Is Paul Kagame the "house negro" of the democratic world?

As every schoolchild knows, the world is divided into Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Bad Guys are led by an axis of evil comprised of Russia, China, and Iran. They are all autocratic dictatorships ruled by ruthless autocratic dictators. Then there's the Good Guys. The Nations of Virtue. NATO/USA/EU and G7. We believe in democracy and human rights and rule of law and blah blah blah... if you're reading this blog you already know the song and dance. What's got my dander up at the moment is this. Throughout that Globe story I was analyzing in my previous post, Rwanda was repeatedly portrayed as being an enemy. They were the baddies behind the bad guys, because if Canada is fighting them, they must be... But hold the phone! Rwanda's Prez is an all-time favorite of the UK-US lords of the universe. He just closed a deal with Britain's first brown PM to ship brown migrants to Rwanda from UK! Imagine the poor shit who spends his life's savings on smugglers to get him and his family from Lagos or Nairobi into the UK, only to get busted and returned to... fucking Rwanda? That's gotta sting! But not to worry. The British tax-payer is lavishing Kagame with hundreds of millions of pounds to take this problem off Rishi's guilty brown hands. We have no probem hurling abuse at the likes of Putin or Lukashenko when they win allegedly rigged elections with numbers in the 70s and 80s. Yet Kagame, who won his last election with 99% of the votes, is still welcome under the Democracy Big Top?! Get the fuck outta here!

Did you know Canada has troops in Africa?

This headline at the Globe and Mail caught my eye this morning; Canadian Peacekeepers plot strategy to defend Congolese city from rebels. Say what? We have peacekeepers in the DRP? (Democratic Republic of Congo, not to be confused with Dan’s Republic of Congo, named after Dan Gertler, which operates in the same general neighborhood.) Who knew? I didn’t, and I pride myself on keeping up with all the latest developments in Canada’s global battle for freedom and democracy. Geoffrey York moseys along for 14 meandering paragraphs before we meet the nine (9) Canadian officers working with the UN mission there. “In their staff officer positions…CAF members are playing a key role…” Of course they are! They are bringing Canada’s key strengths to the battle against the M23 rebels, including “leading joint planning sessions.” I assume this means sorting out who brings the weed and who brings the rolling papers, because if it means much more than that, the Congolese are truly screwed. Who in their right mind would expect the Canadian military, who have a decades long track record of failing to plan the timely replacement of everything from Sea Kings to frigates to submarines to fighter jets, to come up with a timely and effective plan to stymie the M23 rebels? What have these people been smoking? And if that’s not embarrassing enough, York drops another truth bomb a few paragraphs along. “Despite the small size of the Canadian contingent in Congo, it is the second largest of Canada’s handful of remaining units in UN peacekeeping forces.” Lester Pearson must be spinning in his grave.

Christmas is a bummer when they're bombing Bethlehem

You must admit “Western Values” are taking a shit-kicking over there in the Holy Land. Remember, the bombs come from America. Israel is just the delivery boy. It was October 9 when The Greatest Leader since Moses and his side-kick Defence Minister Gallant announced their intention, to world media, to unleash “a mighty vengeance” on the Palestinian people. They literally announced their war crimes in advance, and by golly they haven’t let us down. Collective punishment? Check! Ethnic cleansing? Check! No fuel no food no water… check check check! Bombing hospitals, schools, refugee camps; dropping 2,000 lb “bunker busters” on residential flats… there is no red line that can’t be bombed to oblivion. In these bleak times, it’s refreshing to find a ray of hope. I find Mesarvot Network to be one such ray. Mesarvot Network supports IDF reservists who refuse to serve in the current genocidal war against the Palestinians. They are the most courageous soldiers in Israel. Please support the Mesarvot Network if you can.

Why it's important to inspect your nuts

Here’s a shocking headline; Boeing Urges Airlines to Inspect 737 Max for "loose bolt" in rudder system. Imagine you’re in line to board a plane, and that headline comes across your news feed. That would be somewhat unnerving, would it not? Check out that second paragraph. Yup, it’s true; a bolt ain’t holding nothing to nothing if it lost its nut. And if there’s no nuts securing the bolts securing the rudder section to the rest of the aero-plane, you gonna be in a real big heap ‘o shit real soon! You’re shuffling towards the boarding ramp when you look out the window and see you’re about to board a 737 Max… Destination certain doom! You’d be waving your phone in the air and shouting at non-existent airline “customer humiliation agents:” WAIT! WAIT! HAVE YOU SEEN THIS!?!? HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR NUTS??? Of course, such an outburst would just get you arrested and shuffled off to a psychiatric facility for observation. The good news is at least you’re not on the next 737 Max that’ll fall out of the sky!

Canadian war hero gets medal for attacking mosque

Just one more thing about "the first African-Canadian" to win the Victoria Cross, William Hall. As I've pointed out before, I'm not sure how "Canadian" Hall was, given that he was born 38 years before the country now known as Canada. Canadians are desperate for war heroes, especially if they're Black. It shows the world we're doing diversity and inclusion right! Be that as it may, Hall joined the Royal British Navy and found himself fighting for the British Empire to put down an uprising among the Empire's ungrateful subjects in India. Here's a brief exerpt from his Wikipedia entry; "...the naval gun crew with which he was serving came under heavy fire as they attacked a mosque." Oh dear! 150 years ago that got you a Victoria Cross? Now it would get you life in prison! Canadian values sure have changed... but he still gets a new Arctic Patrol Vessel named after him, so maybe our values haven't changed as much as we like to pretend.

Canada still building imaginary naval fleet. Allies not impressed

Last week the Globe had a story about Canada’s participation in Operation Prosperity Guardian. While I had mocked our pathetic attempt to ingratiate ourselves with Uncle Sam by participating in a naval operation without contributing any ships, the unpaid intern writing at the Globe clarified that while we didn’t have the right hardware right now, it was “in production.” The confusion over what’s been built and when reminded me of the premature naming ceremony for HMCS William Hall. The following stories are from 2015. The RCN took possession of the ship this past August, eight years after that splashy PR stunt by the Harper government. "Canada names another imaginary Arctic Patrol Vessel" If you're keeping track, HMCS William Hall is the fourth of the new Arctic Patrol Vessels to be named by the Government of Canada. Assistant Defence Minister Julian Fantino was at the Africville Museum in Halifax yesterday to announce the good news. The bad news is that there isn't actually a ship to which the Royal Canadian Navy can affix that lovely name. First announced in 2007, Canada's Arctic fleet has been the subject of numerous photo-ops and good-news announcements since, although no ships have been built! That may be about to change, however. Apparently Public Works Minister Diane Finley is so fed up with the lack of progress that she barged into the Irving yards in Halifaxlast week, rolled up her sleeves, fired up a cutting torch, pulled down her goggles, and personally began cutting steel for the first of the patrol ships! Or maybe that was just another photo-op? "About the CBC and that African-Canadian war hero from 1857" HMCS William Hall named after first African Canadian to win Victoria Cross declares the headline at the CBC. It's all part of the Harper gang's program to reinvent Canada as a "warrior nation" by celebrating war heroes of the distant past. We are celebrating Mr. Hall's exploits in 1857 by attaching his name to a not yet built ice-breaking vessel in the many-times-announced but not yet begun Arctic Patrol Vessel program. His name is to go on ship number four. Whether the Arctic Patrol Vessel program ever builds four ships is a matter of conjecture, but there's no denying that the selection of an "African Canadian" certainly underlines the fact that Canada is not only a Warrior Nation, but a diverse and inclusive one. Whether it's kosher to call a man born 38 years before Confederation an "African Canadian" is a minor quibble at this remove. Seems to me there couldn't have been "Canadians" of any ethnicity before there was a Canada; we were just subjects of the British Empire; but let's get back to our Warrior Nation past... 1857 was a tense and trying time for the British Empire. Here in British North America the colonial government introduced the Civilization of Indian Tribes Act, the precursor to the Indian Act and the entire project of assimilation that was recently labelled cultural genocide by the Chief Justice of Canada's Supreme Court. At the same time, in another part of the British Empire, those other Indians rose up against their colonial masters in what has become known as the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The uprising was ruthlessly suppressed by the colonial masters, and India remained a British colony for another 90 years. It was in the context of suppressing that mutiny of the Indian people against their colonial oppressors that William Hall, an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy, was awarded the Victoria Cross. That may say rather more about our glorious warrior past than the Harper clique intended.

New York Times exposes Canada's Foreign Student scam

It can’t be a secret anymore if the New York Times is writing about it. Many Canadian post-secondary institutions have become de-facto fast-tracks to Canadian residency and the prospect of citizenship. That’s because chronic government under-funding has made colleges and universities dependent on the extortionate fees they charge foreign students. Schools like Northern College hire agents to recruit foreign students. These agents scour the Indian countryside looking for prospective students willing and able to fork over the tens of thousands of dollars required for a diploma in “culinary arts” or “early childhood education,” which qualify the graduates to work in two of the lowest paying occupations in Canada. The recruiters work on commission. What they’re selling isn’t education, but access to a student visa, and hence to Canada. There are hundreds of thousands of student visas issued every year, and all those foreign students need somewhere to live in a country with a chronic and ever-worsening housing affordability crisis. Nobody’s getting much of an education, but the colleges get to stay in business, the recruiters can get rich, and the students get a back door to Canadian residency! What’s not to like?

Sh!t happens... life goes on

Me and the Farm Manager were discussing the situation in Gaza. She's got extended family in Israel, so it's a topic she's invested in. Fortunately, all those relations have multiple passports and can catch a flight to Montreal or New Jersey if things go south. That appears to be happening. I read somewhere, and I can't personally vouch for the source, that almost half a million Israelis have left the country since 10/7. But enough about relatives... which brings to mind an anecdote about the New Brunswick born Hollywood mogul, Louis B Mayer. Long ensconced amongst Hollywood's Jewish elite, Mayer had occassion to have Albert Einstein as a dinner guest. Upon hearing that Albert had concocted something called "the theory of relativity," Mayer is alleged to have replied that he had a theory about his relatives too. A lot of big names in Jewish culture were never fully on-board with the Zionist agenda. Mayer and Einstein were two of them. Edgar Bronfman was another. Bronfman was head of the World Jewish Congress for decades. He was a staunch advocate for Palestinian rights. Unfortunately, the WJC was more interested in his money than his advice. History is full of make-up stories. Folks who inflicted assorted war crimes on one another, like the Germans and the French, for example, were inter-marrying and signing trade deals a generation later. Shit happens. It's often ugly shit. It's almost always being manipulated by hate-mongers who seek to profit from division and despair. Here's my advice; leave the shit behind and get on with life.

