Hating the Poor

 

Addiction is a mental health issue.  It's a sociological issue.  It's a medical issue.  Sure, there are some people (rich people) who infamously use drugs for recreational purposes and then become addicts.  But, by virtue of their being rich (and/or famous) their numbers are few.  If you honestly believe that drug addiction is simply a question of morals and self-discipline, you still have to explain the epidemic of public consumption of drugs that has reached unprecedented levels in North America.

Are we really to believe that there's just been some massive breakdown in personal morals, unrelated to any other socioeconomic trends, that is responsible for what we're seeing today? That seems to be the case with "conservatives" (who still love crack-smoking, alcoholic Rob Ford).

More widespread of an issue is homelessness.  It's been rising for decades.  Jobs are more precarious, the incomes those precarious jobs earn have stagnated, the price of housing has skyrocketed, and corporate oligarchs are price-gouging us everywhere they can.  It's no wonder that the problem of homelessness has grown.  And yet, many people look at this and decide that it's just a case of the homeless simply having given up on wanting to support themselves.  Social programs have declined, and it was supposedly the seductive allure of the 1980's general welfare assistance that caused lazy people to drop out of the labour market, but more people are poorer than they were then.

When the root of the problem is so clearly the capitalist political-economic system, the choice of some people to blame to poor for their predicament, and to then HATE the poor, is pathological. 

Expertise Costs Money

 

An interesting article from one of Tony Wikrent's Week-end Round-ups at Ian Welsh's blog:  "Monopoly Round-Up" by Matt Stoller ...

In 1995, the Republican Party took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Led by Newt Gingrich and a small group of right-wing politicians who called themselves “Jihadists,” these men sought to revamp a legislative chamber held by the Democrats since 1949.

Gingrich was an intellectual, as were some of his colleagues. When he first was elected in 1978 as part of what was known as the “New Right,” every young Republican candidate was obsessively reading Robert Bork’s The Antitrust Paradox. In 1995, his goal wasn’t just to pass legislation, but to fundamentally re-gear Congress so it could no longer serve as the brains for the Democratic Party, as it had for the last half century. That was an institutional task, and he set about restructuring the institutions.

First to go was the Office of Technology Assessment, a nonpartisan think tank that conducted long-term studies on important scientific and engineering topics, like how to decommission the Space Shuttle or early warnings on climate change. Gingrich also slashed Congressional staff by a third, eliminated dozens of subcommittees, and killed budgets for the legislative service organizations that helped specific groups of members, like the Black Caucus, the Caucus on Women’s Issues, the Environment and Energy Study Conference, and so forth. Most importantly, the Democratic Study Group, a network of staff and members who organized the rhythm of the House, disappeared.

...

The effect was revolutionary. From 1949 to 1995, there was immense institutional knowledge within Congress. There were staffers who know everything there was to know about the Mississippi River and could go toe-to-toe with the Army Corps of Engineers on reclamation projects. There were dozens of staff who understood the Post Office. The Antitrust Subcommittee had a swath of antitrust lawyers who could investigate industries and develop litigation. 

When I was in the archives, I found that members of Congress like Wright Patman worked insanely hard, and were rewarded for it. Patman started working early and ended his day very late, reading books, publishing reports, and sending queries to figure how the banks worked. His lead investigator had a stack of blank subpoenas and a travel budget, and could just go anywhere he wanted to track down evidence. His people were confident they could do as good a job as the bankers in running powerful institutions, and so they could negotiate effectively.

But you don’t have to go back to the 1930s, just watch a Congressional hearing on C-Span from the early 1990s. The level of substantive knowledge is at an entirely different level than it is today. In 1995, Gingrich struck the death blow to that culture, and the House was soon staffed by 25-year-olds.

  

I don't agree with everything in the article, from the tone to the analyses.  I also don't think that the victories of corporations against legislation is the result of the deliberate lobotomization of the USA's federal legislative branch.  Much of this is just brazen corruption, based on stupid, transparently selfish, corrupt arguments, being rubber-stamped by a totally bought-and-paid-for political class.

That having been said, 21st Century societies are complex and effective regulation requires knowledgeable legislators. 

That was one of my motivations for giving citizens paid positions on public-sector committees.  If I were the God-Emperor of Canada, all public institutions would be managed by committees with one-third of the membership representing the public, one-third representing the workers in that sector, and one-third representing the government of the day.

Anyone could put their name in.  There would be no actual campaigning.  The electorate will be expected to have looked at the list and done their own research.  Naive, I'm sure.  But an organized Left could effectively meet any corporatist usurpers. 

Racism Is Stupid

 

We are all human beings.  That's it.  There ain't no other way to say it.  We're equal.  We are the same.

Accidents of various sorts, random developments, ... such as European innovations in cannons and sailing ships in the 16th Century, ... made some groups of people capable of militarily defeating other people, ... which made the victorious people delude themselves into thinking that they were "SUPERIOR."

It's all crap.

 

Every human community on every single part of this planet Earth is statistically as capable of producing a genius as is any other human community.

Which is not to deny the set of circumstances that produced the European Scientific Revolution.  Or whatever else was lasting from "Western Civilization."  But that's a whole other kettle of fish.

EVERY racist society has its imbecilic justifications for its shit-headed racism.  But they are all garbage rationalizations.  Whether it's some Israeli zio-nazi putz or some empty-headed Canadian fulminating about the First Nations wanting clean water, or clearly stolen lands, or their Constitutional Rights, ... or whatever garbage racist you can think of. 

Pretty good summary of the entire Russia-Ukraine Conflict so far

 It's from SONAR21, "Why Can't the Russians Defeat Ukraine?"

 

Russia committed approximately 150,000–190,000 troops to the initial invasion on February 24, 2022, drawn from essentially its entire available pool of pre-war Battalion Tactical Groups — roughly 100 BTGs out of approximately 120 available.

The initial objective was to create enough military pressure on Ukraine to force it to the negotiating table… That goal was achieved. When Judge Napolitano, Mario Nawfal and I interviewed Foreign Minister Lavrov on March 13, 2024, Mr. Lavrov emphatically stated that the proposed Istanbul Communique was based on a document provided by Ukraine.

