It’s Wednesday, January 28th, here’s the headlines I’m seeing.
International:
The sale of Tiktok has led to censoring of the platform, but also Meta owned platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) are blocking links related to ICE.
France is going to ban government internal use of USA video software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet and require internal usage of a French built video software.
ICE is going to be part of the USA’s Olympic entourage in Milan, Italy, providing security during the games. Despite the USA saying that they have done this in past games and they won’t be there for immigration reasons, protests in Italy have starting demanding that ICE not go to the games.
Germany has issued a travel advisory for the USA, and Germany has also made headlines for saying they want their gold back that is being stored in the USA, and that they want to start talks to boycott the FIFA World Cup in the USA. This comes after Denmark and Sweden have started selling their USA Treasury Bonds.
Activists in the USA are trying to organize a General Strike starting Friday, January 30th. It’s also trending to talk about not paying taxes, competing the tax exemption paperwork so there’s less taxes on paycheques in the USA, and some influencers are floating the possibility of causing a bank run and withdrawing all their cash from their bank.
On the other end of the spectrum, emigration and expat influencers are going viral for discussing how credit scores don’t follow someone internationally, so leaving the USA could be done through going into credit card debt to pay for the travel costs. Quite a few social media accounts are talking about how credit scores were invented to keep Black Americans from buying homes, as pre-1989 bank loans were done subjectively in person, and afterward continued to be an instrument of oppression.
The USA government is currently holding at least 70,000 individuals in concentration camps, the largest being Fort Bliss, Texas, and Dilley, Texas. The concentration camp at Dilley made headlines for showing many detained children in colorful ponchos outside on the grounds. Reports are being made that people are being tortured, abused, murdered, and having their basic human needs neglected.
Despite the headlines saying the Bovino is fired and Noem is being criticized, it’s a distraction from the fact that ICE is still on the ground in Minneapolis, stalking families at bus stops, and tear gassing preschools. A few more politicians have criticized the actions of the USA government, but no real action has been taken.
Canadian News:
The USA ambassdor to Canada, Hoekstra continues to be just the worst, with his latest headlines saying that if we back out of the F-35 Fight Jet Deal, the USA will need to send more military jets to our skies.
The Alberta separation petition is get a lot of air time, especially amongst white, rural Albertans. Most recently, the Big Four in Calgary was a petition signing spot. Some are worried that all this air time will be used by foreign countries to make a case that they need to “invade” Canada to “liberate” the Albertans who want sovereignty. Certainly, USA Secretary of Treasury, Bessent, has also sort of alluded to that.
Today is the last day to register as a member of the Federal NDP to vote in the NDP leadership race.
Calgary News:
Alberta NDP MLAs are asking all MLAs to declare where they stand on the Alberta separation issue. As you might expect, most UCP MLAs are just dodging and ignoring this.
Mayor Jeromy Farkas has set the date in March to consider rolling back the blanket re-zoning in Calgary. Seems like this would just be an expensive waste of money in my mind, as I was ok with blanket re-zoning.
The Takeaways:
Fascism has always been a part of American. In Paxton’s 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, he’s clear that the American South in the 1800s is arguably the origin of fascism in action (Italy is the origin of the word itself). Langston Hughes argued wrote that Black Americans have always known fascism, as the Jim Crow laws were fascist, and the founding of the USA through slavery and colonization was essentially fascism.
Fascism works by dividing people, by making Albertans feel isolated from Ontario, by making whites want to push Blacks out of the neighbourhoods, by telling us to fear gender and sexual minorities. The anecdote to fascism is to see the human on the other side of the divide, and to unify and connect with our communities.
We’re isolated, and that makes us prey to fascism. Connecting with others and building unlikely friendships protects us. So that’s why I started this blog, in the hopes of connecting.
Nature Bound Humanist 
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