Flushing history down the memory hole

Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs expert at The Guardian for over forty years, has a scary headline for you today; "The West ignores the growth of Islamic insurgents in Africa at its peril."

The article contains a single passing reference to Libya; "Sudan and Chad, both negatively affected by the Libyan war, are particularly vulnerable."

Huh? There's a war in Libya? I thought Libya was a thriving democracy after we got rid of their evil dictator for them... what went wrong?

Here's a clue; Gaddafi warned Blair his ouster would 'open door' to jihadis.

Nine years later, it's safe to say Gaddafi was right and we were wrong. Not only did we destroy the most prosperous society in all of Africa, we're now scratching our heads wondering what to do about the jihadist hordes free-ranging across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

And lest you think this disgraceful state of affairs has nothing to do with Canada, remember that almost a thousand brave men and women in Canadian Forces uniforms got medals for their contribution to this fiasco.

You know it's a serious storm when they shut down the cop shop

At the height of the blizzard yesterday the OPP closed their offices in Wiarton and Chatsworth. That would be a great time to rob a bank, except they were all closed too. And good luck making your getaway when all roads out of town are shut down.

I was saddened to see that the Cannabis Horticulture Society cancelled their 8:40 meeting. These folks have a thing about numbers, don't they? An 8:40 meeting? And it's just a coincidence that 8:40 happens four hours and twenty minutes after 4:20?

Our lovely neighbour around the corner had already blown out the drive with his giant tractor by the time I rolled out of bed this morning. I still had to retrieve the snowblower out of the shed to do a little trim work around the edges. The drifts between the shed and the house were over four feet deep. It took an hour to clear a path to the house and fifteen minutes to do the trim work.

The sledders are making up for lost time. Who needs trails when the roads are closed? They'll be working overtime to wring every last bit of climate-killing frivolity out of their machines over the next couple of days.


Environment Canada tells me there's a chance of rain showers for Sunday night.

The "Big One" blows in

Just a few days ago I was thinking, golly, I'm gonna have to put the snow-blower away soon and get out the lawn-mower. Turns out that was a little premature.

The sledders are roaring by right down the middle of the road. It's peak sleddin' for this season, that's for sure.

There's snow-drifts up to my armpits between the house and the shed. Gonna have to put on the snowshoes just to get to the shed and fire up the snow-blower!


Best of all, I get to defer the appointment I had at the Ivey Eye Institute tomorrow!

Mohawks with AK-47s preparing to take back Canada?

Leave it to Quebec Premiere Francois Legault to pour gasoline on the smouldering embers of Justin's reconciliation initiative.

According to the Preem, there's AK-47s in Injun country, a fact that prevents the SQ, Quebec's biggest and baddest biker gang, from making short work of this latest bout of uppity hooliganism.

Not so fast, Mr. Legault! In the first place, I have a hunch that the SQ have way more in their toolkit than AK-47s.

Secondly, the concept of 'sovereignty' would suggest that it is the government of the Mohawk territory that has the right to decide what sort of weaponry is permissible there. Canada has no more jurisdiction over Kahnawake territory than it does over Michigan or New York State, which is to say none, at least insofar as we are to take Trudeau's ruminations on "nation to nation negotiations" seriously.

Finally, after four hundred years of our genocidal policies, our unilateral abrogation of treaties, our endless broken promises, maybe it's time to stop blaming the First Nations when they make these modest gestures to assert, however haltingly, the sovereignty that even our Prime Minister acknowledges is their due.

The civil war Canada could still avoid, if we're lucky

I caught part of the CBC program Cross-Country Checkup this afternoon, and it confirmed what I already suspected. The topic was the Wet'suwet'en pipeline controversy, and there is obviously a huge constituency out there ready to support any politician who promises to "get tough" with our rogue natives.

Sure. And then what?

Then we'll be instantly engaged in asymmetrical warfare with our First Nations. There are tens of thousands of kilometres of unguarded pipeline and power transmission corridors criss-crossing this country. Those who think they're suffering from a two week rail blockade have no idea how expensive things will get if the hot-heads prevail.

