It's down the memory-hole for Ukraine and Zelensky

I just did a scroll-through of the home pages of CBC News, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. There was not a single reference to Ukraine or its president, who for the better part of two years was met with rapturous applause as he toured the capitals of the democratic world in a never-ending fundraiser. Likewise, not a single story about the Ukraine war in the news section of today’s Globe & Mail. A passing reference in a story about Xi’s upcoming trip to the EU is as close as we get. Not a peep in the opinion section either. So what happened? Where’s Zelensky? Is the war over and media forgot to mention it? Have the plucky Ukrainians driven the Russians out of their land and secured the future of the Free World? No. Although none of those news platforms seem interested in informing us, the war is going horribly. For Ukraine. This is a monumental humiliation for the US and NATO. Time, therefore, to change the subject. Move along, folks! Nothing to see here! So, what’s the newest existential threat barreling down on us? At CBC it’s the imminent threat of a bird-flu pandemic. At Fox it’s the imminent threat of the antisemitic, Marxist, Israel-hating, terrorist-loving radicals occupying college campuses across America. At CNN, MSNBC, and in the pages of the Globe & Mail, the biggest threat to the future of civilization is a familiar one-Donald Trump! The brain trust at the Globe are so threatened by the possibility of a Trump win in November they’ve reached Rachel Madow levels of hysteria in sounding the alarm! Four full pages in the opinion section devoted to “can-democracy-survive-Trump” gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Ya, they warned us last time too. There’s not a lot of folks convinced the world is better off after three years of Joe Biden as the top prop in America’s billionaire-run Theatre of Democracy. So goodbye, Zelly, your fifteen minutes are up. I’m sure you’ll be very well compensated. It’s a shame about your country…

Is Canada's Deputy PM a foreign agent?

There’s been a lot of noise about the need to have a registry of lobbyists who are working in Canada at the behest of foreign entities. The noise comes mostly from the same choir of American Empire Loyalists behind the current Hogue Inquiry into foreign interference in our democracy. Justice Hogue released her interim report today, confirming former GG David Johnston’s conclusion that we’re basically dealing with a media-driven nothingburger here. Her report did add the caveat that in some vague way the scandal may have undermined Canadians’ “faith in democracy.” Frankly, what undermines my faith in democracy is the quality of the candidates I’m allowed to choose from at election time. I never seem to have any choice outside a narrow range of pro-USA, pro-NATO, pro-Israel, pro-”free trade” options. That of course brings with it certain certitudes about what our foreign policy must look like. To put the matter bluntly, it inevitably looks like whatever Washington wants it to look like. Which brings me to a titillating headline I saw at the CBC a few days ago. Military charges senior officer with making derogatory remarks about commanders, allies. Murray Brewster, the top gun on military affairs at CBC, didn’t give us a whole lot of details, nor did any other Canadian news outlet. Today I ran across this nugget; Canada is losing its war against Russia and is charging senior officers with disloyalty. Holy heck, who could imagine!? I strongly recommend you read John Helmer’s article. Unlike Murry Brewster, he seems to have contacts in the CAF beyond the PR department. According to him, Colonel Robert Kearney committed the cardinal sin of deviating from the official script on our disastrous mission in Ukraine. Official script; with NATO’s commitment for whatever it takes for as long as it takes, Ukraine will eventually prevail and defeat Putin’s Russia. Colonel Kearney’s alleged heresy; Not a hope in hell. Apparently the Colonel was highly regarded as a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy, which is a deviation from the norm amongst the neutered upper ranks of the CAF. When word of this outrage reached Ukraine’s numero uno lobbyist in Canada, Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, his fate was sealed. Which brings us full circle to the question raised in the title. Should Chrystia be considered a “foreign agent?” That’s not as simple a question as you might think at first glance. Technically, a “foreign agent” would need to get some sort of benefit from the foreign entity they were working for. In Chrystia’s case, I’m not seeing that. Oddly enough, it looks to me like the main pro-Ukraine lobby, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, is largely financed by the Government of Canada! How fucked up is that?

The evolution of "Canadian Values"

I’m an immigrant who landed at Pier 21 in 1956. Immigrants who landed here in 1956 were determined to do whatever they had to do to make a go of things. They had bills to pay in the new country, and since there weren’t any government welfare programs at the time, they took whatever jobs they could. After all, that was always a Canadian tradition. Why did people come here? Opportunity! Often the newcomers saw opportunity where the locals didn’t. That’s why so many successful entrepreneurs can trace their origins to a Jewish or German or Italian or whatever forebear who got off the boat and grabbed whatever job they could, which often meant grabbing a shovel. My father started his life in Canada shoveling coal at Kloepfer Coal in Guelph. The Farm Manager’s grandfather, the guy who brought their clan to Canada, paid the rent in those bleak early years by digging ditches. That was the Canadian way, and it wasn’t just about the immigrants. Historically, Canadians went to where the jobs were; that’s why I’ve encountered Newfies galore in every one of the four provinces I’ve worked in, none of which were Newfoundland. Doing honest work to pay your bills was a Canadian value. It was viewed as a civic duty in my parents’ house to help other newcomers. The first refugee immigrants we sponsored were from Viet Nam. They took whatever jobs were there, worked their butts off, and the extended family are now productive and tax-paying Canadians. Canadian values circa 1975. The next batch were from Afghanistan. We sponsored a Muslim family. Both Mom and Dad had been university professors in Kabul before the US-created Taliban took the country back to the middle ages. Both worked in menial jobs here in Canada for years before getting traction in careers commensurate with their qualifications. Canadian values circa 1995. Over the past few years I’ve been peripherally involved with a refugee family the Canadian immigration system randomly plucked out of a refugee camp in the Middle East. Both parents and two of the kids are on disability pensions. Two other kids are in school and show great promise. The oldest son, physically and psychologically whole, and at age 25 the father of three children, has had difficulty finding his way. He tried fast food for a few months, but that didn’t agree with him. Then he took a shot at construction, but that wasn’t for him either. He hasn’t worked in months, but just came back from his pilgrimage to Mecca, leaving his pregnant wife and three toddlers to fend for themselves. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to find your true authentic self. Canadian values circa 2024.

Outrage as government asks civil servants to show up for work three times a week

They loved Fluffy when he was fluffing up the number of government employees by almost 40% since idiots like me voted him in back in 2015. Ya, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I fell for the “he’s a chip off the old block” narrative. Not that the “old block” didn’t have his flaws, but at least he put some value on retaining a wee sliver of sovereignty vis-a-vis our southern neighbor. Needless to say, I’ve had eight+ years of buyer’s remorse since then. One thing I never saw coming is what a craven crybaby Justin was, compared to Pierre. I’ll never forget Pierre staying in his seat at the 1968 St. Jean Baptiste parade in Montreal as a riot broke out all around him. Justin ran away under protection of his security detail when a protester threw a handful of parking lot gravel in his general direction. Maybe one of the things that fooled me was all the macho posturing Fluffy used to do. Remember the PR stunt boxing match with his good buddy Senator Richard Brazeau? Then when Brazeau got slammed with allegations of drug abuse and sexual harassment you never ever saw them together in a photo again. But it was fun while it lasted; Justin and Patrick posing shirtless for publicity photos. Very Putinesque! So apparently the civil service has expanded by about 100,000 fresh recruits since Team Fluffy took over in 2015. Since the onset of the Covid pandemic (remember that?) those folks have been working from home. Two and a half years ago Elon Musk informed his Tesla workforce that if they didn’t come back to the office, they’d have to pretend they were working for a different employer. Two and a half years later, the government of Canada is gently nudging its 350,000 employees in the same direction.

Leader of Loyal Opposition calls Trudeau a "Wacko." Crisis of democracy ensues

Why has the political process in many leading democracies devolved into crass spectacle? I believe there are a combination of reasons, but they all come down to the fact that our democracies no longer work for the vast majority of the populace. In the world’s benchmark democracy, it has long been my contention that the USSC officially declared the death of democracy with the 2010 Citizens United ruling. If you recall, that was where unlimited money into election campaigns was enshrined as a first amendment right, because corporations are people too, don’t ya know! So, democracy was dead, but, especially when you’re the leader of the democratic world, the show must go on! And has it ever! We no longer expect politicians to get anything done, because we know they can’t, unless their objectives coincide with the objectives of the billionaire donor class who call the shots. But dammit, we still gotta pretend! Otherwise, our entire claim to “leadership of the democratic world” goes down the shitter! That American process was reflected in the shit-show that unfolded in Ottawa this afternoon. The leader of the official opposition called PM Fluffy a “wacko!” Although Canada never had a Citizens United moment, we’ve achieved the same zen-of-democracy space, wherein we don’t actually seriously expect politicians to do anything, at least not in the sense of getting anything done. Look at the legacy accomplishments of Team Fluffy. He legalized weed. He gave us $10/day daycare. And finally, we have pharmacare! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Except this… if your pharmacare needs go beyond contraception and diabetes, you’re out of luck. If you thought “ten-dollar-a-day” daycare meant you’d get day care for $10/day, you’re out of luck too. And as for legalized weed, Justin turned the business over to his Bay Street pals who turned it into the biggest pump-and-dump since Bre-X Gold! But we still gotta pretend! That’s why our official government propaganda outlet will be hyperventilating over the breakdown of decorum in parliament for weeks!

