Thank you, Canada—for standing firm against the new Nazism, for this victory of reason, and for honouring my great-uncle’s sacrifice

Carney leads the Liberals to victory: a triumph of sanity—and a resounding rejection of Trumpism. {AP 29 April} 

Canada holds profound significance for my family—from sheltering Loyalist ancestors (17th-century Puritan stock) post-Revolution, to my Yorkshire-bred 5th great-grandfather fleeing industrial upheaval in early 1800s England. It also protected a portion of my German forebears (most of my Germanic ancestry comes through my paternal grandmother—God rest her soul—who was fully German and Danish. Yet my grandfather's lineage proves equally fascinating—originating from the same region of modern Baden-Württemberg as my great-grandfather, my grandmother's father who settled in New Jersey with his family as a young boy in the 1890s; somehow, I doubt my grandparents ever knew this, a strange twist of fate).

Canada is in my blood. Though I've only visited Quebec and Ontario, I pray to someday muster the energy and wherewithal for that ten-hour drive to Prince Edward Island—to finally walk my ancestors' homeland, that is if average Americans will even be permitted to visit Canada going forward. Not a given, but I digress.

My great-grandfather, Oswald, born in 1903 near Dundas, Kings County, PEI, left for Boston in 1920—joining family and countrymen who'd settled in Lower Mills since the 1870s. Thus explains my now-unfortunate residence behind enemy lines in these former United States. From all accounts I ever heard, Oswald died a miserable and probably abusive drunk in 1965 (and his son, my grandfather, the same in 1989). I knew his widow, my dear great-grandmother Caroline, d.1988, and the primary source of my Puritan/Loyalist lineage, God rest her soul. But it would be Oswald’s younger brother—whom he'd only known as an infant and likely never recalled—that gave his blood for Canada. The family's profoundly unsentimental nature—the whole lot were/are bipolar, myself included—meant I uncovered my great-uncle's wartime deeds through research, not relatives. Precious few survive today, and neither knew nor cared—nor ever will.

My great-uncle Sidney Ulysses (b.1918, Kings County, PEI; pictured above, full name withheld for privacy), a lieutenant corporal, fell on Normandy's shores with the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, 9th Infantry Brigade, in the fight against Nazism on 7 June 1944 (click here for an excellent documentation of the unit’s actions on 6 June, and of their specific mission in the massive invasion). He rests at Reviers Canadian War Cemetery, having given his life for our freedom.

Any embrace of right-wing totalitarianism anywhere dishonours his sacrifice. Thank you, Canada, for honouring his memory and rejecting Fascism's resurgence from across your southern border.

Arthur Newhook, 29 April 2025, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

P.S. Go Maple Leafs, Go Oilers. First all Canadian Cup final in 36 years, this is the year to make it happen. The Bruins are not in the playoffs, and #Murica does not deserve a Stanley Cup this year.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-Twitter, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Educator essentially forced to flee across state lines following far-right intimidation: a requiem for New Hampshire's lost peace and beauty

Ellen Edersheim/New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development

The Guardian 24 April: Meet the new American refugees fleeing across state lines for safety

A New Hampshire educator has fled to Vermont after being doxxed and intimidated by far-right extremists—a disgraceful outcome for a state I once cherished. My childhood memories of the White Mountains and Lakes Region paint it as the safest, most idyllic place imaginable. Yet on recent visits—no more than five times in the last decade, despite living about 30 miles south of the state line—I’ve found its natural beauty enduring and some of the trappings remaining, but its social fabric increasingly reminiscent of Tennessee or West Virginia.

Historically conservative but tolerant, New Hampshire once welcomed all comers without celebrating ignorance. That seemed to change when a certain orange demagogue injected himself into national life, compounded by fentanyl and opioid crises ravaging this rural jurisdiction. Though it narrowly backed the Democrat in 2024’s presidential election, the trend is clear: another Democratic victory is improbable—assuming the party even gets the chance, and regardless of how catastrophically Trump and the GOP govern.

How tragic to witness New Hampshire—my childhood sanctuary of granite peaks and glassy lakes—degraded by opioid epidemics and performative bigotry. That an educator must flee newly emboldened extremists speaks volumes.

I shall state plainly: rural America (the decisive majority of it, do not come barking at me if one is a free-thinking liberal in Buttf**k, Arkansas, or Pigs**t, Oklahoma) must be held accountable for enabling an aspiring autocrat and his Christofascist movement. Their perpetual victimhood narratives—blaming others for crises mostly of their own making—can no longer be indulged. This ‘silent majority’ act has festered too long.

Rural white America’s cultural collapse is almost completely self-inflicted, yet its consequences are national. History shows our weakness: after the (first) Civil War and during the Civil Rights era, we prioritised false unity over justice. The reactionaries were contained for a few decades, but that was never going to hold. The second Civil War is coming, and if the Confederates are to lose again, this time they must be forever eradicated and never allowed to reemerge as they were with the end of Reconstruction and the dawn of the Jim Crow era. I am not convinced the Confederates will lose the next time, though, and I’ll leave it at that. Rest in Peace, New Hampshire as I knew it.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X-Twitter, and at the same handle on FACEBOOK. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Breeders' bonus: the former US considers paying women $5,000 a head to create future climate refugees

stock photo

ABC News: Trump administration looking at $5,000 'baby bonus' to incentivise public to have more children

$5,000 payments to women in the former United States to have babies? Let’s consider: (at least) 8.2 billion people already strain a planet of dwindling resources, amid unprecedented societal destabilisation. Yet this regime proposes to—at staggering public expense—artificially inflate the population, exacerbate the national debt (despite the GOP’s current austerity posturing), divert funds from healthcare and education, intensify housing crises, and reduce women to reproductive vessels. All so these unwanted children can inherit a world of climate catastrophe and mass impoverishment. A masterstroke from these natalist fanatics, let me tell you. Frankly, it’d be preferable to pay the majority of today’s Americans—demonstrably unfit to parent—*not* to procreate.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

The US State Department plans to close its foreign disinformation office—another gift to Putin, another act of treason disguised as the defence of ‘free speech’

Jeremy Pelzer/Cleveland dot com

{The Guardian 16 April} Trump administration shutters US office countering foreign disinformation

They can scarcely claim this decision serves national security interests, nor can they provide any remotely rational justification for such reckless action, but they do very successfully peddle grievances. Yet again, as we witness literally every single day in this hellscape, rank-and-file 'conservatives' will support whatever this regime does, no matter how fundamentally it contradicts the national security principles they once valued during the years of the War on Terror, as long as it continues to nourish their endlessly pathetic persecution complex.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Pennsylvania governor’s residence torched by arsonist following Passover weekend

AP Photo/Marc Levy

AP: Suspect arrested in arson fire that forced Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, family to flee residence

As far as I am concerned, this is what the majority of the American people voted for and approved, no matter how hard they may protest otherwise, and trying to pretend otherwise is futile at this point. A broken empire in severe economic decline, probably too large and unwieldy for its long-term survival, and one which is inhabited by millions of dangerous and resolutely ignorant lunatics who have embraced far-right governance even after their specific cult figurehead had already proven himself an abject failure the first time he was granted the office of the presidency, shall produce mass violence and depravity. For the record, while VP Vance has issued a generic statement condemning the attack, as of this hour I do not see that either the tawny marionette Trump or the shadow president—the South African—has said anything at all. And maybe that is just as well. With every act of homegrown terrorism, the blood of these acts is on the hands of all those who have nurtured and fostered the revival of a culture of grievance, self-pity, white supremacy, Jew-hatred, and anti-intellectualism run amok.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.