The delegations led by Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia and Russian diplomat Vladimir Medinsky met in Istanbul with President Erdogan serving as the mediator. A draft agreement (sometimes called the “Istanbul Communiqué” or draft peace deal) was discussed and the two sides reached a tentative agreement that included Ukrainian neutrality, limits on Ukraine’s military, security guarantees, and the status of Crimea and Donbas. Then the US and the UK intervened and compelled Ukraine to abandon the talks.

...

Russia’s 2025 strategy represented a deliberate evolution from its single-axis focus of 2023 and 2024 toward a multi-front simultaneous pressure approach designed to overwhelm Ukraine’s ability to reinforce any single threatened sector. The year is best understood through its declared objectives, its operational execution across multiple axes, and the structural shift in how Russia was choosing to fight. It is important to emphasize that Russia’s SMO strategy was still intact — i.e., Russia was not mobilizing the country for war, it was continuing to carryout limited operations with the goal of demilitarizing Ukrainian forces without putting the Russian nation on a war footing.

Entering 2026, according to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi, more than 700,000 Russian soldiers were engaged against Ukrainian forces — a figure Putin has cited similarly. Note the rare convergence there: both Kyiv and Moscow have put the Ukraine grouping at around 700,000, which makes it one of the more reliable numbers in this space. This represents almost a four-fold increase in the number of Russian soldiers committed to the Ukraine battlefront compared to 2022.

...

The total strength of the Russian army now stands at 1.5 million soldiers, which means less than half are committed to the fight in Ukraine. Here is the critical difference between Russia and Ukraine: Russia has ample reserves of men and ammunition while Ukraine has no strategic reserve of fresh, equipped formations that could exploit success or backstop a major breach. While the war grinds on at a slow pace in terms of Western assessments, the facts on the ground show that Ukraine has no viable means of stopping the Russian advances. Russia, it appears, is content to inflict massive casualties on Ukraine using its superiority in artillery, drones and FAB-glide bombs. Ukraine’s artillery and drone forces are dwarfed by Russia and Ukraine does not have FAB-glide bombs and the aircraft to deliver them if it did.

The defeat of Ukraine is inevitable. The real question is how much of Ukraine outside of the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia will Russia capture?

 

 

Very concise and comprehensive. 

"Sure there are homeless camps all over the place, but the economy is doing fine really!"

 

Two articles from the "Week-end Wrap" at Ian Welsh's blog.

First: "Why are a record number of Americans living with their parents?" from Robert Bridge at Russia Today.

A record 25.2 million young American adults (about 33%) under 35 have returned to the family nest as the cost of living has become prohibitive.

There is a stereotype of Americans living at home with their parents as freeloaders, living in the basement and spending their ample free time playing video games. That is far from the reality. Around 70% of young adults (ages 25 to 34) living at home are actively employed and use their income to contribute to the household expenses, like groceries and utilities.

One of the main reasons for Americans opting to live with their parents is the high price of home ownership. The median sales price for a single-family home in the US is approximately $434,300. Compare that to 1975 when the average price was under $40,000. That demonstrates how much the dollar has shrunk in terms of purchasing power.

 

Second: "Voters were right about the economy. The data was wrong." from Eugene Ludwig at Politico.

Take, as a particularly egregious example, what is perhaps the most widely reported economic indicator: unemployment. Known to experts as the U-3, the number misleads in several ways. First, it counts as employed the millions of people who are unwillingly under-employed — that is, people who, for example, work only a few hours each week while searching for a full-time job. Second, it does not take into account many Americans who have been so discouraged that they are no longer trying to get a job. Finally, the prevailing statistic does not account for the meagerness of any individual’s income. Thus you could be homeless on the streets, making an intermittent income and functionally incapable of keeping your family fed, and the government would still count you as “employed.”

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate. 

"Anything that threatens my ability to do what I've always done is a hoax!!"

 

Some people REALLY don't like change.  It's unsettling.  Threatening.  Hence, they don't like immigrants.  They don't like people embracing non-traditional gender roles.  They hate challenges to their religion.  Basically, if they grew up with cars, air-conditioners, bbq's, television, etc., ... they imagine that it's always been this way and that there's no reason to change.  So Global Warming is a hoax.  COVID is a hoax.  And they need a Big Daddy leader to stand up against the sources of change and make everything all right. 

Foreign Minister Anita Anand Slinking Away

 

I've seen videos on Instagram and Facebook (but, evidently, they're hard to find on Facebook) of Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand being interrupted from her lunch at some patio in Toronto, having to face accusations about Canada's complicity in Israel's genocide of the Palestinians.

If you ever see those clips (they're usually only from 5 to 15 seconds long) notice how she just gets up and slinks away.

Which is a clear admission of guilt by the way.

I've seen videos of child molesters (that is; known, convicted, admitted child molesters) being confronted by angry people.  And they behave the exact same way as Anand does.  They don't protest.  How could they?  They don't argue back.  The issue is settled.  They are guilty as charged and they just want to get where they're going without getting their heads kicked in.

Which is not to say that the people confronting Anand want to kick her head in.  Just that Anand knows that she has no defence against these accusations.  She can't argue or try to justify her actions.  They're unjustifiable.  She's a war criminal, complicit in the deliberate torture and murder and genocide of innocent men, women and children.

There are other videos of political lapdogs of Israel, sometimes male politicians dealing with male or female accusers.  Sometimes a female politician dealing with male or female accusers.  With the female politicians it's almost always the same.  They look scared and they're trying to get away as fast as they're capable of walking.  They're upset and some of them look like they want to cry.

With the men, when facing a male accuser, they usually make some grim face and move steadily forward.  Some of them do try to talk tough to a male accuser, but it's generally some stupid shit about how the anti-genocide male trying to hold them to account for genocide are idiots wasting everybody's time.  With female accusers, male politicians are more likely to smirk and toss out stupid accusations of those women being dupes of Hamas or in the sway of some other foreign power.

The one constant is that they're all contemptible scum. 

Mark Carney Represents the Sickness, the Emptiness, of Canada

 

I never held out high hopes for Mark Carney.  He said one or two things in the past that caused me to think he'd be a much better prime minister than he's turned out to be.  But those were just idle musings.  The difference between thinking "He might" and "I wish."

But in practice, Carney has been a disaster.  A self-important, delusional, ruthless servant of oligopoly.  Even when he made his big speech at Davos, about "middle powers" aligning with other such nations to pursue their "values" I knew it was bullshit.  He was still supporting Israeli imperialism and genocide to the hilt.

