Homophobia costs Caribbean over $4 billions per year

That's a nugget found on Al Jazeera this morning.

The implication being if these countries rolled out the Pride carpet and embraced queer tourism, those billions would be ripe for the plucking. The study was conducted by an outfit called Open for Business. As you can see by the list of corporate sponsors on p.5, a crowd of A -list money grubbers like that makes you wonder if they're motivated by helping Caribbean economies or fattening their own bottom lines.

Mass tourism of the type that inflicts itself on the countries in question doesn't do much for the hosts. It typically displaces local development initiatives in favour of foreign controlled investments that will repatriate the profits out of the area. It is almost always a boon to a small local elite and their foreign backers, while increasing the dependency of the country as a whole and further immiserating the local work force.

Even if these societies made a concerted effort to woo gay tourists, they have another problem; crime. The most peaceable among them have crime rates exponentially higher than the affluent countries gay tourists come from. How about these murder rates in some of the favourite tourist destinations:

Trinidad & Tobago   30 per 100,000 pop.

St. Kitts                   34

Jamaica                   47

The Canadian stat is 1.8 per 100,000. Who wants to holiday in a country where you're 2000% more likely to be murdered than at home?

While the reluctance of gay tourists to visit these countries may leave a few billions on the table, I can't see this changing in the foreseeable future. Gays are just way too smart.

War with Russia will be the catalyst for martial law in America

The Yanks have really been cranking up the provocations against Russia in the last little while, and with all the NATO manoeuvring going on in the Black Sea at the moment, it would be an opportune time to start the fight they've been itching for.

While that's been going on, any modestly perceptive observer cannot help but notice that America is practically on fire. The guys determined to impress the world with the current "America is Back" PR exercise know that's not a good look for the home of the brave and the land of the free. Martial law will be just the right fire hose to tamp down those flames.

National security will demand it. America is under attack and the malcontents are aiding and abetting the enemy. Off to the gulag with them; every last one.

Best use this time to collect all those guns out there. No pesky court challenges allowed under martial law, and too many of them are falling into the hands of people sympathetic to Putin. 

Under martial law any enemy sympathisers found in the civil service or the universities will find their job security non-existent and tenure terminated.  And of course elections will be suspended for the duration.

Unity will be restored!

The Empire will prevail!

America is back!

Canada joins US ballistic missile program

That's according to Michael Byers, writing in The Globe and Mail today.

If that's news to you, it's because our illustrious PM, he of the "feminist foreign policy," has brought Canada on board "on the sly," as Byers puts it. No public debate required, because we can't afford to waste precious time when freedom and democracy hang in the balance!

Make no mistake; freedom and democracy don't come cheap. Installing the AEGIS Combat System is projected to add over 500 million to the cost of each of our new warships. Given what we know about projections from military contractors, that should at least double by the time we actually fire a missile for peace.

Speaking of which, the current price for a single SM-3 missile clocks in at 15 million Canadian dollars. That's a lot of cake for a country that can't afford to provide decent healthcare, housing, and education for our Indigenous population.

Trudeau's embrace of the US government's weaponization of space upends almost forty years of Canadian resistance to American pressure to sign up, going all the way back to Ronald Reagan's Star Wars fantasies. Not even tough-talkin' commie-hatin' Big Steve Harper went there!

It's all for the good, though. We gotta "stand with our allies" against the Ruskies and the Yellow Peril, as the war-mongers never tire of telling us, and that means hundreds of billions flushed down the toilet in the name of "interoperability." If we want to be in Uncle Sam's posse, it is essential we buy his guns and bullets. 

Speaking of interoperability, we're also signing on for Cooperative Engagement Capability, "a remote firing system that allows a commander on one ship to launch missiles from another, without the latter being in the decision loop." In other words, if an officer from one of our Baltic allies sees a Russian threat, and they are really good at spotting Russian threats in Latvia and Lithuania, he could launch a Canadian missile (Raytheon) from a Canadian ship (Lockheed Martin, BAE). 

Ponder that for a moment. Talk about giving away our sovereignty on a silver platter!

I agree with Byers that our Prime Minister needs to explain these decisions that have been made without public input and could have grave repercussions going forward. 

Surely we have more important priorities than currying favour with Uncle Sam.

My bike ride

I was an avid cyclist in my youth. I used to ride my bike no hands all the way from my house to Elora Public School back in the day, including that downhill stretch from Bird's store, across the bridge, and around the corner!

In my U of Guelph days I was a mad-man on that Gordon Street hill, passing cars on the left, on the right, and generally making a bad name for cyclists.

I fell away from bike rides once dogs came into my grown-up life. I'm a firm believer in vigorous daily exercise, but once you have a dog, that means walking the dog, not solitary bike rides.

Can't say enough about that daily dose of exercise. Get's the heart pumping and the blood circulating, and that's a good thing. Then about a year ago, I was forced to face the fact that my walking buddy, Boomer, wasn't up to much of a walk anymore.

So I bought myself a new bicycle. Apparently that's no mean feat these days. The Globe and Mail had a story on the bicycle shortage just yesterday. They had a cool infographic that showed how a $5000 made-in-Canada Rocky Mountain bike was totally dependant on parts from Taiwan, China, and Japan.

Pretty much the only thing "Canadian" about a Rocky Mountain bike is the frame, unless that's been offshored too and I don't know it yet. Which led me to reflect on the inputs on that $5000 bike. I'm sure they're paying maybe $500 tops for all those foreign bits.

So their frame is worth $4,500?

I don't know, but I'm asking because I can't imagine there's more than 20 minutes of welding involved in fabbing up a bicycle frame. Twelve feet of tubing, twenty minutes of welding, $500 worth of foreign-supplied value-added bits, and you've got a $5000 bike.

And there's a waiting list!

But I digress.

I didn't pay that kind of money for my new bicycle. Mine came from Canadian Tire. I'm a sucker for a mark-down, and this honey was reduced from $600 plus to something that started with a 3. That was good enough for me.

First bike I ever had with disc brakes and shock absorbers.

So I got in quite a few bike rides last summer. Boomer didn't mind me leaving on a bike, whereas if I walked she desperately wanted to come with. After we said goodbye to Boomsie,  I was walking again, and then Bruno came into our lives.

Bruno loves to walk, but not in the hot weather, and so I've been getting some bike rides in again.

Today I headed down Concession 20 all the way through Kemble, and then took the "Kemble By-pass" out to the Lookout. 

Nobody knows why Kemble needs a by-pass. There's like two dozen houses, a church, and a post office, and traffic congestion is generally not an issue. It does come in handy for the locals on those rare occasions the OPP puts a ride-check in the main intersection.

I don't know anything about the outfit, but that look-out is a project of the Kemble Women's Institute, which actually has a fascinating back story. And you catch a fine view there, all the way to Christian Island, and on some days the headlands behind it.