Biden, Gaza, Trump, and the 2024 election

Running a presidential campaign in America, the beating heart of democracy worldwide, is a multi-billion dollar undertaking. Those riches are spread out amongst a multitude of consultants and thinktanks and assorted hustlers, grifters, and political opportunists of all stripes. If you recall the early days of the Biden administration, there was a whiff of euphoria in the air. They had the Jan 6 insurrection piñata to bash on the evening news every night. Court cases were piling up against Trump. A year into Biden’s term the Dem brain trust were convinced 2024 was already in the bag. Then, Ukraine. That’s where the DNC hit the first speed wobble. We would crush Russia with sanctions. The ruble would be rubble and the Russian people would rise up against their evil dictator. When those bold claims were made, the 2024 election was 33 months distant. It is now 6 months away and there’s no sign of Putin’s demise or Russia’s collapse. That’s a serious spanner in the works for the DNC strategists. And while the Ukraine dumpster fire rages, October 7 23 rolls around. Suddenly Sleepy Joe is embroiled in two headline-grabbing wars. That’s definitely not a good look heading into an election. Nobody in America, aside from the Ukrainian diaspora, much gives a shit about Ukraine, but holy thunderin’ Jesus, do they ever get their shorts in a twist over Israel! Joe does the only thing any US politician on the take from the Israel lobby (which is the vast majority of them) can do; profess America’s ironclad support for Israel no matter what. That probably seemed like a clever thing to say at the time. Just like in Ukraine, nobody seriously thought it would last more than a few weeks. Instead, we’re closing in on seven months and the optics are horrendous. It’s really hard to reference Israel’s right to defend itself to justify the murder of 14,000 Palestinian children, without coming across as an apologist for genocide, yet that is exactly what Team Biden has managed to do. The voters have noticed. There’s not a single Muslim vote anywhere for Biden in November. They see him as “genocide Joe” for that ironclad support for Israel. They were considered part of the Dem base until a few months ago. He’s also lost the progressive students over this, which is 90% of the youth vote, a reliable pillar of the Dem base until now. The antiwar movement on campuses across the country is just picking up steam, and could do a lot more damage very quickly unless Sleepy gets serious about yanking Bibi’s leash. In a little over two years, an election that seemed “in the bag,” now seems out of reach. But it’s not that simple. Where will the Biden votes go? Trump would be exponentially worse for the Palestinians. After all, he’s the guy who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and, in true Mafia Don style, offed the Muslim world’s folk hero, Iranian Revolutionary Guards General Soleimani. Will they go to RFK Jr? Not likely. He too is 100% in the tank for Israel. That leaves Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party candidate. She was just arrested at an anti-war sit-in at Washington University in St. Louis. Ironically, this Jewish woman nailed down the pro-Palestinian vote with that gesture. What we have is a polity fractured along multiple fault lines. Will RFK bleed more votes from Trump than Jill Stein bleeds from Biden? Easily possible. I say the odds are even that Dementia Joe’s got four more years. Ponder that.

The difference between porch and stoop

I spend a lot of time on the stoop, watching the world go by. Sometimes I write about it. Sometimes, when I’m writing about it, I call the stoop the “porch.” So what’s the difference between porch and stoop? I’ve not consulted Google on the matter, so I could well be wrong, because as we all know, Google is the final arbiter in questions of what is fact and what is not. In my view, there’s no difference whatsoever, other than this. If you’re sitting on the porch, you live in town. If you’re sitting on the stoop, you’re in the country. I’m in the country. We’ve been having way too much rain lately, but unless there’s a robust wind blowing out of the south south-west, I avoid most of it on the stoop. One of the distractions when I’m focused on frogs and buzzards is the traffic on the road between the stoop and the marsh. Not that there’s a lot of it by city standards. A busy Sunday afternoon might see a few dozen cars go by. There’s people driving by where you can hear their car stereo from a mile down the road. I just think, how deafening must that be in the car? Then again, I remember a time when a loud stereo was considered really cool. In fact, when I was department manager for automotive at the K-Mart in the Stone Road Mall, big-ass car stereos were a big seller. That was just around the time the supposed “muscle car craze” of the late sixties morphed into the van craze of the early seventies. Suddenly a 426 hemi was last decade’s news, and a six-cylinder Econoline van was the happening thing. You had to admit the van had some advantages. Trying the oinky-boinky in a Dart GTS with bucket seats, console, and floor shifter wasn’t exactly an erotic experience, and the back seat wasn’t much of an improvement if boinker or boinkee were more than four feet tall. That’s the era when car stereos hit the big time. I recall a hitchhiking trip from Washington to Minnesota back in the van era. Somewhere in North Dakota a couple of long-hairs gave me a lift. They had the 24” woofers blasting Jerry and company full volume. They eventually pulled over to focus on the hash pipe and a lively discussion about whether sound waves could be harnessed to propel a vehicle. Fast forward fifty years, I’m sitting on the stoop here at Falling Downs, and I can hear the thumping bass of an approaching Land Rover that comes by about the same time every day. I figure these are the same bougie twats who muddied the waters on the porch/stoop debate by introducing the backyard “deck.” That was always just a thing that let you set down your drink on a hard surface instead of on the lawn. I’m sitting on the stoop.

"Journalist of the Year" exposed as warmongering dimwit

By happy coincidence, yesterday’s Globe & Mail brought not only the news of Doug Saunders’ prestigious honour, but a fresh op-ed by the Journalist of the Year himself! “NATO’s spending targets are out of touch.” Finally! A long-awaited rebuke to those many American Empire Loyalists given multiple column-inches daily to shame Team Trudeau over our woefully inadequate expenditures on US military kit. Our allies are fast losing faith in us. We are no longer a serious player on the world stage. We must be more like Australia and commit tens of billions to a nuclear-powered submarine fleet to augment the tens of billions earmarked for surface combatants and the hundred or so billions destined for Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Those obsessions are reflected daily in the hysteria over Canada’s failure to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP spending target. Then I read his column. What a buzzkill. Sadly, Doug doesn’t dwell on the obvious - that a country that can’t afford to provide adequate health care and housing for its own citizens has no business pissing away such vast sums in return for a pat on the back from Uncle Sam. No, Doug is writing from a much deeper level of profundity. He has discovered that the very nature of war in the 21st century has changed. “Military spending is now primarily a matter of buying arms and munitions to supply other countries engaged in wars we will not join, rather than building up domestic forces for our own defence.” Got it? We don’t have to spend those hundreds of billions equipping the Canadian Armed Forces, because we face no threats and won’t join in any wars regardless. Instead, we need to spend the money so we can send the weapons to Ukraine and Israel, countries that are fighting very expensive wars on behalf of our shared values. Shared values? In Ukraine, Canada connived in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in 2014, and then participated gleefully in the US campaign of goading the newly-installed nationalist government towards conflict with Russia. In Israel, the values displayed in the slaughter of 14,000 children in six months speak for themselves. Enough with the “shared democratic values” horseshit. Our values, and our spending, must prioritize the needs of Canada’s citizens, not the fantasies of Empire propagandists writing in the pages of the Globe and Mail.

The Israel we knew is gone forever

Like most every kid who came up in a Christian home in the middle decades of the last century, I was raised to have a profound respect for the Jewish people and their long overdue homeland. With the creation of the state of Israel, a land without people for a people without land, biblical prophecies were coming true all over the place! The Six Day War cemented our bond. The hand of God alone permitted the Chosen People to prevail when their massed enemies unleashed a sneak attack on them! In ‘73 we doubled down. Back in the day, Israel was a destination for many idealistic young people who wanted to demonstrate solidarity by spending some time on a kibbutz. Today the idealistic young people prefer to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinians. What changed? One thing that changed is that my generation outgrew the Sunday School propaganda we had marinated in throughout our childhoods. We learned that the land without people actually had people after all. We learned those people had been displaced. The realization slowly dawned on us they remained displaced decades after the fact. The resistance of the displaced people against their displacers began to get serious attention by the late ‘60s. The “terrorism” of the PLO led, in the fullness of time, to the negotiation of the fabled “two-state solution.” The Oslo Accords were to be the first step on the way to that solution. In 1994 PM Yitzak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Accords. The following year, Rabin was murdered by a right-wing Jewish religious nutter. The two-state solution died with Yitzak Rabin. The people who killed him now steer the ship of state. There will be no peace. There will be no two-state solution. As progressive Israelis abandon ship, as they have been doing for years and will do with increasing urgency going forward, the land we once idealized will become the preserve of Jewish supremacists determined to cleanse the land of the “Children of Darkness.” Yes, they talk like that. And the greatest democracy in history, the ultimate redoubt of human rights, the City on a Hill shining freedom’s light into the darkness of creeping authoritarianism, the United States of America, with the most powerful military in the history of history, backs up Israel’s genocide in Gaza 100%.

The blessings of moving to Amish country

I wrote about the sub $200k residential listing in Teeswater the other day. A roof and a yard and so affordable almost anybody can buy it. What affordability crisis? What I neglected to mention was the many strategic benefits of moving to Mennonite country. The southern reaches of Grey and Bruce counties, most of Huron and a good part of Perth counties, plus most of Waterloo Region, have multiple old-order Amish and Mennonite communities. In trying times, these are the best neighbours you could ever wish for. When the day comes that one of our tyrannical authoritarian adversaries unleashes a cyber-attack that collapses the power grid, where do you want to be? In a 22nd floor condo in downtown Toronto? Or down the road from a guy who’s never been attached to the grid, whose children sell farm-fresh eggs, fresh-baked pies, vegetables, and farm-made summer sausage at the end of their lane (no Sunday sales, thank you very much)? I stopped in at one of those places, just outside Teeswater, because they had summer sausage on offer. The twelve year old kid asks me if I want a full one or a half. Gimme the big one, I said. The kid disappears in the back room and comes out with something that resembles a fence-post. We did some quick renegotiating. I settled for half of a quarter of the fence-post. My old pal Jim Lippert, may he rest in peace, used to be a auto-shop teacher at the same institution of learning where I was a welding teacher. We used to car-pool from Walkerton to the high school in Owen Sound. He lived in the country and had a side-gig raising chickens, that dropped enough eggs that he supplied several local restaurants. When the laying hens wore out, he’d swap them to an Amish family for a stack of fresh-baked pies. We’d drop off three dozen hens on the way to work, and pick up half-a-dozen pies on the way home. By then every one of those hens was cooked, dressed, and pickled. Like most old-order families, these folks also ran a home business in addition to farming their 100 acre spread. In this case, a sawmill. Lippert was close enough to these folks that he felt comfortable taking me around back to see the operation for myself. In one of my past lives I used to do maintenance welding at sawmills on Vancouver Island, so I know from sawmills. I’d never in my life seen anything like I saw in Zook’s back yard. The biggest draught horse you’ve ever seen in your life is walking around in circles all day, attached to a giant wheel that in turn drives innumerable shafts and pulleys, which in turn drive, among many other things, a saw blade that would be at home in any industrial West Coast sawmill. Zook’s workforce seems to be mostly barefoot teenage boys in straw hats. Zook’s operation ain’t gonna miss a beat when the grid goes down. I rest my case.

Affordable housing

Don’t you love those real estate ads that start with “ideal for investors and first-time buyers?” They’re admitting right off the tee that they’re pitting first-time buyers against somebody looking to expand their “portfolio.” Of course they are. They’re paid by the home-owner to get maximum price for their property. Whether it goes to a family starting out or some guy buying the 17th income property for their portfolio isn’t their concern. My dear father, who was in the business for about a hundred years, liked to say; “if somebody bought it, it was obviously affordable.” Hard to dispute that. And there’s a lot more affordable real estate out there than people realize. Problem is, there’s a huge cohort who have convinced themselves they need to be in the GTA. Alrighty then! You can settle for $2000/month for a basement studio, or look a little further afield for affordable housing. I keep an eye on the market around here, and there’s a habitable place on offer right now in Teeswater for under $200k. Definitely a starter, but a roof and 66x132 of real estate. That’s a mere two hour commute to the GTA! Invest a sliver of your accommodation savings in a Tesla twin-motor, and you can probably cut that commute time in half! And here’s a current listing in Owen Sound, two hours out of the GTA. A 19th century townhouse that would be a million in downtown Guelph and at least two million near downtown Toronto. In downtown Owen Sound, a short walk from the waterfront and the farmer’s market, you’re under 300k. Back in the day, people used to go to where the jobs were. That’s how my clan got to Canada, and that’s why we have Newfies clear across the land. Today, there seems to be an expectation that everyone is entitled to a cozy life wherever they please. Who’s going to break the news to the Gen Zs and the millennials that things don’t work that way?