Carney, the human being, is intelligent enough to have a tenuous grasp of what is right and what is wrong.  But in practice, in his day-to-day life, he obviously can't differentiate between ideology, dogmatism, delusion, corruption and evil.

Whether we like it or not, Canada is founded on theft and colonialism.  Canada was a settler colony of the British Empire and now we are an appendage of US imperialism.  We remain saturated with the barbarism and obscurantism of religion.  We are capitalist, at a time when capitalism has become a bloated, stinking, psychotic ideology.  We've long been one of the staunchest supporters of the fascist (which implies racist) Zionist movement.

This is a sick, ignorant, deluded, corrupt, inhuman culture with nothing worthwhile at its core, aside from the rudiments of failed attempts to implement the rule of law, representative government, democracy or human rights.  Those faint gleamings can barely be recognized under the pile of shit that explains why Mark Carney is behaving like stephen harper. 

Good Article About Doug Ford [Ontario PC's] Ruinous Energy Policy

 

It's from Rabble.Ca:  "Ford's deficit funded Ponzi Scheme" 

High hydro rates were a big problem politically. So, In the 2018 Ontario provincial election Doug Ford promised to lower hydro rates by 12 per cent. Ford has not lowered hydro rates by even one per cent. 

What Ford did do was hide and protect private profits with his electricity rebate program subsidy. The Financial Accountability Office has reported the cost to the public treasury from between $6 billion and $7 billion per year.  

Last November first the Ontario Energy Board raised electricity rates by 29 per cent. This was done, as it has been done every November 1 and April 1 since June 2002 to pay the rates the deregulated electricity market charged.  

Knowing this would not be good optics for him, Ford increased the electricity rebate program from 13 to 23.5 per cent, hiding the increase. Ford never talks about his 2018 promise anymore.

Just doing the math, $6.9 Billion plus 23.5 per cent equals a whopping $8.5215 billion and growing, that figure does not include the November 1 increase of 29 per cent.  All paid for by the public treasury.

...

The crisis in both healthcare and education as well as other public services we all depend on is due to the underfunding and cuts to our critical public services to fund this scam and worst of all, Ford is also borrowing from future taxpayers by using deficit financing to pay for his scheme. 

     In a nutshell Ford is financing his scheme with social deficits in healthcare, education and public treasury deficits. 

     The deficit for 2026-27 is now $13.8 billion, indebting future generations.

In the middle of an affordability crisis, Ford’s scheme only protects private profits.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Any working class person who votes for this party of full-time grifters is either a total ignoramus, a hopeless shithead, or both. 

The Difference Between Defeat in Vietnam and Defeat AGAINST Iran

 

Not to take away anything from the accomplishments of the Vietnamese, but what the USA calls "The Vietnam War" was supposed to be a war against Communism.  "The Domino Theory."  The narrative was that communism was spreading.  The USA was the leader of "The Free World" and its job was to stop the spread of totalitarian tyranny.  The defeat of the USA in Vietnam was traumatic for the Washington elites, in that it showed that there were limits to US power.  Still and all, the simplistic "domino theory" (which camouflaged what was actually anti-colonialism that was often [naturally] associated with socialism) held.  Vietnam was an example to the world of how much suffering and death was required to break out of the US-led capitalist/imperialist order.  And postwar Vietnam was made to suffer, with no international reconstruction assistance beyond what the cash-strapped, ossifying USSR could provide.  In other words, despite the defeat in Vietnam, the USA was still the leader of the "free world" and it was going to go on to be an example for others to emulate.

But the "Cold War" ended in 1991.  And since that year, the USA has gone from the world's only "super-power" to de-industrialized, financialized, debt-ridden, super-corrupt, politically unstable ... "Things fall apart.  The centre cannot hold."  ... Perfectly represented by the senile "Genocide Joe Biden" and the doddering, bloated, serial-grifter, rapist "Genocide Donald Trump."  The differences in living standards and technological development between the USA, Europe, Japan and the Anglo-American countries (UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and the rest of the world have shrunk.  China is now a major world power.  Russia is back on its feet.  Leftist movements in Latin America and anti-colonial movements in Africa are arising.  And Iran has just won its war against Israel and the USA.  

So what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz is that the last vestige of European Imperialism (which is at the core of the insanity that calls itself "zionism") is dying and Donald Trump is the ego-maniac who has to face that. 

I started this post almost a week ago.  A day or two ago, the libertarian website antiwar.com provided a link to a foreignpolicy.com article by Paul Musgrave, entitled "Iran Defeat Is Bigger Strategic Defeat Than Vietnam."   I'm not saying that I'm astonishingly prescient.  Just that this sentiment is shared by many others.  The USA could walk away from Vietnam and Afghanistan.  In those cases they lost control of a small, poor country.  In both cases the USA left those countries to rebuild with their own resources from the destruction that America inflicted on them.  Iran is different.  Iran threatens the entire world economy.  It might expel all US military bases from the region.  It might defeat Israel, the last bastion of European colonial-imperialism.

 

And now, tonight, Danny Haiphong is speaking with Mohammad Marandi about Israel's sabotaging of the ceasefire

 

Furthermore, ... there is but no question that this war is bad for the United States.  I have said all along that Donald Trump himself knew this was a bad idea.  I have also said that if one combines the very strong possibility that Trump raped adolescent girls on property owned by Jeffrey Epstein.  And Epstein was a blackmailer.  And Epstein worked for Mossad.  Which would naturally mean that Donald "President of the United States" Trump is being blackmailed by Israel to sacrifice his country on behalf of Naziyahoo's Israel.

 

Let's not beat about the bush here.  There is a growing movement on the right-side of the political spectrum, represented by people like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owen, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and (before Israel assassinated him) Charlie Kirk, that also saw the insanity of the imperialism of the Clintons and Obama and Biden (and all their media sycophants) and status-quo Repugnicans like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, as being bad for the United States.  It's generally the fans of these people who enlist in the "poverty draft" and who find themselves or their loved ones dying in the stupid, useless "forever wars." And those were the people who voted for Trump to bring an end to that insanity.  And Trump violated their trust.  

Don't get me wrong.  There are portions of MAGA so stupid and debased that they forgive Trump for not releasing the Epstein files, and who hypocritically blame Reneé Good and Alex Pretti for their own deaths because neither of those fine, upstanding people would bow to tyranny.  And don't get me wrong that by ascribing to some intellectual and perhaps moral consistency to Carlson, Owens, Taylor-Greene or Kirk, that I now think they are awesome.