From there I headed downhill and found myself on the Presquille Road, which is a nice little waterfront subdivision. A couple of years ago you could still get a waterview lot there for under $200. The lots are all gone and a decent home in the hood is gonna come in close to a million, if you can find one.

It's a nice bike ride because most of the way the waterfront road is between the houses and the shore, so you get that waterfront experience. I experienced it to where it goes back up the hill at the south end. Then I doubled back and took Grey Road 1 to where it hits the end of Con. 20.

That's considered a "multi-use trail" these days, and the sign informs you that ATVs, snowmobiles, motorcycles, bicycles are all welcome, and watch out for pedestrians.

Twenty-five years ago, when my children were children and spent summer with me, we used to be able to drive that road in our Subaru.

From there it was straight up the road and home to Falling Downs. Two hours and 20 kilometres... I earned my six-pack today!

What's "peer reviewed" worth when all the peers are suckling at the same teat?

In one of my past lives I wrote an article about the vet college at the U of G in their student newspaper, the Ontarion. The vet college bigs were dudes with Rolex's on their wrists accustomed to attending multiple foreign conferences every year. When I was tracking them down for the story, they were generally unavailable because they were attending a shindig in Zurich or London or the UN or somewhere.

Meanwhile, the vet school at U of Guelph had just been placed on probation by the American Veterinary Association, because while these guys were off on fancy trips, their school was being run into the ground.

Needless to say, my questions were not welcomed, and there were efforts made to suppress the story. That experience forever tainted my view of the academy.

Public universities are chronically under-funded. That forces them into the arms of corporate donors. In the case of a school like U of G, which began as and essentially remains an agricultural school, that partnership does not bode well for scholarship.

All the big corporate donors in any Ag program come from the Big Ag Big Chem Bayer-Monsanto end of the spectrum. Inevitably, virtually everyone peer-reviewing one another's work, across university programs around the world, has their work to some extent underwritten by the chemical-intensive ag industry.

Same goes for other industries, like pharma, for example. Big Pharma funds big on research programs at the top schools around the world. 

We should stop assuming "peer reviewed" is a stamp of intellectual integrity. 

Ironies of the unipolar world (no. 271)

One of the obligations that falls to the leader of the free world is to maintain stability. What that tends to mean in real life is maintaining the status quo, at least when and where the US bloc has the upper hand.

Stability. What a concept!

Instability, defined as the absence of stability, was once considered a characteristic of the "shit-hole" countries. 

But look around you.

Nobody who looks at the USA today can possibly come away thinking this is a stable country. Yet it's the country that has hundreds of billions to invest in surrounding China and Russia with military bases. To ensure stability, of course. 

Hopefully not the same level of stability that obtains in the iconic urban centres of America; Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco and all the rest of them. The people responsible for that ongoing nightmare are the people who want to impose their model of society on the rest of the world.

In the name of shoring up stability.

Meanwhile, China invests in building ports and railways in countries happy to have the help. They're the bad guys.

It's not just America that's crumbling from the inside. How's the stability thing been working out in France or Germany lately?

And check out how stable UK is now that they've Brexited. Boris has fully embraced Uncle Sam, to the point where he happily risks WW III by recklessly flouting international law with idiotic provocations in the Black Sea. 

All for the sake of stability!

America is back- and scaring off even its most fervent allies

Check out this editorial from JPost today; Israel must stay out of US-China struggle.

Well that's gratitude for you! Hundreds of billions in free money over the years, not to mention that indispensable veto Uncle Sam whips out whenever that nest of Antisemites at the UN starts talking about Palestinian rights, and this is how they thank America?

America is back to lead the Nations of Virtue in the global struggle for human rights and democracy, and the only democracy in the Middle East can't figure out whose side they're on? 

Shame!

 

Canada votes against USA at United Nations

That doesn't happen every day!

Canada and 183 other nations voted last week to demand the US end its economic embargo against Cuba. Only the US and Israel voted against the measure, with US satrapies Ukraine, Colombia, and Brazil sitting on their hands.

Western media like to regale us with yarns about Russian isolation, Chinese isolation, and Iranian isolation. All our adversaries are becoming more isolated by the day. Just today The Globe and Mail found space for a lengthy rant from their Senior Internet Correspondent about how the president elect of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, is a grave threat not only to world peace, but to the Iranian people, which will of course only isolate the regime further!

Canada joined our adversaries last week in condemning the US economic war on Cuba in a vote of 184-2.

Who's isolated now?

Who's the black chick shredding the guitar in this vintage Bo Diddley vid?

Check it out.

The entire rock and roll universe knows Bo Diddley.

But who is that woman? 

Is that as close as she ever got to her 15 minutes of fame?

Was she, like Lisa Fischer, always destined to be 20 feet from stardom, but not any closer?

-----------------

That's the problem with the internet right there.

It's raining and there's nothing else to do, so you check out a few YouTube videos, and by golly, there's something you never saw before!

Not that you ever cared before...

But there it is, just a simple click away... and you suddenly find yourself wondering who's on the guitar in that Bo Diddley concert.

----------------

I rest my case.

The talent pool in Ottawa doesn't have a deep end

That is such a banal observation I can't help but think it must have been made many times before. 

Look at the gal who is Deputy Prime Minister, and Finance Minister on the side. She is often referred to as "Justin's brain," at least by me.

What do we know about her? 

She loves Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalism runs through her veins. 

When she was top banana at Reuters News she got to talk to a lot of billionaires. She even wrote a book about all the billionaires she got to talk to. It was a best-seller.

She's the one responsible for negotiating our new NAFTA. One of The Globe and Mail's top pundits opined that Canada was embarrassingly out-played in those negotiations.

But she's the best qualified candidate to be both Deputy PM and Finance Minister. At the same time!

See what I mean!

Then there's Loose-Lips Lametti, our nation's top legal mind, which one would think would be the qualification for Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

This is the guy who thought mandatory minimums for gun crimes were discriminating against the BIPOC community. If some stressed out single mom fired off a couple rounds at the corner store out of sheer frustration with her sad life, and nobody got hurt, well, why should she be subject to the mandatory min intended for hardened criminals? He actually said that. Look it up.

He's our Minister of Justice? 

Now, on the face of it, you might conclude that just proves he's a man of compassion. But just today he was talking about the murder of that Muslim family in London. Yup, the Justice Minister just told you it was murder, so why bother with a trial?

I'm guessing the defence team will be sharp enough to seize on that. Good job, Loose Lips!

Not only is David Lametti the Justice Minister and the Attorney General, he's a moron to boot! 

Idiocracy isn't so funny anymore.

Canada discovers its colonial roots for the very first time

Here's a breaking story at CBC; Saskatchewan First Nation discovers unmarked graves at former residential school.

Senator Murray Sinclair, who headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has opined often that with up to 25,000 residential school students unaccounted for, we should expect to find some graves. 

