Justin and Chrystia double down on Trump appeasement strategy

Having completely and utterly fumbled the China file, I see where our dynamic duo of diplomacy are busy trying to further ingratiate themselves with the Bolton-Trump-Pompeo combine by doing Uncle Sam's bidding with the so-called "Lima Group."

Canadian journalist Andrew Mitrovica does a nice job of exposing our hypocrisy in this story at Al Jazeera. There's a reason you're reading it at AJE and not in the Globe and Mail. Our "free press" are doing all they can to obscure the fact that what our PM and Foreign Minister are really up to is desperately trying to curry favour with the war-mongers in Washington.


Much has changed in the two years since Justin thought it would be clever to give Mafia Don a poke in the eye with that virtue-signalling tweet welcoming the world's downtrodden and oppressed. It's a complete embarrassment to watch Justin and his Foreign Minister go all-in for America's regime change plans in Venezuela.

This is not what our last PM Trudeau would have done.

After twenty years of relentless hostility from US, Venezuela endgame in play

It's simply amazing to witness how the US, a nation politically paralyzed for the past two years because Putin's minions allegedly interfered in its democracy with hostile Facebook posts, has absolutely no qualms about interfering in Venezuela on a massive scale. Facebook adverts are quite a different matter than having VP Pence openly call for a military coup against the lawful government of Venezuela.

US sanctions have succeeded in "making the economy scream," a turn of phrase coined by Henry Kissinger back when the US was busy overthrowing the democratically elected government of Chile. There is an entire generation in Venezuela that has come of age knowing nothing but US sanctions.

Unfortunately for all concerned, the "end game" is unlikely to be the end of anything, but rather, the beginning of something that should be obvious to the Gods of War in Washington if they weren't blinded by their own propaganda. Namely, any government seen as imposed by the Yanqui is going to face massive popular resistance. Maduro may be deposed, but Chavismo will get a second wind, and not only in Venezuela.

After the successes that US regime-change campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria have enjoyed this century, you'd think that the Exceptional Nation might pause and consider the consequences of its actions, but apparently this is not a requirement when you're exceptional.


And what's truly embarrassing is how keen our Freeland-Trudeau team are to ingratiate themselves with the war-mongers in DC. We used to have a PM Trudeau who charted an independent course for Canada.

Pierre must be spinning in his grave.

It's a small world after all

I'm reading the Style section of today's Globe and Mail, and so far it looks like this may be the only section that you can read end to end without once encountering the name Donald Trump. I'm gonna read it three or four times back to front, every article on every page, for that reason alone.

So Jeanne Beker's got an interview with Jessica Mulroney, who is the wife of Ben Mulroney, who is the son of former PM Brian Mulroney. Jessica makes her living as a fashion consultant. One of the people consulting her is Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau, wife of Justin Trudeau, spawn of Lyin' Brian's arch nemesis, Pierre Trudeau!

Is it a small world or what!?

Justin Trudeau is a wanker

To be perfectly honest, I haven't actually voted in anything since a friend of mine ran for MP on the Green Party ticket here.

Before that, you'd have to go back twenty years or more, when I cast my ballot for one of those Marxist-Leninist dudes running for city council in Guelph.

Quixotic idealists, both of them, and you'd be right if you guessed that the handful of votes either of those players got in the great game 'o democracy had no bearing on the big picture.

Which brings me to the upcoming federal election. A lot of folks had high hopes for the spawn of Pierre. The Liberal Party ran through a number of no-name sad-sacks after the retirement of Jean Chretien, all of whom were bulldozed into irrelevance by the neolib Harper machine.

So finally we get a potentially viable alternative, Trudeau Junior. He makes a few socially progressive noises.

Gonna ease up on the "War on Drugs."

Gonna tax the rich, at least a bit, maybe.

But the more you get to know the guy, the more you figure.... maybe not.

He's all aboard for Canada's military adventure against Islamic State.

He's all aboard for our military adventure in Ukraine.

He's supporting Big Steve's Bill C-51 police state legislation.

He's all about being another sock puppet for US Imperialism.


And that must be making his dear daddy spin in his grave.

Canada: the little colony that couldn't

Just days after announcing that Canada's interests in Iran would henceforth be served by the Italian embassy there, the word in Ottawa is that we will be "combining" foreign diplomatic posts with those of the UK.

