NoW FORECAST

 

Time: The near future

Location: A raft in the mid-Atlantic Ocean

Inhabitants: A man and a cat

 

Key:

VZ: Ex-president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

Kat: The cat

 

Opening Scene: A drone’s camera pans across the water. It is balmy weather today, warm and humid. The sea is calm, a shiny, blue-bright mirror under a deep blue sky swathed here and there with wisps of airy cloud. Birds fly overhead. Fish school nearby. Gradually the drone camera zooms in on an object floating in the water. We see it is a large raft, ungainly buoyed in the Atlantic Ocean approximately one-hundred kilometres off the Cameroon coast. It is late morning. On the raft is a hut. Inside the hut a radio is playing music. The song, “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, is accompanied by a solo male voice.

 

VZ: "Seasonz donz fears the reepser, nor does winds, suns or de rains. We can be likes dey arez. Cum’on Babyz, donz fears the reepser. Babyz take my handz. We be ables to flies…aw shits! What diz soundz? Not anudder fukin’ dronez.” [Ex-President Zelensky opens the door and throws cans of soup at the hovering machine.] “Fukin’ cocks suckerz! Buzz offz!” [The drone flies over the roof of the hut, discharging its load of fish guts and chum, then flies off.] “Uggh! Pitowee! Why dey do dis? Hay Katz! Why? [A large black cat emerges from the hut and begins eating the mess as it drips down the hut wall] “You likes dis shits, doan you, Master Katz.

Kat: “Mrrp-mrrp. Prr-prrt.”

VZ: “If you say soz. It smell badz! Stink all dayz. Basturdz!”

Kat: “Mrrp-mrrp. Meaow!”

VZ: [The ex-president goes inside the hut. He emerges after a few minutes carrying a cup of coffee. Kat continues licking the side of the hut.] “Ah, jaz! My morning cop coffeez. Nothing betterz than dis. Ya zur!” [He sips the hot drink while walking around his floating domain. It is part of the wharf the United States constructed in 2024 to provide a maritime point of entry for humanitarian aid into Gaza. After a short time in operation, high waves broke it apart and its various sections were stored in northern Israel. One section became the ‘raft’ used by the Ukrainian ex-president when he was deposed.] “Whatz a beautifuls dayz! I couldn’instk asktz for more betterz. Except maybez bactks in Kiev where flower bloomz. Grass greens. Warm. Sun shinez. Fight Russians. Yeah, dey waz goodt timez! Goodt timez, for surez. And I make lotz money. Tons moneyz! I hope Olena no spend itz all. Hey, save some for Vova and the kidz.” [He chuckles] “I miss dem so much. I maybe herez on float for whilez. Like Hollywood starz Matt Damons in movie, The Martian. He stuck on Mars. I stuckz on raff. [Dropping his shorts, the ex-president sits on a raised lip of a sealed access tube into the raft.] He defecates into the planter-like structure.] “Ah! Yah. Just like Matt baby, I save my pooz. For fertilize. Maybe start garden. Just in case.” [He finishes and continues touring his domain, coming to a section of the raft that has a built-in ramp for a small ship to dock. He unfolds a nearby deck chair and sits.] “Yeah. Dez should be hare soonz. Every week dronez buzz hut. Then they deliverz foodts. I unload supplies from boatz and das dat. Until naxt weekz. [He sighs and finishes drinking his coffee.] Me all alone. Lonely Vova. Nobody come see me. Only sound now is my voice. Jus’ like Crusoe guy. But at least he had Friday as buddy. Yah.” [The ex-president sits quietly for a time, humming a Ukrainian folk song. The melody is plaintive and stirring. Kat wanders over to the melancholic Vova meowing loudly.] Yas. Just me and you now, Master Katz. Me ‘n’ you.” [The ex-president scratches behind Kat’s ears.]