So how is the nation shocked whenever a few more come to light?

There's no sugar-coating it. The settlers came from Europe and stole the entire continent, indeed, the entire hemisphere, from the Indigenous inhabitants.

There will be graves and more graves.

Against this current events background, the Prime Minister of Canada saw fit to lecture China today on the state of human rights there. At least we're acknowledging our past and making things better.

That's true insofar as insincere apologies and empty promises make things better. 

Those human-rights-denying commies in China have pulled several hundred million of their people out of poverty in the last quarter century. 

There are Indigenous communities in Canada that didn't have potable water a quarter century ago and still don't have it today.

How about we stop with the bullshit symbolic gestures and fake moral agony and crocodile tears in front of the TV cameras, and get on with actually delivering the goods.

When are the social justice howlers coming for Sir Mick?

Has anyone other than me noticed that all kinds of folks from the left, right, and centre of the political spectrum have had their careers impaired when their misogynist or racist musings come to light, while nothing of the sort ever happens to A-list rock and roll stars?

I'm not going to link it for you, you lazy turd, but how is it possible that one still finds the filthy abomination Hot for Teacher on YouTube?

This video promotes so much vile hatred it should be banned everywhere forthwith.

First of all, look at how relentlessly Waldo is mocked. Waldo is obviously a gender dysphoric youngster with perhaps a touch of autism. He needs support, not derision.

And look how they cheer on schoolbus bullying. I can't be the only one who pissed my pants at the prospect of boarding the schoolbus. At least till that summer I grew a foot and put on fifty pounds.

We haven't even begun discussing how this hate film degrades women, or non-men, or birthing people maybe. That's certainly a conversation we need to interrogate. This might even require drilling down. That's what tended to happen at professional development activities. You would have a conversation, which was always required after some expert consultant showed a cheesy powerpoint, and then you'd have to interrogate it in break-out panels.

Been there way too many times, and my advice is get the fuck outta there when the powerpoint comes on.

But I digress.

Seems to me a lot of big names are immune to such close inspection. I remember reading an alleged interview with the guys in the band Kiss in the pages of Penthouse back in the day, and by golly, those lads claimed to have done a lot of things to underage girls that would kill your career today.

And what the fuck is up with the total immunity afforded those multi-millionaires who have been lounging at the top of the rock-pile for fifty years.

To this day, whenever I want to fantasise about whipping women in general or Black women in particular, I put on that old time favorite, Brown Sugar.

Brown sugar tastes good, just like a young girl should. And apparently a good time was had by all just around midnight, when our protagonist was whipping the slave girls.

Anyway, I'm too old and too white to get all the ins and outs of where our billionaire-owned narrative managers are nudging us. I think most of this shit is a charade. 

When they come for the A-listers like Springsteen and Led Zep and the Rolling Stones, we'll know it's serious.

This gal is going places

Nerlap Sidhu ticks a lot of boxes when the mostly white 'n woke CBC producer types are figuring out who to put on air. 

Woman. Check that box.

Woman of colour. That covers the BIPOC thing.

M.A. degree in Equity Studies in Education. She's obviously an expert on the hottest topic of our time.

Equity back-packs. Oh look! That's way so cool and getting trendy! This will get us some looks from marginalized communities!

Nerlap is introducing the children to the mindset behind the Canadian Museum of Human Rights; drown the dumbfucks in virtue signalling and they won't even notice nothing ever changes.

Things are looking good for your career trajectory though, Nerlap. With a resume like yours and a shout-out from the government propaganda outlet, you'll be deputy minister of education in no time!

It's only rock and roll

That used to be a thing. When shit happened, you'd say, it's only rock and roll.

A few years later, you'd just say, shit happens.

But in some obscure way that throws some light on what we thought rock and roll used to be.

Rock and roll was always a little rebellious, always ready to take a chance that shit might happen, and always prepared to keep on rolling if and when it did.

But that was then, and this, unfortunately, is now.

Now, when shit happens, everybody comes down with PTSD and nothing ever happens again.

Toronto Black community marks Juneteenth with gunfight at children's birthday party

Self-proclaimed "core member" and maybe "co-founder" of BLM Canada and BLM Toronto, Marcus Ware, was in Ottawa to celebrate Juneteenth on Saturday. He used the opportunity to announce that queer and trans Black activists were now taking a leading role in liberating the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island from the oppressor.

Meanwhile, some homies back in the 'hood marked Juneteenth with a little gunplay at a toddler's birthday party. Maybe the community of queer and trans Black activists should focus on their own nests before they worry about saving Indigenous people.

Being neither Black nor Indigenous, I suppose it is inappropriate in this age of political correctitude for an old white guy to hold an opinion on these matters, but wtf, might as well indulge a little of that precious freedom of speech while I yet can.

Anybody who imagines that Black Lives Matter, funded almost exclusively by the tax-exempt foundations of white billionaires, will contribute anything of value to the struggle against systemic racism, is delusional. The billionaires are going to underwrite the dismantling of the system that made them billionaires?

I think not!

But they're more than happy to finance any organization that can undermine the potential for solidarity among their victims, and obviously they see Black Lives Matter as a useful tool.

At the end of the day, regardless his many accomplishments as artist, educator, and activist, Marcus Ware is a tool of the billionaires.

Canadian entitlement

The Lancet published a story June 19 about the flaws in COVAX, the mechanism intended to ensure the equitable distribution of Covid vaccines between rich countries and the rest. One year on, this initiative has been a dismal failure. According to one of the stats in the story, the G7 club of rich nations will achieve full vaccinations within the next six months, while at present rates, full vaccination in poorer countries will take another 57 years!

Canada gets special attention, and it's not for our altruism or our famous "feminist foreign policy."

Although Gavi has produced numerous press releases about deliveries of vaccines to LMICs, starting with the shipment of 600 000 doses of the Oxford University–AstraZeneca vaccine to Ghana on Feb 24, 2021, there was no announcement when Canada was allocated 1·62 million doses of the same vaccine earlier that month, and no fanfare when 500 000 doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine were assigned by COVAX to the UK in April.

Oxfam criticised Canada for the delivery, accusing the Government of taking doses from the poor when it has signed bilateral deals with manufacturers for enough vaccine to cover four times the country's population. “Canada should not be taking the COVAX vaccine from poor nations to alleviate political pressures at home”, Diana Sarosi at Oxfam Canada said. However, strictly speaking, Canada was merely following through on the terms of its agreement with COVAX. Public services and procurement minister Anita Anand said as much when she defended the move in a comment to CBC. Canada is “entitled under our agreement with COVAX to draw down on the commitment that we made with them back in the summer”, she said.

Got it? Oxfam says Canada should not be taking Covid vaccine from poor nations. 

The Liberal cabinet minister on the file fires back; Shut-up, we're entitled!

Yes, while it may look like vaccine hoarding, it's actually a simple matter of rich-country entitlement. Nothing to see here...

