itself and its allies. A few hours later he fired top people at the NSA, an agency designed to keep Americans safe.

And, lying, of course, he claimed the world had ripped off America for all this time. Trump, lying, said the world, in the years when the American dollar reigned supreme globally, and the USA became the richest country to ever exist (remember the Reagan 80s?), had "raped and pillaged" America, as if peaceful trading with one's allies and neighbours was a Viking Raid.

He failed to mention America benefits most from the world system of free trade it fought for, even killed for (in Vietnam, for example) during the Cold War.

The people who voted for Trump are not the Americans, for the most part, who have passports, or travel much to foreign countries (maybe sometimes to Canada or Mexico), but for whom Europe and Asia are useless, remote concepts, filled with nasty foreigners.

The people who voted for Trump hate the world of people outside their borders, or don't really care about them, or know them, or care to learn. They are the under-educated masses, those fed internet lies, cheap food and beer, and all the sports, especially wrestling, they can handle. Billionaires lead them cynically, but these are not people who understand that the success of the USA for the past 80 years was down, at least partially, to having allies, and working with them.

Not, in Trump's language, screwing them over.

Now, America as that great idea, of the Superman, the great indispensable friend, is dead. In the past few months, Trump and his ludicrous cronies, including VP Vance, have made sure we know, Europe is despised, Canada is despised, Denmark is despised, NATO is despised... only Russia is somehow exempt from contempt.

Trump has built the world that the leading contemporary Russian philosopher has argued for - a multipolar world, of competing nationalist large powers - basically, the USA, plus Russia and China, dividing the world up between them, no power seeking to dictate to the other few Big Powers - each staying in their own ethical-moral lane. And with few if any allies. Them against the rest of us.

Trump has torn down the perhaps false façade, that advertised a grinning, friendly Uncle Sam, beckoning us to romp on the sands of Miami Beach, and enjoy a Coca-Cola with our burger and Hollywood cartoons. The world of Disney, the world of benevolent hegemony, of avuncular nuclear supremacy, is exposed, as a fever dream, cobbled together from James Dean movies, baseball cards, and Playboy magazines. A 1950s Potemkin village. A disused movie lot. Fake.

Maybe he has done the world a favour, by stripping the good guy BS out of the whole cowboy routine. As if Santa asked for all his presents back, with interest, or Indiana Jones suddenly did a Roman salute, we're stuck with that classic image from the comics, of a Bad Superman, turned on the world, with us terrified and shocked, below.

But probably this is no favour, just a horrible lurching jolt. The start of a new world system. And, this time, with fewer sidekicks brought along for the ride.

{As an end note really, the supreme irony is that Trump's biggest fans, his MAGA voters, will soon find their cars - indeed most everything they want to buy - more expensive not less. He is giving them the opposite of what they wanted, which is the snake oil salesman's cruellest trick. The Economist - hardly left-wing - has called Trump's Tariff plan "the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era".}

SNAFU

2025-03-30T18:26:00.007+01:00

It's been 12 days since I posted about the growing menace of the Trump government. It is worse, sadly, since then.

Threats to bomb Iran. Flights to Greenland, and ongoing threats to seize it any which way.

Ludicrously lax security and lying vilification of journalists; amateur hour at the Pentagon from the telegenic crusader with the menacing messages inked to his white skin.

Tariffs to crush Canada, and other nations.

Threats to law firms. Threats to museums. Detentions and forced expatriation of PhD students on proper visas. Crushing of dissent, of opposing views of history, and, shockingly, the near-constant crumpling of opposition, as media, universities, law firms, and politicians bow down under threat.

Measles and Avian fu spreading. Denial of the globe warming. No alliances. No secure promises. Litigation and bullying.

The general actions of authoritarian take-over - more destruction of the "Cathedral" - more work to make the CEO-king the unquestioned ruler. Dark enlightenment. Death to democracy. March madness.

