Numerous Narratives 🍁

Atomic essays, mini explorations, and a digital garden of diverse ideas – welcome! This is my space for creative experimentation, a place where fiction and reality collide. You'll find reflections on everything from economics and politics to culture and technology, alongside the development of my novel and nonfiction projects. My tools of choice? I am an advocate for Open Source Software such as Ubuntu and ZorinOS Linux working in a Gnome desktop Linux environment on all my personal laptops, Standard Notes, Signal with journalists, Manuskript, and the secure writing environment of theQuill.app. The views shared here are entirely my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer or any organizations I am affiliated with. My perspectives may evolve over time as I strive to maintain an open mind. This blog offers a snapshot of my thoughts at specific moments, capturing ideas that resonated with me then. Please note that some older posts may no longer align with my current views. - - -

@GaryArmstrong GaryArmstrong.blog

A Slow Unraveling, The Beginning of the End

July 18, 2025•623 words

"The descent into war is a numbing journey. It is a collective spell, a shared hallucination. And once the spell is cast, it has a perverse beauty, a seduction, a cleansing of the chaos of daily life. But it is also a lie." - Chris Hedges "Appeals to patriotism, to national greatness, and to the glories of past empires are used to justify war and conquest today. But the realities are exploitation, suffering, and silence imposed on the subjugated." - Edward Said "You are already in the early s...

Ethic Cleansing and Live Genocide

July 17, 2025•588 words

"The descent into despotism always begins with language. The purveyors of war and genocide wrap their crimes in the words of liberation, security, and democracy." - Chris Hedges "Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons. And the language of war has become a performance—its victims reduced to collateral damage and its critics to traitors." - Arundhati Roy "Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires—that i...

Working With My Young Men

July 17, 2025•174 words

"Hard work with my sons pays off in more ways than I can count." "The hard work I put in with my sons comes back tenfold—in pride, in love, and in the men they're becoming." "Every drop of effort with my sons builds a future we can all be proud of." The best gift I have ever received in my life is being a father. Nothing makes me feel more thankful than working with my sons, lifting weights with them, going for a run, a swim, or helping my son build his backyard fences at his new house, and t...

Schadenfreude vs Mudita

July 15, 2025•302 words

“The truth is that envy is simply the tax we pay for the success of others.” - Robert Greene “To rejoice in the good fortune of others is to show a generous soul.” - Aristotle “Schadenfreude is the emotional byproduct of insecurity in a status-obsessed society.” - Alain de Botton “Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.” - François de La Rochefoucauld “Mudita means that you can be happy about other people’s happiness. That’s a great gift.” - Thích Nhất Hạnh When ...

A Slow Global Shift to a Multi-polar World?

July 14, 2025•254 words

"The international system is no longer unipolar, but multipolar, and the era of Western dominance is ending." ― Fareed Zakaria "In a multipolar world, regional powers will increasingly define the shape of global order." ― Parag Khanna "Economic power is diffusing faster than political or military power." ― Zbigniew Brzezinski We may find our societies no longer at the mercy of a single towering empire dictating the drum beat of global life. The age of unipolar dominance, the United States w...

Trump, "The Buck Does Not Stop Here!"

July 13, 2025•629 words

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." – Lord Acton "The ends justify the means." – Niccolò Machiavelli "The best way to predict the future is to create it." – Abraham Lincoln "In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." – George Orwell "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." – Martin Luther King Jr. Truman's "The buck stops here" leadership tenet has been completely reversed in our day and age. Donald Trump is a leader who has...

Wag The Dag, Trump American Apprentice Style

July 12, 2025•381 words

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." ~ George Orwell "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." ~ Noam Chomsky "The media's the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses." ~ Malcolm X There are so much lies from politicians... Do you feel like the truth...

USA President Trump — Africa, We Will Take Your Resources, Thank You!

July 11, 2025•503 words

“Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it.” ~ Frantz Fanon “The West has never been interested in Africa except to exploit it.” ~ Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” ~ W.E.B. Du Bois At the African summit, it became apparent almost immed...

Annihilation by Design: Gaza and the Global Silence

July 10, 2025•354 words

Students of Gaza This isn’t just an attack, it’s erasure. You’re not witnessing a war, you’re witnessing ethnic cleansing, masked in the language of security and self-defense. More than 17,000 students are dead. Over 26,000 children have been maimed or left deeply traumatized, many before they could even comprehend what violence truly means. And as you look at the footage, you see that over 90% of Gaza’s schools are gone, reduced to rubble. These aren’t just numbers to you anymore. They are fut...