Woke CBC snubs wheelchair athlete

I was curious how things went down at the Boston Marathon. Not that I’m a runner, but I know at least a dozen people who have at one time or another made it a bucket list thing to run the Boston Marathon. By and large I’m not crazy about those people; they mostly come off as snobbish and condescending towards non-runners. Anyway, it’s always interesting to see if maybe a Canadian made a good showing. I scan the men’s results. No Canucks in the top ten. I scan the women’s results. No Canucks in the top ten. I scan the wheelchair results. Holy heck, we got us a Canadian on the leaderboard! Josh Cassidy! A 39 year old wheelchair athlete who has competed for Canada in so many elite events I’ll just refer you to his Wikipedia page. This is a dude who won the wheelchair at the 2012 Boston Marathon! And the 2010 London Marathon! At 39 years old, he finishes in the top ten! That’s a story! So here’s the main page CBC story on the Boston Marathon. The top two Canadians in the women’s category used to run on back roads around Thunder Bay! They arrived at the finish line 15 minutes after the winner. Ok, but so what? Why is this the CBC’s Boston Marathon story? Doesn’t the 8th place in the wheelchair cat trump being 15 minutes behind in the women’s category? I am truly confused by CBC’s diversity policies. Granted, there apparently weren’t any trans or non-binary folks to write about, and all concerned are, unfortunately, white, but focusing on two able young women at the expense of a 39 year old dude in a wheelchair strikes me as both ableism and ageism. Explain yourself, Brody!

Mass graves discovered at Gaza hospital after retreat of "most moral army in the world"

Most moral army in the world? That pungent flower of PR supremacy is wilting fast. Most of us who follow these things are so relieved the face-off between Iran and Israel has been tamped down, at least for now, that we’ve almost forgotten Gaza. But the genocide continues. The death toll has passed 34,000. Gazans, especially the youngest and most vulnerable, are starving to death - if they live long enough. And let’s not be deluded about why they are starving. The food that would prevent their starvation rots in tractor-trailers that sit at the gates of Gaza, while Israel slow-walks aid via 1001 petty obstructions. Al Jazeera is the only major news source available in the West that reports out of Gaza without Israeli censorship. That’s why you can’t hope to be reliably informed if you limit yourself to BBC/CBC/CNN/MSNBC/Fox. The “mighty Wurlitzer” of American Empire propaganda ensures we see only the side of the story that is convenient to the Empire. The story we were treated to today was that Israel’s retaliation against Iran demonstrated Israel’s strategic dominance. The Iranians were cowed into standing down, and global nuclear war was averted. Whew! Here’s a more plausible scenario. While we were told the first Iranian direct attack on Israel in history was an abject failure, the reality seems to be somewhat different. We were told 99% of incoming was taken down by a combination of Israel and its allies. We now know some missiles got through the various defences and hit at least three strategic military targets. That was a wake-up call for at least some of the senior IDF guys who don’t pull their strategies out of 3,000 year old religious texts. That’s why Israel’s response was, in the words of Itmar Ben Givr, Minister of National Security and far-right religious nutter, “lame.” It’s comforting that their are some sane folks left at the top of the IDF. Whether they can prevent the Greatest Leader since Moses taking the country into the abyss remains to be seen.

Why we can't build sh#t

For well over two years, Canadian officials, from the PM to various senior ministers to the top guns in the Canadian Armed Forces, have been blowing smoke up Zelensky’s arse about standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes with whatever it takes. The pathetic reality is, aside from words of encouragement, we ain’t got nothin’ in quantities that will make a difference, and we can’t produce anything because we’ve spent the past fifty years destroying our own industrial capacity. Compare that to what we used to be capable of. During the WWII, Canada built over 4,000 naval vessels in five years, with a population of roughly a quarter of what we have now. Contrast that to our current shipbuilding prowess. In 2008 the federal government announced a plan to replace the Halifax-class frigates built in the ‘80s and ‘90’s. It’s now 2024 - WWII could have been fought three times over in that span! How many of the new ships have been built? Why, none, of course! And don’t get your hopes up about seeing any until at least the mid 2030s, more likely the 2040s - if we’re lucky. So what went wrong? There’s a fascinating essay on view at The Atlantic right now, exploring the demise of Boeing. The iconic American company has gone from the pinnacle of the global aviation industry to a laughing stock whose products have become know for dropping random parts from 30,000 feet, or worse. Jerry Useem pins the blame on how finance capital has gradually subsumed the economy. Old-school industrialists like Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Bill Boeing eventually were supplanted by a managerial class that put quarterly profits above any and all other considerations. That was part of a broader shift in societal attitudes. In the ‘50s the US had a top marginal tax rate on high earners of 90%. Seems outrageous by today’s standards, but there were jobs aplenty, people who worked in factories could afford to buy houses and cars, and rich people were still rich, although not by the obscene standards that prevail today. Manufacturers took pride in building stuff that worked well and lasted. In those days the guy who designed a washing machine that lasted twenty years was celebrated. Today the ethos is; only an idiot would build such a thing when you can push a new one on the consumer every five years. The old-timey “social contract” was jettisoned along the way. Employers were responsible only to their share-holders and had no obligations whatsoever to the communities they operated in. “Free trade” ramped up the disintegration. Why pay a worker in Guelph twenty bucks an hour when a peon in Guadalajara will do the job for twenty bucks a week? Along the way the working classes were bamboozled into believing our “dirty industrial jobs” would be replaced by some “new economy” that would “lift all boats,” as the experts assured us. We’re still waiting. War on unions became a fashionable thing. Thatcher took on the mine-workers. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. Peter Pocklington destroyed the union at Gainers. In every case the destroyers were celebrated in the pages of our leading media organs. Fuck the workers - they’ll drink themselves to death soon enough! Fast-forward to the here-and-now. Zelensky’s standing at the door with his begging bowl. The war we goaded him into has, at horrific costs in human lives, demonstrated the bankruptcy of our new and improved economic model. The Russians alone have greater industrial capacity than the combined West. The $90 billions congress just approved isn’t going to Ukraine; it’s going to the US military-industrial complex, there to be pissed away on $6k artillery shells the Russians produce for $600, and their North Korea allies for even less. That, in brief, is how we got here. The lesson is this; countries that deindustrialize would be wise to avoid industrial-scale warfare.

How to tell when we hit Peak Woke

You’ve probably seen this story. Dude in Ontario comes to the realization that he’s actually not a dude, but not a woman either. He’s non-binary! That’s not the first time somebody couldn’t make up their mind, but here’s why this story made the news. Ontario’s public health plan, OHIP, covers transition surgery. Whether your looking for a vaginoplasty or an addadictomy, OHIP’s (ie the taxpayer) got you covered. Sounds plenty accommodating to me, but get this; Dude wanted the vaginoplasty, but also wanted to keep his penis, just in case! OHIP balked. This was a bridge too far, even for the wokees at OHIP. OHIP does not fund “experimental” procedures. Hence the court action. I thought this story so out there I didn’t comment on it the time. It just begs for ridicule. The jokes are so obvious… double dipping… having your cake etc… having it both ways… No, best just to ignore it. Meanwhile, Dude is off in Texas having his dreams come true. Apparently OHIP will pay the tab after all. Human rights! Today I’m having lunch with a guy who survived prostate cancer. “My doctor at Sunnybrook, a top-shelf surgeon, wanted to try an innovative procedure. OHIP ruled it “experimental. I’m not a wealthy man, and I had to pay $23,000 out of my retirement funds because OHIP refused!” You can see why he’d be pissed off! If society is not yet at “peak woke,” you just gotta pray we’re getting really close.

Why I'd rather watch the birdfeeder than the budget speech

I used to care, but things have changed. Mostly what’s changed is once you’ve heard a certain number of these, like a half-century’s worth, you begin to discern a pattern; nothing ever turns out! And it’s never the fault of anyone in Ottawa! This year’s budget was focused big time on housing. In 2015, the year Team Fluffy was first elected, there was a best seller out on the Canadian housing crisis. It was a real and visible thing in 2015. The Liberals spent the next eight years turbo-charging the crisis with the most counterproductive policies imaginable. Idiocies abound. Conestoga College over a few years went from having a few hundred foreign students to 30,000. The temporary foreign worker program expanded from it’s origins of bringing in cheap labour for Canadian farmers, to bringing in cheap labour to staff Tim Hortons franchises. And for years, Team Trudeau maintained a pathway to paradise open at Roxham Road for the convenience of anyone from anywhere with the initiative to make it that far. All these people have to live somewhere! Until about six months ago, making that observation got you branded a racist xenophobe. When the political consultants and pollsters suddenly realized three-quarters of voters now met that definition, the Liberal Party took notice. Hence the sudden compassion for the millions of Canadians priced out of the housing market, largely by government policy! I whole-heartedly applaud any initiative to build affordable housing, but if the last fifty budget speeches are anything to go by, don’t get your hopes up.

Trading the 24/7 infotainment circus for the simple pleasure of watching buzzards cavort in the skies

I've been working on a gradual withdrawal from screen addiction. I haven't watched Al Jazeera for 48 hours straight, until tonight, so obviously I'm making some progress. Guess I would have made more if I'd refrained from clicking on it tonight, but, baby steps! Not that there wasn't plenty of juicy news over the weekend. You could have gone to Al Jazeera for the latest dead-babies-in-Gaza update, and of course they'd be all over the Iran strike on Israel. On US sites you were more likely to encounter speculation about what might transpire when Trump shows up at the first of his pending 91 criminal trials in New York on Monday. Over the past few days I've had more stoop time than screen time. The turkey buzzards, or vultures if you will, are either roosting in the barn or somewhere close by, because every day you can see at least a dozen playing in the skies overhead. A soaring sailing gliding buzzard is poetry in motion. Stoop time is infinitely more rewarding than screen time.