How long must we sing this song?

poem for after the spring equinox 2025

2025-03-21T18:44:00.005+00:00

The Grand Minima

(7 x 6)

for William Empson

Totting it up a plethora of minuscule

debris fields, eon by inch,

the daily granular fractures,

chipped bits and bobs,

dust bunnies that don’t ever quit,

the towering trivial pizza box

style of personal architecture –

love lies, business crops wilt, soar,

the whole a broken abacus possessed

by a stammering Ouija board

whose misspelt detritus inspires

poetry in the super-rich or bored,

the rising tide lifts all quotes, all toffs

step off yachts to sleep between sheets

when the port appears like a murdered

ghost – we host what we love most,

we live in a blackhole inside a blackhole,

like mice are denizens of a tinier Manhattan

project, the nuclearism is unclear, but here

it goes, small into smaller, like faller into fall or

inside the deep dive is the pool looping

around its Ouroboros dream of self –

we’re colliding with the sun that grows us,

as dancers swoon by starlight to the violins

that thrill with their spheres – musical

dividends, paying down, paying off,

jots and crosses, forgotten knots,

those broken rubber bands

good for nothing but snaking

about the lone chopstick, pennies

from Victor Von Doom’s homeland,

the whirligig pirouettes until it stops,

and we, who once were real, are legends

now for agents, booklet faces

left folded on the pews after the mourning,

some anecdotes might-as-well-be

Medieval, or, molecular iotas,

light liquified into cold solids, crazy

salad days browning definitively…

the rays that once were high as corn

now slowing down, so the small ice age

will waltz with rivers, on the planetary stage.

March 21, 2025

INCREASING MENACE

2025-03-18T18:06:00.002+00:00

Much that is menacing is left hidden (a reference to this film still for film fans) but the current strategy from the Trump revolution is to do so much, so often, and have so many outrageously controversial balls in the air at the same time, it is nearly impossible to comment on, let alone oppose, them.

It was bad March 1st, but two and a half weeks later, it seems worse, not least because the crisis whereby the Executive branch defies the Judiciary seems to be starting, with rulings defied and judges threatened (signalling the attempted end of American democracy as a system of checks and balances, on, in other words, a coup); war is breaking out again in the Middle East, and threats against Iran, attacks on Yemen and Gaza, are commencing; the new peace negotiations regarding Ukraine seem designed to support the aggressor; and threats to the sovereignty of Canada, and Greenland, continue. Biden's pardons are questioned; visiting professors refused entry; students threatened; trade wars ramping up; tariffs rising, more DOGE firings, the economy in the USA declining... it seems absurd to say so, but the first 100 days aren't for another month or so, and yet this seems like the most decisively consequential presidency since Reagan's, if not even FDR's. And not in a good way.

We shall see, but for now, it is not looking good...

TRUMP AND VANCE - WORSE AND WORSER

2025-03-01T14:55:00.006+00:00

The sickening fact is, like frat boys unafraid to phone-film some vile pile-on, the bully-gang of Vance and Trump did what they did in front of the entire world, via media they had invited in to the Oval Office. In a sort of pre-Easter enactment of ritual sacrifice, they delivered up President Zelensky of Ukraine - a supposedly-invited guest, and then "tore him a new one" in the parlance of their type of dude.

Many newspaper editorials, from the FT, to the New York Times, and media, from CNN to the BBC, have described the event that ensued as "bullying", an "ambush", and one of the worst moments in American diplomacy, ever. It has also been called, by some world leaders, and other major commentators, the end of the current world order, as the US president seemed to clearly signal his total disdain for an ally, and utterly defended, to the point of rage, a long-time enemy of the West. There were so many ironies in the fire, it is hard to know where to start calling out the frankly bizarrely-dumb hypocrisies, especially of "attack dog" Vance, who must surely by now be considered the most dubious jerk to have ever won a Pulitzer prize.

