Miracle in Toronto

That Delta plane crash in Toronto has been the top story on Canadian news networks for days now. But what really gets the Canadians revved is when US networks cover anything that happens in Canada. A lot of Canadians have a bit of an inferiority complex vis-a-vis our big neighbour. We disguise that by pretending to be morally superior. Whereas Americans are xenophobic racists who object to illegal migration, Canadians built a welcome centre for illegals on the famous Roxham Road on the New York-Quebec border. And if that isn’t virtuous enough in itself, they actually closed it down during Covid, only to re-open it when the virus scare, if not the virus, was in retreat. We’ve always been somewhat holier than thou with the neighbours, and I’ve always considered that a spot of compensation for that underlying inferiority complex. That’s why it’s so awesome to see the outpouring of national pride these past few days. On our twenty minute drive into town, there’s a couple of dozen Canadian flags flying in front of folks who never had them before, often not even on Canada Day. You can thank Trump for making Canadian nationalism great again! But I digress. The world’s attention briefly falls on Toronto, and Torontonians are basking in the attention, because it’s affirmation of Toronto’s status as a “World Class City.” There’s no city in the world more desperate to be considered “World Class” than Toronto. While the US and international news outfits have long since pulled their satellite trucks back to the the states, CBC is still opening every TV news show with a picture of a commuter jet lying upside-down on the tarmac at Canada’s busiest airport. For at least the past 36 hours, that iconic photo has been accompanied by a soundtrack of experts trying to convince you air travel is perfectly safe! Maybe… maybe not so much. The fact that all aboard survived that crash strikes me as a divine miracle rather than an argument for the safety of air travel.

Is NATO over?

That wasn’t a mere turd JD Vance dropped in the punchbowl in Munich last week; that was a full-on double-barreled shit. So, is NATO over? It should have been over 35 years ago, obviously, but keeping it chugging along served a useful purpose for the American Empire. It made America’s adventures in Yugoslavia and Libya look like there was more behind them than America’s lust for destruction. It also kept the money flowing to America’s military contractors. As anyone even peripherally acquainted with the facts of the Ukraine war will know, without Washington’s policy of NATO expansion, there would have been no war. Lucky for Uncle Sam, NATO has long absorbed the Baltic chihuahua’s, whose ever-shrinking populations haven’t diluted their historical Russophobia. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, with a combined population less than the greater Toronto area, and no military capabilities to speak of, are the loudest voices for war with Russia in all of NATO. So it’s no surprise they were blindsided when Vance broke the news Washington doesn’t love them anymore. It’s quite a slap in the face to the American Empire Loyalists in the heights of media and academia in Canada. Until very recently, we were treated to multiple Globe and Mail opinion writers exhorting us almost daily that we need to spend gazillions of dollars on fighter jets and submarines so we can “stand with our allies.” Now that we understand how Uncle Sam really feels about us, ie, 51st state if we’re lucky, we’ve suddenly realized all those sacrifices to the national treasury we’ve been demanding, would be made so we can “stand with” Latvia and Lithuania? And we haven’t even got to the best part; Trump and Putin are now solving the Ukraine war without consulting the EU, NATO, or even Ukraine. This absolutely, positively, has to be the last nail in NATO’s coffin. But yet… Just how frightened are the vassals now that Uncle Sam has dumped his Ukraine war in their laps? Are they scared enough to cough up 5% of GDP for US weaponry? Are the scared enough to up that to 10% if the Empire demands it? I have a hunch Trump-Putin negotiations may not end to America’s liking. Uncle Sam could well need a posse again in the near future. If so, look for a lot of kissy-face hypocrisy as the Big Dog and the poodles make up.

Uncle Sam: destroyer of nations

The trail of destruction goes back decades. Uncle Sam has wrought his magic from the Korean peninsula to the Caribbean to the Middle East. The carnage continues. American senator and perennial War Pig Lindsey Graham was in Munich this week, spreading the word about freedom and democracy, and in a sit-down with Ukraine’s Zelensky, thanked him for sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians so that no American’s had to die to bleed Russia. Zelensky sat there like a scared rabbit and took that abuse. Left to its own devices, Ukraine would never have provoked a war with Russia. But no, we could not resist. The US spent billions subverting democracy in Ukraine. John McCain and Vicky Nuland handed out sweets in the Maidan! Once our ultra-nationalist pets were in place, we promised them the moon! NATO membership! EU membership! Everything it takes for as long as it takes to put Putin in the dustbin of history once and for all! Three years and a million dead Ukrainians later, Uncle Sam is harumphing about Zelensky’s lack of appreciation for everything we’ve done for him. Ukraine isn’t the only country being destroyed by Uncle Sam’s war on Russia. Germany, the industrial heartland of Europe ever since WWII, is rapidly de-industrializing. Why? Because some unknown entity destroyed the Nordstream pipeline! Now Germany relies on LNG shipments from America that cost four times what they used to pay for Russian gas. But, according to geopolitical geniuses like Sholtz and Baerbock, that’s actually a blow for freedom and democracy! And so it goes… The clearly ridiculous becomes an article of faith, and as Lindsey Graham reminds us, it’s all worth it to save American lives while we defeat tyranny and preserve freedom in the world.