Ukraine and Gaza are two fronts in the same war

That's Uncle Sam's war to keep the US empire at the top of the international geopolitical dogpile. In Ukraine, we were gonna teach the Rooskies a lesson. How's that going? By my reading, it's going way better for Team Putin than it is for Team USA/NATO. In Gaza, the American (and hence EU/NATO etc) policy is to support Israel's genocidal campaign against the Palestinians while having their UN ambassador shed crocodile tears in front of the cameras over how heartbreaking it is to see pictures of dead Palestinians children in the rubble created by US munitions. That shit fools nobody outside the USA, where popstars and sports by far eclipse important news from around the world. As in Ukraine, nothing about the Gaza war has done anything to burnish America's claim to a leadership role in the community of nations. Quite the opposite, in fact!

Why some dead babies count more than others

Yesterday, the 75th day of the Israel-Hamas war, Immigration Minister Marc Miller introduced special measures to support temporary residence for extended family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents living in Gaza. 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced and over 20,000 civilians slaughtered before we extended this humanitarian gesture. By contrast, a mere 28 days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada introduced the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET). Compare the two and it’s immediately apparent that the Ukrainians fleeing Russian aggression get a much more generous offer than the Palestinians. For one thing, our Gaza “special measures” are restricted to those with family connections in Canada, whereas CUAET applies to all Ukrainians, regardless of whether they already have family in Canada or not. How to account for our glaring hypocrisy? After all, Israel has killed twice as many civilians in Gaza in two months than Putin’s barbaric hordes have killed in Ukraine in almost two years. I believe it’s a combination of factors. Firstly, our media ecosystem is saturated with anti-Russian propaganda. Putin is a brutal dictator who hates democracy. An irrational megalomaniac, he is capable of any atrocity imaginable. Russia is bad. Similarly, Israel is consistently portrayed as a peace-seeking democracy that has long tried in vain to live peaceably alongside its hate-crazed Palestinian neighbors. No matter how many UN resolutions they ignore and how many women and children succumb to their relentless onslaught, at the end of the day we must respect Israel’s right to defend itself. Israel is good. Finally, let’s not rule out good old-fashioned racism. It’s just so much easier to open our hearts to white Christians than to non-white Muslims. Our hypocrisy stinks.

Canada hits all-time high for immigration

Here’s some good news for the Century Canada crowd; Canada welcomed 430,000 would-be Canadians to these shores from June to September. That’s over 140,000 per month! Meanwhile, housing starts were bumping along at roughly 20,000 per. You can shut down every Air B&B in the country and it won’t make a dent in the housing catastrophe the Ottawankers are creating for us. How the hell are we still on this path when everybody and anybody who knows anything about real estate has been waving red flags for years? Hilliard MacBeth wrote a book about it - eight friggin’ years ago! But, let’s look on the bright side. All our new Canadians are coming from places where they’re accustomed to far larger households than we are. Like double and up. All those nattily attired Nigerians you saw crossing at Roxham Road with their designer luggage? They’re coming from a place where seven to ten under a roof is the norm. Putting up one new build for every seven new Canadians sounds just about right!

US gets sucked in deeper - now commits to keeping Red Sea open

Operation Prosperity Guardian is the latest bullshit endeavor to make it look like Uncle Sam still matters. Seems some terrorists in Yemen are trying to support their fellow terrorists in Gaza by impeding shipping through the Red Sea/Suez Canal. That’s all to put pressure on Israel, home of God’s Chosen People and the only democracy in the Middle East. And you gotta admit those Yemeni terrorists have some serious leverage. Denied passage through the Suez, a containership enroute to Europe from China will require an extra ten days to make port with its cargo of absolutely everything Europe needs to survive. Does Western Civilization have the wherewithal to weather such a crisis? Well, we do now! Canada has just announced we will be part of Operation Prosperity Guardian! That’s a US-led (what else?) operation to keep the sea lanes open for the cheap shit from China that makes modern life possible! Fortunately, Canada is not committing any actual ships, because our fleet may not be up to snuff by current standards, but we’ll have a battalion of paper-shufflers in head-office standing with Israel for as long as it takes… oh sorry, that was Ukraine…

Toronto renames Yonge-Dundas Square in honor of slave-dealing African tribe

Yonge-Dundas Square is the wannabe Times Square of Toronto. Alas, the Wokies discovered some alleged links between the slave trade and Henry Dundas, the Square's namesake. Sankofa Square is the new name for Yonge-Dundas Square. “Sankofa” is allegedly a reference to the folk wisdom of the Akan people in what is now Ghana, and means, according to the experts behind this decision, learning from history to facilitate a better future. From the Wikipedia entry for the Akan people: “The Akan waged war on neighboring states in their geographic area to capture people and sell them as slaves to Europeans…” Eat your heart out, Henry Dundas! But hey, they were Black slavers, so I guess it’s OK!

Other species feces

There's a proud Irishman I run into at the dog park who has the mixed blessing of owning an English Lab. It's a mixed blessing largely because the English have always let down the Irish. Every character flaw that Lab manifests is automatically assumed to be the result of its "English" origins. Like the fact that this otherwise loveable Lab likes to eat dog poo. That's obviously the English side coming out. If there was such a thing as an Irish Lab you can bet it would be too proud to eat dogshit. So I tell the guy about my issues with Bruno Big-Lips, our Italian mastiff. Bruno is too proud to eat dogshit, but he often confuses the cat's litter-box with an orderve tray. The proud Irishman sees his opening... "Well, at least my dog doesn't eat other species feces." Other species feces? I figure add a bass line and some turntable scratching and we could have the next hip-hop chart-topper!

When did underwear become outerwear?

When did pajamas become something you wore to the mall? Or to school? The decline in decorum seems to mirror the decline of our society in general. Have to admit I was an early adopter of de-formalizing dress codes. The only time in my teaching career I ever wore a tie was the couple of years a yahoo down the hall was coming in sporting ripped track pants and rubber boots. That was taking "de-formalizing the dress code" to places it didn't need to go, in my opinion. The Farm Manager maintains her Ed Assistant job at the local highschool. Whereas there once was a "dress code," the dress code today is, so long as genitals and nipples are covered up, anything goes. I see it on the streets around the school. A sports bra up top and short shorts below, with some jewelry and perhaps a little ink in between, tells the world this teen gal is... what? Gullible? Suggestible? Vulnerable?

Hamas is winning the PR war with Israel in most of the world

In the misty recesses of my memory banks I recall running with a gang of hippy-dippy types who were on the way to the Holy Land, there to groove and weed vegetables on some hippy-dippy kibutz. That was a pilgrimage much in vogue amongst the youthful idealists of the time. Fast forward fifty years. Ain’t no youthful idealists heading to Israel anymore. In fact, Israel’s own home-grown youthful idealists have been leaving the country for years. And that was before October 7th. Suddenly, the most genocidal hate speech became acceptable in Western media, which is wildly pro-Israel in all things. Palestinians (and let’s not kid ourselves; they are Hamas supporting Jew-haters every one), are animals, savages, blood-thirsty monsters, the Children of Darkness and Seed of Amalek… There’s a lot that’s dodgy about the 10/7 narrative. The attack was a complete surprise but Mossad and IDF intelligence had the plans in hand at least a year beforehand. But Israel was completely taken by surprise? I think not. I think it more likely that a certain politician who is preoccupied with keeping his ass out of jail thought it a perfect distraction. And so far, the plan is going great! If he can wrap this up in the next couple of weeks or so, he will go down in history as Bibi The Avenger, The Greatest Leader Since Moses! Gaza will simply be D-9ed into the Sinai. Unfortunately, there are signs of danger ahead. Bibi made very dramatic promises to eliminate every last terrorist. That means all Hamas has to do after Bibi declares victory is fire off one rocket, and Hamas has won in the eyes of the world. The campaign of “mighty vengeance,” daily war crimes Netanyahu and Gallant announced two months ago, continues apace. We’re fast closing in on 20,000 Palestinian dead, mostly women and children. Meanwhile, Hamas uploads videos every day of lightly armed fighters blowing up Merkava tanks in the ruble of Gaza City. Youthful idealists around the world today are more likely to volunteer for Hamas than for Israel.

The perfect soundtrack for the mindful life

The perfect soundtrack for the mindful life is an endless loop of my mastiff snoring. Bruno's snoring wordlessly sums up this travesty we call "the human condition." That's not a road you want to take if you value your mental health. I mean the road of making sense of the present moment. You can't. But when you have a 150 lb mastiff curling up next to you, snoring, the wise man will take solace in the snoring, and forgo making sense of the present moment. At least for now.

US slaps sanctions on Israel

Remember the tsunami of sanctions unleashed against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine? Washington actually declared its first sanctions three days before the invasion. Within three weeks most of the “free and democratic world,” as America’s vassal states like to think of themselves, were solidly aboard. The haste of our response to Putin’s aggression stands in sharp contrast to our response to Israel’s far bloodier invasion of Gaza. Israel has killed more Palestinian civilians in eight weeks than Russia has managed in Ukraine in almost two years. The contrast was starting to get uncomfortable; our glaring hypocrisy an embarrassment. Today Washington took action; a visa ban has been imposed on “several dozen” extremist settlers who have been terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank! There you go! Don’t say America doesn’t care about civilian lives! Meanwhile, we will ramp up the delivery of 2,000 lb Bunker Busters to facilitate the IDF’s continuing surgical strikes against terrorists in Gaza. Israel has a right to defend itself.

The darkest time

These few weeks, from when the clocks go back, to the winter solstice, are the darkest time of the year. If you're at all prone to depression even on the longest sun-kissed days of summer, you're really struggling now. Not that I'm struggling all that much. I've been getting into "mindfullness" since early Covid days. That was when everything was locked down and you had nothing to do. Ergo, lots of time to think about nothing! Pure mindfullness! I am 100% focused on what's going on in my mind... which is nothing! But thank God, in just a few weeks the universe will shift gears, and the days will get longer again! Hope will send up fresh green shoots. The birds will come back from their winter holidays... The darkest time will birth spring, again.

Alleged war criminal Henry Kissinger dies before MeToo gang can get their hands on him

The old codger was billing clients huge sums to imbibe his insights at Kissinger Associates right till the end. Remember those hilarious "piece is at hand" posters back in the day? I think they'd be called a "meme" today, or possibly a "trope." I'm not sure what's the difference. Anyway, the double meaning of peace/piece at hand, with a picture of Kissinger carressing a woman's buttocks, was a tip-off that ole Henry may have things to hide. He was more than a war criminal; he was a lech! Probably "indecently assaulted" more women than Harvey Weinstein, if such a thing can be imagined... and don't bother trying to imagine it; it'll hurt your brain. The diminutive Kissinger dropping his pants in front of an unsuspecting Assistant Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway at the Oslo Summit of '68 wasn't more than a blip in Horny Hank's itinerary, but MeToo has a bottomless memory bank. Where the International Criminal Court forgets, MeToo remembers.

