IAPTI, adieu.

But the fight isn't over....

“… if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

— Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

That was so, perhaps, and can be said for so many others, but what Sir Isaac failed to mention is that his vision was also enabled by the comfort received in the arms of the bereaved, the nourishment given by the hand of one whose own belly was unfilled, the shelter built by those who may have known what it is like to be exposed to the inexorable elements, and the regard of so many who are themselves disregarded.

We live in a time where these things are not only unacknowledged, but the “giants” often as well, while narcissists crown themselves with imagined Napoleonic glory, and sip their tipples from the skulls, sometimes virtual, of those slain for profit and pleasure.

It was my pleasure to know some giants of ordinary human stature in my time with IAPTI. So it grieved me no little to learn after last Saturday’s annual meeting, which work duties kept me from attending, that the organization will be disbanding for want of a new team to carry the administrative banner. The wondersome Renato Beninatto once referred to my colleagues in that professional organization as the “Taliban” because they refused to acknowledge the unnatural selection of corporate overlords as the rightful masters of language services and instead advocated for fair trade and social justice.

I did not always agree with their particular approaches, but had no problem to support and encourage the mission of those good people who understand that bread tastes better when it is shared and that dignity is its essential leavening.

We do not know where this world and the wordworking professions are headed, but in the past three months of my silence while I have endeavored in my personal matters to counteract some of the wickedness envisioned by the fascist regime which has taken over the country of my birth, through the dense fog of mental and emotional exhaustion brought on by swimming daily in the AI spew that feeds on news cycles, I can see that this future cannot be one of mental, legal and political surrender to the dominance of the latest tool of oligarchic control, dubiously called “artificial intelligence”.

At this time which resistance is most called for, the organization I know most cognizant of the essence for which we must fight is “giving up”. Or are they?

Freed of the administrative burdens of Argentine bureaucracy, I believe that many of these leaders from the trenches will regroup, ascend, and see further, act further, in ways yet unknown and perhaps never publicly known, but felt, and in that spirit of freedom the best of what we are shall remain alive and propagate.