Flushing history down the memory hole

Simon Tisdall, foreign affairs expert at The Guardian for over forty years, has a scary headline for you today; "The West ignores the growth of Islamic insurgents in Africa at its peril."

The article contains a single passing reference to Libya; "Sudan and Chad, both negatively affected by the Libyan war, are particularly vulnerable."

Huh? There's a war in Libya? I thought Libya was a thriving democracy after we got rid of their evil dictator for them... what went wrong?

Here's a clue; Gaddafi warned Blair his ouster would 'open door' to jihadis.

Nine years later, it's safe to say Gaddafi was right and we were wrong. Not only did we destroy the most prosperous society in all of Africa, we're now scratching our heads wondering what to do about the jihadist hordes free-ranging across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

And lest you think this disgraceful state of affairs has nothing to do with Canada, remember that almost a thousand brave men and women in Canadian Forces uniforms got medals for their contribution to this fiasco.

You know it's a serious storm when they shut down the cop shop

At the height of the blizzard yesterday the OPP closed their offices in Wiarton and Chatsworth. That would be a great time to rob a bank, except they were all closed too. And good luck making your getaway when all roads out of town are shut down.

I was saddened to see that the Cannabis Horticulture Society cancelled their 8:40 meeting. These folks have a thing about numbers, don't they? An 8:40 meeting? And it's just a coincidence that 8:40 happens four hours and twenty minutes after 4:20?

Our lovely neighbour around the corner had already blown out the drive with his giant tractor by the time I rolled out of bed this morning. I still had to retrieve the snowblower out of the shed to do a little trim work around the edges. The drifts between the shed and the house were over four feet deep. It took an hour to clear a path to the house and fifteen minutes to do the trim work.

The sledders are making up for lost time. Who needs trails when the roads are closed? They'll be working overtime to wring every last bit of climate-killing frivolity out of their machines over the next couple of days.


Environment Canada tells me there's a chance of rain showers for Sunday night.

The "Big One" blows in

Just a few days ago I was thinking, golly, I'm gonna have to put the snow-blower away soon and get out the lawn-mower. Turns out that was a little premature.

The sledders are roaring by right down the middle of the road. It's peak sleddin' for this season, that's for sure.

There's snow-drifts up to my armpits between the house and the shed. Gonna have to put on the snowshoes just to get to the shed and fire up the snow-blower!


Best of all, I get to defer the appointment I had at the Ivey Eye Institute tomorrow!

Mohawks with AK-47s preparing to take back Canada?

Leave it to Quebec Premiere Francois Legault to pour gasoline on the smouldering embers of Justin's reconciliation initiative.

According to the Preem, there's AK-47s in Injun country, a fact that prevents the SQ, Quebec's biggest and baddest biker gang, from making short work of this latest bout of uppity hooliganism.

Not so fast, Mr. Legault! In the first place, I have a hunch that the SQ have way more in their toolkit than AK-47s.

Secondly, the concept of 'sovereignty' would suggest that it is the government of the Mohawk territory that has the right to decide what sort of weaponry is permissible there. Canada has no more jurisdiction over Kahnawake territory than it does over Michigan or New York State, which is to say none, at least insofar as we are to take Trudeau's ruminations on "nation to nation negotiations" seriously.

Finally, after four hundred years of our genocidal policies, our unilateral abrogation of treaties, our endless broken promises, maybe it's time to stop blaming the First Nations when they make these modest gestures to assert, however haltingly, the sovereignty that even our Prime Minister acknowledges is their due.

The civil war Canada could still avoid, if we're lucky

I caught part of the CBC program Cross-Country Checkup this afternoon, and it confirmed what I already suspected. The topic was the Wet'suwet'en pipeline controversy, and there is obviously a huge constituency out there ready to support any politician who promises to "get tough" with our rogue natives.

Sure. And then what?

Then we'll be instantly engaged in asymmetrical warfare with our First Nations. There are tens of thousands of kilometres of unguarded pipeline and power transmission corridors criss-crossing this country. Those who think they're suffering from a two week rail blockade have no idea how expensive things will get if the hot-heads prevail.