Winter struggling to get traction... Blame Climate Crisis!

One of the favorite rituals of abuse visited on school children back in the day was the mandatory "public speech." That was where you had to make a speech in front of the class. The vast majority of students dreaded the prospect. Some would break down in tears half way through their speech. One poor kid wet himself right there at the front of everybody. I first had to make a speech in 4th grade, at Ponsonby Public School. My topic was Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut in space. It was supposed to last four minutes. I held up OK; wobbly knees, but no tearful breakdowns and no pants-wetting. Whew! Some of the kids were not at all phased. Janet Mitchell, who I had a bit of a crush on, blew the class away with her masterful speech about Rachel Carson's best-seller, Silent Spring. Seems we were doing great harm to the planet and if we didn't mend our wayward ways, we were doomed! That was sixty years ago. Since then, we've never mended our ways, we do greater harm to the planet every year, and we're ever more doomed by the day. And yet... life seems to go on. Sea levels have been rising so fast that numerous vulnerable states that were predicted to be underwater 20 years ago are with us still. I went to the east coast last summer for the first time in 30 years, and the sea level was pretty much where I remember it. Our government is handing out billions in subsidies to foreign companies promising to build batteries for the EV market. With what? Yes, Canada has a lot of high value minerals... in the ground! How's that "Ring of Fire" development going? The only way all our subsidized battery factories are going to build batteries is if we buy the ingredients from... China? In spite of a sixty years+ campaign to scare the world off carbon fuels, 2023 marks the all-time record consumption of them. Yup, we're burning more coal and oil than ever! India and China are leading the war on the climate; they lead the world in greenhouse gas emissions, by far. But here's the thing; India and China educate more scientists and engineers than the rest of the world combined. Is it really plausible that none of their engineers and scientists are smart enough to see the urgency of our climate crisis? Or is it more plausible that they're a couple of steps ahead of Western engineers and scientists, and realize one or two degrees in average global temperature is no big whoop one way or the other? As for me, I'm just happy I'm gonna make it into December whithout once lifting a snow shovel!

Bibi will beat Hamas to the dustbin of history

I think Hamas already won this war. For well over a month all we heard from The Greatest Leader Since Moses was "no cease-fire until all hostages returned." So here we are, in the fifth day of a four day ceasefire, exchanging hostages for prisoners. Who is actually winning here? Bibi talked his way into an impossible corner in the hours after the Oct 7 attack. The children of light v the children of darkness. The Seed of Amalek. A Mighty Vengeance! Every last human animal bloodthirsty monster of the Jew-hating Hamas MUST DIE! The righteous rage triggered that day momentarily blinded many. As the days and weeks went by, and the world witnessed in real time the ever-escalating dead baby count in Gaza, Bibi's Washington sponsors got cold feet. Biden is on the cusp of an election campaign, and being seen as an enabler of genocide isn't a good look to young American voters. Whadya know! Suddenly it is possible to negotiate a ceasefire after all! To arrange a hostage exchange with bloodthirsty Jew-hating terrorists! That's a weak look for a strongman leader.

A ray of hope in Gaza

Until a few days ago, The Greatest Leader Since Moses wasn’t having any talk about a ceasefire till all the hostages were returned. It’s more than a modest climb-down to agree to a ceasefire before any hostages are returned. But here we are, almost 24 hours into a ceasefire that seems to be holding, and the first hostage exchanges have come off without a hitch. Why the change of heart? A key factor is that over the past seven weeks Israel has achieved the goal of a 10:1 kill ratio in this round, which, considering the historical record, seems to be the minimum required in any Israel-Palestinian conflict. 1400 Israelis died on 7 October (since adjusted to under 1200) and we’ve now killed over 14,000 Palestinians; we’ve made our point. Hopefully, a few days of calm will allow Israelis to come down from the vengeance high they’ve been on.

Canada's reputation has gone for a shit since PM Justin "Fluffy" Trudeau took power

I admit I was a victim of Trudeaumania 2.0 and voted for Fluffy in 2015. It was the Sunny Daze craze, and I was swept along by the zeitgeist. I am ever so sorry. The Great White Hope in black-face has worked non-stop to embarrass himself, and since he's Canada's face to the world, he embarrasses us all with every pratfall. The latest brouha-ha erupted when Fluffy took it upon himself to lecture The Greatest Leader since Moses on the matter of killing babies. It's simply untoward that a little pipsqueak non-entity of a country like Canada, given its own genocidal legacy, deems itself qualified to pass judgement on Israel's genocide in Gaza. We used to care about relations with Israel, but things have changed. Justin has also managed to put India-Canada relations in the deep freeze, for no reason any reasonable analyst has sniffed out. He heard a rumour through the "Five Eyes" rumour reification network and decided on that basis to accuse India of being behind the assassination of a Sikh activist in Canada. Big whoop, you might say, but Modi's sensibilities were offended. We used to care about relations with India, but things have changed. For many, many years Canada worked hard at cultivating relations with China. Canada's China policy under Trudeau the elder paved the way for the Nixon era raprochment between the USA and Chinese communists. We had political capital in China's goodwill bank since the Bethune era. That's all been flushed down the bidet in Fluffy's make-up room. Then China kidnapped the Two Micheals for no reason what-so-ever and you know how that ended... Or maybe you don't. The Globe and Mail revealed on the weekend that the official "Two Micheals" narrative was PR bullshit all along. Ya, apparently there was spying going on, and the Trudeau regime was lying to your face every time they denied it. We used to care about relations with China, but things have changed. What's changed is that there's nobody in the wheelhouse in Ottawa willing to speak out against the idiocy coming from the Mother Ship in Washington.

Alcohol and testosterone; elixir of the teen Gods!

The teen years for young men are brutal years. Your body turns into a hormone factory that completely derails every sensible sentiment you ever held in your head or your heart. To whit; you just wanna get fucked. Or, as the Oracle from Ann Arbor famously put it; “get fucked, and get fucked up!” So we did. We drowned our teenage wasteland of insecurities in booze. As a lifestyle, perpetual drunken hooliganism had its drawbacks. A ride in a police car typically comes with thousands of dollars in legal costs. Pretty soon you realize that’s not a sustainable lifestyle. In my day, it was possible to change the road you were on. I’d like to believe it still is for kids coming up, but in 25 years of teaching high school, the odds of doing that got progressively worse. More than ever, if you’re born on the wrong side of town, you’re gonna die on the wrong side of town. And die young.

Gaza end game: peace in the Holy Land

It’s been six weeks since Israel suffered the gravest security and intelligence failure in its history. The man in charge, PM Netanyahu, promised the perpetrators a mighty vengeance, and spelled out the war crimes Israel would inflict on them in return. A complete siege of the entire civilian population of Gaza. No food. No water. No power. I predicted a cycle of atrocity escalations that are coming true every day. We don’t see much of that in Western media, because media and our culture in general have always had a pro-Israel bias. The outrages became ever more outrageous. The bloodthirsty Hamas monsters dragged 240 hostages into their tunnel networks. As heart-felt as Bibi’s pain at the suffering of the hostages and their families may be, he knows it is more important to kill Hamas than save hostages, and has ordered 30,000 tons of bombs dropped to collapse the tunnel system. Great leaders are fated to make difficult decisions, and only the Greatest will pass the test. Tell the Kaffirs to go to the south, and then bomb them when they do! That’s not a good look to most of the world, who watch the carnage 24/7. But here in the Nations of Virtue all we want to talk about is Israel’s right to defend itself and how it’s high time for a just two-state solution. That train left the station in 1995 when ultra-right religious nutters assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. That’s the same crowd that calls the shots in Bibi’s coalition government. Two-state delusion. Six weeks into this abomination, the PM and his war cabinet are emboldened. No matter the red line crossed or war crime committed, there don’t seem to be any meaningful repercussions. And in spite of some mumbling about a humanitarian pause, Uncle Sugar’s got their back. The maximalists are pushing their advantage. Gazans to the south, and then a little further south, and by God we have to bomb every square inch of Gaza to get every last terrorist, so into the Sinai you go, and good luck to you! Then open humanitarian corridors to let the West Bank and East Jerusalem join them in the New Palestine. Finally, if there are any Arab Israeli citizens left by then, make them an offer they can’t refuse; leave or die. That’s the end game. Peace in the Holy Land.

Greatest Leader since Moses leads Children of Light into final battle with Seed of Amalek

A few short weeks ago Netanyahu was just another crooked politician struggling to survive. His best-before was long past and his future was bleak. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis marched weekly to demand his resignation and incarceration. Then, calamity struck. The greatest intelligence and security disaster in the history of Israel stopped the protests in their tracks. Netanyahu instantly proclaimed himself the right man at the right time to lead the Chosen People, the Children of Light, into the final battle against the Seed of Amalek. That's the kind of genocidal hate-mongering messianic mumbo-jumbo that should send shivers through any sane person who hears it. Instead, lots of people who should know better blithely ignore his genocidal Old Testament references and continue talking about Israel's right to defend itself. And how is that going? Now that Israel has revised its Oct 7 death count to 1,200, while having killed 12,000 Palestinians, the traditional 10:1 kill ratio has been achieved. So why not call it even and allow a truce? Israel's image, carefully crafted over decades, is shredded by the day. A billion Muslims watch the dead baby parade on Al Jazeera 24/7, while we agonize over the rise of antisemetism in countries that "stand with Israel," as if there could be no connection. It's time for those of us in Israel's traditional support bloc to pressure our politicians into taking a meaningful stand. Ceasefire now!

Climate icon Greta adds Hamas to list of things she wants to save

I was watching footage of Greta leading a protest somewhere in Europe. It wasn’t a straight-up save-the-climate event; it was an anti-fossil-fuel, anti-war, anti-capitalist hybrid. The Greta Fan Club attracts some interesting people, as you can tell from the protest placards. One that caught my eye read “Dismantle all Oppressive Structures Now!” Huh? In the first place, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? I mean, say what you will about the Black Lives Matter movement, but you have to admit they had a simple and catchy slogan that was also an infinite repetition of their brand, which proved a fund-raising bonanza! Secondly, what, if anything, does it mean? On a superficial level, it’s appealing. After all, every decent human being is against oppression. But here’s the problem; all social structures are oppressive from some point of view. The only way you can sort out which “oppressive structures” should be dismantled and which preserved would require the creation of some decision making body - which would in itself be another oppressive structure! But back to the rally. Greta is on stage preening for the cameras, when a befuddled schmuck emerges stage left, takes the mic out of her hand, and says, “I thought I was coming to a climate rally, not a political event...” Taken aback by an unscripted moment, Greta was momentarily discombobulated. Once her team dispatched the interloper and gave Greta back her microphone, she immediately had the crowd of many thousands chanting, and I’m sure she made it up on the spot; NO CLIMATE JUSTICE ON OCCUPIED LAND! Double huh.

