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galoots · 5 years

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Team Uncle Week 2019 Day 1: Domestic Life/Parenting It’s Bring Your Child to Work day at McDuck Enterprises, and Scrooge has brought his nephew Donald in like every year before. Scrooge is certain that his nephew, on the cusp of adulthood, will pursue the same career path as him, but when Donald gets fed up with his lofty expectations, Scrooge learns a hard lesson. Sometimes what’s best for our children is letting them find their own path.

“Listen up, everyone!” The rap of Scrooge’s cane against the tile floor echoed throughout the buzzing lobby of McDuck Enterprise’s central headquarters. Heads swiveled from every direction to face the source of the noise, and once all eyes were firmly on the company’s CEO, Scrooge could begin his announcement. Brandishing the tip of his cane towards Donald, who looked equal parts uncomfortable and mortified, Scrooge loudly announced the following to his faithful employees.

“This,” he declared, with a waggle of his cane, “is my darling ward, Donald. Many of you—those who have worked here a long time—know him already. For the few employees for which this is their first year here, and may not recognize him, I caution you to listen up. Take a good look at his face and commit it to memory. Study his features. Remember them well. Because some day in the future, this will be the face of your new boss.”

Longtime employees of McDuck Enterprise looked on with weary, bored expressions. They had heard this spiel many times and were no stranger to McDuck’s bravado when it came to his nephew. A few company greenhorns let out spasmodic bouts of weak, uncertain applause that quickly faded away when they realized no one had joined them. Scrooge beamed out at his little worker bees, his face a mélange of pride and confidence.

Today was the day of the 17th annual “Bring Your Child to Work Day” at McDuck Enterprise. An event Scrooge had initiated as a company-wide event the same year his nephew was born. Naturally, Scrooge schlepped Donald to the yearly occasion in order to educate his ward and as an excuse to tout around his little CEO-in-the-making. A fact Donald would find touching, if not for his uncle’s adamant insistence that he repeat the same declaration year after year, after year, after year. At first, he’d found it inspiring: a motivating promise he hoped to fulfill to make his uncle proud. Later on, he found it lost its oomph after repeat viewings until it had become plain funny to hear Scrooge’s artless, yet sincere affirmation. However, now, well into his teen years, he found it deeply troubling. Every year, he’d find himself smiling apologetically at the other parents and their children as his uncle dragged him from event to event. Usually, he was met with conciliatory expressions from the other parents, weary but understanding, or at least pretending to be. Occasionally, from the more sycophantic employees, he’d receive cajoling, self-servicing attention meant to ingratiate themselves into his good graces. He found neither of these congenial per se, but they were certainly preferable to the looks of out-right disdain from some of the other teenagers that were present. Even though these looks pained him, Donald couldn’t find it in himself to blame these teens, many of them his classmates, for their malice. Instead, he sympathized with them. From their perspective, he must appear the spoiled son of a business magnate, whose privileged future was secured with blatant nepotism. So, while he could find no reason to complain about a day off from school, nor one spent with his adoring uncle, he dreaded the annual event all the same. Scrooge, benign to the loaded atmosphere, merely placed a supportive, guiding arm around his shoulders.

“Come now, Donald. I’ve got plenty to show you this year. I’m terribly excited for you to see what I’ve got in store for you.” Scrooge gently lead him down the hall, unaware of the worry brewing in his nephew’s troubled head.

Touring the facility reminded Donald of the undeniable fact that his uncle truly was a titan of the industry, regardless of the market or its reach. It seemed like there was no piece of the pie that Scrooge didn’t own, and it was enough to make Donald’s head spin. As they toured his facility, Scrooge lectured Donald about their various entrepreneurial pursuits—their challenges, their compromises, and—most importantly—their victories. While he didn’t find it uninteresting, Donald found it incredibly overwhelming to the point of exhaustion. He couldn’t understand how his uncle could juggle it all, and still manage to have a life on top of work. So rather than listen to the particulars of the tales of commerce and finance his uncle spun, he chose to attend to the man’s warm and ardent tone.

It was endearing to hear a loved one go on at length about a fervent interest, Donald thought. Many people perceived his Uncle Scrooge as a cold, indifferent man, but Donald knew this wasn’t true. His uncle’s single-minded pursuit to his work was admirable, and Scrooge spoke of it in the same tenor he used to discuss Donald’s own accomplishments. Comparatively, he knew his odd A+ paper or sports trophy couldn’t hold a candle to his uncle’s vast empire, yet he never felt lesser than Scrooge or his devotion to his company. Scrooge held him in tantamount, if not greater, esteem to his vast fortune, his legacy, and immortal empire he’d built. His uncle would often jokingly exclaim that he’d been a poor old man until Donald became a part of his life despite having well-established his estate long before his birth.

Nonetheless, Scrooge’s ensured confidence in Donald’s ability to serve as his heir unsettled the boy. What should he do, if he proved himself unworthy of that esteem?

“Donald?” Scrooge shook him gently, sending his trouble thoughts running to the corners of his mind. “Are you alright there, lad?”

“Peachy keen, Uncle Scrooge.” Donald flashed his uncle a smile, hoping it was a convincing one.

Scrooge smiled at him, patting his shoulder approvingly. “Good. Shall we make our way to the conference room then?”

“What for?” Donald couldn’t remember a prior year where he’d been allowed to sit on one of Scrooge’s influential, industry-changing business meetings.

“I’ve a meeting to attend of course. I’d like you to observe.”