Why Canada urgently needs to break away from US dominance and chart its own course

Have you noticed the uptick in msm hysteria about Canada's deficit in military spending? To hear the top knobs at CBC and The Globe and Mail tell the tale, Canada has become the laughing stock of NATO, the Western Alliance, the Nations of Virtue, etc etc und so weiter, due to our failure to meet the diktat that 2% of GDP be spent on "defense." And in our half-assed way, we have tried to pacify the criticisms by promising untold billions in future spending on US war kit, from F-35s to submarines to long-range missiles. It's time to back away from the America-uber-alles agenda. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are showing the entire world the limits of American power. American power can't save Ukraine from Putin and it can't stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. America has been a bully for a long time, and its bluff is finally being called by a coalition of "adversaries" who have been fine-tuning their hypersonic missile technologies while the US military was focused on fine-tuning their pronoun protocols. In short, the American empire we slavishly support is in serious, obvious, and, absent an abrupt change of course, terminal decline, while the rest of the world is finally coming together to say 'NO THANKS.' We can continue to "stand with our allies" by mortgaging our grandchildrens' future for fighter jets and nuclear submarines, or we can invest in housing, education, and health care instead. It's not about values. The "values" of the Western bloc permit the torment of Julian Assange even as we profess to value free speech. Our values permit the Gaza genocide even as we proclaim our defence of human rights. As Canadians, let us collectively say no the siren call of "standing with our allies," and instead, say yes to building more public housing, and providing health care and clean water to communities in need. We have a choice. Commit billions to "standing with our allies," ie the American Empire. Or spend those billions meeting the needs of Canadians.

Canada needs to urgently reassess its geopolitical priorities

Have you noticed the uptick in msm hysteria about Canada's deficit in military spending? To hear the top knobs at CBC and The Globe and Mail tell the tale, Canada has become the laughing stock of NATO, the Western Alliance, the Nations of Virtue, etc etc und so weiter, due to our failure to meet the diktat that 2% of GDP be spent on "defense." And in our half-assed way, we have tried to pacify the criticisms by promising untold billions in future spending on US war kit, from F-35s to submarines to long-range missiles. It's time to back away from the America-uber-alles agenda. The wars in Ukraine and Israel are showing the entire world the limits of American power. American power can't save Ukraine from Putin and it can't stop the Israeli genocide in Gaza. America has been a bully for a long time, and its bluff is finally being called by a coaltion of "adversaries" who have been fine-tuning their hypersonic missile technologies while the US military was focused on fine-tuning their pronoun protocols. In short, the American empire we slavishly support is in serious, obvious, and, absent an abrupt change of course, terminal decline, while the rest of the world is finally coming together to say 'NO THANKS.' We can continue to "stand with our allies" by mortgaging our grandchildrens' future for fighter jets and nuclear submarines, or we can invest in housing, education, and health care instead. It's not about values. The "values" of the Western bloc permit the torment of Julian Assange even as we profess to value free speech. Our values permit the Gaza genocide even as we proclaim our defence of human rights. As Canadians, let us collectively say no the siren call of "standing with our allies," and instead, say yes to building more public housing, and providing health care and clean water to communities in need. We have a choice. Commit billions to "standing with our allies," ie the American Empire. Or spend those billions meeting the need of Canadians.

Canadian election interference inquiry exposes Trudeau's Communist sympathies

The present inquiry, which is well into its third month, is turning out to be one heck of a nothingburger. So far, what we know for sure is that China may have tried something. They may not have; we don’t know for sure, but… The tempest was triggered when disgruntled CSIS types leaked some internal documents to friends in the media. These showed that CSIS had strong confidence that China may have attempted to influence elections, and Justin Trudeau wasn’t showing sufficient enthusiasm for their hypothesis. After much hectoring from media pundits, the government announced an official inquiry, and here we are. Inquiry promoters no doubt saw an opportunity to use these undertakings as a platform to denigrate our adversaries. You know; those totalitarian states that want to subvert our democracy. To put it politely, much of what has been revealed has been thin gruel. MP Michael Chong was targeted in an intimidation campaign orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party because of his outspoken criticism of the Uyghur “genocide.” He was especially vulnerable because he still had family in Hong Kong. Turns out Chong didn’t know anything about the intimidation campaign till he read about it in the Globe and Mail. His family in Hong Kong didn’t have an inkling till they heard about it from him. In other words, if there was such a campaign, it was an epic fail! Then again, the CSIS level of confidence re China “may” have done something tells me they’re equally confident they may not have. As for that Uyghur genocide, the Uyghurs are one of the lobby groups that got official standing at the Inquiry. Like every other lobby group with standing, they have been funded generously by US and its allies over decades. This includes the Falun Gong, that ersatz Buddhist cult that hates homos and feminists but hates commies even more. That’s good enough for the Nations of Virtue! As long as you hate the commies most, you’re golden in our books! And the worst of it is they’ve given the PM they hate a golden opportunity to look like a responsible leader by pushing back against this imbecility.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just made Canada's housing crisis worse

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is more than the two roles we most often associate with; being Fluffy's brain, and being a Ukrainian Freedom Fighter. She's also our Finance Minister! Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today announced measures that would enable more first-time buyers to get into the housing market. Hmm… so demand will go up. And how are we doing on the supply side? Not so great... How's that for astute fiscal management! This measure, intended to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, can’t possibly do anything other than make it worse. Mind you, it’s bound to be a very modest increase in demand. Raising the RRSP limit on what you can withdraw for a down payment from $35k to $60k will impact an infinitesimal number of people. How many twenty of even thirty-somethings have $60k in RRSPS? Likewise, raising the limit on the housing savings account to $8k per year only helps people who can save that much in these hyper-expensive times. This is a PR exercise designed to create the illusion that Team Trudeau is “doing something” about the housing crisis. They are. They’re exacerbating it. What they should be doing is what government used to do from the fifties right into the nineties - build affordable rental housing. Governments own lots of land and control the approval process. There are no excuses.

How much honest reporting is too much?

I’m happy to report my Al Jazeera screen time has been whittled down to a half hour per day. I couldn’t take it anymore. Six months into the Gaza war, Israel’s invasion has claimed the lives of 14,000 children, and Al Jazeera has shown me every dead child at least twice. Talk about overkill! Al Jazeera is one of the very few networks that has had reporters on the ground in Gaza, working independently of IDF oversight, and that makes it a valuable source of information on what’s really going on. They must have some quid-pro-quo worked out with the Americans. You can be pro-Hamas and anti-Israel, so long as you are a reliable ally of the US Empire when covering Russia, China, and Iran. Al Jazeera adheres to the deal slavishly. Putin’s genocide in Ukraine. Israel’s genocide in Gaza. There must be some cognitive dissonance around the fact that the evil Putin, the Butcher of Bucha, has only managed to kill 600 Ukrainian children in two years of full-scale, unprovoked, illegal, brutal, genocidal war. For at least the first full year of the Ukraine war it was just about the only thing you saw at Al Jazeera. Gaza is all you see since October 7. The first has maybe 500,000 -600,000 casualties. The second, perhaps 125,000. There are ongoing wars in Africa that have casualties in the millions. We rarely hear much about them, not on Al Jazeera or anywhere else. In any event, I can’t do anything about any of those wars, other than voice my opposition on whatever platform is available to me. That’s why I’m scaling back my screen time. I feel much better after a walk in the woods and a few hours on the stoop watching the birds and listening to the frog choir singing all day long in the marsh across the way.

How to fix Canada's military recruitment crisis: temporary foreign workers!

Sooner or later the nabobs in Ottawa will have to face reality re their issues with CAF recruitment. As the drumbeat for more war ramps up, we Canadians are inundated every day with scary stories about how we really really have to spend many billions more on US military kit or else risk the distain of our allies. Spending money is easy. Getting new recruits to sign on, not so much. I could propose some suggestions for why this might be the case. Since Fluffy’s band of wokelings swept into power in 2015, there’s been a vendetta against senior CAF leadership. One after another, top guys who have devoted to the CAF their entire careers have seen their careers destroyed because of an inappropriate ass-grab during basic training 40 years ago. To be sure, I’m not for inappropriate ass-grabs. There’s no place for that anywhere. Any hint of sexual impropriety needs to be dealt with promptly and publicly. Dealing with it decades later doesn’t have any deterrence impact other than deterring potential officer candidates from pursuing a career with an organization that is all to happy to hang them out to dry if the winds of wokery demand it. In dealing with their recruitment crisis, the wokelings have decreed that the CAF dress code will now permit gender-confused recruits to pick their uniforms from either the male or female catalogue. That sounds great from a diversity and inclusion perspective, but seriously, how many gender-confused people are going to enlist in the CAF in the first place? I haven’t done any scientific research on the matter, but I’m guessing the number is very close to zero. So, regrettably, Canada has no options other than what we do to fill the jobs in all the other fields where Canadians don’t want to do the work. Fruit-picking in Ontario orchards. Harvesting vegetables in BC’s delta farmlands. Pouring coffee at Tim Hortons drive-throughs clear across the land… the list goes on and on and on. Obviously, it’s time to add “defending Canada” to the list of things Canadians don’t want to do.

Fear and loathing on the Porsche Canada website

Every Saturday morning the Farm Manager and I foray into town to breakfast at the European Bakery. We come out with a "Bruno box" of breakfast leftovers. I always feel a bit guilty because I know there's folks in town who wished they had the breakfast Bruno gets. We take the Bruno box out to the parking lot and let the big boy out of the car. What my dog just ate would keep a ravine dweller fed for three days. But what am I supposed to do? Leave the Bruno box at the edge of the ravine? But anyway, I don't want to make this into a political rant. Back to the story; while Bruno is chowing down, I notice there's a dog in the vehicle parked next to us. Looks like a Scottie, and he's sitting very well behaved on the console. Here's where it gets fucky. Behind him, there's a cat roaming back and forth across the back seat. A CAT!! How often do you see a cat free-ranging in a car? Like, NEVER?! Then I notice, holy shit, all the windows are shut tight. Who in their right mind leaves pets in a car with all the windows rolled up? Next thing I notice is I'm parked beside a Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid. I get it! You can keep the windows cranked shut but your magical EV still circulates fresh air to your pets! Wow! And here we've been keeping the windows cracked open when we leave Big-lips Bruno in the car. The Porsche will also keep the air cool, with the windows shut, even on the hot summer days. So I figure I should get me one of those. I go to the Porsche Canada website. Hmm... the base model starts at $112,000. All the utility of my Toyota without the stigma of affordable price! Plus, you can leave your pets in the car with the windows rolled up!

Spring has sprung at Falling Downs - the buzzards are back

Today I noticed buzzards overhead as I was out on my walk. About eight or so. We'd seen some last weekend when we were in Omemee (hometown of Neil Young, as I learned), but that's a little south of here. Towards evening we had a few hanging around the barn, where they've roosted in years past. I also, for the first time this year, hear frogs singing when I step out on the stoop for a breath of fresh air. And the hootin' and tootin' of the Sandhill Cranes has been going on for a few weeks now. The wee birds are coming back too. Some of them overwintered near our birdfeeders. That's not a good strategy because we are not reliable hosts in the winter... which is retarded when you think about it. Why would you fill your feeders religiously in summer, when there's plenty to eat, and neglect them in the winter? Because it's too friggin' cold to sit on the stoop watching the birds in winter, that's why!