I'm just saying that there is a significant portion of right-wing, isolationist, Christian-Nationalist and (sorry Candace) White-Supremacist US-citizens who absolutely DESPISE Israel, and AIPAC hirelings, and ordinary Jewish people.  And maybe some of Trump's top generals are a part of that, or maybe they're just realists, but either way, the people I was just talking about are on their side.  If there's any real-time hope to end this insanity it won't be the lefties milling about for an afternoon.  It'll be people with real material-world resources.  Christian-nationalist members of the US military, who may or may not harbour antisemitic beliefs.

Iran has won this war.  Israel is merely digging its own grave.  Here's Ian Welsh:

The Iranians have not gone to Geneva for the signing or negotiations. They are holding firm on Lebanon. And that means Trump can either rein in the Israelis or the vise starts tightening around America’s balls again.

America cannot win this war. It is impossible. Even using nukes probably wouldn’t work fast enough. That’s why they agreed to a deal that is very pro-Iranian.

That has not changed. They can rein in Israel or cut it loose now, or they can do it in two months when the US is in much more pain, or in 4 months when there are food riots.

There’s a real world. America lost a war that matters. There’s going to be a price for that. If America is smart and not completely controlled by Israel, they’ll pay that price now and if necessary cut Israel lose, because the price will go up every day if the MOU fails.

This is a momentous time.   Here's Nate Bear:

With Israel still bombing Lebanon and oil reserves at critical thresholds, however, this is all far from over.

Iran has sketched out two futures for the US and it now has a decision to make: stand behind the deal which Trump has loudly proclaimed as necessary to save the world, and force Israel to stand down, or let Israel dictate the process, return to war and drag the world into an economic depression. Anything is still possible, of course, but I judge the latter extremely unlikely.

And Trump, in his egotism, venality and conceited self-interest, might just be the man for the moment.

Blog-on dudes and dudettes! 

The Carney Government's AI Strategy

 

Recently, the Carney Liberal Government either released or had leaked their strategy for Canada's participation in the AI Revolution.

But given that AI is a towering mass of shit that nobody normal ever asked for, and, given that Mark Carney and any degenerate willing to be associated with him (that includes Pierre Poilievere) is/are complete shit-heads, nothing in it is of any value. 

Inhumanity

 

Nate Bear wrote an excellent piece on the ludicrous shrieking about "antisemitism" when a mentally ill man in the UK stabbed two Jewish men:

 

This fresh round of hysteria really ramped up after a man with a history of mental illness (and of stabbings) stabbed two Jews in north London last week. Neither died and both will live. Omitted from almost all state-corporate media coverage was the fact that he also stabbed a third man, a Muslim. Also omitted was his history of stabbings (he previously stabbed his own dog, a Somali man, and two police officers), and his history of psychotic breaks.

Despite the circumstances clearly pointing to random attacks by a person suffering an acute mental episode, the police treated it not just as a planned antisemitic attack, but as terrorism.

The terrorism threat level in the UK was raised to severe.

I remember when terrorism used to mean car bombs, political goals, manifestos and scores of dead people, not a mentally disabled man with a butter knife scratching a few people.

But the attack was perfect fodder for the British media and political establishment, who blamed support for Palestine and opposition to genocide for enabling antisemitism, and instantly began demanding pro-Palestine protests were fully outlawed.

Later, Bear mentions how this misuse of the terms "terrorism" and "antisemitism" led to the arrest of a Green Party candidate for posting online that an attack on a synagogue in Michigan, USA was an act of vengeance, not antisemitism:

Mairey posted that an attack on a synagogue in Michigan, in March, was revenge, not antisemitism. Which it was. Ten days before he attacked the synagogue, Ayman Ghazali’s family in Lebanon had been murdered in an Israeli airstrike. His attack against an open and proudly Zionist synagogue was revenge.

I've written before on the phenomenon of some Jewish people to genuinely feel threatened by criticism of Israel, because they genuinely feel that this criticism is antisemitic at its roots.  And I'll say here and now that with Israel's continued depredations and atrocities, I find this attitude to be increasingly tiresome, narcissistic, disgusting and stupid.  But Bear is talking about how the UK ruling class, including the loathsome Keir Starmer, are concocting an "antisemitism" and "terrorism" crisis pretty much out of whole cloth.  Because Israel is an important cog in the machine of capitalist imperialism.  And the fact that Israel is also a genocidal zio-nazi entity means that extraordinary measures have to be taken to attempt to normalize it. [More from Caitlin Johnstone.]

 

The thing is though, ... this has all made me feel that, once again, most "leaders" (people in positions of power) don't care about other people at all.  Look at it this way: The Roman Catholic Church is documented as having an across-the-board problem with their priests molesting children and the Church covering this up.  By "across-the-board" I mean that this was world-wide/systemic.  It wasn't some local scandal that was covered-up by those on the spot and when word got up to the Pope in Rome it was decided to go along with it and hope for the best.  That would have been bad enough.  But no.  This was a problem with the institution as a whole and it went on for generations.

But ordinary people, for whom their bullshit religious beliefs are integral part of "who they are" and whose individual fake religion was Catholicism, decided that a little thing like systemic child rape wasn't enough to make them change their lives and renounce that corrupt institution.  As long as it happened to other children, they apparently don't give a fuck.

 

The "Other."  Non-Hispanic US whites hating Latinos and Blacks.  "Old-Stock" white Canadians hating the First Nations.  Hindus hating Muslims.  Arabs hating Africans and South Asians.  Israelis hating Palestinians. Humans stupidly "other" people and make enemies of them in the blinkered hopes of being able to keep or take as much for ourselves.

And, if ordinary people are capable of such despicable behaviour, imagine what total psychopaths like Benjamin Netanyahu, Keir Starmer, Donald Trump, stephen harper, Mark Carney, Ben Shapiro, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, etc., are capable of!

To the extent that they're Jewish themselves, racist narcissists like Netanyahu and Ben Shapiro probably have some sort of genuine empathy for Jewish victims of antisemitic violence.  But make no mistake about it: Netanyahu cares mostly about himself.  He clearly knew about the upcoming Hamas action on October 7th, 2023 and conspired to make it far more deadly than Hamas intended.  It is documented that he ignored warnings from Israeli, US-American and Egyptian intelligence.  It is documented that the Israeli "rave" (dance party) was re-located to just across the line from the expected attack.  It is documented that it took hours for the IDF to respond to an attack that higher-ups knew was going to happen.  It is documented that when the IDF actually did respond, that it (in line with its "Hannibal Directive") slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians with tanks and helicopter gunships.