The meeting was suitably dull as Donald had expected. Droning executives, confusing jargon, and pressed black and navy suits as far as the eye could see. Twenty minutes in, and Donald already found himself lost. He simply adopted a strategy he often employed in similarly less than stimulating classes. He kept his eyes bright and intent, focused on whoever was speaking, head nodding like a bobblehead, while his mind was a million miles away. As the bigwigs around him discussed at length whatever issue at hand, Donald began to draft a villanelle he was writing in his head. Lost in the lyrical pleasures of poetic composition, he barely heard an unfamiliar voice call his name.

Snapping to attention, he found the room’s eyes trained on him. A woman smiled wryly at him and repeated her phrase. “Donald, I asked if you had any insights into our predicament. A new, foreign perspective often proves beneficial in such matters, and you are Mr. McDuck’s heir, after all.”

Donald couldn’t decipher the woman’s obfuscating smile. Was she asking earnestly? Did she mean to test him? Or did she simply intend to embarrass him, proving to the other higher-ups that he was unfit for his privileged role?

The audible click of the nearby clock’s second hand marked the passing of his elapsed silence. A moment, seconds long, stretched thin to an eternity on the blade of his anxiety, until Scrooge cleared his throat with authoritative control.

“Mrs. Montgomery, while I applaud your initiative, Donald is here only to learn, not to provide input. I’d ask that you stay on track and treat his presence here as you would any observing third-party. While I have no doubt of Donald’s illuminating judgement, it’s neither the time nor place to put him on the spot to share it.”

Sinking down low into his chair, Donald wished for the ability to disappear. He calmly waited until the meeting had ended before briskly leaving the room to bolt for the nearest unenclosed space. Panic squeezed his throat and his ears were filled with the pounding of his heart, in frantic rhythm with his footsteps as he climbed the stairwell. Bursting out onto the roof terrace, Donald gasped for breath. He choked on the air, a sharp pain in his chest, while the feeling he was coming untethered from reality settled upon him. The world turned bizarre and alien around him, as if suddenly viewed through kaleidoscopic vision. His perception pulled away from him like a dolly zoom as he fell away from himself. Gradually, he recognized a warm, unimposing hand on his back, rubbing comforting circles there, and a voice instructing him to breathe. He imagined a feather floating in front of him, ascending with each inhaled and descending with each subsequent exhale.

Slowly, he clicked back into place, and became aware of Scrooge kneeling next to him, on his bad knee no less, on top of the windy roof terrace. When he fully came to, he was sitting next to his uncle on the rooftop bench, sipping a bottle of herbal tea purchased from a nearby vending machine.

“I’m sorry.” He choked out, looking firmly at the cement underneath his unsteady feet.

Scrooge kept a steady hand on the expanse between his shoulder blades. “Don’t apologize, Donald. I had no clue Mrs. Montgomery would put you on the spot like that. I’m so sorry.” That hand kept Donald anchored as he squeezed out angry tears. They splattered onto the cement, marking it a dark gray. Scrooge continued to comfort him as he cried. “The worst of it is over now. We can go home right away or stay here if you prefer. Whatever you need to make you feel better.”

He felt calmer now but still raw, like the wind could rip right through him at any moment. One more stiff breeze and he might topple off the precarious position he occupied on top of this roof. The feelings he’d been trying to push away all day only continued their assault and Donald could feel himself finally buckle.

“Uncle Scrooge, what if I don’t want to run your company?” A small voice, that must have been his own, queried.

“What?” From the sound of his uncle’s voice, he must have caught Scrooge off-guard. “I thought… do you not want to?”

Donald swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat. “Business is your thing. I know you just want what’s best for me, and I want to make you proud, but—What if I’m no good at it?! What if I don’t like it? I feel like there’s all this pressure to be like you and—” His voice hitched as it reached a frantic pitch.

“Slow down. Don’t forget to breathe.” His uncle held him reassuringly, letting Donald rest on his shoulder and catch his breath. “Oh Donald… I had no idea you felt like this. Tell me everything that’s bothering you.”

With his uncle’s go-ahead, the truth welled up inside him, fit to burst. Donald unburdened himself of the mounting pressure that had dogged him all day and all these years. His fears of disappointing Scrooge, his growing anxiety he couldn’t meet his expectations, his doubts he even wanted to follow Scrooge’s career path. He felt lighter and lighter with each admission that slipped from his beak. Scrooge listened quietly and attentively to all he had to say. When he came to a close, Scrooge waited for him to continue before he collected his own thoughts to speak.

“I owe you an apology, Donald.” His uncle braced him with a protective grasp. “I feel utterly wretched putting you through all this. It sounds like you were incredibly stressed because I was pushing you into something you felt ill-suited for. You must have felt so trapped. This was eating away at you for a while, wasn’t it?”

Donald nodded meekly, his head nestled in crook of Scrooges neck.

“Of course, you were. You had every right to be. I know nothing I can say can undo the pain I’ve already put you through, but I am truly sorry.” The tell-tale sound of emotion choked Scrooge’s throat as he spoke. “I love you so much, darling. I’ll be proud of you no matter what you chose to do. I hope you know that.”

Scrooge sighed deeply before he resumed speaking. “I should have asked you what you wanted, instead of bullheadedly forcing my own expectations for your future on you. I’m so sorry, Donnie. I’ll do better from here on out, I swear.”

He hugged him tightly, rocking him slightly in his arms. Donald hugged him back, his arms wrapped around his uncle’s waist, feeling younger than his years, smaller than his frame, and calmer than he’d felt all day.

Speaking in a subdued tone, Donald murmured into his uncle’s feathery neck: “I forgive you, Uncle Scrooge.”

