Going swimming in your snowmobile suit

And I’m not talking ice-fishing here; I’m talking let’s hitch up the boat and get out on Georgian Bay! I’m sitting in my car by the boat launch in Wiarton, just a couple blocks from the hospital that provided me such a hospitable (!) stay a month ago. It’s a bright sun-drenched morning with a brisk breeze blowing straight up Colpoy’s Bay out of the North-East. It’s gotta be friggin’ cold out there! According to Environment Canada the air temp last night was 4 C, and the water temp was 3. That’s a scant two degrees above ice forming on the surface. There’s a medium chop and the waves are at a half-metre. Nobody in their right mind goes out on a day like this. Of course, anyone who knows “serious” fishermen, or “fishers” if we must, will know that serious fishermen are by definition not in their right minds, and as if to prove my point, at that very moment a small aluminum boat comes bobbing around the end of the breakwater, heading for the boat launch. I can’t be sure, but it looks like Billy-Bob from Desboro, his brother Darrell, and his other brother Darrell, and get this; the three of them are bundled up in snowmobile suits! At least they’re getting more than three weeks use out of their winter gear! I wouldn’t want to vouch for the buoyancy of a water-logged snowmobile suit in a worst-case scenario, but hey, maybe these lads are really strong swimmers. Just as a point of interest, I’m a mere two kilometres from the Wiarton International Airport. This must be one of Canada’s smallest international airports, but I did some digging, and they are an official entry point to Canada. As far as I know, never in its history has Wiarton ever hosted any regular scheduled foreign flights. The Canadian Border Services personnel posted here must have one of the sweetest gigs in all the land. Bet they have lots of free time for fishing! I like to come here to contemplate the sorry state of our world. It’s impossible to follow current events without getting mired in grim foreboding. Maybe that new Pope can bring some hope? He’s from Chicago, after all! Just like Barry O, another purveyor of empty hopes. Then again, Rahm Emanuel, Richard Daley, and Al Capone were from Chicago too… The Trump Circus, meanwhile, has become a full-blown three-ring international extravaganza. Mafia Don has thus far failed to end the war in Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza, but did manage to stop a Pakistan-India war nobody even saw coming. I’m guessing that’s relatively easy because Pakistan is effectively a US dependency, whereas both Israel and Ukraine have proven far less dependent than many assumed. If there is any hope at all for the Palestinians in Gaza it lies in the fraying of the Israel-USA relationship. Polling shows a majority of the American public across both parties now disapprove of Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. Prominent Republicans as well as some Dems are balking at criminalizing criticism of Israel. If polling trends continue, there’ll be a stampede of congress-critters abandoning the Chosen People as midterms get closer. The arc of history may not be bending towards justice quite yet, but I detect a shift in the wind. Meanwhile back in my world, I’m focused on recovering some of the strength I’ve lost to CHF. I’ve got a two km track laid out- the first km on the flat, the second up the Burgess Sideroad hill. First timed it at 45 minutes a couple days after I was discharged. As a reference point, that used to be my time for a a 5 km walk. Anyway, I’m doing it in 20-25 minutes now, so obviously some recovery is possible. When there’s not a whole lotta hope, hold tight to what you can find.

The bong people

The Holy Father passed to his reward on Easter Monday. Of course he did! Funny how his health management, or should I say, death management team, managed to make his demise rhyme like that. The only possible dates more apropos for the death of a pontiff are Good Friday and Easter Sunday. A week before, on what is known in households more pious than mine as Holy Monday, my earthly father went to his reward. He was a modest enough man and made no claims to holiness. In fact, he would have seen his demise on Holy Monday as a happy accident rather than pre-ordained. It was only a week before that a keen young doctor had informed me, after a brief hospital stay, that I was fast in the grip of congestive heart failure, or CHF as the acronym-happy medical profession shorthands it. That’s something I’d normally consider a newsworthy development, but under the circumstances I decided to keep it under my hat for the time being. Dad only gets to die once, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. So, the Pope’s a goner, Dad’s a goner, but, at least for now, I’ve got a life to live and many medical appointments to attend. In fact, I had one in Guelph the day after Dad’s funeral. Decided to get a room and stay over instead of making the five hour round trip afresh the next day. Set up camp at the Super Eight out on Woodlawn. It’s right next to the former Holiday Inn Express. I say “former” because during the Covid times the city leased the property and turned it into a homeless shelter. I shit you not! Homeless in Guelph? Y’all come on down to the Holiday Inn and take a load off, courtesy of the Guelph taxpayer! Stay as long as you like! That boondoggle must be over, because they’ve tidied up around the joint and it sports new Hilton badging. Jeez, you just wanna hope they had the fumigators cranked to eleven! But what a beautiful Easter story… death and resurrection! But I digress. At the edge of the parking lot Super Eight’s got a couple picnic tables and a gas BBQ under an enclosure, with a sign; Designated Smoking Area. Don’t let anybody tell you Super Eight has no amenities! I had a good view of the set-up from my room, and it appeared many of the clientele took the sign literally. Nevermind an old codger guiltily pulling on a ciggy, or perhaps even a joint - this crowd brought out the neon-coloured two-foot-tall glass bongs! Oh, well, live and let live, I always say. Next morning, long before anything is astir, I’m the old codger guiltily puffing on a smoke at the picnic table. Somewhere a door slams. There’s three pre-teen girls heading my way, wearing pajamas and carrying a Walmart bag. I quickly stub the smoke because I’m acutely aware I’m setting a bad example. They sit down across from me and pull out a two-foot-tall neon orange bong out of the Walmart bag. Holy shit! Now I’ve seen everything! At some level you want to scream, where are the friggin’ parents, but you know it’s way too late for that. What I learned at my medical appointment was I have two options. One. Put my feet up, fire up a bong, and wait for CHF to carry me to a better place. Two. Put my feet on the ground and lace up the walking shoes. Between diet and exercise I’ll get another ten-fifteen years out of this mortal coil…Or die trying!

Trump-Zellensky and the Angels of Death

I’m pretty sure the entire script for Trump 2.0 is coming out of Dana White’s WWE writer’s workshops. If you can get your mind around that, it explains a lot of otherwise inexplicable shit. Like how a scene that was cut from Godfather III showed up at the Pope’s funeral. Everybody knows that’s how history works. The protagonists sit down alone, and hammer out the future mano a mano. The future of Crimea is Russian. The future of Odessa is Russian too. Unless… As the Great Men of History shape the future there in the Vatican, it’s just Trump and Zelly and some random dudes in swishy floor-length black gowns. Those are the angels! Alas, not all of the angels are working in the employ of Heaven. In fact, there is reason to believe that at least some of them are Putin loyalists. Not sure how Dana’s people will handle that plot twist. Remember in that infamous beat-down in the Oval Office how JD and DJ were tag-teaming Zelly with the “you ain’t got no cards” mantra? Today Trump was admitting he doesn’t have any either. Which leaves the Free World with a stark choice. Do we admit defeat? Or do we make a deal with Putin and call it victory?

Fried chicken; the soul food that healed America

It’s high time we added another name to the pantheon of civil-rights champions who helped America heal after the racial conflicts of the mid 20th century. Colonel Harland Sanders. And for once, he’s neither an African-American nor was he ever a minister in the Christian church, like MLK and John Lewis. But nobody and nothing has brought more American’s together than the Colonel’s secret recipe. Not McDonalds. Not Dominos. Not Taco Bell. I am reminded of KFC’s pivotal role in the history of human rights by this story. Seems the various intelligence agencies in Pakistan have just sleuthed out that KFC is an American company! Who knew? Apparently not those guys!? So, are the Pakistani’s rallying around this champion of Human Rights? No! Instead, they are boycotting it! KFC is American and America funds genocide in Gaza. Therefore, boycott KFC. Case closed! Luckily, America is developing some rules of law to prevent such antisemitic outrages. Already in over half the US states, it is against the law to support the BDS movement, on account the topic makes some folks uncomfortable. Whereas genocide doesn’t.

Netanyahu slams Canada, claims to speak for "civilized" world

Netanyahu as spokesman for the “civilized world?” My God, what depths of depravity have we fallen to? The man has the blood of tens of thousands of Palestinian children on his hands. The Greatest Leader since Moses went off on Carney today because Carney allegedly entertained, however fleetingly, the thought that maybe, just possibly, the IDF has been doing some war-crimey stuff in Gaza. It’s not just the blood of Palestinians. Every Israeli who perished on October 7 and since was a victim of Netanyahu’s corrupt and incompetent government. Every warning about a pending attack was ignored. Border units were withdrawn rather than beefed up. You’d almost think Bibi was deliberately courting calamity. And why not? It’s worked for him many times before! When the going gets tough, you need a strong man at the helm… When that strong man is desperately flailing about to keep his own ass out of jail, the blood on his hands is a mere afterthought. But he presumes to speak for the civilized world. Disgusting!