It's time to step back and take a deep breath. We're not furthering reconciliation by shoving White Man's Law and White Man's Order down the throats of the First Nations we are supposedly engaging in mutually respectful dialogue.


The hour is late, but not too late. Let's get serious.

Fear and loathing in the CBC cafeteria

You have to give credit to the boffins who run the CBC. They have demonstrated great progress in making Canada's airwaves more inclusive.

This must be a great relief for the legions of racialized Canadians who have been clamouring to see more racialized voices on the radio. To my ear, those racialized voices sound pretty much like all the other voices on the CBC, but then, what would you expect from an old white guy?

Meanwhile, the CBC has also attempted to do right by our original sin, our genocidal record vis-a-vis our First Racialized Peoples. Have you noticed how many CBC hosts now toss out a "miigwech" at the end of their shows? Could this be a manifestation of the Great Comeback predicted some years ago by Canada's leading public intellectual?

Alas, all this progressive forward motion is now at risk due to the erratic bumbling of our Prime Minister. Having been elected, twice, on a platform of vacuous and contradictory virtue-signalling, the poor lad doesn't seem to have much of anything else in his toolkit now that some of those contradictions have come to bite his ass.

How dare those damned Indians cripple the economy and prevent the attainment of our climate change goals, goals contingent on our ability to triple pipeline capacity for our fossil fuel exports. There we were in the middle of respectful nation-to-nation dialogue and the back-stabbers pull this?!

The blockades must come down!

NOW!!!

The fact that Trudeau was able to so deftly paint himself into this corner speaks both to his over-weening arrogance and a somewhat limited intellect. There's no excuse for not having seen these protests coming.

Over five years ago Doug Bland wrote Time Bomb, a military man's analysis of the potential for a crippling First Nations resistance campaign. If we're not there yet, we're getting close.


Back in the CBC cafeteria, you've got some racialized voices swapping tales of their victimization by micro-aggression. Couple of tables over, two token Indians roll their eyes, and one says quietly to the other, "won't it be a great day when all we have to worry about is micro-aggression?"

Illusions, confusions, delusions, and hallucinations

(note downward spiral implied in title)

It's been a seriously strange couple of weeks here at Falling Downs.

The Farm Manager finds it "unfathomable" that her 89 year old mother has passed.

Just a week ago we were finding it unfathomable that she was still with us.

But there you go. What is fathomable and what is unfathomable depends not on what's actually going on. It depends on perspective.

For my part, travels to and from the Ivey Eye Institute have been facilitated by my dear sister and my 87 year old father. These trips take us through the heart of Letterkenny country. Dad and I stopped off at Timmies in Listowel last night. The place was crawling with uptight young farmers, the kind of guys who drive $90,000 pickup trucks but fret about the price of corn.

And who can blame them for fretting?

Apparently you're no longer allowed to have your own mechanic fix your John Deere tractor anymore. That's the proprietary preserve of Deere's corporate technicians. No wonder those young farmers are fretting. Some of them own two, three, or more half million dollar tractors and they can't keep them running without the blessing of Deere HQ in Moline.

One of the big motivators that keeps young guys in farming, and bear in mind that 100% of the young guys in farming inherited their farms, is the illusion of independence. How independent can you be when the price of your crop is determined by foreign markets and your tractor repairs have to be done by head office?

Nevertheless, a hundred acres of raw land with no buildings, down in Letterkenny country, will set you back over a million bucks. A hundred acres doesn't make a serious farm in this day and age. Folks just plunk down that million to "add to their holdings."

And of course, none of those guys have a million bucks sitting around. All that expansion and consolidation is financed by bank lending. As soon as the banks get nervous, the entire house-o-cards is gonna collapse.

Good luck to those stoic young farmers when that happens. Timmies can only hire so many.