They were Jewish.  They were even Jewish Israelis.  But still, Netanyahu needs to stay in power to avoid going to prison for corruption charges that he will surely be found guilty of, and so they had to die.  Because he had to make Israelis completely lose their minds.  So "Bibi" Netanyahu slaughtered his fellow Israelis so that he could "justify" (in the minds of degenerates like Biden, Blinken, Starmer, Trudeau, etc.,) committing actual, literal GENOCIDE against the Palestinians.

Even if they don't really care about actual antisemitism, our psychopathic oligarchy does enjoy using it (or the threat of it) as a cudgel to beat the anti-genocide/anti-imperialist/anti-oligarchy side with.  Today, some zio-nazi doctor in Montreal is whining about how he's leaving Canada for the USA due to the rise in "anti-semitism" here.  And the shit-head Mark Carney had some speech to make some announcement about his government's response to this fabricated crisis.

Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith Canada recorded over 6,800 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the highest number it has recorded since 1982. It points to those statistics as proof that anti-Jewish hatred is being normalized in Canada. 

But since B'nai B'rith Canada equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, this is all bullshit and they can go fuck themselves.

I have now decided that the mass-shooting of the racist fanatics of the Chabad group at Bondi Beach in Australia was probably organized by Mossad, or, at least, by Netanyahu.  Even if they were paid-up zio-nazi stalwarts, their deaths at the hands of Muslim gunmen would do a lot to whip-up hysteria to justify curtailing the rights of anti-genocide protesters.  Because Netanyahu and his scum allies simply do not care about other people's lives, Jewish, zio-nazi, or otherwise.

Lately, whatever Canada's foreign affairs ministry is actually called has been paying to run ads on Fazebuck about how Canada is heroically calling out Russia for kidnapping Ukrainian children.  I've dealt with this before.  Russia is evacuating children from war-zones.  Many of the children are ethnic Russians whose parents voluntarily sent them to safer locations, while other, ethnic Ukrainian children on the Russian-controlled side of the border complain about being taken against their will.  One child complained about having to live with a Russian family who tried to make her sing the Russian national anthem every day.  She (and one other child I remember) was complaining about this to a Western news outlet AFTER HAVING BEEN RETURNED TO UKRAINE by the Russian government.  Clearly, children in immediate harm's way, were evacuated from a war zone, and some of them were Ukrainian, and from the journalists' own stories, they were returned to their families once they were identified and the transfers could be effected.

But even if Russia is kidnapping Ukrainian children, for Canada to complain about it whilst enabling Israel to starve, torture, rape and kill Palestinian children is the height of hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy doesn't get any worse than that.  It's like Israel has shit its pants and Canada is complaining that Russia farted.

Canada doesn't care about Ukrainians.  Canada doesn't care about the Palestinians.  Canada doesn't care about the Iranians.  Canada doesn't even care about Canadians.

We are ruled by insane, stupid monsters.  And there is nothing that they won't do to us if they somehow, stupidly, think it will serve their insane agenda.

Antisemitism and Anti-Arabism

 

Znetwork had two good essays that I read today.  One was about the intellectual poverty of antisemitism: "Why Antisemitism Obscures the Real Architecture of Power" by Vuk Bačanovic.

One of the most repellent forms of that old-new popular thinking—now once again spreading with mounting intensity across Western societies since the genocidal devastation of Gaza and the American-Israeli escalation toward Iran—is the stale, mildew-ridden yet ever-ready conclusion: that, finally, the dehumanization of the Jews has been vindicated. That the racist phantasmagoria of Jews as a “cancer of humanity” was merely awaiting its historical confirmation. Ah yes – Hitler, it seems, “knew something after all”: because Zionists, because AIPAC, because Netanyahu, because lobbies—because of that wonderfully crude analytical apparatus that explains history as if it were He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, with a single eternal villain scheming from Snake Mountain against the pious people of Eternia.

...

And here we arrive at the question that spoils the sport for all professional hunters of the “eternal culprit”: why are other accomplices across the vast spectrum of wars, massacres, sanctions, blockades, and mass deaths somehow always deemed “less evil” than the “evil Jews”? Why are Anglo-American imperial elites – Protestant or secular, it makes no difference – and their allies in various petro-monarchies, including Wahhabi–Kharijite ideological apparatuses, so readily portrayed as misguided marionettes of grotesque Jewish caricatures lifted from Nazi propaganda, rather than as fully conscious, fully responsible accomplices in joint criminal enterprises stretching from Libya, through Iraq, to Syria, Gaza, and Iran?

So, is it therefore impossible to be evil if you are not a Jew? Are Washington, D.C., London, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi in fact historic courts of virtue and humanism—merely bewitched by wicked counsellors, like King Théoden in The Lord of the Rings? Otherwise, would they—as a kind of global alliance of beauty queens—ceaselessly labour for peace and human understanding, if only “the Jew” were not whispering in their ear that today, of all days, is perfect for yet another humanitarian catastrophe and genocide?

...

That is why the antisemitic “explanation” of the world is not only morally repugnant, but analytically foolish and politically harmful: it does not expose the existing system—it rescues it. It is especially useful to the system entrenched in Israel, which in fact thrives on the premise that antisemitism is the natural condition of non-Jews, a premise designed to render every new enterprise of Netanyahu’s killers intelligible, even inevitable. Instead of focusing on the nature and structure of capital, the state, lobbies, military-industrial complexes, petro-monarchies, imperialism, and comprador elites, it reduces everything to an ancient, fetid metaphysics of blood and soil—of a handful of uniquely evil people without whom the world, supposedly, would be better.

Only it would not.

 

Of course, Netanyahu and other zionist leaders celebrate how Israel's atrocities reinforce the existing prejudices of the already antisemitic and inculcate antisemitism in confused people who are now seeing this behaviour for the first time.  Which is not to say that a maniac like Netanyahu doesn't himself believe that antisemitism is the core of every non-Jewish person at that same time that he manipulates and creates that hatred. He's like Adolph Hitler; stating his desire to go to war against all his enemies, starting those wars, and then whining that the Jews started them.