From Renters to Owners: LibreOffice and the Future of Canada’s Digital Infrastructure

July 10, 2025•513 words

“If code is law, then open source is democracy.” ~ Lawrence Lessig “Relying on proprietary software is like renting a house you can never own. You’re always paying, but you never truly control the space.” ~ Cory Doctorow “Governments have a moral obligation to use public funds to support software that the public can use, modify, and share.” ~ Richard Stallman “Open source is not just about saving money, it’s about preserving national autonomy in a digital world.” ~ Evgeny Morozov I came ac...

Why American Empire – Hegemony Decline Might Be Locked In

July 8, 2025•273 words

“The collapse of empire is not a tragedy. It is an opportunity.” ~ Chris Hedges “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” ~ George Orwell “The American oligarchy has perfected the art of inverted totalitarianism: rule by corporations, cloaked in democratic rituals.” ~ Sheldon S. Wolin You're living in a nation where decline isn't a fluke, it's at the very least, allowed to continue because the right p...

The Tariff Ultimatum: America’s Economic Sword Against BRICS

July 7, 2025•384 words

When you see phrases like “UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals,” don’t be fooled into thinking this is diplomacy. It’s not negotiation, it’s an authoritarian style of declaration. It’s power flexed in plain sight, hidden in bureaucracy and sealed with “DONALD J. TRUMP, President,” as though the document were some royal decree from a King. This isn’t partnership, it’s domination. And everyone on the global stage sees it for what it is. For leaders in the Global South, or any nation outs...

Why Rain Hypnotizes Us

July 6, 2025•298 words

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life." ~ John Updike "In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you." ~ Deepak Chopra "The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts." ~ Marcus Aurelius “Rain is the silence of heaven descending on earth.” ~ Martin Heidegger “The smell of rain can bring back memories you didn’t know you had.” ~ Paulo Coelho Rain doesn’t just fall, it silences the world. Its steady rhythm draw...

Remembering The Diplomatic Dumpster Fire, Trump Turns Global Statesmanship Into a Spectacle of Spite

July 6, 2025•655 words

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” ~ Thucydides “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu “Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.” ~ Aneurin Bevan “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” ~ Albert Einstein What unfolded in the Oval Office wasn’t diplomacy, it was a display of ego, insecurity, and geopolitical ig...

Where is Democracy Headed?

July 5, 2025•533 words

"The end of history will be a very sad time." ~ Francis Fukuyama "The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." ~ Steve Biko "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau World-Renowned Political Science Professor Fukuyama is critiquing mainly United States of America, but many Western democracies can be included. They're faltering and the possibility of going through a third wave of democratization which might be pulling t...

Two-Phase Learning Model to Develop Future Leaders and Life-Long-Learners

July 4, 2025•345 words

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ~ Alvin Toffler “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” ~ Galileo Galilei “Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of learning.” ~ Dizzy Gillespie “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. You learn 10 months of structured lessons, explicit instr...

My Brother David

July 2, 2025•508 words

“When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.” ~ Antisthenes “A brother is someone who knows there’s something wrong even when you have the biggest smile on your face.” “We came into the world like brother and brother; and now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.” ~ William Shakespeare “Sometimes, brotherhood is stronger than friendship and deeper than blood.” ~ Don Winslow “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” ~ ...

Canada Day 2025

July 2, 2025•213 words

As Canada marks its 158th birthday, this year’s Canada Day celebrations resonate with a renewed and deeper sense of national reflection, unity, and identity. Traditionally a time to embrace shared values like multiculturalism, a strong sense of collectivism, and peace, Canada Day now carries additional weight... Recent comments from U.S. President Donald Trump, suggesting Canada could become the “51st state,” have sparked widespread rejection across the country, ultimately reinforcing Canad...

Understanding and Confronting Cruelty in All Its Forms

June 30, 2025•482 words

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” ~ James Baldwin “Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.” ~ John Steinbeck “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ~ Hannah Arendt “To destroy a people, you must first deny them the basic means of survival. Starvation...