The sun was starting to set as Scrooge and Donald walked the length of the park. They walked in silence for the most part, until Scrooge cleared his throat with a nervous tremor. “Donald… When I made all those speeches about you, I never intended to pressure you. I wanted you to know that I believe in you, because I really do believe you could run my company in the future. You’d be great at it! I never doubted that for a moment. And I guess… I wanted everyone else to know how amazing you are.” Scrooge took off his hat. “I was foolish. I thought if I let everyone know how proud I am of you and how much I believe in you, then you’d feel motivated and empowered to step up to the plate! But all I did was make you miserable.” Scrooge fumbled awkwardly with the brim, keeping his eyes downcast and off of Donald’s face.

His uncle looked vulnerable and uncertain as he stumbled through his explanation. “Donald, I don’t want you to get the impression I’m pressuring you to be like me. I don’t want you to be like me.” His shoulders slumped and his hands dropped to his sides.

Donald’s breath caught in his throat, completely blindsided by his uncle’s admission. Reeling with confusion, he tried to parse the meaning of that declaration but found himself more lost than before. “Why not? You’re so,” he searched for the right word to encapsulate his image of Scrooge with the floundering desperation of a drowning man, “…amazing.” He shook his head at the descriptor he’d chosen. That wasn’t even close to what he wanted to express. Maybe, he thought, words couldn’t describe it. “No, I mean, it’s just that, well, I guess I’m trying to say is—you’re Scrooge McDuck!” He spoke the name with such adoration and wonder in his voice his uncle started to chuckle self-consciously.

“Ach, Donnie.” Scrooge wore a far-off, sad expression that Donald was to young to truly understand. He ran a hand over his head, looking exhausted all of a sudden. “I haven’t been the best person in the past, Donald. Far from it. My path here has been paved with innumerable misdeeds, and there are many things I regret. If I could go back and right them, I would.” Here Scrooge raised his eyes, full of solemnity, to meet his nephew’s concerned gaze. “But there’s one thing I’d never change, and it’s you. I am the man I am today because you came into my life. You forced me to care again.”

Scrooge was silent for a long moment, looking off into the horizon then placed a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “I used to think a parent guided their child’s life and shaped them into the person they ought to be. Like you were a lump of clay I had to mold into a finished piece.” Shaking his head, Scrooge laughed at himself. “I know better now. Children shape themselves. All I did was make sure you didn’t stray too far from your proper path.”

The warmth of his uncle’s fond countenance made something settle in Donald’s chest, something he hadn’t known was stirring or even there to begin with. Now that it had calmed and settled into place, Donald felt like he had untensed a muscle that had been locked for a long time or released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

“Donald, I love watching you grow, and I love growing with you. You are your own person. You aren’t like me, nor should you be. Maybe there’s an impression of myself in you, probably the stubborn part of you, but you do things in a way all your own and by your own agency. My company is yours to run in the future, but it’s up to you decide how to run it. In your own Donald-like way.”

The hand on his shoulder lifted to pat him before Scrooge returned it to his side. “T-that is, if you want to, of course.”

Donald let out a little chuckle, and the two of them continued their lazy promenade through the park for a silent stretch of time. The sun was sinking lower in the sky as the evening twilight spread over the city of Duckburg, painting it in cool blues and honey-toned pinks and oranges.

“Now that I know how you feel, what do you want to do, nephew?”

Donald gave a lame shrug. “I’m not sure. There’s so much I’m interested in. Picking one thing is so hard.”

Scrooge gave a curt little nod, but remained silent, looking at him sincerely.

“I like poetry.” He stated with equally faltering sentiment as before.

“You are quite good at it.” Scrooge admitted with that resonant tone of voice Donald had admired earlier.

“You read my poetry?” Donald often handed his recently drafted compositions to Scrooge, but he’d always assumed his uncle was too busy to actually read through them.

“Of course!” Scrooge said with a haughty tone.

Donald chuckled at his uncle’s mock offense, shaking his head. He’d never thought of his uncle as the literary type, but he trusted that he always spoke his mind.

“Maybe… maybe I do want to follow your footsteps in the future, Uncle Scrooge. Maybe not by running your business, but I do want to find something that makes me as happy as you are when you’re talking about your business.” Donald shuffled his feet. “I think its cool. How much you care. And how hard you work. I think that’s really admirable.”

They walked on in meditative silence. From the corner of his eye, Donald caught Scrooge grinning heartily.

Donald felt his beak reflexively curve into a grin. He took his hands from his pockets and looped his arm around Scrooge’s own. “I don’t know what you were like in the past, Uncle Scrooge, but I do know that I’m really lucky to have a parent like you. Maybe you don’t always do stuff right or smart or whatever, but you always listen to me when you mess up. You listened to me today, and you were ready and willing to change afterwards. No matter what, you treat me with empathy and respect. Whatever I do in the future… I know I want to be just like you.”

Arm in arm, walking amongst shaded poplars and creeping ivy, Donald politely declined to tease his uncle for the tears welling from his eyes.