Kat: “Meow-meow! Prrrr-prrr.” [After a time, a distant motor is heard. Soon, a sleek, torpedo-like boat approaches the raft. It slides onto the partially submerged docking ramp as the ex-president grabs the front line and hooks it into a winch. He begins cranking it to pull the unmanned surface vehicle higher up the ramp. He begins unloading his weekly supplies.]  “Oh boyz! Same old shit! Canz tomato soup. Spamz. Beans. Mac ‘n’ Cheeze. Peanut butters, Bag of stale bagelz. Look, Master Katz, no shave creams, razors. But give me a nudder box of condoms! Wha' for I use dis here, huh? Doan worries, I no try on you! Ha-ha. But all sortz cat foodz for you!” [Kat meows loudly rubbing against the ex-president’s legs as he places the supplies onto a small cart kept near the loading dock. After a while the boat begins to beep and an AI warning sounds: ‘Disengage drone boat from dock or it will explode in two-minutes. Do not attempt to board vehicle. Warning! One minute and forty seconds….’] “Yah-yah. Fuk you, AI! I knowz. I knowz. [The ex-president unhitches the boat’s line from the winch and the drone vehicle slides down into the water and motors off.] “Bye-bye asshole. Bye-bye. Fuk dease basturds, Master Katz! Fuk all! Well, come on. Letz go make the lunchez.” [He begins pulling the cart back to his hut.]

Kat: “Meow-Meow! Yes, let’s hurry! Prrt-prrt!” [Kat jumps onto cart.]

VZ: “Wha you sez, Master Katz? You talk to me nowz? ‘Bout timez!”

Kat: “Prrrr. Mrrrrrrawr. Don’t be silly. Prrrr. Cats can’t talk. Khllllsh!”

VZ: "I hear you plain as dayz. Tell me, when I go home, back to Prez’dent Palace in Kiev? Where my carz. My moneyz? My coke? How I get here, Katz? Why? Where are wife and kidz?”

Kat: “Questions, questions. Why don’t you have any answers, sir? You’re the president..er...ex-president.”

VZ: "How should I knowz? Last thing I rememberz is doing lines with Annalena Barebackz at my dacha near Lviv. We good buddies. Hokey-poke all over plaze! Wow! Germanz sure know how fuk-fuk! I go sleep. I wake up here. Wha’ ‘appen, Katz? You tellz me!” [He stops pulling cart.] 

Kat: “It’s hard to take your problems seriously, Vova. You humans are confusing to us cats. We have nine lives and always land on our feet, so we tend to take things as they come and generally relax when we have problems, like, say, a full litter box. We take life easy. You humans! Man, you make a mess of things! You rarely clean out your own litter boxes and you run around most days like cats in heat! You should nap more. At least nine or ten times a day. It’d do wonders for you, Vova.”

VZ: "I no need napz. I need get off this fukkin' place and go home."

Kat: "Hey, you know how many mating cycles I’ve missed on account of being scooped up with you? Plenty, let me tell you! I’m so horny I could spit!" [Kat spits.] "But then I calm down, cough up a hair ball, and have a nap. See how it works? You gotta learn to relax, Vova. We’re here for the long-haul. Back home, they “couped” you. The Americans. They got tired of you trying to make a deal with the Europeans for more money and weapons, instead of going along with Trump and negotiating with the Russians in order to…”

VZ: “I hate Russians! Pah!”

Kat: “…to save what’s left of your country. Your dawdling cost you Odessa and Kiev, Vova. Ukraine is now a rump state, a shadow of its former self. Landlocked and on life support. Thanks to you. Now, there's no NATO, no EU, no army for you! Banderites are rounded up and thrown in jail. There's millions of refugees. Over a million casualties on the Ukraine side. Government broke. Money gone away with rich expats. Ukrainian infrastructure in tatters. Vova, you could have had a deal in 2022, where you would have kept all the territory you lost (except Crimea). But that fat ass, Boris Johnson, flew in and convinced you to keep fighting. And you listened to that nob! Did you think the Russians were kidding? NATO in Ukraine was a big No-No for them. The biggest. And you ignored Putin (who, by the way, is still president of his country). Man! You humans sure know how to screw things up! And when you do fuk up, brother, it's a humdinger!”

VZ: “But, dey all love me—Macron, Stammer, Merz, Annalena, Ursula— They say so!”

Kat: “Vova, nobody loves you or even likes you. They dropped you like a hot potato when Trump threatened to bail out of Europe and NATO. Heck, I can’t stand you most of the time, and I’m a cat. We love everybody and anybody that keeps our bowl filled. Prrrr-prrr.” [The ex-president starts pulling the cart. Slowly. Lost in thought.]  