Zelensky's English is imperfect, he sometimes dresses in military-style clothing, but he is a remarkably effective, brave, and popular leader, of a Western-allied nation under attack from a larger aggressor, widely believed to be a corrupt state that suppresses democracy, and free speech; Ukrainians have died in the tens of thousands to defend America's supposed interests and values in Europe - the whole free world owes Zelensky a debt of gratitude. During the televised meeting, which he had not set up, he spoke openly and frankly about his ideas, beliefs and experiences, especially pushing back on the idea that Putin can be trusted to stick to his ceasefires (since he has in the past broken them).

Every way in which Vance and Trump bristled, over-reacted, and attacked Zelensky was designed to generate conflict, tension and drama, to try and paint a public record of the man as a tetchy, nasty, foreign upstart - a greedy rude twerp without any respect for the US of A. It was a classic Wild West Black Hat set-up, where a fast-draw gets a slower-draw guy to pull a gun to be eradicated, as in Shane. It's a ploy as old as the hills.

But the complaints against this brave war hero are patently absurd, which makes the burlesque cruelty so nakedly sadistic and insulting:

1. That Zelensky was dressed informally in the Oval office - something which beggars belief, but apparently riled Trump, who seems to forget his friend Musk appears there on TV with a ballcap and dressed casually. Or that Winston Churchill, the ne plus ultra of wartime heroes, war similar para-military get-up in White House meetings with the US president during WW2.

2. That Zelensky was "litigating" to the US media and that this was disrespectful - hard to understand this complaint, since Trump had invited the media in; and Vance claims to support Free Speech. Somehow, an ally explaining their position was suddenly cast as adversarial - of which more in a minute.

3. Zelensky was said not to want Peace - a false point from Trump - Zelensky wants a peace deal backed up by American support, and not a biased ceasefire that allows his enemy to regain their strength, to only attack again in a few months or years. This claim is especially vile because it is a slur implying Zelensky started the war, a talking point Trump has taken from the Kremlin playbook.

4. Zelensky has not been "grateful" or shown "gratitude" to Trump - another sickening lie, wrapped in a perverse exposition of Trumpian megalomania. Firstly, CNN reports Zelensky has publicly thanked the USA 33 times, very effusively. Secondly, since when was America's president a potentate demanding total obeisance and subservience from its vassals? Oh, since about January 20th, 2025.

5. That Zelensky informally referred to VP Vance as "JD" - this is perhaps unfortunate, but only a thin-skinned lunatic would complain his commonly and affectionately referenced initials could be taken by a friendly visitor as a sucker-punch worthy of a dust-up. As an aside, the claim Zelensky wants to start WW3 is the opposite of what he wants - he wants to stop WW3 - it is Russia who has threatened to use nukes in Ukraine, and even in other pats of Europe. The aggressor started it, is a reality that was not permitted to speak yesterday, because for Vance, the truth hurts. He is a quisling toady. Hard to like that.

6. That Zelensky has no cards and should admit that - this is a false Kremlin narrative, ignoring that Ukraine has other allies, especially Canada and Europe, including nuclear powers France and the UK, and strong mid-size power Germany. The fact is Ukraine has fought well and hard, and has managed to stop the aggressor from taking the country it sought to conquer in three days.

7. That Zelensky sends conscripts to the front lines - this Vance claim is a bit hypocritical. The US sent conscripts to Vietnam. Conscription is a legally-accepted act of legitimate democracies. Canada used conscription in WW2. It is not pretty, but it is hardly a deal-braker.

But the main point - the ugly truth - the elephant in the room who was invited to speak in the shape of Trump - is that Zelensky got on their nerves (the Kremlin's friends suggested online the "pig" should have been beaten to near-death - an anti-Semitic trope) with his small frame, un-business-like clothes, and foreign-sounding vowels (there is something of The Brutalist in this) - primarily BECAUSE HE IS THE PRIME ADVERSARY TO RUSSIA at this time - and - for reasons to be mentioned below, Trump and Vance want to suddenly erase Cold War history, and 25 years of Putin's behaviour, and normalise all ties with Russia, a year zero erasing of reality, history and truth that can only be called Orwellian.