#duckverse #disney ducks #duck comics #fanfiction #teamuncleweek2019

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clubofinfo · 6 years

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Expert: John Sidney McCain III (PHOTO: John Hume Kennerly/GETTY IMAGES) The eulogies for the recently deceased John McCain, a US Senator for Arizona, have been plentiful, and so far as the American mainstream media is concerned, they have verged on the hagiographic. He has been variously described as a “patriot”, a “war hero” and a “defender of freedom”. Most perplexingly, McCain was lauded as a “warrior for peace”. But while praise for McCain has been dutifully administered in reverential terms by both liberal and conservative figures, the truth is that there is widespread dissent about McCain’s legacy as a man, as a military officer, as well as a politician. Perhaps, most worrisome is the construction of McCain’s legacy as one of the resolutely principled maverick and insatiable peace seeker. On the contrary, McCain operated at the highest echelons of the American Establishment, a closeted world of vested interests comprising a network geared towards the enrichment of the American elite. He was a captive of the defence industry and an unceasingly aggressive spokesperson for the post-Cold War era militarism that has compromised the United States and brought it down low in the eyes of the global community of nations. So why the almost uncritical eulogising of a controversial life beset by allegations of incompetence, corruption and disloyalty? Perhaps it is the tradition of the people of the United States to venerate their warriors. From the highest serving general to the lowest level foot soldier, Americans have a penchant for what might be termed ‘soldier worship’. There is also a tendency for disparate groups of people to pull together behind someone when confronted by an idea or by a person to whom they feel repugnance. It is certainly the case that the transition from life to death brings out the sentimental in people whether such death is sudden or prolonged. And, of course, as with most cultures, Americans are cautious about speaking ill of the dead. Each of these has doubtlessly played a part in the positive reviews of the life of John McCain since his passing. John Sidney McCain III was born into a family of naval servicemen, two of who reached the rank of admiral. He served as a naval aviator during the Vietnam War and later retired as a captain. McCain also engaged in a well-publicised, long-running feud with Donald Trump who as a polarising figure has succeeded in arraigning different strands of his countrymen against his presidency. His demise, caused by the effects of a malignant brain tumour, was a cruel one. Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of cancer. But there is much to question about McCain. McCain joined the US Navy following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Each man had reached the pinnacle of service and became the first father and son pair to achieve the rank of four-star admiral. When he retired in 1981, McCain had been the recipient of a Silver Star and Purple Heart. He had also received a Distinguished Flying Cross for his “exceptional courage, superb airmanship, and total devotion to duty” during a bombing raid over Hanoi in 1967, and had been awarded the Legion of Merit with Combat “V” award “for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States while interned as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam from October 1967 to March 1973.” But the competence of the future senator as an aviator has been consistently questioned. For instance, in 1960 while on a training exercise, he crashed his plane into Corpus Christi Bay, in the process shearing the skin off its wings. The following year, while serving with an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean theatre, he flew through electrical wires in southern Spain causing a power failure in the surrounding area. And in 1965, while en route to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy football game, he crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia. These incidents, caused by a carefree attitude described as “cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits”, led to rebukes by the naval authorities. They also explain a great deal about the allegations surrounding his responsibility for two more serious incidents. Sarcastically dubbed ‘Ace McCain’ by his commanders, McCain’s career as an aviator was, nonetheless, allowed to continue. Although the official inquiry into the catastrophic fire onboard the USS Forrestal in July 1967 was officially blamed on the accidental firing of a rocket caused by an electrical power surge during preparations for a strike against a target in North Vietnam, the claim that the disaster, which killed 134 sailors while injuring another 161, was caused by McCain ‘wet-starting’ his jet has refused to die. ‘Wet-starting’ refers to where pilots flood the combustion chamber of their craft with extra fuel before ignition in order to create either a loud bang or a plume of flame. McCain is claimed by some to have done this and that the ensuing concatenation of maladies are traceable to his reckless act. That he avoided the consequences of his actions is said to be due to the seniority and influence of his high-ranking father who some, including Admiral Thomas Moorer, a former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, allege was at the time cooperating with the cover-up pertaining to the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the armed forces of the state of Israel, which had occurred the previous month. Three months later, McCain was shot down while conducting a bombing sortie over North Vietnam. No official blame has ever been attached to McCain for his shooting down. But as his aircraft was lost behind enemy lines, its remains were not subjected to the same sort of forensic analysis as had occurred after the earlier mishaps while in control of the cockpit. In all three incidents, McCain’s skill and judgment had been called into question. Aviators like McCain had been trained to stay at altitudes of 4,000 to 10,000 feet in environments where there were heavy deployments of surface-to-air missile launchers. They had equipment which warned the pilot that they were being tracked and also when a missile locked on them. These missiles were relatively easy to out-manoeuvre up to a point. This changed when there were multiple launches of between 6 and 12 missiles. McCain claimed in his autobiography that 22 missiles were fired at his squadron that day and that one blew off his right wing. He had been flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet above Hanoi. It is McCain’s conduct as a prisoner of war which has brought him the most public scrutiny. Officially, he is a hero for withstanding torture: beatings, the withholding of medical treatment and a lengthy spell in solitary confinement, although he wilted and made at least one propaganda broadcast for North Vietnamese radio in which he pronounced himself guilty of “crimes against the Vietnamese country and people.” The United States military Code of Conduct prohibits prisoners of war from accepting parole or other favours from the enemy, although during the Vietnam War, latitude was generally given to those who were seriously ill or injured. McCain, who sustained two broken arms and a broken leg when ejecting from his plane, has been accused by some fellow veterans who were held at the same camps as he, as one who sold out his fellow prisoners and other servicemen by cooperating with his captors in order to be the beneficiary of a cushy captivity. His detractors accuse him of making broadcasts designed to infringe upon the morale of his fellow servicemen and of giving up military secrets such as that related to his flight, rescue ships and the order of attacks. And while they allow that McCain refused an offer of early repatriation unless all prisoners were released, some allege that he was given special treatment with two other ‘defectors’ for cooperating. In fact, they argue that McCain’s refusal was an easy one given that he knew that his future prospects in the military and any public office would have been ruined. Many veterans claimed that those who were granted early release in three sets of releases in 1968 were collaborators who