Father's Day

Father's Day is a good time to recall favourite stories about your Dad.

My siblings and I are blessed to have a father who has gone out of his way to provide favourite stories. Here's a fairly recent one.

Our parents enjoy good health, and although Dad is crowding 90 and Mom isn't far behind, they live full and active lives. Mom thinks Dad's life is a little too active, and she has actively lobbied for a ban on ladder work, as in he's still allowed to use a chainsaw, but not on a ladder. No more ladders for anything. His ladder days were well and truly behind them.

One day Mom is out for a spot of shopping, and Dad figures this is just the time to nip up on the roof and nip off that tree branch that's been brushing up against the eave trough. Drags out the 24' extension ladder and clambers on the roof with a pair of pruning shears.

While he's busy nipping the offending branch, a gust of wind blows the ladder over.

Oopsie!

Luckily, he's got his cell in his pocket. He calls my brother, who is ten minutes away, explains the situation, and sits tight.

As luck would have it, Mom got home before my brother got there to rescue Dad off the roof. 

Busted!

Well, not quite. He ducks down on the roof so she can't see him. She goes in the house, can't find him, and comes back out. Walks around the house, finds the ladder on the ground but can't find him. She figures he fell off the ladder but must have had his phone on him to call the ambulance, so he's probably in the hospital...

Just then my brother pulls in, and he obviously couldn't vouch for Mom's hospital theory, so the cat was out of the bag, so to speak.

Mom's last word on the matter; "You can just stay up there as far as I'm concerned."

Thanks for all the great stories, Dad, and for being such an inspirational role model!

Happy Father's Day!

Annamie Paul - no longer invisible

Only a week ago I was accusing our legacy media of ignoring Canada's only Black leader of a national political party. Seems I was a little ahead of myself.

Today she's on the front page of The Globe and Mail and all over the CBC. 

A theme in her current rise to prominence is that her invisibility was the result of sexism and racism. That conveniently allows us to ignore issues of party politics and events surrounding the defection of Green MP Jenica Atwin.

Recall that Atwin ostensibly left the party because she felt it was too pro-Israel. By the time she crossed the floor she had repudiated her criticisms of Israel, the very issue that caused her to leave the Green caucus in the first place!

That's the kind of unprincipled malleability we value in politicians. I'm sure she'll feel very much at home in Justin's Liberal Party.

 

CBC has no time for Canadian rapper who pulls a million views in hours...

... but there's a Black trans woman in rural Saskatchewan who merits fifteen minutes of your attention.

Oh fuck off!

I see why the CBC management types might be a little uncomfortable with Tom MacDonald. 

Fake woke?

Sucks to be called out, I guess.

CBC has gone so far down the shitter I can't even believe it. I'm a guy who used to listen to Peter Gzowski on my morning commute from Guelph to Milton, where I put in an eight hour shift every day as a welding inspector at Frankel Steel. That's where all the structural steel for World Trade Center 7 came from.

It's a fucked up world, and if you're relying on CBC to explain it to you...

Good luck!

Former Trump flunkies open investment office in Israel

Check out this story from JPost.

Trump's Sec of Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Trump's ambassador to Israel David Friedman just sparked up a new investment fund that will focus on cybersecurity and fintech.

Wow?!? Who could have seen that coming?

US media had a bit of a struggle in the Trump years. Virulently anti-Trump but reflexively pro-Israel, they had a hard time reconciling their hatred for Trump with the fact that he was the most egregiously pro-Israel president in a long line of them.

Anyway, lets forget the moral posturing and political grandstanding for a moment. 

Friedman and Mnuchin are launching a hedge fund out of Israel that will focus on fintech and cyber?

I'm in!

The internet is doing what residential schools couldn't

Assimilating native youth. 

I was taking a visit to the Saugeen First Nation down the road the other day. My vape went on the fritz a while back, so the pot-addled hillbilly has been twisting doobies like it's 1972, and I've got the lung-shredding cough to prove it.

I'm getting desperate, but the head shops in town, being non-essential, remain closed. Every Korean corner store sells bongs and those cheesy tobacco vapes, but I'm looking for a new Pax. I figure maybe some of the pot shops on the rez might stock something like that.

Long story short, nobody had what I was looking for. A gal at one of the joints said she'd order some in. The pot shops on the rez aren't subject to the same regs as the official Ontario pot outlets, and I couldn't help but notice their prices were about half what government shops charge. Five bucks a gram, a hundred an ounce. That in itself is worth a drive to Southampton. 

But here's what struck me. These places are most often family run, so sometimes you'll meet the extended family. Don't be surprised if a twelve year old kid is giving you change when you shop at a rez store. (Not the pot shops; didn't see any minors there.) They're not as bad as the Koreans.... I've had four year olds hand me my change there.

Anyway, I notice that a couple of places where there were kids about, they were all on screens. And not that I was particularly spying on them or anything, but they were playing the same Grand Theft Auto and Hitman 3 or whatever kids everywhere are addicted to.

From Saugeen to Scarborough, the internet has become the great leveller. 

Gbagbo slips shackles, sheds white man's burden

If you read up on the International Criminal Court, you will find that it has since 2002 been in the business of prosecuting the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

One of the problems critics of the ICC have consistently pointed out is that this "international" court can only ever find genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Africa. See for instance my very cleverly titled Bwana still wields the whip in Africa.

As I pointed out in 2013, and also in the previous ICC batting .500 in Negro League, this Afrocentric approach to international criminality is a distinct hangover from the colonial era. What good is our ongoing (and forget all that claptrap about post-colonialism - it has never ended) civilizing mission to the Dark Continent without some enforcement mechanism? As we all know, the Nations of (white) Virtue have well-functioning judicial systems and are well-equipped to root out their own war criminals, and the fact they never find any after exhaustively investigating themselves just underscores the efficacy of this system.

The Africans are another story. African elites have a dismal record of investigating themselves, which is why they get so much international assistance in these matters. It was French commandos from the colonial mother ship who whisked Laurent Gbagbo off to The Hague over ten years ago.

After a ten year plus roller-coaster of trial-conviction-appeal-acquittal, Gbagbo is once again a free man and back home in Ivory Coast, preparing a political comeback.

I wish him every success. It is my hope that he and other African leaders will join forces and establish an African Criminal Court, the remit of which would be to abduct non-Africans from Europe and America and bring them to trial for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. 

There are ample suspects to choose from.

Canada depends on US charity for vaccine supply

Sleepy Joe was just at the podium somewhere or other on his "America is Back" world tour, when he promised a donation of half a billion doses of vaccine to the less fortunate, less developed nations of the world.

Today, the CBC is delighted to report that the first million charity shots are going to less fortunate, less developed Canada.

How can we not be embarrassed?

Where is Barry Sherman when you need him?