The other article was from last July: "The Problem is Not Palestinian Culture - Rebutting Modern Right-wing Colonial Propaganda" by Roman Kozhevnikov.  I most enjoyed this because two days ago I started reading a substack article by some writer whose name I forget, I gave up reading it in disgust, knowing that all the talking points were garbage ... maybe he or she is a paid opinion writer or maybe they're just some anonymous shlub like me.  Regardless, it was all the crapola so eloquently destroyed in this article.

Pro-Israel propagandists want to control the narrative about the Arab-Muslim world and we hear their narratives more often than academic consensus on the matter. Palestinians are accused of low economic productivity to justify their colonization and to whitewash its adverse effects on them. Arab-Muslim values are slandered to present them as the cause of Palestinian problems. However, Palestinians—and other Arabs—were developing their economies rapidly throughout numerous periods of growth and their values guided and inspired them. 

The likes of Caroline Glick paint Israeli occupation as bringing economic growth to the occupied territories, but these claims became outdated in the 1980s, whereupon short-lived West Bank economic growth—brought by Palestinians working abroad—changed to the decades of struggling, caused by Israel’s strangling economic policies. Now that international aid no longer constitutes such a large share of Israel’s GDP, Israel’s economic growth slowed down to less than half its former pace. Meanwhile, the World Bank estimated that the depressed West Bank economy might’ve grown 7.5% per year, if only Israel ceased its damaging policies.

I just thought I'd share.

Politicians are Rotten and Stupid Because the System is Rotten and Stupid

 

This isn't the best humanity can do.  True, we are a flawed, limited species.  But we're capable of better.  We haven't figured out how to restrict the ability of the sociopathic power-seekers from dominating our societies because for most of our time on this planet human beings lived in smaller groups with less power to control nature and each other.  But as our collective ingenuity has increased our ability to manipulate nature and to politically dominate, physically coerce, and psychologically manipulate ourselves, the nasty people with the impulse for narcissism and domination have become a danger too extreme to ignore.

The old order is dying.  "Zombie Neoliberalism."  That is why the malignant narcissists it pukes up are so godawful.  Nobody truly sane could believe in this garbage.  That's why the USA has Donald Trump.  And it's why the Democratic Party USA is so decrepit and deluded and jaded and stupid that they tried to run Joe Biden as a candidate for re-election, even though they'd been hiding him from his own cabinet since at least 2023.  (When those books at that link came out, Democratic Party stooges uniformly whined: "Why are you bringing this up NOW???  Can't you see that Donald Trump is the danger we need to focus on???"  The fact that books about 2020 election came out after the same interval that books about immediately past elections come out didn't matter.  The fact that those books helped explain how Trump was able to win the 2024 election didn't matter.  What mattered was allowing a cabal of corrupt, incompetent shit-heads escape any consequences for their stupid behaviour.  It never ceases to amaze me how entitled and stupid the Democratic Party is.  Because of their own incompetence, arrogance, delusion and cluelessness, they can't even one-hundred percent take advantage of Trump's own advancing senility and stupidity because they themselves tried to lie to the world that their candidate, Joe Biden, wasn't senile, when they knew he was.  I mean, what an "own-goal"!)

And it's why Canada has Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney.  Poilievre has been a public laughing-stock for years.  And now he's reduced to rigged leadership reviews and whining impotently as his own MP's cross the floor and join the Liberals in order to at least taste power once in their careers.  They join Carney, who, as a central bank governor in Canada and then the UK helped grow two real-estate bubbles.  Carney who blathered about "values" at Davos while supporting genocide in West Asia and starvation sanction in Cuba.  Who is killing national childcare and pharmacare, while increasing military spending and talking about privatizing airports.  

And, of course, a sick society produces an ignorant, deluded, selfish, fucked-up electorate.  "Conservatives" who are afraid of their own shadows, lashing out at immigrants, refugees, feminists, homosexuals, artists, ... and "Progressives" clinging to the official parties of "decency" even when they're dominated by psychopathic thieves and murderers, while castigating anyone who tries to point out their error.

Worst Case Scenario

 

Delusional, megalomaniacal, Blackmailed Trump, ... not wanting to go to prison for raping 13-year old girls, ... because that is what Netanyahu, Mossad, Epstein, are threatening him with, ... incoherently decides that he (and the UNITED STATES of AMERICA) will go out "In A Blaze of Glory"!!!!

He WILL try to attack Chinese ships.  Chinese military vessels are in the area.  

It will lead to war and it will turn nuclear. 

Empty Speculation About Charlie Kirk and Last June's "12 Day War"

 

I've heard unsubstantiated rumours from right-wing bloggers and yootooberz that Trump was supposed to have joined Israel's attack on Iran in a substantial way last June, but that Charlie Kirk went to the White House and talked him out of it.  Ah! Here it is: "Charlie Kirk urged Trump in Oval Office to avoid war with Iran, Carlson says"

Spit-Balling

 

Iran and Iraq make some sort of awesome deal with the Kurds of Iraq to help expel the US-Americans from Iraq and they will be given assistance to fight President Al Qaeda in Syria and thereby save their people in that country. [This is far-fetched, I realize, but let's just go with it.] Maybe the Kurds get some more concessions that are real and that do not frighten the Iranians or the Iraqis.

Iraq and Iran conquer Kuwait outright.  Iraq accepts Iranian leadership and assists Iran financially for its sacrifices.  [Ian Welsh, or someone at his blog, talked about Iraq getting financial guarantees from China, based on the colonialist holding of Iraqi oil revenues in US-American banks, to be doled out to Iraq at the USA's discretion.  Iraqi oil is priced in Yuan, or China gets preferred status or something, and Iraq prospers and has money to pay Iran.

This is the end of the petro-dollar. 

The Enigma of Donald Trump's Intelligence (or lack thereof)

 

I recently read two articles, one of them was from Znet, I'll try to find it.

...

"War Against Iran: The Big Picture" by Daniel Axelrod.   The other one was from Craig Murray, "Seeing Trump Clearly". 

I'm mentioning them together because they deal with a subject that is somewhat important and which I have wrestled with here at this blog.  Axelrod's essay focuses more on the long-term continuities of US policy towards Iran over decades, and how Trump's actions actually fit seamlessly within that established framework.  Murray's piece argues that Trump's buffoonery is an act.  Like Axelrod, Murray shows how weakening Iran is long-term US policy and that, for all his seeming oafish stupidity, Trump is winning victory after victory, in Iran, in Venezuela, and now in Cuba.