they dubbed ‘the slipperies’, ‘the slimies’ and ‘the sleazies’, and that McCain had acknowledged this. To be sure, several of McCain’s co-prisoners have spoken on his behalf over the years. Men like George Day and Orson Swindle confirm that torture was regularly administered and that they were forced to talk, although they attempted to mislead their captors by telling untruths. In McCain’s case, he claims his response to questions asking him about future bombing runs was simply to give those that had already taken place. He also claims to have given the names of the offensive line up of the Green Bay Packers football team as members of his squadron. Render Crayton, McCain’s co-prisoner for one year (1971-1972) at the camp referred to as the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, has often spoken up on behalf of McCain and claims that McCain “gave hell to his captors”. An example of this was deciding one morning to loudly sing the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. The penalty for this insubordination was to be removed from a “big room” to “smaller cell rooms”. This does not impress those veterans against McCain who assert that no one witnessed the series of tortures he claimed to have endured. In his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, McCain admitted that he felt guilty throughout his captivity because he knew that he was being treated more leniently than his fellow POWs owing to the fact that he was the son of the commander-in-chief of all US forces in the Pacific region, including Vietnam. His captors referred to him as the ‘Crown Prince’. They also point to the tremendous lengths McCain went towards blocking the release of classified documents during the 1991-1993 Senate Committee hearings on Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action as evidence of his having a personal interest in suppressing information which would discredit him. Through McCain’s efforts, documents such as related to all the Pentagon debriefings of returned prisoners were classified by legislation. A ‘Truth Bill’, which had been twice introduced to ensure transparency over missing men was bitterly opposed by McCain who then sponsored a new bill which sought to create a bureaucratic maze ensuring that only a few non-descript documents could be released. It was passed into law. His rationale that the sealing of these files was for reasons of privacy and preventing the reviving of painful memories were not accepted by those who point to the fact that debriefings from returning Korean War prisoners of war are available to the public, and, as was the case with Korea, could have provided useful leads in so far as the fate of those who were missing in action in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Those who opposed McCain were often subjected to vitriolic abuse by a man who developed a renowned temper. He referred to individuals and groups campaigning for information on MIAs as “hoaxers”, “charlatans” and “conspiracy theorists”. They retorted by dubbing him the ‘Manchurian Candidate’. In fact, many of them, along with the veterans against McCain, often refer to his conduct while in captivity as having been nothing less than treachery. Claims that McCain was on a list of 33 American prisoners of war earmarked to be executed for treason cannot be corroborated. But possible retribution against him by hardline military officers was rendered impossible by the US Defense Department whose officials had adopted a general policy of “honour-and-forgive” for returning prisoners of war. One specific element of this policy was not to prosecute any prisoners of war for making pro-North Vietnamese propaganda statements while in captivity. And to back this up, a move in 1973 by an Air Force colonel charging seven enlisted men of collaborating with the enemy while they were held as prisoners of war by North Vietnam was dismissed by the secretaries of the Army and Navy for lack of evidence and the mitigating circumstances of the “long hardship” they endured while in captivity. While McCain is perceived by his detractors as having escaped punishment for his ‘disloyalty’ while in uniform, some point to his treatment of his first wife as evidence of his capacity for betrayal. A beautiful divorcee who he had married in 1965, Carol McCain had remained loyal to her husband during the period of his captivity. However, in 1969, she was badly injured in a motor accident and had to undergo numerous operations. She lost several inches in height and gained weight. McCain confessed that he returned home to a wife who appeared to be a different woman. He admitted to philandering and eventually divorced her to marry a woman who was 18 years younger than him. His critics make the case that McCain lost interest in a spouse who was no longer the ‘trophy wife’ he had married and replaced her with an extremely attractive woman whose family were very wealthy and well-connected in the state of Arizona, where he would begin his political career. His critics cite this as evidence of McCain’s ruthless and calculating streak, which was guided neither by virtue nor by principle. As a politician, McCain has been lauded as having been guided by a code of “honour, courage, integrity and duty.” His maverick reputation is seen as evidence of his ability to eschew the narrow confines of partisan politics. But his tenure as a senator was beset by allegations of corrupt practices, of being a pork-barrel politico in the thrall of the military industry and Israel lobby, and of being a warmonger who supported America’s recent wars, which has led to the destruction of whole countries and of countless innocent casualties. As a new senator in the early 1990s, McCain was involved in a corruption scandal after he and four senators from the Democratic Party were accused of trying to intimidate regulators on behalf of a campaign donor who was eventually imprisoned for corrupt management practices. He escaped with a reprimand for having “exercised poor judgement”, but with the accompanying judgement that his actions “were not improper”. In August 2006, McCain was captured in a photograph going onboard a luxury yacht rented by the Italian con-man Raffaello Follieri in Montenegro. It was here that McCain met the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska for a second time, after an initial meeting in Davos. Both meetings had been arranged by Rick Davis, who like Paul Manafort, has been a long-time conduit between American big shots and the Russian ultra-rich. Nathaniel Rothschild, who has large business interests in Montenegro, a country that granted him citizenship in 2013, also met with McCain. Events unfolded to reveal that McCain had been part of an elaborate scheme which enabled Western financiers to buy up Montenegro and bribe influential members of the country’s elite who would be pliable to the idea of prising Montenegro away from Serbia. The long-term goal was for Montenegro to declare its independence and pave the way for its accession to membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an objective that came to fruition in 2017. McCain’s scheming in regard to Montenegro highlights his connections to the wealthy interests who control Western politicians, both of who work hand-in-hand in advancing Western geopolitical interests. The co-opting of Montenegro into the Western financial sphere and its membership of (NATO) were manoeuvres calculated to injure Russia’s commercial and military interests. First of all, the oil and gas explorations subsequently embarked upon in the outlying Adriatic Sea is designed to create a market which aims to undercut or totally nullify Russian ambitions to supply oil and gas to countries in the region via a South Stream pipeline project. Secondly, transforming its military status from one of neutrality to being part of the Atlantic Alliance is in keeping with NATO’s post-Cold War eastward expansion, a policy which is designed to intimidate Russia, and which is in defiance of the agreement reached at the end of the Cold War between the leaders of the West and the former Soviet Union, that Germany reunification was predicated on the condition that NATO would not expand eastwards. John McCain, by words and deeds, demonstrated his support for the anti-Russian sentiment that has permeated corridors of power in the United States since the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, a