Better a curveball than a speedball

I tend to be very modest in my consumption of pharmaceutical products. For twenty years there’s been only two items on the shopping list. A couple months ago my doctor added a third, something intended to tamp down the high cholesterol. Shortly thereafter, I noticed an unexpected side effect - my bony ankles were disappearing. No biggie, I thought. Neither I nor anyone else sits around admiring my ankles, so I let things slide, perhaps a little longer than I should have. By the middle of last week fat ankles had become fat feet and fat legs. By the end of the week my abdomen had doubled in size and I was having trouble breathing. It was a major effort to get my pants on, let alone do them up. By Sunday I hadn’t slept for two nights, my face was beginning to puff up, and I was getting worried. I resolved to call the doctor Monday morning. I tell the office I think I’m having a bad reaction to the new meds. The girl tells me the first thing I have to do is get an assessment, and since the office is 100 miles away she says to go to the nearest hospital for that. The nearest hospital is a modest operation in a quaint town on the shores of Georgian Bay. I walk in thinking I’ll be walking out in an hour or two, with a magic potion that’ll make my body shrink. Well! I finally walked out three days later with four new prescriptions and one new diagnosis. In between I got every test that little joint has the technology to administer. The good news is that the liver and kidneys seem to be functioning normally. The bad news, in the doctor’s own words; “your chest ex-ray is lookin’ kinda nasty.” I like the way they get to the point in these small towns. No sense confusing the locals with nonsensical jargon. The diagnosis; congestive heart failure. That’s not something you want to hear, so I had a lot of questions. To my way of thinking, they shouldn’t call it failure as long as the heart is till pumping. Turns out about 70% of folks my age have some sort of cardiovascular disease. When you look at it that way, I’m as boringly normal as I’ve ever been! So, is the party over? Nah… I figure if I stop with the joints and stock up on edibles, I’ll be good to go for long while yet!

Carney's haircut becomes issue in Canadian election

You know you’ve got a vibrant democracy when that happens! Our world has never been as awash in bullshit and flim-flam as it is today. Where oh where are the credible headlines? Where are the debates around the life-and-death issues that make this the most important election of our time? Carney’s haircut is not one of them! These are pivotal times. The values that underpin Western Civilization are under siege as never before; human rights, freedom of speech, democracy itself! Look at how our allies in Europe are backsliding. Just a few months ago VP JD went to Munich to deliver a stern rebuke on how the champions of freedom are dropping the ball on tolerating diversity of opinion. This from a country that’ll deport you if you dare criticize Israel! Speaking of our sacred Western values, they have been on full display in that tragic ruin of a democracy. Murdering 20,000 children is self-defense, you antisemite, you! Any divergence from that view makes you a Hamas supporter, and you richly deserve your fate. Meanwhile, Western Civ’s campaign to save us all from Putin seems to be on the back burner, thanks to that crazed madman Trump unleashing tariff terror on the planet. Holy moly… however did we get to a place where media in his own country declares the Leader of the Free World a crazed madman? Has Freedom fallen? Not quite yet. The Resistance Lives! Just last weekend hundreds of thousands took to the streets in what some Dem party- affiliated PR shop branded the Hands Off movement. Hands off health care! Hands off reproductive rights! Hands off foreign aid! Hands off higher education! Hands off NATO! Say what? Hands off NATO? Really? Ya, the slippery devils almost slipped that past me! In case you haven’t noticed, the US/NATO campaign to save Europe from Putin is struggling mightily. That, I believe, is the main reason we don’t talk much about it. The channel has ben changed… Tariffs tariffs tariffs! And in case that doesn’t work, Trump is already promising even tougher tariffs! The world must be brought to heel! Not sure how that’s going to impress Putin. There’s already 28,000 sanctions on Russia, which have mostly weakened EU countries while their target sports the most robust economy in Europe! It’s enough to make you wonder if Western Civ has lost its way. And in the midst of this existential global mayhem, Canadians face the most important election of our lives. Will we choose the banker’ haircut? Or will we choose PP’s semi-quiff?

American Empire creates its own reality

But the rest of the world has to live in it. Watching the Rose Garden clown show - revival meeting last night brought to mind the alleged Karl Rove quote, to the effect that "when you're an empire you create your own reality." The people around Trump remain convinced they’re still an empire. The reason America runs huge trade deficits with much of the world is because America no longer produces much that anyone wants to buy. That’s not very empire-like, so trade deficits are re-defined as subsidies, or at least they were a few weeks ago. By last night they had somehow morphed into the rationale for “reciprocal tariffs.” That’s how the American Empire invents new realities. If we pause for a moment and consider the old realities, we can see why Uncle Sam is in a rush to move along. In short, the American Empire is in such deep shit that it is unlikely to remain an empire much longer. Trump 2.0 promised he’d end two wars immediately. Unfortunately, they’re both escalating and they both continue to drain US resources. The richest country in the world is running up a vast unsustainable debt that can only end in a major devaluation of the USD, and/or an outright repudiation of the debt. Goodbye global reserve currency status. In the glory days of Empire, the US had the muscle to enforce its dictats. As the Ukraine debacle vividly demonstrates, that is no longer the case. Soft voice- big stick has given way to belligerent bossy-talk without much of a stick at all, unless Uncle Sam fast forwards to nuclear apocalypse. Short of that, when you can’t produce artillery shells in sufficient quantities to support the vassal you goaded into war, maybe it’s time to go back to the soft voice. I’m not optimistic.

Canada rejoices as Trump stops making stupid 51st State joke

Mafia Don had a lot of fun with that “Governor of the 51st State, Justin Trudeau” gag he first fired up last November. He had no idea how intensely many Canadians would take offence at that. CBC alone probably racked up a few hundred hours of on-air umbrage. So Trump being Trump, he obviously had to use it at every opportunity. The Globe and the CBC were aghast that not even King Charles or our EU allies would speak up for us and protect us from hearing Trump’s stupid joke yet again. Today was Trump-proclaimed “Liberation Day,” the day the dreaded Trump Tariffs would take effect. Canada, or at least our legacy media journalists, have had months of sleepless nights waiting for the big day, and wondering how much longer we had to keep our elbows up. I tuned in the CBC coverage. The talking heads were stunned. After all these months of hyperventilating over imminent doom, Canada didn’t even get the baseline 10% tariff! And even better, not once did the Orange Oracle refer to us as the 51st State!

Reflections on the ice storm

The electricity went out here 9:30 Saturday night, and came on again about an hour ago. That’s three days and nights of no internet, no water, no home-cooked meals, no bath, no shower, and to flush the toilet I gotta mosey on down to the creek with a five gallon pail. No internet means I can’t live stream Al Jazeera’s Gaza coverage. Haven’t seen a dead baby in three days! I’m OK with that. It’s a nice break. Apparently the babies are still dying, but I appreciate the break even though they never got one. The water thing shows you how much we take for granted. You could live a lot longer without internet than you could without water. And three days without water? That’s a crisis for me, but three days can easily turn into three months or more in Sudan or Ukraine or Gaza. Three days is a minor inconvenience by their standards. When it comes to flushability, it’s a good idea to stockpile your toilet water before you actually need it. Here’s a tip; load up early in the day before you load up with a beer and a toke. The creek is well over it’s banks and it’s a bit of a muddy mess down there. One false step on the path back to the house and you’re on your ass with your empty water bucket rolling down the hill. When you need three trips to the creek for one flush it’s a long three days without electricity.

Canadian PM Carnage sparks up bromance with Mafia Don

Somehow the bankers and the billionairs understand one another. You gotta respect Mark Carney for not getting swept away by the tidal wave of patriotism that overtook our fair land after the CBC and Globe & Mail, the conjoined arbiters of goodthink in Canada, declared that a lame joke about PM Fluffy as the governor of the 51st state was actually a threat to our sovereignty. All concerned are fully aware Canada’s sovereignty, such as it was, has been frittered away over the decades, to the point the entire world knows “Canada” is just an automatic vote with the USA anytime a United Nations vote count matters. That’s a very good reason for the USA to keep at least the appearance of having allies. All these “allies” are proof of the old adage; when you’ve got ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Oh look! The Free World (ie the nations whose nuts are firmly in Uncle Sam’s iron grip) is backing up the leader of the free world! I for one can not share the euphoria building around the Donald- Mark bromance. At this very moment Donald is enabling a genocide in Gaza, the disembowelment of Ukraine, and the trashing of freedom of speech in America. But we gotta suck up because otherwise a couple of car plants might have to shut down. It’s all about shared values!