Sometimes we move from confused and deluded right into the realm of hallucination. That's when you're able to convince yourself that all is going according to plan, when, in fact, it's all going to shit.

It's the existential variant of "I meant to do that."

Of course you did!

I'd been planning that detached retina for months. I'm surprised nobody has caught on.

Dieter's guide to mindful living

Somewhere out of the depths of the delirium that has enveloped me this past week, I recall the following conversation fragment; "If it was called Dieter's Blog you'd get tons of traffic from folks obsessed with their diets."

I'm thinking, wtf, I'm into the mindfulness thing anyway... I mean, how many times do you find a guru who advises you to "shit mindfully?"

I could be on to something here. If Jordan Peterson can channel Ann Landers, maybe I can be the reincarnation of Swami Babba Rum Raisin?

We'll see how the clicking public feels about that fetching title.

What we're talking about when we talk about "rule of law"

As every good Canuck knows, nobody does rule of law rulier or lawier than we do. Look up "rule of law" in the encyclopedia and there's a picture of a little beaver waving the Maple Leaf.

That's us!

"Rule of law" has become a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who make our laws and rules.

Wanna slap Meng Wanzhou in the slammer for a couple years to disabuse the Yellow Peril of their fantasies about 5G dominance? Rule of law! We had no choice!

A jerk-off US hedge-fund titan loots Sears Canada for billions and leaves 16,000 Canadian pensioners in the lurch? Rule of law! We had no choice!

Another US hedge-fund titan adds billions to the value of CP Rail by killing over five thousand excellent Canadian working class jobs. We are so grateful we thank Bill Ackman for making this Canadian icon more efficient, and gift him a couple of billions as a token of our gratitude.

We had no choice... rule of law!

But nothing throws into relief our attachment to rule of law quite like the Wet'suwet'en debacle. At least we've cleared up one of the great mysteries of this rule-of-law juggernaut.

When we talk about rule of law, we talk about the rule of White Man's Law.

Yup, all of Justin's vacuous twaddle about reconciliation and mutual respect and nation-to-nation dialogue is going down the shitter even as I type these words.

Now he's asking  our FN neighbours, living with the legacy of 400 years of betrayal and broken promises, to be patient. At least he's being even-handed; that's also what he's asking of the non-natives who have been inconvenienced by the rail blockade for a couple weeks.

We are, after all, a fair and just nation, governed by the rule of law...

Rest in peace, Ruthie

It was just after her 75th birthday that the woman I know as "the Bubbinator" entered my life, and just a few months before her 90th that she left. In between we had a lot of laughs.

The heyday of her Roxy Theatre days was mostly behind her, although they'd fix her up with a minor role here and there, and the last time we saw her on stage can't be much more than a year ago. She was held in such high esteem by the Little Theatre crowd that a mere wave on Ruth's part could bring the house down.

Ruth's world has been shrinking for a few years. I remember when we rearranged the house on 4th Ave, moving her bedroom downstairs to facilitate one-floor living. We used to check up on her daily. It was a constant mystery how laundry was getting done in the basement, the clothes put away upstairs, all while Ruth never left the main floor!

There followed a further downsizing into Central Place, where she moved about three years ago. It's a half-block from her beloved Roxy, and for the first couple of years she still got around quite independently.

The last six months or so have been a journey of relentless decline. Ruth's faculties remained sharp to the end. She knew when the quality of her life had become something she didn't appreciate anymore, and didn't want to continue. She knew she was ready for the hospice.

She left on her own terms and on her own timetable. A thousand thank-yous to the staff at Central Place and Chapman House, and especially to Dr. Savaria, for the professional and compassionate care Ruth received these last few months.

Aside from the laughs, we also talked a lot of politics. I could be exaggerating my influence here, but I think it was largely thanks to me that Ruth was eventually able to concede that perhaps Netanyahu wasn't the greatest leader since Moses after all.


Hey Bubby, maybe we can revisit that conversation when we meet again!