Rage and redemption

When Bert Tallman came home from residential school as a young man of 15 or 16, he was filled with rage, and lusting for revenge. That’s perfectly understandable. Rage is a powerful thing. It becomes all-consuming. You gotta get your revenge or die trying. You try to beat those feelings back with booze and drugs, and things get worse. In the CBC interview, Bert talks about a wise auntie who helped guide him through this fraught time. You want revenge. You can go to jail. You can die. How does this help you? While Bert didn’t come right out and say auntie studied the Bible, the story inferred that her influence took him to a place where he finds peace and strength in studying the Bible. The reason this triggers cognitive dissonance in so many, is because the Bible has been befouled by false prophets for so long that we forget there’s a lot of really good stuff in there. When you see public figures like Mike Pompeo and Mike Huckabee claiming to be “devout Christians,” and then look at their works, well, I don’t think the guy who delivered the Sermon on the Mount would approve of those gentlemen. We’ve come to associate Christianity with colonialism and the slave trade, while forgetting that Bible-centred faith communities were instrumental in ending both. Every other civil rights leader in mid-20th century America was a minister in the Christian church! Kids in residential schools suffered abuse at the hands of emissaries of one Christian church or another. Choir boys in Catholic countries around the world have been abused by Christian priests. None of that is endorsed in the Bible. That’s why Bert and millions of others continue to find peace and strength in the teachings of the Bible.

Rossana Dearchild, CBC, Bert Tallman, and my Dad

I had occasion to spend five hours driving to the city and back the other day. I tend to hear more CBC radio when I’m driving than I normally would. CBC has its challenges, and I’m generally not a fan, but sometimes I hear stuff that almost convinces me that the taxpayer’s annual billion dollar subsidy to the Corpse is money well spent. The occasion that forced me behind the wheel was my sense of moral duty to visit my dear father in his new long-term care digs. I don’t think he cares if I show up, but I feel that moral obligation regardless. He moved in a couple weeks ago, so I’m feeling the guilt. I had the trip cued up twice, and both times wild winter weather interrupted my plans, so it felt good to finally be on the road. Somewhere around Mount Forest, Rosanna Dearchild’s program came on. Dearchild has had a presence on CBC for awhile. She’s a no-nonsense advocate for indigenous rights, and while I respect her, I’m not a regular listener. Most of this episode was built around Bert Tallman, a Blackfoot artisan who crafted jewelry, carvings, sculptures, and such. Bert pretty much spilled his life story. From his early years with his grandparents, who still lived the traditional ways, through the trauma of “the scoop” and the residential school experience. He came through all that and is now somewhat of an elder statesman, not to mention an accomplished artist. One of the things I appreciate most about First Nations culture is how it respects the elders in the community. The older I get, the more I appreciate it. My father was a classic immigrant success story. He got off the boat at Pier 21 in 1956. His first job was shoveling coal. In 1972 he was a real estate broker tooling around in a Cadillac, and successful enough to take his family, which by now totaled five children, on a grand tour of old Europe. He had respect. There wasn’t a lawyer in town who wouldn’t return his calls, in person and promptly. He doesn’t get much respect anymore. What hit me about the Bert Tallman story was when he brought up, very matter-of-factly, that he studies the Bible. My first thought was, how did the Wokies at CBC let that slip through? The second was, how did poor Bert internalize the religion of his tormentor? I was sufficiently perplexed that when I got home, I went on CBC to give the interview another listen. Here’s what Bert teaches me. Although there are people in this world who take pleasure in cruelty, the Creator made every one of us capable of kindness. That’s the Sermon on the Mount in a nutshell. Be kind. I got to Dad’s new pad just as he was coming back, slowly and wobbly, from lunch, with his walker in front of him, and my mother at his side. He shook my hand and gave me a “good to see you.” Then he fell asleep.

Cartoon Democracy

Trump 2.0 is taking the world by storm, at least the Western world. The Rooskies and the Chinese commies, on the other hand, don’t seem to be overly concerned. Today I saw a Musk-Trump PR stunt obviously intended as push-back against the massive outrage ignited by the over-reach by Trump 2.0 in shutting down half the government in the name of ‘fighting corruption.’ It should, in a normal democratic society, be seen as a red flag when the Deep State operative Elon Musk, who has never been elected to anything, is in charge of rooting out corruption in America’s democracy. That in itself would be enough to chew on, but what really fucked me up was seeing Musk’s mini-me, his spawn “X,” standing beside him while dad, the richest man in the world, delivered a lecture on transparency in government! How is that not hilarious? If Elon’s kids were even half as smart as their dear daddy, you’d think the little shit would have at least justified his presence in this scene by translating his daddy’s speech into American Sign Language. But no… he just stood there. The 2006 film “Idiocracy,” for all it’s prescient insights, never imagined such a scene. We’re well beyond Idiocracy!

Billionaires have too much money

It’s no secret that money corrupts politics, and nowhere does it corrupt politics more openly and brazenly than in that shining city on a hill in the cradle of democracy, Washington. That’s been the case for decades, if not centuries, but this latest election cycle blew the needle off the political shit-o-meter. American democracy has made Musk the most powerful man in America, and all it cost him was a mere $300 millions from his couch cushion stash. Rich people weren’t a danger to society back when they bought racehorses and art. But as they got richer and richer, they accumulated the capital that allowed them to buy politicians and government regulators as well. That explains Musk. I’m not against people getting rich, but somewhere along the line they can’t be allowed to turn their money into political power. They have billionaires in Russia and China too, but the difference is that in the Free World, government now operates at the pleasure of the billionaires; among our adversaries, the billionaires operate at the pleasure of the government. I’ve seen the headline; “China executes billionaire tycoon.” We will never see the headline; “US executes billionaire tycoon.” No matter how venal, stupid, and destructive, America celebrates its billionaires, and there’s never been as much to celebrate as there is in Washington today.