Canadian election; are you bored out of your mind yet?

There’s a startling difference between Yankee democracy and ours. In the USA, the campaign essentially runs four years. Trump 2.0 has been in office hardly two months and OAC is on the campaign trail, doing a national tour, rallying support for her run for the White House in ‘28! In Canada, on the other hand, we look to keep our election campaigns as short as possible - four weeks in the current tussle. For good reason; we can barely stay awake for a four week campaign! Anything much longer would completely destroy our democracy! So far the most exciting thing that’s happened is the Liberal Party swapped out Fluffy for a Goldman Sachs man. That bought them an instant 20+ points in the polls. Obviously, even loyal Liberal Party stalwarts were beyond fed-up with their perfumed poseur. Not hard to see why. Before politics, he had a grand total of two years of full-time employment - as a teacher in a tony private school. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it looks a bit wimpy compared to thirteen years at GS, and that much again at the very pinnacle of global finance. Carnage is up against PP, a serious career politician. While Pierre never had to maintain order in a grade 7 drama classroom, he’s acquitted himself well in the drama classroom on Parliament Hill for twenty years. All the polls agree nobody else has a chance. Jag’s best hope is he might once again snatch relevance from the jaws of obscurity in case of a minority Lib government. Frankly, that’s wishful thinking. Jagmeet should resign now and make way for fresh blood in the NDP. He’s become as stale as Fluffy. So it’s a choice between the career banker and the career politician. Lets see how they compare. They both promise to stand up to Trump. They both promise to stand up to Putin. They both promise to stand up for Canada. They both promise to stand up for Ukraine. They both promise to stand up for workers. They both promise to stand up for Uighurs They both promise to spend more, much more, hundreds of $billions more, on the Canadian Armed Forces. They both promise more take-home pay for working Canadians. They both promise to solve the housing crisis. They both promise more money for retired Canadians. They both support Israel’s right to defend itself. They both believe in the ever-elusive “two state solution” that died with Izaak Rabin in 1995. They both condemn Gaza’s genocidal war on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East… Can you see where things are going here? I’ve got a great idea. Elections Canada estimates this election will cost out at just under $600 millions. Why not just scrub the show and declare them co-PMs! That money could buy half a new submarine, and we need an entire fleet to ensure the future of our democracy. I’m sure at least the Goldman Sachs guy sees the wisdom in my words. Keep me in mind for a Senate appointment.

PM Carnage calls election; demands Canadians check couch cushions to raise $100 billion for Arctic sovereignty

Thanks to the predations of one Donald Trump, Canada has discovered the concept of “sovereignty.” In short, that’s what we pissed away over the course of many decades as our ruling class, the self-anointed “Laurentian elite,” embraced our status as a branch-plant economy and a vassal state. It’s taken Trump 2.0 for them to realize that may have been a mistake. Now they’re over-compensating. Every other day you see another desperate plea for spending billions or trillions or gazillions on cementing our sovereignty via warships and submarines and fighter jets. Because Trump! And let’s not forget the Arctic. Here’s Geoff Russ in the National Post; Canada needs an Arctic Empire, no matter the cost. Seriously? No matter the cost? Funny, that’s also trotted out in defense of warships and subs and fighter jets. A few months ago, we at least knew we were on the side of the angels, and we were willing to make sacrifices to “stand with our allies.” Then the Boss Angel, Lucifer, double-crossed us and joined Putin’s team. Oh my… What to do? It’s clear that the most important thing Canada can do at this moment is double down on military spending… or perhaps triple or quadruple down. As Mr Russ points out, our values of freedom and human rights and democracy must be preserved, no matter the cost. We must establish a robust military presence in the Canadian Arctic to defend our sovereignty. Putin, or rather Lucifer, has his eye on it for sure, and it’s gonna take a firehose of big bucks spraying non-stop before we can face down Lucifer. Indeed. Our Arctic defense force, the Rangers, patrol our North with ten year old snowmobiles and fifty year old rifles. They’re defending a Canadian Arctic population of maybe 150,000, most of whom live in tiny communities of a few hundred souls. Lucifer’s Arctic, in contrast, sports major cities and a population of at least 2,500,000 north of the Arctic circle. Instead of ten year old Ski-Doos, the Russians patrol the Arctic with state-of-the-art icebreakers, of which they have more than all other Arctic nations combined. So what is Geoff Russ saying when he says “no matter the cost?” What he and 101 other pundits are saying is we need to rubbish every present and future social program to facilitate the unlimited expenditure on war toys. Otherwise, freedom and democracy may perish! That’s total rubbish.

Ripper: the fart-making of Pierre Poilievre

Must say I was taken aback by the title of PP’s brand-spankin’-new just in time for the election biography. Ripper? The word conjures much, mostly negative to my mind. Makes you wonder what the demographics of their focus groups looked like. One of the less offensive connotations involves passing wind, or I should say, the art of the fart. Sure, everybody squeaks one out now and then, but in some environments the passing of wind will draw appreciative comment from bystanders. For example, early in my teaching career, until I gained a permanent contract that enabled me to say no, I “volunteered” to coach soccer and rugby, sports I literally knew nothing about. The team bus inevitably became a venue for competitive farting. “Ripping forth a beauty” meant you’d earned the respect of your peers. If you got really big decibels, cries of “Ripper!” resonated around the bus and fist-bumps were exchanged. The word applied both to the fart itself, and to the fartiste. Maybe that’s the Poilievre plan - to subconsciously appeal to the inner teen in every middle-aged voter.

Why do we continue to spend on war when we could make our world a better place?

Almost a year ago, I wrote a piece on Canada’s spending priorities; Chrystia Freeland's Canada; billions for Ukraine, $200 a month for the most vulnerable Canadians. In the course of my teaching career, I did a few years in “Spec Ed.” That’s where the kids in front of you are what fifty years ago was called “retarded,” forty years ago were “handicapped,” thirty years ago were “special,” twenty years ago were “exceptional,” and are today known as “developmental learners.” Those few years left me some of the best memories of my teaching career. I’m retired now, but the Farm Manager still has her day job as an Ed Assistant with those very students. One of her charges, a young man with a horrendous back-story and multiple challenges, not to mention a history of violence, has captured her ever-bleeding heart. She’s always been the champion of the lost-cause losers. I think maybe that’s why she’s with me. But I digress. Buddy has a fondness for animals, and for some time we’ve been trying to tee up a school visit by me and Bruno. Today we finally pulled it off. Bruno and I were waiting in the parking lot when Buddy and two of his handlers came to greet us. The FM had stocked up on pepperettes beforehand. This young man came out of the building with the flat over-medicated facial expression you see on so many of these students. A couple of pepperettes later, he had erupted into a beautiful full-body smile as he was caressing our Bruno, who, while a bit aloof, can handle a caress after a treat. This evening me and the FM got into a conversation about what lies in store for these kids after they age out of the school system. There’s a great program available locally that is largely volunteer driven and gets next to no official funding. Still, it costs money to rent a space and cover essential overhead. While it provides a variety of stimulating activities, and partially relieves the 24/7 burden of care their parents face, it still costs a hundred bucks a day. And, there’s a waiting list. The vast majority of our developmental learners have no hope to reach this program. What do their futures look like? Bleak. Which brings me back to our former Finance Minister’s budget wherein she promised multiple billions for assistance to Ukraine, and a $200 a month boost for our most vulnerable. Yes, when you’re at least a thousand a month below the poverty line, two hundred dollars does indeed give you a lift, but not out of poverty. At best, you’ll perhaps enjoy a slightly more genteel poverty! But only slightly. Meanwhile, not only have we found a few more billions for Ukraine, but we seem set to embark on ludicrous commitments to commit hundreds of billions of dollars to everything from warships to fighter jets to attack submarines. This is insanity! This is a crime against our most vulnerable! This is a betrayal of our values. Surely we can do better!

