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.