NATO must send troops to Ukraine, or face catastrophic defeat

Here’s a stunning revelation from old-school American Empire Uber Alles warhawk Edward Luttwak. This is a dude who used to get his opinion bits into the NYT and the WSJ whenever he wanted. The fact you’re now reading him on UK alt news websites tells us he’s pissed off some powerful people. That totally boosts his credibility in my estimation. Enough with my two cents. Here’s Luttwak’s essay; It's time to put NATO troops in Ukraine. That sure would put Canada up a stump, eh? We can’t even hit recruitment numbers when we’re clearing snow and fighting forest fires. Who’s gonna sign up to get vaporized by a 2000lb Russian glide bomb for… Ukraine? These past few years have seen a great remake of the CAF. Instead of the old-timey shit like following orders and stuff, the Forces have been remade into a safe space where you are welcome to explore and develop your unique personality. The new approach has yet to goose recruitment, so Canada will once again be humiliated in front of our NATO allies. Well, better to be humiliated in front of our allies than be vaporized…

If NATO has kept the peace in Europe for 75 years, why is there war in Ukraine?

The title of Murray Brewster’s CBC story yesterday was confusing; NATO at 75: Is Canada losing its grip on the world's greatest military alliance? In what sense was NATO ever in Canada’s grip? Is this just another example of state media feeding the delusion that we’re a really big deal on the world stage? Here’s another head-scratcher from CBC, this one a quote from Chrystia Freeland; US 'unable to step up' on Ukraine aid, leaving Canada to fill the gap. Yup, who needs the Americans when Canada’s got your back? What rubbish! Any reasonable assessment about who’s who in NATO would conclude that it’s Uncle Sam who has NATO in his grip, and the other 31 members merely follow instructions issued from Washington. As for gap-filling, there’s substantially more of that coming from countries other than Canada while congress demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of the World’s Leading Democracy. The CBC interview with Freeland that CBC aired this morning reminded me yet again what an accomplished bullshitter the woman is. She takes the tone of a school marm getting pissy with a not-too-bright grade 2 class because she’s having to explain something for the third time. Mostly what she was explaining was there wouldn’t be any actual answers to the questions she was being asked. For most of the past two years we’ve been hearing over and over that Ukraine will prevail. Just a few more months and a few more billions. That’s now become a few years and a few more hundreds of billions. As we celebrate NATO’s 75 years of “keeping the peace in Europe,” the harsh reality is that NATO gravely miscalculated by expanding relentlessly eastward. Russia has been warning for at least 15 years that would lead to war, but we dismissed their concerns and kept pushing. And now we’re in the soup, so to speak. The “sanctions from hell” that were to reduce the ruble to rubble have hurt Europe much more than Russia, which is producing armaments far faster than what the combined industrial capacity of NATO is capable of. But since “we can’t allow Putin to win,” we have no option but to stay the course… another ten years and a few trillions, and victory will be ours!

Canada: the little country that can't

The rank incompetence of our leadership class is a terrifying wonder to behold. Apparently we want to be a global leader in EV technology. To that end, we’ve promised tens of billions in subsidies to various foreign companies to manufacture EV batteries in Canada. And yes, we do in fact have substantial critical mineral resources to build those batteries - in the ground! A lot of those mineral reserves are in the “Ring of Fire” zone in northern Ontario. An outfit called Noront Mining first proposed to develop the area in 2003. Step one is the construction of a road. Twenty-one years later there is no road. Recall that this is a country that was able build a coast to coast cross-country railway in about ten years… but that was a century and a half ago! That’s “progress” for you! And nobody’s more progressive than Team Trudeau. But don’t blame the Liberals. Ineptitude within our ruling elite is a bipartisan affair. Don’t get me started on the train wreck that is the Canadian Armed Forces. Forget about manufacturing our military needs here in Canada. The political leadership can’t even figure out how to buy equipment, never mind building it. That was evident in the Big Steve era, but it’s exponentially worse under PM Fluffy. I suspect a big part of the reason is because, since 2015, the politicians in charge have made Job 1 “changing the culture” of the CAF rather than ensuring we have a competent and well-equipped military. I could go on and on; the made-in Ottawa housing crisis, the years-long debacle of a non-functional federal payroll computer system, the $54 million Arrivecan ap that was budgeted at $80 thousand, the doctor shortage, nursing shortage, teacher shortage… Strategic ineptitude by our technocrats in Ottawa is over the moon! That why the funniest thing I read in my Globe all week was a Thursday op-ed by Canadian political heavyweights Allan Rock and Lloyd Axworthy; “Canada can help establish an international protective force in Gaza.” Here’s the money quote; “Even if we cannot contribute Canadian personnel (which we cannot), we can provide valuable help with planning, logistics, communications, and equipment.” Hilarious!

Is Trudeau finally getting something right on the housing file?

There’s been a flurry of Fluffy announcements of late about our housing crisis. The last one I heard was $15 billions to subsidize the mortgages of 30,000 rental apartment units over the next ten years. In 2015, Canadian author Hilliard MacBeth published a book called “When the Bubble Bursts; Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash.” A few months later Justin Trudeau became PM. The real estate market follows the laws of supply and demand. When more people want housing, there is upward pressure on price, whether you’re renting or buying. As Hilliard argues in his book, supply and demand were out of sync well before 2015. When PM Fluffy came in, he opened the floodgates for foreign students and foreign workers. In 2015, the average house price in Canada was about $400k. Today it’s over $700k. In 2015, the population of Canada was 35 million and change. We just passed 41 million. Along the way, the building industry has been plodding away at roughly 200,000 starts per year. Do the math. When you build 1.8 million units while increasing the population by 6 million, you’re completely destroying the demand/supply equation. That’s why the crash MacBeth predicted nine years ago has not happened yet. In conclusion, the Liberal’s goosing the supply side with incentives, while also restricting demand by reining in student and temp worker numbers, is clearly a step in the right direction. But we have a long, long way to go.

Gaza and R2P

I see where Bibirius of Judea, the Greatest Leader since Moses, has convinced his American sponsors that the impending invasion of Raffa will be the most humane genocide in history. And all the American Empire saints said “Amen.” What’s most remarkable here is the complete absence of protest from any of the “Nations of Virtue,” the USA/NATO/EU combine that presumes to be the conscience of the “world community.” After all, Israel is one of us. Shared values and all that shit. Not only that, but Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. That’s all it takes to silence the R2P crowd. The odious “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine was always about strong nations in Uncle Sam’s orbit beating up weak nations that showed signs of sovereignty. Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, to name a few. But when it comes to the genocide in Gaza, which you can follow almost livestream on Al Jazeera, nobody, but NOBODY, so much as whispers anything about the “responsibility to protect.” Why is that?

Breakfast in Bobcageon

I’m sitting in the sun outside the Full Cup Cafe. I’ve placed my order (three eggs easy-over, hash browns, bacon, gluten-free toast, and raspberry jam) and stepped out for a breath of fresh air. It’s ten o’clock on Sunday Morning. Easter Sunday. Not a lot of folks go to church anymore, but for those who do, Easter is a big deal. Oddly enough, it’s also the International Day of Trans Visibility. Those Christians just couldn’t resist scheduling Easter for the same day. What’s wrong with those people? There’s a church right across the street. The parking lot is full to overflowing. You can hear them singing hymns. But mostly what you hear is BB King on the speakers in front of the Full Cup Cafe. Inside, the place looks like a ‘50’s diner. I suspect that’s not because they hired a fancy-pants designer, but more likely they haven’t got around to a make-over since the ‘50’s. On one wall there’s a sign informing patrons that unattended children will be given an espresso and a kitten. The next wall has a BB King poster and an admonishment to purchase refreshing Coca-Cola. The far wall has the burger board (ten burgers available, including the Blues Burger and the Big Kahuna, which includes pineapple and ham). I’ll have to come back for lunch someday to take a crack at that Blues Burger. Bacon and blue cheese! What could go wrong? The last wall is the window wall where I’m sitting. There’s a pot shop next door, and there’s a couple of… elderly gentlemen? dudes my age? local fuck-ups?… huffing their brains out on their vapes right in front. The one guy must have hit the sweet spot, because he was pretty much doubled over and clinging to the railing to stay on his feet. They’re obviously smoking shit way more deadly than anything in my repertoire, and they’re getting it at a government approved pot shop! Then they got in their car and drove away. The crowd at the Full Cup seemed mostly working-class types. I suppose the not-so-rough folks were across the street on Easter Sunday. We ended up there only because we were heading home after a few days at Pigeon Lake. Don’t know why they call it that. We saw geese, ducks, loons, swans, a mourning dove, but no pigeons. Go figure! Right beside the burger board there’s a sign that reads TRUMP 2024 Take America Back. Yup. Right there on the wall in one of the most authentic diners I’ve seen in years… and in Canada!? What’s this world coming to? Breakfast was so great I left a five dollar tip. Breakfast for two, $45. Sitting in the sun with BB King? Priceless.

Ukraine losing large, so Globe & Mail tells Canadians to "empty the cupboard for Ukraine"

That’s the title of a full-page op-ed in the Globe today. Near the end of Justin Ling’s full-page opus, we find this nugget of clarity; “But one message I heard loud and clear in Ukraine, including from those who fought in this wretched war, is that they are much closer to losing this war than its allies seem to believe.” Indeed! In fact, by the time you get to that revelation, you’ve read about thirty paragraphs of pro-war propaganda exhorting us to mortgage the future of Canada to supply unlimited resources to Ukraine until they “win.” Win what? The end-times crowd wants to portray US/NATO’s war on Russia as some sort of battle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy. Ukraine is fighting Russia so our shared democratic values will prevail in the face of the totalitarian threat. That’s not fooling the rest of the world, aside from the usual lap-dog vassal states in the EU/NATO. Democracy? How does any sane person imagine the never-ending DC clown show makes anyone anywhere want to embrace American-style democracy? Human rights? Dust off your Abu Ghraib souvenir photo album to refresh your memory about the Free World’s (aka the American Empire) commitment to human rights. Free speech? Julian Assange. No, we’re not the good guys anymore…

It's always the end of the world somewhere

In Gaza and Kharkov they’re living through the end of the world right now. We know this because events in Israel and Ukraine are considered highly newsworthy. Truth is, there’s been assorted end-of-the-world scenarios playing out in Darfur, Congo, Somalia, and many other countries for far longer, yet we pay them no attention, unless we can turn tragedy into a Hollywood blockbuster, like Blackhawk Down. This raises a whole lot of questions about why we notice what we notice. Why do our media foreground some conflicts and bury others? But that’s a question for another day. Today I’d like to leave you some tips on how to survive when the sky is falling. Step one; turn off your screens. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it can get you closer. Step two; get a dog. Watching Spot romp at the dog park is way more edifying than watching Al Jazeera. Step three; get a hobby. That’ll keep you busy and your mind off whoever is being genocided this week. I’m a bit of a car guy from way back. Indeed, there is a 5.0 Mustang in the garage right now. It’s so old it qualifies for antique plates!