Drunk on hubris, American Empire races towards the abyss

For about the last thirty years, I’ve been hectored by save-the-planet types to mind my carbon footprint. If it’s not Greta Thunberg in my face, it’s Al Gore up my arse. We gotta get off fossil fuels or we’re all gonna die! In the here-and-now, we find ourselves in a world run by billionaires and their minions. Many of the billionaires hail from Silicon Valley. Most of them are salivating at the prospect of multiplying their billions many times over. Now that they’ve got a huge majority of the serfs addicted to their digital devices, they have concluded the next level in our enslavement will require massive server farms, aka “data centres,” to process the never-ending data streams we provide them. These require massive amounts of energy. The Silicon Valley billionaires have no compunction whatsoever about running their data centres on the very fossil fuels I’ve been warned away from for the last thirty years! And while the filthy rich keep getting richer, it becomes increasingly obvious that America at large is circling the drain. The physical infrastructure is crumbling due to habitual neglect necessitated by the needs of the one percent for ever-lower taxes. Ditto the education system. Housing precarity has become normalized. Health care in America boasts top-of-the-line expenses, but bottom of the barrel results. America’s vaunted military, by far the most expensive in the world, hasn’t won a war since 1945, and has lost it’s proxy war in Ukraine. America’s blank-cheque no-questions-asked support for Israel’s ongoing genocide is earning it the hatred of 80% of the planet. In response, America destroys the remnants of the rights and freedoms, that once made it worthy of the Statue of Liberty, by stomping on the rights of its critics, people like Mahmoud Khalil. As history repeatedly demonstrates, failing empires eventually resort to looting their allies, more properly termed vassals. That’s where we’re at in the present moment. We’ve destroyed Germany’s industrial economy but invite German manufacturers to set up shop in America. We’re going to snuff out industry in Canada and get their branch-plant economy to come home to Daddy. America is racing towards the abyss. The two hour phone call with Putin yesterday led to absolutely nothing. Our adversaries are not impressed, nor are they intimidated by idle threats. As I write this, the Empire is bombing Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, to make it stop harassing Red Sea shipping. Our operation “Prosperity Guardian” has in one year accomplished exactly nothing. The Yemenis are not cowed. Nor are the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians. The world at large is fed up with American “leadership.” It’s increasingly obvious that Americans themselves, those suffering under the yoke of billionaire rule, are fed up too. Witness Luigi. Witness flaming Tesla stores. Only the blind and stupid, drunk with hubris, fail to see the writing on the wall.

Kevin O'Leary, cheap gas, and AI data centres

Do you recall ever voting for AI data centres? Me neither. Yet, they’re a really big thing and they’re coming whether you like it or not. According to Kevin O, there’s a $70 billion AI data centre in the works in Alberta. Alberta Preem Danielle Smith has put out the welcome mat for AI data centres. In case you’re wondering, as I am, why we suddenly need to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the electricity grid to power AI, let me bring you up to speed. AI is the future. AI can write shitty essays at all levels of the education system, and while they’re typically shitty as shit, they blend in seamlessly with the shit a typical social science or humanities student produces without the benefit of artificial intelligence. Needless to say, the entire education bureaucracy, from K to post-Doc, is all aboard for the next great thing! The drivers of AI, the big data barons who own the cloud(s), are staking claims on present and future electricity supplies to an extent that AI will impoverish the energy ecosystem regular folks count on to heat their homes and cook their meals, not to mention charging your EV so you can do your part to save the planet! All of that is irrelevant to Big Data. Our digital data universe needs to be properly harnessed so maximum profits can be harvested. So here’s the conundrum. We (ie the Western World led by USA) have been warring against the Chinese tech sector for at least ten years, ever since Obama’s famous pivot. That’s when we started seeing the never-ending yellow peril propaganda all over our media. That’s when we declared war on Huawei and started throwing sanctions at anything that might advance China’s tech sector. Well guess what? The country that graduates 10x more science and math students than the West is pulling ahead in spite of our best efforts. That’s why DeepSeek is excluded from Western tech infrastructure. Chinese tech could run better data centres with 90% less energy consumption. That’s why we have to put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. Without that tariff, we don’t have a chance to compete. Ya, if you look at the cold hard facts, you might think our Western way of life is doomed. But cheer up, at least we’ve got moral superiority!

Trump makes Liberal Party of Canada great again!

Saw a headline today; “Progressives flock to Liberal Party.” Say what? The party elects a Goldman Sachs man to the top job, and the “progressives” abandon the NDP to climb aboard? As the great Bob Dylan sings in that song I like to listen to after a toke and a few pints, people are crazy and times are strange… To paraphrase Fluffy; make that make sense. Please! Windbag Trump has also managed to fill the sails of the good ship Zelensky with a much needed polling boost. He’s up 10 points since that shit sandwich Donny and JD served him at the famous White House lunch a few weeks ago. If he goes back for a couple more of those, he can probably win the next election! You’d think our new PM would make his first foreign trip to DC, to thank Mafia Don for destroying Pierre Poilievre’s political career, but no, his first trip is to France, there to schmooze failing fellow banker and would-be new leader of Free World Macron (approval rating 27%). Now that Dastardly Don has switched sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, Macron sees an opening in the Global Fight to Save Democracy. To that end, he’s putting together a coalition to send a EU army into Ukraine to enforce the 30 day ceasefire Trump and Zelly have agreed to but Putin hasn’t. What could go wrong? After Paris, our man Carney hopped over the Chanel for a visit with King Charlie (approval rating 51%) and PM Starmer (approval rating 31%). Starmer is all-in with Macron’s EU army plans. Perhaps they can be Co-Leaders of the Free World! After all, their combined approval ratings leave Trump’s 47% in the dust. It’s a shame there wasn’t time for a visit with Germany’s Chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz, another big-league banker. (What is it about Democracy that attracts so many Blackrock - Rothschild - Goldman Sachs types to become public servants?) And a double-shame there’s no time for a meet with Fraulein Faschismus VdL (no approval required and no ratings provided) and her sidekick KK. Oh well, it’s early days for Carney and there’ll be plenty more trips to Europe in the weeks and months ahead. What I’m sensing is a grand anti-Trump coalition in the making. Our new PM is aligning himself with Europe’s champions of human rights and the rule of law. There will be strength in numbers when they all face down the Orange Ogre together. But wait! After our intrepid European freedom fighters prevail over Trump and Putin in Ukraine, perhaps they can mend fences and unite for the greater good. After all, there is an even more important civilizational struggle playing out in the Holy Land. Carney’s new European allies and their nemesis in Washington are all on the same page on that one. Trump, Macron, and Starmer will all support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians with whatever it takes for as long as it takes.

Can Canada survive Donald Trump?

According to the crack journos at CBC and the Globe & Mail, Canada is facing an existential crisis. Our forever besties south of the border want to annex us. For real! Read any recent op-ed by Andrew Coyne. It’s all because of the unhinged moron our neighbours voted into the White House last November. Catherine Cullen, of CBC’s The House, got a few minutes with UK Foreign Secretary this morning. He was in Canada for a meeting of the G 7 foreign ministers to formulate their Ukraine strategy. She spent one minute asking one question about Ukraine, and ten minutes asking one question, over and over again, about why our G 7 allies aren’t standing with us against Trump. The short answer, Catherine, is that every one of them is, just like Canada, a US vassal. Number one rule for vassals who have ceded their sovereignty to the Hegemon is this; remember your place. Otherwise, you’re cruising for a slap-down. Neither Lammy nor any of the other G 7 chihuahuas are dumb enough to risk that simply because the thin-skinned Canadians feel threatened by Trump referring to us as the 51st state. Perhaps our elite are suffering a pang of conscience for the many years they looked the other way while the Leader of the Democratic World bullied sundry smaller nations. Surely they are acquainted with the “Ledeen Doctrine;” every ten years the US needs to throw some shitty little country against the wall to show the world we mean business. The term was coined 25 years before Mafia Don entered politics. Maybe they’re afraid it’s our turn, or maybe it’s just a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which has always hit the journalism profession particularly hard. While much of our over-reaction strikes me as juvenile posturing unworthy of a serious country, the moment provides an opportunity for sober second thought on some recent decisions. The F-35 purchase comes to mind. The more you read about it, the more you realize it’s an overpriced piece of shit American pilots would prefer not to fly. There are sound reasons the plane has never seen combat, unless you count dropping bombs on Gaza or shooting down Chinese weather balloons. The F-16 and F-18 are superior fighter jets. By far the most intelligent thing I’ve seen in the Globe re the Trump threats is a full page advert on page A20 in today’s paper, placed by Caldwell Investment Management CEO Brendan Caldwell. It’s an open letter to Mark Carney, exhorting him to take the high road and eschew the “elbows up” jingoism so popular these days. After all, we don’t demonstrate Canadian values by stooping to Uncle Sam’s level.