Perfect for investors or first-time buyers

How often do you see that line in real estate ads?

That's another way of saying the first-time home buyer is up against somebody who already owns half a dozen, or a few hundred, or, coming soon to a real estate market near you, a billion dollars worth of residential housing.

So good luck to you, first-time buyer!

In my opinion, once you've got hedge funds in residential real estate, the only possible people who are going to win are the hedge funds. They are taking advantage of a severe supply shortage caused more than anything else by a complete lack of government housing policy, and they are using that government created crisis to make housing even less affordable while simultaneously making themselves even richer.

Putting an apartment in the basement isn't exactly a fresh idea. It is indeed true that increases rental stock. But what's happening to the for-purchase housing stock? Well, if we all sit on our hands and say nothing and do nothing, it will gradually end up in the hands of the hedge funds.

On the bright side, you won't have to fret about the fact that your kids can never afford to buy a house.

We'll all be renters!

How to craft a scary headline out of (almost) nothing

Here's the shocking headline from CBC: Black employees slam Ontario Public Service for rampant, systemic racism.

Ouch! That's gotta be hell, working for White Supremacists when you're not white. Let's dig into what's behind the headline.

The number of Black employees referenced in the story is five. The Ontario Public Service has over 60,000 employees. How does talking to five employees out of 60,000 justify that headline? It doesn't, but if the headline read "Five Black employees slam Ontario Public Service for rampant systemic racism," everybody would know you're talking shit.

Of those 60,000,  22.8% , or approximately 15,000 are "racialized," meaning non-white. That's a pretty good reflection of the overall demographics in the country. 

This is the second scary headline writer Samantha Beattie has concocted around a report from Employment Matters Consulting. The first read, "Damning report finds 'persistent and unyielding' anti-Black racism in Ontario's public service." That story provided a glimpse into the methodology behind it. We are told "the consultants held interviews, focus groups and accepted written feedback from 215 Black employees." Once again, the numbers don't come anywhere near justifying the sensational headline.

Employment Matters Consulting is the brainwave of Keith Jeffers, a civil servant who worked his way to the deputy minister level in British Columbia. Mr. Jeffers, who is Black, spotted a business opportunity in the host of EDI (that's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) laws and regulations that were multiplying all around him during his career in the public service; to provide compliance services to governments and corporations.

It was the right idea at the right time, and Mr. Jeffers hit it out of the park! Now, with two shocking CBC headlines exposing systemic racism in the Ontario Public Service, the billable hours for compliance consulting just hit the jackpot! 

Congratulations Mr. Jeffers!

America is back - the world averts its eyes in embarrassment

Being of a more diplomatic bent, media in the allied states, or satrapies as some would have it, aren't quite as dismissive of Biden's "America is back" tour as outlets in those adversarial states, but they have something in common.

With the exception of BBC/CBC and the US outlets, nobody seriously believes that Sleepy Joe is Commander in Chief of anything. The charade is becoming so threadbare, most of the world doesn't understand why America insists on embarrassing herself like this.

Those who thought Sleepy Joe's world tour was going to restore the credibility lost during the Trump era are grievously disappointed. Far from restoring anything, he's losing even more cred! 

That's all for the good. The American Century was last century. It's over.

Unfortunately, there's a ruling class in America, blinded by hubris, who refuse to admit the uni-polar party is over.

Let's hope we don't all have to die before they wake up from their delusions.

Justin Trudeau toots his horn

I searched international news media all weekend for a mention of our PM at the G7 shindig in England. From Al Jazeera to BBC to France 24 to RT, I couldn't find a single passing reference to Justin. It's almost like he wasn't there.

But hold the phone... 

Not only was he there, he was in fact playing a crucial if well-hidden leadership role! Check out this Justin Trudeau quote from The Globe and Mail's Senior Internet Correspondent in this morning's paper:

Canada led the way on a common approach to addressing the challenges posed by China. As partners, we must stand strong and united, and at this week's summit, we agreed to the action to do just that.

That's vintage Trudeau, at least insofar as he's not actually saying anything. The "action" agreed is to "stand strong and united." Not exactly a specific call for anything measurably actionable, is it?

Perhaps international media snubbed Justin due to the two Canada stories that they have been following, ie those mass children's graves in BC and the murder of that Muslim family in Ontario. 

Perhaps, they thought, Trudeau isn't the right guy to be lecturing China or anyone else on human rights.

Being Black on CBC

CBC has had a feature, Being Black in Canada, that has awakened us to the discrimination faced by Black folks across the land.

Oddly enough, there's a Black woman who is leader of a political party in Canada, who is virtually invisible on CBC. Her name is Annamie Paul, and she is the leader of the Green Party Canada. 

You'd think she'd be featured front and centre at the newly woke CBC. After all, wouldn't you think a Black woman leading a national political party would excite those woke white senior execs at CBC?

 

Road kill

I was enjoying some quiet time on the stoop last night, when I thought I heard the sound of something getting run over.

I immediately thought snapping turtle. It's egg-laying time for the snappers in these parts. There's something in their genetic make-up that compels them to cross at least one road before laying their eggs, so this is not an unusual occurrence. 

An even greater threat to snapper survival are the raccoons. They dig up the turtle eggs as quick as the turtles can bury them. So imagine my relief this morning, when heading out for my walk, there was a dead raccoon down by the bridge!

Not that you ever want to celebrate the death of any of God's creatures, but I'm with the turtles on this one.

By the time me and Bruno headed out, there were six vultures on the scene, directing traffic and having a picnic at the same time. They wouldn't even have to flap their wings once to glide from the barn to the scene of the crime. 

There was also a solitary seagull standing off to the side, hoping one of the buzzards had some charitable impulses. Cars, trucks, and motorcycles all tooted their horns and applied their brakes for this circus most of the day.

Last time I checked, the vultures were gone, and it was just the seagull and a couple crows picking over what was already well picked over.

Justice for the snappers.

CBC confirms 80% drop in testing results in 80% less covid cases

Check this out. It's the top headline at CBC News at the moment. "New covid cases have dropped 80%."

Here's a quote from something I wrote a week ago;  "... who would have expected case numbers would go down when you do 80% less testing?"

Yes, they really do think you're that stupid.

What the frack? Canada Pension Plan takes us back to the future

When the Canada Pension Plan was launched in 1965, government bonds typically provided enough of a hedge against inflation that pension funds could stick to the most secure investments and remain solvent. As the financial landscape changed, and government securities now have a real rate of return of less than zero, pension funds, including the CPP, were progressively forced into riskier investments. For the CPP, those riskier investments included fracking operations in Colorado.

Not only does fracking pose a lethal threat to drinking water, it has been a dubious investment financially even in the best of times. You'd think the state pension fund of the most virtuous government on earth would catch a whiff of the toxic fumes emanating from fracking operations and quietly exit their money-losing Colorado fracking play.