 I think there's much to be learned from both essays, but there are some things I take issue with.

We Need a Revolution: Part III

 

The first two parts of this series were about the end of European imperialism and Iran's possible victory in the geo-strategically vital Western Asia region.  A victory against a decadent, decayed, debased West, led by a United States of America that chose an imbecilic degenerate like Donald Trump to be its president.

Let's just take stock of the situation here: Donald Trump is a life-long grifter. His financial crimes and scams and corruption were already common knowledge before his first run for the presidency.  He's a racist.  His father was arrested at a KKK rally.  They got in trouble for discriminating against Black tenants.  He's audio-recorded bragging about sexually assaulting women. He proudly admits to lusting after one of his daughters.  He proudly admits to barging in on teenage girls getting undressed backstage at a beauty pageant he subsidized.  Numerous females (some were still minors when they accused him, others charged him after reaching age-of-majority status) accused him of sexually assaulting them when they were adolescents.  He was found liable for "sexual abuse and defamation" in a civil suit, for which he is still on the hook for $80 million.  He was a long-time associate of Jeffrey Epstein.  Jeffrey Epstein: convicted sexual trafficker.  Jeffrey-Fuckshit-Epstein.  Are there bodies of murdered young girls buried in discreet locations on or near his ranch property in New Mexico or on his notorious island in the Caribbean?  Apparently the FBI isn't eager to find out.  Nobody in authority is.

We Need a Revolution: Part II

 

When I started the last post I had planned on talking much more about the stuff that brought us to "Operation Epstein Fury" and how we needed to respond to this atrocity.  But it ended up being more a post about European imperialism and how this war might represent its final death knell.  (Apparently a "knell" is a tolling of a bell.  And that can go on for a while.  But it eventually stops.  So, yes: "final death knell.")

We Need a Revolution: Part I

 

When capitalism went down hard in the 1930's the world was unquestionably ruled by white people.  China was a basket-case and India was ruled by the British.  Japan was the only truly autonomous non-white country.  And in the 1930's, the rise of tariffs in all the European nations, the USA and Canada, and Australia, devastated its export-oriented economy.  There was a non-capitalist Soviet Union pursuing its autarchic industrialization.  This served as something of a threat to the capitalist countries.  Communists and socialists were rising political movements in their many countries.

Then, as now, the capitalist class wasn't smart enough to have invented fascism to save itself from socialism.  Mussolini, Hitler, and others arose organically from out of societies in distress from the First World War, the post-war dislocations and then the Great Depression.  But the capitalists in Germany and Italy certainly saw how useful they were to push-back against the challenge from socialism.

Britain, France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the USA, Australia, ... maintained social cohesiveness.  Spain went socialist and then fascist.

In the end there was a war. The war replaced the suppressed demand caused by capitalist inequality and financial sector mismanagement with state-subsidized industrial expansion and full employment.  The greater resources of the USA, the British Empire and Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union produced their victory and gave the Soviets forty-five years of super-power status and the Anglo-American bloc seventy-five years of global hegemony.

 

We are now in a slow-motion, drawn-out crisis similar to that of the 1930's.  Except that this time our elites have knowledge (gained through experience) of public-sector financial management, social welfare policies, and propaganda/brainwashing that has so far allowed them to remain securely in power.  They aren't consciously aware of this.  They insist on un-learning all the lessons of the 20th Century in order to pursue their short-term narcissistic goals.  But the continued immiseration of the public, the homeless camps, the rise in household debt and insecurity, combined with the growing inequality and the elites' short-sighted, narcissistic compulsions to destroy those few remaining concessions to reality (welfare policies, fiscal and monetary policies) that provide some comforts for the majority, have led to a return to fascism.

Immigrants are scapegoated.  The lunatic ambitions of the zionist project in Palestine add fuel to the fire.  But this time there is no Soviet Union and no domestic socialist movements of any importance.  There is China and there is Russia.  Czarist Russia was backwards.  Soviet Russia was a clumsy colossus.  21st-Century Russia is a battle-hardened, resource-rich, militarily-focused, independent, more experienced nation.  Sobered by the fall of its empire.  China is an economic and technological powerhouse constrained by the realization that when the population's needs outstrip the resource/economic base, disaster follows.

India, Brazil, Iran, ... they're strong enough now to not be pushed around.

 

Israel was the last case of a European colonialist society.  After 1945, every other European imperialist country was formally giving up their colonies and settler societies (like Canada, the USA, South Africa) had ceased expanding, with some of them making at least token steps to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of their racist pasts.  (South Africa intensified its apartheid regime, but formal white political supremacy was lost by the 1990s.)

Meanwhile, Israeli zionists, to the present day, believe in a racist fantasy of a "Greater Israel" encompassing parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.  This while continuing to impose intense apartheid on the Palestinians and expanding into the West Bank.

If Israel and the United States are defeated in this crisis, it means the end of the era of European imperialism.

And that is what Iran intends.

Can Iran do it?

 I don't know obviously.  I don't have access to inside information about US and Israeli military hardware and tactics.  Nor do I have information about the Iranian side.  But I have seen the results of the June 2025 12-Day War and I saw that Israel was about to be completely overwhelmed after two weeks of fighting.  And at that time, Iran hadn't taken out the USA's radar installations in the Arab puppet dictatorships.  Last June, the Israelis had 30 minutes warning about incoming Iranian strikes.  Now it's said that is down to five minutes.

That's enough for today. 

Pete Hegseth: Imbecile

War Secretary Pete Hegseth is the sort of person whose entire view of the world is informed by his utter stupidity.  He does not understand the world.  He does not understand how to interact with other people.  In his confusion he says and does stupid things and other people regard him with contempt.  Which makes him angry.

Hegseth is afraid of things that are different from him.  That is why he is racist.  He has to believe that he is superior to non-white people because he sees them as threats and the best way to defend his self-confidence is to embrace white supremacy. 

Hegseth is afraid of women because they are different.  Because they sometimes deny him what he wants.  He is vulnerable to them and it kills him when they don't submit to him.  So he joins a church that ordains that women be submissive to men and even advocates taking the vote away from them.

I don't know if Hegseth suffered any childhood traumas (physical or emotional abuse, neglect, whatever) or if his fear and anger is entirely caused by his inherent stupidity.  Whatever the case, Hegseth needs to belief in large, powerful things to sustain his world.  "God" is the all-powerful father who controls the world.  The United States of America is the greatest country in the world and can  never be defeated.  Trump is the great leader, chosen by God to lead the USA to greatness by defeating its enemies, both external and internal.

It is an indictment of USA society that such a complete moron has been elevated to such a powerful position.  The whole MAGA movement is so disgustingly stupid and deluded.  The whole culture has become so debased.  Some sort of painful catharsis will be needed to purge this whole political bowel movement.

This regeneration will not come from the Democratic Party.  A political party that leaves itself open to criticism when its members complain about Trump's genuine mental deterioration, because they themselves foisted a dementia patient on the electorate, is incapable of what is needed to bring sanity back to the USA.

 

CBC Propaganda

 

All throughout the ongoing genocide in Gaza, if you only read CBC News, you could be forgiven for not grasping that a genocide is happening.  So little did they, and have they, reported on it.  (This would not be the case for readers of the National Pestilence, which celebrates it with perverted glee, like the racist subhumans that they are.)

I suppose the same could be said about the Russia-Ukraine War.  There you would have followed a progression; from Russia's dastardly "unprovoked" assault, to their subsequent unspeakable war-crimes, to their massive losses and incompetence combined with their grave threat to rest of Europe despite those losses and incompetence, arriving at the "stalemate" as plucky Ukraine continues to resist.  (Case in point of the mainstream media's garbage coverage was their reporting that the [fascist] Azov Battalion's being "evacuated" from Mariupol.  When, by "evacuated" they meant "surrendered into captivity.")

If you blinked you might have missed the perfunctory mentioning of Putin's attempts to negotiate a security agreement with NATO based on formalizing Ukraine's traditional neutrality and their dismissal by NATO leaders.  Perhaps the CBC provided some brief accounts of the massive corruption that diverted NATO military and financial assistance for Ukraine into the black market and the bank accounts of prominent Ukrainian oligarchs, politicians and fascists.  Some US mainstream media reported briefly on these matters so it's possible the CBC did as well.  

But the main point is that from any of these mainstream propaganda outlets, you would never know that Ukraine has lost at least 500,000 men while Russia's losses are only around 100,000 (as opposed to the million dead that NATO claims). 

I've noticed the same sort of stupidity when it comes to reporting about the USA and Israel's illegal attack on Iran.  Let's look at today's headlines as a case in point:

Mark Carney's Brain

 

I got a delayed email response from my MP about how the Liberals' wholehearted support for Israeli apartheid and genocide has disgraced Canada.  It was a pathetic string of empty platitudes and outright stupidity.  We continue to give aid through UNRWA.  Canada remains committed to a "Two-State Solution."  Canada defends Palestinian self-governance without Hamas.  

A Quick Note About Money

 

According to the Canadian government itself, they've provided $25 billion in aid to Ukraine since 2022.

 Since February 2022, Canada has committed more than $25.5 billion in overall multifaceted aid to Ukraine, including $8.5 billion in military assistance.

Trump Attacks Iran

 

Despite his bluster, Trump was sensing that his moment had passed.  The Supreme Court struck down his tariffs.  His raping of adolescent girls was going to come back to haunt him.  Whatever he thought would be the results of his economic policies, the reality is that the people are worse off than they were before.  And this includes those who believed he'd bring prices down soon after his inauguration.  He doesn't know what to do about the Russia-Ukraine war because he's delusional and stupid.  He genuinely believes the garbage about Russia's having suffered over a million dead from wasteful "human wave" assaults for which there is no photographic evidence.  Therefore he thought that Putin was desperate for peace at any price. At the same time, Trump very much wanted to exploit and humiliate Ukraine.  So he pursued a contradictory policy of insulting both parties in the war and has consequently achieved nothing.  He has successfully created a racist gestapo in ICE (while the pathetic Democrats have done nothing to restrain them other than to request they wear body-cams to record their criminal behaviour) but he has been disappointed that the bulk of the US-American people don't share his racist glee at the abuse of brown people.  In his ignorance and stupidity he didn't anticipate the cratering of support for him from Latinos as they all find themselves targets for racist abuse from ICE agents (some of whom are Latinos themselves, because racists are uniformly stupid people).

Ford Orders Province's Workers Back To Offices But Has No Spaces For Them

 

Corrupt, gluttonous Doug Ford just didn't like the idea of many of the province's workers continuing to do their jobs remotely, from home.  Just because it didn't negatively impact productivity and some reports said it was more efficient as well as better for the workers' mental health was no reason to carry on with the policy (first adopted in response to the COVID pandemic).  No.  "Work" is performed in a "workplace" under the direct supervision of a BOSS.  That's just the way that things are.  So back to the office they had to go.

Except, fat, lazy, stupid, corrupt Doug Ford didn't bother to rent the space for his workers to go to:

Will the Orange Degenerate Attack Iran?

 

 

Trump's massive military build-up in the Middle East is continuing.  As are the "negotiations" in Geneva, mediated by Oman, between Iran and Trump's envoys.  Israel wants an attack, which means the Democratic Party will be okay with it.  Trump admits to being a willing hireling to the zionists.  But Trump must be hearing information from military people that attacking Iran could lead to a very destructive, long-term struggle.  Destructive to Iran, but also destructive to the USA and Israel.  Trump is being pushed into conflict by zionism and imperialism and his own hubris, and pulled from conflict by his self-interest and cowardice.

How did we get here?

How is it that we live in a world where an imbecile and a degenerate like Trump is President?  How does it seem even halfway normal for Trump to be threatening war with Iran at the behest of the genocidal state of Israel, instead of being hounded from office for the revelations from the Epstein files and the fact that half of said files are illegally being withheld? 

Mark Carney and the "Rules-Based International Order"

 

One example of the flexibility and falsehood of international law that Carney admitted to at Davos would be his own theft of $2 billion in Venezuelan gold reserves held in the vaults of the Bank of England.  He was the bank's governor at the time and the UK was (and remains) united in destroying the Bolivarian Revolution that wanted to use Venezuela's oil wealth for the general population rather than local and foreign elites.  Carney's "argument" was that the US puppet/douchebag Juan Guano was Venezuela's legitimate ruler and not Maduro who had only been elected in an election.