Are we there yet? How criticism of Israel became a hate crime

The attached essay, first published at Neumann’s Blog in 2015, is about then Foreign Minister in Big Steve’s government, Little John Baird, first declared war on the BDS movement’s campaign to isolate the state of Israel for its policies of apartheid, land theft, and ethnic cleansing. PM Fluffy’s government took the next step in 2019, adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which condemns virtually any criticism of Israel’s conduct vis-a-vis the Palestinians as antisemitic, and therefore a hate crime. That solves the mystery behind the supposed epidemic of Jew Hate in Canada, and in fact in the world at large. When the PM and Defense Minister of the state of Israel announced their intent to commit genocide, and then proceeded to do exactly that for the next year and a half, it is not surprising that criticism of Israel has ramped up. ____ Sunday, January 18, 2015 It's official; support for BDS is now "anti-Semitism" in Canada John Baird made news today when he was seen running from a barrage of shoes and eggs directed his way when he had the chutzpah to show his face in Ramallah. The Palestinians, due no doubt to the troubling impact their religion has on their thought process, see Baird as an Israeli stooge.After giving the Palestinians a stern lecture on the importance of the rule of law etc, he decamped to Jerusalem, where he signed six "memoranda of understanding" with Avigdor Lieberman, his Israeli counterpart. The cumulative effect of the memoranda is to totally hand off Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East to Israel. Canadian foreign policy hasn't been independent for some time, but today's signings make it official.Included in the memoranda is this gem, governing "public diplomacy cooperation." That means Canada will not only blindly support Israel behind the scenes; we are now committed to make sure we are seen to be doing so in public!Here's the bit that equates BDS with anti-Semitism;Deeply concerned by efforts to single out the State of Israel for criticism and isolate the State of Israel internationally including calls for a boycott of the State of Israel, for the divestment of investments, and for sanctions to be imposed on Israel, Recognizing that the selective targeting of Israel reflects the new face of anti‑Semitism, We're there, folks! Look for the Harper gang to push through something in the next anti-terror bill that incorporates this development, and criticism of Israel will be a crime in Canada.

Trump's bullshit "peace plans" exposed as flim-flam

Who can forget Donald Trump’s bold campaign rhetoric? He was going to go into the history books as a peacemaker for the ages. Those two wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which would of course never had started, had he been in the Oval Office instead of Biden, the worst president in US history, would be wound up right away; Ukraine in 24 hours, and Gaza maybe a day or two later. We’re past the first fifty days of Trump 2.0. Should the Nobel Committee be mooting a Peace Prize for Mafia Don? Alas, that would be premature. The current Gaza ceasefire went into effect the day before Trump’s swearing in. Its primary flaw is that Israel has never ceased fire. They’ve merely scaled back the genocide, killing a mere handful of Gazan’s per day instead of dozens or hundreds. At the same time, they shifted the focus of their ethnic cleansing campaign, massively expanding their attacks on the West Bank. For the past week Israel has again blocked all food, water, medicine, and energy entering Gaza. There is no peace and no ceasefire. The 24 hour peace envisioned for Ukraine was stillborn. Instead, some 1,200 hours in, Rubio has announced, with much fanfare, that Zelensky has agreed to the Trump plan, and “the ball is now in Putin’s court.” The Trump non-plan is for a 30 day truce. Of course Zelensky signed on. He has no choice! But what’s in it for Russia? Even in our legacy media, all but the most deluded fabulists now admit what was obvious enough from the beginning, that Ukraine is losing and will continue losing more every day. Threats of more arms, or the even sillier threat of more sanctions - really tough ones this time - are as ridiculous as they sound. The official Kremlin response has not arrived, but it would be foolish to expect anything other than a big fat nyet. In conclusion, Trump the peacemaker is 0 for 2 at this juncture. On the other hand, Trump the destroyer is batting it out of the park all over the place!

Traffic jam in Indian Creek

Last summer the beavers built a dam on Indian Creek, right under the bridge where it flows under Concession Road 20. That’s right where the snappers will crawl out of the creek and lay their eggs in the gravel shoulders of the road come May and early June. There’s typically a couple dozen turtle nests each season, and the racoons generally have them cleaned out within 24 hours. I walk along there every day, and in almost twenty years I’ve encountered a total of one baby snapper. Infant mortality among the snapping turtle population is horrendous, but somehow the species has survived since dinosaurs roamed the earth. There’s also river otters in that stretch of creek. We’ve had a couple sightings just in the past week, one adult and one adolescent, scampering through the snow on the creek bank. I assume if the beavers hadn’t blocked the creek under the bridge, they’d just swim down the creek. Instead, they now have to exit the creek, run along the bank up to the road, cross the road, and then get back in the creek on the other side of the bridge. We’re gonna have river otter road-kill one of these days. Today there was a muskrat sitting on the ice just on the south side of the bridge, on the edge of open water. It was a fairly young one judging by its size. I stood there eyeballing it for a solid two minutes before it noticed me and plunged into the icy water. An adult would have noticed me and disappeared long before I ever saw it. It’s mighty busy in our little stretch of Indian Creek. Somehow all these different species manage to coexist peacefully on the same small patch of real estate. We humans could learn a lot from them.

Jewish student arrested for Nazi salute at Auschwitz during school trip

I know what you’re thinking. Neumann’s been drinking deeply from those fringe news outlets that spew non-stop antisemitic bile. Guilty as charged; that headline comes from the Jerusalem Post. The Polish authorities, still a little sensitive over their complicity in the holocaust, arrest this Israeli teen who has come to Auschwitz on a school trip. Auschwitz is a top destination for school trips not only from Israel, but throughout the West. Auschwitz generates serious tourism dollars for the state. That’s why the local cops nipped this teen sieg-heiler in the bud, pronto. As a veteran teacher who supervised a few school trips, I can vouch for the fact teens will get up to all kinds of shit. I remember I chaperoned a busload at the International Plowing Match one year, and I had to spend the entire day in the beer tent to keep the little shits out of it! It’s not hard to imagine a teenage wise guy impressing his pals with a Nazi salute at the gates of Auschwitz. They are teens, after all! Luckily for him, his pals spun a pretty good yarn to get him a much-reduced sentence. They were just taking random pictures as Hitler Youth boy was innocently waving at them, and it just happened to look like a Nazi salute! You know, just like that shot of Musk’s recent Nazi salute.

Canadians excited to have former Goldman Sachs banker as new Prime Minister

We’re in the big leagues now! We finally have our own GS alum in the top job, just like they had Rishi Sunak in Britain, Italy had Mario Draghi, and Australia had Malcom Turnbull. Off the top of my head, I don’t recall any of their governments celebrated for improving the lot of their people. Trump packed his first cabinet with GS alumni. His shadow boss Steve Bannon is former GS. There are literally scores of them at the top of the banking and insurance industry in the US and EU. Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right AfD in Germany is a GS grad. They generally skew right politically, although they were plentiful in recent Dem administrations (not that I’d consider that skewing left!). There’s less of a GS presence in the Trump 2.0 cabinet. That’s too bad, otherwise Carney could have sorted out this tariff fracas with a phone call. The billionaires Trump’s hired on from Cantor Fitzgerald and Morgan Stanley are probably just as sympathetic to the interests of the common people as the GS folks. After retiring from the BoE gig Carney was handed not one, but two lucrative sinecures, at Bloomberg and at Brookfield. I’m willing to wager he’s got more billionaires on speed-dial than Chrystia, but probably not as many Ukrainian ones. It was a little unnerving to witness the raucous applause he got from the Liberal faithful at the convention. They’re obviously expecting great things. I am too. Not so much for the folks lining up at the food banks, but certainly for the kind of people he’s spent his entire professional career serving.

Trump and the ever-gushing firehose of horseshit

It’s comforting to imagine the dismay and disarray that has befallen our “Laurentian elite” since January 20 is part of an awakening to just how destructive to Canadian interests US domination of our economy and society has become. Alas, this elite has been all too comfortable with our vassalage, which has been undeniably obvious at least since John Diefenbaker killed the Avro Arrow in 1959. I don’t believe their sudden obsession with Canada’s sovereignty is anything other than nostalgia for the gentler pre-Trumpian days, when Uncle Sam picked our pockets clean while whispering sweet nothings into our ears. Trump, on the other hand, claims we’ve been sponging off the American Empire all along and demands we make it up to them. It’s a vulgar despoilation of the fantasy that we’ve always been besties. Recall it was merely three months ago that our pretty but undeniably stupid Foreign Minister announced the Canadian Arctic was henceforth to be known as the North American Arctic, and that we Canadians were in actuality members of something I’d never heard of; the “North American Homeland!” My view has consistently been that Trump’s political persona is an integral part of America’s Democracy Theatre. Insofar as there ever was a functioning democracy in the US, it has long ago ceased to be such. The billionaires who control the joint can’t just come out and admit that, hence the ever-gushing firehose of horseshit about values, human rights, democracy, and so forth. There’s an excellent essay on view at Naked Capitalism which is well worth a read. The writer argues that the perceived chaos in Trump’s Washington is nothing more or less than the rebranding of the American Empire to better reflect the interests of its owners. I’m inclined to agree.