The supposed rationale for this move is to deliver better value to the Canadian taxpayer.

Why not go all the way and abandon all pretense at being a sovereign nation? Just dissolve parliament and let  Whitehall run the whole show, or at least the parts they're interested in.

Maybe there would be other interested candidates. Perhaps the Chinese would be willing to take Alberta. They seem keen on the tar sands after all. And the Maritimes could join the Boston states. Ontario could officially become part of the midwestern rust belt.

Manitoba might make a go of things as an independent Hutterite homeland. Vancouver could be an independent city-state along the lines of Singapore, with the rest of the province reverting to aboriginal ownership.

Quebec would gain independence by default as the rest of the country withers away around it.

And the savings to Canadian taxpayers would be so immense that no Canadians would need to work anymore...

Poor Pierre must be spinning in his mausoleum. After all that fuss over the "patriation" of the Constitution, our flirtation with sovereignty appears to be over after a mere thirty years.

How I got fired from Dick Cheney's war profiteering empire of evil

OK, I have to admit I'm stretching things a bit here.

But that's a time-honored tradition amongst headline writers in the mainstream press. If a bit of confabulation is good enough for the New York Times, what the hell, it's good enough for The View From Falling Downs.

I got fired from Dresser Industries about 10 years before Cheney became CEO of Halliburton and 15 years before Halliburton bought Dresser. But hang in there; it's a good story.

Before I'd been at Dresser I did a spell at an outfit called Kearney National. The president of Kearney National was a guy named Freeman Spracklin.

This was an era when manufacturing plants in Southern Ontario adhered to what might be called a traditional stratification. The plant manager was usually some guy who had done military service and was discharged with some middling rank. He was invariably British or a first or second generation spawn of Brit immigrants.

The office folks were white and Anglo.

The shop floor was an assortment of Pollocks and Wops, Squareheads and Jamaicans, with an occasional working class Canadian thrown in for good measure.

I spent an entire summer of my employment at Kearney National, a manufacturer of electrical switch-gear, painting Freeman Spracklin's house. I was a welder. I guess this is one of the fringe benefits you don't have to declare when you're a big dog.

Get the niggers to paint your house on the company's dime.

Anyway, one of my fellow painters called up to the big house was a guy named Cheech Contini. Me and Cheech were like brothers. We both liked to toss back a few. We both had illustrious family connections.

Me, well I've told you about the connection to the Von Trapp Family Singers. It's in the blog. Look it up. Let's just say the Captain wasn't quite what he's made out to be in the movie.

In Cheech's case, the family connections were reputed to be to that other "family" of Italian folklore. You know the ones.

So all good things come to an end and the welding/painting the CEO's house gig did too.

Couple years later, I land a gig at Dresser, and holy shit, there's Cheech!

Cheech is raving about the place. He's got himself a sweet spot in shipping. Writes his own overtime ticket! He's also a shop steward! Not only that, but his brother Tony is President of the Steelworkers Local that represents the workforce!

So, I'm thinking, happy days are here for good. Stay tight with my Italian friends and this could be my dream of early retirement come true!

Little did I realize that uncontrollable forces were working behind the scenes. The Dresser plant built overhead cranes and oil rigs. Business was booming. The company had actually gone to England to recruit Brit steelworkers from Glasgow and Sheffield by the dozens with promises of ten years of work. Guaranteed!

Then the commie-symp Trudeau brings in his National Energy Policy and the entire oil rig side goes for a shit literally overnight.

The Brits got lay-off notices and eventually launched a class action lawsuit.

I got called into the office on the last day of my 90 days probation and was told my services were no longer required. One more day and I could have been part of the class action.

So here's the good part. Under union rules the shop stewards are the last to get the lay-off. The Dresser plant hobbled along for a couple of years with a skeleton crew of half a dozen workers to finish off outstanding contracts - at which point shop stewards outnumbered workers by a ratio of 3:1!

Tony was the very last to go.

Rumor has it that he managed to hang on for a couple of years as Local President even after there were absolutely no workers left in the plant for him to represent, and Dresser eventually offered him a generous buyout just to get him the hell out of there.

Good for him!