Let's get out of NATO while we're at it

Yves Engler is a Canadian writer who you won't run across in the pages of the Globe or the Star very often. He's got an essay on view at Counterpunch today, imploring Canada to leave the Lima Group, Core Group, and the Organization of American States.

Engler's toxicity is due to his insistence on calling Canadian "diplomacy" out for what it is; servile toadying to US machinations. That, and not any concerns for "democracy" or "rule of law" or human rights, is what animates Canada's policies vis-a-vis Latin America and the Caribbean.

So if Yves ever succeeds in fanning the embers of our discontent into a genuine public discussion of Canada's priorities, let's make sure our NATO membership is on the table too.

Mr. Baldwin

I seem to have, quite unexpectedly, reached a stage in life where the prevailing topic of interest is the ageing process. Whether we're preoccupied with seeing the previous generation out of this world, or lamenting our own demise, getting old is getting old.

That's why Mr. Baldwin fills me with hope. My misadventure in London this week had a silver lining. I got the opportunity to catch up with my old pal Robert.

Robert told me a story I'd never heard before, which is surprising, because, as he pointed out, our conversation has been ongoing for close to forty years now, with intermittent interruptions. Today he introduced me to Mr. Baldwin.

In his youth, Robert had a paper route in the Orchard Park neighbourhood in Montreal. It was quite a substantial paper route, and his savings paid for his first year at McGill.

Mr. Baldwin was a ninety-four year old widower who lived independently in a duplex on Orchard Park Lane. On collection day, every two weeks, Mr. Baldwin would invite young Robert in for a game of chess.

So far we've got a pretty pedestrian feel-good story. Perhaps it has some dark under-tones, although fifty years ago society at large was probably less paranoid than we are now.

But here's the reason Robert remembers this elderly customer. After one particular chess match on a otherwise typical collection day, Mr. Baldwin proudly showed Robert his just-arrived box set of 33 rpm records; "Learn to Speak French in Record Time."


Don't know how that worked out for Mr. Baldwin, but the fact that he was willing to take a run at it, at ninety-four years of age, makes me feel hopeful.

Things to avoid after eye surgery

Coughing.

Laughing.

Sneezing... and of course, one must avoid excessive strain in any endeavour (see previous post.)


By golly, it's gonna be a fun couple of weeks...

Never rush a BM

I could be totally wrong, but I think it was Mike Myers who had the famous line about "a turtle head poking out."

We all knew what he was talking about. You're taking a dump but you can't seem to get beyond the half-way point of the operation.

So you push, and you grunt, and you push some more, and you push and you strain and strain and strain till, with all that pressure building up, you blow the retina right out of your eyeball.

And the worst of it is, that turtle head hasn't budged an inch!


Moral of the story; take your time.


Shit mindfully.

I'm not an "emergency" kinda guy

Generally speaking, when I sense that I'm not well, the best route to take is to sit tight for a couple of days and see if things pass. 99% of the time that approach proves the correct one.

So when I noticed that the field of vision in my left eye was becoming somewhat compromised last Thursday, and getting more compromised on Friday, and moreso over the weekend, today I thought I'd slip into the optometrist's and make an appointment for later in the week, or maybe next week, to have this shit checked out.

Walked into the optometrist's office at two this afternoon. By 2:15 I had an emergency appointment for 3:00. By 4:30 I had an appointment at the Ivey Eye Institute in London for emergency eye surgery at 10:30 tomorrow morning.

Well, that's a fucked up thing for sure...


There's lots of folks out there claiming our health care system isn't up to snuff. Getting retina surgery at a top-drawer clinic within 24 hours of walking into the optometrist's 200 miles away would seem to be a damned good outcome for a system that doesn't work.

We're gonna push that pipeline through no matter how many protesters die

How retarded would you have to be to believe that the Trudeau government's pipeline agenda makes any sense whatsoever?

The latest clanger is the news that the estimated cost of construction has been bumped from seven billions to twelve plus. If I'm not mistaken, the original Trans Mountain pipeline twinning (and capacity trebling) project was premised on an average price of $100/bbl crude over the life of the pipeline. Crude is half that and the price of the pipeline just went up 70%.