Remember the looting of Sears Canada

Yesterday’s HBC news brought to mind the not-unrelated fate of Sears Canada, so I thought the time is right to revisit that unfortunate episode in Canada’s economic history. Our PM at the time was the same lightweight goofball who the Liberal Party is officially replacing today. If I recall correctly, he was really sad that 16,000 Sears Canada had lost their jobs and their pensions, but there was nothing he could do. That’s the same guy who frequently attended the openings of new Amazon warehouses in Canada to thank Jeff Bezos for bringing “good” jobs that would “strengthen the middle class.” As if! Of course, when the benevolent Bezos recently shuttered eight Amazon warehouses in Quebec to prevent their unionization, our PM was again missing in action. Frankly, I don’t see Freeland, Carney, or Pierre Poilievre doing anything different. The looting of Sears Canada (from Neumann's Blog, October 15, 2017) In yesterday's Globe and Mail business section, "retailing reporter" Marina Strauss offers yet another it's-all-over-but-the-crying insight into the slow and painful death of Sears Canada. This paragraph caught my eye;Sears's insolvency came after years of declines and red ink at the retailer amid shifting strategies and leaders. At the same time, its major U.S. shareholder – hedge fund manager Edward Lampert – profited from Sears Canada's asset sales over the years in the form of generous dividends while leaving relatively little money to invest in the chain.That's the only mention of Edward Lampert. So he arranged for some generous dividends for himself, did he? Just how generous were they? Don't the folks at the Globe and Mail think that might be a relevant bit of info? I'd sure like to know!This seems like an unfortunate oversight from an outfit that never tires of reminding us how great their professionally trained journalists are, how they speak truth to power, and blah blah blah... Anyway, since Marina won't tell me, I decided to look it up for myself.According to dividendchannel.com, in the ten years before Sears Canada fell into the clutches of Ed Lampert, the company paid a modest dividend of .24 per share per year. That's $2.40 over ten years. Then our brilliant American hedgie gets his hands on the wheel, and the good times get a-rollin'!First thing over the side is the Sears Canada credit card unit. That was considered the most valuable part of the company according to news stories of the day. It fetched almost three billions at auction! At that point, the company could have chosen to reinvest in the business, but who are we kidding!? That's not generally the business model that hedge funds pursue, so instead, within months of Lampert's arrival, there's a special dividend of $18.64 per share to spread the loot to the shareholders, especially himself! That's about 750% more paid out in the first year of King Eddie's reign than was paid out in the previous ten years combined!Is this guy a genius or what!And the special dividend gravy train had barely left the station. There followed special dividends totaling $7.00/share in 2010, another 100 million out the door in 2012, and yet another ten bucks/share in 2013!The company that paid out a dividend of twenty-four cents/share per year before Eddie, paid out an average of $4.50/share/year over the first eight years after Eddie. Or putting it another way, over ten years before Eddie, the then profitable company paid out about a quarter of a billion dollars in dividends. In the ten years after Eddie, the now money-losing company paid out close to four billion dollars in dividends. And as the biggest shareholder, Eddie Lampert was the biggest beneficiary of these "special" dividends!Ain't that special!So now the game is over. Sixteen thousand employees have an opportunity to find more meaningful work, and who needs a pension anyway?... But that's a small price to pay for this great system that brings so much prosperity to all of us.More to some than to others.

Canada once again promises the new warships they've been promising for 20 years

I see where the long-promised new fleet of warships, formerly the “surface combatants,” now the “River-class destroyers,” have moved one step closer to actual construction. They allegedly started cutting steel for the first ship last summer. Today’s news is that at least three of the proposed fleet of 15 have got the green light. The bad news is they’re scheduled to come in at 7+ billions apiece. The worse news is, given our wretched shipbuilding history, that number will at least double by the time they’re commissioned sometime in the mid-2030s. Worse than that, by the time the last of the 15 new ships hits the seas in the 2050s, you can mark my words, we’ll have sunk half a trillion dollars into this project. All that, so we can “stand with our allies?” That’s especially problematic now that we’re not sure who our allies are anymore. And let’s not forget; war has changed since this project was first on the drawing boards twenty years ago. The Russians are losing battleships to $100k amphibious drones in the Black Sea. Why would anyone build a multi-billion dollar warship that can be sunk for a hundred grand? That threat aside, Russia continues to build warships like there’s no tomorrow. Last year the Russian navy took delivery of 12 new surface ships and four submarines. That’s a half- century of production by current Canadian standards! But we’re not Russia. We simply cannot afford this idiocy. Look around you. Any tent encampments in your town? Crazy people wandering the streets shouting at God? We have record-breaking line-ups at food banks clear across the land. We simply have more important priorities. Let’s scrap this insane idea that we need to spend untold billions on warships and F-35s while we’re on the precipice of becoming a third-world shithole. Breaking away from the American Empire is the first step in making things right. Go Trump!

The slow and painful death of the Hudson's Bay Company

While my Globe & Mail today was mostly saturated with Trump tariff hysteria, they did find the space to inform me that our beloved Hudson’s Bay Company was filing for bankruptcy protection. How sad, I thought. I was aware the company had fallen into the clutches of American hedge fund billionaires some years ago, but I still saw it as Canadian. Turns out the only time this almost 500 year old company actually had Canadian ownership was for a few years after Canadian billionaire Ken Thomson, also known as Baron Thomson of Fleet, bought it in 1979. According to Wikipedia, Thomson bought the company for $400 million, sold off the oil and gas assets for $550 millions, and eventually sold on what was left to US billionaire Jerry Zucker for a billion! That’s a pretty sweet return on investment! Far from being a Canadian company, two hundred years older than the country itself, HBC was a tool of British colonialism, and a very effective one. In the 1800s the HBC trading posts formed a network that extended as far south as San Francisco. They even had an outpost in Hawaii. They actively discouraged settlement in the northwest, fearing it would interfere with their lucrative fur trade. That changed when HBC was sold to the International Financial Society, a consortium of London bankers, in 1863. Many of London’s banking houses were neck-deep in the promotion of railroad stock, and they saw the potential in the vast land holdings of HBC. Thereafter, the company became aggressively pro-settlement, because you don’t need railroads without a population. Among the bankers was Richard Potter, father of Beatrice, whose bank eventually evolved into the JP Morgan we all know and love today. Not that they didn’t continue the fur trade. In the 1920s the famous Doctor Frederick Banting, and his good friend, the painter A.Y. Jackson, did a tour of the far north and were disgusted by the company’s treatment of the indigenous population. Outraged, Banting travelled to London and faced off with the directors. He accused them of swindling the locals out of $100,000 worth of fox pelts in exchange for $5,000 worth of unhealthy whiteman food that made their teeth fall out. It was the HBC bigshots’ turn to be outraged. They accused Banting of slander. Alas, they themselves had never been to Canada. When they made some enquiries, they backed off, and actually sent Banting an apology. But back to the present. It has been the sorry end of many a once-iconic institution, built up over decades and sometimes centuries, to fall into the hands of today’s robber barons, the venture fund sharpies who specialize in enriching themselves by destroying the livelihoods of others. They have made themselves so filthy rich that, where they once were content to buy race-horses, they now buy politicians. Proving yet again that as long as we allow money to be power, we will always be ruled by the rich.

