Elbows up and fingers crossed; how Carney might sort of maybe teach Trump a bit of a lesson... maybe

Yup, Ottawa be talkin' some serious shit. Not to mention Ontario Big Boss Doug Ford, who has challenged Donny J himself to an arm rassle! Oh, it's a never-ending shit-show, is it not? We have of course had innumerable reminders that Canada's fate hangs in the balance... The sheer idiocy of virtually anything that comes out of our Defence Dept defies belief, but you'll never see CBC ask any serious questions, such as what's the logic behind commissioning a multi-billion $$$ fleet of warships that will be destined for Davey Jones' locker upon meeting the first Chinese drone swarm. All we ever hear is how we gotta spend a shitload of money to "stand with our allies." Isn't it well past time to take a good hard look at what our allies are all about? We still cling to the fiction that we're the "good guys." Our big allies are all-in for Greater Israel. They're all-in for war with Russia. Soon, according to the NATO cheerleaders. Meanwhile, no matter where you look, you'll see public services are drastically underfunded, and that's before our myriad fresh spending commitments kick in. We are way down the wrong road, the road to certain disaster. War with Russia and China? That's stupid enough on the face of it, but even sillier is the conceit that we, "The West," "The Nations of Virtue," will somehow prevail. Best wishes to elbows up and fingers crossed, but I think we're fucked

A history of cannabis consumption

Let me start with a couple of caveats off the top. In the first place, I know nothing about the history of cannabis consumption other than what I read in High Times, so I know archeologists have found cannabis residue on hookas buried with Egyptian royalty 5,000 years ago, but who knows? What I actually know about the history of cannabas didn't kick in till the 1970s. And that brings up my second caveat; my experience of cannabis takes flight (good one, eh?!) from a kinda lame baseline; the 5% THC weed we were smoking in the seventies. To be honest, I stuck with the low-octane stuff for the next fifty years, mainly because that's what I grew in my weed patch. At some point maybe 5 or 10 years ago... or probably closer to twenty now that I do the math, I moved to smoking my weed out of a vape instead of twisting 'em up. In hindsight, that was the thin edge of the wedge that's gonna launch you down the slippery slope. The PAX vapes I settled on after a little experimentation ran 200 bucks and in every case lasted within a few weeks more or less of two years, right around the time the warranty expired. Finally I spring an extra hundred for the PAX 3 model because it has the life-time warranty. It lasts an extra year, and of course to cash in on the warranty, you would have had to do proof-of-purchase paperwork when you bought it. Ya right! Anyway, the PAX vapes still required loading loose bud into a tiny space with my fat fingers and shaky hands. That wasn't getting any easier, and then a few years ago I had a wee close call while germinating my spring crop. Long story mercifully short, there was an incident involving the gas fireplace and (hitherto unknown to me) flammable seed trays, after which I concluded, fuck this; growing 70s-style weed isn't worth burning your house down. That's aound the time I began experimenting with the pre-filled vapes that come with cannabis oil instead of bud. In texture, taste, and viscosity it strikes me as the modern version of honey oil. Remember that shit? That was $500 for a 5g vial back when you could buy a bag of weed for twenty bucks! Which brings me to my current situation. A year and a half ago I got the CHF diagnosis, ie your heart is fucked. Just a couple weeks ago I got the complimentary COPD diagnosis, ie your lungs are fucked too. So you can see where they've totally triggered maximum paranoia in a schmuck who is predisposed to it to begin with! I'll sit on the stoop sucking on the honey oil vape for an hour, hoping to cope, and then be alarmed by the fact I'm having trouble standing up! OMG, it's my heart! OMG, it's my lungs! Ya, maybe...

Doug Ford challenges Trump to sumo cage match on White House lawn

The Ontario preem really got his dander up over Mafia Don's latest tarrif tricks. He was pretty much in hold-my-coat-while-I-kick-his-ass mode. The trouble with Doug is he's too much like Donald; quick to take umbrage and even quicker to fire back with ill-considered nonsense, in Doug's case, how we're gonna ratchet up the pain dial on the Americans and wait Trump out. Here's the problem. At the present moment the American Empire is being grieviously humiliated by the fact it is on the losing side of both the wars it largely instigated. The odds of either of those disasters being salvaged grow more remote by the day. Trump is absolutely desperate to beat the shit out of somebody, and if Russia and Iran are out of reach, Canada may do in a pinch. Maybe not what he pictured in the history books, but better than nothing. Probably a few keeners already floating thesis proposals re "how under President Donald J Trump's heroic and divinely inspired leadership we were able to ensure that Canada would never develop a nuclear weapon." Don't laugh... stranger things have happened; according to all 18 US intel agencies, Iran wasn't developing one either, and look what happened to them! Anyway, I would advise Doug to turn down down the volume on his bombast. As a country, Canada is all soft underbelly with no hard shell in sight. It's time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Canada celebrates 14 years of tough new sanctions on Iran with tough new sanctions on Iran