The Trans Mountain pipeline just lost all credibility as a viable business proposition.

Only a government could make it happen now.


But how could it possibly be a government that came to power on the twin promises of meeting our climate change obligations and working towards reconciliation with First Nations?

Ageing out of hospice care

After a year of relentless decline, we finally got the Bubbinator into the local hospice. That comes with a new concern; they only give you ninety days to die.

Then what? Difficult though it may be to fathom much of a turn-around, stranger things have happened. We're hanging on to her place in the retirement home just in case.

Meanwhile, Bubby's caustic sense of humour becomes ever more caustic. On being told an old friend is coming to see her in a few days, she says, "Oh goodness, she's being optimistic!" At the same time, the hospice comes with 24/7 personal attention, and Bubby has always loved the spotlight. Involved in amateur theatre most of her adult life, she knows how to channel the energy of the audience.

We're ready one way or the other. More importantly, so is she.

Shame on Masai Ujiri and the Raptors

Justin's getting desperate in his bid to drum up support for Canada's seat at the UNSC. He's somehow managed to coral one of the hottest brands in pro sports, the Raptors, into serving as window dressing on his current safari to the Dark Continent.

Having Masai Ujiri tagging along must have seemed like a master stroke to the political operatives behind Justin. Although Justin likes black folks so much he sometimes dresses up like one, Ujiri has serious cred in Africa. This is relatively clever, although ethically vacuous, politicking.

Just why Canada merits a seat on the UN Security Council isn't a discussion we've had. The US is already a permanent member, and in matters of consequence Canada votes with the US virtually 100% of the time. We don't bring anything original or independent to the table, so what would be the point of being there?

Perhaps more insidious, this serves as a Raptors endorsement of Trudeau and the Liberal Party.


That's just wrong!

Told ya so, again

So if I'm reading the news correctly, Biden has tanked, and Impeachment Palooza has given Donny J a goodly boost in the ratings.

Jeez, who couldn't see that coming?

I must say it's really hard to take any of this seriously. American "democracy" is now scripted in Hollywood and New York, by the same folks who bring you all the other popular reality shows.

It's interesting to see the billionaires circling the wagons across the political spectrum. These aren't stupid people. If Bernie's socialist schtick gets a little too much traction, there could be trouble ahead. I mean, who could have imagined a Soros-Koch joint venture even a year ago?


But here you go.

Oopsie! There goes another CPRail train off the rails in a ball of fire...

Seems we've seen a lot of CPRail disasters in the news recently.

A few years ago they were in the news a lot too, but not because of their horrendous safety record. No, the story then was all about how two American business geniuses turned CPRail around. Destroying the old culture at the company, their stated aim, payed off big time. Bill and Hunter waddled away with a cool two billion for their efforts.

They were able to add all that value to the company by shedding five thousand workers and ten thousand rail cars. Make the trains longer. You don't need nearly as many locomotives. Let the trains run faster too.


Do you think there could be a connection between that story and today's?

Buttigieg exposed!

Well there's an oopsie!

There's a whole lotta top-drawer campaign consultant types billing over-time right now just brainstorming on how to pin the Iowa shit-show on Putin.

The flaws in the process are being attributed to an app designed by a software company owned by one of Buttigieg's billionaire backers. That's almost too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, wouldn't you think?

Plutophobia

I'm sure that must be a word, even though I've never heard it in use.

Plutophobia. Fear of plutocrats and plutocracy.

If you're one of those pinkos cheering on Bernie in Iowa, you're probably suffering from a bout of plutophobia.

Fear of billionaires.


Only billionaires can save us from billionaires...

BE AFRAID, CANADA!!!

Another day, another scary story. Logged on to CBC News this morning only to find out that Canada has enemies, and they're trying to subvert our democracy!

