What’s Real and What’s Fake?

6 min readSep 25, 2023

Hello! Yes, I’m back for the moment.

Here are some curated headlines with news no one wants, but is true as far as I know (which isn’t all that far, maybe?).

Shields against falsities buckling. Another “gift link” from The Washington Post and its amazing owner, Jeff “Moneybags” Bezos.

Ex-FBI counterspy chief McGonigal now pleads guilty to hiding payments.

U.S. plan envisions factories in Africa for surging EV battery demand.

Ooh, let’s take a closer look here.

With the drive toward electric vehicles in high gear, the Biden administration signed an agreement with two African countries rich in minerals needed to meet the exploding demand.

How nice, right?

“The plan to develop an electric battery supply chain opens the door for open and transparent investment to build value-added and sustainable industry in Africa and creating a just energy transition for workers and local communities,” a State Department news release said.
Significantly, that could lead to an increase in battery production in Congo and Zambia. This would be an important shift in the historical practice by allowing Africans to reap more wealth from their abundant natural resources, instead of the industrial countries getting most of the benefit.

Shall we all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”?

But then … wait for it!

Yet, justice for workers — including child laborers — is easier said than done, especially with vexing internal problems and the insatiable taste of Americans and others for the latest electronic devices that need the minerals.
Just days before [Congolese President Félix] Tshisekedi’s U.S. visit, Amnesty International released a report with a troubling message: “Industrial mining of cobalt and copper for rechargeable batteries is leading to grievous human rights abuses,” including “the forced eviction of entire communities,” arson, sexual assault and beatings. A 2021 Labor Department document said that between 5,000 and 35,000 children work as cobalt miners in Congo. Many are forced into labor by armed, nongovernmental groups that roam the eastern part of the country.

That is troubling. And Americans are an insatiable lot, aren’t we?

Tshisekedi, who was in New York for U.N. General Assembly meetings, is focused on his people, not a big power rivalry. Kinshasa’s creation of “special economic zones,” he said, “will enable the population to benefit a lot more from the implementation of the MOU.”
Without denial or defensiveness, he said reports about child labor in his country “touch me in the deepest sense.”
“This is why I pushed very hard to make sure that universal basic education is implemented in my country,” he said, while taking no time to eat at a press luncheon organized by the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network, a nonprofit that supports sustainable development goals. “This is something which is very, very important for me. I feel very, very strongly about it.”

I feel strongly about a lot of things, too, but no one cares.

Oh, here’s a good one!

Anderson Cooper on money, history and the dark side of great fortunes.

I may read this book just to mock it. No, not really. Life’s too short.

But seriously?

I remember when “Good Will Hunting” came out. I loved that movie, and I’m a big fan of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. When that movie came out, there were all these articles written about the “two regular guys” who made this movie. I remember thinking at the time: “Regular guys don’t make movies. Regular guys do regular things and have regular lives.”

Huh? Wanna tell that one to the guy who made Clerks? Kevin Smith. That’s his name. A regular guy from New Jersey.

And I’m just a regular person who writes novels (and now screenplays) who chose to self-publish ebooks and print books, because I figured it would be nice to have something to show for my limited time on this planet. Plus the well over 100 query letters and rejections over the years.

Q: Let’s talk about income inequality. You make comparisons to the historical Gilded Age and our current Gilded Age — the same fascination with the rich, the same resentments.
A: What I find so fascinating about just being alive in history is we all think we are the first to experience things: “Oh, my God, there’s never been an Elon Musk before or a Jeff Bezos.” [Bezos owns The Washington Post.] Obviously, they’re doing extraordinary things and they’ve created extraordinary companies and all of that. But I know there has been an Elon Musk before and there has been a Jeff Bezos before. It was Cornelius Vanderbilt and it was John Jacob Astor and a whole bunch of other people.

First of all, no, not all of us think this stuff has never happened before and a few of us actually did see a new Gilded Age of high-tech moguls coming.

Some of us have lost a lot of money depending on them. One of us even compared the company created by The Washington Post’s owner to an Austrian politician who will remain unnamed.

It’s very interesting how we look at these people now: We read about them, we see their yachts, we imagine what their lives are like. I see it differently. I view it through the lens of these past families, and what will the ripple effects be in their lives and their families’ lives? I’m fascinated by the cycles of history — we’ve all been here before, and there has been a version of you here before and there’s been a version of me.

Well, now you’re just babbling.

But here’s a book I might actually read.

Because Gay Talese may be 91, but he has a lot more to say.

Why UAW workers went on strike.

UAW Ford workers say they are striking because they are not making enough money to support their families or their futures.
“We have our limits, too,” said Kevin Ewald, a Ford employee who has worked at the company for nearly three decades. He wants his newer colleagues to be paid more for doing “bone-breaking” work.
UAW workers began striking just after midnight Friday morning after failing to reach a deal with the Big Three autoworkers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

Gosh, it must be nice to have a union with actual bargaining power. Not that I’d know anything about that.

Everything else worth reporting was so depressing, I nearly topped meself or went back to bed.

I think Non Sequitur pretty much sums it up.