Happy New Year! Welcome to Annus Horribilis Maximus!

We're not talking about your visit to the proctologist here. I'm thinking 2026 is shaping up to be a watershed year. There is no happiness in the new year for a great slice of humanity. For a lot of them, this is no big deal, because when have they ever had a happy new year? I'm talking about the 3rd world/global south crowd who perpetually get the short end of the stick when it comes to sharing the fruits of modernity etc. But many of us, accustomed to being on the winning side always, are in for a rude shock. This is a good news - bad news story. The bad news, in a nutshell, is 500 years of Anglo-European domination is winding down. The American Empire is visibly wobbling, economically, militarily, and politically. That's also the good news. What has happened in Ukraine is that the entire USA-NATO brand has been exposed as a paper tiger. Great! We no longer have to knock ourselves out to hit those Trump-imposed 5% NATO spending targets! Free at last! Free at last! The good news is the death of NATO frees up a shitload of money to address the many crises Canada faces. On top of that loss of all military cred in Ukraine, the coming year promises the implosion of the AI bubble. For all practical purposes China has already won the AI race. There you have it. Maximum Horribilis for the Empire and its dependencies, like Israel and NATO; happy days for the rest of the world. Happy New Year!

The folly of trying to spend our way into Donald Trump's good graces

Mark Carney has a two-part strategy to get Canada off Trump’s shit list. It’s been a humiliating ordeal for every decent Canuck to hear those “51st state” jibes over and over again, even after our king politely hinted to the American king that many Canadians didn’t like it. Part one is spending a shit-load of money on what we call “defence.” This is considered a viable strategy because we know one thing Mafia Don really and truly respects, even more than women with big boobs, is shit-loads of money. Part two is hiding Part one from decent Trump-hating Canadians. Hence the “mis-direction” about turning to Europe for defence partnerships. That’s kinda rich, because, while CBC and the Globe would rather keep you in the dark, every leader in NATO is literally begging Trump to re-commit to America’s leadership role. That’s because they know they don’t have a hope of vanquishing Putin without him. The bad news is they won’t defeat Russia with him either. Here’s some numbers NATO fans should keep in mind. In 2021, the year before Putin’s full-scale and fully unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, combined NATO/USA military spending was 1.22 trillion USD. Russia’s was $66 billion. By 2024, Russian military spending had more than doubled, to 149 billion USD. That’s an $80B USD boost. NATO spending went from 1.2 T to 1.56 T. In other words, while Russia bumped spending by 80 billions, NATO bumped spending by almost 400 billions. And what happened on the ground in those two years? NATO and their Ukrainian patsies are making Russia look great again, that’s what! The only reason the war continues is because admitting defeat would mean the end of NATO, and there are far too many Important People collecting fat pay packets to ever allow that to happen. ONWARD FREE AND DEMOCRATIC NATIONS - TO THE LAST UKRAINIAN!