Political Power: How American Politics Became a Stage for Wealth

June 30, 2025•472 words

"We have two governments in Washington: one run by elected people who are not really in charge, and one run by permanent officials who control the levers of power." ~ David Talbot "The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners." ~ George Carlin "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." ~ Benito Mussolini "The conscious and intelligent mani...

Why Does the US Target Iran?

June 28, 2025•915 words

"The U.S. has sought to maintain a unipolar world in which its power is unchallenged, often under the guise of promoting freedom and democracy." ~ Noam Chomsky "The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski "Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the ...

No One Left Behind: The Moral Test of Canada’s Prosperity

June 27, 2025•293 words

"We must ensure that the progress of one group is not purchased by the oppression of another." ~ Justice Murray Sinclair "Poverty among Indigenous peoples is not accidental—it is the direct result of deliberate policies, colonial structures, and systemic exclusion." ~ Pam Palmater "A society grows great when it builds pathways, not barriers, for all its children to thrive." ~ Cindy Blackstock "A society grows great when it builds pathways, not barriers, for all its children to thrive." ~ Cin...

The Captured Republic: How Foreign Influence Rewrote American Power

June 26, 2025•558 words

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." ~ Edward Bernays "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero "The modern dictatorship is a committee government, a government of nobody, because everybody on the committee can always blame somebody else." ~ Hannah Arendt Reading and listening to an interview of Dr. Jeffr...

A Strike on Sovereignty, The U.S. Bombing of Fordow and How the U.S. Pulled Away from the Edge of Nuclear War (Fictional)

June 25, 2025•1,084 words

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” ~ Albert Einstein “In war, truth is the first casualty.” ~ Aeschylus “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” ~ Sun Tzu In the early hours of June 22nd, the world stood closer to the edge than it had in decades. Just three days after the surprise U.S. airstrike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, intelligence briefings began circula...

When Truth Becomes a Weapon: The Rise of Narrative Competitive Authoritarian Power

June 24, 2025•677 words

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ~ George Orwell “The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.” ~ Vaclav Havel “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” ~ Noam Chomsky “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” ~ George Orw...

The Pursuit of Progress in a Competitive Authoritarian American Regime

June 23, 2025•804 words

"Elections are held, but they are not fair. Rights exist, but they are violated. Institutions look democratic, but they are warped." ~ Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way "Democracy is not an all-or-nothing affair. Many regimes fall somewhere in between full-fledged democracy and outright dictatorship." ~ Fareed Zakaria "The erosion of democratic norms is more often a slow, quiet process than a sudden collapse." ~ Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt "Modern authoritarianism wears the mask of dem...

Empire of Lies: How Governments Manipulate Words as Weapons of Truth to Justify Bloodshed

June 22, 2025•806 words

"The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism." ~ Hermann Göring, Nazi military leader, during the Nuremberg Trials "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." ~ George Orwell "The media's job is not to report the facts; it’s to maintain the illusion ...

Aid, Empire, and the Art of Coercion... When Diplomacy Deceives and Weaponizes Charm of Foreign Policy

June 21, 2025•412 words

"America’s cultural hegemony has always been a velvet glove covering the iron fist of its foreign policy." ~ Arundhati Roy "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality... We're history’s actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ~ Unnamed senior Bush administration official (often attributed to Karl Rove) "Aid is just another arm of foreign policy. It's not given altruistically. It's given with strings attached, to build dependency, to extract ...

From Gaza to Tehran: Mapping a Trail of Militarized Ethnic Cleansing, Funded and Supported by USA and Using Israel as the Proxy

June 20, 2025•701 words

“Israel's campaign in Gaza cannot be justified as self-defense. It has become a war of collective punishment, targeting an entire civilian population in ways that fulfill the legal definition of genocide.” ~ Nathan Thrall “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met.” ~ Francesca Albanese “The massacre in Gaza is not a reaction to a threat, it is a premeditated act of ethnic ...

Distinct and Contrasting Historical Narratives for Iran and Israel, Concerning Conflict and Nuclear Capabilities

June 19, 2025•723 words

“The portrayal of Iran as irrational and suicidal has served as a justification for preemptive action, while Israel’s opaque nuclear posture is tolerated, if not endorsed, by the very powers that demand transparency from Iran.” ~ Trita Parsi “Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity—never confirming, never denying—has been a cornerstone of its security doctrine, even as it condemns Iran’s nuclear ambitions as existential threats.” ~ Avner Cohen “Iran has not attacked any country in over two centuri...