Where's Walto?

Ed. here. Walt in terra incognita est. Where could he be? It shouldn't be that hard to find him, now that the world is less crowded, with everyone keeping their antisocial distance.

I confess that I have been searching through Walt's hard drive, looking for clues as to where he might have gone. So far the only thing I've found, downloaded last month and saved as "untitled" is this photo.

Where could this be? Poor Len thinks it's not in his neck of the woods. "The trees are all wrong," he writes. And indeed, it seems to have been taken in the fall. But where? Any readers who recognize the locale are invited to e-mail us at the usual address.

Telling the truth for over 11 years now

Dang! Ed. forgot... again... to remind me that we passed another anniversay last week. The day was 3 July 2009, a day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And, for the very first time, Walt Whiteman was there! [Or here? But that's neither here nor there. Ed.]

Since then we -- your obdt. servant, Poor Len Canayen [and Ed.! Ed.] - have put up well over 4000 posts, only a handful of which have been deleted, although some of the videos have disappeared thanks to the PC police at YouTube. We have been helped immensely by Walt's dozens of Agents. You know who you are, and thank you!

Thank you, too, to our assiduous readers. Remember, your comments are always welcome. Click on the headline of any article and it will open in a separate tab or window, with a "comments" box below. Ed. moderates the comments so it's pointless to call me a racist (see profile), but civilized dissent will be published.

And remember... the truth is not "out there". The truth is here!

Walt is on assignment

Ed. here. Walt has left the building, mumbling something about "Rocky Road". I took that to mean he was going to get some ice cream, but a message from Agent 78 says the two of them are going "off the grid, under deep cover, on assignment". Sounds like a vacation to me, but I know nothing more except that they are expected back on June 1st. If there is any of Ma Nifkins' Jellied Gin in the fridge, I may go off the grid too.

Where's Walto (again)?

Ed. here. Walt is ill. I have asked Poor Len Canayen if he could write about something other than hockey and our beloved Habs (4-0 victors over New York Islanders last night), and he says he will think about it and get back to me.

All I've heard from Walt is that he thinks the New Zealand and international politicians and media have gone over the top... WAY over... in their response to the Christchurch mosque shooting. Non-Muslim female cops and politicians wearing headscarves. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules banned by NZ booksellers. Yet we hear nothing about the 1000s of Christians killed by Muslims in places like Nigeria, the Netherlands, you name it... Having said that, Walt went back to sleep.

Footnote: In Montréal this morning (Poor Len writes), Father Claude Grou, recot of Saint Joseph's Oratory, was stabbed during Mass. He was lightly injured on his upper body, according to the director of communications for the Oratory. A suspect -- a man with a beard -- was taken into custody and will be interviewed by investigators later today, she said. No word on the ethnicity or religion of the attacker. If shouts of "Allahu akbar!" were heard, the Canuck media aren't saying.

Footnote to the footnote: You think I'm jumping to conclusions there? You don't think a Muslim would attach a priest saying mass? Cast your mind back to July of 2016 when Father Jacques Hamel was attacked and killed by two Muslim fanatics while saying Mass in the parish of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, France. The two Islamic extremists had pledged allegiance to ISIS and thought murdering a priest would be a good way to show their devotion to the Prophet.

Where's Walto?

Ed. here. Walt is recovering from minor surgery -- having his attitude adjusted, I believe -- and will return within the next 48 hours.

Meanwhile, for our Canadian readers...

Scraped from Blazing Cat Fur. Thank you.

Who reads Walt Whiteman's World?

Ed. here. An online comment to which I won't provide a link asked, "Who reads Walt Whiteman?" That bit of snark prompted me to check the analytics for the 9+ years we've been blogging, and I thought I'd share some of the stats with you, just FYI.

Here's a map showing where our readers live -- the top 10 countries at least.

Leading the list -- no surprise -- is the Excited States of America, 27.8%. Second place is something of a shocker, considering how little Walt writes in French or about France. Yes, France, at 23.6%. Russia is a solid third at 15.7%, and don't tell me it's all hackers trying to influence US elections! Canada's in fourth with 11.0% and Not-so-great Britain comes fifth at 10.0%.

Then there's a considerable gap until you get to number six, Germany, 2.9%, followed closely by Italy with 2.8%. The Italians are rising fast, though, with a lot of interest in Europe's migrant crisis. Brazil has eighth spot, with 2.3%. Belgium and Ukraine occupy the last two places, with 2.0% and 1.9% respectively.