nationalist who brought to an end the mass plunder of Russia’s resources by Western interests during the government led by Boris Yeltsin. Indeed, no politician better embodied the twin doctrines that encapsulate the militarism pursued by the United States in the aftermath of the US-Soviet Cold War than McCain. These are philosophies espoused by Paul Wolfowitz and Zbigniew Brzezinski. The former provided that American policy was to ensure that after the fall of the Soviet Union, no other power should be permitted to rise and compete with the United States for global influence, while the latter was fixated on militarily intimidating Russia and seeking its dismemberment and relegation to a region designed to serve the energy needs of the West. His dismissal of Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country” and his forthright comment that Montenegro’s accession to NATO was “vital for regional stability and the joint effort of the Western allies to resist a resurgent Russia”, provided clear evidence of his position. McCain’s anti-Russian posture ensured an enduring animus between himself and Vladimir Putin. Although McCain claimed that the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 was “a mistake” initiated by Mikheil Saakashvili, then president of Georgia, Putin accused the United States of fomenting the conflict in order to strengthen McCain’s bid for the White House. “The suspicion arises”, Putin claimed, “that someone in the United States especially created this conflict to make the situation tenser and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.” While Putin’s allegations were pooh-poohed by the White House as “patently false” and by the state department as “ludicrous”, events in Ukraine in 2014 clearly demonstrated McCain’s involvement in the American-sponsored overthrow of the elected government led by Viktor Yanukovytch. This was made possible by utilising the street muscle of ultranationalist groups such as Pravy Sektor. McCain was repeatedly photographed with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far right Svoboda Party which has been accused of being neo-Nazi in ideology while being vocally Russophobic and anti-Jewish. McCain, who wielded a great deal of power as a long-term senator, allegedly chaired an important CIA meeting in Cairo that was pivotal in fomenting the so-called Arab Spring. And just as he met with political extremists in Kiev prior to the US-backed coup, in 2011 he was seen walking the streets of Benghazi where he was photographed meeting anti-Gaddafi rebels who embraced the Islamist creed of al-Qaeda, the alleged perpetrators of the September 11th attacks on the United States. He called the rebels “heroic” and lobbied for US military intervention weeks before NATO began its bombardment and training of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Force (LIFG). And given his vocal support for overthrowing the government of Gaddafi and his ‘fact-finding’ tour, he was also likely to have been influential in paving the way for President Barack Obama’s decision to authorise the use of predator drones. McCain would later be pictured with Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal giving an award to Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the now disbanded LIFG. The Libyan intervention, enabled by the United Nations resolution based on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine, of course, ended in human disaster. Gaddafi was toppled, but a nation which was once Africa’s most prosperous country soon degenerated into a failed state composed of warring militias, Islamist strongholds that have imposed rule by Sharia, and the establishment of slave markets composed of human chattel of Black African origin. The removal of Gaddafi which McCain cheered on has led to a deterioration of security beyond Libya as Islamist terror groups situated in the Maghreb (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) and further down in the Lake Chad Basin (Boko Haram) have been strengthened because of the availability of large quantities of arms and munitions previously owned by the fallen Libyan army. McCain’s dallying with extremists also extended to illegally entering into Syrian territory in 2013 and meeting with anti-government rebels who he described as “brave fighters who are risking their lives for freedom”, but who most neutral observers would classify as terrorists. McCain’s support respectively for the Iraq War which overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Western-backed insurgencies in Libya and Syria, NATO expansion and confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia clearly mark him out as a supporter of American militarism, a geopolitical policy that has caused tremendous harm to American prestige among the community of nations, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, caused large-scale human displacement and a refugee crisis, and which has persistently kept NATO and Russia at loggerheads. It makes a mockery of Congressman John Lewis’s attempt to eulogise him as a “warrior for peace”. Indeed, it was no surprise that the arms giant Lockheed Martin, which has profited from the wars supported by McCain, issued a tribute after his death. That he sympathised with the neoconservative ideology and was beholden to the objectives of the Israel lobby is beyond doubt. His support for American interventions in the Arab world targeting secular governments perceived as not towing the line with Israel was apparent in his role in fomenting insurgencies in Libya and Syria, the latter in regard to which he unceasingly promoted a more direct form of US involvement. It is also confirmed by his long-term attitude of belligerence towards Iran, which he consistently denounced during his presidential campaign in 2008. While on the hustings, he notoriously broke out in song by substituting the lyrics of the Beach Boys hit Barbara Ann with “Bomb Iran”. His statements tended to indicate that he would have been in favour of attacking Iran at the behest of Israel and its US-based lobby groups, an action that was strongly resisted by Barack Obama. McCain, not surprisingly, was dismissive of the Obama administration’s deal with Iran over its nuclear strategy, which he derisively referred to as a “feckless” approach to foreign policy. McCain was despite his maverick label an establishment man adept at manoeuvring between the public spotlight and the shadowy, largely unseen world of what many now understand to be the ‘Deep State’. He was almost certainly a key player in the machinations of America’s ‘double government’ and its formulation of national security policy which, as Professor Michael Glennon pointed out in a lengthy research paper, has essentially remained unchanged from successive administrations starting with George W. Bush, through to the one headed by Barack Obama, and now that of Donald Trump. Far from the mainstream narrative that he was a beloved figure, McCain has gone to his grave leaving a great number disgruntled for various reasons. For many veterans, he will forever be ‘Johnny Songbird’ of ‘Hanoi Hilton’ infamy; like his father, a man of the establishment who covered up many unflattering secrets of the state including that pertaining to the sinking of the USS Liberty which he never sought to redress. To his former Vietnamese foes he remains the celebrity captive, the admiral’s son immortalised as an ‘air pirate’ depicted in a statute bent on his knees next to the lake from where he was retrieved after parachuting from his downed aircraft. To white nationalists he is a ‘race traitor’ who supported successive amnesties for illegal immigrants and to the anti-war segment of the political left, he does not deserve praise for participating in a colonial war of aggression against the Vietnamese people, while the isolationist segment of the political right decried his persistent support for foreign wars of intervention. John McCain was not a straightforward hero. Nor was he an exceptional politician. The unbridled facts of his life and career in the military and as a public figure embody much of what is dysfunctional about the American republic. To succumb to the blatant myth-making and obfuscation of his life represents a failure of the nation to properly reflect and critically examine itself. That cannot bode well for the future. http://clubof.info/