Does Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow read my blog?

Don’t know if that’s actually true, but it’s curious that finally a politician picks up on something I’ve been ranting about for years; the only way we’re ever going to get affordable housing is by governments building it. It is self-evident that the housing crisis isn’t about housing, it’s about affordability. If you’ve got a million bucks to spend, there’s lots of options for you clear across the land. The private sector can provide housing for everyone who can afford it. It’s the people who can’t afford it who are experiencing a crisis. It’s ludicrous to expect for-profit real estate developers to build housing for people with no money! Between the three levels of government, they have all the ingredients for practically unlimited construction of social housing, public housing that provides a roof over your head and caps rent at 30% of your gross income. They have the land and they control the approval process. With full buy-in across all levels of government, financing shouldn’t be a problem. If this country can commit to 84 obsolete fighter jets at 100 million per, surely we can afford to put up as many three storey walk-ups as required to house everybody homeless and the million immigrants, temporary foreign workers, foreign students, and refugees our government wants to import every year. Three-storey walk-ups aren’t rocket science. Various native tribes were building them thousands of years ago. The construction unions will be on board because a full-on building program will create thousands of new jobs. Your social justice types will buy in because thousands of apprenticeships for marginalized youth will be created. Of course, you’ve already got your usual knobs at The Globe and Mail rubbishing the idea. It’ll be a complete debacle and end Chow’s career… Maybe. If that’s the case, at least she’ll have gone down getting something done. By and large our political class today is full of people who want studies and more studies and never get anything done. Go Olivia!

They gotta suck mud before they can suck milk

The old-school beef farmers are a dying breed. I'm talking about the guys who run cow-calf operations on open pastures, not feedlots. Buddy who rents my fields was complaining the other day that he needs snow on the ground before he can do the hundred yard cattle drive to the barn on the other side of me. That's because without snow, the cattle will stop to eat all the grass en route. They've eaten down all the grass in my pastures and now rely on a daily delivery of round bales. Meanwhile, it's been a wet autumn, and the ground around the bale-feeder is turning into a mud hole. Buddy feels for the calves. "The cow's dragging her bag through the mud all day, and the poor calf gotta suck mud for two minutes before they suck milk." In other news from Hillbilly Acres, on our way back from the weekly shopping trip to Foodland and the liquor store, we spotted a couple of dozen blue herons just behind the Wiarton International Airport (yes, it really is an official international airport). Then a few dozen more in the distance... and along the runway a little further on, blue herons as far as the eye could see. There were hundred upon hundreds. The Farm Manager put this find on Facebook and in no time found out somebody had seen a great aglomeration of blue herons in the Tara area, maybe 30 miles south of here. They're all gathering for the great annual blue heron murmuration to points south. The birds from Wiarton and Tara will be joined by many other chapters of the blue heron gang and by the time they hit Florida they'll number in the hundreds of thousands.

Standing with Israel's war crimes in Gaza

It's been over a month since the Greatest Leader Since Moses and his Defense Minister Gallant announced their intention to inflict "a mighty vengeance" on Gaza. They were literally announcing their war crimes in advance, which to my knowledge is a first in the history of war crimes. We stood with Israel regardless. After all, they're the only democracy in the Middle East and they're up against pure evil Jew-hating sub-human religious fanatics, whereas the good guys, Bibi's "war cabinet," are liberal humanists who just happen to base their policies on the Old Testament. At the time, the death scoresheet had it at roughly 1400 dead Jews and a mere handful of dead Palestinians. G*d has mightily blessed Operation Mighty Vengeance, to the point where we're closing in on 11,000 dead Palestinians, the vast majority of them women and children. And while I don't mean to question the judgement of The Almighty, or the Great Leader who does His work on earth, are we not coming to a place where we have to ask; how much mighty vengeance is enough?

Blinky's Middle-East tour highlights US impotence and ineptitude

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants us to believe that he's been "working aggressively" to free the hostages, get a "humanitarian pause," and bring more aid into Gaza. He's achieved little or nothing on all three fronts. As SecState, Blinken is America's voice in the global community. What he's been demonstrating to that community is that America is weak, indecisive, and not in any way fit for the leadership role it imagines is its due. The Ukraine disaster approaches its last act. Remember "whatever it takes for as long as it takes?" Ukraine remembers. Nobody in Washington does. The war is rapidly approaching its two year anniversary. In the first months Zelensky was on the cusp of a peace deal with Moscow, but was waved off by his masters in Washington and London. "Wait a few months and you'll be negotiating from a position of strength," they assured him. Half a million Ukrainian casualties later, Ukraine is destroyed. NATO is weaker. America is weaker. The EU is weaker. Russia is stronger. Before that war can be put to bed, America faces another test of its credibility in the Middle East. Now Team Biden is standing with Israel as Israel demonstrates to all the world that it will proceed with its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians whether Washington likes it or not. When America's attack dog ignores the commands of its purported master, you have to wonder who's really calling the shots. We know it's not Dementia Joe, and it's not Blinken or Sullivan. But you'll notice there's a serious deep state adult on the case now, following Blinky's footsteps and trying to mitigate the damage. Whether Bill Burns can right the ship remains to be seen, but I'm not optimistic. And remember; Russia and Hamas are just minor skirmishes on the way to the real battle the Apostles of American Exceptionalism have planned for us. Forget the Taliban. Forget Russia, Forget Hamas... Set your bomb-sites on Communist China!

"Western values" take a beating in Gaza

The over-arching underlying message from the Mighty Wurlitzer, forever and always, is that we, "Western Civilization," often shorthanded to American Empire, or even Uncle Sam's Club, are the "good guys." We are the Nations of Virtue. We are the champions of human rights and democracy and freedom in the world, and whoever is not with us is evil. The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was undoubtedly a war crime. Targeting civilians and taking civilians hostage are war crimes. Israel is a charter member of Uncle Sam's Club, and the Mighty Wurlitzer reminds us constantly that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and has a right to defend itself. For 48 hours after the launch of the Hamas attack, Israel held the moral high ground, at least in Western perception. On October 9th, PM Netanyahu and Defence Minister announced a campain of mighty vengeance against Gaza, telling the world they intended to inflict war crimes against the people of Gaza. "We see your war crimes and raise you ten-fold." It's genocide poker. Those war crimes have been going on in full view of the world for four weeks now. What has been the response in our Western "Nations of Virtue," the champions of human rights and democracy? We make excuses and buy time for Israel's genocidal war against the Palestinian people. Israel has a right to defend itself. And if defending yourself means denying food and water to 2,000,000 civilians while mercylessly carpet bombing their territory, well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Israel caves to US pressure

Team Biden has made a dipomatic breakthrough! Blinken's ceaseless shuttle diplomacy is paying off! What is the breakthrough, you ask? Has Hamas agreed to release the hostages? Nope. Has Israel agreed to stop bombing civilians? Nope. Is the ever-elusive two-state solution just around the corner? Nope. It's bigger than any of that... Israel has reversed it's decision to deny Ukrainian leader Churchill Mandela Zelensky a photo-op with the Greatest Leader Since Moses! No doubt about it; Biden's America still has clout on the world stage!

Biden begs Israel to go easy on Hamas

In his second visit to the Holy Land in two weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is beseeching Bibi and his “war cabinet” to cut the Palestinians some slack. Rules of War and all that jazz. In response, Israel bombed a convoy of ambulances attempting to ferry injured from Gaza City to the south. That strikes me as a resounding “go fuck yourself” from the Israelis. Blinky’s first visit didn’t fare much better. On that trip he pleaded with Bibi to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The desultory response from the Israeli side was to allow in an average of 12 trucks per day for two weeks. Aid organizations unanimously agree at least 100 trucks per day are required. It’s safe to say that US influence over its pet isn’t what it used to be. Which presents a political conundrum for the Biden regime. Apocalypse Joe has an election coming up, and it won’t do him any good if he’s seen to be presiding over an actual apocalypse at the time. And apocalypse is what’s unfolding there in the Holy Land. Operation Mighty Vengeance has claimed almost 10,000 civilians by now, 4,000 of them children. That’s revenge for the 1405 Israeli’s slaughtered by Hamas on 10/7. How does Israel calculate how much Mighty Vengeance is enough? Is a 10:1 kill ratio sufficient? Or does that still undervalue a Jewish life vis-a-vis a Palestinian? Does the kill ratio need to be 50:1 or 100:1 before a humanitarian ceasefire can be considered?

Three things that took my mind off the madness this week

We live in a fucked-up world, do we not? There seems to be a whole lot of folks who should know better flirting with WWIII. Because why? Because we can win? Let's get real. As Canadians we are charter members of Uncle Sam's Club. The Nations of Virtue! NATO, G7, EU, Israel and Japan, and the "Five Eyes;" Uncle Sam's bumboys one and all. This is what our media refer to as the "international community." Meanwhile, somewhere out there in the rest of the world, there's about 7 billion people who don't see things the way the golden billion of the Nations of Virtue do. That's why there was such a sparse uptake of those Russia sanctions that Apocalypse Joe promised would turn the ruble into rubble. "Ruble into rubble?..." That's almost poetic! But I digress. I'm finding my screens saturated with propaganda and hate speech. I'm just a senior citizen wanting a quiet life, but my entire information infrastructure wants me marinating in hatred and fear. Lucky for me, three things took my mind off the madness and saved, at least for now, my mental health. Thing 1; Birds. You can't step out on the stoop without meeting the birds. That's a big crew, and includes everything from the geese and Sandhill cranes congregating for their Florida vacations, to the wrens and finches who will hang back and take their chances on our bird-feeders. Here's the key thing. None of these birds have screens, so they don't give a shit about Ukraine or Gaza or THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY!!! Thing 2; Cattle and coyotes. We've got week-old calves galivanting in the pasture across the road. And every night we hear the coyote choir raising their voices to heaven. Neither calves nor coyotes are addicted to anxiety-inducing news feeds. They just eat and poop and do their thing. Thing 3; Babies. On their own terms, babies aren't that big a deal. After all, a calf is wandering around on their own legs within a couple of hours of leaving the womb. My grand-daughter at six months is still struggling to do what that calf did on day one. The reason babies give me hope is because there's still well-educated and responsible young people willing to have them. If they're smart, they'll keep them away from the screens as long as possible.