Too poor to afford groceries, too rich for a winter fuel subsidy

Over in not-so-great Britain, there’s a stink around the cancellation of the winter fuel subsidies many seniors typically receive. Those are more important than ever, because heating costs have spiked in the UK, as have food prices, ever since Putin unleashed his full-scale assault on the Democratic World. That wasn’t the cause, per se; the cause was all those sanctions the Free World slapped on him in retaliation. Bombing that pipeline didn’t help. The Russian economy grew by over 4% last year. Every other economy in Europe is shrinking, but hey, it can take awhile for those sanctions to kick in. Meanwhile, there’s tens of thousands of pensioners who have been cut off from the winter fuel subsidies. For many, that’s an eat or heat dilemma. You don’t want the heat cut off, but pay that bill, and you’re reduced to eating cat food. But, times are tough. Buck up and buckle down, folks! Where’s that famous stiff upper lip? Freedom isn’t free! Nor are food or heating fuel. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, PM Starmer saw fit to sign a 100 year partnership deal with Ukraine last week. The deal promises Ukraine billions of UK taxpayer’s pounds every year for the next 100 years, because, after all, if Putin isn’t stopped now, he’ll be having a victory celebration in Wembley Stadium before we know it. The good news is that the pathetically pathetic Starmer is so broken in the polls he can’t possibly be around much longer, and this PR stunt in Kyiv can only hasten his demise.

Two weeks of Trump and heads are exploding all over the place

He can’t do that! Then he does it. Pulling the plug on USAID and NED is long overdue and highly laudable. Those are the two most potent tools that have been used to spread chaos throughout the world for the last half century. Sure, USAID does some legit humanitarian work, but mostly they stir up shit against foreign governments who are reluctant to take instruction from DC. Interesting to note that virtually all “independent media” in Ukraine has been silenced by the pause in USAID funding. How did we ever get to a place where we considered US-funded media in foreign countries to be “independent?” The retardation runs deep. Here’s another conundrum I’m grappling with; how is it possible for anyone on this planet to imagine that Trump’s coalition of billionaires are in fact the champions of the working class? The McDonald’s stunt and the garbage-truck stunt were brilliant PR strokes, but those were stunts, people! But here’s a bunch of working class hosers celebrating Mafia Don. Those stunts work! And that entire Gaza Riviera fantasy is beyond belief. You gotta give that new press secretary full marks for how she batted that back the next day. I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that both the working class and Arab Americans will regret their votes for Donny J sooner rather than later.

School shootings, lockdowns, and scaring the crap out of kids

In my 25 years on the front lines of education, ie at the front of a high school classroom, I never had to deal with an actual school shooting. School shootings are relatively rare in Canada. We had that kid in Taber back in ‘99, and there’s been the occasional teen gang-banger in Toronto hunted down in their high school by gang-bangers from other gangs in other high schools, but overall, school shootings have never become part of our cultural wallpaper the way they have in America. So while I happily avoided school shootings, I unhappily endured many dozens of lockdown drills. You started seeing those after Columbine, but they really took off after Sandy Hook. Usually staff got the heads up that the drill was coming. We were forewarned that an “intruder alert” was pending. Sometimes we even got the expected arrival time. Our job when that alert went off (and the buzzer sounded very much like the tornado alert to me) was to coral the kids in the room, lock the door, and close the blinds. Absolute silence was essential, lest your would-be murderers detect the sound of life on the other side of that locked door. The students were to be kept away from the windows, and preferably seated on the floor against the walls. So you’ve got thirty teenagers on the floor around the perimeter of the classroom, you’ve admonished them over and over re the life and death consequences of breaching the absolute silence protocol… and a kid farts. Somebody giggles. Farts are funny to the vast majority of teens. Giggling is contagious, so that first giggle is followed by a wave, and just as that wave subsides, somebody rips forth a beauty that doubles the decibels on the previous effort, and the entire room explodes in raucous laughter. Lucky for all of us, this was merely a drill. Had there been an actual armed intruder prowling the halls, he (and while I hesitate to indulge gender generalizations, it’s almost always a “he”) would have blasted his way through our locked door and slaughtered the lot of us. I made a point of debriefing the class after every intruder alert. The comment I heard most often was; “if somebody wanted to kill us, wouldn’t they just come at lunch when we’re all sitting in the cafeteria?” True that, but the School Board has to do these bullshit lock-down drills anyway, just in case there’s ever a real shooting, and they have to prove in court they did everything to protect us.

American Exceptionalism and Jewish Supremacy will go to the grave together

In case you haven’t heard, Donald Trump has revealed his plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Just as a hammer sees every problem as a nail, a real estate developer sees every problem as a redevelopment opportunity. Since both the president and his special ME envoy Steve Witkoff are NYC real estate developers, it shouldn’t be a shock that when they look at Gaza, they mostly see 25 miles of waterfront on the Mediterranean. Their people are probably busy with a site plan right now, figuring out where the marinas will go, the casinos, the waterfront condos… it’s the opportunity of a lifetime! Meanwhile, back in the real world, stunned disbelief is setting in. Not only did the US facilitate the Gaza genocide with bullets, bombs, billions of dollars, and multiple vetoes at the UN, they have the gall to now claim they want to build a better place for Palestinians, because somehow their homeland has become a demolition site! These altruistic NYC billionaires want to build a nice place for the Gaza refugees somewhere in Egypt or Jordan. After all, they need somewhere to live. Needless to say, this will never fly.

Trudeau threatens Trump with tariff war

We saw a different PM Fluffy at that presser on Saturday. It’s worth a watch, simply because it shows a different Justin from the one we’re so fed up with. He actually sounds like a serious person! He might even have some leadership potential! What a shame he announced his resignation three weeks ago! What a contrast to the smirking frat boy babbling woke insincerities for the last nine years. Having said that, I should also say I found the overall tone counterproductive. No serious person imagines Canada will prevail in a tariff war with our neighbour, whose economy is 12x the size of ours, and who accounts for 80% of our exports. A lot of the Rambo talk from the likes of Doug Ford seems aimed at the domestic audience. Oddly enough, Doug just called an election, so you can bet he’s playing to Ontario voters. It might look good on TV to see LCBO stores taking Kentucky bourbon off the shelves, but think it through. Where’s it going after they take it off the shelf? Down the drain for a 100% loss? Or back to the supplier under a steep return fee? Either way, Ontario is subsidizing a Doug Ford photo-op. The tone seems to have moderated somewhat after the two Trump-Trudeau phone chats today. I’m sure it will moderate even further in the weeks ahead. At the end of the day, once we realize that booing the US anthem at Raptor’s games is pretty much the most serious weapon in our tool kit, we’ll make peace with reality. After all, what can be so bad about being the 51st state?