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mavwrekmarketing · 7 years

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The world of online advertising remains split: there’s the Wild West and then there’s the corporate dystopia.

In the wild west, dozens of shadowy firms churn out annoying two-bit ads for a quick buck; fake news sites feed off ad exchanges not entirely unlike those that serve the country’s paper of record; Russian cybercriminals routinely bilk the world’s biggest brands out of millions through ad fraud.

SEE ALSO: Can Google’s ad blocker save the online ad industry from itself?

Then there’s the corporate dystopia, in which the vast majority of online ad dollars are vacuumed up by two companies: Google and Facebook.

For a while, the two worlds coexisted peacefully, but it appears that time is coming to an end. There are signs that the Silicon Valley giants have had about enough of the shadiness of their lesser peers (though neither is entirely blameless or immune themselves).

After years of paying lip service to the idea of a cleaner, more user-friendly online ads space, those companies and other major platforms are each flexing their muscles in ways that could actually compel widespread changeblocker-equipped browsers, algorithmic vetting, and machine learning.

Sounds great right? Who wouldn’t love to see fewer terrible ads? Well, without the Wild West, we’re left with just the corporate dystopia. And their show of force has already rattled publishers and ad tech firms, which are wary of the duopoly’s intentions and massive power.

Whatever happens, there’s little chance the crackdown will be bloodless.

Death by duopoly

In the last three months, about $0.70 out of every dollar spent on online advertising went to either Google or Facebook, according to a report this week from Pivotal Research Group.

Around half of the remaining $0.30 is (separately and loosely) estimated to go to a collection of minor platform players ranging from Snapchat to Twitter to Amazon.

Things get a bit messier in the race for the nickel and dime left over after that. Elbowing over that sliver of the market are hundreds of entitiespublishers ranging from the New York Times to BuzzFeed to a rogue’s gallery of fake news sites. Also in the mix are ad tech middlemen from targeters to re-targeters to robotic exchanges, and even mafia fraudsters.

Just look at this mess. These are all the companies that are playing some role in this.

The amount of money spent on digital ads is still growing quickly, but headed just about entirely to the corporate dystopia. Some estimates say as much as 99 cents of every new dollar in ad generation is gobbled up by Google and Facebook.

The stranglehold on growth is evident in the rapid rate at which their slice of the pie is expanding. In just the past two years, the duopoly’s share has grown from 64 percent to 71 percent, according to a report from Pivotal Research Group.

That may not sound like a massive bump on its face, but consider that each 1 percent of growth is equal to about $830 million.

What leftover is a situation in which companies are chasing the scraps. Venture capital funding for ad tech companiesthe shorthand for the sprawl of esoteric businesses that orchestrate the buying and selling of digital adsshrank substantially last year as did the number of business deals in the space.

They can’t entirely blame Google and Facebook. Pivotal advertising analyst Brian Wieser said ad tech’s woes have more to do with their business model than competition from Google, however.

“That’s not the cause of ad tech’s weakness by itself,” Wieser said. “Those are not very good businesses. They’re mostly commoditized.”

Either way, noted venture capitalist Fred Wilson predicted in January that it would be virtually impossible to find funding for an internet advertising business this year.

“The ad:tech market will go the way of search, social, and mobile as investors and entrepreneurs concede that Google and Facebook have won and everyone else has lost,” Wilson wrote.

Terry Kawaja, founder of investment bank Luma Partners, predicts that nine out of 10 current ad tech companies will disappear without successful exits.

Publishers are in a similarly grim position. Most legacy magazines and newspapers still rely on print for the bulk of their ad revenue, and their online share is becoming even more marginal as their audiences shift from desktop to less lucrative mobile.