It's time to step back and take a deep breath. We're not furthering reconciliation by shoving White Man's Law and White Man's Order down the throats of the First Nations we are supposedly engaging in mutually respectful dialogue.


The hour is late, but not too late. Let's get serious.

Fear and loathing in the CBC cafeteria

You have to give credit to the boffins who run the CBC. They have demonstrated great progress in making Canada's airwaves more inclusive.

This must be a great relief for the legions of racialized Canadians who have been clamouring to see more racialized voices on the radio. To my ear, those racialized voices sound pretty much like all the other voices on the CBC, but then, what would you expect from an old white guy?

Meanwhile, the CBC has also attempted to do right by our original sin, our genocidal record vis-a-vis our First Racialized Peoples. Have you noticed how many CBC hosts now toss out a "miigwech" at the end of their shows? Could this be a manifestation of the Great Comeback predicted some years ago by Canada's leading public intellectual?

Alas, all this progressive forward motion is now at risk due to the erratic bumbling of our Prime Minister. Having been elected, twice, on a platform of vacuous and contradictory virtue-signalling, the poor lad doesn't seem to have much of anything else in his toolkit now that some of those contradictions have come to bite his ass.

How dare those damned Indians cripple the economy and prevent the attainment of our climate change goals, goals contingent on our ability to triple pipeline capacity for our fossil fuel exports. There we were in the middle of respectful nation-to-nation dialogue and the back-stabbers pull this?!

The blockades must come down!

NOW!!!

The fact that Trudeau was able to so deftly paint himself into this corner speaks both to his over-weening arrogance and a somewhat limited intellect. There's no excuse for not having seen these protests coming.

Over five years ago Doug Bland wrote Time Bomb, a military man's analysis of the potential for a crippling First Nations resistance campaign. If we're not there yet, we're getting close.


Back in the CBC cafeteria, you've got some racialized voices swapping tales of their victimization by micro-aggression. Couple of tables over, two token Indians roll their eyes, and one says quietly to the other, "won't it be a great day when all we have to worry about is micro-aggression?"

Illusions, confusions, delusions, and hallucinations

(note downward spiral implied in title)

It's been a seriously strange couple of weeks here at Falling Downs.

The Farm Manager finds it "unfathomable" that her 89 year old mother has passed.

Just a week ago we were finding it unfathomable that she was still with us.

But there you go. What is fathomable and what is unfathomable depends not on what's actually going on. It depends on perspective.

For my part, travels to and from the Ivey Eye Institute have been facilitated by my dear sister and my 87 year old father. These trips take us through the heart of Letterkenny country. Dad and I stopped off at Timmies in Listowel last night. The place was crawling with uptight young farmers, the kind of guys who drive $90,000 pickup trucks but fret about the price of corn.

And who can blame them for fretting?

Apparently you're no longer allowed to have your own mechanic fix your John Deere tractor anymore. That's the proprietary preserve of Deere's corporate technicians. No wonder those young farmers are fretting. Some of them own two, three, or more half million dollar tractors and they can't keep them running without the blessing of Deere HQ in Moline.

One of the big motivators that keeps young guys in farming, and bear in mind that 100% of the young guys in farming inherited their farms, is the illusion of independence. How independent can you be when the price of your crop is determined by foreign markets and your tractor repairs have to be done by head office?

Nevertheless, a hundred acres of raw land with no buildings, down in Letterkenny country, will set you back over a million bucks. A hundred acres doesn't make a serious farm in this day and age. Folks just plunk down that million to "add to their holdings."

And of course, none of those guys have a million bucks sitting around. All that expansion and consolidation is financed by bank lending. As soon as the banks get nervous, the entire house-o-cards is gonna collapse.

Good luck to those stoic young farmers when that happens. Timmies can only hire so many.

Sometimes we move from confused and deluded right into the realm of hallucination. That's when you're able to convince yourself that all is going according to plan, when, in fact, it's all going to shit.

It's the existential variant of "I meant to do that."

Of course you did!

I'd been planning that detached retina for months. I'm surprised nobody has caught on.