You'd be wrong. Instead, they're doubling down.

----------

Canada has changed since '65. The current CPP payout tops out around $1,200/ month. Add in Old Age Security and you're looking at a just under $2k. That's just about enough for a one bed flat in Toronto, so good luck with your groceries and that occasional three-pack of Fruit of the Looms. There's also the public housing option. Too bad about the twenty year waiting list.

But buck up, (old) homie! Don't forget; you're retired...

You've got all day to hang out under the Gardiner with a squeegee!

Canada as "sh!thole country"

In the week before our PM Fluffy took his feminist foreign policy to the G7 gabfest in Cornwall, two Canadian stories made headlines around the world. One came from Kamloops BC, the other from London, Ontario.

Both stories reveal a Canada starkly at odds with the carefully crafted image spun by our professional turd-polishing class. You know the one; Canada as the benevolent middle power built on social justice and diversity at home, while standing up for women, children, the environment, and marginalized communities the world over.

The reality is quite something else. Our concern for human rights is focused overwhelmingly on those countries officially on Washington's enemies list. 

Therefore Venezuela is of overweening concern to us, while our "allies" in the quasi-fascist states of the Lima Group get a pass.  

We wring our hands over the state of human rights in the authoritarian anti-gay theocracy of Iran while happily selling weapons to the authoritarian anti-gay theocracy of Saudi Arabia.

We connive in the silencing of Julian Assange while demanding freedom for US flunkies Alexey Navalny and Roman Protasevich.

We hurl accusations of genocide at China even as Senator Murray Sinclair predicts many thousands of anonymous Indigenous children's graves remain to be discovered around our many former residential school sites. 

We simultaneously trumpet our "feminist foreign policy" while hoarding vaccines.

Our commitment to global climate remediation, it is claimed, is dependant on increasing pipeline capacity to bring more of the world's dirtiest fossil fuels to market.

We have a prime minister who is always ready with a weepy apology, but simple things like providing potable water to Indigenous communities is prohibitively expensive, even while we commit billions upon billions to the procurement of war machinery so we can "stand with our allies" against Russia and China.

Is Canada a shithole country?

Depends who you ask.

Hate crimes spike in Canada: Trump to blame

Lawrence Martin has some scary stats in his Globe and Mail column today, courtesy of a couple of impartial experts with a vested interest in promoting them.

Did you know the number of far-right groups in Canada has grown by 30% since Trump was elected POTUS? Yup, there's about three hundred of them now.

Even more alarming,  the Trump-aligned "hard right" in Canada numbers roughly 20% of the population. Hokey doodle! That's 7.5 million Canadian Trumpkins! And lest the reader imagine that Mr. Martin is indulging a little fear-mongering, he reminds us that those 7.5 million far right Canadians are "vocal and ruthless and determined..."

Heck, the Newfoundland constabulary even nabbed one who was in possession of 36 knives and a viable plan to use them in an assassination campaign against Newfie politicians!

Hmm...

Why is it then, that on the rare occasion one of those 300 hate groups calls their 7,500,000 followers into the streets for a demo, they struggle to get a dozen people to show up?

Take a chill pill, dude. Trump is over. Move on. 

Protecting the nest

I didn't hear back from any ornithologists on that last post, so I was forced to spend some extra screen time to find out why those little birds are harassing the crows. Apparently they're protecting the nest. It's not that any particular crow has eaten their fledglings. It's just the principle of the thing; you protect the nest, preemptively if required.

That's got to be the oldest shared value of anything that ever evolved into family units. You protect the nest.

I remember a few years ago, when a good-size black bear was ambling along the creek. He went into the pasture where a dozen cow-calf pairs were grazing. The cows herded the calves together, then a few of the mamas guarded the little ones, while the rest went chasing after the bear, who was happy enough to scamper into the woods.

Protecting the nest.

Where do you find an ornithologist when you need one?

Pre-pandemic, I never paid much attention to birds.

That began to change as I found myself with a new appreciation for the fact I can see, while also being suddenly blessed with an over-abundance of free time. I've been consciously trying to spend more of that time looking at something other than screens.

Not that I'm anything other than the most neophyte "birder." I can identify perhaps half a dozen more species than I used to. On a typical day we'll see everything from the smallest finches to Sandhill cranes, Blue herons, and buzzards galore. We've been noticing some puzzling interactions between crows and red-wing blackbirds.

This started with the observation that one particular crow was being followed everywhere by one of the smaller birds, over a period of days. We initially thought this was some sort of cross-genus romance.

Then we noticed separate incidents wherein multiple red-wing blackbirds appeared to be harassing the crows while others were feeding at our bird buffet. We came up with the more elaborate theory that perhaps the b'birds were working together. Some kept the crows away while the others had lunch.

We have since spun a third theory. We were watching at least five of the b'birds attacking a crow in an apple tree about a hundred yards hence. Was the crow trying to eat their hatchlings? Kind of a morbid theory, I know, but morbid things happen in nature all the time.

So which theory is most plausible? If this post comes to the attention of anyone with some expertise in these matters, please share your thoughts in the comments. 

How is underwear not "essential?"

Great news from the front lines of the pandemic! I was heading into town to pick up my blood pressure meds, and the CBC news was on the radio. New covid cases at their lowest since last September! The presenter sounded almost euphoric.

Shoppers Drug Mart has been open for the duration. That makes sense. People need their meds. While you're in the store you can pick up a few things that may not be quite as life-or-death as your meds. Essentials like lip gloss, eyeliner, nail polish. That makes sense too. After all, you're blowing your germs around the place anyway, so what difference could it possibly make?

With so much good covid news I thought I'd swing by Giant Tiger to see if they were still curbside pickup. Since that a-hole hedge-fund manager in Florida killed Sears Canada, Giant Tiger's been my go-to spot for socks and underwear. That last three-pack of Fruit of the Looms I bought before covid are beyond threadbare, to the point where, even if they were fresh out of the wash, their disgraceful appearance would shame the family name for years to come were I to suffer an unexpected trip to the hospital.

There's people going in and out! Alrighty! New undies at last!

I mask up and head in with a bounce in my step... and you wouldn't friggin' believe it; they've blocked off the entire store with yellow caution tape except half a dozen food aisles at the back. 

To my way of thinking, undershorts are every bit as essential as eyeliner and nail-polish. In fact, reasonable people will agree underpants are every bit  as important as shoes. Just like shoes keep dogshit off your feet, shorts keep skid-marks off your Levis. You're already in the store. If you grab some tinned tuna and a box of cereal, how will anyone be put at increased risk if you pick up a three-pack of Fruit of the Looms on your way out?

The shoe stores have been closed too!

Strikes me as ridiculous. But, I'm not an expert, so what do I know...

Speaking of experts, I guess now that our numbers are at record lows those of us who've spent the past year denigrating them owe them an apology.

I'm sorry, experts.