As you might expect, the overwhelming majority of Walt's readers are running Windows (67%). 11% are Mac lovers, taking a break from designing and other graphic endeavours, no doubt. 8% are in the Linux world, and 3% use Unix. Yes, some folks are getting to us on their iPhones (3%) and iPads (1%). And there are still a few (less than 1%) using Blackberries.

When it comes to browsers, Chrome is the frontrunner, with 39% of WWW readers preferring the Google product. So do we. We switched from Internet Explorer (in third place with 18%) long ago, even before we made the leap from Windows XP to Win10. Firefox is in second place with 29%. Safari comes fourth with 6%, about the twice the number as users of Opera, 3%. Half a dozen other browsers follow, with 1% or less.

Getting back to our readers themselves, the stats give the lie to the canard that Walt Whiteman's World is only for white anglophones. We have readers of every race, in every corner of the world, except for perhaps Antarctica. Following on the top 10 come scads of hits from China (using a VPN, Agent 88 says), south Asia, Australia, sub-Saharan Africa (not just South Africa), parts of the Middle Eastern sandpit, and the Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America (including Texas). Truly, then, Walt Whiteman's World encompasses the whole world.

9th anniversary of WWW

Ed. reminds me that I should have said something about our ninth anniversary. A mention is past due, since my first post was actually on 3 July 2009. How the time flies when you're having fun!

I must admit that I have kind of slacked off this month, what with other anniversaries -- American independence and Canadian "independence" -- and events demanding my attention and, indeed, my corporeal presence. I will write more when I am feeling a little better!

8 years and counting

Ed. here. Walt was too modest to say anything, but the fact is that WWW has been on the Net for just over eight (8) years, which I believe is way beyond the longevity of the average blog. Moreover, we've averaged just over 30 posts per month, for a total (not including perhaps 3 which were deleted for one reason or another) of 2961 counting this one. Walt, Poor Len Canayen [and Ed.! Ed.] are planning to get together on the weekend to bend elbows and pat each other on the back.

"I may be some time..."

Ed. here. Walt said those words to me a moment ago as headed out the door of his cabin in the pines. He is on his way to the nether regions of New York where he has a speaking engagement. While there, he will attempt to gauge the mood of voters in the Rust Belt, ahead of Tuesday's primaries. He anticipates being able to make a prediction on Wednesday. But, he cautions, he may be so charmed by the beauties of Buffalo in the spring that he may linger awhile.

Walt is available to address your chapter of the BPOE, NRA or SOCV in return for first-class airfare, hotel etc plus a modest honorarium. Send your enquiries to the usual address.

Where's Walt(o)?

Ed. here. There's a lot going on at the moment -- political campaigns in the USA and Canada, and the visit -- (or visitation?) of Pope Francis to (on?) America. Agent 10 is in Washington DC for the great love-in, and, having eaten a tin of sardines, is waiting with baited breath to hear what the Pontiff has to say on matters political.

As for Walt, our founder has inexplicably decided to go on retreat, cutting himself off from all forms of electronic communication. A Canada goose just flew over his cabin in the pines, dropping a small brown tube which we now recognize as a coin wrapper in which was enclosed a message to the effect that he (Walt) would be back as soon as the fog clears. Whatever can he mean? Watch this space.

Poor Len reveals what state Walt lives in

Walt and Poor Len grew up [more or less. Ed.] in a neighbourhood that looked like this -- like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. (We didn't go to the "slow school" though. Ours was red brick, for the faster kids.)

But our image of the friendly neighbourhood cop -- the image which was washed into our little brains by our parents, our teachers, the parish priest and pretty much everyone -- was much like what you see here.

The policeman was our friend! He helped us cross the busy street and generally watched over us, like a guardian angel with a gas station attendant's cap and white gloves. If you needed help, call a cop!

Times and neighbourhoods have changed. Cops have changed too, as libertarian Radley Balko (who blogs for the Huffington Post as "The Agitator") declares in his first book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (PublicAffairs, 2013). Nowadays the cops you meet -- you should be so unlucky! -- look more like this.

They won't be your local neighbourhood cops either. Gone are the days when a policeman who lived in your `hood actually pounded a beat, on foot. [That's where the old nickname "flatfoot" came from. Ed.] Modern cops, when they're not in the donut shop, cruise around in air-conditioned "prowl cars"... or better yet, armored personnel carriers. Len isn't making that up. Mr. Balko says the Fargo ND police department has one, complete with rotating gun turret.