Layoffs have swept major outlets in the past weeks, including Time Inc., HuffPost, and Vocativ. Many of these companies are frantically doubling down on video production, through which they can sell more expensive ads.

Blood in the water

Despite its comparatively tiny stature, the free-wheeling world of open-web ads has long been a thorn in the side of Google and Facebook.

Annoying, clunky, and intrusive ads drive people to ad blockers, which Google currently pays a reported $25 million to circumvent. They also force its Chrome browser to compete with ad-free rivals that are popular in Asia, such as Alibabs UC browser. For Facebook, these ads bog down load times for outside links and thus hamper user experiencesomething the company recently cracked down on via an algorithm tweak.

They’re not alone in their distaste for the seedier elements of digital advertising. Pretty much everyone in the industry seems to agree that a certain segment of bad actors are harming the reputation of the space as a whole.

But it now seems major platforms are finally doing something about it.

The first salvo came when news broke that Google’s Chrome browser would soon come equipped with an ad blocker enabled by default.

The feature will filter out ads based on the quality standards set down by the Coalition for Better Advertising, an industry group over which Google is said to have an enormous sway.

The move was cheered by some in the industry, but most remained wary of the search giant’s goodwill.

It could have big consequences. AdBlock Plus, the world’s most popular ad blocker, claims to boast around 100 million active users; Chrome has well over a billion on both mobile and desktop (of course there’s overlap).

Wieser, however, downplays how much impact it will ultimately have on publishers. It may drive prices for higher quality ads up, he says, but media companies will ultimately be competing on the same playing field.

“It could be argued that publishers have engaged in a race to the bottom approach and supported these bad ad units because of the pressures Google and Facebook have placed on the industry,” he said. “But it didn’t need to be that way. I’d argue that if everyone is given an equal opportunity to sell non-bad ads, it doesn’t make much difference.”

Next, Facebook tightened its algorithm for the nth time in a bid to squeeze out clickbaitonly this time, the company said it would do so by taking each publisher’s ads into account.

The social network has remained relatively opaque about the particular types of ads that would lead a site to lose priority in Facebook’s all-important News Feed. It did say that pop-ups, interstitials (those screen-hogging ads that are sprung on you between page loads), and otherwise malicious or deceptive ads would be counted against publishers, and that it would consider the ratio of ads to posts.

Seemingly minor tweaks to Facebook’s code can have make-or-break implications for media organizations, which typically rely on the 1.5 billion-user-strong platform for a vital chunk of their traffic. When Facebook rolled out its first major anti-clickbait adjustment in 2014, it managed to pretty much stomp out a whole cottage industry of exclamation-point-happy screaming headlines.

The incentive to clean up advertising could prompt a similar gravitational pull away from certain types of ads that are currently commonplace. Some publishers say they are already beginning to see the flow of visitors from the platform tank.

Like Google’s new filter, the vetting is all handled by artificial intelligence, which Facebook has said is trained to recognize patterns in pages with suspect ads.

One prominent ad tech executive said the automated nature of these efforts was what worried him most. Stricter policies might sound fine in theory, this person said, but it’s almost never perfectly translated into code without collateral damage.

Finally, Apple finished out the requisite threesome for a Journalistic Trend with a ban on autoplay videos and tracking cookies in its latest desktop version of Safari.

While Safari accounts for a relatively small share of the overall browser market, it is nonetheless, of course, the default on popular Apple products, and there’s always a chance the company could expand the feature to mobile. With less skin in the advertising game, Apple opted for an arguably stricter crackdown, considering that autoplay ads are some of the most common on the web and tracking is ubiquitous.

Apple prompted a similar bout of industry panic when it said it would start allowing third-party blockers on the mobile version of Safari in 2015. That worry turned out to be a bit overwrought; industry watchers may have underestimated just how much of a barrier the need to actually switch on a setting is to the average person, and mobile ad blocking remains relatively insignificant in the United States.

But the prospect of a mobile form of the new filter is even more threatening in that the blocker would be the default state, and Apple’s software can no doubt outperform a small-time developer app.

Is this really, actually a doomsday scenario?

The media industry has for years been wringing their hands about an apocalyptic reckoning in one way or another.

If it wasn’t Apple’s ad blocking acceptance, it was Facebook’s Instant Articles, Facebook stressing friends over news, or Facebook shutting outlets out of its trending topics (Facebook is a bit of a preoccupation.)

Vice Media head Shane Smith has warned of an impending “media bloodbath” every few months for the past year.

Each of those threats has certainly contributed to a slow-burn decline of the media business that’s killed off publications, made mass layoffs a regular occurrence, and gradually drummed out an experienced workforce in favor of cheap, young hires.

But do the events of the last few months actually represent the arrival of a sea change of some sort?

Wieser says it will be less of a tipping point and more of an exponentially growing slow build.

“The economics of not being Facebook and Google just get worse with every passing year,” he said.”It’s harder to grow. You get less of the economic output you produce.”

Feeling the squeeze, publishers are putting rivalries aside and banding together to create potential alternatives. Earlier this year, a host of premium brands including the New York Times, Conde Nast, and NBCUniversal announced an ad partnership that includes shared sponsored content and user data in addition to display ads. Groups of outlets across other categories are following suit.

Some of the biggest firms in ad tech are following a similar game plan. AppNexus, MediaMath, and LiveRamp launched a consortium last month that pools their media buying capabilities into a force that may rival the duopoly.

Such tight-knit alliances between rivals are unprecedented in the industry, but then again, so is an all-consuming duopoly money pit.

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