Globe & Mail editorial board laments death of Pax Americana

According to the clique of American Empire Loyalists who comprise the Globe & Mail’s editorial board, the post-WWII era of US hegemony, “Pax Americana,” was a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity in the world. It was? Try telling that to the millions of Koreans who paid the ultimate price from 1950 to 1953. Try telling that to the further millions who made the ultimate sacrifice in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and ‘70s. Try telling that to the millions in the Middle East who have enjoyed the non-so-tender machinations of the Leader of the Free World, from the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953, to the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, to the unlimited support for Israel’s decades long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Palestinians. Try telling that to the peoples of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and Argentina where US support for fascist governments disappeared hundreds of thousands. The cozy smug American Empire Loyalists at the Globe editorial board don’t remember any of that. All they recall is 80 years of peace and prosperity! Now, in the space of a week,… Mr. Trump has ended Pax Americana. Oh, for fucks sakes! How can you publish such overwrought rubbish? Yesterday’s editorial goes on to proclaim that Canada is left with no choice but to follow the liberal democracies of Europe as they rally to keep Pax America afloat without America. This means joining the unelected Ursula von der Leyen’s jihad to raise a trillion euro’s for the defence of democratic Ukraine. Ya sure, why not? Another trillion down the “whatever it takes for as long as it takes” black hole? That’s beyond stupid, beyond counter-productive, beyond complete mental retardation. Yup, that’s the road we want to take! And it’s not just the editorial board at the Globe. Top Globe thought-leader Andrew Coyne has become completely possessed by Trump Derangement Syndrome, to the point where his latest rants are a cry for professional intervention. In one single recent 800 word op-ed, he informs his readers that Trump is: a nullity, depraved, callous, insane, a criminal, a madman, crazy crazy crazy, a threat to the peace of the world, and a moron. Dude! Lean back in your La-Z-Boy, put on some Bob Dylan, and fire up a fattie. Works for me.

Ukraine, Gaza, and Trump's Nobel Peace Prize

According to the UN, Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has over three years claimed the lives of almost 700 Ukrainian children. Israel’s war on Gaza, in less than a year and a half, has claimed the lives of over 18,000 Palestinian children. When PM Trudeau met the press this morning, to outline Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs, he prefaced his remarks with the observation that, in his mind, it was incomprehensible that Trump would turn on his allies, while normalizing relations with the “murderous dictator” in Moscow. In my mind, it’s incomprehensible that Justin would bring that up, considering he has never said a word about the murderous war criminals running amok in Gaza. Justin and a lot of his fellow NATO underlings are aghast that Trump is moving to normalize with Russia. For them, even though they’ve nothing to contribute other than their best wishes, they remain mesmerized by the “Putin can’t be allowed to win” mantra. Trump recognizes something they don’t; Russia has won. It’s all over except the pissing and moaning and finger-pointing. Not only is Ukraine defeated; NATO has been exposed as a paper tiger. NATO is just coming to terms with the fact that, without America, they hold no cards. It’s over. Rant all you want about Uncle Sam’s callous perfidy in provoking this war (and I’ve done my share of ranting) and then walking away from it. Donald Trump imagines himself to be a peace-maker, and he’s doing the right thing. Which brings me to Gaza. I predicted early on that no matter how toxic Biden was to the Palestinian cause, Trump would be exponentially worse. Yet Trump took the Arab-American vote in the crucial states of Michigan and Minnesota. Arab-Americans hated the Democratic Party so much they were willing to give Trump a chance. How is that working out? Today there was an Arab League summit in Cairo. They were making plans to rebuild Gaza, a plan that would not involve the removal of its inhabitants. Would this summit have occurred if Trump had not floated his uber-gauche plan to turn Gaza into a casino resort? No! Trump has managed to consolidate an Arab coalition willing to rebuild Gaza. So far so good, but what about Netanyahu’s ultimate dream; to have America lead an attack on Iran? To my way of thinking, that’s the ultimate litmus test viz Trump’s intentions. Bibi won’t launch that attack without US participation. If Trump holds back, the Greater Israel fantasies are over. And if Trump can pull that off, he fully deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Doug Ford, the mouth that roared

Did anyone else figure that brou-ha-ha in the Oval Office last Friday looked suspiciously like it might have been scripted by Dana White? Think about it. Don and Dana are pals from way back. Dana’s got the secret sauce that can get the rubes to cheer for… whoever he wants them to cheer for! That’s why I worry about Doug Ford. Doug is Preem of my province. He recently pissed away $180 millions to hold an unnecessary election so he could have a strong mandate to take on Trump. For all those millions, his party gained one solitary seat. I’m surprised he got as much support as he did. At the onset of this unnecessary campaign, he announced he had a plan to ensure every Ontarian had a doctor within four years. I thought, hey Doug, you’ve already been Preem for seven years, why the fuck don’t we have doctors already? But you know politics… I can see Dana’s scriptwriters penciling in Trump’s next victim after Zelly. Doug Ford, the mouth that roared.

Mysteries of the Woke Mind

I took my first university courses in the ‘70s. There were ashtrays on the desks in case you felt like having a smoke during class. Political correctness had yet to be invented, and its toxic spawn, the woke warrior, could not have been imagined. PoMo literary theory, at least in the non-elite schools that admitted the likes of me, was an entertaining novelty, enthusiastically debated over pitchers of beer in the campus pub. It was heady stuff! Once you realize that absence can be framed as the highest form of presence, you’re looking at a big new world of possibilities! In hindsight, it’s not hard to find the through-line to Woke-world and the Woke Mind. Consider a couple of scenarios, purely hypothetical of course. Scenario I: A young girl, let’s call her Muffy, is born into an Italian family, but grows up to believe she is actually an American Indian. A gifted singer and songwriter, she achieves great success and champions Indigenous human rights causes, to the extent that she finds herself on the FBI’s list of radicals and her career suffers twenty years in the wilderness. She perseveres, stays true to her adopted identity, eventually becoming, in regular minds, an iconic voice for Indigenous Rights. In the Woke Mind, she is a fraud, and must be exposed, humiliated, and stripped of decades worth of honours. Scenario II: A young boy, let’s call him Billy, grows up to believe he is actually a girl, in spite of the obvious evidence in his pants that this is not the case. In high school, with the encouragement and support of a caring community, he comes out, and switches from the boy’s swim team to the girl’s. Regular minds immediately claim he is a fraud, and demand Billy keep his willy out of the girl’s change room. In the Woke Mind, Billy is a hero, who should be celebrated for finding the courage to live his authentic life! Maybe fraud is the highest form of authenticity… or is authenticity the highest form of fraud? Either way, you can blame post-modern literary theory.

Starmer's Summit of Silliness promises to keep making empty promises for as long as it takes

British PM Sir Keir Starmer only got that job because the Israel lobby in Britain kneecapped his predecessor on account of his refusal to endorse Israel’s extermination campaign against the Palestinian people. As such, he is fully aware that his tenure is at all times dependent on far more than the whims of British voters. Indeed, every “sovereign” nation outside the Big Three exists at the pleasure of their more powerful neighbours. So what’s an enfeebled vassal state to do when world events call upon it to show some spine? Why, call a meeting, of course! And that’s what Starmer did, hastily convening the “Securing our Future” confab in London yesterday. And, while our own PM Fluffy wasn’t on the original guest list, there he was in all the photo-ops, ingratiating himself with his fellow non-entities. Here’s a quote from his official website: “Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty is a fight for freedom and democracy everywhere. The important discussions we had today reinforced our shared resolve: as Allies, we will remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine. Canada will be there for Ukraine until there is a just and lasting peace. Slava Ukraini!” - The Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada If hot air, wishful thinking, and empty promises could win wars, the Ukrainian army would have occupied the Kremlin a year and a half ago! Slava Ukraini indeed! Starmer’s coalition of the deluded concluded with promises of allied “boots on the ground and planes in the air” to push back Putin and save democracy. When you read the fine print, this remains entirely dependent on what is euphemistically referred to as the “US backstop.” In other words, he affirmed what Trump spelled out to Zelensky last Friday applies to the entirety of Europe; without America you’ve got no cards. But you can bet the empty promises will keep on coming for as long as it takes.

Zelly visits White House, gets shit sandwich with side of humiliation

I had just wrapped yesterday’s rant on the catastrophic consequences of America’s “help” to Ukraine over the past decade, when I turned on the TV to that live presser from the Oval Office. What a fitting exclamation mark to the point I was making! It was the old ass-grabber and war criminal Henry Kissinger who observed that being America’s enemy was dangerous, but being America’s friend could be deadly. How do people forget that? Yet every time another one-time ally gets stabbed in the back, we are shocked and appalled all over again. Wrap your minds around it folks; horny Hank wasn’t joking! America has no friends and no allies. It has only “strategic interests.” The dimwits in Ottawa desperately crafting a policy of appeasement in hopes of avoiding Trump’s threatened tariffs are wasting their time. Trump will do what he does, and no amount of ass-kissing will change the outcome. During Trump’s first term Chrystia Freeland tried to ingratiate herself with Mafia Don by assuming leadership of the Lima Group, that made-in-USA confection that tried and failed to fob off the ridiculous Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. She achieved nothing other than tarnishing Canada’s reputation in the Global South. Did her service to Trump raise his opinion of her? Just yesterday he dismissed her as a “whack job,” so I’m guessing not. And about that 51st state nonsense. The first time Trump said it he had no idea of the scale of bed-wetting it would unleash in this massively insecure country, so now he tosses it out there at every opportunity just to get a rise out of us. We’ve got serious people writing at CBC and the Globe bemoaning that none of our allies have asked Trump to stop making that lame joke. One overwrought journo wondered why King Charles wouldn’t step up and say something! Really? Grow up, Canada!