What to think about while trying not to think about genocide

Virtually the entire world is aware there is a genocide unfolding in Gaza. Mostly, we avert our eyes and change the subject. This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is all about living in the moment. Not just living “in” it, but literally living it into existence. You may need a toke and a pint to figure out that last part, but trust me, once you embrace mindfulness, you’re on the road to the Palace of Wisdom. Since in this particular moment I don’t live anywhere near the Middle East, mindfulness demands I focus on what’s real and right in front of me. That would be my faithful companion, Bruno the Italian mastiff. Truth be told, he’s not all that faithful. He’s only faithful when Mum’s not around to lure him away from me. As soon as she shows up, it’s see ya later alligator. But we do share twenty laps at the dog park every morning after we drop Mum off at work. That’s where Bruno meets his besties. I know the dogs at the dog park way better than I know anybody in Gaza. That’s my excuse for staying silent about a genocide in progress. What’s yours?

We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are losing our allies in the world - retired IDF General

It’s comforting to know not everyone in Israel has completely lost their minds. What’s not comforting is that it may be impossible for the people in charge to change course before things get exponentially worse. Major General Barik was commenting on a recent survey that spelled out what an all-out war with Hezbollah would look like. The conclusions do not bode well for Israel. The main concern is that Israel will be targeted by 2500 to 3000 missiles PER DAY! Iron Dome will be depleted within the first half hour. Unfortunately, IDF and Israeli intelligence sources estimate that Hezbollah can keep up that volume of missile attacks for at least six weeks. Hezbollah missiles are not to be confused with the homemade “rockets” Hamas randomly fires over the Gaza fence. We’re talking serious technology here, the best the “Axis of Resistance” and its allies can come up with. In fact, it is on par with the best US armaments, as the past two years of the Ukraine war have demonstrated. Netanyahu needs to declare victory over the “children of Amalek” and put an end to the ongoing genocide sooner rather than later. Later may be too late.

Canada's "Minister of Mental Health" assaults mental health of Jewish Canadians

Canada's Minister of Mental health, Ya'ara Saks, tagged along with FM Melanie Joly on a recent PR junket to Israel. While in the Holy Land, they made the obligatory side-trip to visit with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. Not only did they visit him, but they released a photo over official government channels of them holding hands with the antisemitic holocaust denier. This has inflicted serious mental anguish on many Jewish Canadians. Isn't Israel at war with the Palestinians even as these air-heads are holding hands with Mahmoud Abbas? Yes, but here's what we're forgetting; Abbas is Israel's man. Every friend of Israel owes Abbas a debt of gratitude for being Israel's faithful Kapo in the West Bank. So relax, Jewish Canadians; you're in good hands with Mahmoud Abbas.

Justin Trudeau's bimbo goes to Holy Land for photo-op; hilarity ensues!

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly went to Israel for no possible reason but to create some PR about how Canada is engaged with the world blah blah blah... Somebody should take Canada aside, give it a kick in the pants, and tell it to shut up and stay out of the way, instead of forever interjecting our virtue-signalling selves into other people's business. Joly was doing OK on her trip till she opened her mouth. I know it's hard to believe anyone can be this stupid, but she used the occassion to announce Canadian support for a program that assists Palestinian victims of sexual violence. The easily predictable (by anyone with a room-temperature IQ) furor hasn't let up. Canada has ditched Israel and sided with the terrorists! Melanie Joly's political career is toast.

Top US Jew demands regime change in Israel

What’s come over Chuck Schumer? Has he had a change of heart re: the Holy Land? Has the daily barrage of dead baby pics from Al Jazeera awakened his conscience? I doubt it. As Madeline Albright so aptly demonstrated with her remarks on dead Iraqi children, there’s no such thing as “too many” dead babies when it comes to furthering the interests of the American Empire. What’s at work here is the Americans are giving the world a bit of political theatre to create the illusion that they’re not the prime enabler and facilitator of the Gaza genocide. Israel is a favored member of the “Nations of Virtue” club led by Uncle Sam, and while dead babies in and of themselves are irrelevant, six months of non-stop slaughter is making it increasingly difficult to present “the West” as the good guys on the world stage. If the US government were serious, they’d pull their ambassador from Israel and halt all military and financial support. Instead, they’ve vetoed every ceasefire proposal at the UN. Yes, they’ve made numerous calls for Israel to permit more aid into Gaza and try harder to avoid killing civilians, but there are no consequences when Israel does the opposite. Ralph Nader published an essay a few days ago which argued convincingly that the true death toll in Gaza is over 200,000. That’s 10% of the population. Mass starvation is just ramping up. How many months will it take to eliminate the other 90%? That’s where things are going. Replacing Netanyahu with Gantz or someone else would make no difference. The public mood in Israel demands vengeance. Schumer’s ploy is a feeble attempt to create the appearance that America tried to prevent the Gaza genocide, when in reality it is Israel’s accomplice and enabler.

What's important?

Lately there’s been wall-to-wall coverage of the carnage in Ukraine and Gaza. Haiti is slowly coming into focus. But it’s always been the end of the world somewhere. There are several ongoing conflicts in Africa that blow even Gaza’s horrendous casualty counts out of the water. Congo. Sudan. Somalia… and they’ve been going on for decades without us ever obsessing over them like we do with Ukraine or Gaza. Some would say that’s because it’s easier for white middle-class audiences to identify with Ukrainian Christians and Israeli Jews than with Africans. No doubt there’s something to that, but my point is that if we can relegate some foreign conflicts to the back burner, we can leave all of them there. Which brings us to what’s important. As you know, I spend a lot of time on the stoop watching the world go by, and thinking about it. That “thinking about it” part allows me to pass off sloth and inertia as “mindfulness.” What I see in the sky on a clear night is an infinite array of stars from horizon to horizon. What I hear is nature; geese in the marsh, coyotes, and the wind in the trees. Last night I traded my perch on the porch for a room overlooking the 401 highway. All I saw was traffic. All I heard was traffic. No night sky and no nature. When you’re counting uncountable stars, you get a sense of your insignificance. When you’re counting uncountable traffic on the 401, you just want to stop counting and go home to your stoop. But we were on a mission. We’d missed our granddaughter's first birthday due to winter weather, and finally made up for it. On the way home we stopped in for a visit with family. Family. That’s what’s important.

If you don't need a license to open-carry, why should you need a license to drive a car

Somewhere in my news-junkie meanderings through the www interverse today I saw a story how South Carolina just became the 26th state to permit open-carry of small arms without a permit. Yup, it’s just like the good old days in the old west! Walk in the gun store, pick out your piece, and off you go! Personally, I’m not against gun laws. As a guy with two ex-wives I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing these words today if we didn’t have some restrictions on gun purchases. Like maybe background checks and a mandatory gun safety course, and a 30 day “cooling off” period, just in case you come to the realization that the gun was a bad idea in the first place. But that story got me thinking. CBC had an expose the other day about how driving schools are conniving to short-circuit competency requirements in the mandatory driver’s test. Here’s my advice to Premier Doug. Doug, my friend, ( I know we’re not friends but that’s what you always called me when you needed to flatten the curve again and again) you’ve made some good common-sense decisions. Like doing away with license plate stickers. Doug, my friend, think about how many public servants could be made redundant if you eliminated vehicle licensing altogether! And even more than that, Doug, why don’t we do away with driver licensing while we’re at it. Think of the savings, Doug! And now that our free press has revealed that rampant cheating has totally destroyed the integrity of the driver’s test, what’s the point! Do the right thing, Doug.

Kipling's hemi

This is a repost from 2011. Wow! It's been 13 years? Anyway, Kipling is still among us, but instead of a 66 hemi-Charger he's now piloting a 1964 Pontiac sedan with the original six-cylider and three on the tree. Shit happens. neumann's blog Tuesday, August 30, 2011 Kipling's Hemi In 2006 Dodge brought out its new Hemi Charger. For those of us who knew the original from forty years before, it was a sad day indeed. A four door Charger? Please, don't do that on my dear grandmother's grave. What were they thinking? Kipling had one of the originals. It was a brutish nasty piece of work. A silver '66 with the solid-lifter 426 hemi. Two four-barrels. 4:10's in the back. Unreal power. Terrorized the Highway 86 dragstrip that summer. The big-block Chevy guys would pull up beside you at the lights, think about it for a couple of seconds and suddenly remember they had a hair appointment and turn their signal light on. Kipling was an original himself, a nasty piece of work in his own way. Then he had one of those life-altering moments. Woke up after a three day party in the Canadian Club and found himself pissing blood. Decided on the spot to switch from rye and hops to the weed of wisdom. Best decision he ever made. Saved his life. Among the people who are into driving fast cars fast, there's always debate about how high you can rev a motor. Nobody really believes that "factory recommended redline" stuff. That's like an official speed limit; a helpful suggestion but everybody knows you can go faster. Oh, the Chevy small-blocks with hydraulic lifters can be "safely" wound to 6 grand, but with a solid cam you're "safely" good for 7500. Trouble is, you never really know for sure the upper limit of "safely" until it's too late. Kipling is one of those mechanical geniuses with an intuitive understanding about what makes things run and what makes them run faster. Everybody needs somebody like that in their life, at least if your life includes rebuilding engines, replacing clutches, restoring cars. I personally have a vague understanding of how stuff works, but I'm a bit of a lame-ass in the hands-on department. It's somewhat disconcerting to have a handful of screws and bolts and nuts left over after you've done a brake job on your car. That's why I always call on Kipling. Now a repair or a rebuild with Kipling always starts with a trip to the NAPA store. How about we fire up one of these before we go, he'll say. Alrighty, I'll say. So we do. Sit around and chat a bit. Maybe fire up another one. Then we're off to NAPA. By now we're getting a little hungry, so we stop at Tim Hortons, have a few donuts. I'm partial to the apple fritters myself. The fruit explosion muffins are damn tasty too, if you've never tried one. Then we sit around there for awhile, shoot the shit some more, and by God, by the time we hit the parts store the day is half over. By Kipling's calculations the solid lifter hemi should be good for 8,000 rpm, no matter what the factory manuals said. After all, the Nascar guys run them that hard for 500 miles at a time. So we get our shopping list and make it back to the shop, get the job organized. Well goddamn if we didn't forget the whatever! And this! And that! And the gasket sealer... Guess we gotta go back to the NAPA store. But lets fire up one of these first. Alrighty. So a job that should take an afternoon takes three weekends, but it's done, it's done right, and you had a good time doing it. Kipling pulls the hemi up behind the start line at the Highway 86 dragstrip and lets loose a burnout that wouldn't have been out of place in the Pro Stock finals at the Winternationals, ten seconds of screaming hemi at 8,000 rpm with just the nose of the Charger peeking out of a billowing tower of tire smoke a hundred feet high. Suddenly, an eerie silence. Turns out you couldn't "safely" twist the hemi that far after all.