Zelensky is a supreme irritant, because he represents a fact on the ground that won't quietly go away - like a victim of a terrible crime - he is speaking out, speaking up, and fighting back. He has been called, by one Trump appointee, a "an annoying ex-girlfriend" because he keeps harping on about "the past" - in this case, the ugly past of mass murder, rape, and pillaging of an innocent nation. And Trump and Vance want him to shut up, and lie down and take it. The MAGA-Trump desire is for all that is "bad" or reputation straining to simply vanish, in relation to their interests.

That is what has shocked and disgusted the Western world in the past day, and changed everything about our current geo-political world reality: The US adversary is now Ukraine - the US wishes to favour, even above its own, the interests of another state, the state of Russia.

There are multiple theories as to why a serving US president could or would - enraged - fight for Russian ideas and mistreat and disrespect an enemy of Russia so openly, while simultaneously dismantling the FBI, and CIA, which serve to hinder Russian actions against the USA, while also seeking to strip down the US government to bare bones and dust.

Occam's razor suggests the obvious one is the truth. Trump is a clear and present danger to America, to the West, to its former allies, and, as has long been suggested, even by credible intelligence dossiers and reports, is an asset serving a foreign power; or, hardly better, is behaving in precisely the same way such a foreign saboteur or agent provocateur would.

And so, in classic Freudian projection, the noble honest hero was treated as a rude traitor, by someone who is a rude traitor, in full view of a world that, today, is in a real mess.

Poem for the appeaser

2025-03-01T13:37:00.004+00:00

Poem for the appeaser

It’s okay to let the bad guy win

if the guy has a thing you want

to trade - this is how the West

was won - ignorance of newly

dead - sign the paper, wave it high -

this is how the losers get to die -

an agreement is safe and lawful

if the liars never lie; for on good

TV the act of being king is king,

not the thing in itself, or being as

being - there’s only what we see

now, not even that when blinded

by defiance of decency; Munich

used to be the name for giving in

to the enemy side – replaced

in our time by televised Gethsemane

showing how power picks insane

channels in which to defenestrate

the weak, the dutiful, fighting true,

even when other states are truly sick.

London, March 1, 2025

BOND MAY NOT BE BACK AS WE KNOW HIM, JIM

2025-02-21T17:46:00.006+00:00

James Bond was, up until a day ago, always produced by the Broccoli family - all of the many canonical films since the early 1960s... for better and worse. Their control was legendary, and often, usually, yielded good or superior results. Their choices for Bond have been a few times inspired, and their attempts to select villains who had won Oscars was notable.

They also tended to be loyal to British writers, directors, and actors, and kept the franchise stable, ongoing, and reliable. The worst James Bond is still worth a telly rewatch on a lazy Sunday afternoon; the greatest are some of the best action movies ever made.

Now, it is in the hands of Amazon MGM - an American company not known for its quality control... it has hits and misses, but plenty of cash.

Fans are anxious; I am, as a fan, very concerned. I am unsure the new films will remain firmly-rooted in the canon, or be as British - with all the eccentricities and potential flaws that entails. Lee Child has gone on record as saying he feels the series needs fresh blood, new ideas, and less focus on the British sense of post-Suez inadequacy; I disagree - the Bond films were atomic-powered by a British sense of inferiority that made Bond a necessary punching above the UK's weight response. Bezos's American superiority complex is ill-equipped to imagine anything but a tediously perfect sort of super-spy; the flaws made Bond fascinating and attractive, as much as his impeccably tailored suits.

Bond is billion dollar business... but it was also curated carefully, with love. It could very easily be dumbed down. It would only take a few missteps to ruin the Franchise.