VZ: “I could havez been a contender. Yah. They called me Churchill once. Now, I no even have cell phone. Is Katz right? Should I have made deal with Putin in 2022? Did I think I could beat Russia? Was I wrong?”

Kat: “The answers to your questions are yes, yes and yes. And beating Russia, a country with three times Ukraine’s population, with all its resources, was a crazy idea to begin with. It was downhill after that. Nice job!”

VZ: “Stop rubbing ins, stupid cat, or I throwz cat food overboard!”

Kat: “Meaowwwowoa now!” Hey, let’s not get testy. You’re still the skipper hereabouts, you sexy thing! Prrrrr. Mrrrrrr-mrrrrr!”

 

Cheers, Jake.____________________________________

 

 

 

RANT: YCMTSU!

IN THE UNITED STATES THE OTHER WEEK, Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberg sat before a congressional panel of “The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” They were there to provide information concerning inappropriate (and probably illegal) censorship activities on the part of social media platforms, and specifically Twitter. Over the past several months, Taibbi and Schellenberg were given access to Twitter files* and internal documents through the auspices of the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk. Combing through a massive archive, the two gained an unprecedented look at how the social media giant operates. They were able to look ‘under the hood’, examining how and why certain “tweets” are promoted and allowed to “trend” with long dialogue threads and thus gaining a wider readership than other tweet posts. Taibbi and Schellenberg gained insights into the platform’s decision-making process on how tweets are either censored and allowed to algorithmically⁺ go by the wayside. Most important were internal documents and DMs connecting the platform’s executives with government officials and intelligence agency operatives whose overtures to the social media company were clearly requests to single-out ‘problematic’ tweets and to “deplatform” offending Twitter accounts. For example, Twitter accounts that U.S. intelligence agencies deemed as conspiratorial, like the 'Russian bots threat' farrago, were deleted, even after Twitter's own technical service was unable to find a significant number of Russian-involved accounts that could have affected the outcomes of either the 2016 or 2020 presidential elections. Twitter did what it was told. It was a you scratch my back and I won't regulate you into submission sort of relationship between the social media platform and government. (The company would go-along-to-get-along). 

BILLIONAIRE-OWNER Musk has his own reasons for releasing internal Twitter accounts and documents to the journalists. No doubt there’s a mix of altruism along with a stiff shot of bottom-line imperatives. But, whatever the case, the revelations are startling and, again, we see  connections between Twitter and Deep State agencies and operatives in private emails and DMs from federal officials expressing concerns with certain Twitter accounts and asking the company to ban problematic ones from the platform. Further, they found what can only be called collusion between “Big Tech”, government and various intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, Homeland) to promote algorithmically some Twitter accounts and to suppress others. Other social media platforms operated (and still operate) in a similar fashion.

 

NO CLEARER EXAMPLE of this is the now-infamous “Hunter Biden lapdance top” imbroglio, with all its sordid pornography, but also containing evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Hunter and his father (the President), evidence that is perhaps not proof of guilt in a court of law, but may very well be in the court of public opinion.

 

TWITTER locked out the New York Post’s Twitter account three weeks before the Presidential elections in November of 2020. The Post could not publish any information it had about the laptop on Twitter, nor link up with any other Twitter accounts. IN A TIME when the digital public square has almost entirely supplanted the brick and mortar one, it should come as no surprise that whoever has the job of ‘gatekeeper’ bears what should be a solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone has access, and that the platform be a place where opinions are freely exchanged, and debates contested honestly and openly. However, this goal is not often present enough at Twitter or at most social media platforms in business today.

 

KEEPING A LID on Hunter’s laptop and all its unseemly revelations is not the role of a social media platform. Nor should it ever be, except for tweets that breech agreed upon community standards or instances of criminality. In 2020, Twitter users and the broader public had a right to read and study those texts and emails on the laptop, as well as analysis from newspapers like the Post. A neutral, hands-off Twitter would have facilitated this. INSTEAD, there was a year or two of Clown Show shenanigans around such extraneous questions like: who had access to the laptop, when, where; what did they do with it? Was it really Hunter’s? Etc. And the party favourite, of course, was Russia who'd somehow ginned up and weaponized the laptop to embarrass Joe Biden. (I think the old gentleman is long past being embarrassed, don’t you?) 