Caesar Bibirius of Judea to meet Mafia Don in White House

Netanyahu is the first foreign leader to score a face-to-face with Trump 2.0. This visit may shed some light on the perennial question; does the tail wag the dog, or does the dog call the shots? Cynics will assume that Bibi is flying in to give Trump his marching orders for the next four years. It’s not hard to see why some would think that. It’s rare to see an American president push back against Israel. It didn’t happen in Trump’s first term, and it certainly didn’t happen in Biden’s four years. Things might be different this time. I’m not sure if Trump will praise Caesar, or bury him… or slap cuffs on him and pack him into a CIA jet for a one-way trip to The Hague. Yes, sounds ridiculous on its face, but bear with me. If you follow things in the Holy Land you’ll know The Greatest Leader since Moses is in a bit of a pickle at the moment. His war of choice in Gaza has been an unmitigated disaster. Fifteen months ago he promised to eradicate Hamas. After by far the longest war in Israel’s history, and the most costly in blood and treasure, we now witness the spectacle of heavily armed Hamas Al Aqsa Brigades escorting the Israeli hostages to their rendezvous with the IRC. Even without all the war-crimes talk, that in itself is a reputational death blow to the once-vaunted IDF. I’ve been wondering for weeks what was behind Trump posting that Jeffrey Sachs critique of Netanyahu. Obviously, there’s a message being sent, but what is it? Consider this scenario; Trump sidelines all aid to Israel until Bibi steps aside. All aid remains stalled until Israel elects a government that does not include the messianic nutters and will at least pay lip service to the ever-elusive “two-state solution.” Bingo! The Abraham Accords come out of the grave Bibi’s war put them in; relations are normalized between Israel and the Gulf states, who will invest the hundreds of billions to rebuild Gaza, and Trump wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The world will know it’s the dog that wags the tail. On the other hand, if the USAF is bombing Iran by the end of the week, we’ll know the cynics were right.

Armageddon cometh!

Ever since Trump had that tariff brain fart last November, Canadian media have been agog at the horrors about to befall us. The sky is about to fall. Brace yourself. Don’t mean to gloat, but I believe I’ve more than once reminded you of the famous adage from the famous war criminal Henry Kissinger; “To be America’s enemy is dangerous; to be America’s friend is fatal.” Since that November cheeseburger and diet Coke binge, Trump has massively disrupted Canadian politics. PM Fluffy resigned. Doug Ford called an election. Looks like the folks who cling to the fantasy of the world’s longest undefended border and all those values we share with Uncle Sam are in for a rude awakening. We’ve already agreed to guard the undefended border to keep fentanyl and illegal migrants out of America. Virtually zero of those threats to US national security come over the northern border, by the way. Defending US borders is a US responsibility, not ours. We don’t even defend our own, so what does Trump expect from us? This must be a stressful time for all those American Empire Loyalists who populate Canadian media and politics. Let me explain it to you. The American Empire is an empire in decline. It is desperately flailing about looking for a strategy to extend its hegemony. The last stage in the collapse of any empire is heralded by the looting of its vassal states. And here we are. Probably a little late to find alternative markets for the 80% of our exports that go to the US. There was a strategy at one time to build up our trade with China, but after Obama pivoted away from China, we did too. That’s just what you do when you’re a vassal. My hunch is that after three or four months of pressure, Canadians will begin to see the wisdom of becoming the 51st state. We haven’t really functioned as a sovereign state at least since the book “Galt, USA” came out in ‘72. I can’t imagine we’re going to start now.

Quitting NATO

NATO is at least 35 years past its best-before date, and stinks accordingly. There was only one reason to keep it operational after the Soviet Union collapsed, but that reason tells you everything you need to know about the threat to global security it has become. NATO is a giant cash cow that has a multitude of contractors, consultants, lobbyists, PR shops, advertisers, an entire “defence” industry, and myriad “think tanks” and politicians sucking it dry. That’s why NATO leadership is adamant that the members of this special club of Uncle Sam’s arse-lickers pony up 5% of their GDP going forward, a 150% jump from the previous annual dues to be members of Uncle Sam’s Club. And don’t get me started with the bullshit about we’re the world of freedom and human rights and democracy, and our values are the light of morality that light the path for the like-minded world, and we’re up against the forces of darkness. That’s mainly Russia and China and Iran, plus any other country that imagines it can defy the dictats of the Big Dog. For Canada, 5% means a quadrupling of our military budget. We’re toying with hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on 20th century war technology in the age of drones and hypersonic missiles. All so we can “stand with out allies.” Look around at the quality of life in your community. Do you pass homeless encampments on your way to work? Do you have a family doctor? Can you afford to send your kids to college? Our education system is broken. Our health care system is broken. Social cohesion is fraying rapidly. We simply cannot afford to waste resources on delusional fantasies that we’re somehow special because we put the American Empire ahead of the well-being of Canadians. President Trump, the de facto leader of NATO, with his recent rants about Canada, has ignited a wave of nationalist sentiment in this country. Our political elite are obsessed with appeasing America. That’s not putting Canadians first. Let’s break away from Uncle Sam’s Club, and become a sovereign nation. If not now, when?