It may be treasured as a gold standard British property, or it may be looted and destroyed. The next casting will be deeply important. The new actor must be British (or Irish) - Idris Elba or Tom Holland or Robert Pattinson would be great choices, or Cillian Murphy or Benedict Cumberbatch, if quirkier options were to prevail. It all depends on whether they reboot to a Young Man Bond, or go for the usual middle-aged Bond.

They should get a top-level director - ideally Spielberg. Nolan, or Tarantino. We don't want it as a TV series, please, and we want it to remain world-class. This is no time to kill the greatest spy brand ever.

IT GOT WORSE

2025-02-21T17:19:00.002+00:00

The other day I thought it could not get worse, when this blog commented on Trump's almost-first-month in office for 2.0.

Then, he apparently sided with Russia, claimed Ukraine had started the war (it hadn't), that its leader was a dictator (he isn't), and later that evening, called himself THE KING on social media.

Since then, he has continued to berate the Ukrainians, discuss the idea of getting rid of income tax entirely, and numerous other unsettling things.

The main concern for the world, now, is that we have a totally ignorant madman at the helm, who feels comfortable lying about the most momentous historical facts, insulting allies, and allying himself with dangerous enemies.

It is, to say the least, bleak.

At least Canada won the hockey game against the USA, eh?

THE BEST FILMS OF 2024 - AND THE OSCAR GOES TO...

2025-02-21T14:26:00.001+00:00

Everyone can google IMDB and Metacritic, in about a second, or Variety or Den of Geek or Sight and Sound, and find other lists of the best movies of 2024. The films listed below were on many end of year lists. At least four have a good chance of winning the Oscar for Best Picture - an asterix indicates the three I currently believe have the best shot.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN - charming, well-acted tale of a young genius growing up

*ANORA - heartachingly sad, side-splittingly funny, sometimes scary, often sexy, it's uniquely potent

A REAL PAIN - some will find it slight, but this Holocaust tour/buddy film has heart and soul and wit

BLITZ - a beautifully filmed revisionist take on the Blitz Spirit by Steve McQueen

CHALLENGERS - a witty, erotic highly stylised play on the tennis as love theme

CIVIL WAR - Jesse Plemons steals the show as a MAGA-like madman

*CONCLAVE - Ralph Fiennes never better in a clever Christie-adjacent thriller with big twist ending

DUNE 2 - I still prefer Lynch's mad version, but this was epic smart filmmaking

EMILIA PEREZ - potentially offensive, but with great songs and acting; maverick, doomed

FLOW - one of the most stirring and beautiful animation films ever made; truly great work

HERETIC - maybe best-acted horror film since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and theologically smart

JUROR #2 - a bit stodgy at first, but its final moments leave an indelible powerful point

MEGALOPOLIS - deeply-flawed work of late style genius from eccentric director worth seeing

MY OLD ASS - Plaza charms in this sweet, very low-key coming of age comedy

REBEL RIDGE - a star was born in this startlingly fresh take on an old plot

SEPTEMBER 5TH - a superior media-focused movie about the dawn of live terrorism

SING SING - Colman Domingo's acting makes this prison drama profoundly moving

*THE BRUTALIST - A brilliant American epic as great as THERE WILL BE BLOOD; a masterpiece

THE NICKEL BOYS - One of the most disturbing and unique films about US racism ever, superb

THE SUBSTANCE - visually stunning, powerfully feminist body horror

WICKED, PART ONE - As good an adaptation as fans could wish for, and thought-provoking too

And who will win some of the key awards?

The Brutalist is the most impressive epic of the year, and a harsh critique of the American Dream, and anti-immigrant sentiment; it's almost as if a Millennial set out to re-imagine a Citizen Kane-sized project, but emphasising contemporary concerns of sexual violence, racism, and capitalist ignorance. It's not as good as Kane, but in the same ballpark, with innovative cinematography, use of AI, and a powerful avant-garde score, and brilliant acting. It should win Best Picture, but Conclave is also topical, intelligent, entertaining, and beautifully filmed, with superb performances; and Anora has the sort of X-rated impudence and grit of Midnight Cowboy, and a striking central performance.