Only a military coup to remove Netanyahu can save Israel

By “we” I mean not just the doomed Gaza population. Israel announced in advance it was about to commit war crimes against Gaza. We’ve been watching them do exactly that for over three weeks. By “trouble” I mean Netanyahu is in the process of igniting a tsunami of antisemitism. Europe has, especially since 2015, been overwhelmed by a flood of Islamic migrants. How do you imagine these people feel when they follow the carnage in Gaza on their screens? How long before a rage builds that will explode into violence against Jewish communities across Europe? This is what The Greatest Leader Since Moses is toying with. But hey, the Bible says there’s a time for war… The best hope for humanity is that some sane factions in the senior reaches of the IDF, men who do not base their decisions on Biblical prophesy, hook Netanyahu off the stage, the sooner the better. Immediate cessation of hostilities, prisoner exchange, and a sober consideration of future prospects are what’s needed to prevent this from spiraling into Armageddon.

Israel shouldn't bank on US support "for as long as it takes"

It was Henry Kissinger who once opined that while it was dangerous to be America’s enemy, being America’s friend could be fatal. Truer words were never spoken. Think Diem in Vietnam. Noriega. Saddam. Gadhafi. Sometimes Uncle Sam just cuts his former besties loose to fend for themselves. The Shah of Iran wasn’t even welcome in America for cancer treatment in his dying days. Ashraf Ghani’s democracy in Afghanistan didn’t last 24 hours after Uncle Sam cut the puppet strings. Next on this shameful list of deceit and betrayal will be a certain comedic actor in Ukraine. In the past six months he’s gone from the top of the “A” list to a nuisance. Yup, everything you need for as long as it takes Zelly. Our new artillery shell factory should be on stream in ‘28, maybe a year or two later, so hang tight and piss off. Uncle Sam has a more important best friend to stand with for as long as it takes; Israel. What baffles me is that Netanyahu keeps citing US support as his promises of a long and difficult war on Gaza keep getting more extravagant. Uncle Sam may well have your back today, but things can change.

Bubby Lifshitz blows hole in Hamas terror narrative

Within minutes of the first Hamas operatives breaching the Gaza fence on 7 October, Israel’s global PR machine went into overdrive. Beasts! Monsters ! Babies beheaded! Women raped and burned alive! Jewish innocents tortured to death! And things unspeakably worse than all of the above! For three weeks every Israeli official who appeared on our news feeds stressed over and over that Hamas were animals, bloody monsters, savages, etc. Then 85 year-old Israeli grandmother Yocheved Lifshitz, one of the Hamas hostages, was released by the bloody savages, and unfortunately gave a media interview before she had been debriefed by the proper authorities. The kidnapping itself was hell, she said, but once Hamas had her in their underground terrorist lair, she was treated well. The terrorists fed her, provided medical care, and made sure she got the medications she normally took before becoming a hostage. What are we to make of that? Here’s what I make of it. The hostages are a bargaining chip. Hamas, long funded and nurtured by Israel itself (a fact surprisingly reported by even CBC and the Globe and Mail) are sophisticated and media savvy. They understand the value of PR. That’s why all the horror stories need to be independently investigated and confirmed. There’s no logical reason to take Netanyahu’s word for anything. He has built a political career on ratcheting up violence and then swooping in to save the day. The unprecedented security lapse of 7 October is on him. He knows it, but he hopes the Israeli people will be sufficiently blinded by hatred to forget.

Blood Quantum Fascists set sights on Buffy Saint-Marie

Brodie Fenlon’s merry band of wokelings at CBC have been having a grand time these past few years exposing various “pretendians,” non-Indigenous folks pretending to be Indigenous in order to unjustly claim the lucrative benefits that come with membership in that oppressed minority. So far they’ve ruined the careers of a few writers and academics, but they’re hot on the trail of their biggest prize yet. Buffy Sainte-Marie. That’s right! Turns out the iconic anti-war activist, singer, song-writer, native-rights activist and all-round mensch has been faking it for eighty plus years. Buffy’s been having some health issues, so thank goodness they’ve managed to expose her fraud before she went to a better place. The CBC has discovered that Buffy has absolutely no proof of her alleged Indigenous background! Who can even imagine such an outrage! Well done, Brodie! This is the kind of world-class investigative journalism that reminds Canadians that the $billion plus taxpayer subsidy to CBC is money well spent!

When politicians want war but generals don't, who you gonna listen to?

Case in point; the much anticipated Gaza land invasion. Over 300,000 IDF reservists have been cooling their heels at the Gaza fence for two and a half weeks by now. Set the way-back machine to three weeks ago, and a lot of those reservists were doing what? Taking to the streets and protesting against Netanyahu, that’s what! And while every last one is prepared to avenge what happened on 10/7, they’ve now had two and a half weeks to think it through and stew over it… A Gaza ground invasion is going to be a brutal undertaking. They know the odds are good that they’ll be dead. For what? How many of them truly believe killing more Palestinians will bring peace to Israel? How many have come to the realization they’re about to give up their lives for the greater glory of The Greatest Leader since Moses? And you can bet the generals aren’t thrilled either. It’s too bad they never speak the truth till they’ve retired, but any number of retired IDF senior staff talk about Hezbollah having a missile inventory in the hundreds of thousands. Iron Dome is overwhelmed by a few dozens. Meanwhile, Netanyahu still barks war war war… Let’s pray those reservists and the senior IDF leadership can find the courage to say no to more death and destruction. Peace now!

Jewish tail still wagging Uncle Sam's dog

In more hopeful times, it was imagined that a two state solution would eventually unravel the knot of the Israel-Palestine conundrum. Nobel Peace prizes were awarded all round. Alas, the Jewish Supremacist factions were having none of it, and since the first Likud government those factions have been on the rise. You’ll never have two sovereign states existing side-by-side as long as one side imagines God promised them the whole enchilada. While paying lip service to the two-state solution, the West turned a blind eye to Israel’s policy of building facts on the ground that would render a two-state solution impossible. There are now over 600,000 Jewish settlers living on what was to be the sovereign Palestinian state. Then October 7th happened. 10/7. Fifteen times worse than 9/11 according to some hyper-ventilating commentators. The mere fact of its happening revealed that Israel was powerless to protect its own people. The greatest leader since Moses, perpetually distracted by his personal legal challenges, had presided over the greatest security breach in the history of Israel. He immediately proclaimed that “a mighty vengeance” was coming Gaza’s way. On October 9th Netanyahu and Defence Minister Gallant announced their intention to pursue a policy of inflicting war crimes on Gaza by preventing food, water, fuel, and all other necessaries of life from entering the enclave. More than two weeks on, the war crimes continue unabated. The war crimes are so brazen the entire world has noticed. Most of the world looks to Israel’s chief enabler to do something about it. And that’s why Team Biden has unexpectedly rediscovered that long-lost two-state solution. Frankly, they’re at least 25 years too late. The only viable solution is the one-state solution. One state from the river to the sea. One state with equal rights for all its inhabitants, be they Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. It’s either that, or we continue stumbling towards the abyss.

Missing Fat Dotard

Remember when Donald Trump was president? He conducted diplomacy mostly by insulting foreign leaders. The grown-ups in Washington were aghast. Would America's reputation survive the Orange Ogre's cringe fest? In due time democracy worked its magic and the adults took back the White House. Whoo-hoo! America is back! USA! USA! USA! USA! Instead of a Manhattan condo promoter with no political experience, the new POTUS had 50 years of experience. A seasoned professional was at the helm, Trump was vanquished, and sanity had returned to America. The euphoria lasted until Biden's team had its first serious international sit-down with China two months after Apocalypse Joe took office. It took China's foreign minister Wang Li about 15 minutes to take the measure of Blinken and Sullivan and Sino-American relations have been in a downward spiral ever since. That was just the first of many own-goals by Team Biden. We're not three years into Biden's term. How's America doing in the world? The little war we instigated in Ukraine? A year ago we were assured Ukraine just needed a few more months and a few more billions in weapons, and Putin would take his place in the dustbin of history. Now we're told Ukraine may need a few more years and hundreds of billions in weapons and financial support, and it looks like Ukraine will run out of Ukrainians before it runs out of US support, and Putin's demise is nowhere on the horizon. And today America is committed to standing with more than Ukraine for as long as it takes. As much as we love Ukraine and consider them brothers in freedom and democracy, we love Israel even more. Shared values, don't you know! We're Christians after all, a Jewish cult that went viral. However robust our commitment to Ukraine, we really mean it when we say we'll stand with Israel. And that's not all. The good folks of Taiwan are perhaps not as enthusiastic about fighting China as Americans are, but hopefully if we keep sending our top guns like Pelosi and Graham over for pep talks they'll eventually see the wisdom of picking a fight with China on our behalf. Have no doubt; we'll stand with Taiwan for as long as it takes too! I gotta admit I'm starting to miss Fat Dotard. Those adults in Washington are getting kinda scary.

Crisis on County Road 20: PIG ON ROAD

The Farm Manager is dialed into the local internet community via Facebook and all that shit. By "local" I mean within a two mile radius or so. A two mile radius is all country people. Some of them original farm homesteaders, most of us just people who'd rather live in the country. I'm not cut out for city life. You live cheek by jowl and everybody's up your ass, and why would any sane person spend a million on a luxury townhouse with luxury vinyl plank flooring when they could have a hundred acres and a hundred year old farm house instead? With original maple floors. And you'll never have to smell your neighbor's farts. But I digress. Tonight the word went out on the aforementioned Facebook community that there was a pig loose on the road. Right in front of my house. Within five minutes there was cars gathered on the road in front of my house, and up the driveway. The emergency response team of neighbours soon had the pig on a leash, and piggy was heading home to his owners, who, at the least, owe the neighbourhood a community pig roast.

Operation Batshit

When we took over Falling Downs 15 years ago, we inadvertently inherited tennants we didn't know about. Two spinster gals in their 90s sold us the joint. They didn't mention the bat colony in the attic that was probably as old as they were. We've been trying to assert our landlord rights ever since. I've got a few successful strategies to get them out of the attic. Put a hibatchi up there and leave a pile of smoldering rags in it (check with insurance provider first). That gets them out. But nothing I've discovered thus far KEEPS them out. We soon realized our annual attic cleanup was just a springclean for the bats. They appreciated coming home to a freshened up batcave. We kinda let things slide for a few years, but recently, the decline in the bat population these last couple of years has filled me with hope. There are noticeably fewer of them, they come later, and they leave sooner. Cleaning up bat shit is one of the most unpleasant jobs imaginable. Plus, inhaling bat shit fumes is allegedly a threat to all your major internal organs. So I put on one of those covid masks (still have a case of them) and got at it. Still have some fine-tuning to do, but I've got two 5 gal Home Depot buckets full of bat shit available to anybody who wants a great fertilizer for next years garden.