Gaza, as seen through the eyes of Donald Trump

Back in the day, before Trump got famous and flabby, he used to be a real estate developer of some repute. The fame put an end to that. Donny J got so famous that he could just rent out his name to some other developer, and take a slice of the pie without ever developing anything himself! That’s why there were Trump Towers all over the place that Trump never had a dime in. Fast forward thirty-five years, and Donald Trump is, just as Oprah predicted in 1988, President of the USA. That’s an interesting video. Trump was totally dialed in to making allies pay up even then. Now that he’s the Big Dog, he wants to make bank on that NATO protection racket. Turn over 5% percent of your GDP or something bad could happen to that nice country you got there. This is the guy who all the top billionaires have rallied behind, because he’s just the champion of the working shmuck they’ve been waiting for. They loved the Mickey D schtick, and peed their pants over the garbage truck stunt. So today, as Mafia Don is winging his way towards the ME aboard Air Force One, to visit Egypt and Jordan and, of course, the Holy Land, they do a fly-over of Gaza. Trump is truly impressed! The place is a complete demolition zone! Trump sees the opportunity immediately! Yup, this place could be the next Luxembourg or Monaco! Perfect climate, miles of Mediterranean shorefront; everything the super-rich could want in a warm-weather destination, because who wants to hang in Zermatt or Telluride year round? And he’s got a plan for the pesky natives; send them to Egypt and Jordan! That’ll free up Gaza’s sea-front for a whole whack of casino-resorts! Truly the highest and best use for this glorious real estate! Tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Eighty years after the Holocaust, we will solemnly intone ‘NEVER AGAIN’ while completely ignoring the Holocaust of our time.

If you've ever heard of the G7 RRM, raise your hand

Don’t see any hands… kinda what I expected. To be frank, I had no idea what it was either. Maybe a new iteration of the venerable Mercedes G-Wagen? Alas, it’s no such thing. As I discovered while absently rooting around on the Global Affairs Canada website, the G7 RRM stands for the Rapid Response Mechanism of the G7 nations, ie the “Nations of Virtue.” Yup, the Nations of Virtue have put together a Rapid Response team to combat threats to freedom, democracy, and human rights posed by our authoritarian adversaries. Now you’d think that might involve some crack military units fully equipped to rapidly respond to actual physical threats to the Nations of Virtue. You’d be sadly mistaken. No, it appears to be a mostly theoretical amalgam of entities poised to combat “Russian disinformation.” We, the G7, do not have any crack military units to combat Putin’s threats to freedom and democracy. What we have is an ad-hoc conglomeration of lap-top warriors fully primed to respond to Russian disinformation! Russian disinformation is not to be taken lightly, and our RRM agents obviously take their mission seriously. So seriously that they volunteered to work from home during that Putin-inspired “Freedom Convoy” that subjected downtown Ottawa to a horn-tootin’ terrorist attack back in early ‘22. Russian disinformation is everywhere. In spite of all the Western experts from our government-funded NGOs saying otherwise, Russian propaganda still wants you to believe Ukraine is losing the war! Don’t they follow the Institute for the Study of War? Oh sorry… the ISW folks seem to have succumbed to Russian disinformation themselves of late. But not to worry; truth will out! Just the other week no less an expert than Lloyd Austin declared that Ukraine’s destruction is the greatest military success story of our time! If nothing else, that marks Austin as a senior leader on the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism team. Personally, I am of two minds on this “disinformation” brouhaha. Yes, I can see where our adversaries could be trying to poison our well of info on what’s going on in the world. On the other hand, it seems to me that the G7 crowd is bullshitting us way more than that so-called “Russian disinformation.” In reality, Ukraine has lost the war its NATO allies pushed it into. In reality, Putin has not only de-militarized Ukraine; he has demilitarized NATO. Russia continues to produce more weapons and ammo than all NATO combined, and that’s after three years of being sanctioned up the wazoo by the combined West. In reality, it’s way past time to give up our exceptionalist fantasies and learn to live in the real world.

American tech leadership is in DeepShit

Just three days ago I watched the billionaire president and three of his billionaire sidekicks razzle-dazzle the rubes with the announcement of “Stargate,” an ambitious plan to invest $500 billions into artificial intelligence, securing US tech leadership well into the future. This was perhaps the capstone of Trumps grand strategy to make America great again. The triumphalism on display was contagious! Yes, it’s morning in America again, and with wokery in retreat, our billionaires are dreaming bigger than ever! The stars and stripes will be planted on Mars in no time! The entire universe will be in awe! I had never heard of DeepSeek, and unless you’re a hard-core tech nerd, you probably hadn’t either. Three days later, DeepSeek is all over the internet. On the same day Don and Larry were promising individualized AI-engineered cancer vaccines, a little start-up in China unveiled an AI platform that outperforms the latest offerings from Open AI. At roughly 3% of the cost! And that’s after ten years of US using every trick in the book, from sanctions to arresting Chinese tech executives, to hobble China’s tech sector. China has pulled ahead in spite of our best efforts. That’s what happens when you have too many scientists searching for new genders and not enough doing science.

2025: does Germany survive?

I was born in Germany, and once held a passport from the Federal Republic. But I’m a Canadian now. As such, I have nothing invested in the survival of Germany. As rotten and incompetent as our political superstructure is in Canada, we ain’t got nuthin’ on the Square-heads. How an intellectual dwarf like Scholz ever became the top dog in what was once a proud nation is a mystery well beyond my pay grade. How the Fairy Princess Annalena Baerbock became Foreign Minister is an even greater puzzle. The Foreign Minister pledges to support Ukraine regardless of what the German voter wants! That’s the kinda democracy you wanna die for, ain’t it?

God smites Gulf Coast

They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, but I reckon there’s nothing mysterious about the worst snowstorm in 100 years descending on the Gulf Coast within hours of Trump rebranding the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Coincidence? You tell me… but I’d say it’s more likely the Almighty is mightily pissed. After all, the Mexicans are a deeply Christian people. In fact, they are so pious that even the cartel bosses have patron saints! In America, on the other hand, mocking God has become a national sport. While Donny J was never a noticeably religious man, he came around when that would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. Donald, the Lord is watching you, so don’t get too big for your britches. Pride goeth before the fall. Stay humble! We’re just glad you didn’t rebrand the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Trump… that might have unleashed a tsunami instead of a mere snowstorm.