But we should consider ourselves lucky; not only do we have CSIS, the CSE, and the RCMP looking out for our freedoms, Catherine Tunney informs us that "fact-checking and traditional journalism have been helpful so far in debunking and correcting misinformation."

I would expect that when Ms. Tunney was doing fact-checking for her own story she must have seen this nugget. Seems the very CSE standing on guard for our democracy is being sued for libel by one of those "Moscow disinformation outlets" they never tire of smearing.

Consortium News is a bunch of folks who used to work in mainstream media and still would had they not suffered random bouts of integrity. Consortium News was started by folks exiled by Fake News.

Wouldn't you think that's relevant to the story?

Wonder why the traditional journalists at the CBC chose to leave it out?

Some thoughts from the pot-addled geopolitical analyst on the emerging multi-polar world

Great news, folks! History hasn't ended after all!

As America declines it is losing its role as global hegemon. Other poles of influence are emerging.

For the time being, there is a vague coalition of states under US sanction comprised of Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba etc. who have at least one thing in common; they are being brutalized by America's abuse of its economic clout.

Until recently the EU has been a reliable US yes-man, but that's changing. The most enthusiastic American ally has just exited the EU. By every indication this will draw them even tighter into the Washington-Tel Aviv orbit. Israel, US, UK, the four eyes and the usual camp followers in the Gulf will remain allies of America.

The rest of the EU becomes a free-floating non-aligned zone for the time being. The ruling elite in most of Western Europe is fed up with American interference in their relations with countries like Russia and Iran.

Then there's the wild cards.

Turkey. After the failure of the US-sponsored coup that was intended to put Gulen in power, Turkey has gone totally off the leash. Anything could happen.

Our Arab allies. All of America's middle east allies are totalitarian states. Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Bahrain, are all vulnerable to mass uprisings. If any of those countries ever fall to authentic democracy none of them will be allies of the US pole.

The Nations of Virtue club is shrinking.

Going forward, it is quite plausible that those in the non-aligned zone will be more inclined to gravitate towards the other pole. Then we'll be pack to the way things were, with one exception.


We are now the Axis of Evil.

"If I'd listened to Bolton, we'd be on World War Six by now."

For a guy who is widely portrayed as an imbecile, I thought Trump rendered a very astute summary of Bolton's tenure as National Security Advisor.

That's a verdict that rings true to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Bolton's career. John Bolton has been an Empire-uber-alles war-monger for decades. That's why it was hilarious that American media suddenly began rehabbing his image when the possibility loomed that he might be a witness for the prosecution in the impeachment proceedings.

Bolton morphed from unhinged war-monger to sober senior statesman literally overnight.

He's not the only one to have enjoyed reputational rehab in the media over the past three years.

Robert Mueller went from hapless doofus to the guy who "cleaned up" the FBI.

The FBI went from the compromised domestic spy agency they've been since J Edgar Hoover's time to patriotic guardians of American virtue.

Henry Kissinger went from internationally wanted war criminal to esteemed elder statesman of the American Empire.

Dubya went from the dumbshit who destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, miring America in wars that go on to this day, to a cuddly old dude swapping bonbons with Michelle Obama...

Donald Trump is the smartest operator in US politics

And the hardest working too.

Which is not the same as saying he's good for America or for the world. What's indisputable is that he's very good for the billionaire class both at home and abroad.

Trump's approval ratings have been steadily climbing for almost two years since their all-time lows in late 2017. This is in spite of (perhaps partially because of?) the unprecedented across-the-board media campaign to portray him as a narcissistic imbecile.

He may be a narcissist, but at this point he's been president long enough that even the most virulent Trump-haters should be reconsidering the imbecile part. What's the most important objective for any first term president?

Re-election. Trump's 2020 campaign kicked off within a month of his 2016 victory and he's been relentless.

The secret to the 2016 win wasn't Russian meddling, it was out-hustling the Clinton campaign. Hillary was doing a major campaign event every three or four days. Trump was doing three or four a day.


That's why he's the POTUS and Hillary is a bitter has-been.