What's Inside This Mental Breakdown of Writing? Here, you'll find my wandering thoughts on economics, geopolitics, culture, technology, and daily ideas. Plus, I'll be dropping little peeks behind the curtain on my novel and nonfiction projects.
I love families. I love family gatherings. It's part of our soul.
I come from an extremely close tight knit Metis family community.
I clearly remember my father would fight for any disadvantaged ethnic group coming into Canada.
When any family, including our new Canadians suffers a devastating loss, community support is there... We always have support for our new Canadians.
When we step forward, whether through financial help, emotional support, childcare, education, sports, or simply by standing beside them, bringing them in to our homes as family and listening, the burden no longer…
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” - Noam Chomsky
"Walls turned sideways are bridges.” - Angela Davis
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” - Desmond Tutu
"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” - James Baldwin
Nietzsche's theory of herd social…
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The price of freedom is death." - Malcolm X
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." - Nelson Mandela
"If you are neutral in situations…
According to frameworks widely recognized in international genocide prevention efforts, such as those developed by Dr. Gregory H. Stanton of Genocide Watch (a model referenced by the United Nations and other bodies), genocide is a process that unfolds in ten stages. These stages are not strictly linear, they can overlap, occur simultaneously, or vary in order, but they provide a predictive model for understanding how genocides develop.
Here are the ten stages, with brief descriptions:
Classification: Societies divide people into "us versus them" categories based on ethnicity, race,…
"Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. Resentment is the wellspring of this reversal, the fuel that drives movements into rigidity." - Hannah Arendt
"The oppressed, when they can no longer endure their lot, invent values that make their powerlessness into virtue. Resentment creates morality where strength has failed." - Albert Camus
"Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is the…
"The hypocrisy of the great powers is such that they speak of peace while preparing for war; they extol humanity while practicing inhumanity." - Mahatma Gandhi
"The supreme international crime is war of aggression. To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Robert H. Jackson
"States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions." - Noam Chomsky
"History shows that the moral…
“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.” - Anthony Brandt
“Family is the compass that guides us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.” - Brad Henry
“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” - Mother Teresa
Love of family is one of the most grounding and nurturing experiences us indigenous families ever come to know. It isn’t just about bloodlines or names written on a family tree. It’s carried in friendship, in shared responsibility.
At its heart, indigenous family love is…
"The most terrifying thing about dictators is that they love their victims, and their victims love them back." - Milan Kundera
"The totalitarian state strives for the total destruction of the human spirit, for it knows that without the spirit, the body will submit willingly." - Hannah Arendt
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." - George Orwell
"The great strength of totalitarianism is that it can erode the distinction between truth and falsehood, making reality itself a tool of power." - Václav Havel
For the past 2 months…
“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide because Gaza does not exist anymore. … The level and pace of indiscriminate killing of a huge amount of innocent people, including in what Israel designated as a safe zone, destruction of houses, infrastructures, almost all the hospitals and universities, mass displacement, deliberate famine, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists, doctors, professors, civil servants…) and the sweeping dehumanization of Palestinians, create an overall picture of genocide.” - Amos Goldberg, Israeli historian and Holocaust studies professor
“A…
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
“The most dangerous of all the forms of human stupidity is racism.” - François Cavanna
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” - Albert Einstein
“Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” - Abraham Joshua Heschel
I recently read and watched Dr. François Burgat, a political scientist from a French university who, after being cleared of terrorism charges, speaks with the cool urgency of someone…
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." - George Orwell
"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
"Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state." - Noam Chomsky
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
When truth is negotiable, power flourishes.
A shadow movement opposed to the Enlightenment ideals of reason, liberty, and progress has always existed within a country that was founded on them. With the…
“Pathological narcissists can lose touch with reality in subtle ways that become extremely dangerous over time. When they can’t let go of their need to be admired or recognized, they have to bend or invent a reality in which they remain special despite all messages to the contrary.” - Bandy X. Lee
“Underneath the so-called narcissistic personality is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary.” - Brené Brown
“Narcissists have poor self-esteem, but they are typically very successful… The malignant types never forget a slight. They may kill you ten years later for cutting…
“A nation’s foreign policy should reflect its values and ideals.” - George F. Kennan
“Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.” - George C. Marshall
“Thus, moral values and a commitment to human dignity have been not an appendage to our foreign policy but an essential part of it … It is the difference between tyranny and freedom, an age-old struggle in…
“Without the U.S. weapons, Israel cannot fight.” - a former Mossad intelligence director
“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide because Gaza does not exist anymore… mass displacement, deliberate famine, … create an overall picture of genocide.” - Israeli historian Amos Goldberg
“The cataclysm that you and I are witnessing in Gaza is a genocide in the awful making… It is not even a ‘war’. It is a genocide.” - Andrew Mitrovica
“The United States… would not use any of its material leverage… Israel sets the policy pathway, operating with little accountability.” - summarizing a U.S.A. Israel…
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tzu
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment... you had to live, did live, from habit that became instinct, in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." - George Orwell
"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously…