Grandstanding aside, Canada remains Uncle Sam's faithful lapdog

Here's a couple of news stories you may have missed this week, because after all, the most important news event in the world is whether the US elevates the privileged shit-bag Kavanaugh to the supreme court or whether some other privileged shit-bag gets the nod.

This week we signed on to Trump's plan to double down on the "war on drugs." Yup, it's been a losing effort for fifty years but count us in! Scootch over, Mr. Duterte, and let Justin slide into the pew beside you!

We're also taking a leadership role in toadying to American policy viz. Venezuela. Yup, we're gonna send Maduro to the ICC! That is quite hilariously portrayed as a snub to 45, who just the day before had made some derogatory remarks about the ICC.

Get serious! Getting rid of Chavez/Maduro and restoring the oligarchs to power has been a goal of Washington since 1999. The New York Times reported recently that there have been "informal" meetings between Venezuelan military commanders and Pentagon officials re: the possibility of a coup.

Justin and Chrystia aren't standing up to Trump; they're running interference for him.


Hard to imagine this obsequious toadying won't be rewarded with a spectacular NAFTA "win" in the very near future.

After Assad, Duterte?

The Beltway Brahmins have been telling us for five years now that Assad has to go, and he's still there. Furthermore, there's every possibility that he'll still be there five years hence. The failure to affect regime change in Syria, however, isn't preventing the think-tankers and opinion makers in Washington from pencilling in the next candidate for regime change.

This time around it's President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who's gone rogue. In the four months since his election he's been making all sorts of "anti-American" pronouncements, and America's ruling class has noticed. Check out the scolding tone in this Washington Post missive today; "...Duterte discovered this week that his actions have consequences."

Yup! Filipinos, from the lowliest expat maid to the President himself, occasionally need to be reminded of their place, don't they?

And here's Foreign Affairs chiming in with a polemic about Duterte's defiance. Different venue, same condescending tone.

And don't miss The Limits of Duterte's Anti-Americanism, on view at The Atlantic.

My favorite is the Foreign Policy hit job titled President Duterte's Crazy Drug War Is Just The Beginning. The sub-head tells the tale; the antics of this mad-man and his crazy shenanigans are an attack on the very foundations of democracy, don't you know! When you read that kind of rhetoric you know that calls for a humanitarian intervention to save the people of the Philippines won't be long in coming.

When those leading mouth-pieces for America's policymakers are singing the same song in unison within a day or two of one another, you know there's more at work than coincidence. Luckily, the Beltway Big-boys still have the Filipino military establishment in their pockets.

All Duterte has is a 74% approval rating from his people.

Alas, that won't be nearly enough...

White House 2016; choosing an overseer for the disintegration of the Empire

America is in decline.

Any serious person already knows this. Even the serious people who opine in the hallowed pages of the NYT or the Washington Post know they're talking shit when they talk about "American exceptionalism" etc. They know the jig is up but they're committed to maintaining the illusion.

Rodrigo Duterte, recently elected president of the Philippines, knows the jig is up too. That's why he's A-OK telling Obama to go to hell.

And he's only the most recent example of former vassal states giving the finger to Uncle Sam. NATO ally Turkey has gone rogue. The Saudis are no longer reliable allies. Israel has long been laughing off American scolding about their egregious land theft and ethnic-cleansing strategy. And why not? After forty years of American finger wagging about their settlement policy, they were just rewarded with the biggest "aid" package in US history; 38 billions in American military aid over ten years. (The fact that this is in reality a 38 billion dollar gift to the US military-industrial complex is another story.)

So the truth is, more and more former allies no longer take America seriously.

The US electorate is poised to elect a caretaker to oversee the next four years of America's decline. Due to the deliberately engineered slovenliness of America's education system, the vast majority of eligible voters are convinced that they have but two choices; Trump or Clinton. Yes, it's a forgone conclusion that one of those will be the next POTUS.

Trump claims he wants to "make America great again." Nobody knows what he means when he says that. Looking at his record, I'd guess he's hoping to make Trump even greater. He'd like to see more Trump Towers in more places. However crass and narcissistic you may find the man, there's nothing about the guy's track record that suggests he'd take any pleasure in setting entire nations aflame. No, he'd much rather see a Trump Tower in Damascus than nuke the place. Or Moscow. Or Manilla. Or anywhere.

Clinton is another story. She has a long record of setting entire nations aflame. If you saw General John Allen's flame-thrower of a speech at the DNC you can bet there'll be lots more to come.

America is indeed exceptional. Homeless vets live in the streets by the thousands. Twenty military veterans chose to end their own lives every day. America remains the only developed nation without a national single-payer health care program. America's schools continue their inexorable plunge in international rankings.

That's exceptional alright.

If you want a president who will grab the naysayers like Putin and Erdogan and Duterte by the neck and shake some sense into them, vote Hillary.

If you'd rather have a president who wants to get along with Putin and Erdogan and Duterte, and will settle for a few more buildings with his name on them, vote Trump.

Electing Trump might result in a few more Trump Towers in the short term. In the long term it might result in more people realising that the USA desperately needs serious electoral reform.

Electing Clinton would more likely result in serious conflict on any number of fronts, to the point where the entire world will be in flames... at which time it will probably be too late for those election reforms.