Revisiting Maslow's hierarchy of needs

I was on Kijiji scoping out older class B motorhomes similar to one I owned 50 years ago. That's because when we were in town today, we saw a very well-kept Home & Park model in the parking lot at Food Basics, mid-80s vintage on a Dodge chassis, and I was wondering what something like that might go for today. There's a banner ad from Scotiabank I can't shake. It follows me to every class B I click on. It is inviting me to sign up for a Scotiabank Momentum Visa card. "Earn 2% cash back on your everyday needs..." it begins. 2% off on everyday needs! I'm in! Sign me up! Food, shelter, clothing... you can save 2% on all your basic needs! Here's the quote in full; "Earn 2% cash back on your everyday needs, from snacking to streaming." When I consider my everyday needs, neither snacking or streaming ever comes up. Makes me wonder what kind of idiots sign up for this credit card, and how they can possibly mistake snacking and streaming for human needs. Society is doomed.

Genocide Joe is murder on Gaza; Trump will be even worse

In December, CNN published an analysis of IDF use of 2000lb "bunker-buster" bombs in the first month of the war. They concluded that many hundreds had been used on densely populated urban centres in Gaza. The story notes “Israel has come under pressure internationally over the scale of the devastation in Gaza, with even staunch ally US President Joe Biden accusing Israel of “indiscriminate bombing” of the coastal strip.” That was months ago, and indiscriminate bombing continues daily. Joe Biden has obviously overcome whatever qualms he harbored about civilians being slaughtered with US supplied bombs, as his government has since shipped thousands more tons to keep the carnage going. All the while, Biden, Blinken, and perpetually heart-broken-for-the-lives-of-Gaza-children Linda Thomas-Greenfield veto every ceasefire proposal that comes before the UN Security Council. They can deliver bombs to the IDF, but delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza? No can do! Besides, our common values demand we support Israel regardless of what the antisemitic fuss-budgets at the ICJ may have to say about it. Meanwhile, sensing that whatever approval rating Biden still has is rapidly unravelling over the dual wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Donald Trump hasn’t said much other than neither of those wars would have happened if he were president. Really? I don’t recall any US efforts to enforce the Minsk agreements during Trump’s tenure, and without Minsk or something like it, Ukraine and Russia were inevitably heading for war. As for Israel, Trump did more to embolden the racist hard right factions than any US president ever. Recall the jubilation in 2018 when Jared Kushner led the US delegation celebrating the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem. 800 people partied at the embassy while, 40 miles away, IDF snipers did crowd control at the Gaza fence.

Are spider webs safe to eat?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not in the habit of eating spider webs. But more than a few times, I've been hiking the Bruce Trail, and walked face-first and mouth open through a spider web. Or when I attempt some off-roading on my mountain bike, gasping for breath on an extreme uphill with the pie-hole wide open when I ride right through a work of deadly art some anonymous spider spent hours creating. Could this be a possible health risk? I googled the matter to find out. Here's the first thing that came up; "Spiderweb is slathered in neurotoxins..." Thats from a website called "Science Alert." Guess I'm fucked for sure. Then again, it says "slathered," not "saturated." Maybe I still have a chance.

Why are all our "enemies" countries that use death penalty on crooked billionaires?

Do you ever get pissed off about how the rich and well-connected get away with the most brazen scams and egregious frauds and rarely pay any price whatsoever? Sure, the odd time some fringe guy like Bernie Madoff is made a token sacrifice, but overall, it’s business-as-usual for the billionaire class. Here’s a little factoid that may explain why our ruling class has designated these countries our “enemies,” and it’s got nothing to do with freedom and democracy. In China, Russia, and Iran, crooked billionaires face the death penalty. Here, they own our democracies.

Israel and USA: we are about to find out who is the dog and who is the tail

I’ve followed Israeli politics for decades, because, at least until Trump, they were pretty much the most entertaining politics to follow. Of course, when you’re the only democracy in the Middle East, it’s not hard to be the most entertaining, but by golly, is there ever a show going on right now. Former PM Benny Ganz is getting the red-carpet treatment in Washington as I type these words. This is after The Great Leader personally and publicly forbade Ganz from making the trip. Ooh-la-la! I love the smell of defiance in the morning! Do you see the game playing out here? Team Biden are fed up with Netanyahu’s defiance. In return for a veto on every UNSC cease-fire resolution, Team Biden has a few simple asks: -let more food in, because starving babies on Al Jazeera are gonna make Joe lose Michigan- stop killing women and children, or at least scale back till after the election- Pleasepleaseplease pretend the “two state solution” is still a thing. All the Americans got in return is a big fat “Fuck you, Joe" as Bibi cranked the the war-crimes dial to 11. Suddenly there’s a whole lot of defiance coming right back at Bibi. The Americans are hosting Bibi’s toughest political rival, who’s polling at 50% approval against Netanyahu’s 32%. And that’s after he caught a big jump post October 7. I smell regime change in the wind.

Explosive sex scandal devastates Canadian religious community

There’s a story been brewing down Guelph way ever since this nugget hit the local news. The scandal has since expanded to include the names of people I once partied with. The “meeting people” were a fundamentalist Christian group, some would say “cult,” that flourished in the Guelph area when I was coming up. A lot of the kids my age who grew up in “the way,” walking with Jesus etc., rebelled hard. They were the hardest drinking, hardest partying teens you’d ever want to meet. Over time, many of them made peace with “the way” and resumed the walk with the Lord they were destined for. But apparently there was more going on than we knew at the time. That’s all starting to come out now. “Be sure your sins will find you out.”

Russian hopes for freedom and democracy died with Navalny

That’s according to the Globe & Mail’s “Chief Internet Correspondent” Mark MacKinnon, writing in today’s paper. Alexei Navalny was never anywhere near as popular in Russia as Western media made him out to be. His popularity peaked during his run for the mayorship of Moscow in 2013, where he finished a distant second to the incumbent. With the exception of a brief period following his alleged poisoning in 2022, Navalny’s approval rating hovered in the range of 2-6%. Putin’s approval rating today is in the mid-80s. The idea that Putin feared losing to Navalny in a free and fair election is pure propagandistic piffle spread by anti-Putin media in the West. Navalny initially drew attention to himself as an outspoken critic of Muslim immigration to Russia. He compared Muslims to cockroaches and recommended their extermination. His rantings were those of a typical “white nationalist.” In Canada his anti-immigrant speeches would be considered hate crimes. Nevertheless, he caught the eye of important people in the West, and soon found himself at Yale University as a Yale World Fellow, there to mingle with other aspiring world leaders being groomed for service to the American Empire. It was after his return to Russia from Yale that we began to read his name regularly in Western media. “He was everything Putin was not,” according to MacKinnon, “he was tall, handsome, and comfortable addressing the crowds of ordinary Russians the diminutive Mr. Putin does not.” How a leader can maintain an 85% approval rating without the support of “ordinary Russians” is a mystery MacKinnon does not explore. Instead, he paints a picture of a Putin so afraid of Navalny that “his funeral was predictably ignored by Kremlin-controlled media.” Except it wasn’t. Here’s funeral coverage at Kremlin-controlled Russia Today. And here’s the story at TASS. That’s some mighty sloppy work from the Globe’s Senior Internet Correspondent! The only hopes that died with Navalny were the hopes of his Western backers that their boy would prove a viable alternative to Putin.

How Canadian PM Lyin' Brian Mulroney got rich fighting apartheid

Now that Lyin’ Brian has gone to his reward, we will be endlessly harangued about his principled stand against apartheid in South Africa. And he was indeed a high-profile anti-apartheid activist. When Brian came to power, the South African Krugerrand was by far the world’s most popular investment-grade gold coin. It was one of the most important exports for the SA economy. A few years before Brian ascended the throne, Canada had introduced it’s own investment-grade gold coin, the gold maple leaf coin. It got off to a slow start. It would be a tough uphill slog to capture market share from the Krugerrand. Enter the humble electrician’s son from Baie Comeau, and his principled stand against apartheid! Mulroney was a leading figure in the drive to impose sanctions against the South African economy, including, of course, international sales of the Krugerrand. Sales of Canada’s gold Maple Leaf took off! Oddly enough, after Brian left office, he soon found himself on the board of directors of Barrick Gold, Canada’s premier gold producer! Brian advanced through the corporate governance ranks to become Chair of the Board of Directors, and if I’m not mistaken, remained a “special advisor” to the board until his passing. Isn’t it great to see such a principled politician enjoy a lucrative payday! Mind you, there were also those embarrassing ethical lapses around that Karl-Heinz chappie and his cash-stuffed envelopes... but let's not bring that up now... RIP Mr Mulroney.

Lyin' Brian Mulroney gifted Canada's working class "free trade," and my butt still hurts

The sales pitch went something like this; Yankee money and know-how, Mexican labour, and Canadian resources would invevitably coalesce into a world-beating economic bloc, bringing oodles of prosperity to all of us! Yes indeedy! Sure, we'd lose a few jobs to Mexico, due to their tendency to work for $20 per week instead of our $20 per hour, but experts assured us we'd only lose the shit jobs like manufacturing cars and stuff. Really good high-tech jobs would replace them, because Mexicans are too stupid to do them. Lyin' Brian didn't have to spell out the too-stupid part. It was implied. The only people who never bought it were the shop floor workees in Canadian factories. We knew from the get-go the Mexicans could do anything we could do. They just did it way cheaper. Free trade was the beginning of the end for Canada's working class. Thanks Brian!

Dementia Joe talks imaginary ceasefire while licking ice-cream cone

This is where we’re at in the world of international diplomacy, circa 2024. The Leader of the Free World is taking a moment from his busy schedule of avoiding issues, to visit an ice-cream shop. Some nosey reporter types mistook the ice-cream stop for a press stop and began hurling questions at the Leader of the Free World. Between licks on his cone, the President revealed that he expects a ceasefire in a week. Boy, does Netanyahu have a surprise for him!