Best Actor should go to Mr Brody, but he was won before, and his accent was apparently AI-improved, which may be the death knell. Mr Chalamet sang his own songs, and magically captured the insouciant weird genius of Bob Dylan, and is young, beautiful and adored. He may win. Mr Fiennes could be a surprise winner, but as deserving as his career is, this is not his night, probably.

Best Actress is for Ms Demi Moore to lose. The other performances are mostly excellent (one is marred by online tweets) but Ms Moore's bravura work here was so brave, naked, and challenging, and the message of The Substance so important, especially for women in film, and society, this seems all but certain. And the idea of rewarding a Hollywood legend too long ignored is satisfying.

For the same reason, Ms Rossellini will win Best Supporting Actress, and Mr Culkin will win Best Supporting Actor - they're hugely popular, and come from acting dynasties. That Mr Ed Norton and Ms Erivo were better is beside the point.

Best Director could go to at least four of the nominated, and will likely swing behind the Best Picture vote.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: TRUMP REDUX FIRST MONTH IN POWER IS ENDING WITH FROM BAD TO WORSE ACTIONS

2025-02-16T14:27:00.005+00:00

In the ten days since the last post here, the world has only gotten more chaotic, and the political climate worsened, in the US and globally, due to the Trump regime.

The bizarrely authoritarian speeches and statements in Munich of all places, from top US officials, like the VP and Secretary of Defence, have managed to essentially dismantle the entire "rules-based order" established after WW2. As former British PM John Major observed today on the BBC, hundreds of thousands of Americans died to keep Europe free from fascism, but Mr Vance ignored the democratically-elected leader of Germany, in Germany, to seek out, meet and support, the leader of an extreme far-right party with ideological roots in the Hitler era. Meanwhile, Ukraine, an ally, was thrown under the bus, when Trump appeared to side with the Russians, in terms of negotiating an end to the war against Ukraine. VP Vance also attacked European nations for their lack of freedoms, while failing to mention or criticise actual authoritarian states, once.

Meanwhile, back home, the Trump regime fired the people responsible for the nuclear arsenal, and continued to dismantle all the checks and balances that support the US constitution. Trump even quoted tyrant Napoleon, indicating he was above the law.

Without exaggerating, this is the sign that an extreme, anti-immigrant, authoritarian group has taken over the levers of American power, and is currently taking American democracy apart, for the apparent benefit of its enemies - it is certainly not for the benefit of its allies. If, as this blog expects, Trump begins to ignore US court judgements openly, and sides ever-more closely with Russian plans; and continues to attack allies with taxes and invasion threats; and continues to fire the US employees that actually run the democratic society he abhors, then, you will have the end of The West as the bulwark concept that kept the world from becoming communist or fascist tyrannies since 1945. In other words, 80 years of History and massive effort down the drain.

The West (democratic liberal capitalism) was and is flawed, hypocritical, imperfect, and often violent; it started wars, and overthrew some elected governments; but it also led to massive improvements in health, and wealth, for billions of humans, and kept the world from fighting a full third world war, potentially killing billions in a thermo-nuclear nightmare. It has been the best worst option, unless you prefer Chinese communism, or the Soviet system, or nihilistic super-violent kleptocracies.

If Trump's revolution signalled the start of a new and magnanimous plan for lands of milk and honey, and had a moral or humane basis, this could be a new golden age. Instead, it is a Godfather-style portioning of the loot, the territories. Some get Ukraine, some Taiwan, some Gaza, Panama, Canada or Greenland. It's bizarre, misaligned, vulgar, and cruel, but that's the way the chips are falling.

To say this blog is in shock, or dismayed, is an understatement. But that doesn't really matter. The steamroller continues.