Sleepy Joe shows some decency on his way out the door

Actually, from what we know now, Joe was apparently irrelevant to his own presidency throughout his four years in the White House. Think on that for awhile. What does that tell you about American democracy? What it tells me is that the standard-bearer of the democratic world order is a faux democracy, as fake as a three-dollar bill. Yup, the Exceptional Nation that has busied itself spreading democracy hither and yon these past few decades doesn’t actually have one at home. Instead, it has a bustling hive of conniving opportunists, careerists, lobbyists, and grifters of all stripes, each committed to the lofty American ideal of lining their own pockets at the expense of what in simpler times might have been called the “common good.” Needless to say, when the DC hustlers realized they were advising a dementia patient, they ran with it. Gotta make hay while the sun shines, dontcha know! And did they ever make hay! Under Biden, hundreds of billions in US dollars flew out the door to “save democracy” in Ukraine, in Taiwan, and in Israel! For almost a year, the hive buzzing around Biden claimed they were working 24/7 for a ceasefire in Gaza, to no avail. Do you really believe Trump’s golfing buddy Steve Witkoff has more influence in Israel than the entire US State Department? Or is it more likely that Sullivan, Blinken, et al were never interested in a ceasefire? How else to explain Trump’s Middle East envoy securing a ceasefire with one visit to Jerusalem, a ceasefire that eluded Antony Blinken and the entire state department for a year? But enough of that; I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him under mountains of well-deserved opprobrium. History will look after that. In the dying minutes of his last day in office, President Biden granted clemency to Leonard Peltier, who has languished in the US prison system for nearly fifty years for the alleged murder of two FBI agents. Over the decades, everyone from the Dali Lama to Mother Teresa to Nelson Mandela to Amnesty International has lobbied successive US administrations for clemency. Every president, including Clinton, Obama, and Trump, has ignored Peltier’s plight. Until today. Good on you, Joe.

Zen and the art of shoveling snow

There’s about a hundred and fifty feet of driveway between the road and the house. We’re having what the locals call a “hard winter” in these parts, and I’ve been spending a lot of time shoveling snow. When I bought the place almost twenty years ago, my father gifted me an old Ford 4000 with a snow-blower attachment. The trouble with that was, it was too efficient for its own good. That little tractor comes with a sturdy 53 hp diesel engine. Those can be fussy in winter. You need to keep them plugged in, and once fired up they should warm up properly before doing any work. You’re into twenty minutes of dinking around before you actually blow the snow, which takes about 45 seconds down the drive and another 45 seconds back up. In a minute and a half you’re done, and then, just to preserve the integrity of the mechanicals, you should let it idle for a few minutes before shutting it off. Being a younger and less patient man twenty years ago, I chafed at all that wasted time. I’d never owned a snow-blower, mainly because I’d only had conventional two-car-lengths driveways, and until relatively recently, say the last thirty years or so, it would never occur to anybody that they needed anything other than a snow shovel to clear that drive. But now I’m in the country, and I’ve got a serious driveway, so I took the plunge and splurged on a super-duper Toro with heated handle-bars and power steering! No shit! Who can even imagine such a thing! Actually, when you drive through town these days, everybody with any driveway at all seems to have a snow-blower, and given suburban lust for the newest and best, heated hand-grips and power steering are probably old news by now. Be that as it may, I nevertheless enjoyed the next two years of mild winters wherein my new Toro had seen maybe ten hours of use. Towards the end of the third winter, also a mild one, it suddenly developed an urge to run at full throttle no matter what you did to the throttle lever. I made a mental note to look after that during the summer. During the summer I forgot all about it. I mean, who thinks about their snow-blower in the summer? Get a life! Or at least get a boat! Anyway, it’s late November and we finally get a decent dump of snow, and all of a sudden I am reminded of this full-throttle issue. By now I’m retired. It doesn’t really matter if the lane is cleared in two minutes or twenty minutes… or by noon! So I bought a snow shovel. The next summer I dismantled the throttle linkage on the Toro. Not complicated - just a few springs and screws and brackets. I set them aside in an orderly way and then forgot about them. That was three years ago. Now we’re into this hard winter, and yesterday it took me three hours to shovel the snow from the house to the road. It was a beautiful experience. I’m savvy to the fact that heart-attack-while-shoveling-snow is a leading cause of death in my cohort, so I take lots of breaks, just to lean on the shovel and admire the scenery. And it was spectacular! In the ebb and flow of an ongoing blizzard, the skies were a kaleidoscope of greys and blues and silvers and whites, and the cold air was pure, without the taint of fuel fumes. It was a beautiful thing!

Blinken and Biden, shit and Shinola

Foreign Sec Antony Blinken and Sloppy Joe have been giving interviews summing up their glorious four years atop the global power pyramid. To hear Antony tell the tale, American diplomacy has never been a more potent force for good in this world. Never! Um… from where I’m sitting, (on the couch in front of the fireplace), American diplomacy looks like an unmitigated disaster. What diplomacy? Oh, you mean the diplomacy that prevented a war in Ukraine? Or the diplomacy that stopped the Gaza genocide in its tracks? US diplomacy never recovered after Tony and Jake exposed their complete incompetence to China’s FM at that embarrassing meeting in Alaska just a couple months into the Biden admin. Wang Yi quickly concluded that Tony and Jake were to diplomacy what Australian Olympian Raygun was to break-dancing… not ready for prime time. Blinky’s delusions are nothing compared to the twilight fantasies of Sloppy Joe. It’s almost impossible to imagine Biden believes the nonsense he spews. He talks as though he’s made America great again! Surely those are merely the musings of a late-stage dementia patient. In reality, no four years in American history have dissipated US standing in the world as much as these four under Biden. From the Keystone Cops retreat from Kabul, to the “whatever it takes for as long as it takes” disaster in Ukraine, to “we’re working 24/7 to get the hostages back” (for over a year with zero results) in Israel, no serious person anywhere on the planet imagines these four years past have in any aspect enhanced America’s standing in the world. Then again, a few idle media posts about tariffs from the president-elect have thrown Canadian politics into crisis. I guess there’s at least one country that still takes Uncle Sam seriously.