Apocalypse Joe says USA "still beacon to the world"

Biden claims US is still a beacon to the world... sure thing, Joe! 10,000 migrants wading across the Rio Grande every day can't be wrong! Biden’s speech from the Oval Office last night was an unofficial declaration of WWIII. We must not waver in our support for Ukraine. And we can never ever waver in our support for the Chosen People. Ergo, we must gird our loins for the coming battle against evil-doers. Airy-fairy shit like the Climate Crisis is obviously gonna have to wait. We are embarking on the ultimate struggle between good and evil, and if you think we’re not the good guys, you’ve obviously been poisoned by Putin’s propaganda. Meanwhile, reports were already coming in about missile attacks on illegal US outposts in Iraq and Syria, and that was before Apocalypse Joe even finished his speech! Meanwhile, the IDF has the green light to roll into Gaza… Meanwhile, Hezbollah has promised it’ll send missiles to Tel Aviv and Dimona if IDF enters Gaza… Meanwhile, USA has carrier strike force in East Med, with a second carrier strike force on its way… Meanwhile, Russia has hypersonic missiles that are eager to meet that US fleet… The times are getting way too interesting for my liking.

Biden and Netanyahu unite Muslim world for first time in 1400 years; WWIII next

On the day of the Hamas attack on Israel, most of the world condemned the action and vowed to stand with Israel. Sympathy for the Holy Land was at an all-time high. Fast forward ten days, and the Greatest Leader since Moses has already squandered that goodwill. Western leaders, who just days ago couldn’t do an interview without mentioning “Israel’s right to defend itself” multiple times, are today accusing Israel of war crimes. Throughout the Islamic world and beyond, millions of outraged Muslims are in the streets tonight, calling for death to Israel and death to USA. Meanwhile, the Greatest Leader since Moses keeps up the apocalyptic rhetoric. The animals, the savages, the bloody monsters of Hamas must and will be annihilated. To the last man. We’ve ordered the evacuation of Gazans from north Gaza. We gave them time to get to safety because we are the most moral army in the world. Now we will unleash Hell on Hamas. That’s going to be an interesting meeting with Biden tomorrow. Joe has an election to win next year and he doesn’t need any help from Netanyahu to make himself look more incompetent than he already does. Between Afghanistan and Ukraine, America’s prestige on the world stage has taken quite a beating. For his part, Netanyahu has managed the near-impossible; united the Muslim world like no Muslim leader in many centuries has been able to do. That’s quite a feat for a man who fancies himself the greatest leader of the Chosen People since Moses.

Why women's pro hockey keeps flopping

Canada’s national women’s hockey team are Olympic Champions, the best in the world! In the leadup to the 2022 Winter Olympics, the team played a tune-up series against Junior A boy’s teams. They lost every one. Here’s the CBC story on the best women’s hockey team in the world losing 8-0 to the Drumheller Dragons. CBC has floated a barrage of happy stories on the new PWHL in recent weeks. A few rich men have decided it’s time for women’s hockey to take its place in the spotlight, and voila, a women’s professional hockey league is born! I predict that within three years it’ll join every previous women’s professional league in the dustbin of history. Here’s why. First off, the hockey ain’t that great. The top women’s team in the world doesn’t have a chance against elite teenage boys, let alone NHL caliber play. Much is made of the opportunity the PWHL provides young girls to achieve their dream of “playing hockey for a living.” The minimum pay for a PWHL rookie is $35k. You can do better as a shift manager at McDonalds. But if you really, really want to play hockey, I guess this is your ticket. Meanwhile, minimum wage for an NHL rookie is more than twenty times greater at $750k. You won’t make that at McDonalds until you own a few stores! Secondly, there’s a reason women’s hockey is doomed while women’s soccer/football and basketball will flourish. It’s all about the male gaze. When you’re watching women’s soccer, you know you’re watching women. Same with b’ball. The women may be freakishly tall, but everybody can see they’re women. Not so in hockey. Between the knee-pads and elbow-pads and shin-pads and shoulder-pads and a helmet and a cage, it’s hard to tell the difference between a junior boys team and the women’s national team. The only hope for professional women’s hockey is a commitment of unlimited support from the NHL. Given their recent ham-handed attempt to squelch Pride tape for hockey sticks, their commitment to diversity and gender equity may not be something the PWHL can take to the bank. So enjoy those $35k salaries while you can, girls… the happy days won’t last forever.

Israel and Hamas in doom loop of escalating war crimes

On Monday, PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant announced they planned to commit war crimes. That’s a departure from conventional norms. As a matter of course, countries engaging in war crimes generally don’t draw them to your attention. The standard operational procedure is to deny, deflect, keep your head down, and with a bit of luck the story soon goes away. There’s always gonna be a fresh atrocity somewhere to take your mind off the last one! But Gallant and Netanyahu announced Monday they would cut off all necessaries of life to the 2.3 million hostages they hold in Gaza until such time as the savage animals of Hamas release the 150 or so that they hold. And for once, Bibi is following through on a promise! Must be the moderating influence of his partners in the “Emergency Cabinet.” Problem is, starving a population is a war crime. These guys announced their war crimes in advance. That’s chutzpa! That’s a pretty stark gamble Bibi is taking. Turn over your hostages and I won’t starve my hostages. Frankly, I think the Hamas leaders should take the deal. The Western world will focus instead on their war crime. In fact, the casual consumer of legacy media would get the impression the Israel-Palestine conflict started last Saturday with the unprovoked attack by the savages of Hamas. We now find ourselves in the doom-loop of escalating atrocities. More to come…

Greatest Leader Since Moses risks destroying Israel to save his career

Netanyahu’s career has had an ominous trajectory. Time after time, when he is politically at risk, he engineers a security crisis. Then he swoops in, the greatest leader of the Chosen People since Moses, and gives the terrorists a sharp slap, and everybody loves him again! Things calm down and life goes on. It’s a proven strategy that has worked again and again. Mr Netanyahu has more reasons than ever to hang on to the Boss job. A slew of corruption allegations for one thing. But this time around, The Greatest Leader Since Moses seems to have miscalculated The “only democracy in the Middle East” has been stinking up the very concept of democracy in recent years. Bibi has to keep steering to the right to collect the Knesset votes he needs to stay in power and out of jail. His latest posse of far-right extremists have pushed Israel into the current crisis. We are now in an emotionally supercharged hate loop of atrocity and counter-atrocity which has no hope of ending well for anyone. You can thank The Greatest Leader Since Moses for taking us all to the edge of the abyss.

Biden pulls plug on Zelensky, will stand with Israel as long as it takes instead

After a year and a half of “whatever it takes for as long as it takes,” Uncle Sam’s caravan of freedom, democracy, and human rights is moving on. While Ukraine is still shown on maps, it has completely disappeared from the news. Trust me, I tried to find updates on the counter-offensive today, and you literally have to go to Ukrainian or Russian news sites to find anything. The days of Churchill Mandela Zelensky jetting around the world for standing ovations appear to be over. The debacle in Ottawa was his last hurrah. Instead, Washington will now focus its energies and resources on helping our brothers-in-freedom in the Holy Land defeat the terrorist uprising in Gaza. It was 18 years ago last month that Israel pulled the last Jewish settlers out of Gaza, thereby creating the independent Palestinian homeland that was to usher in an era of peace in the Middle East. And what did they get for their sacrifice? Nothing but trouble! Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular have proven over and over that they are not ready for peace and democracy. As former IDF General and current Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it today, “those people are animals and we must respond accordingly.” To demonstrate American resolve, a US navy carrier strike group is on its way to the eastern Mediterranean as I write these words. Fortunately for the forces of righteousness, Gaza has no army, navy, or air-force, so Netanyahu’s stated goal of turning the home of 2,500,000 Palestinians into a “deserted island of ruin” should be accomplished by the time the USN gets there. Nevertheless, the Americans will take pride in having stood with Israel for as long as it takes (four or five days max), the first time the US military has come out on the winning side of hostilities since Grenada. Unless of course the entire Middle East goes up in flames, in which case we will have to revisit the situation and strategize next steps.

Netanyahu wanted another war and he got it

Anyone who follows Israeli politics is well acquainted with a recurring theme in the career of The Greatest Leader Since Moses; when his political fortunes are on the down-tick, Netanyahu turns up the dial on violence so he can pose as the strongman who can teach the Palestinians a sharp lesson and bring security to the Holy Land. Works like a charm… or at least it has till now. At this point, there is no reason to assume this time is different. Bibi’s desperation to form a government after the last election resulted in him forming alliances with the most racist and extremist settler factions. The shocking deterioration of Palestinian living conditions since the current coalition took power has been obvious to everyone. Settler extremists have had a green light to terrorize Palestinians across the occupied territories. Hardly a day goes by without Palestinians dying at the hands of settler extremists and/or their IDF protectors. The repeated violations of long-standing protocols around access to Al Aqsa has inflamed Palestinian rage, and is cited by Hamas spokespersons as the rationale for launching the current attack. Supposedly, the Hamas offensive took Israel by complete surprise. I find that hard to believe. Every Palestinian resistance entity since the creation of Israel has been thoroughly riddled with spies and collaborators. Israel has enormous advantages in technical surveillance capabilities. It is far more plausible that Israeli intelligence was fully aware this attack was coming, and chose to let it happen. Why? Within 18 hours of the attack, opposition leaders Lapid and Gantz have already agreed to participate in an “Emergency Government.” Just imagine; full support across the entirety of the political spectrum for Netanyahu! You can bet those massive anti-government protests we’ve been seeing for months are over for the foreseeable future. So what happens next? For the moment, Netanyahu has a mandate to unleash extreme vengeance against the Palestinian resistance. But the “what-ifs” are ominous. What if Hezbollah enters the war? There’s been numerous senior IDF officials over the years warning that Hezbollah has a missile stockpile of hundreds of thousands capable of striking anywhere in Israel. What if Iran enters the war? Iran is but the most vocal state supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah. There are others, and if push comes to shove, even Arab states that have been working at normalizing relations with Israel will be forced to take sides. And let’s not forget that both Russia and China have been stitching up mutual defense agreements with Iran. What if Israel needs to call on its ultimate enabler, the United States, to make good on its promise to ensure Israel will get everything it needs to prevail? Isn’t that the same promise they’ve been making to Ukraine for over a year and a half? And how’s that going? Netanyahu has upped the ante as never before. We live in interesting times.

The slobification of graduation

I remember my high school graduation. It happened seven years after I started grade nine. I'd dropped out for a couple of years, because I was too cool for school. After life kicked me in the balls once or twice I decided maybe I'd be better off with a high school diploma after all. For graduation I wore a suit. That's what you did in the day. You got dressed up for special occassions. Check out the pictures of the crowds in Dallas as JFK's motorcade rolled by. Everybody was wearing their "Sunday best," as we used to call it, even though it was Friday. You honoured God by dressing up. You honoured the President by dressing up. You paid respect to your fellow grads by dressing up. Well, that's all gone for a shit. Saw the pics from the grad ceremony at the high school I retired from a few years ago. Ya, a few kids went to the trouble, but by and large, the kids who wore pjs to class every day, wore them to graduation too. Maybe I'm being too judgemental. Maybe some of the pj kids bought new jammies specially for grad night.