You'd almost think that at some point the relevant experts might detect a degree of futility in our strategy, but apparently we're not there yet. Check out this post from 2012.********** Tuesday, January 31, 2012 What's so tough about Canada's tough new sanctions on Iran? We've already seen the standard fare: blocking bank accounts in Canada held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards. Number of Canadian bank accounts ever held by bigwigs in the Revolutionary Guards? Zero. So the sanctions announced by Foreign Minister John Baird today are going to hit the towellers where it hurts. The new sanctions will include the following: Total ban on oil exports to Iran. While it's true that nobody actually wants Canada's dirty oil, at least we know the Iranians aren't going to get their grubby nuclear-weapon-seeking hands on it. Total ban on maple syrup. That'll teach the towel-heads. No more of the good stuff on your morning pancakes. You'll have to settle for that Aunt Jemima faux syrup that our less committed American neighbors still make available. Complete ban on pork exports to Iran. Good luck finding a BLT or a pulled pork sandwich in Tehran after this. Ban on export of Celine Dionne CD's. What are you going to play at your weddings now, People of the Towel? Total ban on Canadian nuclear technology. That's a grey area. We gave all our Canadian nuclear technology away to India and Pakistan to enable their nuclear weapons programs. If the Iranians can't get it from us they can always get it from them. Leaf's season tickets will no longer be sold to known members of the Revolutionary Guards. I think when they have a chance to mull that over the Iranians will see we're not kidding around. We are the Canadians. We punch above our weight all the time and we mean business. We don't cut and run, unless it becomes politically expedient for us to do so. So shape up, you Iranians. You don't want to risk an even tougher round of sanctions from the biggest hypocrites in the world. ********** So here we are a decade and a half down the road, across a half dozen foreign ministers from both parties, and we've doubled-down on a failed strategy even since Israel and the US launched their criminal war. If Carney was a little more a thinking man instead of banker to the oligarchy he might want to take a fresh look at this. In fact, now that the deranged occupant of the White House has turned on us, Canada needs new friends to avoid isolation - just like Iran does! Maybe we can work something out with the Ayatollahs!

Carney has Trump by the balls -threatens to cut 4 million bbls per day oil exports

Oh ya! Canada rules! Elbows up up and away! We gonna teach Trump a lesson! Taking 4 million barrels per day off the market will totally show Mafia Don we have serious cards to play... wait a minute... all that Canadian oil actually belongs to foreign entities and not to Carneys Canada... oh well, my mistake I guess... there goes our strategy for winning the tariff war. Sorry.

Jason Arday proves my point; you can bullshit education or sociology, but you can't bullshit welding

Far as I know, Jason never spent any time on the floor of a welding shop. He was cut out for bigger things, obviously. That's a shame, because there's a profound lesson in engaging with the authentic, with the shit you can't bullshit. In a fab shop, if the trailer hitch you welded onto the back of a five-ton truck falls off, you're not gonna talk your way outta that with some post-modernist baffle-gab about absence being the highest form of presence! No, you'll a) be unemployed, and b) depending on how many died when the trailer detached from the truck and took out a school bus, be facing a lengthy prison term. Pity the poor sods who were denied the opportunity to engage with what's real. Whether you're prepping a meal or baking a pie or building a house or installing a trailer hitch, IT MATTERS! I spent 25 years in the classroom and took at least two dozen soc courses for my undergrad, and while both soc and ed are prime fields where bullshit can take you a long way, Sociology of Education is a bullshitter's Nirvana! It's a double dose of unaccountability! I mean, you can interrogate intersectionality till the cows come home, and if you get it all wrong nobody will ever notice!

What happens to journalism when narrative detaches from reality?

I watched a great podcast today that addressed that Q in some detail. Retired US military guy Danny Davis had retired Brit spook and diplomat Alastair Crooke on, and they spent an hour dissing the Empire that once provided their paycheques. They covered in some detail the Trump regime's ongoing campaign to pursue policies completely divorced from on-the-ground realities. The American Empire is bleeding out in the Middle East and it is bleeding out in Ukraine, and there's no strategy in sight that promises anything other than more bleeding. Yes, for Russia and Iran, but ultimately, for America too. Our legacy media still push the absurd notion that a Ukrainian victory is just around the corner. I can't imagine what corner that might be. There was a time just weeks into this war when a peace deal was just around the corner, but then Boris showed up with "NATO is 100% behind you with whatever it takes for as long as it takes." Ukraine has been taking the dirty end ever since and there's been no sign NATO ever had either the guns or the balls to fight, although they are planning some new factories that might begin to address NATO deficiencies in... oh ten or twenty years or so? Yet legacy media platforms keep pushing for more war. That's an embarrassment to the profession of jounalism. Just today Doug Saunders informed me that Zelly may in fact be the reincarnation of Winston Churchill, but, like Winston, he's a really shitty leader on the domestic side. Sure, so that's the guy to follow if you're keen for more war? How is that still attached to reality? Doug asserts that Zelly's election in 2019 was the "permanent end to far-right politics in Ukraine." Huh? Within two weeks of Zelly's win the far-right had overturned his election platform 100% and consolidated their grip on power. I'm sure Dopey Doug understands this as well as I do, but his paycheque depends on hewing to the approved narrative long after it's completely detached from reality. At the end of the war, hopefully there will be some accountability for the hordes of Western politicians who kept pushing for more war. NATO reparations for Ukraine after our war-mongering destroyed their country is the least we owe Ukraine.