You know you're a serious county when...

When the guy who wants to be the next Liberal Party leader debuts his campaign on a US comedy network. Mark Carney is a Serious Person. As such, he is networked with many other Serious Persons in the upper reaches of the ruling plutocracy. After all, you don’t get to be governor of not one, but two central banks, unless you have the stamp of approval from, for lack of a better term, the ruling class. For reasons known only to Mr. Carney, and/or his blackmailers, he seemingly is willing to risk his thus-far mostly stellar rep for a chance to lead the Liberal Party of Canada into the next election. That makes no sense on any level. Be that as it may, Mr. Carney chose to debut his Prime Ministerial campaign on John Stewart’s satirical talk show. You can see the wheels turning in the heads of those PR sharpies who dreamed up this stunt; we gotta show Carney as more than a stuffed shirt… let’s showcase him as a regular guy who can take a joke! Alrighty then! John Stewart it is! At least he didn’t show up on Colbert! Does Carney improve the odds for the Liberal Party? Remember, this is the party that brought in Hillary Clinton for their ‘23 policy convention. When the cupboard is so bare you gotta call on Hillary, I guess Carney sort of passes for a “fresh face.” And since Canadian politics have degenerated into a non-stop clown show, there’s no better stage to present the next leader of the ruling Liberal Party than on a US comedy network.

As America lurches from one military debacle to the next, who profits from all this disaster?

If you know America, you’ll know nothing happens unless somebody makes a buck on it. America has been lurching from one military fiasco to the next for well over fifty years by now, and you know that wouldn’t keep happening if nobody was trousering wads of cash off all these disasters. Let’s take a look at how the big military contractors have fared out since just before the WOT (War on Terror) set America on the path of endless war after 9/11. Boeing was under forty bucks in January of 2000. In spite of years of bad news on their civilian side, what with their airplanes falling out of the sky on a regular basis, it’s still up over 400%. General Dynamics has gone up well over 1000%, from twenty bucks to $250. Lockheed Martin is up over 2000%, from twenty bucks to $460. Northrup Grumman is likewise up almost 2000%. Get the general direction we’re going here? In every case, the majority owners are a handful of hedge funds, led by Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street. Given that America hasn’t won a war since 1945, what is it that keeps these war stocks climbing? There’s an elaborate think-tank network, lavishly funded by the war profiteers, that steers American policy inexorably towards more war. What’s doubly disturbing; the overpriced products of the US military-industrial machine don’t seem to meet the standards of… North Korea? You’re dealing with a closed loop; a veritable “perpetual motion” machine. As long as the experts at the think-tanks and the lobbyists can bribe and cajole the elected representatives into more war, the gravy train will keep chugging along.

As Babylon burns, lawyers drool

You can bet the torts and briefs will be a-flyin’ long before the fires are out. There’s an abundance of fat targets just waiting for subpoenas to be served. The bureaucrats throughout the upper echelon of the local and state governments. The feds. The fire department, police department, and emergency management at all levels. This unprecedented fire event will result in an even more unprecedented fireball of litigation! The bad news; all concerned will be sued to death over the next ten years. The good news; unprecedented opportunity for recent law graduates!

Lloyd Austin says Ukraine war is greatest military success story of our time

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pulled that rabbit out of his ample arse at the Mannheim Air Base this week on the occasion of the 25th meeting of the "Contact Group" of Ukraine’s enablers. According to Lloyd, thanks to America’s leadership and the resolve of the freedom loving peoples of the world, Ukraine now has a “booming defense-industrial sector.” You might want to check into that, Lloyd; those booms are coming from the Russian missiles flattening Ukraine’s defense-industrial sector faster than the combined West can stand them up. How is it possible for Austin to make such ludicrous claims at a time when mainstream anti-Russian media like the New York Times and the Washington Post have grudgingly concluded this war is lost? Simple; we’ve come to the place in the narrative where America declares victory and goes home. Sure, there’s a few loose ends… but hey, that’s not our problem! We gave Ukraine everything it needed to defeat Putin. It’s not our fault they screwed it up. So see ya later alligator! Uncle Sam’s got bigger fish to fry - in the South China Sea!

Canada vows to fight against Trump threats

On A6 of today’s Globe & Mail, Marcus Gee, one of the top knobs at the Globe brain trust, throws down the gauntlet; “Thanks, Trump, for reminding Canadians why our county is worth fighting for.” Eight pages later, none other than the little guy from Shawinigan chimes in with a 3/4 page middle finger right in Trump’s face. We gotta get serious about Donald Trump’s outrageous threats! At 91 years of age, Jean Chretien has dusted off his Ross rifle and was last seen racing his mobility scooter in the general direction of the US embassy on Sussex street. He is “ready at the ramparts” to defend this great country from the evil designs of the brutal dictator, Donny J. It’s good to see Canadian thought leaders vowing to fight for us, at least till you realize they’re only fighting “metaphorically.” As in, not actually fighting at all. In terms of an actual real-world resistance, let’s get serious! Everybody knows we long ago surrendered our sovereignty. In the empirical world, ie the real one, we’ll fight Trump’s Anschluss the way Austria fought Hitler’s Anschluss… With cheering crowds!