Wab's wild years

While we toast Wab Kinew’s historic victory last night, let’s not lose sight of the big picture. While technically only half white, Kinew has been a creature of privilege his entire life. Sure, he had some issues early on. The testosterone-alcohol combo has been the bane of many a young man. It’s a credit to Kinew that he got past that phase. However, that’s where his path deviates from the stereotypes. Instead of staying trapped in the downward spiral so many young Indigenous find themselves in, Wab Kinew bounced into a career at CBC, thanks to his privileged background. CBC gave Kinew a national profile, and that’s what got him into politics, and here he is, Premier-elect of Manitoba! The term “hang around the fort” was used by Indigenous activists to refer to those in their communities who sucked up to the colonizers, the inference being that when you hang around the fort long enough, your loyalties to your people are compromised by your dependence on the fort. Let’s hope Kinew can rise above that. Manitoba’s Indigenous population, at 20%, the highest in the land, has extremely high expectations of Mr Kinew. Sooner or later, he’ll have to choose between his people and the fort.

Mysteries of the Blog-o-Sphere

I recently had a run of 2-3000 daily page views. That added up to monthly hits unlike anything I've ever seen. I couldn't figure it out. From a website that was lucky to get a few dozen looks per day, I was suddenly getting thousands? Get the fuck outta here! I figure it was all bots from Singapore. That's where all that traffic was coming from. Then somebody turned the bots off. This website had 5 views on October 2. Looks to me like invisible internet hands have pulled the plug on this blog.

Bank of Canada reveals price hikes make inflation worse!

Price hikes make inflation worse? Who knew!? You’d have to admit we’re in Captain Obvious territory here. Here’s the full story from CBC. At CBC, the operative assumption is that we’re all retarded. When you think about it, you can see where they’re coming from. After all, we live in a country wherein the entirety of our political elite applauded a 98 year-old dude who fought Russia in the WW2. Between 370 MPs and another 100+ Senators plus assorted worthies from the highest ranks of the military, not a single one remembered that Russia was actually our ally in that war, and if you were fighting Russia, you obviously weren’t on our side. But the lot of them applauded till their hands were numb. How retarded is that?

If this gorgeous Indian Summer is due to the climate crisis, let's restart a few more coal-fired generating plants

Coal-fired generating plants are a no-no in the civilized world. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, in case you don't know. Nations of Virtue who understand science have been swearing off coal for a generation. Mind you, there's been some back-sliding of late. In Germany, where the mysterious sabotage of the NordStream pipeline massively sped up the process of getting off fossil fuels, they're dismantling a wind farm to expand an open-pit coal mine. In Kansas, they're restarting a coal-fired generating plant to power a new factory that'll build batteries for electric cars. Seems to me "net zero" is disappearing into the mists of time... And here's another head-scratcher. What's wrong with all those scientists and engineers in India and China? How do they not recognize the dire threat of the climate crisis. Don't they listen to UN boss Guterres? Haven't they heard we've opened the gates of hell and the oceans are boiling? While we in the Nations of Virtue are signing a wait list to take delivery of an EV in a year or two, India and China are non-chalantly building new coal-fired generating plants willy-nilly! So what's the point? But back to this glorious Indian Summer. I have no idea if it's related to global warming, climate change, the climate crisis/catastrophe/cataclysm etc, but I do know it's one of the most pleasant autumns in memory. As for the bogeyman of the day, if we were serious about our contribution to this alleged crisis, we'd get serious about cutting back consumption. We'd focus on building appliances that last fifty years and cars that'll take you half a million miles, and we'd expect a winter coat to last at least ten winters. We'd plant vegetables where the lawn used to be, and what remained of lawn we'd mow with a non-powered push mower. Any trip under a mile we'd walk. Up to 10 miles we'd bike. Beyond that we'd take public transit if at all possible. And it goes without saying we'd have to give up power boats for sailboats and paddle-boards. It's obvious we can't pursue perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. Stop pretending we can continue our reckless over-consumption of resources just by transitioning to "clean energy." We need to put climate ahead of GDP.

Globe and Mail reveals why we're the good guys

The Korean extortionist at the Circle K now demands $5.25 for a copy of The Globe and Mail. Seems like there's a social science experiment afoot to see just how much an old-school newsprint addict is willing to fork out for a paper that has been in a downward spiral for a decade. But it remains Canada's newspaper of record. The Saturday edition is even more outrageous. Tomorrow I'll pick up a copy of the Saturday edition for eight-fucking-forty on our way to breakfast at the European Bakery. Today Globe regular Andrew Coye had an op-ed titled "No, India killing a Canadian is not "just like" America killing Bin Laden." Andrew is a typical American Empire Loyalist. After spinning his wheels for a few paragraphs trying to explain why political assassinations are bad when bad guys do it, but hunky-dory when we do it, he gets to the nitty-gritty; " We're the good guys. If you don't believe that, you have a much larger issue..." Andrew, I am a Canadian who no longer believes "we" are the good guys. What we are is part of the chorus in Uncle Sam's cheerleader section. That's a fact widely recongnized by the vast majority of the global community. That's why there is virtually no support for Russia sanctions outside of NATO and the EU. After Viet Nam, after Cambodia and Laos and Grenada and Panama and Iraq and Yugoslavia and Libya and Afghanistan and Syria and Ukraine, most of the rest of the world no longer sees the US bloc as "the good guys."

Canada: from "peacekeeper" to "terrorist haven"

Last week was non-stop shit-show in Ottawa. PM Fluffy started things off with a bang on Monday, declaring that allegedly, there were potential allegations that maybe India was behind the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. Yessiree, that’s the kind of slam dunk you want to go public with! To Fluffy’s shock and chagrin, India was more than a little pissed off. They’re threatening to stop issuing student visas. If Canadian universities and colleges can’t attract foreign students and the extortionate fees they bring, multiple comfy six-number do-nothing jobs will be at risk in University admin buildings across the land! And India accounts for over 40% of foreign students. Canada does not get much press beyond our borders, but that Monday bombshell gave us a huge international profile all week. Then, while that self-inflicted headwound was still bleeding, on Friday, the Trudeau gang managed to double-down on completely retarded and shoot themselves in the other temple. The world doesn’t really give Canada much thought, which will come as a shock if you only follow CBC news. We’re just another me-too camp-follower of Uncle Sam, with maybe slightly more shlep than the Marshall Islands. But it’s impossible to ignore us now! From Nazi stormtroopers to Khalistan separatists to Al Queda’s White Helmets to Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, if you’re having trouble at home, you’ve always got a warm welcome in Canada!

Zelensky no stranger to honoring Nazis

Amateur Hour continues in Ottawa. Today was spent mostly buck-passing, finger-pointing, and donning sackcloth and ashes over the grave insult we inflicted on Zelly by having him applaud a 98 year old veteran who once “fought with the Nazis.” Relax, Ottawa! Since Zelensky became president, he has awarded Ukraine’s highest honor, “Hero of Ukraine,” to members of at least three neo-Nazi groups: Aidar Battalion, Right Sektor, and Azov. Here’s a story from Israel’s Haaretz news site about the Nazi bona fides of Azov. Stories such as that were quite common in mainstream Western media before February 2022. The Guardian, NYT, Time, Newsweek and others frequently ran stories about the rich tradition of Ukrainian antisemitism and white supremacy permeating Ukrainian nationalist groups. I’m sure no offence was taken. The man did fight Russia, after all, and that’s all that matters in these dark days when the fate of the Free World rests on Zelly’s shoulders. He’s got bigger worries than what’s happening in the Ottawa clown show.

Canada's political elite give standing ovation to Nazi collaborator

I watched that live on Al Jazeera. Arched an eyebrow when the 98 year-old Ukrainian- Canadian veteran had his moment in the spotlight. The reason for his sudden celebrity? He fought Russia during WW2! Many of the Ukrainians "fighting Russia" did so as volunteers fighting with Hitler's Waffen SS. Sure enough, by Saturday it was all over the internet that our Ukrainian-Canadian hero had done exactly that. I guess Bernie Farber must have made a phone call, because today everybody in Ottawa is absolutely shocked and appalled. An actual filthy Nazi collaborator somehow sneaked into the beating heart of our democracy, thereby making a mockery of Canadian values, which are of course the complete antithesis of Nazi values. Nobody clapped harder than Chrystia Freeland. Truth is, the Ukrainians who fought with the SS killed more than Russians. They killed tens of thousands of Poles and Jews as well. Everybody in that building is suffuciently acquainted with the facts to know that, most especially those of Ukrainian heritage. Now our politicians are deperately looking for a fall-guy to pin this scandal on.

Defecation Liberation

Have you ever stopped to give some thought to the urban planners policy assumption that people don't shit? As in defecate, have a BM, take a dump, etc? Have you looked for a public toilet recently? See what I mean? Homeless people get a bad rap for defecating in the street. If you're living on the street, and there's no public toilets, where else are you supposed to shit? In your tent? Society needs to get over its defecation denialism. How is it possible the poo taboo remains intact while all other taboos have been embraced in the name of inclusivity and human rights? Black or white, yellow or brown, everybody needs to shit. The Defecation Liberation Movement could be the key to unifying a fractured world! Demand free public toilets in every neighbourhood in every village, town, and city. DEFECATION LIBERATION NOW!!!

Zelensky is the most popular politician in Canada

Did you happen to watch Zelensky's speech in Ottawa today? The CBC talking heads lost count of the standing ovations, it was that great. Either that or our political elite are the most obsequious toadies to this war's grand narrative, concocted in Kyiv with plenty of input from London and Washington. Canada's parliamentarians applauded every Zelly utterence with child-like enthusiasm. The CBC knobs had a post-speech debate on whether Zelensky was greater than Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela. Contrast the fawning Canadian reception to how Zelly-mania seems to be on the wane in most of our democratic allies. In the US, the NYT, WSJ, and Washington Post have all published recent articles claiming the "counteroffensive" launched early June is kaput. It gained a few meaningless square kilometers of real estate at the expense of tens of thousands of casualties and the destruction of billions in donated weaponry. In contrast, today's Globe and Mail informed me that the counter-offensive was making progress and victory was, if not quite yet in sight, certainly plausible. Meanwhile, Poland's President Duda this week likened Ukrain to a drowning man threatening to pull his would-be rescuers down with him. Poland has given exponentially more aid to Ukraine than Canada has, and it's right next door. Maybe Duda has a point. From the safety of eight thousand miles distance, Canada, in spite of having nothing to offer other than best wishes, remains an indefatiguable cheerleader of NATO's proxy war on Russia. We're ready to fight to the last Ukrainian.