But I do wonder about one thing. This record low number of new cases once again happens to happily coincide with a record low number of tests. In January daily testing peaked at over 75,000 daily. Yesterday Ontario did barely 15,000.

Gee, who would've expected case numbers to go down when you do 80% less testing?

After 215 dead children knock Covid off the front page for a day or two, it's back with a vengeance

Oh lookee!

After a two or three day hiatus in honour of those Indigenous kids, it's back!

Covid!

And oh my god, there's some scary new variants!

It's OMG and more OMG all over the place...

Yup. Gonna have to shut 'er down again. There's still a few small businesses twitching in their death throes. Let's make sure they're done for good.

After all, between Walmart and Amazon, who do those folks think they're kidding?

The political economy of calves romping in the barnyard

I've got a hundred acres here that I lease to a local beef farmer for $1,500 per year.

A few miles south, where the soil is richer and the land flatter, the cash croppers will pay $15,000 per year for the same acreage.

I'm somewhat acquainted with the economics of old-school beef farming. In a good year, a beef farmer breaks even. Virtually everybody in beef farming around here, where open pasture grazing is the norm, can only afford to be beef farmers because they are mortgage free due to having inherited their acreage.

Meanwhile, the dairy guys are still, for now, protected by quotas, although Trudeau's neolib regime is working hard to undo that. The cash croppers are 100% wedded to Big Ag and Big Chem and run operations that are totally at the mercy of big corporations and global markets.

Those calves romping in my barnyard don't know they'll be burger patties within a couple years, but in the meantime, they're enjoying life.

Watching them kick up their heels as they enjoy life is more than enough compensation for the subsidy I provide their owners.

The Chinese Communist Party will never destroy freedom and democracy in Hong Kong

Check this out.

After China chased all those NED funded democracy activists out of town.

After a global smear campaign to denigrate Chinese governance of HK.

After the Nations of Virtue have made China our number one competitor/adversary/enemy.

After our pathetic media platforms have done all they can to whip up Yellow Peril anti-China hysteria.

After all that, a parking space in Hong Kong sells for a record $1,300,000.

Looks like the markets are telling you something your news media doesn't.

Somewhere between heaven and hell

Back in the day I used to hang with a dude who had a contract to run bricks out of Canada Brick in Brampton. Those were boom times. Those bricks went all over southern Ontario and into Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. 

Buddy owned and operated what was known as a "brick train." What that looked like was a Peterbilt tractor with a giant Cat engine, and two trailers behind it, each one equipped with its own boom crane to unload the bricks. That costed out at about 100 thou for the tractor and two hundred for the trailers. 

But those were boom times! He was grossing well over two grand per day, and we're talking over thirty years ago! There was no amount of debt that kind of cash flow couldn't handle. Plus, he had a slightly shady side-line that put another 5Gs in his pocket every month.

Seems the management at Canada Brick was a little sloppy. They had a quality control department, and once or twice a week one or two batches came out of the kilns not fit for service. They were loaded up and taken to the crusher, and then recycled into fresh bricks. The fact that they didn't track the flawed bricks opened up an entrepreneurial opportunity for Buddy.

Instead of driving around the building to the crusher, he'd skedaddle out the gate and deliver that load to a job-site in Ohio or Michigan. Then he's got a train worth of good brick that's totally off the books of anybody, and there's way more brick driveways and brick patios than you can imagine that were built with purloined bricks at the homes of people who knew somebody who knew somebody who could get you a really good deal on bricks. Cash only, of course! 

Things were going so great Buddy bought another set of trains, so that the one could be loaded while the other was being delivered, and he'd go from eight deliveries per week to twelve or fourteen. 

Fat city!

Fat city indeed. An occupational hazard in the trucking biz is you get to meet a lot of truck-stop waitress kinda gals. So while the sun was shining and Buddy was making hay, he was also accumulating girlfriends from Ontario to Ohio to Michigan. They all thought he was rich, as did his wife back in Guelph. And he sorta kinda looked it for awhile. He'd blow into town once a week, spend lavishly, and off he'd go. It was a win-win for all concerned.

Alas, there's always lean years after the fat years, and the building boom unexpectedly wound down. To nothing. He's half a million in debt and has essentially no income. By then his wife had found bank statements from an account he'd opened in Michigan. Around the same time his stateside gals were figuring out he wasn't rich anymore.

He's broke and homeless and living in the truck that's going to be repossessed any day, and he's telling me the guy who sold him that second set of trains had insider info about the coming collapse in construction. He's planning to kill the guy.

Hey man, that's really stupid. First of all, you'll spend the rest of your life in jail. Secondly, when you die, you'll go to hell for all eternity. Is that what you want? 

Hell?

He looks at me. 

What? 

You mean this isn't it?

That same "economic downturn" took me to my own heaven-to-hell adventure. I'd fancied myself an up-and-coming wheeler-dealer. I had a three-plex here and a six-plex there and had built a couple of new homes and had bought the lots to build a couple more. That was all put together with about a million dollars of debt, most of it floating at prime plus 6%. 

The fact that a guy who had never showed more than $14k in annual income on his tax returns was able to get a million dollars into debt tells you how loose things are when times are good. And were they ever good. If I squinted at my financials in just the right light, all that shit I owned was worth a good two million, maybe even three...

In a matter of months my floating rate loans had floated to the 26% range. The market for new construction was dead. I had 15k going out every month and not even half that coming in.  

In the end, the only people who got stiffed was the accounting firm that wanted me to pay a four thousand dollar bill incurred to figure out I was bankrupt, and Revenue Canada, who took this moment to audit me and decide that the last five years of capital gains I'd declared were actually income rather than capital gains, and I owed them forty thousand dollars. That's a lot of money when you don't have any.

My first rehab I briefly shared a room with a serial rehabber. He'd been through the Homewood's addiction treatment program half a dozen times. He had a goodly stash of very fine weed with him, and between that and the shit they shot into your ass-cheeks three times a day, I guess you could say we were in heaven 24/7.

One day Buddy shows me his photo album.

On one page he's got pictures of the summer picnic from the Pentecostal church where he's a sometimes Sunday school teacher.

On the next page he's got pictures from the Satan's Choice Motorcycle Club summer picnic.

In my youth, those were the baddest buggers about when it came to outlaw motorcycle clubs. You had your Devil's Disciples and Paradise Riders, but Satan's Choice was considered the real deal. Every couple of years they'd show up in Maryhill and trash either Vic's bar or Ralph's bar. Maryhill had twenty houses and two pubs at the time, on opposite sides of the street on the same corner. 

The locals were what I would consider a fairly rough crowd, but all it took was one SC guy swinging a manure-spreader chain in the parking lot and the place cleared out pronto.

So Buddy had this ongoing struggle between the alcoholism and the heroin on the one shoulder, and the Sunday school teacher on the other...

He was always somewhere between heaven and hell.