Unfathomable evil: America's extortion of Ukraine's precious minerals

The frightened US puppet masquerading as president of Ukraine will be in Washington today to sign over to Mafia Don the future rights to whatever is left of Ukraine. This will compensate the Americans for the “hundreds of billions” they claim to have invested in support of Ukraine since 2022. The number comes as a surprise to knowledgeable observers, as it is several times the value of support actually given, and seems to be another example of the Trumpian arithmetic that discovered an annual 200B USD “subsidy” to Canada. Furthermore, much if not most of the money never went to Ukraine, but to US arms manufacturers, for game-changing weapons systems that have clearly been no match for the supposedly inferior kit the Russians bring to the party. The rationale for the extortion of this broken country is that America must be repaid for its investments. Let us consider what American “support” has brought Ukraine. The stage was set for war with Russia by egregious US meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics in the lead-up to the coup of 2014. The coup, or the “Revolution of Dignity,” as Western propaganda would have it, brought to the fore elements of the rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, who pine for the days when they donned SS uniforms and gleefully assisted in the cleansing of Poles, Jews, and other Untermenschen. The shooting war began in April of that year with Ukrainian attacks on the Donbas states that had refused to recognize the coup government and instead declared their independence. By 2022 the Donbas war had claimed over 10,000 lives, the vast majority being Donbas civilians. In December of 2021 Putin offered an ultimatum of sorts; let’s negotiate a new security architecture for the region to end the blood-letting. He was summarily ridiculed and ignored across the West. In February, as Ukrainian artillery attacks on Donbass were reaching all-time highs, he reluctantly implemented the “military-technical” option to demilitarize Ukraine. There erupted across the West a gusher of hyperventilating outrage over Putin’s totally unprovoked full-scale invasion. We, the Democracies of the world, promised to back Ukraine “with whatever it takes for as long as it takes” to crush Russia, a promise reiterated almost daily in the capitals of NATO countries. When Zelensky’s government sought to negotiate a truce a mere month into the war, the preening weasel Boris Johnson arrived to scuttle it. Three years later, the damage to Ukraine is incalculable. Ukraine has largely been demilitarized, and so has NATO. The West’s warmongers turned out not to have the “whatever it takes” of their pie-in-the-sky promises for nearly long enough. Hundreds of thousands are dead. Millions are broken in body or mind, and millions more have fled the country. The cost of reconstruction will run into the trillions. Three years later, there’s been an election in the country that leads the Free World. The returned Trump is mostly interested in reminding us the war would never have started if he’d won in 2020. Beyond that, he’d like to move on, and normalize relations with Russia. There’s just one little thing. Uncle Sugar wants his money back. Hence, Zelensky's pilgrimage to the White House today, to sign away whatever is left of his country’s future, and thank America for all its help.

Identity fetishism; the putrid heart of wokery at CBC

News today that Buffy Sainte-Marie has been booted from the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. She’s already had her Order of Canada clawed back. This is all thanks to a CBC campaign to root out “Pretendians,” fake Natives who aren’t really Indians. Supposedly there’s an epidemic of this fakery going on, which is somewhat ironic. You don’t hear about Indians passing themselves off as white to steal university jobs from whites, but for some reason the system incentivizes the reverse to happen. Before the colonists arrived, Indigenous peoples decided who was a member of the tribe. The settlers wanted to improve that loosey-goosey system, so they introduced something called Blood Quantum Laws. That enabled them to determine who was or was not Indian enough. Now the Indians themselves have embraced this settler innovation. Buffy didn’t make the cut. She must be destroyed. Also today, news that human remains have potentially been discovered in the Winnipeg landfill search. It will take at least two weeks to determine whether the remains found are human remains, and more time to determine their identity. That didn’t prevent the CBC from interviewing relatives of the missing women to get them to share their feelings at this moment. That’s pretty much the epitome of exploitative journalism. If CBC needs to feature this story, why don’t they focus on stuff that’s known, instead of speculating about what isn’t. One thing we know for sure is millions are being spent in the search for the remains of these marginalized human beings. Why couldn’t we spend the money on them before they died? Nobody would ever die in a dumpster if we made sure they had a roof over their head. Buffy Sainte-Marie was a one-time supporter of Leonard Peltier. She backed away from that position during an anti-Peltier smear campaign run mainly through CBC. The man is free at last. Here’s his welcome home party. Times are changing, but CBC’s identity fetishism lives on.

Bullshittin' Bill Browder still golden at CBC

Whenever CBC runs out of more reliable sources of anti-Putin propaganda, they turn to the serial liar, con man, crook, and indefatigable self-promoter Bill Browder for his insights, and there he was on The Current this morning. According to Bill, these are indeed bleak times for the Free World, especially since Trump has officially thrown his lot in with Putin against Ukraine. You might think he’s getting a little ahead of his skis with that kind of nonsense, but Matt Galloway wouldn’t know that, so his wild speculation goes unchallenged. Bill is introduced as a human rights activist and Putin expert. In the 1990’s Browder was the junior partner and front-man for a couple of senior Israeli banking moguls of dubious repute. They set up Hermitage Capital to “invest” in Russia in the wild west days after the fall of the Soviet Union, and made out like bandits! According to Russian authorities, that’s because they were. Browder high-tailed it out of Moscow in the nick of time, and set about reinventing himself as a corruption fighter, human rights champion, and best-selling author. Back in 2019 the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel published a detailed critique of Browder’s yarns. True to form, Bullshittin’ Bill had a hissy fit and filed a complaint with the German press watchdog. They sided with Der Spiegel against Browder. Here is Der Spiegel's response. By the way, CBC aren’t the only ones to fall for this charlatan. Last year he was knighted for his service to the British Empire. He is now Sir Bullshittin’ Bill Browder!

Trump just stabbed the Free World in the back

There’s a whole lotta gnashing of teeth and rending of sackcloth going round the punditocracy these days. Trump has betrayed Ukraine! Trump is a Putin stooge! Trump has abandoned our NATO allies! The folks who write this stuff are in shock. They’ve made careers out of shilling for Empire, and they’re in denial about what is happening right in front of their eyes. What they’re seeing is the propaganda they’ve been shoveling so vigorously for the past three years being exposed as delusional bullshit. Since Russia’s totally unprovoked full-scale invasion of 2022, they’ve been regaling us with stories of Ukraine’s soon-to-come victory over Putin. Putin is already on the ropes. Running out of missiles and manpower. The economy is teetering. Soon… just a few more months and a few more billions and maybe some battle tanks and fighter jets… Russia’s collapse is inevitable. Anyone who has bothered to educate themselves about the origins of the Ukraine war, knows it was meticulously provoked over decades by the American Exceptionalists in Washington and their NATO vassals. Nor was there in February of 2022 any “full-scale” invasion. What there has been is endless propaganda about Russian aggression and Ukraine’s pending Triumph. And it’s been bullshit top to bottom and end to end. In reality, this has been a proxy war by US and its NATO allies on Russia, and Russia has won. The dementia case propped up in the oval office imagined he ran the world. The guy who replaced him a month ago doesn’t seem to consider “running the world” his mandate. This is a blessing for the entire planet! It’s an acknowledgement that America is a powerful nation among others, but not the world’s only super-power and Boss of Bosses. It’s an acknowledgement that the interests of other nations will need to be considered going forward. It’s a giant step towards peace in the world.

Snowmageddon

Just over a month ago, I wrote an ode to the joys of clearing one’s drive with nothing more than a shovel. No fancy climate-killing internal combustion propelled snow-blowers or tractors required. Well, that was then. We’ve had about another six feet of snow since, and let me tell you, that hand-shovel shit is getting more than a little old. The local school board has declared 25 “snow days” since Christmas. In my twelve years as a student, and twenty-five as a teacher, I don’t recall ever having more than ten. The kids have lost more than a month of teaching days, and it’s barely the middle of February! Truth be told, the only thing that’s saved me from a heart attack is the fact my tenant farmer has taken pity on me, and has run a good-sized John Deere tractor with a robust snowblower up the drive a few times. Pity, perhaps leavened by the fact I haven’t bumped the land rent in fifteen years. There you go. Be kind to people, and they’ll be kind to you. Give it a try!

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.