Trudeau makes surprise visit to Kyiv to blow more smoke up Zelensky's ass

PM Fluffy made a surprise visit to Ukraine to mark the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale, brutal, unprovoked, barbaric, and full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Did we mention it was a full-scale invasion? As we all know, Putin grew increasingly deranged at the prospect of seeing a thriving liberal democracy flowering next door. He knew once his long-suffering people noticed the pluralist paradise flourishing in the former Soviet satellite state, his days would be numbered. The Russian people would rise up and demand human rights and Pride parades just like they have in Ukraine. Luckily for the Democratic World, the plucky Ukrainians have been putting the run to the Putinist hordes (remember - it was a full-scale invasion) ever since, thanks largely to Canada and our allies providing hundreds of billions in money and materiel, or in Canada's case, billions in promises. Canada has been more than a little light in the materiel department since long before the full-scale invasion, but we do what we can to show our allies that we're a reliable partner in the global struggle between Democracy(good guys) and Authoritarianism(bad guys). To that end, Fluffy and Zelly signed a ten year mutual defence agreement at the weekend. The Canadian side promised aid worth 3 billions in the first year, but did not specify if that was in Canadian dollars or Ukrainian hryvnia. No amounts were committed beyond the first year, just in case. And due to the prudent nature of the Canadian side, our assistance comes as a loan, not a donation. Ukraine should have no trouble repaying once Putin is defeated. Once again Canada proves it has what it takes; a leader who will make empty promises for as long as it takes, and isn't afraid to call Putin names!

Canada "investigating possibility" of aid airdrop to starving Gaza

That’s supposed to be a good news story at CBC. It is intended to reassure readers that Canada is not ignoring the humanitarian catastrophe that has been unfolding in Gaza for almost five months. Alas, we Canadians know there is a vast gulf between our government “investigating possibilities” and actually doing something. After investigating possibilities (2-3 months), a committee will be struck to commence a feasibility study (6-12 months). Then another committee of experts will convene to determine the most viable option(s). No doubt this will require hearings (another 3-6 months,) but before that there will be several months of discussions over whether the hearings should be in camera or public. Following the hearings, our preferred course of action must be sent to parliament for approval. That could easily take another month or more, depending on what other urgent matters are before parliament at that time. Finally, when we get all our humanitarian ducks in a row, possibly in two years time, comes the tough part; getting Israel’s permission to feed the people they are deliberately starving. It’s safe to say anyone in Gaza waiting for Canada’s help will be long dead before it arrives.

Royal Canadian Navy drowns in morass of bureaucratic inertia - zero ships delivered after 13 years

If you follow the comings and goings of our utterly inept and incompetent political class, you’ll be well acquainted with our brand-spankin’ new fleet of warships that have been “in the pipeline” for quite some time now… oh wait… doesn’t seem to be any sign of those ships. In fact, other than Irving wangling another half billion out of the feds recently for “shipyard improvements,” we don’t hear much about the pipeline, let alone the ships. Here’s a story from the archives. Saturday, October 29, 2011 Canada commits 25 billion for new combat ships Minister of National Deference Peter MacKay announced last week that the Irving shipyard in Halifax would be contracted to build the next generation of warships for Canada's navy. As Minister of Deference Mr. Mackay sees his job as being mainly about deferring to the big dogs in Brussels and Washington, and no doubt the big dogs will be pleased with this announcement. After all, it seals our commitment to being able to punch above our weight etc. whenever some dictator in some shithole foreign country who we've supported for forty years gets too big for his britches. And you know how we Canadians like to punch above our weight. It's almost an obsession. But politics aside, it's good news for the lads in the shipyard. I worked on the last generation of warships, at the Irving shipyard in Saint John, and I have to say it's a good gig, in spite of my pacifist leanings. It's good news for the Irvings too. As big-time capitalists go the Irvings are pretty cool. James Irving was the big gun at the Saint John yard back in the day. Used to come in unannounced at the oddest of hours just to see how things were going. One night he shows up on our late shift. One of the boys who'd had a few was a bit irate over having had to install the same set of bulkhead doors three times because the specs kept changing. Got right in Irving's face and gave him a whiskey laced piece of his mind. I thought, well, Buddy's toast. Not so. James Irving was able to overlook the booze-breath because Buddy had some serious concerns about efficiency. That made him Irving's kind of guy. If I was just a bit younger I'd be tempted to head east again.

Lying Jens Stoltenberg claims Ukraine getting F-16s "as early as possible"

Really? We’re at the two year anniversary of this war. The country formerly known as Ukraine is bleeding out in front of the eyes of anyone who cares to look. Mind you, looking ain’t easy if you rely on the typical Western propaganda cartel: CBC/CNN/BBC/Fox, for your news. They're still predicting a Ukrainian victory, if such delusion can be imagined. While I’m no fan of the Bandera-oriented factions put in power by the Washington-organized coup in 2014, I find it outrageous how they’ve been goaded into war with Russia by their American masters, and then left to twist in the wind. What happened to “whatever it takes for as long as it takes?” Did America and her NATO vassals not have what it takes? Or did they deliberately hold back what it takes? The F-16s are a case in point. I recall Ukrainians demonstrating in the streets during the first days of the war, with placards demanding “close the skies!” Two years and half a million dead Ukrainians later, Jens reassures Ukraine we’re working on it… If I were a Ukrainian I’d be pissed off at more than Putin.

Genocide shlemocide; how Bibi owns Biden

It’s dark days for the doomed American Empire. Uncle Sam is in a two-front hot war intended to show the world that the USA remains the “indispensable nation,” “city on the hill,” “mightiest military in history,” and so forth. In Ukraine, the combined resources of USA/NATO/EU have failed to secure victory. In fact, Uncle Sam’s team is being humiliated. “Whatever it takes for as long as it takes” turned out to be nothing more than a PR slogan. What’s even more humiliating is watching the most powerful man on earth, the Leader of the Free World, Joe Biden, grovel before Bibirius of Judea, Greatest Leader since Moses, pleading for a brief pause in the genocide in Gaza. Biden’s got an election to win. This Gaza thing has already cost the Dems the Arab vote, a good slice of the black vote, and the youth vote. Please, Netanyahu, tone it down! Get your snipers to stop shooting children for a few days… please! Watch Al Jazeera news from inside Gaza for an update on how Israel has responded to Biden’s entreaties. Genocide shlemocide… go fuck yourself, Joe! And yet Uncle Sam keeps shoveling money and bombs to Israel to sustain the carnage. What message does that give to the rest of the world?

Let's help the homeless by sending them on Caribbean vacations

I stepped out on the stoop for a breath of fresh air. We're in the second day of a fierce blizzard. My thoughts turned to the plight of the homeless, or if you prefer, those unhoused, housing deficient, or living in a flimsy tent in a storm like this. The unhoused keep a lot of people busy. Cops. Social workers. Paramedics. City employees who clean up after them. And don't forget all the academics interogating the manifold intersections of race, class, and gender that can be studied in your typical homeless encampment. On any given day there are dozens of such studies underway, and every research project got grant money from somewhere. Obviously, there's a lot of investment in the unhoused. Too bad none of it goes into building housing! I came back inside and snuggled up with Bruno in front of the fire. I did a little research of my own. Did you know you can get an all-in caribbean holiday for under a thousand bucks? Our town has several dozen hard-core unhoused. If you add up all those expenses above, I'm guessing those folks eat up half a million of the town budget, easy. So here's the plan. We round up that hard-core crowd, preferably during a blizzard, and hand them their tickets to a warm caribbean resort! And wtf does a weeklong holiday have to do with alleviating homelessness, you ask? Think it through. You sent them south in the dead of winter. One week is long enough for them to realize they're in a place where living year-round in a tent is not only feasible and sustainable, it's considered a middle-class lifestyle. They ain't never coming back!

Democracy icon Alexey Navalny compared Muslims to cockroaches and recommended their extermination

There’s a ludicrous degree of Navalny overkill in the news today. Apparently now that he’s gone, there is no more hope whatsoever for democracy in Russia. Canadian politicians across the spectrum are outdoing one another to sing his praises, and more importantly, to blame Putin for his death. This is highly ironic, given Navalny’s roots as an ultra-nationalist Russian who has compared Muslims to cockroaches and suggested they be exterminated. Needless to say, that sort of commentary would be instant career suicide for any politician in Canada. And not just politicians. But hey, the man hates Putin, and that washes away a lot of sins in the eyes of our virtuous democracy-loving political class. Here’s another angle; maybe that just proves there’s more freedom of speech in Russia than in Canada!

The Heart of Darkness

As the astute reader will have realized long ago, the Farm Manager manages much more than the farm around here. She micro-manages virtually every aspect of my existence. Not that I'm complaining. In fact, I've never been happier! And sometimes her managing manages to birth a great concept for a business venture. Hence the Hearts of Darkness Chocolate Company. That's a concept that has "home run" written all over it. It'll join our stable of start-ups that include the Stinkfoot Cheese Company and the BigAss Chair Company. Yessirree, this commie is embracing capitalism big time! It all started with a story she read me about the health benefits of dark chocolate. Due to considerations of age and lifestyle I'm a proud member of that cohort that can be reasonably expected to drop dead at any moment from a catastrophic cardiac event. Ya, who knows, this could be the last blog post I ever wr... aarrrgggghhh.............. oh shit I can't breathe... call 911!.. Just kidding. Anyway, she says guys my age can benefit big time from regular doses of dark chocolate. I don't have a problem with that. In fact I don't mind dark chocolate one bit. All things considered I'm more partial to white chocolate, but WTF, I like life, and I've never heard anything about the power of white chocolate stretching out my time in this mortal coil. The problem, I think, is getting guys my age into the typical chocolates emporium to buy their life-saving dark chocolates. While we occasionally darken the doorways of such establishments when we have the good fortune of remembering a birthday or an anniversary or the fact that Feb 14 is more than just another day in February, we're otherwise disinclined to frequent these places. It's just not that cool, and what guy goes to a fancy chocolate shop to buy himself chocolates? That's where a bit of marketing savvy comes in, and after "Stinkfoot" and "BigAss" you'll have to admit that I'm up there with the heavy hitters of marketing. Welding was absolutely the wrong career choice for me, a decision that should haunt my grade 9 guidance counsellor to this day. So Heart of Darkness Chocolate Company is going to partner up with the Snap-On folks. Yup, you can buy your life-saving dark chocolates right off the Snap-On truck when Buddy rolls round to sell you your next $150 screwdriver. We're thinking of a NASCAR sponsorship too, especially if we can convince Mark Martin to hang around another year or two. Our people are talking to his people even as I write this. I think we got us a winner! Look out Mill Creek!