POINT IS, the content of the laptop and what it might reveal about Joe Biden’s suitability to run for the highest office in the land was downplayed by the MSM and social media, while the public was distracted by all the nonsense going on around it. It’s only now, two years later that what’s inside the laptop is being discussed in greater detail. In 2020 the public had a right to know, but Twitter executives thought otherwise. IF I UNDERSTAND all the machinations involved in the laptop clusterfuk correctly, these executives acted on their own to suppress information that might be damaging to Joe (“I Need a Nap”) Biden’s bid for the White House. And they succeeded.

"Ummm! Google!"

RESEARCH by Taibbi and Schellenberger shows there was (and is) a good deal of collusion and back channel deal-making between social media platforms and the Deep State, and while the Twitter executives may have acted on their own initiative, as far as we know, it seems likely they did so because it would please the powers that be in Washington, who hold the threat of regulation and unfavourable legislation over their heads.   

WOULD having a freely-functioning 'Twitter-verse' have tipped the elections scales to favour Donald Trump over Joe Biden in 2020? We’ll never know, but in an ideal world, partisanship of this nature would not be part of the ‘DNA’ in any social media platform. If promoting free and public discourse is not uppermost in the minds of the people who are running these digital platforms if, instead, they take upon themselves the role of a publisher of news and commentary, then they should have to abide by the legal restrictions of a publisher. You can’t say you’re a neutral platform for the dissemination of news and information, and at the same time act as a publisher—i.e., editing and curating (or censoring)the content you offer. Try as you will, you can’t suck and blow at the same time. [And we’ve all been down that road before! Ed.]

THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP SAGA is but one exposed and egregious example of what may be an incurable disease, endemic throughout today’s social media organizations, at least as they’re currently configured. Mysterious algorithms, hidden data-harvesting, back-channel DMs with spooks and power brokers are ultimately trust-breakers for people struggling to discover factual news and be privy to honest, engaged discussions about the truly difficult questions we all need answered, and soon. If social media companies cannot or will not provide such services, then a pox on all their houses!

 

HAVING SAT ACROSS A TABLE facing a panel of hostile interlocutors, I know how uncomfortable such settings can be, and I admit to cringing a bit when several of the Democratic members during the sub-committee hearings were outright hostile and derisive of Taibbi and Schellenberg, making numerous ad hominem attacks in a shameful and petty display, most juvenile in my opinion. What are these lawmakers afraid of, to act in such a manner? Uncovering biases and censorship practices within supposedly unbiased and transparent social media organizations should be in everyone's interest. Right? Or am I missing something?  Is it possible there are other motivations at play for these so-called representatives of the people besides a search for truth and justice? 'Representatives', my ass! 💰 Just sayin'.

BUT, Matt and Michael kept their cool (I would have lost it; props to them!), presenting their findings and airing their concerns around how pervasive censorship regimes are within social media organizations. And they did so despite the hostile reception their words received.

AMERICAN author James Howard Kunstler, in a recent blog post, gives his take on the congressional hearings in his usual cogent and well-honed prose:

 

“You get the picture? Now how about that other war: our government’s war against us? What canny reporters (Taibbi, Schellenberger) are calling the Censorship Industrial Complex has been pretty well outed. Everybody knows that the FBI, CIA, DHS, and many other agencies, via hijacked social media, have worked tirelessly to confound and bamboozle the public debate about, really, everything that matters. The odd part is that roughly half of America doesn’t seem to care. Of course, that is the same half of the country that has fallen in love with surveillance, censorship, political prosecutions, election monkey business, mandated mRNA shots, and other excursions into bad faith. Their auditors in the mainstream news media actually seem to relish their roles as enforcers of unreality.” (James Howard Kunstler)

 

Cheers, Jake

 ^{______________________________________________}

 

* “An algorithm is a mathematical set of rules specifying how a group of data behaves. In social media, algorithms help maintain order and assist in ranking search results and advertisements. On Facebook, for example, there is an algorithm that directs pages and content to display in a certain order.” (Digital Marketing Institute)

 

 

                                                                             [You won't catch me any where near that fucking bird! Ed.]

    

 

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