And they'll be considerably better armed and armored too. Even cops on traffic patrol wear kevlar vests and carry an awesome array of automatic weapons, tasers, pepper spray and other WMDs, all the better to subdue perps going 10 mph over the speed limit.

This all started in... wait for it... the hippy-dippy 60s, when young people started to think for themselves -- shock! horror! -- and "do their own thing", in defiance of The Authorities and Forces for Good in our society. It was the social upheaval caused by free thinkers and non-conformists that caught the attention of our politicians and led to the "get tough on crime" policies of Nixon and his successors.

The way Mr. Balko puts it, the "Silent Majority began to see a link between drugs, crime, the counter-culture and race". The problem is that it's virtually impossible not to get involved in some way with at least one of those four things. That's why the Excited States of America has such incredibly high numbers of convicts and ex-convicts, especially of the non-white persuasion.

So also, no matter what colour you are or what you're doing, the policeman who used to be your friend (LOL) now sees you as the enemy. You could be a non-English-speaker who wandered into a "secure area" of an airport because you got lost, and got tasered to death by four (4) Mounties. That happened in Vancouver in 2007 and no-one has yet been found guilty of anything. Or you could be the next Rodney King. Nuff said.

Not just libertarians but all Americans and Canadians should be concerned about the effects on our society of the militarization of the police and the criminalization -- in the minds of the police -- of everyone else. Rise of the Warrior Cop is our summer "must read".

Oh... I promised to tell you what state Walt lives in. Walt lives in a police state.

Allow me to fill in

Hi. Poor Len Canayen here. Ed. told me about Walt needing a rest. In his (Walt's) fatigue, he wrote what amounted to a farewell, and wouldn't be talked out of posting it. But the truth is that he [and Ed.!] want Walt Whiteman's World to live on.

So...I've volunteered to write a few words, from time to time, until the meds kick in and Walt is feeling a little better. I hope you'll find the occasional item of interest, and will share any such with others. "Alternative voices" should continue to be heard, and political correctness be damned!

Note from Ed. to Walt's agents: Poor Len welcomes your comments, tips, leads and contributions. If you don't have an up-to-date e-mail address, write to Walt and we'll be sure to keep you in the loop.

Not to be confused with Walt Whiteman

It has come to Walt's attention that there are to be found on YouTube video clips featuring a story-teller with the name... or stage name... Walt Whiteman. That Walt Whiteman is not to be confused with the Walt Whiteman who writes WWW.

I must say, though, that my namesake is a mighty fine Louisiana stand-up comic. Reminds me of the late Jerry Clower (d. 24/8/98), except that ole Jerry was a Miss'sippi boy. Here is Walt telling a story about Reverend Lyonel P. Giedrey. Enjoy.

The Big Stink

In about twelve hours I'm leaving for The Big Stink, formerly known as The Big Smoke. Yes, I speak of TORONTO, Canada. As seen on CNN! More garbage in the parks than New York!!

While in the neighbourhood, I'll be stopping at a multicult festival. No, it's not a gathering of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and Scientologists! It's a celebration of Canada's diversity! (I got that line from a government handout.)

So...no posts here until the dyspepsia kicks in, `long about Sunday.

Are you following Walt? Following Walt in search of vituperation is like following a lit fuse in search of an explosion. You don't have to wait very long!
It's easy to be a follower. Click on the "Follow" icon at the left and sign up using your Google, AIM or Yahoo! account. Or you can create a brand new account.
Once you've signed up you're free to comment. Comments are moderated, so not every one will be published, but Walt reads `em all!

Welcome to Walt Whiteman's World

Greetings and salutations, dear readers. I'm tired of posting comments on mainstream media websites, only to have them censored. And I'm tired of copying and pasting into personal e-mails my comments on the news and the horrible state of the world. And I don't tweet or twitter! So I've decided to dip my pen in vitriol, as it were, and set up this blog.

Perhaps no-one will read it. I suspect very few blogs get much readership. But this one will be "out there" for those who care to read the other side of debates on politics, race, religion and other topics not fit to discuss at the dining table.

I am not trying to start a dialogue, only a monologue. My opinions are my own, not necessarily those of any party or organization to which I may belong. You are welcome to disagree. You won't be the first. You're also welcome to send me your comments. Unless they're incredibly stupid, intemperate or unhelpful, they'll appear in due course.

If you have something to say but don't want it published, you can e-mail me: walt.whiteman@yahoo.com.