Canada should solve its housing crisis before it buys a fleet of F-35s

Christy Clark is on to something. She's announced she'll take a run for the leadership of the Liberal Party, currently 20 points behind Poilievre's Conservatives. Pierre Poilievre is running a two-gear campaign. Low gear is, “axe the tax.” High gear is, “I’m not Justin.” What else does he have? Plenty of pie-in-the-sky, but not a whole helluva lot that would differentiate him from Christy Clark now that Clark has vowed to axe the tax too. And she’s at least as much “not Trudeau” as Pierre. To prevail over the Conservative’s 20 point lead in the polls, she’ll need to take some bold initiatives. Let me suggest one; backing away from following US foreign policy in lock-step. She would revive a Liberal Party tradition wherein we weren’t afraid to chart our own course. Think Jean Chrétien declining the invitation to join the “coalition of the willing” post 9\11. I think it’s Pierre’s Achilles heel that he panders so enthusiastically to the US-NATO-Israel crowd. There are many Canadian voters who recognize we have priorities beyond defending the status quo. Clark’s team could take a gander at my highly relevant post; How many public housing units could we build for the cost of a single F-35. That’s a debate worth having.

Trump to attack Canada, Greenland, Denmark, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Mars, and Canis Major

Relax folks! It's just Donny J taking his supercharged ego out for a rip! More than a few sharpies have sniffed out that Trump’s musings about us Canadians are massive interference in our democracy. We all knew the dastardly authoritarian dictatorships, Russia and China, have been interfering relentlessly, and we recently discovered that our fellow former colony, vibrant democratic India, has been in on the action too! But not in our darkest paranoid nightmares did we dream that by far the most egregious threat to our democracy would come from our best friend, benevolent big brother, leader of the democratic world, Uncle Sam. What are we to make of this? There’s a tone of near-panic in the Canadian pundisphere. I even read some idiocy about how Canada’s sovereignty is sacred because Canadians sacrificed their lives and so forth… No, in the imagined glory days of our military prowess, we were fighting for our colonial master, not our sovereignty. I suspect us Canadians will become US Canadians without putting up much of a fight.

Blast from the past... remember the exploding train in Lac Magentic?

The archives at Falling Downs, the precursor of this humble Substack, are chock-full of prescient commentary on the goings on in this messed up world. Looks like Bill Ackman has invested part of his 2 billion $ haul from the rape of CP Rail into taking a position in iconic Canadian asset manager Brookfield. Friday, October 3, 2014 Uber-douchebag Hunter "Hitman" Harrison blasts gov't for overreacting post Lac Megantic You remember Lac Megantic?That was the sleepy Quebec small-town that was literally blown off the map last year when one of Fast Eddie Burkhardt's single-crew oil trains exploded in the downtown.Hardly a year has passed, and CP Rail Boss Hunter Harrison is busy whinging about government over-regulation. Harrison just doesn't get why the busy-body government regulators need to fiddle with the free market, and impose draconian communistic rules about everything from speed limits for trains carrying dangerous goods, to mandating that a mile-long train loaded with dangerous goods should have more than a one-man crew!Well Hunter, let me 'splain it to ya; the reason the government needs to regulate greedy twats like you and your acolyte Burkhardt, is because your logic, your procedures, your unregulated over-weening greed, killed 47 people in Lac Megantic......yet nobody is facing murder charges!The reason Hunter is lobbying for less regulation is obvious. The entire Ackman/Harrison strategy for boosting CP Rail's obscene profits going forward hinges on making trains longer and running them faster with smaller crews!Fuck safety!Fuck sleepy small towns everywhere!Profit uber alles!

Carney and Freeland can't wait to stab PM Fluffy in the back

Most Canadian voters don’t care if the pretenders stab Fluffy in the back - as long as somebody stabs him, soon. Canada is beyond sick of PM Fluffy and his non-stop virtue signaling. Canadians are facing an unpleasant dilemma. We are reminded daily that we are falling down when it comes to standing with our allies. Our NATO spending needs a hundred billion dollar boost, minimum. And that’s before the incoming Major Domo of the free world, the billionaire condo salesman from Manhattan, ups the protection juice from 2% to 5% of GDP. Meanwhile, I hear the Farm Manager complain constantly how in her day job, programs for “disabled” kids are being cut back relentlessly. They’re not disabled, of course; they just have differing abilities, which unfortunately take a pile of public money to mitigate, even partially. And there’s our dilemma; we can invest in warships and F-35s and submarines, or we can invest in our people, but we can’t do both. Do either of the pretenders have a plan to resolve this dilemma? Let’s take a look at their resumes. Mark Carney is the pride of Fort Smith, NWT. Google Fort Smith, and Carney is the only name on their “famous” list. Fort Smith is a hard-scrabble kinda place, so you might expect him to have some empathy for the little people. Unfortunately, he went rogue. Unlike every other youngster in Fort Smith, he ended up climbing through a variety of elite schools and landing at Goldman Sachs, a trajectory all too common amongst elite politicians in the Free World. Then he blew past every previous GS alumni and became, serially, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, and then the Governor of the Bank of England! So now he’s pitching to be our next PM? I’ll just take a wild guess, but my hunch is he will prioritize F-35s over autistic kids. Which leaves us with Chrystia, or “Agent Frida,” as the Rooskies supposedly labelled her when she was fighting for freedom and democracy for the former Soviet satellite states, especially Ukraine. I have Chrystia’s 2012 bestseller “Plutocrats” on my bookshelf. Here’s my favorite quote: Many members of the global super-elite have helped me to understand their world and some have become friends. They include George Soros, Eric Schmidt, Victor Pinchuk, David and Mary Boies, Nikesh Arora, Jeff Immelt… And at least another half-dozen names of the uber-rich. I know I have my prejudices, and one of them is “when you’re in bed with the Plutocrats, you’re gonna put F-35s over autistic children… or the unhoused, or the seniors with inadequate pensions, or the people without a family doctor, or the university grads with crippling student loans, or the this and that out the ying-yang.” The good news is either of these pretenders could replace Trudeau. The better news is that Fluffy has poisoned the well of Canada’s democracy to such an extent that neither of them have a hope of winning the next election. The bad news is, that leaves us Poilievre or Singh. Looks like we’re screwed no matter what. To hell with autistic kids… bring on the F-35s!