 

No Wagen for you, Dummkopf!

According to Herr Schwab and his besties in the Billionaires Club, things have got so out of hand in this crazy world that we need a "great reset."

Said reset will save the whales, the rain forests, the elephants, the climate, the planet, and, last but certainly not least, their ample arses, all at the same time. As you can imagine, that's a tall order!

But don't worry; the billionaires didn't become that without being way smarter than you or I, plus they've got all the top celebrity scientists and Hollywood wannabees in their corner. They've figured out that one of the key pillars of the great reset has to be the elimination of the internal combustion engine - that thing that moves your vehicle from point A to point B.

Because that, more than anything else is what's killing the whales and elephants etc. 

The more visionary of the visionaries propose to eliminate the offending hardware nine years hence, by 2030. By then, we'll all be driving electric cars!

Hmm...

I did a little internet research, and there are allegedly 1.4 billion cars (which stat includes trucks and buses) on the road world wide. Approximately 7 million of them are EVs. Works out to .005 % of vehicles on the road, according to my math (and please feel free to correct me).

Here's the problem. In order to meet the expectations of the Schwabbies, (and make no mistake; they're calling the shots) we gonna have to ramp EV production way way high.

And that's the problem. An EV requires lots of what's called rare earth minerals, which are indeed rare, and also require much energy to mine and process. Long story short, it is inconceivable that the global fleet of petroleum based vehicles can ever be replaced by EVs.

No problem! The Klauslings have an answer for that. We just don't need 1.4 billion vehicles on the roads of this precious planet, regardless of propulsion system, period! Cars are a luxury and a privilege, not a basic human right, and therefore they need to be reserved for those privileged enough to deserve luxury. You know, like the smartest people in the world and their immediate hangers on. That shouldn't require more than 1.4 million, not that ridiculous 1.4 billion that's out there now.

No Auto for you, Dummkopf.

Child vaccination and mental health

I watched Premier Doug bullshit his way through his presser yesterday afternoon, explaining yet again why "the science" doesn't permit the re-opening of Ontario schools, although they've re-opened in the rest of Canada and most of the world. Presumably Doug thinks our scientists produce better science. 

If you follow these matters, you will be aware of multiple warnings from paediatricians and mental health professionals about the youth mental health crisis getting more and more urgent the longer lockdowns continue. The scientists Doug listens to know better. 

We gotta get more jabs into the kiddies before it's safe to re-open!

Here are some relevant stats.

In the course of the pandemic thus far, in almost a year and a half, a total of 11 Canadians under age 20 have died of Covid-19 as of 28 May 2021. From 2015-2019, before the pandemic, suicides in that age group averaged 240 per year, more than twenty times the number claimed by the virus. 

That's another way of saying our suicide pandemic was over 2000% more deadly to this cohort than the covid pandemic, and that was BEFORE the lockdowns stoking the current mental health crisis the mental health professionals are warning of.

Attaboy Doug - keep listening to your scientists...

Bye-bye Bibi

I've been waiting to write those words for quite some time, so this should be a happy day. While I'll miss mocking The Greatest Leader Since Moses, there are storm clouds on the horizon.

First of all, I don't see Bennett and the Arab list co-existing in the same coalition more than a few weeks, or at least till Netanyahu is safely out of the picture. Then there'll be another election.

What I said a few years ago, that in the current climate Bibi is a moderate, is going to be proven true.  The next new government after the new government forming today will shed the Arabs and the "centrists," bind with the post-Bibi Likud, and take Israel even further right, if such a thing can be imagined.

Secondly, we're in the midst of a sea-change in US public opinion. Last week I saw a headline on MSNBC that read, "Israel needs to address the Palestinians in a new way. We need to address Israel in a new way."

That's MSNBC, folks.

There are words going into the Congressional Record these days that could not even have been imagined before the Biden government came in. Those in denial will say that's just because he's pandering to the radical wing of the party.

He is! But that's what should be cause for second thoughts among the Israeli political class. Traditionally, the party pandered to its Jewish wing.

A further tilt to the extreme right, just as American support is wavering, is a disaster waiting to happen.

From journalism to propaganda

Whatever happened to the journalism tradition of pretending to present a balanced perspective? 

I say "pretending" because everybody always knew there were 101 ways to rig the final product, but it was the principle of the thing. Appearances matter. We were better than those totalitarian states where the government dictates the news and it's all propaganda. We in the Nations of Virtue believe in a free press, and our free press gave you the news, not propaganda.

Those days are long gone.  The CBC will have Bill Browder on and defer to him as a world expert on Russia with impeccable credentials, without ever hinting that there exists an opposing school of thought about the man. He is widely considered a fraud in Europe today.

Same with Eliot Higgins, the savant supposedly behind Bellingcat. I heard Matt Galloway interview him recently, and maybe international geopolitics isn't his bag, but he brought a level of credulity to the interview that would be more appropriate for a fan club president than a journalist.

Bellingcat is financed by the NATO countries and staffed primarily by veterans of the UK security establishment. At the very least, an interview should put that fact on the table. Instead, it's treated as Russian disinformation - just like Chrystia Freeland's Nazi Grampa.

You see this lack of balance all the time in the pages of The Globe and Mail as well. Today those stalwarts of the Yellow Peril file at the Globe, Robert Fife and Steven Chase, managed to wring a quarter page of anti-China propaganda out of a report from ACHK, the Alliance Canada Hong Kong. We are told this "is an umbrella group for pro-democracy advocates in this country."

Which it is. What we're not told is ACHK was founded in Vancouver in January last year, by pro-democracy activists who had already been kicked out of HK for their efforts or were getting out while the getting was good.

The folks who organized this crowd.

These pro-democracy activists have been lavishly funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy for many years, and presumably that's who's funding ACHK now. If this organization issued a "report," what would you expect it to say?

I would expect it to say pretty much what Fife and Chase reported. But, if Fife and Chase were actual journalists, we would have seen a little more in the way of context.

Context doesn't matter. Balance doesn't matter. Nothing matters except maintaining the official narrative.

Doesn't that sound exactly like what the "journalists" used to do in those totalitarian states?

Mass grave of Uyghur children discovered in China; World outraged!

Mass grave of Indigenous children discovered in Canada; Trudeau apologizes again. World yawns.

As far as I know, that first headline is false. But, can you imagine the outcry if it were an actual headline? The usual army of sanctimonious China haters in western capitals would be clamouring for sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions! We would demand China be barred from all international organizations forthwith.  Ambassadors would be called home. Chinese diplomats would be kicked out.

When a mass grave of Indigenous children is discovered in Canada, another inquiry and an apology should make it go away. No ambassadors are recalled and no sanctions mooted, and we can fully expect to see our parliamentarians resume their moral posturing by lecturing China about the Uygur genocide by the end of the week.

'Cause we're Canadians, and aren't we great!

What genocide?