Justin Trudeau must resign and his advisers must be fired

The past year and a half has not been kind to NATO, nor to Justin’s role within it. In spite of the triumphalism expressed by the likes of Jens Stoltenberg over NATO’s expansion to Finland and Sweden, the 18 months of war with Russia has revealed an unfortunate truth; the military manufacturing capacity of the combined NATO countries, USA included, cannot produce the munitions Ukraine needs to remain viable on the battlefield. “Everything you need for as long as it takes” was a PR jingle and nothing more. Trudeau’s reputation within that paper tiger was already in tatters. It was Trump who called Canada out as one of the free-loading member states, and this is as true now as it was then. What then must be the opinion of the senior members of the alliance when the bushy-tailed loudmouth Fluffy creates an international incident with India? And such an unnecessary incident. When the hit went down three months ago, informed observers would have pegged the odds at least 50-50 that India was behind it. Countries have long eliminated “terrorists” on foreign soil. Israel does it all the time. The USA killed bin Laden in Pakistan. The problem is, as always, that one man’s terrorist is the other guy’s freedom fighter. From the Indian perspective, advocates for an independent Khalistan are terrorists, and they have the same right to rub out Hardeep Singh Nijjar as the American’s had to dispatch bin Laden. The fact that neither Trudeau nor his team appreciated the gravity of what they have unleashed reveals that our foreign policy is in the hands of inept buffoons. It’s time to shut down amateur hour and bring in some grown-ups.

Who is the Boss Starling?

There's a few hundred starlings roosting in the dead elm on the other side of the barn. If I was still heating with wood I'd have taken it down by now. It's a few hundred yards from where I'm sitting on the stoop, but the air is filled with the sound of hundreds of starlings talking to one-another. Suddenly; silence. It's as if somebody hit a switch. Not a cheep or a chirp to be heard. Complete dead silence for at least thirty seconds. Then, a single chirp, and as quick as it stopped, the cacaphony of those hundreds of starlings fired right up again. I figure the one that issued that first chirp must be the Boss Starling. But my question is, and hopefully some ornithologist reading this can provide an answer, how do the other starlings know who the boss is?

More proof that Justin Trudeau's baby-daddy was Fidel Castro

Has PM Fluffy gone rogue? Or is this kerfuffle just a case of pandering to the Sikh vote? After yet another pratfall-laden visit to India, this time for the G20 summit, Justin came home to announce that Canada had hard intel tying India to the murder of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia. This sort of declaration is a major earthquake in the diplomatic world. The tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats has already begun. What baffles me is that Trudeau’s government has allegedly been wooing India to sign up for trade agreements etc. in order to wean our economy away from dependence on China. In the big picture, it’s crucial for the “West” to keep India’s allegiance, and that hasn’t been going well. Having India depart the US camp and cozy up tighter with Russia and China is the last thing our masters in Washington want to see. There’s another irony here. Justin is coming out publicly in support of Sikh separatists in India. Justin’s daddy Pierre invoked the War Measures Act to crush Quebec separatists here. So do you think maybe Fluffy is doing this on purpose? Has he been a communist agent all along? Maybe Fidel really was his daddy after all!

For important Canadian news, go to Al Jazeera, not CBC

To be sure, CBC is your go-to if you want the latest news on transphobia and what drag queens are up to, but I haven't noticed them paying much attention to the sorry state of Canada-India relations. Say what you will about India’s “Hindu nationalist” (not as bad as white nationalist, but a kissing cousin) PM Modi, one thing is for sure; he can sniff out a bullshitting poser a mile away. That’s why he’s failed to warm up to our PM Fluffy. Which is a pity, because sucking up to India has been a key pillar in Canada’s campaign to destroy our relationship with a key trade partner, China. The reason we need to continuously provoke and alienate China is to demonstrate “standing with our allies,” also known as following instructions from the US State Department. After all, communists are bad, but Hindu nationalists are people we can work with. According to this story at Al Jazeera, Modi is pissy with Justin Trudeau because he’s been playing footsie with “Khalistan nationalists.” Those are the Sikhs in Punjab who want their own homeland carved out of India. As you can imagine, that’s not going over well with Modi. Apparently, this has resulted in the suspension of trade talks scheduled for later this year. That’s a really big deal given how hard we’re supposedly working to diversify away from dependence on China. What disturbs me most is I have to find this news on Al Jazeera. As far as I know there’s been no mention of this at CBC or in the pages of The Globe and Mail, or even on the Global Affairs website.

How much more can we crawl up Uncle Sam's arse while pretending to be a "sovereign" nation?

PM Fluffy’s era ends with Justin and his homies sitting on their luggage at an airport in India. Their government jet has mechanical issues, and they must await the arrival of a roll of duct tape so repairs can be facilitated. Canada’s military procurement regs being what they are, Fluffy’s flight crew couldn’t just mosey to the nearest Hindu Hardware outlet and snag a roll of duct tape. No, they had to provide authentic Canadian-made duct tape, and then fly it to India. And Canadian bureaucracy rose to the occasion. We are still a can-do (or is that Candu?) people! Military-grade Canadian-made duct tape was successfully FedExed to that airport in India, and Captain Justin made it to the Liberal Policy Convention in the nick of time. The big question at the convention will be; how much deeper can we crawl up Uncle Sam’s arse while still pretending to be a sovereign nation?

"Their Lord and Savior Taylor Swift"

Had the pleasure of attending the wedding of a dear niece this weekend. The title line came in the speech delivered by a close friend of both bride and groom, who are dyed-in-the-wool Swifties. The young couple love to travel and have already visited 18 countries. They promise the next 18 will be chalked up by following Taylor's current world tour. To be clear, the newlyweds are devout believers in the original Lord and Saviour. I'm sure if Jesus was on a world tour today, His concert dates would take priority. Alas, the Lord seems to be somewhat displeased with his creation and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for His world tour anytime soon. Wedding's today are a bold act of defiance against the nihilistic propaganda the younger generation have been marinating in all their lives. We consistently give them one message; YOU HAVE NO FUTURE!!! If the climate crisis doesn't get you, Covid will! If robots don't steal your job, immigrants will! If you successfully dodge both immigrants and robots, Chatgtp is gonna take your job anyway! Even if you survive rising coastlines and increasing heat waves and forest fires and economic collapse, there's always Putin's nukes to destroy whatever glimmer of home might remain. So it mightily bouys my spirits when I see young people pairing up and planning families in the face of this overwhelming doom and gloom. As for the party itself, I gotta say the kids know how to have a good time. At the back of my mind, I was looking forward to demonstrating my chops on the dance floor. When the time came, I was totally awed by the level of energy. I quickly realized shaking my booty at such a frenetic pace would inevitably result in abject humiliation, not to mention the likely arrival of paramedics on the scene. I think I've become a member of generation Get out of the Way.

Data proves immigration accelerates climate change

Here’s some hard data. Canadians have one of the largest carbon footprints per capita on the entire planet, at approximately 18 metric tons per person per year. Canada also has one of the highest rates of immigration. Where are our immigrants coming from? Our top three sources of immigrants are India, China, and Afghanistan. The carbon footprint per capita in India is under two tonnes. In China, just over 7 tonnes. In Afghanistan, one third of a tonne. (Stats from Worldometers and Our World in Data.) Assuming our new Canadians adopt a Canadian lifestyle, they’ll all be massively expanding their carbon footprints once they get here. Obviously, anyone who cares about our planet should be demanding an end to immigration! That's gonna piss off the do-gooders.

Your daily dose of Yellow Peril propaganda from CBC

CBC’s The Current had a segment this morning on how terribly awful the future looks for young people in China. Apparently the economy is in the doldrums. As a result, there is an entire generation of young people who are questioning whether they will ever attain the standard of living that their parents enjoy. Who can even imagine such a thing? And if that isn’t bad enough, get a load of this; the job market for recent university graduates is so bad that many of them find themselves driving for ride-sharing services or food delivery outfits! Can you believe it! People with university degrees driving Ubers and delivering for Skip the Dishes? Outrageous! So buck up young Canucks, and be thankful you are blessed to live in this land of opportunity! And if you happen to be one of the multitude of Canadian university graduates driving for Uber or Skip and wondering if you’ll ever be able to attain your parents’ standard of living, shut up… at least you’ve got freedom!

Pine Creek First Nation excavates 14 burial sites identified by Ground Penetrating Radar and finds 0 bodies

It was almost two months ago that Pine Creek FN announced they were excavating a church basement where ground-penetrating radar had detected 14 “anomalies.” Over the past couple of years, ground-penetrating radar has created tons of headlines and sold a lot of flags. At no point did I ever see any discussion about the veracity of ground-penetrating radar in locating buried bodies. For anyone who bothered to look into the matter, it became very clear very fast that GPR ain’t worth shit in terms of actually locating buried bodies. Not every “anomalie” is a grave. As far as I am aware, Pine Creek FN in Manitoba is the first community that has dared excavate these anomalies. The results are in. Zero graves found for 14 "anomalies." Nobody has pushed the "unmarked graves" story harder than CBC. Wonder when they'll report the results of the excavation?

The difference between a yoga position and a fentanyl jag

Me and Big Lips Bruno got to the dog park first thing this morning, due to the late summer heat wave. If I don't get the big boy out in the cool of the early morning, he'll get no exercise at all. I noticed on our first lap that the homeless encampment that had sprouted up in the field next door was mostly gone. But a solitary figure 100 yards away caught my eye. Looked like a Muslim at prayer, but he wasn't facing Mecca, so I knew that couldn't be it. By our third or fourth lap he had shifted somewhat, into what looked like a possible yoga position. He maintained that for some time, but by our sixth lap he was on all fours. By the tenth lap he was standing up! Alas, one lap later he was down on his knees again. Five laps after that, he was standing bent over with his pants down. Next lap, back to square one but now bare-assed and tangled up in his trousers. That's around the time me and Bruno headed out. After 45 minutes of watching this lost soul try to stand up, I wonder if he ever succeeded?

Zelensky betrays his sugar daddy

It came as a shock to read that Ihor Kolomoisky has been detained in Ukraine on suspicion of financial hanky-panky involving the paltry sum of a few millions of dollars. As a matter of course, Kolomoisky’s financial shenanigans more typically involve billions, not millions. It is perhaps a measure of the man’s hubris that he was even present in Ukraine to be detained. He clearly believed he was untouchable. As an Israeli citizen he could readily have stayed home in deportation-proof Israel, but maybe he’s a true Ukrainian patriot at heart, and wanted to do his part for the war effort. Whatever his reasoning, he’s up something of a stump now. After all his years investing in Zelensky’s career, guiding him from the comedy clubs all the way to the presidency, this betrayal must come as quite a shock. On the other hand, he should have seen it coming. After all, it has been beyond obvious for the past year and a half that Zelly has a new sugar daddy with much deeper pockets; Joe Biden.