E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

It has been months since I wrote anything here and anything written before has been superseded by such strange, heretofore unimaginable, and extreme, world events, that reality itself has seemed at times bent out of shape. Of course, as commentators have long said, the near-occult power of Donald Trump to warp reality by constant fabrication, deception, and illusion, is a form of magic, augmented by the chaos he seemingly intentionally unleashes daily, with wars, taxes, threats, insults, and weird claims; as well as demonstrable affection for right-wing and tyrannical leaders and systems. In the past few months, for example, Trump has turned Canada, once a paragon of reliable loyalty and decent stability, into almost a foe, and has antagonised a whole nation, with his wild lies and threats. The damage is huge. Bryan Adams has even released an enraged single titled "51st State". Elbows Up Canada Strong! This Donroe power grab menacing Canada is economically illiterate, cruel ...

A Hollywood film poster that shows the best and worst of America in one product Nothing made by humans is all good. Of all the verities that have been agreed on since the dawn of thought, and hence, civilisation and history, the imperfectability of humanity is high on the list. The USA is therefore, like every other nation in history, a flawed, imperfect country, devised by humans, caught like us all in the flood of history. Since it is 250 years old (more or less today), we must also agree that it was conceived and born relatively recently, compared to many other civilisations (India and China and England, for example). Human recorded history is at least 5,500 years old, after all. So, let us admit that the USA is deeply flawed: it was greatly enriched by human slavery, an extraordinarily callous evil; another mass evil, part of its founding myth and extension Westward was the near or total genocide of the indigenous peoples who first lived and belonged on the land now called the USA ...

On The Game For a moment, while they played, my father was alive again, roaring at the TV - come on! come on! - and then, that overtime brutality - a millisecond of pain that smashes a dream - and there I am, facing a screen - defeat instead of uproaring joy - reminding that puck and luck rhyme - losing in overtime, Jack Hughes the nation-killer extreme - I sit there, facing the scarred ice, just me, and my father gone back to where the dead don't play, or watch, much hockey. February 22, 2026, by Todd Stanley Swift

Exceeding all expectations for ruining a new year so quickly, Trump and his band of useful idiots, seemingly avoiding any of the constitutional checks and balances, enacted precisely the sort of decapitation attack on a sovereign nation to take control of power and resources that was aimed at Ukraine a few years ago... although this time the pretext was the soon-to-be infamous Donroe Doctrine , which, frankly, simply states that anything the Americans want in the Western Hemisphere (which includes Mexico, Cuba, Canada and Greenland) they can take... just because. It's a very ugly self-serving doctrine from a time when the USA was an underdog fighting off imperial powers from Europe; now, it is the basis for the law of the jungle, otherwise known as might makes right. The biggest Silverback wins. There's so much contradiction and risk of blowback here, it's astonishing if unsurprising that a sociopath would go against decades of their anti-quagmire anti-nation building rheto...

Had this year been only about good songs, TV shows and movies, plays, concerts, seeing friends, swimming, reading and holidays, it might rank among my top ten favourite years since I was born. However, three major factors make me consider 2025 one of the worst years in my personal experience, and probably one of the very worst years of the past century geo-politically. 1. My mother died. I won't write more here about this, but as you can imagine, this has been the saddest and most upsetting personal life event since the death of my father. 2. Trump, the war against Ukraine, and war and suffering in the Middle East, not to mention other wars and tragedies and terror attacks, led to a geo-political instability "at home and abroad" - with American democracy being undermined as perhaps never before, not even during the Nixon period. 3. The environment. Without even considering the existential risk to all humanity from nuclear weapons, bio-weapons, nanotech, a new pandemic li...

As readers of my Swift Report 2025 will see, when it is posted, this was not what I'd consider a "great year" - for me personally, or for the world, ecologically and politically. However, just as 1941 WAS a great year for movies from Hollywood, in the depths of WWII, so too, 2025 offered some of the best popular/indie music, TV shows, and movies of the century so far. I won't be discussing theatre, opera, art, orchestral, or other works here, nor books. As a publisher that always seems awkward. Though I am on record as praising the posthumous collection by Irish poet Kevin Higgins from Salmon as a necessary book. And I found If anyone builds it, everyone dies a brilliant and thrilling propaganda work, sort of like The Communist Manifesto meets Terminator:2 . If it is even 25% true, as the authors put it, the world will likely be destroyed by superintelligent AI (ASI) by 2047, maybe even in the next 3 years. If accurate, the book is maybe the most important one ever...